RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12464/iran-hollowing-out

The analogies with the former East Germany suggest that Iran, too, is ripe for regime change. They also suggest that a change may come in weeks, months or years, depending on chance events and particularly on whether the local authorities and their security forces, at least in some areas, get tired of killing people.

What is likely to push such developments forward? The answer is that the new American policy, whether by chance or intent, may be as good as anything.

On December 28, 2017, major protests against the Iranian regime broke out in Mashhad and quickly spread to numerous other urban centers. Mostly merely noisy at first, some turned violent and eventually the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) suppressed the phenomenon, killing some and arresting thousands of others. Protests have continued, but news about them is scanty. How are they to be evaluated?

There are interesting parallels with the twilight of the East German regime. By a coincidence, the Iranian regime is in its fortieth year and the East German regime suddenly collapsed just after its leaders had held a large-scale pompous celebration of its fortieth anniversary in the capital, East Berlin.

At its downfall, the government and security apparatus of the so-called “German Democratic Republic” appeared to be, as always, thoroughly in control, yet it took only a few chance events to start a domino effect that swept it away. There was the swell of holidaymakers who drove their polluting “Trabis” into Hungary or Czechoslovakia and thence via Austria into West Germany, because those East European countries had stopped preventing them. Beginning on September 4, 1989, there were the Monday marches that set out after the morning “Prayer for Peace” in Leipzig’s St. Nicholas Church.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12463/cyprus-ethnic-cleansing

“Why is there not peace yet? How can we make peace when we have rabid murderers living among us? Instead of prosecuting them, we enable them to appear on TV and to boast about their murders…. If you do not even bring to account a murderer who says, ‘killing was my art,’ who will you bring to account?” — Şener Levent, the editor-in-chief of the Turkish Cypriot newspaper Afrika.

So far, these “rabid murderers” have not been held accountable for the slaughter of innocent Greek Cypriots: the ethnic cleansing of northern Cyprus. The greater issue is that he and his partners in crime were aided and abetted by the Turkish authorities. All of those responsible need to be tried at international criminal tribunals — the sooner, the better.

Is Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who keeps talking about Cyprus as a security threat to the eastern Mediterranean, trying to deliver a message? Erdogan has long been warning Cypriot and international companies exploring energy resources in the region not to “trust the Greek side in Cyprus.”

The Turkish president’s repeated verbal attacks on Greek Cypriots also shed light on a recent interview, broadcast live on Turkish Cypriot TV, with 84-year-old Turgut Yenağralı — a former member of the paramilitary Turkish Resistance Organization (TMT), founded in 1957 and known for its criminal activities in Cyprus.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/06/resist-us/

Without impartial justice, the UK puts at risk a foundation of any free society. Indeed, official policy has already removed the chocks and encouraged that descent to gather pace. Regardless of Tommy Robinson’s past, I am very worried by his imprisonment. So should we all.

I am very uneasy about the arrest and incarceration of Tommy Robinson. Yes, he has operated on the fringe of legality. Indeed, he carries a number of convictions which can be seized upon to paint him as a figure deserving of little sympathy, if any. On this occasion, he was in apparent breach of a probation order in relation to a previous conviction for contempt of court. Standing outside the court, he was picked up by seven police and bundledinto a paddy wagon for “breaching the peace”, a transparently ridiculous charge as is clear in the You Tube video. Before the judge, he was found guilty of breaching his probation, summarily convicted, sentenced to thirteen months imprisonment and bundled without further ado into prison.

Undoubtedly, as Janet Albrechtsen has pointed out, Robinson was guilty as charged. But here we come to the heart of our worries. The vast majority of British people still assume the law is blind and impartial. But a growing minority now sees the law as weaponised, a potent item in the Left’s arsenal with which it is waging and winning its culture war. The total media blackout imposed by the judge (lifted on appeal), left the sinister impression that Robinson was being “disappeared” with an efficiency any Argentine general from the bad old days might well have admired. The message could not have been more explicit: report on what the court did to Robinson and you will end up occupying an adjoining cell. Is there any other way to describe that ruling but as government-sanctioned intimidation.

http://www.settimananews.it/religioni/millions-of-shadows-of-christians-china/

They may number even two or three hundred million, and are growing fast. They are the self-styled Christians in China, who don’t clearly know what they are.

All read the Bible; some claim to be related to Christ, like Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the destructive Taiping Rebellion in the 19th century, which killed 20% of the Chinese population. Most add to the Bible and the Gospels their own tracts, drawing explanations from Buddhist or Taoist traditions. Lots claim to have dreams and visions of God and the apostles, and thus cure people of their ailments for free or small donations, whereas state hospitals charge stiff bills for any patient.

Some Chinese officials argue they can’t be regarded as Christians at all, but just the latest wave of the centuries-old Chinese syncretic tradition of pulling every faith and belief under one roof. But the new styled Chinese Christians claim to be so, perhaps in part because the label brings with it a more tolerant approach from the authorities, who are not against the spread of Buddhism and Christianity, but take much harsher measures against Islam, for fear of Muslim extremists.

In the past syncretism occurred over a period of 500–600 years to Buddhism, which became sinicized by drawing on homegrown Taoism since the first century AD. The same is happening now in China with Christianity; only the time frame is much shorter. Christianity went from about 2–3% of the total population in the late 1990s to presently being possibly as much as 20–30% of the population. The popularity of the Pope is apparently also helping all of this.

Many people hear about the Pope and the Catholic Church and claim to be Catholic, although they may have never attended Catholic mass.