RUTHFULLY YOURS

Earlier this month I reported here at PJ Media on growing incidents of terrorism by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. I noted the arrest of an IED terror cell composed of Muslim Brotherhood members in Alexandria who had been attacking government and military targets since January.

Now, Egypt is facing escalating threats in the Sinai from the Brotherhood’s affiliate in Gaza — Hamas. Multiple reports in recent weeks place Islamic State (ISIS) figures with Hamas officials in Gaza, and claim Hamas is training ISIS troops with heavy anti-tank weaponry.

The Washington, D.C. foreign policy “smart set” continues to describe Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood as “moderate” jihadists who serve as a firewall between “violent extremist” groups like ISIS.

News reports placed ISIS-Sinai leaders in Gaza meeting with Hamas officials on June 2nd:
Sa’ka @BTelawy

#Report: Top ISIS commander Shadi al-Menei met with Hamas officials in Gaza Thursday in order to discuss coop btw the 2 groups. #Sinai

#Egypt: According to Channel 2, Al-Menei’s group were to help Hamas to smuggle arms via tunnels in return for sophisticated weapons. #Sinai

The Times of Israel reports:

Top Islamic State commander in Sinai Shadi al-Menii met with Hamas officials in Gaza Thursday in order to discuss cooperation between the two terrorist groups, according to a Channel 2 report.

How very odd that the latest ALP candidate deemed unworthy of retaining preselection is a Muslim who goes by the name of “Christian”, but only in the company of non-believers and when presenting himself to voters. That would be Christian Kunde, who was bounced from contesting the NSW seat of Farrer when his association with the weird beard firebrands of Hizb ut-Tahrir came to light. Just by way of a reminder, it was Hizbee honcho Uthman Badar who prompted a you-can’t-be-serious outcry that saw him dropped from 2014’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas before he could lay out the case for murdering women who bring shame on their families. That’s the pair of them above, Badar to the fore, at a Hizbee gabfest in 2012.

Mr Kunde must be very unhappy that a political career has been scotched before it could begin, and so must the ABC, which did yeoman work to present him as the happy face of tolerance and multi-culti amity. A mere two weeks ago, Compass viewers were treated to an adoring profile of the now ex-candidate. It was, by ABC standards, a story that could not possibly go unreported, as it focused on his work as the coach of a women’s AFL team in Western Sydney. Talk about ticking every beluvvied box:

Women breaking gender barriers by playing footy
Muslim women playing footy in their hijabs
Muslim women accepting a lesbian teammate
An ALP candidate who could use some taxpayer-funded free publicity

The Compass episode was multiculturalism’s Potemkin Village, all smiles and falafels-with-tomato-sauce and nary a mention of the unfortunate sorts who give tolerance (and our latest PM’s office elves) a bad name by endorsing the Koranic defenestration of homosexuals. Viewers learned how Mr Kunde met a Muslim bus driver who set him to thinking Islamic values were no different to his own, how he found his way to Allah and “to make things easier” decided to go by two names — “Christian” in the wider world and “Abdullah” when in the company of his co-religionists.

“It’s difficult for Muslims, I guess, to use that name,” he said, referring to the Christian christian name that would have appeared on Farrer ballot papers, explaining that he was Coach Abdullah to his team.

kunde after shearingHow very inconsistent is this multiculturalism? “Christian” is an OK name for ballot papers and ABC promotions, but intolerable to those who themselves demand the tolerance of others.

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia—Joudi al-Omeri drove in circles. And when cars came in her direction, she swerved. These were electric bumper cars, but in Saudi Arabia, the ride doesn’t always live up to its name.

“I come here to drive,” said Ms. al-Omeri, a 27-year-old homemaker still giddy from the roughly five-minute, mostly crash-free ride in her red-and-green two-seater. “It’s much better than bumping against others,” she adds.
At the weekly ladies-only night at the Al Shallal Theme Park in the coastal city of Jeddah, women discard head scarves and head-to-toe black gowns to reveal the latest trends—ripped jeans, tank tops, and tossed-to-the-side ’80s-style hair. For many of them, the biggest draw of the amusement park isn’t the few hours of fashion freedom. Instead, they go there to get behind the wheel—even a bumper-car wheel—in a country that bans female drivers.

