RUTHFULLY YOURS

Iran’s anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism have reached unprecedented levels. The deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) recently pointed out that the Islamic Republic has tens of thousands of missiles prepared outside of Iran to strike Israel.

Iran’s state-owned news agency, Tasnim, quoted General Hossein Salami as saying that “Hezbollah has 100,000 missiles that are ready to hit Israel to liberate the occupied Palestinian territories if the Zionist regime repeats its past mistakes.” He added that “today, the grounds for the annihilation and collapse of the Zionist regime are (present) more than ever.” In addition, Gen. Salami warned Israeli leaders that if they make the “wrong move,” Israel would come under attack.

A senior adviser to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ elite unit Quds Force, Ahmad Karimpour, stated a few weeks ago that Iran could destroy Israel in eight minutes if the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave the order. According to the semi-official Fars News Agency, he said that “If the Supreme Leader’s orders [are] to be executed, with the abilities and the equipment at our disposal, we will raze the Zionist regime in less than eight minutes.”

In addition, Iran’s final decision-maker and autocrat, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, published a plan after the nuclear agreement, explaining how to destroy Israel. Furthermore, he blatantly predicted that Israel would not be around in 25 years. He stated, “En Sha’a Allah [God willing], there will be no such thing as a Zionist regime in 25 years. Until then, struggling, heroic and jihadi morale will leave no moment of serenity for Zionists.”

Khamenei relies heavily on Hezbollah and IRGC to pursue his government’s anti-Israel and anti-US policies. Thanks to sanctions relief and billions of dollars the Obama administration is sending to Iran’s Central Bank from the American taxpayers, Hezbollah and Iran’s IRGC are amply funded. Iranian leaders are increasingly relying on and boasting about utilizing Hezbollah to wipe out Israel.

Friend she may be, however, she parrots the international support for the “two sate (did)solution of Israel, which will not stop until it is categorically derided and trashed as a policy relic by the state of Israel. rsk
The parliamentary chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel issued a statement saying that “Israel can rest assured that a UK led by Theresa May will be there in its moments of need.”

Jerusalem is confident that the strong relationship with Britain it enjoyed under Prime Minister David Cameron will continue when Home Secretary Theresa May takes over the job by Wednesday.

May, according to former ambassador to London Daniel Taub, “has been a long-standing friend of Israel and the Jewish community.”

He said that as home secretary, May was very supportive of “our efforts to deepen British- Israel ties in the area of homeland security, and also very receptive to the concerns of the Jewish community regarding anti-Semitism and violent extremism.” Her ministry was responsible for Britain’s MI5 intelligence service, and as such was both aware and appreciative of the close intelligence and security cooperation between the two countries.

Jerusalem had no formal comment Monday on the political developments in Britain, waiting until she formally takes over as prime minister before issuing a congratulatory statement.

One official said that when it comes to Israel, May “comes with her heart in the right place.”

If, indeed, that is the case, then she will follow a long line of British prime ministers, going back to Margaret Thatcher and including John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Cameron, who were considered good friends in Jerusalem.

German citizens have been shielded from the awful truth about the way life in Germany has been altered by the arrival of hundreds of thousands of young Muslim “refugees.” It is no longer safe for German women and girls to go about the streets dressed and behaving as they have in the past. That is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the shocking news that the mass sexual attack in Koln that received publicity a few days after it occurred was far from an isolated event.

Standard.net reports:

LONDON – At first, there was complete silence from officials. As rumors spread on social media, police had nothing to say about allegations of mass sexual assaults and other crimes carried out on New Year’s Eve in the German city of Cologne.

It was only days later that officials reported that hundreds of women were victims of assault in Cologne, Hamburg and other German cities.

But numbers that are now emerging are likely to shock a country still coming to terms with what happened in Cologne more than half a year ago. According to a leaked police document, published by Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper and broadcasters NDR and WDR, the previous estimates have to be dramatically revised – upward.

Authorities now think that on New Year’s Eve, more than 1,200 women were sexually assaulted in various German cities, including more than 600 in Cologne and about 400 in Hamburg.

