RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-charges-two-russians-with-attempted-murder-of-spy-daughter-1536143138?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=3&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

LONDON—British authorities charged two men that they believe are Russian military intelligence officers with the attempted murder of a former spy and his daughter in March, an incident that prompted the largest-ever collective expulsion of Russian diplomats from the West.

Prosecutors charged the men—named as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov but those names are believed to be aliases—with four offenses related to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, who has lived in Britain since a 2010 spy exchange with Moscow. The charges also included conspiracy to murder and the use and possession of nerve agent Novichok.

“This was not a rogue operation,” she said. “It was almost certainly also approved outside the GRU at a senior level of the Russian state.”

The charges reinforce how the attack—which Moscow denies—continues to provoke profound tensions between Russia and the U.K. and its allies. The U.K. said it wouldn’t seek extradition of the two men, since the Russian constitution forbids it, but that a European Arrest Warrant had been obtained, providing for their arrest if they set foot in the European Union.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that in addition to failing to provide proof that the Russian state was involved in the poisoning, the British government had refused Russia’s offer to send its own investigators to the U.K. to help investigate the case.

In a statement to lawmakers Wednesday, Prime Minister Theresa May said the attack was almost certainly authorized at “a senior level” of the Russian state. She added that the U.K. government concluded that the suspects are officers from the Russian military intelligence service, also known as the GRU.CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12965/labour-party-antisemitism

It was clear that the Chakrabarti inquiry, described by the head of a parliamentary committee as a “whitewash”, had ignored a vast swathe of submissions, chiefly from Jewish leaders, writers, and activists.
Clearly, Jeremy Corbyn is betting that in the Britain today, anti-Semitism is quite literally the winning ticket.

The caveat is clearly designed to let anyone accused of such biased criticism (a central feature of Labour anti-Semitism in the past) wriggle out of demands for their removal and allow Labour to dismiss all but the most unspeakable forms of anti-Semitism.

Britain’s Labour Party, which remains the chief opposition to the current Conservative government, has struggled to throw off a reputation for condoning anti-Semitism and harbouring large numbers of anti-Semites in its ranks. Revelation after revelation of anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist, and anti-Israel utterances, resolutions, and internal investigations have brought the party into serious disrepute and given the media and their political opponents endless opportunities justifiably to label the party with charges of racism. Anti-racism is, quite rightly, a value presumably respected by most people. Writing in British Future in April, Sunder Katwala says he spoke to an anti-racism rally for his local Labour group:

“I told the audience that Labour has been a trailblazer on race. That if you looked around the world, it might be difficult to find any other political party that has taken so much pride in having been a pioneer in fighting racism.”

So far, so good. Katwala, however, immediately continued:

“But I also spoke of my sadness that a party with that tradition and that history still has so much work to do today when it comes to tackling antisemitism in the Labour party itself.”

Now, this is really curious: the most anti-racist party standing accused by many of its own members and MPs of being anti-Semitic. How has that happened and how has it recently been reinforced by a decision made this July by the party’s National Executive Committee?

Before that, it might be helpful to quote part of a recent speech made in the House of Commons on April 16 by Ruth Smeeth, a Jewish Labour MP. She spoke during a lengthy parliamentary session devoted to anti-Semitism, when many fine speeches were made, and at the end she received a standing ovation. Her words shocked everyone in the chamber:

Over the past two years, however, I have experienced something genuinely painful: attacks on my identity from within my own Labour family. I have been the target of a campaign of abuse, attempted bullying and intimidation from people who would dare to tell me that people like me have no place in the party of which I have been a member for over 20 years, and which I am proud to represent on these Benches. My mum was a senior trade union official; my grandad was a blacklisted steelworker who became a miner. I was born into our movement as surely as I was born into my faith. It is a movement that I have worked for, campaigned for and fought for during my entire adult life, so it was truly heart-breaking to find myself in Parliament Square just over three weeks ago, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish community against the poison of anti-Semitism that is engulfing parts of my own party and wider political discourse.

