RUTHFULLY YOURS

What you would never know, from all this hand-wringing about “Islamophobia,” is that only a few weeks before the conference, the country’s media had reported on a popular imam in Biel who, in his sermons, “asked Allah to destroy the enemies of Islam — Jews, Christians, Hindus, Russians, and Shiites.”

The imam in question, Abu Ramadan, preached that Muslims who befriended infidels were “cursed until the Day of Judgment” — which, of course, is not radical at all, but is straight out of the Koran.

The crisis is real. But, says Swiss Muslim author Saïda Keller-Messahli, Swiss politicians, “especially on the left,” refuse to address it. Instead of trying to defend their country from radicalism, they think their job is to “protect minorities and multiculturalism.”

Mosque kindergartens and youth groups, too, are “places of religious indoctrination” for Swiss Muslims. So are the German-speaking public schools, in which imams are permitted to teach classes in Islam using instructional materials from Saudi Arabia or Turkey.

If you listen to some of Switzerland’s pollsters and government officials, the country is suffering from a serious and ever-intensifying crisis — anti-Muslim bigotry.

In August, a study concluded that Swiss Muslims “are generally well integrated into Swiss society.” Their main problem? They face “Islamophobia.”

Another study the same month found that the percentage of Swiss non-Muslims who feel “threatened” by Islam had more than doubled since 2004, from 16% to 38%.

At a September 11 conference, Switzerland’s Federal Commission against Racism (FCR) issued an explicit alert: “hostility toward Muslims,” it warned, was rising – and was “fed by facts that have nothing to do with Muslims themselves.”

Conference organizers blamed this “hostility” on online “propaganda”; Interior Minister Alain Berset accused Swiss citizens of erroneously holding “Islam responsible for all the extremist acts committed in its name.”

What you would never know, from all this hand-wringing about “Islamophobia,” is that only a few weeks before the conference, the country’s media had reported on a popular imam in Biel who, in his sermons, “asked Allah to destroy the enemies of Islam — Jews, Christians, Hindus, Russians, and Shiites.” The imam in question, Abu Ramadan, preached that Muslims who befriended infidels were “cursed until the Day of Judgment” — which, of course, is not radical at all, but is straight out of the Koran.

Abu Ramadan has been living in Switzerland for almost two decades. In 1998, he came to the Alpine country from Libya as an asylum seeker, but over the years has returned home several times — in addition to visiting Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries. This fact should have automatically negated his right to asylum and resulted in his expulsion. But the years went by, and the government, ignoring the evidence right there on his passport, did nothing.

On the contrary: over the years, in fact, the Swiss state had given Ramadan the equivalent of $620,000 in welfare payments.

Reportedly, some public officials were well aware of his hate sermons — but until the content of those sermons surfaced in the media, nobody in the government had made any effort to do anything about him. Instead, people such as Interior Minister Berset and the members of the FCR had kept busy going to conferences and tarring the general public as “Islamophobes”.

At least one high-profile individual in Switzerland has long rejected the official line about successful Muslim integration and unfounded infidel Islam-hatred: Saïda Keller-Messahli. Of Tunisian descent, living in Zurich, she has spent years investigating institutional Islam in Switzerland and urging politicians to take action against it. Asked in a recent interview whether Abu Ramadan is an isolated case, Keller-Messahli said no: such preaching, she explained, is common in Swiss mosques, part of an international strategy to plant a “discriminatory” and “violent” Islam in Switzerland and elsewhere in the West.

Keller-Messahli has just published a book entitled, Switzerland: An Islamist Hub (“Islamistische Drehscheibe Schweiz”). It is sort of a field guide to Islam in Switzerland. The country’s mosques belong to various networks based here and there in the Muslim world; many of the imams have been trained in Egypt or Saudi Arabia; many of the mosques receive funding — and take orders — from organizations in Turkey. In her book, Keller-Messahli draws all the connections, follows all the money trails, and spells out the poisonous articles of faith. And she prescribes strong medicine: monitor the mosques, cut off the foreign cash, and expel the preachers of jihad.

For thirteen years in a row, Business Insider – citing its standard of living, health-care system, and high life expectancy – has put Norway at the top of its annual list of “best countries to live in.” The high life expectancy is an objective fact; the other items are a matter of debate. Norwegian health care? It works admirably, unless you require an operation or treatment that the government considers too expensive or for which there’s a waiting list. Standard of living? Incomes are high, but so are taxes.

