RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15645/iran-qaani-quds-force

The new head of the Quds Force, Gen. Esmail Qaani, is someone who not only desires to kill Americans but also boasts about killing Americans.

According to the U.S. Treasury Department Qaani covered “financial disbursements to IRGC-QF elements, including elements in Africa, as well as to various terrorist groups, including Hezbollah.”

It is incumbent on the international community immediately to cut the flow of funds to Iran’s Quds Force and General Qaani.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Brig. Gen. Esmail Qaani as the new head of the Quds Force after Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US airstrike ordered by President Donald J. Trump. It is important to know who Brig. Gen. Esmail Qaani is and what his policies are: his actions will have consequences for US national security interests and the lives of many Americans and the Free World.

The Quds Force, which the new Iranian General is now leading, has been designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the US Department of State, and has been responsible for killing hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans. According to a statement by the US Department of Defense, the Quds Force was “responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American and coalition service members and the wounding of thousands more”.

The Quds Force also deploys its proxies and militia groups to attack the interests and assets of the US and its allies in the Middle East, as well as the soft underbelly of the US, Latin America. The Quds Force exerts significant influence, direct or indirect, through a conglomerate of more than 40 militia groups, which operate under the banner of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). The organization is, furthermore, in charge of Iran’s extraterritorial operations, which include organizing, supporting, training, arming and financing Iran’s predominantly Shiite militia groups in foreign countries; launching wars directly or indirectly via these proxies; fomenting unrest in other nations to advance Iran’s ideological and hegemonic interests; attacking and invading cities and countries; and assassinating foreign political figures and prominent Iranian dissidents worldwide.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/03/the_canadian_health_care_myth.html

I recently had the opportunity to listen to two Canadian citizens discuss the Canadian health care system, and their personal experiences within it.  They were a very successful, middle-aged couple who had been involved in a motor vehicle accident in the United States while driving to Florida.  The accident in which they were involved was quite serious.  The wife suffered fractured ribs and a fractured sternum.  She also experienced pain in her shoulder, which wasn’t initially detected or diagnosed due to the extent of whole-body pain she was in.  She was taken to a nearby hospital.  Her husband, however, was more seriously injured.

He was trapped in the vehicle and had to be cut out by emergency personnel.  He was taken by helicopter to one of the premier shock trauma centers in the state, where he remained hospitalized for four days.  A broken leg, and a shattered wrist and forearm, necessitated surgeries, with hardware permanently implanted.  The husband received excellent care, as did the wife, though her injuries were not of a kind that are easily treated.  After four days, they returned to Canada, and began their recovery.

Had they lived in the United States, their recovery would have progressed entirely differently than it eventually did in Canada.  In the United States, they would have been seen within days by their primary care physician.  The husband would have been followed up by his surgeon.  Additional scans and studies, including MRIs, CT scans, and X-rays would have been performed to determine if his fractures were healing, if the bones were forming new growth where they had been joined with plates and screws.  The extent of any nerve damage would have been determined by EMG studies.  As soon as he was ready, he would have been started on a course of physical therapy directed to rehabilitating his many injuries, and returning him as closely as possible to his prior level of function, or that level that a maximum medical recovery would have allowed.  Such therapy would likely have been administered at least twice, and more likely three times or more, per week. The progress would have been recorded and the surgeon and primary care doctor, or other orthopedic specialist, would have been copied on the reports.  A team approach to this man’s healing would have brought about the greatest degree of recovery and resumption of function that it was possible to achieve.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/islam-global-muslim-jew-hatred-and-failed-jewish-andrew-g-bostom/

[Editor’s note: Below is the text of Dr. Andrew Bostom’s 10-minute talk in Nashville TN, on Thursday Feb 27, 2020, during a ‘Proclaiming Justice to The Nations, Panel on Antisemitism’, at The National Religious Broadcasters Convention.]

Islamic Law, Sharia, per Koran 9:29—the 9th sura or chapter, the 29th verse—mandates waging jihad war to submit Jews and Christians to a humiliating status of religious discrimination, and legal inequality, if they do not accept the true faith, i.e., Islam.

Fight against those who believe not in Allah, nor in the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger (Muhammad) and those who acknowledge not the religion of truth (Islam) among the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued.

But Islam also singles the Jews out, uniquely, for opprobrium, as is evident in the 7th verse of the Koran’s first chapter, called the “fatiha,” or “opening,” which pious Muslims repeat 17- times daily. This verse refers to those who have “incurred Allah’s anger”, and both a tradition of Islam’s prophet Muhammad himself, and over 13 centuries of authoritative Koranic commentaries, till now, maintain this reference is to the Jews. Why have they engendered Allah’s anger? Here is a 1940 summary “rationale” by the great scholar of Islam’s anti-Jewish polemic Moshe Perlmann, from a chapter entitled, “Jews in the Koran and Traditions” (which mirrors a 1966 work by Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, modern Sunni Islam’s greatest Koranic commentator, and Papal equivalent Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam’s Vatican, from 1996 to 2010, also entitled, “Jews in the Koran and Traditions”):

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/iran-becomes-ground-zero-coronavirus-pandemic-ari-lieberman/

On Monday, Iran’s Ministry of Health released new data concerning the coronavirus. It said that 66 people have died from the virus while 1501 have been infected. But given the Health Ministry’s propensity for lying, the figure for those dead and infected is likely much greater.

