RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15513/iranian-protesters

“Right now people are mad, not just because of their own government… People are furious about the Western reaction, with the silence of the world. When they see that people are getting killed, but still the Western governments do not dare to openly support human rights and ask the United Nations to make an open investigation into the killings and about the 7,000 people in prison.” — Masih Alinejad, Iranian journalist,

The UN Secretary-General, who declared war on “hate-speech” six months ago, apparently could not bring himself to condemn hateful actions of actual state violence against unarmed, innocent citizens.

How should the West respond to the Iranian protests that erupted after the Iranian regime admitted to unintentionally downing the Ukrainian jetliner? US President Donald J. Trump publicly supported the protesters:

“To the leaders of Iran – DO NOT KILL YOUR PROTESTERS. Thousands have already been killed or imprisoned by you, and the World is watching. More importantly, the USA is watching. Turn your internet back on and let reporters roam free! Stop the killing of your great Iranian people!”

By contrast, on January 14, Democrats blocked a House resolution that supported the anti-regime protesters in Iran. On January 28, however, House Resolution 752, was passed, “Supporting the rights of the people of Iran to free expression, condemning the Iranian regime for its crackdown on legitimate protests, and for other purposes”. The resolution had already been introduced in December 2019 as a response to the protests in Iran in November.

The House Resolution further “urges the Administration to work to convene emergency sessions of the United Nations Security Council and the United Nations Human Rights Council to condemn the ongoing human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian regime and establish a mechanism by which the Security Council can monitor such violations”.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/christians-face-hatred-and-discrimination-even-raymond-ibrahim/

The following are some of the abuses that Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of November, 2019; they are categorized by theme:

Slaughter of Christians

Syria:  On November 11, Islamic gunmen opened fire on a vehicle known to be carrying Christian leaders.  Two Armenian priests, a father and son, were killed; a deacon was seriously wounded.  ISIS claimed the murders of Father Abrahim Petoyan and Father Hovsep Petoyan.  The Armenians were going to inspect repairs on an Armenian Catholic church that had been earlier damaged in Deir ez-Zor. “We continue to feel the presence of ISIS,” responded the Armenian Catholic Archbishop Boutros Marayati of Aleppo, adding that Deir ex-Zor “is a very important town for us, because it is there that many of our martyrs were killed as they fled the Turkish genocide of 1915. Today there are no Armenian Catholics left there. Undoubtedly, the Turks don’t want us to return, because our presence would be a reminder of the Armenian genocide.”

Turkey: On November 19, in the streets of the city of Diyarbakir, Korean evangelist Jinwook Kim, 41, was stabbed and later died from his injuries. A 16-year-old Muslim was later arrested.  According to the report,

Kim had arrived in Diyarbakir with his family earlier this year and was pastoring a small community of Christians. The assailant stabbed Kim three times: twice in the heart, once in the back. Officials, however, claim that the incident occurred in an effort to steal Kim’s phone. Local believers urge the authorities to investigate the incident as an assassination, rather than an attempt at extortion. Kim was married and had one child, although his second is expected to be born in the coming days….  He had lived in Turkey for five years.

“This wasn’t just a robbery; they came to kill him,” insists another local Christian, who received a death threat the day after this incident:

“We always get threats. A brother prophesied a few days ago that they (the government) are going to kick out these foreigners, and probably kill a few Turkish brothers. They are going to cause chaos. They know that I am trying to spread the Gospel, so they may target me too. This may be a sign.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/wilders-calls-out-islam-fueled-western-european-andrew-bostom/

The Dutch CIDI (Centrum Informatie En Documentatie Israel) annual report for 2019 just released Monday 2/17/20, recorded 182 anti-Semitic incidents, its highest number ever registered since 1982, when monitoring began. This figure represented a 35% increase from 2018.

