Trump 'Monitoring the Situation in Iran'

"The truth is only President Trump knows what he's going to do and a very, very small team of advisers are read into his thinking on that."

"He continues to closely monitor the situation on the ground in Iran."

"All options remain on the table." 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt 

 

"President Trump is a man of action, not endless talk like we see at the United Nations."

"He has made it clear all options are on the table to stop the slaughter."

Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations

At least 52 prisoners were executed in Iran based on prior non-political convictions during a period of nationwide protests and an ongoing internet shutdown.  Iran International

 

Last June Leavitt had read a message to reporters saying it had come "directly from the president". Trump himself would decide, he maintained, whether to strike Iran "within the next two weeks"; this at a time when Israel was carrying out strikes on Iran, and the president was weighing whether he would order the U.S. military to become involved. Before two days elapsed B-2 bombers were ordered to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. 

 

"It might be that they're delaying things and using the time for getting that posture correct", ventured Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, on the theory that the American president might have been concerned over the current U.S. force posture in the Middle East spurring him to hesitate. No U.S. aircraft carriers, an asset during a military operation in the region were available having been deployed to an operation focused on Venezuela.

 

The perceived shifting tone of U.S. President Donald Trump leaning away from his threats to attack Iran following his continued warning issuing warnings against Tehran for its brutal crackdown on Iranians mounting a countrywide protest against the oppressive Islamist Republic's theocratic regime saw a drop in oil prices as markets reacted to the uncertainty of this mercurial president's changeable sentiments.

 

The intervention of top officials from Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Qatar warning that an American military intervention would have the effect of destabilizing the global economy as well as shaking an already volatile region moving it close to a total regional war appears to have had an effect on the president's decision-making. This is a Muslim Brotherhood reaction to the potential removal of the Islamist theocracy ruling Iran.  

 

Anti-government protesters demonstrate on January 8, in Tehran.   Getty Images

 

While Oman and Qatar are in full support of Iran, as Muslim Brotherhood-linked states, the Muslim Brotherhood has been officially proscribed in Egypt, where it was formed almost a century ago, as a fundamentalist Islamist group dedicated to strict Sharia and jihad by any means, and in Saudi Arabia as well it is outlawed, though it seems that the severe orthodoxy of totalitarian Islamism dictates the decision making in favour of the Muslim Brotherhood whose agenda the Islamic Republic of Iran represents a living example.

 

Qatar in particular, with its massive oil wealth, has bought respectability and recognition as a 'moderate' Muslim state in the United States. Its persuasive power lies in its massive financial investments there, in its universities where it has been able to influence academia to respect its agenda of portrayals of Islam as benign, not the Western values-destructive totalitarian threat it carries. President Trump admires the trappings of wealth and power and is not immune to appreciating those whose generosity benefits him personally.

 

Iranians took to the streets despite the danger they face from their despotic, oppressive government that has, over almost a half-century persecuted them through force of threats and state punishment from imprisonment, torture and a relentless death penalty. Despite Iran's authorities warning the population that taking part in mass protests against the government would be construed as grounds for capital punishment, Iranians kept turning out in their hundreds of thousands in cities across the nation, facing police violence.

 

Iran International

 

Estimates of the rising death count have reached well over 30,000 people. The wounded have overwhelmed hospitals and now reports emerge that the Basij are entering hospitals to take away and execute those wounded in the protests. As for families frantic to recover the bodies of their loved ones for burial, without the thousands of dollars demanded by the regime to release them, those families that cannot afford the price to redeem the corpses are left disconsolate in their grief. 

 

After having issued vehement threats to the Iranian regime for the rising death count, and promising Iranians that the U.S. military is prepared to rescue them,  Trump's assurances that "help is on its way", while urging Iranians to take over their country's institutions, abruptly declared information had been given him from "very important sources on the other side" that Iran  had put a halt to killing protesters and executions were no longer proceeding. No need, therefore, to intervene.

 

At the same time that Qatar, Oman, Egypt and Saudi Arabia persuaded Trump to stand down from his word to the Iranian people, they urged Iranian officials to end the visible repression of protesters, warning that continued Iranian responses or an action against the U.S. would significantly impact Iran. Through social media Trump repeated the speaking lines of those persuading him not to strike Iran: "This is good news, hopefully, it will continue!", he posted over the commutation of a death sentence for a young Iranian shopkeeper-protester.

