RUTHFULLY YOURS

Ankara’s detention of the two Greek soldiers appears to be the latest instance of what has come to be called Turkey’s “hostage-taking diplomacy.” Other examples include a German-Turkish journalist, Deniz Yücel; a French journalist Loup Bureau, and an American pastor, Andrew Brunson, among others. All were imprisoned in Turkey on trumped-up terrorism-related charges. Pastor Brunson has been behind bars since October 2016, but the Turkish judiciary has yet to produce an indictment spelling out the charges against him.

According to Freedom House project director “Turkish hostage-taking has become one of the most pressing problems in relations between Ankara and its Western allies. It is something that everyone knows is happening, but political leaders and diplomats are reluctant to call it by its name.” — Nate Schenkkan, project director, Freedom House.

It is high time the West had a serious discussion about whether Turkey’s aggressive and illegal actions in the region really comply with the principles of NATO and the EU.

Turkey’s arrest on March 2 of two Greek soldiers on suspicion of espionage, after the pair entered a “prohibited military zone” along the border, should be cause for alarm in the West. When they were arrested – in the small space between Turkish and Greek guard posts — Angelos Mitretodis and Dimitris Kouklatzis explained that they had simply strayed by a few meters in the thick forest, due to the poor weather conditions. They had difficulty seeing where they were going, and so followed tracks in the snow.

Their lawyers’ plea for their release was rejected by a court in Edirne, on the grounds that “images were found in the cell phones of the soldiers, who intended to send the footage to their superiors.”

In Brussels, to urge European intervention on the matter, Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos responded by saying that as member states of NATO, Turkey and Greece need to resolve the incident peacefully, “after negotiations between the two armed forces.” European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini expressed the EU’s “full hope that there will be a swift and positive outcome.”

“I’d like to know whose bright idea this was. It is ridiculous and not the business of a Government department. I can’t see the Foreign Office promoting Christianity or the handing out of crosses.” — Tory MP Andrew Bridgen in response to a decision by Foreign Office officials to give away taxpayer-funded Islamic headscarves, claiming they symbolized “liberation, respect and security.”

A review chaired by Professor Mona Siddiqui, a professor of Islam, proposed legislative changes that would require Muslim couples to undergo a civil marriage before or at the same time as their Islamic ceremony, to provide women with legal protection under British law. Nearly all those using Sharia councils were females seeking an Islamic divorce.

“We, the United Kingdom, produced Jihadi John. Something in our cities and towns… have produced the most infamous terrorists. We need to start asking: what is it in our culture, in our cities, in our towns that is producing these sorts of monsters.” — Maajid Nawaz, British counter-extremism activist.

Islamic charities vulnerable to extremists receive £6 million a year from taxpayers in gift aid, according to a new report. The report accused charities of supporting “the spread of harmful non-violent extremist views that are not illegal; by providing platforms, credibility and support to a network of extremists operating in the UK.”

February 1. Foreign Office officials invited 1,800 female staff members to wear Islamic headscarves to mark World Hijab Day. The department gave away taxpayer-funded headscarves, claiming they symbolized “liberation, respect and security.” Critics, citing the compulsory veiling of women in Islamic countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, said the garment is a symbol of male oppression. Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said, “I’d like to know whose bright idea this was. It is ridiculous, a complete waste of taxpayers’ money and not the business of a government department. I can’t see the Foreign Office promoting Christianity or the handing out of crosses.”

In the CQ Researcher issue titled “Religious Persecution,” dated November 21, 1997, Kenneth Jost highlighted the “well-documented cases of churches being bulldozed or burned down, clergy and lay leaders [being] arrested and imprisoned and clergymen being murdered by [Sudanese] government troops.” In the 21 years since this article was printed, global Christian persecution has increased exponentially. The following is a small sampling of what Christians are facing, and the sad truth is that no one seems to be stopping the oppressors and punishing them.

In Sweden, Muslim migrants often persecute Christian migrants, or immigrants who convert to Christianity. Thus, “Open Doors Deutschland documented 743 attacks on Christians in Germany in 2016, and German police documented another 100 in 2017. Similar violence plagues Christian refugees in Sweden, but the Scandinavian country has yet to issue an investigation. A survey published by Open Doors Sweden last year found that … one hundred and twenty-three Christian asylum-seekers reported religiously motivated persecution, and 512 separate incidents. Christian refugees suffered 65 violent assaults, 55 death threats, 7 cases of sexual assault, along with instances of social exclusion, insults, contempt, and threats. More than half, 53 percent, said they had been violently attacked at least once. Almost half, 45 percent, reported receiving at least one death threat. More than three-quarters of those who faced such persecution were converts to Christianity, and almost all of the perpetrators were Muslim.”

