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The U.N. Hates Israel Why does the U.S. still belong to Turtle Bay’s Human Rights Council?

Syria bombs civilians with chlorine gas, China tortures dissidents, Venezuela restricts access to food and Burma is engaged in ethnic cleaning of a Muslim minority. So naturally the United Nations Human Rights Council trains the bulk of its outrage on . . . Israel.

On Friday the council approved five resolutions condemning Israel, as it has done every year since its creation in 2006. The 47-member council includes such paragons of political freedom as China and Cuba. The resolutions characterize Israel as an “occupying power” in Palestinian-claimed territories, including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and denounce the Middle Eastern democracy as an abuser of human rights.

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley and her team, at the urging of the British and the Dutch, spent months trying to convince other European countries not to single out Israel. But when the votes were tallied Friday, only the U.S. and Australia voted against all of the anti-Israel resolutions. The council passed only one resolution apiece condemning North Korean, Iranian and Syrian abuses.

UK: Islamization Full Speed Ahead by Judith Bergman

This is how Islamization occurs and is made permanent: Other schools will think carefully of the risks before they even attempt to “limit the Islamization process”.

It is virtually impossible for “Islamophobia” to be “underreported” in London. The UK is nothing, if not clinically obsessed with “Islamophobia”. In 2016, London mayor Sadiq Khan’s Office for Policing and Crime announced it was spending £1.7 million taxpayer money policing speech online.

British police have even been taking lessons about Islam and “Islamophobia” from radical Islamist groups such as Mend. One of the most active Mend figures, Azad Ali, has said that he has “love” for Anwar Al-Awlaki, an influential US-born Islamic terrorist, who was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

The UK is accelerating its Islamization at an ever-increasing speed. The desire of the British establishment to submit to Islam appears to be overwhelming.

In a recent report, the Henry Jackson society exposed how the UK used taxpayer funds to support Islamist charities working against British society to the tune of more than six million pounds in 2017 alone. According to the report, “As the case studies in this report are illustrative rather than comprehensive, it is likely that this sum represents only the tip of the iceberg”. The report concludes, “Until more comprehensive action is taken, a network of Islamist extremists operating in the UK will continue to use charities and taxpayer money to fund the spread of divisive, illiberal and intolerant views within our communities”.

A Review of Halik Kockanski’s The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and Poles in the Second World War.By Michael Brendan Dougherty

It’s hard to overstate the way that Polish feelings about the great wars are almost inverted from the common ones in the United Kingdom and the United States. For Western powers, the common perception is that the First World War is at best a fratricidal slaughter, conducted for ambiguous reasons. At worst it was the suicide of Western civilization. For Poland, that war was the resurrection of their nation from the dead. For Western powers the Second World War is a moment of sharp moral clarity, in which the victorious powers defeated a truly wicked regime, and rebuilt Western Europe on surer foundations. For Poland, it is an unrelenting nightmare. Technically, the war was launched because the United Kingdom intended to vindicate her sovereignty. In the end the West threw Poland to Stalin like a bone to chew on, while investing millions to swiftly rebuild West Germany.

Kochanski gives us a brief look at the Poland that was reborn at the Treaty of Versailles. It was bitterly funny to read British Prime Minister Lloyd George enter the scene and express his doubts about the proposed Polish borders because they would subject an unacceptable number of Protestant Germans to the rule of Catholic Poles. What is unacceptable in Belfast is unacceptable in Danzig, so carve-outs must be made. These had a democratic and sectarian logic, but were not geopolitically sustainable.

This reborn Poland had a fighting spirit, and immediately committed itself to a few quick wars to grab territories and cities, including present-day Lviv, that would make it a more economically viable nation. It was also an extremely heterogeneous nation, with many ethnic and minority linguistic groups. It was also an underdeveloped economic backwater compared with Western Europe.

The German and Russian attitudes toward this reborn Poland were often hysterical. Kochanski quotes German general Hans von Steckt’s remarks to German Chancellor Joseph Wirth around the time Germans and Russians signed a treaty in 1922, renouncing their territorial claims against each other:

When we speak of Poland, we come to the kernel of the eastern problem. Poland’s existence is intolerable and incompatible with Germany’s vital interests. It must disappear, and will disappear through its own weakness and through Russia with our aid. . . . The attainment of this objective must be one of the firmest guiding principles of German policy, as it is capable of achievement — but only through Russia or with her help. A return to the frontier of 1914 should be the basis of agreement between Russia and Germany.

