RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/children-as-political-puppets

On a pleasant spring evening, at about 7:00, I was walking back to my flat in Paris when I heard the sound of chanting and tambourines being struck in unison. Some of the chanting was unmistakably that of young children, though it was mixed with that of adults.

It came from a political demonstration against a law proposed by the Minister of Education. The proposed law sounded mostly uncontroversial: the age at which children must go to school was to be lowered to three years, but since nearly 97 percent of them do so anyway, this hardly represented a vastly increased burden on the education system. Other proposed changes also sounded less than earth-shattering, though they seemed to be directed toward reducing the influence of teachers’ unions in an extremely centralized system.

Children as young as six and eight held up placards saying that they demanded schools in which there was freedom of thought or that commercialism should be kept out of education. Children are precocious these days, but are they really able, at age six or eight, to argue for freedom of thought or against the entry of market forces into education?

A teacher handed me a flyer that said, “To put an end to this proposed law, parents and school staff are organizing to lead the combat.” No mention was made of the children, who made up half the crowd. I wanted to ask the teacher whether she thought it right to use children in this way: to make them shout slogans and wave banners. They do this kind of thing in North Korea—but in France?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/christchurch-jewish-blame-and-the-global-scourge-of-muslim-jew-hatred_2847735.html

Brenton Tarrant committed a heinous, cowardly act of mass murder when he gunned down 50 defenseless Muslims at two Christchurch, New Zealand, area mosques on March 15, 2019.

As revealed in his own alleged manifesto, Tarrant’s ideological paradigm is a bigoted ethno-nationalist, Marxist-Leninist communist state—i.e., the People’s Republic of China (PRC)—“the nation with the closest political and social values to my [Tarrant’s] own.”

The PRC’s brutal behavior on a grand scale—forcibly interning and “re-educating” an estimated 1.5 million Xinjiang province Uyghur Muslims—comports neatly with Tarrant’s ideologically driven violence.

Tarrant alone bears ultimate responsibility for the carnage he wrought. Moreover, predictably hysterical claims by the Jew-hating Turkish President Erdogan—echoed by supposedly more staid Muslim organizations, “expert” media commentators, and “academics”—that Tarrant somehow represents systemic Western Islamophobia, grotesquely distort the global context of both Muslim versus non-Muslim (especially Christian) and internecine Muslim violence.

https://www.city-journal.org/global-criminal-networks

Imagine that your son or brother has joined a protest against government corruption. During the demonstration, police arrive and force them onto a bus. You rush to the site of the event; you ask about him, but no one tells you anything. You keep searching, your anxiety mounting because you know the depth of the corruption in the city: police and the mayor often collaborate with local drug traffickers. You comfort yourself, remembering that your son or brother was with a large crowd. As the days pass, however, you realize that they weren’t taken into custody by the police; your son or brother has vanished. Two, then three, years pass, and you’re told that it’s too dangerous to keep looking, because “important” people were involved—the mayor, in fact, may have ordered local drug traffickers to kidnap the demonstrators.

What level of corruption is required for the kidnapping and disappearance of 43 students, as happened on September 26, 2014, at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, State of Guerrero, Mexico—and getting away with it? It’s a corruption that goes beyond the traditional definitions that scholars advanced in the 1990s when defining administrative and systemic corruption, in which, say, a local political leader or police chief might receive kickbacks and bribes in exchange for going easy on crime. An international commission of experts investigating the Ayotzinapa events found something far more complex: the perpetrators “didn’t hide their identities,” and there had been possible coordination between the Guerreros Unidos crime syndicate, which was presumed to have killed the students, and at least 18 police patrol units from various municipalities, one state patrol unit, and government officials at various levels. Though some authorities received real-time information about the kidnapping, they didn’t act to protect the students. The commission also noted that Ayotzinapa is a hotspot for heroin trafficking to Chicago—but it is just one of 2,446 Mexican municipalities affected by the convergence of massive corruption and transnational criminal forces that traffic in drugs, arms, minerals, and human beings.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14042/qatar-europe-islamism-finance

“We have been reporting Doha’s ideological and religious penetration for years. In the form of investments and financial operations, Qatar extends its proselytizing network every day, with serious damage to European societies…” — Souad Sbai, the Moroccan-born president of Italy’s Averroes Studies Center.

Qatar has been funding mega-mosques across Europe. Qatar’s goal is apparently to Islamicize the European diaspora.

