RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272399/tightening-sharia-screws-bruce-bawer

It started out with an isolated case here and there. In 2005, Oriana Fallaci was put on trial in Italy for her anti-Islam book The Force of Reason. In 2010 and again in 2011, politician Geert Wilders was tried in the Netherlands for publicly criticizing Islam. In 2011, the Danish Lars Hedegaard was found guilty by a Danish court of hate speech for having, in the privacy of his own home, made reference to the frequency of incest rape in Muslim communities. (The verdict was later reversed by the Danish Supreme Court.) Also in 2011, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was tried and fined in Austria for having stated, truthfully, that the Prophet Muhammed was a pedophile. The verdict was upheld by two higher Austrian courts and, this year, by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

In the years since those notorious prosecutions were initiated, the net has spread ever wider, and such cases have become routine aspects of Western European life. In 2017 alone, about 77 people, most of them “middle aged and elderly ladies,” were convicted in Sweden of “inciting hate.” Also in 2017, two Norwegian parliamentarians, one of them belonging to the Conservative Party and the other to the Progress Party (which gained power by promising to fight such things) introduced a website at which citizens can, with a couple of keystrokes, report “hate speech” to the police. In Britain, too, members of the public are being urged to report “offensive or insulting comments” to the police, and increasing numbers of otherwise law-abiding British subjects are being imprisoned for, as Reason’s Brendan O’Neill put it, “making racist comments or just cracking tasteless jokes on Twitter.”

You might deduce from all this that Western European governments are already doing a bang-up job of suppressing freedom of speech. But the United Nations doesn’t seem to think so. At a December 6 meeting in Geneva of the UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Keiko Ko, the committee’s Rapporteur for Norway, charged that the Norwegian government had not yet done enough to “prevent hate speech” directed at refugees and migrants, to ban so-called “racist organizations,” and to prosecute persons guilty of “racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia.” In response, a Norwegian official attending the meeting assured Ko of Norway’s determination to punish “hate speech” and to develop new ways for the police to “engage those spreading hatred.” Another Norwegian delegate affirmed that “[t]he prosecution of hate crimes, including hate utterances, was a priority in Norway.”

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/france-the-sick-man-of-europe

rance’s ambassador to Poland Pierre Levy has said he was “surprised, even shocked,” by the Polish foreign minister, Jacek Czaputowicz, declaring that “something’s not right” with France, and that was “sad because France is the sick man of Europe, dragging Europe down.” M. Levy went on to make an astonishing statement which only confirmed that the Pole was right.

Talking to the media shortly before Christmas, Mr. Czaputowicz said that the protests in recent weeks and the Strasbourg Christmas market attack by a Muslim reflected France’s overall decrepitude. His reference to the jihadist attack was particularly significant—and irksome to the French ambassador—because it clearly alluded to Poland’s refusal to accept any Muslim refugees from Greece and Italy under EU quotas. That position is shared by the other three members of the Visegrad Group, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.

Levy warned that populism and “fringe forces” threatened European interests. As for the Strasbourg attack, he said that “the investigation into its roots and causes had not yet been completed.” Levy further asserted that most of the perpetrators of past attacks were motivated by the same forces of economic inequality that gave rise to the yellow vest riots: “The attacks were acts of . . . people who, for various reasons, found themselves on the margins [of society], and who adopted the badge of Islamic radicals, even though, in reality, they weren’t radicals at all.”

This is reminiscent of any number of old jokes where, by trying to establish his rationality, the patient confirms that he is utterly insane.

Writing in these pages three years ago, I diagnosed the disorder which is on such blatant display in Pierre Levy’s statement: members of the elite class “treat the jihadist mindset as a pathology that can and should be treated by treating causes external to Islam itself.”

