RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2019/02/06/understanding

On January 15, and well into the morning of the next day, terrorists affiliated with the Somali Jihadi group Al Shabab forced their way into an upscale Nairobi hotel and business centre, killing 21 innocent civilians. Kenyan authorities, with some help from Western allies, killed some of the terrorists and captured the rest. Al Shabab justified the attack by denouncing the Kenyan government’s participation with African Union forces in Somalia, which has been in a state of civil warfare since the early 1990s.

I had driven by the targeted complex a couple of days before the attack, and once lived in this neighbourhood back when Kenya was my permanent home. On this visit to the country, I’ve noticed that—notwithstanding January’s terrible tragedy—tourism is booming, agriculture is bountiful and the Kenyan elite are benefiting from the massive Chinese investments that have transformed the landscape. The overall degree of improvement depends on which expert you believe. But the plethora of expensive cars that now jam the streets of Nairobi, and the building boom on display in many parts of the city, do suggest a surging economy.

Anyone who knows the history and tribal dynamics of East Africa and the Horn will understand that even if the Kenyan government pulled all its troops out of Somalia, Al Shabab likely would still try its best to destabilize this country. I outlined the reasons for this decades ago, when I first briefed visiting Canadian and U.S. military personnel here in Nairobi. Many of the things I told them remain as true now as they were then. That’s because the most important factors at play are rooted in history, not in recent geopolitical developments.

Specifically: Many modern problems in the area are rooted in the Indian Ocean slave trade—a scourge that was distinct from the better known slave trade that preyed on West Africa. In the eastern part of the continent, there was little to no European involvement. The practice was indigenous and ancient, and lasted more than a thousand years.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272756/swedens-fallacious-feminism-bruce-bawer

If you ever want to get a good hearty dose of global-elite received opinion on any imaginable topic, head straight for the website of the magazine Foreign Policy. With recent articles bearing the bylines of Davos-type luminaries like Fareed Zakaria (CNN’s serial plagiarist and reliable purveyor of the blindingly obvious), Christine Lagarde (doyenne of the International Monetary Fund), and any number of Council on Foreign Relations hotshots, FP – whose annual list of “Top 100 Global Thinkers” is routinely topped by the likes of Angela Merkel, Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman, and both Bill and Hillary Clinton – isn’t a place to seek out original thoughts or fresh ideas, but is, rather, the #1 go-to spot for strident asseverations of current left-liberal orthodoxy.

Case in point: a January 30 article by Rachel Vogelstein and Alexandra Bro (both of the CFR) entitled “Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy, Long May It Reign.” Noting the recent return to office of Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, Vogelstein and Bro advised that “Lofven should ensure that one of Sweden’s most contentious governing strategies remains firmly in place: its feminist foreign policy.” What is meant by “feminist foreign policy,” they explained, is that Sweden places “the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights at the center of its diplomatic agenda.” As an example, they cited Sweden’s insistence “on women’s participation in critical Security Council debates” and, ultimately, its success at “ensuring gender parity among those providing input” into such UN deliberations.

Sweden’s “feminist foreign policy” was introduced in 2014, and is only one aspect of what Sweden’s leaders describe as a comprehensive commitment to women’s equality. On the Swedish government’s official website, you can read the immodest claim that “Sweden has the first feminist government in the world.” An official handbook about the “feminist foreign policy” characterizes it as a response to the “discrimination and systematic subordination” confronting “women and girls around the world.” Though remarkably short on specifics, the handbook (which goes on for 111 pages) is long on proud references to the relentless promotion of the policy via speeches, forums, conferences, studies, training sessions, photo exhibitions, roundtable discussions, social-media memes and hashtags, media interviews, glossy brochures (such as the handbook itself), Power Point presentations, “sharing experiences,” and the like.

www.standpointmag.co.uk/february-2019-features-giles-udy-jeremy-corbyn-britain-road-to-socialism

Extracts (totalling 1,216 words) from an article (3,500 words):

Dramatis personae

As the 2003 Iraq war loomed, the fractious British Left, in a rare moment of unity, formed the Stop the War Coalition and brought a million people out on the streets. Few of the unwitting participants knew that the march’s organisers’ ultimate goal was the overthrow of parliamentary democracy; none could have guessed that, 15 years later, the movement’s first two leaders, the British Communist Party member Andrew Murray and left-wing activist Jeremy Corbyn, would be within reach of forming the first communist government in British history, Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, Murray appointed as his “Special Adviser”.

The crash of 2007 shook Western confidence still further. Left-wing commentators such as Guardian journalist Seumas Milne, an old communist comrade of Murray’s, openly voiced nostalgia for the “huge social benefits” enjoyed under Soviet communism in the USSR and Eastern Bloc. Milne is now Corbyn’s Director of Strategy and Communications.

