RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/10/31/denmark-says-it-foiled-iranian-assassination-attempt-on-its-soil/

Denmark recalls its ambassador to Iran over a foiled Tehran plot to kill three Iranian dissidents on Danish soil • Denmark consulting with “partners and allies,” including the European Union, about possible sanctions, Foreign Minister Samuelsen says.

Denmark has recalled its ambassador to Iran after it accused Tehran of plotting to kill three Iranian dissidents living in the Scandinavian country.

Denmark’s Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen and Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen on Tuesday both called the alleged Iranian attack in Denmark “totally unacceptable.”

“I have decided to recall Denmark’s ambassador in Tehran for consultations. Denmark can in no way accept that people with ties to Iran’s intelligence service plot attacks against people in Denmark,” Samuelsen told reporters.

Iranian Ambassador to Denmark Morteza Moradian has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen and it was made “crystal clear” to him that “the gravity of the matter is difficult to describe,” Samuelsen said, adding he was consulting with “partners and allies,” including the European Union, about possible sanctions.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said in a statement that Tehran “strongly denied” the allegations, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

A police operation last month that briefly cut off Copenhagen from the rest of Denmark stemmed from an alleged Iranian plot to kill an opposition activist, the head of Denmark’s intelligence agency said Tuesday while announcing a suspect’s arrest.

A Norwegian citizen of Iranian descent was arrested Oct. 21 on suspicion of helping an unspecified Iranian intelligence service “to act in Denmark” and of alleged involvement in the assassination plot, Danish Security and Intelligence Service Director Finn Borch Andersen said.

The suspect was seen taking photos of the residences of members of the Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz (ASMLA) in Ringsted, a town some 37 miles southwest of Copenhagen, he said.

The suspect has denied wrongdoing and is being held in pretrial custody until Nov. 8, Borch Andersen said. He did not name the Norwegian.

“This is a case that entails an Iranian intelligence operation in Denmark, In our view, it was an Iranian intelligence agency’s plan to assassinate a person who lives in Denmark,” he said.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/israel-mum-about-new-computer-virus-attack-on-iran/

Reports out of Iran indicate that a massive attack on Iranian infrastructure and strategic networks took place in the last few days by a computer virus even more powerful than the Stuxnet worm that wrought tremendous damage on Iran’s nuclear program.

Israeli officials are refusing to discuss any role they had in unleashing the virus, that’s been described as “more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated” than Stuxnet.

As the Israeli Times reports, the attacks come just days after Israel assisted Denmark in foiling an assassination plot on an Iranian dissident and reports emerged that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s cellphone was hacked.

“Remember Stuxnet, the virus that penetrated the computers of the Iranian nuclear industry?” the report on Israel’s Hadashot news asked. Iran “has admitted in the past few days that it is again facing a similar attack, from a more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated virus than before, that has hit infrastructure and strategic networks.”

The Iranians, the TV report went on, are “not admitting, of course, how much damage has been caused.”

On Sunday, Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s civil defense agency, said Tehran had neutralized a new version of Stuxnet, Reuters reported.“Recently we discovered a new generation of Stuxnet which consisted of several parts … and was trying to enter our systems,” Jalali said.

Stuxnet crippled Iran’s nuclear weapons program, setting it back several months, or several years, depending on the source. Hopefully, if the report is accurate and the virus is more advanced and sophisticated, the systems it affected will sustain even more damage.

The Stuxnet virus was reported to have been developed jointly by Israel and the US. This worm is just one aspect of the “shadow war” being waged by Mossad against the Iranian regime.

Without attributing responsibility to the Mossad, the report mentioned the tapping of Rouhani’s phone, noting that the Iranians “had to switch it for an encrypted model because they understand that someone has been listening to him for days and weeks.”

On Sunday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged intensified efforts to counter enemy “infiltration,” Reuters said.

In a speech to officials in charge of cyber defense, Khamenei said: “In the face of the enemy’s complex practices, our civil defense should… confront infiltration through scientific, accurate, and up-to-date… action,” the report said, quoting Iranian state TV. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://quillette.com/2018/10/30/upholding

In his provocative essay The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine didn’t mince words on Christianity. ”What is it the Bible teaches us?” he asked, and answered: ”rapine, cruelty and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us?—to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.”

In 1819, the English deist Richard Carlile was convicted of blasphemy and sentenced to two years in prison for selling the Age of Reason.

Today Tom Paine is celebrated as one of the Enlightenment’s foremost champions of human rights. But even 200 years after his conviction Carlile might not have been vindicated had he been able to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights. In a recent ruling, the Court upheld the conviction of an Austrian citizen for an ”abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace” for denouncing the Prophet Muhammad as a “pedophile.” The Court insisted that the comments could arouse “justified indignation” in religious believers who have a right to have their religious feelings protected. Moreover, states have wide discretion to prevent such “improper attacks on religious groups” in order to ensure social and religious peace. Paine would have been shocked and horrified by such logic. And it is deeply regrettable that the Court declined to revisit its long-held doctrine that the freedoms of religion and speech are conflicting rather than complementary rights.

Paine’s scathing attack on holy scripture was clearly offensive to many Christians—US President Theodore Roosevelt later called Paine “a filthy little Atheist.” But the harsh attacks on the authority of religion by Paine and other Enlightenment figures contributed to a broadening concept of tolerance encompassing both the right to express, critique and reject religious doctrines. So the Court’s insistence that the freedoms of religion and speech are in conflict when the latter is used to attack the former is regressive, however noble the purposes of securing “social peace” and “tolerance.” The Court’s reasoning is ultimately based on protecting the secular aim of peaceful co-existence rather than religious doctrine. But the underlying idea that expressions offensive to religious dogma constitute a threat to the social and religious peace of society has deep roots stretching back centuries.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/china-global-maritime-commerce-ambitions-us-must-respond/

Beijing’s ambitious campaign to dominate global maritime commerce is in full swing. Here’s how the U.S. must respond.

In a speech at the Hudson Institute earlier this month, Vice President Mike Pence said that the American people deserve to know of the strategy behind China’s economic and political competition with the U.S. — and of what the Trump administration is doing to counter the Middle Kingdom’s challenge to U.S. security.

“Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic, and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States,” Pence said, and “applying this power in more proactive ways than ever before, to exert influence and interfere in the domestic policy and politics of our country.”

While the vice president was speaking of the U.S., the American people also deserve to know that China is employing the same playbook beyond our shores, with considerable success. In effect, China has landed, not only by militarizing artificial islands it built in the South China Sea, but by building or acquiring seaports, logistics terminals, and related transportation, communication, and energy assets in more than a dozen countries around the globe, including U.S. allies in the EU and Latin America.

Unlike the high-profile takeover of an American technology company by a Chinese one, the threat to U.S. security posed by China’s new maritime network is all too easy to overlook. Although 90 percent of the world’s energy, commodities, and manufactured goods are transported by ship, few consumers have any direct exposure to shipping or the logistical operations that comprise the “supply chain” of our globalized economy.

But maritime commerce is the operating system of that economy, running constantly in the background in much the same way the operating system of a smartphone powers apps. Control of the components of the system — ports, terminals, and the roads and railways that connect ships to stores — gives China significant leverage over the essential economic functions of the countries where those assets are located.