RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20526/persecution-of-christians-february

Her family immediately went to police, who told them not to go public, and that they would help return Irene…. In early February, however, the family finally did go public — and hinted that the authorities were complicit in the abduction and know exactly where she is. — copticsolidarity.org, February 292, 2024 – Egypt.

Muslim terrorists launched raids on several Christian villages. They murdered 23 people—six were burned alive—wounded 10 and abducted five more, along with setting 28 homes on fire. — persecution.org, February 21, 2024 – Nigeria.

[A] Nigerian cleric asserted that, because Nigeria’s First Lady, Oluremi Tinubu, is Christian, she should be put to death. — naijanews.com, February 22, 2024 – Nigeria.

“[One of the Muslims] shouted that no Christian in the area should be left alive.” — morningstarnews.org, February 6, 2024 – Pakistan.

“…[T]hese pernicious laws… are deeply entrenched in Islamic Sharia law, and the determination to abolish them is lacking in a radicalized nation.” — Juliet Chowdhry, Trustee for the British Asian Christian Association, britishasianchristians.org, February 26, 2024 – Pakistan.

“He replied to me that he was acting in the name of Allah because it was not normal to have statues and that he had come to correct that.” — charentelibre.fr, February 2, 2024 – France.

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of February 2024.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20521/qatar-al-jazeera-terrorists

The long-term agenda looks as if the US and Qatar intend to try to elbow Israel out of any say in what “humanitarian aid” is eventually be brought into Gaza

The US seems to believe that Qatar is aligned with it; the US has its major Middle Eastern airbase there, without which Qatar would be a vulnerable target. However, the report reveals Qatar as aligned with countries such as Iran, Russia, and China, and groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which seek to replace the West. Qatar supported the Taliban until Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani fled in his plane. Then Qatar offered to mediate.

It is the same act — “first the arsonist then the firefighter” — that Qatar is putting over on the Biden administration with Hamas. First, Qatar funds Hamas to the gills, hosts Hamas’s billionaire leaders in its capital, Doha, and allows Deif to declare war on Qatar’s megaphone, Al Jazeera. Then, the Qataris pretend to be impartial mediators, and the Biden administration pretends to buy their act.

It is no secret that Qatar and its news organization Al-Jazeera have long been serving as champions, protectors and lifelines for Hamas and other terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda affiliates and the Taliban.

“There are many channels who are biased, but this is past bias. Now Al-Jazeera is a voice for terrorists.” — Mohammed Fahmy, the former Cairo bureau chief of Al-Jazeera, reported by Eli Lake, aawsat.com, June 25, 2017.

In light of the new damning evidence of Al-Jazeera’s employing terrorists and its close connections to Hamas and other terrorist organizations, perhaps it is time for Israel and Western countries to learn from the Arabs, who understood many years ago that Qatar and its Al-Jazeera are not platforms for peace or news, but rather perpetuators of terrorism.

Qatar and its vast media network, Al Jazeera, have a long history, which, according to a report by the Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI), promote terrorism worldwide. The report notes:

“Al-Jazeera, therefore, should not be discussed as a means of telecommunications, but instead as an unyielding and forceful political tool of Qatari foreign policy under the guise of a mass media network.”

It was this communications powerhouse, the report continues, that basically drove Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from power and in 2012 replaced him with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi, who was also driven from power a year later.

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/evan-gershkovichs-stolen-year-in-a-russian-jail-61234ec9

Evan has lost 12 months of normal existence as a kinetic and curious 32-year-old, a year he should have been jetting around Europe and the U.S. between groups of friends, his family and his reporting trips to Russia.

There has been a burst of weddings and engagements of friends from high school and college. He has missed a year of monumental changes and intrigue in Russian reporting—a cornerstone of many of his friendships with reporters and a key part of his identity. He has missed a year of Arsenal, the Mets and the Jets—his favorite teams. He has missed the final episodes of “Succession,” the finale of “Ted Lasso” and the 16th season of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

“A year is a long time. I feel like a lot has happened in my life,” said his friend and onetime Brooklyn roommate Mike Van Itallie. “To just contrast that with Evan being in the same confined place for literally that entire period of time—it’s pretty tough to fathom.”

Glimpses of soccer

For 23 hours a day, Evan sits in his cell in Lefortovo prison in eastern Moscow.

He meets with his Russian lawyers weekly, and periodically goes to court where a judge extends his pretrial detention. Reporters circle around him taking photos as he stands in a courtroom cage in light wash jeans, occasionally flashing a smile. 

Friends and family send letters with updates on the world and drama at work. He plays chess via mail with his dad and makes suggestions for his fantasy basketball league. He devours Russian-language classics and history books from the jail library. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20522/feminists-hamas-sexual-violence

In November 2023, it was reported that the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, notwithstanding overwhelming evidence to the contrary, claimed the evidence against Hamas “was ‘not solid’ enough to warrant a statement” — to which London’s Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman, replied: “How can we talk about eliminating violence against women and girls if we are tacitly saying its acceptable to rape Jewish ones?”

