RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.us/angela-merkel-vision-eu/

Whatever anyone’s views on the enterprise, there was one question always begging to be asked of the European Union: ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ At an early stage it wasn’t clear to everyone. Then the purpose and direction of travel seemed agreed — under the stewardship of Angela Merkel. She was there to settle disputes, authorize bailouts, offer German help to struggling nations and protect the project as it led to ever-closer union. Whatever else can be said of it, with Merkel at the helm at least the EU appeared to have direction. Not anymore.

This week — after another political drubbing for the CDU in Hesse — the German Chancellor announced that she would not seek re-election as head of the party she has led for 18 years. She also announced she would be stepping down as Chancellor at the next election, in 2021, a position she has held since 2005. During that time in office she has worked with four French presidents, four British prime ministers, and seven people who tried to run Italy. Her demise is proving a drawn-out affair — but we can see, in parallel, the demise of her vision of Europe. A clear, federalist vision which once seemed inevitable and now sorely lacks a leader.

Today there is simply no one on the scene capable of acting as the queen or emperor of that project, as Merkel has done for the past decade. That is due, in no small part, to the decisions she took and the hardness and hubris with which she acted when she held the most powerful position in Europe. The Merkel project had created a EU that had unachievable ambitions, seeking to govern countries with long histories of independence, and was fundamentally un-European in that it sought to impose uniformity upon the most gloriously diverse set of countries on earth.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/11/brazil-bolsonaros-augean-stable/

Very nearly slain on the campaign trail, the new president is widely depicted by Western media as a fascist intent on tyranny. Well they would say that, wouldn’t they? The long-suffering citizens who elected him knew better, voting for a new broom to sweep away mayhem, corruption and leftist failure.

Jair Bolsonaro (left) was recently elected the next President of Brazil, finally putting an end to a generation of highly corrupt and incompetent leftist rule. And yet, when Brazil’s Supreme Electoral Tribunal declared Mr Bolsonaro the next leader of the world’s fourth-largest democracy, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Jose Dias Toffoli made this highly unusual pronouncement: ‘The future president must respect institutions, must respect democracy, the rule of law, the judiciary branch, the national Congress and the legislative branch.’ Those remarks were widely taken to be a rebuke of Bolsonaro’s political views.

It is ironic that the real threat to democracy in Brazil comes not from Bolsonaro but from a highly anachronistic left. Indeed, Bolsonaro was one of the few Brazilian politicians willing to publicly attack what the communists from the Workers Party (PT) were doing: the destruction of the family through gender ideology and sexualisation of children; the promotion of organized crime as a stylish way of life and counter to the ‘capitalist system’; the promotion of abortion on demand; the deep and unprecedented corruption scandals perpetrated by President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and his Workers’ Party, and the endemic violence that is claiming tens of thousands of murders every year.

As Brazil’s most powerful party, the Workers’ Party is structured along Leninist lines, with a central committee and strict rules about adherence to party decisions. It brings under the same banner Trotskyists, Leninists, Maoists, former guerrillas, the Left’s standard issue pseudo-intellectuals and militant trade unionists. The leading group, comments Bernardo Kucinski, a journalist who acted as a special adviser to former President Lula da Silva, ‘is made up of trade union leaders, intellectuals, and members of the old Aliança Libertadora Nacional – ALN [a guerrillas movement], [and] the armed struggle group created by Carlos Marighela’. It has moderate supporters of social democracy, but its radical wing consists of hardliners eager to create a dictatorship of the proletariat.

It is clear that numerous members of the Workers’ Party consider the use of violence a feasible strategy. They argue that laws must be obeyed only as long as they contribute to radical social changes. The idea comes from the writings of Engels, who argued in a March, 1884, letter: ‘The proletariat needs democratic forms for the seizure of political power but they are … like all political forms, mere means’. This sort of mentality is opposed to democracy but helps to explain why, in March 2005, Veja, Brazil’s leading current-affairs magazine, published a cover story about the illegal offering of five million dollars by the Revolutionary Army Forces of Colombia (FARC) to the campaign of Workers’ Party candidates in 2003.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13210/turkey-refugee-role

“Turkish ‘police’ are now openly patrolling ‘Turkish areas’ in Berlin… Cars bearing the logo of an elite Turkish police unit have been spotted on the streets of Berlin – but the German authorities say they are powerless to stop them.” — The Sun.

In spite of the fantasy still harbored by some Europeans that the immigrants eventually will integrate into the societies of their host countries, the opposite has been the case.

Those Europeans who defend mass, unfettered immigration in the name of “multiculturalism” and “diversity” are ignoring the nature of the Muslim-majority countries from which the immigrants hail. The lack of human rights and free speech, the abuse of women and gays, honor killings, anti-Semitism, and violence against non-Muslims and Muslim “apostates” are characteristic of those countries. Rather than escaping the shackles of those countries, many immigrants are simply transporting them to Europe.

