RUTHFULLY YOURS

This miscarriage of justice being orchestrated against Geert Wilders is merely one aspect of the many prosecutions being carried out under laws less about prevention and punishment of actual crimes, and more about criminalizing dissent against the demographic transformation of Europe.

After terror outrages in the name of Islam, its apologists perform defensive operations that try to render Islamic doctrine immune from scrutiny.

The eagerness with which social media giants, such as Facebook and Twitter, have imposed a policy of enforced silence — in concert with Europe’s leaders — is a further irony that will not be lost on future historians.

If the criminal justice systems of European nations continue to pursue charges against whoever questions or criticizes Islam, what hope is there then for the silent members of the Muslim community who might wish to speak out?

The spread of jihad is irreparably undermining Europe’s post-War reputation as a continent of security and peace.

In addition, free speech seems increasingly regarded by mainstream politicians as dangerous and archaic. Diversity of opinion often appears seen as an obstacle to multiculturalism, the objective of which, ironically, is diversity.

These dual trends are set to come to a head in the Netherlands next year, in elections set to follow the conclusion of the trial of Dutch MP Geert Wilders this November. Wilders is the leader the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, or PVV), which currently tops the country’s polls. He faces imprisonment on a charge of hate speech, for saying that the Netherlands could use “fewer Moroccans.”

As Wilders outlined in his opening statement to the court on March 18, the politically-motivated bias against him of one of the judges is a matter of public record. Moreover, despite ample demonstration by Wilders’s defense of the forgery of a group of the criminal complaints that initiated his prosecution, his trial nevertheless continues.

This miscarriage of justice being orchestrated against Wilders is merely one aspect of the many prosecutions being carried out under laws less about prevention and punishment of actual crimes, and more about criminalizing dissent against the demographic transformation of Europe.

Ayatollah Khamenei made clear that he would hold President Rouhani responsible for a failure to produce improvements in Iran’s economy. He implied that if Rouhani fails to adopt a “Resistance Economy” approach, it would negatively impact Rouhani’s aspirations for a second term.

Khamenei’s warning to conserve foreign-currency windfalls that result from the lifting of sanctions is probably a criticism of Rouhani’s recent visit to Europe, where he signed deals to purchase 138 passenger planes.

Rouhani’s management of the economy will be closely monitored by hardliners seeking a return to popularity and the presidency in the 2018 presidential elections.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei last month used the Persian New Year holiday (Nowruz) to deliver his most comprehensive plan for Iran’s economy. His address, proclaimed from his hometown of Mashhad, outlined ten principles of the “Resistance Economy.”

From this speech, it is clear that Khamenei’s plan for Iran’s economic recovery is quite different from that of President Hassan Rouhani and his cabinet. Moreover, Khamenei threw down the gauntlet that he would hold Rouhani responsible for a failure to produce promised improvements in Iran’s economy. Left unsaid but implied was the threat that if Rouhani fails to adopt a “Resistance Economy” approach, it would negatively impact the President’s aspirations for a second term.

For a worldview that claims to be all about freedom and choice and “being oneself,” transgenderism sure is tetchy and intolerant. Consider what has just happened to the celebrated British novelist Ian McEwan. Last week, during a speech at the Royal Institution in London, McEwan took a genteel swipe at the politics of identity. He said identity politics is becoming increasingly consumerist, where we now pluck a ready-made “self” from “the shelves of a personal-identity supermarket.” The making up of one’s identity has gone so far that “some men in full possession of a penis are identifying as women and demanding entry to women-only colleges,” he said. Then came his killer line: “Call me old-fashioned, but I tend to think of people with penises as men.”

Can you guess what happened next? Yes, McEwan was subjected to a Twitch hunt, to that 21st-century bloodsport in which anyone who expresses an unpopular view or makes a less than PC utterance or simply misspeaks a little will be “called out” (shamed) by the bedroom-bound, Twitter-living, self-styled guardians of correct thinking. Twits went berserk over his apparently perverse linking of penises with maleness. They branded him a bigot, weird, a transphobe. Trans-rights activists put the boot in, too. Stonewall, the LGBT activist group, slammed McEwan for being “uninformed” and said his weird worldview doesn’t only “denigrate the trans experience, it denies its very existence.” Paris Lees, a trans woman and journalist, scolded McEwan, telling him his “ideas about penises are outdated.” He should apologize, the mob said.

