RUTHFULLY YOURS

A Swedish court ruled against the parental rights of Alicia, a Swedish citizen, and handed over her children (also Swedish citizens) to a foreigner who is known to have raped their mother, in the context of an Islamic sharia “marriage,” when she herself was a child.

Sometimes, when one points out these rules, people will respond: “Well, the Bible says such-and-such.” The point is not that these things are written in Islamic scripture, but that people still live by them.

Swedish officials have not made any “mistakes” in Alicia’s case. Every single action on their part has been rooted in a philosophy that they thoroughly understand and in which they deeply believe. They are, as they love to proclaim, proud feminists, whose ardent belief in sisterhood ends where brutal Islamic patriarchy, gender oppression, and primitive “honor culture” begin. That is feminism, Swedish style.

In practice, as it happens, this compulsion to respect the different priorities of other cultures is most urgent when the culture in question is the one in which female inequality is most thoroughly enshrined and enforced.

“Sweden has the first feminist government in the world,” brags the Swedish government on its official website. Meaning what, exactly?

“This means that gender equality is central to the Government’s priorities… a gender equality perspective is brought into policy-making on a broad front… The Government’s most important tool for implementing feminist policy is gender mainstreaming, of which gender-responsive budgeting is an important component.”

“The result of 25 years of multiculturalism has not been multicultural communities. It has been mono-cultural communities… Islamic communities are segregated.” – Ed Husain, former Muslim extremist.

This approach, giving social-services, is based on the belief — oft-refuted — that Muslim extremists (both Muslims-by-birth and converts) have suffered from deprivation. It also greatly rests on the naïve assumption that rewarding them with benefits — for which genuinely deprived citizens generally need to wait in line — will turn them into grateful patriots, prepared to stand for the national anthem and hold hands with Christians and Jews.

The British government has shown itself incapable of enforcing its own laws when it comes to its Muslim citizens or new immigrants. Rather than stand up to our enemies, both external and internal, are we so afraid of being called “Islamophobes” that we will sacrifice even our own cultural, political, and religious strengths and aspirations?

For many complex reasons, Europe is in an advanced state of decline. In recent years, several important studies of this condition have appeared, advancing a variety of reasons for it: Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, James Kirchik’s The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, as well as Christopher Caldwell’s ground-breaking 2010 study, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West. Soeren Kern at Gatestone Institute has also been detailing the steady impact of immigration from Muslim regions on countries such as Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

It is clear that something serious is happening on the continent in which I live.

The threat is not restricted to Europe, but has a global dimension. Michael J. Abramowitz, President of Freedom House, writes in his introduction to the organization’s 2018 report:

A quarter-century ago, at the end of the Cold War, it appeared that totalitarianism had at last been vanquished and liberal democracy had won the great ideological battle of the 20th century.

Today, it is democracy that finds itself battered and weakened. For the 12th consecutive year, according to Freedom in the World, countries that suffered democratic setbacks outnumbered those that registered gains. States that a decade ago seemed like promising success stories—Turkey and Hungary, for example—are sliding into authoritarian rule.

DUNCE IS A GENDER NEUTRAL WORD! RSK

Just because a word contains M-A-N, does that automatically mean it refers to a specific gender? If you’re championing the cause of “non-sexist” language, you bet it does.

It’s called “gendered” language and to rational, reasonable people, the argument against it is silly. “All men are created equal” does not refer to one gender. “Mankind” “humanity,””freshman,” “man-made” — these are words that are inclusive of the (excuse me) human race, male and female. For hundreds of years, their meaning has been understood completely by all English speaking people.

But it doesn’t matter that these words do not refer specifically to the male gender. They sound like they do, ergo, they have to go.

This disease has even infected the upper echelons of power in the western world. Here’s Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau correcting a questioner who dared use the term “mankind.” CONTINUE AT SITE

After Israel’s ambassador to Poland criticized that nation’s bill to outlaw words that suggest Polish complicity in the Holocaust, a spokesperson for Poland’s ruling party retweeted the comment that the ambassador’s action “makes it difficult for me to look at Jews with kindness and sympathy.”

The bill, which has passed Poland’s parliament and which President Andrzej Duda has until Feb. 21 to decide whether to sign, would set prison terms of up to three years for using phrases like “Polish death camps” and suggesting “publicly and against the facts” that Poland or its government was complicit in Nazi Germany’s slaughter of more than 3 million Jewish Poles.

