RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://asiatimes.com/2021/03/uk-tensions-grow-as-china-tightens-grip-on-hk-polls/

Political tensions between China and the United Kingdom have intensified after the National People’s Congress (NPC) approved changes to Hong Kong’s electoral system on Thursday. 

The NPC on Thursday endorsed a proposal to change Hong Kong’s election system, at the conclusion of its seven-day annual plenary session in Beijing, Xinhua reported. The plan was approved by the NPC with 2,895 members voting for, no one against, and one abstention.

“This is the latest step by Beijing to hollow out the space for democratic debate in Hong Kong, contrary to the promises made by China itself,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.

“This can only further undermine confidence and trust in China living up to its international responsibilities and legal obligations, as a leading member of the international community.”

On Wednesday, UK Foreign Office minister Nigel Adams told lawmakers that the proposed changes would be a further attack on Hong Kong’s rights and freedoms. He said he could not speculate on Magnitsky-style sanctions against individuals over China’s actions in Hong Kong, but said that such measures remain under very close review.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17149/erdogan-war-kurds

The margin of victory [by the opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoglu in the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election] shocked Erdoğan and his party establishment. That night marked an unforgettable defeat for the invincible Erdoğan. It also marked a new, advanced phase in Islamists’ war on Kurds.

Erdoğan advocates more subtle ways to intimidate opposition. He has been jailing HDP’s democratically elected leaders, MPs and mayors, and appointing trustees in their place.

Erdoğan does not have to shut down the HDP when he has de facto crippled it. The party’s two co-chairmen, Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, have been in jail since 2016.

In February, the crackdown took a new ugly turn. Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a former Islamist, human rights activist and HDP MP, retweeted a post in 2016, advocating peace in the Kurdish dispute. A Turkish court sentenced him to 2½ years in jail for the retweet — although, ironically, the original tweet source had not been indicted. In February the Supreme Court of Appeals upheld Gergerlioglu’s sentence for “spreading terrorist propaganda” — five years after the retweet.

Erdogan’s Kurdish problem, however, has the potential to cost him more than just Istanbul. Research found that the fertility rate in the Kurdish-speaking, eastern part of Turkey was 3.41, as opposed to an average of 2.09 in the Turkish-speaking, non-eastern areas. Kurdish votes in the presidential election year 2023 may reach seven million: Kurds could be the kingmakers.

The race for the Istanbul election on March 31, 2019 went full steam ahead. Islamist parties had controlled Turkey’s biggest city since 1994 – a full 25 years. Istanbul was not just another city to win for any party. Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, had put it: “Who wins Istanbul, wins Turkey.”

In the run-up to the 2019 election, Erdoğan realized that his Justice and Development Party (AKP) might lose if Istanbul’s two million or so Kurds voted for the opposition candidate, Ekrem İmamoglu. What to do? State broadcaster TRT read a statement from Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a terrorist organization. Öcalan’s letter called on Kurds to remain neutral between the government and opposition candidates. That would result in de facto support for the AKP candidate, former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım.

The vote count on March 31, however, proved to be a political fiasco. İmamoglu had won by a narrow margin of 13,000 votes (in a city of 18 million) but the AKP-controlled Supreme Election Board ruled for a rerun on June 23. This time İmamoglu won by a margin of 800,000 votes. The margin of victory shocked Erdoğan and his party establishment. That night marked an unforgettable defeat for the invincible Erdoğan. It also marked a new, advanced phase in Islamists’ war on Kurds. Apparently the Kurds, ignoring Ocalan’s letter, voted for İmamoglu.

Erdoğan’s staunch ultranationalist ally, Devlet Bahçeli, has been persistently calling for a permanent ban by a Constitutional Court of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the third-largest party in the Turkish parliament. Erdoğan advocates more subtle ways to intimidate the opposition. He has been jailing HDP’s democratically elected leaders, MPs and mayors, and appointing trustees in their place.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17130/middle-east-sovereigns-past

The State of Israel continues to enforce Jordanian law [in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria] — despite its clearly racist and backward underpinnings.

No matter what side of the political divide you view it from, a legislative and legal time-warp has trapped the residents of these territories – Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians – in amber for more than five decades. The result: legal chaos, injustice and incessant conflict.

Ironically, Israel’s legal reticence continues to fuel the endless conflict over the land itself… that could be avoided by simply completing the process of land survey and registration initiated by the Ottoman Empire and continued by the British Mandatory and Jordanian governments in turn.

Surveying and registering land ownership was not perceived as an act of sovereignty when the British caretakers undertook it; there seems no reason why it should be regarded that way now.

This same vacuum has made it impossible to formulate forward-thinking policy for land use, environmental protection, settlement policy, and perhaps most critically, a negotiated resolution of the status of the territory. Without establishing who owns what, it is impossible to proceed toward a just division of resources or a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

The time has come to banish the antiquated ghosts of Ottoman, Jordanian and British Mandatory rule, and to fill the legal void in Judea and Samaria with a modern, humanist, democratic system of law for everyone.

