RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-and-improved-taliban-afghanistan-women-and-girls-education-antony-blinken-11671664770?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

During President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, U.S. officials expressed hope that the reconquering Taliban regime might be interested in joining modernity and the roll call of civilized nations. Maybe the mullahs would like Davos.

“The Taliban seeks international legitimacy and support,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Aug. 30, the official end of the evacuation. “Our message is: Any legitimacy and any support will have to be earned.” How? By “respecting the basic rights of the Afghan people, including women and minorities” and “forming an inclusive government that can meet the needs and reflect the aspirations of the Afghan people.”

On Wednesday the Taliban banned girls from attending elementary schools, as well as female teachers and other staff, the Journal reports. “My daughter has locked herself in a room since this morning and won’t stop crying,” said the father of a rising fifth-grader who wanted to become a doctor for her home village. “All her hopes are broken.” A day earlier, universities were also closed to women.

Two weeks ago the Taliban presided over its first public execution since returning to power. The convicted man had been found guilty of a murder. “Under the Islamic legal tenet of ‘qisas,’ which allows personal retribution for crimes, the father of the murder victim carried out the death sentence as a crowd watched, shooting the killer three times,” the Washington Post reports.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19238/persecution-of-christians-november

Without any prior notice, government authorities bulldozed the church and homes of 200 Christians in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, leaving them homeless. “The timing is particularly concerning, coming so soon after costly and devastating floods, and with winter already here and temperatures plummeting.” — The Centre for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement, November 26, 2022.

108 Medieval and early modern Armenian monasteries, churches and cemeteries, between 1997 and 2011, have already experienced “complete destruction,” according to Caucasus Heritage Watch. “[N]ew satellite imagery….showed how a monastery, more than 700 years old , was destroyed, then re-erected as a mosque. — theartnewspaper.com, November 25, 2022, Azerbaijan.

“There has been a marked uptick in religiously motivated attacks by Palestinian Muslims on Christians in Bethlehem….. The Palestinian Authority, responsible for security in the area, did nothing.” — Israel365.com, November 21, 2022.

“I want to burn Christianity … we have incinerators and holocausts like Hitler, a lesson from history…. I swear to Allah we will cause chaos and kill the non-believers…. Whoever is not happy, a bullet in their head, I don’t want a single person alive who would oppose Sharia.” — Tarek Namouz, 42, a barber shop owner in London who, on seven separate occasions, sent £25,000 to ISIS fighters in Syria, Daily Mail, December 15, 2022.

“We will escalate the war against you until you submit to Islam… Our desire is to kill you or be killed, for we are martyrs before Allah, so submit or run from us.” — Message on social media addressed to “the Mozambican crusader army,” it also targeted Christians and Jews, whom it offered “three choices: submit to Islam, pay tax [jizya], or accept endless war.” — Zitamar News; November, 18, 2022, Mozambique

“Even when an abducted girl is found by police she will not be returned to her family. Instead she is sent to a Women’s refuge centre that is meant to be impartial but is corruptible. Muslim rapists or their friends gain access to these protective centres and threaten to kill the girl and her family unless she states she willingly married the Muslim man…. Christian children are bullied in school and even killed for their faith. This prevents Christian families sending them to school which perpetuates levels of illiteracy. …. Provincial Curriculum text books caricature and demonize Christians and other minorities.” — British Asian Christian Association, November 27, 2022, Pakistan.

The following are among the murders and abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of November 2022:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19217/britain-multiculturalism-islam

This year, Leicester’s famous multiculturalism, so praised by the establishment, exploded. Knife attacks, stone- and bottle-throwing, cars torched, religious symbols under siege, dozens wounded, including policemen…. Then the hunt for Hindus began in Britain’s streets.

“Leicester to be first city where white people are minority,” announced The Independent in 2007. Some understood that it would not end well.

What happened? Leicester became Islamized fast. In 2001, the Muslim population was 11%. By 2017, it made up 20%. Among children, Islam is dominant.

For the first time since the 7th century AD, England is no longer majority Christian.

A British bishop, the brave Michael Nazir-Ali, was attacked for denouncing the existence of “no-go areas” in the UK.

No one knows what Britain will be like in 30 years. We might, however, be concerned about a scenario in which large parts of the UK and Europe could resemble Pakistan.