Even the CIDI’s full 99 page Dutch language report, however, provided only limited anecdotal information about a select sample of the perpetrators, rendering a quantitative determination of major (and/or relative) group responsibility impossible to assess. This glaring lacuna was “enlarged” by the report’s absence of background discussion of previously published comparative findings revealing disproportionate rates of extreme anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitic violence, or violent threats, among Western European Muslims, including confirmatory data on anti-Semitic attitudes within the Netherlands itself.

Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders—the Netherland’s most informed and intellectually courageous politician on the subject of Islam—inveighed against the denial of what the report’s findings actually substantiated, during a floor debate, Tuesday 2/18/20. Eschewing the craven, vacuous platitudes of his colleagues, Wilders thundered,

[I]t is almost nauseating. We’ve been talking about anti-Semitism, here in the Lower House (of the Dutch Parliament) for ten minutes now. And nobody, really nobody has discussed the biggest cause of anti-Semitism, which is of course Islam, and Islamization. 

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/canada-a-dead-country-walking/

Canada is presently in the throes of social and political disintegration. A left-leaning electorate has once again empowered a socialist government promoting all the lunatic ideological shibboleths of the day: global warming or “climate change,” radical feminism, indigenous sovereignty, expansionary government, environmental strangulation of energy production, and the presumed efficiency of totalitarian legislation. Industry and manufacturing are abandoning the country in droves and heading south.

Canada is now reaping the whirlwind. The Red-Green Axis consisting of social justice warriors, hereditary band chiefs, renewable energy cronies, cultural Marxists, and their political and media enablers have effectively shut down the country. The economy is at a standstill, legislatures and City Halls have been barricaded, blockades dot the landscape, roads and bridges have been sabotaged, trains have been derailed (three crude-by-rail spillages in the last two months), goods are rotting in warehouses, heating supplies remain undelivered, violent protests and demonstrations continue to wreak havoc—and the hapless Prime Minister, who spent a weak swanning around Africa as the crisis unfolded, is clearly out of his depth and has no idea how to control the mayhem. No surprise here. A wock pupper politico in thrall to the Marxist project and corporate financial interests, Justin Trudeau is generally baffed out when it comes to any serious or demanding concerns involving the welfare of the people and the economic vitality of the nation. Little is to be expected of him in the current emergency apart from boilerplate clichés and vague exhalations of roseate sentiment.

Still, Trudeau may have been right about one thing when he told The New York Times that Canada had no core identity—although this is not what a Prime Minister should say in public. Canada was always two “nations,” based on two founding peoples, the French and the English, which novelist Hugh MacLennan famously described as “two solitudes” in his book of that title. But it may be closer to the truth to portray Canada as an imaginary nation which comprises three territories and ten provinces, two of which, Quebec and Newfoundland, cherish a near-majoritarian conception of themselves as independent countries in their own right. Newfoundland narrowly joined Confederation only in 1949 and Quebec held two successive sovereignty referenda that came a hair’s breadth from breaking up the country.

 https://bit.ly/39TJTfR
Islamic traditionalists vs. Islamic reformers

In 2020, a dramatic battle is raging between the traditional, imperialistic school of Islam, which insists on strict adherence to the Quran and Sharia (“divine laws”), on the one hand, and the modernist/reformist school of Islam, which wishes to adjust Islam to the 21stcentury, by reforming intolerant and violent principles of the Quran, on the other hand.

The traditionalists are led by Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of Cairo’s Al Azhar University, the highest authority of Sunni Islamic learning, which was established in 975 CE, and the pan-Islamic Muslim Brotherhood, the largest Islamic terror organization, which was established in Egypt in 1928. The latter is heavily supported by Turkey’s Erdogan, haunting every pro-US Arab regime and stretching its presence into Latin America and the US.

The modernists – who face a steep uphill battle – are led by Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and the President of Cairo University, Mohamed al-Khosht. They urge Islamic liberalization and modernization.

