RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21571/trump-china

This global catastrophe [China having lied about the human-to-human transmissibility of COVID-19] was followed by China’s sending the poison fentanyl – and, after 2019, “just” its precursor ingredients — to the US, along with other lethal opioids. The smallest amount of fentanyl, equivalent to “a few grains of salt,” can cause death. During the last five years, more than 250,000 Americans have been killed by fentanyl overdoses.

The pattern is familiar: a Western company invests years in research and development, launches an innovative product, and a short while later an almost identical copy turns up, from China, at a much lower price. No development costs, no middlemen, just direct access to the same market, with subsidized pricing to put the original company out of business. How can the inventor ever win like that?

If we continue to allow ourselves to be drained by a regime that never plays by the rules, the United States will end up where Europe already finds itself: with massive deindustrialization, strategic dependency and weakness in times of crisis. Trump appears, at least for now, committed to turning that future around.

So let us criticize the orange man: his methods, his sometimes untoward comments, his impulsive shifts. But let us not lose sight that when it comes to the bottom line, in reining in a lawless predatory Chinese market and reindustrializing America, he is right. No one else even tried.

In the tariff war launched by US President Donald Trump against China, much is said about the Americans’ strategy, mistakes and “brutality”. Less is said about China. Here are three truths about China’s relationship with the West that help to better nuance a simplistic thinking that many so readily embrace.

1. China’s homicides have poisoned the world

During the COVID -19; crisis, vaccines heated up tempers to such an extent that many people lost sight of the fact that vaccines were merely an answer to the original problem: the virus. Whether it escaped from a laboratory or came from a “wet market”, COVID is in all instances a legacy of the Chinese communist regime to the world.

Since then, China has been cracking down on any attempt to identify the source of the virus, just as, for years, it has been doing its utmost to cover up the situation. The original error seems to have been negligence, however that was quickly followed by deliberate lies as to the human-to-human transmissibility of the virus. While China shut down its own internal systems of transportation, it intentionally, backed by the World Health Organization (WHO), saw millions of its citizens travel to locations abroad. Those who restricted admitting them were accused of “racism.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-great-replacement-and-a-great-disgrace/

It’s said that one reason why the British government is so reluctant to address the grooming-gangs horror, so hesitant to cut down on Islamic immigration, and so incapable of expelling even the most dangerous Muslim criminals, is that the government itself has been heavily infiltrated by Muslims. I’m not just talking about the people in high-profile posts, such as Shabana Mahmood, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice; Humza Yousaf, First Minister of Scotland; Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London; the dozens of Muslims in Parliament; or the Muslim mayors of Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Blackburn, Oxford, Luton, Oldham, and Rochdale, among other cities. I’m also talking about Muslims in the Civil Service and Home Office, in the upper echelons of the police services, Crown Prosecution Services, and other such agencies. And let’s not forget the estimable Sir Hamid Patel, who just last month was named chair of the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted).

At first I was reluctant to believe that there are quite so many British Muslims in positions of power as some people maintain. Then something like the following happens, and it seems a hell of a lot easier to believe.

What happened is this: Renaud Camus, the 78-year-old French philosopher, author, and intellectual, was banned from entering the UK. Who, you may ask, is Renaud Camus? Well, back when the world was young, Camus was what the French call a ’68-er – a radical on the barricades, the Gallic equivalent of an American hippie, a bookish lad playing at revolution. He was also a leading figure in France’s gay-rights movement. His 1979 novel Tricks, a chronicle of intimate same-sex liaisons, was a bestseller and a critical sensation. The critic Roland Barthes gave it his imprimatur. Gore Vidal praised it in the New York Review of Books.

But no, Camus isn’t being kept out of Britain because of any of that. Tricks, and the civil unrest of May 1968, are, after all, long ago and far away. Nor is Camus (no relation, by the way, to Albert Camus, the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Stranger and The Plague) being punished for having been an active member of the Socialist Party in the 1970s and 80s. How many French intellectuals, after all, weren’t socialists in the 1970s and 80s? Nor is Camus – a man of wide and deep learning – being banned for having accumulated more diplomas than you can fit on a single wall, including degrees in French literature, philosophy, political science, and the history of law.

