RUTHFULLY YOURS

KABUL—Islamic State fighters disguised as doctors fought elite government forces inside Afghanistan’s largest military hospital on Wednesday in a seven-hour battle that left at least 30 people dead and 50 others wounded, Afghan officials said.

Islamic State’s regional affiliate, Khorasan Province, said it carried out the attack, which began when a suicide bomber detonated a car bomb at the entrance of the heavily guarded medical facility in the Afghan capital. In a statement, Khorasan Province said four of its fighters armed with suicide vests then entered the compound.

As the gunmen and security forces exchanged fire inside the complex, hospital personnel scurried to protect patients and evacuate them to safety. Among those killed were an unknown number of doctors, the Afghan defense ministry said.

A photo distributed by Islamic State’s official Amaq news agency purportedly taken inside the besieged hospital showed what it said was a militant posing next to an automatic rifle, wearing a surgical mask and holding a dagger. Another photo showed the bodies of unidentified victims. All the gunmen died in the fighting, Afghan officials said.

Multiple bomb blasts hit Maiduguri early Friday with many feared dead.
The News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, said the attacks were carried out by suspected suicide bombers around the NNPC depot on Damboa Road, Maiduguri.

The police command’s spokesman, Victor Isuku, confirmed the blasts on Friday.
“Our men are still working at the scene,” NAN quoted Mr. Isuku as saying.
He promised to supply details later.

A witness, Abubakar Kaumi, told journalists at the scene that the blast occurred around 3 a.m.

“A woman suspected to be a suicide bomber walking alongside two girls came round the depot.

“They detonated their explosives near some petrol tankers parked there, and destroyed the three vehicles.

A reader is very angry because I suggested the child raped by a 45-year-old migrant (posing as an unaccompanied minor) was 14.

In fact, he was 12.

This is the state of liberalism today. So determined to prove I am wrong, my observations erroneous, the stories I have on tape inaccurate, that it has lost all sight of the raped migrant child crumpled in the corner.

Similarly, the ‘we know better brigade’ are so puffed up with smug self-importance as they point out Trump got his dates confused over the troubles in Sweden, they can’t see past their own chest to the riots in Rinkeby.

Where cars were set alight, shops looted and shopkeepers beaten while youths went on the rampage.

I asked Mattias Karlsson, leader of the Swedish Democrats – currently leading in the polls – why other politicians refuse to acknowledge the problems right in front of their eyes.

He explained that to accept there is a problem would mean accepting nearly 80 years of liberal thinking was wrong. That multiculturalism doesn’t work, that mass immigration does not lead to integration, that Sweden has made a big mistake.

A stranger came up to me in a coffee shop to say much the same thing. She had read my first report. She implored me to shout louder.

She said Sweden cannot go on pretending it is some kind of utopia. That it is on a path to fail, that her friends fear Sweden is being overwhelmed.

Instead of fighting to save what is savable, French opinion-makers are already writing the terms of surrender.

By hybridizing cultures and rejecting Christianity, France will soon end up not even teaching also Arabic, but only Arabic, and marking Ramadan instead of Easter.

Instead of wasting their time trying to organize an “Islam of France”, French political leaders, opinion makers and think tanks should look for ways to counter the creeping Islamization of their country. Otherwise, we may soon be seeing not only a “Grand Imam de France”, but also lashes and stonings on the Champs Élysées.

Two years ago, the rector of the Great Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, suggested converting empty churches into mosques, to accommodate the growing Muslim community in abandoned Christian sites. Now, many people in France seem to have taken the idea so seriously that a report released by the foundation Terra Nova, France’s main think tank that provides ideas to the governing Socialist Party, suggests that in order to integrate Muslims better, French authorities should replace the two Catholic holidays — Easter Monday and Pentecost — with Islamic holidays. To be ecumenical, they also included a Jewish holiday.

Written by Alain Christnacht and Marc-Olivier Padis, the study, “The Emancipation of Islam of France,” states: “In order to treat all the denominations equally, it should include two important new holidays, Yom Kippur and Eid el Kebir, with the removal of two Mondays that do not correspond to particular solemnity”.

Thus, Easter and Pentecost can be sacrificed to keep the ever-elusive multicultural “peace”.

Terra Nova’s proposal was rejected by the Episcopal Conference of France, but endorsed by the Union of Islamic Organizations of France, close to the Muslim Brotherhood, which would also like to include the Islamic holidays of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha in the calendar. The idea of replacing the Christian holidays was also sponsored by the Observatory of Secularism, an organ created by President François Hollande to coordinate secularist policies. The Observatory of Secularism also proposed eliminating some Christian holidays to make way for the Islamic, Jewish and secular holidays. “France must replace two Christian holidays to make way for the Yom Kippur and Eid,” said Dounia Bouzar, a member of the Observatory.

London

I’m choosing choice
So are my girls and boys
Choice is king, there’s no denyin’
Cut my choice, and I’ll start cryin’

So runs one of the many catchy tunes in “Assisted Suicide: The Musical.” The title and subject are dark, but British theatergoers don’t seem to care. “Assisted Suicide” has received rave reviews since it was first shown last year, and when I saw it in January a packed house gave it a standing ovation. That’s all the more remarkable given the musical’s anti-euthanasia message, at a time when voters on both sides of the Atlantic are making their peace with the practice.

