RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/a-tale-of-two-countries/

Scottish nationalism in the wake of the coronavirus.

Britain is now reporting around 1,000 new cases of coronavirus a day, but the vast majority are in England. On June 29, Scotland accounted for only five out of 815 new cases across the whole of the U.K. Now, Scotland may be only weeks away from having no new cases. But something stands in their way, or so Scottish nationalists claim — the plague-ridden English!

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, a staunch pro-independence campaigner, said that while she had “no plans” to quarantine visitors from England, she couldn’t rule it out. Prime Minister Boris Johnson then accused her government of “astonishing and shameful,” “disappointing and divisive” rhetoric, making the bizarre statement that there is “no such thing as a border between England and Scotland.” Sturgeon responded in kind, calling out his “frankly disgraceful” politicization of the pandemic.

Though health is a devolved power and Scotland has, by and large, made its own decisions on how to tackle the coronavirus — in truth, the two countries’ approaches have been more similar than not. Take the mistakes made, for instance. The calamitous handling of care homes was an error made both north and south of the border. During its worst weeks, Britain saw a 300 percent increase in care-home deaths in England, while Scotland saw a comparatively lower 200 percent increase, though it’s worth mentioning, as writer Alex Massie has noted, “if the overall Scottish casualty rate remains lower that likely only reflects the fact that Scotland had fewer cases, proportionately, when lockdown was introduced.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/10/after-the-u-s-leaves-who-should-the-u-n-be-next/

We should never allow ourselves to be sullied by taking part in such incompetence, while paying for its officials’ lavish salaries and privileged bureaucratic perks.

We’d take it a step further, however. It’s become increasingly clear from observing the United Nations itself that it, too, suffers from many of the same ailments as WHO.

It spends billions and dollars but achieves little or nothing at all. It’s a feel-good bureaucracy that lets globalists pretend they’re addressing the world’s problems, but instead empowers dictators and authoritarians to do their worst.

Take but one example: the Human Rights Council. More than half its members are non-democracies, and include human rights violators Libya, Venezuela, Eritrea and others.

But what’s really strange about the U.N., and inexcusable, is its bizarre fixation on condemning Israel for lawful acts, while ignoring the killing, torturing and murder-by-government of many of its less-savory members.

Lest you think it an exaggeration, consider this: Since 2015, according the the U.N. Watch database, there have been 101 condemnatory resolutions against Israel brought to the floor of the General Assembly. All other nations total 35, six of which were against the U.S.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16178/turkey-erdogan-migrant-blackmail

On February 27, Erdoğan’s government was on the threshold of executing its threat to flood Europe with millions of (mostly Syrian) migrants … Hundreds of thousands of migrants began flocking to the border. By the next day, Greece was not only operating 52 Navy ships to guard its islands close to Turkey; it had also mobilized additional troops on land. Its security forces were able to block 10,000 migrants from entering Greece by way of the Turkish land border.

The new blackmail will not work for a number of reasons. First, because many migrants in Turkey have learned from experience that the Turkish-Greek border can no longer easily be crossed. And second, because the Greek security forces are now better equipped and better prepared to confront a new wave of migrants.

Greece has finally done the right thing and deprived Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of his perpetual threats to blackmail the European Union.

On February 27, Erdoğan’s government was on the threshold of executing its threat to flood Europe with millions of (mostly Syrian) migrants and opening its northwestern borders with Greece and Bulgaria. Hundreds of thousands of migrants began flocking to the border. In a few days, by the beginning of March, they would be in EU territory, to be followed by hundreds of thousands of others. Things, however, did not go as planned by Ankara.

By the next day, Greece was not only operating 52 Navy ships to guard its islands close to Turkey; it had also mobilized additional troops on land. Its security forces were able to block 10,000 migrants from entering Greece by way of the Turkish land border. Some migrants were stuck in the no-man’s land between the two countries and eventually had to return to the Turkish side. Greek officials reported only 76 illegal entries, whom they detained and prosecuted. In his social media account, Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kıran compared the alleged treatment of migrants seeking to cross illegally into Greece with conditions at Nazi death camps at Auschwitz. The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece immediately condemned and denounced the statement.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/libyas-foul-foretaste-of-the-post-american-world-11594228201?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

Does Libya show us the future of world politics?

