RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/canada-courting-hope-muslim-votenew-conservative-christine-douglass-williams/

The official opposition to Islamo-pandering Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s minority Liberal government is the Conservative Party of Canada, which has a new leader, Erin O’Toole. He’s already being pressured by two questionable Muslim lobby groups: the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) and the National Council of Canadian Muslims (formerly CAIR-CAN, with historic ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations–an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism funding case in American history, the Holy Land Foundation Trial)  

Sharaf Sharafeldin, Executive Director of the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC), threatened O’Toole that he will lose the Muslim vote if he does not kowtow to their demands. Sharafeldin stated:

Muslims who share conservative values—ranging from fiscal responsibility to compassionate social policy—voted Liberal for the first time. Stephen Harper introduced Canada to “fear and smear” politics, while simultaneously threatening religious freedoms, particularly of Canadian Muslims. The 2019 election was equally concerning, with Andrew Scheer allowing candidates who had expressed anti-Muslim views to run.

This is untrue. If anything, Andrew Scheer shut down reasonable discourse regarding jihad violence in order to appease agenda-driven Muslims, but evidently he didn’t do enough. For example, Scheer made headlines when he threw the Tory MP Michael Cooper out of a Commons committee hearing involving “online hate” after Cooper’s confrontation with a Muslim witness who had become provocative.

Also, THIS VIDEO surfaced, featuring Andrew Scheer cornered, intimidated and pandering to an Israel-hating imam who sanctions wife-beating.

Sharafeldin also spreads propaganda about Stephen Harper, who as Prime Minister, was very much committed to human rights and equality of rights for all, as opposed to special treatment for one group over another. Harper also demonstrated a commitment to religious freedom when he installed Canada’s Office of Religious Freedoms in the Foreign Affairs Department — in recognition of persecuted minorities everywhere. The Trudeau Liberals shut down this office almost immediately after Trudeau was elected in 2015. Harper’s problem as far as the MAC is concerned was that he was not an Islamo-panderer, prone to being bullied.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16537/tiktok-china-algorithm

“The more reporting I do on this the more it is a sleazy back room deal that protects no one and advantages Trump supporters and, inexplicably, the Chinese government.” — Kara Swisher, America tech journalist and guru, Twitter, September 20, 2020.

“ByteDance in driver seat, algorithm in Chinese hands.” — Eunice Yoon, CNBC’s Beijing Bureau Chief, Twitter, September 21, 2020.

“The TikTok team retains stewardship over the app.” — Shen Yi, professor, Fudan University, China Daily, September 21, 2020.

As Senator Marco Rubio told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures on the 20th of this month, control of the source code is critical… Beijing, not surprisingly, seems determined to keep all of TikTok’s secret sauce.

What’s not [for China] to like? Beijing-based ByteDance gets a lot of cash — the app will carry a valuation that could be as high as $60 billion — and the Communist Party will be able to continue to use TikTok for malign purposes.

The only acceptable arrangement, however, is to completely sever China from TikTok’s U.S. operations — or ban the app entirely.

ByteDance Ltd., the privately owned Chinese technology company, will soon sell minority ownership stakes in the TikTok app to American companies Oracle Corp. and Walmart Inc.

Oracle will become the “secure cloud technology provider” for a new U.S. company, TikTok Global, which will own most of the app’s worldwide operations.

The proposed arrangement, however, does little to address the most important U.S. national security concern with the wildly popular video-sharing platform.

Using his emergency powers, President Trump on August 6 prohibited, after the expiration of a 45-day period, Americans from any transaction with ByteDance or any of its subsidiaries. As a practical matter, the order contemplated the closure of the TikTok app if it was not sold to an American company. The order has been extended.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16523/arabs-palestinians-mistakes

At this pace, Palestinians might wake up one morning to discover that they no longer have any friends in the Arab countries at all.

“The Palestinians failed to establish their state. They failed because they did not want to establish a state. Here I mean the political leaders, some of whom still insist on repeating revolutionary phrases. The establishment of a Palestinian state will be a burden on the Palestinian leaders and will prevent them from practicing corruption…. The Palestinian Authority is no longer suitable to represent the Palestinian people.” — Iraqi writer Farouk Youssef, Al-Arabiya, September 19, 2020.

