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WORLD NEWS

The West Shouldn’t Support A Nigerian Government That Enables Islamic Terrorism Against Christians By Dan DeCarlo

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/29/west-shouldnt-support-nigerian-government-enables-islamic-terrorism-christians/
Few Americans are aware of how Nigeria’s president, Muhammadu Buhari, enables the mass ethnic cleansing of persecuted Christians.

Although it has occasionally made headlines due to the rise of the violent Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram in its northern hinterland, Nigeria is still largely misunderstood and major events in the country remain under-reported in the American media. There are significant U.S. values and strategic interests at stake in Nigeria’s forthcoming election, including questions about the persecution of Christians, the future of U.S. military cooperation in Nigeria, and the spread of Islamist terrorism.

Nigeria is Africa’s largest democracy, with approximately 200 million people and expected to grow to more than 300 million by 2050. The country has long had a history of religious tension and conflict between the mostly Muslim north and predominately Christian south.

This conflict has intensified over the past several decades, engendered by the rise of a new radical Islamism, which has preached a brutal campaign of international holy war against unbelievers. In recent months, Nigeria has witnessed shocking anti-Christian violence, resulting in thousands of deaths and maimings.
Americans Largely Ignorant About What’s Happening

Few Americans are aware that the United States is in the process of selling a dozen light attack aircraft to the government of current President Muhammadu Buhari––a government that has continually soft-peddled and enabled a campaign of violence and ethnic cleansing carried out by Islamic militants against Nigeria’s Christian population.

Kremlin Surprised by Abrupt Cancellation of Trump–Putin Meeting By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-meeting-cancelled-abruptly/

The Kremlin was caught off guard by President Trump’s sudden cancellation of a planned meeting between with Russian president Vladimir Putin, Russian state news agencies said Thursday.

Trump had planned to sit down with Putin at the G-20 summit in Argentina, but canceled the meeting in a tweet Thursday, citing Russia’s Sunday capture of three Ukrainian ships and 24 sailors.

“Based on the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to Ukraine from Russia, I have decided it would be best for all parties concerned to cancel my previously scheduled meeting in Argentina with President Vladimir Putin,” Trump wrote.

On Sunday, Russian and Ukrainian forces clashed off the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia in 2014. Russian border guards opened fire on three Ukrainian ships and captured their crews as they sailed in the Sea of Azov, which is shared by the two nations. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has asked for NATO ships to be sent to the region to “provide security.”

“Foreign military ships entered Russia’s territorial waters without responding to any requests made by our border guards. Therefore, all actions were taken in strict compliance with the law,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the incident.

The cancellation means the Russian president will have “a couple of more hours” for “useful meetings” with other leaders, Peskov was quoted as saying Thursday.

Where Can Asia Bibi Go? Only two places left where she might be safe. Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272088/where-can-asia-bibi-go-hugh-fitzgerald

Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman who spent eight years on death row in a Pakistani jail, having been convicted of “blasphemy” on the testimony of Muslims, has at last been freed by a decision of the Pakistani Supreme Court. But her latest ordeal has only just begun, for she cannot possibly live safely in Pakistan, where massive crowds have been calling for her to be executed and where, during this past year, two high officials of the government who had criticized her prosecution were, as a consequence, murdered by Muslim fanatics.

The United Kingdom has refused to offer Bibi asylum, prompted by fears of violence by Muslims. The UK high commissioner in Islamabad is reported to have warned he could not protect his staff if asylum were granted by the UK. This led the Foreign Office, in turn, to ask the Home Office not to grant Asia Bibi’s request. And there was another fear as well. That was the concern that if Bibi were granted asylum by Her Majesty’s Government, Muslims could well riot in the U.K. itself.

In a demonstration of widespread pusillanimity, no country has yet stepped forward to offer this woman asylum.

So where can Asia Bibi go? There are two places where she just might be safe.