U.S. engagement there has been minimal since a 2012 terrorist attack killed four Americans, including the ambassador, and traumatized the Obama administration. In America’s absence, over half a dozen powers are struggling to control Libya’s future, carving up its territory, and subsidizing militias and warlords as they compete for control over its oil and gas. No end to the war is in sight.

On one side Turkey and Qatar, with some discreet Italian cheerleading, back the Tripoli-based warlords and affiliated tribal leaders whom the United Nations has anointed the “legitimate” government of Libya, the so-called Government of National Accord, or GNA. On the side of the challenger coalition of tribal leaders and warlords stand France, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The latter coalition is led most visibly by Khalifa Haftar, a rogue field marshal who heads what he calls the Libyan National Army.

No higher principles are at stake. Neither side stands for anything more noble than its own security and power. The GNA isn’t fighting for freedom, Islam, U.N. legitimacy or any cause greater than its right to make as much money as possible selling hydrocarbons while taxing the human traffickers and arms smugglers operating in the country’s chaos. The rebels want pretty much the same thing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-holocaust-disneyland-11594336467?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_4&cx_artPos=3#cxrecs_s

The territory of Ukraine was the site of countless horrors committed against the Jewish people under Nazi occupation. Yet the resource-strapped country lacks a major museum and memorial dedicated to the Holocaust. While an international initiative to create one began in 2016, the ambitious project is in disarray, with one critic calling it “Holocaust Disneyland.”

For centuries Ukraine has constituted the historical homeland for much of European Jewry, and more than half of American Jews have roots in the region. An estimated 1.5 million Jews were killed on its territory during the “Holocaust by bullets,” with some 90% of the killings carried out directly by German forces. Babyn Yar—a ravine outside of Kyiv, where some 34,000 Jews were rounded up and shot Sept. 29-30, 1941—has come to symbolize the killing fields across Eastern Europe.

The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center initiative, launched in 2016, likely will be the last major Holocaust memorial built during the lifetimes of survivors. Costs are projected to surpass $100 million. Most funding has come from four Jewish billionaires, some of whose families perished at Babyn Yar. Yet three of the billionaires are Russian citizens. The leading role played by Russians has been controversial, given that the country has occupied and annexed swaths of Ukrainian territory and waged a war that has cost at least 14,000 Ukrainian lives since 2014.

https://dianebederman.com/jews-are-our-dogs-say-muslims-in-canada/

How is this for a rallying cry: “Jews are our dogs”?

Canada, are you OK with this? I have to assume so because no one said a word when predominantly Muslim students shared that statement, July 4 in Mississauga, Ontario at Celebration Square at the “Mississauga Protest for Palestine.”

I guess this is Canada’s idea of diversity in action.

Here is the battle cry:

Praise Allah. Allah is the Greatest

Free free Palestine

Palestine will never die

Long live Palestine

Palestine will be free from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea

We will sacrifice [redeem] our soul and blood for Palestine [Originally in Arabic]

Martyrs by the millions march to [Al-Quds] Jerusalem [Originally in Arabic]

We may die but Palestine will live [Originally in Arabic]

Palestine is our country and the Jews are our dogs [Originally in Arabic]

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/china-advances-michael-ledeen/

China and Iran have unleashed a harsh domestic repression against protesters, as natural disasters sweep across the two countries. China took an early lead:

Waters in 116 local rivers rose one to ten meters (3.3 feet to 32.8 feet). State news agency Xinhua quoted Chongqing city officials on July 2 saying that water levels of 12 rivers are higher than the upper limits, meaning the banks may burst at any time.

At least one person has died, and one is missing, the report said, adding that almost 60,000 have been affected by the floods in the city.

Local authorities in one area in Chongqing have warned those who live on the fourth story or below in buildings close to rivers to be prepared to evacuate.

