RUTHFULLY YOURS

“Like making a pyromaniac the town fire chief.” That’s the verdict from Hillel Neuer, executive director of the NGO UN Watch, on the controversial decision to appoint the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the UN Human Rights Council. It’s a view shared by UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who said that the DRC’s appointment proved that the HRC could not possibly view itself as a unified voice of moral clarity with the integrity to call out abusive governments. The US, which is rightfully reviewing its membership in the council, has called for competitive elections to put pressure on countries with such abysmal human rights records.

Unfortunately, it is not only atrocities within its own borders that the DRC is fueling – it is also sponsoring terrorism overseas. According to a new report, “The Terrorists’ Treasury,” the BGFIBank DRC – which is operated by the brother of Congolese President Joseph Kabila – has been diverting assets to enable the financiers of the Iranian-backed Shiite terrorist organization, Hezbollah.

This is not the first time that the DRC has been exposed as a state sponsor of terrorism. Earlier this year, the NGO Global Witness exposed how Congo Futur, a lumber company owned by major financiers of Hezbollah, had clandestinely created new companies and transferred ownership to proxies in order to circumvent sanctions and export more than $5.5 million worth of luxury timber from the DRC to the US market.

The news that the DRC continues to provide indirect support for Hezbollah comes at a time when the terrorist organization poses a greater threat than ever. First, Hezbollah has been boosting its stockpile of weapons across Lebanon, stoking tensions in the region and raising the prospect of war with Israel. Given the fact that since 1993 every confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon has grown increasingly intense, the next inevitable clash will end up wreaking havoc in both countries.

Second, in addition to expanding its military capacities in Lebanon, Hezbollah has been playing an ever prominent role alongside Syrian government forces in the eastern region of Deir ez-Zor, where the US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces and regime troops are competing for Islamic State territory. Hezbollah has also been exploiting the de-escalation of conflict in south Syria as a vehicle to carry out reconnaissance work in the region, identifying areas in the country from which it could easily strike Israel without needing to be physically close to the border.

However, it is not only towards key US allies that Hezbollah is posing an increasingly menacing threat – it is also towards America itself. The terrorist group was recently caught conspiring to attack the US on its own turf, conducting fundraising operations in the country and positioning “sleeper agents” in places like Michigan and New York.

That the DRC feels emboldened to help Hezbollah restock its war chest should not come as a surprise. After all, the Obama administration and other Western governments have already taught the country – and specifically its President Joseph Kabila – that it can behave how it likes without risking censure.

In 2011, when Kabila came to power in an election marred by electoral irregularities and vote rigging, the US chose to turn a blind eye, believing that for all his faults, Kabila was the best guarantee for stability in the country.

Unsurprisingly the chickens are now coming home to roost. Kabila, a leader who achieved power by corrupt means, is now ensuring that he retains power through equally underhanded methods. Taking Western governments’ past acquiescence as carte blanche, Kabila recently announced that presidential elections originally slated for last December would be delayed until 2019.

The problem is that “hate” is an ill-defined thing. What is hateful to one person may not be hateful to another. What is hateful in one context may not be hateful in another.

British authorities have gone along with a definition of hate-crime which allows the victim (real or perceived) to be the arbiter of whether an offence has been committed. This privilege allows a list of people who believe they have been “trolled” or “abused” online over their “race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity” to be arbiters as well as reporters of any and all such crimes. It is worth considering where this can end up.

Can anyone daring to express dissent against any popular view be reported for “trolling”, “abusing” and “committing a hate crime”?

If you were a police officer what would you rather do: sit in the cold outside the house of a known extremist all day, or sit behind a desk with a cup of tea and scrolling through Twitter?

In May, just after the second of four Islamist terrorist attacks in the UK so far this year, British intelligence officials apparently identified 23,000 known extremists in the country. Of these, around 3,000 are believed to pose a present threat and are under investigation or active monitoring. The other 20,000 are categorised as posing a “residual risk”. Due to the strain on resources, those 20,000 are not under constant observation.

This is a subject which, since the terrorist attack in May, has caused some agonising among the British public, not least because of the identities of the attackers. Khalid Masood, the Westminster Bridge and Parliament assailant, for instance, as well as Salman Abedi (the young man of Libyan heritage who carried out a suicide bombing outside a concert in Manchester) had both been on the radar of the British authorities — both had been in the pool of people considered “former subjects of interest” but not an immediate threat. If the authorities had sufficient resources to follow everyone of interest, perhaps they would have been under observation at the time they were planning their attacks. Perhaps, also, a number of people killed in those attacks would still be alive.

