RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/01/28/snowplow-politics/

Trump, Brexit, and the divides deepening between us

We have now had more than two clear years since the votes for Brexit and Trump. And although most Brexit voters dislike the tendency to link the events, the two are unavoidably intertwined.

A neutral way to interpret both surprise results was to describe them as “disruptions.” But very swiftly a range of carefully pejorative terms (“populist,” “reactive,” etc.) came to be deployed to suggest that these disruptions were not morally neutral. Soon a counter-narrative was adopted that went much further.

It was the identical nature of the pushback in both countries that was immediately striking. Shortly after the Brexit vote, the British public was inundated with media claims of “spikes” in racist incidents, “hate crimes,” and more. Whatever way people had voted, this was genuinely alarming. Had such beasts lain dormant that they had now been unleashed simply because more people ticked the box marked “Leave” than did “Remain”? Two months after the Brexit vote, a 40-year-old Polish man was murdered in Essex. The press and pro–European Union politicians pounced on it. The Guardian claimed that the killing “exposes the reality of post-referendum racism.” Even the conservative Telegraph asserted that the killing raised fears that “migrants are being targeted in post-Brexit hate-crimes.” The head of the EU Commission blamed the murder on “galloping populism.”

By the time that the man’s 16-year-old killer was convicted of his murder one year later, the story had fallen out of the news. Before the trial it had become clear that the killing was the result of nothing more than a pointless, late-night street row, awful, terrible, and with lessons of its own to impart. But the victim’s race had nothing to do with it. Neither did the British public’s decision to vote Leave.

Still, the narrative continued. The enthusiasm for the “outbreak of racism” line was such that whatever facts or counter-arguments emerged to the contrary, the “spike” in hate crimes was clung to as an article of faith. It vindicated the worst suspicions of Remainers and cowed many Leavers. That the police had been urging people to report “hate crimes” during this period (the police generally find it more restful to investigate online offense-taking than, say, deal with the upsurge in knife crime) was ignored. The narrative of “racist vote leads to upsurge in racism” was too useful to be dispensed with.

Precisely the same claim was pumped into the American system after the election of Donald Trump. A collection of offhand, occasionally off-color quotations were characterized as flagrant “dog whistles.” One joke about Mexicans — unwise though it was for a candidate — was declared to be a racist assault on all Mexicans. And once that link was made, it was the smallest of steps to pronounce the vote for Trump “racist” and some sort of green light for real racists. Politicians and pundits tied a spate of bomb threats made against Jewish community centers in the U.S. and abroad in January 2017 to the inauguration of President Trump.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/health-officials-fear-setbacks-in-effort-to-contain-ebola-outbreak/

The World Health Organization warned in its most recent Ebola update this month that containment of the second-largest outbreak of the virus in history could suffer disastrous setbacks if the security situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to deteriorate.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its travel advisory for the region on Wednesday, covering the North Kivu and Ituri provinces that are under a travel warning from the State Department because of militant activity and dangers to civilians.

“The armed conflict and violence in the outbreak area is hampering response activities including early identification of cases, and monitoring of ‘contacts’ (people who may have been exposed to Ebola),” the CDC said. “The North Kivu and Ituri provinces are among the most populated in DRC. These provinces share borders with other countries (Rwanda and Uganda) with frequent cross-border movement for trade activities. The provinces have been experiencing a prolonged humanitarian crisis and deteriorating security situation, which is limiting public health efforts to respond to this outbreak.”

The outbreak began on Aug. 1, days after the conclusion of another Ebola outbreak on the other side of the country in Équateur province.

https://www.ft.com/content/401e52a0-1405-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9

When Nicolás Maduro was sworn in by Venezuela’s Supreme Court for a second six-year term as president on Thursday, a notable judge was missing. Christian Zerpa, a one-time Maduro ally, recently fled the country. Interviewed this week in Florida, the former Supreme Court justice called Mr Maduro’s government “disastrous” and, more importantly, “illegitimate”. It was a crucial legal point. By the end of this week, the US, Canada, and most European and Latin American countries will not recognise Mr Maduro’s presidency as legitimate either.

