Displaying posts categorized under

WORLD NEWS

Biden’s First Signal on China: Fond Memories by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16986/biden-china-signal

In “Four Principles to Guide U.S. Policy Toward China,” the Atlantic Council’s Ali Wyne suggests a weakened America needs to accommodate the People’s Republic of China.

China also cannot get along with the United States, which maintained China-friendly policies for more than four decades. In fact, People’s Daily, the most authoritative publication in China, in May 2019 carried a piece that declared a “people’s war” on America.

China’s “unrestricted warfare” on the United States has taken a toll. Recently, Chinese leaders deliberately spread the coronavirus beyond their borders, making deaths in America mass murder as well as “genocide,” as that term is defined by Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Moreover, in late January of last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in the International Falls Port of Entry in Minnesota seized 900,000 counterfeit $1 bills, made in China…. Nobody, in China’s near-total surveillance state, can counterfeit American currency without authorities knowing about it. [C]ounterfeiting another country’s currency is considered an act of war.

Leaders of democracies, despite all the good will in the world, will find they cannot cooperate with thugs.

“I was asked a long time ago when I was with Xi Jinping,” said President Joe Biden in his first hours in office, as he swore in officials, “and I was on the Tibetan plateau with him, and he asked me in a private dinner he and I and we each had an interpreter he said can you define America for me, and I said yes and I meant it. I said I can do it in one word, one word: possibilities. We believe anything is possible if we set our mind to it, unlike any other country in the world.”

In Beijing, Communist Party leaders must be ecstatic. For one thing, during the 10-minute ceremony Biden mentioned no other country.

Moreover, ruler Xi Jinping will think the Tibetan plateau reference significant. Biden’s words, after all, came one day after then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a determination that China was committing crimes against humanity, including genocide, against minorities. Pompeo’s declaration presumably includes the minority Tibetans. Beijing is suppressing them in many of the same ways as it is liquidating Uyghurs, the focus of his historic statement.

Xi and other Chinese leaders will doubtless take Biden’s fond recollection as a sign the new president is not serious about China’s atrocities against minority peoples.

Justin Trudeau:The most immoral, unethical politician in Canadian history: Diane Bederman

https://dianebederman.com/justin-trudeauthe-most-immoral-unethical-politician-in-canadian-history/

Justin Trudeau, son of Pierre Elliot and Margaret, is the most arrogant, entitled, corrupt, immoral and unethical politician in the history of Canada. He is a dictator in waiting, turning Canada into a Banana Republic. He makes Fidel Castro, a man he truly admired, and Venezuela’s Madura, look good.

His credentials to be the PM? He is a failed drama teacher. How do I know that he is a failed drama teacher? Because he can barely remember the words fed to him by his ventriloquists Gerald Butts, former top advisor to Justin Trudeau who left government following the Jody Wilson-Raybould scandal and Katie Telford, two more unethical people.

I am listing the various unethical, immoral and who knows, illegal actions, of our Dear Leader in no particular order. I apologize if some have been left out.

First, Trudeau has spent more time in his basement than Joe Biden.

When he comes out he commits treason. He harms Canadians and Canada. How is that vaccine roll out coming along Mr. PM?  What – no vaccine available? Begging the newly inaugurated Mr. Biden are you?

But you reached out to China to work with them on a vaccine. You know, China the country you so admire. Our Dear Leader, the man elected to protect our freedoms and democracy, actually prefers China’s methods. “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, ‘We need to go green … we need to start investing in solar.’”

China, the home of the virus. Like Canadians want a vaccine from a country that put melamine in baby powder formula. And  you sent our PPE to China in February 2020. What did you get in return? The #TwoMichaels, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were picked up for nothing except in retaliation for Canada holding Ms.Meng from Huawei at the behest of America?   Who have been in solitary confinement 24/7 with lights on while she sashays around Vancouver, leaving her mansion whenever because she has an ankle bracelet. And then what did you do? By gosh by golly you invited her family from CHINA to come over for Christmas while you sentenced Canadians to their rooms. And then the Meng’s went shopping. And what did you get in return? The two Michaels who were picked up for nothing except in retaliation for Canada holding Ms. Meng and are re in solitary confinement 24/7 with lights on all the time? Oh wait. No.

Guess you never learned from history that appeasement breeds contempt.

