RUTHFULLY YOURS

The real question is: does Moridi represent the Canadian-Iranian community in Canada, or was he just collecting their votes to represent the Iranian and the Azerbaijani governments to Canada?

Although Moridi has ridden to his present position on the Iranian votes in Canada, he has changed faces and seems to be representing the interests of several other governments and institutions — including the Iranian regime; the Islamic Revolutionary Guards business empire and its links in Iran and Canada, and the Azerbaijani government; he is not representing the cultural and political interests of Canada or the Iranian-Canadians who gave him a seat in the Ontario government.

In Iran’s political establishment, as in others, there are often opportunistic figures who change their colors and views, apparently based on what they might gain politically and economically.

A current example is Reza Moridi, a Canadian citizen originally from Iran, who is currently a Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP) in Ontario and the provincial government’s Minister of Research and Innovation.

Originally, to benefit from the votes of Iranian-Canadian constituents, Moridi strongly opposed human rights abuses committed by the Iranian regime and rejected the idea of rapprochement with Iran, currently the world leader per capita in executing people.

Previously, he had written a letter to Canada’s then prime minister, Stephen Harper, urging “the Government of Canada to continue speaking out against the restrictions on free speech and democracy in Iran” and arguing that “The Iranian people must have the opportunity to voice their opinions freely and without fear of harm.”

But his position soon changed dramatically. Suddenly, the Iranian regime’s human rights violations, oppression, and interventions in other countries became less of an issue. He recently met with Canada’s External Affairs Minister, Stephane Dion, to discuss further rapprochement with Iran’s regime, and is currently calling on the Canadian government to re-open its embassy in Tehran.

Father Joseph (Yusuf) Akbulut is one brave man. He is a soft spoken, highly intelligent, Syrian Orthodox Priest I had the honor to meet in November 2013 at his parish, the 1700 year old Church of the Virgin Mary in the Sur district of Diyarbakir, Syria. The Church, and the rectory in which Father Joseph, his wife and six children lived, were in the crossfire of the 10-month war between Kurdish fighters and the Turkish military.

In January they were in the Church with bombs exploding all around. A rocket-propelled grenade destroyed a portion of the wall surrounding the Church. Initially, Father Joseph refused to leave the Church he has overseen for 23 years, fearing it would be leveled if left empty. Unfortunately, he did have to leave – it became too dangerous. Now, the state has seized it along with all the other Christian Churches in Sur, including one of the largest Armenian Churches in the Middle East, Surp (Saint) Giragos.

Father Joseph Akbulut pointing out the “holy spirit” door knocker once so prevalent in the Sur district. Photo by Fran Fawcett Peterson

World Watch Monitor reports;

“We wouldn’t have left the church. But when we looked [on the street] and saw that land mines and rockets were exploding non-stop, we knew that we couldn’t stay,” he told World Watch Monitor. “Our house was shaking and we thought it would collapse.”

The power, electricity, and water were cut off. It was time to flee. They stepped out on the street cautiously, with Fr. Akbulut waving a white flag. Nobody was there.

“It was like a war zone,” he said.

Fr. Akbulut and his family are staying in a hotel for the foreseeable future. Ongoing clashes in the church’s neighborhood prevent their return.*
But controversy has followed him. He has fended off reports from the Turkish media that his church had indirect involvement with the PKK.

Germany is now headed down the road to civil war.

In a remarkable interview with the BBC Newshour program on Sunday night, the spokesman for the Islamic Council of Germany (ISC) called for an outright ban on the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party after comparing the AfD to the Nazi Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; NSDAP) of the 1930s:

BBC: But in a democratic system, if people are voting for them, what can you do?

ICG: We have to teach the people that we have made some experiences from the history, which are very similar and close to the what the AFD is now doing. They are excluding one religious group from the social life. Therefore, they have to be banned from the political system because you cannot deal with the enemies of the democracy by means of the democracy, so the democratic people have to exclude them from all the democratic platform.

BBC: So you want them banned. A party which has won seats in half of regional elections, which has — as you say — between 10 and 15 percent of the vote in opinion polls at the moment — you’d like to see them banned completely, would you?

ICG: Yes.

The call by the ICG to employ German state powers to ban the AfD came after the AfD adopted policy platforms at its conference stating that Islam is “not part of Germany.”

Germany is increasingly falling under the stranglehold of Islamification pressure by Muslims in the country who seek to bring sharia law into full force.

Back in January, a Muslim group called for the banning of alcohol in Germany, and now the ICG is seeking to ban political parties that hold a negative view of Islam. So-called “sharia zones” have already been declared by Muslims in western Germany, with “sharia police” patrolling the streets under the support of the German court system. A growing number of legal cases are also being decided by sharia law.