The public, though, can be forgiving on these matters. They recognise that resources are not endless, that judgements have to be made and that departments have to choose where to allocate their budgets.

These choices are another reason why the public may judge dimly last week’s announcement from the Home Office. Last week, Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd announced the creation of a new national police hub to crack down on hate-crime and “trolling” online. The unit — which will apparently be run by specialist officers — will assess complaints and work out whether they amount to a crime or not. They will also recommend removing material from online platforms if they — at the official hate-crime hub — deem such material “hateful”.

Saudi women will first have to get permission from a male guardian just to apply for a driver’s license. Enabling women will still be mainly in the hands of their Saudi male guardians, and many will probably not allow their women to drive.

Any discontent felt by angry men who want total control over their women, household or other people will probably not allow their women to drive. If women are disappointed or frustrated by this domination, the blame will stay mainly within the Saudi family. The woman is not able to blame the government, but only her male guardian. Yes, the government may technically have annulled the driving ban but it has issued nothing actually to help women to drive.

The real challenge King Salman needs to face now is how to deal with calls for abolishing male guardianship — a far more urgent and significant reform that, after calculating the risks and rewards, might be postponed indefinitely.

On 27 September, the Council of Senior Scholars, the highest clerical council in Saudi Arabia, endorsed the royal decree allowing women to drive, thereby disrupting years of ultra-conservative fatwas and religious opinions by the kingdom’s leading religious scholars including current and former grand muftis and council members.

In a statement published by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), the council said that King Salman had issued the decree to serve “the best religious and worldly interests of the country and people,” agreeing that Islam allows women the right to drive.

In attempt to defend previous fatwas banning driving and to avoid alienating dissatisfied hardline adherents to Wahhabi Salafism, the council said that the current fatwas are “based on the benefits and disadvantages of women driving” evaluated first by the ruler and then by clerics and the women’s male guardians: “Male guardians will have to consider both sides of this issue.” In short, women will first have to get permission from a male guardian just to apply for a driver’s license.

It seems that the main and only winner of all this is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

It seems that the main and only winner of the Saudi royal decree allowing women to drive is Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (Photo by Nicolas Asfouri – Pool/Getty Images)

For a start, the council’s endorsement of the royal decree proves clearly that senior clerics’ fatwas and opinions are open to dramatic changes. Their fatwas are not fixed or unchangeable. Council members, including the current and former muftis, had banned women driving. The council’s endorsement also emphasizes that the king is more powerful in facing the clerics and cares more about his people. The new decree emphasizes the image of the new king as a powerful, great and disruptive reformer.

These developments also implicitly hurt the image of most of powerful clerics who previously banned women driving, whether they have changed their opinions or not. Such developments lead people to believe that clerics’ fatwas have been just reflections of what rulers want, that the clerics are yes-men and not independent.

Development such as allowing women to apply for drivers’ licenses throw into doubt all fatwas and statements issued by all clerics, dead or alive, who may contradict any of King Salman’s future decrees or decisions. The most challenging one is the kingdom’s possible formal recognition of Israel and normalizing relationships with it.

As for deceased clerics, such as the former grand mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz ibn Baz and the popular and influential Sheikh Mohamed ibn al-Uthaymeen, Saudi citizens think that if these clerics were alive today, they would have changed those fatwas exactly as the current council members and the current grand mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Alsheikh did. As head of the council of senior scholars, he endorsed the royal decree — in direct contradiction to his fatwa last year. Saudi people will now think that senior clerics change their fatwas and religious opinions after the king, and will realize that their authority is secondary to the king’s and therefore should not be their main reference.

Alex Alexiev is chairman of the Center for Balkan and Black Sea Studies (cbbss.org) and editor of bulgariaanalytica.org. He tweets it ion national security at tweeter.com/alexieff and could be reached at alexievalex4@gmail.com

Though Western Europe and Washington are reluctant to fess up to this unfortunate fact, Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdogan has long ago given up even the pretence of being a democratic polity and is openly pursuing policies detrimental to democracy, the rule of law and Western security considerations. In short, Turkey has become an Islamist dictatorship every bit as inimical to Western interests as Iran, except for being allowed by the West to maintain the charade that it is still a member of NATO and the Western community of nations. This is a dangerous charade that will inevitably come back to haunt us. For the reality is that Erdogan the Islamist has ambitions that go beyond Turkey and even the Middle East. Well known for his admiration for the Ottomans, Erdogan imagines himself as the leader of a new Ottoman Empire based on an Islamized Turkey, but exerting its influence far beyond. Many would dismiss this as an unrealistic pipe dream, and it probably is just that ultimately. But in pursuing it vigorously, Erdogan has already done much damage both in Turkey and abroad. Suffice it to say that Turks who had lived in Germany and the Netherlands for decades, voted for Erdogan in greater percentages (60% and 70% respectively) than voters in Turkey itself in the last referendum.

