RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/saudi-arabian-arrest-wave-shows-crown-princes-bid-to-control-change-1528191000

Dozens of high-profile Saudis are locked up in jail, many of them denounced as traitors. Hundreds, possibly more, are barred from leaving the kingdom. And others have quietly left their homeland with no plans to return, creating the rudiments of an overseas Saudi dissident community.

Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, has gone further than any of his predecessors to relax the kingdom’s strict social rules. But he is also overseeing one of the most ruthless crackdowns on perceived dissenters that Saudi Arabia has experienced in decades.

After high-profile autumn roundups of what the government said were dissident clerics and corrupt businessmen, the latest wave of arrests, in May, have focused in part on women and men who pushed for the right of women to drive, even though the Saudi government is set to begin recognizing that right on June 24.

The message behind the crackdown, which has come despite scant evidence of public dissent, is that the crown prince alone intends to dictate the pace and scope of change in Saudi Arabia, critics say.

“We were hoping for a more balanced society, more rights,” says a Saudi rights activist who has come under government pressure. “Instead what has happened is more repression, just with a different ideology.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jordans-prime-minister-steps-down-in-wake-of-protests-1528128116

Jordan’s Prime Minister Hani Mulki resigned Monday after thousands protested in recent days against his government’s plan to increase taxes, causing uncertainty in a country that is a vital U.S. ally in the region.

King Abdullah II has accepted the resignation of Mr. Mulki’s government, Jordan’s Royal Court said.

The king thanked the prime minister in a statement for his service and dedication in making difficult and unpopular decisions.

The resignation appears aimed at alleviating tensions after intensifying calls for Mr. Mulki’s dismissal by protesters who said his handling of the economy caused problems. But it remains unclear if the demonstrators will be pacified by the move.

The protests began Wednesday in Amman and other Jordanian cities and towns against a proposed revision to the country’s income tax law that would raise taxes, allow authorities to target more people and scrap exemptions on medical treatment and education.

The tax amendments follow a series of unpopular austerity measures the government adopted earlier this year, including the removal of subsidies on bread that nearly doubled its price. The tax on the sales of a wide range of products and services, including internet subscriptions, was also increased.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/06/history-repeats-new-boer-war/

When the topic is race, the media concentrates on fripperies, such as Hollywood gripes that black actors aren’t being nominated for enough. Meanwhile, the racist murders of white South Africans by black thugs is deemed too sensitive to note, let alone protest.

The South African election of 1994 was supposed to usher in a new era of tolerance, a rainbow nation, free from the apartheid past. However, after twenty-four years of African National Congress government, South Africa is simply the revenge nation, with Lord Milner’s venality over a century ago being matched by people like Julius Malema, the leader of the so-called Economic Freedom Fighters party.

Just as the concentration camp policy of Lord Kitchener resulted in the deaths of 28,000 Boer women and children in the third phase of the Anglo-Boer War (1899 to 1902), so too has there been the same callous and criminal disregard by the present South African government. While history never exactly repeats, it is noticeable that the Boers (farmers), or Afrikaners, are again bearing the brunt of neglect, and worse.

The critics of the actions of successive white South African governments from 1910 to 1994, and particularly after 1948, have nothing to boast about with their silence and inaction, unless exacting revenge is now considered a political achievement.

In the ANC period of governance, highest estimates cite almost 70,000 whites being murdered while scores more have been raped, robbed and tortured. The murder rate on farms has made farming in South Africa one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. In the first quarter of this year there have been 134 farm attacks, with eighteen murders, at a strike rate of 1.5 attacks per day. The average numbers of attackers is three, with eleven being the highest recorded. Victims are often elderly, an eighty-eight-year-old being the oldest.

As the international liberal website Genocide Watch notes, “on average about 50 people per day are murdered in South Africa of which 20 are white”. So given that there are more blacks killed, why should there be special concern for whites? Because whites constitute only 8 per cent of the population (4.5 million) and 95 per cent of white victims are murdered by blacks. In addition there have been some 5000 members of farming families murdered on the ANC’s watch, many of them by hideous cruelty. Just as “black lives matter”, to coin a current phrase in the US, so too do white lives matter in South Africa. There the minority are in a far worse situation than American blacks.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270348/wolves-sheeps-clothing-bruce-bawer

Muslim politicians in the Western world come in two general varieties: those rare ones who are candid about their desire to transform the West in accordance with the dictates of their faith, and those, far greater in number, who prefer to disguise that ambition. The first category includes people like Abdirizak Waberi, a Swedish MP turned Islamic school principal who has actually admitted he believes in “banning music and dancing, prohibiting boys and girls from socializing, and allowing men to beat their four wives with sticks when they became disobedient,” and Brussels city councilman Redouane Ahrouch, who openly advocates for sharia government and recently called for a separation of the sexes on that city’s public transport.

