RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-left-turn-in-mexico-1530496717

Mexico entered a brave old world on Sunday by electing former Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador to a six-year term as president. The 64-year-old left-wing populist has lost twice, in 2006 and 2012, but this time he won against two weak candidates while promising more moderate policies.

The official vote count wasn’t available late Sunday evening, but exit polls gave Mr. López Obrador a large enough margin to call him the winner. Ricardo Anaya of the National Action Party (PAN) is expected to finish a distant second with Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) candidate José Antonio Meade in third. Early indications suggest the president-elect’s coattails will make his Morena front, which includes smaller parties, the largest coalition in both legislative chambers.

The campaign was marred by violence at the local level. But kudos to Mexico’s National Electoral Institute, which handled 157,000 polling stations and some nine million more registered voters than in 2012. The largely peaceful vote is another milestone in Mexico’s progress as a democracy since the days when Mr. López Obrador worked for the PRI that ran the country as a one-party state.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12619/europe-islamic-state

“The growing religiousness is not an expression of marginalization. We are talking about people who are well-integrated, but who want to be religious”. — Professor Viggo Mortensen.

“The vision is an Islamic state — Islamic society… Muslims will prefer sharia rule. But the vision for twenty years from now is for sharia law to be part of Germany, that sharia will be institutionalized in the state itself”. — “Yusuf”, in a documentary series, False Identity.

“I will pick them one by one — I will start with people around me… If every Muslim would do the same in his surroundings, it can happen with no problem… you don’t confront him [the German] with force; you do it slowly… There will be clashes, but slowly the clashes will subside, as people will accept reality.” — “Yusuf”, in a documentary series, False Identity.

Europe will still exist but, as with the great Christian Byzantine Empire that is now Turkey, will it still embody Judeo-Christian civilization?

A Dutch government report published in June showed that Muslims in the Netherlands are becoming more religious. The report, based on information from 2006-2015, is a study of more than 7,249 Dutch nationals with Moroccan and Turkish roots. Two thirds of the Muslims in the Netherlands are from Turkey or Morocco.

According to the report, 78% of Moroccan Muslims pray five times a day, as do 33% of Turkish Muslims. Approximately 40% of both groups visit a mosque at least once a week. More young Moroccan women wear a headscarf (up from 64% in 2006 to 78% in 2015) and large majorities of both groups eat halal (93% of Moroccan Muslims and 80% of Turkish Muslims). 96% of Moroccan Muslims say that faith is a very important part of their lives, whereas the number is 89% for Turkish Muslims. The number of Dutch Moroccan Muslims who can be described as strictly adhering to Islam has increased from 77% in 2006, to 84% in 2015. For Turkish Muslims, the numbers have increased from 37% to 45%. There are few secular Muslims — 7% among Turkish Muslims, 2% among Moroccan Muslims.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12620/turkey-nato-double-game

Why would Turkey first order a Russian defense system and then turn around and make a cooperation agreement with Europe for the same purpose?

This goes back to America’s apprehension that if Turkey uses the S-400s along with the U.S. F-35s, Russia could gain access to information about the aircraft’s sensitive technology.

If Turkey is playing a double game with NATO, let us hope that the United States does not fall prey to it.

In January, 2018 Turkey reportedly awarded an 18-month contract for a study on the development and production of a long-range air- and missile-defense system to France and Italy, showing — ostensibly — Turkey’s ongoing commitment to NATO. The study, contracted between the EUROSAM consortium and Turkey’s Aselsan and Roketsan companies, was agreed upon in Paris, on the sidelines of a meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The contract for the study came on the heels of a deal between Ankara and Moscow, according to which Turkey would purchase the S-400 missile defense system — one of the most sophisticated on the global market — from Russia. The question is: Why would Turkey first order a Russian defense system and then turn around and make a cooperation agreement with Europe for the same purpose?

The answer is likely that Ankara is trying to pretend that it is still loyal to NATO, at a time when its strategic inclinations seem to indicate otherwise.

