RUTHFULLY YOURS

MOSCOW—To see how good relations are between Russia and China these days, check out Novodevichy Cemetery here.

Chinese tourists arrive by the busload each week to pay their respects to Wang Ming, a Chinese Communist leader buried here alongside some of Russia’s most prominent writers, composers and politicians.

“We’re learning about (Vladimir) Lenin and (Josef) Stalin, and how they created this country,” said 39-year-old Cheng Ling, an accountant in Shanghai, as she slid ruble coins along the side of the red granite plinth, a tradition ensuring the dead have money in the afterlife.

Russia’s relations with the West have deteriorated amid the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria and its economy has been battered by punitive sanctions and low oil prices. But the country is welcoming record numbers of Chinese visitors, who are taking advantage of a weak ruble, visa-free group travel, and the opportunity to retrace Communist history.

Red tourism—visiting sites relevant to the Communist Party of China—has flourished under President Xi Jinping, at home and abroad. In June 2015, Russia and China formally agreed on opening up red-tourism routes, a deal signed in Shaoshan, the birthplace of Mao Zedong.

“Travel to Russia is considered politically correct,” said Wolfgang Arlt, director of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute, which is based in Beijing and Hamburg.

In addition, terror attacks in France and Belgium have unnerved many Chinese travelers, he said. “Russia is seen as a very safe option.”

More than 1.1 million Chinese tourists are expected to visit Russia this year, about 16% more than 2015, according to figures from market-research firm Euromonitor released in June. That puts Russia at No. 16 on the list of top destinations for Chinese tourists, behind the U.S. and France but ahead of the U.K. CONTINUE AT SITE

French Catholicism is now witnessing a tragic decline, caught between two fires: state secularism and political Islam.

Le Figaro wondered if Islam can already be considered “France’s prime religion”.

Muslim countries are generously funding France’s mosques, covering an average of 50% of total costs.

“Avignon is no longer the city of the Popes, but of the Salafis. … They [Muslim extremists] urge us to rewrite the history of France in the light of the ‘contribution of the Islamic civilization'” — Philippe De Villiers, author of Will the Church Bells Ring Tomorrow?

The trend indicates that in France, there are currently three young practicing Muslims for every young practicing Catholic.

“It is conceivable that Islam is overtaking Catholicism”. — Osservatore Romano, the Vatican official daily newspaper.

A new book is shaking France. Les cloches sonneront-elles encore demain? (“Will the Church Bells Ring Tomorrow?”), by Philippe de Villiers, is shattering the nation. France, the “eldest daughter” of the Catholic Church, is instead turning into “the eldest daughter of Islam”. “With arrogance, they [Muslim extremists] urge us to rewrite the history of France in the light of the ‘contribution of the Islamic civilization'”, de Villiers states.

De Villiers points out that:

“France has experienced many misfortunes in its history. But for the first time, it must face the fear of disappearing. In France, there are two groups: a new people who move with pride and an exhausted people, who are not even aware of the conditions needed for their own survival”.

De Villiers paints a grim picture of French Catholicism: “Avignon is no longer the city of the Popes, but of the Salafis”. In Saint-Denis, where the French kings and Charles Martel are buried, “tunics and beards now dominate, and girls are dressed in the Islamic shrouds”. If a parish is still alive there, it is thanks to the zeal of the Christian community of Africans and Tamils. “The Kings’ cemetery is just one enclave. It belongs to a story that does not count anymore”.

The bell towers of the churches in de Villiers’ book are already growing silent in Boissettes (Seine-et-Marne), and on the outskirts of Metz, where the bells of the church of Sainte Ruffine have been forced by the state secularist authorities to keep silent. It happened in the Breton village of Hédé-Bazouges, where silence is filled by the sound of what de Villiers calls “the clergy in the djellaba” [outer robe worn by North Africans] — the muezzin’s call to prayer. It is happening everywhere in France.

An appeal would have sent a signal to potential terrorists that Danish authorities look sternly upon logistical assistance to terrorists, and will do everything in their power to pursue justice.

The only one at risk of actual harm is Lars Hedegaard himself: his attempted murderer remains at large. “I have resorted to making the suspected assassin’s name as well-known as possible in self-defense.”

It is deeply disturbing, not only for the victims, but for all citizens, when the courts so clearly divorce themselves from pursuing what most citizens would perceive as justice, and instead appear to favor those who seek to harm society.

Refusing to implicate Omar El-Hussein’s friends in his terrorism, despite their obvious contributions to his terror deeds, and fining the victim of a terrorist attack for publicly naming his would-be murderer, who escaped justice by fleeing the country, inevitably appears like a mockery of justice, not its fulfillment.

