RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12945/italy-hungary-immigration

“We are close to a historic turning point at the continental level. I am astonished at the stupor of a political left that now exists only to challenge others and believes that Milan should not host the president of a European country, as if the left has the authority to decide who has the right to speak and who does not — and then they wonder why no one votes for them anymore.” — Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.

“This is the first of a long series of meetings to change destinies, not only of Italy and of Hungary, but of the whole European continent.” — Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.

“We need a new European Commission that is committed to the defense of Europe’s borders. We need a Commission after the European elections that does not punish those countries — like Hungary — that protect their borders.” — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini have pledged to create an “anti-immigration axis” aimed at countering the pro-migration policies of the European Union.

Meeting in Milan on August 28, Orbán and Salvini, vowed to work together with Austria and the Visegrad Group — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — to oppose a pro-migration group of EU countries led by French President Emmanuel Macron.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-germany-at-odds-over-serbia-kosovo-land-swap-1535729377?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=1&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

VIENNA—The U.S. and Germany are at odds over a possible plan to redraw the border between Serbia and Kosovo and resolve one of Europe’s last major territorial disputes, with Berlin concerned the move could open a Pandora’s box of ethnic recriminations in some of the region’s poorest countries.

Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, is regarded by Serbia as a breakaway state. But to seek backing for eventual European Union membership, the leaders of both nations have said they are considering border changes that could make the countries more ethnically and religiously homogeneous. There have been repeated clashes since 1999 between ethnic Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, especially in the ethnically divided northern city of Mitrovica.

National security adviser John Bolton said last week that Washington had no qualms with the idea, despite two decades of Western opposition. But German officials said Friday they remain deeply skeptical.

“We don’t think discussions on a land swap between Kosovo and Serbia are constructive,” said German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, on his way into discussions in Vienna between EU foreign ministers and Balkan officials. “It can open up too many old wounds among the people there.” CONTINUE AT SITE

http://standpointmag.co.uk/features-september-2018-rw-johnson-the-inevitability-of-fortress-europe-migration
Watching European attempts to come to terms with the problem of migrants from the Third World is to watch a slow-motion train crash. All manner of liberal nostrums about the duty to accept refugees, the right to free movement within the EU and even the notion of a secular indifference to religious distinctions are all being tested to destruction. There seems only one possible conclusion: a Fortress Europe with distinct echoes from its past as Christendom. This may not be what Europe’s elites would choose but popular pressure seems unlikely to allow anything else.

It has often been argued that the reason for the barbarian invasions which ended the Roman Empire lay in climatic changes in Central Asia producing famine conditions which propelled vast population movements westward. Today’s crisis lies in similarly profound events far from Europe which one could sum up as the failure of Third World nationalisms. These arose several generations ago under leaders such as Nasser and Nkrumah, with a promise to modernise and democratise the Middle East and Africa. This promise failed, for it is notoriously difficult to leapfrog the long historical development which has produced democratic modernity in Europe. The result in the Middle East was that although the Arab nationalists swept away the last kings — Farouk of Egypt in 1952, Muhammad VIII of Tunisia in 1957, Faisal II of Iraq in 1958 and Idris of Libya in 1969 — their successors turned out to be even more tyrannical and just as incapable of modernising their countries. One after another these regimes foundered in social unrest or civil war.

The story of African nationalism has been somewhat similar though the complication here is the huge demographic surge which will over the next generation add an extra billion Africans. There is simply no way that Africa’s shaky economies and polities can produce the housing, education and jobs required to meet that surge. The result will be large movements of population towards Europe — and these will be opportunistically joined by Afghans, Pakistanis and others. In other words, what we have seen to date is merely the first trickle of a developing flood. Without doubt all these migrants will claim to be refugees.