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WORLD NEWS

Palestinian ‘Support’ for Saudi Arabia by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13167/palestinians-saudi-arabia

As Mahmoud Abbas was busy praising the Saudis for their “fairness, values and principles,” the London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria issued a statement in which it accused the Saudi authorities of preventing Palestinian refugees from entering the kingdom.

Many Arabs and Muslims can hardly afford to alienate a country as rich as Saudi Arabia. This is a good example of “money talks.” However, this does not mean that the Saudi money will ever change the hearts and minds of Palestinians, especially regarding a peace agreement with Israel.

The mistreatment of Palestinians at the hands of their Arab brethren has never been of concern to Abbas and his leadership. They are silent when Palestinians are killed and expelled from their homes in Syria. They are silent when Palestinians face discrimination and apartheid laws in Lebanon.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not wait for Saudi Arabia to admit that Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in its consulate in Turkey. Days before the Saudi announcement, Abbas decided that he and the Palestinians have “absolute confidence” in King Salman bin Abdel Aziz and this son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

As Abbas was busy praising the Saudis for their “justice, values and principles,” the London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria issued a statement in which it accused the Saudi authorities of preventing Palestinian refugees from entering the kingdom.

“Palestinian refugees fleeing war-ravaged Syria have been denied access into Saudi territories,” the group said. It pointed out that the Saudi ban excluded Palestinians heading to the kingdom to perform the Islamic hajj, or pilgrimage. The group also pointed out that Palestinians who fled Syria to Saudi Arabia “have been shorn of their right to visas, education, and health care, among other vital services.” Saudi Arabia, the group added, “continues to opt for a closed-door immigration policy regarding Palestinian refugees seeking asylum in its territories.”

This is only one example of Saudi discrimination against the Palestinians. The group’s announcement was published on the same day that Abbas was heaping praise on the Saudi leaders.

Population Stabilization or Suicidal Demographics? By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/population_stabilization_or_suicidal_demographics.html

Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth) proclaims that ever since the group’s founding “[t]he Western Hemisphere as a whole is now below [population] replacement rate.” When they formed in 1968, “only four nations were at or below replacement rate fertility… today there are nearly a hundred such nations.”

To cement the direction of progressive solutions for the earth, one letter to the editor took issue with the fact that “some of [the] authors talk about ‘slowing down population growth.’ We have to talk about ending population growth. If all we want to accomplish is slowing down population growth, then we’re just debating whether to go over the cliff running or to go over the cliff walking.'”

It would appear that human extinction is the ultimate goal.

The group is outspoken about Trump’s “trying to cancel all funds for bilateral international family planning assistance” while they maintain that in the U.S., Trump “and his congressional accomplices attack [their] friends at Planned Parenthood day and night. And from Neil Gorsuch to district and appellate judges, Trump schemes to shove [the] courts to the far right for decades to come.” As such, Population Connection is hosting hundreds of college student activists to raise the alarm and be “an unapologetic voice for population stabilization.” Too bad that Population Connection completely ignores the Project Veritas expose depicting Planned Parenthood engaging in the illegal and immoral act of selling baby parts.

Thus, given their ideological bent, President John Seager and his group would herald Europe’s ongoing demographic suicide. Moreover, it is vital to keep in mind that progressives do not mourn the death of Western values. It is integral to the progressive/leftist game plan.

Giulio Meotti writes that it is estimated that there “will be a reduction of about 25 percent in the Greek population by 2050. Even more worrying is the forecast of the country’s statistical agency (Elstat), according to which by 2080 the population of the country could fall to 7.2 million.”

Moreover, “births in public hospitals have dropped by 30 percent and Greece has become a world leader in abortion.” Only Italy has a higher percentage of older people.

Eternal Jihad: Islam Will Never, Ever Stop By Andrew E. Harrod

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/eternal_jihad_islam_will_never_ever_stop.html

The “West and Islam have been mortal enemies since the latter’s birth some fourteen centuries ago,” warns Islam scholar Raymond Ibrahim in his recent book Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. His extensive analysis bears out the apt title of this volume, whose documented history is equally ill remembered and yet vital for modern Westerners.

