RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/france-suspects-russian-role-in-campaign-to-discredit-pfizer-vaccine-11621978289

PARIS—French counterintelligence authorities are investigating whether the Russian government was behind an attempt to pay high-profile health and science bloggers to sow public doubts about the safety of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine, a French security official said.

Several French bloggers said publicly they received emails in recent days from a person claiming to work for a marketing firm called Fazze. The emails, some of which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, offered to pay the bloggers to make videos on YouTube, Instagram and other platforms criticizing the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE, which has been the most widely used vaccine in France. One blogger told French TV he was offered €2,050 (about $2,500) for a video.

The security official said counterintelligence authorities suspect the Kremlin could be responsible for the emails. The official compared the emails to campaigns run by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian firm that U.S. authorities have identified as responsible for Moscow’s effort to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Western officials have said these operations are an attempt by the Kremlin to undermine public confidence in Western institutions.

The Kremlin didn’t respond to a request for comment. It has previously dismissed accusations that Russia was using disinformation campaigns against Western vaccines and has denied interfering in the U.S. election.

Fazze listed an address in London on its website, which was taken down Tuesday. Fazze isn’t registered as a U.K. company. A post on a Russian employment website describes it as a subsidiary of AdNow, a Moscow-based marketing agency. AdNow didn’t respond to a request for comment. The LinkedIn accounts of Fazze employees, now deleted, show many have been educated in Russian schools, such as Siberian Transport University.

https://www.city-journal.org/leftist-rage-at-uk-home-secretary-priti-patel

Some racism is less racist than other racism. Priti Patel, the British Home Secretary (in effect, the minister of the interior), is the daughter of Indian immigrants from Uganda. She is hated by the intelligentsia because she believes strongly in immigration control, though not an end to all immigration.

A crowd in Glasgow recently gathered to prevent two failed asylum-seekers from being deported by immigration officials. A prominent left-wing union official and member of the Labour Party, Howard Beckett, tweeted “Priti Patel should be deported, not refugees. She can go along with anyone else who supports institutional racism. She is disgusting.”

The Labour Party suspended Beckett (meaning, of course, that he will soon be back), and he issued an apology, though it will reassure neither Patel nor much of the British public. He said: “I certainly didn’t mean it to be taken literally. The idea that I would think that a Home Secretary would or should be deported, I’m against all forms of deportation.”

The two men to be deported had gone through a long legal process and had failed to prove that they were entitled to asylum status. This, and the fact that Beckett subsequently claimed to be against the deportation of anyone in any circumstances whatever—except, perhaps, those whom he disfavored politically—suggests that he would support a complete absence of control over immigration, no matter how large the influx such a policy would bring about.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17404/germany-political-islamism

The policy paper, “Preserving Free Society, Promoting Social Cohesion, Fighting Political Islamism,” which whole-heartedly commends law-abiding Muslims who respect Germany’s democratic order, argues that the debate about Islamism in Germany is often reduced to violence and terror, but that it is necessary to focus more on ideology. The proposals include improving research and analysis of political Islam in Europe and the methods by which it spreads; banning the foreign funding of mosques; and reducing the number of foreign imams active in Germany.

“Focusing only on the violent part of Islamism, Islamist terrorism, does not do justice to the overall problem…. This political Islamism, which ostensibly acts non-violently, but stirs up hatred, agitation and violence and strives for an Islamic order in which there is no equality, no freedom of opinion and religion and also no separation of religion and state, has spread far and wide in parts of our society.” — CDU/CSU policy paper.

“We owe the fight against political Islamism not only to our free-democratic ideals and values, but also to most of the Muslims in Germany who share these ideals with us and want to live with us on their basis. Because it is precisely liberal, secular Muslims who are victims of this illiberal, anti-democratic ideology. Those who publicly oppose political Islamism and its strategies are particularly at risk.” — CDU/CSU policy paper.

“These politically extremist, non-violent groups aim to establish an order according to their Islamist ideas by actively preventing integration, dividing Western societies into ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers,’ rejecting equality and religious freedom…. They use democratic structures to undermine and ultimately abolish democracy.” — CDU/CSU policy paper.