Open Door’s top countries where Christians face the most persecution are:

North Korea (94 points) – Christians and Christian missionaries are routinely imprisoned in labor camps.
Afghanistan (93 points) – The government of this Muslim country does not recognize any of its citizens as Christian.
Somalia (91 points) – The Catholic bishop of Mogadishu has described it as “not possible” to be a Christian in Somalia.
Sudan (87 points) – The Muslim government has slated Christian churches for demolition.
Pakistan (86 points) – Christians and other non-Muslims sit on death row, facing charges of blasphemy.
Eritrea (86 points) – Only four religions are officially recognized (Sunni Islam and the Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical Lutheran churches). Those belonging to other faiths are persecuted, and those of recognized faiths are routinely harassed by the government.
Libya (86 points) – The government is reportedly training militants to attack Coptic Christians.
Iraq (86 points) – Iraqi Christians have yet to return to their homelands after expulsion by ISIS.
Yemen (85 points) – The ongoing political and humanitarian crisis has further squeezed Christians and other religious minorities, who already faced severe restrictions on practicing their faiths.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said Russia owes the UK an explanation by Tuesday of how their nerve agent poisoned a former spy and his daughter on British turf, while the White House said it’s hanging back to see how the situation develops.

Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy who fed intelligence to the Brits from 1995 to 2004 and was sent to the UK in a spy exchange in 2010, and his daughter Yulia collapsed March 4 at a shopping center in Salisbury. Both are in critical condition. A restaurant and a pub in the center have tested positive for traces of the nerve agent as military personnel clean up the crime scene and surrounding area.

Speaking to the House of Commons today after receiving an update on the investigation, May said it was “now clear that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia.”

“This is part of a group of nerve agents known as ‘Novichok,'” the prime minister said. “Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down; our knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so; Russia’s record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations; and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations; the government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal.”

“Mr. Speaker, there are therefore only two plausible explanations for what happened in Salisbury on the 4th of March: Either this was a direct act by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of this potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others,” May added.

Russia’s ambassador to the UK was told that the Kremlin “must immediately provide full and complete disclosure of the Novichok program to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”

May said that if there’s “no credible response,” from the Russian government, NATO allies should stand together as “we will conclude that this action amounts to an unlawful use of force by the Russian state against the United Kingdom.” CONTINUE AT SITE

What really lies behind progressives’ dalliance with Jihad and Sharia. http://jamieglazov.com/2018/03/13/glazov-moment-united-in-hate-the-lefts-romance-with-terror/

On this new edition of The Jamie Glazov Moment, Jamie discusses United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Terror and unveils what really lies behind progressives’ dalliance with Jihad and Sharia.

Don’t miss it!

An official investigation into the systemic abuse in Telford, U.K. wasn’t launched until roughly a decade after authorities first learned of it, according to the Sunday Mirror.

British authorities failed to meaningfully address an epidemic of child prostitution that claimed as many as 1,000 victims over the past three decades, according to a new report by the Sunday Mirror.

The report reveals that authorities in the town of Telford became aware of the scale of the problem in the 1990s, but failed to prevent the continued drugging, beating, and rape of hundreds of girls, some of whom were as young as eleven, until an official investigation was launched roughly a decade later.

The Sunday Mirror spoke with a dozen victims who named more than 70 abusers collectively. One victim explained that the police tried to prevent her from discovering why her abuser was not jailed because they feared she would share her story with the press. Another victim, just 14 years old, detailed the tactics her abusers employed to compel her cooperation.

“I hated what was happening and my abusers made my skin crawl but I was told that if I said a word to anyone they’d come for my little sisters and tell my mum I was a prostitute,” the second victim said. “I fell pregnant twice and had two abortions. Hours after my second termination, I was taken by one of my abusers to be raped by more men….The worst moment came just after my 16th birthday when I was drugged and gang raped by five men.”

It’s less than six years since President Obama mocked presidential contender Mitt Romney for warning about the resurgent threat from Russia. In one of the most memorable lines of the 2012 election, Obama scoffed that “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”

Today, there’s plenty of evidence that the Cold War was already on its way back, with a vengeance. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin seized every opening presented by Obama’s policies of “reset,” “flexibility,” appeasement and retreat. During Obama’s second term, Russia made its military reentry via Syria into the conflicts of the Middle East, shored up its ties to Iran, and began reconfiguring the borders of Eastern Europe and the rules of the post-Soviet world order by snatching Crimea from Ukraine. In Washington, American politics has been embroiled since the 2016 election in investigations and bitter quarrels involving allegations of Russian dirty tricks.

By now, the upshot is a global landscape of rising frictions and growing risks of military confrontation between Russia and the United States. For years, Putin’s strategy has been to test the limits of American tolerance — buttressing his projects with a massive military modernization and buildup, while daring the U.S. superpower to stop him. Obama failed this challenge, bequeathing to President Trump the job of redrawing those vanished red lines, and restoring a credible U.S. strategy of deterrence.