The key to spreading Erdogan’s Islamist message is an organization called Diyanet, a Turkish directorate for religious affairs that is directly subordinated to him. Few if any Western leaders have ever heard of it, despite its importance. It was originally set up by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1924 for the purpose of training imams for the mosques, but more importantly, it was tasked with preventing the radicalization of Turkish Islam. The type of education received in these madrassa-like institutions, called imam-hatip schools, was considered second-rate and did not qualify their graduates for the university or government work. At the time of Erdogan’s takeover of the government in 2002, there were 450 imam-hatip schools with some 60,000 students. Most of them were the sons of poorly-educated yet devout Muslims, which Erdogan, himself the product of such a school, considered prime islamization cadres. And so, after neutralizing the Turkish military by means of bogus but ultimately effective show trials, Erdogan set about to build up and promote an army of pious imam-hatip graduates devoted to him, not unlike the janissaries of the Ottoman Empire, who considered themselves the slaves of the sultan alone. Here it must be mentioned that these madrassas as well as the mandatory religious education curriculum in Turkey is highly discriminatory to the extent that it teaches exclusively the Sunni Hanafi school of Muslim jurisprudence, which is not practiced by the large populations of Alevis and the Kurds, who follow the shafi’i madhab, not to mention the millions of secular Turks.

Appointing a zealous Islamist (who considered Israel a terror organization on a par with ISIS) to lead the Diyanet in 2010, Erdogan removed all career obstacles previously faced by imam-hatip graduates, indeed began treating them preferentially for government work and in the military, while providing the Diyanet with massive amounts of money and islamizing the curriculum to exclude evolution. This promptly made these schools a hugely desirable career choice for aspiring Islamists. And so, by 2015, there were 1961 imam-hatip schools with more than 1.2 million students and a budget of $2 billion.

They call him Wunder-wuzzi — the whizzkid — and he’s poised now to become the next chancellor of Austria. Sebastian Kurz, elected on an “anti-immigration” platform (translation: no more Muslims), is yet another in the wave of new leaders in central and eastern Europe who have had it up to their keisters with Mutti Merkel’s insane “immigration” policy, and are about to say Nein! to the European Union’s demands that the cradle of western civilization admit even more of these culturally, morally, ethically, and religiously inimical people. Der Spiegel has the interview. Note the hostile tone right out of the box from the mouthpiece of west German groupthink:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Kurz, you’re 31 years old and poised to become the new Austrian chancellor. Do you sometimes spook yourself?

Kurz: Not in the least. I am aware of the responsibility I am taking on. Things have developed very quickly for me in recent years, but they didn’t happen from one day to the next. I have more than six years of experience in government. I took the decision to run as a candidate very seriously. In May, I decided to change the Austrian People’s Party and to start a broad-based movement aimed at changing this country for the better.

SPIEGEL: Can you understand that some people are a little spooked to see such a young man in charge of a country?

Kurz: If that’s how the Austrian public thought, they wouldn’t have voted for me. Austrians have had a while to get a sense of who I am. Other candidates have been on the political stage for a much briefer period than I. Voters probably were much less familiar with some of the candidates in the German elections, who were previously in Brussels.

SPIEGEL: Do you sometimes wish you had more life experience to bring to your new office?

Kurz: We are who we are. You can’t become 30 years older just like that. People who are older have the advantage of more experience. But you don’t have to despair just because you’re young. If young age is the problem, you can take comfort in the fact that it gets better with each passing day.

Ach, du lieber… After wasting time and space fretting about Kurz’s age, the interviewer finally gets to the heart of the matter:

SPIEGEL: In the election on October 15, your center-right Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) and the right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) together attracted 60 percent of the vote – marking the biggest share for parties to the right of center since World War II. How do you explain this slide to the right?

Kurz: The ÖVP and the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) also had combined support of 60 percent. But clearly, the FPÖ increased its support. That would seem to indicate that more voters were drawn to the party’s platform. As a big-tent party, we take our momentum from mainstream society. When I assumed leadership of the party in May, we made a decision to launch a broad-based movement. In recent months we’ve gained 200,000 new supporters – and that in a small country with a population of 9 million.

