RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/a_sharia_victory_in_the_netherlands.html

This November was meant to be the month for MP Geert Wilders’ second “Draw Muhammad” contest, but Islamic law won a de facto victory over Dutch law mere weeks ago as Wilders announced the contest’s cancellation. When — among many other threats similar attacks — a 19-year-old Afghan stabbed two American tourists in Amsterdam, citing the planned contest as motive, Wilders canceled the event out of concern about further violence.

The Islamists had made their point: “Having the law on your side makes no difference. Do what we want, or somebody is going to get hurt.”

Such antics by Islamist Muslims are not new to Wilders and other speech and conscience advocates. In retribution for his firm and outspoken stance on this subject, he has “spent 15 years living in safe houses and escorted by a security detail due to constant death threats.” These are the tactics, of course, of any common mafia.

In securing Wilders’ retreat, the terrorists established Sharia’s authority for now in the Netherlands on the issue of speech.

The first “Draw Muhammad” contest, organized by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, was held on May 3, 2015 in Garland, Texas. The purpose of Geller and Spencer, and the purpose of Wilders in organizing another this year, was to preserve space for free speech in the face of known supremacist Muslim intentions to forcefully diminish that space.

During the 2015 event, two Muslim men — one a convert but both American-born — armed with multiple rifles and handguns and 1500 rounds of ammunition, began shooting their way into the venue. Both were killed. The purpose of “the Islamist mob” is to assert authority for Islam over all other legal authorities, to become dominant.

What is going on, in other words, are tests of national sovereignty, a battle of civilizations. In this most recent round, I regret to report, the winner was not Western civilization, but rather the Islamist mob.

https://quillette.com/2018/11/21/the-betrayal-of-asia

Among the string of resignations triggered by the draft Brexit agreement with the European Union (EU), one stood out. In a double whammy for an embattled Prime Minister, Rehman Chishti the MP for Gillingham and Rainham resigned as both Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party as well as the PM’s Trade Envoy to Pakistan. Aside from citing Theresa May’s shambolic handling of Brexit negotiations, Chishti said the British government’s failure to give Asia Bibi asylum had been a motivating factor in his decision.

Bibi’s case is a cause célèbre. She is a Christian who had been languishing on death row for nine years in Pakistan for blasphemy charges. To Christians worldwide, Bibi is a symbol of fortitude, faith, and unflinching commitment. After all, a conversion to Islam would have exonerated her, but she refused to recant her faith. She was imprisoned after fetching drinking water for fellow berry pickers on a Punjab farm in Pakistan in 2009. Her Muslim co-workers accused her of contaminating the water, because she was Christian. Following a verbal dispute, a complaint was lodged with a local Imam, alleging that Bibi had blasphemed against the Prophet—a capital offense under sections 295B/295C of the Pakistan Penal Code, introduced under the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her of the charges and said the accusations levelled against her were “concoction incarnate.”

Regardless of the Supreme Court decision, Muslim extremists believe Bibi must still be executed. They staged mass protests in major cities like Islamabad and Karachi threatening to kill the judges who acquitted her. A cursory look online reveals a palpable sense of anger among a section of Pakistan’s public with a petition entitled: “#Hang_Asia_Msih No Compromise on dignity of MUHAMMAD SAWW; We Support Khadim Hussain Rizvi.” Others have dedicated a song against Bibi, and uploaded it to YouTube, the lyrics of which roughly translate from Punjabi to “Don’t give electricity, don’t give water, just hang Asia.” This poisonous indoctrination is seemingly infiltrating more impressionable minds too—another video on YouTube rather depressingly shows children with a doll revelling in a mock execution of Bibi. There’s a fear that Pakistan’s Christian communities will now be targeted by Islamists in retribution for Bibi’s acquittal, and have requested the Pakistani authorities “beef up” security with military assistance to protect churches and properties.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-stop-a-south-african-land-grab-1542992109

Global economic jitters make this an especially bad time for developing economies to embark on bad policy experiments, yet that’s what South Africa did this month in advancing a sweeping plan to expropriate private land. The only saving grace is that voters will have a chance to weigh in before this scheme becomes law.