That has become far more difficult and dangerous than it might have been a decade ago. As the director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency testified to Congress just last week, “Although Russia repeatedly emphasizes that is it not interested in a new Cold War with the United States, it has also made clear that it will no longer reconcile with the West through concessions or a policy of appeasement.”

Gianni Infantino is the second FIFA president to visit the Islamic Republic, but neither of them “pushed for letting women inside the stadiums. Iran is the only country in the World Cup that bans women from their stadiums and any attempt to watch the games means risk of getting arrested.” — OpenStadiums, Iranian women’s organization.

Infantino has both the power and the duty to hold Tehran accountable in this literal and figurative arena. That he exercised neither, preferring instead to appease Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, is outrageous. In spite of his being touted falsely in the West as a “moderate,” Rouhani is a key part of the problem in Iran, not a solution to it.

Infantino deserves a swift penalty kick out of his job.

A week before International Women’s Day on March 8, thirty-five women and girls dressed as men were arrested in Iran while attempting to sneak into a popular annual soccer match. The women, the youngest of whom was 13, were forcibly removed from the premises of the Tehran Derby and “transferred to a proper place.”

The ban on women attending any sports event in Iran, other than all-female matches in which the players are required to wear full Islamic dress, is but one of many issues at the root of the current mass protests across the country against the oppressive and repressive ayatollah-led regime, which came to power nearly four decades ago. Over the years, sports have been used by both male and female anti-regime activists as a symbol of freedom, as it was one of the first areas after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, which ousted the Shah and ushered in the reign of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to be considered by the ruling mullahs as a dangerous expression of secularism.

The reason that this year’s Tehran Derby was of particular interest – and not only to sports fans — was the attendance of world soccer’s top official, Gianni Infantino. As Infantino is the president of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), his arrival at the match was seen by freedom-seeking Iranians as an opportunity to force their government to lift the ban on women spectators.

Many years ago, Elvis made a movie Fun in Acapulco. As they say, the movie didn’t have much of a plot but Ursula Andress is worth whatever it costs to watch it online.

We can safely said that no one is making a movie about fun in Playa del Carmen these days.

As you probably know, there is a lot of talk about “el muro” — the border wall — down in Mexico. Sadly, the political class should be talking about the chaos in the country and how this is impacting their economy.

This week we read that the U.S. closed a consulate office indefinitely. This is from news reports:

“The State Department abruptly closed the U.S. consulate in the popular tourist destination of Playa del Carmen late Wednesday evening and ordered U.S. government employees to stay out of the area.

They warn other Americans either in the region or thinking of traveling to it about a “real crime threat” from local drug cartels…”

Maxime Bernier is right: Identity politics dissolves community, reduces a country to subsets of clans, and obscures the diversity of individual lives

There is much to choose from this week, including the infantile wailing and moronic ignorance of social-justice hooligans driven crazy mad (Pavlovian response) by Jordan Peterson giving a lecture, by invitation, at Queen’s University. (Three cheers for Queen’s president and the law faculty for inviting Dr. Peterson.)

Then there is Justin Trudeau inviting the fanatically anti-Alberta-oil Bill Nye to Ottawa for a public chat on science, the highlight of which was the signal revelation of the centrality of breastfeeding to the scientific method — delivered by our PM. When baby wails and the milk flows, can Planck’s constant be far behind?

As well: Jaspal Atwal, failed Sikh assassin, holding what he ludicrously called a press conference. The only takeaway: his lawyer is scarier, though not necessarily more competent.

More fertile than them all however was the brisk, chippy, and entitled Twitter blast levelled by Liberal MP and person of colour, Celina Caesar-Chavannes (Whitby, Ont.), at Conservative MP Maxime Bernier (Beauce, Que.).

Bernier had criticized an earlier tweet by Ahmed Hussen in which the Immigration Minister said the federal budget was historic for “racialized Canadians.”

Bernier said he deplored that tweet’s “awful jargon,” the pitch to “racialized” Canadians, and put out a plea for “colour blindness,” character over skin colour. His critics, Bernier said, implied (he was) a racist because “I want to live in a society where everyone is treated equally and not defined by their race.”

The parliamentary pigeons were duly agitated. Instanter, Caesar-Chavannes fired off her Twitter blast:

“… please tell this highly privileged man that the ultimate goal of fighting discrimination is equity & justice and not, as he states … to create a colour-blind society.”

That wasn’t going to boil the kettle, so there followed another, more imperious swipe: “@MaximeBernier … colour blindness as a defence actually contributes to racism. Please check your privilege and be quiet.”