RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-australia-still-liberal-democracy/619940/

In a bid to keep the coronavirus out of the country, Australia’s federal and state governments imposed draconian restrictions on its citizens. Prime Minister Scott Morrison knows that the burden is too heavy. “This is not a sustainable way to live in this country,” he recently declared. One prominent civil libertarian summed up the rules by lamenting, “We’ve never seen anything like this in our lifetimes.”

Up to now one of Earth’s freest societies, Australia has become a hermit continent. How long can a country maintain emergency restrictions on its citizens’ lives while still calling itself a liberal democracy?

Australia has been testing the limits.

Before 2020, the idea of Australia all but forbidding its citizens from leaving the country, a restriction associated with Communist regimes, was unthinkable. Today, it is a widely accepted policy. “Australia’s borders are currently closed and international travel from Australia remains strictly controlled to help prevent the spread of COVID-19,” a government website declares. “International travel from Australia is only available if you are exempt or you have been granted an individual exemption.” The rule is enforced despite assurances on another government website, dedicated to setting forth Australia’s human-rights-treaty obligations, that the freedom to leave a country “cannot be made dependent on establishing a purpose or reason for leaving.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17714/iran-torture-epidemic

While the Biden administration and other members of the United Nations Security Council continue to push for the resuscitation of the disastrous nuclear deal — granting Iran nuclear weapons and global legitimacy — they have turned a blind eye to the mullahs’ ever-increasing violations of human rights.

There are reports of slow public hangings-to-death on cranes, amputations of fingers by special guillotines, electric shocks, floggings and rape….

One can also regrettably assume that neither of these men, nor any of the multitudes of others treated in a similar way, was given a fair trial or anything close to a legal defense. According to the Center for Human Rights in Iran, “Three more human rights attorneys in Iran were handed unjust prison sentences in July 2021 amid an ongoing campaign to eliminate due process for activists and dissidents by intimidating the lawyers who defend them….”

The UN, instead of doing its job, appears to have granted the Iranian regime’s leaders full impunity. For how long are the UN, the European Union and the Biden administration going to continue appeasing the mullahs of Iran instead of holding them accountable for their crimes against humanity?

While the Biden administration and other members of the United Nations Security Council continue to push for the resuscitation of the disastrous nuclear deal — granting Iran nuclear weapons and global legitimacy — they have turned a blind eye to the mullahs’ ever-increasing violations of human rights.

Recently, a hacking group calling itself Edalat-e Ali (Ali’s Justice) leaked videos of Iran’s prisons, some of which revealed abuse, including beatings and other unspeakable treatment of detainees carried out by the Iranian authorities at the notorious Evin Prison, where political prisoners are held. “We will continue to expose the oppression,” that the Iranian government is “inflicting on people,” the group said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/eternal-jihad-raymond-ibrahim/

Although August 15, 2021 will forever live in infamy as the date when the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan, for over 13 centuries that date was famous for another event—Constantinople’s defeat of the caliphate, August 15, 718.  While these two events separated by exactly 1,303 years are vastly different in nature—not least that in 718 Islam lost, while in 2021 it won—they both confirm one irresistible point that the confident West should take to heart: the tenacity of Islamic jihad—this relentless snake of war that always bides its time, even if by remaining coiled for many centuries, before striking.

Consider the first event.  In 718, the Eastern Roman Empire (“Byzantium”) repulsed, in dramatic fashion, the Arabs.  It was such a spectacular victory, and Muslim losses were so bad, that, for many centuries, the caliphates never dared make another attempt against the walls of Constantinople.

Put differently, for many centuries after the year 718, anyone living in Constantinople would have thought—and would have apparently been justified for thinking—that the Islamic threat, whatever it was elsewhere, was well behind them.

And yet, in the early 1400s—700 years after the people of Constantinople had thought they’d seen the last of jihad—it was back again besieging them, with the city finally falling to Islam on May 29, 1453.

More significantly, those who besieged and conquered Constantinople in 1453 had little to do with those who besieged it in the eighth century.  The latter were Arabs, under the Umayyad caliphate centered in Damascus.  Those who actually conquered Constantinople were Turks, whose capital was Adrianople (now Edirne).

