RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.org/the-syrian-kurds-are-not-americas-problem/

All of Washington has been atwitter with the president’s recent decision to draw down American forces from their ongoing mission in Syria. The reason is the purported American abandonment — betrayal, in the eyes of many — of the Syrian Kurds. But the situation is more complicated than that. There has been much conflation of both the American mission in Syria and the disposition of America’s erstwhile Kurdish friends.

The fact is, despite being the world’s largest stateless ethnic population, sharing a contiguous landmass that cuts across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran — roughly a 500,000-square-kilometer area — the Kurds are by no means a monolithic entity. What’s more, the United States government has never officially endorsed the concept of a Kurdish state in the Middle East.

Don’t let those facts stop the experts from trotting out many falsehoods and half-truths about the messy situation that is Syria, though. Obviously, the Kurds who have been fighting alongside Americans throughout the entirety of America’s three-decade-long series of Middle East conflicts should be rewarded for their courage. It is utterly confounding, however, that the same “serious” foreign-policy “thinkers” in Washington and media who continually lambaste President Trump for his supposedly destabilizing actions in the Middle East are also in favor of massively destabilizing the region to midwife the birth of an independent, Kurdish state.

The rejiggering of the Middle East map would require more than the paltry American force currently fighting alongside the Kurds of northern Syria. It not only would require the United States to understand the various tribal and regional dynamics between the numerous Kurdish communities throughout the Mideast but would also mean that any potential Kurdish state would have to be cleaved from Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. This could never be achieved peacefully. It would entail some degree of violence and inevitably invoke ethno-religious tribal backlash against the United States at precisely the moment America does not need that headache.

Further, what critics do not understand is that the Kurds have been rewarded for their loyalty to the United States. They also confuse the Marxist elements of northern Syria’s Kurds with the pro-American Peshmerga of northern Iraq.

Here’s Why Everyone Is Upset About the Kurds

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/10/actual-conditions-for-jews-circa-late-2018-in-the-iraqi-kurdistan-paradise-past-as-prologue/

Largely autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan is a Sharia-based society, per its own Constitution, (Articles 6 & 7): 

This Constitution confirms and respects the Islamic identity of the majority of the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. It considers the principles of Islamic Sharia as one of the main sources of legislation… It is not allowed to enact a law inconsistent with the provisions of the fundamentals of Islam. (Articles 6 & 7)

Not surprisingly, given historical Sharia mores, the attendant legacy of Islamic attitudes towards non-Muslims, overall, including Jews, and Islam’s own intrinsic theological Jew-hatred, here are the current prevailing conditions for the tiny vestigial  remnant population of mixed “Jews” of Kurdistan, forced to “practice” their faith surreptitiously, as reported less than a year ago (11/30/2018):

“They call us ‘Ben Jews’ or ‘Sons of Jews’ because we are mixed Jews, Kurds, or other ethnicities.” They keep their Jewish identity hidden for fear of persecution. They meet for Shabbat – the holy day – at a different home every week. Religious celebrations like Hanukkah and Passover are often celebrated privately inside the home of someone within the community. The event on Friday was organized by many people from the community, but “they didn’t want to give their name or picture because of the dangerous situation”

Past as prologue, here are the past conditions for Jewish communities under Kurdish dominion not only in Iraqi Kurdistan–where Jewish families existed as chattel–but also Turkish Anatolia during the mid-19th through early 20th centuries which led to their liquidation by massacre, pillage, and flight.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15007/how-terrible-does-turkey-have-to-get

So where is this “economic devastation” against Turkey? Or does that make two promises that the U.S. has not kept?

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has been threatening to flood Europe with more refugees. “We will open the gates and send 3.6 million refugees your way,” he promised on October 10.

Meanwhile, obscenely, Erdoğan has been invited to the White House for November 13.

The real crime was for the US to betray the Kurds — savory or not — by making promises it did not keep… and leaving the world to wonder which Middle East ally the US will double-cross next. Take a guess?

