RUTHFULLY YOURS

Zimbabwe was once Rhodesia-called the “breadbasket of Africa”- the most productive nation with an infrastructure, judicial system, and gifted with natural beauty, thriving agriculture and a growing middle class of White and Black citizens. Post-colonial independence brought corruption, destruction, epidemics, and a loss of all basic human rights…..It appears that nothing will change for the better….rsk
Zimbabwe’s generals swear what they started doing in the early hours of Wednesday morning isn’t a coup, but it sure looks like one. By the end of the day, long-time strongman Robert Mugabe was under house arrest, his wife Grace was rumored to have fled the country, and state media and the main airport were under military control.

It would be nice to think the military is belatedly punishing the Mugabe regime for the economic and political misery it has inflicted on Zimbabwe’s people for the 37 years the Old Man has been in power. But the coup’s motives are more venal and arise from a power struggle within the ruling Zanu-PF party.

The generals who have long been silent partners in the Zanu-PF government worried that the 93-year-old Mr. Mugabe’s moves to position his 52-year-old wife as his successor imperiled their own influence. The main goal of the coup may be to push Mr. Mugabe out before he could realize his dynastic ambitions. To that end, the military might bring back recently deposed Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, whom Mr. Mugabe fired last week for becoming an alternate center of power within the party.

As gratifying as it is to watch the scorpions fight, the victims as always will be Zimbabwe’s people. Mr. Mugabe’s misrule has left them lurching from one bout of starvation, disease and hyperinflation to another, while the country’s rulers enrich themselves.

This coup offers little hope of immediate improvement. After the crisis in Harare dies down, the government still will be focused mainly on patronage politics coupled with often violent suppression of political dissent. Mr. Mnangagwa allegedly was responsible for his share of the repression as Mr. Mugabe’s security chief in the 1980s.

Zimbabwe may escape one trap by avoiding a ruling family dynasty, and that’s a precondition for the political and economic reforms Zimbabwe needs to have any shot at prosperity. But the country that once was Africa’s bread basket needs a total overhaul of its governance, not merely a coup, and that day is not here.

Suburbs have become transformed into one of the most visible signs of the Islamization of France. Anti-Semitism is devouring the French Republic.

While Jewish symbols disappear from France, Islamic symbols proliferate, from burkinis on the beaches to veils in the workplace. Jews who have not fled France are trying to become “invisible”.

France’s suburbs are rapidly becoming apartheid societies. Hatred of Jews has become the gateway to “la France soumise” — the submission of France.

Suburbs (“banlieues”) — distant from the affluent boulevards and bistros of Paris — form the “other France”. They are the “peripheral France”, (“La France Périphérique”) as the geographer Christophe Guilluy calls them in an important book. They are where “living together” between communities has really been tested.

In the last 20 years, these French suburbs have not only become “concentrations of poverty and social isolation”, but have gone from being some of France’s most densely-populated Jewish areas to “lost territories of the Republic”, according to the great historian Georges Bensoussan, in his book, Les territoires perdus de la République.

These suburbs have become transformed into one of the most visible signs of the Islamization of France.

Anti-Semitism has returned as one of Europe’s worst diseases. France hosts Europe’s largest Jewish community, and Jews have been fleeing the suburbs to either emigrate or move to gentrified districts of the cities, where they feel more protected. What happens to the Jews will have a seismic impact on the entire continent.

In the Parisian suburb of Bagneux, someone recently vandalized the memorial plaque for Ilan Halimi, a young Jew who was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a “barbarian gang” in 2006, just for being a Jew. At the time, it was France’s first case of murderous anti-Semitism in many years. After it, Islamists murdered Jews at a school in Toulouse and a kosher supermarket in Paris.

As Le Monde reported in a chilling new inquiry, anti-Semitism now knocks daily at the doors of the French Jews. It has been creating a serious migratory trend: French Jews have become “internal refugees”.

French Jews are now not only threatened in their synagogues and schools, but in their homes. A Jewish family was recently held hostage, beaten and robbed in their home in the suburb of Seine Saint-Denis. Before that, a retired Jewish doctor and schoolteacher, Sarah Halimi, was beaten and thrown to her death from her balcony, in the Belleville district of Paris. The man who murdered her, while yelling “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is Greater”), was a Muslim neighbor. Two Jewish brothers were recently attacked on a Paris street by men wielding a hacksaw and shouting “You dirty Jews! You are going to die”.

Shortly after taking office in November 2015, Canada’s Prime MinisterJustin Trudeau on CBC’s “1 on 1” argued the importance of working with “the Muslim community to demonstrate that Islam is not incompatible with free and open Western societies.” Thus, reiterating the oxymoron that was introduced by the Muslim Brotherhood and has since been used by their many affiliated Muslim organizations to dupe the West.

So when on October 18, 2017, the province of Quebec passed a new law banning the wearing of niqab or burqa “when riding public transit or receiving government services” for security reasons– Trudeau made it known he wasn’t happy with the new provincial law, law. “As a federal government, we are going to take our responsibility seriously and look carefully at what the implications are” even though the federal government, cannot challenge the new law, implying others could.

