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Talibanization of Bangladesh: Biden-Harris Administration, ‘Human Rights’ Groups Silent by Keya Mukherjee

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20986/talibanization-of-bangladesh-biden-harris

Islamist and jihadist student protesters under [Muhamad] Yunus’s leadership have established an alternative government in the country, reminiscent of Iran’s private militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Dozens of individuals, including Hindus, are falling victim to mob justice, while the perpetrators of these gruesome crimes enjoy impunity.

Notably, Muhammad Yunus is one of the major donors to the Clinton Foundation. According to a cable leaked by Wikileaks, in 2007, Hillary Clinton made frantic efforts and exerted pressure on the Bangladesh Army to appoint her friend Yunus as head of the then military-backed interim government.

Since Yunus enjoys the full support of the Biden-Harris administration, as well as Democratic Party leaders such as Barack Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton, not one of the rights groups, including Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, has issued a statement condemning the attacks, rapes and murders in Bangladesh.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is an anti-democratic Islamist organization that advocates for the establishment of a caliphate. It is banned in Bangladesh and several other countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States.

[W]ill Bangladesh’s descent into radicalism continue unchecked, or will the international community finally confront the growing Talibanization threatening the stability of the region?

Days after Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee the country amidst protests led by Jamaat-e-Islami, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Hizb ut-Tahrir, Hefazat-e-Islam, and other Islamist forces, all charges against Mufti Jashimuddin Rahmani, the chief of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT)—later rebranded as Ansar Al Islam—were dropped. Rahmani, along with dozens of imprisoned Islamists and jihadists, was released. Shortly after his release, Rahmani appeared in a viral video, calling on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to “free Bengal from Modi’s rule and declare its independence.”

The fight for free speech in Ireland isn’t over yet The government has shelved its proposed hate-speech laws, but this is not the end of its censorious agenda. Lorcan Price

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/01/the-fight-for-free-speech-in-ireland-isnt-over-yet/

Lorcán Price is an Irish barrister and legal counsel for ADF International. He has been advising a coalition of Irish politicians opposed to the hate-speech bill.

The Irish government’s mission to make Ireland the wokest place in the Western world suffered a setback late last week, when justice minister Helen McEntee quietly announced that the government was dropping its plan for highly controversial new hate-speech laws.

These proposed speech restrictions were included in the Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill. McEntee has now conceded that ‘the incitement-to-hatred element [of the bill] does not have a consensus’. Describing these proposed hate-speech laws as lacking ‘consensus’ is a piece of masterful understatement. The legislation – which will live on with the hate-speech elements removed – has attracted criticism for its far-reaching implications for free speech, not just in Ireland but also across the West.

And with good reason. Dublin is home to the European HQs of various major tech and social-media companies, such as Meta, Google and X. If it had been introduced in its original form, the bill would have had a huge impact on social-media users across Europe and further afield, as those companies based in Ireland would have been regulated under the new laws. This would have given the domestic Irish legislation outsized global significance.

The original bill criminalised ‘incitement to hatred’, but its definition of hatred was completely circular. Ministers rejected all attempts to introduce a more workable and clear definition into the law, because doing so would make convictions ‘significantly more difficult to secure’.

The vague definitions didn’t stop there. The bill would have criminalised ‘hatred’ expressed against someone on the basis of their ‘gender identity’, which was defined as the ‘gender of a person or the gender which a person expresses as the person’s preferred gender or with which the person identifies and includes transgender and a gender other than those of male and female’.

Bizarre and confusing passages such as this were not drafting mistakes. They were a central feature of the proposed law, designed to create a state of uncertainty as to what would constitute illegal ‘hate speech’.

Defeating Hezbollah Will Strengthen the West by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20983/defeating-hezbollah

An Israeli victory against Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon is vital to guaranteeing the security of the entire Western alliance. It will send a clear signal to Iran — Hezbollah’s paymasters — that the ayatollahs’ unremitting campaign against the West and its allies is ultimately doomed to failure.