Turkey’s military offensive into the overwhelmingly Kurdish northeastern Syria is sending messages on many wavelengths. One consequence is beyond dispute: Turkey is adding further chaos, bloodshed and tears to a region already in turmoil. The U.S. had apparently “assur[ed] Kurdish protection from Turkey.” Trump spoke of “economic devastion” if Kurdish forces were attacked. “As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!),” Trump tweeted on October 7. [Microsoft may thoughtfully have censored this tweet for you. Ed.]

So where is this “economic devastation” against Turkey? Or does that make two promises that the U.S. has not kept?

In theory, the Turkish incursion will build a safe zone that is 30 kilometers (20 miles) deep and stretches more than 480 kilometers (300 miles) toward Syria’s Iraqi border -– which just so happens to be the very place where many of the Kurds in Syria live. From there, the Turkish army will push Kurdish militants south and ward off an “existential threat” to Turkey. Once cleared of the YPG forces, the main Kurdish group (the Syrian offspring of the insurgent umbrella organization PKK) Turkey says it will build homes, hospitals schools and rehabilitation centers for the two million Syrian refugees it hosts.

This happy-ending scenario may not materialize so easily.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/what-does-rand-paul-think-america-owes-our-kurdish-allies/

It’s a question that the Kentucky senator and every American leader ought to answer.

In 2014, Republican senator Rand Paul of Kentucky was all over the map on what, if anything, the United States should do to stop the growing army of jihadists known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

In June 2014, after ISIS conquered Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city at the time, Paul was very skeptical of even using American air power against ISIS. Airstrikes against ISIS could turn America into “Iran’s air force,” Paul wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “America Shouldn’t Choose Sides in Iraq’s Civil War.”

As American public opinion changed, so did Paul’s policy toward U.S. involvement in the war against ISIS. As late as August 29, 2014, Paul still wasn’t sure if “ISIS is a threat to our national security.” But then Paul, who harbored presidential ambitions at the time, abruptly issued a statement saying that he would destroy ISIS militarily.

“Some pundits are surprised that I support destroying the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) militarily. They shouldn’t be,” Paul wrote on September 4 in Time magazine. “If I had been in President Obama’s shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS.” Many of Paul’s non-interventionist allies were baffled by his change of mind. “The sudden evaporation of Paul’s doubts reeks of political desperation,” wrote Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at the libertarian magazine Reason.

In 2015, Paul settled on a plan to defeat ISIS by arming the Kurds and promising them a country: “I think they would fight like hell if we promised them a country.”

The Kurds did fight like hell: 11,000 died fighting ISIS. But this week, President Trump decided it was not worth keeping 100 or fewer U.S. troops in northern Syria to deter a Turkish attack on America’s Kurdish allies. Rand Paul loudly cheered him on.

On Wednesday, I noted Paul’s 2015 comments about promising the Kurds their own country on the Corner, and on Thursday Senator Paul responded with a statement emailed by his communications director. “I did and still do support a homeland for the Kurds — in Iraq — anyone who conflates the Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran into one simple homogenous, easily solvable problem is either naive or disingenuous,” Paul said in the statement.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15002/france-free-speech

Defending someone who is accused of being a “racist” implies the risk of being accused of being a “racist” too. Intellectual terror reigns in France.

France is moving from a “muzzled press to a muzzling press that destroys free speech”. — Alain Finkielkraut, writer and philosopher.

Writers other than Éric Zemmour have been hauled into court and totally excluded from all media, simply for describing reality.

In a society where freedom of speech exists, it would be possible to discuss the use of these statements, but in France today, freedom of speech has been almost completely destroyed.

Soon in France, no one will dare to say that any attack openly inspired by Islam has any connection with Islam.

On September 28, a “Convention of the Right” took place in Paris, organized by Marion Marechal, a former member of French parliament and now director of France’s Institute of Social, Economic and Political Sciences. The purpose of the convention was to unite France’s right-wing political factions. In a keynote speech, the journalist Éric Zemmour harshly criticized Islam and the Islamization of France. He described the country’s “no-go zones” (Zones Urbaines Sensibles; Sensitive Urban Zones) as “foreign enclaves” in French territory and depicted, as a process of “colonization”, the growing presence in France of Muslims who do not integrate.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14945/christians-attacks-burkina-faso

“In the middle of the night, you must go and listen to sermons. You’re forbidden to criticize them. Women have to cover their heads. There’s no talk of cigarettes, alcohol or music, no celebrations … If you smoke, at first they just tell you not to. The third time, they kill you.” — A resident of Burkina Faso, reported by Lindy Lowry, Open Doors, June 20, 2019.

