RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16443/charlie-hebdo-mohammed-cartoons

France is starting to reflect on the dramatic decline in its freedom of expression.

“My unfortunate client will be freedom….” — Richard Malka, attorney for Charlie Hebdo, Le Point, August 13, 2020.

Western democracies have paid dearly for the right to freedom of expression and, if not protected and exercised, it can disappear overnight.

“If our colleagues in the public debate do not share part of the risk, then the barbarians have won”. — Elisabeth Badinter, French philosopher; the documentary “Je suis Charlie”, September 9, 2015.

Yesterday, one day before the opening of the trial for 14 defendants accused of involvement in a string of terrorist attacks in France, which included the murders of their fellow journalists and cartoonists on January 7, 2015 at their Paris office, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo republished the “Mohammed Cartoons” under the title “Tout ça pour ça” (“All of that for this”). “We will never give up”, they said.

The defendants in the trial, some in absentia, “face a variety of charges related to helping perpetrators carry out attacks that killed 17 people over three days in January 2015.” In addition to the 12 victims in and around the office of Charlie Hebdo, a police officer was murdered in the street and four people were murdered in a kosher supermarket.

François Molins, then public prosecutor of Paris, recalled his arrival at the Charlie Hebdo office. He found “the smell of blood and gunpowder. In the newsroom, it is carnage. It is more than a crime scene, it is a war scene, with a frightening tangle of bodies”.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/09/07/viktor-orbans-mandate/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

The Hungarian prime minister has succeeded through democratic means

When Hungary declared a state of emergency in March to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, commentators in the West immediately spread the news that the European Union’s first dictatorship had arrived. Parliament was suspended. There would never be elections again. Hungary’s health-care system would collapse because its prime minister, Viktor Orban, had given the nation’s money away to cronies and squandered more of it in a doomed attempt to make soccer more popular. Criticism of the government was forbidden, forevermore. Political arrests would begin. A colleague of mine at the American Enterprise Institute, Dalibor Rohac, wrote in the Washington Post that, absent a major pushback from Brussels and Washington, D.C., Hungary would emerge “a full-fledged dictatorship.” The U.S. political analyst Liz Mair — no fool, I think — confidently predicted of Orban, “He’s going to wind up putting Gypsies in permanent detention.”

Of course all of this was wrong. There was no diplomatic pushback. Brussels gave a preliminary ruling that the emergency law contained no threat to democracy; it was passed constitutionally. Hungary experienced its relatively small surge of cases and deaths, but its hospital system survived, even if it’s not up to Western European standards, and did just fine. Orban’s rule by decree included scoring some opportunistic points: He rushed through a park renovation opposed by a mayor of the opposition party and made it so that state-issued ID cards carry the birth sex of the holder. If these are abuses, they are more mild than the attempt by California governor Gavin Newsom to make rent-control schemes permanent through emergency powers. Two Hungarians were detained by police departments for criticizing the government, suspected of breaking laws against spreading misinformation during the pandemic. In each case it was determined that they had committed no crime, and they were released. By comparison, a law against online disinformation in Angela Merkel’s Germany is so broad and censorious that Russia and the Philippines cite it as a model they would imitate.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16431/uae-palestinians

The message Emiratis are sending: “We did not betray anyone. We have a wise leader who has decided to do what is good for his country, the Palestinians and all Arabs and Muslims. You Palestinians need to get rid of your corrupt leaders.”

“It is time for this region to enjoy peace, stability and development,” Al Kaabi remarked. “Over the past decades, conflicts and tension have ravaged the region and many opportunities have been lost in order to find the right path that leads people to a prosperous life, and makes hope possible.” — Hamad Al Kaabi, editor of the Abu Dhabi-based Al-Ittihad newspaper, August 14, 2020.

“I was against Israel, but today I’m not. Time has shown us who the real friend is and who is the enemy.” — Emirati social media user, Twitter, August 17, 2020.

