RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-and-the-saudis-1540159637

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has hurt itself badly with the killing of journalist Jamal Khoshoggi, and its serial explanations are compounding the damage. President Trump will lose control of the Saudi-U.S. relationship if he doesn’t speak truth to these Saudi abuses and to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old power in front of the throne.

The most complete Saudi statement, issued late Friday night, at least admits that Khoshoggi was killed in its Istanbul consulate at the hands of Saudi agents. But the story that Khoshoggi was killed in a “fight and a quarrel” isn’t credible on its face. “The brawl aggravated to lead to his death and their attempt to conceal and cover what happened,” said the Saudi statement. That must have been some lopsided “brawl” with a 59-year-old journalist confronting multiple security agents, as if he were Liam Neeson in “Taken.”

The story is contradicted by information leaked by Turkish officials who say Khoshoggi was killed quickly and dismembered on the scene. The Saudis still haven’t produced Khoshoggi’s body, or provided more details of precisely how or when he died.

The “fight” story also conveniently lays blame on lower-ranking officials while effectively absolving members of the royal family, especially the Crown Prince known as MBS. The Saudis say they’ve arrested 18 officials and sacked five others. Several are part of MBS’s inner circle, and it’s unlikely they would have acted without at least the tacit assent of the Crown Prince. Khoshoggi, who had a wide following in the Middle East, had criticized the Crown Prince for his authoritarian tactics in trying to reform the Kingdom.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi-killing-saudi-arabia-lies/

Nineteen days after Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, the Saudi regime has at last acknowledged the obvious, that Khashoggi is dead. After first insisting that he had left the consulate of his own accord despite video evidence to the contrary, and then slamming the allegations of his murder as “baseless” and threatening oil sanctions against those claiming otherwise, the kingdom has finally settled on its official story: Khashoggi was inadvertently killed inside the consulate during a fistfight that just happened to break out in the midst of an otherwise standard meeting with Saudi intelligence officials. The regime has made a show of dismissing and arresting several officials it says were rogues, and attributes responsibility for the killing to them only.

As alibis go, this barely qualifies. It is a wildly implausible story clearly designed to absolve Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of responsibility of the murder and therefore leave open the way for continued close relations with the United States. President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo seem inclined to suspend disbelief, which would be a serious mistake. The situation demands a tougher, less credulous approach.

The Saudi explanation has changed enough times to give the impression that the kingdom was trying on different hats to see which might fit. There is convincing evidence that Khashoggi’s killing was the result of a premeditated operation carried out with bin Salman’s support. Turkish intelligence has alluded to a recording of the killing not released to the public, but thanks to video surveillance, the world knows for certain that a group of Saudi musclemen flew into Istanbul and entered the consulate hours before Khashoggi arrived. Several of these men are members of bin Salman’s inner circle; one, since dismissed from his post, is among the crown prince’s closest advisers. Very little happens in Saudi Arabia without bin Salman’s foreknowledge and approval, so the notion that he would be so unaware of his inner circle’s activities regarding one of the regime’s highest-profile international critics is laughable.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13156/extremist-persecution-christians-may

“Churches and individual Christians have faced increased restrictions in recent months, raising concerns that these pressures signal a coordinated campaign of intensified action against churches by the governing authorities.” — Middle East Concern, Algeria.

A Muslim man walked into a cathedral and threatened to blow it up for preaching the Gospel and not the Koran. — France.

“The Indonesian government should revisit the country’s blasphemy law…. To honor religious freedom as enshrined in Indonesia’s constitution, the government must respect all religions and stop criminalizing Christians when they are merely exercising their right to free speech.” — International Christian Concern, Indonesia.