“Leicester has become the poster city for multicultural Britain, a place where the stunning number and size of the minorities – the 55 mosques, 18 Hindu temples, nine Sikh gurudwaras, two synagogues, two Buddhist centres and one Jain centre – are seen not as a recipe for conflict or a millstone around the city’s neck, but a badge of honour,” was how, in 2013, the British liberal newspaper The Independent celebrated the transformation of Britain’s tenth-largest city.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-mullahs-resort-to-public-hangings/

The depravity of the Iranian theocratic regime knows no bounds, as it has once again resorted to horrific acts of barbarity in an attempt to suppress the nationwide uprising, now into its 87th day. The mullahs’ regime announced on December 12 that they had hanged a young protester in public in the city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran. Majidreza Rahnavard was publicly executed less than three weeks after his arrest for participating in anti-regime protests. Majidreza was hanged from a crane after being lifted slowly into the air and left kicking and struggling as he slowly asphyxiated. He was denied access to legal representation at his trial and severely tortured in prison, suffering a broken arm and other injuries. Afraid that signs of torture on his body would be exposed, the mullahs ordered Majidreza’s body to be buried in secret, without informing his family.

The medieval brutality of Majidreza Rahnavard’s public execution, comes only days after the hanging of Mohsen Shekari, a 23-year-old student arrested during the ongoing protests, tortured into making a confession, then sentenced to death for the mullahs’ sham offense of “waging war against God.” The clerical regime’s resort to torture and execution as they attempt to quell the escalating revolution is testimony to their increasing panic and desperation as they try to cling to power. They are prepared to defy all legal norms and all basic human rights in their vicious retaliatory measures against their own people.The civilized world must hold them to account. More than 700 mostly young men and women have been murdered so far by the regime in their shoot-to-kill policy of confronting the protests. Over 30,000 have been arrested and many more death sentences will be carried out unless the civilized nations of the world intervene.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19236/cut-iran-ties

Where, also, are the women’s movements of the West?

The sister of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Badri Hosseini Khamenei, came out criticizing the whole establishment and calling for the overthrow of her brother’s “despotic caliphate”.

“The regime of the Islamic Republic of Khomeini and Ali Khamenei has brought nothing but suffering and oppression to Iran and Iranians. I hope to see the victory of the people and the overthrow of this tyranny ruling Iran soon.” — Badri Hosseini Khamenei, in an open letter.

Even though a large number of high level public figures, celebrities, athletes are supporting the protesters and turning against the regime, calls for international support by many Iranians are being totally ignored

“O free people, be with us and help us, and tell your governments to stop supporting this murderous and child-killing regime. This regime is not even loyal to any of its own religious principles, and does not know any laws or rules except force and maintaining power in any way possible. ” — Farideh Moradkhani, niece of Ayatollah Khamenei.

It is shocking and reveals worlds about the rank hypocrisy of Western governments — both in Europe and the United States — that, in spite of all the human rights violations committed by Iran’s regime, not a single Western country, except for Ukraine, has — at the very least — recalled its representatives from Iran, closed its embassies and cut diplomatic ties with Iran’s murderous and child-killing regime.

In spite of the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters, many Western governments are maintaining their diplomatic relationships with the ruling mullahs and turning a blind eye to the regime’s sickening human rights violations. Where, also, are the women’s movements of the West?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19237/eight-billion-minds

This is a new kind of war against civilians for control of their minds.

Governments are relying increasingly on controlling public “narratives” and vilifying dissent.

[F]or all the harms their actions have caused, governments have issued no apologies for enforcing such life-altering policies while silencing critics. It is as if “narrative engineers” have adopted an official position that they are incapable of being wrong.

The more nervous about the future policymakers are, the more committed they seem to enforcing a standard “narrative” they can control.

In an age when information has never been more easily accessible, the world is awash in lies.

A citizen either accepts Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” as “Russian disinformation,” or that person is labeled a “Russian sympathizer.” Daring to say otherwise could get one banned from social media, professionally sanctioned, or even fired from a job. Except none of these established “narratives” has proved true.

In each case, the “narrative” proved to be either misleading propaganda or an outright lie. Yet they were created and sustained by online communication platforms that pushed the lies and excluded the truths.

As global events increasingly threaten Western stability, governments have demonstrated no inclination to entertain a diversity of viewpoints or discussions along the way. Instead, the more serious the issue, the more committed to a single, overarching “narrative” they seem to become.

This war for eight billion minds means that citizens must be more vigilant than ever in processing and evaluating what they see and read. Whether they like it or not, they are under attack at all times from those who seek to manipulate and control them. As in the last century, we are surrounded by totalitarian propaganda routinely disguised as “the truth.”