A parliamentary committee on Nov. 15 recommended a constitutional amendment that would allow the government to expropriate land without compensation. The idea has been a fixation in South Africa for years, in the belief that bouts of poor economic growth arise because colonial rule left whites with a majority of the country’s farmland.

But anyone seeking the roots of South Africa’s recent malaise should look elsewhere. Agriculture accounts for less than 3% of gross domestic product, and the number of acres owned by nonwhites or the government nearly doubled between 1994 and 2016 under the “willing buyer, willing seller” land policy adopted by Nelson Mandela.

Weak rule of law and bad policies during the nine-year left-wing administration of former President Jacob Zuma are better explanations for the country’s woes. Land expropriation will make matters worse by deterring investors worried about property rights, especially if such a policy is written into the country’s constitution as the current proposal envisions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-costs-of-the-euro-1543016358

The euro celebrates its 20th birthday in January, and as if on cue the fiscal costs of the common European currency finally are coming into view for voters. That’s the best reading of the budget principles French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to this month.

The bilateral deal, part of the pan-EU negotiation about the European Union’s budget, for the first time contemplates a special fund solely for the 19 countries that use the euro. A pot of money would be created within the EU’s existing budget exclusively for public works or other “investment” projects in euro members. The goal is to create fiscal stabilizers that can moderate economic swings and encourage “convergence” in productivity to avoid future crises.

Most critics have seized on the economics, which aren’t impressive. The size of the budget and funding sources remain up for debate. Keynesians fret that this budget will be too small, reckoning that a budget would need to amount to several percentage points of eurozone GDP to do any good. Their answer to every problem is more public spending.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13336/palestinians-trump-peace-plan

According to the reports, the White House “peace team,” led by senior adviser Jared Kushner and special envoy Jason Greenblatt, has been working on the plan for two years — and President Trump wants it published between December 2018 and February 2019.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his representatives in Ramallah have radicalized their people against the Israeli government to a point where meeting or doing business with any Israeli official is tantamount to treason. This is why Abbas does not and cannot return to the negotiating table with Israel and also why Abbas cannot change his position toward the Trump administration.

Wasel Abu Yousef, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official, said this week that the Palestinians were moving on three levels to thwart Trump’s upcoming plan: rallying worldwide support for the Palestinian position against the plan, uniting all Palestinians, and opposing attempts to normalize relations between the Arab countries and Israel.

Hardly a day passes without the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) affirming its strong opposition to US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-announced Middle East peace plan, also referred to as the “deal of the century.” Palestinian leaders have convinced their people that Trump is the worst person on the face of the earth and that no one should be doing business with him.

The Palestinian Authority is not the only Palestinian party that continues to voice its opposition to the upcoming peace plan. No Palestinian group or individual has come out in favor the plan, although no one in the Middle East seems to have seen it or knows anything about its details. Trump has united the Palestinians in a way that no Palestinian or Arab has been able to do since the beginning of the Hamas-Fatah war 11 years ago.

The Palestinians are united in their opposition to the Trump administration and its policies, especially in the aftermath of the US president’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as well as its decision to cut US funding to the Palestinian Authority for paying terrorists and to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The Palestinians have already determined that the US peace plan is “biased” in favor of Israel, and that is why, they say, they cannot accept it.

The Palestinian Authority and its rivals in Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian factions appear to disagree on everything except their hostility to Trump and his administration. They all refer to the “deal of the century” as a “conspiracy aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause and rights.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13301/european-court-human-rights-islam

The ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is not only wrong for establishing a precedent for sharia-compliant adherence to Islamic blasphemy laws, but appears to be based on a number of false premises.

The real message the ECHR sent, as it succumbed to fears of “disturbing the religious peace,” is that if threats work, keep threatening! What sort of protection of human rights is that?

Just who is it, by the way, that gets to decide what is “incriminating”? Formerly, it was the Inquisition.

Islamic blasphemy laws have now been elevated to the law of the land in Europe.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on October 25 that to state that the Islamic prophet Muhammad “liked to do it with children” and “… A 56-year-old and a six-year-old?… What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?” goes “beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate,” and could be classified as “an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace.”