The Extremists’ Slaughter of Christians Inside Churches

Indonesia: Six suicide bombers from one Muslim family attacked three churches on May 13, during Sunday Mass services; at least 11 worshippers were killed. The suicide bombers consisted of a father, mother, and four children, two boys and two girls, aged 9,12, 16, and 18. According to the report:

“More than 40 people were injured in the blasts. The first attack that killed four people, including one or more bombers, occurred at the Santa Maria Roman Catholic Church… The father of the family accused of carrying out the suicide bombing had detonated a car bomb during his attack. The incident was followed by a second explosion at the Christian Church of Diponegoro that killed two people. In a third attack, at Pantekosta Church, two more died, police said.”

A witness described one of the attacks, where the mother and the two youngest jihadis detonated themselves. Because she was carrying two suspicious bags (apparently of explosives), “officers blocked them in front of the churchyard, but the woman ignored them and forced her way inside. Suddenly (the bomb) exploded.” The father “was very active in the mosque,” said an acquaintance; “he never missed any of the five daily prayers, but he avoided discussing religion.” “The four children were studying in schools run by the Muhammadiyah,” long thought the most moderate Islamic school in Indonesia, said a family neighbor. “To me they were normal people,” he added.

Russia: Four gunmen stormed a church in Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Muslim-majority Republic of Chechnya, and killed three people, a churchgoer and two police officers, on May 19. The attackers — who were also armed with knives, hatchets and homemade explosives — were also killed in the gunfire exchange with security forces at the Church of Michael the Archangel. According to the report:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13145/uk-anjem-choudary-released-from-prison

“I believe we are underestimating the potency and danger of the radicalizers who don’t carry knives, guns and overtly plot terrorist attacks but who pollute the minds of young Muslim men.” — Richard Walton, former head of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command

“I asked the guy who spoke to him if the de-radicalization program had worked and he said, ‘No, he’s got worse. He’s hardened. He speaks in the mind-set of the victim. He sees himself as a martyr the state tried to silence.'” — Fiyaz Mughal, head of the anti-extremist group Faith Matters

Choudary is now considering mounting a legal challenge to the strict conditions of his release, according to the Telegraph. It reported that he has applied for legal aid funding, at taxpayer expense, to bring his action against government ministers, and arguing the parole conditions breach his human rights.

The Islamist firebrand preacher Anjem Choudary, described as Britain’s “most dangerous extremist,” has been released from prison after serving only half of the five-and-a-half-year sentence he received in 2016 for pledging allegiance to the Islamic State.

Prison authorities could not prevent his release: under British sentencing guidelines, prisoners — even those who are still a risk to the public — automatically become eligible for release under license (parole) after serving half their terms.

Prime Minister Theresa May has downplayed concerns over Choudary’s release; British counter-terrorism authorities, however, say they are worried that he will re-exert influence on hundreds of followers upon his release. The cost to British taxpayers of keeping Choudary under surveillance is expected to exceed £2 million (€2.25 million; $2.6 million) a year, compared to the £50,000 (€57,000; $65,000) to keep him in prison.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13075/britain-grooming-gangs

As far back as 2013, Britain’s Attorney General stated in the House of Lords that 27 police forces were then investigating no fewer than 54 alleged gangs involved in child sexual grooming.

Last year, Shahid Javed Burki, a former Pakistani finance minister and vice-president of the World Bank, spoke out about the treatment of women in his country, arguing that the low status given to women has had serious social, demographic, educational, and financial effects.

This problem is, in some measure, reflected in the UK, where Muslim women (mainly of Pakistani origin) face limitations on their participation in the workplace, in higher education, and even knowledge of the English language — matters examined by Dame Louise Casey in her 2016 government review into opportunity and integration.

Bringing Pakistani attitudes into the UK, often within segregated communities, only serves to perpetuate the belief that women are intrinsically the inferiors of men in all respects.