“They’ve forbidden prostitution in the [gold] mines — they slit their throats. They kill someone about once a month, I’d say, and it’s always people they’ve warned. Except the prostitutes. They don’t warn them. They just kill them.” — A resident of Burkina Faso, reported by Lindy Lowry, Open Doors, June 20, 2019.

Terrorism — committed by armed groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al-Mourabitoun, Ansar al-Dine, Ansar-ul-Islam lil-Ichad wal Jihad, Boko Haram, Islamic State in Greater Sahara and the Macina Liberation Front — has resulted in the displacement of more than 135,000 people in Burkina Faso, two-thirds of them since the beginning of this year. Their violence also has led to the closure of many schools.

The extremist attacks on Christians in the Muslim-majority West African country of Burkina Faso are not only a cause of great concern, but indicate that terrorist groups in the Middle East, such as ISIS, have not been defeated; they have moved their operations elsewhere.

Terrorism — committed by armed groups such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Al-Mourabitoun, Ansar al-Dine, Ansar-ul-Islam lil-Ichad wal Jihad, Boko Haram, Islamic State in Greater Sahara and the Macina Liberation Front — has resulted in the displacement of more than 135,000 people in Burkina Faso, two-thirds of them since the beginning of this year. Their violence also has led to the closure of many schools.

According to a September 18 report by the international Catholic organization, Aid to the Church in Need:

“The most recent villages to have been abandoned are those of Hitté and Rounga, where the inhabitants were given an ultimatum by the Islamist terrorists, who ordered them to convert to Islam or abandon their homes. A source, who requested anonymity, said: ‘They are by no means the only ones facing this situation, rather they are just part of a program by the jihadists who are deliberately sowing terror, assassinating members of the Christian communities and forcing the remaining Christians to flee after warning them that they will return in three days’ time — and that they do not wish to find any Christians or catechumens still there.'”

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

He has been long loathed by leftists and secularists, mercilessly targeted by journalists with childish insults aimed at his person and his faith and with obsessive character assassination that has rightly left many people, Catholic and non-Catholic, doubting that he could ever have got a fair trial; indeed, his conviction on the uncorroborated testimony of a single witness has dangerous implications for all Australians.

Here, in order to dispel the impression fostered in some quarters that Cardinal Pell, who has been vilified perhaps more than any other public figure in Australian history, lacks sympathy for the Jewish People, let’s remind ourselves of a speech he gave in Sydney on 14 May 2001, on the topic”Christians and Jews: The way ahead”:

‘Last night Rabbi David quoted the Jewish saying that after the destruction of the 2nd Temple, the gift of prophecy is dead; so that those who claim to prophesy are either babes or fools. Despite this, both of us have been condemned tonight, to talk on “the way ahead”, but my ambitions are very limited for a number of good reasons. A bishop has to be planning for tomorrow, although Jesus himself told us not to worry too much. Tomorrow can take care of itself, we have worries enough today! And in the Catholic community there are scattered individuals who are so busy preparing for the future that they ignore and neglect today’s responsibilities.

I speak too as one less wise; my normal condition, but in this case without extensive experience of ongoing dialogue, deep theological or sociological discussion on this vexed area of Jewish a Christian relations. 

However I pray the psalms every day, with all other Catholic priests; and I love them. I don’t know how many priests, especially those suffering or in trouble, who have told me how much the psalms have helped them.

In Rome 35 or 36 years ago our lecturer on the Psalms told us they were unique in any literature. 

These were the years of Vatican II and all such claims were greeted sceptically by many students.

I reserved my judgement and during the later years I have read something of the other great religions and found nothing to equal the Psalms as a body of prayerful literature.

I have come to know and love much more deeply the writings of the great prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah and especially Ezekiel, the strangest of them all. And I have come lately to study Elijah much more closely. For a long time I didn’t understand his top billing among Jews and Christians and with Jesus himself! Now I believe he is particularly important, and for us now, because monotheism was nearly wiped out then by Jezebel and the prophets of Baal.