Authorities are warning civilians to pay close attention to local rivers and streams. As of the beginning of the month, some 304 rivers had reached perilous levels.

And in Iran, official death totals due to coronavirus have reached a new high. Given that ALL Iranian data are probably falsified, the new death totals are especially dubious. They are both big countries, and do not dread a sudden or dramatic drop in population. Au contraire, the new data suggest that the threat to stability in Iran is diminishing, and therefore that internal stability is increasing.

https://mailchi.mp/peaceandtolerance/when-did-the-left-first-go-woke-when-they-betrayed-black-slaves?e=c4e6370125

On this very day in 1997, Dr. Charles Jacobs, then the president of the American Anti-Slavery Group, an organization at the forefront of the war against modern-day black slavery in Africa, published a biting op-ed in The Boston Globe: “Where are the liberals?”

Back then, the world was slowly coming to grips with a stinging fact: that Arabs and Muslims own black men, women, and children as chattel property in Mauritania and Sudan — today.

The problem, however, was that all of the activist and media elements which one would think would jump to free modern-day black slaves — including the anti-apartheid coalition of the 1980s — simply weren’t there. Even worse, organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — the people who had produced the original reports of slavery which alerted Dr. Jacobs and others to its horrors — simply refused to help.

Furthermore, so-called black “leaders” like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, world-famous figures with massive community and media clout, either directly rebuffed efforts to help tell the world, or backed off at the behest of actively hostile parties such as Louis Farrakhan (who preferred to blame the Jews).

Though a few brave and decent people in the mainstream media, such as at Dateline NBC and even The New York Times, did do their part in broadcasting the images and accounts of slavery, such instances of righteousness were few and far between — and today, are just about extinct.

What, then, astounded Dr. Jacobs and his allies was that it was conservatives and evangelical Christians who actually took up the fight. While liberals waffled and worried about offending Arabs or “dividing” the black community (against Farrakhan), conservatives stood up. Pat Robertson’s 700 Club became a forceful mouthpiece for the abolitionist movement. They were likely the first national television show to broadcast footage of heroes like John Eibner and Baroness Caroline Cox buying back the freedom of black Sudanese slaves — they even trashed Farrakhan as “an absolute charlatan”!

Liberals, however, save for a precious few decent Democrats like Barney Frank and the late Donald Payne, were silent.

That is what led Dr. Jacobs to ask, “Where are the liberals?”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/liberals-betrayal-black-slaves-africa-frontpagemagcom/

Twenty-three years ago yesterday, in 1997, Dr. Charles Jacobs, a frequent FrontPageMag contributor and president of the pro-Israel educational non-profit Americans for Peace and Tolerance, published a biting op-ed in The Boston Globe: “Where are the liberals?”

At the time, Dr. Jacobs, a human rights campaigner and Jewish activist, was the president and research director of the American Anti-Slavery Group, an organization at the forefront of the war against modern-day black slavery in Africa.

By 1997, thanks to his relentless activism and that of the heroic black journalist Sam Cotton (may his memory be a blessing), the world was slowly coming to grips with a vile fact: that Arabs and Muslims own black men, women, and children as chattel property in Mauritania and Sudan — today. Dr. Jacobs himself had come to this news inadvertently. One day in 1990 he picked up a copy of The Economist on a flight home, and flipped to page 42 where he found a one-page editorial entitled “Slavery: By any other name.” What he read shook him to his core: “In Sudan chattel slavery is spreading fast, as a consequence of the civil war between the black Christian and pagan southerners and the Arab, Muslim north.… In February 1988 a [black] child could be bought for $90; so many slaves are available [two years later] that the price has now fallen to $15.” A child cheaper than a pizza; Jacobs took the magazine home with him and was never the same.

The problem, however, was that all of the activist and media elements which one would think would jump to free modern-day black slaves, including the formidable anti-apartheid coalition of the 1980s, simply weren’t there. Even worse, organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — the people who had produced the reports of slavery which originally alerted Dr. Jacobs and others to its horrors — simply refused to be of much help.