Venezuela is in social, economic and political freefall. Its institutions have been suborned by Mr Maduro and his inner circle. The legal basis of his second presidential term is the elections in May last year, which most of the world, although not Russia, China or Turkey, declared to be fraudulent. As a result, so too is his presidency. To put the situation baldly: if Mr Maduro were removed from power next week, many international powers would not treat it as a coup as they never recognised the presidency in the first place. Mr Maduro’s swearing-in for a second term therefore marks a tipping point for the country. Greater international isolation is a given. Although military intervention has been all but ruled out, South American attitudes are hardening, especially in neighbouring Brazil under its rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro.

An escalation of sanctions on Venezuelan officials deemed guilty of corruption and human rights abuses is likely. Also possible, if more extreme, is a ban by the Trump administration on US companies selling the dilutants and other chemicals that Venezuela needs to blend with its otherwise unmarketable heavy crude. If that happened, and the country could not find substitutes elsewhere, around 300,000 barrels a day, or one-quarter of current production, would be affected.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13512/english-channel-migrant-crossings

“A question has to be asked: if you are a genuine asylum seeker, why have you not sought asylum in the first safe country that you arrived in? Because France is not a country where anyone would argue it is not safe in any way whatsoever, and if you are genuine then why not seek asylum in your first safe country?” – British Home Secretary Savid Javid.

Migrants are entitled to free accommodation, cash support at £37.75 per person per week, free healthcare, free dental care, free eyesight tests, free glasses, maternity grants and free schooling — much to the chagrin of many British nationals and former service personnel who do not have access to many of these benefits.

Another tragedy of Aylun Kurdi proportions is only a matter of time… The media are poised and salivating at the prospect of capturing this impending disaster for their front pages; the hackles of a hundred migrant and refugee charities are raised in anticipation of the PR opportunities ahead of them.

Sajid Javid is a rising star in the British Conservative party…. If [he] can stop the boats across the Channel, he will be perfectly positioned to take control of the British Conservative Party as well as the rising migrant crisis.

The British Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, has called in the Royal Navy to help deal with the migrant crisis in the Channel.

Since November, 239 migrants successfully made the crossing from Calais, France to Dover, England in small inflatable boats. A total of 539 migrants tried to make the crossing in 2018.

According to the Daily Mail, “Most of those held by police crossing the world’s busiest shipping lane from France since November have claimed to be Iranian.” Whether this is factually correct, or a line given to them by the people smugglers they pay for their journey, is a reasonable question.

According to UK immigration lawyer Colin Yeo, “The latest asylum statistics show that around three-quarters of Iranian asylum claims succeed,” — a fact the people-smugglers presumably know well and capitalise on for profit.

The legitimacy of these migrant stories is a concern to the Home Secretary, who has been speculating as to what extent these migrants in the Channel are ‘genuine’ asylum seekers. During a visit to Dover he said:

“A question has to be asked: if you are a genuine asylum seeker, why have you not sought asylum in the first safe country that you arrived in?… Because France is not a country where anyone would argue it is not safe in any way whatsoever, and if you are genuine then why not seek asylum in your first safe country?”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272487/french-prisons-incubators-terror-stephen-brown

“Yes, radical Islam is rampant in prison. No one is ignoring it, but the situation continues even though, slowly but surely, [the situation] is rotting.”
–Guillame Jeanson, Parisian lawyer and spokesman for the Institute for Justice (#16).

Leave it to radical Islam to disfigure the beautiful French language with the ugly term “gangster-jihadiste.” Its murderous connotations concern former Muslims convicts who have committed terrorist attacks after being radicalized in French prisons.

And Cherif Chekatt is the latest former, French Muslim prisoner to earn this lovely title. Chekatt, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a video, carried out a terrorist attack on the Christmas market in the eastern French city of Strasbourg last December 11, leaving five people dead.

