RUTHFULLY YOURS

“[T]he charging documents do not present any evidence against him…. He is being held simply because of his Christian beliefs and is facing grave danger in a Turkish prison.” — Gene Kapp, American Center for Law and Justice.

“The government of Turkey — led by an Islamic party — has begun increased crackdowns on Christians, and Pastor Andrew, if convicted, may face years in prison based on extremely serious — and false — charges,” wrote Jordan Sekulow, Executive Director, American Center for Law and Justice.

“A Turkish judge had the option to deport Pastor Andrew, release him on weekly sign-ins at the local police station, or imprison him. The judge chose to remand Pastor Andrew to prison.” — American Center for Law and Justice.

The global “human rights community” has done nothing to help him. One hopes that the incoming Trump administration will stand up for his freedom.

American Pastor Andrew Brunson has been jailed in the city of Izmir, in western Turkey, on charges of “being a member of an armed terrorist organization”.

Brunson — a U.S. citizen from Black Mountain, North Carolina — has led Protestant churches in Turkey for over 23 years with the knowledge of local authorities, and has raised his family there.

Brunson and his wife, Norine, were summoned to the local police station in Izmir on October 7, 2016 to discuss their application to renew their visas. They thought they would be receiving a long-awaited permanent residence card; instead, they were detained by Turkish police.

While Norine was released 13 days later, Pastor Brunson was informed he would be detained until deportation, based on being a “threat to national security”.

To impede the smooth flow of traffic, if one is to go by the globe-girdling agitation of ladies who don’t much approve of the latest US President or, for that matter, the result of elections that fail to produce the result they anticipated.

Yesterday in Melbourne, where outpourings of local feminist sentiment can be murkier than the Yarra, the crusader in blue took her male along to join in the fun. No doubt he enjoyed the outing, especially the heavy lifting of those weighty issues on his half of two signs extolling the correct positions on a number of fashionable topics. The photo also perhaps explains why it can sometimes be rather hard to stay on top of the latest trends in feminist discourse.

Surprisingly, if women are to be free, it seems capping CO2 emissions is a vital first step; likewise, all who aspire to enlightenment must scoff at any link between Islam and frequent outbreaks of mass murder — a conclusion only those silly enough to favour an afternoon at the beach over marching and chanting would ever be likely to entertain. They are the same people, just by the way, who might well regard the veiling of women, child marriage, arranged marriage, consanguineous marriage, genital mutilation and the scripturally ordained second-rate status of women as symptoms of a true patriarchy. Feminists, of course, know better.

And don’t forget that sexuality is not a choice — handy advice if troubled by a sudden interest in bicycle seats or, for that matter, an eagerness to parade as 50% of what many might regard as a humiliating public exercise in cognitive dissonance. “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored,” proclaims Madam’s placard, complete with an erudite attribution to Aldous Huxley, who penned that thought in A Note on Dogma. To be fair, she could not have squeezed too many more words on that single sheet of cardboard and must therefore be granted the benefit of the doubt for not sampling another relevant quote. It is in Huxley’s letter of congratulation to George Orwell upon the publication of 1984.

… I believe that the world’s leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.

Infant conditioning? Narco-hypnosis? Why, it brings to mind Ritalin time with Matron after a Safe Schools class!

For more on the International Day of Female Fury in Comfy Shoes, follow the link below, where another strange discordance is in evidence. When Donald Trump is surreptitiously recorded saying something vulgar in private, he is to be roundly condemned. But it’s entirely different when feminist heroine Madonna speaks of yearning to blow up the White House and urges her new president to go suck a …. well, just follow the link. At Quadrant Online we leave such language to the ladies.

“The genie will not go back into the bottle again, whether you like it or not.” — Geert Wilders, MP and head of the Party for Freedom, the Netherlands.

A growing number of Europeans are rebelling against decades of government-imposed multiculturalism, politically correct speech codes and mass migration from the Muslim world.

Europe’s establishment parties, far from addressing the concerns of ordinary voters, have tried to silence dissent by branding naysayers as xenophobes, Islamophobes and neo-Nazis.

“In many respects, France and Germany are proving they do not understand the meaning of Brexit. They are reflexively, almost religiously, following exactly the path that has provoked the EU’s current existential crisis.” — Ambassador John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

“There is a genuine feeling that Trump taking over the White House is part of a bigger, global movement. Our critics, looking at Trump’s candidacy and his speech yesterday, would call it the rise of populism. I would say it’s simply a return to nation state democracy and proper values…. This is a genuine political revolution.” — Nigel Farage, former head of Britain’s UKIP party, who led the effort for the United Kingdom to leave the EU.