Now that the debate surrounding the extension of Israeli sovereignty to the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria has abated somewhat in light of the Abraham Accords, the time may be ripe to take a closer look at the legal status of these territories.

The picture that emerges might be surprising. More than a century after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the empire’s ghost continues to reign. More than 50 years after Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, more than 30 years after King Hussein of Jordan publicly relinquished all legal and administrative ties to this territory, and more than 25 years after Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, officially relinquishing all territorial claims, the State of Israel continues to enforce Jordanian law — despite its clearly racist and backward underpinnings.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/desecrated-and-defecated-churches-europe-under-raymond-ibrahim/

A few days after Muslim migrants firebombed an 800-year-old Swedish church twice over the course of four days—once on Jan. 20, 2021 and another on Jan. 24—a Feb 4 report came out saying that 829 “hate crimes” against churches in Sweden have been reported between just 2012-2018, or about 138 attacks on average every year.

Thus the churches of Sweden join those of other Western European nations that have taken in sizeable Muslim migrants. In France, for example, two churches are vandalized every day.  According to a 2019 PI-News report, 1,063 attacks on Christian churches or symbols (crucifixes, icons, statues) were registered in France in 2018.  This represents a 17 percent increase compared to the previous year (2017), when 878 attacks were registered—meaning such attacks are only going from bad to worse.

They are also getting increasingly vile.  As one example, vandals used human excrement to draw a cross on the Notre-Dame des Enfants Church in Nimes in 2019 (pictured above); consecrated bread was also found thrown outside among garbage. One week later, vandals desecrated and smashed crosses and statues at Saint-Alain Cathedral in Lavaur; they mangled the arms of a crucified Christ in a mocking manner and burned altar materials.

Similar reports are coming from Germany.  After reporting how four separate churches were vandalized and/or torched over the course of four weeks in 2019, PI-News, a German news site, explained: “In this country, there is a creeping war against everything that symbolizes Christianity: attacks on summit crosses,  on holy figures on the way, on churches and recently also on cemeteries.”

Although mainstream media regularly claim that the vandals—who are seldom caught to verify their identities—are “mentally ill” or part of “right wing extremist” groups, as the recent Swedish report states, PI-News offers a hint: “Crosses are broken, altars smashed, Bibles lit, baptismal fonts overturned, and the church doors smeared with Islamic expressions like ‘Allahu Akbar.’”

https://spectator.org/china-hack-microsoft-solarwinds/

Until a few days ago, and until now for those not up on the latest developments in the tech world, hafnium was a word describing a barely known element on the periodic table included in the manufacture of control rods for nuclear power plants.

But thanks to our never-resting pals across the Pacific Ocean, hafnium now means something else.

There is a group of computer hackers based in China, and reportedly employed by that country’s communist government, which calls itself Hafnium — an indication that for all their technical prowess the Chinese are still far behind the West when it comes to creativity in describing their villainous ways.

The Chinese Hafnium hackers scored a massive coup against Microsoft late last month and into this month by infiltrating hundreds of thousands of Microsoft Exchange servers across the globe. That let the hackers download and read a whole lot of email; one can only imagine the amount of industrial and other espionage that resulted.

And it isn’t over:

When news hit earlier this week that Chinese hackers were actively targeting Microsoft Exchange servers, the cybersecurity community warned that the zero-day vulnerabilities they were exploiting might have allowed them to hit countless organizations around the world. Now it’s becoming clear just many email servers they hacked. By all appearances, the group known as Hafnium breached as many victims they could find across the global internet, leaving behind backdoors to return to later.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17161/switzerland-burqa-ban

The referenda reflect the determination of a majority of Swiss voters to preserve Swiss traditions and values in the face of runaway multiculturalism and the encroachment of political Islam.

Switzerland now joins Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands and Sweden, all of which currently have full or partial bans on religious and non-religious face coverings.

“In Switzerland our tradition is that you show your face. That is a sign of our basic freedoms.” — Walter Wobmann, member of the Swiss People’s Party, the biggest political party in Switzerland.

“Some Muslims also understood that the niqab is a clear symbol of radical Islam.” — Jean-Luc Addor, member of the Swiss People’s Party.

“Saying yes to the ban on veiling is saying no to a totalitarian ideology that has no place in a democracy.” — Saïda Keller-Messahli, founder and president of the Forum for a Progressive Islam.

“The full veil, which turns the woman into a faceless being without an identity, is a symbol of misogynistic political Islam. It is the most visible symbol of an overall fascist ideology, which includes gender apartheid, but also anti-Semitism and gay hatred….” — Gisela Widmer, Swiss author and playwright.

Swiss voters have narrowly approved a proposal to ban face coverings in public spaces. The measure comes just over a decade after citizens voted to ban the construction of minarets, the tower-like structures on mosques that are often used to call Muslims to prayer.

The referenda reflect the determination of a majority of Swiss voters to preserve Swiss traditions and values in the face of runaway multiculturalism and the encroachment of political Islam.

Switzerland now joins Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands and Sweden, all of which currently have full or partial bans on religious and non-religious face coverings.