“Sharia law has been recognized by a British court for the first time after a judge made a landmark divorce ruling… that an estranged couple’s Islamic faith marriage, conducted in a ceremony called a nikah, falls under British matrimonial law despite it not being legally recognized as such.” — The Telegraph.

Turkey, thanks to the United Nations, will now officially be in charge of deciding not only who is a refugee but also where he or she will be placed or transferred. Turkish state authorities have repeatedly threatened to flood Europe with refugees, such as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s message to Europe in 2016:

“You cried out when 50,000 refugees were at the Kapikule border. You started asking what you would do if Turkey would open the gates. Look at me — if you go further, those border gates will be open. You should know that.”

Given the Turkish threats, this new official position for Turkey should be of concern.

The pro-government Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah recently reported:

“The U.N. refugee agency has handed over the management of registration procedures for the refugees in Turkey to the country’s migration authority. Turkey’s Directorate General of Migration Management itself will now oversee the registration of refugees and determine their status. Any foreigner seeking international protection in Turkey will now have to apply to the local offices of the Turkish migration authority.”

https://jamieglazov.com/2018/11/03/glazov-moment-female-genital-mutilators-flown

In this new Jamie Glazov Moment, Jamie focuses on Female Genital Mutilators Flown Into UK, and he asks: Where is #MeToo? Where are all the leftist feminists?

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Elizabeth Yore, the Founder of EndFGMToday.com, discuss End FGM Today, where she reveals how 513,000 girls and women are at risk in the U.S. alone:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/turtle-bay-truth-embargo-1541202078

The United Nations has again proved its worth as an unfailing barometer of human rights—though not in the way the world body intended.

It came in Thursday’s 189-2 vote against the trade embargo on Cuba, blamed by regime apologists for most of Cuba’s many ills. Israel alone sided with the U.S. The resolution on the embargo pops up every year. And every year since 1992 the U.S. has voted against it—except in 2016 when the U.S. abstained because the Obama Administration was cozying up to Havana.

This year U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley tried something different. Instead of simply voting no, the U.S. tried to inject some balance by proposing several amendments that highlighted the many egregious outrages of the Cuban regime. These range from its denial of fundamental freedoms of assembly and expression to the harassment and intimidation of government opponents to the jailing of citizens who dare complain about human-rights violations. All eight amendments failed by overwhelming margins, with only Israel and Ukraine consistently voting with the U.S.

Ms. Haley noted who bears the real costs of this high-minded preening. “It’s one more time that countries feel they can poke the United States in the eye, but you’re not hurting the United States when you do this,” she said. “You’re literally hurting the Cuban people by telling the regime that their treatment of their people is acceptable.”

People can come down on different sides about the merits of an economic embargo. But when the U.N. condemns the U.S. while giving Cuba a pass, Turtle Bay reveals its own moral bankruptcy.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/pompeo-sanctions-just-a-part-of-iran-regime-behavior-change-plan/

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this morning that snapback sanctions on Iran will be “just a part of the U.S. government’s total effort to change the behavior of the Ayatollah Khamenei” and the regime in Tehran.

Sanctions on Iran’s energy, shipbuilding, shipping and banking sectors that were lifted as a result of the P5+1 nuclear deal will go back into effect Monday, Pompeo told reporters on a call.

Eight countries, though, are receiving waivers that will allow them to keep buying oil from Iran without coming under U.S. sanctions: Pompeo did not identify the countries, but Bloomberg reported that four are Japan, India, China and South Korea.

“We expect to issue some temporary allotments to eight jurisdictions, but only because they have demonstrated significant reductions in their crude oil and cooperation on many other fronts and have made important moves towards getting to zero crude oil importation. These negotiations are still ongoing,” Pompeo said. “Two of the jurisdictions will completely end imports as part of their agreements. The other six will import at greatly reduced levels.”

He stressed that “our actions today are targeted at the regime, not the people of Iran who have suffered grievously under this regime”; the U.S. “will maintain many humanitarian exemptions to our sanctions, including food, agriculture commodities, medicine and medical devices.”

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said the U.S. has “gone after the financial networks that the Iranian regime uses to fuel its terrorist proxies in Hezbollah and Hamas, to fund the Houthis in Yemen, and to support the brutal Assad regime in Syria.”

On Monday, Treasury will add more than 700 names to the list of blocked entities, he said, which includes “hundreds of targets previously granted sanctions relief under the JCPOA, as well as more than 300 new designations.”

Senate Republicans including Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) want the administration to cut off Iranian banks from conducting global transactions using the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, and are expected to introduced legislation to force President Trump’s hand after the election. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13211/iraq-christians-returning

“Something specific occurred here that requires a specific response. It is called genocide… It is important for these communities to understand that they have a superpower behind them. This is a White House priority. Our goal is to help those communities return to their historic lands.” — Max Primorac, Special Representative for Minority Assistance Programs at USAID, who is responsible for aiding Christians and Yazidis targeted by ISIS.

While roughly a third of the Christians who fled from ISIS in 2014 are returning, the future of their communities in northern Iraq needs political support and a surge of security and economic development. For Christians worldwide, this is our homeland. This is where we began. These are the people we need to protect and help to prosper.

