RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19939/pakistan-muslim-mobs-hunt-christians

Hundreds of Christians fled their homes on August 16 when, in the eastern Pakistani district capital of Jaranwala, Muslim mobs started an anti-Christian riot, vandalizing churches and setting churches and Christians’ homes on fire — all based just on an accusation that a Quran had been desecrated.

At least 20 churches throughout the city were set on fire and more than 400 homes belonging to Christians damaged.

“Two Christian individuals are accused of desecrating the Quran. People are demanding life imprisonment, but the accusation is false. They have done nothing. The accusation was fabricated by an Islamist group, Tehreek-e-Labbaik.” — Faraz Pervaiz, a Christian Pakistani asylum-seeker who fled to Thailand after being accused in Pakistan of blasphemy for criticizing political Islam, reporting through his sources on the ground, August 2023.

“On August 16, 2023 a woman carrying these documents with torn pages of Quran knocked the door of Raja and Rocky, later be accused of blasphemy. When they opened the door, the woman started shouting at the family and accusing them that you have desecrated the Quran. The family was shocked. Meanwhile this woman started making loud noises to wake the people up. ‘Raja and Rocky has committed blasphemy,’ she was shouting, ‘and you Muslims are sleeping!'” — Faraz Pervaiz, August 2023.

The Muslim mobs then started attacking Christian homes and churches; the Christians fled and slept outside to avoid being burned alive, Pervaiz said.

“Christians are sleeping under open sky now. They are helpless. They get no support from any organization or the Government. They get no food support, and no new shelter is provided. They are starving. They are too scared to go back to their homes. They fear being killed… The police were helping the perpetrators and the vigilantes. There was no military intervention to stop the attacks. …The newly elected Prime Minister of Pakistan has condemned the incidents, but Christians need help, which he could have provided. But he did not because he knew that entire Muslim community would stand against him.” — Faraz Pervaiz, August 2023.

To urge Muslims to hunt down Pervaiz, mullahs in Pakistan have led demonstrations where the crowds were encouraged to chant: “There is only one punishment for insulting the Prophet. Sever the head from the body! Sever the head from the body!”

In 2019, Pervaiz’s home address in Bangkok, Thailand, was revealed in a video released on social media, with calls to every Muslim to find and kill him and his family. Several mullahs also attached fatwas to the video calling on Muslims to kill him. Posters with his photograph were plastered across many cities, including outside mosques and government offices in Lahore and Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad.

Meanwhile, Pakistani Islamists have placed a bounty on Pervaiz. The Tahreek-e-Labbaik political party announced the first bounty of $62,000 in 2015. The next year, a cleric doubled it to $124,000. Pervaiz told Gatestone that many Islamist parties in Pakistan have placed a bounty on him; the amount now totals $400,000.

The UN and other members of the international community seriously need to reconsider their relations with the government of Pakistan. It is a systematic violator of human rights and a major supporter of Islamist terrorism. A government that treats its minorities so unjustly and inhumanely needs to be held to account.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19926/slavery-brics-black-africans

In a garish example of anti-democratic, anti-West, collective state hypocrisy, leaders from the BRICS bloc — representing Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — meeting in South Africa over three days last week invited four Muslim states and two others to join the bloc, while keeping total silence over the racist and Islamist massacre by heavily armed Arab militias of black African civilians being carried out in West Darfur in Sudan over the preceding weeks.

“[A]trocities pile up in Darfur after 100 days of Sudan fighting”, in which “Arab militias are accused of killing lawyers, human rights monitors, doctors and non-Arab tribal leaders”. — Al Jazeera, July 24, 2023.

” [The city of Al-Geneina in West Darfur] has been ethnically cleansed.” — Humanitarian worker, Sky News, broadcasting scenes of thousands of desperate Sudanese refugees displaced in neighbouring Chad, August 17, 2023.

The Africa Defense Forum disclosed on May 16 that Russia’s Wagner group was supervising gold-mining in Darfur, and smuggling nearly $2 billion in gold out of the country.

Yet the “great and the good” — China’s President Xi Jinping, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, with Russian President Vladimir Putin addressing the congregation by video to endorse Russia’s war in Ukraine — made no mention of this genocidal massacre.

Instead, the BRICS leaders invited states with the world’s longest history of enslaving black Africans to join them.

China’s Xinhua news agency reported how Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, who attended the BRICS conference, hailed it as a “commendable step that will facilitate worldwide development while upholding principles of justice.”