One side will ultimately need to give in on its own initiative, or the path towards civil war on German soil is now set in stone.

The nightmare scenario of an America sent back centuries in time before electricity, refrigeration, and smart phones has grown unnervingly closer with the presence of two North Korean satellites with orbits over a blissfully unaware American populace and an Obama administration indifferent to the apocalyptic threat of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.

On Feb. 7, North Korea launched a second satellite, the KMS-4, to join their KMS-3 satellite launched in December of 2012. In an article in the Washington Times on April 24, R. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Peter Vincent Fry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security as well as director of the Nuclear Strategy Forum, both congressional advisory boards, warned of the dangers of an apocalyptic EMP attack that these and similar satellites pose:

Both satellites now are in south polar orbits, evading many U.S. missile defense radars and flying over the United States from the south, where our defenses are limited. Both satellites — if nuclear armed — could make an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that could blackout the U.S. electric grid for months or years, thereby killing millions.

Technologically, such an EMP attack is easy — since the weapon detonates at high-altitude, in space, no shock absorbers, heat shield, or vehicle for atmospheric re-entry is necessary. Since the radius of the EMP is enormous, thousands of kilometers, accuracy matters little. Almost any nuclear weapon will do.

Moreover, North Korea probably has nuclear weapons specially designed, not to make a big explosion, but to emit lots of gamma rays to generate high-frequency EMP. Senior Russian generals warned EMP Commissioners in 2004 that their EMP nuclear warhead design leaked “accidentally” to North Korea, and unemployed Russian scientists found work in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Woolsey and Pry, along with former Reagan science adviser William R. Graham, chairman of the Congressional EMP Commission, Ambassador Henry Cooper, director of the Strategic Defense Initiative and chief negotiator at the Defense and Space Talks with the USSR; and Fritz Ermarth, chairman of the National Intelligence Council; warned of the North Korean EMP threat an article in the February 12 issue of National Review:

Naïve reliance on their transparent disavowals could end up costing millions of American lives.

Hamas needs cannons and cannon-fodders to attack Israel. Hamas cannons came from a variety of sources, some as contributions from other Islamist regimes, such as Iran and Sudan. Smuggled weapons come through the Sinai and are sometimes hidden in containers of goods allowed into Gaza. Hamas has also taken advantage of building materials delivered for the endless reconstruction of Gaza and has been developing its own rockets and tunnels into Israel.

The local talent needed to produce the rockets is found in the Hamas-controlled Gaza school system. So is the fodder for Hamas attacks against Israel, Gaza’s school children, who receive growingly violent indoctrination and detailed instructions on how to attack and murder Israelis.

The Western media has been shocked shocked by ISIS videos showing how it trains children wearing the terrorist group’s black uniforms to sever heads of infidels. But, Hamas training of Gaza’s children wearing Hamas uniforms to slit the throats of Israelis, did not lead to the condemnation of Hamas.

Last month’s celebrations of the annual Palestine Festival for Childhood and Education in Gaza, offer a good example.

The Festival was celebrated throughout the Gaza school system, most of which are operated and funded by UNRWA, and most of the teachers are members of the Hamas Teachers’ Union. The events included young veiled girls and boys wearing military uniforms simulating stabbing attacks on Israelis, killing IDF soldiers and releasing Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails.

Sponsors of these events included the Ramallah-based Bank of Palestine, the Hamas-controlled University College of Applied Sciences in Gaza, whose funders include the World Bank and the European Commission, sponsored the events, as has the London-based, Interpal Fund, which has been designated as terrorist by Israel and US, but not in Britain.

“The displays put on by the children during the Annual Palestine Festival for Childhood and Education show that the sponsorship and support Interpal allegedly provides for worthy causes, is in reality also used to increase hatred for Israel and to indoctrinate violence (in both the formal and informal educational systems in the Gaza Strip). Moreover, funds donated by countries and various groups in Western Europe to further formal educational are also exploited to encourage hatred and terrorism.”

Within a week, Britain’s Labour party leadership was forced to suspend one of its newest MPs and one of its oldest grandees — and both for the same reason.

Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone both say that they condemn anti-Semitism. They always tend to add that they also condemn “Islamophobia and all other forms of racism,” a disclaimer that always seems a deliberate attempt to hide a hatred of Jews under the skirts of any and all criticism of Islam. What is most fascinating is that all the while they are saying this, they stoke the very thing they claim to condemn.

They pretend that the Jewish state does such things for no reason. There is no mention of the thousands of rockets that Hamas and other Islamist groups rain down on Israel from the Gaza Strip. The comment turns a highly-targeted set of retaliatory strikes by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip into a “brutal” attack “on the Palestinians” as a whole. While mentioning those death-tolls, Livingstone has no interest in explaining that the State of Israel builds bunkers for its citizens to shelter in, while Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields and useful dead bodies for the television cameras, to help Hamas appear as an aggrieved “victim.”

