RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-nasty-brexit-threatens-the-west-1537831191
Like many divorces, the struggle between the European Union and the United Kingdom gets more bitter as time drags on. At last week’s EU summit in Salzburg, Austria, the assembled countries, led by France, contemptuously brushed aside British Prime Minister Theresa May’s “Chequers” Brexit plan. Flexing its muscles, the EU made its message clear: Britain must conform to our demands.

If there is no deal by March 29, 2019, onerous trade barriers will snap into place. The likelihood that post-Brexit Britain will suffer severe economic shocks and dislocation is growing.

Mrs. May’s Chequers plan would allow British goods to continue to be sold freely in the EU after Brexit, while services would be governed under different rules. In return, Britain would accept EU standards governing manufactured and agricultural products. From the perspective of many Europeans, even those who sympathize with the U.K., the plan looks like an effort to continue to enjoy the advantages of EU membership while opting out of the obligations, like accepting migration from other EU countries. Moreover, EU leaders reason that if the path of secession is shown to be easy, more departures could follow and the union will be inexorably weakened.

Many Brexit opponents, both in the U.K. and on the Continent, hope that the chaos of a “no deal” Brexit will bring about a second British referendum. Next time, they hope, a chastened British public will vote to remain. But repeating the referendum until the people vote the “right” way is more likely to fan the flames of populist anti-Brussels sentiment around the EU than to quell them.

The U.S. has so far not been involved in the discussions between the U.K. and its EU partners. This is not because it has no interest in the matter. From America’s standpoint, a no-deal Brexit that weakens Britain and poisons EU-U.K. relations would be a disaster. It would undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and one of America’s most important and valued allies. And if a radicalized Labour Party takes power in the wake of a Brexit calamity, the survival of the trans-Atlantic alliance could be at risk. The U.K. itself could come apart. It is crucial from the U.S. perspective that any divorce settlement maintain Western and allied cohesion in a dangerous world.

Some Europeans may view Brexit mainly as a matter of economics, but it is also inescapably a major security concern for the West. The relationship between post-Brexit Britain and the rest of the West cannot be evaluated simply as an internal matter for the EU. Britain may be leaving the EU, but it is not leaving the American-led Western alliance. The implications of a nasty and brutal Brexit for the Atlantic community are too consequential for Washington to ignore.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-man-behind-the-curtain-in-corbyns-oz-a-virulently-anti-israel-spin-doctor/
One Labour insider says that because of top aide Seumas Milne, if the party came to power ‘Israel would have to assume diplomatic relations were unofficially null and void’

In the court of Jeremy Corbyn, few wield more power and evoke stronger reactions than Seumas Milne.

The British Labour party leader’s director of communications and strategy, Milne is a hardline and uncompromising left-winger, and a fierce opponent of Israel. If Corbyn makes it to Downing Street, his most senior aide is likely to act as an outrider, reinforcing and encouraging an anti-Zionist agenda that will be unprecedented in a West European state.

But Milne’s hostility to Israel and his hard-left politics are not a matter of mere speculation. Unlike many spin doctors and political strategists whose professional life has been largely lived behind the scenes, Milne has spent decades center stage.

Before joining Corbyn’s team in 2015, Milne was a longstanding senior journalist and columnist at The Guardian, Britain’s most prominent liberal daily newspaper. From that perch, he left a trail of writings that have landed him at the center of the continuing controversy over the Labour party’s refusal to adopt in full the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.

Milne’s establishment credentials are impeccable. The son of a former director general of the BBC, he was educated at Winchester, one of Britain’s leading public schools, and then went on to study at Balliol College, Oxford.

As former editor of the center-left New Statesman magazine Peter Wilby noted in a 2016 profile of Milne: “Many privately educated young people from elite backgrounds [who came of age during the 1970s] embraced revolutionary politics.”

At boarding school, he stood as a Maoist in a mock election, while a gap year spent in Lebanon sowed an enduring sympathy for the Palestinians.

