Displaying posts categorized under

WORLD NEWS

Prompted, Elan Carr Becomes 1st US Special Envoy On Antisemitism To Acknowledge The Disproportionate, Global Pandemic Of Muslim Antisemitism [VIDEO/TRANSCRIPT

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/09/prompted-elan-carr-becomes-1st-us-special-envoy-on-antisemitism-to-acknowledge-the-disproportionate-global-pandemic-of-muslim-antisemitism-video-transcript/

“Virtually all of the violence against Jews in Western Europe has been from the Arab [Muslim] and [broader] Muslim population—virtually all.”—Elan Carr

U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Elan Carr, participated in a panel discussion of Antisemitism Tuesday evening, 9/10/19, sponsored by Bnai Zion, in Manhattan, which can be viewed in its entirety here. Addressing a question posed to him which was introduced by this tweet of mine and ADL data [here; here; here] I have written about extensively, for example here, which demonstrate the alarming excess prevalence (i.e., 2 to 4.5-fold all other religious groups or agnostics, studied) of extreme Muslim Antisemitism worldwide, Elan Carr became the first such Special Envoy to openly acknowledge the global pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism.

TRANSCRIPT

[Moderator, Rabbi Elie Abadie]: “Let me just introduce this section by saying that today (Tuesday 9/10/19) Andrew Bostom tweeted https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/1171393543925092352, he’s the author of The Legacy of Jihad, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Sharia Versus Freedom, –so he tweeted today that ‘The Islamic Society of North America [ISNA] conference featured Sanders, Bernie Sanders, and Linda Sarsour, promoted mainstream Islamic, Al-Azhar-endorsed manual on Islamic law*, which admonishes Muslims to wage jihad on Jews.’ [*“Reliance of the Traveller,” certified  by Sunni Islam’s Vatican equivalent, Al-Azhar University as conforming to the contemporary ‘practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.’]

Climate Activists Try to Shut Down Heathrow by Flying Drones in Front of Passenger Planes By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/trending/climate-activists-try-to-shut-down-heathrow-by-flying-drones-in-front-of-passenger-planes/

Brain-dead climate activists came up with the scathingly brilliant scheme of protesting against airplanes at Heathrow Airport by flying drones in front of passenger planes to prevent them from taking off or landing. I guess the climate activists got it in their heads that making airplanes crash would be an excellent way to reduce the world’s carbon footprint.

Fortunately, British police foiled their plan by jamming drone frequencies. Several nutcases were arrested and, for the moment, plane passengers have been spared the ordeal of being grounded by idiots who think threatening to kill people is a legitimate way of battling global warming.

Reuters:

“We’ve got a little technical glitch. The drone isn’t flying,” an unidentified campaigner says in the video, as another holds a drone in the air.

Determined to avoid disruption, police invoked extra powers to move people away from the area around the airport until Sunday morning.

“The order has been implemented to prevent criminal activity which poses a significant safety and security risk to the airport,” they said in a statement.

On Friday, they arrested five people in the vicinity of the airport, in addition to seven people who had been arrested on Thursday on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance.

What makes this “protest” so ludicrous is that passenger planes are responsible for only a tiny percentage of carbon emissions.

Heathrow Pause is a splinter group of Extinction Rebellion, which blocked streets in central London this year. It had said it would fly the drones no higher than head height and had no wish to endanger life.

Air travel accounts for just 2.5% of global carbon emissions, but the industry is attempting to reconcile airlines’ growth plans with a pledge to cut carbon emissions.

NORTH KOREAN DANGERS-TOM GROSS

https://madmimi.com/p/3c294f?pact=522126-154007720-7235361215-f8ab6d49db488d1618810b117c05cf6bb587e08a

I attach a very long piece below by Jay Solomon, the former national security reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

For those who don’t have time to read it in full, I have extracted some lines from it below and added one or two comments of my own.

One of the Trump administration’s point persons for the current US negotiations with North Korea is an Israeli-born American friend of mine, who travels regularly to meet with negotiators from the North Korean regime.

EXTRACTS AND COMMENTS
▪ North Korea and Israel, though separated by two oceans and 5,000 miles, have been engaged in low-intensity conflict and high-stakes spy games for more than five decades.