The reactions of the Emiratis to the Palestinian campaign of incitement against the UAE is another sign of the growing disillusionment of many Gulf citizens with the Palestinian leaders and the Palestinian issue. The reactions also show that for the first time in many years, Arabs have the courage openly to say that they prefer peace with Israel over continuing to support the Palestinians, who cannot get their act together and have chosen to align themselves with Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood and the enemies of peace and stability.

As Palestinian leaders continue to condemn the United Arab Emirates for its agreement to normalize relations with Israel, Emiratis have responded by dismissing charges that the UAE betrayed the Arabs and Muslims, as well as Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem and the Palestinian issue.

The main message the Emiratis and other Gulf citizens are sending to the Palestinians and the rest of the Arabs and Muslims is something to the effect of: “We did not betray anyone. We have a wise leader who has decided to do what is good for his country, the Palestinians and all Arabs and Muslims. You Palestinians need to get rid of your corrupt leaders.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/sweden_heading_over_the_cliff.html

Recently, the Muslims of the city of Malmö in Sweden flexed their collective strength and gave their non-Muslim neighbors a taste of things to come when they rioted in a response to the publicized burning of a Quran by activists of Stram Kurs (Hard Line).  Stram Kurs is a far-right political party infamous in Sweden for its racialism and its anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic positions.  Electorally speaking, Stram Kurs is a non-entity and is mainly a zoological curiosity that exists both as an outlet for denizens of Sweden’s intellectual slums and as a boogeyman for the Danish establishment and Muslim community.

As a result of its rather pathetic situation within Sweden’s political system, it must resort to the “propaganda of the deed” (like the anarchists of old), hence the burning of a Quran right near a migrant community in a city where about one out of every six inhabitants is a Muslim.  The Muslims reacted almost cartoonishly true to form by instantaneously turning what was supposed to be a protest against an act of religious desecration into a full-on riot.

Almost all cases of immigration are followed with some sort of assimilation.  Either the immigrant populations are assimilated into the host country, or the host country (or part of it) acclimatizes itself to the immigrant population.  It is quite clear which of these two situations is occurring in Europe (the latter).  This entire episode is indicative of the fact that Muslims in the West and their Western hosts have failed to absorb certain fundamental political lessons to the detriment of all involved.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijings-bullying-escalates-down-under-11598916533?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Australia is the Western nation most exposed to China’s military, economic and diplomatic power, so their relationship bears watching as an indicator of how the Communist Party in Beijing wants to treat other countries. In the latest example of bullying, China has detained with no public explanation Cheng Lei, an Australian citizen and television anchor for a Beijing media outlet.

It’s becoming clear that foreigners work and travel in China at their peril. Australian writer Yang Hengjun has been held on vague “espionage” accusations since last year. And don’t forget the two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, held in China since 2018 as hostages to pressure Canada not to extradite to the U.S. Huawei’s chief financial officer for violating Iran sanctions.

Australia has faced the brunt of Beijing’s ire since the spring for daring to back an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. A state media representative compared Australia to “gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes” and in May China imposed tariffs on Australian barley and restricted imports of beef. Over the weekend China launched a new probe of Aussie wine exports, threatening another trade blow.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16433/us-accommodate-china

For decades, the U.S. had tried to regularize contacts with the Chinese military…. Unfortunately, rules-of-the-road agreements have failed…. “China has routinely violated the letter and spirit of CUES,” James Fanell, a former director of Intelligence and Information Operations at the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told Gatestone. “The problem,” he wrote “is that agreements can work only if both sides really do wish to avoid a military crisis and violent encounter.”

Shultz — and most Americans — underestimate the audaciousness, ruthlessness, and maliciousness of China’s Communist Party. Chinese Communists… are continually propagating the line that China has the right and obligation today to rule the entire world.

In the 1930s, the Western democracies knew about the Third Reich’s persecution of the Jews but did little. That feebleness emboldened Hitler, leading eventually to the destruction of much of Europe. Now, the world is emboldening another once-in-a-century tyrant, Xi Jinping. The international community should not expect timidity to produce a better outcome this time.

Americans love agreements, but no treaty, convention, compact, code, or agreement will restrain a belligerent state that seeks to take down the rules-based international system. There is, Secretary Shultz, no “off-ramp” from confronting the horror of China’s crimes.