The first is the United States, where she could be offered not just asylum, but a place in the Witness Protection Program. Between 1971 and 2013 (the latest year for which figures are available), that Program has successfully protected 8,500 people (“witnesses”), along with 9,900 family members. The American government is unlikely to be worried about possible Muslim unrest should Asia Bibi be given asylum. While Muslims in the UK make up 5% of the population, in the US they make up only 1%, where, likely as a consequence, they are better behaved. The U.S is also 40 times bigger than the U.K. Should Asia Bibi come here, there’s more room to disappear in, with a government that has a ready network of safe houses, new identities, and, if need be, plastic surgery.

The second place where Asia Bibi should consider requesting asylum is the Vatican. By doing so, Asia Bibi would be putting the islamophilic Pope Francis on the spot. He who has been insisting that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” would be confronted with the reality of a Christian woman who, living in a Muslim land, falsely accused by Muslim coworkers of blasphemy against Muhammad, was sentenced to death. After spending eight years of her life in prison waiting for that sentence to be carried out, she was finally acquitted by the Pakistani Supreme Court. Two high-ranking Pakistani officials who had criticized the prosecution of Asia Bibi, the Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer, and the Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, were both assassinated as a result.

Switzerland: “Creeping EU Accession” by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13359/switzerland-eu-accession

The EU has now increased the pressure by resorting to blackmail: Brussels is making its recognition of Switzerland’s SIX Swiss Exchange, the fourth-largest stock market in Europe, contingent on Swiss acceptance of the framework agreement.

The measure was opposed by a coalition of Swiss business groups, which convincingly argued that it was a question of economics and access to international markets for the export-dependent country. “Ultimately, it is about maintaining prosperity in Switzerland and keeping the companies and jobs here,” said Monika Rühl, director of the business group Economiesuisse.

“The SVP rejects a one-sided submission to EU institutions, aimed at establishing an institutional connection of Switzerland to the EU apparatus, with a dynamic EU legal takeover and, ultimately, the subordination of Switzerland to the EU Court of Justice. A dynamic adoption of EU law would be another massive erosion of our direct democracy.” — Swiss People’s Party.

Swiss voters have resoundingly rejected a referendum calling for the Swiss Constitution to take precedence over international treaties and law.

Two-thirds (66.2%) of voters in the November 25 referendum opposed the “self-determination” initiative, put forward by the eurosceptic Swiss People’s Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei, SVP), the largest party in the Swiss parliament.

SVP leaders had argued that the new law was necessary to safeguard national sovereignty from further encroachment by supranational organizations such as the European Union and the United Nations.

The Swiss government countered that the proposal would undermine Switzerland’s economic stability as it would require Bern to amend existing bilateral agreements with the EU, the country’s largest trade partner, to bring them into compliance with the Swiss Constitution.

The proposal’s defeat comes ahead of pending decisions by the Swiss government over whether to sign a wide-ranging EU “framework agreement,” and a controversial UN “migration pact.”

Education and Anti-Semitism Too many young Europeans know little about their brutal past.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/education-and-anti-semitism-1543450010?mod=article_inline

Americans rightly complain that their public schools teach too little history, and two new surveys in Europe show the results of such failures.

A poll by ComRes for CNN finds that awareness of the Holocaust is starting to fade among younger Europeans. While only about 4% of respondents overall reported they had never heard of the Holocaust, the figure is 20% of French aged 18-34. And 30% of all respondents said they know “only a little” about this defining event in recent European history.

Ugly stereotypes about Jews also persist. Some 20% of respondents believe Jews exercise too much influence over global media and politics, and nearly 30% believe Jews exercise too much influence over global finance.

Some 35% of respondents strongly or tend to agree that “Israel uses the Holocaust to justify its actions.” This false equivalence between Nazis and Israel is a trope on the left, where anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism elide. As Britain’s Labour Party has shown under Jeremy Corbyn, these attitudes encourage abuse of Jews and politicians who support Israel.

