RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19583/persecution-of-christians-march

“You should remove your church, because we cannot watch our members turning to Christianity and keep quiet.” — Sheikh Shafi Mukama “ordering the father and son to leave [their church] in 2022, while other from the mob kept watch outside,” morningstarnews.org, March 22, 2023, Uganda.

“Requirements for obtaining permission to build houses of worship in Indonesia are onerous and hamper the establishment of such buildings for Christians and other faiths…. [T]hey are often met with delays or lack of response from officials. Well-organized radical Muslims secretly mobilize outside people to intimidate and pressure members of minority faiths.” — morningstarnews.org, March 24, 2023, Indonesia.

“According to the UN, ongoing insecurity in eastern DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] has displaced 300,000 from their homes in February alone.” — opendoors.ph, March 22, 2023, Democratic Republic of Congo.

“It is a massacre like…killing animals.” — A key church minister, persecution.org, International Christian Concern March 20, 2023, Democratic Republic of Congo.

“For leaving Islam to accept Christ,” say a Mar. 19 report, “a young mother… was chained in her home, subjected to electrical shocks at a psychiatric hospital and has lost her children.” …. [H]er problems began, chiefly from her Muslim husband, who “tried to force her to renounce her faith by chaining her legs and tightening the chains…. [H]er parents and siblings are all Muslims [a local source said], who believe she is suffering mental illness for believing in Christ.” — morningstarnews, March 19, 2023, Sudan.

“[S]ince the start of the war, the Christian population has reportedly diminished by more than 80 per cent, from an estimated 1.5 million to 250,000… More than 350 churches have been destroyed in attacks carried out by terrorists during this period…. On the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, therefore, I want to raise awareness about the country’s Christians, in the hope that the international community acts to prevent their tragedy from continuing before it is too late.” — Report by Natasha Dado, thenationalnews.com, April 16, 2023.

“The rampant trafficking of Coptic women and girls is a direct violation of their most basic rights…. The crimes committed against these women must be urgently addressed by the Egyptian government, ending impunity for kidnappers, their accomplices, and police who refuse to perform their duties…. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt. There are countless families who report that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence.” — copticsolidarity.org, March 16, 2023 and September 10, 2020, Egypt.

“For Christians in the Middle East, the Christmas season is not ‘the most beautiful time of the year’ as in the popular Andy Williams song. On the contrary, after two millennia of Christian presence, the Middle East is slowly but surely being cleansed of Christians…. It is striking that the Western powers, which have a majority Christian population, are not concerned at all by such a disaster.” — Matija Šerić, “Christians In The Middle East: A Persecuted And Forgotten People,” eurasiareview.com, April 15,2023.

“The only country in the region with a growing Christian community is Israel, where the Christian population grew by 1.4% in 2020…. Christians in Israel benefit from the only functioning democracy in the Middle East… According to the Israel Bureau of Statistics from December 2021, 84% of Christians surveyed said they were satisfied with life in Israel.” — Matija Šerić, “Christians In The Middle East: A Persecuted And Forgotten People.”

The report further makes clear that Christians suffer, not just from “terrorists,” but Muslim state and society: “The legal political and social order in many Arab countries is a source of discrimination….[T]he system is hostile towards all non-Muslims, especially Christians. Christians are often not second or third but tenth class citizens, they suffer discrimination in the educational system, in the workplace, the community tries to ostracize them.” — Matija Šerić, “Christians In The Middle East: A Persecuted And Forgotten People.”

The following are among the murders and abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of March 2023:

Muslim Attacks on Churches

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19554/china-trashing-environment

“Risks to marine habitats are most prominent in Caribbean island nations, such as the Bahamas and Antigua and Barbuda, as well as coastal waters across Africa, most notably along Western and Central African coastlines. In the Bahamas, Angola and Mozambique, more than 2,000 km2 of marine habitats face high impact risks.” — bu.edu, December 6, 2022

“Across Angola, Fiji, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, more than 50,000 square kilometers of marine habitats are “facing low but non-negligible risks from nearby projects.” — bu.edu, December 6, 2022

Ports built or financed by the Chinese, the study found, pose the greatest risks to marine habitats; the risks remain high even up to 30 kilometers from the port.

China’s overseas infrastructure projects are not the only ones ruining marine habitats. China’s enormous fishing fleet is simultaneously contributing not only to the severe devastation of marine ecosystems but also to the destruction of the livelihoods of local fishermen.

