RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-persistent-protests-1530658241

Iranians are protesting in the streets again, only a few months after the regime crushed nationwide demonstrations over the country’s sagging economy and widespread corruption. The periodic eruptions are a sign of discontent that may spread as the pressure from renewed U.S. sanctions increases.

The latest upheavals centered in the southwestern city of Khorramshahr over the weekend, after brown fluid started running out of taps. Hundreds of residents gathered in a public space reserved for Friday prayers and blamed local officials for the lack of potable water, chanting such anti-government slogans as “in the name of religion, they plundered us.” Protests also broke out in nearby Abadan.

The weekend demonstrations are part of a larger pattern of discontent with the ruling theocracy in Tehran. In December and January, demonstrations erupted in more than 100 cities and towns over inflation, joblessness and graft. Women staged hijab protests, ripping off their veils. In March farmers from Isfahan province in central Iran protested long droughts. In May truckers went on a nationwide strike to protest stagnant wages and rising costs.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani promised that the 2015 nuclear deal, which funneled tens of billions in hard currency to Iran, would usher in better economic times. Instead, the regime used the money to finance its Quds Force operations and Shiite militias in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

http://iswresearch.blogspot.com/2018/07/russia-abandons-southwest-syria-deal-in.html

Russia is directly supporting an offensive by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in violation of the de-escalation zone in Southern Syria. Pro-Assad regime forces backed by Russia and Iran launched a major offensive against opposition-held terrain in Southern Syria on June 19. The offensive involves elite pro-regime units such as the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) Fourth Armored Division, Republican Guard, and Tiger Forces[1] as well as alleged participation by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)[2] and Iraqi Shia militias. Pro-regime forces seized – or forced the surrender of – most of opposition-held Eastern Dera’a Province by July 2. Russia supported these advances with a campaign of intense airstrikes targeting both military and civilian infrastructure across Eastern Dera’a Province starting on June 24. The Russian Foreign Ministry nonetheless claimed that Russia remains committed to the de-escalation zone in Southern Syria brokered by the U.S., Russia, and Jordan in July 2017. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova stressed that the pro-regime offensive aims to fulfill the alleged obligation of the deal to “eradicate terrorists”[3] in Southern Syria. Zakharova noted that the Russian Armed Forces are present on the ground to facilitate negotiations between the regime and armed opposition groups in Southern Syria.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12576/blasphemy-laws-pakistan

Many extremist Muslims are aiming at even more government submission to sharia through intimidation and terror.

Christians and Ahmadis continue to raise concerns regarding the government’s failure to safeguard minority rights, as well as the government’s persistent discrimination against religious minorities.

Pakistan is also where Muslim militants, such as the Pakistani Taliban, carry out assassinations and terrorist attacks. It seems no one is there to stop them.

On May 6, Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan’s Minister of the Interior, was shot during a rally in his own constituency, in the province of Punjab. Fortunately, he survived the attack, but the bullet in his abdomen could not be removed. “The bullet lodged in my body… will keep reminding me of the impending need to remove the seeds of hatred sowed in the country,” Iqbal said.

An initial report suggested that the main suspect, Abid Hussain, 21, had carefully planned the attack; recently, Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Court issued an 8-day judicial remand of four possible accomplices.

According to other reports, Hussain is linked to Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) — also known as Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah (“Movement of the Prophet’s Followers”). TLP is a new Sunni extremist party known for aggressively calling for enforcing Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which can carry the death penalty, and for opposing any relaxation of these laws.

Many fear that this assault is not an isolated incident and that other members of the cabinet are on the TLP’s hit list. This apprehension, however, does not mean that the government is against sharia or blasphemy laws, or is even thinking of reforming them. Many extremist Muslims are aiming at even more government submission to sharia through intimidation and terror.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/let-german-voters-try-again-1530573865

The main lesson from the troubles in Angela Merkel’s German government is that administrations need to be about something other than survival. By our deadline Monday evening it appeared she had survived the latest challenge to her chancellorship. But she’ll limp through the remaining three years of her term if she can’t fill the ideas void at the center of her government.

