RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13908/ireland-anti-israel

Ireland, as a European Union member state, is subject to the EU’s commercial rules. EU trade rules may prohibit Ireland’s unilateral action as an EU treaty requires common commercial policy for all EU member states. The proposed law “could force US companies with Irish subsidiaries to choose between violating the Irish law or violating US Export Administration Regulations.” — Orde Kittrie, Professor of Law, Arizona State University.

Worst, there is no evidence that Ireland’s “pro-Palestinian” activities are in any way helping Palestinians, who continue to be arrested, tortured and deprived of any viable future by their own corrupt leaders. Most European activities seem actually focused on trying to destroy Israel.

What is most notable, of course, is that there is no commensurate hostility toward any other country. Ireland’s rancid vote also needs to be contrasted to its virtual silence regarding countries that are daily committing hair-raising crimes against humanity, such as Iran, China, Turkey, Syria, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Mauritania, Cuba, Venezuela or Sudan, for instance. Why only Israel? What is now on display is simply a hypocritical condemnation by Ireland of the only democracy in in the Middle East with equal rights for all its citizens.

What is essential is that this double standard — one set of rules for Israel and a whole other set of rules for countries actually committing atrocities — must stop.

Ireland’s legislative lower house (Dáil) on January 29 approved a bill that would make it a crime for Irish citizens to import or sell any product produced by Israelis in areas located beyond the 1949 armistice lines, most of which, such as Jerusalem, were actually liberated by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War from their illegal occupation by Jordan in 1948-49, after Israel was attacked by five Arab armies who were literally hoping to crush it the day of its birth. In 1967, Egypt, presumably hoping to finish the job it had started in 1948, created a casus belli (cause for war under international law) by announcing a blockade of Israel’s access to the Red Sea via the Straits of Tiran.

Ireland’s legislative lower house (Dáil) on January 29 approved a bill that would make it a crime for Irish citizens to import or sell any product produced by Israelis in areas located beyond the 1949 armistice lines, most of which, such as Jerusalem, were actually liberated by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War from their illegal occupation by Jordan in 1948-49, after Israel was attacked by five Arab armies who were literally hoping to crush it the day of its birth. In 1967, Egypt, presumably hoping to finish the job it had started in 1948, created a casus belli (cause for war under international law) by announcing a blockade of Israel’s access to the Red Sea via the Straits of Tiran.

https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/1106913024517070849
https://courtnews.co.nz/2018/02/15/youth

A Christchurch teenager who converted to Islam planned to ram a car into a group of people and then stab them until the police killed him, the Christchurch District Court was told at his sentencing.The teen has now told a psychologist that when the violent incident began he “decided not to hurt anybody because he did not have the means to kill enough people”, Crown prosecutor Chris Lange told the court.“The reason no-one was hurt was that he did not have access to knives,” Mr Lange said. But there was significant premeditation, and hostility towards non-Muslims.The teen harboured thoughts for five months of killing multiple people, and expected to be killed by the police. He had written a goodbye note to his mother.

After his arrest, the youth told police he was angry and had “done it for Allah”.The court has adopted a rehabilitative approach to the teen’s sentencing, with Judge Stephen O’Driscoll releasing him on intensive supervision with a list of conditions and a warning that if he breaches the conditions or reoffends, he will likely be sent to prison.Among the conditions – which will apply for two years while the judge monitors his progress – is counselling by a member of the local Muslim community.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/15/from-brexit

Not long ago, to support Great Britain’s departure from the European Union remained the hoppy heady preserve of the corduroyed English fruitcake.

Only the niche, and utterly mental clung to such opinions. Those trifling oddities, blimpish and better suited to reliving colonial exploits in faraway lands, were not of polite society. To be a Euroskeptic invited the label of weirdo, or, if they liked you—“eccentric.”

That argument was settled. Britain, and indeed the world, owed and pinned its future not to outdated concepts such as nationhood, borders, or common culture­­—oddities, pined for by oddities. To be British was embarrassing, and old hat.

David Cameron, our ex-prime minister, an alleged conservative, pretended himself to share this turbulence of brain. That Euroskepticism. Until he won his leadership election. Then he called such people, “fruitcakes, loonies, and closet racists.”

Then he called for a European referendum. To settle the issue for generations. To smite, finally, those surely dwindling numbers of decaying old white men who still believed in that fatuous list of oddities they held so pathetically dear.