“The present focus on groups prepared to use violence has led to disregarding the ideological justification of violence. These politically extremist, non-violent groups aim to establish an order based on their Islamist ideas by actively preventing integration, dividing Western societies into ‘believers’ and ‘unbelievers,’ rejecting equality and religious freedom, and alienating Muslim youth from Western societies. They use democratic structures to undermine and ultimately abolish democracy.” — CDU/CSU policy paper.

“Religious extremism doesn’t come out of nowhere. On the contrary, it thrives in isolated parallel worlds that have nothing in common with our values. We urgently need to shed light on this and not only wake up when violence erupts.” — Bundestag Member Nina Warken, Integration Commissioner, CDU/CSU parliamentary group.

The German-Moroccan author Sineb El Masrar, in an interview with the public radio station Deutschlandfunk Kultur, said that the policy paper is clearly directed against “reactionary, Islamist organizations” and “that it is not aimed at all Muslims, but at those with a radical agenda.”

“Islamists are not interested in democracy. On the contrary. They reject democracy because they only consider politics to be legitimate if it follows regulations that adhere to the politics of Mohammed in the 7th century. — Susanne Schröter, Islam scholar, Die Tagespost.

“The decisive question is to what extent imams are willing and able to explain that these warlike verses and suras are only to be considered in their historical context and that they no longer have any meaning today, i.e. in principle could be deleted…. It should be added that the implementation of the strategy is only possible if, for example, mosque communities or Muslims as a whole are willing to actively contribute, because they understandably know the segregation efforts of many association representatives much better and more closely than most German observers.” — Bundestag Member Hans-Jürgen Irmer, member of the Interior Committee, CDU/CSU parliamentary group.

The largest parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, the faction of the ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), has approved a wide-ranging strategy to contain the spread of political Islam in Germany.

The plan, outlined in a new policy paper, “Preserving Free Society, Promoting Social Cohesion, Fighting Political Islamism,” warns that a growing number of areas in Germany, where German law is overruled by Sharia law, are in danger of becoming “parallel societies.”

The document also warns that many mosques and Islamic associations in Germany are controlled by foreign governments and that they are producing a generation of German jihadists who extol martyrdom and threaten Germany’s liberal democratic order.

The authors of the report argue that a recent wave of jihadist attacks in Germany and elsewhere in Europe — including the beheading of a schoolteacher in Paris, a crime celebrated by many Muslim pupils in Berlin — requires urgent measures to stop the “poison” of extremist ideology from gaining further ground on the continent.

The policy paper, which whole-heartedly commends law-abiding Muslims who respect Germany’s democratic order, argues that the debate about Islamism in Germany is often reduced to violence and terror, but that it is necessary to focus more on ideology. The proposals include improving research and analysis of political Islam in Europe and the methods by which it spreads; banning the foreign funding of mosques; and reducing the number of foreign imams active in Germany.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17400/iran-will-pursue-nukes

It is important to expect that whatever the deal, the Iranian regime will continue to pursue its nuclear ambitions and clandestine nuclear activities: there are historical precedents for it.

Tehran claimed that the “secret atomic warehouse,” located in a village of Turquz Abad in the suburbs of Tehran, was a place where carpets were cleaned.

The IAEA at first ignored the reports. This should not come as a surprise: the IAEA has a long history of misreporting the Islamic Republic’s compliance with the deal and declining to follow up on credible reports about Iran’s illicit nuclear activities.

The mullahs of Iran will not honor any deal with the international community. While the mullahs will gladly reap the profits of any nuclear deal and its lifting of the sanctions, their regime will continue pursuing its covert attempts to obtain nuclear weapons and overt attempts — with China — to take over the Middle East.

Just recently, we have seen Iran’s entrenchments in Syria and Iraq; its takeover of Lebanon by its proxy Hezbollah; its stepped-up aggression against Saudi Arabia by its proxy, the Houthis, and its 4,000-rocket war this month on the tiny country of Israel by yet another proxy, Hamas.

Whatever “deal” is struck in Vienna, Iran is not interested in “stabilizing” the Middle East. As the Biden administration has correctly pointed out, Iran’s leaders, with China, seem interested only in destabilizing, then dominating it.

The argument that negotiating and reaching a nuclear deal with the mullahs of Iran will curb their nuclear ambitions and prevent the Iranian regime from obtaining nuclear weapons is, sadly, a dangerous fantasy.

The nuclear deal has sunset clauses that soon remove restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after the deal expires. In short, the nuclear deal, rather than preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, as it was falsely touted to do, in fact paves the way for Tehran to become a legitimized nuclear state after it concludes.