As Turkey is a member of NATO, its decision to opt for the S-400, a non-NATO missile-defense system, has been the subject of speculation and controversy. NATO has adopted the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA), according to which the United States plans to deploy its missile-defense systems in various parts of Europe, to protect its forces and those of other NATO members from Iranian missile attacks. Turkey’s move appears to run counter to the EPAA.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12628/turkey-iran-islamism

Khomeini’s support came from Tehran and a few other big cities, notably Isfahan, while Erdogan’s support base is in rural areas and small and medium cities.

While at least 40,000 people have been executed under Khomeini and his successors, Erdogan refuses to bring back the death penalty in Turkey.

Right now, according to Islamic Chief Justice Ayatollah Amoli Larijani, there are 15000 Iranians under death sentence in prison, waiting to be executed.

Is Turkey going to be another Iran? With President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest electoral victory the question is making the rounds in Western political circles. Despite the fact that Sunday’s election gives Erdogan immense new powers, my short answer to the question is a firm: no!

In analyzing the nature of political power in any form the first question to ask concerns the provenance of that power. For where does power comes from determines where it may go.

In Iran in 1979 power was like a box of jewels thrown in the street, ready for anyone to pick up. The Shah had left the country and most members of the Council of Monarchy he had appointed were in the French Riviera, while the army Top Brass had declared “neutrality” which meant the military wouldn’t stop anyone from picking up the box of jewels in the street.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12616/iran-bazaar-revolt

The Grand Bazaar is not just a mega shopping mall; it is the core of a whole way of life. It contains six mosques, 30 hotels, more than 20 banks, six libraries, 9 religious seminaries,13 primary and secondary schools, and is the source of direct or indirect employment for more than 600,000 people.

Since 1979, the Grand Bazaar’s enthusiasm for the Khomeinist regime has cooled somewhat without turning into open hostility. Thus, the current events must be regarded either as a fleeting aberration or as a serious sign that the Khomeinist regime may be losing one of its major bases of support.

One thing is certain: The Grand Bazaar has well-established and tested mechanisms for popular mobilization and a show of force in the streets. If it is angry, it can show its anger. And when it does, it would be foolish for anyone not to take notice.

Last week, Tehran’s Grand Bazaar was shut, with its example imitated in the capital’s other business districts such as Maqsud-Shah, Qaysarieh, Khayyam, Sayyed Vali and Pachenar, among others. At the same time, bazaars in several other cities, notably Isfahan, Mash’had, Bandar Abbas, Kerman and Tabriz also organized token strikes in sympathy with Tehrani merchants.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12569/guilt-museums-artifacts

“The fact is that we have no idea what would have become of the world’s ‘looted’ antiquities if they hadn’t been preserved in Western collections. Would the treasures of Beijing’s Summer palace have survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution? Would the Elgin marbles have survived Turkish tour guides chopping off chunks to sell as souvenirs? Would Daesh [ISIS] have spared those Middle Eastern artefacts that survive in European museums?” — Zareer Masani, historian.

When Christians in Iraq were exiled, murdered or persecuted en masse by the so-called Islamic State, the West stood silent — as if these Christians were the agents of Western colonialism and not the legitimate and oldest inhabitants of the Middle East, long before the Arabs converted to Islam.

When a mob destroyed the French Institute in Cairo, burning books and collections, those who now want to return the “colonial artifacts” stood silent. Where are our Monuments Men now?

A “sense of guilt” for colonialism is debasing the West from within, according to Professor Bruce Gilley, and authoritarian regimes such as Iran, Russia, China and Turkey are profiting from this weakness.

The Romans called it damnatio memoriae: the damnation of memory that resulted in destroying the portraits and even the names of the fallen emperors. The same process is now underway in the West about its colonial past. The cultural elite in the West now seem so haunted by feelings of imperialist guilt that they are no longer confident that our civilization is something to be proud of.