A separate survey of Jewish community leaders by the Joint Distribution Committee’s International Centre for Community Development shows where such attitudes lead. The proportion of leaders who expect anti-Semitism to increase has grown to 66% this year from 54% a decade ago. The percentage who feel “very safe” as Jews in their city fell to 20% from 36%, while the proportion who feel “rather unsafe” has risen to 13% from 6%.

This survey found that Jews now feel safer in countries of the former Soviet bloc than in Western Europe. One explanation may be immigration, since Western Europe has accepted and then failed to assimilate large numbers of Muslim migrants while Eastern Europe has not. Radical Islamists are responsible for most recent high-profile attacks against Jews in Europe, and CNN found that 15% of Muslims in Europe had never heard of the Holocaust.

Civilizations that fail to teach the lessons of their own brutal history to the young are, well, you know.

Baroness Trumpington Former Bletchley Park cipher clerk who became a much-loved institution in the House of Lords

https://digitaledition.telegraph.co.uk/editions/edition_YJ2uq_2018-11-28/data/580436/index.html?share=1&
Thanks to e-pal Fred M……An obituary of a Great Dame of the British realm…..rsk

BARONESS TRUMPINGTON, who has died aged 96, was a former mayor of Cambridge and became the oldest and second longest-serving member of John Major’s administration; she was also by far the most popular.

Built to last, forthright and formidable, Jean Trumpington made up for any lack of intellectual brilliance with a capacity for hard work combined with down-to-earth common sense and an engaging habit of telling jokes against herself.

First recruited into Government ranks in 1983 as a Lords whip, her first job was to act as “keeper of the gate” by placing her imposing form next to the most popular exit to persuade errant Conservative peers to vote. But in fact she became far more effective in this role as a government minister; the prospect of a vintage performance by Jean Trumpington was usually enough to pack the chamber.

In 1987, as a minister at the Department of Health and Social Security, in answer to a question about whether Aids could be transmitted by insects, she replied: “I have replies to questions on bed bugs and monkeys, but I regret that I do not have fleas.”

In 1992, as an agriculture minister, she gave an answer to a question in which she referred to “the Commission’s proposals for reforming the CAP would replace existing support arrangements by a system of compensatory aid, linked directly or indirectly to the cultivated area or the number of animals kept by each farmer,” ending with: “And if you understand that, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.”

In October 1993, shortly after her appointment as a spokesman at the Department of National Heritage, she confessed to finding it difficult to master her brief and during one flustering question session she admitted: “I had been worried I might get my knickers in a twist,” she admitted.

The following year, wearing a stout woollen suit that evoked her career in naval intelligence, she struck an incongruous figure as the department’s representative at rock music awards: “I am here to collect autographs for my secretary,” she announced. “Is Elton John here?”

“I seem fated,” she protested unconvincingly. “When I’m trying very hard to be dignified, something always goes hideously wrong.”

EXPOSING ITALIAN CRIMES Simon Levis Sullam reveals how Italian citizens were actively complicit in the extermination of Jews – and got away with it. By Janet Levy

https://www.jpost.com/

Contrary to the prevalent view that Italians were primarily among the so-called “righteous gentiles” who saved Jews during the Holocaust, Italy played a significant role in the genocide of its Jewish citizens. Italians advanced blood libels, instituted persecutory racial laws, and later actively participated in the arrest and deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. In The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews in Italy, modern history professor Simon Levis Sullam explodes the myth of the “good Italians” promulgated after the war and exposes, for the first time, the cover-up of Italian responsibility.