More than 2,000 men were allegedly involved, and 120 suspects – about half of them foreign nationals who had only recently arrived in Germany – have been identified.

“The most important task of leaders is to keep their populations safe from harm. This should not only be in respect of physical harm or subjugation but also from moral and spiritual harm. I challenge any politician or would-be leader to outline their plans for eliminating the behaviors itemized earlier in this piece and for ensuring that their children’s grandchildren will not have to contend with an Islamic caliphate and Sharia law. Islamic leaders are also welcome to chime in.”

The revelations Muslims are obliged to believe Muhammad received from his heavenly envoy lay out how the faithful must regulate their lives and relations with non-believers. Prominent among them, the obligation to do “good deeds” — and that is the problem.
In the wake of the recent and horrific Orlando massacre, political leaders, experts, commentators, and letter writers have trotted out just about every rationale they could think of to explain this dreadful incident: gay hate, ISIS, mental instability, terrorism, radical Islam, US gun culture, and loan wolves.

While some or all of the above may have played a part, they are all delusions when it comes to the real issue of resurgent Islam (see Kidding Ourselves About Islam). There was, however, one factor that is common to this and similar terrorist events: the perpetrator is reported to have shouted “Allahu Akbar”.

Yes, we need to talk about Allah.

Who is Allah? Allah is regarded as the spiritual monotheistic god who revealed himself to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel over about a 30-year period around AD 630. These revelations form the Koran, which contains the precepts that direct Muslims in their daily life. It is possible that the following precepts of the Koran may have had a bearing on Omar Mateen’s actions.

You who believe, do not take the Jews and Christians as allies: they are allies only to each other. Anyone who takes them as an ally becomes one of them—Allah does not guide such wrongdoers. (The Feast 5:51)

The believers should not make the disbelievers their allies rather than other believers— anyone who does such a thing will isolate himself completely from Allah—except when you need to protect yourself from them. Allah warns you to beware of Him: the Final Return is to Allah. (The Family of Imran 3:28)

With these thoughts in mind, Mateen may have been encouraged in his actions by the following or like directives.

By 2061, the future EU may well be majority Muslim, which appears not to have concerned younger voters steeped since infancy in the official doctrine of relativism and multicultural ‘tolerance’. Older voters recalled that the Channel has been a useful obstacle to invasion and subjugation.
The UN High Commission for Refugees estimates over one million people made their way to Europe last year by boat. Sadly, we are not talking the Queen Mary, nor P&O. In the cold first six months of this year, a quarter of a million more arrived on small boats with unreliable engines. Who knows what numbers — along with tragic losses in the crossing — the current summer will bring.

This level of mass movement of humanity is unprecedented. Even the surging population movements after the Second World War are being surpassed. And Europe, or the EU as the body in charge of migration, has no answer to the problem, only Angela Merkel’s initial, naive response to let them come.

By 2061 (when I hope to be 100) the future EU (including Turkey) may well be majority Muslim. If that sounds far-fetched, consider that half of current EU citizens will be dead by then, and record low birth rates mean next generations will be small, while family reunions of current and future migrants, plus two generations of their own vast progeny, will tip the scales the Muslim way.

The unprecedent immigration to Europe by people largely of Arab background was no doubt a major factor in ordinary Britons recently voting for Brexit. Many average Englanders, interviewed the week after the vote, shyly but firmly implied this to be so. Their second cousins in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted otherwise, but are also unlikely to be home to as many refugees.

Modern Britons — despite their occasional worst examples on TV — tend to be a tolerant people. Alf Garnett was only funny because, already in the 1960s, his views were no longer mainstream. In the lifetime of most British adults, there have seen successive waves of immigration from the Caribbean, from the Subcontinent, and in the past two decades from continental Europe. These waves, with all the cultural changes accompanying them, have transformed urban Britain. London, Leicester, Luton and Slough already have non-white majorities. Birmingham will shortly. All these places are now irretrievably different from fifty years ago.

Did the existing British complain? Yes. That’s a national British pastime, especially if the weather turns unusually mild for a day or two. But, did they turn the waves back? No. Did they integrate all these diverse migrants into the wider British society, bit by bit? Yes, of course they did. To do otherwise would have been unfathomable.

