RUTHFULLY YOURS

Accept for argument’s sake that the vote on June 23 favours the Leave case, what next? No longer in the thrall of Brussels technocrats and having rejected the political project that is the EU, Britain would have a free hand to innovate. A move to a flat-tax, for example.
‘Uncertainty’ is a term in common usage. Both the Leave and Remain campaigns would have to admit to using negative tactics while economic fears are hawked in almost biblical language. Many Britons feel afraid of leaving. They have had to endure President Hollande’s “consequences”[1] and his heir apparent M. Macron warning that he will “roll out the red carpet” for the bankers who will leave London for Paris[2]. They have had warnings from the International Monetary Fund (with more yet to come), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the Leader of the Free World himself[3]. President Obama’s remark that Britain would be “at the back of the queue” as regards to any trade deals was slightly at odds with his speech in Germany two days later where he said he wanted the US-EU TTIP trade deal concluded by the end of the year. How long is this queue again?

The IMF report mentions Britain only four times[4]: In the foreword; predictably in the “Outlook for Individual Countries and Regions”; that the potential of Brexit is one of the “Heightened downside risks” facing the world economy[5]; finally in a special section of a hundred odd words[6]. The actual risk from Brexit is quantified as that dreaded word “uncertainty” again as well as potential damage to trading relationships[7]. It is undermined by the report itself pointing out that Britain’s strong economic performance will offset any “heightened uncertainty ahead of the June referendum”[8]. All these are potential risks and are hedged with many ‘coulds’ and ‘likelys’. None of the report’s authors, no matter how experienced, have ever witnessed such an event and all forecasts should be treated as the worst scenario they wish to imagine.

The OECD report, while more detailed, can be dismissed out of hand. A hatchet job deliberately painting the most damaging picture. In presenting the report one almost expected that OECD head, Señor Gurría[9], would unveil the younger Bill Murray of Ghostbusters drily warning of “human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!” but relations between the US and Mexico seemed to have soured of late. The underlying assumptions of the report, in all of its scenarios, are so flawed as to be laughable. They surmise that Britain would become inward looking, with little trade, immigration or investment. Even its most neutral assessments rest on premises such as “most of this stems from the decline in trade openness” and “a failure to undertake regulatory reforms”[10] which completely misses the point of why Britain would wish to leave.

Both the OECD and the IMF base their hypotheses on the idea that Brexit is a “turn toward more nationalistic policies, including protectionist ones”[11]. The OECD do concede Britain may wish to “improve the business climate” post Brexit but even its best case assumes it would only do so at a speed it calculates partly from Mr Brown’s Ministry, hardly known as a great de-regulating one, and in its worst case that it would do nothing[12]. Its fundamentally flawed view of the UK is highlighted by its pointing out that despite business opposition to labour market regulation and the Working Time Directive, the “political constellation after Brexit” would probably not heed that[13]. Perhaps the best example of its partisan nature is in its summation of the financial sector. Highlighting the risks it then, apropos of nothing, mentions that Switzerland exports an even greater proportion of its banking services to the EU but that they got a good deal[14].

The signs near the Al-Aqsa mosque were clear: “The cameras will be broken and the hands that hung them will be cut off.”

Installing video cameras near the Al Aqsa mosque would be a painful thorn in the side of all the terrorist organizations. The immensely successful collaborations in the area — those with Jordan and Israel and Egypt and Israel — serve the security interests of all three countries, as well as the Palestinians who do not wish to be taken over by Islamic extremists even more brutal than the leaders we have now. And that is precisely why Palestinian elements, from the Palestinian Authority to Hamas, were determined to sabotage the project.

Changing the name of the Temple Mount to Haram al Sharif is another example of the treacherous United Nations’ rewriting of history. The UN move is seen even by us Muslims as a villainous lie that denies not only the historic Jewish presence in Jerusalem, but the history of Christianity as well. Do they really think we are that stupid?

Regardless of what the treacherous UN thinks, surrendering to Islamist demands will not win the war against terrorism.

An article published in Al-Quds Al-Arabi on April 20, 2016 asked why Jordanian Prime Minister Abdallah Ensour fired Salame Hamad from his post as Minister of the Interior, despite Hamad having restored internal security and causing Jordanians to feel they were living in a country of law and order.[1]

The reason, it turned out, was that he was not decisive enough in dealing with the Muslim Brotherhood. While he did close some of its offices and place strict limitations on the number of Gazans visiting Jordan, he apparently did not deal with the movement emphatically enough, and had even met with its leaders in his office twice.

