RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21098/jihadi-terrorists-ravage-africa

According to reports, since 2009, Muslims, inspired by Boko Haram, have murdered more than 150,000 Christians in Nigeria.

Chad, Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger all struggle with jihadist insurgencies.

“The persistent and growing strength of violent extremist organizations in the Sahel threatens to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis and spread instability across Africa, posing significant security and financial risks to the United States and Europe. The continuing collapse of international counterterrorism support, as well as weakening leadership in regional efforts, has created a vacuum in which violent extremism can expand.” — Council on Foreign Relations, October 23, 2024.

The ongoing civil war in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, for example, poses a serious threat to Chad’s stability. As Sudan’s civil war escalates, it fuels further turmoil in the region.

“The conflict, which has spread to 14 of the 18 states in Sudan, has killed and wounded tens of thousands of civilians, displaced nearly 8 million people and forced two million more to flee to neighboring countries.” — UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, September 6, 2024.

The civil war in Sudan has driven around 700,000 refugees into Chad, creating a humanitarian crisis and impeding trade between the two countries.

“Unless there is a coordinated effort to implement comprehensive political, economic, and social reforms alongside military campaigns against Boko Haram, the extremist group’s ideology is likely to continue to gain ground.” — Open Doors, March 2024.

As a result of jihadi violence by terror groups in sub-Saharan Africa, 16.2 million Christians have been forcibly displaced. An Open Doors report quotes Pastor Barnabas, who lives in a displaced persons camp in Nigeria: “Millions of Christians are displaced, here in Nigeria. Millions of Christians are displaced in Africa. The news doesn’t care about it, politicians don’t talk about it, governments don’t talk about it, global politics don’t talk about it. Nobody talks about it.”

“Who is funding these groups? Who is arming and enabling them to the extent that they are more powerful than the forces of sovereign states? What powerful and monied entities are supporting the advance of jihad in Africa?” — Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, October 27, 2024.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/02/finally-a-leader-whos-willing-to-fight-the-culture-war/

Imagine if, a few years ago, you had told the wet leftists of the British establishment that one day there’d be a black woman in charge of a major political party and that they would freak out about it. That instead of celebrating this final breakthrough for race relations, these self-styled progressives would be bitterly murmuring into their muesli that ‘She’s a bit abrasive’ and ‘God help us now’. They’d have refused to believe you. Yet here we are. Kemi Badenoch has won the Conservative Party leadership contest and becomes the first black person ever to lead a major party in Britain. And the left ain’t happy.

Badenoch has succeeded Rishi Sunak as Tory leader. She beat Robert Jenrick, winning 53,806 votes from party members to his 41,388. That’s a solid win. She has a clear mandate to steer the party in her preferred direction. Ideally that will be away from both the frothing Brexitphobia of the One Nation melts and the thin, Johnny Come Lately ‘populism’ of Jenrick and his socially odd support base. And towards a greater willingness to fight the culture war. Towards a readiness, even a glee, to lock horns with a political class that has thrown everything from biological truth to our very own national story on to their bonfire of the vanities. Kemi could be the culture warrior we’ve been waiting for.

She has more than proved her mettle in the battle of ideas. She knows what a woman is, which instantly makes her more deserving of a vote than Keir Starmer, who famously turns into a gibbering wreck whenever he’s asked basic questions about biology. Badenoch hasn’t so much ‘waded in’ to the ‘trans row’, as the media like to describe it, as she has marched in, sword of truth raised. She insists we must ‘protect women’s spaces’ from the presence of men. Whether it’s ‘rapists being housed in women’s prisons’ or ‘men playing in women’s sports’, it’s just not on, she says. And we must be free to say so without the ‘fear of being accused of transphobia’. Three cheers for that.