 

Iran's response was to once more completely shut down the Internet connections across the nation.  And nor can cellphones be operational. No news in or out of the theocracy, other than what the regime may permit. No guarantees that the hunting down and slaughter of Iranians, disconsolate over their abandonment by the world at large and fearing now to emerge from their homes, is ongoing. This is what is meant by a pact with the devil some might compare to the 'art of the deal'. 

"[Thousands have been killed], some in an inhuman, savage manner."

"Those linked to Israel and the US caused massive damage and killed several thousand."

"We consider the US president criminal for the casualties, damages and slander he inflicted on the Iranian nation."

"[Iran considered President Trump to be a] criminal. [The US must be] held accountable [for recent unrest]."

"America's goal is to swallow Iran."

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei 

Iran's supreme leader has for the first time publicly acknowledged that thousands of people were killed during recent protests, blames the West. Iranian leader press office via Getty Images

 

Luminary Iconoclast Leaving Woke Canada

"The issue with the College [of psychologists of Ontario] ... is very annoying to say the least."

"And the new legislation that the [federal] Liberals are attempting to push through, Bill C-63 [Online Harms Act] -- we'd all be living in a totalitarian hellhole if it passes."

"The tax situation is out of  hand, the government in Canada at the federal level is incompetent beyond belief. And it's become uncomfortable for me in my neighbourhood in Toronto."

"[I lived in a] kind of champagne socialist neighbourhood [where I was] less popular in my own neihbourhood than I am anywhere else in the world, literally."

"[The Toronto District School Board is] probably the most woke institution in North America, which is really saying something."

"[Toronto is] run by the wife [Olivia Chow] of the last leader of the socialist party in Canada [Jack Layton], and so the goal in Toronto was to turn it into Portland or San Francisco. And that's happening."

"I didn't ever expect that to be something that happened in Canada. But under Justin [Trudeau] and the woke mob, that's definitely something that's happened."

Jordan Peterson, Canadian psychologist, author, iconoclast

That's it, he's had enough. His advice and outlook on life, how to make the most of it sensibly with the use of one's own commonsense in acknowledging opposing ideologies while selecting what comes naturally, trusting your own reaction to prevailing and ever-changing social mores with a little helpful  hints from a seasoned veteran from the academic world whose personal experience leavened with the insight of a professional  people-watcher, will no longer tolerate the bullying of woke academia, government and  readjusted social structures that stricture personal development.

His rise to prominence owed greatly to pushing back against that woke establishment, starting with his refusal to accede to the preferred pronoun use at University of Toronto where he was a professor emeritus. His instructional books on living a fulfilling life, taking advantage of all possibilities with a clear head untrammelled with the junk science of modern reversals of societal mores mandating that everyone fall into line or be named an outdated troglodyte of social stagnation became a sensation among the troubled minds that saw no value in DEI, Critical Race Theory and Wokeness.

Anonymous complaints of Professor Peterson's private conduct in the social media sphere brought the heavy hand of the College of Psychologists of Ontario down on the Professor's head. His posts characterizing a plus-size model as "not beautiful" hit a sour note with someone, and a single complaint was sufficient no doubt, to spur the College into action against a sinning son. Professor Peterson was ordered to present himself for a coaching program on professionalism in public statements. And when a panel of Superior Court justices ruled that to be reasonable, Professor Peterson prepared himself for the ordeal.

Did those coaching sessions result in correcting Professor Peterson's impulsive remarks that people found so denigrating when he was expressing his opinion of the absurdity of social interactions? Hardly; it appears that the College was unsuccessful in persuading anyone of even minimal standing in the field to take the coaching position, possibly intimidated by the thought of 'correcting' the vision and values of a man known to be very capable in the debating field of rational thought.

 

In any event, the man is fed up with everything he sees and hears around him, from the administration of the Toronto municipality, to the pathetic aura in academia at every level where it is left-wing 'progressive' politics that rule the day and ruin the educational opportunities owing to those whose aspiration it is to secure a sound education, not constant exposure to deranged social experiments in restructuring the social weal to accommodate the victimhood ideology that permeates society from marginal minority groups to imported terrorist heroization.

 

When Professor Peterson left his tenured position with University of Toronto, chief among the reasons he stated was the "appalling ideology currently demolishing the universities and, downstream, the general culture". At a public enquiry into foreign interference, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was testifying he seemed to refer to allegations out of the U.S. that RT, a media source linked to Moscow, had been bankrolling right-wing influencers, inferring that Professor Peterson was one of those. 