Ibrahim begins by elucidating the disturbing conceptual core of Islam and its seventh-century Arab prophet, Muhammad. “The appeal of Muhammad’s message lay in its compatibility with the tribal mores of his society,” Ibrahim notes.

For seventh-century Arabs – and later tribal peoples, chiefly Turks and Tatars, who also found natural appeal in Islam – the tribe was what humanity is to modern people: to be part of it was to be treated humanely; to be outside of it was to be treated inhumanely.

Accordingly, Islam “deified tribalism, causing it to outlive its setting and spill into the modern era.” Islamic doctrines like al-wala’ wa al-bara’ (“loyalty and enmity”) created an umma faith community or “‘Super Tribe’ that transcends racial, national, and linguistic barriers.” Not surprisingly, the Arabic umma “is etymologically related to ‘mother’ (umm) – to one’s closest kin.”

Ibrahim “records a variety of Muslims across time and space behaving exactly like the Islamic State and for the same reasons” – namely, Islam’s promotion of warfare against non-Muslims. Islam’s deity “incites his followers to war on the promise of booty, both animate and inanimate – so much so that an entire sura, or chapter of the Koran, ‘al-Anfal,’ is named after and dedicated to the spoils of war.” Jihadists following Islamic canons thus “‘use’ or ‘loan’ their lives as part of a ‘bargain’ or ‘transaction’ – whereby Allah forgives all sins and showers them with celestial delights.”

China seeks framework for November deal with Trump David Goldman

Ahead of a possible meeting next month between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, the White House tempered any optimism that a trade truce with Beijing is imminent when top economic advisor Larry Kudlow accused China on Sunday of doing “nothing” to defuse trade tensions.

But some Chinese officials and government advisers recently emphasized that China will show patience in addressing American trade demands, postponing if necessary some of its plans to become self-sufficient in high-tech industry.

China’s “Made in China 2025” plan, which envisions a rapid expansion of domestic high tech industry, figures prominently in the US administration’s complaints about Chinese economic policy. US negotiators accuse China of using state subsidies to gain an unfair advantage against US competitors, quite apart from tariffs, non-trade barriers, theft of intellectual property and pressure on Western joint-venture partners to transfer technology.

China told the United States that it would buy whatever the United States wanted to sell in order to reduce the trade deficit, and is ready to work with Washington on improving intellectual property protection, but the American challenge to China’s economic model is a deal-breaker.

By backing off from the 2025 target, Chinese officials believe, Beijing can placate the US Administration, and give President Trump a coup in public relations while keeping its own industrial program intact. The government is exploring a number of ways to present such a deal.

Why Israel? Because Iran Shoshana Bryen

American Ambassador David Friedman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their wives were hosted by Commander David Coles, and the speeches emphasized the close relations between the United States and Israel — specifically, between the two navies.

Amid the comradery, however, it was noted that the ceremony was the first U.S. port visit to Ashdod in twenty years.

The naval base at Haifa has seen more action. Most recently, in June, the guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook visited, following March visits by the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima and the Blue Ridge-class command and control ship USS Mount Whitney.

In that context, however, when the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush docked in Haifa in July 2017, it was the first carrier visit to an Israeli port since the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in April 2000.

The 1980s and 1990s were the heyday of the Sixth Fleet in Haifa. American ships did repairs at Israel Shipyards and brought the first Marines for training in Israel. The American government paid to refurbish the shipyards to enable them to handle the fleet’s larger ships. A well-used USO facility opened in Haifa in 1984 and the sailors contributed about $1 million a day to the Israeli tourist economy.

In 2000, however, after the bombing of the USS Cole near Yemen, liberty for American sailors in the Middle East was largely curtailed — in Israel as well as in countries that posed an overt threat to American interests.

The Passing of a WWII Hero: Joachim Ronneberg, 1919-2018 By Bruce Bawer

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-passing-of-a-wwii-hero-joachim-ronneberg-1919-2018/

The worst thing about living in Norway for the past nineteen years (twenty next April) has been contemplating the dire future that lies in wait for the Norwegian children of today, whose feckless leaders are surrendering their beautiful country to a totalitarian religion. One of the best things about living here has been learning about Norway’s history. What is especially stirring to me is the story of the Norwegian resistance — which is a story almost entirely about a group of very young men who, faced with the occupation of their kingdom by a totalitarian foe, chose not to knuckle under and lie low but to risk their lives in an effort to (at the very least) cramp the enemy’s style. It has been moving just to be alive at the same time as some of these men.

