RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14677/iran-torture-execution

“[T]orture is widely used against suspects after their arrest and in the pre-trial phase in order to extract a confession,” in spite of the fact that “Article 38 of the Iranian Constitution bans all forms of torture and forced confessions.” — Latest Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran, Iran Human Rights.

“In 2014, a man who had confessed to the crime but was absolved of all charges 48 hours before his execution was to be carried out was asked as to why he had confessed to a murder he had not committed. He answered: ‘They beat me up so much that I thought if I don’t provide a false confession I would die during the interrogation.'” — Latest Annual Report on the Death Penalty in Iran, Iran Human Rights.

“So far in 2019 [just the last six months] at least 140 people have been executed and 80% of them were charged with murder. At least two of them were juveniles, under the age of 18.” — Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, a neuroscientist who fled to Norway from Iran, to Gatestone Institute.

“The escalation of military tension is something that the Iranian authorities are seeking, as a way of diverting all the world’s attention to the Persian Gulf, thus enabling them to get away with abusing their own people. Leaders of the Islamic Republic consider the freedom-seeking Iranian people as their main threat.” — Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam to Gatestone Institute.

More than a dozen political prisoners in Iran recently launched a hunger strike to protest the unspeakable conditions under which they have been living since their incarceration for civil-rights activities, according to Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, spokesperson for the NGO, Iran Human Rights (IHR).

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/08/26/the-coming-migration-out-of-sub-saharan-africa/

It could send millions to Europe

Almost the entire population of Italy, it seems, spent the last week of June watching a boat arrive from across the Mediterranean. It was the Sea-Watch 3, a Netherlands-registered ship funded by progressive philanthropists and captained by Carola Rackete, a 31-year-old German climate-change activist. Rackete radioed that she was carrying 42 African refugees rescued at sea who were in desperate health. Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini holds that such ships rendezvous with traffickers just off the Libyan coast, and are really less interested in rescuing sailors than in transporting illegal immigrants to Europe en masse. “Taxis,” he has called them. And indeed, Rackete had been doodling about at the edge of Italy’s territorial waters for several days, charting a course less consistent with any health emergency than with a wish to land her human cargo in the European Union, where it is easy to apply for political asylum and where even those whose applications are rejected are almost never deported. Since his Lega party began sharing power in a populist coalition a year ago, Salvini’s decision to close Italy’s ports to such ships has made him the country’s most popular politician by a mile — and arguably, though he is still only a cabinet minister, the leader of the Western European political Right.

This time Salvini failed. Rackete broke through a line of Coast Guard ships in the pre-dawn hours of June 29 and made port on the island of Lampedusa, allegedly ramming a customs ship in the process, a maneuver for which she was arrested. Italians were riveted to their smartphones and TV sets. A good number of Lampedusans even lined the docks in the middle of the night to holler their wish that she be prosecuted — and worse. But when “Carola,” as she was increasingly known to the public, was released in early July, a crowd of supporters waved signs with handmade hearts. She still faces criminal charges. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s foreign minister, the Social Democrat Heiko Maas, backed Rackete against the Italian authorities. “Saving human lives is no crime,” he said. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14570/killing-free-speech-canada
As has become standard in such cases, the charter contains no definition of what constitutes “hate”, making it a catchall for whatever the Canadian government deems politically inopportune. This is all exhaustingly familiar by now: Germany already has legislation that requires social media platforms to censor their users. France is working on it.

The Conservative members of the committee… recommended instead that sanctions regarding hate crimes online or elsewhere should be dealt with under the appropriate sections of the Criminal Code. They also recommended that “The definition of ‘hate’ under the Criminal Code be limited to where a threat of violence, or incitement to violence, is directed against an identifiable group” and that “rather than attempting to control speech and ideas, the Government explore appropriate security measures to address all three elements of a threat: intent, capability and opportunity”.

“Sickening ideologies which encourage individuals to take the lives of their fellow human beings have faced a concerning proliferation both at home and around the world. Yet sadly, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Members of this Committee have tried to use these troubling events as a way to bolster their political fortunes. They have tried to paint anyone who doesn’t subscribe to their narrow value set as an extremist.” – Conservative Party dissenting opinion in “Taking Action to End Online Hate”.