Who the Hell Is Pankaj Mishra? By Bruce Bawer

I presume you know who Jordan Peterson is. If not, it’s time for you to look him up and watch a few of his innumerable, and almost invariably wonderful, YouTube lectures, interviews, and debates. A clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, he first attained a degree of mainstream celebrity two years ago when he stood up publicly to Canada’s notorious Bill C-16, under which citizens refusing to refer to transgender individuals by their chosen pronouns (including freshly invented ones) could be subject to punishment. Since then, his brilliant analyses of Western society today, his challenging reflections on the need for young – and not-so-young – people to face up to responsibilities, develop competence, and seek meaning in life, and his blunt criticisms of the postmodern enemies of free speech and deniers of biology have won him a massive worldwide following, making him, in the view of many, the most prominent and important intellectual of our time. He’s also become a popular object of attack by leftist ideologues and pretenders at revolution who recognize him, his thoughts, and his army of admirers as an existential threat to the domination of contemporary culture by unexamined and pernicious socialist assumptions.

One of the most recent – and prominent – assaults on Peterson was written by one Pankaj Mishra and appeared on March 19 at the website of the New York Review of Books. Entitled “Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism,” it oozes condescension. According to Mishra, Peterson is a practitioner of “intellectual populism” whose latest book is “[p]ackaged for people brought up on BuzzFeed listicles.” Mishra’s characterization of Peterson’s ideas is breathtakingly dishonest. Peterson, he writes, “insists that gender and class hierarchies are ordained by nature and validated by science.” Well, Peterson does recognize that male and female are biological categories and that certain biological and psychological differences exist between the sexes – some of which operate to the benefit of men, others to the benefit of women. Mishra mocks Peterson for taking Jungian archetypes seriously and says he mythologizes “right-wing pieties.” He also alleges that Peterson’s preoccupation with Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago is common among “Western right-wingers who…tend to imply that belief in egalitarianism leads straight to the guillotine or the Gulag.”

Israeli Choreographers Banned From Oslo Festival Anti-Semitism takes center stage. Bruce Bawer

To judge by their Facebook profiles, Margrete Slettebø and Kristiane Nerdrum Bøgwald are a couple of busy young ladies. Together, they manage Feminine Tripper, an annual dance festival in Oslo, Norway, that focuses on “femininity and gender identity.” They both also work at the “Butoh-laboratorium” in Oslo, which sounds like something scientific but turns out to be a self-styled “collective” specializing in the Japanese dance style known as Butoh. A glance through the Oslo phone book shows that both women live in a couple of Oslo’s nicest neighborhoods. In addition, Bøgdwald, whose father is a noted psychiatrist and researcher, belongs to a theater company called “Grusomhetens Teater” (The Theater of Cruelty). Slettebø, for her part, is a “Dance Artist at ACTS-laboratory for performance practices” and a communications adviser to Arts Council Norway, a government agency that, its website explains, “provides grants to art and culture throughout the country” and “advises the state on cultural questions.” And, to name a couple of activities that seem especially relevant to our story, Slettebø worked for several years as office manager for the youth wing of the Socialist Left Party (an ardent supporter of Palestinians and the BDS movement) and was also an active member of the Joint Committee for Palestine (“an umbrella organization for Norwegian organizations that support the Palestinians’ cause”).

Anyway, here’s the story. On Wednesday, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Feminine Tripper festival, which this year is being held from March 19 to 25 and which professes to welcome participants from around the world, had rejected an application by six Israeli choreographers – Eden Wiseman, Roni Rotem, Nitzan Lederman, Maayan Cohen Marciano, Adi Shildan, and Maia Halter – who had received letters from Bøgwald and Slettebø stating that Israel “uses culture as a form of propaganda to whitewash or justify its regime of occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people” and that they could not, therefore, “with a clear conscience invite Israeli participants when we know that artists from the occupied Palestinian territories struggle with very restricted access to travel to international art venues and that they have little opportunity to communicate their art outside of the occupied territories.” The Israelis did not take the rejection lightly. “Would you reject a Saudi artist for Saudi restrictions on women’s rights?” they wrote back. “Would you reject an American artist for the American policies regarding the ‘Muslim ban’ regulations?”

Going for Broke, the Canadian Way By David Solway

It is no surprise that the new budget tabled by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals is permeated through and through by the feminist mentality. Writing on LifeSiteNews, Lianne Laurence argues that Trudeau’s federal budget “institutionalizes feminism, panders to left-wing interest groups, patronizes women, and is long on ideology and bureaucratic meddling, but short on economics.” It includes, among other spending measures, a “feminist foreign aid agenda,” as well as “billions to boost women in the workforce,” as the Toronto Star reports. One recalls the late Senator Everett Dirksen, who reportedly joked: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”

Indeed, so pronounced is its feminist bent that the budget “appears to have been written out of Status of Women Canada … or perhaps a campus gender studies course: this is surely the world’s first ‘intersectional’ budget,” wrote National Post columnist Andrew Coyne. It is, in his words, merely a “mix of ideological cant and bureaucratic busywork known as ‘gender-based analysis,’” rendering us graphically uncompetitive with the U.S. and “any other OECD country.”

