RUTHFULLY YOURS

Public anger is also being fueled by the growing number of diktats issued by the unelected officials running the Brussels-based European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the bloc, which has been relentless in its usurpation of sovereignty from the 28 nation states that comprise the European Union.

Although the survey does not explicitly say so, the findings almost certainly reflect growing anger at the anti-democratic nature of the EU and its never-ending power grabs.

On May 31, the EU, in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, unveiled a “code of conduct” to combat the spread of “illegal hate speech” online. Critics say the EU’s definition of “hate speech” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the EU itself.

On April 20, the European Political Strategy Centre, an in-house EU think tank that reports directly to Juncker, proposed that the European Union establish its own central intelligence agency, which would answer only to unelected bureaucrats.

Public opposition to the European Union is growing in all key member states, according to a new survey of voters in ten EU countries.

Public disaffection with the EU is being fueled by the bloc’s mishandling of the refugee and debt crises, according to the survey, which interviewed voters in Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden.

Public anger is also being fueled by the growing number of diktats issued by the unelected officials running the Brussels-based European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the bloc, which has been relentless in its usurpation of sovereignty from the 28 nation states that comprise the European Union.

With their goodhearted eagerness to be inclusive, not to discriminate and to defend freedom of religion, Swedish politicians are easy prey for Islamists with an anti-democratic agenda.

“The presumption is that Muslims want nothing more than to adapt to a Western way of life and Western values. … the presumption is also that Islam can be tamed…” — Jimmie Åkesson, Sweden Democrats party leader.

“Democracy is a man-made system, meaning rule by the people for the people. Thus it is contrary to Islam, because rule is for Allaah… it is not permissible to give legislative rights to any human being…” — Sheik Muhammad Saalih al-Munajjid, in fatwa number 07166.

Everyone knows what happens to anyone who criticizes Islam — first, you get labeled an “Islamophobe racist,” then, like the artist Lars Vilks, you might get a fatwa of death on your head.

The question is where the democratic Muslims will be when Islam has gained even more influence in Sweden — will they stand up for Swedish democracy if that means openly going against the tenets of Islam?

It should not be a mystery whether Islam is compatible with democracy or not. All you have to do is look at the Islamic sources or call any imam and pretend to be impressed that Islam does not separate religion and politics.

Yet, when Gatestone Institute called Swedish politicians at all levels to ask if Islam and democracy were compatible, they gave assurances that there were no problems whatsoever with Islam’s capacity for democracy — or they hung up.

The two most common answers given were:

Islam is definitely compatible with democracy!
I cannot discuss this matter right now.

The question cuts through all parties; apparently no one dares to face the facts. So far, throughout history, and now in the world’s 57 Muslim countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), nowhere has Islam been compatible with democracy, freedom of speech, human rights and legal certainty. These Muslim states have not signed the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights, a document Swedish politicians seem to cherish. Instead, those countries have joined the Cairo Declaration, which stipulates that sharia is the only foundation for human rights. In short, human rights are all well and good so long as they do not conflict with sharia — if they do, sharia wins. In practice, this means that in the Islamic world, there are, in the Western sense, no human rights.

China’s military has an interesting way of greeting U.S. officials. In 2011 the People’s Liberation Army unveiled its first stealth fighter—a crude knock-off of an F-22 called the J-20—during a visit by then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. This week a Chinese fighter made an “unsafe intercept” of a U.S. reconnaissance plane while John Kerry and Jack Lew were in Beijing for the annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Call it the diplomacy of recklessness.

Tuesday’s midair intercept of the U.S. Air Force RC-135 over the East China Sea is the second such incident in less than a month, after two Chinese jets came within 50 feet of a U.S. Navy EP-3 flying over the South China Sea. Far from apologizing for the incidents—or denying them—the Chinese foreign ministry accused the U.S. of provoking them by flying “in China’s relevant airspace.” On both occasions the U.S. planes were flying in international airspace. CONTINUE AT SITE

With every new speech in English, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, becomes more comfortable with the language. Yet his audience at a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on Wednesday would have been grateful for their printed copies of his address—not merely because the text would have been helpful when Mr. Modi did trip up, but also as a keepsake: The speech offered the clearest Indian promise to date of a 21st-century alliance with the U.S.