SPIEGEL: Are you trying to say that the view that there’s been a slide to the right is nonsense?

Kurz: I’m not going to cast aspersions on DER SPIEGEL’s ideas. But the result of the vote is unambiguous. The People’s Party won. Parties other than the Social Democratic Party have only won twice in the last 50 years. We know we picked up a lot of votes from people who previously voted for the Green Alternative.

Kurz, wisely, deflects some of the interviewer’s hostility by couching his victory in economic terms, and those are certainly worth emphasizing; they also help to broaden the coalition’s appeal to voters for whom Muslim “immigration” is not the top priority. But let’s not kid ourselves: Kurz’s election is a part of the broader swing to the right we’ve already seen in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Let’s hope the wave eventually hits Germany — and let’s hope it’s not too late when it does.

Amir George, an Assyrian Christian, is the author of “Liberating Iraq – The Story of the Assyrian Christians of Iraq”.

It is a solution to the refugee problem after centuries of persecution. Not only could Assyrian Christian refugees stay where they were, but as Jews did in Israel, they could come “home”.

In the rush to condemn the liberation of Iraq as a mistake, we forget the terror that Saddam Hussein and his two sons inflicted on their people. A visit to nearly every home in Iraq will have a picture of one or more family members among the nearly one million slaughtered by Saddam.

For the Assyrian Christians, this promise of Isaiah 19:23-25 is twofold. First, that “in that day” they will finally have their nation, called Assyria. Second, that their allies will be Israel and Egypt.

Nearly six million Assyrian Christians dot the world.

In 2003, according to the Iraqi government, there were 2.5 million Assyrian Christians in the country, or 10% of the population. Another approximately 3.5 million are scattered from Australia to Europe to Lebanon, Jordan, the US and more.

The Assyrian Christians — descendants of the Assyrian Empire and the first nation to accept Christ — are the indigenous people of Iraq.

In spite of being one of the oldest civilizations, and even today speaking Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, they are refugees in their own homeland.

Following the recent move towards independence by the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Assyrian Christian organizations worldwide have organized formally to request, in accordance with Iraq’s constitution, their own area in their homeland in northern Iraq, on the Nineveh Plain.

In the wake of the “Biden Plan”, put forth by former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair, and then Vice President Joe Biden, the Assyrian Christian area is one of the four areas envisioned as the only long-term solution for Iraq.

According to the plan, Kurdistan, Assyria, Sunnistan and Shiastan — the four dramatically different areas of Iraq — would each be able to evolve into their own areas.

While the Arab areas of Sunnistan and Shiastan in Iraq operate as do most Arab countries — with corruption, terror and civil strife — the non-Arab regions of Iraq, Kurdistan and Assyria in the north are shining examples of what all of Iraq could be, and a testimony to the sacrifice of 4,888 brave Americans who gave their lives for a liberated Iraq, as well as the 35,000 injured and the 2.5 million who served.

In the rush to condemn the liberation of Iraq as a mistake, we forget the terror that Saddam Hussein and his two sons inflicted on their people. A visit to nearly every home in Iraqi will have a picture of one or more family members among the nearly one million slaughtered by Saddam.

For the Assyrian Christians, the move toward the independence of Kurdistan is their encouragement to move forward with their independence as well.

The election outcome, the result of popular discontent with established parties, is the latest in a recent wave of successes for European populists, including in Austria and Germany. The populist ascendancy highlights a shifting political landscape in Europe where runaway multiculturalism and political correctness, combined with a massive influx of unassimilable migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, have given rise to a surge in support for anti-establishment protest parties.

“It is unthinkable that the indigenous European population should adapt themselves to the refugees. We must do away with such nonsensical political correctness. The refugees should behave like guests, that is, they should be polite, and they certainly do not have the right to choose what they want to eat…. There is a deep chasm between what people think and what the media tell them.” — Andrej Babis, in the Czech daily Pravo, January 16, 2016.

As prime minister, Babis would share government with Czech President Milos Zeman, who has described political correctness as “a euphemism for political cowardice.”

Populist tycoon Andrej Babis and his Eurosceptic political party have won the Czech Republic’s parliamentary election — by a landslide — making the “politically incorrect” billionaire businessman the main contender to become prime minister after coalition negotiations.

