RUTHFULLY YOURS

Andrei Gromyko believed that the so-called Westphalian system, in place at least until the Second World War, had been replaced by a duopoly in which only the USSR and the United States counted as powers that could truly affect things. Moscow these days is full of rumors and speculation regarding an impending bid by Putin to revive at least in part and in a new form, the Gromykan “duopoly” by reaching out to the Trump administration in Washington.

Putin knows that without reaching out to the US, he may not be able to consolidate his gains in Crimea, eastern Ukraine and Georgia, while he could become stuck in the Syrian quagmire with no prospect of getting out anytime soon.

Russia’s isolation was best illustrated during the big annual military parade in May 2017, when of all the foreign dignitaries invited by Putin only one turned up: the President of Moldova.

“Consolidation”. In Moscow these days this is the word that most flavors discussions in political circles. The idea is that, thanks to President Vladimir Putin’s bold and risk-taking strategy, Russia has made a number of major gains on the international scene and must now act to consolidate those gains and reduce the diplomatic, economic and political price it has had to pay for them.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12483/london-al-quds-terrorism

The leader of last year’s London Al Quds Day rally, Nazim Ali – director of the “Islamic Human Rights Commission”, which organizes the annual march – called for the annihilation of Israel. They also carried banners that said, “We are all Hezbollah,” (what a comforting thought for the British). If, however, like the scholar Robert Spencer, one reports on these activities, one is barred from entering England.

The real problem is the contrast in how the slightest criticism of Islam in the UK is perceived by British police, who readily go about arresting and prosecuting people for it.

An afternoon of racism is in store for Londoners on Sunday, but as long as the hate is directed against Jews by Muslims, British authorities apparently have no problem with it.

On Sunday June 10 in London, the yearly so-called Al Quds Day march — Al Quds is the Arabic name for both Jerusalem and for the day, invented by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led Iran’s 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah — will take place. The march is, basically, a call for the destruction of Israel, sometimes also Jews in general. Many other cities, among them Toronto, Berlin and Tehran, will also be “celebrating” the day.

Last year in London, around 1000 people waved countless Hezbollah flags, in honor of Iran’s proxy terrorist organization, while chanting slogans such as “Zionists/ISIS are the same, only difference is the name” and “From the river to the sea – Palestine will be free”. They also carried banners that said, “We are all Hezbollah,” (what a comforting thought for the British).

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/kim-jong-un-murderous-dictator-tyrannical-regime/Summits won’t change the nature of the North Korean tyranny.

‘This will not be just a photo op,” President Trump said Thursday of his meeting next week with Kim Jong-un. “This will be — at a minimum, we’ll start with, perhaps, a good relationship. And that’s something that’s very important toward the ultimate making of a good deal.” Later that day the president added that he might, if things go well, invite Kim to visit him in the United States, perhaps even at the White House. “He has also discussed [possibly] golfing with Kim,” a “senior Trump administration official” told the Daily Beast.

Golf? Too soon, Mr. President. Unless this is part of a strategy to get under Kim’s skin — he’ll be uncomfortable, after all, when he hits the links at Mar-a-Lago wearing charcoal fatigues. More likely it’s another example of the president’s view that relations between leaders are more important than the relationships between states, regimes, cultures, and ideas. You try to woo Xi Jinping with “a most beautiful” piece of chocolate cake, for example. Even if the results are not ultimately what you wished for.

Let’s remind ourselves of whom, exactly, President Trump plans to meet next week. For Kim Jong-un is no ordinary man. The Dear Leader occupies the summit of a hierarchical system of some 25 million people whose lives are controlled by his central government in Pyongyang. Some years ago, Christopher Hitchens described the ruling juche ideology this way: “It is based on totalitarian ‘military first’ mobilization, is maintained by slave labor, and instills an ideology of the most unapologetic racism and xenophobia.” He did not mention the troops and artillery North Korea has amassed on its southern border, and the engineers who toil in underground laboratories, building nuclear-tipped missiles capable of reaching South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States.

The geo-strategic ripple effects of the 2018 US nuclear negotiation with North Korea and the 1994 US nuclear agreement with Pyongyang have been closely scrutinized by Iran’s Ayatollahs. Similarly, North Korea has studied the geo-strategic consequences of the 2015 US-led nuclear accord with the Ayatollahs (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

The track record of the nuclear negotiations with the Ayatollahs and North Korea verifies a clear and direct interconnection between the two processes. Moreover, the nuclear agreements with both the Ayatollahs and North Korea were largely shaped by the State Department establishment, in general, and Wendy Sherman, the former Chief Negotiator and Acting Deputy Secretary of State, in particular.