ABOARD THE USS NEW ORLEANS—Boats from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps maneuvered dangerously close to a U.S. military vessel in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, part of a pattern that the top American general in the region—who was on the ship at the time—said risked grave miscalculation.

“What concerns me is our people don’t always have a lot of time to deal with those interactions,” said Gen. Joe Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, as he stood on the bridge of the amphibious ship later in the day. “It’s measured in minutes to really have the opportunity to make the right decision.”

The five Iranian boats included four small patrol craft and a larger boat called a Houdong fast-attack craft. At least one of the patrol boats was equipped with a .50 caliber machine gun and what is known as a multiple rail rocket launcher. They came within several hundred yards of the American ship.

The series of encounters on Monday took place as the New Orleans sailed in international waters through the strait. Gen. Votel, on a swing through the Middle East this week, voiced concern about how quickly such an encounter could turn lethal for the ship, which was carrying about 700 Marines.

In the case of Monday’s incident, U.S. officials didn’t consider the Iranian ships to be technically harassing the American warship, but said they came unacceptably close to doing so. Iran officials couldn’t immediately be reached to comment.

The encounters might have been considered more dramatic if they weren’t so common. American Navy ships reported about 300 incidents with Iranian vessels during 2015, according to data provided by the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Most of those “interactions,” as the Navy calls them, are considered safe or don’t rise to the level of harassment, according to Navy officials.

Navy officials essentially grade Iranian naval behavior on a curve. They said that the way the Iranians behave typically, even when they don’t actually harass American warships, is still not the way most professional navies behave at sea.

About 10% of all incidents are of greater concern, Navy officials said. These may entail Iranian craft crossing the bow of an American warship, approaching at a high rate of speed, or training weaponry on a U.S. vessel.

The IRGC’s routine actions in the region force American warships to have to determine just what their intent is, said one officer here.

“It’s very common for them to come up to within 300, 500 yards of us, and then they’ll turn, or parallel us and stop,” said Lt. Forrest Griggs, the New Orleans’s operations officer. “We try not to become accustomed to that because we don’t want to become complacent.”

Navy officials maintain they always navigate through the international waters of the strait—through which a third of all seaborne oil and other energy products are shipped—and Gen. Votel said the U.S. isn’t trying to provoke Iran with such operations.

Tensions at sea have been high since an incident in January in which two U.S. Navy riverine boats slipped mistakenly into Iranian territorial waters and became stranded before IRGC forces surrounded and boarded them and detained 10 American sailors at gunpoint.CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THWPJE4xaJM

Twin brothers, 24, intended ‘to cause and spread terror’ in South Africa’s Jewish community in what a Johannesburg court calls an attempted act of terrorism.

Twin brothers have been charged with conspiring to blow up various Jewish institutions and a U.S. mission in South Africa, a police spokesman said Monday, in what a Johannesburg court has called an attempted act of terrorism.

Spokesman Hangwane Mulaudzi said that Brandon-Lee Thulsie and Tony-Lee Thulsie, 24, and two other people, identified as siblings Fatima and Ibrahim Mohammed Patel, who are yet to be charged were arrested in Johannesburg on Saturday. The brothers are accused of intending “to cause and spread feelings of terror,” particularly in South Africa’s “Jewish sector,” the court’s provisional charge sheet said, News24 reported.

The Patel siblings appeared in a separate court Monday after a stun grenade and live ammunition were confiscated during a raid on their home outside Johannesburg on Saturday night, said Phindi Louw, a spokeswoman for the National Prosecuting Authority.

The Thulsie brothers’ planned attack may have been “to further the … motives and objectives” of ISIS, according to the court. The four were arrested before boarding a flight to Syria and had been under surveillance for nearly a year. “The allegation is that after the training, they would come back to South Africa,” Malaudzi said.

Nigel Farage is Ukip – whether he leads the party or not is irrelevant

Nigel Farage didn’t set up Ukip, but he reshaped it in his image when he became the party’s leader. Mr Farage’s successor will be in place by September, bringing to an end his nine years at the helm. After clearing away the pint glasses and cigar smoke, how will they manage to fill the Farage-shaped void?

