RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-truth-about-chinas-persecution-of-falun-gong/

Over a million Uyghurs were incarcerated over the last year, blood-and-DNA-tested, ready for organ-tissue matching.

There is a certain transgressive thrill in pulling the tail of a sacred cow. In that sense, Ms. Tolentino’s piece “Stepping Into the Uncanny, Unsettling World of Shen Yun” (March 19, 2019) is a compliment, a flare in the New York sky that Falun Gong, as a victim group, has finally achieved sacred-cow status. But even tail-pulling has an unwritten etiquette: If I wanted to write a critique of, say, traditional Jewish Passover food, I would stick to things such as the texture of gefilte fish rather than condemning the Seder or questioning the existence of the Holocaust. And I suspect Ms. Tolentino would agree with me.

Ms. Tolentino was essentially writing a critical dance review of Shen Yun Performing Arts while sprinkling a little snark on — in her view — the cornball conventions of Chinese theater and Falun Gong’s suspicious refusal to adopt Western, politically correct norms. Yet her argument suddenly took a weird detour, delivering a skeptical judgement on the charges of Chinese State organ harvesting of Falun Gong (“many experts dispute this”).

Why did she do this? Two reasons: A moment of transgressive pleasure is followed by guilt, and guilt must be answered by justification — perhaps the victim group is not really a sacred cow after all? Or they have brought their suffering upon themselves? (You know, through hypocrisy or not answering her emails or something). The second reason is that even a cursory glance at the credible claims surrounding Chinese organ harvesting will establish that this is not the Holocaust.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273331/kiwi-madness-bruce-bawer

Last month, according to at least one count, there were 154 terrorist attacks around the world. Here’s a rundown of some of the major ones. The Taliban took 23 lives in Helmond Province, Afghanistan; at least 15 in Qaysar District, Afghanistan; ten in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan; 20 in Bala Murghab, Afghanistan; 22 in a second attack in Qaysar; and 65 in Sangin District, Afghanistan. ISIS murdered eight people in Idlib, Syria; five in the Anbar desert in Iraq; 16 in Jalalabad; seven in Makhmur, Iraq; 17 in two separate attacks in Kabul; and five in the Syrian desert. In Mali, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb killed 32 people in two separate attacks. In Syria, Ansar al-Tawhid killed 27. In Mozambique, Ansar al-Sunna killed 13 people in a terrorist attack. In three terrorist attacks in Mali, Al-Shabaab took a total of 38 lives. A Turkish jihadist, Gökmen Tanis, shot four people to death on a Utrecht tram. And a man named Brenton Tarrant killed 50 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Which of these things is not like the others?

Only one of these attacks was not motivated by a devotion to Islam. Only one was committed by a single individual acting on his own and not as a member of a terrorist group. And only one made worldwide headlines and caused an entire country to lose its mind and take a scimitar to its own freedoms.

Surely one reason why New Zealanders went insane over the mosque attacks, which took place on March 15, is that their country is so geographically isolated that it can seem immune to the troubles that beset the rest of the world. Another reason is that New Zealanders tend to think of themselves as supremely virtuous, liberal, and multicultural.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijings-chilling-imprisonment-of-a-taiwanese-critic-11554057567

Taipei

Li Ching-yu fixes me with a look of steely determination. “Even in prison,” she says, “my husband is a human-rights activist, and he wants the world to speak out, not only for his freedom but for all prisoners of conscience in China. The last time I saw him, he told me: ‘Go everywhere and tell everyone.’ ”

Her husband, Li Ming-che, is a Taiwanese democracy activist. He has languished in Chinese custody for two years because of his writings. Communist authorities arrested him in March 2017 as he tried to enter the mainland from Macau. Ten days later, China revealed he was detained on suspicion of “endangering national security.” For 177 days Mrs. Li received no news, until his trial on Sept. 11, 2017. In a televised confession—almost certainly obtained under duress—he said he had “disseminated articles and essays that maliciously attacked and defamed the Chinese government.” In November 2017, Mr. Li was sentenced to five years for “subverting state power.”

In Mr. Li’s case, Beijing has applied its “One China policy” in a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose fashion. Because China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, it accuses Mr. Li of writing illegally within its jurisdiction. Yet Mr. Li, who supported civil society in China, is believed to be the first activist imprisoned under Beijing’s new law restricting foreign nongovernmental organizations. So even though his activities from Taiwan are regarded as within China’s jurisdiction, China classified him as a foreigner and stripped him of rights to which Chinese nationals are entitled under the law.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13983/palestinians-fleeing-lebanon

International journalists based in the Middle East seem to care precious little about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon, who, for several decades now, have been protesting the apartheid and discrimination practiced by an Arab country.

