RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13421/iran-plan-b

Is a Plan B possible? No one knows for sure.

What is certain, however, is that the possibility should be discussed. This is what we propose to do in this session with a paper aimed at opening the discussion on how to nudge, help or even force Iran out of the schizophrenic trap that its current ruling elite, or history if you prefer, have set for it — a way out that points to Iran absorbing its revolutionary experience to re-become a nation-state with the needs, aspirations, hopes, fears, and patterns of behavior of nation-states.

For four decades Iran has been in world headlines, not always for the best of reasons. Many countries have had problems with Iran in its current version as the Islamic Republic. In turn, the Islamic Republic has not been able to find the place it covets in a global system that it rejects as a creation of the “Infidel”.

Those having problems with the Islamic Republic have contemplated, planned and, in some cases, even tried quite a few Plan A options to deal with the Islamic Republic. These range from efforts to persuade the current leadership in Tehran to change aspects of its behavior to economic warfare, “crippling” sanctions, and, on occasions, even military action.

All those plans failed to produce the desired result because they were based on the assumption that the Islamic Republic is a classical nation-state and likely to respond as such.

However, in its revolutionary emanation, Iran has experienced what could only be called an historic schizophrenia in which its identity as a revolutionary cause is in conflict with that of its identity as a nation-state.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13434/turkey-brain-drain

Scores of academics (more than 265) who signed the “peace call” are being prosecuted on charges of terrorism.

“Most better [academics] tend to leave the country,” said one university professor in Ankara on condition of anonymity, himself in correspondence with two US universities for a teaching position.

“Children who do not read the Quran are with Satan and Satanic people.” — Professor Ali Erbaş, Turkey’s top cleric, head of the Turkish government’s powerful Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet).

This author once described a Turkish university as “just a group of buildings gathered around a library and a mosque,” to paraphrase a quote from Shelby Foote. Today, universities in Turkey are increasingly becoming seats of Islamic learning, zeal and government bootlicking.

Life, for many scholars, is gloomy. Since the attempted coup in July 2016, nearly 6,000 academics have been dismissed from public universities under emergency decrees, including 378 who had signed a January 2016 Academics for Peace petition condemning the government’s security operations in the Kurdish southeast. Another 38 academics from public universities and 48 from private universities have been dismissed by their universities and were told by university officials that the reason was signing the petition. Scores of academics (more than 265) who signed the “peace call” are being prosecuted on charges of terrorism.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/chaos-on-french-highways-as-yellow-vest-protesters-torch-toll-booths/

A major highway connecting Marseille and Toulon was closed overnight as a key toll booth was occupied and burned by yellow vest protesters.

All told, about 40 toll booths across the country were occupied or set on fire by protesters against the government of President Emmanuel Macron.

Reuters:

Some 20 people were arrested on Tuesday following the blazes, while four others remain in custody following fires on Saturday.

“Motorists should take utmost care as they approach toll gates and motorway access ramps due to the presence of numerous pedestrians,” Vinci said in a statement.

Several people have died in roadside accidents at yellow vest roadblocks in recent weeks, mostly at the many roundabouts blocked by groups of demonstrators.

Toll booths haven’t been the only target of the protesters on the nation’s highways.

Protesters angry about high fuel costs and new speed limits have also damaged or torched hundreds of traffic radars.

Radars-auto.com estimated that by the middle of last week some 1,600 – about half of all French traffic radars – had been damaged. More than 250 have been entirely destroyed, it said.

The French state will also lose several tens of millions of euros in revenues, it said, adding that in 2017 the radars had yielded on average 84 million euros ($96 million) per month.

The interior ministry declined comment on the number of radars damaged, but said that minor damage cost on average 500 euros per radar to repair, with major damage costing up to 200,000 euros.

Fines for damaging radars can run as high as 75,000 euros.

“Even wrapping a radar in plastic or a yellow vest… without destroying it is an offense,” a ministry official said.

Vinci estimates the damages since the start of the protests will cost it “several tens of millions” of euros, not including lost revenue, as the protesters have allowed thousands of motorists onto the highways for free. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2018/12/genocide-in-south-africa.html

Andile Mngxitama calling for mass murder

The MSM does not deign to report an ounce of news about the South African government deciding, by constitutional amendment, to steal all white-owned farmland. This is chiefly at the prompting and urging of the Parliament’s communist/racist Julius Malema. He is not only a communist, but a combination Leninist and Stalinist; Lenin imposed communism on Russia; Stalin decided to seize the most productive farmland, which was in the Ukraine, and as a consequence starved millions to death when the collectivization of agriculture failed. Malema is a member of the African National Congress (ANC) and heads the Economic Freedom Fighters (which means it fights against freedom, not for it)

Cyril Ramaphosa is the president of the country and is as much a racist as Malema.

