RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12574/iraq-banker-mullah-militia-cook

The young technocrats around Muqtada al-Sadr get their ideas, especially on economics, more from Milton Friedman’s texts than Muhamad-Baqir al-Sadr’s “Our Economy”.

The next step should be to also accept ideological and political diversity. I believe that in the past 15 years, Iraq has made significant progress in that direction.

In a system of down-to-earth politics, Iraq would be liberated from utopian illusions that have caused it so much tragedy, and focus on bread-and-butter issues closer to the concerns of both our banker friend and his cook.

“How is Iraq?” we asked a friend just back from Baghdad the other day.

“Bad, very bad, my friend,” was the reply. “Even my cook has an opinion about how to form the new government.”

The Iraqi friend is a prominent banker who spent his youth in exile in the West and returned home only after the fall of Saddam Hussein. However, he seems to have retained the traditional mindset of many of us Middle Easterners, who see ourselves as victims of despotism and yet fear any system in which even the cook has an opinion.

To be fair to our friend, the current political scene in Baghdad isn’t exactly reassuring. The general election failed to produce an outright majority and the formation of a new government could take weeks if not months.

We are used to seeing governments formed and reshuffled in hours, if not minutes, with narrow elite of “usual suspects” playing musical chairs in and out of ministerial posts. In that system, any hitch in forming a government could be dealt with by having some ministers shot, as did Saddam Hussein in his heyday, or exiled into ambassadorial posts with a golden handshake.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/24/ms-merkels-malady

Germans like to apologize. During a brief trip to Munich last year, tensions between locals and newly arrived migrants often flared into fizzing commotions of swinging fists, splatting saliva, and the kind of primal chest-beating one cravenly enjoys from the safety of a Barcalounger and in high-definition on a screen, but rarely relishes up close and personal.

These little flare-ups were often followed by an apology from one of the bystanders. With misty eyes, they would insist with pure conviction that such violent incursions were rare. Yet the mea culpas always seemed artificial—almost rehearsed.

That’s not to judge an entire country on the witness of a few days. Anyone having visited Germany will remark on the conviviality of its people. Their dehydrated sense of humor. And their seeming genetic need to apologize for their part in the great staining of Western, and indeed, human history.

That stain is why Angela Merkel has opened the door to more than 1.5 million refugees since 2015. That stain is why Merkel is clinging to what was the sleepiest job in Europe.

Merkel’s Götterdämmerung means her 13-year tenure could end just months after securing, albeit desperately, her fourth term. Such a grandiloquent virtue-signal also led to the Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) gaining 13 percent of the vote before forming the official opposition. In Germany, this kind of thing doesn’t happen.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/canada-attacks-religious-freedom-1529623475

Mr. Kuhn is President of Trinity Western University

Langley, British Columbia

Canada legalized same-sex marriage in 2005, amid many promises that traditional religious believers would be protected. Those promises have proved empty. Earlier this month the Supreme Court of Canada told Trinity Western University, which I lead, that it could not open a law school. Accrediting a school that upholds traditional Christian teachings on marriage could send the wrong message to Canadians who disagree with Trinity’s beliefs, we were told.

This isn’t about the quality of our educational programs. Our researchers hold millions of dollars in grants. Many members of our faculty have been recognized as 3M Teaching Fellows, Canada’s most prestigious award for excellence in educational leadership. We are consistently ranked one of the best Canadian universities for educational experience, according to the National Survey of Student Engagement.

Trinity simply is being punished for asking its faculty and students to observe traditional Christian teachings on marriage through a community covenant. In 2001 the high court ruled decisively that this policy did not disqualify the university from training public-school teachers. It seemed as if the ruling gave Trinity a secure place as one of the few private faith-based schools in Canada.

But that was then. In 2012 Trinity decided to open a law school. It would have been the only private one in Canada and the only one to offer a specialty in charity law. It was an arduous task from the beginning. Three provincial law societies—similar to state bar associations in the U.S.—said no in March 2014. Everyone agreed that Trinity’s program met all the requirements and would train competent lawyers. But law societies across the country held public meetings during which Trinity’s students and faculty were called bigots and worse.