On July 24, 2018, Britain’s Home Secretary, conservative MP Sajid Javid, issued orders for research into the ethnic origins of the country’s many sexual grooming gangs that had involved large numbers of loosely-termed “Asian men”, who, over many years, had taken vulnerable young white British girls to use or pass on for sexual purposes. Most of the men have, Javid has stated been of Pakistani extraction, which makes the Home Secretary’s intervention significant. Javid’s father came, as did many other Pakistani immigrants, from Punjab, and with only £1 to his name. He became a bus driver, then a clothing store owner. Yet his five sons have all become fully integrated Britons, with successful careers in business, politics and the public sector. They are all models of second-generation immigrant achievement, miles away from the men in the gangs. Reporting on the Javid family, The Times wrote:

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/trump-vs-the-eu-again
In his latest interview with Radio Sputnik International, Srdja Trifkovic discusses President Donald Trump’s recent statement on CBS that the EU was formed to take advantage of the United States and that’s what it has been doing to this day. The first question was whether Trump’s assertion about the EU’s early days was accurate. [Audio]

ST: If you’re looking at the early days, [the European Union] started as the European Coal and Steel Community. Its primary purpose was to facilitate the movement of goods and services within the core of six original countries. This was done with the explicit blessing of the United States, of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, back in the early 1950’s.

If we’re looking at the establishment of the European Union as it exists in its present form, specifically since the Lisbon Treaty was signed and when the current EU institutional framework was created, then there may be some truth to [President Trump’s statement]. In reality the EU has behaved over the past two decades like a trading block ready and willing to take advantage of the very open U.S. market, while inserting all sorts of subtle—or not so subtle—protectionist clauses into its own trading practices.

We need to bear in mind that very often European products have an in-built subsidy which is not directly visible. It is not like a subsidy that goes straight to the manufacturer or to the farmer! It goes via circuitous routes. Very often it’s hard to tell the percentage of built-in subsidies from Brussels which have found a way—for instance, through the French Ministry of Agriculture—but coming from European funds, and making French cheese more competitive than it otherwise would have been.

Q: In the summer the United States and the EU agreed to tone down the trade dispute, after a meeting in the White House between Jean-Claude Juncker and President Donald Trump; but what do you make of Trump’s latest comments about the EU hostility towards the U.S. and what message does this send out?

ST: First of all . . . when it comes to Jean-Claude Juncker, the question is whether he has had his morning libation before the meeting. Personal chemistry works better depending on M. Juncker’s level of inebriation. But seriously speaking . . . Trump has always had a certain Eurosceptic view well in line with his sovereignist principles. During the election campaign, he did make skeptical statements and he even received Nigel Farage of UKIP in Washington . . .

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/10/18/theresa-may-isolated-party-turns-chaotic-brexit-plan-eu-leaders/

Theresa May was on Thursday evening increasingly isolated over her plan to keep Britain tied to the EU for longer as she was savaged by both wings of her party and left in the cold by EU leaders.

Mrs May confirmed on Thursday that she was prepared to consider extending the transition period – currently due to end in December 2020 – by “a matter of months” in an attempt to break the deadlock over the Northern Ireland border issue.

The move enraged Brexiteers who said it would cost billions, and angered members of the Cabinet who said they had not formally agreed the plan before she offered it up as a bargaining chip.

Mrs May also faced a potential mutiny from Tory MPs north of the border, including David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, who said the proposal was “unacceptable” because it would delay the UK’s exit from the hated Common Fisheries Policy.

The Prime Minister was accused by one of her own ministers of presiding over “total chaos” while her DUP allies said she was in a “mad panic”.

Having started the Brussels summit with a call for “trust” from her fellow leaders, she appeared to have lost the support of her own MPs, with one May loyalist admitting she was “losing the confidence” of her party.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/19/anjem-choudary-pictured-free-man-released-prison/

Anjem Choudary – described as one of the most dangerous Islamist preachers in Britain – has been released from prison to start his life as a free man.

The notorious hate preacher had been serving a five-year sentence at Frankland high security prison, Durham, before being transferred to Belmarsh Prison in south-east London.

From there, he was driven at high speed in a convoy of unmarked police vehicles before dawn to a bail hostel in north London, arriving at 6.29am on Friday.

Choudary, 51, was convicted in 2016 after being caught swearing an oath of allegiance to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and served just half of his sentence. Ministers have admitted he remains “genuinely dangerous”.

