RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-force-behind-europes-populist-tide-frustrated-young-adults-1529250781?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=pop&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

A youth revolt is upending Italian politics, and it could be a harbinger of things to come.

Western Europe’s largest anti establishment government came to power earlier this month, driven largely by young Italian voters. Struggling with a persistent lack of job prospects over the past decade, they voted in droves for two parties in the country’s March 4 elections, the 5 Star Movement and the League, an anti-immigration party.

The result laid bare a stark generation gap, with older Italians, who often have to support their grown children, continuing to vote for mainstream parties.

The same pattern appears across southern Europe, and the forces behind the divide show few signs of slowing. Almost 30% of Italians age 20 to 34 aren’t working, studying or in a training program, according to Eurostat, more than in any other European Union country. Greece is second at 29%, while Spain’s rate is 21%.

“Italy is collapsing and yet nothing has changed in this country for at least 30 years,” said Carlo Gaetani, a self-employed engineer in Puglia. Ten years ago, when he was in his early 20s, he voted for a center-left party that he hoped would push for economic development in southern Italy. When Italy descended into a crippling recession, he felt betrayed by the traditional Italian left-wing parties. He has seen friends struggle to find jobs, and said his own business opportunities are limited to the stagnant private sector, because commissions for the public sector are usually awarded to people with connections he doesn’t have.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12519/ramadan-europe

In France, the government, which previously vowed to reduce foreign influences on the practice of Islam in the country, approved visas for 300 imams from Algeria and Morocco to lead Ramadan services in French mosques.

“Every message, no matter how poisonous the message is, should have the right to be expressed.” — Ahmed Aboutaleb, Mayor of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

“The Turkish minister of foreign affairs tried to teach me a lesson about my Islamic identity. It is going too far if a foreign state, which is far away, tries to teach the mayor of Rotterdam about Dutch law and how I should apply it.” — Ahmed Aboutaleb, Mayor of Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Muslims across Europe are marking the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, which in 2018 was observed between May 17 and June 15, in accordance with the Islamic lunar calendar.

Ramadan, a major topic for public discussion in Europe this year, received considerable media coverage, a reflection of Islam’s rising influence.

Muslim leaders sought to leverage the media attention to showcase Ramadan — a time when Muslims abstain from eating and drinking between sunrise and sunset, to commemorate, according to Islamic tradition, the revelation of the Quran to Mohammed — as the peaceful nature of Islam in Europe.

European multiculturalists, normally strict enforcers of secularism when it comes to Christianity, made great efforts to draw up guidelines, issue instructions and carve out special privileges to ensure that Muslims were not offended by non-Muslims during the festival.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/death_of_susanna_antisemitism_never_goes_away.html

Having recently visited the Jewish Museum in New York City, I learned of a series of paper engravings titled “In the Eruv of Theresienstadt.”

In their diabolical way, the Nazis fooled the world concerning the ghastly concentration and extermination camps. During World War II, “small bits of information about the extreme and horrific episodes perpetrated under the Third Reich reached an unbelieving world. The Nazis needed to answer the world’s growing concern, yet they wanted to continue implementing their final solution” of exterminating the Jewish people. So the “Nazis decided to use Theresienstadt to solve the growing outside pressure. Through deceit and subterfuge, the Nazis transformed Theresienstadt into a model ghetto.”

Those who survived the horrors of the Holocaust remembered. Fritz Lederer (1878-1949), who was trained at the Weimar Academy of Fine Arts, “designed sets for theater productions in Theresienstadt” – yet another incongruity. After the war, though, he created “oppressive scenes of the camp, including the ‘The Eastern Fortress,’ ‘The Only Exit from Eruv,’ and the ‘Little Fortress’ depicting the prison where many inmates were tortured and murdered.”

The term eruv refers to the symbolic boundary established in some Jewish communities, demarcating a space considered the shared private property of all members, within which certain practices normally forbidden on the Sabbath may be performed. Lederer’s use of the term eruv in the context of Theresienstadt is laced with irony. The only way out of this eruv was by death or deportation to an extermination camp.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12515/diplomatic-big-bang

Diplomacy is changing before our eyes.

“The unspoken objective is to constrain the U.S., and to transfer authority from national governments to international bodies. The specifics of each case differ, but the common theme is diminished American sovereignty, submitting the United States to authorities that ignore, outvote or frustrate its priorities…. By reasserting their sovereignty, the British are in the process of escaping, among other things, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights.” — Ambassador John R. Bolton, Wall Street Journal, March 7, 2017.

The Singapore summit is indeed historic. First, it is so because just a few weeks ago we were closer to a nuclear war than to even the semblance of a peace process. The way we got here is surprising, because it did not obey the usual rules.

A few days ago, during the G7 summit held in Canada, US President Donald Trump upheld his decisions on tariffs and his positions on the trade deficit. These stances followed his decision to pull out of the Paris climate change agreement and the Iranian “nuclear deal”. It is clear that the new US administration challenged the alliances inherited from the Cold War. President Trump, a businessman, not a politician — one of the reasons he was elected — is asking America’s trading partners just to have “free, fair and reciprocal” agreements. It is probably not all that unusual to feel affronted when asked for money or to regard the person asking for it as mercenary or adversarial. It does not always mean that this feeling is justified.