There are no loud bangs or ferocious head-on crashes. There are a few slow-speed collisions, but also a lot of dodging, as many women are content with just gliding over the smooth surface. For some, the biggest risk of bumping into each other is while taking a selfie.

“They love driving the cars,” Aman al-Abadi, the ride attendant, said of the women who were getting back in line for another spin. “Men are always bumping.”

With the exception of remote corners of the desert kingdom—where Bedouin women sometimes get behind the wheel—the amusement park offers a rare, hassle-free environment for women to hone their driving skills. That is partly why, on ladies nights, there is a winding queue at the bumper cars. CONTINUE AT SITE

…….This is the fraying world in which Britain is making its Brexit choice. It may be that a “leave” vote will not have such dire consequences as the “remain” campaign predict, and that the U.K. will join the happy ranks of Switzerland and Norway as a rich, European, non-EU state. In normal eras, the benefits of disruption often outweigh the costs.
But this is not a normal era. If the U.K. leaves the EU, why shouldn’t Scotland secede from the former to rejoin the latter? If Britain jilts Brussels, why shouldn’t Brussels return the favor when Britain returns to Europe seeking new terms of trade? If the world is taking a protectionist turn, why would an island country dependent on trade abandon the economic security of the one immense free-trade bloc to which it already has access?

And if Britain leaves the Union, what guarantees that future governments will have a Thatcherite bent? It was Thatcher who in 1975 spearheaded the Conservative Party’s campaign to remain in Europe the last time the membership question was put to British voters. Rarely do nationalist politics not end in statist economic prescriptions.

Like every country, Britain has its share of cultural anxieties and economic problems, some of which are connected to Europe. But not all of them. Britain’s housing bubble is not Europe’s fault, nor is the poor quality of its health services, or its high taxes and cost of living. It’s always easier to blame a marriage’s difficulties on your spouse than on yourself. And as in many marriages, the temptations of a single life can sometimes seem irresistible. They’re worth resisting.

It may be that one day Britain will have another Thatcher, and the U.S. another Reagan, and another Brexit referendum could be a flight to safety and not a leap in the dark. Till then, Brexit would be that most un-British of acts: Imprudent.

The British people go to the polls Thursday in their most important vote since they elected Margaret Thatcher in 1979. While we hope Britain votes to remain in the European Union, the reasons have less to do with the sturdy British than with the damage an exit could do to a Europe that is failing to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

America’s interests lie in a free and prosperous Europe, and we’ve long thought this is best served with Britain as part of the European Union to balance France and Germany. The British look west across the Atlantic more than continentals, and the Brits have largely been a voice of reason in Europe’s councils.

This is especially valuable today given the manifest failures of Europe over the last decade. With rare exceptions like Spain and Ireland, the EU and eurozone have failed to restore the economic growth the Continent so desperately needs. Its leaders can’t, or won’t, ask their citizens to sacrifice to reform their creaky welfare states or solve the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa. They have bungled the migrant crisis in a way that has undermined public confidence and increased support for nativist right-wing parties.

Many British watching this from across the Channel understandably think they can do better on their own. And in many respects they have. They never joined the euro, despite predictions of doom at the time, yet Britain has prospered. Its growth rate since the financial panic is among the strongest in Europe. The British are also exempt from the Schengen rules of passport-free travel, which has spared them from the migrant fiasco.