“[Qatar’s] English-language stations produce slick propaganda against Qatar’s enemies, dressed up in Western liberal rhetoric. Al Jazeera’s latest venture – its social media channel, AJ+ – is aimed at young, progressive Americans. Its documentaries on the evils of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Trump administration are sandwiched between glowing coverage of transgender rights campaigns and emotional appeals for the plight of asylum seekers on America’s southern border – seemingly incongruous topics for a broadcaster controlled by a Wahhabi regime… Qatar is now the largest foreign donor to American universities.” — Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum.

In October, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini visited Qatar, the “energy giant”, where he praised the emirate for “not sponsoring extremism anymore”. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. Qatar, “the other Wahhabi state”, apparently is interested not only in its economic relationship with Europe, but also in exporting its brand of political Islam.

According to a new book, Qatar Papers: How the Emirate Finances Islam in France and Europe, by two French journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, Qatar has distributed 22 million euros to Islamic projects in Italy alone. This funding has had virtually a single beneficiary: the Union of Islamic Communities and Organizations in Italy (UCOII), accused of closeness to Qatar’s pet organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, the mouthpiece of which is Qatar’s media outlet, Al Jazeera, located in the capital city of Doha.

https://www.city-journal.org/global-extremist-violence

Last week, the New York Times featured an illustrated timeline of “white extremist” killings over the last nine years, with lines demonstrating citation and affiliation among the killers. According to the Times, the record shows “an informal global network of white extremists whose violent attacks are occurring with greater frequency in the West.”

The idea that white supremacist violence is a growing global threat has gained more currency recently, notably in the wake of the ghastly Christchurch mosque massacre, when an avowed white nationalist murdered 50 Muslims. New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for instance, asserted that “White supremacists committed the largest # of extremist killings in 2017.” No one will deny that racial hatred is an evil ideology, and that people who kill in the name of white supremacy commit evil—but is it true that white extremists are sowing a growing amount of worldwide mayhem?

The evidence suggests otherwise. Even a superficial glance at the record indicates that of the nearly 20,000 people killed in thousands of extremist killings in 2017, white supremacists were responsible for very few. The worst terrorist event of 2017, according to the State Department, was the explosion of a truck bomb outside the Safari Hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, which killed more than 580 people. This violent act is believed to have been the work of Al-Shabaab, which was responsible for 97 percent of the 370 instances of extremist killings in Somalia in 2017, accounting for about 1,400 deaths—mostly civilian. The remaining violent acts were carried out by Jabha East Africa (ISIS-Somalia), a dissident Al-Shabaab splinter group.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/no-deal-brexit-yes-if-macron-vetoes-an-extension/

This week European leaders will meet in solemn conclave, with and without Prime Minister Theresa May, to determine whether or not to extend the U.K.’s membership of the European Union and, if so, for how long. Brits have until recently paid relatively little attention to this occasion since it was generally agreed that the other EU members wanted the Brits to stay in. All doubts were on the British side, where a heated debate now seems to be moving towards a cross-party Con–Lab agreement to strike a pretend Brexit that would keep Britain inside most of the EU’s economic institutions, regulations, and tariffs for an indefinite period. There’s a lot to play for still — half the Tory party hates May’s deal — but for the moment the ball is in the court of Brussels.

And for the first time, one of the Europeans may say no. Not just any old European either, but the French president, Emmanuel Macron.

The actual choice before the European Council asks should Britain be allowed to remain in the EU for a short time (i.e., until June 30) ,to sign off on May’s withdrawal deal or nearest equivalent; or a long time (another year or even longer), to enable a different deal to be negotiated; or no time at all, being shown the door on Friday. All Europeans except Macron favor some version of the first two options. If you’re interested in such matters, Wolfgang Munchau in today’s FT has an informative analysis that suggests that if Corbyn and May can agree on the general principles of leaving the EU, then the good ship BRINO (Brexit in Name Only) can sail between the Scylla of No Deal and the Charybdis of Another Referendum to reach an agreed departure date in December. Macron, however, is reportedly tired of these endless discussions and skeptical that the Brits will ever agree on a bipartisan deal that has public support and a chance of survival. He is thinking of exercising the French veto to prevent any extension at all, and so in effect bringing about a no-deal Brexit from outside.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

Robert Sarah is a Guinean prelate of the Catholic Church. A Cardinal since 20 November 2010, he was appointed prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments by Pope Francis on 23 November 2014.

