RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/communist-cuba-enslaves-physicians-11577299061?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

What do you call a system that combines slavery with espionage? In Communist Cuba, you call it humanitarian aid. For decades Havana has sent tens of thousands of doctors abroad as a supposed sign of goodwill, only to steal their income and use some as unwilling spies. Fortunately, more nations are rejecting Cuba’s “help.”

After toppling socialist dictator Evo Morales in November, Bolivia expelled more than 700 Cuban doctors, accusing them of fomenting protests demanding Mr. Morales’s return to power. Ecuador moved to evict the 400 or so Cuban doctors within its borders a few days earlier. One doctor said she and her colleagues received only a third of their promised salaries, with Havana keeping the rest. She also said Cuban authorities forced them to “send messages of support to the revolution.”

In late 2018, incoming Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro demanded that Cuba allow the more than 8,500 doctors in his country to bring their families and collect their full salary, which was paid for by Brazilian taxpayers. Havana soon recalled the doctors. A year before, at least 150 Cuban doctors in Brazil filed lawsuits detailing their mistreatment. One said, “There comes a time when you get tired of being a slave.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15311/persecuted-christians-enemies

“You have this absurd situation where the scheme is set up to help Syrian refugees and the people most in need, Christians who have been ‘genocided,’ they can’t even get into the U.N. camps to get the food. If you enter and say I am a Christian or convert, the Muslim U.N. guards will block you [from] getting in… and even threaten you…” — Paul Diamond, British Human Rights Lawyer, CBN News, December 4, 2019.

Lord George Carey is suing the UK Home Office for allegedly being “institutionally biased” against Christian refugees and therefore complicit in what he calls “the steady crucifixion of Middle East Christians.”

When it comes to offering asylum, the UK “appears to discriminate in favour of Muslims” instead of Christians. Statistics seemed to confirm this allegation: “out of 4,850 Syrian refugees accepted for resettlement by the Home Office in 2017, only eleven were Christian….” — Barnabas Fund, November 2, 2017.

A number of other Christian orderlies were also denied visas, including another nun with a PhD in biblical theology from Oxford; another nun denied for not having a personal bank account; and a Catholic priest denied for not being married.

Christian “infidels” need not apply, but radical Muslims are welcomed with open arms.

The United Nations Refugee Agency appears to be committed to blocking persecuted Christians from receiving any assistance. According to a recent CBN News report:

Christian Syrian refugees … have been blocked from getting help from the United Nations Refugee Agency, the UNHCR, by Muslim UN officials in Jordan.

One of the refugees, Hasan, a Syrian convert to Christianity, told us in a phone call that Muslim UN camp officials “knew that we were Muslims and became Christians and they dealt with us with persecution and mockery. They didn’t let us into the office. They ignored our request.”

Yes, tiny Israel with 9 million people, the size of New Jersey is number 8!  The U.S. is 473 times the size of Israel. 
Happy Holidays from Janet Levy.

According to U.S. News and World Report, the most powerful countries in 2019 are:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/power-rankings
1.   United States
2.   Russia
3.   China
4.  Germany
5.  United Kingdom
6.  France
7.  Japan
8.  Israel
9.  Saudi Arabia
10. South Korea
11.  United Arab Emirates
12.  Canada
13.  Iran
14.  Switzerland
15.  Australia
16.  Turkey
17.    India
18.   Italy
19.   Iraq
20.  Singapore
21.   Sweden
22.  Pakistan
23.  Spain
24.  Qatar
25.  Belgium
26.  Netherlands
27.  Norway
28.  Denmark
29.  Egypt
30.  Brazil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15320/palestinians-iraq

Instead of helping the Palestinians who are being arrested and killed and tortured in Iraq, the UN, EU and “pro-Palestinian” groups are busy spouting hate against Israel.

The number of Palestinians in Iraq has dropped from more than 40,000 before 2003 to fewer than 6,000 today. Many Palestinians have been killed, injured and arrested by Iraqi authorities and various militias. Thousands of Palestinians fled to neighboring countries, including Syria and Jordan.

The United Nations, European Union and various human rights organizations pay attention to the Palestinians only when they find a way to hold Israel responsible for their “suffering.”

More than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed in Syria since the beginning of the civil war there in 2011. Palestinians in Lebanon are banned from working in about 70 professions, such as medicine, law and engineering, or joining any professional association…. Palestinians are victims not only of their Arab brothers, but also of the double standards of the international community, which continues to be obsessed only with Israel.

Palestinians living in Iraq were recently stripped of the equal-rights status they had enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. Now, the Palestinians are complaining that they are being targeted by the Iraqi authorities and various militias.

Their complaints, however, seem to have been ignored by the international community, including Western activists and human rights organizations that describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian.”

No one in the international community cares about Palestinians when they are targeted by their Arab brothers.

The United Nations, European Union and various human rights organizations pay attention to the Palestinians only when they find a way to hold Israel responsible for their “suffering.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pompeo-champions-the-faithful-11577144946?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Christmas is anything but a season of peace and joy for millions of Christians around the world today. Not since the death of Stalin have Christians in so many places faced the levels of discrimination, violence, imprisonment and even death on account of their religion that they do today.

After more than a century of intermittent genocide, persecution and forced removals, ancient Christian populations in much of the Middle East are on the edge of extinction. Iraq’s Christian population, estimated at 1.4 million as recently as 2003, fell by almost 90% in the chaos that followed the American invasion. Roughly three quarters of Syria’s Christian population, estimated at two million before the current civil war, are refugees. Once a substantial percentage of the Arab Palestinian population, Christians are rapidly disappearing from the Palestinian territories. Egypt still retains a large Christian population, but Copts face pervasive discrimination and, especially in rural areas, violence.

