RUTHFULLY YOURS

Welcome to what is becoming the new global terrorist normal.

Few days go by now without at least one mass-casualty terrorist attack somewhere in the world. Two such attacks on Sunday, in the Ivory Coast and Turkey, killed 39 people combined.

On Sunday afternoon gunmen raided Grand Bassam, a resort town in the Ivory Coast popular with wealthy locals and Westerners. The assault followed the template of other recent Islamist attacks in the region, with gunmen spraying fire at vacationers on the beach.

At least 12 people were murdered in Grand Bassam, at least one a French citizen, before security forces killed six terrorists and stopped the attack, according to the Ivorian government. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for the attack.

Left unchecked in the Middle East, al Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) have expanded into Africa. An Islamist crescent stretches from the Horn of Africa to West Africa, and to compete for recruits Africa’s al Qaeda and ISIS affiliates are racing to out-do each other in savagery. CONTINUE AT SITE

Iran’s firing long-range ballistic missiles that could reach Israel last week was the result of the Obama administration’s unwavering refusal to hold the regime accountable.

Last week Iran flaunted its violation of U.N. Resolution 2231, which bans Tehran from “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology.”

But Iran feels reassured. After all, the regime was not held responsible for three fire previous testing of ballistic missiles, even after the Iran Deal was agreed upon. Instead of punishing the Islamic Republic, the U.S. added a few Iranian individuals and companies to its designation list, as if these were engaging in a private missiles development program.

Hans-Georg Maaßen, the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV), warned that the Islamic State was deliberately planting jihadists among the refugees flowing into Europe, and reported that the number of Salafists in Germany has now risen to 7,900. This is up from 7,000 in 2014 and 5,500 in 2013.

“Salafists want to establish an Islamic state in Germany.” — Hans-Georg Maaßen, director, BfV, German intelligence.

More than 800 German residents — 60% of whom are German passport holders — have joined the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Of these, roughly one-third have returned to Germany. — Federal Criminal Police Office.

Up to 5,000 European jihadists have returned to the continent after obtaining combat experience on the battlefields of the Middle East. — Rob Wainwright, head of Europol.

A 15-year-old German girl of Moroccan descent stabbed and seriously wounded a police officer in Hanover. The stabbing appears to be the first lone-wolf terrorist attack in Germany inspired by the Islamic State.

The incident occurred at the main train station in Hanover on the afternoon of February 26, when two police officers noticed that the girl — identified only as Safia S. — was observing and following them.

The officers approached the girl, who was wearing an Islamic headscarf, and asked her to present her identification papers. After handing over her ID, she stabbed one of the officers in the neck with a six-centimeter kitchen knife.

“[T]hey have launched an investigation against me in accordance with article 301 because I mentioned ‘peace, brotherhood, and human rights’ in my statement to the press. Hundreds of lawsuits have been brought against lawyers and members of opposition in Turkey because they talked about peace and brotherhood.” — Ilhan Ongor, Co-President of the Adana branch of the Human Rights Association.

Starving or murdering civilians does not, apparently, constitute a crime in Turkey, but speaking out about them does.

Insulting non-Turkish and non-Muslim people has almost become a social tradition in Turkey. Prejudice and hate speech have become normalized.

What makes this hate speech even more disturbing is that these people — Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, and Jews, among others — are the indigenous peoples of Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Thrace, where they have lived for millennia. Today, as a result of Turkey’s massacres, pogroms and deportations, they have been turned into tiny communities.

According to the 2015 statistics of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), Turkey, 28 lawsuits were opened by applicants against member states regarding their violations of freedom of expression. 10 of those applications (complaints) were made against Turkey’s violations of freedom of expression. So Turkey ranked first in that category.

Turkish law professor Ayse Isil Karakas, both a judge and elected Deputy Head of the ECHR, said that among all member states, Turkey has ranked number one in the field of violations of free speech.