Katy Hopkins and Lauren Southern have excellent, informative videos about the economic situation in South Africa and the atmosphere of fear among white farmers can be found here and here. Stalin’s starvation of millions was deliberate and premeditated. The same thing will happen when the farmers are eradicated; the whole population will starve. It is estimated that one farmer feeds about 3,000 people. Additionally, the country has a water problem; Israel offered its technology to help correct the problem, but Ramaphosa rejected the offer, based on Israel’s relation with the Palestinians. This is spiting one’s nose for ideological and racial reasons, and not really concerned about the population.

The lie about how whites “stole” the land from the blacks is fiction out of whole cloth. Southern presents a history of South Africa that contradicts the common story and belief propagated by the government, that whites systemically robbed blacks of their land. The Dutch began to settle the Cape Town area in the late 17th century. They got along with two black tribes which were eventually wiped out by the Bantu from the north, The Khoikhoi (previously called Hottentots) and the San. A detailed description of the chief and final battle between the Voortrekkers and the Zulus can be found here. As Southern and Hopkins relate, the white settlers entered into land trades and agreements with blacks but never expropriated it. The farms that Ramaphosa and Melama want to take originated with the whites, and were created and maintained by them…for centuries.

The story of blacks once owning hundreds of farms “stolen” by whites is as much a myth of Wakandaone, two and three.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13413/child-brides

After the mullahs’ party imposed Sharia law in Iran and made it the official unquestionable law of the land, the authorities immediately changed the age of legal marriage to 9 for girls and 13 for boys. After 40 years, the Sharia-based law has not changed.

The prevalence child marriage “still remains far too high. In a set of 25 countries for which detailed analysis was conducted, at least one in three women marry before the age of 18, and one in five women have their first child before the age of 18.” — World Bank.

According to official Iranian statistics, 180,000 child marriages take place there each year. In addition, in 2013 in Iran, a law was passed that allows men to marry their adopted daughters.

Facebook acted as an auction block for a child bride in South Sudan as recently as last month.

Unless the international community steps in and, instead of appealing to the Islamist leaders of Iran, applies pressure to get these laws changed, more children will be at risk.

“At eight years old my parents sat me down for a serious talk,” said Noushin, during the interview. “I can still remember the tremble in my mother’s voice. She told me that in two days I would be part of an Islamic religious blessing. My father insisted that I behave, and not cause a scene. I was confused, but I trusted them, that they were telling me the truth. I trusted them right up to the moment that the wedding ring went onto my finger and I became the bride of a 43 year old man.” Noushin, now 19, is the mother of three.

You might assume that her parents, who so willingly gave their child to this man, were not educated or had never been exposed to modern ways of thinking. In fact, Noushin’s father had been educated in Europe, and then came back to his country to work for the regime.

Noushin said the wedding was “a nightmare I could not wake up from. I understood that I was married, but I did not understand what that meant.” She said was forced to have sexual intercourse before she reached puberty. “Each day was filled with new confusion, and new horrors,” she said, as she tried to become accustomed to the role she was forced to endure.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13433/yellow-vest-riots

Across Western Europe, ordinary citizens feel ignored and condescended to by their political, business, academic, and media elites. Against the will of most of these citizens, their leaders are gradually surrendering their nations’ sovereignty to the EU.

Also against these citizens’ will, their nations have been flooded with Muslim immigrants who embody a major cultural challenge, have caused massive social unrest, and represent a devastating economic burden.

Although it is increasingly obvious that taxpayer-funded Islamization is leading Western Europe down the wrong path, the EU, which stands foursquare behind this disastrous development, refuses to reverse course.

Perhaps the question should not be why Western Europeans are rioting but why they did not start rioting a long time ago.

Paris has now seen its fifth weekend of street demonstrations by the so-called gilets jaunes, or “yellow vests,” although reports suggest that things may be finally winding down. Meanwhile, the protests — which in many instances rise to the level of riots, with innumerable examples of looting, vandalism, and arson – have spread. The last couple of weekends have seen disturbances in other major French cities, such as Toulouse, Bordeaux and Lyon, as well as in cities in the Low Countries, including Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Nijmegen and Maastricht. This weekend, in London, as the tension, confusion, and frustration surrounding Brexit have intensified and the possibility of a second referendum seemed to increase, yellow-vested protesters, most of them apparently supporters of Brexit, blocked major bridges and shut down streets in the city center.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13415/turkey-outrage-khashoggi

There are at least 170 journalists and media workers currently in Turkish jails and prisons, according to the Platform for Independent Journalism.

Hrant Dink, as editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper, Agos, wrote about the Armenian Genocide. For this he was prosecuted under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which makes it illegal to insult Turkey or Turkish government institutions or to “denigrate Turkishness.” Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper’s office in Istanbul on January 19, 2007. Eleven years after the murder, the trial is still in progress.

The Turkish government still has not officially recognized, apologized for, or made reparations on behalf any of these and other such crimes at any time in its history; impunity for past injustices continues to lead to present injustices.

It is high time for members of the Western media to stop relying on Turkish officials as sources of reliable information in their reports on Khashoggi, and start highlighting Turkey’s ongoing deadly persecution of its own journalists.

