RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17164/persecution-of-christians-february

“[W]hat is happening in eastern DRC, the killing of innocent civilians on an almost daily basis, is an underreported tragedy.” — Illia Djadi, human rights activist acquainted with the region, Persecution, International Christian Concern, February 16, 2021 — Democratic Republic of the Congo

A Muslim colonel stole weapons from an armory and then blamed the 12 soldiers on duty for the theft. Six of those 12 soldiers—all Christians—were then executed on January 25. — The Christian Post, February 4, 2021 — Nigeria

“It’s not only about these six soldiers…. Nigeria is becoming like Somalia and Rwanda. That was exactly how it started, with the government taking sides and backing the members of a particular ethnic group. That’s the situation. Even in the security forces, Christians are being targeted.” — Emeka Umeagbalasi, a lawyer, The Christian Post, February 4, 2021 — Nigeria

“Many Nigerians now believe the Army fights for Islam, not Nigeria…. The Army’s lack of action to protect Christians comes directly from its leaders in government… When troops go into areas controlled by radical Islamists to defend Nigerian Christians, the government orders them to retreat. Then, Islamist rebels shoot them in the back.” — The Christian Post, February 4, 2021 — Nigeria

Four converts to Christianity, arrested on the charge of “acting against national security by forming a house Church,” were sentenced to a combined total of 35 years in prison…. Apparently thinking his sentencing too lenient, the [judge] further informed the Christian prisoners… that “your actions are worthy of death.” — Uganda Christian News, February 3, 2021 — Iran

During the court hearing, testimony was offered that “In Syria there was a practice whereby if they kill an apostate, they are assured passage to Heaven in the afterlife”…. The accused were granted bail. — Malta Today, February 12, 2021 — Malta

Sexual Assaults on and Forced Conversion of Christian Women

Bangladesh: Two Muslims brutally raped a married Christian mother. On the evening of February 5, the 43-year-old woman was at home alone (her husband worked nights and her son was studying at a distant school). Two men broke in and attacked her. According to the woman:

“With their faces covered, they looked like thieves, but instead they wanted sex and started beating me up. As I tried to disentangle myself, I recognised Mohammed Alam’s face [a neighbor]. They kept beating me; I was scared and helpless. I asked for some water and they gave me a glass mixed with a sleeping pill that made me unconscious for three days.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17163/iran-historic-impasse

This is why many, even among the critics of the regime, insist that showing any interest in this year’s presidential election, slated for June, is not only a waste of time but active participation in a massive political deception.

Today the pro-US faction, also backed by Britain, still hopes to revive the scenario by fielding a candidate in June. But that would require a much bigger effort by President Joe Biden to inject massive cash into Iran’s morbid economy, grant major diplomatic concessions to the “New York Boys” and contribute to creating a feel-good atmosphere.

Even then, the scenario may not work.

Khamenei… could propel one of his minions in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, his main support base, into the presidential slot and pave the way for one of his sons to emerge as the next “Supreme Guide”.

“Not worth a bucketful of spit!” This is how US President Harry Truman described the vice-presidency when he himself filled that slot under President Roosevelt.

Today, some commentators believe that he colorful description could be applied to the position of the president in Iran.

This is why many, even among the critics of the regime, insist that showing any interest in this year’s presidential election, slated for June, is not only a waste of time but active participation in a massive political deception.

How relevant are such analyses?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17110/china-military-artificial-intelligence

Complacency or eased trade restrictions on dual-use technology would be the greater danger. So would any backing-off of counter-espionage investigations into Chinese bribery of American university professors or further infiltrations of PLA-linked Chinese nationals into research centers in the U.S. Both are prime examples of Beijing’s willingness to play a long game as regards theft of intellectual property that has potential military applications.

Interestingly, there is another Chinese firm that is often mentioned in discussions of China’s push into facial recognition AI development. The company known as Megvii produces a software application called Face++ that has secured many patents in the use of AI for surveillance technologies. One of that company’s stakeholders? Bohai Harvest RST, the investment company started by Hunter Biden and his business partners.

We have seen that China is one of the many practitioners of the “Princeling” strategy, which enriches the associates or family members of powerful politicians in order to grease the skids for deals that, if considered on their own merits, would likely not be allowed by the national security gatekeepers whose mission is to protect valuable military technology from getting into the hands of America’s adversaries.

Military use of artificial intelligence may well determine the outcome of the next war, and it is far too strategic to American national security to look away for even a moment from the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party.