“This Is a Warning to Christians in All Parts of the World”: The Persecution of Christians, by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16985/persecution-of-christians-december

Muslim fighters tortured a 58-year-old Christian woman of Armenian descent by hacking off her ears, hands, and feet before finally executing her. — Medium.com, January 14, 2021, Artsakh.

As to why she was mutilated before being killed, jihadis often cite the Koran’s calls to cut off the hands, feet, and throats of infidels (e.g., Koran 5:33, 47:4). — Artsakh.

One of the survivors… managed to escape his home in time and hide in the outside bathroom: “through the ventilator of the latrine he saw the rebels killing 4 members of his family including his wife and 3 children.” — Virtueonline.org, December 3, 2020, Democratic Republic of Congo.

“My husband began reading verses in the Koran that allowed men to beat their wives if they disobey them, and after that he started beating me….” — Morning Star News, December 17, 2020, Uganda.

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of December, 2020:

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria: In a video that appeared on Dec. 29, Islamic terrorists executed five Christians. The footage shows five armed members of the Islamic State (West African province) standing behind five men dressed in orange suits, and on their knees with their arms tied behind their backs. The terrorists order each of the men to say their names and the hostages oblige, each adding, “I am a Christian.” One of the terrorists then says “This is a warning to Christians in all parts of the world and those in Nigeria…. Use the heads of these five of your brethren to continue with your ungodly celebrations,” a reference to Christmas. The five Muslims then open fire into the back of the Christians’ heads and kill them.

A few days earlier, on Christmas Eve, and into the early morning of Christmas Day, Muslim raiders terrorized a Christian village, where they slaughtered between seven and 11 people, including a 5-year-old, and kidnapped 11 more (it is believed that the five Christians who were executed on video were from among these 11). Riding on trucks and motorcycles, the jihadis opened fire indiscriminately, torched 10 homes and one church, and plundered the food supplies meant to be distributed on Christmas Day. Although traumatized, some Christians remained defiant. A text by Markus Bulus, a local, on Christmas Day states:

“Whatever Boko Haram planned against us has failed. Whatever it is, we shall still celebrate Christmas. Jesus, we’re so grateful this day even with the bad experience we had last night. We have nothing to offer as our thanksgiving, but we offer our hearts in deep supplication to your majesty on this Christmas Day.”

Elsewhere throughout month of December, Muslim Fulani herdsmen “killed 33 Christians, destroyed 18 homes and displaced more than 2,500 people.”

Turkey: Elderly Christian Man Still Missing Year Later by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16973/turkey-christians-abducted

“About 20 people who knew us wanted to help us with the searches, but the gendarmerie prevented them from coming…. and civilians were not allowed to help. If the permission required had been given, we would have found my mother right away….” — Father Remzi Diril, a priest of the Istanbul Chaldean Church and one of the couple’s sons, after his mother’s body was found bullet wounds in the head and back; interview with Milliyet, January 11, 2021.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Assyrians in southeast Turkey “suffered forced evictions, mass displacement and the burning down of their homes and villages.” They were exposed to severe persecution “including abductions (including of priests), forced conversions to Islam through rape and forced marriage, and murders. These pressures, and other more insidious forms of discrimination, have decimated the community.” — Minority Rights Group International, World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples, Assyrians, updated June 2018.

Today, EU candidate and NATO member Turkey is still not willing or able to provide security and basic human rights for this persecuted minority.

One year after the abduction and disappearance of an elderly Christian couple in southeast Turkey, their children are still asking the Turkish authorities for help in locating their missing father and holding the perpetrators accountable.

Hurmuz Diril (72) and Şimuni Diril (65) are Assyrian Christians who lived in the village of Mehr/Kovankaya in Şırnak Province before their disappearance on January 11, 2020. Two months later, on March 20, Şimuni Diril was found dead by her children in a nearby river. There has since been no news concerning the whereabouts of Hurmuz Diril.

Tehran’s Presidential Show: A Game of Exclusions by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16984/iran-presidential-show

The aim, here, is exclusion rather than qualifications.

One fake university with an address in the island of Saba, in the Caribbean, has sold over 500 doctorates to Iranian officials for $25,000 apiece.

To complicate matters further, the conditions demand other qualifications that are hard if not impossible to measure…. For example, how do you prove “heartfelt belief in the necessity of religion” or “transparent hostility to the West” or “opposition to all seditions that have taken place against the Islamic Revolution”?