Alsalem, from Jordan, claims the charges against Israeli forces are “reasonably credible,” but refuses to divulge the source. In reality, no credible or proven instance of this behaviour by Israel’s forces in Gaza since October 7 has been publicly recorded.

“Organizations that fight for LGBT rights condemned the country that allows freedom, and marched for a terrorist organization that punishes gay people with death.” — Jared Kushner, townhall.com, March 7, 2024.

“Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.” — Paul Johnson, historian, thepublicdiscourse.com, January 23, 2023.

Early women’s liberation movements, forerunners to present feminist activism, were founded to proclaim women’s rights to social equality. Radical feminism, as a narrow expression of the original movement, fails spectacularly in exemplifying society’s moral and ethical precepts. Its advocates appear to prioritize narcissistic, egocentric identity ideologies over the sanctity, dignity, and ontological security of the individual woman.

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” — Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, December 10, 1986.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/china_s_digital_fentanyl.html

While all eyes may be on TikTok right now as Congress debates the app’s future, this type of influence by the Chinese regime isn’t new. It goes back to the Chinese Communist Party’s goal of hegemony — to win without fighting. 

With the promise of massive profits in China, institutions like Hollywood started self-censoring for a piece of China’s market. For decades, the Chinese regime has used its soft power influence to shape perceptions in society, ultimately impacting politics. 

As French philosopher Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” James Scott, founder of the Center for Cyber-Influence Operations Studies wondered, “But who does one become when the thought is hijacked?”

TikTok takes that a step further, where the thought isn’t being hijacked, the thought is being planted. 

With over 170 million Americans on the app, stories of teens signing up for some laughs, but ending up dead doing challenges, have been making headlines. 

Is this just for entertainment, or is it, as some say “digital fentanyl” with deadly consequences?

That’s where soft power comes in. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20519/china-unrestricted-warfare

China-linked hackers appear to be looking to attack U.S. infrastructure, especially key components such as the electrical grid, water reservoirs and treatment plants, pipelines, and transportation and communications systems, among other targets.

The goal is seemingly to disrupt the U.S. everything critical to life – if you have no electricity, your cellphone will not work; no water will come out of the tap; gas pumps will not pump gas; flights and trains will stop, and disease from disabled sewage treatment plants will spread. There will be havoc and panic. The government and military will be unable to protect the nation. That is what is meant by “unrestricted warfare.” Not a bullet was fired. It did not have to be. According to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, it is perfect.

What are some of the steps that should be taken?

The West has correctly identified the CCP as the malign threat that it is; now we have a responsibility to put into place the measures and deterrents to prevent it from attacking us through cyberspace or any other way. Let us not wait until we experience a 9/11-scale cyberattack that could be far more damaging to the U.S. than what took place on that dark day more than 20 years ago.

If there is one thing FBI Director Christopher Wray has been consistent on, it is the threat of Communist China across a wide range of fronts. At an unprecedented event on July 6, 2022, Wray and his British counterpart, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum, held a joint public appearance – the first ever — to discuss the growing security challenge posed by China. Evidently, they saw the matter as urgent.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/evan-gershkovich-one-year-in-prison-russia-vladimir-putin-journalism-677f9c50?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Friday marks the ugly anniversary of Russia’s arrest and continuing imprisonment of our reporter Evan Gershkovich. On Tuesday he was ordered held for another three months at the request of Russia’s Security Service, though he hasn’t been formally charged or put on trial.

The Kremlin claims he is suspected of spying, but his real offense is honest reporting. If he does go to trial, any charges and evidence will be wholly invented.

By the accounts of those who have seen Evan, he has held up remarkably well in notorious Lefortovo prison. That’s a tribute to his character and upbringing. His parents have been relentless advocates and kept his case in front of the public and U.S. officials. The 32-year-old is a brave and sturdy man coping as well as anyone can with unjust confinement and the uncertainty of when it will end.

The Journal has also not let up in its campaign to free Evan. A publication like ours asks reporters, especially the young and intrepid, to shine a light on often dangerous places for the benefit of our readers. Reporters know risk is part of the job, but we do as much as possible to reduce that risk.

Yet there is no protection against a willful regime intent on taking an American hostage. Evan is the first American journalist taken by the Kremlin since the end of the Cold War, and he was accredited to report in the country by the Russian Foreign Ministry. His last dispatch before his arrest described how the Russian economy isn’t as healthy as advertised and made news worldwide.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20514/sharia-violence-against-women

“Sharia-linked violence is inflicted upon women in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Asia. This includes the recent extreme sexual violence committed against Israeli women in October 2023 by Hamas proven by the UN; the infliction of sexual slavery on Yezidi women by the Islamic State (IS); killing of Iranian women for not wearing the hijab; the trafficking, kidnapping, and conversion of Coptic Christian girls in Egypt; kidnapping of girls and women in Nigeria by Boko Haram; mass attacks on women in Germany in 2015; the rape of girls in the UK by the so-called ‘grooming gangs’; the forced conversion, kidnapping and murder of Hindu girls in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to name a few.” — Press release, March 8, 2024.

