RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12879/mauritania-slavery

The arrest of Abeid — a prize-winning human rights activist whose latest “crime” was being a candidate in an election — should sound alarm bells in Washington.

The Trump administration needs to demand Abeid’s immediate release and make any further financial aid to Mauritania conditional upon proof of concrete moves to eradicate slavery and indentured servitude.

To state that Mauritania is engaged in the kind of “reform” that is “needed to improve people’s living standards” is both false and unconscionable. Not only are Mauritania’s minorities so impoverished that being enslaved is often their only perceived alternative to starving, but its deceitful government is responsible for perpetuating the situation.

Although referred to as the “world’s last country to abolish slavery,” it actually remains “slavery’s last stronghold.”

On August 7, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania arrested Biram Dah Abeid, the founding head of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA), a human rights organization dedicated to eradicating slavery in the west African nation. Abeid described the police waking him in his home in the capital city of Nouakchott, and taking him into custody without charges.

Abeid and those petitioning for his release have good reason to suspect that his arrest – one of many over the past few years — is related not only to his persistent anti-slavery activism and critique of Islamic texts, but to the fact that he is running for a seat in parliament in the legislative elections slated for September 1.

Abeid, a member of the Haratin, Mauritania’s largest minority group, established the IRA in 2008, the year in which Mauritania’s first democratically elected president, Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, was ousted in a coup led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who has been in power ever since. Abeid has been described as a “thorn in the side” of Aziz, particularly when he challenged Aziz in the 2014 presidential election, and came in a “distant second.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12882/germany-deported-jihadist

Aidoudi’s asylum request was rejected in 2007 after allegations surfaced that he had undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. During his training, he had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden.

“What we are currently experiencing is not a struggle for the rule of law, but a power struggle between an obviously ideologically oriented judiciary and unpopular political representatives.” — Tomas Spahn, writing for Tichys Einblick.

“Confidence in the rule of law is not undermined by a ruling such as that of the Gelsenkirchen Administrative Court, but by the fact that it took almost twelve years for Osama bin Laden’s ‘alleged’ bodyguard finally to be deported.” — Henryk Broder, columnist, Die Welt.

A court in Germany has ruled that the recent deportation to Tunisia of a failed asylum seeker — an Islamist suspected of being a bodyguard for the former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — was unlawful and that, at taxpayer expense, he must be immediately returned to Germany.

The ruling has cast yet another spotlight on the dysfunctional nature of Germany’s deportation system, as well as on Germany’s politicized judicial system, one in which activist judges are now engaged in a power struggle with elected officials who want to speed up deportations.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/08/17/time-has-come-teach-political-class-lessonim-back-fighting-real/

It is now beyond doubt that the political class in Westminster and many of their media allies do not accept the EU referendum result. They refuse to acknowledge the wishes of the majority of those who took part in that historic plebiscite of 2016 by voting to leave the European Union. As far as I’m concerned, this is the worst case of Stockholm syndrome ever recorded.

It is equally clear to me that, unless challenged, these anti-democrats will succeed in frustrating the result. Whatever they may claim publicly, this is their ultimate objective. They think nothing of betraying the citizens of Britain.

For months now we have heard the same argument from this bunch: “Leave voters did not know what they were voting for.” The implication is that Brexiteers are stupid and should submit to the superior view of our betters.

Well, I’ve had enough of their lies, deceit and treachery. The time has come to teach them a lesson – one that they will never forget.

The 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit did so because they wanted an independent United Kingdom. They wanted to live in a country that makes its own laws and is in charge of its future. They did not want to be governed by the unaccountable bully boys in Brussels.

A vital part of making this decision was based upon a tangible instinct to leave the single market. Yet under Theresa May’s fraudulent Chequers plan, the people have instead been offered a form of regulatory alignment. What is more, nothing will be done to take back control of our borders, our fishing rights or our ability to be a global trader for many years to come. Theresa the Appeaser has produced a set of ideas that are nothing more than a cowardly sell-out.

With all this in mind, now is the time for action.

Since the referendum result was declared, almost the entire Brexit debate has been conducted within the divided parties which inhabit the Westminster bubble. There has been virtually no input from the people at all apart from at the 2017 general election – an event when both major political parties were unashamedly dishonest with the electorate in their manifestos.