No, Camus’s offense is having published the 2011 book Le Grand Remplacement (The Great Replacement), which warned that Europe was undergoing, as the title put it, a great replacement – a massive influx of non-Western immigrants who, owing to early marriages and high reproductive rates, were gradually taking the place of native Europeans who were marrying late, if at all, and, in most cases, having no more than one or two children.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21566/iran-pakistan-murders

Pakistanis are asking why these terrorists, these enemies of peace, continue to find shelter inside Iran. For years, groups like the BNA and its sibling, the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), have launched attacks…

Behind the scenes, officials acknowledge the seriousness of the moment. There is discussion not just about diplomacy, but about deterrence.

The Iranian regime, meanwhile, remains cagey. Their official statement condemned the attack but offered little detail about any arrests or investigations.

The international community has remained muted. Western governments — so quick to condemn terrorism elsewhere — have yet to speak out. There have been no statements from the UN.

In Islamabad, the Foreign Office is reportedly considering a range of responses, from diplomatic measures to more direct action…. Among cabinet members, there is now open debate: What is the cost of silence? What is the risk of restraint?

ISLAMABAD — The workshop was nothing more than a room carved out of metal and concrete. A few oil drums, rusted toolboxes, and eight tattered mattresses stood lined up against the wall. These were not barracks or hideouts—just a makeshift dormitory for eight Pakistani laborers who had crossed into Iran looking for honest work. That night, they were exhausted after working through the day repairing broken-down trucks in the remote Iranian village of Haiz Abad. They had no enemies, no weapons — just calloused hands and quiet dreams of returning home with enough money to feed their families. But as they slept on April 12, darkness brought something other than rest.

The eight men — citizens of Pakistan, fathers, sons, brothers — were found with their hands bound, and their bodies riddled with bullets. Executed. Slaughtered. Their corpses were discovered in the same positions in which they had gone to sleep, the narrow room now soaked in red. The murderers? The Baloch Nationalist Army (BNA) — a terrorist outfit long known to have sanctuaries inside Iranian territory — was quick to claim responsibility. They had carried out the massacre on Iranian soil. And Iran’s regime, days later, still has no answers, no arrests, no accountability.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21565/iran-endless-negotiation

The Iranian regime’s primary objective remains preserving its power. The mullahs see their nuclear program as the key to their survival.

Any agreement should aim for nothing less than the total and permanent dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear capabilities. This means no enrichment, no reprocessing, no heavy-water reactors, and no stockpiles – anywhere on the planet — of enriched uranium.

The dismantlement and enforcement processes must not be outsourced to any international organizations or foreign governments…. Ensuring compliance must lie directly with the United States and its most trusted regional ally, Israel. Both countries have the intelligence capabilities, military readiness and political will to ensure that any nuclear dismantlement is not only thorough but irreversible.

Rounds of negotiations, verbal commitments or limited restrictions are invitations to cheat. The mullahs’ plan is one of delay and deception. America’s plan must be not to let them.

The Trump administration, after signaling a preference for dialogue over confrontation, is engaging in renewed a diplomatic effort to end Iran’s nuclear program. President Donald J. Trump has made clear that he is not seeking war. “I would prefer to make a deal,” he stated recently, “because I’m not looking to hurt Iran.”

Given the devastating costs of war, focusing on negotiation rather than on military intervention is a noble and responsible course of action. The Iranian regime, however, is not new to such diplomatic games of chess. The mullahs have mastered the art of prolonging negotiations: appearing cooperative while covertly advancing their strategic interests, especially developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, and operating proxies in the region, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, not to mention Iran’s own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as well as smaller militias.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/questions-for-carney/

Before Canadians cast their votes on April 28 they might run a few questions by Prime Minister Mark Carney, starting with the man Carney has already replaced. For example, did Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ever do anything with which you disagreed? Carney hasn’t made that clear, and there’s more to it.

During the Covid pandemic, the Trudeau government froze the bank accounts of protesting truckers. Does you approve of that action? Does it square with your concept of free speech and civil liberties?

Do you share Justin Trudeau’s admiration for China’s “basic dictatorship?” Did the People’s Republic of China ever do anything with which you disagreed? The PRC maintains police stations in 30 countries, including Canada. Is that a wise policy? Has Canada ever collaborated in any way with China’s military?

Do you agree with David Frum that Pierre Trudeau was “a bad man and a disastrous prime minister?” As Frum explained, Pierre Trudeau “traveled to Josef Stalin’s Soviet Union to participate in regime-sponsored propaganda activities.” Was that a wise choice on Trudeau’s part? Why did the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service destroy secret files on Pierre Trudeau? Can the CSIS be trusted?