China’s military buildup threatens its neighbors and regional stability in the Far East. Beijing’s aggressive military expansion has made its navy the largest in the world, and it has been flexing its maritime muscle in the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific region. It continues to build its ballistic missile capacities as well.

Further, China’s expertise in cyber-warfare is both well-established and feared. It has allowed the PRC to hack into computers and steal intellectual property, as well as other cyber crimes.

But the junction of China’s growing cyber capabilities and its aggressive military buildup is in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to military weapons and systems.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/iran-warns-gulf-arabs-not-join-security-pact-hugh-fitzgerald/

As Israel and Gulf Arab states – Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., and Bahrain – are discussing a NATO-like defense pact, Iran is predictably attempting to prevent it. The warning to the Arab states by Iran’s former Defense Minister is reported on here: “Iran hopes Saudis, UAE, Bahrain ‘not foolish enough’ to strike defense pact with Israel, Israel Hayom, March 4, 2021:

Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are “unlikely foolish enough” to enter a defense pact with Israel, Iran’s former Defense Minister and Expediency Council member Brig. Gen. Ahmed Wahidi told Russian outlet RT channel on Wednesday.

 The statement followed a Reuters report that cited Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz as saying Israel “intends to develop a special security arrangement” with Gulf Arab allies. Wahidi was the first Iranian official to comment on it.

Wahidi, who is the head of Iran’s Supreme National Defense University, said that the “Zionist entity” was facing multiple crises, including a political one, which forced it to hold four elections in two years.

Let’s see. Israel is “facing multiple crises”? Israel’s economy is booming. It is expected to. grow by 4.2% this year; by comparison, the EU expects to grow only by 3%. Nearly every week there is news of a billion-dollar purchase of an Israeli start-up by an American company, of billions invested in the Israeli economy by Americans, Europeans, and now, as well, by those Arabs with whom Israel has normalized ties.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/03/uk-tensions-grow-as-china-tightens-grip-on-hk-polls/

Political tensions between China and the United Kingdom have intensified after the National People’s Congress (NPC) approved changes to Hong Kong’s electoral system on Thursday. 

The NPC on Thursday endorsed a proposal to change Hong Kong’s election system, at the conclusion of its seven-day annual plenary session in Beijing, Xinhua reported. The plan was approved by the NPC with 2,895 members voting for, no one against, and one abstention.

“This is the latest step by Beijing to hollow out the space for democratic debate in Hong Kong, contrary to the promises made by China itself,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.

“This can only further undermine confidence and trust in China living up to its international responsibilities and legal obligations, as a leading member of the international community.”

On Wednesday, UK Foreign Office minister Nigel Adams told lawmakers that the proposed changes would be a further attack on Hong Kong’s rights and freedoms. He said he could not speculate on Magnitsky-style sanctions against individuals over China’s actions in Hong Kong, but said that such measures remain under very close review.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17149/erdogan-war-kurds

The margin of victory [by the opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoglu in the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election] shocked Erdoğan and his party establishment. That night marked an unforgettable defeat for the invincible Erdoğan. It also marked a new, advanced phase in Islamists’ war on Kurds.

Erdoğan advocates more subtle ways to intimidate opposition. He has been jailing HDP’s democratically elected leaders, MPs and mayors, and appointing trustees in their place.

Erdoğan does not have to shut down the HDP when he has de facto crippled it. The party’s two co-chairmen, Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, have been in jail since 2016.

In February, the crackdown took a new ugly turn. Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a former Islamist, human rights activist and HDP MP, retweeted a post in 2016, advocating peace in the Kurdish dispute. A Turkish court sentenced him to 2½ years in jail for the retweet — although, ironically, the original tweet source had not been indicted. In February the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld Gergerlioglu’s sentence for “spreading terrorist propaganda” — five years after the retweet.

Erdogan’s Kurdish problem, however, has the potential to cost him more than just Istanbul. Research found that the fertility rate in the Kurdish-speaking, eastern part of Turkey was 3.41, as opposed to an average of 2.09 in the Turkish-speaking, non-eastern areas. Kurdish votes in the presidential election year 2023 may reach seven million: Kurds could be the kingmakers.

The race for the Istanbul election on March 31, 2019 went full steam ahead. Islamist parties had controlled Turkey’s biggest city since 1994 – a full 25 years. Istanbul was not just another city to win for any party. Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had put it: “Who wins Istanbul, wins Turkey.”

In the run-up to the 2019 election, Erdoğan realized that his Justice and Development Party (AKP) might lose if Istanbul’s two million or so Kurds voted for the opposition candidate, Ekrem İmamoglu. What to do? State broadcaster TRT read a statement from Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a terrorist organization. Öcalan’s letter called on Kurds to remain neutral between the government and opposition candidates. That would result in de facto support for the AKP candidate, former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım.