The binding referendum, approved on March 7 by 51.2% of voters, is popularly known as the “burqa initiative,” although the proposal does not specifically mention burqas or niqabs, the face-coving garments worn by some Muslim women. The ban encompasses most face coverings, including the bandanas and masks sometimes used by violent street protesters, and applies to all public spaces, including parks, restaurants, shops, and public transport.

The measure allows for some exceptions: health (anti-Covid masks); weather (scarves), safety (motorcycle helmets) and local customs (carnival costumes). Face coverings may also be worn inside houses of worship.

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2021-03-04-chief-justice-mogoeng-mo

Chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng has been ordered to apologise for, and retract, pro-Israel comments he made during a webinar in June last year.

The Judicial Conduct Committee found Mogoeng guilty and ordered him to apologise unconditionally for becoming involved in political controversy through his utterances in the online seminar hosted by The Jerusalem Post on June 23 2020.

The committee further ordered Mogoeng to unreservedly retract and withdraw a statement he uttered after a public outcry over his initial comments. He said he stood by his comments and that he would not apologise or retract them — “even if 50 million people were to march every day for 10 years for me to do so, I would not apologise”.

“If I perish, I perish,” he said.

An NGO, Africa 4 Palestine, the SA Boycott Disinvestments and Sanctions Coalition (SA BDS Coalition) and a Durban-based Women’s Cultural Group (WCG) complained separately to the Judicial Service Commission about Mogoeng’s comments in July.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/never_again_the_time_to_stop_chinas_holocaust_is_now.html

As early as December 1942, the Allies knew of Nazi Germany’s massacre and horrific abuse of Jews and other populations the Nazis deemed inferior.  Two million Jews had already been killed by then.  But the Allies were slow to act against the unspeakable evil.  By the time the Second World War was over, the Nazis had exterminated 20 million people, including six million Jews.

Today, the world is again displaying that willful, unconscionable blindness.  It is doing nothing as Communist China forces Uighurs and other minority groups it finds politically or culturally undesirable into prison camps with marked similarities to Nazi concentration camps.

The Nazis killed their victims by gassing them, shooting them, and subjecting them to gratuitous torture and forced labor.  Thousands died of disease and malnutrition.  With highly organized teams, Josef Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death, conducted abominable medical and “eugenic” experiments on detainees.  Out of revulsion at what had happened in Nazi-occupied Europe, there were many proclamations of “Never Again.”  Never again would the world stand by and allow a genocide of such mammoth proportions and abject evil.

Despite that pledge arising from the carnage of the Shoah, the world seems indifferent to Communist China’s network of prison camps, where the atrocities being committed may well approach or surpass those of the Third Reich.  Staring us in the face is the possibility of another monstrous genocide. In addition to Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, other minorities, Christians, Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners are being shoved into these camps for re-education through brainwashing, rape, sterilization, involuntary abortions, torture, and forced labor.  Falun Gong adherents, a peace-loving group with over 100 million followers worldwide, banned since the 1990s, are being harvested for their organs to supply an ever-growing transplant industry.  Genetic experiments are being conducted to breed sought-after characteristics in humans and monkeys.  Replacing notions of Aryan superiority with Han Chinese supremacy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is aiming to become the global hegemon by creating its own delusional version of a master race.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17111/china-pressure-taiwan

One of the “necessary means” that China employs against Taiwan is forcing the Taiwanese air force to be on constant alert… It is part of a strategy known as “gray-zone warfare” that aims to intimidate and ultimately exhaust Taiwan’s resolve to resist the Chinese takeover. Tensions in the region are now considered to be at their highest since the mid-1990s.

More recently, China has expanded its operations against Taiwan from the air to the sea.

The new law authorizes China’s coast guard to use “all necessary means” to stop or prevent threats from foreign vessels, including the use of fire weapons.

“I think the time has come to be clear: Replace strategic ambiguity with strategic clarity that the United States will come to the aid of Taiwan if China was to forcefully invade Taiwan or otherwise change the status quo across the [Taiwan] Strait.” — Senator Tom Cotton, Defense News, February 18, 2021.

“China must be, will be reunified” with Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in January 2019. The goal of reunification is a basic tenet of China’s policy regarding Taiwan. It forms a central part of Xi’s nationalist doctrine, according to which, reunification is “a must for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation in the new era”.

“We are willing to create broad space for peaceful reunification, but will leave no room for any form of separatist activities”, he added. “We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means.”

One of the “necessary means” that China employs against Taiwan is forcing the Taiwanese air force to be on constant alert. Chinese jets made a record 380 incursions into the Taiwanese air defence identification zone (ADIZ) in 2020 — the highest number of incursions since 1996 — thereby forcing the Taiwanese air force constantly to scramble military aircraft to head off the Chinese incursions. It is part of a strategy known as “gray-zone warfare” that aims to intimidate and ultimately exhaust Taiwan’s resolve to resist the Chinese takeover. Tensions in the region are now considered to be at their highest since the mid-1990s.