RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-antiterror-opportunity-in-sudan-11601333982?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The fact that Sudan’s leaders are openly discussing the normalization of relations with Israel shows how much the northeast African nation has changed since the downfall of dictator Omar al-Bashir. The Trump Administration’s diplomacy is pulling Khartoum closer to the West, but it needs help from Congress.

Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok took office last year after widespread protests brought about the old regime’s end. He shares power with unsavory figures but has managed to repeal draconian Islamic laws and give civil society some breathing room. The government has promised elections in 2022, and Mr. Hamdok wants to improve ties with the U.S. before his term ends.

The prime minister’s position is fragile. Many Islamists want him gone—he survived an assassination attempt this year—and the generals who toppled Mr. Bashir aren’t excited about democracy in Khartoum. But Congress can improve Mr. Hamdok’s standing, and give the country’s struggling economy a boost, by removing Sudan from the state sponsor of terrorism list.

The U.S. made the designation in 1993. Mr. Bashir hosted al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden at the time and gave them a free hand to plot mayhem around the region. After decades of isolation, the country has turned around and already qualifies for removal. Washington has tied the change to a $335 million compensation package for victims of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/09/27/uae-irans-aggressive-policies-made-arabs-look-at-israel/

“The more strategic the Israelis look at these relationships, the more doors will open to them,” says UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash. Normalizing ties with Israel “was strategically good for the UAE, will make it have more of a global presence.”

The United Arab Emirates didn’t need peace with Israel to counter Iran, a top UAE official said Friday, but he said Iran’s aggressive policies over three decades alarmed many Arab countries and made them look at their relationship with Israel “with fresh eyes.”

UAE Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash acknowledged at a virtual briefing on the sidelines of the equally virtual UN General Assembly’s annual meeting of world leaders that this may not have been Iran’s intention. But its actions had an impact in the region, he said, though he wouldn’t speculate on whether other Arab countries would follow the UAE and Bahrain in establishing relations with Israel.

“The only thing I want to say is the more strategic the Israelis look at these relationships, the more doors will open to them,” Gargash said. “If they look at it very `transactionally’, I think that it is not going to send a very good omen for normalizing relations with many of the Arab countries.”

Gargash said the UAE’s message to Israel is to “look at these opportunities and build strategically, and think long term rather than short term” – and prove wrong the countries who say that because of the Israeli political system its decision-makers think only tactically.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16550/france-terrorism-silence

This brand of extremism has also managed to transform many European citizens into prisoners, people hiding in their own countries, sentenced to death and forced to live in houses unknown even to their friends and families. And we got used to it!

“[T]his lack of courage to follow in Charlie’s footsteps comes at a price, we are losing freedom of speech and an insidious form of self-censorship is gaining ground.” — Flemming Rose, Le Point, September 2, 2020.

“To put it simply, freedom of speech is in bad shape around the world. Including in Denmark, France and throughout the West. These are troubled times; people prefer order and security to freedom.” — Flemming Rose, Le Point, August 15, 2020.

On September 25, in Paris, two people were stabbed and seriously wounded outside the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, where 12 of the satirical magazine’s editors and cartoonists were murdered by extremist Muslims in 2015. The suspect, in police custody, is being investigated for terrorism.

The accused murderers in the 2015 attacks are currently on trial in Paris.

Shortly before the knifing attack, on September 22, Charlie Hebdo’s director of human resources, Marika Bret, did not come home. In fact, she no longer has a home. She was evicted after serious and concrete death threats from extremist Muslims. She decided to make her “exfiltration” public for French intelligence to alert the public to the threat of extremism in France.

“I have lived under police protection for almost five years”, she told the weekly Le Point.

“My security agents received specific and detailed threats. I had ten minutes to pack and leave the house. Ten minutes to give up a part of one’s life is a bit short and it was very violent. I will not go home. I am losing my home to outbursts of hatred, the hatred that always begins with the threat of instilling fear. We know how it can end”.

Bret also claimed that the French Left abandoned the “battle for secularism”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16552/egypt-christians-abduction-rape

“One of the strategies they used to gain the girls’ trust was for the kidnapper, a Muslim man, to tell the Christian girl he loved her and wanted to convert to Christianity for her. They would start a romantic relationship until, one day, they would decide to ‘escape’ together. What the girls do not know is that they are actually being kidnapped.” — Former Egyptian human trafficker, World Watch Monitor, October 5, 2017.

