RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272097/un-israel-bashing-day-joseph-klein

Beginning in 1977, the United Nations has observed the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” every year on November 29th. This is the date in 1947 when the UN General Assembly approved its partition resolution envisaging the establishment of two states – an independent state of Palestine and an independent Jewish state of Israel. The Palestinians and their surrounding Arab neighbors rejected the original two-state solution with their usual response – violence. The creators of the Jewish state, on the other hand, were willing to accept the partition compromise. Israel subsequently offered the Palestinians a succession of opportunities for their own state, which the Palestinian leadership has repeatedly rejected. Nevertheless, the Palestinians, with a lot of help from their friends, have managed to turn the United Nations into their propaganda arm. The highlight every year is the UN’s treatment of the November 29th anniversary of its own original two-state General Assembly partition resolution as, to quote former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, a “day of mourning and a day of grief.” To assuage its grief, the UN General Assembly passes annually a series of blatantly one-sided anti-Israel resolutions, which have deliberately overlooked decades of Palestinian terrorism aimed at killing civilians.

Fiery anti-Israel speeches precede the votes. The UN-sponsored pro-Palestinian forum known as the UN Committee for the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People gets things started at least a day in advance. This year, not content with leaving it to the Palestinians’ friends among the member states to make their case, the committee invited Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN commentator, to the anti-Israel hatefest. CNN called Marc Lamont Hill “one of the leading intellectual voices in the country.” This “intellectual” advocated the use of violence if necessary as a legitimate form of “resistance.” He supported the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel and the so-called “right of return.” He voiced the words that Palestinians have regularly used to call for the end of the Jewish state: “a free Palestine from the river to the sea.” When criticized afterwards for using dog-whistle language appealing to the anti-Semitic destroy Israel crowd, Hill did not apologize. He argued that the “river to sea” expression is “a phrase used by many factions, ideologies, movements, and politicians. My reference to ‘river to the sea’ was not a call to destroy anything or anyone. It was a call for justice, both in Israel and in the West Bank/Gaza.” CNN was not buying Hill’s lame explanation, nor should anyone else who knows anything about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most likely responding to public backlash than acting on principle, CNN announced that “Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN.”

The good news this year is that for the first time the UN member states will not just be asked to vote on the usual anti-Israel resolutions to mark the anniversary of the General Assembly partition resolution. As a result of an initiative promoted by the Trump administration, they will also have to decide whether to approve a separate draft resolution condemning Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets into Israel and for inciting violence that put “civilians at risk.” The draft resolution also demands that “Hamas cease all provocative actions and violent activity.” The administration, led by U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, has reportedly been negotiating the final text of the resolution with other member states, which may require some tinkering while leaving the core condemnation of Hamas intact. There is a particular focus on obtaining European Union support. Hamas is on the 28-member EU bloc’s terrorism blacklist, which the European Court of Justice has upheld.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272062/have-very-intolerant-day-daniel-greenfield

November 16 is National Button Day, National Fast Food Day and International Tolerance Day: if you’ve never heard of International Tolerance Day, that just shows how intolerant you are.

International Tolerance Day was celebrated at the World Tolerance Summit at the Armani Hotel in Dubai. A photo of the event shows three Arab Muslim men in burnooses sitting under the Summit’s subtitle, “Prospering from Pluralism: Embracing Diversity through Innovation and Collaboration.”

The UAE is an Arab Muslim entity. Good luck obtaining citizenship if you aren’t an Arab Muslim. Leaving Islam is forbidden, but the government has a special site encouraging infidels to convert to Islam.

Diversity is great. As long as it’s limited to Muslim men. Pluralism is fantastic. But you’re not allowed to leave Islam. And tolerance is applied equally to Muslim men and other Muslim men on Tolerance Day.

Like most terrible global ideas, International Tolerance Day was invented by the UN. Or specifically by UNESCO around the time that Bosnia and Herzegovina joined up before becoming enmeshed in a genocidal war. Because nothing says tolerance like genocidal ethnic conflicts at the United Nations.

Key conferences were held in Russia, Korea and Turkey: three countries in a permanent state of war.

The Turkey tolerance conference featured a renewal of Turkey’s emergency law after over 10,000 Kurds were killed by Turkish authorities. After the Korean tolerance conference, North Korea sent armed infiltrators across the border. And during the Moscow tolerance conference, Chechen Islamic terrorists attacked a hospital and took thousands of hostages. The 1995 score read: Intolerance 3, Tolerance 0.

But that’s always the way it is at the UN where tolerance is on the menu, but never on the plate.

International Tolerance Day led to the Year of Tolerance in 1995. It wasn’t very successful as the Bosnian War was still going on, the First Chechen War was underway, and the Taliban were wrapping up their takeover of Afghanistan. The Turks were tolerantly killing the Kurds, the Kurds in Iraq were killing each other, Bill Clinton decided to bomb the Serbs, and the United Nations retreated from Somalia.

