RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/icrc-despite-criticism-still-taking-part-in-hamas-hostage-ceremonies/

Although the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) previously issued a plaintive call for hostage releases to be carried out in a “dignified manner” following criticism from U.S. Senate leaders over its participation in Hamas’s handover ceremonies, the ICRC still took part in Thursday’s exhibition involving the transfer of four dead bodies.

While Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the ICRC had refused to cooperate in the ceremony, almost leading to a “blowup,” Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights attorney and CEO of the Israel-based International Legal Forum, said that report wasn’t accurate.

“Apart from some timid request by the ICRC for a ‘private, dignified handover of hostages’, today’s release again descended into an obscene and macabre propaganda display, in which a Red Cross representative even joined a masked Hamas terrorist on stage, alongside the coffins of the four murdered hostages,” he told JNS.

Ostrovsky noted: “Under the Geneva Conventions, for which the ICRC serves as guardian, ‘humiliating and degrading treatment,’ such as what Hamas is doing in parading the hostages on stage, including the murdered captives, is considered a gross violation of international law and a war crime.” 

The ICRC, in a statement on Wednesday, urged “those with the responsibility and the authority over these releases, and those with influence on them, to ensure that they are conducted with privacy, respect, and care.” 

Hamas prisoner ceremonies, in which hostages are presented to braying Gazan crowds and forced to thank their tormentors, have been denounced by Israeli and U.S. leaders. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the crowds of Gazans who mobbed three Israelis during a Jan. 30 release. 

U.S. President Donald Trump expressed shock at the emaciated condition of three others released on Feb. 8. American lawmakers condemned the ICRC for its part in the ceremonies, saying the agency risked jeopardizing its image as an unbiased actor. (The Red Cross claims two of its seven principles are “impartiality” and “neutrality.”)

U.S. Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Washington Free Beacon website on Wednesday, “Participating in Hamas’s propaganda ceremonies definitely calls into question their supposed neutrality. Seems like the ICRC is more concerned about their public image than actually fulfilling their mission to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict.” 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21419/prosecuting-unacceptable-opinions

On CBS television recently — in a scene straight out of the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police for political repression — three German prosecutors being interviewed explain that their job is to suppress “unacceptable opinions.”

The question, however, clearly is not actually about repressing all false information – just that, it seems, which displeases the so-called “left” as well as many of Europe’s newcomers. As one of the three German prosecutors put it, “Freedom of expression is fine, but there are limits.” There are, and they are carefully laid out in the 1969 US Supreme Court decision Brandenburg v. Ohio…

The so-called “left”, nevertheless, appears to have reinvented itself in a form that rejects everything that is not itself.

Marie-Thérèse Kaiser, a politician from Germany’s right-wing political party Alternative für Deutschland… had posted on social media in 2021, questioning the socialist mayor of Hamburg’s decision to welcome Afghan refugees, by citing statistics about Afghan men’s involvement in gang rapes in Germany. The court ruled that her statements violated the “human dignity” of Afghan refugees as a group…. The court did not contest the validity of the statistics. She was therefore convicted not for peddling “false information,” but for telling the truth.

The good news is that the funding of this industry of lies by the US government is over. You can be skeptical of certain practices in Islam without being “phobic” and refuse to allow biological men (xy) to take part in women’s (xx) competitions without being “hateful”. Let us hope this trend will jump the pond.

A cultural war appears to be brewing between Europe and the United States.

At the Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2025, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance surprised attendees by downplaying external threats to Europe, instead emphasizing what he called “the threat from within” Europe. Vance argued that the greatest danger to European democracy stems from its own leaders’ retreat from fundamental values, such as freedom of speech and democratic principles. He lambasted European governments for suppressing free speech, citing examples like Sweden’s conviction of a Christian activist for burning a Quran, Germany’s crackdowns on anti-feminist online comments, and the UK’s restrictions on religious expression near abortion clinics. Vance compared these actions to “Soviet-style” censorship, suggesting Europe is abandoning the liberties it once championed during the Cold War.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/muslim-terrorists-behead-70-christians-in-church-in-the-congo/

Open Doors International, a worldwide organization which supports Christians who suffer persecution and discrimination for their faith, reports that the bodies of 70 Christians were found in a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They had been beheaded by jihadists in the latest horror of the ongoing Islamic genocide of Christians in that country and elsewhere throughout Africa.

According to local sources, at around 4 a.m. last Thursday (13 February) militants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) – a group with direct ties to the ISIS (Islamic State) terror group – seized 20 Christian men and women from their homes in Mayba in northeast DRC. Later, the militants surrounded the village and captured 50 more believers. All 70 were held hostage for a short period and then taken to a Protestant church in nearby Kasanga and slaughtered, reportedly with machetes.

