LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
February 05/2018
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/newselias18/english.february05.18.htm 

News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006
Click Here to enter the LCCC Arabic/English news bulletins Achieves since 2006

Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on February 04-05/18
Anti-hijab protesters defy Iranian authorities after the arrest of nearly 30 women for not wearing headscarves أحتجاجات النساء في إيران ضد قانون فرض الحجاب مستمرة حتى بعد موجة الإعتقالات
Daily Mail/February 04/18
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5347779/Iran-anti-hijab-protests-continue-despite-earlier-arrests.html#ixzz56639O9JY

Iranian Womens' Anti-hijab Protest Gains Momentum Despite Dozens of Arrests
Reuters/February 04/18
'We are fighting against the most visible symbol of oppression,' said Masih Alinejad, who hosts the website My Stealthy Freedom As images of Iranian women holding their hijabs aloft spread on social media, an influential activist said women are symbolically rejecting the wider "interference of religion" in their lives.
"We are fighting against the most visible symbol of oppression," said Masih Alinejad, who hosts the website My Stealthy Freedom where women in Iran post photos of themselves without hijabs. Under Iran's Islamic law, imposed after the 1979 revolution, women are obliged to cover their hair with a scarf, known as a hijab, and wear long, loose-fitting clothes. Violators are publicly admonished, fined or arrested. "These women are saying, 'It is enough - it is the 21st century and we want to be our true selves,'" the Iranian activist told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Iranian police said on Thursday that 29 women who took part in the campaign had been arrested in Iran for protesting against the country’s compulsory hijab rules, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. The trend picked up momentum after video and images were posted online of one woman waving a white scarf on a stick in December - a day before demonstrations erupted against economic conditions in eastern Iran, said Alinejad. Unrest quickly spread across the country and the focus broadened as protesters began calling for Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to step down. The video went viral as police cracked down, and Alinejad said the woman was arrested. She has since been released, according to a Facebook post by Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh. Although the wider anti-government demonstrations have ended, women across Iran are "fed up" and continue to protest against "the interference of religion in our personal lives", said the activist. Alinejad said she is now flooded with videos and photos of women imitating the viral video and she shares them on the My Stealthy Freedom Twitter account and Facebook page. "These people are not fighting against a piece of cloth, they are fighting against the ideology behind compulsory hijab," said Alinejad, who called the movement the "true face of feminism." To campaign against the obligatory wearing of headscarves, Alinejad last year encouraged women to take videos or photos of themselves wearing white and upload them on social media with the hashtag #whitewednesdays.
The #whitewednesdays campaign is part of a larger online movement started three years ago by Alinejad, a journalist who has lived in self-imposed exile since 2009. She has received death threats since her campaigning started. "I wake up everyday with the voices of these women in my inbox," said Alinejad from New York where she now lives. "I am full of hope. Civil disobedience is the first step to gain our victory."