 

"I don't think it's reasonable for the prime minister of this country to basically label me a traitor and I don't find it amusing." 

Jordan Peterson has announced that he has moved to the U.S. from Canada. Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP/Getty Images

 

Persecuting, not Prosecuting the Prime Minister of Israel

"I'm simply astonished by the magnitude of the absurdity. And, I must say also the magnitude of the injustice."

It's an ocean of absurdity and I want to talk about it. I want to testify."

"I lead the State of Israel and the Israeli army on seven fronts [and] a few days ago, a tectonic thing happened here, an earthquake that hasn't happened in a century ... and now it happened in one fell swoop."

"And this thing [in Syria] changes reality."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a press conference in Jerusalem, December 9, 2024. Maya Alleruzzo/Pool via REUTERS

 

A Prime Minister of a country at war, a war that has spread to include several countries surrounding Israel, from its south to its north, orchestrated by another country whose goal is to destroy the Jewish State with the aid of its proxies. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthies, the Syrian state, and the mastermind behind them all, the Islamic Republic of Iran have all had to be contended with by this man and his ruling cabinet, devising strategies, committing themselves and Israel to choices they hope and pray will protect its people, while at the same time focusing on the return of Israelis taken hostage by a terrorist group and its supporters.

The Herculean task of managing all of this, along with attempts to assure its less hostile neighbours that Israel's intentions are purely self-defensive. While simultaneously struggling to defend its honour and its UN-soiled reputation among both allies and detractors. Has there ever been another nation whose efforts at defense have been as hamstrung as Israel's? When its major benefactor feels entitled to place the country's existential response to terror seeking its obliteration under its final command, withholding vital munitions to coerce compliance?

 

All these issues juggled and considered, analyzed and discussed, decisions made in the hope that they will in the final analysis be helpful in securing a future for the tiny geographical enclave, suffocated by the overwhelming presence of a comparative gargantuan presence of another religion, culture, heritage, ethnic and ideological system alien and hostile to its own. A Prime Minister who has been stalked and accused and threatened by judicial action of a politicized, bitter opponent.

 

Under such duress that would crack the resolve and capability of  any lesser man, ordered to report for ongoing interrogation by law wielded by those whose animus toward Benjamin Netanyahu knows no bounds of decency, proportion and perspective, demanding that with this weight of responsibility to a nation on his back, he must regardless appear three times weekly for six-hour interrogations by mind-numbingly insensitive and oblivious members of the Tel Aviv District Court prosecution.

 

Which is where, after years of aggravated judicial assault, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his testimony of self-defense against charges of corruption reflecting three suits brought against him close to five years earlier, by prosecutors. Despite the Prime Minister's consistent denials of the allegations lodged against him, denouncing the oppressive drive to convict him as representing political persecution, he focused on the "absurdity" of those cases and the trial's timing coinciding with the conflict with Hamas and the tenuous ceasefire with Hezbollah, added to the collapsed dictatorship of Syria's Bashar al-Assad. 

Despite the lawyers representing the Israeli Prime Minister requesting delays in his testimony, they were rejected by the court which has brought bribery and breach-of-trust charges against him in three cases, named and differentiated as 1000, 2000, and 4000. The Likud Party and its coalition partners, along with some opposition politicians dismiss the trial as a partisan effort at government change by ex-parliamentary methods. 

The prosecution ignored the advice rendered to them in June of 2023 when the judges advised the prosecution to drop the charges, citing "difficulties" in establishing guilt. This is a roadshow unworthy of the Jewish state, whose leftist politicians and population have besmirched themselves by an agenda of legalized slander, in the process endangering the country as a whole at a critical time of its embattled existence. Nothing less than shameful.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiles as he prepares to testify in his trial on corruption charges at the district court in Tel Aviv at the start of his hearing on corruption charges on December 10, 2024. MENAHEM KAHANA/Pool via REUTERS

Leaving Zion To Return To Spain

"They took everything from us -- our identity, our possessions, any property that we had."
"I don't have $6,000 a pop to do this [assemble qualifying materials and pay for the application process], and I don't see how it would benefit me."
"I was planted in the United States, and in the United States I'll stay."
Maria Apodaca, Sephardic Jew, Albuquerque, New Mexico

"It's almost like a huge, many, many months-long scavenger hunt."
"[An immigration case he worked on of a Venezuelan refugee claim to enter Canada was] 100 times more simple [than his own Spanish citizenship application.]"
"It's odd, but I felt the need to reciprocate. They cannot make amends through our mutual ancestors ... if the descendants do not take up the offer."
Daniel Romano, lawyer, Montreal

