RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/hong-kongs-deteriorating-academic-freedom

Hong Kong’s once-vibrant academic environment, known for its commitment to free thought, critical discourse, and intellectual inquiry, has experienced a troubling erosion of academic freedom in recent years, as Beijing tightens its grip on the city’s autonomy. The recent case of Rowena He, an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) known for her research on the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, illustrates the growing restrictions on Hong Kong’s academic institutions. The scholar was fired from her professorship after Hong Kong authorities rejected her visa renewal application, preventing her from returning there from the U.S., where she was on an academic fellowship.

He’s scholarly contributions include her book Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China and numerous articles on China’s democracy movement. Her work exemplifies the rich intellectual tradition that Hong Kong once represented.

The persecution of academics in Hong Kong is not new. Benny Tai, a former law professor at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), is a well-known activist and scholar who played a prominent role in the 2014 Umbrella Movement, which called for universal suffrage and fair elections in Hong Kong. In July 2020, HKU’s governing council voted to dismiss him after the Hong Kong government convicted him of charges related to his involvement in the Umbrella Movement. Unlike with He, however, the charges against Tai stemmed from his role in organizing and participating in pro-democracy protests, not from what he taught or researched as a professor. He’s case thus signals Beijing’s growing censorship of, and control over, academic output in Hong Kong.

He’s dismissal also fits into the broader context of the rapid erosion of freedom in Hong Kong. Just a few weeks earlier, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee delivered his annual policy address, in which he vowed to enact Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law by the end of 2024. This bill is Hong Kong’s version of the Beijing-imposed Hong Kong National Security Law of China, enacted in 2020, which has been used to destroy freedom of speech, press, and expression in the bustling city.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/10/iran-houthis-red-sea-missiles-israel-hamas-us-navy-carriers/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-onward-journey

Six days ago, the US aircraft carrier Dwight D Eisenhower – Ike – transited the Suez Canal southbound and headed into the Red Sea as part of her pre-planned but accelerated deployment to the Gulf Region. En route she joined USS Ford and her carrier battle group in the Eastern Med for some interoperability training and the obligatory formation photo. 

It is impossible to say for certain that this overt display of around two hundred thousand tons of nuclear-powered naval firepower – to say nothing of all the escorts – is what has kept Hezbollah relatively quiet over the last few weeks but it’s bound to have influenced their thinking. It is also risky to say that this effect will endure, but for now, it appears to be a win for carrier-based deterrence. Given how many predicted a region-wide escalation by now, this is one piece of good news alongside the horror of Gaza.

Aside from sporadic attacks on US troops inland in Iraq and Syria, there is one other Iranian-backed terrorist group in the region which hasn’t got the memo yet, and that’s the Houthis. They overthrew the legitimate government of Yemen in 2014, and Saudi Arabia and her allies have been engaged ever since trying to restore some semblance of order there with varying degrees of success. That the Saudis are often painted as the villain of this piece baffles me, although that is an article for another time. This year at least has seen fighting in Yemen slowing with talks between Saudi and Iran, mediated by the Chinese, apparently making some progress despite al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)’s best efforts to derail them. 

However, as one would expect of Iranian proxies who see disruption and fear as endstates in themselves, the Houthis didn’t wait long after the Hamas incursion to start firing missiles up the Red Sea at Israel. USS Carney intercepted four in one go but there have been more since, forcing the US and Israeli navies to station destroyers and corvettes to intercept further firings. 

What is clear is that Saudi and US efforts to prevent Iranian-supplied arms from entering Yemen over the last few years haven’t entirely worked and that the Houthis are still able to move and fire them without being detected and destroyed prior to launch.

But it’s possible that this might be about to change.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/a_brief_history_of_emkristallnachtem.html

November 9th marks the eighty-fifth anniversity of Kristallnacht, the infamous “night of broken glass.”

The pretext for this part-pogrom, part state-sponsored riot was the assassination of German embassy official Ernst vom Rath in Paris. Throughout Germany and Austria, primarily in heavily Jewish areas, synagogues were destroyed, businesses gutted, and for the first time, Jews were arrested by the thousands and sent to the existing concentration camps like Dachau.  

Looking back, the mortal danger to the Jews of Germany was obvious. The Jews of Germany and Austria were concerned, of course, but many were comforted by the idea that Jews had survived calamities before and discrimination even leading to violence, was often a feature of the world they lived in. They just need to lie low, and the threat would pass.

When Hitler came to power many still did not take him seriously. One Jewish commentator in Chicago echoed what was commonly believed: Speculating that while the situation for Jews in Germany was dire, it was unlikely that Hitler would remain in power past one year.

The Nazis had made it clear that Jews were to be ostracized. The Nuremberg Laws had begun to be enforced, amounting to the isolation and exclusion of Jews from society. Physicians, professors, teachers, and civil servants all faced restrictions that often prevented them even interacting with Gentiles.

Large numbers of Jews who were able left the country. But others waited. It was Kristallnacht that left no doubt; Jewish life in Germany was at an end.

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=fcf96971c9

On and after October 7 the world has been treated to images of Hamas terrorists engaging in the most horrific acts against Israeli civilians, including even elderly people and babies. Surely all civilized people would react to these crimes with revulsion and outrage? To the contrary, the last several weeks have seen massive pro-Hamas demonstrations around the world, including on campuses of elite universities and in major cities like London, Paris, Washington, D.C., and New York.