But I’m not here to argue with Business Insider’s rankings. I’m here to point out an aspect of Norwegian life that never figures on any of these “best country” lists, whether put out by Business Insider or the United Nations or whomever. I’m talking about statism – the degree to which the state is a palpable part of everyday life.

Briefly put, Norway is pretty much statism central. I’m more accustomed to it now, but when I was first living here I was acutely aware every single day of the presence of the government in my life. I’m not talking about some abstract, theoretical phenomenon. It’s a real, palpable feeling. A feeling of being a bit less of an individual and a bit more part of a collective. An awareness that your eleven-digit “person number” (which includes your birth date) comes up a lot more often than your social-security number ever did back in the U.S. A sense of being covered by an umbrella, but also surrounded by a wall.

For the last four years, to be sure, Norway has had a supposedly non-socialist coalition government, led by the Conservative Party, with Labor heading up the socialist opposition. In the September 11 elections, the governing coalition was returned to power. But the non-socialist label is deceptive: whichever party or parties happen to be running the country at any given time, the public sector is overwhelmingly dominated by Labor and other leftist parties. While in power, the so-called conservatives may pass legislation signaling a bit more support for business interests or the military, but they never do anything that significantly reverses Norwegian statism.

Now, to live under a statist system is, as it were, to live in someone else’s house, and thus to live by their rules. Nanny Norway doesn’t think it’s good for you to drink. So she doesn’t allow anyone other than herself to sell liquor, and makes buying it as costly and troublesome as possible. In my town of 12,000 people, there’s one state-owned liquor outlet. Hours are limited. The tax on (for example) a bottle of vodka is 300%. Beer is more than twice as expensive as anywhere else on earth.

Nanny Norway thinks it’s best for you to eat at home, so going out to dinner is also a pricey proposition. Lunch? Almost nobody goes out to lunch. Years ago, in a New York Times article about Norway’s high prices, I made casual reference to the matpakke, the modest packed lunch – usually a sandwich or two wrapped in wax paper or aluminum foil – that Norwegians of all socioeconomic levels take to work. After VG, Norway’s largest daily, ran an article about my article, I received hundreds of emails and text messages – including death threats – savaging me for insulting a beloved national tradition.

“It’s a match made in hell,” writes journalist Benny Avni of the nuclear weapon and ballistic missile proliferation nexus between Iran and North Korea. This international, potentially apocalyptic version of what is known as a “red-green alliance” between radical Islamic and leftist elements makes America’s often neglected missile defense efforts all the more urgent.

Various commentators have noted a “stark contrast” between the ideological natures of the Iranian and North Korean regimes. As Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies observes, the Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocracy, while North Korea is a hereditary tyranny with an anti-religious, Marxist ideology. Nonetheless, these two rogue state international outcasts, once included in President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil,” both “feel a serious threat from the United States and the West,” notes Harvard University’s Matthew Bunn.

Accordingly, Israeli analysts have observed that the “nuclear and ballistic interfaces between the two countries are long-lasting” since the carnage of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. During the conflict, Iran internationally “was a pariah, desperate for military equipment and ammunition,” notes North Korean military analyst Joseph S. Bermudez, Jr. “If Iran has sometimes been desperate to buy arms and military technology, North Korea has always been desperate to sell arms and military technology,” given the country’s economic isolation, writes Cordesman. Thus, North Korea “needed money more than it needed anything else. Iran, which needed missiles more than anything else, was the ideal partner,” concludes the think-tank Geopolitical Futures.

The Iran-Iraq War began a relationship in which, one Israeli academic notes, “several analysts believe that Iran was the primary financial supporter of North Korea’s missile development program.” In exchange for Iranian oil wealth, North Korea provided Iran with Scud-B missiles that North Korea began producing in 1987 after having reverse-engineered them from missiles procured from Egypt in the late 1970s. By the end of the 1980s, Iran had received hundreds of Scud-B and Scud-C missiles.

Subsequently, Iran agreed in 1992 to provide North Korea with $500 million for joint nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development. As a result, North Korea fielded the Nodong missile in the 1990s while Iran deployed its clone, the Shahab-3, in 2003 after several years of testing. While North Korea’s Nodong missiles can hit parts of Japan, Representative Ted Poe (R-Texas) notes that from Iran, the Shahab-3 can strike Israel and Central Europe. North Korea’s Musudan missile, 19 of which Iran obtained sometime before 2007, has theoretically an even longer range, capable of striking from Iran targets like Berlin and Moscow.