Of course, the weirdos won. And ever since, the Camerons of this world have worked tirelessly to overturn our decision.

Like Cameron, those who would overturn us only expressed their real opinions of us within the confines of their circle of tony friends at their tony parties, safe in distance of ear and eye, from the troglodytes whom cannot be taken seriously.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13893/iran-wipe-israel-off-map

As Iran’s theocratic establishment believes that the Supreme Leader is Allah’s representative on earth, whatever words or desires the Supreme Leader utters are considered Allah’s wishes, which must be brought to life by Allah’s true believers.

Iran has built, or is in the process of building, more than 10 military bases in Syria, some of which are near the Israeli border.

When will the international community begin to take the Iranian’s government clear verbal threats and physical aggression seriously? Or would the international community secretly like to see Israel destroyed, under Europe’s Orwellian inversion of words: “the peace process”?

Iran’s military activities and clear public threats to annihilate Israel continue to grow in frequency and intensity. These moves not only instill fear, as they are doubtless meant to do; they also threaten to disrupt the international community. With such dire promises of conflict, it would be expected that the international news media and politicians throughout the world would have something to say about this situation. Instead, Iran’s continued abusive behavior continues to be cozied up to at worst, or at best, ignored.

One of the core pillars and revolutionary ideals of the Islamic Republic is destroying the Jewish state. It is also one of the religious prophecies of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and his successor, the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Israel will be eventually erased from the face of the earth. As Iran’s theocratic establishment believes that the Supreme Leader is Allah’s representative on earth, whatever words or desires the Supreme Leader utters are considered wishes, which must be brought to life by Allah’s true believers.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273159/netherlands-ex-muslims-get-threatened-every-single-robert-spencer

Three converts from Islam to Christianity who live in the Netherlands recently spoke about their experiences, and it’s clear that they’re not exactly finding diversity, in the form of mass Muslim migration into Europe, to be their strength.

An ex-Muslim from Kurdistan named Faraidoun Fouad recounted: “I converted in 1999. In 2002 God called me to reach out to my own people. Directly after my conversion to Christianity I received the first threats. People who I thought were my friends, became my enemies.”

Nor were his former friends all jihadis: “Even Muslims who are not very conservative told my wife that they would kill me.”

Fouad converted twenty years ago, but his Muslim ex-friends have never gotten used to the fact: “I receive threats every day. When I post something on Facebook, I often receive hateful reactions.”

Fouad’s experience was similar to that of another convert, a woman named Esther Mulder who fled Somalia in 1992. Though they had left the homeland, they brought its mores to the Netherlands; when Esther was 14, they told her she was about to be married off. What she wanted had nothing to do with it, so she ran away from home and lived in shelters. Finally she married a Dutchman and converted to Christianity.

The first time she entered a church, she was frightened: “I constantly looked around thinking: ‘What if one of my family members comes in or someone from Somalia?’”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13864/eu-media-literacy

The above initiatives, of course, exist in addition to all the other measures that the EU has put in place to “guide” Europeans onto the path of proper thinking… which the untransparent and unaccountable online tech giants — Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla — signed in October 2018, and their 2019 “Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech online.”

In the same vein as China’s “reeducation camps” or the former Soviet Union’s “rehabilitation centers” that abused psychiatry for political purposes, Marine Le Pen in September was ordered to undergo psychiatric tests for tweeting the pictures, ostensibly to establish whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions”.

It is probably safe to say that the first victims of the EU’s media literacy policies will be diversity of opinion and free speech.

The first European Media Literacy Week, an initiative of the European Union, will take place March 18-22 in various European cities. The week is a new initiative by the European Commission, putatively “to underline the societal importance of media literacy and promote media literacy initiatives and projects across the EU”. The European Commission explains its policy of strengthening ‘media literacy’ within the EU — which could have been a noble and useful initiative — the following way:

“With the rapid rise of digital technology and its increasing use in business, education and culture, it is important to ensure everyone can understand and engage with digital media.