The Court’s judgment has a long history.

In 2011, free speech and anti-jihad activist, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, was convicted by an Austrian court of “denigrating religious symbols of a recognized religious group” after she gave a series of small seminars: “Introduction to the basics of Islam”, “The Islamization of Europe”, and “The impact of Islam”.[1]

No Muslims appear to have attended Sabaditsch-Wolff’s seminars. The court case against her came about only because a magazine, NEWS, filed a complaint against her after secretly planting a journalist at her seminars to record them.

Wolff was convicted of having said that Muhammad “liked to do it with children” and “… A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? … What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?”

On February 15, 2011, the Vienna Regional Criminal Court — according to the summary in the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) — found that “these statements implied that Muhammad had had paedophilic tendencies”, and convicted Sabaditsch-Wolff “for disparaging religious doctrines” under §188 of the Austrian penal code, which states:

“Anyone publicly denigrating or mocking any person or thing that is the object of worship of a domestically existing church or religious society… among whom his conduct is liable to cause legitimate annoyance, is punishable by imprisonment of up to six months or a fine of up to 360 daily rates”.

Sabaditsch-Wolff was ordered to pay a fine of 480 euros and the costs of the proceedings. The Vienna Court of Appeal upheld the decision in December 2011. Sabaditsch-Wolff then appealed the Austrian court decisions to the European Court of Human Rights. She stated that her right to freedom of expression, safeguarded in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, had been violated.

On October 25, the ECHR reached the conclusion that there had been “no violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights”.

In its ruling, the ECHR stated:

“The Court found in particular that the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant’s statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria. It held that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate, and by classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.”

The ECHR’s ruling is not only wrong for establishing a precedent for sharia-compliant adherence to Islamic blasphemy laws, but appears to be based on a number of false premises.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13327/brexit-northern-ireland-protoco

lArticle 20 of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland should be supplemented by a sentence of the form: “If not earlier, this Protocol shall cease to apply [x] years after the end of the transition period unless both the European Union and the United Kingdom agree to extent its application in whole or in part.” Here “[x]” should be a number (of years) that is sufficiently large to convict the EU of bad faith if it refuses to countenance such a sentence, but sufficiently small not to be absurd. We think that “three” would be a suitable number of years, but even “five” would establish the principle that the United Kingdom must have a guaranteed prospect of liberty.

Theresa May presented her Brexit deal to her cabinet on November 14, 2018 and to the House of Commons the next day. It consists of two documents, the “Draft Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community” (585 pages) and the “Outline of the political declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” (8 pages). The documents were released to the public only after the conclusion of that cabinet meeting.
The Problematic Protocol

The Members of Parliament hardly had time overnight to read the Draft Agreement in its entirety. Instead, they rushed to read the “Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland” because they knew that this had been the most controversial element in the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

The Protocol recalls in its preamble that “the Withdrawal Agreement… does not aim at establishing a permanent future relationship between the Union and the United Kingdom” while noting that both parties recognize the need to maintain the “soft border” that exists between Northern Ireland, as an integral part of the United Kingdom, and the Irish Republic. Although it is hoped that that “permanent future relationship” will have been negotiated by the end of the “transition period” during which the United Kingdom completes its withdrawal from the EU, this may not happen. The aim of the Protocol, therefore, is to serve, if necessary, as a “backstop” arrangement to preserve the soft border even after the transition period while negotiations on the permanent future relationship are completed.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13333/interpol-president-election-russia

It is well-established that Russia has abused Interpol as a tool to persecute abroad the political opponents of the ruling Russian regime who have been forced to emigrate.

Such an influential organization as Interpol cannot be led by a representative and functionary of an unfree nation that violates the rights and freedoms of its own citizens, violates its international obligations, annexes the territories of other states, and is currently the protagonist of several wars of aggression.

Would Interpol target these people on Russian request? It is difficult to imagine otherwise should a Russian official becomes the head of Interpol. The candidate for the post of the head of Interpol also raises questions. Alexander Prokopchuk is a major general of the Russian police, an organization known for its corruption and persecution of representatives of the Russian opposition.

