RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/legacy-of-an-african-genocide-11554160620

This poor country once brutally occupied by Belgium has had no surcease in conflict-ignored by the so called African-American legislators in Congress who have shown no interest in the turmoil in Africa but choose rather to spend their days criticizing Israel…..rsk

April marks the 25th anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide, in which almost 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were indiscriminately set upon and murdered—in their homes, in schools, in churches and in the open air. Victims were often killed by machete, sometimes by neighbors they’d known for years.

Foreign governments, including the U.S., dithered while Rwandans died. The end of the genocide came only when the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Paul Kagame and supported by Uganda, marched into Rwanda, defeated the genocidal government forces, and drove the remaining loyalists into the bush.

Twenty-five years after the Rwandan genocide, neither the ethnic conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa nor the problems that made the world’s response so tepid and slow have been resolved. Commendable and even heroic measures by both Hutu and Tutsi survivors in Rwanda have restored order, enabling victims and perpetrators to live side by side without further violence. The economy is growing at a rapid clip, but political life in Rwanda is constrained. Opposition politicians risk arrest; some of the regime’s critics have mysteriously died; and well into President Kagame’s third term, there is no alternative to his rule in sight.

Meanwhile, the prospect of an effective, consistent international system that could act swiftly to prevent new genocides is even more remote now than in the 1990s. The “international community” is better at wringing its hands than at stopping crimes against humanity. The U.S.-led response to ISIS demonstrates that multinational intervention against outrageous behavior is possible. But the world’s indifference to the wider slaughter in Syria is a sobering reminder of the limited political will to enforce even the most basic humanitarian standards.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tension-over-the-taiwan-strait-11554159931

Two Chinese J-11 fighter jets crossed the Taiwan Strait’s “median line” on Sunday, stoking a 10-minute standoff with Taiwanese jets in the island’s airspace. Taipei’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the incident “intentional, reckless, and provocative,” and it underscores why President Trump should bolster Taiwan’s defenses with a sale of American F-16s.Taiwanese media called the incursion the first since 2011, and the one eight years ago was considered an accident. Chinese planes have skirted the island’s airspace for years with little consequence, and Sunday’s deeper breach underscores the danger of that impunity.

Beijing is smarting from the voyage a week ago of a U.S. Navy destroyer and Coast Guard cutter through the Strait, as well as President Tsai Ing-wen’s speech in Hawaii a few days later. Speaking via video link to the Heritage Foundation, Ms. Tsai confirmed her government’s request to buy American M-1 Abrams tanks and F-16V fighters.

The Chinese may hope Sunday’s escalation will convince Washington that its support for Taiwan’s democracy isn’t worth the risks. This strategy has worked for decades to convince American Presidents not to sell fighters to Taiwan, and the island’s forces are now heavily outnumbered. Taiwan has 144 fourth-generation F-16s from the 1990s compared to 600 fourth-generation planes on the Chinese side, an advantage that has made Beijing more aggressive.

https://www.firstpost.com/india/new-zealands-hijab-gesture-is-deeply-flawed-6351781.html/amp?__twitter_impression=true

(Ruchika Sharma is a doctoral scholar in history at the Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Last week, New Zealand’s women, including prime minister Jacinda Ardern, wore headscarves to show solidarity with the Muslim community in the wake of terrorist attacks that targeted mosques. The act drew mixed reactions: while some praised New Zealand for the show of support, others questioned whether donning the hijab, a symbol of oppression in several Muslim majority countries, was necessary to express togetherness.

It is seminal here to consider the repercussions of Scarves in Solidarity—not only because the hijab has oppressive origins, but it is still used in several Muslim majority countries to control women’s bodies. Furthermore, the idea that hijab signifies the Muslim community stereotypes Muslim women in particular and the community in general.Yet, the biggest flaw of the Scarves in Solidarity movement is regarding women as active identity bearers of a community. The idea that women must bear the burden of a community’s identity, which is at the core of so much religious practice and belief, is one of the core dictates of patriarchy.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2019/04/hijab-hypocrisy-not-just-piece-of-cloth.html

In the wake of the Christchurch atrocity, New Zealand’s female (and feminist!) prime minister, along with the female mayor of Christchurch, covered their heads with hijabs out of “respect” for their Muslim fellow-citizens, and numerous of their non-Muslim countrywomen followed their example, including a policewoman and several news anchors.

Aussie columnist and Sky News host Rita Panahi, American-born of Iranian parentage, knows a thing or two about the oppression of women that the hijab represents,

Women celebrating World Hijab Day is like a slave celebrating their chains: PanahiSky News host Rita Panahi says World Hijab Day, celebrated on February 1, is a betrayal of the most oppressed women in the world. Ms Panahi says a woman celebrating modesty culture like the hijab, ‘is like a slave celebrating their chains’ and it shows how regressive modern feminism has become. She says celebrating the hijab and burqa ‘is utterly perverse and has no place in a civilised society that values equality’.

Women donning the hijab after Christchurch attack were ‘well-intended, but ignorant’Sky News host Rita Panahi says New Zealand women who donned the hijab following the Christchurch massacre were ‘well-intended, but ill-considered and ignorant’. Fifty people were killed when an Australian-born gunman opened fire at two Christchurch mosques on March 15, prompting a slew of high-profile women to veil themselves in the hijab in solidarity with Muslim victims and their families. Ms Panahi says women in some Muslim nations are being beaten and locked up for fighting against the hijab.

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.