RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/isis-in-mozambique-beheading-children-reports-

ISIS-linked extremists are reportedly beheading children in Mozambique, the BBC claimed on Wednesday.

The global jihadist movement has largely been defeated in the Middle East, but the genocidal Islamist extremism that it once sought to bring to Iraq and Syria is now being carried out in areas in Africa. For many years, various groups linked to Al Qaeda or Islamist extremists percolated across the Sahel and in Somalia. They have now spread down to Mozambique and its Cabo Delgado region.

When claims of ISIS extremists infiltrating and taking root in Mozambique first appeared years ago, some scoffed at the notion. This was the same narrative that cast doubt on Boko Haram in Nigeria. In 2012 an article at The New York Times claimed that there was no proof that a “well-organized, ideologically coherent terrorist group called Boko Haram even exists.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17105/france-war-against-police

In January, the statistical services of the Ministry of the Interior recorded 2,288 such “kill them all” incidents, based on information from police reports.

The media’s suspicion of the illegitimate use of violence by the police is so intense that officers under attack do not even feel permitted to use their weapon

The indictment of the police by the media and the entertainment industry — actors, singers and so on — is also fueled by academics.

Judicial cowards, of course, also side with the chic mob against the police.

If the police cannot investigate or protect the public because officers are afraid of being called racists, the security of the citizens is in danger.

On January 25 in Pantin, a suburb of Paris, on February 4 in Carcassonne in the south of France, and on February 13 in Poissy in Yvelines, organized groups of “young people” — according to the established media vocabulary to avoid any ethnic designation — lured police forces into their neighborhoods to ambush them. To the shouts of “Kill them; kill them all”, police patrols were attacked with explosives and pyrotechnic devices used as urban guerrilla weapons. Each time, videos of the attack were broadcast on social networks.

Between March 17 and May 5, 2020, French police were subjected to 79 ambushes, based on statistics from the Ministry of the Interior published by Le Figaro. In October 2020, Le Figaro counted at least ten attacks on police precincts since the beginning of the year, and more than 85 incidents of “violence against persons in positions of public authority” were recorded daily throughout the country by the national police, according to Le Monde. In January, the statistical services of the Ministry of the Interior recorded 2,288 such “kill them all” incidents, based on information from police reports.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/israel-and-china-dilemma-joseph-puder/

In the late spring of 2020, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Israel. His visit came after Israel formed a coalition government between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White Party. Pompeo, while endorsing Israel’s rights to Judea and Samaria, had a blunt message for his Israeli friends: “Beware of China.” Pompeo added, “We don’t want the Chinese Communist Party to have access to Israeli infrastructure, Israeli communication networks, and the kind of things that endanger the Israeli people and the ability of the US to cooperate with Israel.”

Pompeo’s gently expressed admonition to Israeli officials was not new. In the 1990’s, the US pressed Israel to cancel a deal to sell the Phalcon Intelligence surveillance aircraft to China. Israel backed down, and was compelled to return the $250 million to Beijing that the Chinese had invested in the project.

For Israel, the situation was terribly uncomfortable. It was forced to choose between its closest and most trusted ally – the US, and a great business opportunity with China. There was little hesitation however, on Israel’s part. The US will always be Israel’s top priority.

In fact, almost immediately following Pompeo’s warning, the Israeli government decided to pass on a bid by the Israeli affiliate of the Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchinson, to build a $1.5 billion water desalination plant in southern Israel. The contract was awarded instead to a local Israeli company named IDE Technologies.

American culture is so pervasive in Israel that many Israelis might quip that Israel is the 51st state of the United States. Every American fad and fashion is almost immediately adopted in Israel. Thankfully for Israel, the US and Israeli interests in the region, although not identical, they come as close as two countries can be. Israel moreover, has voted with the US more often than practically any other country.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-recalls-its-ambassador-to-the-u-s-for-consultations-11616011568

By Jessica Donati and Ann M. Simmons

The Russian ambassador to the U.S. has been summoned to Moscow for consultations, a Russian foreign ministry spokesman said, as the Kremlin determines the next steps in relations with the U.S. under the Biden administration.

The announcement that Anatoly Antonov had been summoned to Moscow came a day after a U.S. intelligence report for the first time directly accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering a wide-ranging influence operation to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election, intending to hurt President Biden’s campaign.