She has stood up for the right of young gay folk to discover their sexuality without being pumped with puberty-blocking drugs or mauled by surgery to ‘correct’ their ‘wrong’ bodies. The sinister medical meddling with gay kids’ bodies is a species of conversion therapy, she says, essentially aimed at ‘making them straight’. She’s right. And her views were lately echoed by JD Vance, who said ‘trans-affirming healthcare’ is ‘pharmaceutical’ conversion therapy. Badenoch has even met with the LGB Alliance, the brilliant gay-rights group ruthlessly maligned by the lost souls of the woke as a ‘hate group’. She’s a better friend of homosexuals than anyone on the Labour benches.

She has challenged the fashionable view of Britain as ‘institutionally racist’. Actually, she says, this is ‘the best country in the world to be black’. Her praise of this plucky nation that ‘sees people, not labels’ infuriates the mostly white wet-wipes of the opinion-forming classes who get off on flagellating both themselves and the kingdom for all the racial crimes of history. To these people, there’s nothing worse – really, nothing – than the sight of a black lady saying ‘It’s good to be black in Britain’. It shatters their ideologies of self-loathing from which they derive their cultural power and media clout. A black woman nipping at the heels of the fashionable shame of white influencers? It just won’t do.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21075/europe-german-problem

With Merkel gone, Germany finds itself on an accelerating trajectory of impoverishment.

One might have hoped that the German Right would learn a few lessons from the Merkel disaster. It has not.

The European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political group in the European Parliament — in which the CDU is a member party — appointed Ursula von der Leyen as head of the European Commission. Under her leadership of the European Union, the economy is collapsing, industry is disappearing and Islamism is proliferating. Supposedly, all of that does not matter because Europeans have the Holy Grail: the “energy transition” to a “zero-carbon” Europe, and more regulations than all the other civilizations combined.

Unfortunately, that policy is an absolute myth. “Zero-carbon Europe”, a physical impossibility, will never happen. Even if it did, it would make no difference to the global explosion in CO2 emissions. Europe accounts for just 8% of global CO2 emissions. Even if Europe ceased to exist, it would make little difference to global CO2 emissions. They would continue to grow on all five continents.

To get Germany and Europe out of this rut, would it not be more constructive for the CDU to consider governing with the AfD?

Today, Germany embraces the ideologies of “green energy” and a zero-carbon society — a society that no longer emits CO2. Germans seem serious about ideology; they seem serious about everything. Once they buy into an ideology, it might be hard to change their mind.

This is how Chancellor Angela Merkel came to power (2005-2021). Many forget that she did not emerge from the extreme green left, although judging by her record, one might think so. She came, in fact, from the CDU/CSU, Germany’s “center-right” party.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21072/erdogan-turkey-kurds-hypocrisy

“Turkey is bombing and massacring Kurds tonight. No protests, no marches, no media coverage, no condemnations from UN, no ICC arrest warrants for Erdogan. Since 1914 Turkey has killed over 1.5 million Kurds. Stop Kurdish genocide.” — Hemdad Mehristani, researcher, X, October 23, 2024.

If Turkey has the right to respond to a terrorist attack by bombing dozens of targets belonging to Kurdish militants in Iraq and Syria, why is Israel being condemned for responding to the October 7 Hamas-led atrocities against its own citizens? Just because of the “two-state solution”: Michigan and Minnesota?

Not only is Erdogan lying when he accuses Israel of “genocide,” but he is also proving that he is a big hypocrite. If he is really worried about the safety of the Muslims in the Gaza Strip, why does he continue to support Hamas, while denying Israel the right to defend itself against Islamist terrorism? If he believes that he has the right to bomb Kurdish militants in Syria and Iraq, why is he denouncing Israel for taking the same action against Palestinian Islamist terrorists?

The complicit silence of the anti-Israel groups on US university campuses towards Turkey’s crimes is simply evidence of a staggering racism and hypocrisy.

Earlier this month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of committing “genocide” in the Gaza Strip in its counterterrorism operation against the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group. Hamas had launched the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, murdering 1,200 Israelis, wounding thousands, and kidnapping more than 240 hostages. Erdogan, whose country has been hosting and supporting some of the leaders of Hamas, threatened that Israel will “eventually pay the price for this genocide.” He added: “There will be no peace in the world without accountability for the genocide in Gaza.”

