RUTHFULLY YOURS

A few of us have been predicting for several years now that the so-called “moderate” rebels in Syria backed by the CIA would inevitably collapse into the surging camp of Sunni extremists.

And now that is exactly what has happened, thus signaling the beginning of the end of any pretension of a “moderate opposition” to back in Syria.

In September 2013, the belief that the “moderates” vastly outnumbered the extremists of the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra was taken as gospel by the Obama administration, both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and the D.C. foreign policy establishment. Those of us challenging that conventional wisdom were a pretty small circle.

Now, the so-called “vetted moderates” are flocking to the banner of the rebranded al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, as the CIA halts their weapons pipeline while the smaller “moderate” groups fall willingly or unwillingly into the extremist camp.

So much for all that “vetting” by the CIA.

Reuters reported earlier this week:

CIA-coordinated military aid for rebels in northwest Syria has been frozen since they came under major Islamist attack last month, rebel sources said, raising doubts about foreign support key to their war against President Bashar al-Assad.

Rebel officials said that no official explanation had been given for the move this month following the jihadist assault, though several said they believed the main objective was to prevent arms and cash falling into Islamist militant hands. But they said they expected the aid freeze to be temporary.

The halt in assistance, which has included salaries, training, ammunition and in some cases guided anti-tank missiles, is a response to jihadist attacks and has nothing to do with U.S. President Donald Trump replacing Barack Obama in January, two U.S. officials familiar with the CIA-led program said.

As I have reported extensively here at PJ Media for several years, the “vetted moderates” have always played a double-game with jihadists groups. And now the Washington Post reports today that it has finally caught up with them. CONTINUE AT SITE

Bravo yet again to Nikki Haley, America’s new ambassador to the United Nations. Speaking at an informal meeting of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, Haley called out Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism, saying:

The United States will not hesitate to stand against the forces of terrorism, and that includes standing against the states that sponsor it, in particular the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This follows Haley’s refreshingly direct comments last week to the press — aptly praised by the New York Sun under the headline “Haley’s Comet” — in which Haley denounced the UN’s obsessive attacks on the democratic state of Israel. In those remarks, Haley lambasted the UN’s “double standards” as “breathtaking,” and threw in a mention of Iran as “the world’s number-one state sponsor of terror.” Here’s an excerpt:

Incredibly, the UN Department of Political Affairs has an entire division devoted to Palestinian affairs. Imagine that. There is no division devoted to illegal missile launches from North Korea. There is no division devoted to the world’s number one state-sponsor of terror, Iran. The prejudiced approach to Israeli-Palestinian issues does the peace process no favors. And it bears no relationship to the reality of the world around us.

With such remarks, Haley is bringing to the UN a voice of truth, decency, and plain old common sense that is a desperately needed departure from the usual diplomatic doubletalk. Credit her also for blocking the ploy by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to name as his special envoy to Libya a former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, which is not a UN member state. The PA has been maneuvering for decades to obtain that status without keeping its promises to negotiate in good faith a lasting peace with Israel.

Haley is salvaging for the U.S. a role of integrity that, under President Barack Obama and his successive UN ambassadors, was all too often lamentably absent (recall Ambassador Susan Rice leading from behind on Libya, and Ambassador Samantha Power, who this past December abstained from vetoing Resolution 2334, with which the Security Council savaged Israel).

Both Haley and President Trump — who chose her — deserve credit for Haley’s stellar performance so far at the UN. On a number of vital issues not only has Haley hit the ground running, but in contrast to her predecessors of the past eight years, she has been heading in the right direction.

All that said, a warning is in order. This is the UN we are talking about — a mountain of unaccountable bureaucracy and moral sludge, where even for the best and brightest the job of trying to bring about any kind of genuine reform is like trying to clear a mudslide with a teaspoon.

Haley’s latest denunciation of Iran’s terror-sponsoring ways came in the context of a proposal by Guterres to create within the UN secretariat a new office devoted to combating terrorism. Like most reform proposals that originate within the UN itself, the thrust here — unfortunately — is to try to improve a rotten UN system by creating yet more of it.