On the surface there is no connection or continuity between those who in the eighth century tried to conquer, and those who in the fifteenth century did conquer, Constantinople—except, of course, for one thing: both were Muslims, and both articulated their hostility for and need to conquer Constantinople in distinctly jihadist terms: like every other infidel, the Christian kingdom had two choices before it: submit to Islam—which it rejected—or fight.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/taliban-shoot-dead-folk-singer-after-announcing-public-music-ban-in-afghanistan_3975467.html

The Taliban has executed a well-known folk singer in a village in Afghanistan after officials announced a ban on playing music in public, according to local reports.

Fawad Andarabi, a well-known folk singer, was killed in the Afghanistan village of Andarab, north of Kabul, a region where parts of the population are rejecting Taliban rule, The Associated Press reported.

Andarabi played the ghichak, a bowed lute, and sang traditional songs about his birthplace, his people, and the country. He was said to have been dragged from his village home before being shot dead by the group.

His son, Jawad, told AP that the singer was “shot in the head for no reason” at the family’s farm, just days after the Taliban had searched his home and drank tea with him.

“He was innocent, a singer who only was entertaining people,” Jawad, said. “They shot him in the head on the farm.”

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said his group would investigate the shooting but did not provide any further information.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/australia-passes-sweeping-online-surveillance-bill-amid-privacy-concerns_3975554.html

The Australian federal government last week passed a sweeping surveillance bill that would grant top law enforcement agencies the authority to take over social media accounts and hack the devices of individuals suspected of participating in serious online crime.

The Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identity and Disrupt) Bill 2020 passed both houses of federal parliament on Aug. 25, and introduces three new powers which Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews argues will assist law enforcement in keeping up with evolving technologies to protect Australians.

Specifically, the legislation grants the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) the power to modify or delete the data of suspected offenders, collect intelligence on criminal networks, and take control of a suspected offenders’ online account.

Those who refuse to comply can face up to 10 years in prison.

In defending the legislation, Andrews cited an operation earlier this year that resulted in 290 arrests, saying that this “confirmed the persistent and ever evolving threat of transnational, serious and organised crime—and the reliance of these networks on the dark web and anonymising technology to conceal their offending.”

“In Operation Ironside, ingenuity and world-class capability gave our law enforcement an edge. This Bill is just one more step the government is taking to ensure our agencies maintain that edge,” the minister said in a statement.

“Under our changes the AFP will have more tools to pursue organised crime gangs to keep drugs off our street and out of our community, and those who commit the most heinous crimes against children,” she added.

Passage of the bill however has been met with scrutiny, with some human rights activists saying it’s a “draconian” and “extreme” infringement on an individual’s right to privacy.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17632/uk-medieval-customs

Advocates of multi-culturalism demand not only that we should accept sweeping changes to our cultural landscape, but also that we should be far more welcoming of some of the medieval customs, traditions, and religious laws it has taken much of the world — often at great cost in the irrevocable currency of life as well as treasure — centuries to get rid of.

This importation of Muslim laws and customs, which often sit at odds with the British way of life, is seen as yet another example of a “preferential treatment” that minority groups receive over and above the indigenous population. That Christians, and people of other faiths, are guiltlessly persecuted in a majority of Muslim nations only serves to increase this resentment.

The advocates of diversity then claim that those who would disagree with what seem to them outdated practices that should remain outdated, are called “racist”, “xenophobic” or “Islamophobes,” when actually they might just be opposed to the beating of women, child marriage, female genital mutilation or a whole host of abuses they mistakenly thought had been left behind ages ago.

If there is one “woke” issue that has caused more division and anger in the UK than any other, it is that of the “multi-culturalism experience” that has been incrementally dumped on us – here and in Europe — since the end of the Second World War.

These practices have been introduced via the ever-expanding British Muslim community, which this writer was born into, and with which he therefore shares a certain understanding and affinity.

Advocates of multi-culturalism demand not only that we should accept sweeping changes to our cultural landscape, but also that we should be far more welcoming of some of the medieval customs, traditions, and religious laws it has taken much of the world — often at great cost in the irrevocable currency of life as well as treasure — centuries to get rid of.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/icna-hamas-haiti-joe-kaufman/

On August 14, 2021, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck the southern coast of Haiti, taking the lives of thousands and damaging or destroying over 130,000 buildings. Photographs on social media depict a man wearing a yellow vest peering at the rubble. On the vest is the logo of Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD), the overseas division of ICNA. On one of the pics is a reference to a web page on the HHRD site devoted to raising money in the name of the earthquake. It would seem this group has good intentions, yet it is merely a façade meant to conceal ICNA’s radical history and foundation in terror and to benefit off and exploit a disaster.