Persecution hangs over beleaguered Christian communities in much of the world. Christians in sub-Saharan Africa face violence from Boko Haram fighters. In Pakistan no Christian is safe from false charges of blasphemy. Hindu mobs in India have attacked churches. In Indonesia, radical Islamists attempt to disrupt the traditionally peaceful relationships among the country’s religious groups.

The most alarming developments are taking place in China. As authorities in Beijing work to enforce ideological conformity and restrict debate among China’s 1.4 billion people, the Christian population is experiencing heightened scrutiny and pressure. Crosses have been pulled down from church roofs, and churches have been bulldozed. More ominously, the biometric monitoring and close surveillance that has been used to crush Tibetan Buddhists and the Muslims of Xinjiang has been systematically introduced into Christian churches across the country.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15324/german-parliament-hezbollah

Germany, however, has refused to ban Hezbollah’s “political wing,” which continues to raise funds in the country. A German foreign ministry official, Niels Annen, has said that such a ban would be counterproductive because “we focus on dialogue.” His comment has been understood to mean that the German government does not want to burn bridges with Hezbollah’s sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“We don’t have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hezbollah on one hand and the resistance party on the other…. Every element of Hezbollah, from commanders to members as well as our various capabilities, is in the service of the resistance, and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority.” — Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem.

Germany’s Social Democratic Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, however, has refused to ban Hezbollah in its entirety. He recently repeated the German government’s distinction between Hezbollah’s legitimate and illegitimate activities in Germany.

“It remains to be seen to what extent the German federal government will…actually ‘exhaust all the resources of the rule of law’ to stop Hezbollah’s money laundering and terrorist financing in Germany.” — Bild, December 19, 2019.

The German parliament has passed a non-binding resolution that calls on the German government to ban the activities of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah — Arabic for “The Party of Allah” — in Germany.

The measure — supported by center-right Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats, the two major parties that make up Germany’s ruling coalition, and also by the classical liberal Free Democrats — has been hailed as “important,” “significant,” and a “crucial step.”

The resolution, however, falls short of a complete ban on Hezbollah and appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that would allow Germany to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15301/turkey-osman-kavala

To no one’s surprise, on December 10, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) called for the immediate release of Kavala, saying there was a lack of reasonable suspicion that he had committed an offense,

According to its official statement, the [EU] court found that Kavala’s detention “pursued an ulterior purpose…namely that of reducing [him] to silence,” ruling that the charges he faced and the detention “were likely to have a dissuasive effect on the work of human-rights defenders.”

Although the indictment does not give any evidence of Kavala’s involvement in any violent protest, it claims Kavala’s phone conversations with ordinary people — academics and NGO people — are evidence of “terrorist activity.”

Even if Kavala is released shortly, as the Constitution dictates he should be, he will have spent nearly 800 days in jail for no crime, and, from the moment he is released, will have to carry on with his legal struggles against a state with no tolerance for dissent.

Businessman-turned-philanthropist Osman Kavala has been promoting arts, culture and history since he started to devote his time to civil society in the early 1990s. His understanding of promoting culture was to promote cultural diversity and pluralism. His resumé says, “he dedicated his life to building a civil and just society.” His Anatolian Cultural Foundation seeks to bridge ethnic divides through art, including with neighboring Armenia with which Turkey has no diplomatic relations.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/12/pakistan-sentences-fulbright-scholar-death-daniel-greenfield/

“The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”

That’s what that looks like.

A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Saturday sentenced a liberal scholar and former university lecturer to death on blasphemy charges.

In Pakistan, anti-terrorism courts terrorize.

In 2013, Junaid Hafeez was accused by students at the university where he taught of making blasphemous Facebook posts. Insulting Islam’s Prophet Mohammad carries a mandatory death penalty in Pakistan, which is about 95% Muslim.

His lawyers say he was framed by students from an extremist Islamist party for his liberal and secular views and this month a U.S. religious freedom commission placed Hafeez on its list of global victims.

“He (Junaid Hafeez) shall be hanged by neck till his death subject to its confirmation by the honorable high court,” a court order stated.

Hafeez, who quit his studies at Pakistan’s top medical college to pursue a passion for art and literature, secured a Fulbright scholarship and attended Jackson State University where he majored in American literature, photography and theater.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15317/britain-corbynista

What the pundits ignore is that all those constituencies had already voted Conservative in 2016 when they voted for Brexit.

Looking beyond Brexit, one key feature of the election may well be the dramatic rejection by voters of the Labour Party and its current leader Jeremy Corbyn. The party’s performance was the worst since the 1930s and, if opinion polls are to be trusted, its leader the most disliked since James Ramsay MacDonald, who headed a Labour government for nine months in 1924 before transforming himself into a turncoat.

The beauty of democracy is that nothing is irreversible. However, democracy needs a strong opposition. The sooner Corbyn and the Corbynista bow out, the better for British democracy.

The British Conservative Party’s victory at last week’s general election has been described variously as “an earthquake” and “a triumph.” Because the party won it biggest parliamentary majority since the 1980s, the election may look like a triumph for its leader, Prime Minister Boris Johnson. However, if applied to the opposition Labour Party’s performance, the label “earthquake” may also appear to be in order.

A closer examination of the results, additionally, may provide a more nuanced picture or at least a less pixelated one. One key feature commentators have focused on was the massive switch of many traditional Labour-supporting constituencies to the Conservatives. Pundits ask: How did people who had never voted Conservative decide to do so after generations of attachment to socialism?

What the pundits ignore is that all those constituencies had already voted Conservative in 2016 when they voted for Brexit. In other words, by voting Tory in the general elections they were just confirming their previous transfer of loyalty. The Labour Party lost just one constituency that had voted against Brexit, Kensington in London, to the Conservatives. However, it won another constituency, Putney, also in London, which had voted Remain.