RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272332/murder-morocco-bruce-bawer

It was only last July 29 that Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, a young American couple who had spent the previous year bicycling across much of Africa, Europe, and southern Asia, were murdered by ISIS members in Tajikistan. The story made international headlines. What added to the widespread interest in their fate was the fact that they had kept a blog of their journey, complete with photos and philosophical reflections. Repeatedly they denied the reality of evil and expressed the view that people are basically good. Reader comments on a New York Times article about the couple that appeared after their deaths celebrated them as “heroic,” “authentic,” “idealistic,” “inspiring,” “a Beautiful example of Purity and Light,” and so on. I disagreed. “Their naivete,” I noted in a piece I wrote about them, “is nothing less than breathtaking.”

Now comes the story of Maren Ueland and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, which captured the interest of people in Norway and Denmark all last week. Ueland (28) was Norwegian; Jespersen (24) was Danish. They were students together at the campus of the University of South-Eastern Norway in Bø, a small Telemark mountain town (pop. 6,000) that happens to be in my own neck of the woods. Both Ueland and Jespersen were majoring in something called friluftsliv og kultur- og naturveiledning, a combination of words that defines precise translation; suffice it to say that the subject is designed for students who want to work in the outdoors, to lead guided tours in the woods, and to point out items of cultural interest to hikers – that sort of thing.

No field of study could be more archetypically Norwegian. Until recently, the official state religion of Norway was Lutheranism, but the country’s real religion is nature – specifically, going for a walk in the mountains: fresh air, quiet, serenity, a sense of being in touch with the eternal and divine. This activity even has its own standard set of rituals, among them the practice of taking along a couple of oranges, a Kvikk Lunsj (that’s a brand name) chocolate bar, a Thermos of hot chocolate and another Thermos containing boiled hot dogs. A common expression here is “Ut på tur, aldri sur” – take a walk in the wood and you’ll always feel good!

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13469/turkey-threats-against-greece

The one issue on which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his opposition are in “complete agreement” is the “conviction that the Greek islands are occupied Turkish territory and must be reconquered.”

“So strong is this determination that the leaders of both parties have openly threatened to invade the Aegean.” – Uzay Bulut, Turkish journalist.

Ankara’s ongoing challenges to Greek land and sea sovereignty are additional reasons to keep it from enjoying full acceptance in Europe and the rest of the West.

Turkey’s “persistent policy of violating international law and breaching international rules and regulations” was called out in a November 14 letter to UN Secretary General António Guterres by Polly Ioannou, the deputy permanent representative of Cyprus to the UN.

Reproving Ankara for its repeated violations of Cypriot airspace and territorial waters, Ioannou wrote of Turkey’s policy:

“[it] is a constant threat to international peace and security, has a negative impact on regional stability, jeopardises the safety of international civil aviation, creates difficulties for air traffic over Cyprus and prevents the creation of an enabling environment in which to conduct the Cyprus peace process.”

The letter followed reports in August about Turkish violations of Greek airspace over the northeastern, central and southeastern parts of the Aegean Sea, and four instances of Turkey violating aviation norms by infringing on the Athens Flight Information Region (AFIR). Similar reports emerged in June of Turkey violating Greek AFIR by conducting unauthorized flights over the southern Aegean islets of Mavra, Levitha, Kinaros and Agathonisi.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13470/turkey-turns-on-america

How interesting that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called Turkey and the U.S. “strategic partners,” when he has repeatedly stated that Turkish campaigns in northern Syria are aimed at eliminating U.S.-backed Kurdish groups. Erdogan referred to these groups as “terrorists” whom Turkey is “burying in the wells that they have dug.”

On December 20, Erdogan held a joint press conference with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, in which Erdogan announced that Ankara is siding with Tehran against Washington.

President Trump said Turkey “should be able to easily take care of whatever remains” of ISIS in Syria. But Turkey did not bomb or invade Syrian or Iraqi territories when ISIS invaded and took over those lands. In fact, ISIS members and supporters have been operating in Turkey, and the Turkish government has at times treated those who expose ISIS activities more harshly than ISIS supporters themselves.

The U.S. withdrawal will end up costing Americans far more in blood and treasure down the line than the small but deterrent footprint there now. The damage a withdrawal will do at this time is inestimable — and will go down in history as Trump’s legacy, just as Neville Chamberlain’s is the bogus deal Hitler dangled in front of him. It would have been so much less costly in blood and treasure to defeat Hitler before he crossed the Rhine. How ironic it would be if Trump were to go down in history as one of those “losers” he so detests.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13461/andrea-leadsom-brexit

The whole kerfuffle over the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland – the so-called “backstop” – could be ended by making one simple addition to Article 20 of the Protocol.