“We’ve become used to clapping along and thinking that choice is good,” the musical’s creator, Liz Carr, tells me in a recent interview at the Southbank arts center in London. “It’s like a mantra: the right to die, the right to die, the right to die. We just clap along, and we don’t know what assisted suicide means or what the consequences are—that we’re essentially asking the state to be involved in people’s death.”

Euthanasia will likely be on the legislative agenda in Australia, Finland, Portugal and Sweden this year. In jurisdictions where medically assisted suicide is already permitted—Belgium, Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and six U.S. states among them—the definition of who qualifies keeps expanding.

Holland and Belgium have the world’s most permissive laws. In November, a doctor in the Netherlands euthanized a 41-year-old father of two who had struggled with alcoholism; the Dutch government is considering a draft law to legalize euthanasia for perfectly healthy people who hold “a well-considered opinion that their life is complete.” Belgium in 2014 removed the minimum age for euthanasia, and in September a terminally ill 17-year-old became the first minor to take advantage of the change. Both countries routinely euthanize patients with dementia and depression.
The stakes are especially high for people with disabilities, like Ms. Carr, who suffers from a genetic disorder that prevents her from extending her muscles, among other impairments. Such people watch the assisted-suicide movement’s recent strides and wonder what it all means for their future in societies where the government is the main, often the sole, health-care provider.

Yet a steady stream of uncritical coverage in the media continues to push the euthanasia movement along. Such coverage usually takes the form of TV documentaries that follow, and gently cheer, a disabled or terminally ill patient’s journey to the death chamber. Thanks but no thanks, says Ms. Carr.

“I was really, really angry at the media portrayal of this subject matter and the amount of bias and the amount of propaganda,” she says. Watching the documentaries, “I’d say, ‘But it’s not that simple! Why is nobody looking for alternatives or talking to other people?’ ”

So she created a musical. Much of “Assisted Suicide” involves Ms. Carr taking on her alter ego, a character named Documentary Liz. Film footage shows Documentary Liz living a humdrum disabled life, while a lachrymose melody plays and a narrator dourly describes the scene: “Liz feels trapped, imprisoned by her difficult circumstances. Liz has few freedoms, few choices on a day-to-day basis.” CONTINUE AT SITE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: This analysis argues that Iran is steadily making progress towards a nuclear weapon and is doing so via North Korea. Iran is unwilling to submit to a years-long freeze of its military nuclear program as stipulated by the July 2015 Vienna Nuclear Deal. North Korea is ready and able to provide a clandestine means of circumventing the deal, which would allow the Iranians to covertly advance that nuclear program. At the same time, Iran is likely assisting in the upgrading of certain North Korean strategic capacities.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/iran-progressing-nuclear-weapons-via-north-korea/

While the Vienna Nuclear Deal (VND) is focused on preventing (or at least postponing) the development of nuclear weapons (NW) in Iran, its restrictions are looser with regard to related delivery systems (particularly nuclear-capable ballistic missiles) as well as to the transfer of nuclear technology by Iran to other countries. Moreover, almost no limits have been placed on the enhancement of Tehran’s military nuclear program outside Iran. North Korea (NK) arguably constitutes the ideal such location for Iran.

The nuclear and ballistic interfaces between the two countries are long-lasting, unique, and intriguing. The principal difference between the countries is that while NK probably already possesses NW, Iran aspires to acquire them but is subject to the VND. Iran has the ability, however, to contribute significantly to NK’s nuclear program, in terms of both technology (i.e., by upgrading gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment) and finance (and there is an irony in this, as it is thanks to its VND-spurred economic recovery that Iran is able to afford it).

This kind of strategic, military-technological collaboration is more than merely plausible. It is entirely possible, indeed likely, that such a collaboration is already underway.

This presumption assumes that Iran is unwilling to lose years to the freeze on its military nuclear program. It further assumes that NK is ready and able to furnish a route by which Iran can clandestinely circumvent the VND, thus allowing it to make concrete progress on its NW program. And finally, it assumes that the ongoing, rather vague interface between the two countries reflects Iranian advances towards NW. The following components and vectors comprise that interface.

From the 1990s onward, dozens – perhaps hundreds – of NK scientists and technicians apparently worked in Iran in nuclear and ballistic facilities. Ballistic missile field tests were held in Iran, for instance near Qom, where the NK missiles Hwasong-6 (originally the Soviet Scud-C, which is designated in Iran as Shehab-2) and Nodong-1 (designated in Iran as Shehab-3) were tested. Moreover, in the mid-2000s, the Shehab-3 was tentatively adjusted by Kamran Daneshjoo, a top Iranian scientist, to carry a nuclear warhead.

Furthermore, calculations were made that were aimed at miniaturizing a nuclear implosion device in order to fit its dimensions and weight to the specifications of the Shehab-3 re-entry vehicle. These, together with benchmark tests, were conducted in the highly classified facility of Parchin. Even more significantly, Iranian experts were present at Punggye-ri, the NK nuclear test site, when such tests were carried out in the 2000s.

