RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-castros-still-run-cuba-11618783289?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Raúl Castro announced his resignation as chief of Cuba’s Communist Party on Friday. Many U.S. media outlets characterized the move as the “end of an era” of communist rule on the Caribbean island. This is false. For many years Cuba has not really operated as a communist or socialist state. Instead it has been ruled by a military dictatorship that concentrates its power within a cartel-like chain of command of hard-line Castro family members and loyalists and generals who fiercely shield their wealth and status—as well as each other.

Many analysts are focused on whether Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel will inherit Mr. Castro’s leadership position as party secretary, which—on paper, at least—is the highest office in the land. This is a distraction, as is Mr. Díaz-Canel, who was installed by Mr. Castro in 2018 as part of a faux transition of power. In Cuba, the Castro family leads with an iron fist, and the party and government follow suit. Even the Communist Party’s online motto, #SomosContinuidad—“we are continuity”—implies the regime is determined not to change.

The key figure of Cuba’s silent elite is Gen. Luis López Callejas, Mr. Castro’s former son-in-law and the father of his grandchildren. Mr. López Callejas leads Gaesa, a military-run conglomerate that controls about 75% of the Cuban economy, including hotels, construction companies, shipping companies, hard-currency transmitters and currency exchanges. In 2018, a former State Department official told a Senate subcommittee that Cuban military personnel under Mr. López Callejas’s command were “directly involved” in trafficking cocaine from Venezuela.

Another key figure is Mr. Castro’s son, Col. Alejandro Castro Espín, a powerful member of the Cuban intelligence apparatus. He maintains a close relationship with the Kremlin and was directing Cuba’s spy agencies at the time of the 2019 sonic attacks against U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Cuba, which are still unexplained.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fate-of-alexei-navalny-11618780971?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The contest between freedom and dictatorship continues on many fronts, and the most stirring is the courage of individuals risking their lives by resisting oppression. Jimmy Lai and other Hong Kong democrats have been jailed at China’s insistence, while the Kremlin is slowly squeezing the life out of Alexei Navalny in prison.

The 44-year-old critic of Vladimir Putin has been languishing in Russia’s notorious IK-2 prison since March 11 on trumped up charges of violating his parole on a previous phony charge. He dared to recover in Germany after nearly dying after he was poisoned by government agents. But he bravely returned to Russia, where he was arrested and imprisoned.

Mr. Navalny has been on a hunger strike after being denied treatment for other ailments. “Alexey is dying now. Given his condition, it’s a matter of days,” Mr. Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said on Facebook.

The White House warned Sunday that there would be “consequences” if Mr. Navalny dies, and President Biden said Saturday that his treatment is “totally, totally unfair.” But Mr. Biden sent Mr. Putin mixed signals last week by inviting the autocrat he has called a “killer” for a leader-to-leader summit even as Mr. Navalny’s health was weakening in prison.

The free world—if we can still use that locution in the Age of Woke—needs to find its voice again on behalf of courageous dissenters like Alexei Navalny and Jimmy Lai. They should become global household names, as Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov were during the Cold War. And let’s hope the White House is serious about “consequences.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17289/iran-policy-posturing

A nuclear armed Islamic Republic might be no more than a nuisance for the US, as is North Korea for example, while it would be an existential threat to Israel.

But what if the whole nuclear issue, built by former President Barack Obama as the core of the “Iran problem”, is a diversion designed to put real or imaginary foes on a wrong trajectory?

So, is Iran enriching uranium to build a bomb?

He [Obama] cited a “fatwa” by “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei that forbids Muslims from building the bomb. (Needless to say possibly apart from Obama no one has seen the fatwa.)

What if what many see as the Islamic Republic’s nuclear policy is a posture… not a policy? That posture serves the Khomeinist regime’s interests by shifting the focus away from the real mischief and crimes it has been committing inside and outside Iran for four decades.

Its “exporting revolution” has already contributed to triggering and prolonging the war in Yemen. Without its involvement, the Syrian civil war may not have led to what is the greatest tragedy the world has seen in the new century. By creating Hezbollah, the mullahs have led Lebanon to the brink of ungovernability, not to say systemic collapse. By supporting the most radical rejectionist groups, the mullahs have also helped block the road to an Israeli-Palestinian coexistence accord.

To forget all that, not to mention the seizing of scores of hostages and the killing of hundreds of US, British and French soldiers with roadside bombs and terror attacks in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, and over 100 terror operations in 22 countries across the globe, would be the height of naiveté and a sure sign of moral decadence.