Justice? Raisi was deputy prosecutor general in a four-member committee codenamed the “death commission” in Iran in 1988, which was responsible for the executions of thousands of political prisoners who were loyal to a banned opposition movement, “on orders issued by Raisi and his three colleagues.”

Worse, although slavery continued legally in Iran until 1929, “It never went away”. — iranwire.com, April 30, 2020.

The article showed a series of photos of black African slaves in Iran, such as this one from the 1880s. — Denise Hassanzade Ajiri, “The face of African slavery in Qajar Iran – in pictures,” The Guardian, January 14, 2016.

The issue of the enslavement and oppression of black Africans — continuing to this day in Darfur and elsewhere — is an issue suppressed by BRICS.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19929/geert-wilders-speech

I have been on the death lists of the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS for a very long time….

In recent years, several fatwas have been issued against me by imams and mullahs, two of which have been repeated quite recently. Fatwas, religious death sentences consisting of concrete calls to Muslims worldwide and also in the Netherlands to kill me.

I now receive so many death threats, every day and about a thousand a year, that I no longer even report everything, because then I would no longer be able to do my work as a Member of Parliament.

They are often descriptions of how they want to kill me, often with explicit pictures, beheading videos, there are audio recordings of threats, including imams from mosques, and other disgustingly violent material. Many of those threats come from various Islamic countries, but especially from Pakistan.

And with a few exceptions of Pakistanis who came to the Netherlands to kill me, but luckily were arrested and also convicted, 99.99% of all people who threaten me from abroad have never been prosecuted.

Luckily one is prosecuted today. And I would like to thank the Public Prosecution Office for that.

I do hope that they will also prosecute the Pakistani mullah Jalali and the political leader Rizvi, who issued the aforementioned fatwas against me. Please don’t forget them.

[T]oday your court is hearing the case against Khalid Latif, a well-known former cricketer from Pakistan, who in 2018 put a bounty of three million Pakistani rupees, then about 21 thousand euros [roughly $23,000], on my head as a reward for the one who murders me, and would post the video of that murder online as evidence. And if he had more money, he added, he would also give it to the one who kills me.

Khalid Latif thinks I should be killed because I (and I quote) would insult “the prophet of God” – he is referring to Muhammad – by organizing a cartoon contest [which did not take place].

But of course that is absolutely no reason to put a price on someone’s head, let alone kill someone.

I wanted to make it clear that making drawings is allowed by anyone and we should never, ever bow down to people who choose violence, threats, murder and terror.

Because of all the fatwas, threats and calls to kill, I have been living in high security for almost nineteen years.

I have lived in a prison with my wife for months for my safety, lived in a barracks, lived in a police station, had to dress unrecognizably in public with mustaches and wigs. And to this day, my wife and I live in a government safe house.

I can’t do the most basic things that every human being does every day without thinking about it…. Quickly get some air. Empty the mailbox. Driving. Walk around the block. Quickly run a message [errand] in the store…..

And frankly, you never get used to it. You learn to deal with it but you never get used to it. And that’s tough. You should know that.

I am grateful to be protected. I also want to say that today.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19928/communist-china-ecuador

“We are basically being plundered. There are no words. There are no words to describe this tragedy…. China took control of the natural resources. They control the hydroelectric plants, they control the oil, a large part of mining, and they control political power. We’ve been colonized. Again.” — Fernando Villavicencio, Ecuadorean investigative journalist and presidential candidate in the award-winning 2022 documentary, This Stolen Country of Mine.

From 2007 to 2017, Villavicencio, who was a leading critic of the country’s sellout to China and government corruption, investigated the corruption and China dealings of left-wing Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who effectively sold the country and its rich resources to China. In 2020, Correa was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption but had already fled to Belgium. Today, China is Ecuador’s largest creditor.

[I]n March 2023, Honduras cut ties with Taiwan and established diplomatic ties with China in order to handle its enormous debt and need for investments.

Even more disturbing is the fact that China’s activities in Latin America amount to a significant security threat against US interests.

“What concerns me as a Combatant Commander is the myriad of ways in which the PRC is spreading its malign influence, wielding its economic might, and conducting gray zone activities to expand its military and political access and influence… The PRC is investing in critical infrastructure, including deep-water ports, cyber, and space facilities which can have a potential dual use for malign commercial and military activities. In any potential global conflict, the PRC could leverage strategic regional ports to restrict U.S. naval and commercial ship access. This is a strategic risk that we can’t accept or ignore… This is a decisive decade and our actions or inactions regarding the PRC will have ramifications for decades to come.” — General Laura Jane Richardson, Commander of the US Southern Command, to the House Armed Services Committee regarding her concerns over China’s activities in Latin America. Those include China’s recent financing of a $3 billion container port in Peru, and the establishment of a space monitoring station near the Strait of Magellan. March 8, 2023.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19922/iran-religious-influence-us

The Iranian regime is advancing its ideology and increasing its influence in Shia mosques throughout the United States, while the Biden administration is sitting idly by, presumably still seeking to return to a disastrous nuclear deal, lift sanctions against Iran, and fund the regime to launch more terrorist attacks, further repress its own citizens, and pave the way for it legally to obtain an unlimited supply of nuclear weapons.

