RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12997/germany-migration-dissent

Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, BfV, has dismissed claims that right-wing gangs chased non-Germans during the late August demonstrations in Chemnitz after the fatal stabbing of a German by a group of migrants. That news flew in the face of Chancellor Merkel’s repeated use of the charge of a “hunt on foreigners” in describing the incidents.
According to the domestic affairs spokesperson for Merkel’s Christian Democratic party, Maassen “would answer parliamentarians’ questions about his comments at special meetings next week. In these “hearings,” politicians are expected to bring more pressure to bear on the intelligence chief, in an apparent attempt to make him recant his statements.
Maassen is not the only one in the crosshairs of the mainstream politicians. Rattled by the recent wave of protests against country’s open-door immigration policy, establishment parties across the political spectrum are calling for the populist anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party (AfD) to be placed under police surveillance.
In early September, authorities in the states of Lower Saxony and Bremen placed their regional chapters of Young Alternative, the AfD’s youth wing, under surveillance citing “suspected ties to extremists.”

In Communist East Germany, truth-telling involved risks. The penalty for it was often loss of one’s professional career and social status, if not more. Today, challenging the state-approved narrative in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Germany can sometimes have similar consequences.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271301/suggestion-nikki-haley-hugh-fitzgerald

It was recently revealed that the photograph posted online by an Arab propagandist, Abdullah Alsaafin, of a two-year-old girl identified as Bayan Abu Khamash, supposedly killed by Israeli bombs, had in fact been taken from Instagram, where the girl was identified as an American two-year-old, Elle Lively McBroom.

“War is deceit,” said Muhammad, and the uncovering of deceit is a legitimate defense in such a war. Now that we know the source of that photo, there are several things that might be done. Instagram or Twitter or wherever Abdullah Alsaafin has an account might be publicly appealed to, to remove his account in light of the fact that he has been caught malevolently misusing, for the purposes of propaganda, a photograph on Instagram. Instagram cannot police every misuse of its contents, but when such a blatant and dangerous example is brought to its attention, it has a responsibility to act. It should not only remove Alsaafin’s account (if he has an Instagram account; otherwise the places where he posted the false photo should remove his account), but explain that it is doing so because of his malevolent theft, with malice aforethought, of a two-year-old’s photograph.

This is one of many examples where the Arabs have used fauxtography. Recently, I was informed, Arab propagandists had posted pictures in the aftermath of the earthquake in Mexico, identifying them as scenes in Gaza. Photographs of destruction in Syria have been similarly applied. During the 2006 war in Lebanon, Hezbollah — and willing Western journalists — engaged in fauxtography of every kind. Burning tires in the smoky distance were presented as burned out buildings, an untouched Qur’an was carefully placed in the middle of rubble, and then deliberately set on fire, long after the building it was said to have been in had been reduced to rubble.

https://spectator.us/2018/09/macron-salvini-battle-europes-future/

The first sign that Matteo Salvini was destined to do battle with Emmanuel Macron came in June, a few days after he was named Italy’s interior minister. Salvini, whose party, the League, wants to cut immigration drastically, announced that a German-registered rescue ship carrying 629 aspiring migrants from Africa would not be allowed to dock in Sicily.

Macron reacted with disgust. ‘The policy of the Italian government,’ a spokesman for his political movement announced, ‘is nauseating.’ Salvini responded that if the French wanted to show their open–heartedness, they might make good on their unfulfilled pledge to feed and shelter some of the 100,000 African migrants Italy had until recently been receiving each year.

This week, what had seemed like a personal antipathy between the two men revealed itself as an all-out battle for European hearts and minds. When Libyan rebels attacked government positions in Tripoli, threatening the agreements Italy has made with the Libyan coast guard to limit departures of migrants from the shores of North Africa, Salvini mused aloud to reporters. ‘There’s someone behind this,’ he said. ‘Someone who started a war [in 2011] that should never have been started, someone who calls for elections without sounding out his allies and the people on the ground, someone who tries to force the issue by exporting democracy, which never works.’ He urged journalists eager to know what he meant by that to ‘ask Paris’.

Days earlier, Salvini had invited the Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to Milan to issue a manifesto. It was Orbán who exhorted Europe to harden its borders during the great overland migration from war-torn Syria and points east in 2015. Standing under the awning of a pizzeria in Milan, Orbán singled out Salvini as ‘my hero and my comrade in destiny’. And he singled out Macron as his nemesis. ‘There are two camps in Europe,’ Orbán said, ‘and one is headed by Macron. He is at the head of the political forces supporting immigration. On the other hand, we want to stop illegal immigration.’