Of especial importance is that the complaint shows how many aspects of Sharia directly contradict what the UN claims it stands up for. By relying heavily on UN documents, and quoting from the UN conventions that back them, the complaint essentially asks the UN to do what it should be but is not doing.

The complaint further shows that, according to the UN’s own definitions, the issues it raises cannot be deemed “Islamophobic”….

To redress these abuses, the complaint asks the UN Human Rights Council to do several things. One consists of requesting that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which claims to represent the Muslim world at the UN, provide a “single consolidated response” as well as “one standardized, worldwide codification of the Sharia and an explanation as to why Sharia should not be considered a fundamental cause of violation of women’s human rights.”

The complaint also requests the appointment of “two non-Muslim rapporteurs, one who is a Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief and the second, a Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women…”

Should, as is likely, the UN not respond, it will have, once again, proven itself a defunct and corrupt organization.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/22/leo-varadkar-vs-the-people/

‘I am no longer best man to be Irish PM’, said a BBC headline this week, summarising Leo Varadkar’s resignation speech. The truth, Leo, is that you were never the best man to be Irish PM. He was never elected by the people to be taoiseach, instead securing that seat of power by appointment and backroom dealing. And once there, once he’d been gifted the highest office in the land by his allies in Dublin 4, he wielded government not for the people, but against them. He bent Ireland to what was essentially a vast real-time experiment in social re-engineering and thought control.

An unelected ruler using his power and clout to correct the country and improve the people? There’s a word for that. And it isn’t ‘democracy’.

Varadkar announced his resignation on Wednesday. In an emotional speech he said he was stepping down as leader of Fine Gael immediately and will step down as taoiseach once his successor has been chosen. His ‘shock departure’ followed the people’s crushing defeat of the twin referendum he put forward. Overwhelming majorities rejected his proposals to alter the Irish constitution to update its definition of ‘family’ and to fix what Varadkar damned as its ‘very sexist’ reference to a woman’s ‘duties’ in the home. No thanks, said the electorate, in the biggest ever referendum loss by an Irish government.

Even the fact that Varadkar’s stepping down is widely seen as a ‘shock move’ speaks to the haughtiness, the outright unworldliness, of his political kind. To many of us it makes perfect sense that a PM would bugger off after suffering a historically unprecedented bloody nose from voters. But it seems the Varadkar clique thought they could ride it out. ‘No biggie’ was their view. Until his ‘shock departure’ on Wednesday, reports the Guardian, ‘the political fallout from the [referendum] debacle had widely been expected to be limited’.

Who expected that? I’m sure those voters who gleefully seized the opportunity of the referendum to give the middle finger to Varadkar and the rest of the establishment didn’t expect the impact of their discontent to be ‘limited’. It is a testament to the arrogance of technocracy, to the chasm that has emerged between Ireland’s rulers and Ireland’s ruled, that the Dublin establishment thought it could shrug off the largest drubbing it has ever received from voters.

In the end, tellingly, it seems it was disgruntlement from within his own party ranks, rather than the disgruntlement of the oiks, that convinced Varadkar to go. He was facing ‘increasing discontent within Fine Gael’, with some party bigwigs worried he’s an ‘electoral liability’. Everything you need to know about the man is contained in the fact that he essentially shrugged when the masses rose up against him but bolted when his fellow clerisy members criticised him. To the technocrat, the disapproval of their dinner-party circle carries far more weight than the discontent of ordinary people.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/isis-rampages-in-moscow-terrorist-attack-russia-3ddf98c6?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

To all the other security risks in the world, you can add the return of Islamic State as a killing machine. Russians were the victims on Friday as gunmen attacked civilians at a Moscow concert venue, killing at least 133. ISIS suicide bombers killed more than 80 in Iran in January, and no one should doubt that the jihadists are looking to target Americans sooner or later.

Vladimir Putin predictably tried to pin the murderous assault on Ukraine, and his coterie blamed the U.S. But the evidence so far points to ISIS, including that the jihadists took credit for the assault and posted a video of it taking place, apparently from one of the killers. The U.S. says it warned Russia about a potential ISIS attack, but Mr. Putin publicly dismissed the U.S. warning as disinformation.

Blaming Ukraine now helps Mr. Putin distract attention from his earlier dismissal of what has now cost so many innocent lives. And it deflects from the fact that Russian security was so inept that the killers could rampage for an hour in the Russian capital and somehow escape in a car.

Mr. Putin will now use the attack to deceive Russians and mobilize more young men to be cannon fodder for his ambition to annex Ukraine. He has a history of using these events to his own political advantage, and the evidence points to an apartment bombing in 1999 as an inside job that helped to elevate him to the Presidency. Ukraine will have to brace itself for missile attacks as part of this latest Putin misdirection.