A sense of guilt now seems a kind of post-Christian substitute religion that seduces many Westerners. The French scholar Shmuel Trigano suggested that this ideology is turning the Westerners into “post-colonial subjects” who no longer believe in their own civilization, but instead what will destroy it: multiculturalism. In France, for example, a manifesto was launched for “a multicultural and post racial republic”. The result would be, in the words of the anthropologist Jean-Loup Amselle, a “war of identities” and a clash between communities. Last month, the UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said that, if elected Prime Minister, he would order the British Museum to return to Greece the Elgin Marbles, the frieze that had surrounded the Parthenon of Athens and one of the major attractions of the British Museum. “This whole campaign is sheer lunacy,” wrote Richard Dorment. But it is a lunacy spreading all over Europe.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced that he wants to change the rules that make French public collections untouchable, and allow the return to Africa of dozens of historical artifacts now in the Louvre Museum. Macron has appointed two commissioners, the writer Senegalese Felwine Sarr and the art expert Bénédicte Savoy, to prepare a report.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12575/britain-deradicalization-programs

The two effective initiatives were, “one defying political correctness and tackling difficult issues head-on and the other directly addressing extremism in religious [Islamic] texts.” — The Times.

Unwittingly, Home Secretary Sajid Javid showed just why the deradicalization programs he is defending do not work. He said nothing about the boy’s family’s religious faith, radical Islam or the narrative of hate and intolerance founded on a “radical” interpretation of the Quran and Sunna to which the boy may well have been exposed at home, at the mosque and over the internet.

The trouble with Javid’s tribute to those Muslims who “stand up against all forms of extremism” is that bigotry and bloodlust are not merely figments of Islamist extremists’ minds. They stem from an authentic interpretation of Quranic verses and hadiths, which currently dominates the Muslim world.

The vast majority of deradicalization programs in the UK are at best ineffective and at worst counter-productive, according to a recent study by the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT, also known as the “nudge unit”), a social purpose company partially owned by the UK government, but that works in partnership with the Cabinet Office.

As the Times reported recently, BIT examined 33 deradicalization programs across Britain, in schools, youth centers, sports clubs and English-language classes. Most of these are part of Prevent — a strategy presented in 2011 to the UK Parliament by the Secretary of State for the Home Department — designed to keep vulnerable citizens from becoming terrorists or supporting any form of violent extremism inspired by radical Islamist or right-wing ideologies. BIT found that only two of the programs have been successful.

The main reason for the failure of the other 31 programs, according to the Times’ report on the study, is:

“…that facilitators were uncomfortable dealing with sensitive topics and would often refuse to engage if they were brought up. BIT found that teachers in particular were afraid to bring up matters of race and religion with their students without appearing discriminatory, often causing them to refuse to talk about these topics entirely.”

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/06/identity-politics-empire-debate/

For many groups, such as Copts and Jews, empires ruled by the Ottomans, Habsburgs and Britain were frequently more benign than the ethnically based nation-states that succeeded them. The plight of the East African Indians once British rule ended constitutes a clear example.

Mealtimes, “institutional racism” and the “historical amnesia of British colonialism”. They were all there on January 27 when a group of fourteen, led by students at SOAS (formerly the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London), chanting, “We have nothing to lose but our chains”, protested in the Blighty UK Café in Finsbury Park, London. They demanded that Chris Evans, the owner, “apologise to the local community” for commemorating Winston Churchill instead of presenting him as a racist who perpetuated the injustices of the empire. The café offers a breakfast called “The Winston” and décor featuring model Spitfires and a mock-up of an air-raid shelter. A change of décor and menu was demanded.

The SOAS Students’ Union, in a statement, declared that the café “exercises a concerted historical amnesia of British colonialism, which is offensive to those who continue to experience institutional racism”. Earlier, a large mural of Churchill had been repeatedly defaced. The phlegmatic Evans remarked, “If you cannot celebrate Britain and great Britons you are just erasing history and if you cannot celebrate Churchill, you cannot celebrate anyone.” In 2002 Churchill was voted the “Greatest Briton” in a large-scale BBC poll.

https://www.milsteinff.org/from-auschwitz-to-america-lessons-from-europes-killing-fi

This month, we had the privilege to learn more about the devastating and cruel truths of the Holocaust. We traveled to six countries – the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Germany – with 100 leading American philanthropists and scholars, and together, we tried to wrap our heads around the scope of the genocide carried out by Nazi Germany and its European collaborators.