The EU keeps insisting that, in order to protect Ireland, the “backstop” cannot be modified. But if that insistence leads to a no-deal Brexit, it will guarantee that Ireland suffers the very damage that the “backstop” was supposed to prevent!

Among the Conservative MPs opposed to May’s deal, there is now an emerging consensus that if she can obtain convincing assurances over the “backstop” from the EU, accepting her deal may be the least bad option. This may be a turning of the tide.

If the EU refuses to give May legally binding assurances to ensure a brief application – if any – of the “backstop,” it alone will be responsible and worthy of condemnation for every misery that ensues from a no-deal Brexit.

Andrea Leadsom is the Leader of the House of Commons, that is, she is responsible for arranging government business. She has also proposed a solution to the problem of the “backstop” which is based on the same principle as our own earlier suggestion, namely, to limit the application of the “backstop” to one year renewable by mutual consent.

If there is anyone fresh to the Brexit drama, let us recall that the deal to leave the European Union negotiated by UK PM Theresa May consists of two documents, the Withdrawal Agreement (WA, 585 pages) and the Framework for the Future Relationship (FFR, 26 pages). The WA both winds up the current UK-EU relationship and defines the nature of the “transition period” from March 29 next, the day that the UK officially leaves the EU, to the end of 2020. During that transition period, the FFR is due to be turned into a full-fledged treaty defining the future trading and other relations of the two parties.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272320/how-canada-protects-sharia-frontpagemagcom

[Below is a review by Fergus Hodgson in Epoch Times of Fired by the Canadian Government for Criticizing Islam, which is Frontpage Associate Editor Christine Douglass-Williams’ account of how she was fired by the Canadian government for criticizing Islam. Get Fired! Here.]

If you denounce Sharia law in a public fashion you will suffer. Outside of the arab world, this also holds true in Canada, where a member of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation board was fired over comments on Sharia law.

Such intimidation elicits self-censorship and an incremental downward spiral for Canada’s proudly modern, liberal society.

Christine Douglass-Williams was a director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation (CRRF) from 2012 to late 2017, and she has documented her story in a courageous new book: Fired by the Canadian Government for Criticizing Islam. Published in September by the Center for Security Policy—a neoconservative-leaning think tank in Washington—this 103-page story leaves no doubt about the swift enforcement of political correctness under the Liberal Party government.

A mulatto migrant from Trinidad and Tobago and self-described “visible minority,” Williams is an accomplished journalist and expert on Islam, author of The Challenge of Modernizing Islam. As a widely read contributor to Jihad Watch and sought-after speaker, she became a victim of her own success. Her profile rose to include engagements throughout Canada and abroad, notably in Iceland alongside Robert Spencer, author of The Truth about Muhammad and a fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back

Her concerns about the nature of Sharia law, particularly its implications for women and migrant integration, were right out in the open and never kept a secret. However, as her perspective garnered traction, murmurings grew.

At a May 2017 event in Reykjavik, titled “Everything You Wanted to Know about Islam but Were Afraid to Ask,” she offered a “personal warning to Icelanders.” She believed the Icelandic population was “being duped,” and she warned that “Westerners need to be street smart as citizens of a culture that idolizes multiculturalism.”

To be fair, she didn’t mince words. Consider the following excerpt from her message to Icelanders:

“Islamic supremacists will smile at you, invite you to their gatherings, make you feel loved and welcome, but they do it to deceive you and to overtake you, your land and your freedoms. … [Sharia] stipulates—among other abuses—death for apostasy, death for gays, a lower value to women, and the full covering of women.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272313/no-room-inn-asia-bibi-christmas-jules-gomes

Like Joseph, Mary and Jesus fleeing the murderous King Herod, Asia Bibi and her family will spend Christmas dodging murderous Muslim mobs in Pakistan. Not a single Western country has made room in the immigration inn for the world’s most famous persecuted Christian.

Theresa May, Britain’s Christian PM, has opened Britain’s Intersectional Inn to Syrian Muslims, hate preachers, returning jihadis and gays hounded for being homosexual. But the door of May’s Intersectional Inn remains shut to a Pakistani Christian who has spent eight years on death row for the crime of blasphemy.

Intersectionality is the West’s new religion. Your value depends on how many victim groups you belong to. A one-eyed, black, lesbian, Palestinian, Muslim woman gets the gold medal. A heterosexual, black, woman, is awarded silver. A white, gay, American male is at the bottom with a bronze medal.