Yet the main arguments for Brexit are less persuasive on close examination. The first—near and dear to our heart—is the promise of freedom from regulation by Brussels. No one has mocked the EU’s diktats more than we have. Yet the Brexiteers aren’t exactly promising a return to Thatcherism. Boris Johnson, the most prominent Tory supporting Leave, is happy with the National Health Service and subsidies for British business. Nigel Farage’s UKIP is protectionist. CONTINUE AT SITE

A “Russian-Chinese axis” will dominate the Middle East with Israel as its Western anchor: That scenario was floated June 15 in Russia Insider, a louche propaganda site that often runs the work of fringe conspiracy theorists and the occasional anti-Semite. But the author in this case was the venerable Giancarlo Elia Valori, president of Huawei Technologies’ Italian division, a veteran of past intelligence wars with a resume that reads like a Robert Ludlum novel.

Writes Prof. Valori:

A Russian/Israeli axis could redesign the Middle East. Currently the main powers have neither father nor mother, and the replacement of the great powers by Iran and Saudi Arabia will not last long because they are too small to be able to create far-reaching strategic correlations. Hence the time has come for the Middle East to be anchored to a global power, the Russian-Chinese axis, with Israel acting as a regional counterweight.

I would be tempted to dismiss Valori’s thesis as pulp fiction, except that I also raised the prospect of a “Pax Sinica” in the Middle East, three years ago in this publication.

Israeli-Russian relations, to be sure, are quite good. Deft military cooperation avoided problems between Russian forces in Syria and the Israeli army. Israel tolerated the occasional Russian overflight in its territory and Russia tolerated the occasional Israeli raid on Russia’s local allies, Iran and Iran’s cat’s paw Hezbollah. There even has been some speculation by Israeli officials that Russia might use itsUnited Nations Security Council veto against the French-led proposal to impose a Palestinian State.

Tactical cooperation between Russia and Israel, though, is beside the point: Where do Russian (and Chinese) long-range interests coincide with Israeli interests? Prof. Valori writes of a redesign of the Middle East, and that is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

The century-old design of the Middle East, namely the Sykes-Picot agreement, is broken; America broke it by imposing majority (that is, Shia) rule in Iraq in 2007. The Middle East requires a new design. Sykes-Picot, as I explained in this space, set minorities to govern majorities: A Sunni minority in Shia-majority Iraq and a Shia (Alawite) minority in Sunni-majority Syria. That created a natural balance of power: Syrian Christians supported the Alawites and Iraqi Christians supported Saddam Hussein. The oppressed majority knew however nasty the minority regime might be, it could not undertake to kill them all.

The desire of many British citizens to leave the European Union is being assailed by American cultural elites as hysteria: a cancerous growth from the blighted soil of nativism, nationalism, and Islamophobia. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, for example, finds it “unimaginable” that most Britons would vote “yes” in the June 23 referendum, known as Brexit: “I believe that reason will prevail over derangement.”

Only a degraded form of liberalism, however, fails to see why Great Britain might view the European Union with dismay. Whatever its noble intentions, the EU has come to embody a set of values fundamentally at odds with Britain’s historical ideals and institutions. Put simply, British exceptionalism will never make its peace with the secular and leftist assumptions of the European project.

Liberals on both sides of the Atlantic have conveniently forgotten the decisive role played by Great Britain in setting the foundation for the modern democratic state. Like no other country in Europe, Britain developed a tradition of natural rights, the rule of law, trial by jury — all informed by its Christian culture and institutions. Even Montesquieu, the French theorist most associated with the separation of powers, looked to the English example. “He was an ardent admirer of the English constitution,” says Russell Kirk in The Roots of American Order. “He finds the best government of his age in the constitutional monarchy of England, where the subject enjoyed personal and civic freedom.”

Britain’s political and social institutions, nourished by these ideas, stretch back centuries. “Where French kings relied on authority and force, the English sought consent and co-operation at every level, from Parliament to parish,” writes John Miller, professor of history at the University of London. “Louis XIV’s success owed much to the fact that the ruling elite and the king’s officials generally accepted the principles of absolutism. There was no such acceptance in England.”

That’s right — long before Madison, Jefferson, and Rousseau, English revolutionaries were rejecting political absolutism. They proclaimed man’s natural and inalienable rights and reimagined the purposes of government in light of these rights.