We saw the horrific conditions suffered by the Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau, which were built with a single purpose: to eradicate the Jewish and Gypsy peoples. We saw mass graves in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Poland, where hundreds of thousands of Jewish families perished by firing squads because their gentile neighbors collaborated with or joined in when the German Killing Machine arrived. At the Rumbula Forest Memorial, we paid our respects to some of the 2.4 million Jews who were killed in the Hidden Holocaust by bullets – some, murdered by neighbors they had grown up alongside.

Far too many people view these places as simply historical sites, where you can learn something about the past, but nothing about the future. Many – including some within the Jewish community – can’t comprehend that the antisemitism that existed in Nazi Germany might happen again, especially in America.

Facing these horrors up close focused our attention on the relevance of the Holocaust to our present day. How can we ensure that Never Again isn’t just a slogan, but a mindset and an action plan?

Three lessons from our journey stand out.

First, events like the Holocaust don’t happen overnight. They result from a process of systematic racism, intimidation, and discrimination that lasts many years.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/06/sharia-stealth/

Criminalising comments deemed offensive to any religious group intimidates those who wish to freely express their ideas and opinions, a liberty our democracy has always maintained should be available to all. Such laws are antithetical to all the West represents — and all it should be defending.

The infiltration of non-Muslim countries by Islam is one of the strategies Mohammed devised when creating his ideology. His initial approach was persuasion through infiltration and, if that failed, he then adopted a military strategy through conquest and total domination. This is still Islam’s approach today. The financing of universities by Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for gaining critical leverage and massive influence has been endemic in the United States but also other Western countries, including Australia. This enables these oppressive Islamic regimes to strategically insert academics who become prominent and thus extremely influential in corrupting the minds of gullible students.

There is no Centre for Western Civilisation in Australian universities. However, there are plenty of centres dedicated to the promotion of Islamic states and societies. Take a look for instance at the Centre for Muslim States and Societies at the University of Western Australia. Its director is Samina Yasmeen (BSc Punjab, MSc Quaid-i-Azam, MA ANU, PhD Tas), a self-described expert in ‘the role of Islam in world politics’. When the media reported violent protests in Sydney by radical Muslims attacking the police, she dared to create a moral equivalence between the violence of Muslims and the so-called ‘violence’ of YouTube videos that ‘inflame emotions across the Muslim world.’[1] These videos ‘violate the special place assigned to Prophet Mohammed. Any disrespect is felt as an intrusion into this sacred space’, she said.[2]

This Muslim academic claims it is the disrespect of Islam that triggers the violent responses of radical Muslims against non-Muslims. Instead of addressing the appalling levels of intolerance and bigotry within the Muslim community, Yasmeen proposes a form of punishment of those who ‘violate’ the ‘religious feelings’ of Muslims. She argues that Australians should be forced to respect these ‘religious feelings’, which cannot be ‘invaded’ by infidels. Any criticism of Islam is, in her opinion, a primary source of Islamic terrorism and all sorts of intolerant behaviour: ‘I would argue that intentionally violating spaces sacred to Muslims or any other people falls within the space of violence. Though not obviously targeting anyone living today, deliberating inflaming emotions needs to be acknowledged as violence’, she says.[3] Yasmeen also talks about ‘coordinating financial sanctions’ that ‘could help the Muslims deal with such attacks on religions feelings’. In order to ‘help Muslims to deal with such attacks on religious feeling’, a form of Sharia law by stealth should be imposed:

A billion dollar lawsuit against those who target religious beliefs, and engage in intense violation of sacred spaces, would shift the whole discussion to a different place. Even if the courts throw out the suit, it would focus attention on legal pathways to oppose such violence aimed at space that is sacred for a quarter of humanity. It may even create pathways that counter violence of this kind. [4]