With all of the votes counted, Babis’s anti-establishment party ANO (which stands for “Action of Dissatisfied Citizens” and is also the Czech word for “yes”) won nearly 30% — almost three times its closest rival — in elections held on October 20. The Eurosceptic Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the anti-establishment Czech Pirates Party and the anti-EU Freedom and Direct Democracy party (SPD) came second, third and fourth, with around 11% each.

The Communists came in fifth with 7.8%. The Social Democrats, the center-left establishment party that finished first in the previous election, came in sixth with just 7.2%. The Christian Democrats, the center-right establishment party, won 5.8%, just enough to qualify for seats in parliament. In all, nine parties competed in the election.

The election outcome, the result of popular discontent with established parties, is the latest in a recent wave of successes for European populists, including in Austria and Germany. The populist ascendancy highlights a shifting political landscape in Europe where runaway multiculturalism and political correctness, combined with a massive influx of unassimilable migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, have given rise to a surge in support for anti-establishment protest parties.

Babis’s victory will also strengthen the role of the Visegrad Group (V4), a political alliance of four Central European states — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — committed not only to resisting mass migration, but also to opposing the continued transference of national sovereignty to the European Union. A stronger V4 will accentuate the divisions between the pro-EU states of Western Europe and the increasingly Eurosceptic states of Central and Eastern Europe. The European Union consequently will struggle to maintain an outward semblance of unity.

In his victory speech at the ANO party headquarters, Babis, who campaigned as a centrist, refused to speculate on the composition of a coalition government, but said he wanted the cabinet to be set up as quickly as possible: “This is a huge opportunity to change our country. I would like to assemble a government that will be of the people and for the people and promotes policies that are in their favor.”

Babis also tried to reassure the public that he would not put the Czech Republic on the path to authoritarianism, as some of his detractors have charged:

“We are a democratic movement. We are a solid part of the European Union and we are a solid part of NATO. I do not understand why some people say we are a threat to democracy. We certainly are not a threat to democracy. I am ready to fight for our national interests and to promote them.”

Taboos — traditional ones, at any rate — were the ballast that kept us on an even keel. Increasingly that is no longer the case, as White House Chief of Staff General John F. Kelly so eloquently reminded the Washington press corps. Instead, policy and discourse is shaped by the sensibilities of jackals

If you didn’t catch White House Chief of Staff, General John F. Kelly, talking to the press about the politicisation of President Trump’s condolences to the wife of a fallen marine, Sgt La David Johnson, you should. This is part of what he said.

You know when I was a kid growing up, a lot of things were sacred in our country. Women were sacred, looked upon with honour. That’s obviously not the case anymore as we see from recent cases. Life – the dignity of life – is sacred. That’s gone. Religion, that seems to be gone as well. Gold Star families, I think that left in the [Democrat] convention over the summer. But I just thought – the selfless devotion that brings a man or woman to die on the battlefield, I just thought that that might be sacred.

Though clearly emotional at times it is amazing that he was able to speak with such composure. General Kelly lost his son, Second Lt. Robert Kelly, to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2010.

It goes without saying that the action of Democrat congresswoman Frederica Wilson in raising the matter as she did was beyond despicable. It can be made sense of only in a world of seriously declining standards of common decency. This is not about glimpse of a woman’s stocking no longer being shocking. It is about not assuming the worst of each other. I don’t know what Trump said. I believe I know what he meant to say. He meant to say what General Kelly suggested he might say.

He was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining…He knew what the possibilities were because we’re at war… and when he died, he was surrounded by the best men on this earth; his friends.

Maybe it didn’t come out quite right. I don’t know. I know from experience that trying to remember what you are supposed to say in pressurised and emotional situations can get you into more trouble than extemporising. If he mangled it in any way, a quiet word might have had him making amends in one way or another. But, hey, that would have been the decent thing to do.

Theresa May was mocked because she developed a nagging cough during a speech to the ‘faithful’ at the Conservative Party’s recent conference. Who hasn’t had a coughing fit? How in the world does that reflect on her ability as prime minister? Sympathy and understanding would have been the decent response. Instead jackals spotted weakness and pounced.

Recall Tony Abbott when opposition leader making his overheard and immediately-reported comment “shit happens” in 2011. This followed a firefight in Afghanistan in which an Australian soldier, Lance Corporal Jared McKinney, was killed. It was absolutely clear, in context, that Abbott’s comment was not disrespectful.

His comment was aimed, in a comradely manner, at the things that had gone wrong. It was a complete beat-up by some reporters lacking even the rudiments of common decency who took his remarks out of context and tried to make political capital out of a soldier’s death. They were the disrespectful ones.