If the legal system in Denmark is anything to go by, being an accessory to murder is just fine. Attackers are protected to the hilt; their victims are left unprotected and fined.

In February 2015, the terrorist Omar El-Hussein murdered Danish film director Finn Nørgaard in front of café Krudttønden in Copenhagen. Later that night, he killed a Jewish guard in front of the Copenhagen synagogue. Danish police shot and killed El-Hussein during the subsequent manhunt.

Four men assisted El-Hussein after he killed the film director: They helped him get rid of the murder weapon, gave him fresh clothes and bought him a new bag, which he used to store the gun used to kill the Jewish guard. They also met with him several times in different places around Copenhagen in the five hours leading up to the murder of the Jewish guard. One of those places was an internet café, where El-Hussein googled for information about the synagogue. The four men were charged with complicity in the terrorist act against the synagogue.

At the end of September, the Danish District Court acquitted all four of the terrorism charge. The district court found no evidence that the men knew of El-Hussein’s plans to attack the synagogue, when they met with him after his attack at Krudttønden. Instead, the four men were convicted of minor charges, such as threats and violence against prison staff, weapons possession in particularly aggravating circumstances, and possession of illegal ammunition. Three of the men were free to go after the sentencing, as their 18 months in custody meant that they had already served their sentences, which were sixty days, six months, two and a half years and three years respectively. One of the four men has already declared his intention to sue the Danish state for damages amounting to 1 million Danish kroner (USD $150,000) for the 18 months he spent in custody. The prosecution has decided that it will not appeal the verdict, which is therefore final.

Ace shooter Heena Sidhu has pulled out of the Asian Airgun Shooting Championship to be held in Tehran in December this year.

Heena, the reigning title holder, has withdrawn her name because of Iran’s insistence on female contestants adhering to the dress code which makes wearing of ‘hijab’ mandatory for women participants.

“Forcing tourists or foreign guests to wear ‘hijab’ is against the spirit of the game. Since I don’t like it, I have withdrawn my name,” Heena Sidhu told Times of India.

“You follow your religion and let me follow mine. I’ll not participate in this competition if you are going to force me to comply with your religious beliefs,” she added.

The organisers have made it clear on their official website that the female contestants will have to wear clothes in compliance with the rules of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It’s not for the first time that Heena has withdrawn her name from a tournament being held in Iran.
“Yes, I have done it earlier as well. Two years back, I had decided not to go to Iran for the same reasons. It’s only Iran which insists on such a code. It does not happen in other nations,” Heena said.

Meanwhile, the President of Rifle Association Rajendra Singh has said that Indian shooters have always respected the Iranian traditions.

“We have good relations with Iranian shooting federation and we respect their culture and tradition. All females, including tourists and diplomats, wear hijab when they visit Iran. All other Indian female shooters, except Heena, have accepted the decision,” Rajendra Singh told TOI.

Before long the same administration that declared the fighting in Iraq over several times will claim victory over ISIS. The timetable for its push against the Islamic State appears to have less do with the victimized Christians and Yazidis who have been prevented from coming here as refugees in favor of Syrian Muslims than with the Clinton presidential campaign. Like Obama’s declarations that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were over, the announcement that ISIS has been defeated will be premature.

It is based on a profound misunderstanding and misreading of Islamic terrorism.

Long before its current string of defeats, ISIS had begun evolving into another Al Qaeda; a multinational alliance of Jihadists scattered around the world. Bombing Mosul isn’t hard, but try bombing Marseille, Brussels or London. There is no doubt that the ability of ISIS to temporarily establish a caliphate allowed it to build a network that could carry out terror attacks from New York to Miami to Nice to Munich. But it would be dangerous to assume that losing Iraq and Syria will stop ISIS.

ISIS doesn’t matter. The idea of ISIS does. And the idea of ISIS is Islamic supremacism.

The organization we think of ISIS has transformed and rebranded countless times. Even now our leaders vacillate between calling it ISIS, ISIL or, more childishly, Daesh, while it dubs itself the Islamic State. We have been fighting it in one form or another for over a decade. It would be unrealistically optimistic to assume that the war will end just as this old enemy has shown its ability to strike deep in our own cities.

The bigger error though is to think that we are fighting an organization. We are fighting an idea. That is not to contend, as Obama does, that we can debate it to death. It is not the sort of idea that argues with words, but with bullets, bombs and swords. But neither does it just go away if you seize a city.

UNESCO has joined forces with Islamic State. The fundamentalists now have a new weapon: resolutions passed by servile international bodies.

An earlier delay and the opposition of UNESCO’s chief, Irina Bokova, had raised hopes that this act of jihadist, barbaric, unjust, and, frankly, arrogant supremacism might be voted down. It was not. Now a new lie was given the sanction of the world’s largest and most unaccountable body whose reason for being is to preserve significant sites, not to bowdlerize them.

