RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/erdogan-must-release-pastor-andrew-brunson/Erdogan’s case against American pastor Andrew Brunson is ludicrous.

It’s never a good idea to negotiate with a hostage-taker, but when it’s a NATO ally, there isn’t much choice.

The Trump administration has been trying to get back a Christian pastor detained in Turkey since October 2016, and when a possible deal at the sidelines of the NATO summit fell through, it decided to drop the hammer.

A couple of weeks ago, the administration sanctioned Turkey’s justice and interior ministers — remember, these are top officials of a fellow NATO country. The action hit the Turkish currency and stock market hard. Then President Donald Trump intervened in his inimitable style, with a tweet promising a doubling of aluminum and steel tariffs against the country and pointedly noting the drop in the value of the lira.

As always, the president’s shoot-from-the-lip style is open to question, but Turkey deserved every last character — including the two exclamation points — in that presidential tweet. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not Justin Trudeau or Angela Merkel, a leader firmly within the liberal West who annoys Trump. He’s an Islamist authoritarian who is fundamentally changing the character of an erstwhile ally.

Erdogan’s resort to hostage-taking as a tactic to gain leverage over allies — it’s not just us — is a barbarous throwback and a disgusting homage to rogue states such as Iran and North Korea. He also has grabbed a Turkish-American NASA scientist and local employees of American consulates.

The case against the pastor, the highest-profile case, is ludicrous. Andrew Brunson lived with his family in a seaside city, Izmir, for more than 20 years until the government, after Erdogan survived a coup, decided that he was guilty of aiding terrorist organizations and carrying out military espionage.

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/norways-favorite-anti-semitic-cartoonist-strikes-again/

After the publication of a dozen Muhammed cartoons in the September 30, 2005, issue of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten led to mass Muslim mayhem, the story of the cartoons went worldwide – but the cartoons didn’t. Well, yes, you could find them online. But very few of the newspapers, newsmagazines, and TV news programs that reported on them actually showed them. They were too scared. One brave exception was Vebjørn Selbekk, then editor of Magazinet, a tiny Norwegian newspaper. In its January 9, 2006, issue, he reprinted the cartoons as part of a feature examining their impact. The feature included an interview with Norway’s most famous editorial cartoonist, Finn Graff, who has been plying his trade at various newspapers – most recently Dagbladet – since 1960. Asked if he would ever draw anything that might offend Muslims, Graff said no. He admitted that he feared the possible repercussions, but also insisted that his decision was based “as much on respect for [Muslims’] religious belief as on real fear.” In other words, as I wrote in my 2009 book Surrender, “he supposedly respected beliefs that he knew might drive people to kill him.”

For reprinting the Danish cartoons, the courageous Selbekk ended up being savaged by pretty much the entire Norwegian cultural establishment and pressured to apologize by people at the highest levels of the Norwegian government. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg (now head of NATO) declared that, yes, Norway had free-speech rights, but that those rights came with responsibilities, which Selbekk had ignored; Stoltenberg also insisted that no major Norwegian newspaper had reprinted the cartoons. (On the contrary, Aftenposten had done so, and Dagbladet had run them on its website, but in the effort to single out Selbekk for demonization these inconvenient facts were dropped down the memory hole.) On February 10, 2006, Selbekk capitulated and, in the presence of government ministers and reporters, formally expressed his contrition to fourteen imams representing forty-six Norwegian Muslim organizations. It was a disgraceful day for Norwegian liberty. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/sweden-approaches-the-brink-keeps-head-in-sand/

Sweden was the first European country to fully embrace the “diversity” myth, which posits that nation-states are unquestionably improved by a huge influx of non-native cultural aliens. The vogue for “multiculturalism” — which is effectively a process by which the native culture is supplanted and replaced by a foreign one, otherwise known as invasion and conquest — has since spread to other nations, to the manifest detriment of each of them.

And yet the manic ability to continue to prize “diversity” at the expense of national cohesion continues, aided and abetted by the international media (in this case, Reuters) which is completely on board with the cultural-Marxist program of Western cultural destruction:

Youths torched and vandalized scores of cars in the Swedish city of Gothenburg and surrounding towns and Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said on Tuesday the disturbances looked organized ” almost like a military operation”.

Note the obfuscatory word, “youths,” which has become a standard journalistic euphemism for “young Muslim males.”