“Media literacy is vital for economic growth and job creation. Digital technologies are a key driver of competitiveness and innovation in the media, information, and communication technology sectors.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/parliament-against-everything/

In the wake of the Parliament’s second rejection of Theresa May’s negotiated withdrawal agreement, the House of Commons is voting on many amendments that are meant to determine what Parliament would like to see happen. The answer turns out to be: almost nothing.
1

Parliament already narrowly expressed its wish not to leave the EU without a deal. And today the action is swift. A vote supportive of delaying Brexit and carrying on a second referendum, was defeated resoundingly. Only 85 MPs voted for it. A vote to give parliament more control over the Brexit process-the Benn amendment-taking things out of Theresa May’s hands, was also defeated. The “EEA” or Norway option, of retaining economic ties to the European Union was defeated. Leaving the political project but remaining in the customs union, defeated. And the “Malthouse compromise” which had been promoted by arch-Brexiteers like Jacob Rees Mogg has also been defeated. A plan to allow “indicative votes” — that is, where MPs express support for different options, rather than follow a party plan and the guide of party whips — was also rejected. One of the only things that was approved was an amendment that urged seeking an extension of Article 50 to June 30 if Parliament approves May’s Brexit deal by March 20.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/reeling-from-crisis-to-crisis-britains-may-is-still-standing-11552502536

LONDON-—Prime Minister Theresa May has faced one political disaster after another, losing crucial votes and ministers at a rate not seen in British politics for decades.

Yet she’s still standing.

An extraordinary combination of factors means that despite regular drubbings in parliament, a rolling rebellion among her own cabinet and a flagship Brexit plan that was overwhelmingly rejected for a second time on Tuesday, the 62-year-old continues to hold on to power.

“Normally a leader will at some point confess the game is up,” said Mark Garnier, a Conservative Party lawmaker and former minister. “The party is slightly shocked.”

At the heart of this survival act: a fear among Conservative Party lawmakers about who would replace her.

Ousting Mrs. May could result in a Conservative leader who might take Brexit in a different direction, either forcing a much deeper break from the trading bloc or keeping the country much more closely bound to the European Union.

It could also trigger an election increasing the chance of a hard-left Labour Party coming into power. So Conservative lawmakers, worried that Brexit might suddenly get more radical or not happen at all, are sitting on their hands.

“Nobody wants to mess with this,” said a prominent Conservative euroskeptic. For Conservative party officials to force a change of leader in the midst of Brexit negotiations “seems crazier even than everything else,” said Tony Travers, professor at the London School of Economics.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273144/isis-spokesman-whats-our-crime-we-just-wanted-robert-spencer

In a new video, an Islamic State (ISIS) spokesman named Abu Abd al-Azeem, “whose speech,” noted Reuters, “is peppered with Koranic recitations,” complained about the bad rap his cuddly group has gotten. “Why are we bombed by planes,” he asked plaintively, “why do all the nations of the unbelieving world come together to fight us?…What is our guilt? What is our crime? We (just) wanted to apply the sharia of Allah.”

Indeed. And now, in light of that statement, here are some questions that mainstream counterterror analysts should ponder deeply: did the Islamic State actually apply Sharia? ISIS is routinely dismissed as un-Islamic, but what exactly did they do that cannot be backed up by specific citations from the Qur’an and Hadith? And if the Islamic State just wanted to apply Sharia, and Sharia is entirely benign and compatible with Western values, as Western analysts also regularly insist, then why did the whole world regard the Islamic State as a criminal entity that must be destroyed? Why was it not welcomed into the family of nations, alongside other Sharia regimes including Saudi Arabia and Iran?

The cognitive dissonance arises, of course, from the assurances we received from the likes of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Kerry, David Cameron, and virtually every other authority in the Western world that the Islamic State was not Islamic, and indeed, had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam.

This reached absurd levels during the Obama administration. “ISIL does not operate in the name of any religion,” said Obama’s Deputy State Department spokesperson Marie Harf in August 2014. “The president has been very clear about that, and the more we can underscore that, the better.” Yet Abu Abd al-Azeem’s words above make it abundantly clear, as does every other statement ever issued by ISIS, that the group believes itself to be operating in the name of Islam, and indeed, to embody the fullness of Islamic teaching. In June 2014, a video circulated of a masked Islamic State commander telling a cheering crowd: “By Allah, we embarked on our Jihad only to support the religion of Allah….Allah willing, we will establish a state ruled by the Quran and the Sunna….All of you honorable Muslims are the soldiers of the Muslim State.” He promised that the Islamic State would establish “the Sharia of Allah, the Quran, and the Sunna” as the crowed repeatedly responded with screams of “Allahu akbar.”