And he did. All the virtual tomato-throwing at this heretic who dared to say that people with penises are men had the desired effect. It elicited a public backtrack. In an open letter in the Guardian, McEwan accused some of his critics of being “righteous and cross,” yet he then bowed and scraped before the trans religion. Transgenderism “should be respected,” he said. Then, most strikingly, he obediently expressed the key tenet of the trans ideology: “Biology is not always destiny.” Remarkable. In the space of a few days, he went from raising interesting, awkward questions about trans identity to repeating in a national newspaper the trans mantra that “biology is not destiny.” For those of us who believe in freedom of thought, it was an ugly sight, reminiscent of those poor souls dragged before the Inquisition and set free only when they dutifully bought into their inquisitors’ belief system and publicly declared: “I believe in Jesus Christ.”

Anti-Zionism and anti-Israel sentiments in Sweden have morphed in recent times into blatant anti-Semitism. In the city of Malmo (known for its violent Arab and Muslim population), a Jewish teacher in a Swedish public school was fired last month for being Jewish. The teacher identified only as A, is an Israeli-Jewish woman who immigrated to Sweden 39 years ago with her native born Swedish husband who served with the UN Observers Force in the region. A claimed that her school principle warned her that the students “hate the Jews,” and added that she would be “abused by both the Swedish and the Arab students.”

A’s experience is not unique in 2016 Sweden, and not just in Malmo. Naomi Lind, another Israeli woman living in a Stockholm suburb, also encountered the same anti-Semitism as a teacher in Swedish public schools. Lind moved to Sweden from Israel in 1982, and taught computer science to adults and youngsters. She recalled that on one occasion a young female student who was upset by a grade Lind gave her, responded with “I hope Hitler would rise from his grave and finish his work.” Lind remembered the difficult situations in her work that compelled her to leave her job. “I always felt that the school administration felt uncomfortable with me because I was an Israeli and a Jew.”

Lind, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, pointed out that her school administration refrained from dealing with the anti-Semitic and hurtful remarks of the girl that invoked Hitler.

Visiting Sweden late last summer, this reporter witnessed the fear and discomfort Jews in Sweden now feel. In discussions with Swedish Jews, I was told of avoidance to wear Jewish identifying symbols such as a kippah or a necklace with a Star of David. Ralph, 29, a veteran of the Swedish army, put it plainly by stating, “There is no place for Jews in Sweden.” He added that he was planning to move to the U.S. Many young Jews have moved to Israel.

A synagogue in central Stockholm had its windows boarded to hide the fact that it was a Jewish place of worship. There was no sign at the entrance to mark it as a synagogue. This was not happening in a remote village but just a few miles from the seat of the Swedish government and its people’s parliament.

Gender equality is now so thoroughly advanced, thanks to Western men, that feminism’s latest wave is free to insist the hijab is no instrument of oppression but a symbol of choice and liberation! You’ve come a long way, baby. Once, only men were privileged to make public fools of themselves.

“Can a privileged white male like me talk about equality and diversity?” While clearly suffering from ‘white-male guilt’, former Victorian politician Rob Hulls, writing in the Fairfax press, grudgingly answered in the affirmative. Bully for him, but that he thought the question worthy of sweating over is instructive. White men are not the flavour of the times. Indeed, those supporting Donald Trump are often described in left-wing media (e.g., in The Huffington Post) as “angry white men” whose influence is dwindling in the racial mixing pot.

I take no personal credit as a white man but it seems queer to me, without in the least belittling other parts of humanity, that the very part of humanity which has made this modern West, in which gender equality and ethnic and sexual diversity can flourish, is the subject of scorn and derision. I will focus on gender equality.

Men and women are one in Christ (Galatians 3:28) and therefore equal; no ifs, buts or maybes. And, in any event, indubitably, life is better for everyone and infinity less mean spirited in societies in which men and women have equal status. But, as we all surely know, that something is closer to God’s intention and better, doesn’t necessarily mean it will hold sway. For most of history and in most places it hasn’t. To wit: bad things have happened, are happening in many parts of the world, and can happen in our part of the world unless we guard the ramparts.

Equality as a state of affairs is often misunderstood. Turning to arithmetic: two plus two makes four but, equally, so does one plus three. Being equal is not the same as being the same. When it comes to men and women there is one important and statistically significant difference across all ethnicities and cultures. Men, on the whole, and with few exceptions, are stronger and more aggressive than are women.

