RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13259/britain-multiculturalism-october

There were 140 new cases of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Birmingham between April and June 2018.

“There remains a huge problem with professionals viewing forced marriage as a cultural issue rather than a crime. Many aren’t even aware there is a law.” — Jasvinder Sanghera, attacking the government’s failure to tackle the problem of forced marriages.

The Ministry of Justice blocked plans for an academic study into why prisoners convert to Islam and how it can lead to radicalization. “They will have been concerned about what this proposed project will discover,” a source said.

October 1. So-called “cutters” are being flown into Britain to perform female genital mutilation (FGM) on young girls, according to The Independent. “The practicing community talk together, saying, ‘My girl needs to be cut,’ and pay the cutters to come into the UK and cut the girls here,” said Hoda Ali, an FGM activist who works in West London. She added: “The reality is we need to open our eyes. We don’t need to think just about faraway countries because right now we have girls who are in their late teens or even early twenties who were cut in this country. They are British girls who were born here and they were cut here.”

October 2. Women and girls who are coerced into marriage by their families will be allowed to give evidence in secret so they can object to their foreign spouses’ visas without fear of repercussions, according to legal changes announced by Home Secretary Sajid Javid. The changes come two months after The Times revealed that the Home Office was issuing visas to known abusers in forced marriage cases.

October 3. Zakaria Mohammed, a 21-year-old drug dealer from Aston, Birmingham, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after admitting to charges of modern slavery. Mohammed groomed his victims — a 14-year-old girl and two runaway 15-year-old boys — before making them sell class-A drugs from squalid flats a hundred miles from their homes. The teens, who were transported from Birmingham to Lincoln to work as “expendable workhorses” in drug dens, were found by police in a drug-infested apartment in Lincoln. The Telegraph reported it was the first time in British legal history that a drug-dealer has been convicted for breaching the Modern Slavery Act by trafficking children.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13238/germany-merkel-resignation

It was the policy of unchecked mass-immigration against which Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party finally revolted.

The race to succeed Merkel as the party’s chair is wide open, and these days, being a Merkel confidante is a liability rather than an asset.

The next party leader’s sole role will be to share the blame for any new election defeats, starting with the elections to the European Parliament in June 2019 — unless he distinguishes himself from Merkel and presents a set of convincing ideas for Germany’s future.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on October 29, 2018, announced her resignation, a day after her party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), suffered yet another crushing election defeat. Merkel said she would step down as leader of her party in December and would not seek re-election in 2021.

In the state election in Hesse, Germany’s two biggest parties received their worst results in more than half a century. The CDU dropped from 38% to 27%, the Social-Democrats (SPD) from 30% to less than 20%. Both parties continue a losing streak that shows no sign of reversal. Rather, the downturn seems to be accelerating. In last year’s general elections, Merkel’s party and its ally, the Social Democrats, recorded their worst results up to then in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. Throughout much of Germany’s postwar history, the CDU and SPD each used to achieve about 40% of the votes. In last autumn’s general elections, the CDU and SPD combined barely managed to surpass the 50% threshold to form a government. Recent polls see them combined at barely 40% (24% for the CDU and 15% for the SPD).

“The time has come to open a new chapter,” Merkel said. In a letter to the party, Merkel admitted mistakes that her government may have made “in recent weeks and months”. According to Merkel, the voters did not acknowledge the current government’s “decent” achievements due to the latter’s wrong “work culture” that “doesn’t meet” Merkel’s “personal standards” — apparently referring to the public feud between her and the CDU’s Bavarian sister-party CSU over immigration policy.

Merkel went on to say, “For the rest of the election period, I’m ready to continue to work as Chancellor,” meaning that she will step down as chancellor in 2021 at the latest, or maybe a bit earlier, if there is a chance to enthrone her protégée, CDU general secretary Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, before the next elections.

