RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16152/modern-slavery

There are an estimated 136,000 people living in modern slavery just in Britain. Slavery in the UK takes the form of forced labor, and domestic and sexual exploitation. Albanians and Vietnamese are among the groups that constitute the majority of slaves. — Global Slavery Index, 2018.

There are currently an estimated 9.2 million black slaves in Africa. Slavery, according to the index, includes forced labor, forced sexual exploitation and forced marriage. — Global Slavery Index, 2018.

“According to the U.N.’s International Labor Organization (ILO), there are more than three times as many people in forced servitude today as were captured and sold during the 350-year span of the transatlantic slave trade”, Time Magazine March 14, 2019.

Modern slavery earns criminal networks an estimated $150 billion a year, just slightly less than drug smuggling and weapons trafficking.

“G-20 countries import some $354 billion worth of products at risk of being produced by modern slavery every year”. — Global Slavery Index, 2018.

One Malian slave, Raichatou, told the Guardian in 2013 that she became a slave at the age of seven when her mother, also a slave, died. “My father could only watch on helplessly as my mother’s master came to claim me and my brothers,” she said. She worked as a servant for the family without pay for nearly 20 years, and was forced into a marriage with another slave whom she didn’t know, so that she could supply her master with more slaves.

The news has been filled with reports about Black Lives Matter (BLM) supporters vandalizing and tearing down statues of slave traders, slave owners, and anyone who they perceive as having been historically involved with slavery. In Bristol, England, a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down and thrown into the harbor. In Belgium, statues of King Leopold were defaced.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16150/china-war-india

China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea — equipped with military bases, naval ports and airfields — pose a strategic threat to neighboring countries. In 2018, China landed nuclear strike-capable bombers on these artificial islands, sending an alarming message to the U.S. and regional powers.

Some commentators ascribe China’s stepped-up predations — on Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Australia — to a hope that the world is too distracted by the coronavirus pandemic and the economic devastation it unleashed to bother confronting China, let alone stop it.

While the U.S. has decreased its nuclear stockpile, China is boosting its arsenal, according to a report released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute on June 15.

The Free World, if it wishes to remain free, seriously needs to stand with the world’s largest democracy. If China is allowed to succeed in its aggression, it will only embolden the Communists in Beijing to redraw borders, dictate terms to other countries in the region, and press on with its plan to dominate the world.

India has been facing its toughest military challenge in nearly six decades after 20 Indian soldiers were reported killed by Chinese troops in a border clash.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16153/how-to-deal-with-china

China’s threats to punish Australia seem to be part of an increasingly bullying, aggressive approach by Chinese officials, not only toward Australia, but also toward India, and at least four other countries in the region: Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Japan, as well as islands in the Pacific.

The only real solution to China’s duplicity and aggression would be for Western nations — all 186 nations that were harmed by China’s lies during the Covid-19 pandemic — to cut all ties with China, to start a firm policy of “Made in America” or “Made Anywhere But China” to show a willing independence from a country that openly aspires to dominate the world.

China — perhaps hoping that everyone is sufficiently distracted by the virus the Chinese Communist Party unleashed on it, as well as by the “free gifts” from China that, in their trade-off for freedom, promise to be fatal — is clearly on the march. The world might remember that it would have been so much easier to stop Hitler before he crossed the Rhine.

China’s Communist Party leadership was not pleased to hear a call from Australia for a global inquiry into the origin of the Covid-19 virus and China’s possible role in it.

Australia further requested that the investigation be conducted outside the purview of the World Health Organization (WHO), which had had been spreading lies and disinformation about the transmissibility of the virus. China seems to have decided that Australia’s insistence on an independent study was a violation of the spirit of their bilateral relationship. Indeed, for the past three decades, the Australian economy has been buoyed by expanding commercial ties with China. This relationship has now soured, and China has been threatening Australia with economic warfare unless it reconsiders its inquisitive foreign policy.

Making good on its threat, China slapped an 80% tariff on Australian barley and has threatened to boycott Australian wine and beef. Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne has rejected any such attempts at economic coercion.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/voice-jihad-will-be-heard-loud-and-clear-terry-bishop/

On the same day senior Taliban leaders could be seen in a video celebrating dozens of “various martyrdom seeking groups” including suicide bombers, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was telling the U.S. State Department and reporters that he “[believes] we are in a more hopeful moment that validates our approach [regarding the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan].” He was “optimistic that finally we are moving forward to the start of the intra-Afghan negotiations.”

Apparently, the Taliban defines negotiation quite differently than Khalilzad is willing to admit. Per his own words in the recent special briefing, he is clearly wrong — either by virtue of ignorance or misinformation — on the Taliban’s commitment to break ties with al-Qaeda (and a conglomerate of Deobandi-linked terrorist groups in the region, for that matter). What is more, he has also ignored their means for preparing for peace. After all, nothing says peace more than a group of martyrdom seekers and suicide bombers.

On June 1, 2020 — the same day of Khalilzad’s lofty statements about the organization — a near 35-minute video entitled “Victorious Force (1)” was released by the Taliban, highlighting some of their various methods for engaging in negotiation with the Afghan government that are fearfully ignored by a blinded special envoy. “We are in a good place,” he contends. However, the martyrdom groups participating in jihadi training at Al-Fateh Camp seem to say otherwise.