The Law Society of Upper Canada, the nation’s oldest and largest, told the high court in Ottawa during oral arguments on Nov. 30, 2017, that accrediting any “distinctly religious” organization would violate the Canadian Charter, which is similar to the U.S. Bill of Rights. It added that when the government licenses a private organization it adopts all its policies as its own. If these arguments had been accepted, they would have spelled the end of Canada’s nonprofit sector. In their zeal to root out the supposed bigotry of traditional religious believers, these lawyers were prepared to dynamite Canada’s entire civil society.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12566/spain-anti-israel

The proliferating anti-Israel activism, driven by the rise to power of the political far-left, is establishing Spain as the EU member state most hostile towards the Jewish state.

A Madrid-based organization, Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM), which is fighting the anti-Israel BDS movement in Spain, said that Valencia’s motion was anti-Semitic and an incitement to hatred.

“The BDS movement in Spain acquired its current virulence with the emergence of Podemos, a ‘Chavist’ far-left party financed by Venezuela and Iran…. As Podemos gained control of the municipal governments in the main Spanish cities, the anti-Israel movement had access to multiple economic, human and organizational resources…. Podemos has driven over 90 such declarations in Spain in jurisdictions covering a population of over eight million people” — Ángel Más, president, ACOM.

Valencia, the third-largest city in Spain, has approved a motion to boycott Israel and slander it by declaring the city an “Israeli apartheid-free zone.” The move comes days after Navarra, one of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities, announced a similar measure. In all, more than 50 Spanish cities and regions have passed motions condemning Israel. The proliferating anti-Israel activism, driven by the rise to power of the political far-left, is establishing Spain as the EU member state most hostile towards the Jewish state.

http://freebeacon.com/blog/unhrc-worlds-inhumane-institution/

“The Human Rights Organization is the last place anyone would ever expect to find some of the biggest human rights abusers in history.” This quote, from the 2003 film Bulletproof Monk, proves that even a silly action-comedy can contain basic truths. The United Nations Human Rights Council contains such human rights beacons as China, Cuba, Venezuela, and the Congo. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley called it a “cesspool” in her remarks announcing America’s exit, making it the first country to leave in UNHRC’s 12-year history.

Ironically, the U.N. created the Council in 2006 to replace the U.N. Human Rights Commission, which had become hopelessly compromised by anti-Semitism. But only a year after its inception, the Council singled out Israel as the only country to be a permanent item on its agenda, Agenda Item 7.

While critics of the move argue that the United States can do more good by working within the Council, this ignores that after the United States joined, nothing about the Council’s behavior changed. Since the United States became a member in 2008, the number of anti-Israel resolutions has even accelerated. According to UN Watch, the Council condemned Israel on 27 separate occasions in its first four years. By 2015, the number had risen to 62. Israel has received more official condemnations from the U.N. than all the world’s nations combined.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/morocco-iran-relations/

Iran’s recent moves against Morocco’s national sovereignty reflect its intention to continue on its path towards global domination by destabilizing pro-Western countries. Tehran is shifting its attention towards Africa, which is less on the Western radar following the American withdrawal from the JCPOA.

Morocco’s decision to sever relations with Iran a week before President Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the JCPOA may not have been a complete coincidence. Iran’s presence in North Africa has been increasing over time and grew yet more pronounced as the deadline approached for the expected American withdrawal from the JCPOA.

Iran, which is concerned about the future of its interests – global influence, access to natural resources, recruitment of new proxies, the training of existing proxies, and the relocation of illegal conventional and nuclear weapons research – has shifted its attention towards areas that have until recently attracted little scrutiny from the international community, particularly the US. Likewise, in the past few years, Iran has pushed for stronger relations with African countries, including South Africa and Algeria – working to counter Sunni influence through mosques and ideological overtures, but also funding infrastructure, concluding mutually beneficial deals, and arming Shiite militias in West Africa.