Two months or nine months? This is the question making the rounds with regards to the latest “incident” at Natanz nuclear center where Iran is engaged in a massive uranium enrichment program. Attributed to Israeli secret services, the incident disabled some 5,000 centrifuges put in full operation two months ago as a means of exerting pressure on the new administration in Washington.

Iranian experts say the infernal machine could be back in full gear within two months. Western experts say nine months is a likelier time-span. The “incident” came at a time that Tehran’s envoys were engaged in indirect talks with US diplomats on a possible deal for Iran to reduce its enrichment program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions imposed by Washington, the UN and the European Union.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17274/hatred-enmity-ethnic-cleansing-and-genocide

After a mosque leaders’ wife embraced Christianity, and as a form of “retribution,” the imam ordered the rape of three Christian girls related to a local pastor…. — Morning Star News, March 11, 2021, Uganda.

“Intercourse with a girl below the age of 16 is statutory rape in Pakistan, but in most cases a falsified conversion certificate and Islamic marriage certificate influence police to pardon kidnappers.” — Morning Star News, March 12, 2012, Pakistan.

On March 20, a court “changed a sentence of life imprisonment to the death penalty for a Christian convicted of sending a blasphemous text message in 2011″…..Such petitions are “seen often as a service to Islam and as jihad or holy war against blasphemers.” according to the report. — Union of Catholic Asian News, March 29, 2021, Pakistan.

“[O]rthodox Muslims demand to make capital punishment the only penalty for blasphemy”…. The courts increasingly seem to be complying. — Union of Catholic Asian News, March 29, 2021, Pakistan.

“That night, our village was attacked…. I was at home with my four children. We tried to escape to the woods, but they took my eldest son and beheaded him. We couldn’t do anything because we would be killed too.” — Save the Children, March 16, 2021, Mozambique.

“In one of the worst attacks last year, the jihadists turned a village football pitch into an execution ground where they beheaded more than 50 people in three days of savage violence.” — Barnabas Fund, March 30, 2021, Mozambique.

Algeria is becoming less tolerant of religious minorities.

Attacks on Christian Women and Girls

Uganda: After a mosque leaders’ wife embraced Christianity, and as a form of “retribution,” the imam ordered the rape of three Christian girls related to a local pastor; he also planned to attack the pastor’s church. “When my husband interrogated me about being a Christian, I refused to answer him,” the wife later explained:

“Soon a Christian neighbor told me that my husband was out to kill me, hence I should escape with my children. That particular day in the evening hours, I escaped with my five children. I am thankful that the church received us.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/linda-thomas-greenfields-reckless-moral-equivalency/

Does Linda Thomas-Greenfield understand the purpose of, and duties associated with, her position as United States ambassador to the United Nations? I’m sure she has her own conception of the job, and it’s her right to act on the basis of that conception; she’s the one who’s been selected for and confirmed to the role. But judging from her recent comments made while addressing Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, I don’t think that conception bears much resemblance to that which Americans have of her mission:

Of course, when we raise issues of equity and justice at the global scale, we have to approach them with humility. We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect union and have been since the beginning. And every day we strive to make ourselves more perfect and more just. In a diverse country like ours, that means committing to do the work. It means learning and understanding more about each other. It means engaging trailblazing groups like yours, to teach, to grow, to include, to improve. It means not forgetting our past or ignoring our present, but keeping both firmly in mind as we push for a better future. I tried to do this recently in the U.N. General Assembly when I spoke on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Thomas-Greenfield shared a few moving examples of the horror that she and other African Americans experienced in the Jim Crow South before going on:

I’ve seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved  white supremacy into our founding documents and principles . . .

. . . Racism is not the problem of the racist. And it is the problem of the society that produces the racist. And in today’s world, that’s every society. In America, that takes many forms. It’s the white supremacy that led to the senseless killing of George Floyd. Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many other black Americans. It’s the spike in hate crimes over the past three years against Latino Americans, Sikh, Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans,  and immigrants. And it’s the bullying, discrimination, brutality, and violence that Asian Americans face every day,  especially since the outbreak of COVID-19. That’s why the Biden-Harris administration has made racial equity a top priority across the entire government. And I’m making it a real focus of my tenure at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17287/fashion-brands-forced-labor-china

The suit accuses Spain-based Inditex (whose brands include Zara, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Pull and Bear and Stradivarius), France-based SMCP (comprised of Parisian brands, Sandro, Maje, Claudie Pierlot and De Fursac), U.S.-based footwear company Skechers, and the U.S. subsidiary of the Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo, of being “accomplices in serious crimes,” including “concealment of the crime of forced labor, the crime of organized human trafficking, the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity.”