“He spent his entire time at Balliol wearing a Mao jacket and talking with a fake Palestinian accent,” one of Milne’s fellow students told Wilby. “It was like performance art, the sort of thing Gilbert and George [British artists] would do. He launched a string of motions in the JCR [junior common room] attacking Israel.”

But, unlike his contemporaries — though like his boss — Milne appears never to have outgrown his youthful support for the far left or antipathy toward the West.
Not a journalist, rather a ‘propagandist’

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-warns-russia-deploying-s-300-in-syria-would-be-major-mistake/?utm_source=Breaking+News&utm_campaign=breaking-news-2018-09-24-1930169&utm_medium=emai

Israeli security cabinet to meet Tuesday over developments

Both Jerusalem and Washington warned Russia on Monday evening against its declared intention to provide the Syrian military with advanced surface-to-air missiles within two weeks, saying the move would further destabilize the region and increase already high tensions.

Israel’s high-level security cabinet was set to meet Tuesday morning to discuss the latest developments.

Russian President Vladimir Putin informed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of the decision to provide Syria with the S-300 system in a phone call Sunday.

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In response, according to a statement by Netanyahu’s office, “The prime minister said providing advanced weapons systems to irresponsible actors will magnify dangers in the region, and that Israel will continue to defend itself and its interests.”

Concurrently US National Security Adviser John Bolton said Russia’s announcement was a “major mistake” that would cause a “significant escalation” of tensions. He urged Moscow to reconsider.

Channel 10 News quoted a senior American official who noted that the system could endanger US Air Force jets operating against Islamic State in Syria.

“Bringing more anti-aircraft missiles into Syria won’t solve the Syrian army’s unprofessional and indiscriminate firing of missiles and won’t mitigate the danger to aircraft flying in the area,” the unnamed official said.

Russia made the announcement following last week’s downing of a Russian plane by Syria in a friendly fire incident that killed 15 Russia soldiers. The Russian military’s reconnaissance Ilyushin Il-20 was shot down by Syrian missile defense systems responding to an Israeli airstrike.

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/09/women-can-violent-men/

Violence by women against men receives little attention, yet nearly four decades of research reveals they are also targets of physical abuse. Why the silence? Because the activists’ ultimate goal is to tar all men, not just the relatively few perpetrators, as a collective and universally guilty group.

You may have heard of a Perth-based family counsellor who was forced to resign from Relationships Australia WA (RAWA) after posting on his private Facebook page an article social commentator Bettina Arndt wrote a few years ago for the Weekend Australian.[1] The article summarised the latest official statistics and research on domestic violence, providing evidence that most domestic violence is two-way, involving women as well as men.[2] This was regarded as a breach of policy, because, on its own website, RAWA says its domestic violence policy “is historically framed by a feminist analysis of gendered power relations” which, contrary to the international evidence, denies women’s role in domestic violence.[3]

By endorsing a feminist policy that is so morally bankrupt (and punishing a well-respected counsellor for refusing to do so)[4], this government-funded institution displays a disturbing lack of compassion for the wellbeing of all the male victims of domestic violence. RAWA’s policy is based on a discredited approach that perpetuates the false assumption that domestic violence is always perpetrated by men against women. And yet, data keeps mounting which indicate that domestic violence may be perpetrated by both men and women against their partners. A decade ago an official letter by the Harvard Medical School declared that “the problem is often more complicated, and may involve both women and men as perpetrators”. Based on the findings of an analysis of more than 11,000 American men and women aged eighteen to twenty-eight, the letter concluded:

When the violence is one-sided … women were the perpetrators about 70% of the time. Men were more likely to be injured in reciprocally violent relationships (25%) than were women when the violence was one-sided (20%). That means both men and women agreed that men were not more responsible than women for intimate partner violence. The findings cannot be explained by men’s being ashamed to admit hitting women, because women agreed with men on this point.[5]