Throughout most of history women have occupied a secondary position to men – certainly outside the narrow confines of the home. Their childbearing role undoubtedly contributed to this. But, undoubtedly, their lesser physical strength and aggressiveness were defining. This hasn’t changed, yet women in the Western world now occupy positions of authority in all walks of life.

After the Paris powwow in December the action switched to Davos. Then the serried legions of jetsetting carbonphobics repaired to the four corners of this tormented planet with renewed messages of a doom that only other people’s money can avert.
The Paris COP 21 at the end of last year may have set an all-time record for conference attendance of officials, NGOs and lobbyists—40,000 plus at least 5000 from the media. Virtually every world leader made an appearance, many changing their schedules at short notice to attend the opening rather than the close. There may have been a thousand booths of different organisations and countries, and in the course of the deliberations there would have been over 800 formal meetings and presentations.

During these meetings statesmen and NGOs repeated the same messages they had delivered dozens, sometimes hundreds of times. We heard how the ice was melting, the rivers were drying and sea levels were rising. We heard how tropical diseases were going to engulf us unless we took action and how, in view of the rapid expansion of renewable technology, that action was going to be much cheaper. Moreover if we used less energy we would be better off because we would spend less money. National spokesmen boasted of the sacrifices they were making and how much they were doing to advance the clean/low energy cause at home and abroad, while NGOs urged faster and further action.

The conference featured a constant series of street theatres. 350Org staged a major concert featuring, among others, Patti Smith, Flea (of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers), and Thom Yorke (of Radiohead). When musicians are lecturing us on policy we know the end of rational government is near.

The only note of dissent was the counter-conference hosted by the Heartland Institute, which featured genuine scientists, including the recently deceased great Australian Bob Carter, who demonstrated that:

the earth was not warming to a level that might cause unease;
there was no increase in inclement weather events;
sea levels were not rising;
the emission-restraining actions by the developed world would be meaningless since the developing world, especially China and India, would take no such measures and their emissions already exceeded those of the developed world.

The protesters outside and inside the Heartland event far exceeded the invited attendees. Among them, with his own camera/sound crew, was the University of Queensland’s John Cook, who originated the story that 97 per cent of scientists agree about human-induced global warming. Actually, only 1.6 per cent of the thousands of papers Cook and his activist team studied were said to have explicitly endorsed the warmist view and even some of these scientists have rejected the researchers’ classification of their papers.

Politics and diplomacy were the dominant issues in Paris. Few were concerned about the science or economics of climate change. Even the source material in the IPCC Fifth Assessment issued in 2014, once the 6000 pages of jargon and intimidating diagrams had been navigated, asserts that with a three-degree warming total loss of global GDP compared with business-as-usual is just 2 to 3 per cent over the course of a century. That’s just half a year’s growth even without any mitigatory action, such as planting different crops. Meanwhile the apparently trivial costs of preventing the emissions rest upon massive new breakthroughs in renewable energy technology and a Philosopher’s Stone discovery of how to capture and store the carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

In view of the IPCC’s sober assessment of losses from climate change, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) could hardly endorse the double-digit losses in global GDP claimed by hack studies like those of Stern and Garnaut. It did however promote alarmist studies, such as one that topically claimed climate change was killing more people than terrorism.

In January, the UN cavalcade moved on to Abu Dhabi where UN chief Ban Ki-moon said: “Sustainable energy is the thread that connects economic growth, social equity, and our efforts to combat climate change.” Leaders of the world’s mendicant states queued up to divert to themselves funds from this major oil producer and owner of Manchester City.

WHAT CEASEFIRE?
[Notes below by Tom Gross]

One of the most misleading aspects of news coverage in the New York Times (which stated again a couple of days ago – in a story abut John Kerry and Iran – that there is a “cessation of hostilities in Syria”) is the impression the paper has given that there is an effective ceasefire in Syria. Or that Russia has withdrawn its forces. Neither is true. One can only presume that New York Times editors are eager to defend the policies of the Obama administration, which helped negotiate the failed ceasefire in Syria.

I attach seven articles below. There are summaries first of some of these articles.

There are also still reports in the Iranian media every day, about the funerals of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and other Iranian-backed Shia mercenaries who died fighting in Syria. For example, this IRGC commander, Amir Ali Mohammadian, died in Aleppo province on April 8.

For example, on April 6, IRGC members Mohammad Jabali and Abufazl Rahchamani, both from Tehran, were killed in Syria.