As early as 1938, under the centralized authority of the Italian Social Republic (RSI), Italy introduced racial laws for its Jewish citizens that limited their economic activities, demonized them as inferior and enemies of the country, and persecuted them in employment, education and property ownership. The Ministry of Popular Culture set up local centers to study the Jewish problem and crank out antisemitic propaganda for the media. A telling sentiment expressed on Radio Roma was the hope that “the Jews be burnt, one by one, and their ashes scattered in the wind.” All of this ultimately paved the way for Jewish annihilation.
Five years before any roundups began, Levis Sullam reveals, the Italian government conducted a complete census of the Jewish population and established an efficient bureaucracy to surveil and persecute this “disease of humanity.”

False and dehumanizing accusations about Jews, many promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church, were rampant.

Jews were viewed as deserving of segregation and persecution based on race alone. Officers in the Fascist National Republican Guard under Mussolini were well briefed in spiritual and biological racism theories.

From 1943 to 1945, a network of collaborators – police, militia members, customs officials and more – hunted Jews in their homes. They arrested, imprisoned and handed Jews over to the Germans for deportation to death camps. Jewish property and belongings were ransacked and stolen, often with impunity. Audaciously, Jewish victims of theft were charged an administrative fee for this confiscation of their assets, the book recounts.

To illustrate the depth of action undertaken by the complicit Italian population, the author describes the actions and involvement of three prominent community members. He shows how the sentiments of these people of note were representative of the general populace, helped create widespread hatred of Jews in the period leading to World War II and helped facilitate genocide.
Giovanni Preziosi, an RSI legislator, spearheaded the General Inspectorate of Race. He was responsible for identifying “racial status,” studying “racial questions,” disseminating antisemitic propaganda and devising solutions to the Jewish problem with full knowledge of the “final solution” adopted by the Germans. He was a willing and enthusiastic party to the joint Italian-German undertaking to perpetrate genocide. He was responsible for supervising the confiscation of Jewish property and infusing the educational system with antisemitic propaganda.

Giovanni Martelloni, a writer on the “Jewish question” and head of the Office of Jewish Affairs in Florence, joined the Inspectorate of Race in 1944 and carried out arrests and confiscations. An antisemitic writer who defined a “Jewish problem” that had plagued the world for 2,000 years, he was put in charge of coordinating anti-Jewish activities in Florence.

Pretender pulls ahead in crucial hustings to decide Angela Merkel’s successor Jorg Luyken,

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/28/pretender-pulls-ahead-crucial-hustings-decide-angela-merkels/

The pretender came out fighting on Wednesday night at the most important hustings in the race to succeed Angela Merkel. Friedrich Merz, an old rival of the German chancellor, is vying to make a remarkable comeback by replacing her as leader of her Christian Democrat party (CDU).

And he didn’t hesitate to attack her record as leader, claiming she has abandoned the party’s conservative profile.

“You don’t need to copy every single Social Democrat policy, that just doesn’t have to happen,” he said, referring to the Germany’s main centre-Left party.

By the time Mr Merz had finished a speech in which he appealed for more funding for the Germany military, several audience members leapt up in a standing ovation.

Wednesday’s hustings in Düsseldorf was make-or-break for Mr Merz, who retired from politics in 2009 after losing to Mrs Merkel in a battle for control of the party.

He is locked in a three-way race to take over as CDU leader when Mrs Merkel stands down next month and, if polling is to be believed, he is neck-and-neck with Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the current party chairman and a Merkel loyalist.

The third candidate, Jens Spahn, is lagging far behind.

The Bafflegab of the West’s ‘Dhimmi Wits’ Peter Smith

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/the-bafflegab-of-the-wests-dhimmi-wits/

The West is almost completely saturated with “Dhimmi Wits.” This term is self-explanatory, I think. Unfortunately, I can’t claim authorship. I need to confess to flagrantly purloining it from the brilliant Religion of Peace website. It is too good and apt to be confined. Incidentally, do visit the site. Among heaps of information and statistics about the religion of supremacism, sexism, homophobia, discrimination, discord, hate and war it contains this gem:

Finally, please don’t send us a death threat unless you’re serious about carrying it out. The editor is tired of hearing from wimps who are all talk. In the event that you do want to submit a death threat, we have a special form for that.