The January 27-28, 2020 Al Azhar International Conference on Renovation of Islamic Thought, with leading clerics and politicians from 46 Muslim countries, demonstrated the decisive dominance enjoyed by the traditional school of thought in the Arab/Muslim world.

The conference accorded reverence and thunderous ovation to the call by Al Azhar’s grand Imam for the renewal of rigorous obedience to the Quran and Sharia and to his harsh criticism of the modernists. However, there was no applause for the challenging President of Cairo University, who called for replacing some of the traditional Islamic guidelines, which “are suitable for a different age.”  The modernists – most notably President Sisi – maintain that adjusting Islam to the 21st century is a prerequisite to de-radicalize Islamic youth, reduce intolerance and violence, curtail regional turbulence and set Muslim societies on a modern path.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15156/europe-academic-fascism

Minority groups claim “safe spaces”, but the ones who really need safe spaces are those who disgree with the reigning orthodoxy.

An appeal by some French intellectuals, including many Muslim thinkers such as Boualem Sansal and Zineb el Rhazoui, criticized this “intellectual terrorism.”

Free expression is not needed for “politically correct” or sedative speech, but it is the only protection the minority has from the tyranny of the majority.

“[T]he freedom of Speech may be taken away — and, dumb & silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.” — US President George Washington, 1783.

The European university — which should be the home of open pluralism, debate, research and thought — has instead become the paradise of intellectual sectarianism and terror. This new radicalism will reinforce not only political correctness, but also submission to coercion in the West.

Western universities have become places of personal fear and intellectual terror. Formerly sanctuaries for open inquiry, instead fierce ideological minorities have been setting red lines of orthodoxy in the face of a silent or, worse, compliant academy. Education — from ex ducere, to lead out — has been increasingly eroded by ideological fundamentalism and an attempt to determine not only what actions are acceptable, but even words and thoughts.

Social media has helped by officially reviving the lynch mob. We must now all sing the praises of multiculturalism, Islam, immigration, post-colonial guilt and racializing just about everything. In this new Inquisition, not even the slightest doubt or dissent can be tolerated — it must be punished!

Freedom of expression is increasingly at risk in France by effectively creating new crimes of opinion. If your personal opinion coincides with the official one, you have nothing to fear. If your ideas conflict with the official ones, you risk becoming ostracized and your mere existence in the public sphere scandalous.

“The new academic fascism,” is how Natacha Polony, a television host and editor of the French weekly Marianne, has described it. If you dissent, educators, political leaders, the media and the mob will try to destroy you, just as they destroyed Giordano Bruno in 1600 for saying that the universe could have many stars.

“Small radical groups create a climate of terror to impose opinions and silence their opponents,” Polony wrote. “They enjoy infinite mercy from some political and media circles insofar as they claim to embody the Good. Who would dare to challenge them?”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15630/iran-pseudo-democratic-election

The difficulty was that the leadership of the revolution had no intention of creating a Western-style society in which economically and socially Westernized Iranian middle classes would feel at home. One way to deceive them was to continue with a tradition of elections dating back to 1907.

For decades later, a new middle class has emerged, President Hassan Rouhani refers to it as “the well-off 30 percent”, people who are prepared to live a double life in which economic comfort, not to say prosperity, is combined with lack of political freedoms and restrictive social norms….In this double life, the new middle class passes part of the year abroad, mostly in Western Europe and North America, where it can wear what it likes, eat what it likes and live like its Western counterparts.

[O]ver 3,000 high-ranking officials have permanent resident permits for the United States and Canada…. Thousands of the children of this new middle class attend Western universities, mostly in the US and Canada…. In Western Europe and North America tens of thousands of former Islamic officials and their associates own property and substantial investment portfolios.

A Majlis reflecting the reality of a corrupt, incompetent and brutal regime in full is less harmful than one designed to hide the nature of the Islamic Republic and promote forlorn hopes of moderation and reform.