Things become more complicated when would-be candidates are asked to prove loyalty not only to the regime and all its policies but also to be committed to preserving all the existing institutions of the Islamic Republic. This means that those who dream of reforming let alone disbanding the High Council of Guardians of the Constitution or merging the Revolutionary Guard with the national army need not apply.

Perhaps to divert attention from here and now problems, such as the ravages caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, economic meltdown, hyperinflation and rampant corruption, Tehran’s ruling elite have decided to give an early start to a presidential election expected to be held in June.

The Religious Transformation of French Schools by Giulio Meotti

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16972/france-schools-religion

In France, a low-intensity war is bubbling, aimed at radicalizing education.

At the Pierre Mendès France School in Saumur, a student told his teacher, “My father will behead you”. It has become impossible even to make a precise list of these incidents. They occur every day in France.

“Faced with Islamist intimidation, what should the free world do?” — Title of Robert Redeker’s column in Le Figaro in 2006. A few days later, he began receiving death threats.

If extremists have managed to intimidate France’s schools and universities, why should they not be able to subdue all of society?

“Unlike you, Colonel, and so many others, Mila will never submit”, wrote the French teenager’s father to her school’s principal in a letter published by Le Point. On January 18, 2020 Mila O., then 16 years old, made insulting comments about Islam during her Instagram livestream.

“During her livestream, a Muslim boy asked her out in the comments, but she turned him down because she is gay. He responded by accusing her of racism and calling her a ‘dirty lesbian’. In an angry follow-up video, streamed immediately after she was insulted, Mila responded by saying that she ‘hates religion'”.

Mila continued: “The Koran is a religion of hatred; there is only hatred in it… Islam is sh*t…” Since then, she has received approximately 50,000 messages and letters that contain threats to rape her, slit her throat, torture and behead her. She has had to keep moving from one school to another.

Biden Re-Engages With China-Centric World Health Organization Why Americans should be worried. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/01/biden-re-engages-china-centric-world-health-joseph-klein-0/

Joe Biden signed an executive order on Day One of his presidency, which fully re-engages the United States with the World Health Organization (WHO). In doing so, the sleepy “woke” 46th president of the United States is rewarding an incompetent global governance body that helped the Chinese regime cover up the severity of the coronavirus it unleashed upon the world. Biden is committing the United States to waste many millions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars on this unreformed globalist bureaucracy. Biden has also laid the groundwork for participating in the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility, co-sponsored by the World Health Organization, which is seeking to administer the worldwide distribution of coronavirus vaccines. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Chief Medical Adviser to President Biden, is the Biden administration’s representative to the World Health Organization.

The spokesperson for United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres declared that “the United States joining and supporting the COVAX facility will give momentum to efforts to ensure equitable access to vaccines for all countries.” This means socially engineered global COVID-19 vaccine redistribution, akin to leftist progressive schemes for global wealth redistribution. China, which is a participant in COVAX, will stand to benefit the most from COVAX’s allocation of vaccine doses to all participating countries, because the COVAX allocations will be proportional to the participants’ total population size. By joining COVAX, the Biden administration is effectively helping China receive more vaccine dose allocations than it needs or deserves, simply because it is the most populous country in the world. Life-saving vaccines developed by American companies with the backing of the U.S. government may be diverted to COVAX’s vaccine pool and hence to China because of Biden’s decision. This would mean potential vaccine shortages in the United States, denying some Americans timely access to vaccines they helped pay for through their taxes.

The Palestinian Plan to Dupe the Biden Administration by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16976/palestinian-plan-dupe-biden

The proposed Palestinian elections are part of a scheme designed to deceive the international community, specifically the US and EU, into believing that the Palestinians are serious about implementing major reforms, ending financial and administrative corruption, and engaging in another peace process with Israel.

Not only does Abbas have no plans to depart from the political scene anytime in the near future, he is even said to be considering running in the presidential election.

There is one reason, and one reason only, why Abbas is now talking about holding general elections: to continue milking the cash cow he has in the form of American and European governments. Abbas wants the money to ensure his continued dictatorial rule over the Palestinians.

Abbas is hoping that such an international conference, under the auspices of the United Nations, European Union, Russia and China, would impose a solution on Israel. Abbas has only one solution in mind: one that would see Israel fully withdraw to the pre-1967 lines, including east Jerusalem, and the establishment of a Palestinian state that would undoubtedly be used in the future as a launching pad to wage war on Israel.