While some analysts deny the existence of Iran-North Korea missile design collaboration or joint development, Iranian-North Korean ballistic cooperation extends beyond missiles themselves to fields such as test data exchanges. “It’s doubtful there has been a single Iranian missile test where North Korean scientists weren’t present, nor a North Korean test where Iranian scientists didn’t have a front row seat,” notes the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin. Missile test sites in Iran and North Korea also exhibit strong similarities.

Evidence concerning Iran-North Korea nuclear cooperation remains more indefinite, although both countries have used similar nuclear supply chains like that of Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. Despite numerous reports through the years of technical personnel exchanges and visits, sometimes involving hundreds of individuals, Cordesman notes that American intelligence has never confirmed such cooperation. Yet British officials on September 10 argued that the rapid progress of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development indicated foreign help from a country like Iran or Russia.

RIYADH—Saudi Arabia on Tuesday lifted the world’s only ban on women driving, removing a restriction in the deeply conservative kingdom that had become a symbol of women’s oppression.

In a royal decree, King Salman announced that women will be allowed to obtain driving licenses starting next June, after a government committee studies how to allow women onto the roads driving their own vehicles.

The decision, immediately condemned by many Saudi conservatives on social media, comes at a time of profound change championed by the Saudi monarch and his son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who are leading efforts to relax the country’s strict social rules as they move to open up and modernize the country’s oil-dependent economy.

It also comes as the monarchy clamps down on perceived opposition: Saudi authorities have arrested dozens of people this month, from clerics to academics, in what the authorities described as a nascent antigovernment plot ahead of the king’s widely expected abdication in his son’s favor, the timing of which remains unclear.

“We refer to the negative consequences of not allowing women to drive, and the positive aspects of allowing them to do so, taking into consideration the necessary Shari’ah regulations and compliance with them,” King Salman said in the decree, referring to Islamic law.

The announcement caps a decadeslong campaign led by Saudi women to abolish a rule that drew widespread condemnation from both friends and foes of the kingdom, tarnishing its reputation internationally.

“We are very excited. We are over the moon,” said Hatoon al Fassi, a Saudi historian and one of the leaders of the campaign to let women drive. “Our struggle, the years of work have at last yielded a result, our right has been realized. It’s a historical moment. King Salman made a historical decision.” CONTINUE AT SITE

What has been revealed about the Labour party at its annual conference in Brighton should make all decent people shudder.

A fringe meeting hosted a call for Labour to debate whether the Holocaust actually happened, the libelling of Israel as a racist, Nazi, apartheid and colonialist state and a demand that Jews who supported Israel should be kicked out of the Labour party.

What was so chilling was not just that the meeting, called Free Speech on Israel (aka Safe Space for Hate) provided bigots with the opportunity to spew their bile. It cheered and applauded them.

Israeli-American author Miko Peled told it Labour members should support the freedom to “discuss every issue, whether it’s the Holocaust, yes or no, whether it’s Palestine liberation – the entire spectrum. There should be no limits on the discussion.”

Michael Kalmanovitz, a member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, called for two pro-Israeli groups to be expelled from the party. He said: “The thing is, if you support Israel, you support apartheid. So what is the JLM (Jewish Labour Movement) and Labour Friends of Israel doing in our party? Kick them out.” The Mirror reported: “Loud cheers, applause and calls of ‘throw them out’ erupted in the room of around a hundred activists in response.”

Fringe meetings are not run by the party and Labour says it isn’t responsible for their content. Nevertheless, the event was advertised in official conference literature. It was chaired by an individual called Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi. Watch this clip of her addressing the conference plenary session to see just what a piece of work she is.

She was opposing the proposed rule change to make it easier to expel antisemites. In addition to ranting and raving about Israel with a breathtaking stream of defamatory falsehoods, distortions and smears – including a swipe at the Balfour Declaration – she was actually booed by journalists when she claimed that Jewish groups behind the rule change had been briefing certain newspapers. She then received a ecstatic standing ovation when she stated: “I am not an antisemite. This party does not have a problem with Jews”.

Ah, how the conference loved that. Look at their faces on the clip. They are beside themselves with joy that they are being given permission by a Jew to hate the collective Jew in the State of Israel.

The situation could not have been clearer or more disquieting. It is Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi who is the problem with the Labour party – the problem she denies exists. And in not only giving her a platform but ecstatically applauding her bigotry, the Labour party was showing that Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is not in fact the issue. The real problem is the Labour party itself.

