RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/01/16/15-killed-islamist-attack-kenya-hotel-complex-continues/

A member of the SAS helped save hundreds of lives when he charged into gunfire to rescue civilians trapped during a terrorist attack in Nairobi.

A mission mounted by Kenyan forces on Wednesday ended a 20-hour assault on 14 Riverside, a luxury hotel and office complex in one of the city’s most affluent districts, killing at least some of the perpetrators.

Uhuru Kenyatta, the Kenyan president, said that 14 civilians were killed before the attack was ended in one of the biggest military operations ever mounted in the capital.

At least one Briton was killed and one other badly wounded, amid fears that the true death toll could be higher after the Kenyan Red Cross disclosed that as many as 50 people remained unaccounted for.

The unidentified SAS soldier, reportedly in Kenya to train and mentor local special forces, often appeared to be at the forefront of the operation, frequently pictured bringing civilians to safety.

Although on non-combat deployment, he raced to the scene within the first hour of the attack, wearing body armour over civilian clothes and a balaclava to cover his face.

In one photograph from the scene, he carries the limp, bleeding body of a victim. Another shows the soldier bursting into the hotel complex with his special forces issue C8 Diemaco rifle drawn.

He reportedly worked with US Navy Seals, operating under Kenyan command, during the mission.

British special forces, who regularly train the equivalent troops of foreign nations, are not meant to engage in any direct combat on such missions.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/isis-claims-credit-for-syrian-bombing-that-left-two-americans-dead/

Reuters, citing a “U.S. official,” reported Wednesday morning that four American officials were killed and three were wounded in the bombing. A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition confirmed that American troops were killed in the incident but did not specify as to the number of casualties.

The Islamic State claimed credit Wednesday for a suicide bombing that left at least two U.S. troops dead in the coalition-controlled city of Manbij in northern Syria.

The blast, which ISIS claimed credit for on their official propaganda website Amaq, killed at least nineteen people in total, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The ISIS propaganda website indicated that a single suicide bomber wearing a bomb vest targeted a patrol of U.S.-led coalition forces. It’s the first time ISIS has claimed credit for an attack on coalition forces since President Trump announced all U.S. troops would withdraw from Syria.

“The President has been fully briefed and we will continue to monitor the ongoing situation in Syria,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

The decision to withdraw from Syria, which Trump reportedly made last month during a call with the Turkish president, led to the resignation of former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. Critics of the decision have pointed out that while ISIS has been cleared from the vast majority of its former territorial holdings, roughly 30,000 fighters remain in the region.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ten-thoughts-on-theresa-mays-brexit-deal-defeat/

1. Theresa May’s defeat by the unexpectedly large margin of 230 votes last night was indeed “historic,” as every bore in journalism and punditry wrote — but only because of its size: It was the largest defeat for a government on a major issue in parliamentary history. Some of the earlier defeats turned out to be historic in a more substantial sense — Neville Chamberlain’s loss of Tory support in the 1940 Norway debate, leading to the appointment of Winston Churchill as prime minister, is the best example (though Chamberlain was not actually defeated but won the vote). Other such votes were less important because they didn’t lead to much, such as the vote of no confidence in the 1924 Labour government, which led to Stanley Baldwin’s lackluster “Safety First” Tory government, which in turn lost the following election — which, come to think of it, may not be a bad forecast of the unexciting May regime.

2. Don’t trust any of the predictions that as a result of this vote, some particular next-step “option” is now off the agenda because it lacks parliamentary support. That’s because no single option for Brexit or Remain currently enjoys a parliamentary majority. All, however, have some prospect of succeeding in eventually amassing such a majority. That even includes a No Deal Brexit, since that’s what will happen unless a majority of MPs gradually gather around another option. Most media people either don’t know that or don’t want you to know that because they disapprove of No Deal and of the kind of voters who support it.

3. It’s always interesting to compare the expected effects of a surprise upset with the actual effects. For most of the last year, press commentary treated the Tory Brexiteers as the main opposition to the soft-as-putty Brexit that became May’s Withdrawal Agreement. Yet when its defeat was announced, the large pro-Remain crowd outside Parliament cheered lustily. It was important to them that the Brexiteers should not enjoy a victory. So they claimed it as their own in the hope of ensuring that they do actually benefit. Similarly, pre-vote there had been dire media predictions that a defeat for May would mean a fall in the pound. It was the predictions that collapsed, however, when May’s defeat led to a rise in the pound. It was swiftly explained by the financial pundits that it was the very size of May’s defeat that caused the pound to rise rather than fall, because it might mean we would now get an even softer Brexit than before. Hmmnnn. I’m not sure that would convince me if I’d lost money following their first advice.