Since the October 2 murder of Saudi Muslim Brotherhood political activist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been condemning the perpetrators of the “ferocious murder,” vowing that his government would “uncover what has happened” and portraying himself as a champion of human rights.

https://isgap.org/flashpoint/gilets-jaunes-lost-in-the-funhouse/

8-11 PM December 11 Strasbourg: Terrorist attack at the Christmas market. The shooter, wounded and on the run, has been identified as 29–year-old Cherif C. a multi-recidivist criminal who has been flagged as a security risk since 2016. The current tally is two dead, a third victim brain-dead, thirteen wounded, six of them critically.

Since November 17, I have been gathering available information on the Gilets Jaunes (GJs), or “Yellow Vest Movement”, observing, analyzing, and testing my insights against accepted opinion. With rare exceptions, the GJs have been received with exceptional indulgence. The violence they spawn is both condoned and denied…attributed to the GJs and lifted from them by hair-splitting distinctions, as if, in a raging crowd of thousands, one could separate the real GJs from the opportunistic thugs, all dressed in yellow vests, all surging in the same direction. Murderous hatred and unprecedented destruction are dismissed with a Gallic shrug as an epiphenomenon that can’t discredit the voice of the people crying for justice.

What about jihad (the so-called terrorist attacks) on these same streets and boulevards such a short time ago and one after the other? Some commentators and officials did mention the danger of creating opportunities for terrorist attacks in the midst of a Gilet Jaune “demonstration.” But, I told myself, these GJ actions are in themselves terrorism, and these common ordinary Frenchmen are behaving as if they were inspired by Islamic mobs in Kabul, Peshawar, or… Gaza.

How blind, deaf, and dumb to create chaos in an already beleaguered democracy. And now the inevitable has happened. A jihad attack between one Yellow Saturday and the next. The baseless speculation that President Macron would declare a state of emergency to put an end to those pointless actions is becoming a reasonable option.

I still feel as though I have to apologize for my harsh judgment of giletjaunisme. But I will trust my intuition.

Lost in the funhouse

How can the Gilets Jaunes “movement” be evaluated on the basis of a bowdlerized version of their grievances, propositions, and actions, packaged in comparisons with the French Revolution and mai 68 to make a palatable story adapted to a variety of tastes? That narrative cannot encompass the scope, the concrete realities, and the glaring contradictions of an incendiary outburst of negative energy in the heart of a European democracy.

Editor’s note: Below are the video and transcript of remarks given by Geert Wilders at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 2018 Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 15th-18th at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272252/geert-wilders-restoration-weekend-frontpagemagcom

Robert Spencer: It is my great honor and great pleasure to introduce to all of you tonight the great visionary who is going to be the one who turn things around for Europe and brought about its salvation as a continent upon which free people could still live, and the one man who has stood firm all these years against absolutely extraordinary and crushing pressure to give in, the great, the heroic, Geert Wilders.

Geert Wilders: Thank you. Robert, thank you so much for the most kind words. So, hello America, how are you tonight? It’s an honor for me to be at Restoration Weekend again, and it’s a pleasure to be amongst friends. I see so many here, great people with strong convictions and love for freedom, people who supported me for so many years, like the great David Horowitz himself. Thank you David.

But also Dr. Bob Shillman, Nina Rosenwald, Daniel Pipes, all people that I will have to say thank you so much for all you did, but also please allow me to say a word of respect to a colleague of mine in your own U.S. Congress, a hero, somebody that I respect a lot and was re-elected at the mid‑terms, the congressman from Texas, Louis Gohmert, Louis rise.

Thank you. And of course, I’m not involved in your own domestic politics, but for me one of the best news was, not only that our friend Louis Gohmert, but also that our friend Steve King from Iowa was elected. Congratulations both. And of course, it’s always a pleasure for me to be in the United States, the land of the free and the home of the brave. America is a country that is not afraid to let its own national interests prevail as it should; to do what is best for its own people–the American people–where most of the leaders in my part of the world, Western Europe, cannot even spell the word national, let alone the combination national interest, your country is led by one of the strongest and bravest leaders of the free world, and I honor him from that, Donald J. Trump.

Europe desperately needs more strong leaders like Mr. Trump for we are fighting for our existence, and I’m not exaggerating. Our freedom, our way of life, our culture, our identity, our national security, are at stake and heavily under attack, and the reason for that indeed still is mass immigration and Islamization combined with the total failure, and even betrayal by weak European politicians who are unwilling to fight back.

They, those weak leaders, do not protect us but they facilitate our destruction and when political leaders become pieces of evil, the people must speak, and so we have to do that. And that is why we do speak out and fight back. But, that comes with a price. If you dare to fight back, if you dare to speak the truth about Islam, the authorities and the Islamists will do anything to silence you. You will be taken to court. I have myself been taken to court or threatened to be taken to court in my own country, the Netherlands, in Austria, in Pakistan, in Jordan, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Saudi Arabia.

The biggest Muslim country in the world Indonesia declared me persona non grata for life.