RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13341/turkey-cyprus-christian-culture

“Turkey has been committing two major international crimes against Cyprus. It has invaded and divided a small, weak but modern and independent European state… Turkey has also changed the demographic character of the island and has devoted itself to the systematic destruction and obliteration of the cultural heritage of the areas under its military control.” — from “The Loss of a Civilization: Destruction of cultural heritage in occupied Cyprus.”

“More than 550 Greek Orthodox churches, chapels and monasteries located in towns and villages of the occupied areas, have been pillaged, deliberately vandalized and, in some cases, demolished. Many Christian places of worship have been converted into mosques, depots of the Turkish army, stockyards and hay barns.” — Cyprus Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“UNESCO considers the intentional destruction of cultural heritage a war crime.” — Artnet News, 2017.

A sixth-century mosaic of Saint Mark, stolen from a church after Turkey’s military invaded Cyprus in 1974, was recently recovered in a Monaco apartment and returned to Cypriot officials. The ancient masterpiece was described by Arthur Brand, the Dutch investigator who located it, as “one of the last and most beautiful examples of art from the early Byzantine era.”

Many other cultural Cypriot relics, from churches and other sites, were stolen from Cyprus by Turkish invaders and smuggled abroad. Some were recovered and returned in the past. In 1989, mosaics stolen from the Church of Panagia Kanakaria, discovered in the United States, were returned to Cyprus.

In the summer of 1974, Turkey mounted two major military campaigns against Cyprus and occupied the northern part of the island (which Turkey now calls the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus,” recognized only by Turkey). Since the Turkish invasion, much information has emerged not only about the atrocities committed against the Cypriots, but also of the destruction of historic, cultural and religious monuments.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13348/we-will-displace-you

There were 128 incidents of church vandalism or other anti-Christian attacks in France during the first five months of 2018, according to a Paris-based Roman Catholic non-profit organization that tracks attacks against Christians.

Zanzibar “has concealed Christian persecution for decades…. issues that the international community knows too little or nothing about….[T]he Christian body has been persecuted for so long.” — Simon, pastor of a church, quoted by International Christian Concern.

Extremist Muslim Attacks on Christian Churches

Egypt: Police stood by and encouraged a Muslim mob attacking a church. After local Muslims in Ezbet Sultan Pasha village learned that Christians, who form about 20% of the population, were on their way to legalizing a church building, they surrounded it on July 6, after Friday prayers. “The protesters were chanting slogans against us [Christians], such as ‘We don’t want a church in our village,'” said one resident. “We locked ourselves in our homes during the demonstration because we were afraid that they would attack us. Police didn’t do anything to disperse the demonstrators and didn’t arrest anyone of them.” Demonstrations continued into the next day with no police intervention.

On the following Friday, again after Muslim prayers, local Muslims and others from neighboring villages, surrounded the church again and hurled stones and bricks at it and a at nearby Christian home. “They were shouting ‘Allahu akbar’ [‘Allah is greater’] and chanting hostile slogans against Copts, such as: ‘We will not allow any church to exist in our Muslim village,’ ‘We will not allow any other prayers to be held in our Muslim village except our prayers,'” said another Christian resident. According to the report:

“While police did not intervene, one of the officers apparently promised the protesters that no church would be allowed in the village. … [T]his declaration encouraged the protesters who clapped shouting ‘Allahu akbar’…. There are at least approximately 3000 pending applications from churches that still need to be examined by the government commission set up to verify whether they meet legal requirements.”

Archbishop Makarios released a statement saying, “We are saddened by official appeasement of and acquiescence to demands by some who possess no right to such demands [the demands to have no church in the village], to the detriment of Coptic rights.” A local said, “Terror dominates the village because the Muslims can demonstrate and gather at any time. We are in great fear and in anticipation of the situation.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13335/fracturing-france

In a new program, Macron’s government is offering Arabic lessons in France’s public schools to children as young as six years old, purportedly to facilitate integration.

French authorities seem to ignore that the vast majority of terrorists from France have been French citizens, who spoke a perfect French and, unlike their parents, were born in France. They were perfectly “integrated”. They rejected it.

US President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron engaged in a public diplomatic clash just days before Trump visited France this month. The spat began when, in a radio interview, Macron suggested that Europe needed an army to protect itself from the US. “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,” said Macron.

Protecting France from the United States? In a November 11 speech commemorating World War I, Macron in a diplomatic welcome to his guest, attacked “nationalism”. President Trump had proudly called himself a “nationalist” less than three weeks before.

