RUTHFULLY YOURS

Muslims “have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” — Hillary Clinton.

“We have been forced to live under a climate of fear, this is not England. I grew up in in to a free decent country accepting British values and the British rule of law. … I think there is two laws, one for them and one for us.” — Nissar Hussain, former Muslim.

“They wanted to kill us by burning us alive, but we managed to escape. We have lost everything.” — Ramni Das, 57, accused of witchcraft in Bangladesh.

Iraq’s parliament passed a law that will force Christian children to become Muslim if their father converts to Islam or if their Christian mother marries a Muslim.

In Pakistan, an 8-year-old girl, Sara Bibi, was beaten and locked in a school bathroom by her Muslim head teacher for using the same toilet as Muslims. She was then expelled from the school.

“Death sentences in Iran are particularly disturbing because they are invariably imposed by courts that are completely lacking in independence and impartiality. They are imposed either for vaguely worded or overly broad offences, or for acts that should not be criminalized at all, let alone attract the death penalty. Trials in Iran are deeply flawed, detainees are often denied access to lawyers in the investigative stage, and there are inadequate procedures for appeal, pardon and commutation” — From a July 2015 Amnesty International report.

How ironic that Europeans have no problem stuffing themselves with syrupy Iranian dates exported by this regime, knowing full well that there are thousands of prisoners are being tortured in Iran while awaiting their executions.

Amnesty International reports that in the fall of 2015, cartoonist Atena Farghadani was forced to undergo a “virginity and pregnancy test” prior to her trial. The charge? “Illegitimate sexual relations,” for having shaken hands with her lawyer.

Iran nevertheless won a top seat on the U.N.’s Commission on the Status of Women in April 2014. Not a single UN member, not even the US, objected.

On the UN’s Human Rights Day, observed December 10, an Iranian woman was sentenced to death by stoning in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran is believed to have imposed death by stoning on at least 150 people, according to the International Committees against Execution and Stoning.

The Commons debate on whether the existing British air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq should be extended to Syria revealed the strategic black hole at the heart of Westminster. Despite the stirring calls to arms from both David Cameron and Labour’s potential leader Hilary Benn, this was less a debate about Syria and more of a litmus test for the principle of intervention. It was also clear that Labour can no longer make a meaningful contribution to debate about national security with a leader whose ideological commitment to pacifism allows no circumstances in which force would ever be used. The result is that the only formal opposition to government policy is binary — intervention or no intervention. The effect on national security should not be underestimated. The lamentable lack of strategic content in almost 12 hours of debate made clear that despite the outcome, the practice, if not the principle, of military intervention is in poor health on both sides of the House.

It is hard to imagine an intervention with a stronger moral and strategic mandate — a UN resolution and a request for assistance after an attack on a Nato ally. Nonetheless, political will must be matched by a commitment to a strategy that has a strong chance of succeeding. Yet militarily the plan under debate will not prove to be decisive. At best the extension of air strikes represents the correction of a logical deficit in the UK’s contribution to the fight against IS. We are in practice at war with a pseudo-state that requires conventional land forces to defeat. Western politicians still do not seem to have grasped that unlike al-Qaeda, whose aim was the removal of infidels from the region, IS seeks control of territory with no borders because all must be enfolded into the caliphate. Clearly, special forces and air power alone won’t decisively change the facts on the ground.

The Obama administration is calling on the Cuban government to free a political prisoner — one of the dozens released from prison a year ago as a rapprochement gesture, only to be re-arrested a few months later.

Vladimir Morera Bacallao, 53, is reportedly near death due to the hunger strike he started behind bars in October.

Morera Bacallao, a labor activist, was arrested in April in the run-up to the regime’s sham municipal elections for posting a sign outside his home stating: “I vote for my freedom and not in an election where I cannot choose my president.”

A month ago, he was sentenced to four and a half years behind bars.

Around the same time, another one of the political prisoners whose release was hailed by the Obama administration as a grand gesture of the Castro regime toward human rights was sentenced to another prison term. Jorge Ramirez Calderon received two and a half years behind bars for “joining a peaceful protest asking for improved sanitary conditions and water in his community,” the State Department acknowledged at the time.

Vladimir Putin seems to catch the West by surprise every single time he invades another country — starting with Georgia, then Crimea, Ukraine, and now Syria. He hasn’t yet reconquered the old Soviet Empire, but Eastern Europe and the Baltics are feeling an icy wind blowing from the East.

