RUTHFULLY YOURS

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom implored Secretary of State John Kerry late last month to admit to the United States some Bangladeshi bloggers at high risk of assassination by al-Qaeda groups.

That follows a plea just before Christmas from a coalition of human rights groups warning that dozens of Bangladeshi writers — deemed blasphemers by Islamists for their secular works — were in “urgent danger” and in need of protection.

But today at the State Department, the Obama administration wouldn’t confirm if it had any response to the requests in which the urgency of the matter was clearly spelled out.

USCIRF Chairman Robert P. George wrote to Kerry on Jan. 25, asking “that our government provide humanitarian parole for a limited number of Bangladeshi writers at imminent risk of assassination by extremist groups.”

Last year, one American, Avijit Roy of Atlanta, and four Bangladeshis, Washiqur Rahman Babu, Ananta Bijoy Das, Niloy Chatterjee, and Faisal Arefin Dipan, were viciously murdered by assassins aligned with al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent.

George noted that they “were assassinated because of their writings, including expressing their secular beliefs that amounted to blasphemy in the eyes of the religious extremists who killed them.”

“Additionally, numerous other individuals have been placed on ‘hit-lists,’ which are widely available on the Internet. The five murders, along with the hit lists, underscore that several individuals remain in imminent danger,” he wrote.

“USCIRF respectfully urges you to use your good offices to help secure humanitarian parole for a select number of bloggers who remain in imminent danger in Bangladesh.”

The December letter to Kerry from PEN American Center, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and others noted that “the government of Bangladesh has not provided adequate protection to those at risk and, in some cases, has promoted the idea that these bloggers should self-censor in order to deter attacks against them—or that they should leave the country.”

“In what appears to be a concession to appease Islamist groups, Bangladeshi officials have also arrested secular bloggers on charges of insulting religious sentiments in the past,” the coalition wrote.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union funded “peace movements” throughout the west – because for the Soviets “peace” meant “the absence of opposition”.

In our time the new peace movement is Islam. And so we are told today, from the podium of a mosque with “extremist” “links”, that the very word Islam means “peace”. Actually, it means “submission” – ie, the absence of opposition.

The only difference between then and now is that instead of being chanted by scrofulous hippies protesting outside a Nato air base the old line’s being peddled to us by the President of the United States. Odd.

~At the end of September, I spoke in the Danish Parliament on the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons. (See my speech here.) Afterwards I was hustled off-stage and, a little weary and the worse for wear, gave an interview in a rather handsomely appointed ante-room on the subject of Chancellor Merkel and her Million Muslim March. You might be interested in what I had to say – remember this was two months before the Paris attacks and three months before the New Year sexual assaults and the cover-up by German police and media. Click below to watch:

The flag the Turkish prime minister proudly witnessed while being hoisted at the United Nations is an inspiration of the flag used by the Arab Palestinian nationalists in the first half of the 20th century, which was the flag of the 1916 Arab Revolt against Prime Minister Davutoglu’s beloved Ottoman Empire.

In his speech, Abbas did not forget to “convey our best wishes to our beloved Armenian brothers in Palestine, in Armenia and in the entire world,” and invited Armenian President Serzh Sarghsyan “to visit Palestine and we hope he will accept the invitation.”

Although it came as no surprise, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, in his weekly parliamentary group speech last December, spoke like a Palestinian politician, not a Turkish one:

“The most oppressed people of the 20th and 21st centuries is the Palestinian people … Our support will continue until Jerusalem becomes the capital of independent Palestine … No one should doubt our devotion to the Palestinian cause … We won’t forget Palestine, Gaza, Jerusalem, not even in our dreams … We do politics for this holy way.”

The atmosphere on Swedish social media is now almost revolutionary. People post videos of themselves accusing the government of murder, of filling Sweden with violent people.

When Alexandra Mezher was murdered, she was alone in the residence with ten asylum seekers. She was stabbed by one of the “children” she cared for.

When National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson appeared on the “Good Morning Sweden” TV show, the day after Mezher’s murder, he expressed sympathy for the murderer, but barely mentioned the victim. This sparked frenzied outrage on social media.

Mass immigration is continuing to claim victims in Sweden. Murder, assaults and rape have become everyday occurrences in this small country, with a population just short of ten million, which last year opened its doors to almost 163,000 immigrants. The latest victim is 22-year-old Alexandra Mezher. She was stabbed to death last week by a so-called unaccompanied refugee child at the asylum house where she worked.

Although the massive influx of asylum seekers has decreased drastically since January 4, when Sweden implemented border controls on the Swedish/Danish border, the people who are already here pose a giant problem to municipalities, police and citizens. The police are fighting a losing battle against street crime, as well as daily incidents at asylum houses – general disturbances that include fights, rapes and threats.