RUTHFULLY YOURS

By 2061, the future EU may well be majority Muslim, which appears not to have concerned younger voters steeped since infancy in the official doctrine of relativism and multicultural ‘tolerance’. Older voters recalled that the Channel has been a useful obstacle to invasion and subjugation.
The UN High Commission for Refugees estimates over one million people made their way to Europe last year by boat. Sadly, we are not talking the Queen Mary, nor P&O. In the cold first six months of this year, a quarter of a million more arrived on small boats with unreliable engines. Who knows what numbers — along with tragic losses in the crossing — the current summer will bring.

This level of mass movement of humanity is unprecedented. Even the surging population movements after the Second World War are being surpassed. And Europe, or the EU as the body in charge of migration, has no answer to the problem, only Angela Merkel’s initial, naive response to let them come.

By 2061 (when I hope to be 100) the future EU (including Turkey) may well be majority Muslim. If that sounds far-fetched, consider that half of current EU citizens will be dead by then, and record low birth rates mean next generations will be small, while family reunions of current and future migrants, plus two generations of their own vast progeny, will tip the scales the Muslim way.

The unprecedent immigration to Europe by people largely of Arab background was no doubt a major factor in ordinary Britons recently voting for Brexit. Many average Englanders, interviewed the week after the vote, shyly but firmly implied this to be so. Their second cousins in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted otherwise, but are also unlikely to be home to as many refugees.

Modern Britons — despite their occasional worst examples on TV — tend to be a tolerant people. Alf Garnett was only funny because, already in the 1960s, his views were no longer mainstream. In the lifetime of most British adults, there have seen successive waves of immigration from the Caribbean, from the Subcontinent, and in the past two decades from continental Europe. These waves, with all the cultural changes accompanying them, have transformed urban Britain. London, Leicester, Luton and Slough already have non-white majorities. Birmingham will shortly. All these places are now irretrievably different from fifty years ago.

Did the existing British complain? Yes. That’s a national British pastime, especially if the weather turns unusually mild for a day or two. But, did they turn the waves back? No. Did they integrate all these diverse migrants into the wider British society, bit by bit? Yes, of course they did. To do otherwise would have been unfathomable.

ABOARD THE USS NEW ORLEANS—Boats from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps maneuvered dangerously close to a U.S. military vessel in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, part of a pattern that the top American general in the region—who was on the ship at the time—said risked grave miscalculation.

“What concerns me is our people don’t always have a lot of time to deal with those interactions,” said Gen. Joe Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, as he stood on the bridge of the amphibious ship later in the day. “It’s measured in minutes to really have the opportunity to make the right decision.”

The five Iranian boats included four small patrol craft and a larger boat called a Houdong fast-attack craft. At least one of the patrol boats was equipped with a .50 caliber machine gun and what is known as a multiple rail rocket launcher. They came within several hundred yards of the American ship.

The series of encounters on Monday took place as the New Orleans sailed in international waters through the strait. Gen. Votel, on a swing through the Middle East this week, voiced concern about how quickly such an encounter could turn lethal for the ship, which was carrying about 700 Marines.

In the case of Monday’s incident, U.S. officials didn’t consider the Iranian ships to be technically harassing the American warship, but said they came unacceptably close to doing so. Iran officials couldn’t immediately be reached to comment.

The encounters might have been considered more dramatic if they weren’t so common. American Navy ships reported about 300 incidents with Iranian vessels during 2015, according to data provided by the Navy’s Fifth Fleet. Most of those “interactions,” as the Navy calls them, are considered safe or don’t rise to the level of harassment, according to Navy officials.

Navy officials essentially grade Iranian naval behavior on a curve. They said that the way the Iranians behave typically, even when they don’t actually harass American warships, is still not the way most professional navies behave at sea.

About 10% of all incidents are of greater concern, Navy officials said. These may entail Iranian craft crossing the bow of an American warship, approaching at a high rate of speed, or training weaponry on a U.S. vessel.

The IRGC’s routine actions in the region force American warships to have to determine just what their intent is, said one officer here.

