RUTHFULLY YOURS

Ahead of a possible meeting next month between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, the White House tempered any optimism that a trade truce with Beijing is imminent when top economic advisor Larry Kudlow accused China on Sunday of doing “nothing” to defuse trade tensions.

But some Chinese officials and government advisers recently emphasized that China will show patience in addressing American trade demands, postponing if necessary some of its plans to become self-sufficient in high-tech industry.

China’s “Made in China 2025” plan, which envisions a rapid expansion of domestic high tech industry, figures prominently in the US administration’s complaints about Chinese economic policy. US negotiators accuse China of using state subsidies to gain an unfair advantage against US competitors, quite apart from tariffs, non-trade barriers, theft of intellectual property and pressure on Western joint-venture partners to transfer technology.

China told the United States that it would buy whatever the United States wanted to sell in order to reduce the trade deficit, and is ready to work with Washington on improving intellectual property protection, but the American challenge to China’s economic model is a deal-breaker.

By backing off from the 2025 target, Chinese officials believe, Beijing can placate the US Administration, and give President Trump a coup in public relations while keeping its own industrial program intact. The government is exploring a number of ways to present such a deal.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-passing-of-a-wwii-hero-joachim-ronneberg-1919-2018/

The worst thing about living in Norway for the past nineteen years (twenty next April) has been contemplating the dire future that lies in wait for the Norwegian children of today, whose feckless leaders are surrendering their beautiful country to a totalitarian religion. One of the best things about living here has been learning about Norway’s history. What is especially stirring to me is the story of the Norwegian resistance — which is a story almost entirely about a group of very young men who, faced with the occupation of their kingdom by a totalitarian foe, chose not to knuckle under and lie low but to risk their lives in an effort to (at the very least) cramp the enemy’s style. It has been moving just to be alive at the same time as some of these men.

Among them was Max Manus, who was 25 years old at the time of the Nazi invasion. A fearless saboteur, he was captured by the Gestapo only to escape, flee to Sweden, make his way to the Soviet Union and to travel, from there, mostly by ship, to the U.S., then Canada, and finally Britain, undergoing training in all three of the last-named countries for undercover work. He died in 1996 and was memorialized in a terrific movie, Max Manus (2008).

Then there’s Gunnar Sonsteby, who was a 22-year-old accountant in Oslo when the Nazis invaded. Joining the Resistance, he was soon head of the Oslo Gang, described by one historian as “the best groups of saboteurs in Europe.” A master of disguise and a gifted forger, Sonsteby, after the war, became Norway’s most decorated citizen. When he died six years ago, his state funeral was broadcast live on national TV.

Now a third Norwegian hero has joined them. On Sunday evening came news that Joachim Ronneberg, one of the nation’s last remaining World War II heroes, had died at age 99. Only twenty when the Germans invaded, Ronneberg was the youngest member — but also the leader — of the team that carried out the famous 1943 raid on the heavy-water plant in Vemork that has been dramatized on film in the 1948 Norwegian-French co-production Kampen om tungtvannet (currently available on YouTube with English subtitles), the historically unreliable Kirk Douglas vehicle Heroes of Telemark (1965), and, most recently, the excellent six-part Netflix miniseries The Heavy Water War (2015). CONTINUE AT SITE

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom has been quick to blame the U.S. and Israel for alleged misdeeds toward the Palestinians. The Turkish-based Anadolu Agency reported on May 16, 2018 that Wallstrom blamed the U.S. for encouraging the Palestinian riots in Gaza. She is quoted as telling Swedish TT News Agency that: “The U.S. has a big responsibility in the incidents where at least 50-60 Palestinians were killed and many others injured.” This was said in the context of the Hamas organized provocation to march thousands of Gazan across the Israeli border. It also happened to occur during the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem, which followed the Trump administration recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Wallstrom did not condemn Hamas’ effort to attack Israel and Jewish civilians.

The same Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallstrom (pictured above), eager to condemn the U.S. and Israel, has been silent about the execution of Kurdish political prisoners by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Sweden has turned a blind eye on Iran’s gross violations of human rights, and its cruel executions of women and teenagers. The Iranian regime has executed Kurdish dissidents with impunity. Sweden was silent about it, as were other leaders of the EU. They were too busy appeasing the Ayatollahs in an effort to preserve the unreliable Iran nuclear deal or JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), and winning business contracts.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271698/new-low-persecution-tommy-robinson-bruce-bawer

On Friday, the British judiciary lifted reporting restrictions on the three trials of a total of twenty “Asian” men at Leeds County Court, allowing the media to inform the public that the men were sentenced to a total of 221 years in prison for the rapes of fifteen young girls in the West Yorkshire town of Huddersfield. It was the second of these trials that Tommy Robinson was reporting about online on May 25 when he was arrested outside the Leeds courthouse, rushed through a brief trial conducted by Judge Geoffrey Marson, sentenced to thirteen months behind bars, and immediately confined in Hull Prison.