Hamas 'Prepares for Imminent War' With Israel in Gaza
Jack Khoury/Haaretz/February 04/18
Hamas sees '95 percent' chance of confrontation with Israel, Al Hayat reports, but sources say Hamas is attempting to ratchet up debate about the humanitarian crisis in the Strip
The Gaza strip is preparing for confrontation with Israel within the next few days, the London-based Arabic daily Al Hayat reported on Sunday. According to the report, Palestinian factions, Hamas being chief among them, assess the chances of war with Israel "at 95 percent" and assume it could erupt within hours or days. Sources that have met with Yahya Sinwar, Hamas' political leader in Gaza, say that Palestinian factions believe that Israel will use a training exercise planned on the southern front to open a military operation against Hamas. The report further said that the military wing of Hamas has declared a state of high alert, evacuating sites and headquarters and even deploying road blocks accross the Strip.Political and human rights activists in Gaza told Haaretz that the atmosphere in the Strip is very grim in light of the humanitarian crisis, some of which involves the non-implementation of the reconciliation agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority and mutual recriminations between the PA and Hamas over the freeze in talks. Still, it seems the report of an impending military clash within days is exaggerated, and is part of an attempt by Hamas to ratchet up international discussion over the severe humanitarian situation in the Strip and the lack of progress toward reconciliation. It is widely believed that Israel will not initiate war with Hamas without real escalation in the south, such as a surge in rocket fire at southern communities. In terms of the wider region, Egypt is not interested in an escalation, considering its continued operations against ISIS in Sinai and its upcoming presidential elections next week. Political and human rights activists that spoke with Haaretz say that Hamas launching a campaign against Israel remains unlikely at this point. A senior delegation of Fatah officials is set to visit the Gaza Strip this week, including members of the movement’s Central Committee. They are to hold meetings with the leadership of Hamas and the other factions. The PA says Hamas has not yet given up control over security or tax collection, while Hamas accuses the PA of shirking its responsibility toward the Gaza Strip. Hamas says that while Hamas has given up administration to the Mahmoud Abbas government, Abbas has not yet instructed that sanctions it imposed about a year ago be lifted. Palestinian sources told Al-Hayat that Abbas has presented an alternative plan to that of U.S. President Donlad Trump, which calls for a phased recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with possible exchanges of territory that will allow Israel to annex the large settlements. According to the report, Abbas has conditioned his agreement to phased recognition to agreement on borders, but the White House rejected that proposal and said its plan would be presented for implementation, not negotiation. This report has not been confirmed by officials in the PA, and talks are continuing with international officials, particularly Russia, to move ahead on a UN Security Council resolution.

