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Why, for the UN, Is One Mosque Massacre So Much Worse than Countless Church Massacres? by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18532/mosque-church-massacres

[I]f one non-Muslim attack on a mosque is enough for the UN to institutionalize a special day for Islam, what about the countless, often worse, Muslim attacks on non-Muslim places of worship? Why have they not elicited a similar response from the UN?

The above list, it should be noted, is hardly comprehensive; there have been many similar attacks on churches — in Egypt alone. But because there were few, if any, fatalities, they received little or no coverage in the Western press.

This dismissal is especially true for those remote — and, apparently, in the views of Western media, “unimportant” — regions, such as Nigeria, where Christians are being purged hourly in a Muslim-produced genocide. Thus, after noting that Muslims have eliminated 60,000 Christians between just 2009 and 2021, an August 2021 report states that, during that same time frame, Muslims also destroyed or torched 17,500 churches and 2,000 Christian schools. How many undocumented souls perished in those largely unreported terror attacks?

Therefore, the original question: If one non-Muslim attack on a mosque, which claimed 51 Muslim lives, was enough for the UN to establish an “international day to combat Islamophobia,” why have so many Muslim attacks on churches, which have claimed thousands of Christian lives, not been enough for the UN to establish an “international day to combat Christianophobia”?

The UN, it seems, would have us ignore and brush aside all these ongoing massacres of Christian church worshippers as unfortunate byproducts of misplaced “Muslim grievances” — and instead fixate on this one singular, if admittedly horrendous, incident.

For the UN, evidently, one incident constitutes a “pattern” — one in dire need of recognition and response. The response is to silence, ignore or attack all those who expose the heavily documented real pattern of abuse and violence against non-Muslims — which, make no mistake, is precisely what “combatting Islamophobia” is all about.

The United Nations recently named March 15 as “international day to combat Islamophobia.” That date was chosen because it witnessed one of the worst terror attacks on Muslims: on March 15, 2019, an armed Australian, Brenton Tarrant, entered two mosques in New Zealand and opened fire on unarmed and helpless Muslim worshippers; 51 were killed and 40 wounded.

Can the West fix itself? The war in Ukraine may be just the first test of the western alliance Douglas Murray

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/fractured-west-fix-itself/

There are many ways to fracture a people. But one of the best is to destroy all the remaining ties that bind them. To persuade them that to the extent they have anything of their own, it is not very special, and in the final analysis, hardly worth preserving. This is a process that has gone on across the western world for over a generation: a remorseless, daily assault on everything that most of us were brought up to believe was good about ourselves.

Take Britain’s national heroes — the people who used to form the epicenter of my country’s feelings of national pride. Twenty years ago, Winston Churchill easily topped the BBC’s national survey identifying who the nation thought the Greatest Briton. Today whenever the BBC runs a piece about Churchill it includes the “case for the prosecution”: a set of tendentious and fallacious arguments now frequently made against him. This has consequences. When the outburst of iconoclasm crossed the Atlantic in the summer 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, Churchill statues were among the first to be assaulted. Indeed they were attacked so often that the statue in Parliament Square was boxed up, and only got unboxed when the French president arrived in London for the day.

It isn’t just Churchill who gets this treatment. Almost everyone in British history does. Again and again, largely due to our importing some of the worst ideas in modern American life, we are told that we need to scour our past and purge whatever fails to satisfy our current urges.

Europe: Demography Governs Democracy by Giulio Meotti

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18567/europe-demography-democracy

There is a replacement of civilization and the media is not even covering it.

“By 2050, 50 percent of the French population will be mixed.” — Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Radio Classique, May 17, 2021.

“The mayor of Grenoble adopts the arguments and rhetorical formulas of the Muslim Brotherhood: talking about freedom to impose sexism”. — Céline Pina, Le Figaro, May 4, 2022.

This wokeism talk pretends to be “inclusive” but carefully excludes entire groups on the clearly racist basis of skin color (whites) or ethnicity (Jews). Wokeism, filled with progressive, racist talk, pretends not to be racist but meanwhile is imbued with the syrupy racist ideology of “diversity” — which advocates replacing a society by immigration. It also promotes political correctness, a deadly virus that paralyzes the vital reflexes of the West. Wokeism is the ideal ground for the debut of political Islam in Europe.

This ever-increasing percentage of Turkish, Bosnian, Kosovar, Iranian and Iraqi politicians in Germany will increasingly influence the choices of the first European power in matters of immigration and multiculturalism.

“What we see in big cities today will be normal for the whole country in the future. In a city like Frankfurt, we will have between 65 percent and 70 percent.” — Herbert Brücker, head of migrant research at the Federal Institute for Employment Research, Die Welt, April 11, 2019.

“The massive vote for Mélenchon is proof that the strategy of community victimization that began in the 1990s produced what it was intended to produce in one or two generations. Mélenchon gathered a large part of the Muslim vote, which obviously does not make it a Muslim or Islamist party, but only a ‘cuckoo’ party. Like the cuckoo hatching its eggs in the nest of a bird of another species, a cuckoo party shelters and protects ideas that are not its own. The Muslim Brothers have a strategy that they expressed in their plans from the 1980s: to form an alliance with the most docile parties to propagate their ideas”. — Florence Bergeaud-Blackler, anthropologist, Marianne.net. April 22, 2022.