And that was the last Year of Tolerance.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/29/west-shouldnt-support-nigerian-government-enables-islamic-terrorism-christians/
Few Americans are aware of how Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, enables the mass ethnic cleansing of persecuted Christians.

Although it has occasionally made headlines due to the rise of the violent Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram in its northern hinterland, Nigeria is still largely misunderstood and major events in the country remain under-reported in the American media. There are significant U.S. values and strategic interests at stake in Nigeria’s forthcoming election, including questions about the persecution of Christians, the future of U.S. military cooperation in Nigeria, and the spread of Islamist terrorism.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest democracy, with approximately 200 million people and expected to grow to more than 300 million by 2050. The country has long had a history of religious tension and conflict between the mostly Muslim north and predominately Christian south.

This conflict has intensified over the past several decades, engendered by the rise of a new radical Islamism, which has preached a brutal campaign of international holy war against unbelievers. In recent months, Nigeria has witnessed shocking anti-Christian violence, resulting in thousands of deaths and maimings.
Americans Largely Ignorant About What’s Happening

Few Americans are aware that the United States is in the process of selling a dozen light attack aircraft to the government of current President Muhammadu Buhari––a government that has continually soft-peddled and enabled a campaign of violence and ethnic cleansing carried out by Islamic militants against Nigeria’s Christian population.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-meeting-cancelled-abruptly/

The Kremlin was caught off guard by President Trump’s sudden cancellation of a planned meeting between with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Russian state news agencies said Thursday.

Trump had planned to sit down with Putin at the G-20 summit in Argentina, but canceled the meeting in a tweet Thursday, citing Russia’s Sunday capture of three Ukrainian ships and 24 sailors.

“Based on the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to Ukraine from Russia, I have decided it would be best for all parties concerned to cancel my previously scheduled meeting in Argentina with President Vladimir Putin,” Trump wrote.

On Sunday, Russian and Ukrainian forces clashed off the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Russian border guards opened fire on three Ukrainian ships and captured their crews as they sailed in the Sea of Azov, which is shared by the two nations. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has asked for NATO ships to be sent to the region to “provide security.”

“Foreign military ships entered Russia’s territorial waters without responding to any requests made by our border guards. Therefore, all actions were taken in strict compliance with the law,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the incident.

The cancellation means the Russian president will have “a couple of more hours” for “useful meetings” with other leaders, Peskov was quoted as saying Thursday.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272088/where-can-asia-bibi-go-hugh-fitzgerald

Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman who spent eight years on death row in a Pakistani jail, having been convicted of “blasphemy” on the testimony of Muslims, has at last been freed by a decision of the Pakistani Supreme Court. But her latest ordeal has only just begun, for she cannot possibly live safely in Pakistan, where massive crowds have been calling for her to be executed and where, during this past year, two high officials of the government who had criticized her prosecution were, as a consequence, murdered by Muslim fanatics.

The United Kingdom has refused to offer Bibi asylum, prompted by fears of violence by Muslims. The UK high commissioner in Islamabad is reported to have warned he could not protect his staff if asylum were granted by the UK. This led the Foreign Office, in turn, to ask the Home Office not to grant Asia Bibi’s request. And there was another fear as well. That was the concern that if Bibi were granted asylum by Her Majesty’s Government, Muslims could well riot in the U.K. itself.

In a demonstration of widespread pusillanimity, no country has yet stepped forward to offer this woman asylum.

So where can Asia Bibi go? There are two places where she just might be safe.

The first is the United States, where she could be offered not just asylum, but a place in the Witness Protection Program. Between 1971 and 2013 (the latest year for which figures are available), that Program has successfully protected 8,500 people (“witnesses”), along with 9,900 family members. The American government is unlikely to be worried about possible Muslim unrest should Asia Bibi be given asylum. While Muslims in the UK make up 5% of the population, in the US they make up only 1%, where, likely as a consequence, they are better behaved. The U.S is also 40 times bigger than the U.K. Should Asia Bibi come here, there’s more room to disappear in, with a government that has a ready network of safe houses, new identities, and, if need be, plastic surgery.

The second place where Asia Bibi should consider requesting asylum is the Vatican. By doing so, Asia Bibi would be putting the islamophilic Pope Francis on the spot. He who has been insisting that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” would be confronted with the reality of a Christian woman who, living in a Muslim land, falsely accused by Muslim coworkers of blasphemy against Muhammad, was sentenced to death. After spending eight years of her life in prison waiting for that sentence to be carried out, she was finally acquitted by the Pakistani Supreme Court. Two high-ranking Pakistani officials who had criticized the prosecution of Asia Bibi, the Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer, and the Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, were both assassinated as a result.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13359/switzerland-eu-accession

The EU has now increased the pressure by resorting to blackmail: Brussels is making its recognition of Switzerland’s SIX Swiss Exchange, the fourth-largest stock market in Europe, contingent on Swiss acceptance of the framework agreement.

