RUTHFULLY YOURS

So it appears that there will be no state visit for Donald Trump. The US President will not travel down The Mall in a carriage with the Queen. More than that, it appears that the leader of our closest ally will not visit London at all. He may have gone to Paris already. He may have gone to Brussels. He may be able to travel to Hamburg with ease. But his feet will not darken the streets of London. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who had repeatedly campaigned against the President, chose to take some credit once the non-visit was announced: Trump had “got the message”. Londoners such as Mayor Khan did not want Trump to visit — ever.

There are a number of disconcerting aspects to all this. One is the fact that the American President will not be visiting Britain during a period when British relationship-building will everywhere be of unusual importance. Second, there is the fact that all this suggests that a small group of noisy activists on social media can decide who should and who should not visit the UK. That isn’t democracy, or even government, but rule by social media mob.

But most alarming is the pride with which those who have kept him away have responded. And Mayor Khan most of all. Londoners were used to their Mayor having a separate foreign policy when Ken Livingstone represented their city. But to consider the full awfulness of Khan’s intervention it is worth comparing him to his immediate predecessor. Imagine if Boris Johnson had insulted Angela Merkel. Imagine that it wasn’t even a gaffe — which would have been bad enough. Imagine if he had actually campaigned to stop her coming to London and suggested he would help to raise a crowd if she came. In such a situation, if the leader of an ally like Germany actually chose not to come as a result of something Boris Johnson had said, there would be an uproar. There would have been no way the Mayor could have remained in position, no way, indeed, he could ever have held public office again. Why can Mayor Khan help keep the US President out of London and escape similar censure?

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Former Google engineer James Damore has just filed a class-action lawsuit against his erstwhile employer. The filing states that it aims to represent not only Damore but other employees of Google who have been discriminated against because of their “perceived conservative political views”, “their male gender” and “their Caucasian race”. Among the details in the suit is the allegation that the “presence of Caucasian males was mocked with ‘boos’ during company-wide weekly meetings”. This is remarkable stuff. If a bakery in Northern Ireland, say, was even once alleged to have organised weekly “boos” of any black or gay staff, then the company would be out of business before anyone had ascertained whether the charges were true or not.

When French President Emanuel Macron recently said that “We are working on the structuring of Islam in France,” it was only one part of a message, to prepare Muslims and non-Muslims for the big project: transforming Islam in France into the Islam of France.

Prison guards tried to explain that every day, their lives are in danger. In late January when the strike ended, Macron said privately that the danger was not radicalized Muslim prisoners but radicalized guards, and claimed that one of the main unions for prison guards had become “infiltrated” by undercover militants from the right-wing Front National party.

When US President Donald Trump announced the transfer of the American Embassy from Tel Aviv in Jerusalem, Macron immediately tweeted, “France does not approve the US decision. France supports the two-state solution, Israel and Palestine, living in peace and security with Jerusalem as the capital of the two states. We need to focus on appeasement and dialogue.” The last sentence is a resumé of Macron’s Islam policy: appeasement and dialogue — in other words, submission.

During Emmanuel Macron’s election campaign, and even after he became president, he carefully avoided France’s two most dodgy topics: migrants and Islam. It did not take long, however, before Macron found himself caught up in both of them.

On February 11, 2018, however, Macron gave an interview to Journal du Dimanche: “We are working on the structuring of Islam in France and also on how to explain it, which is extremely important,” Macron told the French weekly newspaper. Of course, nothing significant came out of the interview; it was only one part of a message, to prepare Muslims and non-Muslims for the big project: transforming Islam in France into the Islam of France. Although its contents are still unclear, the frame is usually the same: Muslims are supposedly victims, and a reform of France is necessary to make them peaceful and happy.

One wonders if the Islam of France will be really different from what it is today.

