RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-kim-and-the-boys-in-the-camps/

President Trump did an excellent thing at the State of the Union address last January. He honored Ji Seong-ho, an almost superhuman defector from North Korea. Ji escaped the country on crutches. I saw him at the Oslo Freedom Forum a couple of weeks ago. As I wrote, “he projects an air of ebullience. I can’t help thinking he is happy to be alive.”

Trump has said some shocking things in recent hours. For example, he said the following about Kim Jong-un: “He is very talented. Anybody who takes over a situation like he did at 26 years of age and is able to run it, and run it tough. I don’t say he was nice or say anything about it. He ran it, few people at that age — you could take one out of 10,000, could not do it.”

It is unclear how old Kim is. Probably, he was 28 when he inherited the dictatorship. But that is a triviality.

He has certainly “run it tough,” if that’s the way you want to characterize Kim’s rule over North Korea. His father chose him for his dictatorial mettle. This apple did not fall very far from the tree. Kim Jong-il passed over his two older sons to anoint the youngest, Jong-un. (If you would like to read more about this, consult my 2015 book, Children of Monsters.)

Two years ago, I interviewed another North Korean defector, Jung Gwang-il. (All North Korean escapees are considered defectors, because all North Koreans are supposed to belong to the state, body and soul.) Jung was in the gulag, like so many of his countrymen. Let me give a paragraph from the piece I wrote about him. It is a horrible paragraph, and you may wish to skip it, but here it is, in the interest of truth:

In the winter, the prisoners were made to get wood from the mountain. Many were injured or killed, as the trees fell or the logs rolled down the mountain. Other prisoners would not pause to bury the dead. It would have taken too much energy in the frozen ground. They carried the bodies back to a shed next to a latrine. At night, when you went to the latrine, you could hear moaning from the shed — some weren’t dead yet. By the spring, they were all dead, of course. The bodies had formed a great gelatinous mass. And Jung and the others would have to break it apart, with shovels, and bury it.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/iran-nuclear-deal-disaster-from-the-start/

The more we learn about it — as Iranian and Obama-administration deceptions are uncovered — the more we know it was a disaster from the start.

When Donald Trump withdrew from the so-called Iran deal in early May, almost all conventional wisdom in Washington was aghast.

The Left thought nullification would fast-track Iranian proliferation, incite more Iranian terrorism and adventurism, estrange our allies, and alienate a possible new friend.

Many on the conservative side (aside from Never Trumpers who are against anything Trump is for, including their own prior policies) thought it would have been wiser to back out slowly, or at least to have waited first for the duplicitous Iranians to get caught in clear violations, or to coordinate a joint withdrawal with the Europeans.

Few of these critics ever quite understood that the deal was already a stinking corpse, long overdue for burial. Iranian cunning and the strategic thinking about the asymmetrical deal had always aimed at the following trajectory:

Ostensibly postpone a bomb now, at a time when the regime was facing growing unrest and near bankruptcy from sanctions — and thus was in no position anyway to build an arsenal of bombs and missiles.

Keep occasionally cheating to ensure the apparatus for bomb-making was successfully hibernated — and therefore easily restarted at a future date.

Enjoy hundreds of billions of dollars in new commercial income over the next ten to 15 years to quiet domestic unrest, and to bank enough cash to go fully nuclear in the future.

Forge the so-called Shiite Crescent to the Mediterranean, by dominating Bashir al-Assad’s weak Syria, exploring anti-Sunni possibilities in Yemen, and bulking up Hezbollah’s Lebanon, while stocking a huge arsenal of preemptive missiles based near Israel. Hope that Iran’s regional strategic stature would only improve over the next decade.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12390/anti-west-imam

The purpose of brainwashing their students with inciting anger and hatred clearly seems to be to instill in them the notion that they are being victimized by the West.

Some members of the so-called “victim” community, such as Islamist leaders, take advantage of this victimhood status. They use it as a shield and then become the victimizers by crushing people in their own countries.

Such ideas and values prevent ordinary people and scholars from focusing on the crimes against humanity that Islamist leaders of state and non-state entities commit.

The accommodation of Muslim extremists by leaders in the West not only helps them recruit more people to target Westerners, incite anti-Western, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic sentiments, but more importantly, it tramples the millions of ordinary Muslims who seek to promote in their homelands values such as the institutions of democracy, freedom of speech, separation of religion and state, the independence of education and the judiciary, and equal justice under the law.

In my high school in Syria, which was directed by the Iranian regime through its embassy staff in Damascus (Iran has several schools in Syria and sends teachers and imams there), every student was forced to attend daily prayer at noon. We were commanded to stand behind an extremist clergyman, mimic his actions, and recite the prayer. After the prayer, we had no choice but to listen to the preaching of a fundamentalist imam who was most likely employed by the regime to advance their ideological and political interests.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/270412/poison-society-german-editorial-migrants-and-daniel-greenfield

I usually don’t do this. But I thought that this editorial from Germany’s Tagesspiegel was worth translating at least in part.