By now even the New York Times has noticed Putin’s huge arms buildup, with a fivefold increase in the last decade. When Putin made his latest aggressive move into Syria, he made very sure that the world would take notice — using everything from ballistic and cruise missiles launched from the Caspian Sea to the guided missile cruiser Moskva in the Eastern Mediterranean. Under Putin, the Russian Empire is on the move, expanding north into the Arctic, west into Europe, south into the Middle East, and east with the new Russo-Chinese alliance.

To be sure, Putin has an Bamster-sized ego. But he also thinks strategically, unlike our political class, which apparently decided that with the election of Obama, peace and love were here to stay. The Norwegians embarrassed themselves by giving the Bam their most prestigious bauble, the Nobel Peace Prize, without even waiting for him to serve his first term. In a permanently peaceful world, why bother to spend money on defense?

BRUSSELS—Belgian authorities said Tuesday they arrested two people on terrorism charges and broke up a plan for attacks during the holiday period, underlining fears of further mayhem in a Europe still unsettled over Islamic State’s deadly attacks in Paris last month.

Police seized Islamic State propaganda and military-style clothing but no explosives or arms in a series of raids Sunday and Monday in Brussels, Liège and the Flanders region of Belgium, prosecutors said.

The arrests were made amid stepped-up antiterrorism operations by Belgian authorities in the aftermath of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks, which were planned by a Belgian national and carried out by a team that included several others with ties to Belgium, including the fugitive Salah Abdeslam, a French citizen who was born and lived in Brussels.

http://jamieglazov.com/2015/12/29/how-language-shapes-freedom-and-tyranny-on-the-glazov-gang-3/

In this special edition of The Glazov Gang we are running two of our blockbuster episodes that featured two freedom fighters from totalitarian environments who unveiled the fascinating links between linguistics and liberty/slavery.

In the first episode, Kai Chen, China’s Basketball Superstar and the author of One In A Billion: Journey Toward Freedom, discussed How Language Shapes Freedom and Tyranny.

In the second episode, Nonie Darwish, the author of The Devil We Don’t Know: The Dark Side of Revolutions in the Middle East, revealed How Arabic Stifles Individualism and Freedom, shedding light on how the Arabic language impedes psychological growth and sabotages the path to democracy.

Don’t miss these two episodes!

The curfews are accompanied by military assaults against civilian populations — their homes, businesses, offices, historical monuments, reservoirs and infrastructure are being bombed and destroyed.

“No one can go outside. Our water is running out. The food at homes is running out. The telephone lines have been cut. The situation here is terrible. … After declaring the curfew, they [the Turks] deploy soldiers, police and snipers in the evacuated schools. They have piled up their ammunition inside the schools.” — Osman Tetik, a representative in Cizre of the Education and Science Workers’ Union.

“They are shooting bullets at hospitals and ambulances. The Ministry of Health is standing by as hospitals are turned into military quarters and as health institutions and employees become targets.” — Gonul Erden, co-President of the Trade Union of Public Employees in Health and Social Services.

“All those towns will be cleansed of terror elements. If necessary, neighborhood by neighborhood, house by house, street by street.” — Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, December 15.

The curfews and military assaults against Kurdish civilians have reportedly forced at least 200,000 Kurds to flee.

Some 30 Muslim men thought that the woman was in violation of Islamic sharia law, by being in Sweden unaccompanied by a man. They thought that she should therefore be raped and her teenage son killed.

Two Swedish citizens were convicted by a Gothenburg Court of joining an Islamist terror group in Syria and murdering two captives. Video evidence showed one victim being beheaded. “Every night when I have gone to bed, I have seen a head hanging in the air.” — Court Chairman Ralf G. Larsson.

Sometime during the night, the victim was awakened by the Iraqi as he raped her. The woman managed to break free and locate a train attendant. At first, the woman did not want to call the police. “She felt sorry for him [the rapist] … and was afraid he would be deported back to Iraq.”

One week after Sweden raised its terror alert level to the highest ever, the police raised another alarm — saying their weapons are simply not good enough to prevent a potential terror attack.

November 4: The Swedish Immigration Service sent out a press release, saying that it had hired close to a thousand additional employees since June. The Immigration Service now has over 7,000 employees, including hourly workers and consultants — double the 3,350 employees who worked there in 2012. Most of the new recruits work with the legal processing of asylum applications, but the units dealing with receiving migrants and filing their initial applications have also expanded considerably. As if the record influx of migrants this autumn were not crushing enough, the Immigration Service also had trouble retaining its staff. Employees complain about being badly treated: they are always expected to be on call, and possibly even work Christmas Eve.