Europe: Judeo-Christian Symbols Vanish, Islam Rises
Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/February 04/18
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/11820/europe-christian-symbols-islam
The British housing market is now dealing with a new special entry: former Christian churches. A former Methodist church in Surrey was recently put on sale for the first time in its 154-year history. And a few days later, a church in London and went on the market -- converted into apartments.
Religious symbols are an integral part of a civilization. When old symbols vanish, new ones -- with their own identities -- take their place. Europe's public imagination today is being flooded with Islamic symbols, from veils in schools, swimming pools and workplaces, to the volume and height of mosque minarets.
We impenitent secularists might be happily indifferent to the fall of the old religious symbols -- but we should not be indifferent to the new religious symbols taking their place.
French writers coined the term "le grand remplacement," meaning the demographic replacement by immigrants of native Europeans. There is, however, another replacement taking place on the old continent.
Look at the images taken by the Israeli-Hungarian photographer Bernadett Alpern. Synagogues -- like silent witnesses of the fall of a fundamental branch of the European civilization -- have been turned into museums, swimming pools, shopping centers, police stations and mosques.
Now it is the turn of the Stars of David and skullcaps, the two most visible Jewish symbols. A poll by the World Zionist Organization recently revealed that at least half of Jews in Europe do not feel safe wearing symbols of their faith. They are right. A few days ago, an 8-year-old Jewish boy wearing a skullcap was attacked and beaten in the street by two men in Sarcelles. Earlier in January, in the same suburb, a man slashed the face of a 15-year-old Jewish girl who was walking home while wearing the uniform of her Jewish school. It is the "new normal" for French Jews.
For years, European elites have been preaching multiculturalism and religious and cultural relativism. Now we find ourselves living through not only further assaults on the habitually besieged Jews and their faith, but a massive de-Christianization, as well.
A historic German church, St. Lambertus, was demolished last month. The 19th-Century Catholic site in Germany was destroyed to make way for a coal mine. It is sadly ironic that the only group protesting this shameful destruction was a secular, non-Christian one: Greenpeace. Forty activists climbed the church to protest its demolition. They displayed banners reading: "Those who destroy culture also destroy humans".
The demolition of one of the towers of St. Lambertus Chruch in Immerath, Germany on January 9, 2018.
The abandonment of old churches is not an economic question. Last year, the German Catholic Church's revenues reached a record $7.1 billion. It is rather a question of cultural decline. It is a fate also overtaking many other Christian sites in Europe.
The British housing market is now dealing with a new special entry: former Christian churches. A former Methodist church in Surrey was recently put on sale for the first time in its 154-year history. And a few days later, a church in London went on the market -- converted into apartments.
Religious symbols are an integral part of a civilization. "Communism was a kind of false religion, although it had its own liturgy," said French author Michel Houellebecq in a recent interview. "A religion is much harder to destroy than a political system. And religion plays a key role in the society and in its cohesion".
When old symbols vanish, new ones -- with their own identities -- take their place.
"Islam is a reaction to Christianity, which it wishes to replace", according to Professor Rémi Brague, author of the new book, Sur la religion ("On Religion"). Islamism, according to Brague, is an attempt to replace Judeo-Christian civilization. Europe's public imagination today is being flooded with Islamic symbols, from veils in schools, swimming pools and workplaces, to the volume and height of mosque minarets.
Brague adds that "free institutions hardly developed in areas that had not been influenced by Jewish or Christian ideas". The change should therefore also matter to the secular, who could not care less about religion.
We impenitent secularists might be happily indifferent to the fall of the old religious symbols -- but we should not be indifferent to the new religious symbols taking their place.
**Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
© 2018 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Caroline Mulroney to officially join PC leadership race Monday: source
The Canadian Press/February 04/18
TORONTO — A source with Caroline Mulroney's campaign says the Toronto lawyer and businesswoman will officially jump into the race to lead Ontario's Progressive Conservatives on Monday, days after reports first emerged suggesting she was eyeing the party's top job.
Mulroney, the daughter of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, was pegged as a contender to replace Patrick Brown as soon as the contest began, despite having never held political office.
The 43-year-old mother of four has hinted she intends to run for the leadership, thanking those who supported her candidacy on Twitter over the weekend but stopping short of formally announcing her plans.
Mulroney, a lawyer who studied at New York University, was acclaimed as a Progressive Conservative candidate in the riding of York-Simcoe, north of Toronto, last August. In 2014, she was appointed to the Windsor Detroit Bridge Authority to help oversee development of a $4 billion second border span between the two cities. Mulroney also co-founded the Shoebox Project in 2011, a non-profit that collects and distributes gifts to women who are homeless or at risk. Prior to announcing her political plans, Mulroney served as vice-president of Toronto-based BloombergSen Investment Partners, and used to work at a venture debt fund. "It wasn't her plan to seek the leadership, she was very, very focused on the riding and on the community and that's where her efforts went," said Peter Van Loan, a legislator with the federal Conservative Party who acted as an adviser to Mulroney.
Though new to politics, Mulroney has shown herself to be hardworking and genuine, which has won her support in the community — even among those who may judge her based on the family name, Van Loan said.
"She has intrinsic strengths and intrinsic talents of her own, whatever her name may be," he said. "When you talk about that kind of name, that's sort of the impression people have before they meet her and then when they meet her, talk to her, the response you get is, 'Wow she is so relatable, she understands me, she gets me, she listens to me, she obviously genuinely cares,'" he said.
Mulroney's lack of political experience will likely be her biggest challenge, particularly when measured against more seasoned candidates, said Kathy Brock, a policy expert and political science professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. But it could also play in her favour, bringing some freshness to the Tories at a time where their interim leader has vowed to clear out the "rot" from the party, Brock said. "This is one of the ways in which being more of a newcomer to the (Progressive) Conservative party in Ontario and Ontario politics, that might actually be an advantage, given what the Conservatives are going through," the professor said.
"She gives a fresh face, a fresh feel, and yet she has ... the potential to pull on experienced advisers and her own experiences with politics from having been involved through her family and friends."Mulroney's entry into the race means there will now be two high-profile women competing for the Tory reins, which could bolster the party's image, she said. Former Tory legislator Christine Elliott threw her hat in the ring in the last week. "That might be the type of thing that they need to get over the incident with (former party president Rick) Dykstra and Patrick Brown. It just gives them a new focus and new energy and it makes them look a little more current with the times," she said. Brown and Dykstra resigned within days of each other after being confronted with allegations of sexual misconduct, which they deny. The allegations have not been independently verified by The Canadian Press. Toronto politician Doug Ford, brother of the city's late former mayor Rob Ford, is also in the running. Sources tell The Canadian Press former Postmedia executive Rod Phillips is also set to enter the race within days.
Candidates have until Feb. 16 to register, and the new leader will be announced March 10. Paola Loriggio and Shawn Jeffords,
The Canadian Press