Guterres is urging that to head this proposed new counterterrorism office, the UN — which is already rife with scores of senior officials — should create a post for yet another under-secretary-general. The idea, basically, is to consolidate an array of UN counterterrorism initiatives under a counterterrorism czar. In theory (I stress, in theory, not necessarily in practice), this would consolidate and streamline UN counterterrorism efforts, leading to better results.

Haley, amid her otherwise sterling remarks at Wednesday’s informal consultations of the General Assembly, was endorsing this proposal, urging that the UN expand its counterterrorism assistance to member states, and saying:

The United States supports the Secretary-General’s proposals to reform the UN’s counterterrorism architecture. These changes can start with the appointment of an Under-Secretary-General to oversee and coordinate the numerous entities whose work with the UN relates to counterterrorism. This new Under-Secretary-General will need to set clear priorities to implement the UN’s Global Counterterrorism Strategy.

That sounds good, but it almost certainly won’t work.

The basic flaw in the UN’s counterterrorism “architecture” is not lack of a yet another office, headed by yet another under-secretary-general. We’ve been here before, with proposals to streamline, consolidate, fortify, mobilize, and better manage UN counterterrorism efforts. Please see, for instance (if you can make any sense out of it), the UN web page on the CTITF 2005 coordination framework, which was supposed to solve the problems that the proposed new architecture is now supposed to solve. (The record suggests that terrorists, worldwide, are unimpressed.)

The basic failing here is built into the design of the UN itself, which welcomes as members not only freedom-loving democratic states, but also states that sponsor terrorism, or at least don’t mind terrorism as long as it is directed at others (especially if they can profit by abetting such activities as sanctions-violating arms smuggling). Typically, such UN member states strive to stymie or subvert UN offices and initiatives that are meant to help clean up the world. Thus does the UN Human Rights Council end up stacked with human-rights violators. Thus does the misogynist regime of Iran secure for itself a seat on the governing board of the UN’s agency for Women.

LONDON—The Conservative Party won a key local election in northern England after a Thursday vote, dealing a blow to the center-left Labour Party which had held the seat for decades, and giving Prime Minister Theresa May a boost weeks before she formally starts Britain’s negotiations on leaving the European Union.

Election results released early Friday showed the Conservative candidate Trudy Harrison took 44% of votes in Copeland, a constituency in northwest England, while Labour’s Gill Troughton came in second with 37% of more than 31,000 votes cast. The election marked the first time a governing party has taken a seat from a rival since 1982 in a byelection.

The Conservative Party wrote in a tweet: “Welcome to Trudy Harrison: Copeland’s first Conservative MP since 1935!” Ms. Harrison said the victory was a “truly historic event.”

The loss of Copeland, which had been a Labour stronghold, is a sign of how far the political landscape in the U.K. has shifted in the wake of Britain’s movement to leave the EU. Labour, which supported remaining in the EU, has struggled to hold on to working-class voters that once made up its support base.

In another race on the same day, Labour held on to a seat in another heartland, Stoke-on-Trent, a former coal-mining and pottery-making hub in the English Midlands. The anti-EU, anti-immigrant UK Independence Party, came in second, with the Conservatives in third.

Labour’s defeat in Copeland raises questions about whether its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has wide enough appeal to win in a general election and could spark a renewed movement to oust him. Mr. Corbyn, a leftist leader, has deepened rifts within an already divided party. While he has drawn support and big crowds with attacks on the wealthy and big business, his opponents will likely seize on this election as a sign that his appeal is too narrow.

Under his leadership, the party has been split over its approach to Brexit. In Stoke-on-Trent, roughly 70% of voters supported Britain’s exit from the EU, breaking with Labour’s pro-EU stance. Many former Labour voters say they feel increasingly disenchanted with the party’s Londoncentric view. CONTINUE AT SITE

Live streamed footage of a young woman being sexually harassed in the Swedish capital of Stockholm has become part of an abhorrent ‘PR campaign’ that was launched on a closed Facebook group run by Tunisian men. The perpetrators appear to be showing the video in order to encourage other Tunisians living in Europe to pay a visit to the city.