“619 lawsuits of freedom of expression were brought at the ECHR between 1959 and 2015,” she said. ” 258 of them — almost half of them — came from Turkey and most were convicted as violations of freedom of expression.”

Here is the fulcrum around which so much of the problem turns: the belief that Islamic law has every right to be put into practice in non-Muslim countries, and the insistence that a parallel, if unequal, legal system can function alongside civil and criminal law codes adhered to by a majority of a country’s citizens.

Salafism is a form of Islam that insists on the application of whatever was said or done by Muhammad or his companions, brooking no adaptation to changing times, no recognition of democracy or man-made laws.

The greatest expression of this failure to integrate, indeed a determined refusal to do so, may be found in the roughly 750 Muslim-dominated no-go zones in France, which the police, fire brigades, and other representatives of the social order dare not visit for fear of sparking off riots and attacks. Similar zones now exist in other European countries, notably Sweden and Germany. According to the 2011 British census there are over 100 Muslim enclaves in the country.

As millions of Muslims flow into Europe, some from Syria, others from as far away as Afghanistan or sub-Saharan Africa, several countries are already experiencing high levels of social breakdown. Several articles have chronicled the challenges posed in countries such as Sweden and Germany. Such challenges are socio-economic in nature: how to accommodate such a large influx of migrants; the rising costs of providing then with housing, food, and benefits, and the expenses incurred by increased levels of policing in the face of growing lawlessness in some areas. If migrants continue to enter European Union countries at the current rate, these costs are likely to rise steeply; some countries, such as Hungary, have already seen how greatly counterproductive and self-destructive Europe’s reception of almost anyone who reaches its borders has been.

The immediate impact, however, of these new arrivals is not likely to be a simple challenge, something that may be remedied by increasing restrictions on numbers, deportations of illegal migrants, or building fences. During the past several decades, some European countries ­– notably Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark — have received large numbers of Muslim immigrants, most of them through legal channels. According to a Pew report in 2010, there were over 44 million Muslims in Europe overall, a figure expected to rise to over 58 million by 2030.

Roman Catholics throughout the world are in the midst of the season of Lent.

Lent occurs over the six weeks stretching between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. It is recognized by Catholics as a season of renewal, a time for Christians to repent of their sins and draw nearer to God.

And while prayer is essential to renewing one’s relationship with one’s Creator, Sustainer, and Savior, unless prayer is accompanied by the love of one’s neighbors, it is in vain.

There are two things that every Christian knows: (1) The love of neighbor transcends any and every boundary that human weakness—human sin—disposes us to draw; and (2) This agape (highest form of love) can be expressed in any number of ways.

These facts considered, Christians in America—particularly during this Holy Season—should bear in mind the plight of their brothers and sisters in the faith around the globe who are made daily to endure persecution of a kind that few of us can scarcely conceive.

The victims are men, women, and children to whom we are now and probably always will be strangers. They are almost always people of color, not infrequently (but by no stretch invariably) Africans and Middle Easterners.

And most (but not all) of the time, their persecutors are Muslims.

Unidentified gunmen stormed a Catholic-run retirement home in southern Yemen last Friday, killing 16 people, including four Catholic nuns. A priest was taken captive and is still missing. The retirement home, run by the Missionaries of Charity — an organization established by Mother Teresa of Calcutta — houses 80 elderly people in the jihadist-infested port city of Aden. The four gunmen reportedly entered the the home on the pretext that they wanted to visit their mothers at the facility.

Via the Guardian:

The gunmen moved from room to room, handcuffing the victims before shooting them in the head. A nun who survived and was rescued by local residents said she hid inside a fridge in a storeroom after hearing a Yemeni guard shouting “run, run”.

Khaled Haidar said that he counted 16 bodies, including that of his brother, Radwan. All had been shot in the head and were handcuffed. He said one Yemeni cook and Yemeni guards were among those killed.

Chikombedzi, Zimbabwe

My country’s government would rather see people starve than let them eat genetically modified food.