QARAQOSH, Iraq — Christians are gradually returning to their historic homeland in northern Iraq, after three years of ISIS occupation.

The lucky ones managed to flee before the ISIS onslaught in the pre-dawn hours of August 6, 2014, and returned to find their houses intact. Most, however, are facing tremendous damage to their homes and families from a war that pitted neighbor against neighbor, community against community, tearing apart bonds forged over generations.

Yohanna Younis Towaya, 54, a prominent businessman and farmer, returned to find his home burned and looted. “One wall, next to my father’s house, was completely blown out but we repaired it,” he says. His father’s house, next door, he says, has been flattened by an allied air strike: ISIS fighters turned it into a fighting post.

Towaya says he doubts he will ever rebuild his father’s house, like the 116 such buildings in this once-thriving Christian economic center. “ISIS fighters are buried there beneath the rubble,” he says. “Sometimes, you can smell them.”

The smell of the unburied dead is pungent. You can smell it from here in the Christian heartland all the way into ancient Mosul, 12 miles to the west. The area was totally devastated in the final battle to crush ISIS hold-outs fighting from tunnels and underground bunkers.

No one really knows who provided ISIS with their tunneling machines, but there are many of them. On the outskirts of Qaraqosh, members of ISIS had dug a maze of tunnels beneath a Syriac Orthodox monastery at Qortaya to an ancient Assyrian mound 150 meters away. Those firing positions, high enough for an ordinary person to walk upright, allowed them to dominate the surrounding plains.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13190/britain-terror-investigations

If you do not even dare to link terrorism to its source, then surely neither can you prepare for it.

No one seems to be holding roundtable talks with non-Muslim communities across the UK to address their legitimate fears and concerns about religiously-motivated terrorism on their lives.

Perhaps the main reason that terror victims had nowhere to turn is that even after years of living with Islamic terrorism, British authorities and public services still appear to be more concerned with dealing with perceived “Islamophobia” than with the real, devastating consequences of terrorism.

Britain’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Max Hill, recently recommended:

“…the Police should consider and reflect upon the community impact of a large-scale [terror] investigation, centering as it did on particular areas of Manchester with a large Muslim population… Good community policing, as well as good counter-terrorism policing, demands that real efforts are made to work within and with local communities, where many blameless residents will have been inconvenienced if not traumatised by the regular appearance of Police search and arrest teams on their street or in their home. I would like to see the outcome of Police reflections on this aspect…” [Emphasis added]

Hill’s recommendation was published in his recent report on how the UK handles its counter-terrorism efforts. In the report, Hill examines police investigations of the major 2017 terrorist attacks; his recommendation was connected to the investigation into the terrorist attack in Manchester in May 2017, in which Salman Abedi murdered 22 people and injured 139, half of them children, at an Ariana Grande pop concert at the Manchester Arena.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/haley-cuba-vote-just-one-more-time-un-members-feel-they-can-poke-u-s-in-the-eye/

Ambassador Nikki Haley lashed out at the United Nations’ annual condemnation of the U.S. embargo on Cuba as “one more time that countries feel they can poke the United States in the eye.”

“You are literally hurting the Cuban people by telling the regime that their treatment of their people is acceptable. For 27 years we’ve had this debate, and nothing has changed in Cuba – at least nothing for the better,” she told members. “…The sorry state of liberty and human rights in Cuba is not lost on anyone in this chamber – even as countries vote to blindly support the resolution every year.”

The resolution calling on the U.S. to lift the embargo was first introduced in 1992 and has passed overwhelmingly each year. This year the vote was 189-2, with the U.S. and Israel opposing.

In 2016, when the Obama administration was trying to forge better relations with the communist country, both the U.S. and Israel abstained during the vote.

Haley said proponents of the resolution “falsely blame America for all kinds of evil things, even genocide.”

“Those who support this resolution every year have it wrong. Our reason for the embargo is and has always been Cuba’s denial of freedom and the denial of the most basic human rights for the Cuban people. The United States will continue to stand with the Cuban people until their rights and their freedoms are restored. Period. We won’t back down,” she added. “Last year, we were joined by just one nation in voting against this resolution. And that’s fine. We were in very good company. We have no problem standing alone on behalf of the things that we believe in and will proudly do so again today if necessary.”

During a speech today at Miami Dade College’s National Historic Landmark Freedom Tower, National Security Advisor John Bolton warned that “in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, we see the perils of poisonous ideologies left unchecked, and the dangers of domination and suppression.”

“The ‘Troika of Tyranny’ in this hemisphere — Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua — has finally met its match,” he added.

Regarding the mysterious “sonic attacks” that have driven most U.S. diplomats from Havana and caused illness including traumatic brain injury, Bolton vowed that “this president will not allow our diplomats to be targeted with impunity.” Cuba has denied being behind the attacks.

Haley said at the UN that “for 27 years we’ve had this debate, and nothing has changed in Cuba – at least nothing for the better.”