The so-called Hermit Kingdom in Pyongyang has been actively bolstering states hostile to Israel, and facilitating attacks on the Jewish state, since the 1960s. Despite occasional attempts to broker a truce between the two nations, the Israeli-North Korean relationship has been defined for decades by covert hostility and proxy conflict – a shadow war between the two nations. The pattern continues through the present day in North Korea’s alliance with Iran and Syria.

North Korea has long transferred military capabilities to Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Libya and Myanmar, including, in some cases, nuclear technologies or materials.

And yet despite this enmity, North Korea and Israel have also secretly engaged in intermittent diplomacy in recent decades to try and safeguard their national security, at times behind Washington’s back.

NORTH KOREA BEHIND ATTACK AT TEL AVIV AIRPORT

▪ For North Korea, confronting Israel emerged in the 1960s as a central plank in its campaign to fight U.S.-backed governments. The communist regime aggressively funded and trained Arab and other terrorists who targeted Israel in the 1960s and 1970s.

Iranian Tanker Fiasco Exposes Britain’s Muddled Thinking by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14877/iran-britain-shipping-seizure

The ensuing diplomatic stand-off between London and Tehran eventually resulted in Britain agreeing to release the Grace One, but only after the British authorities received written assurances from Iran that the oil would not be delivered to Syria.

Now it appears that Iran has deliberately misled the British government about its intentions after satellite photographs revealed the ship, which has now been renamed the Adrian Darya 1, is in Syria, where its $130 million oil cargo has been handed over to the Assad regime.

“Anyone who said the Adrian Darya-1 wasn’t headed to #Syria is in denial. Tehran thinks it’s more important to fund the murderous Assad regime than provide for its own people. We can talk, but #Iran’s not getting any sanctions relief until it stops lying and spreading terror!” — Ambassador John Bolton, then US National Security Advisor, September 7, 2019.

The sorry saga of the Iranian oil tanker that was originally seized by Britain before making its way to Syria to unload its cargo in breach of EU sanctions highlights the confusion that lies at the heart of the British government’s policy towards Tehran.

The Iranian-registered tanker, which at the time sailed under the name Grace One, was seized by British Royal Marines in early July off the coast of Gibraltar on suspicion that it was delivering its cargo of 2.1 million barrels of oil to Syria, a clear violation of EU sanctions that are in place against the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Iran responded two weeks later by seizing the British-registered tanker Stena Impero as it passed through the Strait of Hormuz, thereby causing deep embarrassment for the government of then British Prime Minister Theresa May, which had failed to put adequate measures in place to protect British shipping from any act of Iranian retaliation.

The ensuing diplomatic stand-off between London and Tehran eventually resulted in Britain agreeing to release the Grace One, but only after the British authorities received written assurances from Iran that the oil would not be delivered to Syria.

Now it appears that Iran has deliberately misled the British government about its intentions after satellite photographs revealed the ship, which has now been renamed the Adrian Darya 1, is in Syria, where its $130 million oil cargo has been handed over to the Assad regime.

Is England Still Part of Europe? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/england-europe-never-fully-integrated/

Britain has a last chance to re-embrace the free-market democratic world that it once helped to create.

British prime minister Boris Johnson is desperate to translate the British public’s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union into a concrete Brexit.

But the real issue is far older and more important than whether 52 percent of Britain finally became understandably aggrieved by the increasingly anti-democratic and German-controlled European Union.

England is an island. Historically, politically, and linguistically, it was never permanently or fully integrated into European culture and traditions.

The story of Britain has mostly been about conflict with France, Germany, or Spain. The preeminence of the Royal Navy, in the defiant spirit of its sea lords, ensured that European dictators from Napoleon to Hitler could never set foot on British soil. As British admiral John Jervis reassured his superiors in 1801 amid rumors of an impending Napoleonic invasion, “I do not say, my lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea.”

Britain’s sea power, imperialism, parliamentary government, and majority-Protestant religion set it apart from its European neighbors — and not just because of its geographical isolation.

Turkey: Religious Backlash? by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14815/turkey-religious-backlash

It is notable, however, that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s efforts to create “devout generations” of Muslims, through the establishment of numerous state-funded Imam Hatip religious schools, may not be having the desired results.