The rampant spread of coronavirus in Iran was a problem largely the result of the Islamic Republic’s own making. In early February, Iranian officials were aware of a potential problem in the city of Qom, where a shrine holy to Shia Muslims served as a breeding ground for the transmission of the virus. Yet authorities took no action to quarantine the city or even warn residents to take safety precautions. The shrine still remains open to visitors and video has recently emerged showing people licking the shrine.

By the time health officials began taking action, it was a case of too little too late. Iran’s Deputy Health Minister, Iraj Harirchi, downplayed claims made a city lawmaker that deaths from COVID-19 had reached 50 and said that he would resign from his post if that assertion was accurate. A day later, Harirchi became a victim of COVID-19 and was under quarantine but not before he was observed coughing on those adjacent to him during the previous day’s press briefing. Several other Iranian diplomats and parliamentarians have since been infected, and at least two have died including a senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran’s bumbling and incompetence in dealing with the health crisis can be attributed to the Islamic Republic’s unwillingness to acknowledge weakness and vulnerability. Its healthcare system is woefully inadequate. There are dire shortages of masks, medicines and testing kits. In the final analysis, the regime’s deceit, incompetence and corruption has spread fear and cost lives.

Iran’s handling of the crisis stands in marked contrast to how its arch nemesis Israel is addressing the issue. While Iranian officials are spewing little else but propaganda, the Israelis are at the forefront of inventing cures and treatments for the coronavirus.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15638/china-religion-crackdown

“In practice, your religion no longer matters, if you are Buddhist, or Taoist, or Muslim or Christian: the only religion allowed is faith in the Chinese Communist Party.” — A Catholic priest, AsiaNews.it, December 31, 2019.

One mother, who is a member of The Church of Almighty God, said that her son told her to abandon her faith when he returned home after school. “My son told me that if I get arrested, our entire family will be finished. He threatened to jump off the building to end his life if I continued practicing my faith,” she recently told Bitter Winter.

One shop-owner told Bitter Winter, “A few years ago, many shops sold religious couplets. In 2018, the government started banning them. Last year, all couplets were confiscated from shops, and this year, sellers are threatened to be fined and imprisoned. No one sells them in Shangqiu anymore. Who dares to risk?”

China, meanwhile, maintains that its human rights record is admirable. According to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang, “The Chinese people are in the best position to judge China’s human rights condition, which is at its historical best.” — Time.com, January 15, 2020.

China is increasing its already extremely severe suppression of religious freedom. More than a year ago, at a November 2018 hearing of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, the President of the Religious Freedom Institute, Thomas F. Farr, described China’s religious suppression as “the most systematic and brutal attempt to control Chinese religious communities since the Cultural Revolution.”

On December 30, 2019, China’s Communist Party (CCP) announced new “Administrative Measures for Religious Groups”. The measures — which came into force on February 1, 2020 — stipulate that religious organizations exist to promote the CCP and its ideology, according to Bitter Winter, a magazine on religious liberty and human rights in China.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/europe-appeasement/

The word “appeasement” evokes dark memories of the Munich 1938 agreement, in which Britain and France made far-reaching concessions to the aggressive German Nazi state in order to avoid violent conflict. The betrayed victim was Czechoslovakia, which was not even invited to the conference at which its fate was to be decided. The outbreak of WWII in 1939 showed, of course, that the agreement was a gross error in judgment. Sadly, the West does not appear to have learned much from Neville Chamberlain’s misguided proclamation of “peace in our time”.

The reality that antisemitism is an integral part of European culture is not the only issue dividing the EU and Israel. There is also the serious problem of chronic and habitual appeasement, though it is not often identified as such.

The quintessential example of Western appeasement in recent years was the 2015 nuclear agreement forged by the Obama administration with the Islamic Republic of Iran (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA). The four other members of the Security Council plus Germany all signed this flawed agreement alongside the Americans. The pact, which was ostensibly intended to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of Tehran’s Islamist regime, allowed it to continue to design and test missiles and develop advanced centrifuges.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu appeared before the US Congress to protest the agreement—a highly unusual and undiplomatic act, but justified under the circumstances. Obama was appeasing an aggressive and hostile Iranian regime that made (and continues to make) unceasing threats to destroy the State of Israel.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15660/iran-elections-outcome

For the first time in 40 years…. [t]he so-called “moderates” and “reformists” whose task was to give a North Korean-style regime a Scandinavian varnish have been reduced to insignificance…. Thus even without Ahmadinejad’s bloc, the IRGC and affiliates enjoy a solid majority.

The fact that the new Majlis reflects the true nature of the regime as never before must be regarded as a positive development…. In foreign policy, the new Majlis could end the illusion, most recently entertained by former US President Barack Obama, that the way to bring Iran back into the international fold is to back the “moderate” faction by offering concessions to the regime.

The next Majlis reveals the true nature of the Khomeinist system as a typical “Third World” regime with a military-security backbone and a thin ideological varnish. Something like the Castroist outfit in Cuba, the Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe, and, above all, North Korea, which is Khamenei’s ideal model of government…. Seen in that light, no one would expect the Islamic Republic to respect human rights, encourage citizen participation in decision-making and put the quest for economic development above obsession with ideological purity.

The results show that the overwhelming majority of Iranians either reject the current regime or, at last no longer actively support it…. For the Iranian opposition, the unmasking of the regime is a great boon; knowing who exactly one is fighting against is the first step towards shaping a credible strategy for change.

Describing the latest exercise in voting in Iran’s “elections” may require a high degree of indulgence. When all candidates are pre-approved by the authorities and no one is declared a winner without the stamp of the “Supreme Guide”, to speak of elections would mean stretching lexical flexibility to breaking point. And, yet, the rigmarole in question merits attention for a number of reasons.