RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/indonesia-moderate-islam/

Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s recent cabinet reshuffle suggests that Indonesia may adopt a more critical attitude toward China and reinforce government support for efforts by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the world’s largest Muslim movement, to reform Islam and position the Southeast Asian state as a key player in a battle with Middle Eastern rivals for the soul of Islam.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo signaled some potential policy moves with the recent appointment of ambassador to the US Muhammad Lutfi as trade minister and prominent Nahdlatul Ulama official Yaqut Cholil Qoumas as minister of religious affairs.

Lutfi’s appointment came two months after a visit by Mike Pompeo to Jakarta in October at the invitation of Nahdlatul Ulama during which the Secretary of State extended Indonesia’s access to a preferential tariff arrangement and opened the door to a free trade agreement with the US.

Pompeo emphasized in talks with Widodo and in an address to a Nahdlatul Ulama conference the need to challenge China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea as well as its brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the People’s Republic’s northwestern province of Xinjiang.

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy, extradited to China three Uighurs, the dominant Turkic ethnic group in Xinjiang, just days before Pompeo’s arrival.

Qoumas’s appointment is significant not only because of his prominent Nahdlatul Ulama background but also because he is one of the leaders of the movement’s most influential wing, which has adopted a tough position on China’s repression of the Uighurs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-overtakes-u-s-as-worlds-leading-destination-for-foreign-direct-investment-11611511200?mod=hp_lead_pos2

China overtook the U.S. as the world’s top destination for new foreign direct investment last year, as the Covid-19 pandemic amplifies an eastward shift in the center of gravity of the global economy.

New investments by overseas businesses into the U.S., which for decades held the No. 1 spot, fell 49% in 2020, according to U.N. figures released Sunday, as the country struggled to curb the spread of the new coronavirus and economic output slumped.

China, long ranked No. 2, saw direct investments by foreign companies climb 4%, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said. Beijing used strict lockdowns to largely contain Covid-19 after the disease first emerged in a central Chinese city, and China’s gross domestic product grew even as most other major economies contracted last year.

The 2020 investment numbers underline China’s move toward the center of a global economy long dominated by the U.S.—a shift accelerated during the pandemic as China has cemented its position as the world’s factory floor and expanded its share of global trade.

Investment RetreatsForeign investment in the U.S. fell sharply in2020 as the country ceded its position as thetop destination for overseas businesses toChina.FDI inflows for some leading hosteconomies, change from 2019 to 2020Source: United Nations Conference on Trade andDevelopment

ChinaU.S.IrelandSingaporeIndiaBrazilCanadaMexico-60%-40-20020

While China attracted more new inflows last year, the total stock of foreign investment in the U.S. remains much larger, reflecting the decades it has spent as the most attractive location for foreign businesses looking to expand outside their home markets.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.