"There's definitely a lot of Jewish people that feel like their Spanish or Sephardic expression of Judaism is important to them, so being validated by Spain is something that's pleasing."
"But I think also Brexit is just having a big [impact on] young, liberal European-liking people who don't want to give that up if they don't have to."
Ben Shapiro, Interfaith Charity, London, England

"You had to do it [unusual 'family customs' such as not eating pork, washing hands before and after meals, covering mirrors at home after the death of a family member], but you never knew why."
"I always wanted to know who I was. I think this is something I had to do for my ancestors. They went through a lot of pain. They were expelled from their land ..."
"To me, it's not about, What I can do with that citizenship? It's more about restoring something that I love, or we loved, hundreds of years ago."
Juan Hernandez-Villafuerte, 41, Montreal 

A gift shop in the old Jewish quarters of Toledo, where Jews were expelled five centuries ago. Photograph: Gérard Julien/AFP/Getty Images

Juan Hernandez-Villafuerte was led to believe by his family that they were Christian, despite the peculiar customs his family observed, well known to the Jewish community as identifying features of Judaism, but unknown to him, though his mother suspected their family had once been Jewish. That would have been before the year 1492, when Spanish Jews faced the Inquisition, and expulsion from Spain. Some Jews had acquiesced to the demand they abandon Judaism and become Christian. But even these people, called Marranos, were suspected of secretly practising Judaism, and some were burned alive, in auto-da-fes, the lethal penalty of spurning Roman Catholicism by those seen as heretical.

He was curious enough to return to Mexico City where his family had lived for generations, where he sought out police and church records, discovering an old property record dating from 1610 with the name of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather as the owner of a property there. "I was actually able to touch it. I always wanted to now who I was." He had felt impelled to do that genealogical research when in 2015 the Spanish Parliament passed into law the granting of citizenship to descendants of Sephardic Jewry who could produce documentation that they qualified.

Applicants had to prove connections with Spain going back centuries  AFP

Historically, Jews faced persecution, oppression, racist propaganda, pogroms and expulsion wherever they lived in the diaspora. And this modern-day 'change of heart' by a country that had made life impossible for Jews, and appropriated whatever assets and properties they might have had, while expelling them, discovered that with the detested Jews no longer to be relied upon for their trading, business and workmanship skills, their economies suffered, leading succeeding governments to invite the Jews to return.

Now, in our modern era, Spain and Portugal have done just that. As has done Sudan, beckoning former Sudanese-Jewish families to return to the places where they suffered intense human rights abuses. Come back, they say, where you belong, we miss you. They stand prepared to correct a historical wrong of immense proportions. Spain's economy is in ill health, its unemployment rate, particularly among the young, is sky-high. Just as it once closed its doors to Jews, it has more recently opened its borders to refugees and migrants streaming to Europe any way they can from the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

As long as an applicant is able to provide documentation demonstrably proving their Iberian heritage that application will be considered. Census documents, birth records, baptism, marriage and death certificates. The records must be translated and the translator must be given official recognition by the Spanish government, they must pay the application fee of $6,000 and the applicant must be prepared to travel to Spain to sign their application alongside the signature of a Spanish notary.

The old Jewish quarter of Toledo was a major cultural centre in the Middle Ages AFP

A rabbi at a Sephardic synagogue in Vancouver receives up to dozens of requests monthly to write letters to accompany Spanish citizenship applications, with requests arriving from South Americans, Mexicans, and occasionally Canadians. Some of those people have in their possession original scripts dating from the Inquisition. "People really, really took this seriously", explained Rabbi Shlomo Gabbay of Vancouver's Beth Hamidrash synagogue.

Spain is facing the prospect of a steadily diminishing population with a low fertility and replacement rate among the Spanish just as is occurring all over the world as people prosper and become more educated and women put off childbearing in favour of putting careers first. Spain's fertility rate at 1.3 children per woman is below replacement level, projecting a declining population by 9.4 million between 2000 and 2050. Spaniards have been promised pro-natal government initiatives even while it has accepted increasing refugee numbers.

Despite which, one has to wonder whether the application process for Spanish-Jewish descendants has any focus beyond the obvious potential of economic enhancement for the country. Jewish repatriation applicants must pass a language and citizenship test, most must hire a lawyer and genealogist  to guide their claim forward, all details pointing to the fact that only the affluent could afford the time and the money it would require to fulfill all those mandatory details.