“This disruption is fruitful. The taboos of the last few years are now fully on the agenda: illegal immigration, Islam, the nonsense of open borders, the dysfunctional EU, the free movement of people, jobs, law and order. Trump’s predecessors did not want to talk about it, but the majority of voters did. This is democracy.” — Roger Köppel, editor-in-chief of Die Weltwoche, Switzerland.

Inspired by the inauguration of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, the leaders of Europe’s main anti-establishment parties have held a pan-European rally aimed at coordinating a political strategy to mobilize potentially millions of disillusioned voters in upcoming elections in Germany, the Netherlands and France.

Appearing together in public for the first time, Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Front, Frauke Petry, leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s Northern League and Harald Vilimsky of Austria’s Freedom Party gathered on January 21 at a rally in Koblenz, Germany, where they called on European voters to participate in a “patriotic spring” to topple the European Union, reassert national sovereignty and secure national borders.

Hello Germany. Is everything alright? I’m doing well.
Yesterday a new America, today Koblenz and tomorrow a new Europe!

It’s really a great honor for me to be here today in the beautiful city of Koblenz, at a meeting of the ENF Group, in the presence of so many German patriots.

And what you stand for is extremely important. Not only for Germany, but for all of Europe.

Europe needs a strong Germany, a self-conscious Germany, a proud Germany, a Germany that stands for its culture, identity and civilization.

Europe needs Frauke [Petry], instead of Angela [Merkel]!

My friends, that is why Germany is so great. Why you are great. Because you do your duty. And the Alternative for Germany (AfD), and my friend Frauke Petry, and all of you here, stand against the new totalitarianism that threatens us today.

We are at the beginning of a Patriotic Spring across Europe, and also here in Germany. And I thank you for that. You are the new Germany.

And all our European countries are faced with the question of their existence. My friends, the United Nations expects that the population of Africa will quadruple by the end of the century — from 1.1 billion today, to 4.4 billion. Studies show that in Southern Africa, one in three adults wants to emigrate. And in North Africa and the Middle East, one in five wants to emigrate. Many of them want to come to Europe in the future.

The question that none of our ruling politicians now ask is: How do we protect our country and our identity against mass immigration? How do we protect our values?
How do we protect our civilization? Our culture? The future of our children? These are the fundamental questions we have to answer.

In recent years, our governments have allowed millions of people to flow uncontrollably into our countries. Our governments have conducted a dangerous open-borders policy.

And I know, as do you, that when the citizens of Eastern Europe defeated communism in 1989, they were inspired by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Vaclav Havel, Vladimir Bukovski and others, who told them that people have the right, but also a commitment, to “live in the truth.”

Original Post: Breaking news out of Melbourne, Australia, that at least three people have died after a man plowed a vehicle into a group of pedestrians near a shopping mall.

According to one witness, the driver was screaming, “Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar!”

This event is reminiscent of the terror attacks last July in Nice, France, and more recently at a Christmas mall in Berlin.Remarkably, police have asked Melbourne Herald Sun reporter Andrea Hanblin to remove her video interview of the eyewitness who claimed the driver was shouting, “Allahu Akhbar, Allahu Akhbar!”

The immediate two aims of the Kairos Document are: 1) to boycott Israel and the Jewish historical connection to the Land of Israel; 2) to neutralize the support of Christian Zionists and any other Christians for Israel.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Secretariat targets Israel’s tourist industry and aspires to re-direct pilgrims from Israel to the Palestinian area, and to guide pilgrims from having a positive outlook on Israel to having a negative reactions to the Jewish State.

Many faithful Christians, including a good portion of the fine Lutheran Church of Hannover, are hardly aware of the degree of deception employed by the WCC Secretariat. They would be scandalized to know that they were being used for the Secretariat’s scheme of nationalism and anti-Semitism.

The Christian faith is known for holding aspects of the divine commitment to the Jewish people by seven biblical covenants: six unconditional ones with Abraham (Gen 12, 1-3), the Land (Gen 12, 1), the Levites (Num 25, 10-13), David (2 Sam 7, 10-16), Israel and Judah (Jer 31, 31-34), Jerusalem (Ez 16), and one conditional one at Sinai (Ex 19, 5). Those commitments are preceded by the universal covenant with the whole creation (Gen 9, 12-17). Many attempts which try to re-draw that celestial union of universality-cum-Israel-particularity fall, unswervingly, into the trap of nationalism and anti-Semitism.