There is a replacement of civilization and the media is not even covering it.

Canada’s Military Advised to Go Woke By Mark Milke

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/canadas-military-advised-to-go-woke/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=fifth

“A recent report on Canada’s military is the most unserious, illiberal, anti-religious, bigoted piece of policy tripe to emerge from any NATO ally anywhere on the planet.”

A recent report on Canada’s military is the most unserious, illiberal, anti-religious, bigoted piece of policy tripe to emerge from any NATO ally anywhere on the planet.

After Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February and its war on the same ever since, you would think that Western policy-makers would grasp how critical it is to ensure that our militaries are well-funded, well-equipped, and ready to defend our allies in NATO — just in case.

The United States, the United Kingdom, and other selected allies including the Baltic republics and Poland have grasped this; even neutral Finland and pacifist Sweden want to now join NATO in response to Russian aggression. Meanwhile in Canada? The military is being told to go “woke.”

A Canadian military report released a few weeks ago alleges that Canada’s military is shot through with “systemic” racism. It’s a typical claim from the woke Left that sees racism everywhere and gives it as a monocausal explanation for nearly every ill and observed disparity. This new report follows that path. It’s obvious in the title and subtitle, which is an accusation in addition to being verbose: “Minister of National Defence Advisory Panel on Systemic Racism and Discrimination, Final Report: With a focus on Anti-Indigenous and Anti-Black Racism, LGBTQ2+ Prejudice, Gender Bias, and White Supremacy.”

The Real Purpose of the Iran Nuclear Deal by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18564/iran-nuclear-deal-purpose

Many analysts argue that the nuclear deal — original and revised — is primarily about legitimizing Iran’s nuclear program. The deal, they say, is designed to strengthen, not weaken, the Islamic Republic.

Statements by Obama and his senior foreign policy advisors, the same people who are now advising President Biden, reflect a belief — a naïve one, many say — that if Iran were stronger, and traditional American allies — Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — were weaker, the Middle East could achieve a new balance of power that would result in more peaceful region.

“The catch to Obama’s newly inclusive ‘balancing’ framework was that upgrading relations with Iran would necessarily come at the expense of traditional partners targeted by Iran — like Saudi Arabia and, most importantly, Israel. Obama never said that part out loud, but the logic isn’t hard to follow: Elevating your enemy to the same level as your ally means that your enemy is no longer your enemy, and your ally is no longer your ally.” — Lee Smith, Middle East analyst, Tablet magazine.

“The Realignment rests on, to put it mildly, a hollow theory. It misstates the nature of the Islamic Republic and the scope of its ambitions. A regime that has led ‘Death to America’ chants for the last 40 years is an inveterately revisionist regime. The Islamic Republic sees itself as a global power, the leader of the Muslim world, and it covets hegemony over the Persian Gulf — indeed, the entire Middle East.” — Tony Badran and Michael Doran, Middle East analysts, Tablet magazine.

“After oil, the Islamic Republic’s major export item is the IRGC-commanded terrorist militia — the only export that Iran consistently produces at a peerless level. Malley and Sullivan got it exactly wrong when they argued, in effect, that allies are suckering the United States into conflict with Iran. It is not the allies but the Islamic Republic that is blanketing the Arab world with terrorist militias, arming them with precision-guided weapons, and styling the alliance it leads as ‘the Resistance Axis.’ It does so for one simple reason: It is out to destroy the American order in the Middle East.” — Tony Badran and Michael Doran.

U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley has confirmed that diplomatic efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal originally signed by U.S. President Barack Obama are at an impasse. “We do not have a deal with Iran, and prospects for reaching one are, at best, tenuous,” Malley told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a hearing on May 25.

Malley also admitted that the Biden administration is seeking a new deal that is “shorter” and “weaker” than the original deal. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during his confirmation hearing in January 2021, promised that the administration would pursue a new deal that is “longer” and “stronger.”

Majority Report: Canada’s Latest Advance in Precognitive Legislation By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/05/25/majority-report-canadas-latest-advance-in-precognitive-legislation-n1600764

The 2002 film Minority Report was a box office success and, like the Matrix franchise, emerged as one of the most talked-about movies of recent times. The crux of the film involved a “precrime” policing unit that could act to prevent crimes before they were committed, on evidence provided by a team of comatose subjects with precognitive abilities. Of course, the plot was utterly absurd, demanding major suspension of viewer disbelief, but nonetheless provocative in its social and political implications. 

Though the story descends into complicated but typical melodrama — abducted child, failed marriage, false accusation, eventual resolution — resulting in the abandonment of the clairvoyant project, the idea of precrime prevention is the fanciful “hook” on which the narrative depends. It serves as the fiction within the fiction that has to be initially accepted if the film is to retain its unlikely coherence. Of course, what the film calls a “minority report” is an anomalous factor, different from the more comprehensive reports of predictive infallibility, but second sight remains the rule. Obviously, no such precognitive technology is even remotely conceivable — or so we might have thought.

