RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/the-anti-humanist-ideology-o

In the wake of the horrific Christchurch shootings, we need to thoughtfully engage with the ideology which influenced it. Just before the massacre, the self-confessed killer, Brenton Tarrant, distributed what is being called a manifesto, in which he unashamedly describes what he was about to do as a “terrorist attack”, and gives and account of his ideology. We need to understand this ideology, not to give it a platform, but to learn and to equip ourselves to stand against such hatred.

Ideology and Evil

I have recently been re-reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. The Christchurch massacre of people at prayer took place while I was making my way through Solzhenitsyn’s history of the Soviet annihilation of millions of their own. Countless lives were flushed down the vast sewer of the Gulag. Solzhenitsyn traced the Soviets’ descent into darkness as communist ideology took over people’s souls and minds, making many even half-decent people into monsters. He wrote:

To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he is doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity to natural law. Fortunately it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions. Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble – and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evil-doers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

Ideology — that is what gives evil-doing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses, but will receive praise and honors.

Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions.

http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/03/31/brazils-bolsonaro-warmly-received-by-netanyahu-in-israel/

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warmly welcomed Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on his first state visit to Israel on Sunday.

Bolsonaro touched down Sunday and received red carpet treatment from Netanyahu, who is running for re-election in nine days. The Brazilian leader opened his speech after landing with the words “I love Israel” in Hebrew.

The Brazilian president is expected during his four-day trip to decide whether to follow U.S. President Donald Trump’s lead and move the Brazilian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a move he has repeatedly promised.

Netanyahu called Bolsonaro a “good friend” and said Israel and Brazil have entered “a new era” of relations.

The prime minister said he and Bolsonaro would sign “many agreements,” including security deals, and that the Brazilian leader would visit Judaism’s holy Western Wall, “in Jerusalem, our eternal capital.”

Israeli financial news website, Calcalist, reported on Sunday that Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras was considering bidding in a new tender to explore for oil and gas offshore Israel and a final decision would be announced during Bolsonaro’s visit.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/31/hunt-knifeman-north-london-four-people-stabbed-random/

There have been more than 20 fatal stabbings across the capital since the start of the year, with two knife murders in the past few days.

Scotland Yard officers were urgently hunting a crazed knife-man who stabbed four complete strangers in the space of a few hours after approaching them at random.

A 45-year-old woman and a 23-year-old man remained in a critical condition in hospital and two others were seriously hurt following what detectives described as a series of “senseless and cowardly” attacks.

Officers flooded the streets of Edmonton in north London and warned the public to be vigilant following the spate of linked knifings which occurred in the space of just over 12-hours.

The attacker was described as a black man, approximately 6ft 3ins tall, of skinny build and wearing dark clothing, possibly a hooded top.

The incidents followed another upsurge of bloody violence across the country with at least six fatal stabbings in recent days.

On Monday Theresa May, the Prime Minister, will host a major knife crime summit at Downing Street as the police desperately try to get a grip on the rising tide of violence.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/03/31/theresa-may-risks-survival-conservatives-siding-remainers/

Trust. Such a simple word yet difficult to define. Can the British people trust their politicians? In fact, do we deserve their trust?

That question is being tested as we find ourselves in the middle of a constitutional crisis and political failure.

As a Leave-supporting MP, I resigned my ministerial job over the final terms of the Withdrawal Agreement in November. I then voted against it for the third time on Friday.

I have received a hero’s welcome from those grateful for “not letting us down”. I have also had the finger of blame pointed and have been branded an “extremist” and “hardliner”.

Champion and villain in equal measure. Neither, in reality, are true.

The position in which my Leave-supporting colleagues and I have found ourselves has been difficult.

As the valiant minority in a Remain-dominated Parliament, sidelined by the pro-Remain Government and Civil Service, we have always known that the uphill struggle was worth it for the sake of the 17.4 million majority. We resoundingly rejected the Withdrawal Agreement in January because it did not offer Brexit.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13974/brexit-message-eu

The first problem with the EU is that, though it is called a union, it isn’t really one. The EU is essentially an economic club; not a state.

Brexit has highlighted the key challenges that the EU faces. The first challenge concerns a widespread overestimation of the EU’s role. This is due to its perception as a supra-national state, which it certainly is not.

The EU is also facing the challenge posed by the return of the nation-state as the most popular model of socio-political organization across the globe. Right now all supra-national and/or international organizations, from the United Nations to NATO, are regarded with suspicion, if not outright hostility, not only in Europe but also throughout the world.

With the Brexit saga’s denouement still uncertain, the European Union would do well to re-examine its performance as a daring experience in socio-political engineering on a grand scale. Even if, as expected, the United Kingdom somehow manages to fudge Brexit and remain tied to the EU, the fact remains that millions of Brits and other Europeans are unhappy with aspects of the experience.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13975/uk-unwelcome-christians

In rejecting the claim for asylum of a man who converted from Islam to Christianity, and presumably compelling his return to Iran, the British government is effectively sentencing him to death.