America’s goal should be to defeat Chinese communism, not accommodate it.

George Shultz, writing a Wall Street Journal op-ed first posted August 26, believes America has a “collective future” with China.

Yes, Americans have one with the Chinese people — as they do with all other people — but is it possible to have a common future with a hostile state openly committed to overthrowing you and, among other things, committing crimes against humanity?

No, that is not possible.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/cyprus-46-years-turkish-occupation-uzay-bulut/

What does the international community often think when they hear “Cyprus”? A beautiful island country in the Eastern Mediterranean? A heavenly holiday destination? Warm weather and scenic beaches? All of these are true. However, this small and resilient island country also has a dark and criminal history – a history shaped by the Turkish occupation since 1974.

Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960 but full independence across the island would not last for long. In the summer of 1974, the Turkish military invaded northern Cyprus twice – first on 20 July and then on 14 August, committing ethno-religious cleansing and crimes against humanity in an attempt to terrorize the Greek Cypriots to push them southward.  

Turkey “launched a full scale aggressive attack against Cyprus, a small non-aligned and virtually defenseless country, possessing no air force, no navy and no army except for a small national guard,” Zenon Rossides, the then-Cyprus representative to the United Nations, sent a letter on 6 December 1974 to the UN Secretary General. “Thus, Turkey’s overwhelming military machine embarked upon an armed attack including napalm bombing of open towns and villages, wreaking destruction, setting forests on fire and spreading indiscriminate death and human suffering to the civilian population of the island.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/rising-islamic-terrorist-threat-austria-strikes-daniel-greenfield/

On a summer Sabbath day, Elie Rosen, President of the Jewish Community of Graz, spotted a suspicious man hanging around the synagogue. The synagogue had recently been vandalized and the man had a backpack full of rocks that he was about to start throwing at the synagogue.

After the synagogue had been vandalized a few days earlier, Rosen had warned that in the Austrian city, “we are dealing with a stronger left wing and anti-Israel antisemitism,”

Rosen’s concern was understandable since some of the graffiti smeared on the wall around the synagogue read, “Free Palestine” and “Our language and our country is Palestine”. A second attack by the same perpetrator on the Sabbath Eve had smashed the synagogue’s windows.

The wall that the Islamic attacker had vandalized was made out of bricks from the ruins of the original Graz synagogue that had been destroyed by the National Socialists. The synagogue, which had been rebuilt only two decades ago, serves Graz’s tiny surviving Jewish community.

Austrian Jews know better than to take such slogans lightly. One of the worst episodes of  antisemitic violence after the National Socialist period had been an assault by two PLO Islamic terrorists on a synagogue where a Bar Mitzvah was taking place. The terrorists had opened fire with machine guns and thrown hand grenades into the synagogue. A woman who had rolled on a hand grenade to protect the children died. A number of other congregants were wounded.

When Rosen asked the bearded man what he was doing, the vandal attacked him with a chair leg, and fled on a mountain bike. When the police caught him, he expressed no remorse.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-stop-iran-from-terrorizing-dissidents-abroad-11598822066?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Jamshid Sharmahd, a California-based Iranian opposition activist, disappeared in late July while traveling to a technology conference in India by way of Dubai. Mr. Sharmahd’s family tracked his movements using mobile phone data to a remote region of neighboring Oman before he dropped off the map. Days later, he appeared blindfolded on Iranian state television as a result of what the Islamic Republic termed a “complex operation” by “anonymous soldiers.”

More frightening than the apparent kidnapping of the U.S.-based dissident is the fate that likely awaits him. This summer Tehran sentenced to death another kidnapped opponent, who had been living as a refugee in France. And in recent weeks a prominent Iranian women’s rights activist based in the U.S. revealed that her family had been pressured to invite her to a get-together in neighboring Turkey so she could be abducted.

Iranian democracy activists living in Western countries are understandably alarmed by this apparent uptick in kidnappings and hope that their adopted democratic homes will protect them. But safeguarding these dissidents will require world leaders to stop thinking of such incidents as isolated crimes, and instead confront them as state-sanctioned intimidation policy.