To make matters worse, we are subjected to a daily stream of negative media stories about Brexit in an attempt to beat us into submission. The latest example of this was the British Medical Association suggesting that a No Deal Brexit would lead to huge numbers of people dying.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/predicted-huge-gains-for-swedish-nationalist-party/

The national Sweden Democrats are predicted to become the largest political party in the country following elections on September 9.

Their only problem is that none of the socialist parties that have ruled Sweden for more than 100 years will work with them. The situation is similar to what it is for other nationalist, eurosceptic parties in Germany, France, Holland, and other Western countries. The people support the nationalist agenda but other politicians refuse to have anything to do with them.

There is no doubt that the roots of the Sweden Democrats can be found in the far right. Nazi flags and uniforms were a common sight at party rallies 20 years ago.

But those days are mostly gone. The Sweden Democrats’ anti-immigration, anti-EU agenda resonates with millions of ordinary people and recent events have angered millions of citizens who fear that the 165,000 refugees who’ve settled in the country are refusing to integrate.

NBC News:

Tobias Andersson agrees. At 22, the leader of the party’s youth wing will likely become a lawmaker next month. Andersson joined the Sweden Democrats at 16, attracted by its tough stance on criminal justice.

But he becomes most animated when discussing immigration, which he said is “bad in every way possible.”

Immigration aside, the party wants to limit abortion and increase defense spending. It opposes Sweden’s membership in the European Union and has expressed skepticism about man-made climate change.

https://pjmedia.com/faith/in-a-coptic-monastery-murder-most-foul/

The death of Bishop Epiphanius, the abbot of the fourth century Monastery of St. Macarius, last month has set off an ecclesiastical murder mystery worthy of a Dan Brown novel. More than a simple whodunit, the case has exposed simmering tensions of a theological, if not personal, nature in an influential corner of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

A scholar of ancient manuscripts with a frizzy beard typical of Orthodox clerics, Bishop Epiphanius, 64, was found at dawn on July 29, lying in a pool of blood outside his monastic cell. Injuries to his skull indicated he had been hit on the head with a blunt object, possibly a pipe, the police said.

The intrigue deepened days later when the Coptic authorities defrocked a younger monk, Isaiah, who had clashed with the bishop in the weeks before his death. Soon after that, another monk, Faltaous, 33, slashed his wrists and tried to throw himself from a four-story building. Faltaous was hospitalized and treated for his injuries. On Aug. 11, Egyptian prosecutors said Isaiah had been charged with the murder of Bishop Epiphanius after confessing to the crime. Two days later they said that they had detained Faltaous for questioning.

Beyond that, not much more is known. The police have sealed off the monastery to interview 150 people, including staff members, monks and bishops. The Coptic patriarch, Pope Tawadros II, has issued orders apparently aimed at tightening discipline among the country’s 2,000 monks.

New admissions to the monasteries have been suspended for a year; monks require permission to travel outside; and they have been given a month to close their Facebook and Twitter accounts. “In the light of what has happened, we need to give the monks their space and let them return to a focus on monastic life,” said Archbishop Angaelos of London, a prominent Coptic leader, speaking by phone. “They do not need social media accounts.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12847/iran-dancing-crime

To people in the West, it may seem impossible for dancing to become a crime. But as sharia laws get imposed, before you know it, any innocent act of “fun” can suddenly become a crime.

Maedeh Hojabri posted video clips of herself dancing on Instagram. For this “crime,” the 19-year-old woman was arrested, jailed without due process and without an opportunity to defend herself, and publicly shamed with a televised confession of her “crime.”

Who will the morality police come for next?

A Muslim mother in the sharia-ruled country of Iran, was talking about her 10-year-old daughter: “She asked me, ‘Why can’t I dance? We dance because we are happy. How can being happy be wrong? Why is dancing a crime?'” She spoke about the confusion in her daughter’s eyes. “It is a question I don’t know how to answer.”

Her daughter’s life had changed, she said, when she heard that a 19-year-old woman named Maedeh Hojabri had become the target of the Iran’s Islamist “morality” police. Her crime? Posting video clips of herself dancing on popular worldwide social media sites, like Instagram. The consequences for an act like that are severe. As has happened to other young women who posted video clips of themselves dancing, Hojabri was arrested, jailed without due process and without an opportunity to defend herself, and publicly shamed with a televised confession of her “crime.”

Hojabri’s dancing videos on Instagram made her a popular figure on Instagram in Iran, and gained her hundreds of thousands of followers on the social media platform. Imagine, if she were living in the West, how she would be treated. She would likely have been considered talented, have had opportunities thrown at her, been invited on popular shows and be sponsored for radio and television programs.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/18/beware-jeremy-corbyn

Donating £3 to the campaign of Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Party leader was, at the time, the best money I had ever spent.