The plaintiffs are asking the French judiciary to rule on the “possible criminal liability” of the companies. The stated aim is to “end impunity” for the brands, which are accused of “offloading on their subcontractors their responsibility for human rights.”

“In fact, many companies in the sector are likely, at one stage or another of their production, to profit, consciously or not, from the coercive policy pursued by Beijing towards the Turkic peoples, whether in Xinjiang or in factories in other regions of China where Uyghur workers are sent.” — French newspaper Liberation.

“China’s systematic campaign against the Uyghur population is characterized by mass detention, forced labor, and discriminatory laws, and supported through high-tech manners of surveillance. There are reasonable grounds to believe that China is responsible for crimes against humanity. It is important to recall that crimes against humanity were born out of the experience of the Holocaust and first were prosecuted at Nuremberg. Every government has committed to protect their populations from crimes against humanity.” — Naomi Kikoler, Director, Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Four major European and American apparel and footwear manufacturers have been sued in a French court for allegedly using forced labor in Xinjiang, a mostly Muslim region in northwestern China.

Human rights groups, academic researchers and journalists have increasingly been sounding the alarm that the Chinese government is forcing more than 500,000 Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic and religious minorities to pick cotton in Xinjiang, one of the largest cotton-producing regions in the world.

On April 9, the European Uyghur Institute, in collaboration with a French human rights NGO called Sherpa, the Ethics on Labels Collective (Collectif Ethique sur l’étiquette), and a Uyghur detention camp survivor, all represented by Bourdon & Associés, a prestigious Paris-based law firm, filed the lawsuit at the Judicial Court of Paris (Tribunal judiciaire de Paris).

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/china-sticks-it-prostrate-america-lloyd-billingsley/

Last month in Anchorage, Chinese diplomats Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi subjected Biden’s secretary of state Anthony Blinken and national security advisor Jake Sullivan to lengthy verbal barrage. For all its fury, China’s triumphalist rhetoric was only the sequel to an even deeper humiliation.

In February, China subjected U.S. diplomats in the PRC to “anal swab tests.” In this routine, a Chinese doctor sticks a swab two inches into the rectum and rotates it several times, an invasive procedure to say the least. Chinese Dr. Li Tongzeng claims the anal swab is a more effective test for Covid-19, but UCLA microbiology professor Omai Garner says the respiratory test is the “gold standard.”

Dr. Gary Procop, director of  molecular microbiology, virology, mycology and parasitology at the Cleveland Clinic, told Healthline that “at least one early study supports respiratory specimens as superior to the other end of the alimentary canal.” The American diplomats duly lodged a protest with China’s foreign ministry, which claimed the tests were done in error and later denied that China ever “asked” the U.S. diplomats to undergo the anal swab in the first place.

In similar style, the Chinese regime claims that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had nothing to do with the spread of Covid-19, even though the WIV received shipments of deadly viruses stolen from a lab in Canada. These included the Nipah virus, transmittable from animals to humans and also able to jump between humans.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/israels-cyberattack-on-iranian-nuclear-facility-so

A cyberattack allegedly conducted by Israel’s Mossad caused damage to Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility that was so “severe” that the facility might not be able to continue enriching uranium until next year.

The strike came only a day after Iranian officials bragged on the nation’s National Nuclear Technology Day about its new centrifuges, which expedite the process needed to create nuclear weapons.

“Two intelligence officials briefed on the damage said it had been caused by a large explosion that completely destroyed the independent — and heavily protected — internal power system that supplies the underground centrifuges that enrich uranium,” The New York Times reported. “The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a classified Israeli operation, said that the explosion had dealt a severe blow to Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and that it could take at least nine months to restore Natanz’s production.”

The debilitating strike comes as President Joe Biden seeks a nuclear deal with Iran, leading top former officials to warn that acts of desperation will give up America’s leverage on Iran. Former President Donald Trump, concerned about Biden’s weakness on Iran, reportedly considered launching a strike on the facility before he left office in an attempt to prevent Biden from going back to the Iran nuclear deal. One of Iran’s top nuclear scientists was assassinated during the final weeks of Trump’s term, an event that many believe that Israel was behind.

Following reports last week that Biden was going to lift sanctions on Iran, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs told The Daily Wire that “undoing the strategy that was working in the Middle East, and giving Iran what it wants, encourages nuclear blackmail, hostage taking, and terrorism against US bases.”

“What a waste of our leverage,” Heinrichs added. “If this is a preview of the larger Biden Mid East strategy, and it is, forget more normalization agreements between Arab states and Israel. Correctly identifying Iran as the primary source of instability and treating it as such was the bedrock of that success.”

Andrea Stricker, Research Fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Wire that the cyberattack was proof that Israel will do everything in its power to protect itself.