That’s the only conclusion to draw from the announcement in February that Zimbabwe will reject any food aid that includes a genetically-modified-organism ingredient—such as grains, corn and other crops made more vigorous or fruitful through GMO breeding. The ban comes just as Zimbabweans are suffering from our worst drought in two decades and up to three million people need emergency relief.

“The position of the government is very clear,” said Joseph Made, the minister of agriculture. “We do not accept GMO as we are protecting the environment from the grain point of view.”

In other words, my country—which can’t feed itself—will refuse what millions around the world eat safely every day in their breakfasts, lunches and dinners as a conventional source of calories. It doesn’t matter whether the aid arrives as food for people or feed for animals. Our customs inspectors will make sure that no food with GMOs reaches a single hungry mouth.The drought has devastated my family’s farm, which will produce almost no sorghum or corn this year. We’re short on money and the drought has caused prices to soar, even for the simplest goods. In the markets, cabbages the size of tennis balls sell for $1.

People are desperate for work. Last week I watched a man the age of my grandfather carry a hoe from house to house, trying to trade whatever labor he could offer for a meal. He wound up performing backyard chores for a cup of tea. The rejection of GMO food aid is a humanitarian outrage—a man-made disaster built on top of a natural disaster. Yet something even worse lies behind it: a denial of science. GMOs pose no threat to human health, as virtually every scientific and regulatory agency that has studied them knows.

They are also positively good for the environment, allowing farmers to fight soil erosion by planting high-yield crops that need less water, reduce greenhouse gases—and, most important, grow more food on less land. CONTINUE AT SITE

BERLIN—Germany’s federal police agency said that it had obtained files from Islamic State containing names and personal data of members of the extremist group that officials believe could help prosecute suspected militants.

The Federal Criminal Police, or BKA, believes the documents are authentic and would serve in prosecutions and in evaluating security measures, an agency spokeswoman said Thursday. She declined to say how the agency obtained the files or to disclose any details of the information in them.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière stressed the significance of the documents, saying they offered an opportunity to prove the participation of Germans in the terror activities of Islamic State. The records could help lead to speedier investigations and stricter prison sentences for any Germans who have participated in the Sunni Muslim extremist group’s activities, he said.
Confirmation that German authorities had a trove of Islamic State documents came after Sky News reported late Wednesday that it had obtained tens of thousands of similar documents containing 22,000 names, addresses, telephone numbers and family contacts of Islamic State members. It wasn’t clear whether the documents acquired by the German authorities were identical to those obtained by Sky News. CONTINUE AT SITE

I intend to put Kirralie Smith, representing the Australian Liberty Alliance (ALA), first on the Senate ballot paper for NSW at the next election. I am doing that for four reasons.

First, I believe that Islam represents a dire threat to civilised values. Second, Mrs Smith seems to me, having read about her and heard her speak, an excellent candidate. Third, the ALA is a party of traditional values and small government. Fourth, the ALA supports increasing defence expenditure.

Bear in mind that I will vote for the ALA despite one of the Party’s policy apparatchiks, ex-National Ron Pike, explaining his grand scheme to take the dividends from the Snowy Mountain Scheme, which presently go to the NSW, Victorian and the federal Governments, and use them to pay interest on new borrowings to fund a massive program of hydro-electric dam building. I won’t go into more detail. Rex Connor came to mind.

I have nothing against dams. I like them. But it is self-evidently Mr Pike’s pet scheme and the ALA would have been wise to leave it alone. It has nothing to do with the price of fish – no pun intended. Mr Pike should set up his own party, perhaps.

Too much policy detail leaves a new party hostage to pet schemes of those who have had no success in pushing them within the established parties. It is best, in my view, simply to establish philosophical positions which will guide policy choices, rather than get among the weeds. The exception in this case is the ALA’s position on Islam, which is its raison d’être and the basis of its appeal for electoral support. Those who do vote for it won’t have dams on their minds.