“I would like to explain why I, a son of Africa, allow myself to address the West. The Church is the guardian of civilization. I am convinced that western civilization is passing at present through a mortal crisis. It has reached the extreme of self-destructive hate….

How could I not emphasize the threat posed by Islamism? Muslims despise the atheistic West…. A West that denies its faith, its history, its roots, and its identity is destined for contempt, for death, and disappearance.”

Indeed,

‘”It is a false exegesis to use the Word of God to promote migration. God never wanted these rifts,” Cardinal Sarah told French publication Valeurs Actuelles before going on to blast bishops who “say fuzzy things, vague, imprecise, to escape criticism, and they marry the stupid evolution of the world.”

Sarah, head of the Vatican liturgy office, minced no words in his denunciation of the prevailing viewpoint among liberal Catholics, which states that the faithful betray Christ by wanting stricter immigration policies.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/jeremy-corbyns-labour-long-ignored-complaints-of-anti-semitism/

Despite receiving more than 850 formal complaints, the British labour party has failed to take action against, and on occasion defended, members who have made outrageously anti-Semitic claims, according to a new exposé published by the Sunday Times.

Data obtained by the Times show that party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s office had received 863 complaints relating to anti-Semitism as of March 8, 2019, but only intervened in 101 of those cases. In total, 454 of the cases remain unresolved, including 249 cases in which no action has been taken. And in those cases that were resolved, 191 members faced no sanction, 145 received a warning the Times characterized as a “slap on the wrist,” and just 29 members were expelled.

Many of the complaints that failed to prompt permanent expulsions were based on a party member having explicitly endorsed an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. In one such case, a trade-union official in Manchester was readmitted to the party after sharing a tirade that blamed “Jewish Israelis” for the September 11 terrorist attacks. In another, a councilor in Lancashire was readmitted after decrying the nefarious influence of the “Jewish media” and the “Rothschilds” and after having defended those epithets as “blanket term[s] of description without any racist connotations.”

In other cases, members who said things such as “Heil Hitler,” “F**k the Jews,” and “Jews are the problem” have remained in the party despite Corbyn’s office having received complaints about them over a year ago.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/the-uks-remainers-will-tear-down-democracy-and-all-its-rules-to-get-their-way

“The United Kingdom,” the New York Times proclaims with its customary tone of Olympian certainty, “has gone mad.”

That publication has become almost comically anti-British over the past two years, but on this occasion, it has a point — albeit an unintended one.

The author, Thomas Friedman, offers us his lofty diagnosis of Britain’s collective dementia. It is caused, he informs us, by “Conservative hard-liners who used to care about business but are now obsessed with restoring Britain’s ‘sovereignty’ over any economic considerations.”

What he means by “hard-liners,” to be clear, is “MPs who accept the 2016 referendum result,” something all sides promised to do in advance. It is worth pointing out that 12 months after the referendum, there was a general election, at which both the Labour and Conservative parties promised unequivocally to uphold the people’s verdict.

Only now, it turns out that when they made that promise, quite a few candidates had their fingers crossed behind their backs.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13892/iran-regime-cave-in

“Yes, the accused fled from a country where virtual bullies push against science, knowledge and expertise and resort to conspiracy theories to find a scapegoat for all the problems because they know well that finding an enemy, spy or someone to blame is much easier than accepting responsibility and complicity in a problem”. — Kaveh Madani, one of Iran’s leading environmentalists, who recently fled to London.

Despite its economic crisis, Iran continues to provide hundreds of millions of dollars every year to terrorists. ” When you throw in the money provided to other terrorists, the total comes close to one billion dollars. Let’s pause to consider that, because it bears repeating:The Iranian regime spends nearly a billion dollars a year just to support terrorism”. — Nathan A. Sales, U.S. State Department Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism.

This impressive decline of the Iranian regime is being accompanied by petty and repressive laws. Iran recently handed down a sentence of 33 years in prison and 148 lashes to a prominent Iranian lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who dared to defend girls who were protesting Iran’s forced veiling laws. In another recent incident, an Iranian couple were arrested after their public marriage proposal went viral on social media.

The Islamic Republic of Iran today, through its terror proxies and puppet regimes, has been extending its hegemony to many capitals of the Middle East: Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Sanaa. Iran continues to threaten the Middle East, the Mediterranean basin and potentially Europe. Forty years after its theocratic revolution in 1979, the mullahs speak (wishfully, one assumes) of a “declining” America.