Adam, a Tunisian man who saw parts of the attack taking place online, informed libertarian-conservative magazine Fria Tider on the existence of the Facebook group. The page has some 60,000 members and specifically aims at enlisting “Tunisians living in Europe,” according to a statement made by the website administrators.

On the night of January 26, the live broadcast of the group started as Adam was logged into Facebook. The footage shows two Tunisian men leaving a kebab restaurant in central Stockholm, at the end of a night out. When the Arabs fail in getting the attention of a cab they decide on stealing a bike instead.

Soon after, viewers could witness the men sexually assaulting a woman in an empty street. During the ordeal, the victim shouts “Stop filming,” while the migrants grope her, pull her hair, and tear off her clothes. One of the men also tries raping the woman, who is about 25 years of age, when the cell phone footage ends.

Adam was shocked by the video but nevertheless managed to film parts of it on his own phone as evidence, even posting 8 seconds of the ordeal on his Facebook page after blurring the victim. “I will submit the rest of the video to police,” he says.

After studying many of the online comments accompanying the attack, Adam paints a grim picture of the Muslim Arab mentality. He says that many of them think it is perfectly fine to harass girls and women. “Some viewers even thought it was awesome,” he discovered. After posting parts of the footage on his Facebook page, Adam received online death threats from other Tunisians.

“The attackers want to show that they live in Stockholm and that life is cool here. Many Tunisians are defending these rapists and it looks like as if I hate Tunisians because I expose them. I consider their actions a serious crime, but they see it as something normal.”

One of the men in the clip has previously been convicted of other violent assaults, Fria Tider could independently verify, while the second is an illegal immigrant who has been hiding from the Swedish authorities since 2014. “He’s trying to meet women here and convince them to marry him so that he can stay in Sweden,” says Adam.

Adam claims to have informed Stockholm authorities on the attack, but a police spokesman denied having any knowledge of the incident.

It’s the second time in one month migrants in Sweden live stream a sexual assault to Facebook. And probably not the last.

“I am not ashamed of what I am. I am a Muslim, that is to say, submissive to Allah who created me and who by his grace has harmoniously shaped me.” — Salah Abdeslam, a Belgium-born French national of Moroccan descent and the main suspect in the November 13, 2015 attacks that killed 130 people in Paris.

The Grand Mosque of Paris announced that it was withdrawing from the Foundation for Islam of France, a new, government-sponsored foundation charged with “contributing to the emergence of an Islam of France that is fully anchored in the French Republic.” In a statement, the mosque, which represents 250 of the 2,500 of the mosques and Muslim associations in France, said that it denounced “any form of interference in the management of Muslim worship.”

“An Algerian sociologist, Smaïn Laacher, with great courage, just said in a documentary aired on Channel 3: ‘It is a shame to deny this taboo, namely that in the Arab families in France, and everyone knows it but nobody wants to say it, anti-Semitism is sucked with mother’s milk.'” —Georges Bensoussan, a highly regarded Jewish historian of Moroccan descent, who is being prosecuted for talking about anti-Semitism among French Arabs.

“When parents shout at their children, when they want to reprimand them, they call them Jews. Yes. All Arab families know this. It is monumental hypocrisy not to see that this anti-Semitism begins as a domestic one.” — Smaïn Laacher, a French-Algerian sociologist, in a documentary called, “Teachers in the Lost Territories of the Republic.”

“Islamophobia is a weapon of intimidation and an invention to forbid debate.” — Pascal Bruckner.

Three months after French authorities demolished the “Jungle” migrant camp, migrants are returning to Calais at the rate of around 30 a day. Most of them are unaccompanied minors hoping to smuggle their way across the English Channel to Britain.

January 1. The Interior Ministry announced the most anticipated statistic of the year: a total of 945 cars and trucks were torched across France on New Year’s Eve, a 17.5% increase from the 804 vehicles burned during the annual ritual on the same holiday in 2015. Car burnings, commonplace in France, are often attributed to rival Muslim gangs that compete with each other for the media spotlight over which can cause the most destruction. An estimated 40,000 cars are torched in France every year.