U.S. intelligence agencies previously have said Moscow tried to interfere in the 2016 election and that it was doing so again last year but hadn’t explicitly linked Mr. Putin to allegations of 2020 meddling. Russian officials have repeatedly denied any effort to influence the outcome of U.S. elections.

A statement by the Russian foreign ministry said the most important thing for Moscow was to identify ways to rectify the relationship, blaming Washington for bringing relations between the two countries to “a blind alley.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17177/stop-xi-jinping

We see Xi’s new demands in his intransigent position going into Thursday’s meeting in Anchorage. China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, and his subordinate, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, look as if they are going to Alaska not to engage in meaningful discussion, but to lecture Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and to dictate the terms of the relationship going forward.

Yang’s unpleasant February 5 telephone call with Blinken is a warning of Xi Jinping’s new no-compromise attitude.

If the disease in fact escaped from that lab, as new evidence suggests, the coronavirus is almost certainly a biological weapon.

Chinese leaders set a goal to dominate tech, and they have employed every tool at their disposal. They will stop at nothing to own the tech of tomorrow because they understand that tech dominance will give them economic and geopolitical dominance as well.

China can innovate, and it can steal. Most important, it can concentrate its attention on goals.

The big tech companies are certainly not loyal to America. They are, like many companies, loyal to profits. In other words, they are loyal to themselves.

Tech giants, such as Microsoft, that helped China develop facial-recognition systems to control racial minorities, apparently have no qualms about helping the Communist Party commit crimes against humanity…. It is up to Washington to prevent the tech giants from enriching and strengthening a hostile Chinese regime.

The way to free Hong Kong, ultimately, is to end the Communist Party. Once the territory is free, its people can decide whether to seek sovereign status.

If Xi Jinping thinks he can take over Hong Kong without cost, he will be emboldened to go after other areas. We must establish deterrence.

Beijing’s territorial ambitions have grown during the course of this century. Xi Jinping will not stop until he is stopped.

Canlorbe: Welcome, Mr. Chang. How do you assess the situation of the new communist giant, namely Xi Jinping’s China?

Chang: Xi Jinping now has, in President Biden, the American leader he has always wanted. Biden with his executive orders and other actions has so far given China many gifts and has asked for nothing in return. Among these unilateral concessions are his lifting a ban on Chinese electrical equipment, postponing rules against investments in China’s military-linked companies, rejoining the Beijing-dominated World Health Organization, and delaying prohibitions on Chinese apps.

As a result of receiving so many free gifts from Biden, Xi seems more arrogant and is demanding even more.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/can-you-say-death-panels-bruce-bawer/

On paper, the six million citizens of Norway are among the luckiest people in the world. Thanks to profits from North Sea oil, the nation’s sovereign wealth fund is worth over $1 trillion, which comes to about $200,000 a head. Norwegians earn good salaries, on average, and even though they shell out a lot in income taxes – as well as the world’s highest taxes on gasoline and alcohol – they’re supposed to receive a great deal in return, namely free education up through the graduate-school level (if they choose to go that far) and a social-welfare system that promises to serve the needs of the disabled and unemployed as well as to cover the costs of everyone’s medical care from cradle to grave.

But the promises are one thing, the reality another. In recent decades, like other countries in Western Europe, Norway has welcomed massive numbers of immigrants, an alarmingly high percentage of whom seem destined to be lifelong welfare clients. In Norway as elsewhere, this has put a severe strain on the treasury. Priorities have had to be identified, and choices have had to be made. The nature of those priorities and choices is reflected in two recent news items from the land of the fjords.

One of the reports concerns a family of five in Seljord, a small town in the mountains of Telemark. Ghiat Kanaan, the father; Riham Abouaisha, his wife; and their three children, Bana, Ghazal, and Omar, came to Norway from Syria about four years ago, presumably as asylum seekers. It’s not clear from the news story, which was posted on the website of NRK on March 4, whether anyone in the family has a job; all we know is that they can’t afford to buy their own residence. As a rule, such families are placed in rental apartments on the taxpayers’ kroner, in addition to being supplied with furniture, a car, and regular bank transfers to guarantee them a decent standard of living. 