You wouldn’t know any of this by checking in with the mainstream media, partly because they don’t care about the massacre of Christians anywhere in the world, partly because they can’t figure out how to blame Israel and the Jews for the beheadings of African Christians, and partly because they’re too busy ginning up outrage over Trump firing IRS employees and dismantling the DEI grift.

But some accounts on social media tried to raise awareness. The X account “Libs of TikTok” tweeted, “Seventy Christians were found beheaded in a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They were reportedly hostages of the Islamist group ADF—an ISIS affiliate. Why isn’t the MSM covering this story??”

Pro-life activist Lila Rose posted about the massacre as well: “Horrific. 70 Christians were brutally beheaded by an Islamist group inside a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo Where’s the media outrage? Pray for persecuted Christians.”

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/21/temper-tantrums-by-zelensky-and-european-leaders-could-scuttle-trumps-ukraine-peace-efforts/

You would think that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be extremely grateful to President Trump for his extraordinary full-court press to end the war in Ukraine. You might also assume that America’s European allies would appreciate that America now has a president who is reasserting strong American leadership on the international stage to promote peace in the Ukraine/Russia War, the Middle East, and around the world.

Over the last two weeks, Trump began an aggressive diplomatic effort to end the war in Ukraine. He enlisted his National Security Adviser, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Treasury, Russia/Ukraine special envoy, Middle East special envoy, and other officials to engage with Ukrainian, European, and Russian officials on how to end the war. Trump spoke on the phone with Putin and Zelensky. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff arranged the release of American prisoners from Russia, which hopefully was a sign of good faith by Putin in joining future peace talks.

This week, Secretary of State Rubio, National Security Adviser Waltz, and Witkoff held four hours of meetings in Riyadh with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Russian foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov. This meeting was intended to repair U.S.-Russian relations after years of neglect by the Biden administration and start a conversation with Russian officials on how to reach a cease-fire and a peace agreement in the Ukraine War.

Instead of promoting and supporting Trump’s peace efforts, European leaders and Zelensky threw temper tantrums. They have opposed everything Trump has tried to do, asserted that Trump is siding with Putin against Ukraine, and claimed they are being excluded from U.S. peace efforts.

European leaders, Zelensky, and the mainstream press have harshly attacked President Trump and his national security team for appeasing Putin, claiming that the U.S. talking with Russian officials rewards Russia by ending its isolation. This argument doesn’t make sense because it obviously is impossible to negotiate an end to the war without dialogue with Russia.

The real issue here is that Zelensky and European officials want to stick to the fantasy policy on the war they pursued with the Biden administration. This included no compromises whatsoever to Russia. Russia must withdraw from all Ukrainian territory. They want Russia to pay reparations to Ukraine and Russian officials to be tried for war crimes.

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/africa/on-the-road-to-bulawayo/

In 1980 Bulawayo was the pearl of Rhodesia. Beautifully maintained, it was well laid out with attractive gardens, public spaces, excellent utilities and competently functioning services. Former residents speak nostalgically of their happy memories.

Try it now (above). Berlin 1945 is not too much of an exaggeration. Buildings are crumbling, closed and shuttered ruins, exuding an air of emptiness, desolation and gloom. The railway station is permanently closed. Giant potholes making the road look like the surface of the moon ensure travel over 20kms is impossible. There are no shoulders and cars just cruise on regardless through the unsigned intersections. Alongside the road sit or lie listless ghost people with pathetic displays of goods. The museum, formerly one of the best in Africa, now has dusty untended cabinets mostly invisible due to the theft of light bulbs.

It is a picture of utter dystopia, African style. In one of the worst examples of vicious irony, a statue of Joshua Nkomo, the leader of ZAPU, has displaced Cecil Rhodes – no doubt intended as a reminder to the locals of the near-genocide of Nkomo’s followers by Mugabe’s North Korean thugs should they have any ideas about protesting their fate.

What produces this oasis of desolation and despair, no different to the state of the rest of Zimbabwe? Forty-five years of rule by ZANU, that’s what, a depressing rebuttal to Ian Smith’s comment that had Rhodesia Front been left to gradually bring in full voting while retaining white expertise and institutional memory there would have been a far superior outcome.

What does this tell us? Every independence or liberation party in Southern Africa, if not the rest of Africa, once in power has held on regardless, running their economies into the ground and producing desolation, poverty and misery for their people that dwarfs anything they experienced in the colonial days. Look at Mozambique, Angola, Namibia where the governing parties have held on, going to any lengths to ensure that no democratic process can evict them, regardless of the desire of the suffering population.