Mrs. Merkel stared down a rebellion from the center-right Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party to Mrs. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Horst Seehofer, Mrs. Merkel’s Interior Minister and CSU leader, had threatened to resign (or force Mrs. Merkel to fire him) if she didn’t emerge from last week’s European summit with a plan to stem the entry of asylum-seekers into Germany.

She did, and despite Monday’s theatrics Mrs. Merkel’s deal with Mr. Seehofer mostly builds on that EU pact. She promised the CSU stricter enforcement along the Germany-Austria border to bar asylum-seekers whose claims are being processed elsewhere in the EU from entering Germany, in line with the EU plan.

Maybe that will give Mr. Seehofer the political boost he wants from stirring up this feud. Bavaria, in Germany’s south, was traversed by a large share of the Middle Eastern migrants who entered after Mrs. Merkel’s open-door offer of refuge in 2015. The CSU now faces an electoral threat from the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which could deprive Mr. Seehofer’s party of its absolute majority in the state parliament in local elections in October. But the CSU’s slipping poll numbers suggest Mr. Seehofer’s stunt may have backfired.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/02/angela-merkel-melts-under-pressure-to-tighten-europes-borders/

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governing coalition is hanging on by a thread. Last-ditch talks are underway between Merkel and interior minister Horst Seehofer of the Christian Social Union (CSU) over Germany’s migration policy. Seehofer wants migrants turned away at the border if they have sought asylum elsewhere in Europe, while Merkel wants an EU-wide deal. This standoff has caused Merkel to recant on her long-held beliefs and policies about migration.

How did this happen? Disagreements over migration policy between Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and junior coalition partner CSU almost prevented Merkel from forming a government last year. Then, last month, Seehofer proposed tighter restrictions of Germany’s borders, threatening to defy Merkel and enact the restrictions with or without Merkel’s approval, daring her to remove him from his post, which would have led to a breakdown of the coalition between their two parties.

This sent Merkel on a frantic diplomatic tour of Europe in an effort to get EU members to agree on a new policy that would radically reduce the number of migrants and refugees who would be able to come to Europe, in the hopes of assuaging Seehofer and the CSU. Merkel has caved, reversing her previous position of absolute open borders and moving to toughen the entire continent’s migrant policy.

http://www.melaniephillips.com/time-leave-question-jews-britain-europe/
These are alarming times for Jews in Britain and Europe.

The British Labour Party is convulsed over the realization that it is riddled with antisemitism. Jeremy Corbyn, its leader and a friend to Hamas, has been exposed as belonging to Facebook groups hosting claims that the Jews were behind ISIS and 9/11, that the Rothschilds controlled the world’s finances, and other such paranoid theories. The backwash from the exposure of these groups revealed a tsunami of anti-Jewish insults, smears, and libels by Labour supporters. Corbyn’s responses, often truculent and insulting to the Jewish community, have only deepened the crisis.

Last year, according to the Community Security Trust, saw the highest number of antisemitic incidents in Britain since the CST started recording such data in 1984. In the past, surges in these incidents had occurred in response to the reporting of Israeli military action. That’s disturbing enough. But what was more disturbing here was that this record surge had occurred in the absence of any such Israeli activity.

Worse is happening in mainland Europe. In Paris, an 85-year-old survivor of the Shoah, Mireille Knoll, was stabbed to death and her body burned by a young Muslim. Last year, a man shouting “Allahu akbar” beat up Jewish schoolteacher Sarah Halimi and threw her to her death out of her Paris apartment window. In January, a teenage girl in the Paris suburb of Sarcelles wearing the uniform of her Jewish school was slashed in the face with a knife. Later that month, an eight-year-old boy was beaten in the same area because he was wearing a kippah. In February, two Jewish men in Paris were attacked with a hacksaw amid a volley of Jew-hating abuse.

In Amsterdam, a kosher restaurant long targeted for attack had its windows smashed in March by a man holding a Palestinian flag and shouting “Allahu akbar.” Holland’s chief rabbi says that, on the street, curses or taunts of “dirty Jew” are now quite normal. At the beginning of Chanukah last year, two Syrians and a Palestinian firebombed a synagogue in Gothenburg, Sweden. A few days later, a Jewish cemetery in Malmö was attacked. In Germany, the Israeli flag has been burned and Jewish pupils bullied by Arab schoolmates. And so on and on.

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.