If the House will indulge me, I would like to read out a small sample of what I have received on social media…

“Hang yourself you vile treacherous Zionist Tory filth. You are a cancer of humanity.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271213/most-dangerous-countries-europe-women-have-large-daniel-greenfield

Sweden has one of Europe’s highest rates of sexual assaults.

At 120.79 violent sexual assaults per 100,000 people, and 56 rapes per 100,000, the otherwise bleak socialist country ranks as having the second highest rate of sexual violence in Europe.

What makes Sweden so exceptionally dangerous for women? Its militant feminism is embedded in its political culture and its educational system. Sweden has boasted of a “feminist foreign policy”, 61% of Swedes in one survey identified as feminists and hold the strongest views on “gender equality” of any Europeans. Swedes are the most likely to believe that it’s okay for men to cry. Only 11% believe that women should take care of the home and only 10% believe that it’s a man’s job to support his family.

A local branch of the Left Party in Sweden even demanded that men urinate while sitting down.

And then there are the Czechs, just 13% identify as feminists, 77% think that a woman’s place is in the home, yet the sexual assault rate is 7.79 per 100,000, a tiny fraction of feminist Sweden.

If the real issues were feminism and toxic masculinity, if sufficient educational indoctrination about the evils of masculinity is needed to “teach men not to rape”, women should be safest in Sweden.

So what went wrong?

Instead of traveling from Stockholm to Prague, let’s take a closer trip over to neighboring Finland.

Finland has a third of Sweden’s rape rates and a quarter of its sexual assault rates. Its numbers are still far higher than most of Europe, but nowhere near those of Sweden.

What could possibly explain the difference?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/are_feminists_aiding_muslim_domination.html

“What do you think about … creating an awesome festival where only non-men are welcome until ALL men learn how to behave?” This comes from the article titled “Women Cheer as Sweden’s Man-Free Music Festival Kicks Off.” Initiated as a response to the wave of sexual assaults at Swedish festivals in recent years, only female bands are performing, and “neither male security guards nor journalists are allowed to enter.” However, “transgender women [sic] born as men are allowed to attend. Only men who identify with the sex they were born with, also called cis men, are banned.”

Such a radical view balkanizes and scapegoats men while applauding transgender behavior.

In fact, the misandry has led the Swedish Equality Ombudsman, a government agency that promotes equal rights, to “examine whether the festival is compatible with discrimination laws.”

It appears that the left-wing feminist movement has become the perpetrator of man-hatred, all in the name of protecting women. Yet overlooked by the advocates of the man-free festival is that it was a plethora of Muslim migrants who perpetrated the dreadful assaults and rapes. These migrants come from societies where this is considered an acceptable way to treat women. In fact, “no issue is taken with toxic Islamic masculinity. This thinly-veiled excuse-making may be considered an attempt at dispelling anti-Islamic bigotry. Yet, holding woefully low standards for men based on their background is an equally poor form of bigotry.”

Thus, the elephant in the room is being deliberately ignored. Accusations of bigotry must be avoided at all costs. It is easier to inflict collective blame than to deal with the actual guilty parties.

By scapegoating all men, ignored is the fact that Sweden is not providing the proper security to protect its women from sexual assaults. At the same time, the country is spending vast sums of money to support more migrants from the Muslim world. They bring their culture and religion to bear, and it is decidedly anti-female.

No one in authority dares question why there has been an increase in sexual assaults. No one dares wonder why the Islamic world does nothing to assist its own brethren while the West is expected to pick up the tab.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/british-jews-have-reason-to-fear-corbyns

Lord Jonathan Sacks isn’t known to throw around accusations. So when the Commonwealth’s former chief rabbi weighed in on Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, people took notice.

Rabbi Sacks last week described Mr. Corbyn as “an anti-Semite” who has “given support to racists, terrorists and dealers of hate.” He called one Corbyn comment “the most offensive statement made by a senior British politician since Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech,” a vicious anti-immigration diatribe. Rabbi Sacks was referring to Mr. Corbyn’s 2013 description of British “Zionists”: “They don’t want to study history and . . . they don’t understand English irony either.” On Sunday Rabbi Sacks doubled down, telling the BBC that the prospect of Mr. Corbyn as prime minister was a “danger” to British Jewry.