To be sure, Poland deserves a fair shake about the World War II murder of Jews within its borders, and other nations have long sought to allay its concerns. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said just the other day that the term “Polish death camps” was wrong, Israel says it doesn’t oppose Poland’s efforts to discourage its use, and President Barack Obama apologized for using the term in 2012.

Rather than correct history, however, this bill is designed to curtail efforts to speak openly about the past. And it’s driven far less by the government’s concerns for accuracy than by its desire to nourish its right-wing, nationalistic base at the expense of Jews and other targeted minorities.

First, a few facts about Poland’s experience during the war: For one thing, it was treated savagely by both Germany and the Soviet Union, which conspired to carve it up. For another, and unlike its neighbors, it was never ruled by a pro-German collaborationist government in Warsaw. For still another, the death camps within its borders were built by the Nazis, not by Poles.

A warning for Taiwan about unification with China….rsk
Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal overturned prison sentences Tuesday for three students who led prodemocracy protests in 2014. But the defendants didn’t celebrate, because the justices also upheld tougher sentencing guidelines for future cases, and the government is barring other democracy advocates from taking part in elections.

Two years ago a magistrate sentenced Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow to community service and suspended jail terms for leading the civil-disobedience campaign that occupied downtown streets for 75 days. Most of the population supported their request that Beijing honor its promise of universal-suffrage elections for the city’s chief executive. But Beijing refused, and prosecutors then took the rare step of asking for tougher punishment in the Court of Appeal, which imposed jail terms of six to eight months.

The government’s motivation was clear: Convicts sentenced to three months or longer are banned from running for public office for five years. If the activists won seats in the city’s legislature, they could use that platform to demand Beijing honor its promises of autonomy and democracy. Mr. Law was elected to the legislature in 2016. But the Beijing-backed government created new rules that retroactively disqualified him and five others.

By-elections for four of those seats will be held on March 11, and another popular protest leader, Agnes Chow, was expected to replace Mr. Law. An election official disqualified her on grounds that she would not uphold the city’s constitution, the Basic Law, that says Hong Kong is part of China.

French Interior Minister Gérard Collomb described the level of violence in Calais as “unprecedented.” He attributed the fighting to an escalating turf war between Afghan and Kurdish gangs seeking to gain control over human trafficking between Calais and Britain, which many migrants view as “El Dorado” because of its massive underground economy.

During his visit to Calais, Macron outlined his government’s new immigration policy: food and shelter for those entitled to remain in France, and deportation of those in the country illegally.

“Emmanuel Macron did it. Never before has a president of the Republic fallen into unpopularity so fast and then become popular again.” — Paris Match.

Hundreds of Africans and Asians armed with knives and iron rods fought running street battles in the northern port city of Calais on February 1, less than two weeks after French President Emmanuel Macron visited the area and pledged to crack down on illegal immigration.

The clashes plunged Calais — emblematic of Europe’s failure to control mass migration — into a war zone and reinforced the perception that French authorities have lost control of the country’s security situation.

The mass brawls, fought in at least three different parts of Calais, erupted after a 37-year-old Afghan migrant running a human trafficking operation fired gunshots at a group of Africans who did not have money to pay for his services. Five Africans suffered life-threatening injuries.

Within an hour, hundreds of Eritreans, Ethiopians and Sudanese took to the streets of Calais and attacked any Afghans they could find. More than a thousand police officers using batons and tear gas were deployed to restore order. Two dozen migrants were hospitalized.

The single terrorist survivor of the horrible 2015 ISIS attack in Paris that killed 130 people refused to answer any questions when he appeared in court today in Brussels, Belgium.

The 28-year-old mass murderer Salah Abdeslam even refused to confirm his own identity. During the proceedings, he made clear that his silence will continue throughout.

Abdeslam wore a white jacket and appeared with his thick beard in court. When one of the judges asked him “are you Salah Abdeslam,” the terrorist refused to respond. Instead of answering, he simply stared at the floor. This attitude is undoubtedly the result of his hatred for everything not radically Islamic. Extremists like Abdeslam refuses to accept the authority of secular institutions. So no, he’s not going to answer this question — or any other question for that matter. He considers himself well above the judgments of “unbelievers.”

Although the trial is important, this particular trial in Belgium isn’t about the Paris terror attack, but about his shoot-out with police in March 2016 when they came to arrest him. He’s accused of possession of (banned) weapons and of attempted murder in a terrorist context.

Belgian and French prosecutors and intelligence officers were hoping that Abdeslam would give them some insight into the inner workings of ISIS and similar terror organizations. That is, clearly, not going to happen.