RUTHFULLY YOURS

What is obvious is that the West concerns itself with its live citizens; we concern ourselves in glorifying our industry of death. No one here really cares about the dead: they quickly become just an excuse for more violence and more terror attacks.

When one looks at Westerners, one can only envy the hyper-morality of their self-criticism. They are forever accusing themselves of moral lapses. Sometimes they seem to have some kind of autoimmune disease whose function is to cleanse their societies.

To us, it looks as if all they really care about are hating Jews and stroking corrupt dictatorships.

Perhaps the time has come to learn from our “enemy” and first take a cold hard look at ourselves.

It is obvious that the West concerns itself with its live citizens; we concern ourselves in glorifying our industry of death.

It seems we regard our dead differently from the way the dead are regarded in the West. Here, no respect is paid to the shaheed [martyr]; he is expendable. He serves only as an excuse to hate, riot and glorify the “resistance” and the “jihad” — terrorist attacks.

Why, during the long years of our conflict in the Middle East, have we Palestinians never interested ourselves in the bodies of Palestinian terrorists killed in terrorist attacks? No one has ever shown the slightest interest in their fate. Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East often point fingers at one another, yet in reality, we respect neither the living nor the dead. No one buries the thousands of bodies of Islamists killing each other. We abandon our brothers to rot in foreign soil. There are untold number of civilians killed in Syria, Iraq and Yemen, their bodies unmourned, eaten by scavengers.

We simply use the bodies of terrorists — to call for more blood and more terrorism against civilians, and to keep the terrorism industry going. No one here really cares about the dead: they quickly become just an excuse for more violence and more terror attacks.

Sometimes it is hard to credit, but there really are good and worthwhile things to be found in the most surprising places — in this instance the journalism of Crikey’s Canberra correspondent, Bernard Keane, who can be very silly indeed. Every now then though, just like the proverbial broken clock, he gets it right and his thoughts on Yusuf Islam, the artist formerly known as Cat Stephens, make that point.

If you don’t have a particular passion for saccharine songs about love and peace and let’s-all-get-along-ism, know that Islam intends to tour Australia in November and it appears that, unlike Ayaan Hirsi-Ali, nobody is threatening to blow him up or stage massive demonstrations outside his concert venues, nor are they harassing the tour promoter’s insurers with dark talk of all the unfortunate things that might happen if Islam is allowed to sing and speak freely. You know the sort of thing: Nice little theatre you’ve got here, pal. Pity if something were to happen to it.

And there is another difference as well. While Hirsi-Ali has never called for anyone to be murdered, Yusuf Islam most definitely and emphatically has, as per this video clip. Keane writes:

Yusuf Islam joined in the Iranian-initiated demand that Rushdie be killed for his book, The Satanic Verses. According to Yusuf Islam in 1989, Salman Rushdie should have been murdered for his book.

“He must be killed. The Koran makes it clear — if someone defames the prophet, then he must die,” Islam said in February that year.

Keane adds that the singer favoured death by burning — something it will be good to remember the next time Peace Train comes on the radio.

Islam has never dis-avowed his homicidal sentiments, as far as an extensive Google search can establish, yet he is allowed to enter the country without official obstacle or intimidation of his hosts and promoters. Rushdie, meanwhile, has spent more than a quarter century shadowed by bodyguards and living every waking moment with the thought that the next might be his last.

One reason no one is protesting Yusuf’s tour may well be that, unlike the snarling Left and its Islamist allies, those of more conservative mien are too busy attending to work, family and paying taxes to look up contact information for Immigration Peter Dutton, a former policeman who some think might make a decent PM one day. This might be his chance to prove it by following the precedent set in 1975 by Clyde Cameron, who banned Alice Cooper from entering the country. Ah, innocent days!

In his latest RTRS interview (Bosnian-Serb Republic public TV service), Srdja Trifkovic talks about Russia’s complex political and economic power structure, which is mostly at odds with the image of an authoritarian Kremlin monolith presented in the Western media.
[Video here—Trifkovic segment starts at 6 minutes. Excerpts, verbatim translation from Serbian.]

Q: Professor Trifkovic, you’ve just come back from Moscow where you attended the Economic Forum, but it was also a political forum?

ST: The Moscow Economic Forum is a major annual gathering of economists and experts who advocate a change in the macroeconomic policy of the Russian government. They act from the standpoint of what one may call “patriotic opposition.” They argue that the country’s economy and financial structures are still unduly dominated by the upholders of the Washington Consensus, and by the oligarchs who continue to control the flows of money through their ownership of many private commercial banks.

Q: Are you trying to say that the Russian government is pro-American?

