RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/why-are-you-killing-christians-trump-asks-nigerias-raymond-ibrahim/

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  This article was first published by the Gatestone Institute.

“Why are you killing Christians?” US President Donald J. Trump apparently shocked his Nigerian counterpart, Muhammadu Buhari, by asking this question the first time they met in the White House in April 2018. The Nigerian president admitted this, according to a September 8, 2020 report, toward the end of a recent talk with his cabinet members:

[W]hen I was in his office, only myself and himself, with Allah as my witness, he looked at me in the face and said ‘why are you killing Christians?’ I wonder, if you were the person how you would react? I hope what I was feeling inside did not betray my emotion…

He should not have been shocked. Several international observers characterize what Nigerian Christians experience not just as “persecution” but as a “pure genocide.”

Since 2009, “not less than 32,000 Christians have been butchered to death by the country’s main Jihadists,” according to a May 2020 report. Hundreds more have been killed since then. Earlier this year, Christian Solidarity International issued a “Genocide Warning for Christians in Nigeria” in response to the “rising tide of violence directed against Nigerian Christians and others classified as ‘infidels’ by Islamist militants….”

Under Buhari, who became Nigeria’s president in 2015, the carnage of Christians has only accelerated. According to a March 8, 2020 report, titled, “Nigeria: A Killing Field of Defenseless Christians,”

Available statistics have shown that between 11,500 and 12,000 Christian deaths were recorded in the past 57 months or since June 2015 when the present central [Buhari-led] government of Nigeria came on board. Out of this figure, Jihadist Fulani herdsmen accounted for 7,400 Christian deaths, Boko Haram 4,000 and the ‘Highway Bandits‘ 150-200.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16718/space-dominance-china

Some believe the US space program should emphasize climate change research. If there is no overall increase in space spending, there will be less money for, among other things, defending American assets in space.

Brandon Weichert of The Weichert Report said in an interview with Gatestone that there might be a move to “staff the Space Force with people inimical to its mission.”

America is… in many respects behind Russia and China in the ability to fight “over great distances at tremendous speeds, ” as Space Force’s General John Raymond said in September.

Moreover, there are other policy proposals that would degrade America’s ability to defend itself…. Unfortunately, there are many who still believe America can come to agreement with China.

In space, almost everything has a dual purpose. Fisher, for instance, reports that China will put a laser on its upcoming space station for the announced purpose of eliminating space junk. Of course, such a laser is also capable of killing American satellites.

Other dual use items are Russia’s co-orbital “Space Stalkers.” In peacetime, they can be used to repair satellites. In wartime, Weichert says, “they can physically push U.S. satellites out of their orbits.” That would render America’s forces, and America itself, “deaf, dumb, and blind on land, at sea, in the air, and within cyberspace.”

In any event, neither Russia nor China honors agreements, especially arms control treaties.

China will be launching satellites almost every other week starting next March. In one instance the gap in next year’s frenetic schedule of launches will be only five days.

This year, through the end of September, China launched 29 satellites, more than any other nation. The U.S. was a close second with 27.

Beijing aims to widen its lead. Most observers worry that the Chinese regime is determined to get to the moon before U.S. astronauts return there, but another troublesome development is that China will quickly be filling up orbits with satellites.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16722/iran-mullahs-turmoil

Iran’s currency, the rial, lost more than half its value so far just in 2020.

Iran’s regime is currently running a $200 million budget deficit per week and it is estimated that if the pressure on Tehran continues, the deficit will hit roughly $10 billion by March 2021. This deficit will, in return, increase inflation and devalue the currency even further.

Iran’s militia groups are subsequently receiving less funding to pursue their terror activities. This shortfall may be why, for the first time in more than three decades, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, made a public statement asking people to donate money to his group.

Iran’s ruling mullahs desire to maintain the JCPOA. It not only provided their regime with many benefits including economic relief and global legitimacy; at the same time, it ignored Tehran’s military adventurism in the region, its ballistic missile program and its support for terror groups across the Middle East. Most importantly, the JCPOA also paved the way for Tehran ultimately to become a nuclear state.

The “maximum pressure” policy against Iran’s ruling mullahs is working and must absolutely continue.

The Iranian regime is in turmoil thanks to the “maximum pressure” policy implemented by US President Donald J. Trump against the ruling mullahs.

Iran’s currency, the rial, lost more than half its value so far just in 2020. That decline makes it one of the most worthless national currencies in the world. As of October 25, the rial traded on unofficial markets at 300,500 to the US dollar. The rate has pushed the Iranian authorities to agree on removing four zeros from its currency, which has gone into a virtual free-fall. Two years ago, one US dollar was worth nearly 30,000 rials.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macron-and-the-islamists-11604098346?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

France has been rocked in recent weeks by three terror attacks, the latest on Thursday in Nice. That stabbing in a church, which killed three, followed the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty two weeks ago outside his school near Paris. A knife attack last month outside the former office of the Charlie Hebdo magazine injured two.

France is no stranger to Islamist terrorism, especially after the 2015 Paris attacks that killed 130 and the 2016 Nice truck attack that claimed 86 lives. But the latest incidents have shocked the country, for coming so close together and being such a frontal assault on French values.

Mr. Paty was singled out for displaying caricatures of Mohammed in a lesson on free speech—cartoons such as those linked to the 2015 rampage at Charlie Hebdo’s office after the magazine published similar images. Thursday’s knife attack in Nice is not the first to target religious sites in the traditionally Catholic country; a priest was murdered in a church in Normandy in 2016.