In July, 68 leading U.K. rabbis had written an open letter to the Guardian accusing Labour’s leadership of ignoring the Jewish community and the “severe and widespread” anti-Semitism plaguing the party. Shortly after, in an unprecedented move, the country’s three leading Jewish newspapers published joint cover stories describing the potential of a Corbyn-led government as an “existential threat to Jewish life” in Britain.

Some members of Mr. Corbyn’s own party have been unforgiving. A day after Rabbi Sacks’s remarks were published, Labour veteran Frank Field resigned from the party’s group in Parliament over the issue. Another senior party member, Dame Margaret Hodge, furiously confronted Mr. Corbyn in July and called him a “racist and anti-Semite.” Dozens of other party leaders have expressed outrage over the matter.

But Mr. Corbyn and his acolytes are having none of it—and have engaged in concerted efforts to undermine their critics.

A Labour spokesman called Rabbi Sacks’s comments “absurd and offensive.” The party briefly put Ms. Hodge under investigation. Labourites who participated in a March protest over anti-Semitism were accused of attempting to smear the party leader and were threatened with dismissal from the party via a process known as “deselection.” A letter endorsed by thousands of Corbyn supporters alleged that the gathering was the work of a “very powerful special interest group.” For his part, Mr. Corbyn claimed in an interview: “I’m not an anti-Semite in any way, never have been, never will be.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-labour-leader-jeremy-corbyn-faces-pressure-on-anti-semitism-accusations-1535904000?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=undefined&cx_artPos=2#cxrecs_s

LONDON—Tony Flacks joined the British Labour Party in the early 1980s, seeing the center-left group as the natural political home for a high-school teacher working in a rundown North London district blighted by racism and discrimination.

He quit after more than three decades of membership in 2016, angry and fed up at what he perceived as the party’s reluctance to root out an ancient prejudice that he, a British Jew, saw flowering anew within its ranks: anti-Semitism. This year, for the same reason, his 29-year-old daughter followed suit.

Century-old ties between Britain’s Jewish community and the Labour Party are fraying as the U.K.’s main opposition party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, struggle to deal with a crescendo of accusations of anti-Jewish bias.

Some lawmakers fear the controversy is denting Labour’s electoral appeal by overshadowing its attacks on Prime Minister Theresa May’s government over Brexit, housing and other policies voters say they care about.

Officials of the Labour Party, whose governing committee is meeting next week in an attempt to quell the issue, say the party deplores all forms of discrimination. They have pledged tougher penalties for any Labour members engaging in anti-Semitic speech or acts, and Mr. Corbyn has ordered up a program to educate members about anti-Semitism. The Labour leader, who has faced—and denied—several specific allegations of anti-Jewish bias himself, has told British Jews he is their ally in combating hate.Yet the party’s efforts to persuade its supporters and critics that it is tackling the problem have repeatedly fallen flat, and some supporters of the Labour leader have pushed back against the issue. Earlier this year, pollster YouGov PLC found that over 70% of the more than 1,000 Labour members it polled thought accusations of anti-Semitism were being exaggerated in a bid to undermine Mr. Corbyn’s leadership or muffle criticism of Israel.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-swedish-shake-up-1536191274

Now it may be Sweden’s turn. Voters head to the polls for a national election on Sunday, and as in nearly every other recent European election the polls suggest that Swedes are set to rebel against mainstream parties, especially on immigration.

As usual in Swedish elections, the top vote-getter is expected to be the center-left Social Democrats of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. But polls currently peg the party’s support at about 25%, down from the roughly 30% in recent elections. The bigger race is for second place, between the mainstream center-right Moderate party and the heretofore fringe Sweden Democrats. Both currently enjoy between 15% and 20% support in the polls.

This means the Sweden Democrats are peeling voters away from both mainstream parties and are on track for their best-ever result. Sweden’s complicated parliamentary-seat math may still allow the Moderates to form a ruling coalition, but it would be a weak government, and the fringe party could play spoiler on specific legislation.