Furthermore, the overall conduct of both rogue regimes – as far as abandoning or advancing nuclearization, ending or expanding terrorism, subversion and ballistic capabilities – has been immensely impacted by the US negotiation posture. Thus, the less assertive and more eager is the US, and the more reluctant it is to use the military option, the less deterred and the more radicalized are Iran and North Korea.

They consider concessions made by the US and other Western democracies to be a sign of weakness, especially when the concessions are tangible and immediate – in return for future reciprocity – ignoring the tenuous, violent, unreliable and lawless track record of the two rogue regimes.

May 22. Religious advisers at the Masjid Ramadan mosque in Dalston, east London, said that bitcoin, the cryptocurrency, is halal (permissible according to Islamic law) for donations if it is “transacted in a lawful manner.” The mosque, also known as Shacklewell Lane Mosque, will accept donations in two different cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum. Zayd al Khair, a religious adviser at the mosque, said: “Any money or currency is neither halal, permissible, nor haram, impermissible. Guidance is about the value which it represents. If money is transacted in a lawful manner then it is halal. We do not always know the source of cash donations, but we take these in good faith too.”

May 22. Farooq Rashid, 43, of Bradford, was sentenced to two years in prison for possessing and sharing jihad-related material online. “Terrorist groups such as Daesh [ISIS] rely heavily on their propaganda being shared online to encourage support, radicalize, and provoke individuals to carry out attacks abroad and in the UK,” said Martin Snowden, the head of Counter Terrorism Policing in North East England.

May 23. A mother who forced her daughter to marry a relative almost twice her age was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in prison. It was the first time a forced marriage case was successfully prosecuted in an English court. Forced marriage has been a punishable offense in Britain since 2014. Birmingham Crown Court heard how the woman duped the then 17-year-old into travelling to Pakistan to wed the man, who was 16 years her senior. Years before the ceremony, the girl was entered into a “marriage contract” with the man and became pregnant aged 13.

May 23. The Daily Mail reported that Amazon, the online retailer, was selling terrorist recruitment material and bomb-making manuals: “Many of the books, which have radicalized thousands of international terrorists, are available for next-day delivery. Some can be downloaded instantly as Kindle editions anywhere in the world. The inflammatory titles are sold by third parties using Amazon’s platform, allowing them global reach and lending them an aura of legitimacy.” Labour MP John Mann said: “This is Amazon giving assistance to terrorists and putting lives at risk. We’ve just had the anniversary of the Manchester bombing. They need to be held to account. Amazon is allowing terror material to circulate. Free speech arguments don’t apply when it comes to terrorists trying to recruit. There must be a full police investigation into Amazon.”

May 24. Baroness Cox and other members of the House of Lords called on the British government to “respond urgently” to a 2015 review on Sharia courts by drafting a law to protect vulnerable Muslim women. Lord Elton said that the problem of Sharia councils “seems to me bigger and more urgent than Her Majesty’s Government are giving it credit for.” Baroness Flather accused Whitehall of not taking the issue seriously. Baroness Cox asked whether the government “will make it a priority to respond urgently with appropriate legislation.” In April 2015, Baroness Cox authored a 40-page report — “A Parallel World: Confronting the Abuse of Many Muslim Women in Britain Today” — which documented how Muslim women across Britain are being systematically oppressed, abused and discriminated against by Sharia law courts, which treat women as second-class citizens. The report warned against the spiraling proliferation of Islamic tribunals in the United Kingdom.

May 25. Tommy Robinson, a 35-year-old anti-Islam activist, was arrested and jailed for contempt of court after livestreaming footage of participants in a criminal trial outside Leeds Crown Court. The trial involved members of a Muslim pedophile gang charged with sexually exploiting young girls. Outrage ensued after Judge Geoffrey Marson ordered a media blackout on Robinson’s arrest and incarceration.

May 29. A Pew Research Study found that 73% of Britons identify as being Christian, but only 18% attend church. In the UK, 45% of church-attending Christians say Islam is fundamentally incompatible with British values and culture, as do roughly the same share of non-practicing Christians (47%). Among religiously unaffiliated adults, 30% say Islam is fundamentally incompatible with their country’s values. The poll found that 69% of those who identify as Christian were in favor of reducing the levels of immigration, compared to 32% of non-affiliated adults.