The Harvard Medical School’s letter was based on a seminal work published in the American Journal of Public Health in 2007. Written by four experts in the field (Daniel J. Whitaker, Tadesses Laileyesus, Monica Swahn and Linda S. Saltman), it seeks to examine the prevalence of reciprocal (that is, two-way) and non-reciprocal domestic violence, and to determine whether reciprocity is related to violence and injury.[6] After analysing the data, which contained information about domestic violence reported by 11,370 respondents on 18,761 heterosexual relationships, the following conclusions were reached:

● A woman’s perpetration of domestic violence is the strongest predictor of her being a victim of partner violence;[7]

● Among relationships with non-reciprocal violence, women were reported to be the perpetrator in a majority of cases; [8]

● Women reported greater perpetration of violence than men did (34.8 per cent against 11.4 per cent, respectively).[9]

One explanation for these significant findings is that men are simply less willing than women to report hitting their partner. “This explanation cannot account for the data, however, as both men and women reported a larger proportion on nonreciprocal violence perpetrated by women than by men.”[10] In fact, the authors explain that women’s greater perpetration of violence was reported by both women (female perpetrators = 24.8 per cent, male perpetrators = 19.2 per cent) and by men (female perpetrators = 16.4 per cent, male perpetrators = 11.2 per cent).[11] Based on the information available, the authors concluded:

Our findings that half of relationships with violence could be characterised as reciprocally violent are consistent with prior studies. We are surprised to find, however, that among relationships with nonreciprocal violence, women were the perpetrators in a majority of cases, regardless of participant gender. One possible explanation for this, assuming that men and women are equally likely to initiate physical violence, is that men, who are typically larger and stronger, are less likely to retaliate if struck first by their partner. Thus, some men may be following the norm that “men shouldn’t hit women” when struck first by their partner.[12]

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/tory-leadership-candidates-theresa-may-replacement/

A look at the likeliest contenders to replace Prime Minister Theresa May should conservative discontent spark a battle for her job

Speaking at the E.U. summit in Salzburg last week, Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, humiliated Prime Minister Theresa May by saying that her Brexit plan “will not work” because it “risks undermining the single market.” To many conservatives, this was further proof of the E.U.’s uncompromising approach to the Brexit negotiations, and of the need for the cleaner break with Europe favored by the Vote Leave campaign.

In other words, the E.U.’s rejection of May’s plan was welcome news to many pro-Brexit Tories. The so-called Chequers deal, which May announced in July, offers a strikingly diluted version of the Brexit the country voted for. When it was unveiled, then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson called it a “turd” and resigned along with some lesser-known ministers.

Nevertheless, Britain must reach a deal with the E.U. by March 29 or else leave without one – and with the clock ticking, even some Brexiteers now favor a more “pragmatic” approach. For instance, Michael Gove, the environment secretary, a self-described “realist” who worked with Johnson on the Vote Leave campaign, has since defended the Chequers deal as “the right one for now,” saying it can be adapted later.

But not everyone within the Conservative party is happy with May’s proposal. In Westminster there are rumors of an imminent leadership challenge. Earlier this month, the London Times revealed that 50 Tory MPs had recently met to discuss getting rid of her. Those party insiders who remain loyal to the prime minister fiercely deny the rumors of an impending no-confidence vote. One told National Review that this story is “categorical bollocks.” Likewise, Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg oftentimes deny these claims, reiterating that it is Chequers, and not the Prime Minister, that they wish to “chuck.”

Still, given May’s political struggles and the discontent with Chequers brewing to her right, one wonders how many Tory MPs are quietly hoping to force her out. Referring to a leadership challenge, one Conservative MP told National Review, “If her policy doesn’t change, we’d end up with a very bad deal for Britain. Then the unthinkable [getting rid of her sooner rather than later] might become the essential.”