Chinese fishing boats are destroying the livelihoods of West African fishing communities on the West African coast. Due to illegal Chinese fishing, they could be losing more than $2 billion each year.

In Ghana… illegal fishing boats use Ghanaian flags, but, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation, 90% of those boats belong to Chinese owners.

“There is no fish in the waters. We used to catch up to 90 trays of sardinella fish a day and now we barely get five trays a day.” — Dembo Touray, fisherman Bakau, Gambia’s largest fishing community, aa.com.tr, 2020.

Even though, in 2019, Communist Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged that the BRI would become “green and sustainable,” he did not say when.

“China says it will follow environmental guidelines, but history has shown these protections are nonexistent.” — William Laurance, distinguished research professor of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, The Guardian, September 20, 2021

Additionally, China already mines 70% of all rare earth materials, a situation that has made the world virtually dependent on it. The future of the African continent’s environment, in short, looks anything but sustainable.

China’s overseas infrastructure projects present high-impact risks to the environment, a new study has found.

The report — conducted by researchers from the Boston University Global Development Policy Center, the University of Queensland, the University of California Santa Barbara, and Colorado State University — focused on the risks to coastal and marine ecological systems posed by 114 of China’s overseas development projects between the years 2008-2019. According to the document, those 114 projects represent only 20% of all Chinese development finance projects in that time period, meaning that the results of the study are probably just the tip of the iceberg.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/irans-ayatollah-khamenei-signals-regime-split/

Has the ongoing insurrection in Iran, now into its seventh month, exposed glaring splits in the theocratic regime? In his Nowruz (Persian New Year) address to the nation, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the elderly and increasingly delusional Supreme Leader, insisted that the main priority of the theocratic regime was to fight inflation. Unveiling his concept of ‘The Year of Curbing Inflation,’ he indirectly acknowledged that his country is bankrupt, but failed to offer any way of resolving the perilous state of the Iranian economy. His mumbled remarks may have disappointed his hard-line followers, who prefer to hear pledges to “wipe Israel off the map” or cries of “death to America,” and have little appetite for economic reforms. But splits and divisions amongst the mullahs are now the trademarks of this failing fascist regime.

The Iranian economy is in plummeting decline. Spiralling inflation, currently at 43.4 percent, and a collapsing currency, have combined with tough western sanctions to bring the country to a virtual standstill.  Food prices in particular have suffered massive spikes over the past year, including a 125 percent increase for meat, 250 percent for onions, 82 percent for eggs, and 78 percent for rice.The active Iranian workforce is 26 million, of whom at least 10 million were jobless even before the Covid pandemic. Youth unemployment is at a staggering 40 percent. At least 60% of the population are living in poverty, unable to meet their essential daily needs.

Combined with the mullah’s own venal corruption and regional warmongering, it is little wonder that the country with the world’s second largest gas reserves and fourth largest crude oil reserves is now facing economic meltdown. Iran, despite its once rich, civilized and open culture, has become an international pariah, its religious fascist regime condemned for human rights abuse and the export of terror, while its 85 million beleaguered citizens struggle to feed their families.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/could_the_partition_of_india_and_pakistan_repeat_itself_in_uk_and_scotland.html

When India was liberated from British rule more than 75 years ago, the territory was divided, or partitioned, into India and the new state of Pakistan; East Pakistan later became Bangladesh.

The British oversaw the partition along with the newly appointed Indian and Pakistani leaders in their respective newly formed nations.

British civil servant Sir Cyril Radcliffe drew up the borders between India and Pakistan, in 1947, dividing the sub-continent very roughly into:

a central and southern part, where Hindus had the majority
two parts in the north-west and north-east that mostly  Muslim population

But Hindus and Muslims were scattered throughout British India.

Hence, after the declaration of the partition, more than 15 million people traveled, often hundreds of miles, to cross the new frontiers to their respective nations. It has been called the largest exodus in human history.

Almost 75 years later, history may be repeating itself.

Last October, the United Kingdom swore in Rishi Sunak as their new prime minister. Sunak’s parents are Indian Hindus who migrated to the U.K. from East Africa. Sunak was born in Southampton in 1980. His father was a doctor, his mother was a pharmacist. He went to the boarding school Winchester College, then studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford, and business at Stanford University in the U.S.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19572/bankrupt-china-regime

America can stop China’s nuclear weapons development and other monumental programs.