May 29. A couple was convicted of forced marriage for luring their 19-year-old daughter to Bangladesh in an attempt to force her to marry her first cousin — so that he could obtain a British visa. Leeds Crown Court heard how the girl’s parents had told her they were going on a six-week holiday to Bangladesh to visit relatives. Just days after arriving, however, she was told by her father that he had found a husband for her. The victim, who was not named for legal reasons, told the court: “He said, ‘I have planned this for years, the guy is really suitable, I’ve given him money for university, and he’s a really attractive guy for round here.’ He was trying to get me to say yes, but at no point did I say yes. I thought it was disgusting because it was my first cousin and stood my ground.” She was rescued by British authorities before the marriage took place. The judge told the two defendants that they should expect an “immediate imprisonment” when they are sentenced on June 18.

May 29. The trial began of Anthony Small, a 36-year-old former boxing champion who converted to Islam in 2007, for terrorism offenses. Prosecutor Karen Robinson told the Old Bailey that Small “implored Muslims to take violent action against the West.” On his YouTube channel, Small described himself as “a former professional champion boxer who now works to take mankind out of the oppression of democracy and liberating themselves with Islam/Sharia.” In the video, he spoke out against McDonald’s and Coca Cola and other symbols of Western culture. He said the choice was to “either accept the flame-grilled burger or we are going to flame grill you from the sky.”

May 30. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) called on the Conservative Party to conduct an inquiry into allegations of Islamophobia within the party. At least five Tory candidates have been suspended in recent weeks for making so-called Islamophobic comments. On April 17, for example, Alexander van Terheyden, a council candidate in Hackney, was suspended after, on social media, he called Islam, a “violent political ideology” comparable to fascism and communism. In response to allegations of Islamophobia, Van Terheyden said: “I’ve stated Islam is a violent political ideology. Note the word ‘political’ and not religious. Note I do not refer to Muslims, I refer to the political ideology. My views have always been public. If you mean the fact that I’m happy to voice my discontent for communism, fascism, Islam and other extreme political ideologies there is no secret to this.” In December 2015, a government report found that the MCB is “secretly linked” to the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic fundamentalist group committed to a “civilizational jihad” aimed at undermining liberal democracies in the West.

May 31. Khurram Javed, 35, of Rotherham was sentenced to two years in prison for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl. The trial was part of the National Crime Agency’s Operation Stovewood, which is investigating child sexual exploitation and abuse in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.

May 31. Husnain Rashid, 32, of Lancashire, pled guilty at Woolwich Crown Court to three terrorism offenses, including one in which he called for an attack against Prince George, son of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and third in line to the throne. Rashid will be sentenced on June 28 for the offenses spanning from October 2016 to April 2018.

May 31. Mohammed Aslam Rabani, a 61-year-old twice-married former imam at a mosque in Nottingham, was sentenced to five years in prison for sexually assaulting a teenage boy in the mosque’s attic. Rabani repeatedly assaulted the boy between June 1990 and June 1993, when the victim was 12 years old. The victim, who is now married and a father, said: “He was a father figure to me and everyone. Not even my own family would believe what he was doing to me. I was scared, because beatings at home and at the mosque were commonplace in our community. Children just did as they were told and adults were always right. As a result, I didn’t speak out. Additionally, I thought it was normal, because I also believed that Rabani should be trusted. I assumed that because he was the imam, that whatever he did was right and that he was closest to God.”

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/tommy_robinson_disappears_free_speech_in_england_is_dead.html

The arrest of British free speech activist Tommy Robinson has sent shockwaves across the Anglosphere. The United Kingdom, once dedicated to the values of freedom, has taken a path toward authoritarian government and away from freedom. The once great nation, which created the Magna Carta and once commanded an empire, is now the land of tyranny. Unless the British people love their freedom enough and fight this injustice in fierce fashion, it will remain a land silenced by intimidation and fear.

The authoritarian socialist government of the United Kingdom has been out to get Robinson for years on anything it can. It has harassed, intimidated, arrested, and incarcerated Robinson, as it did last May, since it is now apparently a “crime” to report on the decades-long systematic rape of hundreds of non-Muslim children by gangs of Muslim men, who are now apparently a protected class of people. Lizzie Dearden of the Independent reported that Robinson was arrested for “breaching the peace,” no doubt an absurd pretense by the British authorities in light of the documented film footage of his actions.

