RUTHFULLY YOURS

It is not a secret that democracy can be used to abolish democracy.

It may have finally begun to dawn on the people that Swedish Sweden will soon be lost forever, and in many areas replaced by a Middle Eastern state of affairs, where different immigrant groups (mainly Muslims) make war on each other as well as on the Swedes.

According to Dr. Peter Hammond, in his book Slavery, Terrorism and Islam: The Historical Roots and Contemporary Threat, the goal of Islam is not to convert the whole world, but rather, to establish sharia law all over the world.

There is no country where Islam is dominant that can be considered a democracy with freedom of speech and equal justice under law.

In Sweden’s last census in which citizens were asked about their religious beliefs, in 1930, fifteen people said that they were Muslims. Since 1975, when Sweden started its transformation from a homogenous, Swedish country into a multicultural and multi-religious one, the number of Muslims has exploded. Now, approximately one million Muslims live here — Sunni, Shia and Ahmadiyya from all the corners of the world — and Mosques are built and planned all over the country.

No one, however, seems to have asked the crucial question upon which Sweden’s future depends: Is Islam compatible with democracy?

SÃO PAULO––A group of 150 health experts have published an open letter calling for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro to be delayed or moved to another location because of the threat posed to public health by the Zika virus.

The letter, addressed to World Health Organization Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan, says there is still much to be learned about the effects of the virus, and that half a million foreign tourists attending the Games this August risk spreading it around the world.

“The Brazilian strain of Zika virus harms health in ways that science has not observed before,” the letter said. “It is unethical to run the risk, just for Games that could proceed anyway, if postponed and/or moved.”

The virus is contracted from mosquitoes and spread between humans through sexual transmission, and infections have increased rapidly across Brazil in recent months. According to the letter, which was signed by epidemiologist John Last, mosquito expert Donald Roberts, and former White House science adviser Philip Rubin, among others, cases of the disease in Rio de Janeiro have more than quadrupled in January through April of this year compared with the same period last year.

In most people, the virus can cause a fever, a rash, joint pain and red eyes. But researchers say it can cause a condition known as microcephaly, a condition characterized by a small head and brain abnormalities, in babies born to infected women. Doctors are now discovering that some of those babies suffer from much worse birth defects than previously associated with microcephaly.

The World Health Organization issued a statement after the publication of the letter, saying “canceling or changing the location of the 2016 Olympics will not significantly alter the international spread of Zika virus,” and instead recommending that travelers follow public health advice.

The WHO recommends pregnant women not travel to areas with ongoing Zika virus transmission, that people traveling to such areas protect themselves with mosquito repellent and clothes that cover as much of the body as possible, that travelers stay in air-conditioned accommodations to further avoid mosquitoes, and that they stay away from areas with no piped water and poor sanitation. CONTINUE AT SITE

Vladimir Putin’s intervention in Syria caught many by surprise, but it is a return to Russian geopolitical aspirations that stretch back to the czars.

Every Russian schoolchild is taught about the violent death of Aleksandr Griboyedov in 1829. A poet and playwright whose work is enshrined in the country’s literary canon, Griboyedov had the misfortune to be Czar Nicholas I’s ambassador to Tehran in the wake of Persia’s humiliating loss of territory to Moscow’s spreading empire. A Tehran mob, furious at the czar and his infidel representatives, stormed the embassy, slaughtering the unlucky ambassador and 36 other Russian diplomatic staff.

A century and a half later, in 1979, those events were almost replayed in Iran (as Persia is now known). When five leaders of the Iranian revolutionary students gathered in Tehran to decide which foreign embassy to target, two of them advocated seizing the Soviet legation. They were persuaded instead to overrun the U.S. embassy, creating a no less historic trauma for another world power entangled in the politics of the Middle East.
Russia’s long history of involvement—and warfare—in the region is largely unknown to Westerners, but it helps to explain President Vladimir Putin’s decision last fall to intervene in Syria’s civil war. Mr. Putin’s gambit on behalf of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad caught many in the West by surprise. Critics have assailed it as a miscalculated bid to replace the U.S. as the dominant outside power in the region.

But when viewed from Moscow, Mr. Putin’s Middle Eastern adventure looks like something very different: an overdue return to geopolitical aspirations that stretch back not only to the Soviet era but to centuries of czarist rule. “The Middle East is a way to showcase that the period of Russia’s absence from the international scene as a first-rate state has ended,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy in Moscow, which advises the Kremlin and other government institutions.

Last week, a mob of 300 Muslim men in southern Egypt stripped a 70-year-old Christian woman naked and paraded her through the streets.This Islamist atrocity came a few days before an EgyptAir flight from Paris exploded in the skies near Alexandria. It was the second passenger jet bombed by jihadists in Egypt in recent months.

Egypt is hanging on by a thread. Like the attack that downed a Russian passenger jet over Sinai last October, this week’s attack is likely the work of an Egyptian airport employee. It is yet more proof that nearly three years after the military deposed the Muslim Brotherhood’s jihadist government, the Brotherhood’s supporters remain seeded throughout the country and are capable of threatening the regime and the very survival of the Egyptian state.

It isn’t in the least surprising that Islamists have this power. Most Egyptians support them.

In the parliamentary elections four-and-a-half years ago, Islamists won more than 65 percent of the vote. Those were the most open elections in Egyptian history.

Given their strength, it is far from certain that President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will long succeed in preventing the most powerful and populous country in the Arab world from becoming another branch of Islamic State.

From Israel’s perspective, how this battle pans out is of pivotal importance. But you wouldn’t know it from the media – or from our national security leaders.

As far as they are concerned, the gravest threat facing Israel is the Israeli Right. From their perspective, the most significant development of the year was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Avigdor Liberman to replace Moshe Ya’alon as defense minister.