Among them was Max Manus, who was 25 years old at the time of the Nazi invasion. A fearless saboteur, he was captured by the Gestapo only to escape, flee to Sweden, make his way to the Soviet Union and to travel, from there, mostly by ship, to the U.S., then Canada, and finally Britain, undergoing training in all three of the last-named countries for undercover work. He died in 1996 and was memorialized in a terrific movie, Max Manus (2008).

Then there’s Gunnar Sonsteby, who was a 22-year-old accountant in Oslo when the Nazis invaded. Joining the Resistance, he was soon head of the Oslo Gang, described by one historian as “the best groups of saboteurs in Europe.” A master of disguise and a gifted forger, Sonsteby, after the war, became Norway’s most decorated citizen. When he died six years ago, his state funeral was broadcast live on national TV.

Now a third Norwegian hero has joined them. On Sunday evening came news that Joachim Ronneberg, one of the nation’s last remaining World War II heroes, had died at age 99. Only twenty when the Germans invaded, Ronneberg was the youngest member — but also the leader — of the team that carried out the famous 1943 raid on the heavy-water plant in Vemork that has been dramatized on film in the 1948 Norwegian-French co-production Kampen om tungtvannet (currently available on YouTube with English subtitles), the historically unreliable Kirk Douglas vehicle Heroes of Telemark (1965), and, most recently, the excellent six-part Netflix miniseries The Heavy Water War (2015). CONTINUE AT SITE

Swedish Hypocrisy on Human Rights Turning a blind eye to the Mullahs’ persecution of Kurds. Joseph Puder

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom has been quick to blame the U.S. and Israel for alleged misdeeds toward the Palestinians. The Turkish-based Anadolu Agency reported on May 16, 2018 that Wallstrom blamed the U.S. for encouraging the Palestinian riots in Gaza. She is quoted as telling Swedish TT News Agency that: “The U.S. has a big responsibility in the incidents where at least 50-60 Palestinians were killed and many others injured.” This was said in the context of the Hamas organized provocation to march thousands of Gazan across the Israeli border. It also happened to occur during the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, which followed the Trump administration recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Wallstrom did not condemn Hamas’ effort to attack Israel and Jewish civilians.

The same Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom (pictured above), eager to condemn the U.S. and Israel, has been silent about the execution of Kurdish political prisoners by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Sweden has turned a blind eye on Iran’s gross violations of human rights, and its cruel executions of women and teenagers. The Iranian regime has executed Kurdish dissidents with impunity. Sweden was silent about it, as were other leaders of the EU. They were too busy appeasing the Ayatollahs in an effort to preserve the unreliable Iran nuclear deal or JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), and winning business contracts.

A New Low in the Persecution of Tommy Robinson “Fake news” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271698/new-low-persecution-tommy-robinson-bruce-bawer

On Friday, the British judiciary lifted reporting restrictions on the three trials of a total of twenty “Asian” men at Leeds County Court, allowing the media to inform the public that the men were sentenced to a total of 221 years in prison for the rapes of fifteen young girls in the West Yorkshire town of Huddersfield. It was the second of these trials that Tommy Robinson was reporting about online on May 25 when he was arrested outside the Leeds courthouse, rushed through a brief trial conducted by Judge Geoffrey Marson, sentenced to thirteen months behind bars, and immediately confined in Hull Prison.

On June 13, he was transferred to Onley Prison, which has a higher Muslim population than the institution in Leeds and was thus more dangerous; exactly who ordered this transfer, which seems utterly unjustified except as a malicious attempt to expose Robinson to harm, remains unknown. Through the summer, Tommy’s supporters held rallies around Britain, accusing their nation’s establishment of having illegitimately imprisoned Tommy in order to shut down a major critic of the official appeasement of Islam; meanwhile, the mainstream media and political and cultural elite insisted in unison that Tommy’s trial had been completely on the up-and-up and that he’d gotten precisely what he deserved.