Lies by UNESCO to rewrite history, erasing all traces of Judaism and Christianity to favour a jihadist Islamic fancy, were already under way in 2015. UNESCO fraudulently renamed two ancient Biblical Jewish sites, Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs, as Islamic sites. Historically, Islam did not even exist until the seventh century.

This is the history of Islam, how it takes over — with both hard jihad (violence) and soft jihad (usurping history, migration [hijrah], political and cultural infiltration), and intimidation (soft jihad with the threat of hard jihad underneath it). What is even more saddening is that often, as with this vote, it is done with the West’s cooperation and voluntary submission.

Before the United Nations, with its authoritarian, anti-democratic voting blocs, finishes eradicating Western, Judeo-Christian civilization, as it is clearly trying to do, it is high time for Western democracies to run, not walk, away, before further harm comes to them too, as it surely promises to do.

UNESCO last August planned to vote on the historical status of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and its associated Western Wall. Back then, this author stated that UNESCO’s plan was to deny any Jewish link to this most central of all Jewish holy sites, to trash a history going back thousands of years, and to claim the Mount and the Wall as Islamic sites.

Islam believes that it is eternal and had therefore preceded the other two great monotheisms, Judaism and Christianity, even though it was only to become visible to the world through Mohammad in the seventh century AD, but entitled to elbow out the two older religions.

WASHINGTON—A Russian jet fighter flew within a half-mile of an American military aircraft over Syria earlier this month, prompting U.S. officials to register pointed concerns to Moscow, U.S. military officials said.

The encounter was sufficiently close that the “jet wash,” or turbulence from the passing Russian fighter, was felt by the crew of the American aircraft, according to Col. John Dorrian, the spokesman for the American-led coalition against Islamic State in Baghdad.

“That’s closer than we’d like,” he said of the Oct. 17 incident.

Col. Dorrian said U.S. officials have determined thus far that the Russian jet fighter’s near miss to the U.S. aircraft wasn’t done for any “nefarious” purpose, but was an accident. The jet fighter apparently was escorting a Russian spy plane. U.S. officials declined to identify the American plane involved, citing the sensitivity of its mission.

U.S. military personnel aboard the American craft immediately contacted the Russian aircraft crew. The following day, U.S. officials followed up on the incident more formally through an official channel with the Russian military, first established in October 2015.

The memorandum of understanding establishing the channel provides for routine military-to-military exchanges in an effort to “de-conflict” the airspace over Syria. The more formal and higher-level exchange between senior level military and civilian officials on both sides may also take place as needed.

Today, the United Nations General Assembly will elect 14 of the 47 members of the Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the organization’s main body tasked with protecting and promoting human rights globally. Appallingly, six notorious dictatorships — China, Cuba, Egypt, Russia, Rwanda, and Saudi Arabia — are running for reelection for a new three-year term. By gaining these highly coveted seats, which they consistently use to exercise a heckler’s veto, authoritarian regimes seek to prevent any significant exposure of their horrendous human-rights records.

The UNHRC was established in 2006 with the authority to appoint U.N. special procedures (working groups, independent experts, special rapporteurs, etc.), assess the human-rights situation among the 193 member states of the U.N. through its Universal Periodic Review, and receive individual complaints. In practice, around 22 authoritarian regimes — roughly 47 percent of its members — control the council’s agenda, using their seats to block resolutions against friendly dictatorships, disproportionately criticize Israel, paint a rosy picture of their own dictatorial records, and shut down victims of human-rights abuses.

Authoritarian regimes with a leading voice in the council include Ethiopia, Venezuela, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Burundi. Their hijacking of the council is not a recent trend. The UNHRC was created to replace the Human Rights Commission, a body established in 1946, which was disbanded after it infamously elected Muammar Qaddafi as president in 2003.

Prior to its disappearance, the commission suffered a barrage of criticism and vilification precisely because many of its members were dictatorial regimes. Kofi Annan, the U.N. secretary general at the time, said in 2005 that “the commission’s capacity to perform its tasks” was “undermined by its declining credibility and professionalism.” In particular, Annan criticized the states that had “sought membership of the commission not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others,” resulting in a “credibility deficit” that cast a “shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole.”

To prevent the disaster that was the Human Rights Commission from happening again, the U.N. General Assembly established a set of minimum standards that states should fulfill if they wished to join the newly created council. Its founding resolution mandated that states “take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments made thereto.” The resolution also stated that the candidates “shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.”

So, given the selection criteria developed by the U.N. General Assembly itself, no country that violates human rights systematically and that is likely to use its membership to undermine the protection of human-rights victims should even be allowed to run for election.