One of the signs of this weakness in dealing with Islamists was Jordan’s surprising recent backpedaling on an agreement instituted by the Jordanian Wakf (office of religious endowment), which was brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. According to the agreement, video cameras would be installed in Jerusalem at the Al-Aqsa mosque. The footage would be transmitted in real time to both Israeli and the Jordanian authorities. Such an arrangement would improve security in Al-Aqsa, and expose and prevent hostile activities by the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, the Northern Branch of Israel’s Islamic Movement and members of the Hizb al-Tahrir radical Islamist group.

The Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, have, in fact, managed also to foul their relations with Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. After years of loyalty by Jordanian Islamists to the royal house of the Hashemites, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad (s.a.a.w.), in recent years Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood entered into conflict with the Jordanian government.

Signs of the conflict were quickly evident in threats plastered on Al-Aqsa mosque. They warned against the installation of cameras. The signs were clear: “The cameras will be broken and the hands that hung them will be cut off.”

It is the very existence of the Jordanian Wakf that keeps the Palestinian Authority (PA) — and subversives from the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Movement, Hamas and Hizb al-Tahrir — from turning the Al-Aqsa mosque into a fulcrum for a religious war between Islam and Judaism, on the false claim that the Jews and the government of Israel are supposedly plotting to destroy the mosque.

The truth is that the cameras would finally prove, once and for all, who the genuine provocateurs are that endanger the mosque. The cameras would expose the hypocrisy of the Palestinian Authority, which pretends to care about Al-Aqsa, while actually simply wanting to keep Jews from having access to the Temple Mount.

Palestinian leaders have repeatedly shown that their priority is not peace, or a two-state solution, or a Palestinian state, but repression.

If a Palestinian state is created without correcting these destructive practices, it is highly likely that the new Palestinian regime will follow the same pattern already established, and be a hatemongering, corrupt, undemocratic, oppressive, belligerent, and ineffective regime. This would not only be a security threat for Israel, it would mean more of the same for the Palestinians.

France, with the support of the United States, is leading a new attempt at peace between Israel and the Palestinians, with the implied goal that an independent Palestinian state would be created — but what should we expect from such a state?

Although past behavior is not a perfect predictor of future behavior, it is a strong indicator of it, especially if no corrective action has been taken.
Violence

When Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared, “The dawn of freedom rises with the evacuation of the last Israeli soldier and settler.” Yet, instead of using that freedom to build a successful economy, Palestinians destroyed the greenhouses that the settlers had left, and terrorists launched rocket attacks against Israel. These attacks forced Israel to institute a naval blockade of Gaza, to limit the supply of weapons to terrorists.

The Oslo Accords signed by Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s provided a transition period meant to lead to Palestinian statehood. However, instead of peaceful coexistence with Israel, the Palestinian leadership launched an assault that became known as the Second Intifada.

During the recent stabbing attacks by Palestinian terrorists, Abbas declared, “Each drop of blood that was spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood as long as it’s for the sake of Allah. Every shahid (martyr) will be in heaven and every wounded person will be rewarded, by Allah’s will.”

These violent actions and the incitement are not exceptions. They are part of a pattern of Arab denial of the Jews’ right to exist, which started well before Israel declared its independence, and that caused several wars and innumerable terrorist attacks against Israel.
Lack of democracy

Palestinian democracy has so far been a failure. Yasser Arafat was elected in July 1994 as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) for a four-year term, but he stayed in power, without further elections, for more than 10 years until his death in November 2004. Mahmoud Abbas was elected President in May 2005, and is still in office, without further elections, eleven years later.

Hamas, which won the PA legislative elections of 2006, was never invited to take the PA reins of power, but it took control of the Gaza Strip through a violent overthrow of Fatah, and still controls Gaza — also without further elections — ten years later.

Fatah and Hamas have used elections to create a semblance of democracy, and both have abused their authority to go far beyond their legitimate mandates. Both routinely use control of the media, control of the education system, and violence to maintain their power, as documented extensively by Israeli-Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh.

The World Health Organization seems to have its hands full. With the Rio Olympics only two months away, the Zika virus has become an international public-health emergency. Ebola’s embers still glow in West Africa, and yellow fever besieges Angola.