But M. Levy’s task is to represent his country’s government, which in France’s case primarily means President Emanuel Macron. As it happens, Macron is a paradigmatic pastiche—almost a caricature—of Europe’s postmodern, transnational elite. He is an Islamophile open-borders globalist. Two years ago he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that critics of Angela Merkel’s open-door migration policy were guilty of “disgraceful oversimplification.” By allowing over a million aliens into the country, “Merkel and German society as a whole exemplified our common European values. They saved our collective dignity by accepting, accommodating and educating distressed refugees.” He subsequently lampooned Donald Trump’s promise to protect America’s southern border by promising never to build a wall of any kind.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-congos-crooked-contest-11546453926

A long history of misrule has made the Democratic Republic of Congo one of the world’s poorest and most dangerous countries. The Congolese people had reason for optimism this summer when President Joseph Kabila agreed to step down. This makes the hijinks surrounding Sunday’s election particularly dispiriting.

This was only the fourth multiparty election since independence in 1960, and it is the central African nation’s best chance at a peaceful transfer of power. After delaying elections for years, in August Mr. Kabila agreed to abide by the constitution and forgo another presidential run. That left his chosen successor, Emmanuel Shadary, to face off against some 20 candidates. The opposition largely coalesced around Martin Fayulu and Felix Tshisekedi, and Mr. Shadary trailed in polls.

It’s hardly been a fair contest. The government used an Ebola outbreak as a pretext to bar voting in opposition strongholds, and security forces broke up opposition rallies. Thousands of voting machines were destroyed in a fire last month. Millions of the DRC’s 46 million registered voters were unable to cast a ballot.

Both sides have claimed victory, though it’s unlikely Mr. Shadary pulled off a legitimate win. The government has since shut down SMS, the internet, and some radio services. It claims this was meant to stop the spread of fake news. Pardon Congolese who suspect this is a fake excuse for disrupting nongovernment communications ahead of the release of preliminary results on Jan. 6.

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2019/01/britains-islamic-demise.html

I used to think that the U.K. would resist Islam “on the beaches, and in the skies,” that is, fight the Islamic invasion of the country (by virtual invitation) by a hostile, inimical religious-political ideology and its adherents, valuing all the Enlightenment heights it had achieved – in freedom of speech, “democracy,” reason and a rational philosophy – and wished to retain everything that advanced man’s condition and freedom from tyranny.

But I no longer think that. Britain has become as bad and totalitarian as Angela Merkle’s authoritarian Germany. Soeren Kern of the Gatestone Institute has itemized Britain’s submission to Islam in the half year leading up to the beginning of June 2018.

The Muslim population of Britain surpassed 4.2 million in 2018 to become around 6.3% of the overall population of 64 million, according to data extrapolated from a recent study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe. In real terms, Britain has the third-largest Muslim population in the European Union, after France, then Germany.

The rapid growth of Britain’s Muslim population can be attributed to immigration, high birth rates and conversions to Islam.

Islam and Islam-related issues, omnipresent in Britain during 2018, can be categorized into several broad themes: 1) Islamic extremism and the security implications of British jihadists; 2) The continuing spread of Islamic Sharia law in Britain; 3) The sexual exploitation of British children by Muslim gangs; 4) Muslim integration into British society; and 5) The failures of British multiculturalism.

It goes without saying, that everywhere it’s been tried, multiculturalism has failed – Sweden, France, and Germany being the outstanding instances. It can succeed in sinking roots and flourish only if national governments allow it to and water it with mandatory “toleration.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13490/islamic-university-europe-netherlands

A 2012 Turkish YouTube video describes the “Islamic University of Europe” as a school “established in 2001 to build an aware and cultivated European Muslim identity in Europe and to promote Islam… and to bring to life the mentality that is ‘to serve humanity is to serve Islam.'” Bahçekapılı’s lectures are in keeping with this mission. One such lecture glorifies the eighth-century Muslim military invasion of Spain and the establishment there of the Islamic state of Al-Andalus (Andalusia).

The school’s former rector, professor Ahmet Akgündüz, has called the opponents of Turkish President Erdogan “enemies of Islam,” and has stated that stoning people to death is “one of the prescribed punishments within Islam.”