Like the venomously anti-Israel Israeli professor Avi Shlaim, who was speaking at the launch of yet another groupuscule Jewish Voices for Labour, Kalmanovitz said the claims of antisemitism in the party were part of a right-wing effort to undermine Jeremy Corbyn and the left. But people like him ensured we could all see for ourselves this could not be the case. For antisemitism was on rank display at those Corbynista meetings.

Those behind “Free Speech on Israel” showed their true colours on free speech by reportedly ordering those attending not to tweet or take photographs for fear of “hostile coverage”. Meanwhile leaflets were passed around claiming that concerns about rising antisemitism were a “manufactured moral panic”.

Yet elsewhere, one Jewish Labour activist reported that leaflets were being passed around the conference floor demanding the expulsion of the Jewish Labour Movement from the Party; and Izzy Lenga, the Vice-President of the National Union of Students tweeted: “I didn’t think it was possible, but I feel a whole lot more unsafe, uncomfortable and upset as a Jew on [the Labour Party Conference] floor right now than I do at NUS”.

Today, the party passed the rule change making antisemitic abuse and harassment by Labour members a punishable offence. The Guardian reported:

“The rule change proposed by the Jewish Labour Movement, which has been backed by the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn and the party’s national executive committee, will tighten explicitly the party’s stance towards members who are antisemitic or use other forms of hate speech, including racism, Islamophobia, sexism and homophobia.”

Yet this change is worse than meaningless. Yes, it enables the party to expel antisemites. But crucially, it leaves unresolved the definition of what antisemitism actually is. And you can bet your bottom dollar that Labour will never, ever accept that demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel is the contemporary form of the oldest hatred.

How could it accept that? Its members overwhelmingly subscribe to it – even though many of them haven’t the faintest clue that what they believe to be the truth about the Arab-Israel conflict is in fact a pack of lies from start to finish.

In maintaining this fictitious distinction, Labour wields what it believes to be the ultimate weapon: the anti-Zionist Jews who offer themselves as human shields to protect those who they hope will destroy the State of Israel through demonisation and delegitimisation.

The assumption is that no Jew can be an antisemite; so if Jews say Israel is a Nazi apartheid racist murderous colonialist state committing unspeakabke atrocities, that cannot be antisemitism.

But that’s rubbish. Antisemitism has unique characteristics, including double standards applied to no-one else but the Jews, systemic lies and falsehoods, imputation of a global conspiracy to harm the world in their own interests, blame for crimes of which they are not only innocent but are the victims, and so on. All these characteristics that make antisemitism a unique collective derangement apply to the demonisation of Israel.

Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology.

The annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly last week, and President Trump’s widely noted remarks there, focused much-needed attention on the organization. The dithering and inaction on critical international problems Trump noted served as a reminder that the U.N. has long been dysfunctional and disappointing. That is not surprising: It was designed to fail.https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/26/the-u-n-is-designed-to-fail/

Best-known for its so-called “peace-keeping” efforts in areas of conflict—where it enjoys a mixed record, at best—the organization’s other agencies, commissions and panels have a dismal record of accomplishment, especially while acting as the world’s regulator-wannabe for all manner of products and processes. The U.N. regularly panders to activists and, not coincidentally, adopts policies that expand its own scope and responsibilities. Science routinely gets short shrift in U.N. brokered international agreements, where everything becomes an exercise in international horse-trading.

As both a candidate and as president, Donald Trump has criticized the under-performance and lavish self-indulgence of U.N. bureaucrats. The United States has long been a hugely disproportionate funder of U.N. activities—our mandatory assessment and voluntary contributions totaling some $8 billion each year—but the era of America as the U.N. sugar-daddy is about to end. In the Spring, State department staffers were instructed to find significant cuts in U.S. funding for U.N. programs (above the mandatory assessment). That was the first signal of long-overdue belt-tightening.

Why are incompetence and profligacy rife within the sprawling organization? In several respects, it’s in the U.N.’s DNA.

First, the U.N. is essentially a monopoly. Inefficiency and incompetence are not punished by “consumers” of their products. It is not as if the services of the U.N. can be spurned in favor of patronizing a more efficient and competent competitor. On the contrary, it is not uncommon in these kinds of bureaucracies for failure to be rewarded with additional resources. Contrary to good business practice, if a program isn’t working, government bureaucrats clamor to make it bigger.