A “void” isn’t strictly speaking an accurate description, as the next Ukip leader will likely find that the man they replace is still keen to be involved. Mr Farage insists he is off because he wants his life back, but he has had some trouble letting go in the past. He tried resigning last year, declaring that he “never felt happier” after stepping down and that an “enormous weight” had been lifted from his shoulders. But he was back three days later, explaining why he was going to carry that weight on for a while longer. He stepped down for a bit longer ahead of the 2010 general election, but came back swiftly after it became clear that Lord Pearson was struggling as his interim replacement.

Mr Farage may have been “chief spokesman” at the time, but party insiders admit to me that he was seen as the “power behind the throne”, so his return to the Ukip helm was regraded as a mere formality.

If next Ukip leader wants to sketch out a different path to Mr Farage, they’ll have to be ready to face their predecessor down when he comes calling. I understand he took pains to make clear to MEPs last week that he may be resigning, but he would still be engaged. That’s hardly a surprise – as Ukip has been a project Mr Farage has spent over 20 years of his life working on. He took what Alan Sked originally launched as the Anti-Federalist League and replaced its academic dustiness with electorally potent blend of populism and charisma. The results speak for themselves: 4 million votes at the last general election and a national vote secured for Brexit. Ukip as it stands is Mr Farage’s baby, so it’s little surprise that he has a vested interest in making sure his successor doesn’t reverse the work he has done.

Not that he’d admit so publicly, as the outgoing Ukip leader was nonchalance itself on the issue of his party’s future over the weekend. Speaking on LBC, he insisted that his successor should take it in a “completely different direction”. But in truth it’ll be only on his terms.

The challenge facing the next Ukip leader is how to follow such a big character. One leading contender, Steven Woolfe, likes to compare this question to “what would happen after Ferguson left Man United”, asking: “Do you want to be Louis Van Gaal or David Moyes?”

After the events of last weekend, when the Hezbollah flag was raised in London, spending an evening at a rally with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) seemed positively benign. How wrong I was.

08 July 2016. Richmond Terrace, London SW1A. An area directly opposite Downing Street that is used for demonstrations. It is two years since the 2014 Israel–Hamas conflict, and today the PSC dusted off their ‘stop the attack’ banners, and came out to protest.

But it isn’t 2014 anymore. It was staged to be a big event. It was an anniversary, it was advertised heavily by the PSC minions, their ‘interim head honcho’ Sarah Apps was there, as were their other ‘chiefs’. By half time I heard conversations amongst the organisers making excuses for the low turnout. Scores of banners were left by the sidewalk, with not enough hands to raise them all aloft

A fact about the state of pro-Palestinian activism is this: More people turned out for the Hezbollah Flag than for this PSC anniversary. There were 170, maybe 200. The Facebook event page suggests 557. It seems lots of those that did attend have multiple accounts on Facebook.

I did learn that I need to take my disguise up to another level. I was wearing a hat and a large Keffiyeh, but was ‘clocked’ as soon as I entered. The PSC and I have history, I am passive, I am an ‘investigative journalist’ and they don’t like what I write. A ‘persona non grata’ they can do little about.

The pro-Israelis were taken to one side by the police. Unmasked now, I saw one of them was Joseph and realised this was an Israel Advocacy Movement (IAM) action. Andrew was there, Ben, Chloé, Micha and perhaps a couple of others.
The Israeli flags

The police formed a line between the two groups and the IAM crowd took out their Israeli flags. On the one side a mob of angry anti-Israeli activists, on the other 5 people with the courage to face them.

The distance between the two groups was negligible. A woman by my side ducked and lunged towards the Israeli group, but was stopped and pushed back. Lighter in hand, it seemed she had wanted to burn an Israeli flag. Looking back over the footage, I saw that the lighter had been placed in her hand only during the confrontation. She never made it through the line of stewards.

There was verbal abuse and a stand-off. More distance was placed between the two sides and the organisers tried to bring people back to the rally. There were still people talking on the stage, microphone in hand, but almost nobody was listening. The mob was where the action was. Hating a Jew clearly far more enticing than listening to the same old rhetoric.