In a now familiar European story, the top three issues have been migration, migration and migration. Sweden welcomed more than its fair share of Middle Eastern migrants in 2015, with a ratio of migrants to locals even greater than in Germany. But voters quickly had second thoughts, and in late 2015 Mr. Löfven’s government tried to shut the door by imposing new border checks to block migrant entries.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12943/turkey-journalist-prison

Medeni Duran wrote that his imprisoned brother Metin “cannot walk, speak, or eat and does not recognize anyone anymore. He can only breathe.”

Mistreatment and even torture of journalists and media employees, along with arbitrary arrests, are getting alarmingly commonplace in Turkey.

At least 183 journalists and media workers in Turkey in are being held, either in pretrial detention or serving a prison sentence, according to the Platform for Independent Journalism.

Dissident journalists and writers in Turkey increasingly face government threats and arbitrary arrests for their work and opinions, but for Metin Duran, the punishments have been even more grotesque.

Duran, 37, has been jailed on terrorism-related charges in Sincan Prison, near Ankara, since March 30, 2018. But he is not aware of where he is or what the court decided about him.

A former journalist for Radyo Rengin, a radio station in the city of Mardin in southeastern Turkey, Duran lost part of his memory, along with his ability to walk and speak, after a stroke that followed a heart attack on October 10, 2015. Yet despite these crippling disabilities, he was sent to prison on March 30 and remains there, the Mezopotamya news agency (MA) reported.

Ahmet Kanbal, the journalist who covered Duran’s imprisonment for Mezopotamya, told Gatestone:

“Duran’s trial got started in 2015 and lasted for more than a year. He was eventually sentenced to a prison term of three years, one month, and fifteen days. His lawyer then appealed to the Supreme Court; this proceeding also lasted for more than two years. When Duran’s punishment was finally approved, he was arrested on his sickbed on March 30.”

Duran’s radio station was shut down by emergency decree following an attempted coup in 2016 against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271243/south-africa-question-walter-williams

South Africa has been thrown into the news because of President Donald Trump’s recent tweet that he instructed his secretary of state to “closely study” alleged land seizures from white farmers in South Africa.

Earlier this year, a land confiscation motion was brought by radical Marxist opposition leader Julius Malema, and it passed South Africa’s Parliament by a 241-83 vote. Malema has had a long-standing commitment to land confiscation without compensation. In 2016, he told his supporters he was “not calling for the slaughter of white people — at least for now” (https://tinyurl.com/y7mfmhco). The land-grabbing sentiment is also expressed by Lindsay Maasdorp, national spokesman for Black First Land First, a group that condones land seizures in South Africa. He says, “We are going to take back the land, and we’ll do it by any means necessary.” The land confiscation policy was a key factor in the platform of the new president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

I have visited South Africa several times, in 1979, 1980 and 1992. My three-month 1980 visit included lectures at nearly all South African universities. The 1992 return visit, two years after apartheid ended and two years before democratic elections, included lectures on my book “South Africa’s War Against Capitalism.” During each visit, my counsel to South Africans, particularly black South Africans, was that the major task before them was not only ridding the nation of apartheid but deciding what was going to replace it.

That’s an important question. William Hutt, the late University of Cape Town economist who was an anti-apartheid voice within the academic community, wrote in his 1964 book, titled “The Economics of the Colour Bar,” that one of the supreme tragedies of the human condition is that those who have been the victims of injustices or oppression “can often be observed to be inflicting not dissimilar injustices upon other races.” In 2001, Andrew Kenny wrote an article titled “Black People Aren’t Animals — But That’s How Liberals Treat Them.” Kenny asked whether South Africa is doomed to follow the rest of Africa into oblivion. Kenny gave a “no” answer to his question, but he was not very optimistic because of the pattern seen elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. He argued that ordinary Africans were better off under colonialism. Colonial masters never committed anything near the murder and genocide seen under black rule in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Nigeria, Mozambique, Somalia and other countries, where millions of blacks have been slaughtered in unspeakable ways, including being hacked to death, boiled in oil, set on fire and dismembered. Kenny said that if as many elephants, zebras and lions were as ruthlessly slaughtered, the world’s leftists would be in a tizzy (https://tinyurl.com/ybj4u9fj).