Rationales that I have seen to justify Hamas’s conduct have included that Israel is supposedly an “apartheid state,” that Israel engages in “genocide,” and that the Israelis are “settler colonialists.” In each case the words used as accusations against Israel are completely detached from their usual meaning, or indeed from any meaning. Certainly, much that Israel has done over the years could be subject to fair criticism. But “apartheid”? “Genocide”? Ridiculous. “Settler colonialism”? I have no idea what that even means.

Here in the U.S. we have a well-established constitutional order of freedom of religion. People practice dozens of different religions, and members of one religion, and also the government, do not prevent or restrict the practice of other religions by other people. That was not an easy order to establish, but we have established it (at least for now), and it enables people who have come from all over the world and from many different religions to live among each other in peace.

The Muslim countries have no such principles. As far as I can determine, the record of Muslim countries with regard to treatment of members of other religions is universally abysmal, in every case far worse than anything Israel can possibly be accused of. Yet somehow in the torrent of criticism of Israel for “apartheid” or “genocide,” this subject never comes up.

So I thought it would be useful to put together a small round-up of treatment of members of minority religions in Muslim countries. I will focus on the countries of North Africa, and on their treatment of their Jewish populations, because that information is particularly relevant to the situation involving Israel today. The North African countries once had substantial and thriving Jewish communities, none of which exist any more. Nor was the abysmal treatment by the Muslims limited to Jews. Similar (if perhaps not quite as bad) treatment has befallen members of other religions like Christians or Baha’is by Muslims both in North Africa and also in places like Pakistan or Iran or Nigeria.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20126/hamas-nazis

[B]igots hate Jews and their nation-state. This has nothing to do with support for the Palestinian people, who are horribly oppressed by Hamas. If they really wanted to support the Palestinian people, they would be demonstrating for Palestinian freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom not to be used as a human shield, due process, equal justice under law, and especially freedom from the corrupt and repressive governance of their own leaders, some now safe from the devastation they began from their five-star hotels in Qatar.

Nor does it reflect support for stateless, oppressed or occupied national groups in general. These selective bigots are silent about the stateless Kurds , the oppressed Uyghurs and other groups that deserve their support. They only focus on the Palestinians because they are allegedly oppressed by Jews. It is hatred of Jews, not love of the Palestinians or other groups that motivates these bigots.

Let us remember that these shows of support for Hamas began before Israel even responded to the Hamas barbarity. They were shows of support for what Hamas did to innocent Jews: rapes, beheadings, torture, mass murder and kidnapping.

Many university students and faculty, not only in Germany but at Harvard, Yale and Georgetown, supported Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Today’s Nazis are Hamas. Today’s enablers of Nazism are the students and others who support Hamas. History will judge them the way history has judged Nazi collaborators.

Among the groups that have supported the rapes, beheadings, burning alive, mass murder and kidnappings of Jews by Hamas have been some that purport to speak for gays, Jews, feminists and progressives. If any of these groups were actually to travel to Gaza, they would be murdered by Hamas.

Hamas has no tolerance for gays, Jews, feminists or progressives. Indeed, among the people beheaded, raped, murdered and kidnapped were gays, Jews who support Palestinians, feminists, progressives and non-Jews. None of that matters to Hamas. If you are a Jew or an Israeli or just happen to be in the way, you are a target of their barbarity.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/goodbye-to-all-that?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

What you are looking at is a table set up on Saturday in London’s Charing Cross station, where people could buy poppies to be worn as a lapel pin in the days leading up to Remembrance Weekend in a few days’ time. That’s when the country commemorates British service members who have died in two world wars and other military conflicts since the onset of World War I.

The group selling the poppies are typical of the British people for whom this weekend is a solemn rite of collective memory, an affirmation of the supreme sacrifice that so many have made to defend the nation and its values.

But surrounding them are the ugly faces of the new Britain, those who have poured onto the streets in their tens of thousands to bellow their support for the annihilation of  Israel and the murder of Israeli Jews — people who call the genocide of Israeli Jews “resistance” and Israel’s resistance “genocide”. 

Yesterday saw the fourth of these weekly demonstrations, which have brought out Muslim-led mobs onto the streets of Britain and other western countries exulting at the barbaric massacre of 1400 Israelis on October 7 and demanding a ceasefire — not by Hamas, which continues its war crimes by firing volleys of rockets every day intended to murder more Israelis, but by Israel which is waging war in Gaza to destroy Hamas and end its criminal onslaught.

The image of those people surrounding the poppy sellers, whose own faces are a picture of pained stoicism, is as obscene as it is frightening. For those demonstrators stand for the barbarism and depravity that the defenders of Britain who are being commemorated by the poppy died in the attempt to defeat. 

Indeed, on one of the posters behind the poppy sellers but out of shot in this picture was a swastika, the Nazi symbol which these mobs are so grotesquely trying to pin on the Jewish nation that arose from the ashes of the Holocaust. 

In this war against Hamas and Iran, Israel is fighting for its life and the lives of its people against Palestinian Arabs whose forbears allied themselves to Hitler in the thirties and pledged to wipe out every Jew in the Middle East. Today’s Palestinian Arab genocidists display the same depravity. The spectacle of their acolytes in Britain crowding out those who wish to commemorate the British heroes who fought Nazism and aggression against the free world is beyond sickening.