Yet the WHO found time at its annual meeting in May to tackle what it must consider a particularly pressing item: Israel, specifically conditions in “the occupied Palestinian territory” and “the occupied Syrian Golan.” A resolution, reported by the Geneva-based UN Watch, proposed that a field assessment be conducted to investigate. It passed 107-8, with eight abstentions.

The resolution, sponsored by the Palestinian delegation and the Arab bloc, was the only country-specific one considered. The WHO’s session neglected to address the bombing of Syrian hospitals by Syrian and Russian warplanes. It skipped the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, where the Saudi-led bombings and blockade have left millions without food and water.

Israel, like any country, makes mistakes. Its actions should be scrutinized, but it shouldn’t be held to an arbitrary, higher standard. Far from being outraged, the WHO should laud the Jewish state for its treatment of Syrians in the Golan. Israeli hospitals have stepped up to provide medical treatment to more than 3,000 refugees from the brutal civil war.

This typifies the Jewish state’s humanity. Palestinians regularly go to Israeli hospitals for treatment. Two years ago, the daughter of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh underwent emergency treatment in a Tel Aviv facility shortly after Hamas-Israel fighting ended.

Health outcomes in the West Bank and Gaza might surprise many readers. Take life expectancy at birth, a classic benchmark. In 2014, the figure for these territories was 73, according to the World Bank. Compare that with Libya (72), Iraq (69), Egypt (71) and Jordan (74). CONTINUE AT SITE

Back in January, the U.K.’s Gay Times ran a morbidly fascinating piece. Following the latest attacks in Paris and ISIS’s throwing of gays off buildings, the magazine asked, “Is Islam itself really a threat to the gay community?” Readers may be unsurprised to hear that the next sentence read, “The answer is simple. ‘No.’”

According to the piece (written by one Thomas Ling), there is nothing in Islam that need worry gays. But what, I hear you ask, about the Islamic traditions? What about the Koran? Fortunately, Gay Times had this covered, insisting that the Koran says “nothing at all” about being gay. Phew! So everyone can flip over to the articles on diets and work-out routines?

Well, not quite. The reason given was that “the word ‘homosexual’ simply didn’t exist when it [the Koran] was written.” Okay, but what about the founder of Islam, Mohammad, and his injunction to kill people who are gay? Our intrepid reporter avoided that hadith but did note another “prophetic narration,” which says, “When a man lies with another man, the throne of heaven shakes.” (The author fails to make the obvious frippery that if you’re really lucky the earth will also move.)

Anyway, having got near the rub, Gay Times author promptly slipped into the more comfortable issue of Biblical injunctions on homosexuality. He insisted that “the ruthless and reckless applications of Sharia law by IS are not inevitable consequences of Islam.” To give the reader a boost, we are reminded of a Muslim MP who voted for same-sex marriage and told how great the work of an “anti-Islamophobia” group was before closing with some bashing of tabloids for their publishing “negative” news stories about Muslims. The whole exercise in casuistry concluded thus:

Maybe it’s time to accept that Islamic State has very little to do with the teachings of Islam. Maybe we should start comparing their fighters to terrorists like Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, motivated by skewed personal beliefs, instead of to an entire diverse religion. It’s maybe then that society can accept Islam and promote a tolerance that can be proudly looked back on by future generations of gay Muslims.

That’s a lot of “maybes.” So let me add a couple of my own. “Maybe” Gay Times and Mr. Ling are wrong. Maybe they are in fact only symptomatic of the slow learning of gay communities in the West when it comes to Islam. And maybe, just maybe, after Orlando, a few more people will realize that the patchwork-quilt paradise of societal atomization we call “diversity” is a hell of our own creation.

It isn’t surprising that most gay spokespeople and publications lean left. For historic reasons — principally the political Right’s opposition to gay rights — most gay spokespeople continue to think that the political Right is the sole locale from which anti-gay sentiment can come. For many years Pat Robertson was their worst nightmare. But Pat Robertson just wanted to stop gays from marrying. He didn’t call for people to throw us off high buildings.

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2016/06/13/isis-takes-credit-for-stabbing-police-commander-wife-near-paris/

Through its same wire service that has claimed credit for Orlando, Brussels and other attacks, ISIS took responsibility for the double murder of a police commander and his wife.

The 42-year-old cop was in front of his suburban home in Magnanville, about 30 outside of Paris, this evening when he was attacked by a knife-wielding assailant.