“The kidnappers receive large amounts of money. Police can help them in different ways, and when they do, they might also receive a part of the financial reward the kidnappers are paid…. In some cases, police provide the kidnappers with drugs they seize.” — Former Egyptian trafficker, World Watch Monitor, October 5, 2017

“If all goes to plan, the girls are also forced into marriage with a strict Muslim. Their husbands don’t love them, they just marry her to make her a Muslim. She will be hit and humiliated. And if she tries to escape, or convert back to her original religion, she will be killed.” — Former Egyptian trafficker, World Watch Monitor, October 5, 2017.

“There are countless families who report that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence. If there is any hope for Coptic women in Egypt to have a merely ‘primitive’ level of equality, these incidents of trafficking must cease, and the perpetrators must be held accountable by the judiciary.” — From “‘Jihad of the Womb’: Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt,” a report by Coptic Solidarity.

The kidnapping, sexual abuse and forced conversion of Christian women and girls in Egypt — a “particularly vulnerable group to exploitation” that is quietly living an “unimaginable nightmare” — is rampant, with no signs of easing up. This is the finding of a report published on September 10, 2020 by Coptic Solidarity, an international organization based in Washington D.C., that works to promote equal citizenship rights for Egypt’s Christian minority.

In its 15-page report, “‘Jihad of the Womb’: Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt,” Coptic Solidarity documents “the widespread practice of abduction and trafficking” and estimates that there have been “about 500 cases within the last decade, where elements of coercion were used that amount to trafficking,” according to the UN’s own definitions, particularly per its “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children.”

According to Coptic Solidarity:

“The capture and disappearance of Coptic women and minor girls is a bane of the Coptic community in Egypt, yet little has been done to address this scourge by the Egyptian or foreign governments, NGOs, or international bodies. According to a priest in the Minya Governorate, at least 15 girls go missing every year in his area alone. His own daughter was nearly kidnapped had he not been able to intervene in time.”

The report offers 13 separate case studies. Victims range from teenage girls, to newlywed and pregnant young women, to married women with children. Most of the victims disappeared in one of two ways: either they were publicly kidnapped, often by being forced into a car while traveling to school, church, or work; or — especially true for teenage girls — they were lured into relationships with young Muslim men who promised them the world, until, that is, they realized they had been duped. According to a former Egyptian human trafficker:

“[O]ne of the strategies they used to gain the girls’ trust was for the kidnapper, a Muslim man, to tell the Christian girl he loved her and wanted to convert to Christianity for her. They would start a romantic relationship until, one day, they would decide to ‘escape’ together. What the girls do not know is that they are actually being kidnapped. Most of the time they will not marry their kidnapper, but someone else.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16551/cfr-javad-zarif

The tweet contains interesting indicators to how [the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard] Haas tries to dodge the issue. He presents Afkari’s killing as a judicial “execution”, enabling Zarif to say “well, you have executions in some states of the US as well.”

In November 1938, a few days after Kristallnacht, the French ambassador to Berlin Robert Coulondre reported the event to Paris, describing the savagery in the heart of Europe, concluding that “nevertheless [néanmoins in French] one should understand German grievances against the Jews.”

[I]n his expose at the CFR meeting, Zarif repeated the same claims, not to say lies, that he has been dishing out to the illustrious audience for years. And it seems that they gobbled it up with the same appetite as before. To hoodwink his audience, Zarif never used the term “Islamic Republic” and pretended that “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei doesn’t exist. Nor did he talk of Islam and Tehran’s strategy to “export the Islamic Revolution” to the whole world, including New York where the CFR is located.

Portrayed by Zarif, the Khomeinist regime is a peace-and-love enterprise where the judiciary is independent, all freedoms are respected, and the strategic aim is to establish peace and harmony across the globe. There are no political prisoners in Iran. Tehran’s support for Hezbollah and Hamas is cultural and the Iranian presence in Syria is only advisory, at the invitation of the Syrian government. There are, of course, no American and other foreign hostages in Iran. If there is trouble in the Middle East it is the fault of the United States. OK, not of good Americans like John Kerry and Barack Obama but of people like Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo.

For the past few years, hosting the Islamic Republic’s Foreign Minister, Mohammed Javad Zarif, has developed into an annual ritual of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). This year, however, CFR’s invitation to Zarif raised a storm of protest beyond the bubble in which American foreign policy junkies play games, indulge in fantasies, and address their principal task, which is fund-raising.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16538/middle-east-transformational-peace

Both Arab countries and Israel will benefit immensely.

Palestinian leaders are suddenly discovering that, as the Arab saying goes, “The dogs bark but the caravan moves on” – possibly without them.

