RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/iran_is_ripe_for_regime_change.html

It is hard to believe that four decades has passed since the Islamic Revolution was forced upon the Iranian people and their freedom disappeared. Under the rule of these adherents of death, everything in Iran is deteriorating while Iran’s religious government is strong and has a great deal of control on everything. Too much control without independent checks and balances encourages corruption, nepotism and inefficiencies. As a result, the bulk of the nation’s wealth flows to a few select individuals.

This is a wake-up call for Iran’s authorities and the international community. Although denied by many through the past four decades, Iran is literally a political, social and economic time bomb closing in on a colossal detonation.

While Iran continues to develop its missile program that is sharply criticized by the United States and Israel, they simultaneously seek to suppress people’s desire to keep a share of the country’s wealth. Prosecution and imprisonment of innocent people and systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, along with hundreds of gruesome acts, have also been reported.

Iranians have witnessed several uprisings, but they have become numb and unable to function and conduct a normal life. The battle against the Islamic regime remains arduous and long. The mullahs will not give up power easily, even if that means the complete destruction of Iran.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270672/frances-latest-surrender-jihad-stephen-brown

It is being called “the biggest aquarium in the world.”

Perhaps the best known symbol of France to the world, the Eiffel Tower, will open this month with a new look that leaves some native French very disgruntled.

New walls of “extra clear”, bullet-proof glass, standing 10 ft. high and 2.5 inches thick, will now enclose Paris’s affectionately named ‘Lady of Iron’ on its north and south sides. Metallic walls of curved prongs of equivalent height will encase the other two sides, through which one will have to pass to access the Tower after submitting to security controls.

In addition, 420 blocks are being placed around the Tower to prevent jihadist vehicular attacks like those that occurred in Nice, Barcelona and Berlin. All of which has caused observers to complain the Tower will lose its aesthetic look, resembling now a “fortress.”

Under construction since last fall at a cost of about 40 million dollars, many French believe these latest security measures not only disfigure the venerable ‘Lady’, but represent, above all, the French political class’s impotence in face of the jihadist threat.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12340/jihad-allowance-work-ethic

After the ruling class, the highest respect and wealth is given to the jihadist class or military leadership class. Otherwise, the jihadist or military class might turn against the leadership and Islamic system itself. That is one reason why the highest pensions in most Muslim countries, as in Gaza and the West Bank, go to widows, parents and children of jihadists and military retirees.

“We [the Muslim world], don’t work and if we work, we don’t do it professionally. We do not produce . . . and we import everything from the needle to missiles… Muhammad ordered us to excel in everything ‘if you kill, do it properly, and if you slaughter, do it properly…’ How come the Zionist gang has managed to be superior to us? They have become superior through knowledge and technology and work ethics.” — Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars.

Today, as Muslims are escaping their vast, poverty-stricken Islamic territories in 54 Islamic nations for the greener lands of Europe and America, Westerners seem to think they are rescuing refugees. Many times they are, but other times this is just the latest version of a story that has been repeating itself for 1,400 years.

Recently, the President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, dismissed President Trump as just a “tradesman” who lacked the qualifications to handle political and international affairs. At face value, the criticism might sound similar to that of an opposition party alleging that Trump lacks political experience. Coming from an Islamic leader, however, it reflects a much deeper meaning: on how differently the Islamic culture views the work ethic and the means of acquiring wealth.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12662/britain-parliament-grooming-gangs

The approach the British authorities have taken in response to this national disaster appears largely based on countering secondary issues — most notably, individuals that protest the grooming, including at one point the arrest of parents attempting to rescue their daughter from her abusers.

There also seems to be a tacit alliance with much of the media to silence public discourse and, when all else fails, outright suppression.

In response to Britain’s ongoing sexual grooming scandal, a group of 20 MPs signed an open letter to recently appointed Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, urging coordinated action.

As the UK Parliament has 650 MPs, the 20 signatories constitute a mere 3% willing to support the protection of children subjected to gang-rape, trafficking and torture, and at times murder. Such a paltry number of politicians willing to speak out against child sexual slavery seems yet more evidence of the moral bankruptcy of Britain’s political elite and how low the country appears to have sunk.