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12988/china-social-credit-system

China’s “social credit” system, which will assign every person a constantly updated score based on observed behaviors, is designed to control conduct by giving the ruling Communist Party the ability to administer punishments and hand out rewards. The former deputy director of the State Council’s development research center says the system should be administered so that “discredited people become bankrupt”.
Officials prevented Liu Hu, a journalist, from taking a flight because he had a low score. According to the Communist Party-controlled Global Times, as of the end of April 2018, authorities had blocked individuals from taking 11.14 million flights and 4.25 million high-speed rail trips.
Chinese officials are using the lists for determining more than just access to planes and trains. “I can’t buy property. My child can’t go to a private school,” Liu said. “You feel you’re being controlled by the list all the time.”
Chinese leaders have long been obsessed with what Jiang Zemin in 1995 called “informatization, automation, and intelligentization,” and they are only getting started Given the capabilities they are amassing, they could, the argument goes, make defiance virtually impossible. The question now is whether the increasingly defiant Chinese people will accept President Xi’s all-encompassing vision.

By 2020, Chinese officials plan to have about 626 million surveillance cameras operating throughout the country. Those cameras will, among other things, feed information into a national “social credit system.”

That system, when it is in place in perhaps two years, will assign to every person in China a constantly updated score based on observed behaviors. For example, an instance of jaywalking, caught by one of those cameras, will result in a reduction in score.

Although officials might hope to reduce jaywalking, they seem to have far more sinister ambitions, such as ensuring conformity to Communist Party political demands. In short, the government looks as if it is determined to create what the Economist called “the world’s first digital totalitarian state.”

That social credit system, once perfected, will surely be extended to foreign companies and individuals.

At present, there are more than a dozen national blacklists, and about three dozen various localities have been operating experimental social credit scoring systems. Some of those systems have failed miserably. Others, such as the one in Rongcheng in Shandong province, have been considered successful.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12974/turkey-naval-base-cyprus

The possibility of a Turkish naval base on Cyprus does not bode well for the chances of a Cyprus reunification deal, particularly after the breakdown of the July 2017 peace talks, which were suspended when “Turkey had refused to relinquish its intervention rights on Cyprus or the presence of troops on the island.” Turkey has 30,000 soldiers stationed on Cyprus, the northern part of which it has illegally occupied since 1974.
“If Greek-Turkish tensions escalate, the possibility of another ill-timed military provocation could escalate with them… Moreover, such a conflict might open up an even greater opportunity for Russian interference.” — Lawrence A. Franklin.

Turkey’s Naval Forces Command has “submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stating that Turkey should establish a naval base in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,” according to Turkey’s strongly pro-Erdogan daily, Yeni Safak, which recently endorsed the proposal for the base in an article entitled, “Why Turkey should establish a naval base in Northern Cyprus.”

“The base will enable the protection of Northern Cyprus’ sovereignty as well as facilitate and fortify Turkey’s rights and interests in the Eastern Mediterranean, preventing the occupation of sea energy fields, and strengthening Turkey’s hand in the Cyprus peace process talks.”

Having a naval base in northern Cyprus would also strengthen the self-proclaimed “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,” which is recognized only by Turkey. Cyprus is strategically important: a naval base there would give Turkey easier access to the Eastern Mediterranean’s international trade routes and greater control over the vast undersea energy resources around Cyprus. In the past, Turkey has blocked foreign vessels from drilling for these resources; in June, Turkey began its own exploration of the island’s waters for gas and oil.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/11/u-k-police-urge-citizens-report-neighbors-offensive-insulting-speech/

English police are now calling on citizens to report hate incidents. Reporting friends and neighbors to the police has terrible historical connotation, and for good reason. It is legitimate fascism. Timid citizenries are easy to control — fear that even a coworker could file a report to the police can keep people in check.

The latest call for action in England is from the South Yorkshire Police on Twitter. Similar reporting requests are posted on the United Kingdom government website. Two tweets from the South Yorkshire Police over the weekend requesting citizens to report hate matters to police should grab our attention.

The first calls out any hate “incident or crime.” There is a meaningful distinction there. The tweet defines hate incidents as “motivated by prejudice or hostility (or perceived to be so)…” The tweet ends with, “Report it and put a stop to it.”

To be clear, reportable incidents under this scheme have as low a bar as non-crime incidents merely perceived to be hostile. This would be hilarious if it was not so serious. Law enforcement is now soliciting people to turn others in for being offensive. Freedom from criminal investigation and arrest may now be subject to someone else’s feelings or perceptions in England.