In May, Canada launched a so-called Digital Charter, meant to promote “trust in a digital world”. The charter contains ten principles, three of which deal with “hate speech and disinformation”.

The charter, said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, will target fake news and hate speech online. “The platforms are failing their users, and they’re failing our citizens,” he said. “They have to step up in a major way to counter disinformation. And if they don’t, we will hold them to account and there will be meaningful financial consequences.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14717/britain-us-toxic-politics

What neither side of this transatlantic tag-team seems to realise is that by putting into words their apparent hatred of the West and its allies, they are exposing themselves as antagonists of the very freedoms that enable them to speak or have economic opportunity without fear of reprisal — freedoms they would never have in Somalia, the Palestinian territories, or many of the tyrannies entrenched on the planet.

What voters can see is that those are the very freedoms that these politicians might try to take away from them, too, if their policies were adopted.

By refusing to rein in his support for a variety of dubious ideas and bedfellows, Corbyn has seen his popularity dwindle to almost nothing, and turn the Labour Party into a brand that even formerly like-minded outlets now call toxic.

In the often staid world of politics, the allure of the outsider appeals to a desire for change. Sometimes all it takes to impress the public in today’s political climate is to look and sound the part.

The rise and continuing slide of UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, however, is a good example of what happens when the vote-hungry-courting of a certain demographic backfires, something that his far-left US counterparts — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley & Rashida Tlaib — the newly minted “Squad” — might do well to take on board.

Propelled to into the limelight by the same anti-economic-freedom wave, Ocasio-Cortez & Co, despite the age gap, share more in common with Jeremy Corbyn than the other white-haired Socialist, Bernie Sanders, ever did.

As a long-time outspoken ambassador for a variety of unsavoury organisations, whose interests clearly sit at odds with those of the UK, Corbyn has succeeded in alienating himself — and his party — from both traditional Labour voters and mainstream politics. For all of his frenzied endeavours to sound relevant, his efforts seem to have backfired. Instead of focusing his attention on Britain’s infrastructure or the needs of the working class — the very people Labour traditionally represented — Corbyn’s adoption of the populist-progressive memes of the day, and his allying himself to too many “controversial” causes, has resulted in his becoming sidelined. As a result, Boris Johnson, is almost certain to remain prime minister for the foreseeable future.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-agrees-to-restart-trade-talks-as-white-house-delays-new-tariffs/

After several weeks in which negotiations over a potential trade deal between the world’s two largest economies had stalled, Chinese and U.S. officials spoke over the phone Tuesday, with China’s Ministry of Commerce announcing afterward that the two powers plan to speak again in the coming weeks.

“Both sides agree to talk again on the phone within two weeks,” the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.

Chinese vice premier Liu He spoke Tuesday night with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, according to the statement. They were joined by Chinese commerce minister Zhong Shan and Central Bank governor Yi Gang.

News of the reignited negotiations came as Lighthizer’s office announced the U.S. will delay a planned 10 percent tariff on $300 billion of Chinese imports.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14713/palestinians-gaza-hamas-revolt

“Fifteen years ago, Hamas raised the slogan of ‘Islam is the solution’…. Now, there is rampant corruption [under Hamas]. The corruption is in all institutions, including the judiciary and the police. Today, the corruption is organized and managed by Hamas. The corruption is at the top of the pyramid. It is the corruption of politics, the corruption in the administration, the corruption in employment, the corruption in relief aid.” — Abu Safiyeh, a representative of the PLO’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the Gaza Strip, in a Facebook post that caused his arrest.

The voices emerging from the Gaza Strip are anguished and reflect the Palestinians’ growing sense of disillusionment with Hamas. These voices, however, are still small in numbers. Hamas’s brutal methods of suppression and torture have deterred a large number of Palestinians from speaking out. These voices will grow only if the international community heeds them and calls out Hamas for its brutal crackdown on Palestinians.

Hamas is carrying out its current crackdown against Palestinian activists because it knows full well that the world will probably not utter a word. Why would it? Bashing Israel is much more rewarding than identifying Palestinian leaders as the champion violators of human rights that they are.