It didn’t take for the leading Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated, the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, together with Marie-Michelle Lacoste, a Montreal convert to Islam to file a lawsuit with the province’s Superior Court requesting to suspend the law because the ban “gravely infringes” the religious and equality rights of Muslim women in the province. She accused the local government of sending a message “ to the citizens is that if they already have negative thoughts about Muslim women wearing the niqab, it’s OK to think this way, (that) you are right to harass them, to threaten them, to insult them,” she announced. The Court is scheduled to hear her request later on Wednesday. Rest assured that if the court denies her request, she and the Islamic organizations that support her will not stop until the ban is lifted.

“The Awareness guide – listed terrorist entities,” posted on the Royal Canadian Mounted Police website quotes Sections 318, 319, and 320 of the Criminal Code, which forbids hate propaganda. “Hate propaganda” means “any writing, sign or visible representation that advocates or promotes genocide or the communication of which by any person would constitute an offence under section 319.”

But since Trudeau took office, his pro-Islamic policies led to lax enforcement of Canada’s anti- “hate-crime” and incitement laws against Canadians, including Muslim religious leaders, who publicly support the mujahideen in their armed struggle against infidels, and the killing of the enemies of Islam.

Last September Quebec prosecutors decided not to file hate crimes charges against Sheikh Sayyed Al-Ghitawi, an imam at the Al-Andalous Islamic Center in Montreal,

who during two Friday sermons on August 2014, prayed to Allah to “destroy the accursed Jews” and to “kill them one by one.” “Oh Allah, turn their children into orphans and their women into widows,” he said in the sermons, which were posted on the Alrahma Qanat on YouTube.

Local authorities, police, teachers and MPs have all been working with MEND even though the organization “meets the government’s own definition of extremism” and “has regularly hosted illiberal, intolerant and extremist Islamist speakers… has openly sought to undermine counter-terrorism legislation and counter-extremism efforts, in addition to having its own links to extremists…”
Despite meeting the government’s definition of an extremist group, MEND is nevertheless organizing a number of events for “Islamophobia Awareness Month” at British universities.
One can think of other issues that are more deserving of an “awareness month” in the UK, especially because many of the people affected by those issues have suffered the consequences of the British obsession with “Islamophobia”.

In Britain, Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, along with Liberal Democrats leader Vince Cable, are the poster boys for this year’s “Islamophobia Awareness Month” a yearly campaign, which has been running under the leadership of Islamist group Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND), since 2012.

“We have to drive out racism in any form in our society,” said Corbyn – whose own Labour party has never been more anti-Semitic and who considers Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists his “friends”. The message came wrapped in a propaganda video he stars in for the campaign. “Islamophobia,” he continued, “is a terrible thing, causes terrible hurt and terrible pain”.

“I greatly welcome the contribution that MEND is making to raise awareness of this issue and mobilise people in the political world and elsewhere to fight Islamophobia”, Cable adds in the video.

Here are two leaders of British political opposition parties, virtually genuflecting to MEND, a group that was recently described, as “Islamists masquerading as civil libertarians”.

Corbyn and Cable are not, however, the only ones to eager for the company of Islamic supremacists. Local authorities, police, teachers and MPs have all been working with MEND even though the organization “meets the government’s own definition of extremism” (“Vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs.”) and “has regularly hosted illiberal, intolerant and extremist Islamist speakers… has openly sought to undermine counter-terrorism legislation and counter-extremism efforts, in addition to having its own links to extremists…”

Almost unnoticed in the coverage of President Trump’s Asia trip, Lebanon is slipping under Iran’s control. On November 3, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, resigned, citing fears of assassination by Hezbollah, the Shia Muslim terrorist group funded and controlled by Iran. No one can say Hariri’s fears are unjustified since his father, former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, was murdered in 2005 — almost certainly at Syrian or Iranian direction.

While the full ramifications of Saad Hariri’s resignation remain to be seen, Tehran’s ayatollahs have now significantly extended their malign reach in the Middle East. This is bad for the people of Lebanon; bad for Israel, with which Lebanon shares a common border and a contentious history; bad for Arab states like Jordan and the oil-producing Arabian Peninsula monarchies; and bad for America and its vital national interests in this critical region.

Sadly, Iran’s progress was foreseeable from the inception of Barack Obama’s strategy of using Iraqi military forces and Shia militia units as critical elements in the campaign to eradicate the ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The Baghdad government is effectively Iran’s satellite. Accordingly, Obama’s decision to provide that regime with military assistance and advice strengthened Iran’s hand even further and materially contributed to its efforts to establish dominance in Iraq’s Shia regions.

Moreover, Iran itself, supported by Russian forces in Syria, aided and directed the Bashar Assad regime in fighting against both ISIS and the Syrian opposition. Iran also ordered Hezbollah to deploy from Lebanon into Syria, thus effectively creating a Shia-dominated arc of control from Iran itself to the Mediterranean.

