RUTHFULLY YOURS

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom implored Secretary of State John Kerry late last month to admit to the United States some Bangladeshi bloggers at high risk of assassination by al-Qaeda groups.

That follows a plea just before Christmas from a coalition of human rights groups warning that dozens of Bangladeshi writers — deemed blasphemers by Islamists for their secular works — were in “urgent danger” and in need of protection.

But today at the State Department, the Obama administration wouldn’t confirm if it had any response to the requests in which the urgency of the matter was clearly spelled out.

USCIRF Chairman Robert P. George wrote to Kerry on Jan. 25, asking “that our government provide humanitarian parole for a limited number of Bangladeshi writers at imminent risk of assassination by extremist groups.”

Last year, one American, Avijit Roy of Atlanta, and four Bangladeshis, Washiqur Rahman Babu, Ananta Bijoy Das, Niloy Chatterjee, and Faisal Arefin Dipan, were viciously murdered by assassins aligned with al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent.

George noted that they “were assassinated because of their writings, including expressing their secular beliefs that amounted to blasphemy in the eyes of the religious extremists who killed them.”

“Additionally, numerous other individuals have been placed on ‘hit-lists,’ which are widely available on the Internet. The five murders, along with the hit lists, underscore that several individuals remain in imminent danger,” he wrote.

“USCIRF respectfully urges you to use your good offices to help secure humanitarian parole for a select number of bloggers who remain in imminent danger in Bangladesh.”

The December letter to Kerry from PEN American Center, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and others noted that “the government of Bangladesh has not provided adequate protection to those at risk and, in some cases, has promoted the idea that these bloggers should self-censor in order to deter attacks against them—or that they should leave the country.”

“In what appears to be a concession to appease Islamist groups, Bangladeshi officials have also arrested secular bloggers on charges of insulting religious sentiments in the past,” the coalition wrote.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union funded “peace movements” throughout the west – because for the Soviets “peace” meant “the absence of opposition”.

In our time the new peace movement is Islam. And so we are told today, from the podium of a mosque with “extremist” “links”, that the very word Islam means “peace”. Actually, it means “submission” – ie, the absence of opposition.

The only difference between then and now is that instead of being chanted by scrofulous hippies protesting outside a Nato air base the old line’s being peddled to us by the President of the United States. Odd.

~At the end of September, I spoke in the Danish Parliament on the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons. (See my speech here.) Afterwards I was hustled off-stage and, a little weary and the worse for wear, gave an interview in a rather handsomely appointed ante-room on the subject of Chancellor Merkel and her Million Muslim March. You might be interested in what I had to say – remember this was two months before the Paris attacks and three months before the New Year sexual assaults and the cover-up by German police and media. Click below to watch:

The flag the Turkish prime minister proudly witnessed while being hoisted at the United Nations is an inspiration of the flag used by the Arab Palestinian nationalists in the first half of the 20th century, which was the flag of the 1916 Arab Revolt against Prime Minister Davutoglu’s beloved Ottoman Empire.

In his speech, Abbas did not forget to “convey our best wishes to our beloved Armenian brothers in Palestine, in Armenia and in the entire world,” and invited Armenian President Serzh Sarghsyan “to visit Palestine and we hope he will accept the invitation.”

Although it came as no surprise, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, in his weekly parliamentary group speech last December, spoke like a Palestinian politician, not a Turkish one:

“The most oppressed people of the 20th and 21st centuries is the Palestinian people … Our support will continue until Jerusalem becomes the capital of independent Palestine … No one should doubt our devotion to the Palestinian cause … We won’t forget Palestine, Gaza, Jerusalem, not even in our dreams … We do politics for this holy way.”

The atmosphere on Swedish social media is now almost revolutionary. People post videos of themselves accusing the government of murder, of filling Sweden with violent people.

When Alexandra Mezher was murdered, she was alone in the residence with ten asylum seekers. She was stabbed by one of the “children” she cared for.