Europe might wish to look into what is being taught at Islamic schools, particularly those that receive government money.

A recent development in a two-year-old corruption scandal — involving the so-called “Islamic University of Europe” in the Netherlands — has renewed public interest in the institution, involving tax fraud.

Its rector, professor Nedim Bahçekapılı, has gone missing after Dutch prosecutors decided to arrest him as part of an investigation addressing the school’s “tax evasion of millions of Euros, corruption, and opening fraudulent classes.” The Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security said that the rector could not be found and is believed to have left the country.

Less attention has been paid, however, to the dangerous course content of the Rotterdam-based school, which, in 2016, was stripped by the Dutch Parliament of its “university” status for financial reasons.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272389/theresa-mays-anti-christian-regime-jules-gomes

You don’t need to be a fan of the vintage British political sitcom Yes Minister to understand how government reviews are instruments of inertia, damage control, public relations, virtue signaling, obfuscation and a surrogate for action. As the smooth-tongued civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby from Yes Minister puts it: “The job of a professionally conducted internal inquiry is to unearth a great mass of no evidence.”

On Boxing Day, Britain’s Conservative in Name Only (CINO) government in cozy chumminess with the Church of England gave the nation a gift. The day was most certainly chosen for its significance: in British tradition postmen, errand boys, servants and the hoi polloi expect to receive a gift box from the high and mighty.

So as his Boxing Day 2018 gift, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP announced a review into the global persecution of Christians, which would be led by Philip Mounstephen, Anglican Bishop of Truro. The heralding of this great news of glad tidings was peppered with the standard British bureaucratic blather.

The Foreign Office said its independent review would consider “tough questions and offer ambitious policy recommendations.” It would provide “an objective view of Britain’s support for the most vulnerable Christians globally,” trumpeted Lord Tariq Ahmad, Britain’s special envoy on freedom of religion.

https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2019/1/now-we-do

Ernesto Araújo is the Foreign Minister of Brazil.

“I am very worried; he talked too much about God.” So said a prominent Brazilian political commentator on TV after hearing President Jair Bolsonaro’s victory speech on the night of October 28, 2018, when the polls showed his victory by a 55–45 margin over the Marxist candidate, Fernando Haddad.

So now talk of God is supposed to worry people. This is sad. But the people of Brazil don’t care. Bolsonaro’s government, in which I serve as foreign minister, doesn’t care what pundits say or what they worry about: they don’t have a clue about who God is or who the Brazilian people are and want to be. Their worry is that of an elite about to be dispossessed. They are afraid because they can no longer control public discourse. They can no longer dictate the limits of the president’s or anyone else’s speech. The last barrier has been broken: we can now talk about God in public. Who could imagine?

Over the years, Brazil had become a cesspool of corruption and despair. The fact that people didn’t talk about God and didn’t bring their faith to the public square was certainly part of the problem. Now that a president talks about God and expresses his faith in a deep, heartfelt way, that is supposed to be the problem? To the contrary. I am convinced that President Bolsonaro’s faith is instrumental, not accidental, to his electoral victory and to the wave of change that is washing over Brazil.

Brazil is experiencing a political and spiritual rebirth, and the spiritual aspect of this phenomenon is the determinant one. The political aspect is only a consequence.

For a third of a century, Brazil was subject to a political system composed of three parties acting increasingly in concert. Only now are we realizing the shape and full extent of that domination. First we had the of Brazilian Democratic Movement (pmdb), which took over after the regime established in 1964 (misleadingly called the military regime) gave away power peacefully in 1985. Originally a moderate left-wing opposition to the regime (although with some far-left infiltration), pmdb took the reins of government, wrote a new constitution, and became a broad front for the old oligarchy under a more modern, urban, social-oriented guise. That group mastered the art of political favors and bureaucracy, establishing itself as the foundation of the system. The extent to which the bureaucracy is able to allocate resources in the Brazilian economy—choosing winners and losers—has always been astounding, and during this period it became a full-fledged system of governance that completely stifled the economy.