On June 13, he was transferred to Onley Prison, which has a higher Muslim population than the institution in Leeds and was thus more dangerous; exactly who ordered this transfer, which seems utterly unjustified except as a malicious attempt to expose Robinson to harm, remains unknown. Through the summer, Tommy’s supporters held rallies around Britain, accusing their nation’s establishment of having illegitimately imprisoned Tommy in order to shut down a major critic of the official appeasement of Islam; meanwhile, the mainstream media and political and cultural elite insisted in unison that Tommy’s trial had been completely on the up-and-up and that he’d gotten precisely what he deserved.

That line of argument, however, was completely discredited on August 1, when Lord Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, and two other judges issued a ruling that could scarcely have been more severe in its knockdown of Marson’s treatment of Tommy. Writing that the whole thing had been a “muddle,” from the nature of the charges to the justification for the verdict, the judges reversed Tommy’s conviction, freed him on bail, and ordered a new hearing. That hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, October 23.

Did Lord Burnett’s decision chasten Tommy’s critics? Not a chance. On Friday, once the reporting restrictions were lifted on those grooming trials, the major media in Britain dutifully provided accounts of the verdicts. There was certainly a lot to report: three trials, several months, fifteen victims, twenty defendants, a mountain of stomach-turning testimony. But the focus of the British media wasn’t on any of this – it was on Tommy. Since he’d played a leading role in drawing attention to the existence of Muslim rape gangs in Britain – a fact that local governments, police departments, social-services agencies, and the mainstream media had kept shamefully, pusillanimously silent about for decades – they might have taken the occasion to apologize for having hounded

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13157/north-korea-space-program

“Even though the US and its allies try to block our space development, our aerospace scientists will conquer space.” — Hyon Kwang-il, director of the scientific research department of North Korea’s National Aerospace Development Administration.

Such statements made all the more chilling North Korea’s 2016 launch of the Unha-3 rocket, with the capability of carrying satellites into space, its July 4 and July 28, 2017 test-launches of the Hwasong-14 ICBM and its November 28, 2017 test-launch of the Hwasong-15 ICBM, which reportedly has a maximum range that would allow it to hit anywhere in the United States.

If North Korea were able to develop the capability to damage or destroy US satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), it would be a major achievement for the country and pose a debilitating threat to space security.

Although North Korea, like other countries, claims that its space program is for civilian, rather than military, purposes, there is good reason to suspect that this is not quite what is going on, and that its government will simply use these capabilities to continue developing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of carrying nuclear warheads, to continue threatening global security. North Korea, like other countries, is probably planning to use its space program to militarize and weaponize the realm of space itself.

It is in this context that North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-5 satellite, whose imminent launch was first reported in December 2017, needs to be viewed. The report did not come as a surprise, particularly as two months earlier, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Kim In-Ryong, told the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space about his country’s five-year plan, from 2016 through 2020, to develop “practical satellites that can contribute to the economic development and improvement of the people’s living.” As Fox News reported, however, “…many U.N. members, including the U.S., fear that North Korea’s space program is actually a cover for its weapons program.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13161/grooming-gangs-britain

Although Muslim men are no different from the rest of us, nevertheless, all the rules governing sexuality may be easily found in Shari’a law and enshrined in the judicial systems of more than one Islamic country in the present day. The result is the perpetuation of attitudes towards women that often appear to debase them and allow men to treat them with contempt.

As often cruelty to women happens not only behind closed doors, but in the public square, we can only guess how this display affects both women and men. Sons see how their mothers are treated; this too doubtless informs their behaviour.

It is important not to assume that the members of British grooming gangs consider themselves jihadis entitled to capture non-Muslim girls. They do not even appear at all pious. But knowledge of such practices is likely to have some impact on Muslims coming from countries where some form of slavery or indentured servitude still exists.

Sadly, in the case of Britain’s grooming gangs, religious ideology does not play a role in forbidding child sexual grooming. It is important to examine just how crucial a factor this seems to have been in community silence about them.

Men, after a certain age — as nature seems to have intended to preserve the human race — are often sexually attracted to women. Women, similarly, are often sexually attracted to men, even if many cultures try to keep that proclivity a closely-guarded secret.

Different cultures handle human sexuality in different ways, presumably to avoid the potential social disruption it could create. This control has traditionally been affected by religious doctrines, laws, and patriarchal priests, ministers, rabbis, muftis and other clergy. In the West, women’s dress, behaviour, and rights to autonomy have been freed from religious control only in the 20th and 21st centuries, with the rise of the suffragettes, feminism and the availability of safe contraception.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-and-the-saudis-1540159637

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has hurt itself badly with the killing of journalist Jamal Khoshoggi, and its serial explanations are compounding the damage. President Trump will lose control of the Saudi-U.S. relationship if he doesn’t speak truth to these Saudi abuses and to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the 33-year-old power in front of the throne.

