RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/scotland-blasphemy-law-repeal-new-speech-restrictions-replace-old-ones/

Out with the old and in with the new.

On Friday, reports emerged that the Scottish Parliament had introduced a bill decriminalizing blasphemy. No one has been prosecuted under the blasphemy law in question for 175 years, but still, the law “no longer reflects the kind of society in which we live,” the government said.

Fair enough, one might think. But look closer: The new bill does not simply repeal the dormant blasphemy law, as reports suggest. Instead, it replaces the law with a new one, designed for actual use in the 21st century. Reflecting “the kind of society in which we live,” the new bill is neither freer nor more liberal than the old one; it merely enshrines the policing of a different kind of speech.

The single sentence abolishing “the offence of blasphemy,” does not appear until part four of the Hate Crimes and Public Order (Scotland) Act. In part one, the drafters make the bill more palatable by creating enhanced penalties for existing crimes that are “aggravated by prejudice.” In explaining how this could be applied, Lord Bracadale, who conducted an independent review of the legislation, gave ministers two hypothetical scenarios:

A man who was annoyed at the noise his gay neighbor made putting out the bins in the early morning engaged in abusive shouting, in the course of which he made comments about the neighbor’s sexual orientation including hoping that “people like you die of AIDS. . . .”

A man shouts at a disabled person in a wheelchair on a street saying, “get out of my way you cripple” and proceeds to tip them out of their wheelchair . . .

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/europes-moment-of-truth/

The COVID-19 crisis has pushed the euro zone to its breaking point.

O n April 16, responding to the COVID-19 crisis, French president Emmanuel Macron said Europe had arrived at its “moment of truth.” Economics is a “moral science,” he insisted. The euro zone’s financially stronger nations, therefore, have an obligation to look after their weakest partners by establishing a fund that “could issue common debt backed by a common guarantee.” It was the expected high-minded call for a technocratic solution, and it dodged the fundamental underlying political question. In a euro zone still based on nation-states, the strong, broadly speaking, ‘northern’ members have always asked why they should aid their weaker southern counterparts. Today, leaders of those northern states are being called to help the southern members on a scale never before contemplated. Not surprisingly, when they all met in a videoconference on April 23, they ignored Macron.

Europe is indeed at a moment of truth, but European politicians have yet to grasp how bleak that truth really is. All economic forecasts today are too optimistic. Even the strongest European countries will have their hands full coping with domestic economic distress. In such conditions, everyone is on his own. Cooperation is hard enough within federal states, as recent tensions in Germany and even more so the U.S. demonstrate. Cooperation on the scale required within the euro zone, based as it is on the E.U.’s confederation of nation-states, would require a remarkable political revolution.

All economic forecasts are optimistic

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15944/afghanistan-china-moving-in

Both the United Kingdom and the U.S. State Department have complained to China about the free flow of Chinese weapons to Iran, which then wind up with the Taliban. These include surface-to-air missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, artillery shells, and land mines.

China’s $3 billion copper mine investment… in Afghanistan’s Logar Province remains under the Taliban’s protection. Other Chinese corporations that have initiated investment projects in Afghanistan include the Zinjin Mining Company, the Jiangxi Copper Corporation, and China National Petroleum Corporation.

Beijing and Washington are driving different bargains with the Taliban. China, supported by pro-Taliban elements in Pakistan, apparently hopes to enlist the Taliban to prevent Uighur and Eastern Turkistan Independence Movement (ETIM) fighters from using Afghanistan to launch attacks on the Chinese Province of Xinjiang. The U.S., for its part, wants the Taliban’s assurance that it will oppose Al-Qaeda and Islamic State operations on Afghan soil as a prerequisite for a near total troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The question is, just what is the likelihood of that?

The Trump administration has made clear that it wants to end the forward-positioning of U.S. troops on what it regards as a seemingly endless war in Afghanistan, and the Taliban wholeheartedly agrees. China, in the meantime, has continued to profit from its bilateral commerce and investment in the region, and now appears willing to play a future military role in the area. China has already established a military base in Tajikistan near the Chinese border with Afghanistan….

During the tumultuous two decades of American military presence in Afghanistan, China has been quietly increasing its influence there.