Macron, it seems, was using the armistice signed in 1918 to forget what is going on in France in 2018.

Gérard Collomb, France’s Interior Minister until last month and currently Mayor of Lyon, is apparently pessimistic about the situation in his country, according to comments reported by Valeurs Actuelles. “People do not want to live together,” Collomb lamented, continuing that the responsibility for security during the recent immigration has been “huge.” Collomb also warned that there is only a “little time” to improve the situation. “It’s difficult to estimate but I would say that in five years the situation could become irreversible. Yes, we have five, six years to avoid the worst,” he added.

And the worst will be a “secession”, or as Gilles Kepel, the French specialist on Islam, called it: “La fracture.”

Macron, however, does not seem particularly receptive to Collomb’s warning. A man reportedly shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed a police officer in Brussels this week, during a state visit by Macron to the Belgian capital — the first for a French president since Mitterrand visited there in the 80s. Macron also went to Brussels’ Molenbeek district, which he defined “a territory marked by the image of the terrorist drama and also a place of initiatives, sharing and integration”. Sharing and integration?

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch posted an interesting article about how a Pakistani UN member is proposing that a war on “islamophobia” be waged to eradicate this form of “hate speech” for good and forever and ever.

Make no mistake: by “defamation of religions,” the Pakistanis mean “criticism of Islam,” as neither they nor anyone else care when Judaism, Christianity, or any other religion is criticized. And make no mistake about another point as well: once anything — anything at all — is established as off-limits to criticism, you are not living in a free society, but in a tyranny, for those who adhere to the ideology that cannot be criticized can do anything they want to you and others, and you won’t be able to say a word about it. So what Pakistan is trying to do with this initiative is establish over the entire world the tyranny of Sharia and its blasphemy laws that forbid criticism of Islam.

Make no mistake: by “defamation of religions,” the Pakistanis mean “criticism of Islam,” as neither they nor anyone else care when Judaism, Christianity, or any other religion is criticized. And make no mistake about another point as well: once anything — anything at all — is established as off-limits to criticism, you are not living in a free society, but in a tyranny, for those who adhere to the ideology that cannot be criticized can do anything they want to you and others, and you won’t be able to say a word about it. So what Pakistan is trying to do with this initiative is establish over the entire world the tyranny of Sharia and its blasphemy laws that forbid criticism of Islam.

She also stressed the importance of countering “Islamophobia” and incitement to violence and hatred that is being witnessed in some parts of the western world by the negative depiction of Muslims.

One must ask oneself: Where and when have the “denigrators” of Islam run riot, attacked mosques, beaten up Muslims, raped Muslim women, or otherwise incited anti-Islam and anti-Muslim violence?

Of hatred of Islam there is aplenty, especially when individuals grasp the totalitarian nature of Islam and Sharia law; naturally they would hate Islam as much as they would Nazism and Communism. They do not want to live under it, nor do they want it next door in a submissive country like Canada. “Peace and harmony” are not analogous or equivalent to Islam’s 1400 year record, as Robert Spencer writes in detail in The History of Jihad.

Ambassador Lodhi also called for greater respect for each other’s religious beliefs, symbols and revered personalities.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/a_sharia_victory_in_the_netherlands.html

This November was meant to be the month for MP Geert Wilders’ second “Draw Muhammad” contest, but Islamic law won a de facto victory over Dutch law mere weeks ago as Wilders announced the contest’s cancellation. When — among many other threats similar attacks — a 19-year-old Afghan stabbed two American tourists in Amsterdam, citing the planned contest as motive, Wilders canceled the event out of concern about further violence.

The Islamists had made their point: “Having the law on your side makes no difference. Do what we want, or somebody is going to get hurt.”

Such antics by Islamist Muslims are not new to Wilders and other speech and conscience advocates. In retribution for his firm and outspoken stance on this subject, he has “spent 15 years living in safe houses and escorted by a security detail due to constant death threats.” These are the tactics, of course, of any common mafia.

In securing Wilders’ retreat, the terrorists established Sharia’s authority for now in the Netherlands on the issue of speech.

The first “Draw Muhammad” contest, organized by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, was held on May 3, 2015 in Garland, Texas. The purpose of Geller and Spencer, and the purpose of Wilders in organizing another this year, was to preserve space for free speech in the face of known supremacist Muslim intentions to forcefully diminish that space.