As a result of these laws, the conditions of Palestinians in Lebanon have worsened to a point where 65% of them live below the poverty line, according to a report by Al-Jazeera.

The Arab and Western silence towards the plight of the Palestinians in Lebanon achieves one thing alone: aggravating Palestinian agony. Yet the only evil the Arab leaders and the international community see is the supposed evil that they link to Israel.

Palestinians appear finally fed up with the apartheid and discriminatory laws they have been subjected to in Lebanon in the past few decades. They appear fed up with the ongoing apathy towards their plight in the international community and media. They also appear fed up with the international media’s obsession with Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The only Palestinians the international media reports about are those whose “problems” are directly linked to Israel.

For the past year, dozens of international journalists based in the Middle East have been covering the weekly protests along the Gaza-Israel border. These journalists, however, seem to care precious little about the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon, who, for several decades now, have been protesting the apartheid and discrimination practiced by an Arab country.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13955/turkey-christchurch-new-zealand

The more critical problem is the discrepancy between the way the government and the people of Turkey have been treating the Christchurch attacks, as opposed to the way they have been responding to the murder of non-Muslims in their own country.

While Muslim worshippers were being murdered in New Zealand — and Turkey was among the nations condemning the anti-Muslim slaughter and voicing outrage over “Islamophobia” — they were paying little or no attention to the Christians in Nigeria, Congo, Ethiopia, Uganda, Pakistan and elsewhere who were being violated, abducted or massacred by extremist Muslim perpetrators. Where is the reciprocity?

Until Turks and others are as vocal in their condemnation of religious-based violence and hate crimes against non-Muslims as they are about those against Muslims, it is hard to take what Ataklı referred to as their “talk of tolerance” seriously.

Since the March 15 massacre of dozens of Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, Turkey has joined the rest of the world in condemning the murders, praying for the victims and commemorating the event by laying wreaths at the sites of the slaughter.

The German Bild newspaper accuses Ambassador Christoph Heusgen of “pure malice” in comparing Israel to the Hamas terror group.

The German Bild newspaper is accusing the country’s ambassador to the U.N. of “betraying Chancellor Angela Merkel’s security pledge to Israel by comparing the Jewish State to the terrorist organization Hamas,” the Jerusalem Post reports.

The editorial took Ambassador Christoph Heusgen to task for comparing Israel’s security measures against Palestinian terrorists with Hamas rocket attacks, says the Post.Heusgen was quoted as saying that “civilians must live without fear of Palestinian rockets or Israeli bulldozers.”Bild journalist Filipp Piatov responded that “after 130 missiles in a week, pure malice,” a reference to recent Gaza rocket attacks on Israel. “Murderous rockets are not bulldozers.

The Israeli government is not a terrorist militia. This comparison has nothing to do with the promise of Chancellor Merkel,” said the editorial.

http://www.settimananews.it/italia-europa-mondo/lost-italy-should-find-itself-its-geography/Italy’s current crisis goes beyond the contingent disputes between the League and the M5S and the confusion on the agreement on the Silk Road with China behind the back of its traditional allies and partners. It is an epochal event for the peninsula that the Austrian prime minister Metternich in 1815 defined as “a geographical expression”, not a political one.

The modern Italian state was born in 1870 by eliminating the Papal state, which existed for about 1,500 years, and was heir, in turn, to about a thousand years of Roman Empire and the Roman Republic. In that way, Italy has ceased to be a more or less colorful periphery of Rome and has become the territory that dominates the ancient capital.

The modern Holy See was born of this. The Vatican freed itself from the European and Italian territorial anchor and has taken on an increasingly global dimension, up to Pope Francis who is profoundly redefining the Church.

Italy has the extraordinary advantage of hosting the Holy See – the problem is how to take advantage of it without interfering with the Church, which would then kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

On the other hand, there is a similar concern for the Church to take advantage of Italy without bullying the country, which would then return to being surrounded by a semi neo-Papal state that causes a global Church to lose its universal reach.

In this, there is a third element. The years of the DC, from around 1949 to 1992, were those of a unified Italy with greater economic, intellectual, and scientific development.

The fall of the DC occurred because the party did not reconcile their alliance with the U.S. (their “employer” since 1948), and indeed they tried to push the euro through behind Washington’s back, when the U.S. opposed the single currency.