Two recent divine-restructuring efforts of that kind count the Christians in Nazi -Germany and some Palestinian Christians. The former attempt ended in the Holocaust; the latter is now sponsored by the World Council of Churches (WCC) through two major engines, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme to Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), and the Kairos Palestine Document with its spin-off, “Alternative Tourism.” These two programs are of interest here.

Denmark’s parliament yesterday passed a draft forbidding people to marry a person under the age of consent. In addition to this, Copenhagen decided it will no longer accept marriages that have previously been registered abroad if one of the persons involved in such a union is under the age of 18 years old. https://gatestone.eu/denmark-marriage/

Denmark initiated a similar law in February 2016, but unfortunately for the child brides, the Danish Immigration Service (DIS) decided to reunify them with their ‘husbands’ in September 2016, after the government had made a sudden U-turn on the issue. Copenhagen ‘justified‘ the reversal of its position by stating that preventing this type of child abuse might amount to an infringement of the fundamental refugees’ rights.

“In some of these cases it has been assessed that it would not be compatible with Denmark’s international obligations to maintain the separate living quarters, thus these couples have been offered to be housed together.”

But the Danish legal crusade against child marriage has been renewed, and is still based on reports from 2016 showing Danish asylum centres accommodate some 27 ‘married’ juveniles, writes The Danish Local. Previous accounts made mention of 14-year-old girls who entered Denmark as refugees and then became the brides of men that were more than ten years their senior.

Naser Khader, from the Conservatives, last year told Metro Xpress that he was “outraged” by the situation:

“That’s what you call ‘pedophilia’ when you have made a 14-year-old pregnant and are allowed to stay with the girl. The men should not be able to apply for asylum in Denmark. We can give asylum to the 14-year-old but should kick their grown men out. In Holland, you can, according to what I’ve been told, not be granted asylum if you have a child bride. So it must be in Denmark.”

The tightening of the laws on Thursday nevertheless still offer room for legal loopholes. A marriage will not be rejected when there’s “a compelling argument” for the union.

The above mentioned supposedly successful Dutch government is still struggling with the issue as well. Holland banned child marriages in 2015, but in the four months that followed the implementation of the law, some 60 Syrian-born child brides entered the Netherlands, according to RTL.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Most observers, when debating the pros and cons of a two-state solution, focus exclusively on its potential impact on Israel and its Jewish citizens. Much less attention is paid to the solution’s potential impact on the Palestinians. Leftists, right-wingers, conservatives and liberals all tend to assume that two states would naturally be in the Palestinians’ interest. Think again.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/396-frisch-two-state-solution/

As was apparent at the recent Paris conference, the world refuses to acknowledge that the two-state solution has already failed the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority (PA), established in 1994, came to rule over all of Gaza in the summer of 2005 after the complete Israeli withdrawal and destruction of Israeli settlements. The PA also had exclusive control over the major cities in Judea and Samaria/the West Bank and their environs, comprising some 95 percent of these territories’ population.

However, that unified Palestinian entity, which was supposed to be the Palestinian side of the two-state equation, proved extremely short-lived. Within two years of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, Hamas took over Gaza completely. In the summer of 2007, after several rounds of fighting that began soon after Hamas’s electoral victory in 2006, the Islamist group established its own exclusive government in Gaza.

Thus, the Palestinians partitioned themselves into two bodies: an autocratic entity headed by Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, and a Hamas theocracy in Gaza. Almost unnoticed, the two-state solution had given way to a three-state solution.

European states – like France, for example, which convened the Paris conference – will no doubt clam that that was all in the past, and the past can always be corrected.

It is certainly true that the Palestinians are always allowed by the international community to have yet another chance. But a two-state solution is simply no longer feasible.

A relatively bloodless civil war has been raging between the two entities day in and day out since their bloody 2007 confrontation, offering a constant illustration of why there cannot be a single Palestinian state. If the two sides were to attempt to reunite, that war would become very bloody indeed. The Palestinians themselves realize this, which explains the succession of failed attempts to bring the sides together.

As separate entities, the two sides make do by utterly subduing the opposing group. The cost of this suppression has been relatively low so far: several deaths of tortured political prisoners in Hamas and PA prisons, a few extrajudicial killings, and the occasional closing down of professional or charitable organizations linked to the opponent. The PA, the economic clout of which is financed by the international community, has blocked projects like the creation of a new Israeli electric grid line into Gaza and the creation of a modern port that would considerably improve Gazans’ standard of living.