RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16663/vatican-china-religious-persecution

Perhaps the most stinging criticism in Pompeo’s article was his having pointed out the marked contrast in the Vatican’s current position on Communist China with the Holy See’s moral witness which helped liberate Central and Eastern Europe from communism in the late 20th century.

The pope, according to Cardinal Zen, is being manipulated by his advisors. Cardinal Charles Maung Bo… is another outspoken opponent of the Vatican’s “opening” to China. Cardinal Bo, who has vilified the Communist Party of China for its “moral culpability for the COVID Virus pandemic,” also has declared that “the CCP is a threat to the whole world”…. U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke… no doubt added to the Holy See’s indigestion.

Possibly the most abrasively received comment came at the close of Pompeo’s article in First Things where he reminded the Vatican of the Apostle John’s counsel that “the truth will set you free.”

In the 1980s, the uncompromising condemnation by the sainted Pope John Paul II and President Reagan of the USSR’s “Evil Empire” helped tear down Moscow’s “Iron Curtain.” Maybe the victory of the Americans in the Cold War is not to the liking of Pope Francis. Is it really his intention to “undo all of the good work that the great John Paul II did in pursuit of human freedom and dignity?”

US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s September 30 – October 1 visit to the Vatican was a diplomatic profile in courage. Despite the Pope’s refusal to meet the U.S. Secretary of State, Pompeo repeated his warning to the Holy See that if it goes ahead with plans to renew the 2018 Sino-Vatican Agreement, it will compromise the Catholic Church’s moral authority. Pompeo also urged the Vatican to live up to its mission of defending human rights in China, where Catholics churches and shrines are being destroyed and priests imprisoned, and also urged the Pope to reconsider renewing the secret agreement with Beijing, which permits the Communist Party of China (CCP) to have a key role in appointing Catholic Bishops in China.

The Vatican has refrained from any condemnatory comment on the CCP’s persecution, incarceration, torture and forced labor of millions of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province, and has remained silent about Beijing’s contravening its pact with Hong Kong to honor “one country, two systems” until 2047. China has violated the civil rights of Hong Kong’s citizens.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16662/china-fentanyl-source

For one thing, the Communist Party, through its cells, controls every business of any consequence…. Beijing tightly controls the banking system and knows of money transfers instantaneously…. Furthermore, fentanyl cannot leave the country undetected, as virtually all shipped items are examined before departing Chinese soil.

Chinese gangs are large and far-flung. In China’s near-totalitarian state, it is not possible for them to operate without the Communist Party’s knowledge. And if the Party somehow does not know of a particular gang, it is because it has decided not to.

China’s postal service has to know that it has become, among other things, the world’s busiest drug mule.

The regime has adopted the doctrine of “Unrestricted Warfare,” explained in a 1999 book of the same name by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. The thesis of the authors, both Chinese Air Force colonels, is that China should not be bound by any rules or agreements in its attempt to take down the United States…. The regime, consequently, is using criminality as an instrument of state policy…. China’s officials will stop at nothing to increase the power of their regime.

“I’m not alleging any kind of conspiracy, I suppose, but just the plain facts of it: fentanyl and Covid both came from China, China’s our main rival, they’re benefitting from the deaths of many thousands of Americans,” Tucker Carlson noted on his October 16 show.

China’s regime has been pushing fentanyl into the United States for years.

Fatal drug overdoses in the U.S. last year hit a record 70,980, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those deaths, 36,500, were from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. Cocaine and methamphetamine fatalities were also up, largely because these substances were mixed with fentanyl.

It is, as Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution states in a July paper, “the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history.”

There is no doubt where this drug comes from. “Since 2013, China has been the principal source of the fentanyl flooding the U.S. illicit drug market—or of the precursor agents from which fentanyl is produced, often in Mexico,” reports Felbab-Brown.

A Drug Enforcement Administration Intelligence Report issued in January comes to the same conclusion as to the source of deadly fentanyl.