After the murder of Susanna Maria Feldman, a 14-year-old Jewish girl in Germany, Tagesspiegel takes its ‘spiegel’ and takes a hard look at the moral hazard of accommodating migrants.

The murder of Susanna F. – Poison for Society – Tagesspiegel

At the end of his remarks on the case, Müller, the head of the Police of Westhessen, finished a sentence with the word “but”, which suggests that he knows that this case has a meaning that goes beyond the specific criminal case…

Mueller spoke about the murder of Susanna , 14 years old, allegedly raped and murdered by a man who continued to live in Germany after his asylum application was rejected. An act that, like a cruel and cynical commentary on refugee policy, becomes public in just these days, in which the treatment of migrants and asylum seekers is also top priority at the political level.

The chief of police speaks of a ” repugnant crime, ” and then says “but.” “But” it was a 13-year-old refugee who had contributed significantly to solving the case. In an effort not to link the words murder and refugee, he has linked Solution and Refugee, as if it were the same thing. With that, he’s just tapped into the generalization trap he was trying to warn against.

The country looks after the murders in Freiburg and Kandel , after Maria and Mia, now turns in horror to Wiesbaden, to Susanna…

The feeling of insecurity will continue to increase, and with it the resentment of the authorities, of politicians, of all whom they believe are allowing it to take place. The anger at those refugees who instead of being grateful for food, lodging and lodging turn criminal – especially when the victims come from the society that welcomed them.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270396/strange-case-maajid-nawaz-joshua-winston

First of all, let me clearly define my terms – Islamism is essentially synonymous with terrorism in my mind, because their goals are the same. Islamism is the political element of Islam which seeks to establish a global caliphate that sees everyone living under sharia. Sharia, as we know, in spite of the lies that are continually told by the Muslim darlings of the UK’s media, does not take kindly to gays, women, and people of other faiths.

Maajid Nawaz was once part of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which I consider to be a terrorist organization for the reasons given above. Hizb ut-Tahrir is banned in all Arab Muslim countries, with the exception of Yemen, the UAE, and Lebanon. It is also banned in some other countries, too: Germany, China, Russia, Egypt, Turkey, etc. Yet Hizb ut-Tahrir still holds demonstrations in Central London to this day. This is a terrorist organization that Mr. Nawaz was part of, promoted, and helped grow to its size today. Nawaz also allegedly spent time in jail because of his participation with Hizb ut-Tahrir and his other Islamist activities.

Today Maajid is the darling of the UK’s media. Apparently being an ex-member of a terrorist organization makes one an expert on how best to spread Islam peacefully across the UK. Maajid is still a fierce promoter of Islam. He is still looking to spread it worldwide, but he’s hoping that he can reform Islam and give us the soft version, the version without all the calls to violence and the need to establish a caliphate. To that I say, good luck, and, further, you can keep it, because I’m not buying into it. I do not want Islam in any of its guises.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270354/islamic-insanity-netherlands-daniel-greenfield

On a pleasant Wednesday in Schiedam, a Dutch city near Rotterdam’s sizable Islamic population, a 26-year-old Syrian refugee stood on a balcony waving an axe and shouting, “Allahu Akbar.”

The police arrived at the modernistic dark and gray building, limned in steel and glass, where the nameless Syrian was shouting about the supremacy of his religion and its axe to all others in Schiedam.

The Dutch cops tried to calm him down. Instead he attacked a police dog which later died of its injuries. After some failed attempts at negotiating his surrender, the Syrian was shot in the leg. Paramedics loaded him into one of two yellow ambulances dispatched for the occasion and maneuvering past a police Volvo took him off to be an even bigger burden on the taxpayers of the Netherlands.

Even before murdering a police dog, the Syrian refugee had been in contact with various aid agencies. By the time he’s done being treated, evaluated, counseled, tried, defended, prosecuted and judged, he will have cost the Netherlands enough money to feed an entire Syrian city for a day.

“It is certain that he had no religious motives,” Mayor Lamers insisted. “The most important thing is that he first receives the right care, that also applies to his father. As soon as he is recovered, there will probably be a long-term admission to a clinic.”

Make that two Syrian cities for a week.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270432/historic-kim-trump-summit-kicks-lloyd-billingsley

President Trump has assured North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un that the long awaited summit that started today in Singapore is a “one-time shot” and repeatedly told reporters “we’ll see what happens.” Democrats couldn’t stand the wait. Before the two men even met, Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh told Fox News the summit was “a win for Kim.”

Trump and Jong-un shook hands in an historic meeting and the president told reporters “we will have a terrific relationship, I have no doubt.” At this writing, the two have entered a meeting with only translators present, to be joined later by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton.

It remains unclear whether Kim will dump his nuclear program, as Trump wants, or whether the United States will reduce its military presence with ally South Korea, as Kim Jong-un wants. Sanctions and economic issues are also in play. As the negotiations play out, observers might keep some realities in mind.