The video, which includes English subtitles, can be viewed in its entirety on Voice of Jihad, the official website of the Afghan Taliban. It was produced by Al-Hijra Studio, part of the Audio & Visual Sector of the Multimedia Department of the Commission for Cultural Affairs of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The short film begins with the recitation and English translation of the Quran, chapter 8, Surah al-Anfal (The Spoils of War), verse 60: “And prepare against them whatever you are capable of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-statues-and-limitations-11593040923?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The U.S. isn’t alone in grappling with whom to commemorate in public monuments. Europe is having its own debates, and as in America the results are sometimes positive and just as often ridiculous.

In the positive column, there’s Belgium’s rethink of statues honoring King Leopold II, and Bristol’s removal of monuments to Edward Colston in the United Kingdom. Leopold’s personal rule of Belgian Congo was marked by brutality on an industrial scale, with mass amputations a favored means of controlling a population enslaved in service of Leopold’s rubber interests. Colston made his fortune in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

The problem in both places is that the statues have been attacked by mobs rather than removed by local governments after reasoned debate. That absence of reasonable discussion also explains the other mob targets.

Those include statues of Winston Churchill, one of which in London’s Parliament Square had to be boarded up to protect it. The role of Churchill’s government in exacerbating a Bengal famine that killed several million Indians in 1943 is worth debating. But Churchill’s leadership in defeating Nazi Germany counts for more to any rational mind.

Speaking of India, Gandhi isn’t immune. A move is afoot in addled corners of the left to remove statues of the leader of India’s independence movement due to racist remarks he made about Africans.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16148/end-china-tech-empire

China’s window of vulnerability… is only a few years at most. So this is the time for the world to act.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology talks about the country committing $1.4 trillion in the next five years.

China also is working on plundering Google, which has various operations in the People’s Republic including its AI China Center in Beijing and partnerships with the country’s two leading universities, Peking and Tsinghua. Yet the company has larger plans.

Google, which has refused to work with the Defense Department on artificial intelligence, is helping the Chinese military in that critical field. This situation is hideous. “The United States has to absolutely prohibit Google and other tech firms from doing business in China or with Chinese firms,” according to Brandon Weichert.

China’s market is losing its attractiveness. The economy is in distress, suffering from both the coronavirus epidemic and systemic weaknesses, such as excessive indebtedness, smothering state controls, and xenophobic hostility to foreign investment…. Now is the time to shut down Beijing’s massive, state-directed, and government-funded effort to dominate the world’s technologies.

“China,” some say, “is largely a land of rule-bound rote learners.” The Chinese try but rarely make breakthroughs on their own. Moreover, ruler Xi Jinping, who demands that his regime dominate the technologies of the world, is fast eliminating the one essential ingredient of innovation: freedom. Totalitarianism promotes obedience, a quality not particularly helpful for developing the technologies of tomorrow.

Yet despite everything, Xi’s China has still managed to become a technology leader in critical fields, such as quantum communications and 5G wireless communications. The Chinese, because of their success, are now racing to own the technologies of this century.

China also has weaknesses. Its economy is failing, and the regime, through especially provocative actions, is losing the support of the international community. The country’s window of vulnerability, however, is only a few years at most. So this is the time for the world to act.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16142/visible-muslim-women

“Muslim women are hampered in their development by difficult circumstances and a theory of coercion. … I could not tolerate that women can only pray in the back of mosques and are not properly recognized. I wanted to change this traditional picture, but the IGGÖ refused to question this, even institutionalized it.” — Fatma Akay-Türker, former spokeswoman for women’s affairs of the Islamic Faith Community, who resigned.
“I believe in democracy, freedom, questioning deadlocked theological structures and the equality of human beings. In a world dominated by men I fight for the right of women to speak out, against all forms of discrimination and the sexualization of women.” — Fatma Akay-Türker.
“Relevant passages [of the Koran] regarding women must be reinterpreted. But this was not accepted among the men [in the council]. The classical interpretation of the Koran cannot solve the problems of women….” — Fatma Akay-Türker.
In the meantime, a man has filled Akay-Türker’s position.

Fatma Akay-Türker, until June 16 spokeswoman for women’s affairs of the Islamic Faith Community of Austria (IGGÖ), has stepped down with a statement:

Resignation!!

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/while-america-promotes-freedom-and-human-rights-abroad-we-must-uphold-those-values-home

Iran is hosting an “I Can’t Breathe” international cartoon exhibition, with seventy-two pieces from twenty-seven countries, mocking America for its racial unrest and portraying its leaders and police as Nazis and Klan members.

In China, officials are blasting America for its racism while the People’s Daily, the communist party’s official newspaper, ran a cartoon of a crumbling Statue of Liberty and a White House soaked in blood and tear gas. In Moscow, Russian president Vladimir Putin said on state TV that “if this fight for natural rights, legal rights, turns into mayhem and rioting, I see nothing good for the [United States].”

The hypocrisy is breathtaking, for Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow are among the world’s leading human rights abusers, and they don’t even pretend to respect the freedoms that Americans take for granted.

Tehran is crushing pro-democracy demonstrations in increasingly harsh fashion, killing hundreds and arresting thousands as recently as November, while jailing and torturing journalists, human-rights lawyers, labor leaders, and other activists. Beijing is jailing lawyers, censoring the internet, holding Uighurs in concentration camps, and curtailing freedom in Hong Kong. The oligarchs, journalists, activists, and opposition leaders who challenge Putin often wind up jailed, attacked, or dead.

Nevertheless, the autocrats’ attacks on America remind us that due to the ideals we promote around the world – freedom, democracy, equality rights, pluralism-we pay a price abroad when we don’t live up to them at home. We invite attack from our autocratic adversaries, divert attention from their human rights horrors, and make ourselves a less effective advocate for human rights.