ICNA or the Islamic Circle of North America is the American arm of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), a South Asian Islamist movement with numerous links to terrorism. JI’s former militant wing, al-Badr, was responsible for many of the massacres that took place during the 1971 genocide against the citizens of what is now known as Bangladesh. One of al-Badr’s death squad commanders, Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, has served in leadership positions at ICNA for decades. While Khan is yet to be punished for his alleged crimes (He was sentenced to death in absentia in November 2013), ICNA has publicly condemned the execution of Khan’s al-Badr colleagues.

Since November 2000, ICNA has formally partnered with JI’s Al-Khidmat Foundation (AKF) for a variety of overseas projects. In August 2006, AKF listed ICNA as its top donor, at the same time AKF took a delegation to the Damascus, Syria home of then-Hamas leader, Khaled Mashal, to hand him $100,000 for terrorist acts against Israel. On ICNA’s website, ICNA tries to confuse people and clean its hands of this subject, as well as with the matter of Ashrafuz Zaman Khan, while defaming this author with outright lies and “Islamophobia” smears. However, news of this was directly on JI’s website, and this author has reported on it and shown proof of it for years.

ICNA has a dawah (Islamic outreach) wing, Why Islam (WI), that utilizes its website to promote domestic violence against women. Posted on the site is a text, Gender Equity in Islam, that appallingly tells men that, if they “fear disloyalty” from their wives, it is a valid response to “beat them.” Not long ago, the site featured a message board, where forum moderators made posts deriding Jews and in favor of Hamas and Israel’s destruction. One WI moderator, Marwan, in response to a story about an Indian restaurant called “Hitler’s Cross” that was adorned with Nazi symbols, crudely joked, “Nazi restaurant… I wonder if they have kosher meals.”

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/top-admiral-warns-of-rapid-chinese-russian-nuclear-arms-buildup/

Admiral Charles Richard: ‘We are in uncharted waters’

Admiral Charles Richard, chief of U.S. Strategic Command, warned that China and Russia are building up their nuclear stockpiles at an unprecedented rate.

Richard said Thursday that China’s nuclear weapons buildup and Russia’s advanced nuclear capabilities have prompted a reassessment of America’s ability to defend itself.

“We are in uncharted waters,” Richard said at a Hudson Institute event. “We are facing a class of potential adversaries that we haven’t had to deal with in 30 years.”

Richard’s remarks come amid a heated fight over the future of America’s nuclear arsenal, as national security staff in the White House and lawmakers such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) push for a smaller U.S. stockpile.

A letter from Senate Democrats prompted the Biden administration to call for an independent review of ground-based nuclear weapons, which have been in service since the Vietnam War. Several powerful House and Senate Democrats have opposed nuclear modernization, an effort which experts say would give China and Russia an advantage in a growing arms race. Sen. Steve Daines (R., Mont.) called the attempt to “scuttle” America’s nuclear arsenal misguided in an August letter to the White House.

The admiral said that given the speed of Russia and China’s weapons buildup, policymakers should waste no time in strengthening America’s nuclear position.

“Business as usual will not work,” Richard said. “It is going to be long enough before I get any new modernized capability into the forces that I am responsible for. We can ill afford, given the threats that we’re facing, any further delays on that. … If we make the wrong decision, we can’t come back a couple years later and buy it back.”

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/battle-eastern-europe-energy-sector-ukraine/

The fight to power eastern Europe is heating up. As Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky prepares to meet Joe Biden at the White House, competition for Ukraine’s energy market is increasingly being framed as a battle between East and West. And as western investments into renewables vie with fossil fuel imports from Russia, the struggle for the nation’s energy supply is assuming a moral dimension reminiscent of the Cold War.

Tens of thousands of panels at Ukraine’s huge Nikopol solar farm harvest the sun’s energy for nobody. In late 2019, the Canadian owners of the farm, TIU Canada, were informed that the nearby Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant, owned by the notorious Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, would be disconnecting their farm from the power grid to make repairs. They were not aware that any such repairs were needed. Despite frantic protests the connection was severed — and a year and a half later, it has still not been restored.

Kolomoisky’s tentacles extend deep into Ukraine’s economy and politics. He controls a faction of MPs without which the current coalition would collapse, as well as the country’s most lucrative energy distributor and, previously, some of its biggest banks. He is a controversial figure who in March 2021 was banned entry to the US over his ‘significant corruption’.