Whether or not a leadership challenge is upcoming, conservatives will likely not want Theresa May to run in the next election. They need someone who is capable of leading in decisive times, but also someone with enough grassroots appeal to win a general election. Who might this person be? In no particular order, here are some names being floated around the House of Commons.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13015/multiculturalism-britain-august

When the rape charge was put to him, Al-Noor, through his interpreter, told Hull Crown Court: “Guilty. Yes, I did that. Why not?”

A police officer phoned a charity to ask whether it was “culturally acceptable” for an Iraqi pedophile [whom he had just arrested] to have a 12-year-old girlfriend.

Officials received dozens of reports last year that women wanted to block visas to the UK for men they had been made to marry in countries such as Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

August 1. In a landmark ruling, a high court judge declared that a Muslim wife could divorce her husband and claim his assets, despite the fact that they married in an Islamic ceremony called a nikah, which is not legally recognized in Britain. In a written ruling, Mr. Justice Williams, who heard the case in the family division of the high court in London, concluded that the marriage fell within the scope of the 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act because the couple had expectations similar to those of a British marriage contract. The decision came after Nasreen Akhter divorced her husband, Mohammed Shabaz Khan, who attempted to block her separation on the basis that they were not legally married according to English law and only under Sharia law. Previous cases involving nikah marriages concluded that they were legally non-existent, meaning that spouses had no redress to the courts for a division of matrimonial assets if a marriage broke down. The ruling will make it easier for women who are married under Sharia law to divorce their husbands and split their assets. The ruling also appears to enshrine two parallel justice systems — British law and Sharia law — in Britain.

August 2. British teenagers are being forced to marry abroad and are therefore effectively raped and often impregnated while the Home Office “turns a blind eye” by handing visas to their husbands, according to The Times. Officials received dozens of reports last year that women wanted to block visas to the UK for men they had been made to marry in countries Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates. In almost half of the cases, records show, the visas were approved. Yvette Cooper, chairwoman of the home affairs select committee, said that she would demand answers from the Home Office over the findings. Experts believe there are thousands of victims in Britain, but that the vast majority are too afraid to come forward.

August 3. Safaa Boular, 18, of Vauxhall, London, was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum 13-year term, for plotting a jihadi attack on British soil. Alongside her mother and sister, who were imprisoned in June, Boular was part of Britain’s first all-female ISIS cell. Boular presented herself at the trial in Western clothing and declared herself deradicalized, but Judge Mark Dennis QC warned that she posed an ongoing threat: “There is insufficient evidence…to conclude at this stage that the defendant is a truly transformed individual.”

August 4. A police officer phoned a charity to ask whether it was “culturally acceptable” for an Iraqi pedophile to have a 12-year-old girlfriend, according to an investigation carried out by The Times. The officer had arrested the 26-year-old man but wanted to be “culturally sensitive” after the suspect said the relationship was acceptable in his community. The charity that took the call, Karma Nirvana, told the officer to deal with the man as he would any other suspected child abuser. The charity, which works with victims of forced marriage, said the case showed the danger of officers whose professional judgment was clouded by fear of being called racist.

August 5. Former foreign secretary (and possible future prime minister) Boris Johnson sparked a political firestorm after making politically incorrect comments about the burka and the niqab, the face-covering garments worn by some Muslim women. He compared Muslim women wearing burkas to bank robbers and letter boxes, but added, “that’s still no reason to ban it.” The ensuing debate over Islamophobia revealed the extent to which political correctness is stifling free speech in Britain. It also exposed deep fissures within the Conservative Party over its future direction and leadership. London Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said that Johnson’s remarks did not “reach the bar” to be a criminal offense.

August 6. The Daily Mail removed a report from its website that described the French capital as “Powder Keg Paris” after a French activist, Marwan Muhammad, complained that the report was Islamophobic. The article reported that 300,000 illegal migrants were living in the suburb of Saint-Denis, north of Paris, where drug dealing, crime and poverty were rising due to “immigration on a mammoth scale.”

