RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.steynonline.com/13949/diversity-rape-of-the-day

Have you ever been to Hamburg’s Stadtpark? They call it the “green heart” of the city, over 350 acres of woods and lakes and meadows, playgrounds and sports fields and concert stages, plus Germany’s largest planetarium. It’s also a great place to rape someone.

So a fifteen-year-old girl gets dragged into the bushes by a gang of four “youths”. They rape her, and take the trouble to film themselves doing so. Because, after all, if you gang-rape someone, you want to have something to show to the lads who weren’t able to make it. When they’re sated and push off, the girl gets to her feet and staggers away only to run into five more chaps, who rape her all over again. And film it all over again, in what by now is enough video for a full-length feature – over two-and-a-half hours. That’s getting close to Lord of the Rings – and with a cast to match: the semen of nine different men was found in and on her body. And from all over the map: Egypt, Libya, Kuwait, Iran, Afghanistan, Montenegro, Poland, Armenia… That’s a lot of diversity: it’s like the UN General Assembly of semen …although officialdom was eager to characterise most of the rapists as “German”, with two said to be of “uncertain nationality”. There’s a lot of that about.

The rape of a schoolgirl is a terrible thing – especially for the guys. As the eminent lady psychiatrist assigned to the case, Nahlah Saimeh, was at pains to explain, “a migrant background can push offenders to the margins of society” and lead to “fantasies of grandeur as an attempt to compensate for one’s own misery”.

Yeah, but two-and-a-half hours? That’s some fantasy of grandeur.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/12/muslim-assimilation-and-its-malcontents-rachael-kohn/

I was recently called “Islamophobic” on Facebook by a Muslim convert I met once many years ago. The prompt was nothing I said about Islam, but about assimilation being the road to integration for Aboriginal Australians, as it has been for most other individuals and ethnic-religious groups in the West. It was a telling leap to make, given that for twenty-one years my program, The Spirit of Things on ABC RN, featured many Muslims, but perhaps the former community leader and school teacher remembered only the ones who rankled, those who advocated a modern, assimilated version of Islam and denounced some of its belligerent and oppressive expressions.

Marnia Lazreg is a Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and CUNY in New York, and when I went visited her in 2010, I remarked that she was the only faculty member without a photo of herself on her website. She told me that after writing her book Questioning the Veil, it was “dangerous” for her to be recognisable, given the resurgence of Islamist thinking in post-9/11 America. Her own mother took off the veil at the age of fifty after the independence of Algeria, and Marnia’s generation of students never thought of wearing the veil as they contemplated living a new kind of life, reflecting modernity. But Professor Lazreg’s writing about women and their desire to be free from the tyranny of a patriarchal Islamic tradition that confined them to full bodily coverage and the ambit of the home, was ironically problematic in mid-town Manhattan in twenty-first-century America.

Like Lazreg, a Canadian Muslim, Irshad Manji, was also imperilled by the publication of her book The Trouble with Islam Today, and when I interviewed her during a visit to Sydney in 2004, she had security around her at all times. Her book begins with her experience as a young bright student in a madrassa in Vancouver where she was punished by her teachers for asking questions about the Koran. Expected to recite the sacred text without understanding it, she questioned why Muslims are instructed to avoid Jews and Christians, when to her as a young Canadian they were friends and fellow citizens. As a highly successful young host on TV Ontario, where her boss was Jewish, she spoke and wrote about the irrationality of Muslim anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism. Consequently, her books are banned in many Muslim countries.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20191/iran-nuclear-bombs

The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran must not be underestimated. Iran’s regime has frequently threatened to wipe a whole country — Israel — off the map, and is also increasing military cooperation with Venezuela and Cuba to threaten the US. Europe, too, remains a rich target for nuclear blackmail. Iran would not even have to use its nuclear bombs; the threat would be enough.

It is high time for the Biden administration and the European Union at least to stop Iran from selling its oil. If not, much of the planet will soon see itself either in World War III or a surrender.

It would have been so much less costly in life and treasure to stop Hitler before he sent the German army across the Rhine in 1936. Perhaps US President Joe Biden is trying to bribe the mullahs not to create any more mayhem before next year’s US presidential election – but the only result of such timidity is that the price goes up – with a worse war to follow. Biden would not have won WWII.

The Iranian regime, through its proxies, has already attacked US forces in Iraq and Syria at least 74 times since October 17. US retaliation – against the proxies, not Iran – apparently could not impress Iran’s regime less. Someone else takes the bullet: that is why Iran has proxies in the first place… The Biden administration is not only allowing to Iran’s mullahs to create a war cost-free, it is paying them to do it.
The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran must not be underestimated. Once Iran obtains nuclear weapons, it will most likely provide some of them to its proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. (Image source: iStock)

Iran is closer than ever before to obtaining nuclear bombs; meanwhile, the Biden administration’s only policy toward the ruling mullahs of Iran is to keep “rewarding” them with billions of dollars.