[A]n estimated 90,000 Israelis being forced to flee their homes, leaving large swathes of northern Israel deserted. Hezbollah has said that those Israelis will not be able to return to their homes, raising concerns that Hezbollah, which had been planning to invade northern Israel, might also be planning to occupy it.

[United Nations Secretary-General António] Guterres, referring to Israel, announced that the war “did not happen in a vacuum.” Ironically, it is Guterres himself who is responsible for creating the non-vacuum that ignited the situation. According to UN Security Resolution 1701, it was the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, under the direction of Guterres, that was tasked with “maintaining security and stability throughout south Lebanon….” It didn’t.

Since the IDF launched its military campaign against Hezbollah, Israel has faced the usual barrage of criticism over civilian casualties.

The reality, though, is that the group most responsible for causing casualties is Hezbollah which, like its Iranian-backed ally Hamas in Gaza, has no qualms about putting innocent Lebanese civilians in harm’s way.

Israel’s offensive to destroy Hezbollah, therefore, is very much in the West’s interests in terms of safeguarding its future security, a consideration Western leaders should take on board when seeking to address the deepening crisis in the Middle East.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20983/defeating-hezbollah

An Israeli victory against Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon is vital to guaranteeing the security of the entire Western alliance. It will send a clear signal to Iran — Hezbollah’s paymasters — that the ayatollahs’ unremitting campaign against the West and its allies is ultimately doomed to failure.

[A]n estimated 90,000 Israelis being forced to flee their homes, leaving large swathes of northern Israel deserted. Hezbollah has said that those Israelis will not be able to return to their homes, raising concerns that Hezbollah, which had been planning to invade northern Israel, might also be planning to occupy it.

[United Nations Secretary-General António] Guterres, referring to Israel, announced that the war “did not happen in a vacuum.” Ironically, it is Guterres himself who is responsible for creating the non-vacuum that ignited the situation. According to UN Security Resolution 1701, it was the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, under the direction of Guterres, that was tasked with “maintaining security and stability throughout south Lebanon….” It didn’t.

Since the IDF launched its military campaign against Hezbollah, Israel has faced the usual barrage of criticism over civilian casualties.

The reality, though, is that the group most responsible for causing casualties is Hezbollah which, like its Iranian-backed ally Hamas in Gaza, has no qualms about putting innocent Lebanese civilians in harm’s way.

Israel’s offensive to destroy Hezbollah, therefore, is very much in the West’s interests in terms of safeguarding its future security, a consideration Western leaders should take on board when seeking to address the deepening crisis in the Middle East.

End of Empire: Careful What You Wish For Mervyn Bendle

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/civilisation/the-end-of-empire-careful-what-you-wish-for/

“The Future So ended civilization in the once thriving Roman province of Britainnia. The lessons for Australia seem obvious: the collapse of an Imperial order brings only economic and political chaos, death and destruction, and regression into an era of civilizational darkness from which it takes many centuries to emerge, if ever. Perhaps those shrill ideologues, academics, teachers, media propagandists, and other useful idiots demanding the end of American Imperialism, and an ill-defined ‘End of Empire’ should do some historical research or, at the very least, should be challenged to justify their nihilistic demands. The global reality is clear, we live in an increasingly dangerous and uncivilized world where the sole guarantor of our liberal democratic system and way of life is the United States: Make America Great Again!”

The End of Empire For many years it has been de rigueur on the Left to denounce ‘American Imperialism’ and demand the end of ‘the American Empire’, usually in favour of an ill-defined ‘socialist alternative’, or some global socialist system (modelled on the European Union, or the United Nations, or Communist China) or, at an even more extreme level, a global Islamist theocracy (modelled on Iran or the Taliban). Such demands are quite shrill in Australia and are emitted with monotonous regularity by the Greens, the Socialist Left of the ALP, Islamist organizations, the various Trotskyite groupuscules, most academics and teachers in the humanities and social sciences, and much of the media and the arts. But what has been the historical experience when empires die? And, specifically, how has such an event impacted on nations, such as Australia, that exist on the periphery of an empire?