“Since [last summer], seventeen students with headscarves who identify as atheists have come to my office and [told me that] the reason [for their atheism] is the actions of the people who say they represent religion.” — Dr. İhsan Fazlıoğlu, Istanbul Medeniyet University, T24, March 19, 2018.

“The religion that the [Turkish] government is trying to ‘impose’ on society is emotionally unsatisfying: it is loveless.” — Professor Murat Belge, Head of the Department of Comparative Literature, Bilgi University, Istanbul, to Gatestone.

“Mosques or churches in your neighborhoods are no longer your only sources of information… Of course, societal pressures and the situation of the country are also [important] elements, but they are only elements that get the questioning started. This situation makes many people ask, ‘Is this what my religion is about?’ or they say, ‘If this is religion, I am out.'” [Emphasis added] — Selin Özkohen, head of the Atheism Association, Euronews, March 19, 2019.

In a radio interview on July 23, Temel Karamollaoğlu — the head of Turkey’s Islamist opposition party, Felicity — accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of driving young people, particularly those from religious families, away from Islam and towards deism, a belief in a non-interventionist creator, or a god of nature.

According to a 2018 survey conducted by Turkey’s leading polling company, KONDA, Karamollaoğlu appears to be correct, at least about the growing number of young Turks who no longer consider themselves “religious” Muslims.

UK: Tony Blair Think-Tank Proposes End to Free Speech by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14850/uk-tony-blair-free-speech

Disturbingly, the main concern of Blair’s think-tank appears to be the online verbal “hatred” displayed by citizens in response to terrorist attacks — not the actual physical expression of hatred shown in the mass murders of innocent people by terrorists. Terrorist attacks, it would appear, are now supposedly normal, unavoidable incidents that have become part and parcel of UK life.

Unlike proscribed groups that are banned for criminal actions such as violence or terrorism, the designation of “hate group” would mainly be prosecuting thought-crimes.

Democratic values, however, appear to be the think-tank’s least concern. The proposed law would make the British government the arbiter of accepted speech, especially political speech. Such an extraordinary and radically authoritarian move would render freedom of speech an illusion in the UK.

The Home Office would be able to accuse any group it found politically inconvenient of “spreading intolerance” or “aligning with extremist ideologies” — and designate it a “hate group”.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has released a report, Designating Hate: New Policy Responses to Stop Hate Crime, which recommends radical initiatives to tackle “hate” groups, even if they have not committed any kind of violent activity.

The problem, as the think-tank defines it, is “the dangerous nature of hateful groups, including on the far right like Britain First and Generation Identity. But current laws are unable to stop groups that spread hate and division, but do not advocate violence”. The think-tank defines what it sees as one of the main problems with hate crime the following way:

“A steady growth in hate crime has been driven by surges around major events. Often this begins online. Around the 2017 terror attacks in the UK, hate incidents online increased by almost 1,000 per cent, from 4,000 to over 37,500 daily. In the 48-hour period after an event, hate begins to flow offline”.

Brexit and the Deficiencies of Parliament by Malcolm Lowe

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14849/brexit-parliament

What has characterized the last year of UK politics is that individual MPs in the various parties have begun to seek the same freedom of action as US Members of Congress. So far, however, they are both fearful of suffering the same fate as the 21 banned by Johnson and remain inexperienced in the exercise of such freedom.

Johnson now has two alternatives. One is to reinstate the 21. His defenders claim that this would encourage similar defections in the future. The other alternative is to stick to his unpopular decision and risk being dismissed himself by his party. Either way, the unwitting heritage of Johnson may include the end of the tyrannical powers of the UK PM.

The Bank of England in its latest report estimates that the consequences of no-deal on October 31 will be less dire than it thought a year ago, but dire they will be: GDP will shrink by 5.5%, inflation will rise from 2% to over 5%, unemployment will “surge to 7% rather than 7.5%, up from a current 45-year low of 3.8%.” In short, a very healthy economy will turn into a problematic economy. The most worrying problem, however, is that the Bank is engaged in guesswork about an event without precedent. If things turn out much better or much worse than estimated, nobody should be surprised that the Bank got it wrong.

