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July 2017

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At G20, a ‘Good Start’ to Future U.S.-Russia Talks By Alexis Simendinger

By on July 9th, 2017

President Trump has never been coy about what he wanted from Russia and from President Vladimir Putin: relations with the United States that are substantively better than they were under President Obama.

By any metrics in the early months of his administration, the president did not get his wish. Ties with Russia ebbed to a post-Cold-War low point, in part because of global skepticism about Trump’s inexplicably rosy embrace of Russia during his presidential campaign.
Friday, during the two leaders’ first face-to-face meeting, the pleasantries and handshakes between Trump and Putin bloomed into a substantive discussion about Russia’s election interference, a U.S.-Russia brokered cease-fire in Syria that is to begin on Sunday, and an appraisal of Bashar al-Assad’s limited future as president in light of a civil war that nudged Russia and the United States to back opposite sides.

The two leaders also talked about the hazards of North Korea’s nuclear program, according to the top diplomats from both countries.

Agreements were few, but the “chemistry” was pronounced good, and the conversation went long.

The meeting in Hamburg during the G20 summit consumed an extensive two hours and 16 minutes, most of it focused on Syria. The discussion, which included Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and two translators, was described as productive, although, as expected, accounts from each country about what was said by Trump and Putin differed in key respects.

President George W. Bush, President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discovered in the months after their respective initial meetings with the former KGB agent that their soulful personal confidences, tutorials about global leadership, and gimmicks about resets and new starts altered little during a persistently fraught relationship.

With Putin, it’s never the first meeting or the early phone calls that set a mood. He has a record of publicly exploiting opportunities to appear to offer Western leaders some of what they seek, only to take assertive actions in the opposite direction later on.

“Putin sees geopolitics as a zero-sum game in which, if someone is winning, then someone has to be losing,” Clinton wrote in “Hard Choices,” her book about her years as secretary of state.

What interests Putin in the United States is not the personal chemistry and camaraderie he might forge with its various leaders, but rather how the United States and its policies can be altered or undercut to support his nationalist ambitions and his demands that the West acknowledge Russia’s global influence.

“Putin is a master at pressing his geopolitical advantage when he senses complacency in the West,” the Wall Street Journal editorialized last year.

U.S. intelligence agencies determined last fall that Putin and forces at his disposal interfered with the 2016 presidential election in an effort to help Trump win, believing the New York reality television celebrity would be more accommodating to Russia than his Democratic opponent, whom Putin despised.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Deadly Tale: Christian Converts from Islam by Majid Rafizadeh

By on July 9th, 2017

Most of all, the Islamist leaders fear that as a former Muslim, you have true knowledge of what Islam actually is, and you may disclose that information to others.

“Not only has [Maryam Naghash Zargaran] been detained unjustly because of her Christian faith, but the Iranian authorities have denied her urgently needed medical care.” — U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

“For more than four years, Maryam Naghash Zargaran has suffered in an Iranian prison, falsely charged with ‘propagating against the Islamic regime and collusion intended to harm national security.’ The Iranian government must cease its targeting of Christians and release Maryam and other religious prisoners of conscience.” — Clifford D. May, Commissioner, USCIRF.

It is currently being spouted through all forms of media — impossible to ignore — you will hear claims over and over again by many radical Imams, Muslim scholars, and preachers that Islam is a religion of inclusiveness, that anyone can become a Muslim just by muttering a few words. It seems quite simple, right?

This is not new. I grew up hearing all these claims in Iran, under Islamic laws. To uninformed ears, this can sound almost magical. What is important, however, are the many more significant requirements the imams conveniently leave out. Above all, once you become a Muslim, there is no way to turn back. Your faith is under the control of the extremist imams, sheikhs, governments, or simply the community. You cannot just decide to abandon Islam and go back to how you were living. The penalty of attempting this is death.

Additionally, those imams and sheikhs who will have you believe how easy it is to join Islam, claim that Islam accepts Christianity and Judaism (“people of the book”), and that there is absolutely no difference between the Abrahamic religions. Sounds nice to most ears. But it is absolutely false. Let us take a quick look at some people who left Islam for other “Abrahamic” religions, particularly Christianity.

Maryam Naghash Zargaran, a 38 year-old Christian convert from Islam, is currently facing serious health issues in one of the world’s most vicious jails; Evin prison in Tehran.

A former children’s music teacher, Zargaran became acquainted with teachings of Christianity at young age. Even though she grew up in a Muslim family and under Sharia, she found Christianity to be her true faith. She made a decision to convert, and dedicated her life to helping children, and ended up at an orphanage. She did her best to care for the children, and provide them with the stability and love they had been missing.

What harm was Zargaran doing to the society? She was contributing the society doing charity work and privately practicing her faith. But, if you live under Islamic laws, your faith is neither private nor personal. Your faith is directly controlled by Islamist authorities or the state.

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IMMIGRATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s Mass Migration: The Leaders vs. the Public by Douglas Murray

By on July 9th, 2017

“[T]he more generous you are, the more word gets around about this — which in turn motivates more people to leave Africa. Germany cannot possibly take in the huge number of people who are wanting to make their way to Europe.” — Bill Gates.

The annual survey of EU citizens, recently carried out by Project 28, found a unanimity on the issue of migration almost unequalled across an entire continent. The survey found that 76% of the public across the EU believe that the EU’s handling of the migration crisis of recent years has been “poor”. There is not one country in the EU in which the majority of the public differs from that consensus.

At the same time as the public has known that what the politicians are doing is unsustainable, there has been a vast effort to control what the European publics have been allowed to say. German Chancellor Angela Merkel went so far as to urge Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to limit posts on social media that were critical of her policies.

Is Bill Gates a Nazi, racist, “Islamophobe” or fascist? As PG Wodehouse’s most famous butler would have said, “The eventuality would appear to be a remote one”. So far nobody in any position of influence has made such claims about the world’s largest philanthropist. Possibly — just possibly — something is changing in Europe.

In an interview published July 2 in the German paper Welt Am Sonntag, the co-founder of Microsoft addressed the ongoing European migration crisis. What he said was surprising:

“On the one hand you want to demonstrate generosity and take in refugees. But the more generous you are, the more word gets around about this — which in turn motivates more people to leave Africa. Germany cannot possibly take in the huge number of people who are wanting to make their way to Europe.”

These words would be uncontroversial to the average citizen of Europe. The annual survey of EU citizens recently carried out by Project 28 found a unanimity on the issue of migration almost unequalled across an entire continent. The survey found, for instance, that 76% of the public across the EU believe that the EU’s handling of the migration crisis of recent years has been “poor”. There is not one country in the EU in which the majority of the public differs from this consensus. In countries such as Italy and Greece, which have been on the frontline of the crisis of recent years, that figure rockets up. In these countries, nine out of ten citizens think that the EU has handled the migrant crisis poorly.

How could they think otherwise? The German government’s 2015 announcement that normal asylum and border procedures were no longer in operation exacerbated an already disastrous situation. The populations of Germany and Sweden increased by 2% in one year alone because of that influx of migrants. These are monumental changes to happen at such a speed to any society.

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