A van burns during a recent riot in a Paris suburb. Car burnings, commonplace in France, are often attributed to rival Muslim gangs that compete with each other for the media spotlight. An estimated 40,000 cars are torched in France every year. (Image source: RT video screenshot)

January 2. Approximately 3.7 million crimes were reported in France in 2016, a 4% increase over 2015, according to Le Figaro. Seine-Saint-Denis, a Paris suburb which has one of the highest concentrations of Muslims in France, ranks as the most dangerous part of the country, with 18.2 attacks per 1,000 inhabitants. It is followed by Paris, with 15.7 attacks per 1,000 inhabitants and Bouches-du-Rhône with 11.5 attacks per 1,000 inhabitants.

January 2. The Criminal Court of Paris sentenced Nicolas Moreau, a 32-year-old French jihadist, to ten years in prison for fighting for the Islamic State. He is the brother of Flavien Moreau, the first French jihadist to be sentenced for such an offense upon his return from Syria in November 2014. Born in South Korea, adopted by a French family at the age of 4, Nicolas became a delinquent after the divorce of his adoptive parents. He converted to Islam in prison, where he spent five years. Nicolas said he fled the Islamic State after 17 months due to its “excesses.”

January 3. Jean-Christophe Lagarde, the president of the Union of Democrats and Independents, a center-right political party, attributed the closure of a PSA Peugeot-Citroën automobile factory to an excess of religious demands by Muslim employees. “There have been difficulties even in my department, for example in Aulnay-sous-Bois. It has never been said, but part of the reason for the closure of PSA was due to the omnipresence of religion and the fact that there were religious demands at work, work stoppages, decreased productivity. PSA’s decision to close Aulnay was influenced by this aspect.”

January 3. The Administrative Court of Poitiers dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Coalition against Racism and Islamophobia (CRI), which tried to ban a 14-page document aimed at preventing radicalization in schools. The document called on teachers to monitor several criteria, including “uncut long beards,” “shaved hair,” “Muslim clothing,” “refusal of tattoos,” and “weight loss associated with frequent fasting.” The document also referred to behavior such as “identity withdrawal,” “selective exposure to the media,” and “political rhetoric” concerning Palestine, Chechnya and Iraq. The document urged teachers to monitor closely students interested in the “history of early Islam.” The court emphasized the strictly internal nature of the document, which was deemed to be “devoid of any legal effect” because it contains “no mandatory provisions.”

January 4. Of the 230 French jihadists who have been killed in Iraq and Syria, seven were killed by American drones, according to Le Monde. “The French targets had a twofold status: they were military objectives, the elimination of which is theoretically governed by the law of war, and they were also targets of judicial proceedings in France. In the name of the ‘self-defense,’ which the coalition states claim, military logic prevailed over the right to legal defense,” the paper complained.

FROM JANET LEVY
In 1971, I was a student at the University of Copenhagen, On weekends, I would frequently join friends to take the boat across the Oresund Strait to Malmo, Sweden. At the time, Malmo, was a safe, pleasant, bustling gateway to Sweden. Of course, Sweden’s liberal social welfare and immigration policies have changed all that.

A British friend, a lawyer and musician, who owned 330 shops in 24 countries and has since immigrated to Tel Aviv, has this to say:

Malmo, Sweden

It must be over 20 years ago that my company had a shop in Malmo. It had been a profitable business but the figures
went down. Without going there I asked our regional manager why the sales were down. She told me “the wrong kind of immigrants
had moved into Malmo.” Without ado I sold the shop since we had had an offer and thought no more about it.

The same thing happened in Holland in The Hague and Rotterdam and in France, in Paris and Marseille.

Then came 9/11 after which I launched my own enquiry, (with an open mind) into what I soon learned Churchill had labelled “the religion of blood and war” and “this form of madness” and much, much more.

Now the media, which is indeed the enemy of the people, not only in America but worldwide, together with the dhimmi, crazed elite-globalist-no borders-no nations-politicians, are trying to convince people that reality is not real.

Well, I can confirm from my own experience that what happened to my enterprise in Malmo, Sweden happened, actually happened, and that was 20 years ago. It was as though locusts had come and devoured the crops.

– R