On November 21, the election of a new President of Interpol will take place. The leading candidate for this post is the representative of the Russian Federation, Major General of the Russian Police Alexander Prokopchuk. The Standing Committee of the Free Russia Forum expresses its categorical protest against the election of this candidate to the post of head of Interpol. Such an influential organization as Interpol cannot be led by a representative and functionary of an unfree nation that violates the rights and freedoms of its own citizens, violates its international obligations, annexes the territories of other states, and is currently the protagonist of several wars of aggression.

It is well-established that Russia has abused Interpol as a tool to persecute abroad the political opponents of the ruling Russian regime who have been forced to emigrate. Critics and other targets of the Putin regime residing outside of Russia have repeatedly been victimized by Interpol mechanisms such as Red Notices and “diffusion” notices, as a result of which they were detained and put through lengthy legal procedures before they managed to convince Interpol of the political nature of their persecution — often requiring political intervention on their behalf.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13334/germany-domestic-intelligence

Sinan Selen, a 46-year-old Istanbul-born counter-terrorism expert, will be the first Muslim to fill a top leadership position within Germany’s intelligence community.

Throughout his government career, Selen has been resolute in confronting Islamic fundamentalists in Germany. He also led efforts at the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) to monitor the Turkish nationalist Milli Görüs, an influential Islamist movement strongly opposed to Muslim integration into European society.

The leadership changes at the BfV were spurred by a cellphone video that purportedly showed right-wing mobs attacking migrants over the murder of a German citizen in Chemnitz by two failed asylum seekers. According to the respected blog Tichys Einblick, the video actually documented migrants attacking Germans, not Germans “hunting” migrants.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has appointed a Turkish immigrant to fill the second-highest position in Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, BfV).

As the BfV’s new vice president, Sinan Selen, a 46-year-old Istanbul-born counter-terrorism expert, will be the first Muslim to fill a top leadership position within Germany’s intelligence community.

The appointment comes just weeks after Merkel fired BfV President Hans-Georg Maaßen for publicly defending the anti-mass-migration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) against attacks from Merkel and her junior coalition partner, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).

By choosing Selen, Merkel appears to be trying to achieve several objectives. First, she seems to be attempting to save her floundering government by placating the SPD, which has demanded that the domestic intelligence agency begin monitoring the AfD party, and which has called for more people with a “migration background” in leadership positions at federal agencies.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271992/asia-bibi-and-plight-pakistani-christians-jack-kerwick

Media talking heads and self-appointed monitors of “hate” have been waxing hysterical over what they claim is a rising tide of “hate crimes” nationwide, a phenomenon, they want for us to believe, provoked by the rhetoric of President Donald J. Trump.

This claim, of course, is nonsense. Yet there’s another point that I wish to make here.

While the Western world has been deluged with media coverage regarding the legions of Muslims that fled to Europe from the oppression that they allegedly suffered in their own homelands, as well as with stories (many of which have been revealed as hoaxes) of Christians victimizing religious minorities in the streets of America, media elites never make a sound concerning the oppression that Christians around the world really suffer at the hands of the non-Christian majorities with which they co-exist.

Take Asia Bibi as just one example of this endemic phenomenon. This young woman’s experience is illustrative of that endured by numerous Christians throughout Bibi’s home country of Pakistan and throughout the Islamic world. Hers is worth drawing attention to, however, for more people are increasingly becoming familiar with Bibi’s name.

Bibi is a Pakistani woman, a mother of five children, and a member of Pakistan’s Christian minority. In 2009, she was arrested. The following year, Bibi was found guilty of the blasphemy charges that had been brought against her and she was sentenced to…death.

Bibi had been charged by her co-workers with having made offensive remarks about Muhammad and the Quran. They had ordered her to fetch them some water. She did. But after Bibi drank from it, they refused to do so and mocked her for having “defiled” the drink. Bibi’s co-workers ordered her to convert to Islam. It was then that Bibi had responded that it is they, her harassers, who should convert, for while Jesus saved humanity from its sins, what had Muhammad ever done for humanity, Bibi asked.