It is the narrative of the “left” on Israel that is causing the resurgence of anti-Semitism. It is not coming from nowhere. It is coming from them. If the left wants to deal with it, they first have to deal with themselves.

Every time anyone thinks Britain’s Labour party has reached a new low of anti-Semitism, entirely new depths seems to open. In September, I wrote here about how the election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour party constituted a “mainstreaming” of racism in the UK. Although Mr. Corbyn claims he does not have any tolerance for any hatred of anyone, he is a man who has spent his political life cosying up to anti-Semites and terrorist groups that express genocidal intent against the Jewish people. He has worked closely with Holocaust deniers, praised anti-Semitic extremists and described Hamas and Hezbollah as his friends.

“Why are your bishops silent on a threat that is yours today as well? Because the bishops are, like you, raised in political correctness. But Jesus was never politically correct, he was politically just! The responsibility of a bishop is to teach, to use his influence to transmit truth.” — Jean-Clément Jeanbart, the Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Aleppo, Syria.

Federal authorities arrested Khalil Abu-Rayyan of Dearborn Heights, Michigan, an ISIS supporter who had planned to carry out an attack on a 6,000-member Detroit church. Abu-Rayyan allegedly had guns and a large knife, and told an undercover FBI agent that he “tried to shoot up a church one day … If I can’t do jihad in the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here. … It is my dream to behead someone.”

In Pakistan, a disabled Christian man sentenced to death for blasphemy said that he was forced into admitting to the charges in order to stop his wife from being tortured… Emmanuel and his wife were found guilty of insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad in text messages to a local imam in 2013, and sentenced to death. The conviction came despite the fact that the poor Christian couple are illiterate.

As opposed to their Western counterparts, Christian leaders who live in the Middle East continued expressing their frustration at the West’s indifference and worse. Jean-Clément Jeanbart, the Melkite Greek Catholic archbishop of Aleppo, during an interview, asked “Why are your bishops silent on a threat that is yours today as well? Because the bishops are, like you, raised in political correctness. But Jesus was never politically correct, he was politically just! The responsibility of a bishop is to teach, to use his influence to transmit truth. Why are your bishops afraid of speaking? Of course they would be criticized, but that would give them a chance to defend themselves, and to defend this truth. You must remember that silence often means consent.”

The archbishop also criticized the migration policies of Western countries: “The egoism and the interests slavishly defended by your governments will in the end kill you as well. Open your eyes, didn’t you see what happened recently in Paris?”

The first opinion-poll results on President Obama’s intervention in the Brexit debate since he left London for Germany and the EU summit have now been published. They show two things of interest: a small movement toward the Leave campaign, and a clear majority of voters who disapproved of the president’s intervention.

Of four polls, all four shifted toward Leave, by between one and four percentage points. That still left Remain ahead in two polls, and Leave in the other two (but by smaller numbers, in or close to the margin of error). Probably the fairest interpretation is that Remain is slightly ahead but Leave is closing a small gap and that Obama helped to close it further.

Disapproval of Obama’s intervention is far clearer, however. Majorities of 55 and 60 percent were critical. This popular response was expressed in a cartoon of Obama seated opposite the Queen at a Palace dining table, saying airily, “She’ll have the fish” — as the Queen winces and the butler staggers back in horror.

But Obama is popular in Britain, and this reaction was not very harsh. It seems to have focused on his arrogance in telling the Brits that if they left the EU and wanted a separate U.S.-U.K. trade deal, they would have to go to the back of “the queue.” That word is a Britishism that commentators immediately cited as evidence that the speech had been written in Downing Street. It wasn’t personal arrogance so much as calculated pressure from both governments.

That episode illustrates one of the oddest elements in this referendum campaign. Though it’s quite common in modern politics (see Trump, passim) for outsiders and dissidents to denounce the overwhelming influence of “elites” or “establishments,” this is a rare occasion when the elites and establishments boast about it themselves.

ISIS released a new video today reminiscent of the “nasheed” song threats preceding and succeeding the Paris and Brussels attacks.

The new twist this time? Children — aka ISIS “cubs,” as the terror group calls them — doing the singing, making threats in French translated into English.

The video features more images of President Obama than the one or two that are usually dropped into most ISIS videos and publications. With a backdrop of a child in ISIS garb wandering through a bombed neighborhood, superimposed images show Obama speaking at the United Nations, Obama shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a bilateral meeting, Obama and Putin as well as Obama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at last November’s G20 summit in Turkey, and Obama again at the UN in two different scenes.

Secretary of State John Kerry is shown exchanging pleasantries with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Putin is also shown shaking hands with French President Francois Hollande.