The religion of identity politics has a great commandment—love your neighbor depending on their position on the totem pole of intersectionality.

The high priests of this religion are innkeepers holding the keys to the doors to the Intersectional Inn. On merit alone, Asia Bibi should be accorded a red carpet welcome in the Intersectional Inn. Bibi is a colored (20 points) woman (20 points), who has been brutalized by Pakistan’s patriarchy (25 points). She is a low-class (10 points) and low-caste (20 points) farm laborer (15 points). She has rotted on death row facing the death penalty (30 points) for eight years for a crime she did not commit (15 points).

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/12/left-brain-right-brain-no-brain/

By their own estimation, so-called progressives are kind, caring and awash with empathy for all mankind. Meanjin scribbler Patrick Marlborough must have missed that memo, given his aren’t-I-smart slagging of the late Bill Leak.

It was famously said of the British and Americans, most likely by George Bernard Shaw, that they are divided by a common language.

To a lesser extent, possibly because we don’t have Britain’s regional accent distinctions, the same is true of Americans and Australians. When an American friend dropped by a few years ago, for example, he was utterly puzzled by frequent references in the press of people claiming to be “chuffed”.

One morning he found about three such references in the one newspaper. “What the hell does this word mean?” he asked, so I invited him to figure it out by considering the context.

He studied each sentence with scholarly concentration: “I was completely chuffed”, “I am absolutely chuffed”, and so on. Finally, my friend delivered his definition verdict.

“It means ‘drunk’,” he said.

Well, no. But it did for the rest of his trip.

The right and left sides of politics have lately arrived at a similar language gulf. Or maybe it isn’t so lately. Back in 2001, newly-elected US president George W. Bush vetoed a last-minute regulation on maximum arsenic particulate levels in water supplies that had been signed by his predecessor, Bill Clinton.

This move caused outrage among leftists, who raged that Bush’s veto exposed the nation’s children to risk of horrible death and furthermore proved that Republicans care not at all for innocent, water-craving families.

There was a logical flaw to those arguments, and they were quickly identified by Minnesota columnist James Lileks. “For all these accusations to work, you have to believe that Republicans want poisoned water,” he wrote. “You have to believe they drink different water than everyone else.”

“And, of course, they do,” Lileks continued, warming to this absurdity. “Doubt it? Switch parties. Join the GOP, and see what happens: cheerful clean-cut uniformed men show up the next day, and take you off the city water lines. They’ll connect you to the special Republican water system that crosses the nation, supplying pure clean perfect water to GOP households.”

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/

Europe is being destroyed by uncontrolled migration. There are refugees, fake refugees, economic migrants and terrorists, and no one can identify who is who.

Most are not looking to integrate into their host countries. They are colonists. Their aim is to overwhelm Western societies. Hundreds of sharia courts function in every major European city and there are numerous no-go zones, where infidels are forced out and police will not enter.

Jews are not safe in Europe and are leaving in record numbers, particularly from France, England, Norway and Sweden, where authorities cannot or will not protect them.

We must all be compassionate and ease the suffering of genuine refugees, but Canada would be foolish to follow Europe’s example.

U.S. Rightly Rejects UN Global Compact on Refugees

The United States has nothing to apologize for in standing up for its national sovereignty and opposing global compacts that do not serve the interests of the American people. As the Heritage Foundation concluded in urging the United States not to sign on to the Global Compact on Refugees, “Too often, even non-binding, voluntary compacts serve as gateways to binding commitments and vehicles for politically motivated criticism.” Moreover, if the leadership of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees continues to slam U.S. refugee policies and to press for international funding for Iran, the Trump administration should firmly object and cut back substantially on what the U.S. contributes annually to this UN bureaucracy.

https://canadafreepress.com/article/u.s.-rightly-rejects-un-global-compact-on-refugees

BREAKING: “The people’s win” Belgian Prime Minister resigns over UN Migration Pact

Migrant criminality rising in countries where the number of migrants has also risen has given way to votes such as Brexit and the rise of populist politicians. The career ending UN Migration Compact has seen millions across the globe signing their names to petition after petition in at least half the member states demanding their governments not sign it.

https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/12/breaking-the-peoples-win-belgian-prime-minister-resigns-over-un-migration-pact/

Why You Should Be a Nationalist

It’s undeniable: Around the world, nationalism is on the march, and the media and reigning political elites would have you believe this is a dangerous disaster in the making. So, why is Yoram Hazony, author of The Virtue of Nationalism, unafraid?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13447/obama-christian-genocide-nigeria

“On March 23, 2015, President Obama himself took the unusual step of releasing a video message directly to Nigerians all but telling them how to vote. In that video, Obama urged Nigerians to open the ‘next chapter’ by their votes.” — Goodluck Jonathan, former president of Nigeria, in his new book, My Transition Hours.