It is not difficult to find how this comes about. These parties are run by unreconstructed Stalinists, hardwired with the National Democratic(!) Revolution ideology. This template is the map for centralising all state institutions, stripping away democratic rights and crushing all opposition to create a one-party state. The results are predictable and appalling. The mass of the population are driven into severe poverty, infrastructure is ruined, the remaining middle class is crushed while the party and its acolytes become enormously richer, stripping the country of every resource they can lay their hands on. It is kleptocracy that dwarfs countries like Nigeria, even Russia.

Consider Zimbabwe. Infrastructure gone, farming ruined – the former breadbasket of Africa now has to import food – and fully one-third of the population has fled to other countries. Mozambique is no better. The government has ruthlessly suppressed all protest after an election it lost. Such is the desolation and poverty that an ISIS group has invaded the oil-rich north, where they have no difficulty finding supporters among the wretched population.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/nevertrump-european-scolds-president-trump/

Last week the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the erstwhile Prime Minister of Denmark, Nato Secretary General, and fervent supporter of the “rules based international order,” to which Rasmussen has “dedicated much of [his] life,” and that functions as a globalist, antinationalist foreign policy talisman that for decades U.S. taxpayers have financed.

Having returned to the White House, Trump is once again challenging that order with his America first policies and impatience with our allies’ refusal to share the cost of being the “world’s policeman.”  Rasmussen fears Trump has “gone rogue” and “no longer exercises his authority over geopolitical gangsters, or becomes abusive toward the world’s most steadfast rule followers” ––by which he means Europeans, especially the Nato nations.

In other words, stale NeverTrump clichés we’ve been hearing since 2016––and much longer when targets were conservative Republicans who challenged “we are the world” globalism. But what it’s really all about is a simple principle of that order: “Let you Yanks and the bad guy fight––and you pick up the bill.” Now Europeans are miffed because we again have a president who first looks to his own countrymen and their interests ahead of those of international oligarchs, plutocrats, and cognitive elites who malign the U.S. and its citizens who don’t get in line with the globalist program, as the Democrats have.

Another bad NeverTrump habit Rasmussen indulges was identified by commentator Salena Zito in 2016: When Trump uses his trademark hyperbolic bluster, the press and the Dems “take him literally but not seriously,” whereas his supporters “take him seriously but not literally.” They understand that such exaggerations, insults, and bravado are tools for getting international attention, gaining leverage, and creating uncertainty in our adversaries, which often include our nominal allies.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/02/the_german_central_bank_agrees_with_president_trump.html

In trade relations between Germany and the U.S., the European nation has clearly been on the winning side of unfair policies, and now the president of the nation’s central bank says Germany would “suffer” if President Trump were to implement the same tariffs that they have on us. From Reuters, via Yahoo News:

Trump’s tariff plans put Germany’s growth at particular risk, Bundesbank warns

Germany is particularly vulnerable to US trade tariffs, which could curb growth for years to come and hold back an economy already suffering through two straight years of contraction, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel said on Monday.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has been in a deep industrial recession, due in great part to subsidised Chinese output crowding out German products at a time when soaring energy costs at home are already weighing on competitiveness.

Modelling projections based on tariff threats from U.S. President Donald Trump, the Bundesbank concluded that Germany would suffer but the U.S. would also take a hit that would more than offset any positive impact of the trade barriers.

Germany clearly has lots of problems not associated with America. China dumps its products there, and its own “green” policies are hammering citizens with high energy prices.

According to Google AI, Germany’s tariffs on American cars is 10%, plus they have a 19% value added tax. Meanwhile America only has a 2.5% tariff on German cars. That doesn’t sound fair, does it? And after all, all these European progressives are “fairness,” right?

Why should America subsidize Germany’s economy to the tune of $65 billion per year? From the same Reuters item:

The German trade surplus with the United States is heading towards a record level just before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump arrives at the White House, an analysis of statistics office data showed.

https://dianebederman.com/trudeau-one-thing-about-stupid-its-contagious/

One thing about Stupid-it’s contagious

Dear Canadians now booing the American anthem. You stand with Trudeau’s sudden case of righteousness regarding big, bad, old Trump and his calls for the annexation of Canada and implementation of tariffs.

Where were you when Trudeau stamped out the rights of hard-working  TRUCK-DRIVING Canadians when they refused to get the Covid shot after driving all over Canada and the USA, with no open rest stops or restaurants? He called these people and those of us standing with their right not to be jabbed; racists and misogynists .

January, 2022

“Yes, we will get out of this pandemic by vaccination. We all know people who are a little bit hesitant. We will continue to try and convince them, but there are also people who are fiercely against vaccination,”

“They are extremists who don’t believe in science, they’re often misogynists, also often racists. It’s a small group that muscles in, and we have to make a choice in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we tolerate these people? Or do we say, hey, most of the Quebecois people – 80% – are vaccinated. We want to come back to things we like doing. It’s not those people who are blocking us.”