With Islam, an unbridled anti-Semitism in France has continued to soar. On January 29, 2018, an 8-year-old Jewish boy wearing a Jewish skullcap was attacked in the suburb of Sarcelles, near Paris. For a long time, Sarcelles was a suburb where Jews and Muslims once lived peacefully side by side. That has changed. In 2014, a pro-Palestinian demonstration escalated into an anti-Jewish pogrom, complete with shops burned and civilians attacked. On January 10, 2018, also in Sarcelles , an unidentified assailant armed with a knife slashed the face of a 15-year-old Jewish girl. On January 9, in the suburb of Creteil, a kosher grocery store that had been covered with swastikas days earlier was gutted in a fire. The police said they suspected arson.

Macron reacted strongly against the anti-Jewish violence. “It’s the republic that is attacked,” he said. Like all presidents before him, he took great care not to name the Islamist attacker.

In France, small groups of Muslims and Salafists have undertaken ethnically to purify territories that they see as their own. Every time an area is shared with Jews, the violence against them builds up. Between 30,000 and 60,000 Jews have already migrated from their homes — generally in the eastern suburbs of Paris — to other, safer parts of Paris.

As for asylum seekers, in 1981, there were 20,000 asylum seekers in France. In 2017, the number of economic migrants disguised as “asylum seekers” reached a historic mark of 100,000, announced the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) on January 8, 2018. That 100,000 represents an increase of 17% from the year before.

The Trump administration is turning out to be a blessing in disguise for the European Union. While many of the president’s rhetorical statements offend European sensibilities, and while dramatic acts like the withdrawal from the Paris climate accord prompt talk of a “crisis” in trans-Atlantic relations, the actual consequences of the administration’s policies are shoring up Europe’s foundations in surprising ways.

A year ago, fears that an allegedly pro-Russia Trump administration would ditch the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and throw Europe to the wolves had delicate Europeans trembling. These days those fears seem quaint. But few in Europe have yet grasped how anti-Russian and pro-European the Trump foreign policy is at its core.

This is partly because European reflexes, especially German ones, are so often nonstrategic. Fine words and noble resolutions are mistaken for hard facts, and the wrapping paper matters more than the gift.

When many Europeans—and more than a few Americans—hear the word “fracking,” for example, they don’t think of the spear tip of an American energy offensive that limits Russia’s geopolitical ambitions while creating the conditions for renewed European prosperity. And when they hear about American plans to rearm and modernize its nuclear arsenal, they instinctively think about the dangers of American militarism—overlooking Moscow’s hostile military buildup that endangers the European countries closest to Russia.

Energy is the place to begin. The vast American oil and gas resources being unlocked by unconventional (and rapidly improving) techniques like fracking are more than a domestic economic bonanza. They are a key instrument of American foreign policy. These resources will not only deprive Middle Eastern countries of the financial capacity too many have used to underwrite radicalism and terrorism; they force Russia, whose economy is greatly dependent on oil exports, to count the cost of every bullet fired in Ukraine and every mercenary deployed to Syria

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, during his 20th annual state of the nation speech on Sunday, said that “Christianity is Europe’s last hope.” He added that European leaders have “opened the way to to the decline of Christian culture and the advance of Islam.”

Orban also stated that Hungary will continue to oppose efforts by the European Union and (to a lesser degree) the United Nations to encourage mass migration from the Middle East and Africa.

That’s all controversial enough in today’s climate, but Orban wasn’t done yet. He also described Europe as being steadily conquered by migrants. “Born Germans,” he said, “are being forced back from most large German cities, as migrants always occupy cities first.”

He concluded that, because of the failed policies of Brussels, Berlin, and Paris, “Islam” will “knock on Central Europe’s door” from two directions: from the south and from the west.

Although very popular in his own country, other European politicians — and especially the official (but unelected) leaders of the EU — detest, distrust, and even fear Orban. The reason is obvious: Orban has no patience whatsoever for globalism, multiculturalism, and political correctness. CONTINUE AT SITE

Turkey’s ruling party, and even much of the opposition, seem intent on, if not obsessed with, invading and conquering these Greek islands, on the grounds that they are actually Turkish territory.

“The things we have done so far [pale in comparison to the] even greater attempts and attacks [we are planning for] the coming days, inshallah [Allah willing].” – Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, February 12, 2018.