Hamas leaders are scared. Of what? That Palestinians will return to the streets of the Gaza Strip to demand that their leaders govern rather than tyrannize. The living conditions of Palestinians in Gaza have gone from abysmal to worse.

That is why the leaders of Hamas recently ordered their security forces to detain several Palestinian activists for allegedly planning another wave of protests similar to those that swept the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

Last March, Hamas security forces used excessive force to break up demonstrations held in various parts of the Gaza Strip under the banner “We Want to Live!”

The demonstrations were organized by Palestinians to protest the longstanding economic crisis, including soaring unemployment and increased taxes imposed by Hamas on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Dozens of Palestinians were injured and arrested during the demonstrations, including human rights activists and journalists.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14714/russia-sudan

Moscow has reportedly signed a “draft military agreement” with Sudan, “to facilitate entry of Russian and Sudanese warships to the ports of the two nations.” According to Maj. Gen. Al-Hadi Adam Musa, head of Sudan’s parliamentary subcommittee on Defense, Security and Public Order, “This deal will pave the way for more agreements and greater cooperation… possibly a Russian base on the Red Sea.”

Russia also “is looking at establishing a logistics base in Eritrea” and has reached a “draft agreement with Egypt for Russian warplanes to use Egyptian military bases.”

It is crucial for the West not only to keep a close watch on Moscow’s moves in Sudan, but to prevent Russia from increasing its influence in the region.

In January, three months before the April 11 military coup in Sudan that ousted dictator Omar al-Bashir after 30 years of iron-fisted rule, Moscow reportedly signed a “draft military agreement” with Sudan, “to facilitate entry of Russian and Sudanese warships to the ports of the two nations.” According to Maj. Gen. Al-Hadi Adam Musa, head of Sudan’s parliamentary subcommittee on Defense, Security and Public Order, “This deal will pave the way for more agreements and greater cooperation… possibly a Russian base on the Red Sea.”

This draft agreement followed other defense discussions between Russian President Vladimir Putin and al-Bashir. According to a recent report in The Arab Weekly:

“Al-Bashir has been talking with Russian President Vladimir Putin about a possible Russian military presence in Sudan since the pair met in November 2017. During their meeting, al-Bashir offered to construct an airbase for Russia on the Red Sea coast and to re-equip the Sudanese Army with Russian weapons, including SU-30 fighter jets and surface-to-air missiles…

More extraordinarily, during an interview with RIA Novosti, al-Bashir requested that Putin protect him from ‘US aggression,’ which intended to divide Sudan into five countries.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274608/eu-court-brink-mandating-anti-semitic-product-joseph-klein

Pope Francis said recently that he was “concerned because we hear speeches that resemble those of Hitler in 1934.” He was talking about the rise of extreme nationalism and populism, which he feared could lead to the fragmentation of the European Union. The pope should be worried about any current resemblances in Europe to the Nazi past, but the pope’s praise of the European Union as an antidote is premature. Indeed, the European Union itself is on the verge of reviving the Nazis’ stigmatization of Jewish-made products on the pretext that they come from “occupied” Palestinian territories.

According to sources cited by the Washington Beacon, “The European Union is poised to mandate that Israeli products made in contested territories carry consumer warning labels,” which is seen by Jews as “an ominous warning sign that they say is reminiscent of Holocaust-era boycotts of Jewish businesses.” The Advocate General of the European Court of Justice recently issued a non-binding opinion to the effect that EU law requires the labeling of such products as coming from “settlements” and “Israeli colonies.” He analogized this situation to the European boycott of South African goods during its apartheid period. “The absence of the indication of the country of origin or place of provenance of a product originating in a territory occupied by Israel and, in any event, a settlement colony, might mislead the consumer as to the true country of origin or place of provenance of the food,” the Advocate General said, referring to food products. Israeli occupation and settlements could be “an objective factor which might affect the expectations of the reasonable consumer,” he added.

Brooke Goldstein, a human rights lawyer and executive director of the Lawfare Project who has fought the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in various courts, remarked, “The Advocate General’s opinion said that goods produced by Muslims are to be labeled from ‘Palestine,’ and goods produced by Jews labeled as coming from ‘Israeli colonies.’ Both people are living in the same geographic location, and yet Jewish goods are being treated differently.”