Britain’s media elite have ignored the letter. Reporting has been limited to the local press in Oxford and Rochdale — areas afflicted by grooming — as well as a few alternative media outlets such as Breitbart London, and indirect reference on Sky News.

A key signatory of the letter, Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, whose constituency was made infamous by grooming, was forced from Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party front bench in 2017 for speaking openly about the prevalence of “British Pakistani men” in this type of child sexual exploitation. Given that Sajid Javid, then Communities Secretary, spoke in support of Champion, it is perhaps intentional that this letter was addressed to him in his new role as Britain’s first Muslim Home Secretary.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/united-nations-report-on-american-poverty-distorts-and-misrepresents/

It is unnecessary, politically biased, factually wrong, and a waste of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

Last month, the United Nations released a report about poverty in America. A single researcher spent two weeks in our country, visiting four states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. His report was harshly critical, condemning America for “punish[ing] those who are not in employment,” among other farcical notions.

Everyone knows there is poverty in America. Thousands of public officials at the federal, state, and local levels of government attempt to address poverty, as they should. Thousands more nonprofit, charitable, and religious organizations honorably dedicate themselves to fighting poverty in our country.

As governor of South Carolina, I saw firsthand the struggles of poor communities that often lack the economic and educational opportunities enjoyed elsewhere in America. And we did something about it. During my administration, we brought record-breaking numbers of new jobs to South Carolina, spanning each one of our state’s 46 counties; moved thousands of citizens from welfare to work; and made unprecedented investments into the education of students in economically challenged parts of our state. The fight against poverty is a complicated, multi-dimensional battle, but it is one that has the attention of Americans at all levels.

It certainly has the attention of the Trump administration. Its economic policies have helped bring unemployment down to the lowest level in decades. Its tax-reform law included a landmark measure to direct billions in new capital into distressed communities in every state.

https://pjmedia.com/michaelwalsh/in-germany-the-immigration-worm-has-turned/

I’m in Berlin at the moment, staying not far from Checkpoint Charlie, through which I passed many times during the Cold War, and not far from the spot where, sledgehammer in hand, I did my small bit to dismantle the Berlin Wall in November of 1989. So much has changed in the nearly 30 years since that memorable moment: McDonald’s and KFC have franchises on either side of the intersection of the Friedrichstrasse and the Zimmerstrasse, where the Wall briefly opened to allow a narrow passage from the American sector’s principal checkpoint across a short block flanked on both sides by the Todesstreifen of barbed-wire and machine-gun free-fire fields. On the western side — actually the southern side, by the compass — the fearsome Wall was gaily painted with graffiti; on the other, it was a blank slate of gray concrete, fully reflective of the Stalinist Leftist orthodoxy of the only captive nation that even remotely tried to make a go of the Marxist economic, social, and moral lie.

Now, three decades after the Wall came down, I’m back in East Berlin talking to old and new German friends — most of them Ossis, or East Germans — about the current state of Germany’s overriding social and political issue: the influx of more than one million cultural aliens, mostly from the Muslim ummah and thus by faith and profession profoundly opposed to Western Judeo-Christian civilization. And their answer is… not good for the Merkel administration. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12635/exceptional-islam

“Western observers… will need to accept Islam’s vital and varied role in politics and formulate policies with that in mind, rather than hoping for secularizing outcomes that are unlikely anytime soon, if ever.” — Shadi Hamid, author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World.

“‘Islamic exceptionalism’ is neither good nor bad. It just is.” — Shadi Hamid.

“As the transition from pre-modernity to modernity proceeds with its twists and turns, the Muslim world, over time will progress and develop to the point that eventually there will arise a theology, as occurred in Christendom, consistent with the needs of Muslims and reconciled with modernity.” — Salim Mansur, author of The Qur’an Problem and Islamism: Reflections of a Dissident Muslim.

In early May, the Brookings Institution held a lecture and panel discussion in India on the question of whether Islam is “exceptional” and what it means for the future of Western democracy. A main speaker at the event was Shadi Hamid, author of a 2016 book, Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam Is Reshaping the World.

Hamid, an American Muslim, repeated the thesis of his book, summarized in an op-ed in Time magazine.