The attacker then took the victim’s wife and 3-year-old son hostage inside their house.

Police surrounded the property, evacuating nearby residents, and attempted to negotiate for a few hours before storming the home and fatally shooting the attacker. The wife was found dead inside the house; the toddler was rescued.

Le Parisien newspaper reported that a neighbor heard the attacker yelling “Allahu Akbar.”

The paper said the police commander had been stabbed nine times in the abdomen and the assailant announced the wife’s murder on social media after he killed her.

The ISIS-linked Amaq Agency later issued a breaking news alert stating an “Islamic State fighter kills deputy chief of the police station in the city of Les Mureaux and his wife with blade weapons near Paris.”

Another massacre and where to sheet the blame? Polite convention precludes making more than passing mention of the killer’s creed, while ‘too many guns’ and ‘mental illness’ are getting tired. So let’s settle on a non-specific strain of homophobia and leave the Prophet out of it
Another barbaric Islamic terrorist massacre, killing 49 people and injuring over 50 in an Orlando gay nightclub; and the heart searching begins among the mentally challenged. What drove American-born, Afghani-parented, frequent-mosque-attending, prayer-mat-toting, Omar Mateen? It is a mystery.

His ex-wife said he was mentally unstable. He apparently beat her and kept her housebound. CNN after flirting as best they could with all kinds of possibilities, including white supremacism, had a get out. Of course, it makes sense now; he was around the bend. Well, wife-beating and keeping women secluded might just be the way devout male Muslims go about their lives. Sounds crazy to us but not to an Afghani or, say, Saudi-Arabian, I dare say.

President Obama couldn’t bring himself yet again to mention Islam as being complicit, though he did manage to blame guns. Expect the gun laws in the US to get most emphasis by Democrats who are clearly oblivious to the zero correlation between worldwide terrorist attacks and gun laws. There is no accounting for sheer wilful blindness and imbecility.

Mind you it is likely that Mateen was unbalanced. I tend to think that anyone who would deliberately gun down people in a nightclub is probably deranged. But where does that get us when clearly there are so many deranged people inspired by Islamic scripture.

Wikipedia lists 220 worldwide Islamic terrorist attacks in the six years 2010 – 2015, which have received “significant press coverage.” So far 29 are listed for 2016, including the Orlando attack. Countless other less significant attacks have occurred. It is quite easy to see online estimates of over 20,000 Islamic attacks since 9/11.

These are numbers of plague proportions carried out by people who are apparently mentally unbalanced. Is it something in the water? In fact, it is something in the book. And more of us better start comprehending that before we are buried as a civilisation – the LGBT crowd among them.

It just might have been no accident that Mateen targeted a gay nightclub at the start of Ramadan. There is plenty of support in the Hadiths for killing homosexuals, including by throwing them from high buildings. Of course Islamic apologists are fond of quoting Old Testament condemnation of sodomy. I too would think this relevant if there were bodies of Jewish or Christian religious zealots who went around giving life to these passages by encouraging the killing of homosexuals. As it is, it is totally and completely irrelevant and, I suspect, deliberately deceptive and distracting.

The Orlando massacre is a hideous reminder to Americans that homophobia is an integral part of Islamic extremism. That isn’t to say that some people of other faiths and ideologies aren’t hostile to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, community. Nor is to say that Islamic extremists don’t target other minorities, in addition to engaging in wholly indiscriminate violence. But it is important to establish why a man like Omar Mateen could be motivated to murder 49 people in a gay nightclub, interrupting the slaughter, as law-enforcement officials reported, to dial 911, proclaim his support for Islamic State and then pray to Allah.

I offer an explanation in the form of four propositions.

1. Muslim homophobia is institutionalized. Islamic law as derived from scripture, and as evolved over several centuries, not only condemns but prescribes cruel and unusual punishments for homosexuality.

2. Many Muslim-majority countries have laws that criminalize and punish homosexuals in line with Islamic law.

3. It is thus not surprising that the attitudes of Muslims in Muslim-majority countries are homophobic and that many people from those countries take those attitudes with them when they migrate to the West.

4. The rise of modern Islamic extremism has worsened the intolerance toward homosexuality. Extremists don’t just commit violence against LGBT people. They also spread the prejudice globally by preaching that homosexuality is a disease and a crime.