The most complete Saudi statement, issued late Friday night, at least admits that Khoshoggi was killed in its Istanbul consulate at the hands of Saudi agents. But the story that Khoshoggi was killed in a “fight and a quarrel” isn’t credible on its face. “The brawl aggravated to lead to his death and their attempt to conceal and cover what happened,” said the Saudi statement. That must have been some lopsided “brawl” with a 59-year-old journalist confronting multiple security agents, as if he were Liam Neeson in “Taken.”

The story is contradicted by information leaked by Turkish officials who say Khoshoggi was killed quickly and dismembered on the scene. The Saudis still haven’t produced Khoshoggi’s body, or provided more details of precisely how or when he died.

The “fight” story also conveniently lays blame on lower-ranking officials while effectively absolving members of the royal family, especially the Crown Prince known as MBS. The Saudis say they’ve arrested 18 officials and sacked five others. Several are part of MBS’s inner circle, and it’s unlikely they would have acted without at least the tacit assent of the Crown Prince. Khoshoggi, who had a wide following in the Middle East, had criticized the Crown Prince for his authoritarian tactics in trying to reform the Kingdom.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/jamal-khashoggi-killing-saudi-arabia-lies/

Nineteen days after Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, the Saudi regime has at last acknowledged the obvious, that Khashoggi is dead. After first insisting that he had left the consulate of his own accord despite video evidence to the contrary, and then slamming the allegations of his murder as “baseless” and threatening oil sanctions against those claiming otherwise, the kingdom has finally settled on its official story: Khashoggi was inadvertently killed inside the consulate during a fistfight that just happened to break out in the midst of an otherwise standard meeting with Saudi intelligence officials. The regime has made a show of dismissing and arresting several officials it says were rogues, and attributes responsibility for the killing to them only.

As alibis go, this barely qualifies. It is a wildly implausible story clearly designed to absolve Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman of responsibility of the murder and therefore leave open the way for continued close relations with the United States. President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo seem inclined to suspend disbelief, which would be a serious mistake. The situation demands a tougher, less credulous approach.

The Saudi explanation has changed enough times to give the impression that the kingdom was trying on different hats to see which might fit. There is convincing evidence that Khashoggi’s killing was the result of a premeditated operation carried out with bin Salman’s support. Turkish intelligence has alluded to a recording of the killing not released to the public, but thanks to video surveillance, the world knows for certain that a group of Saudi musclemen flew into Istanbul and entered the consulate hours before Khashoggi arrived. Several of these men are members of bin Salman’s inner circle; one, since dismissed from his post, is among the crown prince’s closest advisers. Very little happens in Saudi Arabia without bin Salman’s foreknowledge and approval, so the notion that he would be so unaware of his inner circle’s activities regarding one of the regime’s highest-profile international critics is laughable.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13156/extremist-persecution-christians-may

“Churches and individual Christians have faced increased restrictions in recent months, raising concerns that these pressures signal a coordinated campaign of intensified action against churches by the governing authorities.” — Middle East Concern, Algeria.

A Muslim man walked into a cathedral and threatened to blow it up for preaching the Gospel and not the Koran. — France.

“The Indonesian government should revisit the country’s blasphemy law…. To honor religious freedom as enshrined in Indonesia’s constitution, the government must respect all religions and stop criminalizing Christians when they are merely exercising their right to free speech.” — International Christian Concern, Indonesia.

The Extremists’ Slaughter of Christians Inside Churches

Indonesia: Six suicide bombers from one Muslim family attacked three churches on May 13, during Sunday Mass services; at least 11 worshippers were killed. The suicide bombers consisted of a father, mother, and four children, two boys and two girls, aged 9,12, 16, and 18. According to the report:

“More than 40 people were injured in the blasts. The first attack that killed four people, including one or more bombers, occurred at the Santa Maria Roman Catholic Church… The father of the family accused of carrying out the suicide bombing had detonated a car bomb during his attack. The incident was followed by a second explosion at the Christian Church of Diponegoro that killed two people. In a third attack, at Pantekosta Church, two more died, police said.”

A witness described one of the attacks, where the mother and the two youngest jihadis detonated themselves. Because she was carrying two suspicious bags (apparently of explosives), “officers blocked them in front of the churchyard, but the woman ignored them and forced her way inside. Suddenly (the bomb) exploded.” The father “was very active in the mosque,” said an acquaintance; “he never missed any of the five daily prayers, but he avoided discussing religion.” “The four children were studying in schools run by the Muhammadiyah,” long thought the most moderate Islamic school in Indonesia, said a family neighbor. “To me they were normal people,” he added.

Russia: Four gunmen stormed a church in Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Muslim-majority Republic of Chechnya, and killed three people, a churchgoer and two police officers, on May 19. The attackers — who were also armed with knives, hatchets and homemade explosives — were also killed in the gunfire exchange with security forces at the Church of Michael the Archangel. According to the report: