RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/canada-euthanasia-assisted-suicide-children/

In the United States’ most culturally aligned nation, a race toward the once-unthinkable accelerates.

It never made any sense. The assurance that active euthanasia would always be limited to terminally ill, competent adults just never made any sense. Here’s the problem: Once a society widely supports eliminating suffering by eliminating the sufferer and redefines as a “medical treatment” the act whereby doctors kill seriously ill patients, there is no logical argument for limiting euthanasia to adults with legal decision-making capacity. After all, children suffer too, so how can they be logically refused “medical aid in dying” — or MAID, the current euphemism for euthanasia and assisted suicide — only because of their age?

The short answer, of course, is that they can’t and they won’t be, once a society generally embraces euthanasia consciousness, as is demonstrated by the three countries where lethal-jab euthanasia has been legalized and now has popular support. Belgium legalized euthanasia in 2002 for anyone age twelve and older. In 2014, it eliminated all age restrictions. A recent report published by Belgian authorities reveals that three children were euthanized legally in 2016–17 — the youngest at age nine — with the two others at ages eleven and 17, respectively. Their maladies? Cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, and a brain tumor.

Euthanasia has popular support in the Netherlands as well. There children down to age twelve are permitted to be euthanized, with parental permission required until age 17. Infanticide is also practiced openly by Dutch doctors, even though it is technically illegal. Indeed, the “Groningen Protocol,” a bureaucratic checklist published by Dutch pediatricians, describes which terminally ill and seriously disabled babies can be put down.

When these horrors are brought up in euthanasia debates in the United States, assisted-suicide advocates wave off the concern as mere slippery-slope advocacy and sniff that whatever policies Belgium and Netherlands have adopted, those countries are very different culturally from the United States. Now that blithe assurance is poised to become inoperable, as Canada appears on the verge of allowing children to be euthanized.

The Canadian Supreme Court in 2015 created a right to be euthanized, followed by enabling legislation in the national and provincial parliaments. The law basically guarantees the availability of euthanasia to adults experiencing intractable suffering — as defined by the patient — in circumstances where death is reasonably foreseeable. Serious discussions are now underway to expand that license to children. That development is especially alarming for the United States, given that Canada is our closest cultural cousin.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13240/hamas-truce-trust

These benefits for Hamas are exactly why the proposed truce is dangerous and sends the wrong message to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists. A truce now says that if you engage in violent, extortionistic acts, you get what you want.

This victory for Hamas will, of course, only increase the terrorists’ appetite and motivation to continue their attempts to kill as many Jews as possible. They will see any truce as a retreat on the part of Israel in the face of violence and terrorism.

Hamas will now have more time to prepare for the next war against Israel. The proposed truce will give Hamas breathing space to smuggle more weapons into the Gaza Strip, dig new tunnels and recruit thousands of Palestinians to its ranks.

A real truce between Israel and the Gaza Strip will be achieved only after the jihadi terrorists are removed from power, and not rewarded for violence and threats.

It is no secret that most of the Arab countries do not trust Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group. President Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, for instance, as well as many Palestinians, do not have any confidence in Hamas, particularly after the summer of 2007, when the Islamist movement violently seized control of the Gaza Strip. Earlier this year, Abbas threatened that “shoes will be pouring” onto the heads of Hamas leaders.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13250/asia-bibi-pakistan-betrayal

“I am requesting the president of the United States, Donald Trump, to help us exit from Pakistan.” — Ashiq Masih, Asia Bibi’s husband.

“Placing Asia Bibi on the ECL [no-fly list] is like signing her death warrant.” — Wilson Chowdhry, Chairman of the British Pakistani Christian Association.

Blasphemy laws in Pakistan “have been used to target religious minorities, pursue personal vendettas, and carry out vigilante violence. On the basis of little or no evidence, the accused will struggle to establish their innocence while angry and violent mobs seek to intimidate the police, witnesses, prosecutors, lawyers and judges.” — Amnesty International.

The joy over the acquittal of Asia Bibi lasted barely 24 hours. The Christian mother of five from Pakistan was forced to spend eight years in prison, much of the time on death row, ostensibly for “blasphemy,” before the Supreme Court cleared her of any offense.

“I can’t believe what I am hearing, will I go out now? Will they let me out, really?”, Asia Bibi said by phone after the historic sentence, according to AFP news agency.

Unfortunately, massive street protests by extremist Muslims immediately erupted to pressure the government to delay her release. The phone network in some areas was suspended for reasons of “security”. Rioting caused schools in Islamabad, Punjab and Kashmir to close. Roads were blocked, paralyzing parts of Islamabad, Lahore and other cities. Christian schools warned parents to come and get their children for fear of violence. Churches were put on high alert. Protesters hold placards that read: “Hang Asia Bibi”.

“There will be a war if they send Asia out of country,” warned Khadim Hussain Rizvi, leader of Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), an Islamist party that supports blasphemy laws.

Threats by vigilante mobs who called for her death and warned of national unrest evidently worked. Pakistan’s government, after saying it would begin the process of preventing Asia Bibi from leaving the country, has now been accused of signing her “death warrant”.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/brazils_bolsonaro_takes_aim_at_communist_cuba.html

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, the conservative former military man painted by the press as a madman, “Tropical Trump,” and all that, is showing signs of a strategic mindset.

In his first noticible foreign policy move, he’s threatened to just shut down ties with Cuba. According to Reuters:

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro said there was no point maintaining diplomatic relations with Cuba because it trampled on human rights and there was no business to be done with the communist-run island.

In an interview published on Friday by Correio Braziliense newspaper, Bolsonaro criticized the Mais Medicos (More Doctors) program under which 11,420 Cuban doctors work in poor or remote parts of Brazil.

He said that 75 percent of the doctors’ salaries was paid to Cuba’s government and their children were not allowed to join them in Brazil, citing the case of a doctor whose three young children had to stay in Cuba.

“That is just torture for a mother,” Bolsonaro said. “Can we maintain diplomatic relations with a country that treats its people that way?”

Seems family separations, something the Democrats have a big cow about, aren’t such a big deal when Castro does it.

The Miami Cubans over at Babalu blog, as you can imagine, are pleased. Alberto de la Cruz wrote:

If you wondered why leftists hate Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro so much, this is one of the reasons.

What a move like this would show is two things: One, ties with Cuba are a waste of time, given that Castro doesn’t allow private business to flourish, the communist regime doesn’t believe in paying bills and as a result, the country doesn’t have money. It’s a permanent freeloader state, in search of a patron.