“Because of its outsize role in law and governance, Islam has been — and will continue to be — resistant to secularization,” he wrote. He explained:

“Unlike Jesus Christ, the Prophet Muhammad was a theologian, a preacher, a warrior and a politician, all at once. He was also the leader and builder of a new state, capturing, holding and governing new territory. Religious and political functions, at least for the believer, were no accident. They were meant to be intertwined in the leadership of one man.

“Second, more than merely the word of God, for Muslims, the Quran is God’s direct and literal speech. It is difficult to overstate the centrality of divine authorship. This does not mean Muslims are literalists; most are not. But it does mean the text cannot easily be dismissed as irrelevant.”

This means, he added, that “Western observers… will need to accept Islam’s vital and varied role in politics and formulate policies with that in mind, rather than hoping for secularizing outcomes that are unlikely anytime soon, if ever.”

It happened back in April, although it was reported only in the German media; apparently the English-language media didn’t find it newsworthy that a Muslim migrant beheaded his one-year-old daughter on a Hamburg train platform. But the sheer horror of this incident has been compounded now by Angela Merkel’s government, which has reportedly banned further reporting on the incident. Anything to keep as many Germans as possible ignorant and complacent regarding just how devastating the Muslim migrant influx into Germany really is.

“According to eyewitnesses,” says one news report on this incident, “the 33-year-old suspect, Mourtala Madou, beheaded his one-year-old daughter in front of a horrified crowd of commuters at Jungfernstieg station on Thursday April 12, and then stabbed his German girlfriend, the mother of the child. The suspect allegedly stabbed the infant from behind, while she was sitting in her stroller, and then severed her neck. He then allegedly stabbed his girlfriend in the chest before fleeing the scene, dumping the murder weapon in a train station trash can. He was later arrested…. Eyewitnesses can be heard saying that the suspect cut the babies [sic] head off.”

Police spokesman Timo Zill said the murders were “very targeted”; eyewitnesses described them as an “honor killing.” In beheading the baby, Madou also utilized a form of killing especially favored by Islamic jihadis, heeding the Qur’anic injunction, “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (47:4).

In response, the Merkel government did not open an investigation of honor killing, or of Muslim migrant crime. It did not commission a study of Islamic theology and culture, and the effects of importing a large number of people from a culture of violence into Germany. Instead, “German media has been allowed by the government to report on the murder of the mother, but Angela Merkel’s pro-migrant government banned German media outlets from reporting on the decapitated baby. Germany’s largest newspaper, Bild, report on the death of the mother of four, without mentioning the details regarding the barbaric murder of her child.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-in-central-america-again-1531074911

Sometimes it seems that Central America is unwilling or unable to make the connection between strong institutions and a free and just society. The privation in the northern triangle—Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador—that has sent thousands of migrants to the U.S. border in search of work and a better life is ultimately the result of failed institutions.

The bloody upheaval in Nicaragua is another case in point. Since April 19 more than 300 people have been killed while protesting against strongman Daniel Ortega, according to local human-rights groups. The U.S. Treasury last week imposed sanctions on three Ortega henchmen—the national police commissioner and a Sandinista Youth official for human-rights violations, and the head of Nicaragua’s state-owned oil company for corruption.

Central America is strategically important to enemies of the U.S., and Russia’s role is particularly notable. It has a large and secretive satellite compound at the edge of the Nejapa lagoon on the outskirts of Managua, and its Interior Ministry has a large “police training center” in the capital’s Las Colinas neighborhood. The Soviet Union was an Ortega ally in the 1980s, and Russia today has every incentive to help him prosper as a dictator.

Nicaragua hasn’t had a fair, transparent national vote since the one that brought Mr. Ortega to power in 2006. He and his unpopular wife Rosario Murillo, now Nicaragua’s richest couple, are often called “the new Somozas,” a reference to the ruling family Mr. Ortega’s Sandinista movement removed in 1979.

When it’s all over except for carting away the dead, as in Venezuela, U.S. diplomats and legislators are good at tsk-tsking abuses of power. But when something can still be done about it, they are mostly AWOL and sometimes complicit. Witness U.S. funding of the U.N.’s International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG. CONTINUE AT SITE