The 1990s saw the ascendance of the Social-Democratic Party (psdb), an offshoot of pmdb with roots on the left but better groomed, which started to cater to voters eager for economic stability after a decade and a half of mismanagement and hyperinflation. psdb refashioned itself as the free market party, more or less hiding its true colors and its cultural-liberal agenda, and surfed on sound macroeconomic policies to become the dominant force from 1994 to 2002, always retaining its links to the traditional political-bureaucratic cabals represented by pmdb.

The third branch of the system emerged in the early 2000s, in the shape of the Workers’ Party (PT),an Orwellian name, by the way, since real workers are rarely spotted in this party ruled by Marxist intellectuals, former left-wing guerrillas, and members of the trade-union bureaucracy. After the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known universally as Lula) in 2002, PT—which had been preparing for this for years—quickly captured and co-opted the pmdb–psdb power scheme, retaining the old tit-for-tat machinery run by pmdb and the stability policies represented by psdb and establishing a much firmer grip on power than its predecessors. pmdb became the junior party in PT’s coalition, while psdb took the role of tamed opposition, participating in presidential elections every four years in which its role was to lose nobly to PT.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13494/britain-multiculturalism-transformation

“We demand the legal right to Free Speech, in an Act which will bring an end to the ludicrous notion that ‘hate speech’ and ‘offensive speech’ deserves people be imprisoned or charged. In short, an Act to codify the citizens’ right to freedom of speech without government intervention.” — Petition (ultimately rejected) to the British government calling for codifying free speech.

“A hate crime is any criminal offense, for example assault or malicious communications, which is perceived [emphasis added] to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s actual or perceived race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity.” — From the British government’s response to the petition.

A Home Office review proposed legislative changes that would require Muslim couples to undergo a civil marriage before or at the same time as their Islamic ceremony. Such a requirement would provide women with legal protection under British law. The review said that nearly all those using Sharia councils were females seeking an Islamic divorce. As a “significant number” of Muslim couples do not register their marriages under civil law, “some Muslim women have no option of obtaining a civil divorce.”

The Muslim population of Britain surpassed 4.2 million in 2018 to become around 6.3% of the overall population of 64 million, according to data extrapolated from a recent study on the growth of the Muslim population in Europe. In real terms, Britain has the third-largest Muslim population in the European Union, after France, then Germany.

The rapid growth of Britain’s Muslim population can be attributed to immigration, high birth rates and conversions to Islam.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13476/european-union-authoritarian

What the Lisbon Treaty actually created was an authoritarian political system that infringes on human and political rights.

Article 4 states in part: “…The Member States shall facilitate the achievement of the Union’s tasks and refrain from any measure which could jeopardise the attainment of the Union’s objectives.” In other words, the interests of the Union are above the interests of individual states and citizens.

In a democratic system with a healthy balance of power, a ruling coalition can be challenged or replaced by the opposition. This is precisely what is lacking in the EU, as the Treaty of Lisbon requires that European Commission members be selected on the basis of their “European commitment.” This means, in effect, that anyone with a dissenting view may never become a member of the Commission. As history repeatedly demonstrates, where there is no opposition, freedom is lost.

The Treaty of Lisbon — drafted as a replacement to the 2005 Constitutional Treaty and signed in 2007 by the leaders of the 27 European Union member states — describes itself as an agreement to “reform the functioning of the European Union… [it] sets out humanitarian assistance as a specific Commission competence.”

What the Lisbon Treaty actually created, however, was an authoritarian political system that infringes on human and political rights.

Take the mandate of the European Commission (EC), for instance. According to Article 17 of the Treaty:

“The Commission shall promote the general interest of the Union… In carrying out its responsibilities, the Commission shall be completely independent… the members of the Commission shall neither seek nor take instructions from any Government or other institution, body, office or entity.”