During the 2015 event, two Muslim men — one a convert but both American-born — armed with multiple rifles and handguns and 1500 rounds of ammunition, began shooting their way into the venue. Both were killed. The purpose of “the Islamist mob” is to assert authority for Islam over all other legal authorities, to become dominant.

What is going on, in other words, are tests of national sovereignty, a battle of civilizations. In this most recent round, I regret to report, the winner was not Western civilization, but rather the Islamist mob.

https://quillette.com/2018/11/21/the-betrayal-of-asia

Among the string of resignations triggered by the draft Brexit agreement with the European Union (EU), one stood out. In a double whammy for an embattled Prime Minister, Rehman Chishti the MP for Gillingham and Rainham resigned as both Vice Chairman of the Conservative Party as well as the PM’s Trade Envoy to Pakistan. Aside from citing Theresa May’s shambolic handling of Brexit negotiations, Chishti said the British government’s failure to give Asia Bibi asylum had been a motivating factor in his decision.

Bibi’s case is a cause célèbre. She is a Christian who had been languishing on death row for nine years in Pakistan for blasphemy charges. To Christians worldwide, Bibi is a symbol of fortitude, faith, and unflinching commitment. After all, a conversion to Islam would have exonerated her, but she refused to recant her faith. She was imprisoned after fetching drinking water for fellow berry pickers on a Punjab farm in Pakistan in 2009. Her Muslim co-workers accused her of contaminating the water, because she was Christian. Following a verbal dispute, a complaint was lodged with a local Imam, alleging that Bibi had blasphemed against the Prophet—a capital offense under sections 295B/295C of the Pakistan Penal Code, introduced under the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her of the charges and said the accusations levelled against her were “concoction incarnate.”

Regardless of the Supreme Court decision, Muslim extremists believe Bibi must still be executed. They staged mass protests in major cities like Islamabad and Karachi threatening to kill the judges who acquitted her. A cursory look online reveals a palpable sense of anger among a section of Pakistan’s public with a petition entitled: “#Hang_Asia_Msih No Compromise on dignity of MUHAMMAD SAWW; We Support Khadim Hussain Rizvi.” Others have dedicated a song against Bibi, and uploaded it to YouTube, the lyrics of which roughly translate from Punjabi to “Don’t give electricity, don’t give water, just hang Asia.” This poisonous indoctrination is seemingly infiltrating more impressionable minds too—another video on YouTube rather depressingly shows children with a doll revelling in a mock execution of Bibi. There’s a fear that Pakistan’s Christian communities will now be targeted by Islamists in retribution for Bibi’s acquittal, and have requested the Pakistani authorities “beef up” security with military assistance to protect churches and properties.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-stop-a-south-african-land-grab-1542992109

Global economic jitters make this an especially bad time for developing economies to embark on bad policy experiments, yet that’s what South Africa did this month in advancing a sweeping plan to expropriate private land. The only saving grace is that voters will have a chance to weigh in before this scheme becomes law.

A parliamentary committee on Nov. 15 recommended a constitutional amendment that would allow the government to expropriate land without compensation. The idea has been a fixation in South Africa for years, in the belief that bouts of poor economic growth arise because colonial rule left whites with a majority of the country’s farmland.

But anyone seeking the roots of South Africa’s recent malaise should look elsewhere. Agriculture accounts for less than 3% of gross domestic product, and the number of acres owned by nonwhites or the government nearly doubled between 1994 and 2016 under the “willing buyer, willing seller” land policy adopted by Nelson Mandela.

Weak rule of law and bad policies during the nine-year left-wing administration of former President Jacob Zuma are better explanations for the country’s woes. Land expropriation will make matters worse by deterring investors worried about property rights, especially if such a policy is written into the country’s constitution as the current proposal envisions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-costs-of-the-euro-1543016358

The euro celebrates its 20th birthday in January, and as if on cue the fiscal costs of the common European currency finally are coming into view for voters. That’s the best reading of the budget principles French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to this month.

The bilateral deal, part of the pan-EU negotiation about the European Union’s budget, for the first time contemplates a special fund solely for the 19 countries that use the euro. A pot of money would be created within the EU’s existing budget exclusively for public works or other “investment” projects in euro members. The goal is to create fiscal stabilizers that can moderate economic swings and encourage “convergence” in productivity to avoid future crises.