When National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson appeared on the “Good Morning Sweden” TV show, the day after Mezher’s murder, he expressed sympathy for the murderer, but barely mentioned the victim. This sparked frenzied outrage on social media.

Mass immigration is continuing to claim victims in Sweden. Murder, assaults and rape have become everyday occurrences in this small country, with a population just short of ten million, which last year opened its doors to almost 163,000 immigrants. The latest victim is 22-year-old Alexandra Mezher. She was stabbed to death last week by a so-called unaccompanied refugee child at the asylum house where she worked.

Although the massive influx of asylum seekers has decreased drastically since January 4, when Sweden implemented border controls on the Swedish/Danish border, the people who are already here pose a giant problem to municipalities, police and citizens. The police are fighting a losing battle against street crime, as well as daily incidents at asylum houses – general disturbances that include fights, rapes and threats.

SÃO PAULO—Health officials in Brazil reported two cases of the Zika virus being transmitted through blood transfusions, the latest challenge in the global battle against the fast-spreading mosquito-borne epidemic.

Both cases were reported by health officials in Campinas, a wealthy industrial city of about one million people an hour northwest of São Paulo, the country’s largest city.

A number of countries are tightening their rules on blood donations in response to the global Zika outbreak.

The American Red Cross said on Wednesday it is asking potential blood donors who have been in Mexico, the Caribbean or Central or South America to wait at least 28 days after their trip before donating.

Cármino Antonio de Souza, health secretary of Campinas, said on Wednesday that both transfusions occurred during the first four months of 2015, but the presence of Zika in the two transfusion recipients wasn’t confirmed until recently, in part because they were initially suspected of being infected with dengue, another mosquito-borne virus.

As many as 1.5 million Brazilians may have been infected with the mosquito-borne Zika virus and now the U.S. and other countries are also reporting new cases. But what is the Zika virus? And why does it pose a threat to pregnant women? Dipti Kapadia explains. Photo: Getty Images

The first case involved a liver-transplant recipient who contracted Zika through blood donated in March 2015. The second was a gunshot victim who tested positive for Zika after receiving multiple blood transfusions; he later died of his wounds, not the Zika virus, Campinas health officials said.

BERLIN—German police said they have conducted raids in several regions and arrested three people in an investigation of four Algerian men who are suspected of planning attacks in Germany and having ties to Islamic State.

Berlin police said in a statement that two men and a woman were arrested in the raids conducted in the capital and in two western states, but that those arrests were based on existing warrants in other cases.

Authorities suspect that the four men under investigation had contacts with Islamic State and say that one of them was being sought by Algerian authorities for belonging to the extremist group. They seized computers, cellphones and other material.

Berlin police spokesman Stefan Redlich told n-tv television that the probe started in December.

Saudi Arabia has ordered the segregation of men and women in local council meetings, in a setback to women’s rights in the ultraconservative kingdom.

Under the new rules, which follow the recent election of women to Saudi Arabia’s local councils, female representatives must now participate in the council meetings through a video link. The men will be able to hear their female colleagues, but not see them.

Females represent a fraction of the council members—38 out of 2,106 officials—but the same-room ban is a reminder of the challenges women face in Saudi Arabia, where they still can’t drive or travel abroad without the permission of a male relative.
“I am really upset,” said Samar Fatany, a women’s rights activist and columnist with Saudi Gazette newspaper of the rules, which were introduced last week by the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs but only gained national attention in recent days. “You don’t put them out there for show and then marginalize them.”

The government order represents a particularly strict imposition of the country’s widely applied gender segregation policy. It is in contrast with the Shura Council, an unelected advisory body to the king, where women and men sit in the same assembly hall.

The elections in December were widely hailed at the time as a small but symbolic turning point for women’s rights in the kingdom. Yet the ruling underscores the continued sway of the country’s hard-line conservatives.

Conservative clerics protested against women’s participation before the election over concerns that it would lead to gender mixing and Westernization of society.

