RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17111/china-pressure-taiwan

One of the “necessary means” that China employs against Taiwan is forcing the Taiwanese air force to be on constant alert… It is part of a strategy known as “gray-zone warfare” that aims to intimidate and ultimately exhaust Taiwan’s resolve to resist the Chinese takeover. Tensions in the region are now considered to be at their highest since the mid-1990s.

More recently, China has expanded its operations against Taiwan from the air to the sea.

The new law authorizes China’s coast guard to use “all necessary means” to stop or prevent threats from foreign vessels, including the use of fire weapons.

“I think the time has come to be clear: Replace strategic ambiguity with strategic clarity that the United States will come to the aid of Taiwan if China was to forcefully invade Taiwan or otherwise change the status quo across the [Taiwan] Strait.” — Senator Tom Cotton, Defense News, February 18, 2021.

“China must be, will be reunified” with Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in January 2019. The goal of reunification is a basic tenet of China’s policy regarding Taiwan. It forms a central part of Xi’s nationalist doctrine, according to which, reunification is “a must for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation in the new era”.

“We are willing to create broad space for peaceful reunification, but will leave no room for any form of separatist activities”, he added. “We make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means.”

One of the “necessary means” that China employs against Taiwan is forcing the Taiwanese air force to be on constant alert. Chinese jets made a record 380 incursions into the Taiwanese air defence identification zone (ADIZ) in 2020 — the highest number of incursions since 1996 — thereby forcing the Taiwanese air force constantly to scramble military aircraft to head off the Chinese incursions. It is part of a strategy known as “gray-zone warfare” that aims to intimidate and ultimately exhaust Taiwan’s resolve to resist the Chinese takeover. Tensions in the region are now considered to be at their highest since the mid-1990s.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/german-state-govt-says-no-permit-needed-islamic-robert-spencer/

Here is some exciting news for those who are impatient for our glorious multicultural future to arrive. A cultural line has been crossed. And the implications of this, beyond the expected hosannas from the usual proponents of globalism and multiculturalism, are ominous. 

The German-language Junge Freiheit reported Monday that “according to the Hessian state government, muezzin calls can be made without a permit.” The Hessians have a bad record going back to serving as mercenaries in the British army during the American Revolution, and this isn’t any better. The state government explained in response to an inquiry from the Alliance for Germany (AfD), which opposes mass migration: “Contrary to the assumption of the questioner, no (immission control) approval is required for the Muslim call to prayer, with or without loudspeaker. Approvals were therefore not granted and can therefore not be withdrawn or revoked.” 

The AfD inquiry had noted that the Islamic call to prayer was broadcast over loudspeakers “in many cases with massive disapproval from the affected non-Muslim population, who saw the muezzin call as an expression of Islamic dominance and a violation of their own religious and cultural identity.”

The Hessian state government brushed such concerns aside and implied that the questioners were bigoted even just for raising such concerns: “In a society that gives room to different beliefs, there is no right to be spared from contact with deviating statements of faith or religious symbols, even under the aspect of so-called negative religious freedom.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-swiss-wont-miss-the-burqa-11615332345?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Switzerland voted in a referendum on Sunday to ban face coverings, and it wasn’t a revolt against Covid restrictions. Medical masks are excluded from the prohibition. Its real target is the burqa.

The measure, approved 51% to 49%, prohibits the wearing of full facial coverings in public. No specific garment or religion is mentioned, and the proposal is sex-neutral. The ban includes the balaclavas beloved by anarchists as well as the facial draping worn by some Muslim women. Yet there was never any doubt about the intent. The proposal was introduced by, among others, the nativist Swiss People’s Party, whose campaign featured posters of a black-veiled woman.

Switzerland joins Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany in banning the burqa. A challenge to the French ban was dismissed by the European Court of Human Rights. European democracies differ from America’s in notable ways, and many Americans have reservations about the Swiss prohibition: Aren’t burqa bans an illiberal curbing of religious and expressive freedom? By some reports, fewer than 100 women in Switzerland wear the burqa. Do they constitute so great a threat to the venerable Swiss nation that their constitution, which guarantees freedom of faith and conscience, has to be amended to alter their sartorial practice?

Aware that judgments from afar can sometimes be glib, I put these questions to Elham Manea, author of a book published last month titled “The Perils of Nonviolent Islamism.” A Swiss Muslim of Yemeni descent, she teaches at the University of Zurich’s Political Science Institute and campaigned for the prohibition with “a group of like-minded feminists, leftists and Swiss of Muslim heritage.” (She stresses that she distanced herself from the Swiss People’s Party.)