ST: No, but within her economic and financial structures there are officials—like Elvira Nabiullina, head of the Central Bank of Russia—who reject dedollarization, which is advocated by the “patriotic” wing of the government, as embodied in the deputy prime minister in charge of the defense industry . . .

Q: You mean Rogozin?

An article by Rachel Aviv titled ‘The Trauma of Facing Deportation’ describes an unusual disorder known as ‘uppgivenhetssyndrom’ or ‘resignation syndrome’ that only exists in Sweden and is specific to the children of immigrants. Published in the April 3, 2017 issue of The New Yorker, Aviv describes how refugee children suffering from resignation syndrome fall into a coma-like state after being informed that their families will be expelled from the country. The Swedish refer to the condition as ‘apathy’ and the children as ‘de apatiska’, the apathetic. There have been several hundred cases of resignation syndrome in the past decade. The symptoms are very severe and typically begin with depression followed by a gradual withdrawal into an unconscious state that requires tube feeding. The children are unable to move, eat, drink or respond even to painful stimuli and are in this state for months sometimes years. The only known cure is for their families to receive residency permits to stay in Sweden.

A simple objective cultural explanation for resignation syndrome is that it is another manifestation of honor violence. However, studies that suggested the family was staging the illness were labeled xenophobic while research that theorized the migratory process precipitated the condition became the basis for government policy. Hence, a 2013 guide for treating apathy published by the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare advised “A permanent residency permit is considered by far the most effective ‘treatment,’ and that a patient will not recover until his family has permission to live in Sweden.” In brief, political correctness tainted the studies because it was more politically expedient to grant residency to all families with children suffering from the syndrome than to acknowledge that this could be another manifestation of honor violence where cultural traditions allow parents to abuse their own children. If honor violence is proven to be the reason for the syndrome than Sweden’s immigration policy is the cause of the illness not the cure.

Honor violence is a form of domestic violence that is committed by family members against other family members to either prevent the family from being dishonored or restore the families damaged honor. Victims of honor violence typically internalize the values of their family or community and feel guilty and responsible for the perceived offense against honor. Honor violence is typically attributed to assaults and murders of women who have refused arranged marriages or defiled the family’s honor by not following traditions. Honor violence is not always punitive for alleged violations of cultural traditions. Anything that preserves the family honor is permitted including forcing children into slavery or child marriage to settle a debt. Being deported back to a country where the family status and honor would be diminished could be motivation for shaming a child into staging resignation syndrome. The New Yorker article did not mention that the majority of mothers of the apathetic refugee children had been subjected to physical and/or sexual abuse and were described as severely traumatized. One study suggested a Munchausen by proxy scenario proposing the idea that the mother staged the illness as a method to cope with her own trauma. The theory characterized the syndrome as ‘lethal mothering’, a behavior that is consistent with honor violence. In honor based tribal cultures men can justifiably subject their wives to physical and sexual abuse and mothers can willingly harm their own children to preserve the family honor. A 2016 study claimed that almost all children with resignation syndrome suffered traumatization from physical abuse, harassment or by witnessing violence and abuse in the close family. Intrafamily violence is also consistent with honor crimes.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia—Russian authorities identified a 22-year-old man from the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan as the suicide bomber who caused a deadly subway-train blast in Russia’s second-largest city on Monday, underscoring Moscow’s concerns about radicalization in Central Asia.

In a statement Tuesday, Russia’s Investigative Committee identified the attacker as Akbarjon Jalilov.

The explosion occurred Monday on a train between Sennaya Ploshchad, a busy downtown subway intersection, and Technological Institute station.

According to the statement, forensic experts found genetic traces of Mr. Jalilov on a bag containing an explosive device that was found and disarmed at Ploshchad Vosstaniya, another subway station not far from the site of Monday’s explosion. Investigators also drew their conclusions based on surveillance-camera footage, the statement said.

Russian Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova said Tuesday morning that 14 people had been killed and 49 remained in hospital.

Earlier Tuesday, the Investigative Committee said that an explosive device could have been detonated by a man whose fragmented remains were found in the third carriage of the subway train.

Rakhat Sulaimanov, the official representative of the Kyrgyz security agency, said the person responsible was likely a native of Kyrgyzstan who then became a Russian citizen. Mr. Sulaimanov said Kyrgyz security services were in contact with Russian authorities over the matter, but declined to provide further details.

No group has claimed responsibility for the blast. It occurred during a visit to the city by Russian President Vladimir Putin, raising official concerns that the attack was timed to his stay. CONTINUE AT SITE

I think one of the most astounding, arguably dense articles to be published anywhere on the issue of censorship vs. freedom of speech was published in one of the most unlikely quarters of the world, New Zealand. A correspondent sent me the text and link to an article titled: “Want equality? Curtail free speech.” It was written for “Stuff” by a fellow by the name of Jacob Van De Visser. “Stuff” was described by the correspondent, Lindsay Perigo, as IslmoMarxist.