According to Justin Trudeau, “Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century.” Do you agree with Justin? Did Fidel Castro ever do or say anything with which you disagreed? Why does Justin Trudeau look so much like Fidel Castro?

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/17/how-do-the-lawyers-defending-hamas-sleep-at-night/

I didn’t know what to expect when I decided to read the now-infamous application to ‘de-proscribe’ Hamas. This is the application lodged by a British law firm last week to remove Hamas from the UK government’s list of banned organisations under the Terrorism Act. The lawyers have asked home secretary Yvette Cooper to make it legal to openly support Hamas in the UK, given that the act makes expressing support for any proscribed organisation a criminal offence.

I was driven to read the application in full after seeing a bizarre interview on Talk earlier this week with one of the lawyers involved, barrister Franck Magennis. He seemed affronted when the presenter asked him how he sleeps at night. A perfectly reasonable question, given that Magennis acknowledged it was his decision to represent Hamas, an organisation responsible for the largest pogrom of Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas is not a client he was professionally obliged to take on.

In response, Magennis accused the presenter of putting ‘a target on [his] back’ by falsely conflating him and his client. He even suggested that the presenter ‘may receive a call from the police’. (It is worth noting that, on 7 October 2023, Magennis changed his profile picture on X to a bulldozer crashing through a border fence and tweeted ‘Victory to the intifada’, although this has since been deleted.)

As a criminal lawyer who defends just about anybody, I know a bit of what this barrister is talking about. I am not a murderer because I defend murderers. Everyone should be entitled to legal representation. If the Nazi leadership could rely on Britain’s top legal brains during the Nuremberg trials, then there is no reason, in principle, why Hamas should not avail themselves of the best and brightest, either. So I decided to take the application seriously, and read it in good faith.

It turns out the ‘application’ spouts Hamas propaganda from the very first line. It reads: ‘For more than a century, the British state has been responsible for colonisation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine.’ This is hardly the impartial, objective language of the courtroom. It takes Hamas’s warped view of history and repeats it unquestioningly. It refers to Israel, quoting a former British governor of Palestine, as a ‘little loyal Jewish Ulster’. It casts Israel as illegitimate, claiming that requiring Hamas to accept Israel’s right to exist would be an ‘unreasonable demand’. In other words, Hamas should be entitled to continue to fight for the eradication of the only democracy in the Middle East and the world’s only Jewish State. It refers to Israel in quotation marks, to ‘signal that it is a colonial term, reflective of a racist attempt to impose an ethno-exclusionary state on a pluralistic and ethnically diverse population’. These are the kinds of things you’d expect to hear from a batshit student in a sixth-form common room, rather than a lawyer in a courtroom.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21551/texas-recognizes-pakistan-day

The problem is that at the same time as Texas was celebrating “Pakistan Day”, in Pakistan, Christian citizens were being arrested and sentenced to death for “blasphemy,” and Muslims were abducting young Christian girls to sexually abuse, forcibly “marry,” and coerce into converting to Islam.

Pakistan’s national and provincial parliaments have given their consent to these atrocities…. Christians, Hindus and other non-Muslim communities in Pakistan have been enduring increased levels of violence and persecution….

Under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam, its prophet or other religious figures can be imprisoned and sentenced to death…. The police are often biased and refuse to file reports from Christians and Hindus.

The Texas House of Representatives might instead have dedicated March 23 to Pakistan’s abduction victims and abused children.

“The introduction of a ‘Single National Curriculum’ in schools denigrates religious minorities and enforces the teaching of the Quran and subjects like Mathematics and Science in an Islamized manner. Thus, religion is permeating school education… Radical Islamic groups are flourishing… Such groups are innumerable and even a ban will only make them re-organize, re-brand and re-emerge. The default option for dealing with radical Islamic movements (who are able to mobilize millions for street demonstrations) is appeasement and even accommodation…” — Open Doors, December 2024.

“Occupations that are deemed low, dirty, and degrading—such as cleaning sewers or working in brick kilns—are reserved for Christians by the authorities. Many believers are referred to as ‘chura’, a derogatory term meaning ‘filthy’. Christians are also vulnerable to being trapped in bonded labor.” — Open Doors, 2024.

Have Pakistani Texans done anything to help the victims of these horrific human rights abuses in Pakistan or raised awareness of them in any way while in the US? In what areas have they effectively cooperated with the US government? Have they used their resources to fight Islamic terror groups; if so, to what extent? Has Pakistan been a great US ally? What has the government of Pakistan actually done to deserve being celebrated with an official day by the Texas House of Representatives?