RUTHFULLY YOURS

In one audio recording, Erdogan was heard ordering his son to get rid of all the cash he kept at home; and his son, after trying for several hours, tells him there are still millions left. Erdogan denied the authenticity of the evidence and claimed this was a coup d’état against his elected administration. He then purged all prosecutors and police officers investigating the charges.

Zarrab’s testimony as a witness, as well as documents displayed at trial “would show that this conspiracy to launder money for Iran was not a rogue operation. It would show the Turkish government at its very highest level understood what was going on — and approved of it.” — Nate Schenkkan, Freedom House, USA.

“Former and current opposition figures already face prosecution and threats should they help publicize corruption allegations against Erdogan. The potential conviction of Turkish government officials plays to Erdogan’s growing anti-Western rhetoric. It serves as further evidence, for Erdogan and his supporters, that the West will not tolerate promising, strong leaders who pursue independent foreign policies. This perception feeds popular narratives that Islamists in Turkey and elsewhere hold about Western or American policies in the region. It also resonates well with extremely high levels of popular anti-Americanism in Turkey.” — A. Kadir Yildirim, research scholar, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

“He has a strong paranoid orientation. He is ready for retaliation and, not without reason, sees himself as surrounded by enemies. But he ignores his role in creating those enemies, and righteously threatens his targets. The conspiracy theories he spins are not merely for popular consumption in the Arab world, but genuinely reflect his paranoid mindset. He is convinced that the United States, Israel and Iran have been in league for the purpose of eliminating him, and finds a persuasive chain of evidence for this conclusion.”

— Explaining Saddam Hussein: A Psychological Profile, by Dr. Jerrold M. Post, presented to the House Armed Services Committee, December 1990.

In the text above replace the words “in the Arab world” with “Turkey,” and delete the word “Iran” in the preceding line, and one will get a short paragraph “Explaining Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: A Psychological Profile.” A number of high-profile investigations developing on American soil are threatening Erdogan’s legitimacy while Turkey’s strongman resorts to the tactic he knows best: spin global conspiracy theories to influence voter behavior in a country the where average schooling is a mere 6.5 years.

A poll conducted this summer found that 29% of French Muslims found Sharia to be more important to them than French laws. It also found that 67% of Muslims want their children to study Arabic, and 56% think it should be taught in public schools.

A 2016 UK poll showed that 43% of British Muslims “believed that parts of the Islamic legal system should replace British law while only 22 per cent opposed the idea”. Another poll from 2016 found that 23% of all Muslims supported the introduction of sharia law in some areas of Britain, 39% agreed that “wives should always obey their husbands,” and 52% of all British Muslims believe that homosexuality should be illegal.

French President Emmanuel Macron blamed France, not Islam, for the increased radicalization, which he said should lead France to “question itself.” According to Macron, then, the parallel Islamic societies of France, have nothing to do with Islam. They are the fault of the French republic. Did the French republic impose sharia and the subjugation of women in the suburbs, described by one female survivor as “hell”? Was the French republic behind the recent distribution of leaflets stipulating “if you meet a Jew, kill him”?

A French intellectual, Christian Moliner, recently suggested that France should establish a Muslim state-within-a-state that adheres to sharia law, inside the borders of France, to avoid a civil war. Warning against refusing to deal with the problems of Islamism in Europe because of political correctness, he stated:

“Out of the fear of appearing Islamophobic, to satisfy this bustling fringe of Muslims, governments are ready to accept the spread of radical practices throughout the country…. [some] territories are outside the control of the Republic. The police can come only in force and for limited durations… We can never convert the 30% of Muslims who demand the introduction of sharia law to the merits of our democracy and secularism. We are now allowing segregation to take place that does not say its name.”

Moliner’s solution?

“… Establish a dual system of law in France… one territory, one government, but two peoples: the French with the usual laws and Muslims with Qur’anic status (but only for those who choose it)… The latter will have the right to vote… but they will apply Sharia in everyday life, to regulate matrimonial laws (which will legalize polygamy) and inheritance… They will no longer apply to French judges for disputes between Muslims… conflicts between Christians and believers will remain the responsibility of ordinary courts…”

Moliner’s proposal represents a total surrender to political Islam and is of course outrageous, especially considering that Muslims only comprise a little more than five percent of the French population. What he suggests, however, merely formalizes the status quo that already exists — and not only in France — even if it abandons reform-minded Muslims and eventually, with their collapsing demography, the non-Muslims there.