4. Another factor at play here is the confusion that May herself causes by constantly reiterating her absolute determination to achieve Brexit and fulfill the instruction given by the voters in the referendum. That doesn’t deceive the Westminster village, but it has persuaded others that she is a symbol of Brexit at any price. In reality, she is a symbol of subordinating Brexit to the wishes of a Remain establishment and cabinet without seeming to do so. She is thus a cause of confusion and an obstacle to any fruitful change of government and/or Tory policy in response to last night’s defeat. Her rhetoric will probably remain strong, but she will likely be as weak towards the Labour and Tory Remain Ultras like Dominic Grieve as she has been towards the EU negotiators and the establishment. Unless she undergoes a Damascene conversion, she will now open negotiations with Opposition parties and her own Remainer rebels on the next Plan B while ramping up her Brexit language to keep Brexiteers happy and Boris at bay. This kicking the can down the road works until you run out of road, which in this case will be the 29th of March — and that means on present form that she will try to get the EU to agree to a postponement of Brexit. That would keep open a Pandora’s Box of competing alternatives to Brexit that the fixed date was intend to close firmly.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/theresa-may-brexit-deal-defeat/After two years of political dysfunction, the British prime minister’s future is as unclear as her country’s.

The only meaningful unity that the United Kingdom has seen in the past two years has been opposition to the Brexit deal Prime Minister Theresa May negotiated with the European Union. That agreement, as predicted, suffered a crushing blow in the House of Commons today, voted down by a 432-to-202 margin in what was instantly the worst parliamentary defeat in history.

The defeat, as predicted, has prompted Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to propose a vote, expected to be held on Wednesday, of no confidence in the government. When future historians consider Brexit, they will surely marvel at May’s obstinate capacity for survival in the face of unending political humiliation. Though her authority is all but nil at this point, if she hangs on tomorrow, her leadership will be further cemented. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, though it still doesn’t bring me Brexit . . .

May’s final plea before the defeat was that “a vote against this deal is a vote for nothing more than uncertainty, division, and the very real risk of no deal,” or worse, “no Brexit at all.” Which is true. Labour is just as split as the Tories on the question of how to proceed. Corbyn now faces enormous pressure from his own back-benchers to back a second referendum, and has shown no sign at any point of having an alternative to May’s deal in mind.

That is because there were only ever two alternatives to May’s deal, as the EU saw it: no-deal Brexit (which they deem disastrous) or no Brexit at all (which they’d quite like). For the British people, the choice was simpler still — faith in Brexit or no faith in Brexit. Now it seems that Britain faces two distinct but inexorably linked crises: a crisis of government and a crisis of legitimacy. Should both crises collide, it is hard to imagine the havoc that would ensue.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13540/europe-peaceful-takeover

The concept of the clash of civilizations assumes that there is a conflict between religions. This view often appears to be true where Islam is concerned; the religious aspect of Islamism appears to be a powerful motivator. That desire illustrates how deeply flawed were the sociological and political theories of modernization, according to which the entire world eventually would undergo a process of enlightenment, similar to Europe’s.
Whereas traditional Marxists believed that a dictatorship of the proletariat would result in a classless society, the neo-Marxists apparently believe that a dictatorship for the benefit of minorities will result in a society of absolute freedom for all.
To this end, they seem to think, it is necessary to build an anti-discrimination bureaucracy to break the domination of the majority over the minority and force the majority to demand an end to its own privileged position. It is not enough for the majority to tolerate otherness; it must embrace and love it.

The vast majority of Western politicians and members of the media today appear to be guided by the idea that it is better to be wrong about Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History than to be right about Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations. This seems simply an abbreviated expression of a widespread unwillingness, or inability, to call things by their real names. Let us examine the reality that is so hard for many members of liberal societies to acknowledge, and which explains why Huntington’s diagnosis of the current era is far more fitting than Fukuyama’s.

Huntington’s working hypothesis for analyzing current events basically follows German sociologist Max Weber’s “sociology of civilizations.” Yet the term “shock of civilizations” was coined in 1957 by the historian Bernard Lewis, in the aftermath of the Suez crisis.

The clash of civilizations should not be understood, however, in a purely military context. The clash of civilizations in which we find ourselves today is less direct in three main ways:

The two “civilizations” are not on distinct opposite sides. Not all Muslims are Islamists; not all Europeans want to defend European civilization.
Two religions do not stand against each other. Europe has religiously disarmed and in its place has put a totally irrational dogma in the form of multiculturalism.
The clash is not taking place with arms. Although terrorist attacks are severe, the attempt by one civilization to subjugate the other is occurring on a broader ideological and religious plane.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13521/denmark-immigration-transformation

The decision to send the criminal inhabitants of the asylum center to the uninhabited island of Lindholm caused great relief in Bording — an element the international press appears to have missed. Clearly, the right of law-abiding citizens to live in peace does not count for much on the scale of international moral outrage.

Significantly, the outraged international press did not offer any answers to the legitimate question of what governments are supposed to do with hardened criminal asylum seekers, who pose a genuine threat to their surroundings and have been sentenced to deportation, but cannot be deported from the country because of international human rights obligations.

The problem is far from a uniquely Danish one: virtually all European countries have signed international human rights conventions that leave them with the same dilemma.

The country did not just “change”. Danish politicians, with their policies, changed it.

