RUTHFULLY YOURS

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).

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.