This is a wonderful column on the clarity of vision of the late Conor Cruise O’Brien who wrote “The Siege” a superb book on Israel’s history and mandate. rsk

It might be best to begin by saying how I came to be interested in the 1986 visit to South Africa of Conor Cruise O’Brien, the great Irish statesman, diplomat, writer and public intellectual. I was born on Merseyside but my father was later transferred to Durban by his employers, so I finished my schooling there and then attended the University of Natal, where I was heavily involved in anti-apartheid activities. A Rhodes Scholarship took me to Oxford just before the Security Police came to detain me. I was to stay in Oxford for many years as student and teacher, well aware that it would be unsafe to return to South Africa. I finally did so in 1978 and thereafter returned frequently to teach and to write about the evolving situation for The Times and Sunday Times. Ultimately I left Oxford in 1995 to return to South Africa where I ran the Helen Suzman Foundation. I have ended up living in Cape Town. Throughout these many years I have heard countless friends and colleagues discuss “the Conor Cruise O’Brien affair”, which was quite a landmark in South Africa, particularly for liberals. This always intrigued me, for I had got to know Conor a little through his son, Donal. The account which follows depends heavily on the oral testimonies of eye-witnesses.

Conor visited South Africa on a number of occasions and was considerably interested in its politics which he, among many others, compared with both Israel and Northern Ireland. During several of these visits he gave lectures at the University of Cape Town (UCT) — generally regarded as the country’s premier university — and these were sufficiently well received for him to be invited by Dr David Welsh to return as a Visiting Professor to the university’s political science department in 1986.

This was, however, the era of the academic boycott of South Africa called by the Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM). The boycott was continuously controversial with those (like Conor) who felt there should never be any impediment to the free movement of people and ideas. Over time the AAM, which was always controlled by the African National Congress (ANC) and often by the South African Communist Party, had succeeded in getting apartheid branded by the UN General Assembly as a “crime against humanity”, a fact which served to heighten the AAM’s sense of self-righteousness. In turn, of course, the political atmosphere both within South Africa and outside was charged by the increasing tide of revolutionary protest led by the United Democratic Front (UDF), which acted as a surrogate for the banned ANC. On the English-speaking university campuses, student feeling had become increasingly shrill, a development much strengthened by the decision to open these universities to students of all races.

One of the key pillars of the apartheid regime had been the Separate Universities Act of 1959, which forbade racial integration at tertiary education level. This was a tremendous blow to the liberal English-speaking universities — Witswatersrand (Wits), Natal, Rhodes and UCT, which all fought and protested strongly against the new Act. Thereafter black students were consigned to (inferior) “tribal colleges” within the so-called “black homelands”. Inevitably, political dissent spread from the black campuses into black schools, finally resulting in the explosion of the Soweto riots of 1976 which then spread right round the country. This in turn created a climate of continuous unrest in the nation’s black schools. The exiled ANC naturally seized on this new opportunity and extensive political mobilisation took place within these schools under the (educationally disastrous) slogan of “Liberation now, education later”. In practice this meant continuous school boycotts, stay-aways and protests and the enrolment of many schoolchildren as full-time political activists. The result was a steep decline in the standard of these “Bantu Education” schools, leading to a so-called “lost generation” of schoolchildren whose school lives were punctuated by continual and often violent clashes with authority.

The seas are roiling once again in the Middle East. Saad Hariri resigned as Lebanon’s prime minister, citing an assassination plot against him organized by his former government coalition partner, Hezbollah. “Wherever Iran settles,” he said in a television address, “it sows discord, devastation and destruction, proven by its interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries.”

It is noteworthy that Mr. Hariri delivered his remarks from Saudi Arabia. Lebanon’s president Michel Aoun, a long-time tool of Damascus, said he will not accept Hariri’s resignation unless he returns to Beirut and hands it over in person – certainly a strange course of action.

The Lebanese Army claims it is not aware of any assassination plot – hardly a credible statement when Hezbollah controls the Army and independent sources indicated Hezbollah killed Hariri’s father in 2005. On one matter there isn’t dispute: Hariri was not able to assert his authority in office; albeit he had to know the Iranian backed terrorist organization would not afford him the opportunity to use his limited powers.

Although it appears as if Hariri is doing Saudi Arabian bidding, he is actually exposing the Lebanese government for what it is – the subject of a hostile takeover by Tehran. The mask of credibility has been removed. Iran’s conquest and de facto annexation is complete.