“[H]e was the subject of a search the morning of his terrorist attack for an attempted homicide in the course of an armed robbery that went bad,” stated the newspaper Figaro.

Before his murderous rampage, Chekatt already had 27 convictions in three different countries – France, Germany and Switzerland – for crimes including armed robbery. But while in prison in France in 2015, French intelligence believes he was radicalized.

“During a stay in prison, he was noticed as much for his violence as for his religious proselytism,” noted one report. As a result, he was carded “Fiche S” by French intelligence concerning potential dangerousness.

But after the December terrorist attack, France’s future concerning “gangster-jihadistes” continues to appear bleak.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/01/sexual-harassment-and-cultural-masochism/

From the country which did nothing to stop and much to ignore Rotherham’s grooming gangs of Subcontinental predators comes a slanderous TV ad intended to combat sexual harassment on public transport. The villain with the roving hands and thrusting crotch? A middle-class white male of course.

One of the biggest media narratives of 2019 will be the liberal morality play of selective-outrage at the sexual peccadilloes of Donald Trump and his alleged attempts to hide them. It will no doubt run and run. And this may well be just as it should be, although it is worth mentally stepping back and reminding oneself that many much-revered statesmen of former times will have been guilty of very similar behaviour but which was kept well out of the public eye.

We are endlessly told in our Anglosphere media that we now live in a globalised world; and in many ways we do. It is ironic then that when it comes to some global issues – such as the oppression of women by men – that same media is the very essence of parochialism. The casting-couch sexual pressure faced by some Western women on their way up the ladder of fame and fortune is a bigger story than an Indian woman sentenced by village elders to be gang-raped as punishment for the supposed transgressions of her brother and now living in terror of her neighbours.

Then there is the tricky issue of ‘racism’: defined, in media terms, as something of which only white people can be guilty. Liberal preciousness about ‘racism’ means that even within the confines of our wealthy developed world, media coverage of sexual harassment depends on who is doing the harassing. This is why, in the UK, the rape and terrorising of hundreds of non-Muslim girls by gangs of Pakistani men went unreported for years.

It also gives rise to endless media fictions in television drama and advertisements. Like this one: it’s standing room only on a London Underground train…man in a grey suit is staring at the rear of a woman in a white suit. The carriage is roaring and rolling along the tunnel. Man’s stare is steady and menacing. She is oblivious…. until he leans in to her and surreptitiously fingers her bottom. He is white, middle class and around forty. His face has something of the stuck-up, repressed Brit of Hollywood caricature; the curl of his thin upper lip, the damp pallor of his skin and the cold, glazed eyes all suggestive of some kind of droit du seigneur fantasist. She is black, thirty-something and also middle class. Professional in appearance and attractive, she looks like she might one day get cast as one of those alluring TV female special agents, complete with side-arm weapon and karate black belt. She is circumspectly but determinedly ignoring the situation but he persists and eventually, on the pretext of making room for other passengers, he thrusts his groin into her behind just as the train pulls into the next station, where she escapes.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/warning-her-life-is-in-danger-for-renouncing-islam-australia-weighs-saudis-asylum-plea/

A young Saudi woman fleeing family abuse is awaiting a decision on whether Australia will grant her asylum request after a dramatic standoff — broadcast on social media — with Thai officials who impeded her escape.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said Monday that Rahaf Mohammed Al-qunun, 18, was safe for the moment after having her passport seized in Bangkok en route from Kuwait to Australia.

Al-qunun barricaded herself in a Thai hotel room over the weekend to avoid deportation, tweeting to draw attention to her plight: “I am the girl who escaped Kuwait to Thailand. My life is in danger if I’m forced to return to Saudi Arabia.”

“I’m rahaf mohmed, formally seeking a refugee status to any country that would protect me from getting harmed or killed due to leaving my religion and torture from my family,” she tweeted on Monday.

Al-Qunun said she was confined in her room for six months for cutting her hair, and has suffered beatings and death threats from her male relatives.

Australian reporter Sophie McNeill locked herself in the room as well to help protect Al-qunun.