India and the U.S. have been performing a mating dance since the early days of George W. Bush’s second term. Bruised by Iraq, he found a salve of sorts in India. By the end of his presidency, Mr. Bush had concluded a nuclear deal with India that was the historic turning point in a relationship between the two countries that had hitherto been cordial at its best and bristling at its worst. (The nadir came in 1971, when Bangladesh, aided by India, broke away from Pakistan, to President Nixon’s great consternation.) The vastly improved relations with India counted as one of the few Bush foreign-policy successes beyond dispute.

President Obama had things other than India on his mind in his first term. But in his second term, Mr. Obama made up for his neglect of the land Bush had won over, courting New Delhi so ardently that U.S.-India relations will also count as that rarity in the Obama presidency, an indisputable foreign-policy achievement.

The nationalist Mr. Modi and the cosmopolitan Mr. Obama aren’t natural soul mates. Neither were the folksy Mr. Bush and the mousy Manmohan Singh, Mr. Modi’s predecessor. So the coming together of India and the U.S. isn’t the product of passing brotherly love, or chemistry that might dissipate once new leaders come along. There have been tectonic changes in the world that have caused India to rethink its foreign, defense and economic policies. Foremost among them is the irruption onto the world’s stage of China—mercantilist, bellicose, sea-grabbing and covetous of ever-greater portions of global heft. India cannot cope with China without America. CONTINUE AT SITE

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi paid his second visit to the White House in two years on June 8. President Barak Obama was greatly pleased by Modi’s stated willingness to proceed with ratification of the Paris agreement to limit greenhouse gases, and this was the theme duly emphasized in the Western media coverage of their meeting.

To Modi, however, global warming was a peripheral issue. He is a foreign-policy realist who looks upon Obama’s climate-change obsession with quiet bemusement, while pretending to share his concern in order to obtain concessions on other issues. He is far more interested in the long-term geopolitical challenges facing India from the Islamic world to her west and from the Chinese colossus to her north. Pakistan is perceived—quite rightly—as a threat and a source of chronic regional instability, and its deep state (as embodied in the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI) as irredeemably jihad-friendly. China’s explosive economic growth over the past quarter-century, followed less spectacularly by India’s since the mid-1990’s, has not prompted the two Asian giants to resolve their border disputes and other feuds of long standing.

In order to meet various actual or potential threats, Modi wants to further develop and assert India’s status as a regional power; but to that end he needs closer relations with Washington on a number of fronts. His strategy vis-à-vis the United States is threefold. First of all, Modi wants to turn India into a major global manufacturing workshop—that is the theme of his Make in India campaign—and he sees the involvement of U.S.-based corporations as essential to its success. His second goal is to encourage the United States to terminate its policy of tolerating Pakistan’s duplicity in the fight against Islamic terrorism—as manifested in its schizophrenic attitude to the Taliban in Afghanistan—and to encourage the U.S. to look upon India as the only reliable and rational partner in the Subcontinent. Finally, Modi wants to diversify India’s arms supplies—most of which still come from Russia—but does not want to become (or to be seen as becoming) too close to the United States in the grand-strategic scheme of things.

All of Modi’s strategic themes and objectives broadly correspond to America’s interests in Asia. India occupies pivotal position in the Indian Ocean, the second most critical maritime highway in the world. Under Modi the Hindu nationalist, the government in Delhi may be more inclined to base its long-term strategy on the development of a community of geopolitical interests with the leading thalassocratic power in the world—the United States—than any of its predecessors since independence. America wants to contain China’s ambition to break through the bars of the First Island Chain in the Far East and Southeast Asia, while India would be loath to see Burma (“Myanmar”) provide China with direct access to the Indian Ocean by road, rail and pipeline.