That line of argument, however, was completely discredited on August 1, when Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, and two other judges issued a ruling that could scarcely have been more severe in its knockdown of Marson’s treatment of Tommy. Writing that the whole thing had been a “muddle,” from the nature of the charges to the justification for the verdict, the judges reversed Tommy’s conviction, freed him on bail, and ordered a new hearing. That hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, October 23.

Did Lord Burnett’s decision chasten Tommy’s critics? Not a chance. On Friday, once the reporting restrictions were lifted on those grooming trials, the major media in Britain dutifully provided accounts of the verdicts. There was certainly a lot to report: three trials, several months, fifteen victims, twenty defendants, a mountain of stomach-turning testimony. But the focus of the British media wasn’t on any of this – it was on Tommy. Since he’d played a leading role in drawing attention to the existence of Muslim rape gangs in Britain – a fact that local governments, police departments, social-services agencies, and the mainstream media had kept shamefully, pusillanimously silent about for decades – they might have taken the occasion to apologize for having hounded

North Korea’s Toxic Space Program by Debalina Ghoshal

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13157/north-korea-space-program

“Even though the US and its allies try to block our space development, our aerospace scientists will conquer space.” — Hyon Kwang-il, director of the scientific research department of North Korea’s National Aerospace Development Administration.

Such statements made all the more chilling North Korea’s 2016 launch of the Unha-3 rocket, with the capability of carrying satellites into space, its July 4 and July 28, 2017 test-launches of the Hwasong-14 ICBM and its November 28, 2017 test-launch of the Hwasong-15 ICBM, which reportedly has a maximum range that would allow it to hit anywhere in the United States.

If North Korea were able to develop the capability to damage or destroy US satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), it would be a major achievement for the country and pose a debilitating threat to space security.

Although North Korea, like other countries, claims that its space program is for civilian, rather than military, purposes, there is good reason to suspect that this is not quite what is going on, and that its government will simply use these capabilities to continue developing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of carrying nuclear warheads, to continue threatening global security. North Korea, like other countries, is probably planning to use its space program to militarize and weaponize the realm of space itself.

It is in this context that North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-5 satellite, whose imminent launch was first reported in December 2017, needs to be viewed. The report did not come as a surprise, particularly as two months earlier, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Kim In-Ryong, told the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space about his country’s five-year plan, from 2016 through 2020, to develop “practical satellites that can contribute to the economic development and improvement of the people’s living.” As Fox News reported, however, “…many U.N. members, including the U.S., fear that North Korea’s space program is actually a cover for its weapons program.”

Britain’s Grooming Gangs: Part 2 by Denis MacEoin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13161/grooming-gangs-britain

Although Muslim men are no different from the rest of us, nevertheless, all the rules governing sexuality may be easily found in Shari’a law and enshrined in the judicial systems of more than one Islamic country in the present day. The result is the perpetuation of attitudes towards women that often appear to debase them and allow men to treat them with contempt.

As often cruelty to women happens not only behind closed doors, but in the public square, we can only guess how this display affects both women and men. Sons see how their mothers are treated; this too doubtless informs their behaviour.

It is important not to assume that the members of British grooming gangs consider themselves jihadis entitled to capture non-Muslim girls. They do not even appear at all pious. But knowledge of such practices is likely to have some impact on Muslims coming from countries where some form of slavery or indentured servitude still exists.

Sadly, in the case of Britain’s grooming gangs, religious ideology does not play a role in forbidding child sexual grooming. It is important to examine just how crucial a factor this seems to have been in community silence about them.

Men, after a certain age — as nature seems to have intended to preserve the human race — are often sexually attracted to women. Women, similarly, are often sexually attracted to men, even if many cultures try to keep that proclivity a closely-guarded secret.

Different cultures handle human sexuality in different ways, presumably to avoid the potential social disruption it could create. This control has traditionally been affected by religious doctrines, laws, and patriarchal priests, ministers, rabbis, muftis and other clergy. In the West, women’s dress, behaviour, and rights to autonomy have been freed from religious control only in the 20th and 21st centuries, with the rise of the suffragettes, feminism and the availability of safe contraception.