RUTHFULLY YOURS

Pope Francis is one of the gabbiest popes in recent decades. The pontiff has not been shy about commenting on issues that he obviously knows little or nothing about — especially climate change, about which he gets his talking points directly from the far left.

So I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised when the pope calls in an Italian reporter on a whim to heavily criticize the U.S. for its immigration and refugee policies.

The Daily Wire reports:

“I worry about very dangerous alliances among powers that have a distorted vision of the world: America and Russia, China and North Korea, Putin and Assad in the war in Syria,” he said in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

Directing his comments toward world leaders gathered in Germany for the G20 summit, Francis said the meeting of the world’s top economies worries him.

“Our main and unfortunately growing problem in the world today is that of the poor, the weak, the excluded, which includes migrants,” said Francis, the first pope in 1,300 years to come from a nation outside Europe. “This is why the G20 worries me: It mainly hits immigrants.”

Francis told world leaders that Europe is the “richest continent in the whole world” and that leaders there should not close borders. Conflict across the Middle East and Africa have forced millions to flee their homes, making them refugees. But few problems were solved at the G20 — while leaders agreed to support free trade, there was no consensus on how to deal with the refugee problem.

I’ve said this before when the pope has criticized the refugee policies of other nations. Unless the Vatican flings open its gates and takes in a few thousand refugees itself, the pope has no standing whatsoever to criticize others. CONTINUE AT SITE

Ten million dollars is apparently nothing to a free spending socialist like Justin Trudeau, but it’s pretty clear his sneaky little payoff to a Guantanamo-jailed terrorist, Omar Khadr, isn’t going over well with the U.S. veteran he blinded.

According to the Daily Caller:

The wounded warrior who was blinded by Omar Khadr’s grenade attack that killed Sgt. Chris Speer says Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau should be charged with treason.

In an interview with the Toronto Sun on Saturday, Layne Morris says Trudeau’s decision to reward the former al-Qaida terrorist with a formal apology and $10.5 million cash settlement feels “like a punch in the face.”

“I don’t see this as anything but treason,” said Morris. “It’s something a traitor would do. As far as I am concerned, Prime Minister Trudeau should be charged.”

Morris is also angry that Trudeau delivered the “compensation” money to Khadr in secret so that the settlement would be unknown to any U.S. court.

Paying anything to a sworn terrorist who killed our men and who will use his taxpayer winnings to kill us again, is a sign of pure insanity in the West. Was there a war on, or was there a legal dispute about terrorists’ rights to take down the Twin Towers in 2001? Why are any of these people getting money? The sneakiness of the maneuver defies the imagination showing that people of Trudeau’s ilk care so much about terrorists’ feelings they are willing to pay billions from other people’s money to succor them even as veterans go neglected. Yet they are just canny enough to know that the public won’t stomach it – the public they have such contempt for – and do it in secret.

It goes to show how far gone the left is when it comes to matters of war and peace. To them, there is no such thing as war, there are only lawsuits to be litigated. This explains why these people can never be trusted with the powers that go with war. They will just find a way to pay off the enemy.

It’s time to fix this problem from the stateside fast.

Iran is currently one of the youngest countries in the world, 70% of the current population of 80,957,894 are under 35.

Despite having rich oil and gas fields, culture and civilization, the youth and especially children in Iran are still deprived of basic human rights.

Today in Iran, the common belief is that child labor is ‘normal’. Parents regard their children as additional sources of income. Some families attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.

At a very early age children often separate from their families, to earn a few cents per hour, and are consequently exposed to serious hazards and illnesses. You may find them on the streets of large cities like Tehran, Esfahan, and Tabriz, in large numbers. They simply do not have enough time to go to school and improve their future prospects.

Recently Iranian media published reports on seven million child laborers, as well as a significant number of children abused in the drug trade.

The state-run ISNA news agency quoted three officials of Iranian regime on June 2, 2017.

Sarah Rezaie, a member of the so-called Imam Ali population, reduced the dimension of this social problem by claiming that there are two million working children in Iran, but unofficial statistics show the number of child laborers is at seven million.

She announced that these children are between 10 to 15 years old and added: “There are some pieces of evidence that show even 5-years-old children and babies are also caught in forced labor.”

She described the situation of children working in some of the metropolitan areas of Iran as “disastrous… and this has become a kind of norm.”

Rezaei pointed to the existence of shops where adolescents, often addicted themselves, sell addictive substances such as nas, pan, glass, and crack, adding that “these children are used in other cities of Sistan and Baluchestan province.”

These children swallow these drugs and after they crossed the border they expel them. Many have died in the process.

Sousan Maziarfar speaks of the children who search in garbage dumps for food… said the average age of these children is 12 years. “41% of these children are illiterate and 37% of them have dropped out of the school in order to work,” she added.

Maziarfar revealed that many of these children not only face disease but also having their faces, fingers and toes chewed and wounded by rats.

Soraya Azizpanah, a member of the association for the protection of the rights of the Children, also quoted Iranian regime parliament’s research center, which according to ISNA news agency, indicates 3.2 million children have dropped out of school to work.

With the Trump administration considering how to break the stalemate between Taliban-allied groups and the government of Afghanistan, terrorists detonated a car bomb in Kabul on May 31, killing more than 150. Afghan intelligence blamed the violence on Haqqani, a terror network with close ties to the Taliban, al Qaeda and Pakistan’s spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence. The attack demonstrates that Washington needs to focus on the threat from Haqqani, which has also consolidated militant factions across strategic regions of the war zone.