“[O]ut of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian, representing just 0.2% of all Syrian refugees accepted by the UK.” — Barnabas Fund.

At the same time, the Home Office allowed a Pakistani cleric, Syed Muzaffar Shah Qadri, considered so extreme that he is banned even from his native Pakistan, to come and lecture in UK mosques.

“It’s unbelievable that these persecuted Christians who come from the cradle of Christianity are being told there is no room at the inn, when the UK is offering a welcome to Islamists who persecute Christians…. There is a serious systemic problem when Islamist leaders who advocate persecution of Christians are given the green light telling them that their applications for UK visas will be looked on favourably, while visas for short pastoral visits to the UK are denied to Christian leaders whose churches are facing genocide. That is an urgent issue that Home Office ministers need to grasp and correct.” — Dr. Martin Parsons, Barnabas Fund.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/03/mourning-a-massacre-with-the-veil-of-oppression/

This from BBC News on May 19 last year:

It is five years since Iranian Masih Alinejad started a movement – since joined by thousands of women – protesting against the compulsory wearing of the hijab, or headscarf, in her country. It spread on social media and led to unprecedented demonstrations in the streets …Niloofar (not her real name) was arrested for demonstrating against the mandatory hijab. She says she was held in solitary confinement and subjected to torture and beatings. An active member of the movement who still lives in Iran, she says that through Masih’s campaigns “ordinary people get together to make the government react”.

Now let’s cut to New Zealand and Jacinda Ardern draping herself in a headscarf to signify solidarity with Muslims. Reportedly, New Zealand women generally were encouraged to wear a scarf to show their solidarity. A heavily-armed policewoman is pictured in newspapers with a headscarf while guarding a funeral of one of the victims of the shootings. It is false, it is virtue-signaling, and it is sickeningly unsupportive of brave Muslim women trying to throw off their oppression along with their scarfs.

It was a terrible event in New Zealand. An outpouring of grief and sympathy should be forthcoming. But perspective is required. You don’t have to show sympathy by donning clothing which is used in so many places to keep so many women in check and under the yolk of religious fundamentalists.

http://news.acdemocracy.org/new-europe-and-the-isl

The European Union’s Progressive-Left post-nationalist leadership is set on challenging the sovereignty of  nation-states, by eliminating borders and letting in millions of Muslims.   This policy has already contributed to moving the “old” European continent towards a new Europe, occupied by new people with a new culture. Apparently, opening the continent to millions of mostly unqualified migrants who refuse to assimilate, and who drain the coffers of their host countries, seems like the preferred solution to the negative birthrates among the Europeans.

On August 30, 2010, as he was folding his tent near the Vatican, on his last visit to Rome, Italy, then Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, forewarned: “Europe runs the risk of turning black from illegal immigration; it could turn into Africa. There is a dangerous level of immigration from Africa into Europe, and we don’t know what will happen. What will be the reaction of the white Christian Europeans to this mass of hungry, uneducated Africans? We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and cohesive continent or if it will be destroyed by this barbarian invasion.”Kaddafi urged the Europeans, “imagine that this could happen, but before it does, we need to work together.”

He proceeded to offer the Europeans a deal, asking for a modest fee of 5bn euros, to stop the mass migration to Europe, which as he predicted, are costing billions of euros annually.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-pulls-a-syria-in-venezuela-11553901531

Vladimir Putin has made a career of intervening abroad and seeing if the world lets him get away with it. He did this in Georgia when George W. Bush was President, then in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Syria in Barack Obama’s Presidency. Now he’s doing the same on Donald Trump’s watch—this time in America’s backyard in Venezuela.

Two planes arrived in Caracas last weekend with 100 Russian troops, and in recent years Russia has provided cash, food and weapons to prop up the regime of Nicolás Maduro. The U.S. has thrown its support behind Juan Guaidó, the interim president chosen by the National Assembly and backed by nearly every country in the region. But Mr. Putin is betting that with a limited military and financial investment he can keep Mr. Maduro in power, expand his control over Venezuela’s oil company, impress the world with his moxie, and embarrass Mr. Trump.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13961/iran-going-nuclear

“Thank God, the tests on the IR4 and IR2M (centrifuges) have been completed. They were tested for over 12 years. Today we have all the data, and we can easily manufacture them on an industrial scale.” — Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was not allowed to inspect or monitor Iran’s military sites where nuclear activities were most likely being carried out. Among the many concessions that the Obama administration gave the Iranian government, one was accepting the Iranian leaders’ demand that these military sites would be out of the IAEA’s reach.

Due to this surrender, various high-profile Iranian sites such as the Parchin military complex, located southeast of Tehran, were free to engage in nuclear activities without the risk of inspection.

Once the authoritarian, anti-Semitic and anti-American government of Iran possess a nuclear bomb, no amount of actions will be able reverse the catastrophe.