The Australian gave more space last week to someone who seems to be on the right side of the argument yet inevitably fails at the final hurdle and joins the inglorious order of Dhimmi Wits. This time it was Jason Thomas who teaches risk management at the Swinburne University of Technology. His emphasis was on dealing with violent terrorism. Fair enough. And I thought at one point that he’d got it. Listen to this:

The only way this [terrorism] can occur is for a web of supporters and sympathisers to continue to believe that the non-violent dimension of Islam is compatible with Western democratic values. It is not. As T E Lawrence said: “Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent active force and 98 per cent passively sympathetic.”

Then we get to his remedy and everything falls apart in a blither of jargon. I will spare you the full account and summarise. Basically, we have to conduct Einstein-like thought experiments on what the borderless Islamic threat looks like and to employ “asymmetric tactics…to deeply penetrate and destroy the movement from within.” Hardly believable? That’s exactly right. Academic bafflegab at its most iconic.

Terror comes out of Islamism, but Islamism is a product of Islam. Islam has 1.8 billion Muslim adherents and rising. Penetrate that if you can. Sure, you can cut one head off but given time it will grow again and, in the meantime, there are plenty more. Hydra doesn’t do it justice and, when I look around, I can’t see Hercules in the wings.

Consider all the hype that surrounded ISIS, as though it defined the problem. Get rid of ISIS, vintage 2013, and all will be well. Never mind the fourteen uninterrupted centuries of Islamic conquests, incursions and terrorism that went before. But you must see the trick.

The Dhimmi Wits, making up almost all of the political and media class, liked to focus exclusively on ISIS. That way they attempted to blinker you and me from focusing on the religion of 1.8 billion, which will forever continue to seed mayhem. Find a Muslim majority society which has internal harmony and prosperity and which doesn’t trouble its neighbours. Hard, isn’t it?

Sweden: Women Raped, Authorities Too Busy by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13332/sweden-rapes-police

According to Mikaela Blixt, after a man attacked her in the street and tried to rape her, the police did nothing, even though she knew where her attacker lived and could easily have identified him.

The Swedish mainstream media outlet, Expressen, wanted to interview Blixt, but, according to her, only on condition that she not mention that her attacker was an Afghan migrant.

Not only women, but almost one out of three Swedes, do not feel safe in Sweden, according to a new poll that asked 6,300 Swedes how safe they feel in their homes and communities.

It is curious that the Swedish police not only have sufficient resources to charge people who attend peaceful demonstrations, but also people who allegedly commit thought crimes.

“Sweden,” stated its government in November 2015, “has a feminist government. We place gender equality at the heart of both national and international work… The overall objective of the Government’s gender equality policy is equal power for women and men to shape society and their own lives. This is ultimately a question of democracy and social justice.”

Wait a minute. Shouldn’t women living under a “feminist government” be able — at a bare minimum — to leave their homes without the fear of becoming victims of sexual assault?

22,000 sexual crimes were reported in 2017 to the Swedish police, 7370 of them rapes, according to the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet, or Brå). That number corresponds to an average of 20 reported rapes per day — twice as many as in 2005. Those are just the reported rapes. In 2012, for instance, only 20% of all rapes were reported to the police, according to Brå.

Unlike what the Swedish media has been preaching for years — that most rapes occur in private settings and are committed against victims who know already their attacker — the large majority of rapes are, in fact, committed in the public sphere by men who have never previously met their victim, according to Brå. Out of the 842 men sentenced for rape or attempted rape in the past five years, noted a report by Svt Nyheter (Swedish Television) 58% were foreign-born — from the Middle East and North Africa, southern parts of Africa and other places outside of Europe. When it came to men sentenced for attempted rape, as well as violent rape, where victim and perpetrator did not know each other beforehand, 80% of the men were foreign born and 40% had only been in Sweden for a year or less.