Escorted by three police officers, Choudary was walked up the front steps to the six-storey bail hostel – which is close to shops and schools – wearing blue Adidas trainers, a grey cardigan over a long white robe and sporting his recognisable long grey beard. Five other unmarked police cars were parked in the surrounding area.

Half-an-hour after he entered the bail hostel, a plain-clothed police officer removed three black bags containing Choudary’s belongings from the boot of an unmarked car.

He now faces 25 strict bail conditions including a ban on talking to children and using the internet.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13094/turkey-spies-mosques

According to Turkish media reports, the Turkish government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) gathered intelligence via its imams and other employees in 38 countries on the activities of Turks suspected of supporting the US-based Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen.

Peter Pilz, then an Austrian member of parliament, last year revealed that he had received documents from a Turkish source indicating the existence of “a global network of informants” — spanning four continents — reporting to Turkey’s Diyanet on alleged Gülenists. In most cases, these informants were religion attachés at embassies and consulates.

In 2016, the Diyanet Center of America (DCA) completed the construction of a $110 million mosque complex in Maryland, the United States. According to the DCA website, “The result is a small village that will be an important cultural hub for all visitors and residents of Washington DC area.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated the complex, one of many Diyanet-affiliated mosques in North America.

The Trump administration should be on guard. If Erdogan’s mosques in Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia are being used as a conduit to spy on Turkish nationals who possibly oppose his rule, is it not safe to assume that similar activity has been going on in the United States?

According to Turkish media reports, the Turkish government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) gathered intelligence via its imams and other employees in 38 countries on the activities of Turks suspected of supporting the US-based Turkish Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom Turkey’s government accuses of organizing a failed coup attempt in July 2016. Diyanet reportedly requested from its branches abroad to submit their findings in time for the 9th Eurasia Islamic Council, which took place in October 2016. These findings were then reportedly submitted to the “Coup Commission” of the Turkish parliament (TBMM).

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/the-saudi-connection-enough-already
In the aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the question has been raised whether the U.S.-Saudi alliance can or should be saved. It is based on false premises: there is no such alliance. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is neither a friend nor an ally of America. It is an enemy of civilization, a malevolent aberration. A Saudi-free world would be a better, safer world.

Contrary voices, some of them probably encouraged by Saudi largesse, are swiftly merging into a chorus of “reason” and “pragmatism.” “The U.S. and its allies cannot simply disengage,” writes The Hill. “Like it or not, Saudi Arabia and its partners need one another.” “Saudi Arabia is simply too crusial to U.S. interests to allow the death of one man to affect the relationship,” according to MarketWatch.com. Significantly, it points out that “the Saudis’ new best friend” may throw them a lifeline: “As Iran has become the biggest threat to Israel, the Jewish state has made common cause with the Saudis. Former Saudi bashers such as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s confidant Dore Gold now meet with the kingdom’s officials.”

Indeed, the Saudi cause has been embraced with gusto by assorted neoconservative pundits who see the emerging Jerusalem-Riyadh axis as the permanent foundation of our policy in the Middle East. In Israel itself, the affair has caused alarm. “The Khashoggi Murder is a Disaster for Israel,” Daniel B. Shapiro warned in the Haaretz on October 17: “In Jerusalem and D.C., they’re mourning their whole strategic concept for the Mideast—not least, for countering Iran.” Diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon argued in The Jerusalem Post that Saudi leaders were of pivotal importance in pushing the Trump administration to make its policy on Iran amenable to Israel’s interests: “Netanyahu led the rhetorical charge in Washington to get Trump to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal earlier this year, but the Saudis—and other Persian Gulf states—were equally involved behind closed doors lobbying heavily against it,” he wrote. If Saudi Arabia finds that its political capital is dwindling, Israel’s proxy lobby groups in Washington “may actually go to Capitol Hill, as they have done in the past, and discreetly lobby for the Saudis, something that could paradoxically bring the two countries even closer together,” Keinon concluded.