Even before that, however, it is important to expect that whatever the deal, the Iranian regime will continue to pursue its nuclear ambitions and clandestine nuclear activities: there are historical precedents for it.

It was not one year into the 2015 nuclear deal that two credible intelligence reports revealed that Iran had no intention of honoring the terms of the deal it had just reached with the Obama-Biden administration. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, revealed in its annual report in 2016 that the Iranian government had been pursuing a “clandestine” path to obtain illicit nuclear technology and equipment from German companies “at what is, even by international standards, a quantitatively high level.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17394/persecution-of-christians-april

In a video released on April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State in Sinai executed 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama, a Christian. Salama appears on his knees in the video, with three men holding rifles standing behind him….

“We should remember that Greece spent 400 years under Turkish Islamic rule and that the fight for freedom was bloody. With that in mind it is even more dramatic seeing these images of fighting age migrants desecrating Greek holy places and having no respect for the country they are allegedly seeking refuge in.” — Greek City Times, April 12, 2021.

“[H]e was kept in at least three different police stations and illegal torture cells, where he was mentally and physically tortured to confess to the baseless accusation [of blasphemy]… [P]olice repeatedly threatened to kill him…. The police investigators…also tortured him into naming other members of the Bible study circle…” — Aneeqa Maria, Salamat Masih’s attorney, Morning Star News, April 29, 2021, Pakistan.

The Slaughter of Christians

Egypt: In a video released on April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State in Sinai executed 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama, a Christian. Salama appears on his knees in the video, with three men holding rifles standing behind him. The one in the middle launches into a typical jihadi diatribe: “All praise to Allah, who ordered his slaves [Muslims] to fight and who assigned humiliation onto the infidels” —pointing contemptuously at the kneeling Christian before him — “until they pay the jizya while feeling utterly subdued.” The words are a paraphrasing of Koran 9:29, which commands Muslims to “fight the people of the book,” understood as meaning Christians and Jews, “until they pay the jizya (monetary tribute) with willing submissiveness and feel themselves utterly subdued.”

The middle speaker continued by threatening “all the crusaders of the world” — a reference to Christians in the West — while singling out the countrymen of the one about to be slain: “as for you Christians of Egypt, this is the price of your support for the Egyptian army.” The speaker then points his rifle at the back of the Christian’s head —as chants of “jihad! jihad! jihad!” blare out — and fires at point-blank range, killing him.

It is unclear when the video was made — Salama was abducted at gunpoint over five months earlier for helping to build the only church in the area. “He kept the faith till the moment he was killed,” the group Sinai Province said of the slain Copt in a statement. During the months of his captivity, several Egyptian activists accused the authorities of indifference in not being able to locate and secure the release of Salama, which they say could easily have been done. Ironically, the Egyptian government issued a statement the day after the video was released saying that they had located and killed the same three terrorists that had executed the Copt—without offering any specifics. The claim was met with skepticism.

In a separate incident, on April 3, in the streets of Minya, a Muslim man butchered a Christian woman and her toddler son with a machete—”as if he were slaughtering chickens,” said eyewitnesses. The murderer, a tuk-tuk driver, is Abu Muhammad al-Harami; his victims were Mary Sa’d and her six-year-old son, Karas. When their paths crossed in the streets, he had made threatening and derogatory comments to Mary. When she said she would report him to police, Abu Muhammad leapt on her with his machete, butchering her and her son. Although Egyptian media and authorities claimed, as they always do, that the man’s motives appear not to have been religious, the fact is every once in a while such “random” attacks on Egypt’s Christians occur.

In late December 2020, for instance, two Muslim brothers went on a stabbing spree against Christians, killing one and critically injuring two others. Authorities said the brothers were in mourning and upset because their mother had died earlier that day. But as a local Christian clergyman said, “what does the death [of the Muslims’ mother] and the Copts have to do with each other?” The same year, on January 12, 2020, a Muslim man crept up behind a Coptic woman walking home with groceries, pulled her head back with a hand full of hair, and slit her throat with a knife in his other hand. Catherine Ramzi was rushed to a nearby medical center, where her throat was sewn with 63 stitches; doctors told her she came within an inch of dying. It is believed that he may have identified her as a Christian for not wearing a hijab around her hair or for having a cross tattoo on her wrist.