“Israel did not destroy Syria; Israel did not burn Libya; Israel did not displace the people of Egypt; Israel did not destroy Libya, and Israel did not tear up Lebanon. Before you Arabs blame Israel, take a look at yourselves in the mirror. The problem is in you.” — UAE Islamic cleric Wassem Yousef, Twitter, September 16, 2020.

“Palestinian leaders failed to invest in opportunities. They failed to take strategic decisions and chose [instead] to forge an alliance with Iran.” — Saudi writer Yusef al-Qabalan, Al-Riyadh, September 18, 2020.

The biggest losers, of course, are again the Palestinians — who are quickly losing the sympathy of a growing number of Arabs.

The Palestinians have recalled their ambassadors to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in protest of the signing of the peace deals between the two Gulf states and Israel. The Palestinians are now threatening to withdraw their envoys from any Arab country that follows suits and establishes relations with Israel.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16521/persecution-of-christians-august

“If we report these cases, the offenders get away with it by apologising and saying that they did it in an unconscious way. Should a Christian do something similar, he is immediately accused of blasphemy and the local Christian community is guilty by association. They rape our women, kill our people, destroy or burn our properties…. [All] we want is for our constitution and the law to treat us as equals, with justice, and for the guilty to be put on trial.” — Rev. Irfan James of Peshawar, AsiaNews.it, August 25, 2020, Pakistan.

“You get so disappointed when you see immigrants do that. I’m an immigrant myself. And I don’t get it. Sweden has given them everything they want.” — Naem Sufan, sputniknews.com, August 2020, Sweden.

Maira Shahbaz, a 14-year-old Christian girl, escaped from the home of Mohamad Nakash—her kidnapper, whom the Lahore High Court had recently ruled is her legitimate husband despite her objections—and fled to a police station, where she gave testimony, including on how she was being “forced into prostitution” and “filmed while by being raped,” with threats that the tape would be published unless she complies with the demands of her rapist/husband and friends… — churchinneed.org; August 26, 2020, Pakistan.

Rape and Forced Conversions of Christians in Pakistan

In late August, Maira Shahbaz, a 14-year-old Christian girl, escaped from the home of Mohamad Nakash—her kidnapper, whom the Lahore High Court had recently ruled is her legitimate husband despite her objections—and fled to a police station, where she gave testimony, including on how she was being “forced into prostitution” and “filmed while by being raped,” with threats that the tape would be published unless she complies with the demands of her rapist/husband and friends. “They threatened to murder my whole family,” the girl said. “My life was at stake in the hands of the accused and Nakash repeatedly raped me forcefully.” In an interview, a friend of Maira’s family described how the family is in hiding and constantly on the run, adding:

“Maira is traumatized. She cannot speak. We want to take her to the doctor, but we are afraid we might be spotted. We are all very frightened, but we place our trust in God.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16505/iran-missile-violations

“The important point about these missiles is that they are fully equipped with homing. It means they are of the fire-and-forget type. We fire the missile and the data is on the missile itself, it has various navigation systems built in.” — Iran’s Navy chief, Adm. Hossein Khanzadi, Associated Press, June 8, 2020.

“We are open about the fact that Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, come from the Islamic Republic of Iran.” — Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, The New Yorker, December 13, 2016.

“Today, more than ever, there is fertile ground – with the grace of God – for the annihilation, the wiping out, and the collapse of the Zionist regime. In Lebanon alone, over 100,000 missiles are ready to be launched….” — Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Brigadier General Hossein Salami, to Iran’s state-run IRIB TV, July 1, 2016.

Iran’s foreign-based weapons factories give it an advantageous military capability for waging wars or striking other nations through third countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Yemen or Iraq.

Instead of appeasing the ruling mullahs of Iran, it is incumbent on the international community to act to stop this predatory regime — now.

Not even a word of condemnation has been issued by either the United Nations or the European Union on the Iranian regime’s latest violations and acceleration of its threatening ballistic missile program. Instead, the UN and the EU are still committed to lifting the arms embargo on Tehran and keeping global sanctions removed from the ruling mullahs.

The regime, meanwhile has been focusing on the proliferation of long-range precision-guided ballistic missiles. It recently unveiled several new missiles — the Haj Qasem surface-to-surface ballistic missile and the Abu Mahdi long-range naval cruise missile — as well as several reportedly high-quality jet engines.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/09/18/iranian-justice-3-teens-will-have-fingers-cut-off-for-stealing-n943072

Three teenagers convicted of stealing had their sentences upheld by the Iranian Supreme Court. The court ordered that the sentence be carried out; four fingers from their right hands will be severed, in accordance with Islamic law.