In the second category are Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, who while striving to pose as a progressive allows his mask to slip now and then (recently, he told an interviewer that “every Muslim is a bit of a salafist”), and London mayor Sadiq Khan, another faux liberal who has, in fact, ordered police to put less emphasis on monitoring potential terrorists and more emphasis on harassing Islam critics. And let’s not forget Minnesota’s (and the DNC’s) own Keith Ellison, who poses as a standard-issue Democrat but belonged for a decade to the Nation of Islam, speaks at CAIR events, and has ties to several pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic groups.

Also belonging to the latter category is Somali-born Bashe Musse, a Norwegian Labor Party politician who has been a member of the Oslo City Council since 2011. During the last couple of weeks he’s been making headlines because of a Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) report on “dumping.” What’s dumping? Like honor killing and female genital mutilation, it’s a common practice in Europe’s Muslims communities. Instead of sending their kids to regular neighborhood schools, many Muslim parents in Europe send their children off to madrasses – Koran schools – in the countries from which they, the parents, emigrated. The children stay in these schools for years at a time, memorizing the Islamic holy book while their agemates back in Europe learn math, science, and literature.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270356/european-union-run-lloyd-billingsley

Back in March, the League party and anti-establishment Five Star Movement gained victory in what Angelo Codevilla called Italy’s “Trump election.” The governing Democratic Party, descendant of Italy’s Communist Party, managed only 18 percent of the vote, and the biggest loser was the Democrats’ former prime minister Matteo Renzi “the international Left’s Boy Wonder, the Italian Obama.” Nothing like this had happened in a century.

“Italy’s voters choose populists,” CNN proclaimed, “deliver stinging rebuke to Europe.” European Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker described the election as the “worst-case scenario” for Europe. Since the March populist victory, Italy has been without a government, but that changed on June 1.

As the Telegraph reported, the “anti-immigrant, hard Right” League party and “anti-establishment” Five Star movement have agreed to a compromise, with Guiseppe Conte serving as prime minister. Like the election itself, that had leftist billionaire George Soros reaching for his bullhorn.

Soros conducted considerable election meddling of his own, but said he was “very worried” that Russia was exercising “negative influence” in Europe. “I don’t know if Putin is actually financially supporting him (Matteo Salvini of the League) and his party. This is a question that I think the Italian public has a right to ask, and ask him to tell you whether he’s actually in the pay of Putin.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12448/italy-illegal-migrants

An estimated 700,000 migrants have arrived in Italy during the past five years. — International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“There are not enough homes or jobs for Italians, let alone for half the African continent.” — Matteo Salvini, Interior Minister, Italy.

This law [Article 10 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights] effectively prevents Italy and other EU members from deporting migrants to most countries in the Muslim world.

Italy’s new interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has vowed to cut aid money for migrants and to deport those who illegally are in the country.

“Open doors in Italy for the right people and a one-way ticket out for those who come here to make trouble and think that we will provide for them,” Salvini said in the Lombardy region, home to a quarter of the total foreign population in Italy. “One of our top priorities will be deportation.”

Salvini, leader of the nationalist League (Lega) party, formed a new coalition government with the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) on June 1. The government’s program, outlined in a 39-page action plan, promises to crack down on illegal immigration and to deport up to 500,000 undocumented migrants.

“The party is over for illegal immigrants,” Salvini said at a June 2 rally in Vicenza. “They will have to pack their bags, in a polite and calm manner, but they will have to go. Refugees escaping from war are welcome, but all others must leave.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/spains-abrupt-left-turn-1528054426?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=6&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

His many opponents finally caught up with Mariano Rajoy on Friday when a leftist coalition ousted the Spanish Prime Minister’s center-right government with a no-confidence vote in parliament. The risk now is that Madrid will unwind the reforms that have helped the country grow faster than its neighbors.

Mr. Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP) has itself to blame for Friday’s 180-169 defeat. Last month Spain’s National Court convicted 29 people, including the party’s former treasurer, of a kickback scheme. Mr. Rajoy denied knowledge of the operation, but the scandal has alienated PP voters and the party’s liberal-centrist Citizens coalition partner, whose leader, Albert Rivera, called for snap elections.