August 6. Muhammed Mucahid, a 57-year-old a Turkish migrant living in London, was arrested after allegedly sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy in the restroom of a McDonald’s restaurant in Southend-on-Sea. Mucahid was accused of watching the boy attempt to use a urinal, then ushered or pushed him into an empty cubicle. It is alleged he kissed him on the cheek before the boy managed to escape and get back to his father, who had been waiting in line to order food.

August 7. Ishaq Al-Noor, a 21-yer-old Sudanese asylum seeker, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for raping a 17-year-old student in a cemetery in Spring Bank in Hull, East Yorkshire. When the rape charge was put to him, Al-Noor, through his interpreter, told Hull Crown Court: “Guilty. Yes, I did that. Why not?” Al-Noor, of West Hill, needed the services of one of the few interpreters in Britain who could speak his particular Sudanese dialect.

August 8. A Sky Data Poll found that 60% of Britons surveyed said that it is not racist to compare Muslim women wearing burkas to bank robbers and letter boxes, while 59% were in favor of a burka ban.

August 9. Three members of a Rochdale pedophile grooming gang were stripped of their British citizenship and now face possible deportation to Pakistan. Taxi drivers Adil Khan, Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rauf were among nine men imprisoned for gang raping teenage girls in 2012. In 2016, Theresa May, Home Secretary at the time, ruled that the three should have their names deleted from the roll of British citizens. The trio, all of whom have British children, challenged the decision. They claimed it violated their human right to a family life. Senior judges at the Court of Appeal ruled that stripping them of citizenship is “conducive to the public good.”

August 10. A bus driver in Bristol was disciplined after asking a Muslim woman to remove her face veil. “This world is dangerous,” he told her. The 20-year-old woman was with her two-month-old baby when the driver of a bus destined for Bristol’s city center explained that if he could not see her face, he did not know what she was capable of doing. “I’ve been humiliated in public, and I’m disappointed,” the woman said. “It’s 2018, we shouldn’t be like that. I’m being stereotyped.” The bus company apologized for the driver’s actions and said they took action against him.

August 10. Lewis Ludlow, a 26-year-old convert to Islam from Rochester, Kent, pled guilty to plotting a terror attack on London’s Oxford Street. Ludlow, who also used the name Ali Hussain, planned to rent a van and hit pedestrians. He also targeted Madame Tussauds and St Paul’s Cathedral, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said. Ludlow said that he had hoped to kill up to 100 people.

August 10. Prime Minister Theresa May was accused of trying to censor photos of her at a halal butcher for fear of alienating voters. The photo was taken during a campaign stop at London’s Smithfield Market, but her aides begged photographers not to use it, according to the Sun. The source said: “Her staff pleaded with us. They were terrified it would alienate people. Her team were petrified.” The Prime Minister’s office insisted that there were no restrictions on photos.

August 11. Liam Bradley, a 48-year-old motorcycle instructor, accused a Shell gasoline station in Blackburn of “racism” after he was told to remove his helmet while a woman in a burka was refueling her vehicle next to him. Venting his frustration on Facebook, Liam branded the different treatment as “racism at work in Britain,” and urged people to share his post so as to not “let them get away with it.” The post quickly went viral.

August 13. Razwan Faraz, a former deputy head teacher at the Nansen Primary School in Birmingham, lost an appeal to get his job back. Faraz, who was fired after saying that homosexuals should be “eradicated,” had alleged that he was the victim of religious discrimination, but a judge threw out his claim for unfair dismissal. Nansen Primary was embroiled in the “Trojan horse” scandal, in which an anonymous letter exposed an alleged plot by a group of conservative Muslims to take over several Birmingham schools and impose an Islamist ethos there.

August 14. Salih Khater, a 29-year-old British citizen of Sudanese origin, swerved his car into cyclists and pedestrians before driving towards police and crashing into a barrier outside the Houses of Parliament. Police said his case was being treated as terrorism due to the location, methods and alleged targeting of civilians and police officers.