At the heart of their argument was the doctrine of consent: the God-given freedom of the individual to choose his political and religious commitments. As John Locke put it in his Second Treatise of Government (1690), political authority remains legitimate only if it retains the consent of the governed. “Men being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent.”

In Saudi Arabia, Mohammad bin Salman’s “Vision 2030” it is totally identified with his leadership. If it succeeds, he will harvest the praise; on the other hand, many in the Saudi elite will latch on to any sign of failure of his policies in order to block his ambitions.

Mohammad bin Salman’s social-political agenda to broaden the power base of the regime to include the young and educated — and to a great extent relatively secular or moderate — will certainly be seen by the Wahhabi clerics and the tribal social conservatives as geared towards reducing their control over the populace and hence their weight in the elite.

Another serious risk is that the economic plan entails reducing the Saudi welfare state. The economic and social fallout of weaning the Saudis away from entitlements will be exploited by domestic opposition elements and by Iran.

In Iran, the electoral process within the Assembly showed what was not evident during the parliamentary elections held in February, namely that even a formal preeminence of moderates does not and cannot influence the decision making of the Iranian regime and that Khamenei succeeds to pull the strings despite seemingly democratic procedures.

After having won the chairmanship of the Assembly, Jannati delivered a speech demanding total loyalty to Khamenei, which can be considered as targeting the moderates.

Following the announcement of Saudi Arabia’s “Vision 2030” Economic Plan by Deputy Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman on April 25, King Salman announced a reshuffling of the government. The reshuffling was clearly orchestrated by the Deputy Crown Prince and reflects his agenda. This shuffle probably is not the last word even in the near term; the changes in the government strengthen the political position of Mohammad bin Salman, because the new ministers owe him their posts, and through them he will strengthen his hold on the levers of government, especially in the economic sphere. His next step may be to move to neutralize Prince Mitab bin Abdullah, the minister in charge of the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG) and a close ally of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Nayef. He could do this by absorbing SANG into the Ministry of Defense.

In essence, my 2007 book, The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization, was an extended rumination on the cultural factors that made Americans unable to talk about, study, teach, debate, let alone face and ward off Islam like “grown-ups” — honestly, logically, fearlessly. It is a cultural history of how Americans and other Western peoples evolved into the perfect dhimmi.

Today, the taboo against telling the truth about our Islamic crisis, just like the Islamic crisis itself, is far worse because it has been institutionalized, deeply rooted, selected for, and otherwise set in the postmodern equivalent of stone.

After Orlando, after Trump’s response, unique in the annals of national politics for its discussion of protecting the nation from mass Muslim immigration, and after the predictable anger directed at Trump (not the Orlando jihadist and this latest cycle of Islamic conquest that spat him out), I thought it might be interesting to look back not at the beginning, of course, but at a beginning. The first post-9/11 Western counterattack — on the West.

Chapter 8 of The Death of the Grown-Up includes the question:

Who can forget the storm of censure that rained down on former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for illuminating the differences between Western and Islamic culture, and for finding- for stating out loud – that Western culture was superior?

A decade after writing that, I wonder if anyone can remember.

It was less than two weeks after 9/11 on “our civilization,” when he spoke out, in Italian, about the superiority of Western civilization due to its principles of liberty.

The BBC translated his remarks this way:

“We have to be conscious of the strength of our civilization. We cannot put the two civilizations on the same level. All of the achievements of our civilization: free institutions, the love of liberty itself–which represents our greatest asset–the liberty of the individual and the liberty of the peoples. These certainly are not the inheritance of other civilizations such as Islamic civilization.”

And the AP wrote:

“We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and–in contrast with Islamic countries–respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its values understandings of diversity and tolerance. [Western civilization is superior because] has at its core, as its greatest value, freedom, which is not the heritage of Islamic culture.”

