RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/guatemalas-president-defends-democracy-against-the-u-n-1536098714

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales announced Friday that the agreement his country has with the United Nations Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala won’t be renewed. The commission—known by its Spanish acronym, CICIG—has one year to tie up its work and, by Sept. 3, 2019, leave the country.

Mr. Morales sent a letter to the U.N. secretary-general advising him of the decision. In a press conference Mr. Morales said that CICIG should immediately begin transferring its responsibilities to “corresponding [Guatemalan] entities,” mainly the attorney general.

On Monday CICIG’s top prosecutor, Colombian Iván Velásquez, flew to Washington, though he didn’t reveal why and has no public events scheduled. His spokesman said the trip had been planned for a while. It wouldn’t be the first time the prosecutor went north on a secret mission.

The U.S. Congress pays a substantial part of CICIG’s budget, but Mr. Velásquez has refused to answer questions at congressional hearings or in any public forum. Instead he meets behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, where he can control the narrative in front of an audience—both left and right—that is unfamiliar with or doesn’t care about CICIG’s transgressions against innocent Guatemalans. He also seems to have State Department sympathizers.

Mr. Morales’s detractors charge that he fired Mr. Velásquez to protect himself. CICIG has been investigating the president and alleges that he was the beneficiary of illegal campaign financing. He denies wrongdoing and enjoys immunity as long as he holds office. Mr. Velásquez has been working to lift that immunity.

Mr. Velásquez might successfully defend his commission if the standoff with the president were the only disputed issue. But under his leadership there is strong evidence that CICIG routinely flouts the rule of law and tramples civil liberties in violation of the Guatemalan constitution. His methods can’t be supported by a republic that pledges allegiance to transparency and human rights. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://ekurd.net/timeless-arab-israeli-2018-09-02

At a time when our older children witness–if not actually participate in–the vilification of Israel and Zionism inside and outside the classroom on the typical “Progressive” university (and even high school) campus, as we enter a new High Holy Day season, there are certain timeless and timely truths that must never be forgotten. Indeed, if one cares about these issues, it’s best to prepare starry-eyed, save the world/fight for the underdog, naive offspring before they fly the coop. Like the Passover Haggadah, they need to be recited and reviewed for each generation…

It seems like yesterday when the author was one of those above kids…

The difference? He ( I ) took it upon himself, with parental encouragement, to be involved and to learn lots about the Middle East before leaving the nest. Those were the years leading up to the June ’67 Six Day War.

Sadly, polls now increasingly show–at least in the Diaspora, though Israel certainly has such problems too–that not many (especially non-Orthodox) Jewish students (let alone others) care much about such things any more…Ditto for their parents. Neither do many of their religious leaders who say things like they care about Israel but insist that it be an increasingly indefensible zipper of a state. These acorns don’t fall far from their trees.

Not that those who do care were ever in the majority, but things are now lots more worrisome. Presently, many Jews even criticize the American leader, President Trump, for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving America’s embassy there. And who cares about their alleged and pointless reasoning given the reality of Palestinian Arab rejectionism of any Jewish State—regardless of size?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12957/sweden-left-party-terrorism

On his Facebook page, Said Hadrous praises the Samer Issawi, a member of the DFLP terrorist group who was convicted in Israel of possession of explosives and attempted murder.

In a post on Facebook on August 29, Lars Adaktusson, a Swedish member of the European Parliament for the Christian Democrats, said that the EU should designate the DFLP as a terrorist organization.

Another Left Party candidate in the upcoming elections, Dr. Ali Hadrous, is running for the Landskrona City Council. He often shares Facebook posts showing sympathy with jailed Palestinian terrorists.

Osama Tamim was a member of the DFLP in Syria and is now running for the Åmål City Council on the Left Party list. In 2016, Tamim’s organization, Amal Palestina, distributed to children in Åmål a booklet in Arabic in which youngsters are portrayed favorably as instigators of violent activities.

Anyone who believes that anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are exclusive to the extreme right would do well to observe the campaign for the September 9 elections in Sweden, in which politicians belonging to the Marxist-Leninist organization the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) are running for office on the increasingly popular socialist-feminist Left Party ticket.

The most prominent of these candidates is Said Hadrous, number 7 on the Left Party list. Hadrous, who grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, is a member of the DFLP Central Committee and chairs the Palestinian lobby organization, Group 194, which is closely linked to the DFLP. On his Facebook page, in a post from 2013, Said Hadrous praises the DFLP terrorist Samer Issawi, convicted in Israel of possession of explosives and attempted murder. After being confronted recently by the Swedish newspaper, Världen Idag, about a 2016 photo on Facebook in which he appears dressed as a militant brandishing a weapon, Hadrous responded by referring to the paper as part of the “extremist racist Zionist media.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271216/anti-christian-pogroms-nigeria-jack-kerwick

Unquestionably, the abuse and corruption of children by sexually predatory Catholic priests and its concealment by church leaders long precedes the rise of Pope Francis. Nevertheless, as has been noted by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, former Vatican ambassador to the United States, this rot reaches to the highest echelons of the Church leadership.

