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December 2018

The Russia Probe Has Nothing to Do with Russia By Roger L Simon

https://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/the-russia-probe-has-nothing-to-do-with-russia/

America is at war with itself and the Russia probe is the leading, but far from the only, front in that war.

Bad as Vladimir Putin is, the investigation has little or nothing to do with Russia–which has been what it is since the days of the tsars–and everything to do with us.

From the Okhrana (the tsars’ secret police that authored the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and specialized in agents provocateurs) to the Cheka to the NKVD to the KGB to the FSB, it has always been the same. The Russians — Soviet or not — have always engaged in disinformation. Their recent Facebook and Twitter offerings were nothing more than the tip of an iceberg that’s been sailing for years.

In other words words, there’s nothing new here. The indictments of the Russian hackers by Mueller and Company were no more than a face-saving charade. They will never be arrested and no one will care. No one remembers who they were even now, less than a year later, except that they vastly expand the number of those indicted for breathless press reports.

U.S. leaders have been trying, and largely failing, to cope with Russia in all its guises since Franklin Roosevelt. FDR was gulled by New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty, the progenitor of “fake news” and probably its worst practitioner, into thinking Stalin wasn’t so evil after all and that Dzhugashvili didn’t really starve over a million Ukrainians. And what little he did had to be done. After all, as Duranty put it, you had to break some eggs to make an omelet.
Exposing Joseph Stalin’s Media Apologist

Roosevelt went on to cede Eastern Europe to Stalin at Yalta, setting up decades of misery. When Reagan came along and tried to reverse the situation, building the military and confronting Moscow, many of our Democrat friends — the same ones attacking Trump for being soft on Russia — cried foul and went viciously after Reagan as a war monger.

The hypocrisy is beyond comprehension. Do these people think we’ve had a lobotomy and can’t remember anything? Maybe they have.

Nevertheless, after the Wall fell, things only got better for a brief time because Russia remained Russia and our leaders remained ineffectual or worse in their ability to deal with it. George W. Bush naively looked into Putin’s eyes and saw his “soul.” Obama was sleazier. He colluded with the Russian dictator, being caught on video whispering to Putin’s lackey Medvedev to tell Vladimir that he, Barack, would be freer to make concessions after the election. (If Trump had been caught doing such a thing, CNN would be playing it fifty times a day for the next fifty years.) And then he literally gave Syria to the Russian dictator, walking back on his red line on chemical weapons. (Again, if Trump had done that, CNN would have had a mega-orgasm. We need a new word for extreme hypocrisy.)

But now we’re in the era of Trump and that intramural blood sport the Russia probe is in full blast, threatening never to end, people being arrested right and left for process crimes or for engaging in the kind of corruption that has pervaded Washington, D.C., in both political parties since any of us were alive.

The latest is that we learn Donald, a businessman, was trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. As news, that’s right up there with the sky is blue and the sun rises in the East. CONTINUE AT SITE

“Burnt Beyond Recognition”: Extremist Persecution of Christians, August 2018 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13367/extremist-persecution-christians-august

“The non-implementation of the law has brought us a gang of hardliners who have become above the law.” — Human rights activist, World Watch Monitor, Egypt.

A group of Muslims thrashed Vishal Masih, an 18-year-old Christian, after he repeatedly defeated a Muslim teen at arm-wrestling.” — Persecution, International Christian Concern, Pakistan.

“We cannot watch our children joining infidels’ church,” explained a local sheikh. — Morning Star News, Uganda.

Comoros: Sunni Islam was formally declared “the religion of the state.” “An ultra-conservative group of radical scholars … are pushing the country to a more extreme view of Islamic law (sharia) in the country and are against Christians.” — World Watch Monitor, August 3, 2018.

Christians Burned Alive and Churches Torched

Ethiopia: Approximately 15 Christian priests were killed—at least four burned alive—and 19 churches torched during Muslim uprisings in the east, where most of the nation’s Muslim population, consisting of 33% of the population, is centered. “Similar tensions are bubbling under the surface in other parts of Oromia,” which is approximately 50% Muslim, said a local source. “We have even heard of places where Muslims had asked Christians to vacate the area. And though this call is veiled as ethnic rivalry by some media and observers, it is at its very core a religious matter.”

Nigeria: During one of eight raids on Christian villages on August 28, Muslim Fulani herdsmen burned alive a Christian pastor, his wife, and three young children in their home; two other non-relatives were also killed in the raids. Armed with machetes and AK47 rifles, the Islamic raiders also looted and destroyed 95 houses and three churches. Gyang Adamu, one of the pastor’s surviving children who was away at the University of Jos at the time, “got to know about the attack when I saw a post on Facebook that Abonong village [his home], was under attack,” he said. When he finally got through to someone local, “the report I received was very devastating; I couldn’t believe that all my family members have been engulfed in the pogrom. On reaching home, I saw my daddy and younger ones burnt beyond recognition. The sight of the gory incident broke me down.”

Turkey’s Reign of Terror: The Persecution of Minority Alevis by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13356/turkey-alevis-persecution

The Alevi-owned broadcaster, TV10, for example,was closed down in September 2016, two months after the failed coup attempt against Erdogan, for allegedly “threatening national security and belonging to a terror organization.”

A TV10 cameraman, Kemal Demir, was taken into police custody on November 25, 2017 and arrested on December 2. Veli Büyükşahin, TV10’s chairman of the board, and Veli Haydar Güleç, a TV10 producer, were arrested on January 10. All are still in prison.

“TV10 did not belong to a major business. While it was trying to carry out its activities with its few employees and very limited resources, it was closed down by executive order. Moreover, its properties were seized [by the government] and then sold by the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (SDIF)… The indictments against them contain no criminal element and judges have turned down the indictments twice. Yet, these people have been detained for 10 months and there is still uncertainty as to when they will be tried in a court and when a result will be obtained from the hearings.” — Kemal Peköz, MP from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), in a speech before parliament November 1.

In Turkey, several methods are employed to eliminate religious minorities, not only by physical violence. Instead, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tries to erase minority faiths by preventing their ability to function by denying them the freedom to establish and safely operate their own institutions and places of worship. The Alevis, for instance, a historically persecuted religious minority in Turkey, are all-too-familiar with this form of oppression.

The Alevi-owned broadcaster, TV10, for example, was closed down in September 2016, two months after the failed coup attempt against Erdoğan, for allegedly “threatening national security and belonging to a terror organization.”