August 15. Thirty-two members of a Muslim sex gang were charged with offenses including rape and trafficking after an investigation into sex crimes against children in Huddersfield. Police in West Yorkshire said the five alleged victims were girls aged between 12 and 18, with the offenses said to have occurred between 2005 and 2012. Those charged include: Banaras Hussain, 37; Banaris Hussain, 35; Mohammed Suhail Arif, 30; Iftikar Ali, 37; Mohammed Sajjad, 31; Fehreen Rafiq, 38; Umar Zaman, 30; Basharat Hussain, 31; Amin Ali Choli, 36; Shaqeel Hussain, 35; Mubasher Hussain, 35; Abdul Majid, 34; Mohammed Dogar, 35; Usman Ali, 32; Mohammed Waqas Anwar, 29; Gul Riaz, 42; Mohammed Akram, 41; Manzoor Akhtar, 29; and Samuel Fikru, 30. A further 12 men who were not named for legal reasons were charged with “numerous offenses in connection with the same investigation.”

August 16. A sermon at the Didsbury Mosque, where the Manchester bomber worshipped, called for the support of armed jihadist fighters, according to the BBC. In December 2016, an imam at the mosque was recorded praying for “victory” for “our brothers and sisters right now in Aleppo and Syria and Iraq.” The imam, Mustafa Graf, said that his sermon did not call for armed jihad and he has never preached radical Islam. The recording the BBC obtained is of Friday prayers at the mosque six months before Salman Abedi detonated a suicide bomb after an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena in May 2017. Abedi and his family regularly attended the mosque and his father sometimes led the call to prayer. The family’s whereabouts on the day of the sermon are not known, but the BBC reported that Abedi bought a ticket for the concert 10 days later. The bomb killed 22 people as well as the attacker, and injured hundreds of others.

August 17. A three-year-old girl was hospitalized after allegedly being subjected to female genital mutilation, which left her severely wounded. A London couple — the man, 42, and woman, 36, of African heritage — was accused of carrying out the procedure. The case is only the third time that charges of FGM have been brought to court. The two previous cases both resulted in acquittals, meaning that there has not been a single FGM conviction in the UK despite its being illegal in the country since 1985.

August 19. The number of girls being forced into marriage ahead of the summer holiday period has increased by more than a third in recent years, according to the national charity Karma Nirvana, which provides training to the police, National Health Service and social services. The group condemned the Home Office for shelving a campaign to raise awareness of the practice of girls taken abroad to be married off to strangers during the “critical” run-up to the summer break — the time of the year when the problem is at its peak. Speaking to The Independent, Karma Nirvana revealed that it had learned of 150 new cases of forced marriage from May to July, an increase of more than a third compared to the same period in 2015, when it received 99 new cases. The charity also found that cases of forced marriage had soared by 40% at the start of the school holidays in 2018. The charity also said that in July, it was receiving reports of cases at a rate of two a day, more than double the average of 25 seen in the first four months of the year, with 44 cases reported in May and June. Karma Nirvana’s founder, Jasvinder Sanghera, warned that thousands of girls would not be returning to school in September, having had their educations cut off and, in many cases, been left trapped in a cycle of poverty after falling victim to the crime.

August 20. Senior politicians and animal welfare groups condemned the British government over a deal that allows meat from lambs slaughtered without being stunned to be exported to Saudi Arabia. They said that the deal, estimated by the government to be worth £25 million ($33 million; €28 million) over the next five years, showed a disregard for animal welfare.

August 22. Abdul Jalil, a 64-year-old migrant from Bangladesh, was found guilty of cheating the British welfare system out of £28,000 ($37,000; €32,000) over a period of eight years. Jalil was spared time in jail after he told probation officers that “he would do unpaid work as long as it’s light work.” The judge ordered him to complete 120 hours.