TEL AVIV—Three Palestinians carrying knives, guns and explosives attacked Israeli security forces at an entrance to Jerusalem’s Old City on Wednesday, killing an officer and seriously wounding another.

The attack happened after Israeli security forces stopped the Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate. Police later said the trio opened fire on the police before being shot and killed. The dead officer was identified as 19-year-old Hadar Cohen.

The attackers were found to be carrying explosives, and were planning a larger attack, according to Israeli authorities. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Jerusalem has been at the center of a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israeli security forces and civilians that began in September and spread across Israel and the Palestinian territories. Increased security in Jerusalem has reduced the numbers in recent weeks.

Israel’s military is coordinating with forces from the Palestinian Authority to calm the violence, Nitzan Alon, the Israeli military’s head of operations, told reporters in Tel Aviv, though he warned it could continue.

MELLITAH TERMINAL, Libya—A 9-foot-high wall built of fabric, sand and steel that can withstand a car bomb surrounds this seaside oil-and-gas complex, a barrier against militant attacks that many in Libya hope will soon be fortified by a national army under a central command.

Two rival factions that have spent years fighting for control of Libya are now locked in a political battle to form a unity government capable of defending their country and its oil industry against escalating attacks by Islamic State.

The political standoff has swelled U.S. worries of Libya turning into a hub for international Islamic State operations. Top national security advisers met last week with President Barack Obama over Islamic State as military leaders increasingly point to the need for stepped-up operations against the militant group, including in Libya.

Libya’s National Oil Co., among the country’s last functioning institutions since the fall of dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, issued a “cry for help” last month amid killings, car bombings, gas line sabotage and the burning of oil storage tanks by extremists. The attacks appeared aimed at undermining the peace process and Libya’s oil industry, which supplies 95% of state revenues.

Islamic State “fills the void” left by the lack of a unified government, said Fathi Ali Bashaagha, a Libyan lawmaker helping negotiate a United Nations-brokered power-sharing agreement between the two rival factions. Libya’s fight against extremists has fallen largely to militias with varying allegiances.

Pope Francis gave his first-ever interview on China and the Chinese people on Jan. 28 to Asia Times columnist and China Renmin University senior researcher Francesco Sisci. The Pope urged the world not to fear China’s fast rise in a historic one-hour interview at the Vatican. He said the Chinese people are in a positive moment and delivered a message of hope, peace and reconciliation as an alternative to war, hot or cold. The pontiff also sent Chinese New Year’s greetings to the Chinese people and President Xi Jinping, the first extended by a Pope to a Chinese leader for the Lunar New Year in 2,000 years.

Sisci’s exclusive interview took place in a Vatican hall decorated with a painting of the Holy Mary Undoer of Knots, in which she performs the miracle of untying impossible knots.

ROME–He felt it immediately, or so I sensed, and he tried to put me at ease. He was right. I was in fact nervous. I had spent long hours hammering down every detail of the questions I was going to ask, and he had wanted time to think and churn them over. I asked for an interview on broad cultural and philosophical issues concerning all Chinese, of which over 99% are not Catholic. I didn’t want to touch on religious or political issues, of which other Popes, at other times had spoken.

I hoped he could convey to common Chinese his enormous human empathy by speaking for the first time ever on issues that worry them daily – the rupture of the traditional family, their difficulties in being understood and understanding the western world, their sense of guilt from past experiences such as the Cultural Revolution, etc. He did it and gave the Chinese and people concerned about China’s fast rise reasons for hope, peace and conciliation with each other.

The Pope believes the Chinese are in a positive movement. He says they should not be scared of this, nor should the rest of the world. He also believes the Chinese have a great legacy of wisdom that will enrich them and everybody and will help all to find a peaceful path forward. This interview is, in some respects, the Pope’s way of blessing China.

Sisci: What is China for you? How did you imagine China to be as a young man, given that China, for Argentina, is not the East but the far West? What does Matteo Ricci mean to you?