A network of Saudi women’s rights activists jumped in to help get #SaveRahaf trending. One of those women, who lives in Canada with her husband, told CBC that she’s now “actually feeling some kind of guilt because her story went viral and I’ve heard about other other women that have been, like, their fathers their brothers, they just took their phone.”

“It is scary. You know, even when you are trying to support this campaign in Saudi Arabia, you always have to cover your tracks,” she said. “I have my family there in Saudi Arabia. They don’t know that I am doing this. I was talking to my father when I last visited my family in Saudi. My father just told me that … if I’m thinking to just leave Islam and not be a Muslim anymore, that he’s going to kill me by himself. And I just got so scared.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13519/abbas-hamas-palestinians-syria

The Action Group for Palestinians of Syria says that according to its research, there are at least 1,711 Palestinians being held in Syrian prisons.

The plight of the Palestinians in Syria is not difficult to fathom. What is difficult to fathom is: Where are the international media when those Palestinians are being brutalized?

One can make up excuses for the apathy of the international community toward the atrocities the Palestinians are facing in Syria. However, the indifference of Palestinian leaders to the suffering of their own people is harder to justify.

As the reports about the Palestinian victims were emerging, Abbas was in Cairo socializing with famous Egyptian actors and actresses.

It has been another tragic year for Palestinians living in Syria, but the international community, including pro-Palestinian advocacy groups and mainstream media in the West, seem to have missed the misery.

The latest reports from Syria reveal that 82 Palestinians have died as a result of brutal torture in prisons run by the Syrian government in 2018. The report states that a total of 556 Palestinians have been tortured to death while being held in various Syrian prisons the past few years.

According to the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria (AGPS), a human rights watchdog organization that was established to monitor the situation of Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria, the real number of the Palestinians tortured to death could be higher: those are just the ones they know about; the Syrian authorities do not provide any details about detainees. In addition, AGPS pointed out, the families of the victims are afraid to announce the deaths of their sons and daughters for fear of being targeted by the Syrian authorities.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13518/turkey-scolds-europe

“It is… futile… to discuss Islam using geographical or cultural adjectives, such as European Islam, French Islam, moderate Islam, etc.” — Ali Erbaş, the head of Turkey’s state religious authority, the Diyanet.

The Diyanet does not even recognize Judaism and Christianity as authentic faiths — as is immediately apparent on its official website. In the Diyanet’s interpretation of the verse [Quran, Al-Baqarah 140], the religious figures whom Jews believe to be their prophets, and the religion of Jesus, all originated with Islam: “Ibrahim was neither Jewish nor Christian. He was a Hanafi Muslim… It is the religion of Tawhid [oneness of Allah] that Allah sent to humanity from the very beginning [of time] and that is the most suitable for human nature. So it is completely contrary to facts to claim that [the prophets] were Jewish or Christian…”

How ironic that this is the same Erbaş who claimed at the conference in Cologne that the “increase in anti-Islamic discourse and actions… threaten European multiculturalism,” while the Diyanet is responsible for decrees that do not allow for the slightest bit of multiculturalism in Turkey. In fact, all religious and ethnic minorities in Turkey are persecuted with the blessing of the Diyanet.

The Diyanet’s president’s recent rant against Europe — from a podium in Cologne, no less — was disingenuous, false and a perfect example of projection. It is European liberalism that is under assault, not the other way around.

At a recent conference in Cologne on the future of Europe’s Muslims, Ali Erbaş, the head of Turkey’s state religious authority, the Diyanet, railed against what he called the “increase in anti-Islamic discourse and actions… [that] threaten European multiculturalism.”

In his keynote address to the conference, hosted by Turkey’s main Islamic body in Germany, DITIB — based in the Cologne Central Mosque, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan inaugurated during a visit to Germany in September — Erbaş declared:

“… racism, social exclusion… xenophobia, attacks against mosques… [and] discriminatory discourse and actions disregard human life and honor… restrict [Muslims’] rights, make social and cultural institutions dysfunctional and harm the common morality and conscience of humanity.”