RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15510/europe-iran-hezbollah

“Hezbollah itself has publicly denied a distinction between its military and political wings. The group in its entirety is assessed to be concerned in terrorism…” — The British Treasury, January 17, 2020.

Britain joins the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, Israel, the 22-member Arab League, the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council as well as Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay in making no distinction between Hezbollah’s military and civilian wings. In all, more than 30 countries have banned the group in its entirety.

In Germany, the EU’s largest member state, a foreign ministry official, Niels Annen, said that a complete ban of Hezbollah would be counterproductive because “we focus on dialogue.” His comment has been understood to mean that the German government does not want to burn bridges with Hezbollah’s main patron, the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.

In other EU member states, government officials appear worried that a total ban of Hezbollah could jeopardize the safety of European troops deployed to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, or UNIFIL. EU member states contribute more than 3,650 troops to UNIFIL — mostly from France, Italy and Spain.

“Hezbollah is a single large organization, we have no wings that are separate from one another. What’s being said in Brussels doesn’t exist for us.” — Ibrahim Mussawi, Hezbollah spokesman, interview in Der Spiegel, July 22, 2013.

The British finance ministry has added the entirety of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah — Arabic for “The Party of Allah” — to its sanctions list and has ordered a freeze on any assets it may have in the United Kingdom.

The move, aimed at cracking down on Hezbollah’s fundraising activities in Britain, adds increased enforcement teeth to the British government’s February 2019 decision no longer to distinguish between Hezbollah’s military and political wings and to classify the entire organization as a terrorist group.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15511/russia-primacy-africa

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow largely withdrew from the African continent, until Putin rekindled the flame about two years ago, in an attempt to restore Russia’s “glory days” and fill a vacuum wherever one is created by the West.

Between Russia’s expansionism in the region, and China’s as well, the United States would do well to remain as vigilant as ever.

While the United States and France have been helping the fragile governments of Africa’s Sahel region stave off Islamist terrorist attacks and takeovers, Russia has been busy trying to push NATO out of the area and augment its own influence there.

Moscow’s strategy rests on three pillars. The first is the cultivation of relationships with African leaders, particularly those attempting to remain in power in spite of constitutional limitations — such as, for instance, Sudan’s former dictator, Omar al-Bashir, who was recently ousted by oppositionists. The Kremlin dispatched several hundred paramilitary advisers in late 2018 to train the Sudanese military how to suppress protests.

Ultimately, Moscow’s mission to boost al-Bashir failed; he was overthrown in April 2019, a few months later.

The second pillar is the insertion of Russian agents into the inner circle of rising African leaders, such as the young, recently elected president of Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina. This pillar is also likely at work in the Kremlin’s penetration of Central African Republic (CAR) President Faustin Touadera’s staff by the Russian security adviser, Valery Zakharov.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/uks-dumbest-terrorist-tests-dumbest-justice-system-daniel-greenfield/

On a summer day in the UK, Mohiussunnath Chowdhury left his Luton home, took an anime sword that he had sharpened, typed “Windsor Castle” into his phone, and then followed the directions on the map.

“Tell everyone that I love them and that they should struggle against the enemies of Allah,” the aspiring Muslim terrorist had declared. “The Queen and her soldiers will all be in the hellfire.”

Instead of finding Queen Elizabeth II at the Windsor Castle, Mohiussunnath found that it was a pub offering “great real ales” and “fresh food”. The infidel phone had tried to divert the devout Muslim. Despite the Berkshire pub’s offerings of “grilled loin of pork” and Jägermeister, he didn’t attack it.

The Uber driver got back into his car, took along his anime sword, and this time made sure that the directions were pointing him to Buckingham Palace, not some sort of hellish booze palace. But the Queen wasn’t even there, the soldiers were on guard, and the police intercepted him outside the gates.

“It’s all a bit f____d up,” Mohiussunnath said, got out his anime sword, and shouted, “Allahu Akbar.”

The anime sword, unlike a real sword, had an enormous handle, which made it impractical to wield, and all too easy for the police to grab on to. The cops were able to wrestle it away from him even while he kept shouting, “Allahu Akbar”. Two cops suffered cuts before using tear gas to bring him to his knees.

Was it over? No, it was just getting started. The only thing more incompetent than Mohiussunnath was the British justice system which couldn’t convict a terrorist if he were attacking Buckingham Palace.

Literally.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/the_knife_attack_in_london_what_happens_in_israel_doesnt_stay_in_israel.html

In 2015, Israel once again came under terrorist attack from Palestinians desperate to erase Jews from the land they’ve inhabited continuously for 3,800 years. Unlike past terrorist attacks, which mostly relied on suicide bombs in restaurants and buses or on rocket attacks from afar, this was a more personal type of terrorism: Palestinians walking down the street or shopping in stores would suddenly pull out long knives and savagely stab anyone within reach. It was called “the knife intifada.”

But what happens in Israel doesn’t stay in Israel. In some ways, you can consider Israel a testing ground for terrorist tactics that Jihadists intend to use against others around the world – and it’s clear with Sunday’s “terrorist-related” knife attack in the Streatham neighborhood in London that the knife intifada has fully arrived in England.

The Palestinians haven’t been shy about using knives to wage war on Jews. Here’s a grim photograph from 1947 — before there was an Israel, before there were 1967 lines, and before the PLO had even formed — showing an Arab stabbing a Palestinian journalist, while the British soldiers took a photograph, but did not bother to help:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/02/brexit-supporters-overcome-decades-establishment-opposition/#slide-1After decades of opposition from the establishment — from Obama to Blair to the BBC and the IMF — the Brexiteers won the day

William F. Buckley Jr. entitled one of his anthologies of conservative thought “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?” In it, he expressed his hope that the ideas in it would become reality.

Last Friday, I attended a party in London where leading Brexit supporters celebrated their nation’s departure from the European Union. Several of them privately told me they never thought that such a day would ever arrive. But the left-wing Guardian newspaper paid the Brexit rebels their due in 2016. It noted that they’d “worked for little else, with no reward, and with no sign that they would ever prevail.” The paper compared the Brexit “sect” to medieval monks who copied their manuscripts “waiting for the Dark Ages to come to an end.”

Friday’s party, organized in part by Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts and held at a private club in Mayfair, was full of toasts and speeches reminding the world of the great odds that battlers for Brexit had overcome. Rising just before the clock struck 11 p.m., the point at which Britain formally left the EU, Roberts brought the house down by declaring:

We faced an establishment that hadn’t been so unanimous on any single issue since appeasement and Munich. It was the BBC, Barack Obama, Tony Blair, David Cameron, the powers of Oxford and Cambridge, the civil service, the Bank of England, the Confederation of British Industries, Goldman Sachs, and even the International Monetary Fund which warned Brexit would lead to a 10 percent decline in GNP — a decline greater than that during World War II.

But, Roberts continued: “The British people were conscious of their history, an extraordinary thing given they hadn’t been taught it in schools for the last half century. They instinctively understood the patriotic part of it. They were lions, they never were daunted, and the lions roared back in 2016.”