Fresh from their second election loss in a row, Labour’s mild ineptitude was about to translate into hilarious farce. One which I, and many other conservatives, were all too keen to cement into a laughing stock sure to punctuate the decades ahead with regular dizzying mirth.

For the princely sum of £3 (less than the price of a pint) one could ensure the new Labour leader would be Corbyn, a bedraggled know-nothing backbencher whose terrific dullness would condemn his party to decades of nothing.

Back then, in 2015, Corbyn managed to squeeze onto the leadership ballot via charitable Labour MPs naively hoping to “widen the debate.” It went terribly wrong.

Getting wind of Corbyn’s glittering Marxist résumé, left-wing activists deserted the likes of Great Britain’s Communist party to stump up that tiny sum for a say in the future of the only other party with a chance of meaningful power.

Corbyn won in a near 60 percent landslide. (And increased that figure in a re-do). His supporters were muted only by raucous #ToriesForCorbyn then giddily convinced Labour was castrated.

The victor, after all, was everything that made Labour unelectable for what their party’s sensible and shrinking sect billed the “wilderness years”—18 years of irrelevance as Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher raged on.

NO COMMENT….RSK HE DID LOOK GREAT IN A TUXEDO

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/burmas-rohingya-muslims-need-trump-administrations-help/

President Obama stood idly by as the Burmese government slaughtered the Rohingya. President Trump can and must do better.

Throughout its second term, the Obama administration downplayed mounting evidence that Burma’s Rohingya community was being deliberately eradicated by the country’s military. Genocide was an inconvenient fact for an administration eager to claim a foreign-policy achievement in Burma’s democratic transition. With U.S. help, in 2015–16, Burma had been transformed from a pariah military dictatorship into a democracy headed by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, an international human-rights icon. But Burma’s deplorable religious-freedom record was hardly a secret.

Since 1999, Burma has been designated a severe and systematic religious persecutor under the U.S. International Religious Freedom Act. Its ethnic Rohingya Muslim and Kachin, Chin, and Karen Christian minorities have been regularly oppressed and subjected to brutal attempts of forcible conversion by its Buddhist majority. Violent conflict between them and a military bent on “Burmanization” has raged on and off since the country’s 1948 independence from Britain.

In 2012, the attacks against the Rohingya Muslims in Burma’s northern Rakhine state became particularly intense. That year, Genocide Watch issued an emergency alert that these Rohingya were being slaughtered and driven from their homes. On May 20, 2013, noted human-rights advocates Jose Ramos Horta, Muhammad Yunus, and Benedict Rogers wrote of these early warning signs of genocide in the New York Times:

The Rohingyas were recognized until the 1982 Citizenship Law stripped them of their citizenship and rendered them stateless. Since then, they have faced a slow-burning campaign of persecution, which exploded last June and again in October, resulting in the deaths of at least 1,000 and the displacement of at least 130,000. . . . Human Rights Watch has published evidence of mass graves and a campaign of ethnic cleansing.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/180817

Since March 30, when Hamas launched its first “return march” with thousands storming Israel’s border, Israel’s media pundits have said neither side wants escalation. They had it right. What’s being termed “the small arrangement” looks like a big win for Hamas, whose strategy most resembles that of North Korea.

In 1999, North Korea was in a similar situation to Hamas now. Its economy was in tatters. State rations hadn’t been distributed for five years. Control of its population was slipping. Today, Hamas can’t make payroll or provide basic services and faces staggering unemployment. One of the generally agreed reasons why Hamas whipped its people up in the first place was to distract them from their economic problems.

According to the agreement, which sources say will be signed Friday in Cairo, Hamas will accept a yearlong ceasefire in exchange for a sea lane to Cyprus, extension of its fishing waters, the opening of border crossings on the Israel and Egyptian sides of the Gaza Strip, and humanitarian projects and funding from Egypt and Qatar to pay the salaries of its public servants. Qatar will also pay Gaza’s electric bills.

Curiously, despite the nearness of a deal, Khalil al-Haya, Hamas’s deputy head, called on Gazan residents to march en masse to the border. Terrorists continue floating fire bombs into Israel. One was spotted above the skies of Netivot on Thursday. This continued aggression, too, follows North Korean strategy.

The North Korean Model