It was unclear what triggered Monday night’s unrest but Sweden has seen a rise in violence in areas with high unemployment and other social problems and the incident echoed rioting in the capital Stockholm in 2013. Mounting public concern about gang-related and other violence has become a central issue in campaigning ahead of a national election on Sept. 9.

How about that!

Police said that up to 100 cars were either set fire to or vandalized in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second-biggest city located in the western part of the country, and in nearby towns such as Falkenberg and Trollhattan, an industrial area with high unemployment. There were no reports of injuries.

Two men, 16 and 21 years old, were arrested on Tuesday and police said it expected to make more arrests during the day. Police said gangs were involved but gave no details.

Including the names and cultural nationalities of the perps in the gangs. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12838/union-for-the-mediterranean

The EU countries involved in the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) appear unbothered by promoting “integration” — or even claiming “a common heritage” — with countries such as Mauritania, where, according to recent reports, up to 20% of the population (Haratines and other Afro-Mauritanian groups) is enslaved, and anti-slavery activists are regularly tortured and detained.

There is not the slightest allusion in the UfM yearly report, or in the 2017 Roadmap for Action, to the fact that in most Muslim countries, sharia law influences the legal code — especially regarding marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody — and that gender inequality may therefore be institutionalized and not something likely to change, regardless of the number of UfM projects.

Given these large sums of money involved, it is remarkable that the UfM and its activities enjoy little to no scrutiny in the European press.

In July, the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) celebrated its 10-year anniversary. Most Europeans, however, are unlikely to have heard about the Union, let alone the anniversary. The media rarely reports on the UfM and its activities.

The participating countries in the UfM are the 28 European Union (EU) member states and the Southern Mediterranean countries, which include Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Mauritania, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, “Palestine”, Syria (temporarily suspended), Tunisia and Turkey. Libya has observer status in the UfM. The UfM is chaired by a “co-presidency” shared between the European Union and Jordan. The UfM Secretariat maintains the daily operations of the UfM and is run by a Secretary General, presently Nasser Kamel (Egypt).

The UfM was launched by a decision of the UfM Heads of State and Government in Paris in July 2008, and constitutes an institutionalization of the Barcelona Process, which began in November 1995 with the signing of the Barcelona Declaration.

According to the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMed), the Euro-Mediterranean alliance launched by the Barcelona Declaration Process “was structured around three main work areas (political and security dialogue; economic and financial partnership; and social, cultural and human partnership)” between the EU and the mainly Muslim majority countries in North Africa and the Middle East (usually referred to in UfM context as the Southern Mediterranean).

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12831/toronto-shooting-cover-up

The Hussain “family statement” was not written by the murderer’s parents at all, but rather by Mohammed Hashim, a professional activist connected with the National Council of Canadian Muslims. Its American parent organization, as stated in its own documents, is CAIR, designated as a terrorist entity by the United Arab Emirates.

Contrary to what Hashim purportedly wrote in the statement, there is no evidence that Hussain was diagnosed with or treated for a mental illness, even after one of his high-school teachers reported to the police 10 years ago that Hussain had said “I want to kill someone… I just feel it would be really cool to kill somebody.”

Given the global climate, to which Canada most certainly has not been immune — as well as Hussain’s dubious connections — the attempt by the government and the media to dismiss potential links to terrorist groups or inspiration from jihadist ideologies, is both premature and politically transparent.

On July 22, two youngsters — 18-year-old Reese Fallon and 10-year-old Julianna Kozis — were killed, and another 13 people, ranging in age from 17 to 59, were wounded in a brutal shooting attack at a number of restaurants on Danforth Avenue, in Toronto’s popular Greektown neighborhood. The perpetrator, who was later identified as Faisal Hussain, killed himself after exchanging gunfire with police.

Hussain’s firing stance and ability to reload his 40-caliber Smith and Wesson handgun while on the move suggested that he had experience with firearms.

The following morning, the Toronto Police Service issued a statement that indicated they had already identified the shooter, yet did not release his name until later that afternoon. Meanwhile, a statement allegedly from the Hussain family made the rounds in a number of news outlets.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-supreme-leader-rules-out-u-s-talks-in-trump-esque-style-1534172157

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ruled out direct talks with the U.S. on Monday, rejecting an offer from Donald Trump in the president’s own style—a strongly worded, all-caps tweet.