“Christianity is on the brink of extinction in Nigeria.” — Bosun Emmanuel, the secretary of the National Christian Elders Forum, June 23, 2018.

“Hundreds of indigenous Numan Christians in Adamawa state were attacked and killed by jihadist Fulani herdsmen. When they tried to defend themselves the Buhari govt. sent in the Airforce to bomb hundreds of them and protect the Fulani aggressors.” — Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigerian lawyer, author and former Minister of Aviation, Daily Post, December 6, 2017.

In March 2014, after the United States Institute for Peace invited the governors of Nigeria’s northern states for a conference in the U.S., the State Department blocked the visa of the region’s only Christian governor, Jonah David Jang, an ordained minister.

In a bombshell revelation, Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s former president (2010-2015), has accused the Obama administration of meddling with his nation’s politics in order to replace him with its current president, Muhammadu Buhari — whom many blame for facilitating the persecution of Christians. In his new book, My Transition Hours, Jonathan writes:

“On March 23, 2015, President Obama himself took the unusual step of releasing a video message directly to Nigerians all but telling them how to vote… In that video, Obama urged Nigerians to open the ‘next chapter’ by their votes. Those who understood subliminal language deciphered that he was prodding the electorate to vote for the [Muslim-led] opposition to form a new government.”

A 2011 ABC News report provides context:

The current wave of [Muslim] riots was triggered by the Independent National Election Commission’s (INEC) announcement on Monday [April 18, 2011] that the incumbent President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, won in the initial round of ballot counts. That there were riots in the largely Muslim inhabited northern states where the defeat of the Muslim candidate Muhammadu Buhari was intolerable, was unsurprising. Northerners [Muslims] felt they were entitled to the presidency for the declared winner, President Jonathan, [who] assumed leadership after the Muslim president, Umaru Yar’Adua died in office last year and radical groups in the north [Boko Haram] had seen his [Jonathan’s] ascent as a temporary matter to be corrected at this year’s election. Now they are angry despite experts and observers concurring that this is the fairest and most independent election in recent Nigerian history.

https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/opinion-rod-liddles-journey-im-woke-to-the-new-antisemitism/
Roderick E. Liddle is an English journalist and an associate editor of The Spectator.

Call it a ‘personal journey’, if you like. That’s what the dimbo TV documentary producers like to call it. Rod has been on a personal journey, and now he is woke, praise the Lord. Oh, I’m woke all right. Woke to the new antisemitism – which isn’t, when you poke and pry at it a little – terribly different from the old antisemitism.

I remember 15 years back a report coming out which showed that there had been a steep rise in antisemitic attacks and graffiti in London. The weird thing was, I thought at the time, the producers of the report (it was somehow attached to the Greater London Council) played this headline down. Usually anti-racist organisations scream blue murder at any rise in racism.

One bloke, involved in the report, was insistent that the antisemitic thing was not really important. That was a man called Lee Jasper. I knew of him as being part of the truly mentalist Labour far left. But still, why would he play down the shocking findings from his own organisation? More importantly, why do others on the far left play it down now?

Yes, I was slow to realise – you guys were on to this long before me.

This new rise in antisemitism, which I had thought long dead, was not shaven-headed white imbeciles from the far right. It was Muslims, a large chunk of it. The giveaway was the graffiti the report didn’t show: “Allah U Akbar!” The National Front rarely paint that on walls.

Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked. From that moment on, it all fell into place.

Fast forward 13 years and I was kicked out of the Labour Party, of which I’d been a member for 40 years, for having attempted to explain the party’s strange affection for antisemitism.

It was the consequence, I reckoned, of the growing number of Muslim activists and councillors within Labour (four had just been suspended for making antisemitic statements) and the infantile supposedly liberal far left whose unconditional support for “Palestine” (to the exclusion of every other supposedly persecuted minority in the world) was an even more potent symbol of their status than shopping at Waitrose and eating quinoa. These groups loathe Israel as much as they loathe the capitalism which has given them their comfortable existences.

Suddenly I grasped that the British far left didn’t want people to know about antisemitism because it pointed the finger at people they really, really liked.