Not all Muslims are homophobic. Many are gay or lesbian themselves. Some even have the courage to venture into the gender fluidity that the 21st century West has come to recognize. But these LGBT Muslims are running directly counter to their religion.

In his 2006 book “Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law,” the Dutch scholar Rudolph Peters notes that most schools of Islamic law proscribe homosexuality. They differ only on the mode of punishment. “The Malikites, the Shiites and some Shafi’ites and Hanbalites are of the opinion that the penalty is death, either by stoning (Malikites), the sword (some Shafi’ites and Hanbalites) or, at the discretion of the court, by killing the culprit in the usual manner with a sword, stoning him, throwing him from a (high) wall or burning him (Shiites).”

Under Shariah—Islamic law—those engaging in same-sex sexual acts can be sentenced to death in nearly a dozen countries or in large areas of them: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, the northern states of Nigeria, southern parts of Somalia, two provinces in Indonesia, Mauritania, Afghanistan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates. Death is also the penalty in the territories in

Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed’s vision for Saudi Arabia, the way he puts it, is as a country no longer dependent on oil; with a growing economy and transparent laws, which will consequently give it a strong position in the world.

The prince has already received negative blowback from conservative members of the Al Saud clan. They have been resistant to change in the past and may not appreciate new reforms which might threaten their authority in the country.

The status quo is that Saudis are raised with the conviction that the state will always provide for their needs, healthcare and security, in exchange for their loyalty to the ruling Al Saud clan. However, the recent oil crisis has witnessed many luxuries stripped away from the Saudi people, as the state prepared to deal with a growing budget deficit. The move to impose taxes, a concept alien to the country, is sure to create discontent among ordinary Saudi people.

Saudi Arabia, long associated with oil wealth and extravagance, has decided that time has come for it to revamp its image. Last year, King Salman, 80, ascended the Saudi throne, and since then has unleashed major reforms, introduced a more assertive domestic and foreign policy, and handed over the reins of some of the most significant posts of the Saudi leadership to a younger group of Saudi leaders.

The driving force behind these reforms is the 30-year-old deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, otherwise known as MBS. Prince Mohammed’s vision for Saudi Arabia, the way he puts it, is as a country no longer dependent on oil; with a growing economy and transparent laws, which will consequently give it a strong position in the world. All of this may come across as appealing, but the ability of Prince Mohammed to deliver these reforms depends on several variables. To succeed, Prince Mohammed, although he enjoys a broad mandate, still needs the support of the rest of the country.

Shouting “Allahu akbar,” a 29-year-old American citizen with roots in Afghanistan entered a Florida nightclub at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning and committed what is being called “the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.”

Prior to slaughtering at least 50 people and seriously wounding dozens of others, Omar Mateen phoned 9-1-1 and pledged allegiance to ISIS.

Mateen had planned the massacre in advance, purposely targeting a venue known to be frequented by lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgenders — the perfect personification of liberal Western values considered abhorrent to radical Muslims, regardless of their specific jihadist affiliation.

The FBI promptly launched an investigation into the now-dead Mateen, who had been working as a security guard at G4S Secure Solutions since 2007. It quickly emerged, however, that Mateen was already on the FBI’s radar for having various ties to Islamic radicalism.

About 10 hours after the massacre, with bodies still inside The Pulse — Orlando’s self-described “premier gay nightclub” — President Barack Obama addressed the nation to condemn the horrific incident, which, surprisingly, he referred to as an act of terror. Not the least bit surprisingly, he refused to utter the word “Islamist.” Instead, he declared the perpetrator a person “filled with hate.”

On a Fox News panel in the aftermath of the bloodbath, counterterrorism expert Sebastian Gorka stressed the need for the White House and the world to acknowledge the clear connection between this attack and all the others with the same ideology. Linking the Fort Hood, Boston, San Bernardino, Paris and Brussels massacres, Gorka — author, most recently, of “Defeating Jihad: The Winnable War” — was the only one who mentioned Israel. The point he was making, and has been trying to hit home in his writings and lectures, is that the Islamist assault on the West is not a series of individual lone-wolf attacks, but rather a global movement, whose “propaganda by deed” is terrorism. And, he said, these recent acts, unlike the 9/11 attacks, are relatively small in scope and cheap to carry out, but nevertheless terrorize and paralyze whole cities. In other words, they get a lot of bang for their buck, both literally and figuratively.