North Korea is the first hereditary Stalinist dictatorship, the most oppressive regime ever to exist, with the possible exception of Enver Hoxha’s Albania and the Cuba of Fidel and now Raul Castro. Under Kim Il Sung, who launched the 1950 invasion, North Korea built up nuclear reactors, but it was his son Kim Jong Il, who took over in 1994, who advanced the nuclear weapons program while denying that the regime even had one.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12494/germany-migrants-rape-feldman

“Susanna is dead. Maria from Freiburg; Mia from Kandel; Mireille from Flensburg; and now Susanna from Mainz….” — Alice Weidel, co-leader AfD party.

“Susanna’s death is not a blind stroke of fate. Susanna’s death is the result of many years of organized irresponsibility and the scandalous failure of our asylum and immigration policies. Susanna is victim of an out-of-control leftwing multicultural ideology that stops at nothing to impose its sense of moral superiority.” — Alice Weidel, co-leader AfD party.

“On the day of Susanna’s murder, you [Merkel] testified in parliament that you have handled the migrant crisis responsibly. Do you dare to repeat that claim to Susanna’s parents?” — Alice Weidel, co-leader AfD party.

The rape and murder of a 14-year-old Jewish girl by a failed Iraqi asylum seeker has cast a renewed spotlight on Germany’s migrant rape crisis, which has continued unabated for years amid official complicity and public apathy.

Thousands of women and children have been raped or sexually assaulted in Germany since Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed into the country more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The latest crime, entirely preventable, is uniquely reprehensible in that it highlights in one act the many insidious consequences of Germany’s open-door migration policy — including the failure to vet those allowed into the country and the practice of releasing migrant criminals back onto German streets instead of incarcerating or deporting them.

The crime also exposes the gross negligence of Germany’s political class, which appears to be more concerned with preserving multiculturalism and the rights of predatory migrants than protecting German women and children from them.

Police say that Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurd, raped Susanna Maria Feldman, strangled her and then dumped her body in a wooded area alongside railroad tracks on the outskirts of Wiesbaden. Bashar then fled to Iraq on false identity papers.

Feldman had been missing from her home in Mainz since May 22. Her mother filed a missing person report on May 23. Police, however, did not even begin to search for the girl until more than a week later, when an unnamed 13-year-old boy, a migrant living in the same refugee shelter as Bashar, contacted the police. Feldman’s body was finally recovered on June 6.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12373/arab-culture-literature

In France, recently, a group of intellectuals published a manifesto asking the Islamic world to eliminate anti-Semitic verses from the Koran. The initiative followed the murder of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, Mireille Knoll.

The Turkish Council of Higher Education responded with a moratorium on establishing additional departments of French studies in Turkey.

There are no guarantees that curiosity, self-doubt and free speech will create a more liberal society. But closed-mindedness and censorship, in the Middle East, Europe or anywhere, are not likely to, either.

In the West, books and documentaries have been cancelled. In France, recently, a group of intellectuals published a manifesto asking the Islamic world to eliminate anti-Semitic verses from the Koran. The initiative followed the murder of an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, Mireille Knoll. The Turkish Council of Higher Education responded with a moratorium on establishing additional departments of French studies in Turkey. For years, under the presidency of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish culture has been closing in on itself. “Going into a Turkish bookstore is like walking into a psychiatric ward,” according to the British journalist Gareth Jenkins in The New Yorker. Turkey sentenced journalists and writers to prison, and put publishers of foreign novels, such as its most famous translator, Necmiye Alpay, on trial. The problem, however, may not be just Turkish, but, as the author Robert R. Reilly called it, “the closing of the Muslim mind”.

A new report for the Atlantic Council written by Hossam Abouzahr, the founder of the Living Arabic Project, details the dramatic cultural change in the Arab world:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/270418/wheelchair-bound-jewish-man-wms-blocks-terrorist-daniel-greenfield

The scene is Al Quds Day, the usual pro-terror rally in London. And one man and one woman took a stand. Here’s the whole story.

The flag of Hezbollah has again been openly marched through the streets of London this afternoon – but only after prominent lawyer Mark Lewis delayed the event by blocking the road in his wheelchair.

More than 1,000 people rallied beneath the gun-emblazoned flag of the Lebanese terrorist group outside the Saudi Embassy, hearing speakers including Rev Stephen Sizer, who once shared a social media post pointing the finger at Israel for 9/11…

But by that time they hadn’t even yet set off, the one-man stand by Lewis, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, contributing to the delay.

Lewis told Jewish News: “It wasn’t just me. My other half Mandy Blumenthal stayed with me. I knew that I couldn’t stand up and be counted but I could sit down.”

“These people were supporting terrorists. We had to object and not give them a free pass. These are our streets. The Government were allowing them a free rein, we had to stop them. I thought I’d challenge the Police to see if they had a legal basis to stop me exercising my freedom to protest. They said they had an order blocking the street. I asked to see it. They looked flummoxed.” …

The call for action was echoed by ZF chair Paul Charney, while director Arieh Miller, pointing across the road, stressed “that is not a victimless flag”.

Names of victims of Hezbollah terror in Israel and elsewhere were held aloft on placards.