After the Iran-backed Hamas terror group launched its genocidal war against Israel and Jews, the Iranian regime ratcheted up its enrichment of uranium. The regime claims it now has enough enriched uranium to make three nuclear bombs, according to one of the two confidential reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and seen by Reuters.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/11/ireland-on-the-verge-of-establishing-an-oppressive-censorship-regime/?utm_source=

Despite superficial similarities to First Amendment jurisprudence in the U.S., the proposed Irish hate-speech statute would all but guarantee its politicized use.

The ferocious desire of Ireland’s myopic and feckless governing class to crack down on speech that it considers “hateful” seems at last to be reaching fruition. After a riot in Dublin was blamed on “far-right” agitators, the country’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, renewed his push for a stricter set of legal restrictions on the free expression of the citizenry. “It’s now very obvious to anyone who might have doubted us,” Varadkar said last week, “that our incitement-to-hatred legislation is just not up to date.” “We need that legislation through,” he insisted, “and we need it through in a matter of weeks.”

When selling its proposal, Ireland’s government is careful to use words that do not appear suggestive of censorship. Far from being about “enforcing politeness or political correctness,” the country’s minister of justice, Helen McEntee, maintained last week, the statute she covets is about preventing forms of “criminal hate speech” that “recklessly incite” or “stir up acts of hostility, discrimination or violence.” “People may hold different views and opinions,” McEntee vowed. Her target, she explained, was instigation.

Rhetorically, this is quite a clever trick — akin to describing welfare spending as “insurance” or defining McCarthyism as “accountability culture.” But a trick it is nevertheless. If Ireland truly wished to crack down on reckless incitement while leaving “views and opinions” alone, it could simply have adopted the American standard of review, which, by design, does precisely that. That, instead, the Irish government has developed a system for the wholesale regulation of debate is telling.

Examined superficially, the guts of Ireland’s law seem similar to the holding in America’s controlling First Amendment case, Brandenburg v. Ohio. If enacted, Ireland’s measure would enable the punishment of speech that is “likely to incite hatred or violence” — which appears to channel Brandenburg’s exemption of speech that is “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely” to do so. But this resemblance is a mirage.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/evan-gershkovich-prison-russia-biden-administration-alsu-kurmasheva-2d31322b?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

A Russian court on Tuesday extended the unjust detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich through at least Jan. 30. That would extend his imprisonment to 10 months on false charges of espionage since his arrest in March.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow criticized the court’s decision, and thanks for that. But the question Americans should ask the Biden Administration is what price has the Russian government paid for imprisoning an American journalist?

We can’t think of anything that would discomfit Vladimir Putin, who is responsible for Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest. The dictator has been denounced around the world, but the bomber of Ukrainian civilians hardly cares about that. No real Russian spies have been arrested in the U.S., nor any Russian journalists or diplomats even expelled, in response.

The White House seems to be focusing on some kind of prisoner exchange for Mr. Gershkovich, as it has for others such as basketball celebrity Brittney Griner. The problem is that Mr. Putin doesn’t seem interested in anyone currently in U.S. custody, and Russia’s official position is that Mr. Gershkovich must go on trial first. Russia could finish its Potemkin trial in days if it wanted to.

The harsh reality of Mr. Gershkovich’s detention for all American journalists working abroad is that the failure to impose costs on Russia will encourage the Kremlin and other rogue states to grab others. And sure enough, it recently escalated by detaining American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20187/should-nazis-economy

The new index does not include Chinese and Hong Kong stocks, so to match the assets of the I Fund to the new index, the Thrift Board will have to sell Chinese and Hong Kong stocks and not buy them in the future.

Investors have noticed. More than three-quarters of the foreign cash invested in Chinese stocks in the first seven months of this year has already been withdrawn from China. In excess of $25 billion has exited the country.

Chinese stocks listed in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and New York have lost about $955 billion of market capitalization this year…. The plunge in the renminbi against the dollar this year has further eroded returns.

Chinese economic news has become downright scary, and, unfortunately for China, there is no such thing as a brave money manager.

China’s companies for decades essentially had a free ride: As a practical matter, they did not have to meet U.S. disclosure requirements, which applied to companies from all other countries. This unjustified preferential treatment was reduced somewhat in August of last year when the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board surprisingly clinched an agreement with Chinese regulators to give the U.S. access in Hong Kong to the audit papers of Chinese companies.

So why should companies continue to get special access to American equity markets just because they come from China? Or why should they have any access at all?

The Chinese economy and financial markets are fragile. It is time to cut off all the blood supply to the Nazis of the 21st century.

They certainly cannot be happy in Beijing. An exceedingly technical administrative decision in Washington, D.C. will soon result in investors pulling tens of billions of dollars in investments from a cash-strapped China.