Mr. Rajoy ignored Mr. Rivera’s good advice and tried to hang onto power, giving an opening to Socialist Party leader Pedro Sánchez to cobble together a so-called Frankenstein coalition that few Madrid insiders thought possible. The crew includes far-left Podemos, Catalan pro-independence parties and the right-leaning Basque Nationalist Party, which had negotiated pension benefit increases for the region in Mr. Rajoy’s last budget.

Mr. Sánchez has promised to honor that budget, as well as keep Spain’s fiscal commitments to the European Union. But to do that he’ll have to keep Spain’s economic engine purring. That will be hard to do with Podemos in the coalition. The Spanish left wants to roll back the Rajoy Administration’s supply-side reforms, including tax cuts and the 2012 Derecho Laboral reform, which made it easier to hire and fire workers, as well as implement a new wealth and inheritance tax.

Mr. Joffe is an editorial council member at Die Zeit in Hamburg and a fellow of Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

Everybody loves Italy for its savoir vivre and panache—not to mention Rome’s place as the cradle of Western civilization. Yet there is a darker side to the country’s vanguard role. In 1922 Italy gave the world fascism, more than a decade before Hitler’s storm troopers marched through Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. After World War II, Italy was the only Western country ever to include members of a pro-Soviet Communist Party in its governing coalition. In 1970, the Red Brigades invented modern European terrorism.

This March brings another nasty first: power to the populists of the left-wing 5 Star Movement and the far-right League. Radical parties have won seats in several European legislatures, but nowhere have they captured a majority. Forget Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, which can’t win more than a third of the French public. The outcome in Italy is historic: Europe’s fate may well be decided in Rome.

Imagine, in American terms, a coalition between Bernie Sanders and the tea party: an orgy of government spending on one side, tax cuts and small government on the other. Can’t be done? In Italy, non fa niente—it doesn’t matter. We can eat our pizza and have it too. While 5 Star seeks a guaranteed income of €780 (around $900) a month, the League will pursue its suggested flat tax of 15%.

Now do the arithmetic. Italy’s public debt has already surpassed 130% of gross domestic product, and European hedge-fund manager Joseph Oughourlian predicts that the new government’s goodies could swell the annual deficit by more than €150 billion.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12435/rape-gangs-oxford

What price has been paid, is being paid, or might be paid at some stage, by all those public officials who tacitly or otherwise allowed these modern-day atrocities to go on, doing nothing to stop them?

Families of some of the abused girls related that they had tried consistently to raise the alarm over what was happening to their daughters, but that every door of the state was closed in their faces.

If Britain is to turn around the disgrace of its culture of ‘grooming gangs’, it should start by changing the risk-reward ratio between those who identify these monstrous crimes and those who have been shown to have covered them up.

Since the arrest of Tommy Robinson on May 25, the presence generally — and incorrectly — referred to as ‘Asian grooming gangs’ has been back in the news. This has reignited a debate about whether victims are getting justice and whether perpetrators are encountering it.

In all this at least one key element is missing. What price has been paid, is being paid, or might be paid at some stage, by all those public officials who tacitly or otherwise allowed these modern-day atrocities to go on, doing nothing to stop them? The policemen, politicians, council workers and others who were shown to have failed time and again. They have never been sentenced to prison for any of their oversights — and perhaps criminal charges (not even charges of criminal negligence) could never be brought against them. It is worth asking, however, if any of these people’s lives, career paths, or even pension plans were ever remotely affected by their proven failure to confront one of the greatest evils to have gone on in Britain. That is the mass rape of young girls motivated by adults propelled by (among much else) racism, religiosity, misogyny and class contempt.

Perhaps the post grooming-gang career of just one public official might help to answer that question. Her name is Joanna Simons. In 2013 she was the Chief Executive of the Oxfordshire County Council. She had been at the centre of that Council’s ‘care’ programme for nearly a decade: that is, throughout the period in which the mass rape of local girls (subsequently investigated under the name ‘Operation Bullfinch’) was carried on. The barbarism, which was carried out by local men of what is erroneously described as ‘Asian’ origin, included branding one of the girls with an ‘M’ on her body. The abuser’s name was ‘Mohammed’ and the Mohammed in question wanted people to know that this girl ‘belonged’ to him and as such was his property.