Case Study: Roman Britain  The fate of Roman Britain provides a case study of this traumatic experience. Indeed, it provides a particularly vivid example of what happens on ‘the edge of empire’ when that empire dies, and it is not at all a re-assuring picture. The Fall of Rome and the sacking of the eternal city had ramifications not only for the Italian Peninsula but for all the Roman provinces, which were closely integrated into the Imperial system; as the centre fell apart they found themselves exposed to unprecedented internal stresses and external threats, which they were ultimately unable to resist, plunging into the Dark Ages from which it took a millennium to emerge.

Britannia Perched in the Great Ocean, on the farthest margins of the Empire, by the beginning of the 5th Century, the island province of Britannia had enjoyed some 300 years of the Pax Romana. In that time, its settled and cultivated area had expanded inland from the southern and Channel coasts across fertile and productive fields to the frontiers of Scotland and Wales, beyond which lived ancient tribal societies with little interest in being integrated into an Imperial system, the immensity and complexity of which they couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

Our Ukrainian War Narrative—Paradoxes, Obsessions, and Disconnects Why does the Biden-Harris administration deify Zelensky and Ukraine but demonize Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/30/our-ukrainian-war-narrative-paradoxes-obsessions-and-disconnects/

About half of America sympathizes with Ukraine’s plight and wishes to arm it.

After all, Kyiv was attacked preemptively by Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022, in an effort to decapitate its government and turn the country into a Russian satellite, perhaps similar to the status of a Belarus or Chechnya.

The heroic ability of the Ukrainians to save Kyiv and to stop the Russian assault beyond the occupied Donbas and Crimea has hinged on Western weapons deliveries, specifically from European NATO countries and, to a far greater extent, the United States.

But now, after a reported 1 million combined dead, wounded, or missing Ukrainians and Russians (the actual figure is probably far higher), the war remains deadlocked with no end in sight.

Putin serially threatens to break the static front with tactical nuclear weapons. The Europeans are tiring. And no one in the United States has come up with a strategy to push back the Russians from either their February 2022 demarcation points or their post-2014 occupation of Ukrainian borderlands.

The result is a lot of disconnects, paradoxes, and mysteries about the war, the Biden administration’s role in it, and the general geostrategic landscape surrounding the conflict.

Ukrainian Election Interference?

Americans are demonized by the Uniparty elites for having doubts about their blank-check support for Ukraine. And while the American people are mostly anti-Putin, they are not always pro-Ukraine.

But why is that so?

For one, we know that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election.

Iran’s Newest Proxy: Sudan by Peter Hoextra

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20982/iran-newest-proxy-sudan

Iran, having just had two of its major proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, seriously degraded, is apparently setting its sights on a new, “consolation prize” proxy to use as an additional base of operations: Sudan.

Iran’s strategy of supporting and infiltrating other countries and terrorist groups — as it has done in Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Lebanon, Venezuela and Yemen — appears as yet another extension of its strategy of moving into territories with weak or unstable governments to expand its influence throughout the Middle East, to create new fronts for its campaign to destroy Israel and bring down the world order led by the West.

A major port and foothold in Sudan will enable Iran to accomplish two of its goals: to continue encircling Israel in a “ring of fire” by opening yet another front from which to attack the small Jewish nation from the southwest, and to further control all international shipping in the Red Sea.

The Sudanese Armed Forces, led by [Sudanese General Abdel Fattah] Al-Burhan… although invited [for peace talks], was not represented. “We will not go to Geneva,” Al-Burhan told reporters in Port Sudan, at the time; “we will fight for 100 years.”

Al-Burhan nevertheless showed up at the UN recently, asking for talks. Why did he not respect the offer from the US and the international community when they gave him that opportunity in Geneva? Might the incident suggest a lack of candor?