The head of the state-funded Directorate of Religious Affairs, the Diyanet, has openly described Turkey’s recent military invasion of Afrin as “jihad.” This designation makes sense when one considers that Muslim Turks owe their demographic majority in Asia Minor to centuries of Turkish persecution and discrimination against the Christian, Yazidi and Jewish inhabitants of the area.

In an incident that took place less than two weeks after the Greek Defense Ministry announced that Turkey had violated Greek airspace 138 times in a single day, a Turkish coast guard patrol boat on February 13 rammed a Greek coast guard vessel off the shore of Imia, one of many Greek islands over which Turkey claims sovereignty.

Most of the areas within modern Greece’s current borders were under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire from the mid-15th century until the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and the establishment of the modern Greek state in 1832. The islands, however, like the rest of Greece, are legally and historically Greek, as their names indicate.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), however, and even much of the opposition seem intent on, if not obsessed with, invading and conquering these Greek islands, on the grounds that they are actually Turkish territory.

In December, for instance, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the main Turkish opposition CHP party, stated that when he wins the election in 2019, he will “invade and take over 18 Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, just as former Turkish PM Bulent Ecevit invaded Cyprus in 1974.” He said that there is “no document” proving that those islands belong to Greece.

“What is clear at any rate: the financing [of imams] by foreign actors must stop.” — Jens Spahn, Deutsche Welle.

“The message that ‘If you reach a Greek island, you will be in Germany in six days,’ not only encourages refugees from Syria, but also many people in Bangladesh and India. No country in the world, and no European Union, can withstand that if we give up control of our external borders.” — Jens Spahn, Die Zeit.

“To anyone who makes their way to Germany, it must made be clear that their life here will be very different from that at home. They should think carefully about whether they really want to live in this western culture.” — Die Welt.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has sparked a mutiny from within her own party over a controversial coalition deal that allows her to remain in office for a fourth term. The deal, in which Merkel agreed to relinquish control over the most influential government ministries, has led a growing number of voices from within her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to say — publicly — that it is time to begin looking for her successor.

In a prime-time interview with ZDF television on February 11, Merkel, already in power for 12 years, rejected the criticism and insisted that she will serve another full four-year term. “I ran for a four-year term,” she said. “I promised those four years and I’m someone who keeps promises. I totally stand behind that decision.”

Merkel, who has been called the “Teflon Chancellor” because of her political staying power, may indeed manage to eke out another four years in office, albeit in a much-weakened position. Her decision in 2015 to allow into Germany more than a million migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East sparked a mass defection of angry CDU voters to the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the third-largest party in the German parliament. As a result, in Germany’s inconclusive election in September 2017, Merkel’s party achieved its worst electoral result in nearly 70 years.

Asked once whether he believed in God, French president Emmanuel Macron replied, “That’s a real question, a complex question. I undoubtedly believe in a transcendence. I am not sure any more that I believe in a God. Yes, I believe in transcendence.”

Another real and complex question for him to answer is that regarding the relationship of the French Republic with Islam. France is a militantly secular country whose militancy has seemed only to grow stronger as the Church grows weaker. France rejects all connection between religion and state; in the mouth of a French intellectual, the words très catho (very Catholic) sound more like an accusation than a description. The ghost of Marshal Pétain—who replaced “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” with “Work, Family, Fatherland”—still rides.

Islam is perhaps about to be made an exception to French laïcité, or the complete separation of church and state. In 2003, then-president Nicolas Sarkozy set up the Conseil français du culte musulman—the French Council of the Muslim Religion. The CFCM was supposed to represent French Muslims, though two-thirds of them have never heard of it. Delegates are elected in proportion to the surface areas of their mosques; the elections are said to be influenced by the various countries that make financial contributions to the respective mosques.

Macron seeks something different. He wants to “structure” French Islam, with a view to undermining extremism and foreign influence. It is said that North African and Persian Gulf states pay some 300 imams in France; they also pay for the construction of new mosques (which is illegal). However, the financing of mosques is very murky: the mosques do not render very clear accounts, hiding behind financial regulations for non-profitmaking organizations that are much less stringent than those for religious organizations.