The three young men claim that their confessions were tortured out of them. One of the young men is in very bad health after slitting his wrists earlier this year.

Fox News:

“Article 278 of the Islamic Punishment Law, the four fingers of their right hands will be cut off for four counts of robbery,” IRM noted. “The fingers must be cut off from the bottom, leaving only the palm and the thumb. According to Article 667 of the same law, they were also ordered to return the stolen goods.”

As a strict Islamic Republic, amputation is legal in Iran based on the Sharia law, which enables “amputation of the full length of four fingers of the right hand of the thief in such a manner that the thumb and palm of the hand remain” — although it remains relatively rare, with the death penalty the more common sentence handed down by the courts.

Nonetheless, it is not apparent how many Iranians are levied with judicial amputation each year, as the cases are kept clandestine to avoid heat from human rights advocates and the broader international community.

Iran apologists argued for years that the practice had been “phased out” and that Iran was actually a decent, enlightened country. Barack Obama thought so. He signed a deal that kept Iran from getting the bomb for a long time. At least, that’s what the Iranians told him.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-flies-warplanes-near-taiwan-as-senior-u-s-diplomat-visits-11600449576

TAIPEI—Beijing flew military aircraft close to Taiwan on a day that a senior American diplomat met with Taiwan’s president as part of a series of recent U.S. moves to improve ties with the self-ruled island.

Undersecretary of State Keith Krach, the highest-ranking State Department official to visit the island since Washington cut formal ties with Taipei four decades ago, expressed U.S. support for deeper cooperation at a dinner Friday evening hosted by President Tsai Ing-wen, her office said.

The Trump administration has pushed to further relationships with Taiwan as tensions grow with Beijing over technology, trade and global influence. The status of the island, which Beijing considers part of Chinese territory, is one of the most sensitive issues between the U.S. and China. Beijing sees high-level U.S. interactions with Taiwanese officials as provocations.

The State Department said earlier this week Mr. Krach’s trip was to attend a memorial service honoring former President Lee Teng-hui, who died in July. Mr. Lee’s legacy of helping Taiwan transition to a multiparty democracy gave the U.S. and Taiwan an opportunity to highlight shared political values around democracy, a point emphasized in statements from both sides.

Hours before the meeting, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it scrambled jet fighters after at least 18 Chinese aircraft crossed the so-called median line in the Taiwan Strait that roughly marks the halfway point between the island and mainland China.

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

Journalist Drew Holden kept a list of politicians and mainstream media outlets that have been denigrating, downplaying and outright mocking President Donald Trump’s approach to the Middle East. From Samantha Power to John Kerry to Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer to Rep. Mark Pocan; from Reuters to CNN to The New Yorker to Foreign Policy to the Guardian to…well, you get the point.

Mostly, it is a litany of how much more dangerous the region has become for a variety of Trump’s moves, and how the U.S. is doomed to failure. Following the Israel-United Arab Emirates and Israel-Bahrain peace agreements, witnessed by the United States, criticism has largely been centered around the idea that it really isn’t a big deal. They’re little countries. They don’t matter. They would have done it without Trump. The U.S. doesn’t need the oil, so who cares?

Wait. Wait. What was that about oil?

Who doesn’t need oil?

It is true that with President Trump’s support of fracking, the U.S. no longer relies on the import of oil from the Persian Gulf. But our allies—in particular, our Asian allies—do. And China certainly does.

And herein lies the almost entirely unremarked upon the importance of regional peace, freedom of navigation, the United States and the connection between Middle East policy and China policy—a connection that appears to have escaped left-leaning punditry.

The Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran has been threatening oil shipping from the Persian Gulf by the other oil-producing states, which are predominantly Sunni. The United States Navy guarantees freedom of navigation in the Gulf, and we have bases in Oman, Qatar (odd, but true), Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain with which to do it. There are those in the U.S. who say, “We don’t import Persian Gulf oil, so why should we pay for the security that allows the Arabs to profit?” “Why do we provide security for ships going to China?” China, which is in the process of building a much bigger navy and has established a Middle Eastern base in Djibouti on the Red Sea near the U.S. base there, could conceivably take over that responsibility.