Versions vary somewhat, but the gist is clear. Maybe the bilionaire media-mogul-turned-politician was an unlikely champion of the virtues of Western civ–or anything else for that matter. After all, the almost operatically buffoonish and scandal-ridden Berlusconi was in the public eye practically as much for his outrageous financial maneuvres as for his political programs. Nonetheless, this Italian prime minister was the lone ranger on the international horizon to seize on and uphold the essence of Western civilization-liberty, prosperity, human rights-and point out the obvious: Liberty, prosperity, and human rights are not part of Islamic civilization. We have to be conscious, we must be aware of this distinction. It was something worth fighting for, Berlusconi presumed, against Islamic terrorists and the Islamic nations and networks that openly, secretly, tactically, financially or religiously support them. Some reports included Berlusconi’s additional point-strangely overlooked–that just as Western liberty had defeated communism, so, too, would it vanquish Islam.

In a pre-PC time, such remarks would have been regarded as boiler-plate bromides, the platitudes of a politician trying out new applause lines at the outbreak of war. But back to real life. According to the “international community” circa September 2001, Berlusconi couldn’t have said anything more horrifying. …

If the looming vote endorses the rejection of the EU, it will be Britain declaring, as it always has, that it is open to the world. More than that, it will be a statement of confidence, an affirmation of history and a declaration that it it is not scared nor has reason to be.
The current government is in a unique position to change Britain. While there seems to be a rise in socialist movements in both the UK and America, they are in no way mainstream. Despite Senator Bernie Sanders success in the Democratic primaries, an analysis of his supporters shows they are not the poorest, who have been voting for Mrs Clinton.[1]. Similarly in the UK, the movement that has recently taken control of theLabour opposition is an unholy alliance of unreformed hard-leftists and younger affluent voters attracted by the fresh smell of musty old ideas, the sport for whom its but a short step from social media to socialism. However the left is intellectually bankrupt, their ideas disproven by the history the right forgot to teach.

The old New Labour faction is reduced to clinging to the Big Government statists on the Continent while the new Old Labour group see the EU as corporate menace and wish to rewind the European clock to the 1970s. In the 2015 General Election the public revolted at the thought of a socialist-light party, never mind a socialist one. This is not to assume that the opposition is unelectable. There are political cycles, just as there are economic ones, and for all their faults Labour is still the alternative government. The Conservative Party made itself electable, but that is not to say it is particularly loved. A vote to leave would unquestionably be a vote for self-determination, and you cannot have political freedoms without economic ones. A radical move by the government could entrench lower tax rates for good, to paraphrase Milton Friedman “the important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically unprofitable for the wrong people to do the wrong thing.”

The reason the left can get any traction is due to the perceived failures of capitalism. One can make an argument for nationalised utilities or railways on the basis that no one is offering to build a new pipe into your home or introduce new tracks for mag-lev trains. The competition principle underpinning the free market gets no suction here. However this is to forget that nationalisation stymies innovation. It is an acceptance of the status quo. An acquiescence to the idea that this is as good as it gets. A surrender to managed decline.

The Answers

In recent times, putting one’s trust in the free market has been given a bad name. Whether it is for the 2008 crash or the behaviour leading up to it, capitalism has been under attack. Yet it was not the free market that crashed the world economy but government interventions. In both Britain and the US, the economic gains of the free market governments of Lady Thatcher and President Reagan were squandered by those that followed. While President Clinton governed as a centrist and was moderated by a Republican-controlled House, the Bush Administration that succeeded ended up spending in a most un-Republican way. The size of Mr Blair majorities effectively made him an elected dictator. After following the economic plans of Conservative Chancellor Kenneth Clarke in their first term, New Labour went on a very Old Labour spending spree in their subsequent ones. The results were to entrench crony capitalism in oligopolistic markets while government spending and regulations grew. By interfering in the markets they created bubbles. Addicted to high tax receipts, assured that all their regulators had everything in check and convinced they could manipulate the markets to solve domestic housing policy, they allowed firms to become too big to fail, then encouraged them to lend and spend like it was 1999 and we were all at the end of history. When the market tried to correct itself the systemic risk panicked policy makers into the biggest transfers of debt ever, yet seemed to absolve anyone of responsibility.