The ADL’s response: “alarming that white supremacist rally in Poland today drew 1000s of young Europeans who, like those who marched in #Charlottesville, believe in ‘ethnic purity’ and target immigrants, Muslims and Jews for #hate,” is stupid and duplicitous as usual. The Charlottesville event had at most a hundred bigots who were bused in to disrupt a protest against removal of Confederate statues. In Poland, with its sordid history of collaboration with Nazis in roundup of Jews, a march drawing thousands is truly alarming…rsk
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has called on the Polish government to take action against anti-Semitism after a weekend nationalist march included demonstrators calling for a country free of Jews.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon told the Associated Press that the event was “a dangerous march of extreme and racist elements.”

“We hope that Polish authorities will act against the organizers,” Nahshon said. “History teaches us that expressions of racist hate must be dealt with swiftly and decisively.”

The rally of some 60,000 Poles included chants of “Pure Poland, white Poland!” and “Jews out of Poland,” and banners with slogans such as “white Europe of brotherly nations” and “pray for Islamic Holocaust.”

Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak called the demonstration “a beautiful sight,” adding that “we are proud that so many Poles have decided to take part in a celebration connected to the Independence Day holiday.”

The American Jewish Committee said chants at the march also included “clean blood, lucid mind,” “Sieg Heil” and “Ku Klux Klan.”

“While the joyous 99th anniversary of Polish Independence was appropriately celebrated in ceremonies led by President Duda, the day was seriously marred by hateful, far-right throngs that threaten the core values of Poland and its standing abroad,” said Agnieszka Markiewicz, director of AJC’s Warsaw-based Central Europe office. “The growth of xenophobic nationalism in Poland is becoming more dangerous, and we urge the government to condemn unequivocally the phenomenon and take appropriate action to counter it.”

“The apparent tolerance shown for these purveyors of hate — and, let’s be clear, that’s exactly what they are — by some Polish government officials is particularly troubling,” Markiewicz added.

“Alarming that white supremacist rally in Poland today drew 1000s of young Europeans who, like those who marched in #Charlottesville, believe in ‘ethnic purity’ and target immigrants, Muslims and Jews for #hate,” tweeted Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt.

The European Jewish Congress warned at the end of August that “there has been a distinct normalization of antisemitism, racism and xenophobia in Poland recently.”

EJC president Moshe Kantor said that anti-Semitic incidents including a proliferation of “fascist slogans,” banners and commentaries “appear to have coincided with the Polish government closing its communications with the official representatives of the Jewish community.”

A University of Warsaw Centre for Research on Prejudice study released in January found 37 percent of Poles surveyed voicing negative attitudes towards Jews in 2016, up 32 percent from 2015 — sentiment especially driven by young Poles.

Maybe he’ll do the wave with Raúl and Joanne, too By Silvio Canto, Jr.

We just learned that Oscar Lopez Rivera will be going to Cuba to receive special recognition or an award, as reported by a state newspaper in the island:

According to a program prepared for the independence activist — the first after his release last May 17th — , the award will be giv

en to Lopez Rivera at the Jose Marti Memorial, located at Revolution Square in Havana.

According to the Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, ICAP, Lopez Rivera will assist in a political-cultural activity on Monday at th

e Havana entity that was host to many solidarity actions for his cause.

The agenda also includes an exchange with students at the University of Havana’s Master Hall, visits to provinces and to the Santa Ifigenia Cemetery in eastern Santiago de Cuba where he will visit the memorials that hold the remains of National Hero Jose Marti and the leader of the Revolution Fidel Castro.

Isn’t that sweet? President Obama opened the U.S. embassy and now Cuba invites a terrorist. You can’t make this stuff up!

My guess is that President Obama got away with commuting his sentence because most Americans don’t know who this man is or was.

His story started in 1974 when the FALN was a deadly domestic terror group based in the US, as we saw in Politico:

The FALN was responsible for over 130 bombings during this period, including the January 1975 explosion in Manhattan’s historic Fraunces Tavern, which killed four and wounded 63. In October of that year, it set off, all within the span of an hour, 10 bombs in three cities causing nearly a million dollars in damage.

Recent events in the Middle East confirm the observation that very little in the Middle East is easily understood. A day after Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched a palace purge by arresting several of his fellow royals, a high ranking prince mysteriously died in a helicopter crash. State media did not reveal the cause of the crash, albeit any suggestion of motive would be entirely speculative.

There are conditions that have been established. Dozens of princes, ministers and a billionaire tycoon were arrested as Bin Salman, age 32, attempts to consolidate his power. It would appear as if the Crown Prince wants to eliminate any trace of dissent prior to the formal transfer of power from his 81 year old father who is suffering from a terminal illness.

One of those detained by authorities is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, an investor who owns a major stake in Twitter, Citigroup and News America. He has also contributed to Middle East Studies programs from Columbia to Yale and points in between. His arrest suggests no one is beyond the reach of the Crown Prince.

Over the last two years Bin Salman has taken over most of the key economic and security posts and is unquestionably the most important figure in government. The Crown Prince is also deputy prime minister (the king is prime minister) and minister of defense. Clearly this seizure of power has given rise to the resistance inside and outside the royal family. In the Saudi system, power has been passed among the sons of the founder of the modern Saudi Kingdom, Idn Saud. Crown Prince Mohammed is putting an end to all of that as political power is migrating to his branch of the family, including all military authority.