The Palestinians live under two dictatorships: one in the West Bank and one in the Gaza Strip. Elections, even if they are held, will not produce new leaders. They will produce Fatah flunkies and Hamas henchmen who bow obediently to their corrupt bosses.

One week after he entered the 17th year of his four-year term in office, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas finally announced new parliamentary and presidential elections, scheduled to take place in May and July 2021.

His announcement was carefully timed to coincide with the inauguration week of President Joe Biden and in response to immense pressure from the European Union.

Defining ‘Metrics’ to Measure Radical Islam is Vital to Defeating It by Tawfik Hamid

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16915/radical-islam-definition

Al-Azhar, the most respected Islamic university and organization in the Sunni world, is not – by their own definition – a terrorist organization. Yet the question remains. Is al-Azhar truly moderate, or could it be radical? If we fail to establish clear definitions, we can create chaotic situations that result in our asking radical institutions to help us counter radicalism.

It is notable in this context to mention that French President Emmanuel Macron met with the Grand Imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, Ahmed Al-Tayeb, and called for all French imams to be trained at the Al-Azhar religious institution. The President of France probably has asked for this form of training without determining if Al-Azhar itself was a radical organization or a moderate one.

Other metrics of Islamic radicalism such as accepting child marriage, considering the lives of Muslims to be more precious than the lives of non-Muslims, and accepting force or violence to impose Islamic religious values upon others can be also included.

Based on these metrics, if any person or Islamic organization fails to reject such abhorrent ideological values, they should not be called moderates. Instead, they should be called what they are: Islamic radicals. We urgently need to detect and expose ideological radicalism before it turns – as it inevitably will – into acts of terrorism.

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks by 19 radical Islamists, the main response by many governments – as well as the United States – has been conducting direct, kinetic warfare to fight the threat of Islamic terrorism. No doubt there is a need to use kinetic force to fight militant jihadists; however, failing to fight the ideology that drives them ensures an endless supply of such individuals who will fight eternally against what they believe are infidels.

Things get more complicated when we realize that what we call radical Islam is not clearly defined – there are no standard metrics by which to measure it. In other words, we are fighting an undefined enemy. It is like fighting or trying to treat diabetes without applying metrics to the disease to determine who is diabetic and who is not, and who has improved with treatment.

The lack of metrics to measure Islamic radicalism is further confounded by the fact that the word “radicalism” can be such a relative term. We could argue about it forever as long as we do not have clear metrics for it. In other words, people can disagree whether an Islamic organization is moderate or radical if they lack the means to determine what is radicalism.

Palestinians: Victims of an Arab Country by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16948/palestinians-victims-syria

Like most Arab countries, Syria denies citizenship to Palestinians. Children born in Syria to fathers who are Palestinian nationals are considered Palestinians, not Syrian nationals.

Palestinian leaders see no evil or wrong-doing when their people are being killed, injured, displaced, arrested and tortured in an Arab country. The attention of these leaders is solely focused on Israel, which they denounce day and night not only for what it does, but also for what it does not do.

On January 9, Abbas entered the 17th year of his four-year term. He is again talking about his desire to hold new elections. This charade is played at least once or twice a year so that people will believe that he really wants elections.

The Palestinians do not need new elections. They need new leaders who will guide them out from their longstanding morass into a future of promise and peace.

As Palestinian leaders condemn Israel almost on a daily basis, they continue to ignore the ongoing suffering of Palestinians living in a number of Arab countries, especially Syria.

Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011, 4,048 Palestinians have died – but Palestinian leaders hardly seem to notice. Another 333 Palestinians have gone missing, while 1,797 are being held in prisons controlled by the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Like most Arab countries, Syria denies citizenship to Palestinians. Children born in Syria to fathers who are Palestinian nationals are considered Palestinians, not Syrian nationals.

Palestinian leaders who meet on a regular basis in the West Bank city of Ramallah seldom discuss the tragedy that has befallen their people in Syria.

Similarly, the leaders of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, who relish giving interviews to the media, seem oblivious to the existence of Palestinians in Syria.

Palestinian leaders see no evil or wrong-doing when their people are being killed, injured, displaced, arrested and tortured in an Arab country. The attention of these leaders is solely focused on Israel, which they denounce day and night not only for what it does, but also for what it does not do.