While the Trump Administration is distracted by the coronavirus and its economic fallout, China is now poised to inherit the great power role once played by Britain, Russia and the U.S.

Beijing has deftly maintained low-key but friendly relations with the Taliban since the Islamic movement assumed power in Kabul in 1996. Only China and Pakistan kept their ties with the Taliban when American and Northern Alliance forces drove the terrorist group from power in the autumn of 2001.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15920/iran-un-human-rights-council

One of the worst examples we can identify as a conscious distortion of reality is the way in which the UN Human Rights Council, in its February-March 2020 five-year report on the Islamic Republic of Iran, lavished praise on the despotic regime.

Other extreme forms of punishment used in Iran are equally appalling: Execution by stoning, Execution by hanging, Execution by firing squad, Execution by beheading, Execution by throwing from a height, Amputation, Blinding, Flogging. – United Against Nuclear Iran

Yet many people who boycott Israel refuse to boycott Iran. The irony is mind-boggling.

There are times when even the most steeled among us are shocked by things others say or do. For example, people who insist against overwhelming evidence that Hitler and the Nazis were good people or that the Führer never intended to kill the Jews. Individuals who, again against a massive body of evidence, deny where the coronavirus began; or, though their numbers are relatively small, the percentages of Muslims who apparently still support the Islamic State (ISIS).

One of the worst examples we can identify as a conscious distortion of reality is the way in which the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in its February-March 2020 five-year report on the Islamic Republic of Iran, lavished praise on the despotic regime. A majority (85%) of the countries contributing to this travesty of the truth made a mockery of human rights values by treating the Islamic Republic as a shining example of those values in action — something, as we shall see, it has never been. According to UN Watch:

https://www.memri.org/reports/syrian-author-while-rest-world-sanctifies-life-we-arabs-sanctify-death

 
In an article in the weekly Enab Baladi, identified with the Syrian opposition, author and journalist Khatib Badla harshly condemned the sanctification of death in Arab society. The Arab leaders, he said, have long been cultivating the ancient Islamic concept of shahada (martyrdom) and encouraging their people to die for the regime, while other governments in the world have sanctifed life and promoted the security and well being of their citizens. He added that the Arab culture of death leads only to ruin and destruction, and wondered if a day will ever come when the Arabs finally embrace the culture of life.

The following are translated excerpts from his article: [1]

“Our [source of] hope is death. The life-loving nations deserve our appreciation and affection. The governments and national institutions in their countries work night and day to provide them with security, dignity and wellbeing, so they can get the most out of life, and if  a citizen is close to death, [the authorities] will mobilize and do everything they can to prolong his life, if only for a couple more hours…

“Conversely, we [Arabs] have a trait that distinguishes us from all the other peoples of the world, which is a love of death. We dream of it, regard it as a source of inspiration and think about it every day. We love death and love the dead. Instead of hoping for longevity, for [a life of] giving and loving, we say, with defeatism… ‘God, [help me] go to battle and reach my grave. This is in addition to the grand slogans we [like to chant], such as: ‘death to America,’ ‘better death than humiliation’ and ‘seek death and you shall be given  life [in the next world]’…

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/04/belgium-charges-3-commemorating-holocaust-daniel-greenfield/

Those who fail to learn from the past, are condemned to repeat it as grim farce.,

Three men who placed a wreath at a Holocaust monument in Belgium were charged with violating the country’s emergency measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The men, including a City Council member from the town of Boortmeerbeek, were notified of a police investigation against them last week after laying a wreath on April 19 at a local monument commemorating the 1943 hijacking by resistance fighters of a train transporting Jews from Belgium to be murdered at Auschwitz.

On Friday, Belgium lifted some restrictions on movement, ending its lockdown. But gatherings and celebrations are still prohibited, leading to the police action against the three men, who are all members of the National Combatants Organization of Belgium, the Belga news agency reported.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/is-canadas-response-to-covid-19-led-by-china-sympathizers/

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a news conference in Ottawa on May 31, 2018. (Patrick Doyle/The Canadian Press via AP)

The controversy over Canada’s Public Chief Health Officer Theresa Tam continues to fester. Her lack of consistency, credibility, and competence—the three Cs of responsible authority—is a matter of public record. As I wrote previously, Tam has become the face of the anti-COVID task force. But she remains something of an enigma, including her date of birth, her actual place of birth and the dates of her degrees.