August 24. A Muslim family was filmed butchering animal carcasses on a patio in public housing in Dagenham, Essex. The footage sparked a hygiene probe from the local council but a woman at the property denied any wrongdoing. It was not known if the family — celebrating Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival of sacrifice — slaughtered the animals at home or were simply butchering them. A columnist, for the Sun, Anila Baig, said that Muslim families traditionally sacrifice a goat or sheep and divide it into portions for Eid al-Adha, but added: “In this day and age, it’s extremely unusual for someone to do this themselves at home.” Mohammed Shafiq, of the Ramadhan Foundation, insisted the family had done nothing wrong in practicing their religion.

August 24. The Lancashire County Council temporarily suspended its ban on beef and lamb from animals that are not stunned, as is required before Islamic religious slaughter. The move is aimed at giving all of Lancashire’s county councilors the chance to reconsider the authority’s ban on halal meat from unstunned animals. The county council’s cabinet decided in July to provide only stunned halal meat, except poultry, to schools. But the Lancashire Council of Mosques objected and threatened to ask Muslim families across the county to boycott all school meals.

August 25. Yusuf Aka, a 22-year-old man from Grovebury Walk, Leicester, was sentenced to five years in prison for randomly stabbing a man during a violent rampage at a hospital in the city. Aka, on parole from a seven-year sentence for armed robberies when the incident happened, told the Leicester Crown Court that he did what he did because he wanted “attention.”

August 26. British Somali teenagers are being taken back to their parents’ homeland under the pretense of a holiday vacation and then kept in detention centers before being forced into marriages, according to the Guardian. The latest government figures showed a 100% year-on-year increase in the number of forced marriage cases handled by Home Office involving Somali children and teenagers. In 2017, the figure rose to 91. There were calls from 65 females and 26 males. Of those, 23 were under the age of 15. London had the highest number of victims at 64. When the Guardian contacted several UK-based Somali community organizations and charities, most said they had not heard of the practice or denied that forced marriage involving British Somali nationals was taking place.

August 30. Mohammed Hamza Siddiq, a 37-year-old convert to Islam, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on charges of encouraging terrorism on Facebook. Siddiq, formerly known as Andrew Calladine, did not enter a plea and was remanded in custody.

August 30. Abubaker Deghayes, 50, a former leader of the al-Quds Mosque in Brighton and brother of Guantanamo detainee Omar Deghayes, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after being found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice. Blackfriars Crown Court in London heard how Deghayes, who arrived in Britain from Libya in 1991 and is the father of two jihadis killed in Syria, threatened to have his wife shot if she gave evidence against him in a separate trial. In it, he was accused of assaulting his wife and children in what was described as an exorcism. Judge Rajeev Shetty reprimanded Deghayes for refusing to stand for the court: “You appear rather arrogant with no respect for the secular nature of our laws. You have refused to stand with the court opening and closing. This does not insult me but insults our proud legal system.”

August 31. Naa’imur Zakariyah Rahman, a 21-year-old jihadi from Finchley, north London, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for plotting to kill Prime Minister Theresa May. Rahman, who pledged allegiance to ISIS, had planned to bomb the gates of 10 Downing Street, kill guards and then attack the prime minister with a knife or gun. His plan was discovered by a network of undercover counter-terrorism officers from the Metropolitan police, the FBI and MI5. Judge Charles Haddon-Cave said that Rahman was “a very dangerous individual” and that it was “difficult to predict when, if ever, he will become deradicalized and no longer be a danger to society.”

An incisive and sobering look at the West since 9/11 by Mark Steyn, pointing out that since 9/11 Muslim immigration to the western world has doubled, leading to “a great demographic transformation” that has empowered Islamic extremism in Europe’s heartland while the West has spent 17 years “dithering around in the Hindu Kush”. A very worthwhile, if disturbing, view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=Ua8KIbPuGtc

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2018/09/betrayal-of-netherlands-video.html
Betrayal of the Netherlands (video)

Here’s a fresh warning from Geert Wilders about the fate of the Netherlands under the lunatic policy of Open Borders, a policy that is equally applicable to the other countries whose political elites seem hell-bent on destroying European civilisation, true liberalism, and their children’s futures in what many hapless observers are calling “The Great Betrayal”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=FJOQPR7wWBI

https://pjmedia.com/trending/pompeo-us-preparing-a-series-of-actions-against-venezuela/

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told Fox News that the U.S. is preparing a “series of actions” against Venezuela’s leaders to increase pressure on the government.