Iranians went to the polls on Friday to elect a new Islamic Consultative Assembly, an ersatz parliament designed to give an autocratic regime a pseudo-democratic varnish. At the same time, voters were invited to participate in by-elections to fill vacancies in the Assembly of Experts, a grouping of mullahs supposed to supervise the performance of the “Supreme Guide”.

With the final official results not yet available, it is not clear how many of the 60 million people eligible to vote bothered to take part in an exercise that many regard as insulting and futile. A number of polls, including some conducted by the government, predicted a turnout no higher than 50 percent. A Ministry of the Interior poll put the number of those who intended to vote in Tehran at 24 percent.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/03/09/escape-from-wuhan/#slide-1

An account of the coronavirus quarantine in China

The onset of the crisis in Wuhan startled me like a jump scare in a horror movie. You’ve seen the kind I mean. The audience is led to believe that the monster, psycho killer—or what have you—pursuing the intended victim is still distant. Then whatever it is stands up from behind, leaps out in front, bursts through the floor, or otherwise appears and delivers the jolt. 

In mid January, my girlfriend visited the hospital for an ordinary illness. She came back on edge about the new disease, which had alarmed the staff. She had to cancel her usual trip home for Chinese New Year, too. She was told that if she visited her family, who lived in a smaller town (by Chinese standards!) near Hubei Province, she would be quarantined for two weeks, as a precautionary measure. The same would be done to anyone who arrived from Wuhan. She advised me to avoid the subway at peak hours.

Ominous signs mounted after that. More and more I saw surgical masks—usually blue, sometimes white—on the faces of people walking on Guangba Street where I lived. These were different from cloth breathing masks, the ones used for filtering out pollution, that had, in a casually dystopian way, been incorporated into fashion. Those I think make people look like characters from the 1990s video game Mortal Kombat. The preponderance of these new masks on people’s faces was a rough barometer of the intensifying climate of fear.

On Wednesday, January 22, the proportion of people on the streets I saw wearing the masks jumped up precipitously from about 25 percent the day before to about 80 percent. Pharmacies were selling out of them. When I sat down in a coffee shop that evening, someone took my temperature with an electronic thermometer you pointed at the target’s ear, to make sure I wasn’t running a fever. They were doing this with all of the patrons. Other businesses were, increasingly, doing the same thing. This is getting weird, I thought.

The next day, the real shock came. 

https://gatesofvienna.net/2020/02/geert-wilders-the-koran-is-full-of-jew-hatred/

In the following video Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands, speaks out in the Dutch parliament, taking government ministers to task for refusing to acknowledge Islam as a major factor in the growth of Jew-hatred in the Netherlands:

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/25236

“Islamic ideologues work in the same way on both shores of the Mediterranean: what they did twenty or thirty years ago in the Maghreb, they do it today in France. If these Islamist ecosystems continue, they will speak for our Muslim companions. In the event of an extreme right reaction or electoral victory, we will be in a civil war scenario”.

This is the scenario outlined on Le Figaro by Bernard Rougier, academic and Arabist author of the new book “Les territoires conquis de l’Islamisme”. This is the scenario on which Emmanuel Macron spoke on Tuesday. He explained that French Muslims have their place in the national community, they are French among the French, but that [their intention is that] there will be laws of Islam on French soil.

Macron said that the republican ideal is not an empty space but a historical reality whose density is urgently needed and everyone must be respected. Macron said it from Mulhouse, in Alsace, where Islamists are working on a space that takes charge of all aspects of life by placing them under Islamist control, a real enclave – financed by Qatar and Turkey.

Macron launched a campaign against political Islam and what he calls “Islamist separatism” in some French cities, announcing measures to strengthen controls over the external financing of mosques, to end the nomination by Algeria, Morocco and Turkey of 300 imams per year in France and ban Turkish and Arabic courses. Imams, Macron said, are often related to Salafism or the Muslim Brotherhood and “preach against the republic”.