“In four separate cases, recent reports have illustrated the Iranian regime’s influence on multiple Shi’a mosques and religious institutions in the United States. This is unacceptable.” — Letter from nine US House Representatives to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, June 28, 2023.

“This appears to be part of a network of regime-sponsored mosques acting as agents for a foreign adversary. The radical ideology being promoted by this regime preaches hatred not only towards Jews, Christians, and Westerners but also to Sunni Muslims and fellow Shi’a Muslims who do not accept the regime’s ideology.” — Letter from 9 US House Representatives to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, June 28, 2023.

We are fortunate enough in the US to have freedom of religion enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

All the same, Americans might like to be aware that there are clergy in the US whose goal it is to take the beliefs you now hold away from you and replace them with their own?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19921/china-influence-activity-us

[President Joe] Biden’s closing the China Initiative played, of course, right into the Chinese Communist Party’s hands.

While the Biden administration worries about political correctness, the Chinese Communist Party is successfully using every means at its disposal to weaken the US in all fields.

“[A] significant portion of America’s intellectual and political elites share the responsibility for perpetrating key CCP propaganda agendas, including misleading the American public to minimize the degree to which the PRC is still a country ruled by a Marxist-Leninist communist party. The manipulation of language is a prime example of this endeavor.” — Miles Maochun Yu, Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, hoover.org, May 5, 2021

The FBI has named China as “a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States” and said that confronting this threat is “FBI’s top counterintelligence priority.” However, instead of focusing all available resources on countering this “grave threat” from the CCP on all fronts, the Biden administration has been busy institutionalizing woke ideology in the federal bureaucracy — including in the military….

The Biden administration, under an executive order issued in February 2023, now requires all federal agencies to present annual “equity action plans” in order to “advance an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities.” Since Biden became president, the military alone has spent close to 6 million hours on diversity, climate change and “extremism.”

The other focal point for the Biden administration has been mitigating “climate change” – all while China, during 2022, has been approving the construction of two new coal plants per week.

The US under Biden is arguably not even close to countering the threat that China poses or perhaps even properly understanding it.

The Biden administration has unfortunately shown itself to be unable to stop, or even limit, China’s continued rise. On the contrary, the connections of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to China could mean that the US president is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.

Meanwhile, at a recent press conference, when asked whether the administration is concerned that Hunter Biden’s ties to China “pose a national security issue,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan replied, “I don’t have any comment on that.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/indias-battle-against-jihad/

Despite historical persecution, ethnic cleansing campaigns, as well as ongoing pressure at the hands of jihadists supported by Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir remains part of India, whose sovereignty in the region helps improve the civil rights of the residents, enables it to battle the Islamist threat, and enhances stability in South Asia.

Today, Jammu and Kashmir is demographically majority-Muslim, but it is within the borders of India, which has millennia-long historic and spiritual ties with the region.

Indigenous Hindus are the original inhabitants of Kashmir and possess a unique ethno-religious culture existing for more than 5,000 years. Kashmir had a majority Hindu population ruled by Hindu kings until the 14th century when Muslims from Central Asia invaded the region.

Under Islamic rule, Hindus in Kashmir were subjected to persecution. In the early 1800s, Sikh rulers controlled the region, and then a Hindu dynasty from the mid-1800s through 1947.

In 1947, the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir became part of the secular Republic of India. Shortly thereafter, Pakistani Armed Forces invaded the area. In response, Indian Forces deployed to counter Pakistan’s attacks. In Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the areas of Kashmir which remained outside of India, thousands of Hindu families were forced to flee for their lives.

In 1948, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 47 urging the Pakistani military to withdraw. Pakistan, however, refused.

Since then, Pakistan has increased its military presence and fomented unrest and terrorism in the region. Thousands of civilians have been killed in terrorist acts carried out by militant groups supported by Pakistan.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/25/the-china-century-is-over/

For decades we’ve heard that China will some day, very soon, be the world’s hegemon, both through its stunning economic growth and its rising military might. Move over, America, here comes China. Just as the 1900s were the “American Century,” the 2000s would be the “China Century.” Not so fast.