Reuters reports:

“You’ll see in the coming days a series of actions that continue to increase the pressure level against the Venezuelan leadership folks, who are working directly against the best interest of the Venezuelan people,” Pompeo said. “We’re determined to ensure that the Venezuelan people get their say.”

Pompeo gave no details on what those actions might be.

Last year, Washington imposed sanctions prohibiting trading new debt and equity issued by the Venezuelan government and its state oil company PDVSA. It has imposed several rounds of sanctions on government officials, including on Maduro.

Venezuela’s economy has collapsed under Maduro, with annual inflation running at 200,000 percent, and staple foods and basic medicine increasingly difficult to obtain, which has led to mass emigration.

Pompeo’s warning comes ahead of the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York next week attended by heads of state from around the world. Maduro has not attended the meetings since 2015 and this week said he may not attend the gathering because of concerns about his safety. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/fort_trump_and_the_future_of_eastern_europe.html

‘Fort Trump’ said the Polish president Andrzej Duda, during a White House press conference last week, would be an appropriate name to call the first American military base in Poland. Whether this Polish dream comes to pass or not is yet to be seen, but the strategic rationale behind it is anything but the joke U.S. pundits took it to be. It is, in fact, an encapsulation of the dilemma facing Eastern Europe and with it, NATO and the United States.

Barely concealed behind it is a multitude of challenges that must be addressed without delay if a serious crisis in Europe and the alliance is to be avoided. At the bottom of it is the seemingly unavoidable conflict over Muslim immigration. Virtually all of Eastern Europe refuses to accept any of them and is quite open about it. Politically-correct Western Europe, Germany first and foremost, is scandalized and wants to force the Eastern Europeans into repeating their own disastrous mistakes. And it does not help reminding them that Muslim integration has failed miserably in their own country with 64.8% of German Turks voting for Erdogan after 60 years of living in Europe. Nor does telling them that barely a century ago, much of the Balkans was under Ottoman rule, complete with infidel taxes and slave markets. Or that last year Poland alone issued 235,600 work permits to immigrants and is currently hosting over a million migrants, 40,000 of them from Vietnam.

Secondly, and here is where Fort Trump fits is, Poland and all of Eastern Europe simply do not trust the Western Europeans to defend them if push comes to shove. And it is enough to take a look at German military power in 2014 to realize that they are right. In that year, only 42 of 109 German Eurofighter planes were combat ready, as were 39 of 89 Tornado aircraft, while the Bundeswehr’s once mighty tank force had shrunk by 90%. And with 1.2% of GDP going to defense, it has certainly gotten much worse in the meantime. Is it any wonder that the Poles and all the rest of them, who have not forgotten what Russian domination means, will only feel safe if they have GIs stationed on their soil? Whether this is feasible now or in the future is another question, but it is important for Americans to understand why East Europeans feel the way they do and why the gulf between them and Western Europe seems to be widening.

Finally, there is an immediate issue that must be resolved if the alliance is not to suffer irreparable damage. It is a German-Russian deal called Nord-Stream 2 that is unquestionably directed against the interests of Eastern Europe. Perhaps it is worth recalling that the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to bring gas directly from Russia to Germany was called by the Polish foreign minister at the time “the Molotov-Ribbentrop pipeline.” This one deserves that appellation even more. By bypassing all of Eastern Europe, it stands to do great economic damage to Ukraine and other pass-through countries. It is a blatantly political Putin project and while Merkel continues to pretend that it is not, this is hypocrisy pure and simple. It is high time for Trump to say publicly that this project shall not pass.