The measure was opposed by a coalition of Swiss business groups, which convincingly argued that it was a question of economics and access to international markets for the export-dependent country. “Ultimately, it is about maintaining prosperity in Switzerland and keeping the companies and jobs here,” said Monika Rühl, director of the business group Economiesuisse.

“The SVP rejects a one-sided submission to EU institutions, aimed at establishing an institutional connection of Switzerland to the EU apparatus, with a dynamic EU legal takeover and, ultimately, the subordination of Switzerland to the EU Court of Justice. A dynamic adoption of EU law would be another massive erosion of our direct democracy.” — Swiss People’s Party.

Swiss voters have resoundingly rejected a referendum calling for the Swiss Constitution to take precedence over international treaties and law.

Two-thirds (66.2%) of voters in the November 25 referendum opposed the “self-determination” initiative, put forward by the eurosceptic Swiss People’s Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei, SVP), the largest party in the Swiss parliament.

SVP leaders had argued that the new law was necessary to safeguard national sovereignty from further encroachment by supranational organizations such as the European Union and the United Nations.

The Swiss government countered that the proposal would undermine Switzerland’s economic stability as it would require Bern to amend existing bilateral agreements with the EU, the country’s largest trade partner, to bring them into compliance with the Swiss Constitution.

The proposal’s defeat comes ahead of pending decisions by the Swiss government over whether to sign a wide-ranging EU “framework agreement,” and a controversial UN “migration pact.”

https://digitaledition.telegraph.co.uk/editions/edition_YJ2uq_2018-11-28/data/580436/index.html?share=1&
Thanks to e-pal Fred M……An obituary of a Great Dame of the British realm…..rsk

BARONESS TRUMPINGTON, who has died aged 96, was a former mayor of Cambridge and became the oldest and second longest-serving member of John Major’s administration; she was also by far the most popular.

Built to last, forthright and formidable, Jean Trumpington made up for any lack of intellectual brilliance with a capacity for hard work combined with down-to-earth common sense and an engaging habit of telling jokes against herself.

First recruited into Government ranks in 1983 as a Lords whip, her first job was to act as “keeper of the gate” by placing her imposing form next to the most popular exit to persuade errant Conservative peers to vote. But in fact she became far more effective in this role as a government minister; the prospect of a vintage performance by Jean Trumpington was usually enough to pack the chamber.

In 1987, as a minister at the Department of Health and Social Security, in answer to a question about whether Aids could be transmitted by insects, she replied: “I have replies to questions on bed bugs and monkeys, but I regret that I do not have fleas.”

In 1992, as an agriculture minister, she gave an answer to a question in which she referred to “the Commission’s proposals for reforming the CAP would replace existing support arrangements by a system of compensatory aid, linked directly or indirectly to the cultivated area or the number of animals kept by each farmer,” ending with: “And if you understand that, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.”

In October 1993, shortly after her appointment as a spokesman at the Department of National Heritage, she confessed to finding it difficult to master her brief and during one flustering question session she admitted: “I had been worried I might get my knickers in a twist,” she admitted.

The following year, wearing a stout woollen suit that evoked her career in naval intelligence, she struck an incongruous figure as the department’s representative at rock music awards: “I am here to collect autographs for my secretary,” she announced. “Is Elton John here?”

“I seem fated,” she protested unconvincingly. “When I’m trying very hard to be dignified, something always goes hideously wrong.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/28/pretender-pulls-ahead-crucial-hustings-decide-angela-merkels/

The pretender came out fighting on Wednesday night at the most important hustings in the race to succeed Angela Merkel. Friedrich Merz, an old rival of the German chancellor, is vying to make a remarkable comeback by replacing her as leader of her Christian Democrat party (CDU).

And he didn’t hesitate to attack her record as leader, claiming she has abandoned the party’s conservative profile.

“You don’t need to copy every single Social Democrat policy, that just doesn’t have to happen,” he said, referring to the Germany’s main centre-Left party.

By the time Mr Merz had finished a speech in which he appealed for more funding for the Germany military, several audience members leapt up in a standing ovation.

Wednesday’s hustings in Düsseldorf was make-or-break for Mr Merz, who retired from politics in 2009 after losing to Mrs Merkel in a battle for control of the party.

He is locked in a three-way race to take over as CDU leader when Mrs Merkel stands down next month and, if polling is to be believed, he is neck-and-neck with Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the current party chairman and a Merkel loyalist.

The third candidate, Jens Spahn, is lagging far behind.