Openly stating its ambition to dominate the Middle East — and to drive US forces out of the region presumably to make it easier to do so – Iran, for 40 years, through force and intimidation, has been seeking to dominate its neighbors in the Middle East, not just Israel, but also Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Iran’s militias and proxies have been firing, as well, on American assets in the region, more than 160 times just in the last year, with virtually no response from the US. Iran has also been extending its reach into Africa, especially with the increasing collaboration of two powerful allies: China and Russia.

Iran’s influence is not presently confined to any region. Iran has, for instance, been “exporting the revolution” to the Western Hemisphere, particularly, as mentioned, Venezuela, an ideal base from which to harass the “Big Satan,” especially when Iran will have nuclear weapons, which are reportedly close to being “taken public.”

This new, potential land-grab by Iran, in collaboration with Russia and China, poses yet another serious security threat not only to Israel, but also to the entire region and the United States. It is hoped that the US government, and whoever wins the November election, will give this emerging flashpoint urgent attention.

Slaughter in Bangladesh and the International Cover-Up by Vijay Patel

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20979/slaughter-in-bangladesh

Muhammad Yunus is one of the major donors of Clinton Foundation, and according to a cable leaked by Wikileaks, back in 2007, Hillary Clinton made frantic bids and exerted pressure on Bangladesh Army to make her friend Yunus head of the then military-backed interim government.

[S]ince August 5, 2024, massive attacks on Hindus, including their homes, businesses and temples began, while local media were barred from covering these incidents, as the Yunus regime has been arresting critics and journalists and bringing murder cases against them.

As Yunus is enjoying full support of the Biden administration as well as Democratic Party leaders such as Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, none of the rights groups, including Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch has issued any statement pertaining attacks (including murder and rapes) on Hindus in the country.

On August 5, 2024, Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee the country and take refuge in India following a month-long anti-government movement led by Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), ultra-Islamist Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Hizb Ut Tahrir and other Islamist organizations in the country. It was earlier perceived by many that the Biden administration had been trying to topple Sheikh Hasina from power and install Muhammad Yunus as head of the government.

Muhammad Yunus is one of the major donors of Clinton Foundation, and according to a cable leaked by Wikileaks, back in 2007, Hillary Clinton made frantic bids and exerted pressure on Bangladesh Army to make her friend Yunus head of the then military-backed interim government.

Scathing Truths at the UN Javier Milei

https://quadrant.org.au/features/world/a-dose-of-unwanted-truth-at-the-un/

“From this day on, know that the Argentine Republic will abandon the position of historical neutrality that characterised us and will be at the forefront of the struggle to defend freedom. As Thomas Paine said, “Those who wish to reap the blessings of freedom must, as men, endure the fatigue of defending it.”

To the authorities of the United Nations, to the representatives of the various countries that make up the United Nations and to all the citizens of the world who are watching us, good afternoon. For those who do not know, I am not a politician, I am an economist, a libertarian liberal economist who has never had the ambition to be a politician and who was honored with the position of President of the Argentine Republic after the resounding failure of more than a century of collectivist policies — policies that destroyed our country.

This is my first speech before the UN General Assembly and I would like to take this opportunity, with humility, to alert the various nations of the world to the path they have been treading for decades and the danger of this very organisation’s failure to fulfill its original mission.

I do not come here to tell the world what to do. I come to tell the world, on the one hand, what will happen if the United Nations continues to promote collectivist policies, which they have been doing under the mandate of the 2030 Agenda, and, on the other hand, to lay out the values the new Argentina defends.

Zelensky’s Inexplicable and Inexcusable Partisanship By Michael Brendan Dougherty

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/zelenskys-partisanship/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=top-bar-latest&utm_term=first

Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to campaign with Kamala Harris and to specifically attack the Republican vice-presidential nominee — preemptively blaming J. D. Vance for a global war — is unwise for many reasons. By appearing at what was in effect a campaign event for Democrats, the Ukrainian president himself is now deliberately and knowingly contributing to the political polarization of this issue in a way that can only work to his country’s detriment. 