Google “The China Century” and you get 1 billion hits. It’s that ingrained as an economic truism.

But in recent years, China has entered a kind of doom loop of debt accumulation, population shrinkage and a productivity slowdown that is eroding its once powerful economic growth and threatens to halt many of the economic advances it made over the last 50 years.

We’ve watched as decades of 10% annual GDP growth, a result of Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 market-oriented reforms, began dropping sharply under Chairman Xi Jinping, China’s born-again Communist leader. The nation’s traditional growth engines of soaring government debt, consumer spending, and foreign investment are now sputtering.

There are two big reasons for this.

One, is China’s single-child policy. Soon the nation of 1.4 billion will shrink outright. Economic growth usually follows population growth.

Two, the return to communist principles under Xi, whose totalitarian policies and crackdowns on dissent and human rights since 2012 have led to an exodus of foreign investment and know-how, and created a stagnant domestic economy.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/24/mercenary-chief-prigozhin-dead-wagner-boss-plane-putin/

“Never strike a king,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “unless you are sure you shall kill him.” Good advice, but it comes too late for Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian leader of the Wagner mercenary army.

Vladimir Putin, that old KGB man, already knew Emerson’s message, deep in his guts. He also knew the unstated part: if you try to kill the king and you fail, you will be the dead one.

And so Prigozhin was.
 
Prigozhin, once Putin’s ally, should have known the limits of their ties

The leader of the Russia’s most effective mercenary force had once been Putin’s chef and ally. He had the Kremlin’s support when he formed Wagner. He had it, too, when he led his soldiers in the grinding, brutal battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, where Wagner lost tens of thousands of soldiers in the house-to-house fighting. As the fighting wore on, however, Prigozhin learned the limits of Putin’s support.

The Kremlin’s fear was that, if Prigozhin and his mercenaries got credit for this prominent victory in Bakhmut, Wagner’s success would undermine the prestige of the regular Russian army and ultimately threaten Putin’s own power.

Preventing that erosion is why the regular military’s two leaders, Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and military chief of staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, ultimately denied Wagner the ammunition and supplies they needed to complete their victory. Then Shoigu and Gerasimov, presumably at Putin’s direction, tried to deny Wagner credit for taking the city.

Prigozhin’s Fatal Decision to March on Moscow
 
Prigozhin was furious at this betrayal and said so repeatedly on his widely-circulated social-media posts. When his PR campaign failed, Prigozhin took much more drastic—and ultimately fatal–action. He mobilized his troops to march on Moscow.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19917/atrocities-blasphemy-laws-pakistan

“What began as accusations against two Christian brothers has escalated into a devastating wave of violence, resulting in the destruction of over 20 churches and 500 homes. The situation remains tense as the community grapples with the aftermath of this unfortunate incident.” — Pakistan Christian Post, August 18, 2023.

“Both men were taken into custody on the next afternoon and handed to the Counter-Terrorism Department, Punjab for investigation. Section 295-B relates to desecration of the Koran and carries a punishment of life in prison. Section 295-C relates to insulting Muhammad and is punishable by death.” — Morning Star News, August 18, 2023.

After the Pakistani Supreme Court’s 2018 acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Christian who was charged with blasphemy and kept in solitary confinement for eight years until TLP members held protests across Pakistan. Muhammad Afzal Qadri, a TLP co-founder, also called for the murder of the three Supreme Court justices involved in hearing Bibi’s appeal, stating: “The Chief Justice and two others deserve to be killed.”

“Videos circulating on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms showed a violent mob dragging a half-dead man on the streets of Sialkot, Pakistan on December 1, 2021. Young men were throwing stones at him and kicking his body as he was dragged mercilessly by those who called themselves the ‘protectors’ of the sanctity of the Prophethood. The videos go on to show ghastly scenes of the mob burning a corpse as dozens of men not only look on, but use their cell phones to take selfies….” — Atlantic Council, January 15, 2022.

On July 8, 2023, police arrested a 35-year-old Christian for allegedly sharing a post on Facebook, although “Even the imam of the village mosque told them that the post contained nothing derogatory against Islam, and that they should desist from stoking religious tension.” — Morning Star News, July 12, 2023.

“Pakistani authorities need no more evidence to see how dangerous the blasphemy laws are – they are abused to make false accusations that can, and have, led to unlawful killings and even whole communities being attacked and their homes burnt.” — David Griffiths, Director of the Office of the Secretary General of Amnesty International, August 25, 2020.

No changes in the situation have yet been observed.