Denmark made international headlines in late November 2018, when the Danish government announced a plan to send certain asylum seekers to the small, uninhabited island of Lindholm. The international outrage was intensified when it came to light that the island currently houses a research center for contagious animal diseases; that the ferry which the asylum seekers will be able to take to the mainland during the day (it does not operate in the evening) is named “Virus”; and that the asylum center will be accompanied by a constant police presence on the island.

The group of asylum seekers meant to live in Lindholm consists of criminals of various sorts, including those who have been sentenced to be deported from Denmark, those who are considered a security threat to Denmark, and so-called “foreign warriors”.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/parliament-rejects-mays-brexit-deal/

The Brexit deal painstakingly negotiated by British prime minister Theresa May over the past two years was rejected overwhelmingly by Parliament on Tuesday.

The deal, which fell in a 432–202 vote in the House of Commons, represented the only established path forward to prevent a so-called “no-deal” British exit from the European Union, which is set to take place in March and would likely result in massive political and economic upheaval.

In response to the historic defeat, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tabled a vote of no confidence, which, if passed, would oust May and give Corbyn a chance to form a new government. If Corbyn’s bid to become prime minister then failed to gain the support of a majority of MPs within 14 days, Parliament would dissolve and a new general election would be held.

May, in advocating on behalf of the deal she has negotiated over the past two years, cast it as the only viable option that accorded with the will of the British people, who voted in June 2016 to leave the European Union.

“This is the most significant vote that any of us will ever be part of in our political careers,” May said as the five-day Commons debate concluded. “The time has now come for all of is in this House to make a decision . . . a decision that each of us will have to justify and live with for many years to come.”

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/a-trump-of-ones-own/

Here’s one reason to hold out some hope for 2019. On January 9 — while the British political class continued to bungle Brexit, French officials kept battling the gilets jaunes, and leaders across Europe persisted in waving the EU flag and waving in armies of Muslim immigrants — Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini went to Warsaw and, at a press conference with Polish Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński, envisioned Italy and Poland as ushering in a new “European spring” to challenge the primacy of the “Germany-France axis.”

The Guardian spelled out to readers just how they should feel about this “European spring.” Identifying Salvini — in the first two sentences of its article, mind you — as a “far-right interior minister” who seeks “far-right alliances” and leads “the far-right League” (later in the piece, Marine Le Pen, too, was labeled “far-right”), Guardian scribe Angela Giuffrida was quick to add that Salvini’s party and Brudziński’s “share similar anti-immigration, anti-Muslim and Eurosceptic views.”

It would be fairer, of course, to say “anti-Islam” here rather than “anti-Muslim,” and to describe Salvini and Brudziński not as “anti-immigration” but, rather, as opposed to suicidal immigration policies that have flooded much of Western Europe not with potential Nobel Prize winners but with likely rapists, Jew-beaters, gay-bashers, and lifelong welfare recipients, not to mention more than a few would-be jihadists and cheerleaders of terror.

Salvini further declared that if Europe follows along the path charted by himself and Brudziński, which involves “strengthening borders,” it might well experience a “renaissance of European values” and reverse the severe damage done to the continent by bureaucrats in Brussels and in the various national capitals. To any American, needless to say, this rhetoric will sound very familiar. And indeed, the fact is that while the Western European political class and its allies love to sneer at Donald Trump, millions of ordinary citizens across the continent wish dearly that they had a Trump of their own.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272521/beirut-paris-middle-east-joseph-puder

Lebanon has not had a functioning government since May of 2018. The reason? Squabbling among the various sectarian groups over ministerial posts. In the meantime, Lebanon’s national debt has soared to $84 billion or 155 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The unemployment rate, too has risen to 36 percent.

Frustrated by the prolonged political bickering of the politicians, public-sector agencies and businesses throughout Lebanon staged a strike last week expressing their anger over the economic downturn, which has been crippled by the eight months absence of a functional government. Beirut’s port was closed along with state institutions such as the National Social Security Fund, the electricity company, and the Rafic Hariri International Airport experienced hour long stoppages. The strike was called by the General Confederation of Lebanese Workers, with the backing of the new cross-sectarian Sabaa Party.

Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker, called on (January 9, 2019) the Arab League economic summit scheduled to take place in Beirut at the end of the month, to be postponed due to Lebanon’s failure to agree on a new government. The Shiite-Muslim leader also asserted “the necessity of having Syria participate in such a summit.” The Arab League suspended Syria’s membership following the Assad regime crackdown and butchery of protesters against the Bashar al-Assad regime.

At the birth of modern Lebanon in 1943, the National Pact established a parliamentary allocation of seats based on a 1932 census, which gave Christians a 6-to-5 ratio. In 1990, the ratio changed to a 50/50 allocation of parliamentary seats. Nevertheless, according to the National Pact and established customs, the President of Lebanon is always a Christian Maronite, the Prime Minister is always a Sunni-Muslim, and the Speaker of the Parliament is always a Shiite-Muslim.