Thus, Vigano concludes, the Pope must resign.

This lifelong Roman Catholic agrees wholeheartedly.

The idea that the Pope was ignorant of what has occurred stretches credibility to the snapping point. But even if he was ignorant, his resignation would be a powerful symbolic expression of the Church’s resolve to repent of the evil that it has permitted for decades.

In all candor, though, there are still other reasons for why Francis should resign:

Simply put, by way of exploiting his office and influence toward the end of promoting, not traditional Church teaching, but a leftist political agenda that prominently features “climate change” and “[illegal] migrant’s rights,” Francis has injected confusion and division into the church.

The infusion of leftist ideology into the church became glaring this past weekend when the newly appointed Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blasé Cupich, a defender of Pope Francis, remarked that Francis is not going to be distracted from his “bigger agenda” by going down the “rabbit hole” of the child sex scandal that’s rocked the church.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12947/boris-johnson-burka-blues

“As a Muslim woman, I’d like to thank Boris Johnson for calling out the niqab” — Title of an article by Dr. Qanta Ahmed in The Spectator.

“[T]his is a point that we Muslims seem to be unable to get across to non-Muslims – there is no basis in Islam for the niqab…. That’s why Muslim nations are themselves regulating and banning the niqab and burqa…” — Dr. Qanta Ahmed, The Conversation, January 2017.

Some observers feel that it is especially painful to see Western feminists marching and wearing black face masks in order to protect Muslim women’s right to wear them, but failing to support the rights of other Muslim women who plead not to be forced into them.

We are expected to feel guilty if we dare to question what some Muslim women themselves question: if shariah law is really the most wholesome lifestyle for many women.

“[T]here is no basis in Islam for the niqab…. That’s why Muslim nations are themselves regulating and banning the niqab and burqa…” — Dr. Qanta Ahmed. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

On August 5, Britain’s former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, published an article in The Daily Telegraph. Entitled “Denmark has got it wrong. Yes, the burka is oppressive and ridiculous – but that’s still no reason to ban it”, the article created a furore both within and outside his own Tory party, and for more than one reason.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12946/turkey-greece-tensions

Relations between Washington and Ankara have already deteriorated significantly under Erdogan — as dramatically emphasized by America’s absolutely correct refusal to turn over to Erdogan the man he says is behind Turkey’s 2016 coup attempt, Fethullah Gülen, a Muslim cleric who exiled himself to Pennsylvania almost 20 years ago, as well as by the escalating imbroglio over detained U.S. pastor Andrew Brunson, who is apparently being held as a hostage to force the U.S. to extradite Gülen back to Turkey.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Wess Mitchell recently called Greece, “an anchor of stability in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Balkans.”

Under President Trump, the signs keep growing that the U.S. is more and more likely to see things Greece’s way.

During his state visit to Greece in 2017, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a forceful request that Greece agree to re-negotiate the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Pictured: Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens on December 7, 2017. (Photo by Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s June 24 re-election seems to be leading to heightened tensions between Turkey and Greece. Furthermore, in an eventual confrontation between these two NATO member states, Turkey’s reported interest in purchasing air-defense missiles and fighter jets from Russia, underscored by Turkey’s continued detention of American Christian Pastor Andrew Brunson and the U.S. imposition of sanctions on Turkish officials (as well as Turkish counter-sanctions), may well cause Washington to favor Greece.

DISPATCHES FROM TOM GROSS-

It is very much worth setting aside time to watch this 8 minute video:

https://youtu.be/U_rUft54VKg
DISPATCHES FROM TOM GROSS-

It is very much worth setting aside time to watch this 8 minute video:

https://youtu.be/U_rUft54VKg

http://www.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/archives/001790.html

Jamie Mithi of the South African think tank Africans for Peace, speaks out against the “Israel apartheid” lie propagated by many western journalists and academics, which he says not only distorts truth, but insults both Israeli Jews and the real suffering of South Africa’s Black population under the apartheid regime.

Mithi is interviewed by Muhammed Desai who constantly interrupts him when he wants to provide some facts. (In 2013, Desai defended shouts of “Kill the Jews” made by students an anti-Israel protest at Johannesburg’s Wits University.)

Tom Gross adds: Israeli Arabs vote, they serve in parliament, they can travel, they can sleep with whoever they want (providing it is consensual of course), they can be gay, they are represented in virtually every profession in Israel, and an increasing number serve in senior positions. For example, last month an Israeli Arab woman, Prof. Mona Khoury-Kassabri was appointed dean of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s School of Social Work, a major appointment for any woman in the Middle East.

(The Jewish-sounding South African Rebecca Mendelson who Desai quotes to Mithi in the TV clip to say Israel is a “fascist state” sounds like a made up “fake news” person, and I can’t find any reference to her in an internet search.)