In 1920 Lenin urged British communists to enter the Labour Party to subvert it from within. In 1936, Trotsky told his followers to do the same, but successive generations of Labour leaders resisted this “entryism”, most famously in Neil Kinnock’s 1980s campaign against the Trotskyite group Militant. Two young members of a group which tried to thwart Kinnock’s campaign were Corbyn and Jon Lansman, later the founder of Momentum. That failure, reinforced by Tony Blair’s New Labour reforms, convinced many leftists that the only option left was bring the government down by extra-parliamentary action. This was the context when John McDonnell, now Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor, made his call for “insurrection”, a general strike and street protests in 2013.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-nightmare-of-human-organ-harvesting-in-china-11549411056

China stands accused of a gruesome trade in human organs. It’s difficult to prove, because the victims’ bodies are disposed of and the only witnesses are the doctors, police and prison guards involved. Even so, the evidence supports a damning verdict.

The charge is that many prisoners of conscience—Falun Gong members, Uighur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists and “underground” Christians—have been subjected to medical testing and had their organs forcibly removed. Those organs have fed an enormous trade in organ transplants.

Patients in China—including foreigners—are promised matching organs within days. Former Canadian politician and prosecutor David Kilgour, lawyer David Matas, American journalist Ethan Gutmann and a team of researchers have confirmed this by posing to Chinese hospitals as patients. Dr. Huang Jiefu, China’s former vice minister for health and chairman of its organ-transplant committee, ordered two spare livers as backups for a 2005 medical operation. They were delivered the next morning. In most advanced Western countries, patients wait months or even years for transplants.

In 2016 Messrs. Kilgour, Matas and Gutmann published a report, “Bloody Harvest/the Slaughter: An Update,” building on research that dates back to 2006. In this latest version, the authors estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year in Chinese hospitals.

Where are the organs coming from? China claims it has the “largest voluntary organ donation system in Asia” and stopped using prisoners in 2015. But the country has no tradition of voluntary organ donation. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13688/britain-fgm-conviction

Editor’s Note: February 6 is International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, a United Nations-sponsored annual awareness day aimed at eradicating the practice.

“Female genital mutilation is a sickening, depraved form of child abuse and we will do all we can to ensure all perpetrators are brought to justice.” — British Home Secretary Sajid Javid.

“It is the physical damage and emotional damage as well. It can be very, very damaging. The person who should be protecting them in the first place has usually arranged and facilitated it. How can you rebuild that link to the person that should be protecting you?” — Inspector Allen Davis, the Metropolitan Police Service lead officer for FGM.

“The grooming gang cases are again one of the only near parallels. As a number of official inquiries have revealed, in Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxfordshire and a growing list of other places, there must have been hundreds if not thousands of people who were not perpetrators in the cases but who knew something was going on. People who worked in social services, local police, hotel owners and others… but decided to turn a blind eye… But it had also become a local custom… There is something to be grateful for in the Old Bailey prosecution this week, certainly. But underneath it are deep questions which cannot go unaddressed.” — Douglas Murray, The Spectator.

In a landmark ruling, a mother-of-three has become the first person in Britain to be found guilty of female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that has been outlawed in the country for more than three decades.

Under British law, anyone found guilty of performing FGM can be imprisoned for up to 14 years. It has been illegal in Britain since 1985 under the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act, later amended in the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003.

The UK’s Serious Crime Act defines FGM as involving “procedures that include the partial or total removal of the external female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13532/eu-full-orwell

The problem is that this professedly noble initiative comes from an organization that has already for several years been censoring free speech in Europe.

The handbook guidelines state that journalists should “Take care not to further stigmatize terms such as ‘Muslim’ or ‘Islam’ by associating them with particular acts… Don’t allow extremists’ claims about acting ‘in the name of Islam’ to stand unchallenged. Highlight… the diversity of Muslim communities… where it is necessary and newsworthy to report hateful comments against Muslims, mediate the information.” In other words, the guidelines ask journalists to disinform the public.

This is the same European Commission that most recently expressed its disapproval of the withdrawal of Austria from the UN’s “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration.” The Compact stipulates that media outlets that do not support the UN’s migration agenda will not be eligible for public funding. How is that for “fully respecting Europe’s fundamental principles of freedom of expression, a free press and pluralism”?

The EU has launched a comprehensive Action Plan against Disinformation. Its purpose, according to a recent press release from the European Commission, is apparently to “protect its democratic systems and public debates and in view of the 2019 European elections as well as a number of national and local elections that will be held in Member States by 2020”.

In June 2018, leaders of EU member states had met in the European Council and invited the European Commission “to present… an action plan by December 2018 with specific proposals for a coordinated EU response to the challenge of disinformation…” It is this action plan that the Commission presented to the public on December 5.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13658/philippines-christians-slaughtered

The new terrorism in the Philippines is not merely inspired by political or territorial grievances, real or imagined, but rather is imbued with intrinsic hate for the “other” — for the “infidel.”