“We [realists] understand that only defeat will convince Palestinians like Mrs. Ashrawi, and through them Iranian, Turkish, Islamist, leftist, fascist, and other anti-Zionists, that the century-plus conflict is over, that Israel has prevailed, and that the time has come to give up on futile, painful, and genocidal ambitions.” — Daniel Pipes, Middle East Scholar.

If President Trump is able to continue following the bold, unconventional path he has traced, he will most likely succeed where all his predecessors have failed. What he has accomplished already — in less than four years, with so many forces determined to undermine him… is extraordinary.

“Trump has done more for peace in the Middle East in four years than any other American President in seventy-two years.” — Meyer Habib, member of the French National Assembly, i24 News, September 14, 2020.

On September 15, two peace agreements with Israel and known as The Abraham Accords – one with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and one with Bahrain, and — were made official at a White House ceremony. President Donald J. Trump spoke of a “historic breakthrough” and a “previously unthinkable regional transformation”. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu added that the world is witnessing “the dawn of a new Middle East “.

The agreements, which come 26 years after the last peace treaty, between Jordan and Israel, mark a further step towards the integration of Israel in the region.

The UAE and Bahrain are the first Arab countries to recognize Israel without requiring any concession from Israel (Netanyahu said that the extension of Israeli sovereignty to parts of Judea-Samaria and the Jordan Valley was suspended, not canceled) and without any American financial contribution involved.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/09/pakistani-attacks-charlie-hebdo-workers-wmeat-daniel-greenfield/

The Religion of Peace would like to remind you that it’s still lethal even while everyone’s focused on a virus.

A man armed with a meat cleaver attacked and wounded two people on Friday who had stepped out for a cigarette in front of the Paris office building where Islamist militants gunned down employees of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo five years ago.

Police detained the man suspected of carrying out the attack soon after with bloodstains on his clothes next to the steps of an opera house about 500 metres (yards) away.

French officials said the attack was terrorism. A police source told Reuters the suspect was 18 years of age and of Pakistani origin.

A second suspect was detained and prosecutors were trying to establish his relation to the knife attacker. The second man is Algerian, according to the police source.

The staff of the magazine issued a statement expressing their support for the victims of Friday’s attack. “Far from terrorising us, such events should make us even more assertive in the defence of our values,” the statement said.

Pakistani and Algerian. Nothing to do with religion then.

 According to Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, however, there is little doubt: “clearly it is an act of Islamist terrorism “, the minister said on France 2 this Friday evening.

The French can actually say the “I” word.

Meanwhile, these days, American conservatives want a medal for saying, “Radical Islamic terrorism” as if there are “moderate Islamic terrorists” to distinguish them for.

He was arrested a month ago “for carrying a prohibited weapon”, a “screwdriver”, when he was “still a minor”.

I presume we’ll shortly be saturated with claims that…

1. He suffered from mental illness

2. Was on drugs

3. Was entrapped by police

4. Was reacting to racism and economic oppression

… the 4 usual claims made by the pro-terror lobby in and out of the media.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-tale-of-two-chinese-economies-11601075108?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Investors around the world appear to be taking comfort in the revival of China’s economy, but the question has to be which Chinese economy they’re watching. There are two, and Beijing is subsidizing growth in the wrong one.

Look beyond encouraging data such as the second quarter’s above-3% GDP growth, and what’s reviving is the export-and-government-driven manufacturing economy. As of August, manufacturing investment is positive again and this is driving industrial production and exports.

But the Chinese economy comprised of household consumers—ordinary Chinese people—is stuck in the doldrums. The unemployment rate is falling, to 5.6% in August. But this measures only some urban workers, and the true level of unemployment and underemployment almost certainly is much higher. The best reason for optimism is that consumer spending perked up in August. This was mostly concentrated in luxury goods, however—and in China stockpiling jewelry and handbags constitutes a form of saving.

The explanation for this divergence is straightforward, as Kevin Rudd and Daniel Rosen explained recently in these pages. President Xi Jinping still talks a good game about economic reform, but he has all but abandoned many of the overhauls his predecessors attempted. In the broadest terms, China no longer seeks to attract a wide variety of foreign investment as a path toward higher productivity and more economic opportunities.

Instead, since the 2008 financial panic and especially since Mr. Xi took power in 2012, Beijing has relied on debt-fueled stimulus of manufacturers and local governments to avert recessions. The trend is pronounced in the months since the coronavirus pandemic took hold.