On the same day, three members of the Afghan Shia militia Fatimiyoun Brigade and four members of the Pakistani Shia militia Zainabiyoun brigade were killed in Syria. The Zainabiyoun and Fatimiyoun Brigades are among the Shia militia that have been brought in by Iran to support of the Assad regime. There are pictures of their funerals here from the Mehr News Agency.

And so on.

But Western media that want to pretend the Iranian government is moderate, or not at the forefront of orchestrating the killings and ethnic cleansing in Syria, fail to report on this.

Mr. Cain, a former U.S. ambassador to Denmark, is the principal of Cain Global Partners

Two Saturdays ago, just outside Maastricht, the Netherlands, I visited the 65-acre American Cemetery in Margraten. A sea of marble white crosses and Stars of David is arrayed in a gentle arc marking the final resting place of 8,301 American soldiers who fell nearby while ensuring the liberty and security of a Europe brutalized by World War II.

My wife, Helen, our daughters Cameron and Laura, and a few friends and I were there to view the magnificent array of flowers brought to the cemetery the day before. The flowers came from the funerals of Alexander and Sascha Pinczowski, Dutch siblings who lived in New York and were murdered on March 22 in the Brussels airport by Islamist terrorists Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui.

Alex was married to our daughter Cameron.

He was an exceptionally clever student of international relations, and possessed a keen curiosity about the world. Alex and I talked about the deliverance of Europe from the evils of Nazism, including his family’s hometown of Maastricht. We didn’t always see eye to eye on politics, but Alex and I agreed that the Allies’ success in 1944 had some essential requisites. Those included: the ability to coordinate an effort against a poisonous ideology; the willpower of free people from noncaptive nations to commit to fighting a common enemy; and the presence of resolute leadership—which could only come, at that point, from America.

As I stood before the dozens of bouquets at the cemetery, I pondered whether, with an enemy of a type different in this century, America today was still willing to fulfill the leadership role that once brought peace and freedom to the world. And are the countries affected by this modern war, which includes many of the same nations ravaged by World War II, willing to take this fight seriously?

Our own experience in Brussels, while frantically searching for Alex and Sascha, gives reason for doubt. CONTINUE AT SITE

Belonging to ISIS or trafficking in slavery evidently do not constitute serious crimes in Turkey. But signing petitions calling for peace and non-violence, or requesting political equality for Kurds, are unspeakable offenses.

“We are not shocked that the defendants have been acquitted. This lawsuit has become one of the hundreds of other lawsuits in our country in which the criminals have been protected even though the evidence against them is obvious.” — Association of Progressive Women, on the acquittal of six people charged with having ties with ISIS and trading in Yazidi sex slaves.

“Requesting peace has become a crime in this country. The state of Turkey has committed the gravest rights violations against those who struggle for human rights, against the Kurds and against free thought.” — Sebnem Korur Fincanci, President of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey.

Turkish politics has therefore not been able to go beyond a clash between assorted Islamists whose worldviews are foreign to democratic values, and non-Islamist but still extremely oppressive political parties that operate under the shadow of a tyrannical military, whose worldview is also foreign to democratic values.

Turkey’s “fight” against the Islamic State (ISIS) continues. On March 24, Turkey released seven suspects who had been arrested in a case involving the Turkish branch of ISIS.

Halis Bayancuk, alleged to be the “Emir,” or commander-in-chief, of ISIS, is among the suspects. This was the fourth hearing of the trial known as the “Istanbul ISIS trial.” A total of 96 suspects are on trial. Only seven had been jailed; the others had not. Although those seven were released on March 24 at the end of the hearing, their trial is still ongoing; the final verdict has not been given. All of them are now outside jail, free, and living their lives as they wish.

BRUSSELS—Belgian authorities said Sunday they believe the terror network that killed 32 people in Brussels last month was initially planning a fresh attack in France but changed the target as investigators closed in.

“The Federal Prosecution Office can confirm that numerous elements in the investigation have shown that the terrorist group initially had the intention to strike in France again. Eventually, surprised by the speed of the progress in the ongoing investigation, they urgently took the decision to strike in Brussels,” prosecutors said in a press release.

On March 18, Belgian and French police arrested key terror suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels. The terror attacks at the national airport and the city’s metro station took place four days later.

Federal prosecutors also said they are now charging Mohamed Abrini with terrorist murders and participation in a terror group in the Brussels attacks. On Saturday, he was charged with the same offenses over the Paris attacks of last November.

The prosecutors said on Saturday that Mr. Abrini admitted to his involvement on the attack on Brussels’ national airport on March 22. CONTINUE AT SITE