In May 2017, in the city of Marawi, a civilian bus was stopped by jihadis; when 9 passengers were discovered to be Christian — apparently because they were not able to quote the Koran — they were tied together and shot dead, execution style. The jihadis who took over Marawi during the uprising forced women into sex-slavery and ordered Christian men embrace Islam or be used as human shields against the Philippine Army.

January’s deadly church-bombing, which claimed 20 lives and wounded more than 100, is the latest reminder that, as with other nations that have a sizeable Muslim minority, the Philippines is embroiled in the jihad. While the ostensible reason behind it may be political or territorial, the sadistic hate that accompanies attacks on Christians and their churches suggests that ideology is the ultimate cause.

On Sunday, January 27, extremist Muslims bombed a Catholic cathedral during Mass in the Philippines. At least 20 people were killed and 111 wounded.

At 8:45 am, two explosives were detonated about a minute apart in or near the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo. According to the Associated Press:

“The initial explosion scattered the wooden pews inside the main hall and blasted window glass panels, and the second bomb hurled human remains and debris across a town square fronting the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, witnesses said.”

Photographs on social media showed human bodies and remains strewn on the street just outside the cathedral. Last heard, the officiating priest, Fr. Ricky Bacolcol, “was still in shock and could not speak about what happened,” said a colleague.

After the first bomb detonated, army troops and police posted outside the cathedral rushed in, at which point the second bomb went off. Fifteen of the slain were civilians, five were military men; 90 of the wounded were civilians.

The cathedral, located in a Muslim-majority area, was heavily guarded; it had been hit before. In 1997, Catholic Bishop, Benjamin de Jesus, was gunned down just outside the cathedral; in 2010, grenades were hurled at it twice, damaging the building.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-growing-anti-maduro-alliance/

The administration of our “America First” president is leading an international and multilateral effort to restore popular sovereignty and human rights in what was once the richest country in South America. This is an historical irony worth welcoming. Today, after a weekend of protests in Caracas, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Poland, among others, joined the growing number of countries recognizing 35-year-old Juan Guaidò as president of Venezuela.

It’s a trend that Donald Trump started. Last month the opposition-controlled National Assembly designated Guaidò president after the disputed inauguration of socialist autocrat Nicolás Maduro. On January 23, Trump validated the assembly’s decision and mobilized the U.S. government behind Guaidò’s democratic revolution.

The president of the Organization of American States, as well as the governments of Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Canada, Chile, and Australia, followed Trump’s lead. Israel recognized Guaidò a few days later. Now the Europeans have joined the bandwagon.
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Two decades of socialism have impoverished and corrupted Venezuela. The United States and Canada say they will send humanitarian aid, putting the generals who continue to support Maduro on defense. “To the Venezuelan military high command, now is the time to stand on the side of the Venezuelan people,” John Bolton Tweeted on February 2. The military is all that stands between Maduro and the abyss. His Cuban puppeteers, and his Russian, Chinese, and Iranian allies, will be dealt a major setback if the armed forces abandon Maduro and new elections are held.

The situation is fluid and dangerous. But the number of Guaidò’s friends is rising as Maduro grows ever more isolated. And given the ruin Maduro has brought to Venezuela, Guaidò needs all the friends he can muster.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/a-not-so-innocent-abroad-pope-francis-in-arabia-i

Pope Francis arrived in the United Arab Emirates yesterday, February 3. Tonight he will address the “Muslim Council of Elders,” a body based in the UAE which supposedly “seeks to counter religious fanaticism by promoting a moderate brand of Islam.” We’ll reserve our judgment until we see the text of his speech (cf. Part II tomorrow); but on current form nothing good should be expected from the occasion.

The “Council of Elders” is the brainchild of Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam of Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque and university. Today’s meeting between Francis and el-Tayeb (fifth in three years) is light years away from Al-Azhar’s angry freezing of relations with the Holy See which followed Pope Benedict XVI’s September 2006 lecture at the University of Regensburg on Islam and violence, and his subsequent demand for greater protection for Christians in Egypt.

The Legacy of Pope Benedict—The ongoing improvement in relations was predicated on a clear volte-face on the Roman side, an implicit albeit not openly stated admission that Pope Benedict’s analysis is not accepted by his successor. As if to confirm the hint, in 2016 Pope Francis claimed that his meeting with el-Tayeb at the Vatican—ended with an embrace—was proof that “they [Muslims] seek peace, encounter.” On the other side, however, throughout the past decade Sheikh el-Tayeb himself has remained unyielding on his condemnation of Benedict’s alleged Islamophobia and insulting intolerance.