“THERE WILL BE NO WAR, NOR WILL WE NEGOTIATE WITH THE U.S.,” Mr. Khamenei, who has final say in state matters and must approve any political talks, said on his official Twitter account.

“Even if we ever—impossible as it is—negotiated with the U.S., it would never ever be with the current U.S. administration,” he added in a separate tweet.

The pronouncement, which repeated comments from a speech Mr. Khamenei delivered earlier Monday, appeared to erase any uncertainty over Iran’s response to Mr. Trump’s offer late in July for unconditional talks

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12828/turkey-palestinians-hate-fest

Ahed Tamimi has called on “Palestinians to murder Israelis through ‘martyrdom-seeking operations’ (i.e., suicide bombings), stabbing attacks, and stone-throwing…” — Bradley Martin, researcher.

If Palestinian Arabs are stateless today, it is by their own choice. Their leaders have chosen to expend their energies on wiping Israel from the face of the earth rather than on establishing a state of their own next to Israel.

Palestinian Arabs keep rejecting offers to establish a state of their own, according to David Brog, with Israel, Britain and the UN having offered Palestinian Arabs the opportunity to build their own state on five separate occasions — in 1936, 1947, 1967, 2000, and 2008.

Turkey, on the other hand, has never accepted the right to self-rule of any non-Turkish people living in Asia Minor and historic Armenia, which is today eastern Turkey.

Ahed Tamimi, a 17-year-old Palestinian girl, was released from an Israeli prison on July 29, after sitting in jail and prison for almost 8 months. In March, she had been sentenced to an 8-month sentence after pleading guilty to charges of assault and incitement. Ahed was welcomed in the West Bank like a “hero”. “A crowd of supporters jostled for selfies with the teen,” the Washington Post reported.

Ahed became the center of international attention on December 15 when she assaulted an Israeli soldier. The soldier did not respond. Her mother posted the video on Facebook. In the video, Ahed is seen slapping and punching the soldier.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12845/un-hamas-ceasefire

This ceasefire initiative is rather disturbing: it requires no meaningful concessions on the part of Hamas. It leaves, for example, wholly intact Hamas’s extremist ideology, which calls for the destruction of Israel, and does not demand that Hamas lay down its weapons.

A ceasefire may sound good, but in the current circumstances it will send a deadly message to Hamas and the other terror factions in the Gaza Strip: namely, that long-term terror bombardment of Israel gets you economic and humanitarian projects funded by the United Nations and Western donors, and perhaps even a seaport and airport. The ceasefire would give Hamas five to ten years to continue amassing weapons, tightening its grip on the Gaza Strip, and preparing for its next war with Israel.

Any ceasefire agreement will be perceived as a reward for Hamas-sponsored terrorism and violence against Israel. These negotiations will spur other terrorist groups around the world to continue their attacks with the hope of gaining legitimacy and forcing the UN and the international community to negotiate also with them.

Why is the UN apparently prepared to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the Gaza Strip while keeping Hamas in power and even allowing it to become stronger? Why is the UN being allowed to play the role of savior of Hamas?

The Palestinian Hamas terrorist group that controls the Gaza Strip has reportedly accepted, in principle, an Egyptian and United Nations initiative for a long-term ceasefire with Israel. According to some reports, the initiative calls for a ceasefire of five to ten years in return for the easing of economic sanctions and humanitarian and economic aid to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12821/turkey-neighborhood-bullies

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s foreign ministry keeps bullying his country’s neighbors and the region, just like his friends, President Maduro of Venezuela and President al-Bashir of Sudan.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s motorcade arrived at his 1,100-room palace on an unusually rainy day in Ankara on July 9. His armored Mercedes was showered with red roses, thrown at the car by crowds cheering him hours before an extravagant inauguration ceremony. A 101-gun salute and an Ottoman military band greeted him along with 10,000 selected guests (this author was on the guest list but, in protest, preferred not to attend).Whereas pompous scenes from Erdoğan’s palace ceremony showed the glittering face of Turkey on July 9, events from the day before were saddening and unveiled “the other Turkey.” A passenger train derailed in the Thrace region west of Istanbul, killing 24 and injuring more than 300. On the same day, students from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara were arrested for carrying placards “insulting the president” at their graduation ceremony.