Leave it to the Canadian prime minister, as many have noted, to translate the central premise of the movie into the realm of public policy. Bill C-261, currently pending before Parliament, proposes to deal with the newly formulated crime of online “hate propaganda” and “hate speech” before said crime has actually been contemplated, let alone occurred, assuming the plaintiff believes that he or she is the intended target of hate. An individual can thus be accused of a crime and made to pay the price — censure, compensatory damages, or even imprisonment — before the event has taken place. 

Assassination in Tehran The motorcycle killers who got to the Quds Force Colonel were playing hardball. Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/death-tehran-kenneth-r-timmerman/

The motorcycle killers who assassinated a senior Quds Force officer in Tehran on Sunday knew what they were doing.

According to Iranian media accounts, accomplices blocked the street behind the target’s car by double-parking and raising their trunk, clearing the way for the motorcycle killers who shot Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei five times as he was about to drive off in his Kia Pride.

The feat was even more brazen since the Colonel’s street led directly to the Iranian parliament, one of the most secure areas of Tehran. The assassins hit Khodaei from behind in the head and the heart, blowing out both the driver and the passenger side windows of his car, according to photos subsequently released to the Iranian media.

The Iranian regime immediately blamed Israel for the assassination, referring to Khodaei as a “defender of the shrine,” a reference to Quds Force officers engaged in the fight against ISIS in Syria.

Khodaei, whose real name was Bahram, was one of three brothers who joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in the 1980s and fought in the war against Iraq. All three brothers, and four more Khodaei cousins, later became officers in the elite Quds Force, Iranian sources said.

How The Biden Administration Is Getting Erdoğan’s Moves All Wrong by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18483/getting-erdogans-moves-wrong

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when every sane country is staying away from wiring even a few cents to Russia, NATO “ally” Turkey is still talking about buying a second S-400 system.

The result? The U.S. is further appeasing [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan.

Erdoğan has long been playing the old oriental carpet-selling game: pitting potential buyers against each other to get the best price — Turkey is hoping to be sold to the highest bidder.

The West’s appeasement will just further embolden Erdoğan to keep blackmailing it: If you do not sell me F-35s or F-16s, I will buy fighter jets from Russia. Erdoğan then turns to Putin: I am your man in NATO. If you do not want me to be a real NATO ally, you must give me something. Erdoğan’s double-play has to be stopped. For that, is needed a determined Western bloc who will remind him that he will not get what he wants from his (theoretical) allies in the West by blackmailing them.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revived an old, outdated, near-defunct concept: a Western habit of overrating Turkey’s “geo-political importance.” Totally blind to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s anti-Western policy calculus, the Biden administration is pushing Turkey’s Islamist strongman into further stealth hostility toward the civilized parts of the world.

The Elites Have Every Intention Of Controlling Our Lives

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/26/the-elites-have-every-intention-of-controlling-our-lives/

From the world’s largest gathering of hypocrites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, we have learned that a personal carbon footprint tracker is in the works. In the wrong hands, it would be the equivalent of the ankle monitors used to ensure that criminal offenders don’t escape their house arrest.

“We’re developing, through technology, an ability for consumers to measure their whole carbon footprint,” J. Michael Evans, president of Alibaba Group USA, said Tuesday while on a panel discussion on responsible consumption. “What does that mean? Where they are traveling. How they are traveling. What are they eating. What they are consuming on the platform.”

This will excite the virtue signalers who will be happy to post their carbon footprint scores on social media. But for the rest of us, those still wishing to live freely, who don’t want elites establishing the limits of “responsible consumption,” it’s deeply troubling.

Evans described the tracker as if it were just another way for people to keep up with their activities – like a smart watch that monitors health.

But the existence of the technology plays straight into the hands of the wrong people, which in the developed world is roughly half of all elected officials and nearly all of the regulators and bureaucrats of the administrative state. Don’t think that they will decline the opportunity to someday require, in the name of saving the climate, each of us to have a carbon footprint tracker so that our lives can be monitored, and our behavior adjusted as needed.

Genocide for Profits by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18562/genocide-for-profits

Putin’s genocidal war on Ukraine may have less to do with empire and far more to do with profits.

Enormous profits.

There has been considerable commentary about Putin’s war motives, from a belief that Ukraine is little more than an insurgent province of Mother Russia to a fear that Ukraine is becoming a satellite of Western democracies. But those motives miss the fact that Putin rules by allowing oligarchs to enrich themselves and — by extension — himself. And like any criminal, he is going where the money is and there is much money buried in the ground of Ukraine.

While it has historically been considered a rich agricultural region, it is now considered extremely valuable. Putin understands that Ukraine is also very rich in the precious metal lithium. One source reports that for fixed contracts, the annual average lithium price in the United States was $17,000 per ton in 2021, more than double that in 2020.

Published reports reference Ukrainian experts who believe their nation’s Donbas region, now occupied by Russia, holds some 500,000 tons of lithium oxide, a source for refined lithium.