Do these events presage a war between Saudi princes? Will Saudi leaders feel war is inevitable? Hariri needs Saudi support. Without it, he is swimming in the Mediterranean by himself. By contrast, Hezbollah merely waits for orders from Iran.

The fear is that self-interest might drive the Sunni factions to war, a war that will have profound effects on the region. Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman described the Houthi missile flying over Riyadh as an “act of war.” Moreover, the war in Yemen promoted by Iran may spill across the border into Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia ordered its citizen to leave Lebanon escalating this bewildering crisis. It also escalated its condemnation of Hezbollah declaring Lebanon had effectively declared war on Saudi Arabia.

That the British government turned on the chief executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, Nazir Afzal — a pioneer of the campaign to rescue under-aged girls from the drugging, torture and rape of violent criminals — is beyond shocking.

While the British authorities made a concerted effort to sweep the identity of the pedophiles under the carpet, the perpetrators themselves proudly shouted “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”) in the courtroom after they were convicted and sentenced.

Boys educated by their fathers and radical clerics to view women as chattel would be likely to grow up as misogynists. Accounts from the female family members of some of the convicts in the grooming cases revealed a monstrous hatred for women in general, and non-Muslim women in particular.

It is bad enough that women and girls in the Middle East are inferior in the eyes of their families and the law. Yet, for Britain to look the other way, if not sanction, practices that are anathema to a democracy that prides itself on human rights, is a perversion of justice to Britons of all backgrounds, including law-abiding Muslims.

The former Manchester police detective who exposed a pedophile ring in Rochdale — and resigned in 2012 over the failure of the system to bring the perpetrators to justice — recently broke her silence. She told the British press about the abuse to which she was subjected in her department for attempting to reveal that the perpetrators were Muslim men of Pakistani origin.

Maggie Oliver explained that the reason she decided to come forward with her story was the discovery that a former colleague, detective John Wedger, not only had experienced similar bullying at the hands of the Greater Manchester Police department, but is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his ordeal. Wedger said he was forced into early retirement in October, after more than two decades of service, due to his mental state. His shaky condition was caused, he said, by the behavior of his colleagues and superiors, who were aware that children were being sexually exploited; not only did they dismiss the fact, however, but at least one officer was providing the perpetrators with information about the investigation.

Oliver recounted that her assignment during what was dubbed “Operation Span” was to gain the confidence of the victims and encourage them to speak about their abusers. She claimed that once the children started pointing fingers at mostly Muslim men, the police department began to downplay her findings.

On all questions dedicated to immigration and Islam, France’s Council of State has become an Islamo-leftist body, dedicated to encouraging Muslim immigration and protecting the expansion of Islam and Islamism in France.

The government wanted to expel foreign workers immediately after the cancellation of their work permit. Due to the Council of State, deportation was delayed by 24 hours, enough time to allow them to escape and become permanent illegal immigrants.

Maybe the elites are looking for “redemption” after France colonized parts of Africa. They are forgetting, however, that it was Muslims who colonized the Middle East, the Christian Byzantine Empire, North Africa, Greece, much of Eastern Europe and Asia, Northern Cyprus and Spain.

On October 25, 2017, the highest French administrative court, the Council of State (Conseil d’État), ordered the removal of a Roman Catholic cross from the top of a monument dedicated to Pope John Paul II in a public square in Ploërmel, Britanny. According to the France’s highest administrative court, this cross was said to violate the secular nature of the State. Not the statue of the ex-pope John Paul II by itself; just the cross above it.

Social media, in France and abroad — especially in Poland where John Paul II was born — flew into an immediate uproar: How could the government of a country considered the “eldest daughter of the Catholic church” ask for the removal of a Catholic cross in a tiny village that nobody even knew about before this incident?

The Council of State is an independent legal body that has jurisdiction over disputes concerning civil liberties, administrative police, taxes, public contracts, the civil service, public health, competition rules, environmental law and secularism, to name just a few of its missions. The Council of State is also — as its name implies — the main advisor of every branch of government. Each time a minister or a prime minister has a difficult political decision to make, he sends the case to the Council of State. Generally, the Council of State’s advice becomes the law.

The immense respect due to the Council of State seems to have caused even the keenest observers to miss the fact that, on all questions dedicated to immigration and Islam, the Council of State has become an Islamo-leftist body dedicated to encouraging Muslim immigration and protecting the expansion of Islam and Islamism in France.