Syria served concurrently as another important platform for Iran – until the destruction by Israel of the plutonium-based nuclear reactor that had been constructed in Syria by NK. According to some reports, not only were the Iranians fully aware of that project in real time, but the project was heavily financed by Tehran. Considering Iranian interests, it was probably intended as a backup for the heavy water plutonium production reactor of Iran’s military nuclear program, and possibly as an alternative to the Iranian uranium enrichment plant in Natanz in the event that it is dismantled.

“Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning…” — Muslim Brotherhood affiliate Samer Majzoub, Canadian Muslim Forum.

The motion still does not offer any definition or any statistics to support its claim that “Islamophobia” is a problem in Canada.

However, it should hardly shock anyone that the first motion condemning Islamophobia has so swiftly been followed up by a new motion demanding concrete government measures.

The West is submitting to blasphemy laws. Denmark, for example, has apparently decided that now is the time to invoke a dusty, old blasphemy provision. Denmark still has a provision in the penal code against blasphemy, but until now, it has only been used three times. The last time was nearly half a century ago, in 1971. Denmark’s Attorney General has nevertheless just charged a man for burning a Quran.

In the West, blasphemy as a criminal offence has for centuries generally been considered a relic of the past. In a largely godless society, few people take offense to blasphemous comments or acts. Christians do not descend upon alleged blasphemers with guns and knives, and publishers do not worry about “offending” Christians.

In 1997, Danish public service radio financed an artist burning a Bible and broadcast it on national television. No one was charged, even though there were complaints and the state prosecutor investigated the case.

Yet, a Danish man will be prosecuted. He burned his own Quran in his own garden and then posted the video in a public Facebook group, “Yes to freedom, No to Islam,” with the accompanying text, “Consider your neighbor, it stinks when it burns”. Attorney General Jan Reckendorff stated:

“It is the prosecution’s view that the circumstances of the burning of holy books such as the Bible and the Qur’an implies that in some cases it may be a violation of the blasphemy provision, which deals with public mockery or scorn against a religion. It is our opinion that the circumstances of this case require that it should be prosecuted in order for the courts to have the opportunity to take a position on the matter.”

The Attorney General may have been mentioning the Bible only out of politeness. After all, no one has been prosecuted for burning the Bible in Denmark, as not even burning it on national television was considered sufficiently offensive. The Quran is clearly a very different matter.

The decision has caused renewed debate about abolishing the blasphemy provision in Denmark — an issue that regularly pops up.

In Norway, the provision against blasphemy was abolished in 2005. A poll conducted in January showed that 41% of Norwegian Muslims believe that blasphemy should be punished, and 7% believe that the penalty for blasphemy anywhere should be capital punishment.

In Britain, at least one man has been prosecuted and sentenced for burning the Quran (in 2011) and several arrested in 2010 and 2014 .

The enforcement of blasphemy provisions, so out of place in a largely post-Christian Europe, brings back the Middle Ages, when blasphemy was ferociously prosecuted by the Church. Is that really an era for modern European society to be aspiring to after centuries of fighting for freedom of speech?

In Canada, meanwhile, anti-Islamophobia motions, aiming gradually to prohibit all criticism of Islam — and part of Muslim blasphemy laws — are being passed. The Ontario Provincial Parliament unanimously passed an anti-Islamophobia motion in February. The motion called on the legislature to “stand against all forms of hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance; rebuke the… growing tide of anti-Muslim rhetoric and sentiments” and “condemn all forms of Islamophobia.” Needless to say, no such motions were introduced to protect Judaism or Christianity.

Women Defend Yourselves – YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbXZ6uWEsAQ&feature=youtu.be

BRUSSELS—The European Union’s parliament on Thursday asked for the bloc to scrap visa-free travel for U.S. citizens within two months in retaliation for the U.S. continuing to exclude five EU countries from its no-visa regime.

While the request is nonbinding and unlikely to change EU policy, it reflects hostility among some European politicians to the Trump administration.

Under EU visa-reciprocity rules, countries allowed visa-free travel to the EU must replicate the no-visa regime to all EU countries.
However, the U.S. Visa Waiver program allowing visa-free travel to citizens from 38 countries is based on a country-by-country analysis of how many of their citizens overstay or are declined visas.

In the EU, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania continue to be outside the Visa Waiver program, years after joining the EU. Cyprus and Poland became members of the EU in 2004, Romania and Bulgaria 10 years ago, and Croatia in 2013.

A two-year deadline that lapsed in April 2016 obliging the EU executive to scrap visa-free travel for U.S. citizens has been pushed back last year, as the outgoing Obama administration didn’t commit on the issue before the presidential elections that took place in November.

European home-affairs commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, who traveled to Washington last month, spoke to U.S. Secretary for Homeland Security John Kelly and explained the time constraints and the pressure from the European Parliament to resolve the issue. But with the new administration still defining its policies, EU officials don’t expect the matter to be advanced soon. CONTINUE AT SITE