As I pointed out in an earlier article, Trudeau has assigned his minister of foreign affairs, the ineffable Chrystia Freeland (of “100 years ago pretty much all women were beaten by their husbands” fame), to represent the country in the ongoing NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) talks with the United States. Freeland wants to expand the agreement to include gender and social justice goals. This is not going to work for Canada. Moreover, Freeland, a card-carrying feminist prone to tears when trade talks are about to collapse, is simply no match for a tower-building business-minded tycoon like Donald Trump. Rebel Media host Ezra Levant had it exactly right: Freeland, “an emotional-wreck quota-token,” did not much impress the tough European negotiators at CETA (Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) with her brand of lachrymose naiveté. Unless we get lucky, Freeland will succeed at doing what she does best: harm.

The embarrassments continue to mount up. Canada’s minister of environment and climate change, Catherine McKenna (aka “Climate Barbie”), instructs us to “consider the gendered impacts of climate change on women, girls and children.” Presumably the rest of the natural creation, including men, is of no account. Moreover, the possible relation that might exist between climate change and gender has baffled most observers, apart from the fact that the hypothesis of man-made climate change has been pretty well discredited.

South African radical: White farmers should ‘leave the keys’ when they go By Rick Moran

We’ve been covering the ongoing tragedy for white farmers in South Africa for more than a year, culminating in a law passed by the radical South African parliament that expropriates white farmland that’s been in the same family for hundreds of years without compensation.

Predictably, this has set off a wave of violence against white South African farmers that has led to the death of one white every five days, according to Newsweek:

Activists say South African authorities are tacitly approving attacks on the country’s white farmers, with one being murdered every five days, and the police turning a blind eye to the violence.

The white nationalist lobbying group AfriForum says that when lawmakers passed a motion last month which could see land being seized from farmers without compensation, it sent a message that landowners could be attacked with impunity.

It said there have been 109 recorded attacks so far in 2018 and 15 farm murders, meaning that this year, one white farmer has been killed every five days.

In a statement, Ian Cameron, AfriForum’s Head of Safety said: “Our rural areas are trapped in a crime war. Although the South African government denies that a violence crisis is staring rural areas in the face, the numbers prove that excessive violence plague these areas.”

They may be “white nationalists,” but that doesn’t mean they should be slaughtered. But the radical black government claims it’s a lie and that white farmers who are now fleeing to Australia should “leave the keys” to their houses and their tractors when they go.

Never Again? By Shoshana Bryen

“Never Again” was a rallying cry for Jews after the Holocaust. Never again would Jews be defenseless. Never again would Jews be force-marched, starved, and gassed without a response. Never again would Jews wait to be rescued. Never again would Jews look at burgeoning anti-Semitism and direct threats and be slothful. Never again would Jews go quietly.

It worked out that way for the Jews. The State of Israel; the IDF; the self-confidence of Jews in the United States, Canada, and Australia; and the utter shame of the European countries for the craven and complicit way their people and governments behaved served to protect the remnant of European Jewry and rescue 800,000 Jews from Arab countries, plus Russians, Yemenites, Ethiopians, and Iranians.

But what happens when the forced march, starving, and gas happen to someone else? And what happens, specifically, when the United States, France, and Russia – World War II allies – stand around not only watching, but complicit? What happens when it happens in Syria?

To begin with – starvation and gas. The Syrian military under the protection of Russian air cover has dropped weaponized chlorine on civilians in various Sunni areas of Syria.

Secretary of defense James Mattis laid blame on both. “Either Russia is incompetent or in cahoots with Assad,” Mattis said. He said it would be “very unwise” for the Assad regime to use chemical weapons. Acknowledging there is “no evidence” of the use of sarin gas – specifically banned by the Geneva Conventions – “there’s an awful lot of reports about chlorine gas use or about symptoms that could be resulting from chlorine gas.” He added, “Right now we’re getting reports – I don’t have evidence that I can show you – but I’m aware of the reports of chlorine gas use.” Chlorine gas kills just as surely.