Now, however, under “From Renting to Owning,” a new program initiated by the Seljord municipal government in order to ensure that “people like the Kanaans” stay in the area (why this should be a desideratum is also unclear), the Kanaan family have their own “dream house.” They picked it out themselves; the municipality of Seljord bought it for them to live in, while retaining the title; eventually, they will become its owners. The Kanaans were one of the first two families in Seljord to benefit from this program, which plunked down a total of about $500,000 for the two houses. The report on the Kanaans’ new house was treated in the media as a feel-good story.

An op-ed that appeared at the end of February in the newspaper Bergensavisen was the opposite of a feel-good story. Under the headline “The Right to Breathe,” 21-year-old David Instebø Vang, a native of Bergen, explained that he was born with cystic fibrosis (CF) and that he is expected to live to be somewhere between 40 and 50. “The question is really what will give way first – the intestines, the pancreas, or the lungs? I would bet on the lungs, because it already feels as if they’re running on empty. Breathing isn’t easy, and talking is usually followed by coughs and hacking. Breathing, for me, is like breathing through a straw while running at full speed up and down the stairs.” And this is just one of several very unpleasant symptoms that make living with CF a painful daily struggle.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kim-jong-uns-sister-warns-u-s-not-to-cause-a-stink-with-north-korea-11615901802

SEOUL— Kim Jong Un’s sister warned that the U.S. should avoid causing a stink with North Korea if the two countries are to enjoy a peaceful relationship, as a pair of top Biden administration officials traveled to the region.

In a Tuesday state-media report, Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of the North Korean dictator, railed against combined military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea that began last week. The trainings have for years been scaled-down affairs, having moved to computer simulations. But the Kim Jong Un regime has long been irked by the exercises, choosing to view them as U.S. hostilities.

Ms. Kim mostly levied insults at the Seoul government and didn’t mention President Biden by name. But she singled out the new U.S. administration, which she said has been “trying hard to give off [a] powder smell in our land,” according to the English language version of the report.

“If it wants to sleep in peace for [the] coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step,” said Ms. Kim, deputy director of the North’s propaganda and agitation department.

Ms. Kim has taken on a more elevated role in recent years, serving as Pyongyang’s mouthpiece for relations with the U.S. and South Korea. She hadn’t issued a statement since December, when she attacked South Korea’s then-foreign minister for casting doubts about the legitimacy of North Korea’s claims of having zero Covid-19 cases.

The North Korean state-media missive, a hallmark of the regime’s foreign affairs, came as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin were in Japan, with plans to next travel together to South Korea. The visits represent the first foreign trip for each. North Korea’s denuclearization is a key focus for the stops in Tokyo and Seoul.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/03/16/chinas_useful_elitists_westerners_exploited_for_beijings_domestic_image_767855.html

Early in February, the BBC broadcast interviews with several Uighur women who graphically described the horrific treatment they’d received while detained in one of the concentration camps where China has reportedly locked up a million or more ethnic Muslims for “vocational training” and “deradicalization.”

John Ross, British academic: China approvingly noted his claim that the BBC was controlled by British intelligence.

China’s response was swift and predictable. It accused the BBC of passing along “fake news” about Xinjiang, the COVID epidemic and other matters. The BBC, China’s authorities said, had “seriously violated” regulations that news broadcasts be “truthful and fair.” Chinese newspapers also dutifully passed on an accusation against the network from a British journalist and academic named John Ross. Ross claims that the BBC is largely controlled by the British intelligence service MI5, which, according to Ross, directly “vets” all members of the broadcaster’s staff.

The Chinese press cited a tweet in which Ross said that “coordination of the BBC with military intelligence,” had come “from a special office inside BBC headquarters.”

China often turns to foreign “experts” such as Ross to supply credibility for its persistent complaint that the Western media is “anti-China” and in cahoots with foreign governments, especially the United States. Ross is one of several foreigners, generally attached to Chinese universities or research institutes, who have emerged as apologists for Beijing, especially as it has come under intensifying criticism for its human rights violations in Xinjiang and Hong Kong and its ever tighter control of opinion across the country. 

An old tradition: Back in the 1930s, this book by a left-leaning American journalist presented to generations of Americans a view of the rising Mao Zedong as a benignly progressive figure.