On November 14, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board changed the benchmark for the Thrift Savings Plan’s International Stock Index Investment Fund, better known as the I Fund.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/26/sweden-and-the-explosive-consequences-of-multiculturalism/

Where did it all go so wrong for Sweden? The nation once known for ABBA, IKEA and its social-democratic welfare state has now become a byword for gangland killings and grenade attacks. Crime has soared to unprecedented levels. Grenade attacks have become an unwelcome feature of suburban life. Islamism is spreading unchecked. Even some on the Swedish left have been forced to acknowledge that multiculturalism is unravelling and that the state has failed to integrate vast numbers of migrants.

Swedish journalist Ivar Arpi joined Brendan O’Neill on the latest episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show to discuss all this and more. What follows is an edited extract from their conversation. Listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: Sweden has found itself in the middle of a global battle between liberalism and Islamism. There have been frequent violent clashes over Koran burnings, as well as a terrorist attack on Swedes in Brussels last month. How are Swedish people navigating this?

Ivar Arpi: Right now the majority opinion in Sweden is that you shouldn’t be able to do things like burn the Koran. And, like in much of the West, the response of the Swedish media and political class to any Islamist terror attack is to immediately consider the feelings of Muslims who might now face discrimination.

In the past, we’ve seen prominent figures in Sweden saying things like: ‘Now remember, all Islamists are Muslim, but not all Muslims are Islamists.’ That shift in focus away from the actual victims takes place almost immediately. This was definitely the case after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October.

But there are also many people in the public sphere, such as journalists and academics, who are waking up to the fact that they were wrong about Islamism and multiculturalism. It’s been an ongoing development, but it’s visible.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/26/election-of-milei-wilders-and-cogswell-has-the-left-worried/

Is there a disturbance in the force? I think there might be. In just the last week, the chainsaw-wielding “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei won the presidential election in Argentina, the Freedom Party of Islamo-realist Geert Wilders trounced its opponents in the snap general election in the Netherlands, and, here at home, a Republican was elected mayor of Charleston for the first time since 1877. The Zeitgeist would seem to be awake and on the move. What is it waking from? I agree with those who say it is waking from wokeness.

In this context, it is not irrelevant to point out that Donald Trump, who has consistently been leading in almost all GOP polls since the 2024 election campaign began, has surged even further ahead. As I write, an Emerson poll has Trump ahead of his competition by 64 to 8 for DeSantis, and 9 for Nikki Haley. The hoary meme of conventional wisdom cautions that even if Trump wins the nomination it won’t matter because he is unpopular with the American people. Alas for that scrap of anti-Trump prognostication, the former president has also pulled ahead of his likely opponent Joe Biden. Some earlier polls had Trump tied or ahead by a fraction of a point. The current polls have him ahead in the general election by some 4, 6, or more points.

Are these phenomena related? I say yes. They are all part of a growing revulsion against the real-world, reality-show version of The Camp of the Saints, the dystopian novel, originally published in French,  about what happens when mass immigration from the third-world overwhelms Europe and America. I will not be giving anything away when I note that the result is the collapse of civilization. If you look up “Camp of the Saints” on Wikipedia, you will be told that the book has been criticized “for conveying themes”—odd locution—of “racism, xenophobia, nativism, monoculturalism, and anti-immigration.” “The novel,” we read, “is popular within far-right and white nationalist circles.” It is popular with me, too. But good luck, if you don’t already know the book, finding out for yourself. Camp of the Saints has been out of print for years and efforts to prise loose the rights from its publisher have been for naught. Currently, a paperback copy of the English version sells for about $200 on Amazon; the hardcover will set you back $4,155.15. (I think the 15¢ is a nice touch).

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20175/iran-accomplice-eu

Germany is the top European trade partner buying oil and non-oil commodities from Iran.

“UANI [United Against Nuclear Iran] said that research had led to the identification of 2,500 businesses around the world, suspected of having involvement with Iran, with hundreds in Europe. They will publish their names if they do not receive satisfactory answers.” — The National, September 22, 2023.

The EU’s trade with Iran, increasing the Iranian regime’s revenue, is doubtless making it easier for the theocratic establishment to provide weapons to Russia, repress its own people even further, strengthen its military presence in Venezuela and Cuba, help its proxies escalate their goals of trying to annihilate Israel and the Jews, and above all, top off its nuclear weapons program with which to blackmail everyone.

If this is the damage the Iranian is doing without nuclear weapons, just think what it will do with them.

The Europeans’ continuing business with Iran repeats the same mistake they made with Nazi Germany: feeding a war machine that will ultimately turn on them. Appeasing anyone will only encourage him to become an even greater threat. Although Europe and the US most probably will not do it, the time has come to stop.

In spite of the Iran’s increasing involvement in the war against Ukraine and against Israel and Jews, the European Union, as well as the US, appear more than happy to continue appeasing the Iran’s ruling mullahs. Shouldn’t this make them considered accomplices?

Iran and Russia are fast making headway constructing a plant based in Russia that will mass-produce Iranian-designed kamikaze drones, presumably to help Moscow attack Ukrainian targets.

Yet, no sanctions or pressure have been imposed either by the United States or the European Union just on this project, let alone Iran’s lethal nuclear program or the 60+ attacks on US troops in Syria and Iraq just since October 17.