Robinson, a former member of the English Defense League whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is being unfairly persecuted by the U.K. government. Robinson’s “crime” was that he yelled questions outside Leeds Crown Court and named the alleged defendants, like any other reporter. So what? The state broadcaster, the BBC, and the mainstream media had already named them. Why was he arrested, and why were they not arrested?

If gangs of white men had spent decades torturing and raping little Muslim girls and a justly outraged Muslim reporter were covering the case, in a similar manner as Robinson, would he be arrested?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/haley-to-un-human-rights-commissioner-border-policy-on-children-is-our-business/

WASHINGTON — UN Ambassador Nikki Haley lashed out at the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for trying to dictate U.S. border policy after criticism from the world body on the Trump administration’s deterrence policy of separating children from parents at the border.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the policy on Hugh Hewitt’s show Wednesday, noting “we are having more people coming bringing children with them entering between the ports of entry, between the ports of entry illegally, and they’re not, you cannot give them immunity.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Thomas Homan told the Center for Immigration Studies in D.C. on Tuesday that “it’s sad to see children cry when you take a parent out of a home, but because it’s sad doesn’t mean that we ignore the law.”

In a briefing this week on human rights issues in Egypt, the United States and Ethiopia, Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said the office is “deeply concerned that the zero tolerance policy recently put in place along the U.S. southern border has led to people caught entering the country irregularly being subjected to criminal prosecution and having their children – including extremely young children– taken away from them as a result.”

“The practice of separating families amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child,” Shamdasani said. “While the rights of children are generally held in high regard in the US, it is the only country in the world not to have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We encourage it to accede to the Convention and to fully respect the rights of all children.”

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/06/europes-vanishing

AVIGNON, France—The Rhone River Valley in southern France is a storybook marriage of high technology, traditional vineyards, and ancestral villages. High-speed trains and well-designed toll roads crisscross majestic cathedrals, castles, and chateaus.

Traveling in a Europe at peace these days evokes both historical and literary allusions. As with the infrastructure and engineering of the late Roman Empire right before its erosion, the Continent rests at its pinnacle of technological achievement.

There is a Roman Empire-like sameness throughout Europe in fashion, popular culture and government protocol—a welcome change from the deadly fault lines of 1914 and 1939.

Yet, as in the waning days of Rome, there is a growing uncertainty beneath the European calm.

The present generation has inherited the physical architecture and art of a once-great West—cathedrals, theaters, and museums. But it seems to lack the confidence that it could ever create the conditions to match, much less exceed, such achievement.

The sense of depression in Europe reminds one of novelist J.R.R. Tolkien’s description of the mythical land of Gondor in his epic fantasy “The Lord of the Rings.” Gondor’s huge walls, vaunted traditions, and rich history were testaments that it once served as a bulwark of a humane Middle-earth.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12464/iran-hollowing-out

The analogies with the former East Germany suggest that Iran, too, is ripe for regime change. They also suggest that a change may come in weeks, months or years, depending on chance events and particularly on whether the local authorities and their security forces, at least in some areas, get tired of killing people.

What is likely to push such developments forward? The answer is that the new American policy, whether by chance or intent, may be as good as anything.

On December 28, 2017, major protests against the Iranian regime broke out in Mashhad and quickly spread to numerous other urban centers. Mostly merely noisy at first, some turned violent and eventually the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) suppressed the phenomenon, killing some and arresting thousands of others. Protests have continued, but news about them is scanty. How are they to be evaluated?

There are interesting parallels with the twilight of the East German regime. By a coincidence, the Iranian regime is in its fortieth year and the East German regime suddenly collapsed just after its leaders had held a large-scale pompous celebration of its fortieth anniversary in the capital, East Berlin.

At its downfall, the government and security apparatus of the so-called “German Democratic Republic” appeared to be, as always, thoroughly in control, yet it took only a few chance events to start a domino effect that swept it away. There was the swell of holidaymakers who drove their polluting “Trabis” into Hungary or Czechoslovakia and thence via Austria into West Germany, because those East European countries had stopped preventing them. Beginning on September 4, 1989, there were the Monday marches that set out after the morning “Prayer for Peace” in Leipzig’s St. Nicholas Church.