RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/francis-buk-video-my-escape-slavery-sudan-frontpagemagcom/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Francis Buk, a former slave in Sudan who escaped his enslavement and is now an abolitionist. (Read his memoir Escape from Slavery and help him to free modern-day slaves by supporting iabolish.org.)

Francis shares The Nightmare I Experienced Under Slavery and My Escape, revealing also how the Left has betrayed African blacks enslaved — till this day — by Muslim-Arab slave-masters.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Dr. Charles Jacobs, the president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, discuss Do Black Slaves’ Lives Matter?, where he sheds a disturbing light on: When did the Left first go woke? When they betrayed black slaves.

He takes us into the horrific world of Racist Muslim Arabs Barbarizing Black Slaves in Africa.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16389/world-affairs-slippery-patch

Today, as in the 1880s, big, small and even mini wannabe empire-builders are engaged in a ruthless power game…. The most intense activity comes from Russia and China.

China, for its part, is projecting power all over the world while bullying some neighbors and bribing others into submission. When deemed necessary, it also acts with military force, as it did recently along the ceasefire line with India. China treats some African, Asian and Latin American countries, notably Congo-Kinshasa, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Ecuador as abatis or territory left by previous masters and open for pickings by new reapers.

Overall, in economic, political and even military terms, Western powers, still nominally led by the United States, remain involved in all continents but are increasingly behaving as if their hearts, not to say their pockets, are no longer in it.

As for Germany, it seems that its hapless Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has no ambition beyond caressing the corpse of the Obama “nuclear deal” with Iran.

The current lukewarm war may never morph into a hot one, but the risk should not be dismissed. Today, projecting power with low-intensity war, often waged through inexpensive proxies as Iran does in Lebanon, or through mercenaries as Russia does in Syria and Libya, enables even relatively poor countries to cast a larger shadow than they deserve.

“The world has stepped into a slippery patch, and we need to steady it.” This is how Benjamin Disraeli saw the international scene in the early 1880s.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16391/persecution-of-christians-july

“[T]here are young girls who have been abducted and enslaved, forced into sexual slavery by some of these guerrillas, these insurgents, these terrorists… We know that the recruitment of boys and adolescents, some of them very young, aged 14, 15, 16, is also happening. It is obvious that these young boys are under coercion. If they refuse to join the group, they could be killed.” — Paulo Rangel, Portuguese Member of European Parliament, Catholic San Francisco, July 23, 2020; Mozambique, where Islamic State (ISIS) seized a port.

In one week in June, 15 people were beheaded in the Christian-majority nation. Discussing the situation, Bishop Lisboa said: “The world has no idea yet what is happening because of indifference.” — Mozambique.

A 16-year-old Muslim refugee from Syria pleaded guilty to four counts of terrorism. His schemes were shared with and exposed by an undercover FBI agent posing as a fellow ISIS supporter online…. “It was a bomb lab,” the report said. — Global News, July 31; Canada.

“Somalis generally believe all Somalis are Muslims by birth and that any Somali who becomes a Christian can be charged with apostasy, punishable by death.” — Morningstar News, July 9, 2020.

The following are among the abuses that were inflicted on Christians throughout the month of July 2020:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16390/arab-world-change

“What is the difference between a Jewish person and an Israeli?” my mother, a religious and traditional Emirati, asked.

“Well,” she said, “when they start coming here, we shall get to know them better.”

For women trapped in the dogma of tradition, half in-half out, adventurous but guilt-stricken, we now feel proud of the choices we made to carve a niche for ourselves, because this niche is the new center. We can finally be ourselves and create the lives we wanted: to be out in the world, not in the confinements of a golden cage.

There was for so long the mantra of “Israel is the enemy.” It was a mantra that people could not break out of and that they believed without proof. These people are now quiet. We need this change in the Arab world. It has taken so long to come.

It was easier than we thought, that joint statement of the United Arab Emirates, Israel and the United States.

There were so many steps that were skipped, though: you can tell by reading on Twitter the voices of opposition from other countries that were in shock at the news. They resist the possibility, but to us, now that we are capable of acknowledging the peace that was created, the opposition feels no bigger than ants with puny pincers.

This is perhaps the first time that peace has happened without a war. It is peace for the sake of peace

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16375/turkey-erdogan-new-enemies

All those Turkish-Greek tensions in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas bolster a century-long Turkish nostalgia to take back some of the Greek islands. Yeni Safak, a fiercely pro-Erdoğan newspaper, suggested that the Turkish military should invade 16 Greek islands.

“Discussion of wars and invading Greek islands is… a tactic used by the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to distract the Turkish population from the woeful economic situation.” — Greek City Times.

Erdoğan needs epic stories of military might against real or fabricated foreign enemies to tell an increasing number of grudging voters in the face of an ailing economy. That is bad news for the entire region.

Fearing a sharp decline in his approval rating, especially in view of a looming economic crisis, Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appears to be chasing new wars with real or imaginary enemies.

Election data and research show that Turks have a tendency to unite behind their leader in times of crises or confrontation with foreign enemies. According to the Turkish pollster Metropoll, for example, Erdoğan’s approval rating peaked to 71.1% in December 2013, when he portrayed a slew of corruption allegations about him and his family as “a coup attempt.” In parliamentary elections in 2015, Erdoğan’s nationwide vote fell to 37.5% and his Justice and Development Party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/iran-israel-uae-deal/

The peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates presents the Iranian regime with dilemmas on both the foreign and the domestic front. The regime fears the emergence of a new international alliance that will have greater power to contain its hegemonic regional aspirations, and there is a new urgency to the need to prove to the Iranian people that the government’s imperialist foreign policy works to their benefit.

The condemnations in the Iranian media of the nascent Israel-UAE peace agreement are hardly surprising. The regime’s leadership is covering its embarrassment and apprehension with a stream of defamation and threats. Parliament Speaker Muhammad Bakr Qalibaf called the agreement “despicable and a betrayal of human and Islamic values,” while President Rouhani warned the UAE leaders “not to open their gates” to Israel. (An interesting exception to this pattern was the statement of former MP Ali Motahari, who tweeted, “Apart from the betrayal of UAE rulers, the blame was also on us for scaring the Arabs and pushing them into Israeli arms”.)

Israel’s rapprochement with the Gulf state is raising concerns in Tehran for a number of reasons. First, the regime fears that an alliance comprising Israel, the Gulf States, and other countries, supported by Washington and Riyadh, would be a serious roadblock in the path of Iran’s goal of regional hegemony. A multinational system of that kind would strengthen its constituent members not only on the security level but also on the economic, commercial, and cultural levels—a worrisome prospect for Tehran.

The prospect of such an alliance is particularly troubling to the regime at a time when its regional status is declining. Recent events in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have negatively affected Tehran’s ability to promote its “axis of resistance” in the region. Its status in Iraq has been weakening since the October 2019 uprisings, a pattern that gathered new momentum after the killing of Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. The deep crisis now engulfing Lebanon and the Hague’s conviction of a Hezbollah member for the assassination of PM Rafiq Hariri do not contribute to Iran’s prestige. On top of all this, Israeli air strikes in Syria are severely hampering the regime’s attempts to turn the country into a front line against Israel.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jimmy-lai-a-man-for-all-seasons-11597705349?mod=opinion_major_pos9

Taped on the wall by my desk is a photo of Jimmy Lai in handcuffs. It was taken a week ago, the day 200 Hong Kong police raided his Apple Daily newspaper and arrested him. It is my most treasured photo of Jimmy, who also happens to be my godson, having been baptized in 1997 just before the handover of Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty. The point is that though the handcuffs were intended to humiliate him, every man, woman and child in Hong Kong saw them for what they were: a badge of honor.

Soon Jimmy will go to trial on charges from sedition to colluding with foreign powers. It’s utter rot, of course. If he finds himself facing prison, it is only because Communist China, for all its size and power, fears any Chinese who insists on speaking the truth.