President Emmanuel Macron appears to understand the relationship between Islamist rejection of French values and this terrorism. This month he delivered a major address promising a national strategy to combat Islamism, which he described as “Islamist separatism.” Proposals include making it harder for radical imams from overseas to relocate to France, and requiring religious organizations that run sports clubs and the like to pledge to support “republican values” in exchange for public funding.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ditching-jeremy-corbyn-11604098252?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

“The new Labour leader, Keir Starmer, is working hard to purge left-wing anti-Semitism, and Mr. Corbyn’s suspension is a clear and overdue statement of what sort of party Labour wants to be. It’s also an example to parties such as America’s Democrats that also have struggled with creeping anti-Semitism among elected officials.”

Plenty of politicians have led their parties to electoral defeats, but few then have their party membership challenged. Few deserve this unique dishonor more than Jeremy Corbyn, who was suspended on Thursday by the British Labour Party he formerly led over anti-Semitism on his watch.

Mr. Corbyn was elected to lead the party in 2015, and his tenure revealed the anti-Semitic underside of far-left politics. Mr. Corbyn frequently drew the wrong kind of attention for commenting approvingly of anti-Semitic artwork on social media or, earlier in his career, writing a foreword for a book laden with anti-Jewish stereotypes. His office allegedly suppressed investigations into Labour members accused of anti-Semitism—accusations that increased as Mr. Corbyn’s left wing of the party crept into greater leadership roles.

This scandalized British voters, including many Labour members who take pride in their party’s history of opposition to racism. It contributed to Labour’s historic rout in December’s election, and it exposed the party to legal problems.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-security-nice/three-dead-as-woman-beheaded-in-knife-attack-at-french-church-idUSKBN27E17D

NICE, France (Reuters) – A knife-wielding attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) beheaded a woman and killed two other people at a church in the French city of Nice on Thursday.

A defiant President Emmanuel Macron, declaring that France had been subject to an Islamist terrorist attack, said he would deploy thousands more soldiers to protect key French sites, such as places of worship and schools.

Speaking from the scene, he said France had been attacked “over our values, for our taste for freedom, for the ability on our soil to have freedom of belief”.

“And I say it with lots of clarity again today: we will not give any ground.”

In Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, state television reported that a Saudi man had been arrested in the Red Sea city of Jeddah after attacking and injuring a guard at the French consulate. The French Embassy said he was in hospital after a knife assault though his life was not in danger.

Within hours of the Nice attack, police killed a man who had threatened passersby with a handgun in Montfavet, near the southern French city of Avignon.

France’s Le Figaro newspaper quoted a prosecution source as saying the man was undergoing psychiatric treatment, and that they did not believe there was a terrorism motive.

Nice’s mayor, Christian Estrosi, said the attack in his city had happened at Notre Dame church and was similar to the beheading earlier this month near Paris of teacher Samuel Paty, who had used cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a civics class.

Thursday’s attacks, on the birthday of the Prophet Mohammad, came at a time of growing Muslim anger at France’s defence of the right to publish the cartoons, and protesters have denounced France in street rallies in several Muslim-majority countries.

After the Nice attack, Prime Minister Jean Castex raised France’s security alert to its highest level.

Estrosi said the Nice attacker had repeatedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” even being detained by police.

At around 9 a.m. (0800 GMT), a man armed with a knife entered the church and slit the throat of the sexton, beheaded an elderly woman, and badly wounded a third woman, according to a police source.

The sexton and the elderly woman died on the spot, the third woman managed to make it out of the church into a nearby cafe, where she died, Estrosi told reporters. None of the victims has so far been named.

“The suspected knife attacker was shot by police while being detained. He is on his way to hospital, he is alive,” he said.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16697/europe-iran-regime

Swiss and German economic deals might be aiding Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program…. The Swiss firm Ceresola TLS reached an agreement [in 2010] with the Rahab Engineering Establishment in Iran to deliver tunneling technology as part of a subway project. This is precisely the type of heavy earth-moving equipment Iran’s rulers need to burrow away nuclear facilities underground, as the regime did with the Qom and Natanz nuclear enrichment plants.

The German company Krempel delivered to two Iranian companies insulating pressboards that were incorporated into Iranian missiles armed with chemical warheads, which were used by the Syrian regime in a chlorine gas attack in January 2018. The attack resulted in 21 injuries, including six children.

The Association of Iranian Banks in Europe wrote in July: “45 percent of the EU exports to Iran came from Germany, which delivered goods worth 555 million Euro, with an increase of 31 percent compared to last year.”

Europe’s most powerful economic engine, Germany, and the rest of the EU have sadly opted to align themselves with the Islamic Republic of Iran on the pressing issues of Iran’s nuclear program, and its stomach-turning human rights record.

To better understand Europe’s current policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is worth citing an episode recounted in a 2006 essay by Iran expert Amir Taheri.

In 1984, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, then foreign minister of the Federal Republic of Germany and an ex-member of the Nazi party, traveled to Iran in an attempt to moderate the malign conduct of the then five-year-old revolutionary regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Genscher declared his intention to engage in “critical dialogue” with the regime, but the notion sparked the joke that “critical dialogue” was really “an exercise in joint criticism, by the mullahs and the Europeans, of the Americans,” Taheri wrote. The German foreign minister announced at the time that his dialogue with Iran’s rulers was a success in “intensifying” political relations between then West Germany and the Islamic Republic.