Kramp-Karrenbauer’s success, however, is far from guaranteed. The race to succeed Merkel as the party’s chair is wide open, and these days, being a Merkel confidante is a liability rather than an asset. For months, pundits in Germany and abroad had speculated about the “end of the Merkel era”, even more so after she had lost a key supporter in a party rebellion earlier this year. On September 25, in a surprising vote among members of the CDU and CSU parties, Merkel’s longtime ally Volker Kauder was ousted after 13 years as parliamentary group leader of the combined faction.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271861/louis-farrakhan-live-tehran-lloyd-billingsley

Monday November 5, one day before the election, marked the resumption of sanctions on the Islamic regime by the Trump administration. Nation of Islam boss Louis Farrakhan flew to Iran to speak out on behalf of the ruling mullahs.

As Fox News reported, Farrakhan told Mohsen Rezaei, Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council: “Today, I warn the American government that sanctioning Iran is a big mistake.” The eager Farrakhan failed to flag any mistakes by the Iranian Islamic regime, the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism. And Farrakhan took care to time his visit with an important event.

Thirty-nine years ago, in 1979, the Islamic regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran, took more than 50 American diplomats and civilians hostage, and held them for 444 days. Farrakhan marked the anniversary by telling law students at the University of Tehran, that “America has never been a democracy” and then led the students in a chants of “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”

No one in America had ever seen a performance quite like that. On the other hand, in his live Tehran show the Nation of Islam boss was not advancing any new themes.

On October 14, the 23rd anniversary of the Million Man March, Farrakhan addressed a cheering audience in Detroit: “To the members of the Jewish community that don’t like me — thank you very much for putting my name all over the planet…I’m not mad at you, ‘cuz you’re so stupid.” The Nation of Islam leader also claimed “I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite,” and repeated that message in a tweet.

Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz denounced the speech and called out presidents Obama and Clinton, along with former DNC boss Keith Ellison, for their ties to Farrakhan. Even so, prominent Democrats running for office were not swift to denounce Farrakhan for his Jews-are-termites speech. In fact, Farrakhan thrives on special treatment from high-profile Democrats.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazil-is-moving-its-embassy-to-jerusalem-1541464850

Shortly after Jair Bolsonaro’s decisive victory in the Brazilian presidential election last week, the populist leader said he would follow through on his campaign promise to move Brazil’s embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Like Donald Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro—himself a Catholic but married to an evangelical Protestant pastor—owes his political success in large part to support from evangelical voters. As recently as the 1970s, Brazil was almost uniformly Catholic. But in one of the greatest religious shifts of modern times, the largest country in Latin America is today nearly as evangelical as the U.S.: 25% of Brazilians identify as evangelical Christians, compared with 26% of Americans, according to the Joshua Project. As in the U.S., many evangelical and Pentecostal Christians instinctively support Israel and endorse a law-and-order agenda at home.

At a time of increased anxiety for many Jews in Europe and North America, the rise of evangelical and Pentecostal Christian support for Judaism and Israel in much of the world is a heartening sign. Based on a literal approach to the Bible and a covenantal theology that attributes a continuing religious significance to the Jewish people and their state, these two rapidly spreading forms of Protestant Christianity tend to promote a climate of respect for individual Jews as well as support for Zionism. They view the continued existence of the Jewish people as a mark of God’s faithfulness and believe the Jewish people have a special place in God’s plan as recipients of his favor.

Improved relations with Israel are a hallmark of evangelical political influence. Guatemala, another historically Catholic country, is now about 40% Protestant. It opened an embassy in Jerusalem two days after the U.S. did. Although Latin American countries have typically been hostile to Israel since the 1967 war, that’s changing rapidly.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271849/iran-faces-harsh-us-sanctions-joseph-klein

“SANCTIONS ARE COMING,” President Trump tweeted in advance of the remaining set of U.S. sanctions against Iran that are coming back into force on November 5th. Lifted under the disastrous Obama nuclear deal with Iran that the Trump administration exited last May, these re-imposed sanctions will target Iran’s energy, shipping, and shipbuilding sectors, and transactions with the Central Bank of Iran as well as with other Iranian banks. The aim is to dry up revenues the Iranian regime uses to fund not only its nuclear program, but also its continued development and launching of ballistic missiles that transgress the same United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231 that had endorsed the nuclear deal itself, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Iranian regime has also used revenues gained from the JCPOA’s lifting of the sanctions to finance terrorists world-wide rather than to relieve the financial hardships of its own people. That is all about to change. “Our objective is to force the regime into a clear choice: either abandon its destructive behavior or continue down the path toward economic disaster,” President Trump said in a statement issued last Friday.