It is remarkable that the UK Parliament has spent almost a year of debates about the Brexit deal agreed by Theresa May’s government and the European Union. Indeed, about one small detail of that deal. We shall briefly describe what that detail is before explaining that the inordinate resulting delay reflects deep and longstanding dysfunction in the whole parliamentary system of the UK.

The deal consisted of two documents, the Withdrawal Agreement (WA, 585 pages) and the Framework for the Future Relationship (FFR, 26 pages). Most of the WA consists of regulations obviously needed for winding up UK participation in EU institutions, settling mutual debts, safeguarding the interests of UK citizens resident in the EU and vice versa, and the like. Even Boris Johnson regards all that as basically good and necessary.

The bone of contention is rather the so-called “Backstop” or (properly) the “Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.” This is a set of procedures designed to preserve the current “soft border” between the two parts of Ireland until the Protocol can be replaced via the negotiations that will turn the FFR from a shortlist of intentions into a permanent relationship between the UK and the EU. At 174 pages, it is nearly a third of the WA. Yet the real contention is just about Article 20 of the Protocol – a mere page and a half out of a total of over 600 pages.

Why Egypt Does Not Want to Help Gaza by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14859/egypt-gaza-help

Israel’s goodwill gestures, however, have so far failed to deter Hamas and other Palestinian groups from repeatedly violating the ceasefire understandings.

Israel is prepared to do whatever is required to help the Palestinians in return for a cessation of terrorist attacks against Israel. Meanwhile, the Egyptians themselves offer nothing but broken promises regarding the crisis in the Gaza Strip. Egyptian policy, it appears, is based on the assumption that the Gaza Strip is – and must remain – solely the problem of Israel.

Why do Egyptians have to travel all the way to Israel to discuss supplying the Gaza Strip with food, medicine and fuel (through Israel) when Egypt can easily do so through its shared border with the Gaza Strip? The world seems to have forgotten that the Gaza Strip has a shared border not only with Israel, but with Egypt as well.

Egypt’s shifting and sometimes contradictory policy toward the Gaza Strip seems to have one goal: to divert attention from Cairo’s responsibility for the ongoing plight of its Palestinian neighbors.

Here is what Egypt and the Arab states should be telling Israel: “Thank you for all that you have done so far to help the people of the Gaza Strip. However, these are our Arab brothers. Therefore, it seems fair that we step in and assume this burden.”

Egypt has resumed its mediation efforts to prevent an all-out military confrontation between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Earlier this week, senior officials from Egypt’s General Intelligence Service (Mukhabarat) who visited the Gaza Strip reportedly relayed to Hamas leaders a message from Israel: it promised to “ease restrictions” on the Palestinians in return for a cessation of anti-Israel terrorist attacks.

The 21: A Journey into the Land of Coptic Martyrs A close look at the plight of an ancient Christian community Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274903/21-journey-land-coptic-martyrs-raymond-ibrahim

A review of “The 21: A Journey into the Land of Coptic Martyrs” by Martin Mosebach.

To learn as much as possible of the 21 Coptic Christians martyred for refusing to recant their faith at the hands of the Islamic State (“ISIS”) on the shores of Libya in 2015, writer Martin Mosebach traveled to their Egyptian homeland, where he interviewed family members, local clergymen, and generally took in the culture and atmosphere of Coptic living.

The result is an account that alternates between tragedy and triumph—between senseless deaths and staunch perseverance, past and present.  Because martyrdom is such a normal aspect of Coptic experience, when Mosebach “later asked myself what I had actually learned about the martyrs during my weeks in El-Aour,” where most of them lived, “I was at a bit of a loss.”  Neither the Coptic Church (historically known as the “Church of Martyrs”), nor the relatives of the slain, understood the latter’s martyrdom as something out of the ordinary or in need of elaboration.  The martyred—menial workers who spent their lives earning and sending money back to their families in Egypt—did not even seem to matter much as individuals but rather representatives of the collective.

Mosebach still managed to gather enough firsthand information to offer a compelling theory on the series of events that led to their slaughter.  The narrative includes an extra pious ringleader who inspired his fellow captives to persevere against beatings and death threats, and an ISIS guard who reportedly converted to Christianity and fled after witnessing their staunch faith.