Most critics have seized on the economics, which aren’t impressive. The size of the budget and funding sources remain up for debate. Keynesians fret that this budget will be too small, reckoning that a budget would need to amount to several percentage points of eurozone GDP to do any good. Their answer to every problem is more public spending.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13336/palestinians-trump-peace-plan

According to the reports, the White House “peace team,” led by senior adviser Jared Kushner and special envoy Jason Greenblatt, has been working on the plan for two years — and President Trump wants it published between December 2018 and February 2019.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his representatives in Ramallah have radicalized their people against the Israeli government to a point where meeting or doing business with any Israeli official is tantamount to treason. This is why Abbas does not and cannot return to the negotiating table with Israel and also why Abbas cannot change his position toward the Trump administration.

Wasel Abu Yousef, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official, said this week that the Palestinians were moving on three levels to thwart Trump’s upcoming plan: rallying worldwide support for the Palestinian position against the plan, uniting all Palestinians, and opposing attempts to normalize relations between the Arab countries and Israel.

Hardly a day passes without the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) affirming its strong opposition to US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-announced Middle East peace plan, also referred to as the “deal of the century.” Palestinian leaders have convinced their people that Trump is the worst person on the face of the earth and that no one should be doing business with him.

The Palestinian Authority is not the only Palestinian party that continues to voice its opposition to the upcoming peace plan. No Palestinian group or individual has come out in favor the plan, although no one in the Middle East seems to have seen it or knows anything about its details. Trump has united the Palestinians in a way that no Palestinian or Arab has been able to do since the beginning of the Hamas-Fatah war 11 years ago.

The Palestinians are united in their opposition to the Trump administration and its policies, especially in the aftermath of the US president’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as well as its decision to cut US funding to the Palestinian Authority for paying terrorists and to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The Palestinians have already determined that the US peace plan is “biased” in favor of Israel, and that is why, they say, they cannot accept it.

The Palestinian Authority and its rivals in Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian factions appear to disagree on everything except their hostility to Trump and his administration. They all refer to the “deal of the century” as a “conspiracy aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause and rights.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13301/european-court-human-rights-islam

The ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is not only wrong for establishing a precedent for sharia-compliant adherence to Islamic blasphemy laws, but appears to be based on a number of false premises.

The real message the ECHR sent, as it succumbed to fears of “disturbing the religious peace,” is that if threats work, keep threatening! What sort of protection of human rights is that?

Just who is it, by the way, that gets to decide what is “incriminating”? Formerly, it was the Inquisition.

Islamic blasphemy laws have now been elevated to the law of the land in Europe.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on October 25 that to state that the Islamic prophet Muhammad “liked to do it with children” and “… A 56-year-old and a six-year-old?… What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?” goes “beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate,” and could be classified as “an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace.”

The Court’s judgment has a long history.

In 2011, free speech and anti-jihad activist, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, was convicted by an Austrian court of “denigrating religious symbols of a recognized religious group” after she gave a series of small seminars: “Introduction to the basics of Islam”, “The Islamization of Europe”, and “The impact of Islam”.[1]

No Muslims appear to have attended Sabaditsch-Wolff’s seminars. The court case against her came about only because a magazine, NEWS, filed a complaint against her after secretly planting a journalist at her seminars to record them.

Wolff was convicted of having said that Muhammad “liked to do it with children” and “… A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? … What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?”

On February 15, 2011, the Vienna Regional Criminal Court — according to the summary in the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) — found that “these statements implied that Muhammad had had paedophilic tendencies”, and convicted Sabaditsch-Wolff “for disparaging religious doctrines” under §188 of the Austrian penal code, which states:

“Anyone publicly denigrating or mocking any person or thing that is the object of worship of a domestically existing church or religious society… among whom his conduct is liable to cause legitimate annoyance, is punishable by imprisonment of up to six months or a fine of up to 360 daily rates”.

Sabaditsch-Wolff was ordered to pay a fine of 480 euros and the costs of the proceedings. The Vienna Court of Appeal upheld the decision in December 2011. Sabaditsch-Wolff then appealed the Austrian court decisions to the European Court of Human Rights. She stated that her right to freedom of expression, safeguarded in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, had been violated.

On October 25, the ECHR reached the conclusion that there had been “no violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights”.

In its ruling, the ECHR stated:

“The Court found in particular that the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant’s statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria. It held that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate, and by classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.”

The ECHR’s ruling is not only wrong for establishing a precedent for sharia-compliant adherence to Islamic blasphemy laws, but appears to be based on a number of false premises.