Rabat’s break with Tehran came as a shock to much of the international community. Not many have followed events in North Africa and are aware of recent illegal maneuvers by the separatist group Polisario, which claims to represent the Western Sahrawi tribes. Polisario has long been known as a smuggler of small arms to Mauritania and other countries in the region, and in the last decade has been implicated in drug smuggling.

http://jamieglazov.com/2018/06/22/glazov-moment-australian-broadcasting-corporation-celebrates-hijab/

Jamie discusses Australian Broadcasting Corporation Celebrates Hijab and asks: Is the Hijab really just so “sensuous” and such an incredible “source of empowerment”?

Don’t miss it!

And watch Jamie focus on No Honor Killings in America? — where he unveils the Left’s callous lies . . . and heart of darkness:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12570/germany-crime-trump

According to the narrative peddled by the mainstream media, after a series of horrendous migrant crimes and string of deadly terrorist attacks perpetrated by newly-arrived Muslim migrants, towns and cities across Germany were reverting to some sort of idyllic harmony.

According to Germany’s 2017 crime statistics, more than 1,100 foreigners were charged with murder or manslaughter, as opposed to around 1,500 suspects holding German passports. Given that Germany was home to roughly 10 million foreigners as opposed to 70 million German nationals, these are staggering numbers.

“The number of homicides rose by 3.2%” and “the number of sexual assaults had risen as well,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung disclosed, while correctly maintaining that the crime report showed an overall drop of 9.6%.

US President Donald Trump attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s migrant policy this week. The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition,” he tweeted on June 18. “Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!” he added.

President Trump’s comments come at a time when Merkel is facing the biggest crisis of her career. She is struggling to hold her government together, with the Bavarian Catholic party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), threatening to leave the governing coalition over immigration. The CSU wants the police to have the authority to turn away illegal migrants at the border, a move bitterly opposed by Merkel.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/haley-to-sanders-un-report-decrying-poverty-in-america-is-ridiculous-and-misleading/

WASHINGTON — UN Ambassador Nikki Haley told Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that a UN report declaring that “contempt for the poor” is growing in America along with wealth inequality was “politically motivated” and “misleading.”

After the initial report from United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights Philip Alston was issued earlier this month, Sanders and 19 other Democrats sent a letter to Haley urging that the administration take heed of the report and present an action plan to combat poverty.

“We believe the massive levels of deprivation outlined in the report – as well as the immense suffering this deprivation causes – are an affront to any notion of the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the lawmakers wrote. “Given the breadth of poverty outlined in the report, these rights are simply illusory for millions in this country.”

Alston, an Australian law professor who has served in the role since 2014, went on a fact-finding mission for the UN Human Rights Council across the U.S. in the first two weeks of December. He visited California (Los Angeles and San Francisco), Alabama (Lowndes County and Montgomery), Georgia (Atlanta), Puerto Rico (San Juan, Guayama and Salinas), West Virginia (Charleston) and Washington, D.C., for his study.

The United States’ “immense wealth and expertise stand in shocking contrast with the conditions in which vast numbers of its citizens live,” the report stated. “About 40 million live in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and 5.3 million live in Third World conditions of absolute poverty. It has the highest youth poverty rate in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the highest infant mortality rates among comparable OECD States. Its citizens live shorter and sicker lives compared to those living in all other rich democracies, eradicable tropical diseases are increasingly prevalent, and it has the world’s highest incarceration rate, one of the lowest levels of voter registrations among OECD countries and the highest obesity levels in the developed world.”

Alston called those stats and policies behind them “cruel and inhuman” and said Trump administration policies seem “driven primarily by contempt, and sometimes even by hatred for the poor, along with a ‘winner takes all’ mentality… contempt for the poor has intensified under the Trump Administration.”

In a letter to Sanders dated today, Haley told the senator that “poverty is an issue the Trump administration takes very seriously,” and “being able to provide for one’s self and family is empowering, both economically and spiritually.”

Haley said she was “deeply disappointed” in Alston’s report and branded it a waste of UN funds. “There is no question that poverty in America remains a serious concern, but it does no one any good to inaccurately describe its prevalence or its causes,” she wrote. “It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America.” CONTINUE AT SITE