The sanctions that are being re-imposed are tough. With few exceptions, any government or business entities importing Iranian oil or otherwise violating the sanctions, including via barter arrangements, will be subject to stringent U.S. financial penalties. However, the sanctions will exempt for humanitarian reasons the sale of food, medicine, medical devices, and agricultural commodities to Iran. Moreover, the Trump administration has decided to grant temporary waivers to eight countries, including South Korea, Japan, and India. The purpose is to avoid an immediate spike in oil prices that would occur if oil exports from Iran were virtually eliminated overnight, and to soften the blow to allies in Asia whose economies could be seriously imperiled by an immediate shut-off of their oil purchases from Iran upon which they have been dependent. The full list of countries excludes the European Union as a whole, which has 28 members. Two of the eight countries receiving the temporary waivers will completely cut off imports of Iranian oil in a matter of weeks, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The other six, he said, will “greatly” reduce their imports. All countries receiving the temporary waivers must reapply for extended exemptions beyond six months.

China, the largest purchaser of Iranian oil, has also been mentioned as a possible recipient of a temporary waiver. Such a move is hard to justify unless the Trump administration has concluded it must pay this price for China’s ironclad agreement to verifiably implement all the multilateral sanctions in place against North Korea and not transfer by ship any oil received from Iran or other sources to North Korea. Whatever the reason, any temporary waiver granted to China must be fully reversible at any time for any reason. If granted, the waiver should be used as leverage in trade negotiations with China and be pulled immediately for any violation by China of the multilateral sanctions against North Korea.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/05/irans-hits-western-soil-reveal-foreign-policy-establishments-hypocrisy/

While America is often insulated from the most malign of Iran’s activities, even if only by dint of our distant geographic position, the brazen and bellicose mullocracy has reminded us of its global reach at a pivotal time. This global reach extends from our Transatlantic allies, to our southern neighbors and our own shores. Clearly, Iran feels it perfectly acceptable to carry out murderous acts here in the West with impunity.

This all should only underscore the need to counter the Khomeinist regime using every element of national power at all points of leverage. The political establishment’s silence in the face of this threat — if not its urging to engage further economically with Iran while punishing its foes in spite of the calamitous consequences of that very policy during the Obama years — is stunning.

For the latest evidence of Iran’s audacious aggression, America need look no further than Europe. There, Iranian hit squads, in part under diplomatic cover, have been exposed for plotting a string of assassinations in what seems to be a concerted campaign to take out the ayatollahs’ political rivals in exile, among other foes.

The latest evidence of this effort comes mere days before U.S. sanctions are set to “snapback” on Iran in strategically significant sectors like shipping, energy and finance. Some Europeans have resisted these very sanctions. But do not hold your breath waiting for the media and political establishment to harp on these attempted hits. This is Iran after all, not Saudi Arabia.

According to the Associated Press, in September 2018, Denmark’s national security service foiled an alleged assassination plot directed by Iranian intelligence against a leader of the Danish wing of a militant Iranian separatist group called the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA). This follows the 2017 murder of the founder of the ASMLA, Ahmad Mola Nissi, in The Hague at the hands of an “unidentified assailant.” Dutch authorities reportedly expelled two Iranian diplomats who may have been linked to the Nissi assassination.

ASMLA consists of Ahwazi Arabs, a small minority in Persian-dominated Iran, who desire independence, and according to Amnesty International are subject to severe repression. ASMLA has engaged in violent acts against the Iranian regime, including attacks on energy infrastructure in Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan province, where Ahwazis predominate, and against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).