The second tweet explicitly calls on citizens to “please report non-crime hate incidents, which can include things like offensive or insulting comments, online, in person, or in writing.” Reporting non-crimes to the police already seems like a waste of time and resources, but reporting people to the police for being offensive crosses the line into fascist territory.

https://wp.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/
MP OF PALESTINIAN DESCENT CONDEMNS CORBYNITE POSTERS AS “BLATANTLY ANTI-SEMITIC”

Britain’s first MP of Palestinian descent told the BBC that the defacing of London bus-stops with “Israel is a racist endeavour” posters was “blatantly anti-Semitic”.

Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, said: “I’m a Palestinian. The fact that this has come from a group that purportedly is speaking for Palestinians, I take great offence at myself, because I think it is blatantly anti-Semitic.”

Moran was responding to comments by Labour Shadow Chancellor and key Corbyn ally John McDonnell who had told the BBC “It is not at all anti-Semitic to describe Israel as a state as racist.”

The posters were meant to mock the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of Jew-hate, which says that comparing Israel to Nazi Germany or singling out only one country, Israel, and calling it “a racist endeavor” are examples of modern anti-Semitism.
MUSLIM MAYOR OF MONDAY CONDEMNS ANTI-ISRAEL POSTERS

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, condemned the “Israel hate” posters on the city’s bus stops as “offensive” and said that any posters found would be rapidly removed.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/9-11-changed-european-radical-to-conservative-president-bush-speech/

‘Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.’

On September 11, 2001, I was sitting on the floor of my sister’s living room, babysitting her one-year-old daughter. We were lazily playing, with the afternoon news on the TV in the background. The first thing I noticed was how the anchor’s voice changed. The woman was saying “Wait, wait,” while staring to the side of the camera. There had been a horrible accident, she said, as I watched the smoke pour out of the first tower. When the second plane hit, I hoped beyond hope she was right.

I had just gotten back from a year in France. A few months earlier, I’d been standing in a crowded bar on Place de Clichy, celebrating my 20th birthday. I remember that night, although several bottles of bad white wine say I shouldn’t. I was surrounded by my peers, other upper-middle-class liberals who had fled to Paris to fulfill their fantasy. We had come to this historical city to live the life of songs and books and Technicolor movies. We were radicals. We were heroes. We were going to change the world.

The people with me in that bar were a random sample of the political atmosphere of Europe at the time. Militant feminists, pro-Palestinians, members of the autonomic environmentalist movement, and your run-of the-mill anti-government thugs. Having a friend who had been jailed for rioting was as necessary as a Malcolm X T-shirt and a back-pocket paperback of Catcher in the Rye. I gladly picked up that uniform, just as I picked up rocks and banners knowing that this was the ticket to ride.

Raised in a family of academics, this was a natural evolution on my part and a result of a serious political interest. I identified as an intellectual and as a political thinker with a critical mind. What I failed to acknowledge at the time was that my country was a controlled environment and that the spectrum on which political analysis took place was limited. Not unlike The Truman Show, where the choices you think you are making were already made for you long ago, and any dreams of a different fate are swiftly corrected.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12983/imran-khan-pakistan-minorities

In a move that raised eyebrows both in Pakistan and abroad, the government succumbed to the pressure of Islamists by asking renowned economist Atif Mian to step down from membership of the prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council, solely because he is a member of the persecuted minority Ahmadi community.
Mohammad Abdus Salam was the first Pakistani to receive a Nobel Prize in science, and the second person from an Islamic country, after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, ever to have been awarded a Nobel Prize in any field.
Mohammad Safdar, a prominent legislator, launched a verbal attack on Ahmadis, calling them a “threat to this country, its Constitution and ideology… Because their’s is a false religion, in which there is no concept of jihad for Allah.”
Let us hope that the Pakistani leadership’s abandonment of Mian is the last such incident.

Radical Islamists took to the streets of Pakistan on September 1, to protest Prime Minister Imran Khan’s appointment of former Princeton University scholar Atif Mian, a minority Muslim of the Ahmadiyya faith, to the Economic Advisory Council (EAC). Demanding that Mian be removed from the EAC, a key forum that advises the prime minister on economic issues, demonstrators threatened to lock down Pakistan’s major cities, including Islamabad, its capital.

Mian’s appointment was opposed by Pakistan’s right wing political parties including “Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP)”, which strongly objected to his Ahmadi faith.

In addition, a well-orchestrated social-media smear campaign is being waged against Mian — the only Pakistani on the International Monetary Fund’s 2014 list of the world’s “25 brightest young economists” — for the sole reason that he adheres to the Ahmadiyya faith.

Then, in a move that raised eyebrows both in Pakistan and abroad, the government succumbed to the pressure of Islamists by showing the door to Mian: he was asked to step down from membership of the EAC.