“It’s very common for them to come up to within 300, 500 yards of us, and then they’ll turn, or parallel us and stop,” said Lt. Forrest Griggs, the New Orleans’s operations officer. “We try not to become accustomed to that because we don’t want to become complacent.”

Navy officials maintain they always navigate through the international waters of the strait—through which a third of all seaborne oil and other energy products are shipped—and Gen. Votel said the U.S. isn’t trying to provoke Iran with such operations.

Tensions at sea have been high since an incident in January in which two U.S. Navy riverine boats slipped mistakenly into Iranian territorial waters and became stranded before IRGC forces surrounded and boarded them and detained 10 American sailors at gunpoint.CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THWPJE4xaJM

Twin brothers, 24, intended ‘to cause and spread terror’ in South Africa’s Jewish community in what a Johannesburg court calls an attempted act of terrorism.

Twin brothers have been charged with conspiring to blow up various Jewish institutions and a U.S. mission in South Africa, a police spokesman said Monday, in what a Johannesburg court has called an attempted act of terrorism.

Spokesman Hangwane Mulaudzi said that Brandon-Lee Thulsie and Tony-Lee Thulsie, 24, and two other people, identified as siblings Fatima and Ibrahim Mohammed Patel, who are yet to be charged were arrested in Johannesburg on Saturday. The brothers are accused of intending “to cause and spread feelings of terror,” particularly in South Africa’s “Jewish sector,” the court’s provisional charge sheet said, News24 reported.

The Patel siblings appeared in a separate court Monday after a stun grenade and live ammunition were confiscated during a raid on their home outside Johannesburg on Saturday night, said Phindi Louw, a spokeswoman for the National Prosecuting Authority.

The Thulsie brothers’ planned attack may have been “to further the … motives and objectives” of ISIS, according to the court. The four were arrested before boarding a flight to Syria and had been under surveillance for nearly a year. “The allegation is that after the training, they would come back to South Africa,” Malaudzi said.

Nigel Farage is Ukip – whether he leads the party or not is irrelevant

Nigel Farage didn’t set up Ukip, but he reshaped it in his image when he became the party’s leader. Mr Farage’s successor will be in place by September, bringing to an end his nine years at the helm. After clearing away the pint glasses and cigar smoke, how will they manage to fill the Farage-shaped void?

A “void” isn’t strictly speaking an accurate description, as the next Ukip leader will likely find that the man they replace is still keen to be involved. Mr Farage insists he is off because he wants his life back, but he has had some trouble letting go in the past. He tried resigning last year, declaring that he “never felt happier” after stepping down and that an “enormous weight” had been lifted from his shoulders. But he was back three days later, explaining why he was going to carry that weight on for a while longer. He stepped down for a bit longer ahead of the 2010 general election, but came back swiftly after it became clear that Lord Pearson was struggling as his interim replacement.

Mr Farage may have been “chief spokesman” at the time, but party insiders admit to me that he was seen as the “power behind the throne”, so his return to the Ukip helm was regraded as a mere formality.

If next Ukip leader wants to sketch out a different path to Mr Farage, they’ll have to be ready to face their predecessor down when he comes calling. I understand he took pains to make clear to MEPs last week that he may be resigning, but he would still be engaged. That’s hardly a surprise – as Ukip has been a project Mr Farage has spent over 20 years of his life working on. He took what Alan Sked originally launched as the Anti-Federalist League and replaced its academic dustiness with electorally potent blend of populism and charisma. The results speak for themselves: 4 million votes at the last general election and a national vote secured for Brexit. Ukip as it stands is Mr Farage’s baby, so it’s little surprise that he has a vested interest in making sure his successor doesn’t reverse the work he has done.

Not that he’d admit so publicly, as the outgoing Ukip leader was nonchalance itself on the issue of his party’s future over the weekend. Speaking on LBC, he insisted that his successor should take it in a “completely different direction”. But in truth it’ll be only on his terms.

The challenge facing the next Ukip leader is how to follow such a big character. One leading contender, Steven Woolfe, likes to compare this question to “what would happen after Ferguson left Man United”, asking: “Do you want to be Louis Van Gaal or David Moyes?”