Erdogan is currently facing the same charges he has leveled against Israel. The only difference is that many in the world are silent when Turkey targets the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, but continue to protest against Israel for defending itself against Hamas murderers and rapists responsible for the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21048/iranian-missiles-hit-europe

Iran’s Islamist regime has never made a secret of its ambitions. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who seized power following the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and established the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, said: “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

Ignoring the warning signs will only make the price Europe pays even higher.

The question is, how much more aggression will Europe tolerate before it recognizes the full extent of the threat?

How come Europeans do not seem as distressed about the deaths of civilians in Ukraine as in Lebanon and Gaza?

All the EU seems to do is issue statements of condemnation against Israel, which is sacrificing the lives of its people to save these sanctimonious ingrates.

The first step should be to formally designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its elite Quds Force as terrorist organizations. This would send a powerful signal that Europe is no longer willing to tolerate Iran’s military and ideological expansion, and it would empower law enforcement across the continent to act decisively against Iranian operatives.

Europe should also take a bold step of shutting down all Iranian embassies and consulates on its soil.

Europe should sever all trade relations with Iran. Every euro that flows into Iran is likely being funneled into Tehran’s military machine and its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The EU also needs to be prepared to form a coalition to back up its words with military action. Continuing to sit passively while Iranian missiles and drones rain down on a European nation is not a strategy; it is a surrender

If Europe finds itself too hesitant to confront the Iranian regime directly, it should at the very least stand by those who are fighting the Iranian regime and its proxies. Israel has taken the lead in confronting Iranian aggression in the Middle East. Rather than undermining Israel for defending itself and the West against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, the EU should do everything it can support these heroes. Abandoning Israel while it fights Iranian-backed terror only weakens Europe and plays into the hands of everyone working to bring it down.

By responding with empty words as Iranian missiles hit European soil, the EU is essentially green-lighting Tehran to escalate its aggression. The lessons of Nazi Germany are there for everyone to see.

The time has come for Europe to support those risking their lives to take down this terror regime before they get a nuclear bomb.

Most grateful of all would be the people of Iran.

The European powers’ current approach to Iran is uncomfortably reminiscent of how, in the 1930s, they dealt with Nazi Germany.

European democracies, choosing appeasement over confrontation, turned a blind eye to Hitler’s rising aggression. This indulgence, not surprisingly, simply emboldened the Nazis, and led to the horrors of World War II.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21047/china-blockade-of-taiwan

Beijing maintains that the island has been an “inalienable” part of China since time immemorial. The People’s Republic has never exercised control over Taiwan. In fact, no Chinese regime has ever held indisputable sovereignty to it. Chiang Kai-shek, the first Chinese ruler to exercise control of the whole island, arrived in 1949.

A quarantine is a cunning maneuver at a time that China is not prepared for a full-scale war and is not ready to start hostilities by launching an invasion of Taiwan’s main island.

Not prepared? Xi Jinping does not trust the Chinese military, a war on Taiwan would be extremely unpopular with the Chinese people, and the Chinese regime is extremely casualty averse.

Xi, therefore, is trying to intimidate everyone else into submission.

“The real target is the United States.” … They were “practicing ways to ambush the U.S. Navy if it heads towards an already held-hostage Taiwan.” — Chang Ching of the R.O.C. Society for Strategic Studies.

Xi’s implied threats to use these weapons are particularly ominous. We have to ask ourselves: When in history has a militant regime engaged in belligerent acts and constantly threatened to go to war but did not actually do so?

China on October 22 conducted live-fire exercises in the Taiwan Strait.

The bellicose move follows a 13-hour simulated blockade of Taiwan on October 14 and 15. The People’s Liberation Army, in the Joint Sword-2024B exercises, employed a record 153 planes as well 26 ships, including the Liaoning, one of the country’s three aircraft carriers.

The Chinese Coast Guard participated in the massive drill as well, carrying out, as the Economist noted, an “unprecedented” patrol around the main Taiwan island.

The drill, according to the Chinese Coast Guard, was a “practical action to control Taiwan island in accordance with the law based on the one-China principle.”