There are two possible explanations for this bizarre stunt: One, Zelensky has concluded that Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is correct in saying that a Trump victory means that U.S. aid to Ukraine will immediately be zeroed to nothing. Or two, the Harris campaign is using its own leverage over Zelensky to make him a campaign surrogate, hoping to complete its pitch to Nikki Haley–style Republican voters who overwhelmingly support Ukraine, even if this stunt does more damage to Ukraine’s cause among Republicans generally.

To the first point, there is little evidence Donald Trump will simply cut off U.S. support for Ukraine. Trump has been cagey about his views on supporting Ukraine, but there are some clues about his wanting to keep his options open. First, he backed Republican Mike Johnson in the House as Johnson signed onto a Ukraine aid package. Second, Vance, as his running mate, has stuck to the script set by Trump. Even though Vance went out of his way to debate and cajole his own party on this issue when he was in the Senate, he did not mention Ukraine once in his own convention speech, and on the stump he repeats Trump’s views, not his own. Trump has said only that the war wouldn’t have happened if he were in office, and that it will end shortly after he is elected. He has also implied that he could, if he wanted to, make worse problems for Vladimir Putin.

To the second point, the deployment of Zelensky on the American political front amounts to a tacit admission that perhaps Ukraine isn’t vital to America’s interests. If it were, Democrats would not make it an acceptable sacrifice in a presidential campaign.

‘He Targeted My Child for Sexual Exploitation’: The Persecution of Christians, August 2024 by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20966/persecution-of-christians-august

Muslim militants slit the throats of about 26 people inside a church: “All non-Muslim men over the age of 12 were separated out before being killed.” — acnuk.org, August 30, 2024, Burkina Faso.

“So let everyone know that the role of Christians in Lebanon has ended! You have become a minority in this country, and yet you still hold high positions… Nobody would accept this issue. The coming generations will… not accept that the president must be Christian; he must be a Sunni Muslim or Shi’ite.” — Reda Saad, pro-Hezbollah commentator, x.com, August 18, 2024.

“We informed the police about the accused, but they still did not take any action, giving sufficient time to Asad to convert the minor child and contract an Islamic marriage with her…. Fairy is just 12 years old. She had no access to a cell phone and rarely went out of the home by herself….” — Parveen Shaukat, mother of Fairy Shaukat,12, abducted, converted and married by Muhammad Assad; morningstarnews.org, August 28, 2024, Pakistan.

“The accused not only kidnapped the child, he converted her and contracted an Islamic marriage to save himself from prosecution [a common practice by kidnappers to sexually exploit underage non-Muslim girls].” — Sumera Shafique, Christian attorney; morningstarnews.org, August 28, 2024, Pakistan.

“Women who disappear and are never recovered must live an unimaginable nightmare. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt.” — Coptic Solidary report, “‘Jihad of the Womb’: Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt”, copticsolidarity.org, September 10, 2020, Egypt.

On August 5, a Muslim migrant from North Africa was arrested for robbing a church in Turin. There were many other acts of arson, desecration (including of a Christian cemetery), statue breaking, and thefts targeting churches in Italy throughout the month of August — torinotoday.it, August 6, 2024, Italy.

On Sunday, Aug. 18, a mob consisting of local officials forcibly dragged a Christian pastor from his church and sealed off its site on the dubious claim that the place had originally belonged to the government…. “What was disappointing was those people who closed my church were my friends….” — morningstarnews.org, September 3, 2024, Indonesia.

On Aug. 30, a massive fire “broke out” in the Coptic Christian Diocese of Beni Suef in Egypt, consuming all of the five-story Christian building’s contents…. [T]his is only the latest of many churches in Egypt to be torched and immediately attributed to “faulty wires” and other natural causes. In one month alone, August 2022, a full 11 churches reportedly “caught fire.”… Also “interesting” is that “accidental” fires in mosques—which outnumber churches in Egypt by a ratio of 40 to 1—are completely unheard of.” — copticslodarity.org, September 2, 2024, Egypt.