Haqqani’s ties to Pakistan make political solutions essential. Islamabad has shown no sign it is genuinely willing to end its support of terror proxies and reconcile with the Kabul regime. Yet the success of the administration’s recent decision to deepen U.S. involvement in the Afghan war will depend on whether Haqqani can be defeated, co-opted, or separated from the ISI, which for decades has relied on militant proxies to further Pakistani interests in Afghanistan.

Since 9/11, Haqqani has evolved from a relatively small, tribal-based jihadist network into one of the most influential terrorist organizations in South Asia. It is largely responsible for the violence in Kabul and the most notorious attacks against the coalition. It masterminded the 19-hour siege on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in 2011, and allegedly facilitated an assault on a U.S. Consulate near the Iran border in 2013 and a 2009 suicide bombing of a U.S. base in Khost province, which killed seven CIA operatives. The group also holds five American hostages in Pakistan. Since the 2013 death of Taliban leader Mullah Omar, Haqqani has become the only group with the cohesion, influence and geographic reach to provide Pakistan with “strategic depth”—a territorial buffer on its western border.

Pakistan denies sponsoring terror proxies and continues to work with the U.S. in counterterrorism against certain anti-Pakistan groups. But Western and Afghan officials say Islamabad also sponsors terrorism in order to undermine Afghanistan and India. In 2011 Adm. Mike Mullen, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Haqqani a “veritable arm” of the ISI.

Haqqani is a central element of the strategic challenge that faces the U.S. and its allies. The network’s expanding operations in northern and southeastern Afghanistan, and especially in Kabul, over the past decade have enabled its Taliban affiliates to “control or contest” territory accounting for about one-third of the Afghan population, or nearly 10 million. That’s a higher proportion of the population than Islamic State controlled in Syria and Iraq at the height of its power in 2014, according to CNN’s Peter Bergen. The militants’ wide reach makes it hard for NATO forces to build enduring partnerships with Afghan civilians.

As the debate intensifies over how the U.S. should respond in Afghanistan, Washington must also change its approach to Pakistan. As a first step, the president should appoint an envoy who would lead diplomatic and intelligence efforts to buttress the Kabul regime against terrorism. The envoy would also sharpen the focus on Pakistan in bilateral diplomacy with countries that have good relations with Islamabad, such as China, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states.

The envoy would also oversee relations among Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Russia and India, focusing on the formulation of political solutions. A U.S. alignment with India would more effectively check Pakistan, while improved U.S. relations with China, cemented over shared concerns about escalating violence and economic security, could pressure Islamabad and its proxies into a political settlement.

The U.S. should also press Pakistan to stop providing sanctuary to terrorists. That would require Washington to consider publicly exposing the extent to which officials at the highest levels of the Pakistan military and ISI support terror. Such moves against an ostensible ally would be unusual and would require advanced measures to protect intelligence sources and methods. But the U.S. has tolerated Pakistan’s duplicity for 16 years, and it hasn’t worked.

Equally important, the Afghan National Security Forces are unequipped for infiltration by Haqqani factions. The U.S. and NATO allies should increase political intelligence and military resources to ease into a strengthened combat-support role, training and mentoring the Afghan forces. A more adaptive political-military NATO campaign would help reduce the threat from Haqqani, eventually enabling Afghan troops to move from defense to offense against increasingly capable adversaries. CONTINUE AT SITE

OTTAWA—Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended the apology and financial compensation his government issued to Omar Khadr, saying Saturday they were the price for violating Mr. Khadr’s constitutional rights while he was held at Guantanamo Bay for over a decade.

Canada’s constitution “protects all Canadians, even when it’s uncomfortable,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters at the end of the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Hamburg, Germany. “This is not about the details or the merits of the Khadr case. When the government violates any Canadians’ [constitutional] rights, we all end up paying for it.”

Negative reaction to the formal settlement unveiled Friday has been swift, with former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper weighing in, saying the deal is “simply wrong.”

The formal settlement with Mr. Khadr, a Canadian held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay for over a decade following the death of a U.S. Army medic, marked an attempt to bring closure to a case that fueled a bitter debate on how to handle national security threats.

Canada’s Liberal government said it wished to “apologize to Mr. Khadr for any role Canadian officials may have played in relation to his ordeal abroad and any resulting harm.”

Settlement details, such as a payment for damages, weren’t publicly disclosed. A person familiar with the details said the payment was about 10 million Canadian dollars ($7.75 million).

The settlement brings an end to a drawn-out lawsuit Mr. Khadr’s lawyers launched against the Canadian government. It sought C$20 million in damages over his detention in Guantanamo Bay and what it claimed were a violation of his constitutional rights by Canadian officials, who interviewed Mr. Khadr while he was in custody. Canada’s top court ruled in 2010 that Mr. Khadr’s rights under Canada’s Charter of Rights were infringed.

Mr. Khadr, now 30 years old, was born in Canada and later brought to Afghanistan, where at age 15 he was captured by the U.S. Army in July 2002 and transferred to Guantanamo Bay. In October 2010, he pleaded guilty to a series of charges including murder, attempted murder, providing support for terrorism and spying. He came to Canada years later to serve the remainder of his eight-year sentence. He was released on bail in 2015, and has lived in western Canada since. CONTINUE AT SITE