Demand for American Sperm Is Skyrocketing in Brazil Explosive growth spurred by more wealthy single women and lesbian couples turning to U.S. donors By Samantha Pearson

SÃO PAULO—With “jewel-tone eyes,” blond hair and a “smattering of light freckles,” Othello looks nothing like most Brazilians, the majority of whom are black or mixed-race. Yet the “Caucasian” American cashier, described in those terms by the Seattle Sperm Bank and known as Donor 9601, is one of the sperm providers most often requested by wealthy Brazilian women importing the DNA of young U.S. men at unprecedented rates.

Over the past seven years, human semen imports from the U.S. to Brazil have surged as more rich single women and lesbian couples select donors whose online profiles suggest they will yield light-complexioned and preferably blue-eyed children.

Brazil is one of the fastest-growing markets for imported semen in recent years, said Michelle Ottey, laboratory director of Virginia-based Fairfax Cryobank, a large distributor and the biggest exporter to Brazil. More than 500 tubes of foreign semen frozen in liquid nitrogen arrived at Brazilian airports last year, officials and sperm-bank directors said, up from 16 in 2011. Complete data from Anvisa, Brazil’s health-care regulator, isn’t yet available for 2017.

U.S. sperm-bank directors said preferences like those of Brazilian purchasers hold across their global market. “The vast majority of what we have and what we sell are the Caucasian blond-haired, blue-eyed donors,” said Fredrik Andreasson, CFO of Seattle Sperm Bank, which provides about a quarter of Brazil’s imports.

Everyone wants a “pretty kid” and for many parents in Brazil, where prejudice often runs deep, that means “the white biotype—light-colored eyes and skin,” said Susy Pommer, a 28-year-old data analyst from São Paulo who decided to get pregnant last year after a breast-cancer scare left her eager to raise a child right away with her partner, Priscilla. CONTINUE AT SITE

Oliver Friendship Theocratic Iran and its Citizens’ Lives

The political authority of the unelected Supreme Leader and his personally selected Guardian Council to veto bills and choose presidential candidates makes a mockery of Iran’s supposed ‘democracy’. For those who might criticise such a system, a mandatory seventy-four lashes await.

In his 1689 publication A Letter Concerning Toleration, the English philosopher John Locke recommended that the institutions of religion and state be made into totally separate entities, because such a separation would lead to a high level of social stability. Locke’s ideas were considered revolutionary at the time, but the notion of a separation of religion and state has long been a staple of developed nations. However, numerous countries, especially in the Middle East, still implement a form of government where religion and state are intertwined. Iran is one such nation.

Iran’s theocratic ruler, the “Supreme Leader”, is a clear representative of the interests of the dominant Shia Islam in the nation’s political sphere, and has a stranglehold over matters pertaining to the Iranian state. This situation has resulted in internal lawmaking that negatively affects the lives of Iranians, and a political structure that denigrates the country’s democracy.

Iran used to have a form of more democratic governance promoting the separation of religion and state until the 1979 uprising that led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic. The uprising was led by the nation’s first Supreme Leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, and was supported by many of the older, more religiously fanatical citizens who were against the rapid modernisation and Westernisation of Iran by the then government. With this new political order came a new constitution, stating that “All civil, penal, financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military, political, and other laws and regulations must be based on Shia Islamic criteria.” This constitutional basis for the authority of the dominant Shia Islam over matters of state is politically and practically manifest in the role of Supreme Leader.

The current Supreme Leader of Iran is Ali Khamenei. Elected to this position not by popular vote, but by decree of the Assembly of Religious Experts, Khamenei was chosen as a “suitable cleric” to uphold the beliefs of Shia Islam in Iranian politics. The members of the Assembly of Religious Experts are also strict followers of Shia Islam and experts in the Koran and sharia law. The Supreme Leader they elect is guaranteed to be of a similar hardline Shia conviction, which Khamenei is, and act on behalf of Shia interests and principles, which Khamenei does.

The Supreme Leader operates both within and above a largely impotent publicly elected civil government and President, and has powers over matters of state that are far-reaching, controlling, and near absolute. In the Iranian constitution, the Supreme Leader’s role is defined as to “determine the interests of Islam in Iran”, and to “guide” and “supervise” the nation. This was included in the constitution by Iran’s original Islamic revolutionaries in order to assuage fears that a more moderate, democratic and Westernised government would regain power.

The Supreme Leader has far-reaching control over jurisdictions typically considered matters of state in the West. While the elected President of Iran does handle matters of small civil legislation, the theocratic Supreme Leader is totally responsible for control of the armed forces and defence, and can “dictate general guidelines of Iranian foreign and domestic policy”. The Supreme Leader also has the authority to appoint military commanders, the director of national radio and television networks, members of the national security council, the chief judge and prosecutor, and mosque leaders in all of Iran’s major cities.