What do we know? We know that she initially downplayed the scope of the disease. We know that she is intimately associated with the World Health Organization as one of seven physicians who sit on its oversight committee. We know that the WHO operates as an arm of the People’s Republic and that its Director-General Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus has no medical expertise, is an ardent lifelong Marxist, and is a loyal defender of China.

Tam’s public record is deplorable. Indeed, she has been wrong at every turn. “Right now,” she said at a critical juncture, “the risk is low in Canada.” She assured us that travel bans were not necessary since they were not recommended by the WHO. Recently, Conservative Member of Parliament Derek Sloan, one of the four contenders for the party leadership vacated by Andrew Scheer, circulated an email highly critical of Tam recommending that she either resign or be fired.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/04/27/irans-space-threat-is-the-problem/

One can expect Iran to launch many more satellites into orbit over the next year or so to complete the constellation it is developing. At that point, both North Korea and Iran would have the capability to threaten the technological American military with certain defeat.

The Trump Administration has issued an edict to the U.S. Navy: sink any Iranian vessel that harasses U.S. warships operating near Iran. The last two American presidents had to deal with Iranian brinkmanship at sea. Yet, never before has the White House given such an explicit order.

What changed?

First, the coronavirus pandemic not only has crippled the United States, it also has eviscerated the leadership of Iran, which already was grappling with an economic decline caused by the sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration for its wanton pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Second, as the global price of oil collapses, Iran’s economy is suffering even more than it already was (oil is a key commodity for Iran). This creates a negative feedback loop, making Iranian aggression more likely in the region.

Third, Iranian aggression against American forces in the region not only is on the rise, but Iran passed a major milestone recently: the country has placed its first indigenously produced satellite into orbit. Many believe that the satellite launch was merely cover for the testing of an Iranian ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear payload over any target in the world.

This is certainly a possibility.

But there’s something more to this launch that has American strategists concerned beyond the expected concern over Iran progressing in the critical domain of reliable ballistic missile capabilities.

More Than a Nuclear Threat

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15943/coronavirus-china-intimidation

Chinese envoys have been especially aggressive on Twitter, which they are using to attack, intimidate and silence Western journalists, lawmakers and think tank scholars — essentially anyone who contradicts China’s official version of events.

Under pressure from Chinese officials, Esther Osorio, a communications adviser to Josep Borrell, the head of the EU diplomatic service, personally intervened to delay the release of the initial report. The EU was reportedly hoping to get better treatment for European companies in China. On April 25, however, the South China Morning Post, which also obtained a copy of the original report, revealed that Beijing had threatened to withhold medical supplies from Europe if the section on China was not removed.

On April 15, Germany’s most popular newspaper, Bild, published an article titled, “What China Owes Us So Far,” which suggested that China should pay Germany €150 billion ($162 billion) in reparations for the coronavirus pandemic. The article included an itemized list of economic damage, including €50 billion for losses to small businesses and €24 billion for lost tourism.

“You rule by surveillance. You wouldn’t be president without surveillance. You monitor everything, every citizen, but you refuse to monitor the diseased wet markets in your country.” — Julian Reichelt, editor-in-chief of Bild, “You Are Endangering the Entire World,” addressed directly to President Xi Jinping.

The European Union has caved in to pressure from China and has watered down a report on Chinese efforts to deflect blame for the coronavirus pandemic. Officials in Beijing reportedly threatened to block the export of medical supplies to Europe if the report was published in its original form.

The revelations come as Chinese diplomats around the world are waging an aggressive disinformation campaign — described as a “Wolf Warrior” style of diplomacy, named after a Chinese nationalist action film series — aimed at controlling the narrative about the origins of the coronavirus.

Chinese envoys have been especially aggressive on Twitter, which they are using to attack, intimidate and silence Western journalists, lawmakers and think tank scholars — essentially anyone who contradicts China’s official version of events.