Freedom of Speech? Stuff and nonsense! It’s a short article, so, instead of beginning with my own comments, I’ve reproduced the article here so you can guffaw or be astonished as you will. Mr. Perigo, in his own remarks, wondered if the piece was tongue-in-cheek satire because it is so blatantly irrational and hostile to freedom of speech

I’m not certain of its sincerity, either, but given the avalanche of anti-speech articles and the ubiquity of actions that have taken place before and after Donald Trump’s election (see the Gatestone column here about American campuses opposing or shutting down speech, except that which doesn’t violate student “safe spaces”) in November 2016, together with the tone and content of Stuff’s other articles, it is wholly consistent with the irrationality of what is occurring in the West.

It’s time for New Zealand to criminalize Islamophobia!

On March 23, New Zealand awoke to the horrific news of yet another terrorist attack, this time in London.

A deranged individual ploughed a car into innocent pedestrians and brutally stabbed a police officer to death before being shot. Five people died, including the attacker. [Italics mine]

The Twittersphere was soon abuzz with conjecture and accusation. Who was to blame? What were the motives?

I felt sick as I read comments saying “Islam is to blame” and “it must be another Muslim”.

The fact that the attacker was a Muslim is irrelevant. The issue is that Islamophobia was the first response.

If you are a Muslim, you continually have to defend your faith against people who accuse it of being a dangerous and violent set of ideas. Islam is the religion of peace; anyone who understands this knows it has no part in the ideology of ISIS.

Life is a constant fight for other minorities, too.

If you are a member of the LGBTQAA+ community, you must battle for your rights. You are forced to choose from just two bathroom choices when often you don’t fit either. Workplaces often fail to be inclusive to this community, refusing them places in the boardroom.

No political observer in his right mind would have expected at the beginning of 2016 a Brexit vote in Britain in June, the resignation of David Cameron, a dogfight between the two main Brexit supporters and propagandists within the Tory party, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, and eventually the rise of Theresa May. Nor would he have foreseen, for that matter, the election of Donald Trump in the United States on November 8.

Something similar is happening in France now — on a much larger and trickier scale. A few months ago, it was taken for granted that François Hollande’s ineffectual socialist administration would be succeeded after the 2017 election — on April 23 and May 7 — by a conservative government led either by former president Nicolas Sarkozy or former prime minister Alain Juppé: a simple matter of the swing of the pendulum, as is the rule among democracies. What the French are facing now, however, is an unprecedented upsurge of the National Front, the elimination of a generation of political leaders on almost all sides, and the collapse or near collapse of classic Left and Right parties. While many voters welcome the change, others are just in a state of shock. On March 18 — one month or so ahead of the first ballot — 34 per cent of the electorate and 43 per cent of voters under 35 had still not decided whether to vote or not.

On March 20, the five most prominent candidates debated for three and a half hours on TV. About 10 million people watched intently. It was indeed a great show — and probably a defining moment in the campaign.

All five candidates are rebels. Marine Le Pen, 48, the National Front leader, is a rebel by definition. She has managed to upgrade in many ways the party she inherited from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 2011, to purge it of many unsavoury elements, to trim its formerly racist and anti-Semitic rhetoric (including Holocaust denial) and to switch from Vichy nostalgia to a near-Gaullist statism. In fact, she has even been increasingly reluctant to use the name National Front, and has floated alternative labels, such as Rassemblement Bleu Marine (“Navy Blue Rally”, a play on words with her first name which means “Navy” in French).

For all that, she is still sticking to a binary, undemocratic and utterly revolutionary view of the world, positing a bitter fight between what she calls “the System” (the political and cultural elite, of both Right and Left, the “lobbies”, globalisation, multiculturalism, immigration, the European Union, the euro) and “the people” (the ordinary Frenchmen) whom she claims to represent exclusively. The implication is that either you side with the people and her against the System, and opt for a fully sovereign and autarkic France under her guidance, or you are, willingly or not, an enemy of the people. Interestingly enough, she used this logic against her own father, as he resisted the revamping and defascisation of the National Front, and did not flinch from expelling him from the party at the age of 86.

At the other end of the political spectrum, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 65, a former minister of vocational education, rebelled against the Socialist party in 2008 to found the more hardline Parti de Gauche (Left Party) and then the Front de Gauche (Left Front) in association with a diminutive Communist Party. He eventually started a new movement in 2016, France Insoumise (Indomitable France).