In short, President Trump’s arguments, which sound like a leitmotif, go back to the economic aspect of things. NATO? Why should it be normal that, in order to defend Europe, the American taxpayer pays the heaviest part. Free trade? Why should America suffer a trade deficit with so many countries? Climate change? The results of the Paris Climate Change conference, COP 21, were apparently not only costly but questionable, and to critics, looked like a list of unenforceable promises that would not have come due until 2030 — if ever.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12334/refugees-arab-states

Whereas refugees arriving under the UNHCR are entitled to be granted asylum and eventually citizenship, the UAE is clear from the start that it wants to send its refugees back home. Back home to what? To a half-ruined country still ruled by one of history’s most brutal dictators hand-in-hand with Iran, Russia, and Hizbullah?

As the years pass, as more and more countries struggle with poverty, conflict, religious extremism, terrorism, ethnic divisions, governmental incapacity, corruption, and declining levels of education, huge sections of the world’s rapidly growing population will look in vain for safe places… The Western states who support the UNHCR cannot possibly handle this without suffering internal decline.

In the first part of this series, as many surveys have shown, we saw how difficult it has been, and apparently remains, for many Muslims to be assimilated into non-Muslim societies.

In Part Two, we examined how difficult it remains to allow Syrian and other refugees even to settle into other Muslim and Arab countries, including places such as Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Jordan, which have taken in millions.

In this final part, we shall look at the remaining Muslim countries, which have taken in few or no refugees from the Syrian civil war. These are the richest countries in the Arab world, and the least troubled by disintegration. Many are generous in their funding for humanitarian aid, but that money is donated on the understanding that the refugees are looked after by the UNHCR and the countries they have already reached. Seeing why may be a help.

In 2014, Amnesty International published a short article, “Facts and Figures: Syria refugee crisis & international resettlement”, in which it stated that “The six Gulf countries – Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain – have offered zero resettlement places to Syrian refugees”.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/06/update-tommy-robinson-receiving-death-threats-in-new-uk-prison-imam-places-hit-on-tommy-robinson-

As TGP’s Cassandra Fairbanks previously reported, UK activist Tommy Robinson was arrested on May 25th for suspicion of breaching the peace while livestreaming to report on the trial of a child grooming gang and will now have to serve a prior 13 month suspended sentence.

Friends and supporters of Robinson, 35, are asserting that his notoriety and stance on Islam places his life in great danger in prison.

Articles about the arrest and subsequent imprisonment of Tommy Robinson were rapidly scrubbed from the internet after the British government put restrictions in place banning any reporting on the matter.
Now this…

Paul Joseph Watson reported earlier today that Tommy Robinson has been moved to a maximum security prison with a 71% Muslim population.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ultimate-demarche-france-want-to-oust-english-from-the-eu-1528986165?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=pop&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

BRUSSELS—As if the European Union didn’t have enough to worry about, now it’s at odds over what should be its dominant language.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, wants to make French grand again and replace English as the default language in EU institutions, the way it was before Britain joined the bloc in 1973. With the U.K. negotiating to leave the EU next spring, he is eager to restore the linguistic ancien regime.

“English has probably never been so present in Brussels as when we’re talking about Brexit,” Mr. Macron said in March on the Day of Francophonie—a celebration of French language and culture observed in more than 70 countries. “This domination is not inevitable,” he declared.

Dethroning the Queen’s English looks nearly impossible for the soon-to-be 27-country bloc. Its 24 official languages produce 552 translating combinations—an impractically large number that demands a shortcut.

English is by far the leading foreign language taught in the EU, according to official statistics. Over 80% of primary-school children and over 95% of secondary-school students across the bloc learn English before any other foreign language.

Still, Brexit means a downgrading for English. Today it’s the official language for 12.8% of the EU’s 511 million people but after Britain leaves it will be just the second official language in just two countries: Ireland and Malta. Combined they represent 1.2% of the EU’s post-Brexit population.

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, known for her pithy tweets during EU leaders’ meetings, said any decision regarding the bloc’s linguistic regime “cannot be divorced from reality.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-protectionist-stance-spooks-germanys-economy-1528977600

FRANKFURT—President Donald Trump’s trade threats aren’t only hurting feelings in Germany. They are beginning to weigh on the country’s economy.

The European Union’s largest economy, whose export-oriented vigor has kept the continent afloat for more than a decade, is cooling more rapidly than expected in what economists see as the early fallout from protectionist moves by the U.S.

The slowdown comes just as Europe has been gradually emerging from the economic hangover caused by the continent’s debt crisis in 2010.

After years of robust growth fueled by foreign demand for premium cars and engineering goods, Germany saw its annualized growth rate roughly fall by half in the first quarter of 2018. Exports have fallen in three of the first four months of the year, manufacturing orders are down and sentiment indicators are in free fall.

The weakness can’t be blamed on the U.S. president’s “America First” policies alone. A cold winter and a bad flu epidemic appear to have slackened growth earlier this year. But the bad news has been so persistent since then that economists are now looking for other explanations.

“It’s clear that concerns over protectionism and the more assertive foreign-policy stance of the U.S. have begun to have real economic implications,” said Oliver Rakau, a Frankfurt-based economist with Oxford Economics. CONTINUE AT SITE