In this way Jimmy might be thought of as Hong Kong’s Thomas More, the difference being that while King Henry VIII wanted More to speak up, Beijing wants Jimmy to shut up. In the more than two decades since Hong Kong was handed back to China, most Hong Kong elites have cut their consciences to accommodate their new overlords. Which leaves Jimmy Lai and his printing press as Hong Kong’s single most important counter to official propaganda.

If Jimmy’s message resonates, it is in good part because his story is Hong Kong’s story. He arrived from mainland China on his own, a stowaway in the bottom of a fishing boat. In a city built by Chinese refugees, he raised himself from a scruffy teenager to the founder of a highly popular clothing chain, and then proprietor of Hong Kong’s highly popular Next magazine and Apple Daily newspaper.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16374/un-iran-terrorism

Europe’s leaders also did not support extending the arms embargo. They have been arguing that they want to preserve the nuclear deal. What deal? The deal that Iran never signed? The deal that Iran has been violating anyway?

The European powers have also ignored a recent plea by Iran’s neighbors to extend the arms embargo, as well as a recent statement made by the IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi, who raised serious concerns about possible clandestine and undeclared nuclear sites in Iran.

The six-country Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates — submitted a plea to the UN Security Council to extend the Iranian arms embargo. The letter accurately stated that “Iran has not ceased or desisted from armed interventions in neighboring countries, directly and through organizations and movements armed and trained by Iran. As such, it is inappropriate to lift the restrictions on conventional weapons’ movement to and from Iran until it abandons its destabilizing activities in the region and ceases to provide weapons to terrorist and sectarian organizations.”

The UN’s decisions to allow “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism,” freely to have an unlimited supply chain of conventional weapons may sadly go down in history as one of the most dangerous acts against stability and world peace.

One would think that one of the most dangerous things possible would be to allow what the US Department of State calls “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism,” Iran, freely to buy, sell, import and export advanced weapons. Yet, this is exactly what the United Nations just decided to do. The UN Security Council voted on August 14 to permit the 13-year arms embargo on the Iranian regime to expire.

Even the ruling mullahs do not seem to believe that they received such a great reward. “I don’t remember [in the past] the US preparing a resolution for months to strike a blow at the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it garners only one vote [the Dominican Republic],” said Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. This, he added, was a humiliation and blow to the US. Iranian politicians and media outlets are also celebrating. As the headline of the Iranian newspaper Etemad read in Persian (Farsi): “US is Defeated in Home Game: Attempts in New York to Convince the UNSC Member States Fail”.

Iran, thanks to the previous US administration, is crying victory. Among the many concessions that the Obama-Biden administration gave the ruling mullahs of Iran was setting a date when Iran’s arms embargo would be lifted. President Obama agreed to add a provision in the nuclear deal — which, by the way, Iran never signed – for the arms embargo’s disappearance.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/putin-critic-alexei-navalny-hospitalized-in-suspected-poisoning/

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, a staunch critic of President Vladimir Putin, was hospitalized in critical condition after a suspected poisoning on Thursday morning.

Navalny was on a flight to the Siberian city of Tomsk when he fell ill, and the plane made an emergency landing in Omsk where he was brought to intensive care. The hospital has so far refused to share medical details with Navalny’s personal physician, although doctors did say the opposition figure was on artificial ventilation.

“We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed in his tea; it was the only thing he drank all morning,” Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on Twitter. “Now he is unconscious.”

Anatoly Kalinichenko, deputy head doctor at the First Emergency Medical Hospital in Omsk, told journalists that he could not say whether Navalny’s life was in danger.

“Poisoning is being looked at as one of the possible reasons for the deterioration of his condition,” Kalinichenko said.

Navalny has vocally criticized Putin for years, and is able to reach millions of followers through his YouTube channel. In July, Navalny led a series of protests against proposed constitutional amendments that would allow Putin to remain in power until 2036.