The vote count on March 31, however, proved to be a political fiasco. İmamoglu had won by a narrow margin of 13,000 votes (in a city of 18 million) but the AKP-controlled Supreme Election Board ruled for a rerun on June 23. This time İmamoglu won by a margin of 800,000 votes. The margin of victory shocked Erdoğan and his party establishment. That night marked an unforgettable defeat for the invincible Erdoğan. It also marked a new, advanced phase in Islamists’ war on Kurds. Apparently the Kurds, ignoring Ocalan’s letter, voted for İmamoglu.

Erdoğan’s staunch ultranationalist ally, Devlet Bahçeli, has been persistently calling for a permanent ban by a Constitutional Court of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the third-largest party in the Turkish parliament. Erdoğan advocates more subtle ways to intimidate the opposition. He has been jailing HDP’s democratically elected leaders, MPs and mayors, and appointing trustees in their place.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17130/middle-east-sovereigns-past

The State of Israel continues to enforce Jordanian law [in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria] — despite its clearly racist and backward underpinnings.

No matter what side of the political divide you view it from, a legislative and legal time-warp has trapped the residents of these territories – Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians – in amber for more than five decades. The result: legal chaos, injustice and incessant conflict.

Ironically, Israel’s legal reticence continues to fuel the endless conflict over the land itself… that could be avoided by simply completing the process of land survey and registration initiated by the Ottoman Empire and continued by the British Mandatory and Jordanian governments in turn.

Surveying and registering land ownership was not perceived as an act of sovereignty when the British caretakers undertook it; there seems no reason why it should be regarded that way now.

This same vacuum has made it impossible to formulate forward-thinking policy for land use, environmental protection, settlement policy, and perhaps most critically, a negotiated resolution of the status of the territory. Without establishing who owns what, it is impossible to proceed toward a just division of resources or a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

The time has come to banish the antiquated ghosts of Ottoman, Jordanian and British Mandatory rule, and to fill the legal void in Judea and Samaria with a modern, humanist, democratic system of law for everyone.

Now that the debate surrounding the extension of Israeli sovereignty to the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria has abated somewhat in light of the Abraham Accords, the time may be ripe to take a closer look at the legal status of these territories.

The picture that emerges might be surprising. More than a century after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the empire’s ghost continues to reign. More than 50 years after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, more than 30 years after King Hussein of Jordan publicly relinquished all legal and administrative ties to this territory, and more than 25 years after Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, officially relinquishing all territorial claims, the State of Israel continues to enforce Jordanian law — despite its clearly racist and backward underpinnings.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/desecrated-and-defecated-churches-europe-under-raymond-ibrahim/

A few days after Muslim migrants firebombed an 800-year-old Swedish church twice over the course of four days—once on Jan. 20, 2021 and another on Jan. 24—a Feb 4 report came out saying that 829 “hate crimes” against churches in Sweden have been reported between just 2012-2018, or about 138 attacks on average every year.

Thus the churches of Sweden join those of other Western European nations that have taken in sizeable Muslim migrants. In France, for example, two churches are vandalized every day.  According to a 2019 PI-News report, 1,063 attacks on Christian churches or symbols (crucifixes, icons, statues) were registered in France in 2018.  This represents a 17 percent increase compared to the previous year (2017), when 878 attacks were registered—meaning such attacks are only going from bad to worse.

They are also getting increasingly vile.  As one example, vandals used human excrement to draw a cross on the Notre-Dame des Enfants Church in Nimes in 2019 (pictured above); consecrated bread was also found thrown outside among garbage. One week later, vandals desecrated and smashed crosses and statues at Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur; they mangled the arms of a crucified Christ in a mocking manner and burned altar materials.

Similar reports are coming from Germany.  After reporting how four separate churches were vandalized and/or torched over the course of four weeks in 2019, PI-News, a German news site, explained: “In this country, there is a creeping war against everything that symbolizes Christianity: attacks on summit crosses,  on holy figures on the way, on churches and recently also on cemeteries.”

Although mainstream media regularly claim that the vandals—who are seldom caught to verify their identities—are “mentally ill” or part of “right wing extremist” groups, as the recent Swedish report states, PI-News offers a hint: “Crosses are broken, altars smashed, Bibles lit, baptismal fonts overturned, and the church doors smeared with Islamic expressions like ‘Allahu Akbar.’”