The Chinese Communist Party needs America for, among other things, money, and the U.S. does not have to provide it.

In reality, China’s economy in 2022, after price adjustments, almost certainly contracted, perhaps by as much as 3%.

Exports fell 6.8% year-on-year. More significantly, imports, one of the best reflections of domestic demand, plunged 10.2%.

“Everything is down, whether plane travel, freight, or buying on the Alibaba platforms.” — Anne Stevenson-Yang, author of China Alone: Return to Isolation, to Gatestone, April 2023.

China, therefore, needs factory orders from abroad and foreign investment. The American president can crimp both of these lifelines by, among other things, using his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and by joining or liberalizing free-trade agreements with other countries. For instance, U.S. President Joe Biden could encourage factories to move to the Western hemisphere by making a few fixes to the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). The American market is the largest in the world, and the president can use it to redirect trade flows.

“We now know that China spent $240 billion on country bailouts from 2008 to 2021, correlating with a drop in Chinese lending for infrastructure projects that are the core of this Belt and Road Initiative. It is clear that China is now overstretched and unable to continue with the BRI overall plan into the foreseeable future.” — China analyst Charles Burton of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, to Gatestone, April 2023.

Municipalities and cities across China have not been able to pay civil servant salaries and promised benefits, and for months there have been protests, even in wealthy cities like Wuhan in Hubei province and Dalian in Liaoning.

There is a lot America can do to stop China’s fast buildup of its most dangerous arsenal, and in any case Americans must not under any circumstances fund, with trade and investment, the weapons pointed at them.

President Ronald Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by reducing the flow of cash to Moscow. It is now time to bankrupt China.

After all, no money, no nukes.

“We are probably not going to be able to do anything to stop, slow down, disrupt, interdict, or destroy the Chinese nuclear development program that they have projected out over the next 10 to 20 years,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley on March 29 at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. “They’re going to do that in accordance with their own plan.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macron-blunders-on-taiwan-and-ukraine-france-asia-military-china-xi-jinping-military-support-303181c5?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Emmanuel Macron fancies himself a Charles de Gaulle for the 21st century, which includes distancing Europe from the U.S. But the French President picked a terrible moment this weekend for a Gaullist afflatus following his meeting with Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Mr. Macron said in an interview with a reporter from Politico and two French journalists. “The question Europeans need to answer . . . is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”

No one wants a crisis over Taiwan, much less to accelerate one, but preventing one requires a credible deterrent. Mr. Macron seemed to rule out European help with that when he told the journalists that “Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it.”

If Mr. Macron wants to reduce American public support for the war against Russia, he couldn’t have said it better. Without U.S. weapons and intelligence, Russia would long ago have rolled over Ukraine and perhaps one or more NATO border countries. Mr. Macron says he wants to make Europe less dependent on U.S. weapons and energy, which is fine. But then how about spending the money and making the policy changes to do it?

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/369747

Sonia Backès, French secretary of state for citizenship, has just said that “political Islam wants to bring the Republic to its knees”. If only it were the République…
The French National Institute of Statistics has just provided us with numbers that tell of an unprecedented change of civilization in the history of a country that is the cradle of European culture. It is truly historic: there are more practicing Muslims than practicing Catholics between the ages of 18 and 59 in France. Reading the latest report from Insee, the French Statistical Institute, helps us understand the change of civilization we are experiencing in Europe.

One and a half million of Catholics pray and 800,000 go to church. Two million Muslims pray and 726,000 go to the mosque. There has already been an Islamic overtaking of Catholicism. And without considering the under 18s, where Muslims outclass Christians with Bulgarian percentages.

Le Monde reports that secularization is proceeding quickly only for Catholics. Muslim immigrants are not becoming “woke”. The postmodernist virus has not corroded their minds. 91 percent of Muslims educated as Muslims remain so. They remain religious, even after two generations. The use of the veil for women is also increasing: from 18 to 29 percent of all women in France in just ten years.

Three years ago, Muslims in France were 7 percent. Today they are 10 percent. Pierre Brochand, former director of the French internal secret service, has just said that “the critical point will be when Muslim immigrants cross the 50 percent threshold”. France is already teetering on Islam at 10 percent (in most big cities it’s 20 to 30 percent).