The heavy perils we face today include centralized governments micromanaging society, the growing prospect of global war, the growing prospect of forced surrender, and the replacement of reasoned debate and free speech with state-sanctioned “narratives” and censorship: totalitarian governance seems not far behind. This is a new kind of war against civilians for control of their minds.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-725005

In a two-part interview with Israel’s Channel 14 on Tuesday and Wednesday, the nephew of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised the masses who’ve been risking and losing their lives to extricate themselves from the grips of the ayatollah-run regime.

A France-based expat, Dr. Mahmoud Moradkhani has been following from afar the ongoing protests in his home country, spurred by the murder in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the Islamic Republic’s morality police for not wearing her hijab properly.

Moradkhani, who left Iran in 1986, seven years after the Islamic Revolution, to study medicine in Paris, is the son of Khamenei’s sister, Badri Hosseini Khamenei. Her whereabouts have been in question since December 7, when he tweeted an open letter that she penned in support of the rallies.

“I oppose my brother’s actions,” she began in the post that went viral. “I express my sympathy for all mothers mourning the crimes of the Islamic Republic regime [from the time of its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] to the current era of the despotic caliphate of Ali Khamenei.”

She concluded the lengthy missive by declaring that “the people of Iran deserve freedom and prosperity, and their uprising is legitimate and necessary to achieve their rights,” adding, “My brother wrongly considers the voice of his mercenaries and money-grubbers to be that of the Iranian people. He is rightly deserving of the disrespectful and impudent words that he uses to describe the oppressed, but brave, Iranian people.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19231/belgium-energy-suicide

Security of energy supply seems, for some officials, to be an abstract concept. It is anything but. In practice, when energy security is not guaranteed, it means blackouts and an explosion in energy costs, as well as, for many, having to choose between “heat or eat”.

When energy costs become insane — even higher than neighboring countries — industrial companies stops investing. Then they stop maintaining the existing productive apparatus. In the end, they leave the country.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Belgium is the only Western country that has shut down a fully operational nuclear reactor… The closure of a second nuclear reactor, under exactly the same conditions, and without the slightest operational alternative, is planned for the beginning of 2023.

Most of the major environmentalist organizations have been actively supported and financed by the Russian Federation, with Russia hoping that if they could discourage the West from developing energy sources, the West would turn to Russia for energy imports — as it did. This financial support did not have to be direct: it was enough to create “environmental foundations”, headed by the leaders of the major environmental organizations, and massively financed by Moscow.

The current Belgian Minister of Energy… was a 50% partner in the law firm BLIXT, which represented, in Belgium, the interests of Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom, the country’s main energy company.

Voters have eyes to see their dwindling bank accounts and their 17-degree living rooms in the winter. Belgian voters see the winter bristling with looming blackouts, leading to darkness and cold. They also see unemployment and the accelerated disappearance of their savings.

There is an overwhelming majority in the Chamber to repeal the 2003 law on the destruction of Belgian civil nuclear power. The repeal would allow the government to enter into serious negotiations with ENGIE-Electrabel for the extension of the entire Belgian nuclear power system. The government could then decide whether or not to allocate massive investments in the construction of new nuclear reactors, after the example of what has recently been approved in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

Is it not high time for a new parliamentary majority, supported by an overwhelming majority of the Belgian population, to accept the responsibility to avoid returning to “the cold and the dark”?

Belgium’s situation is dramatic. While our neighbors have taken and are taking measures to cushion the energy crisis, maintain their budgetary health and guarantee their energy supply, Belgium is in a situation of clear and obvious failure on all three counts. I will only deal here with the energy misery, which is entirely avoidable and caused by the anti-nuclear tendencies of two environmentalist political parties, Ecolo and The Greens.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-night-the-lights-went-out-in-europe/

Politico Europe, a publication marinated in green politics, has named Russian President Vladimir Putin as one of its “power players of the year” — for, in the publication’s words, “advancing Europe’s green agenda.”

“By invading Ukraine and manipulating energy supplies to undermine European support for Kyiv, Putin has achieved something generations of green campaigners could not — clean energy is now a fundamental matter of European security,” the news outlet explained approvingly.

It went on to note that Putin “invaded Ukraine after the EU had spent two years laying the foundations of its Green Deal program for zeroing out emissions by 2050. That meant the policy machinery for a total remake of the European energy economy was already moving. All it needed was a nudge.”

You would have to be pretty severely afflicted with Climate Change Derangement Syndrome to celebrate a silver lining in Putin’s murderous attack on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Europe has sprinted so far ahead of the United States in its quest to end the use of fossil fuels that many U.S. politicians, environmentalists and media voices look on with envy.

But how is Europe’s Green New Deal going now that Putin has given it “a nudge”?