Andrés Villegas, a Colombian, found a Jewish ancestor who was born in 1595 AFP

The Spanish Citizenship Committee of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico received 50 to 75 calls daily from people making enquiries about Spanish citizenship. Some interested in pursuing citizenship never suspected that the customs their families had followed had anything to do with Judaism. "That s a bombshell that goes off in someone's head. That is a real identity crisis. Citizenship is like getting this badge: yes, we are who we are", explained Schelly Talalay Dardashti, with the Committee. Observing that some people resort to DNA testing.

"There's a sense certainly toward the Jews of some sort of historical debt, some sort of reckoning."
"But if I can be more cynical, I think there's also an element of an attempt to bring people with assets and affluence to the countries [Spain and Portugal] and also to offset some of the refugees that are arriving at these countries."
"Many of them are having an awakening that they have to have another place to go, and I think that Israel used to be that escape hatch, but now Israel is in as much chaos as the United States."
Howard Adelman, associate professor of history, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

Christians Under Siege From the Middle East to China

"[The authorities] have been plotting to bomb the church ever since 2009."
"They were hesitant at the time after hearing rumours that officials from the United Nations visited the church and took photos. But now they've actually done it."
Parishioner, the Golden Lampstand Church, Linfen, China

"The repeated persecution of the Golden Lampstand Church demonstrates that the Chinese government has no respect for religious freedom or human rights."
Bob Fu, founder, president, China Aid, Midland, Texas

The Golden Lampstand Church in Linfen, Shanxi province. Pictured in 2009  AP

Tens of thousands of Chinese Christians raised 17 million yuan ($3.3-million) in Linfen, a city of 4.3-million Chinese, to build their church in 2009, which was, in fact, an 'unauthorized' place of worship. That same year, squads of security police descended on the church, smashing the building, seizing bibles. But the parishioners picked up the pieces and continued to attend their church for services. Until January 7 when the unauthorized "house church" was entirely destroyed by the People's Armed Police, a paramilitary answering to the regime.

This followed persecution and imprisonment of many of the church leaders, according to reports by ChinaAid, the U.S.-based NGO. Explosives were detonated, completely destroying the church this time around, as people stood by witnessing the demolition, weeping at the sight of the destruction being carried out. Not that state-sanctioned Christian Churches are totally free of persecution by the regime. Christmas celebrations planned by Chinese Christians in 2017 were suppressed or curtailed, people attending subject to surveillance camera monitoring, installed by the authorities.

AFP PHOTO / ANWAR AMRO

In the Middle Eastm the story of Christian persecution is even more fraught with danger and death awaits those who fail to take defensive action. Christian Assyrians, Chaldeans and Syriacs have suffered imprisonment and torture and finally death. They were witness to their churches desecrated, ancient monuments in the land where Christianity arose, destroyed. The Aramaic-speaking Christians were among the first in the world to convert to Christianity. Now they are hunted down and haunted by the fate that drives them from their homes in what was once ancient Mesopotamia.

A century ago they comprised twenty percent of the region's population. Within the last fifteen years their numbers have been reduced to 3 percent of the population. They fled Mosul in 2014 when Islamic State entered to take control from the suddenly-vanished Iraqi military. A half-million of Mosul's civilian population hurriedly exited the city; 200,000 Christians and 200,000 Yazidis, fleeing for their lives, knowing full well that ISIL would be targeting them.

As internally displaced people they thronged United Nations refugee camps for haven, taking their place alongside the mostly Shiite Muslims who had left Mosul to the Sunnis who would fare slightly better under Islamic State rule; a sectarian match. In those refugee camps the Christians found they continued to be targets of persecution, their religion viewed as anathema to the Muslims who shared the misery of the camps.

From Sweden where his family fled when Turkish-Cypriot conflict reached out to make his family vulnerable to violence in Midyat, Turkey in the 1970s, Assyrian Christian Nuri Ceyhan Kino, a journalist and filmmaker by profession, responded. He had foreseen this latest catastrophe that Assyrian Christians would be exposed to, had written about its imminence, produced documentary films that failed to take the attention of, much less influence people in power, leaving the region's Christians vulnerable to the malevolence aimed at them from the region's majority Muslims.

He undertook a mobilization of volunteers in 2014 to join in launching a social media campaign to alert the international community to the tragedy about to unfold and to coordinate protests around the world.A documentary was produced titled "Our Last Stand" portraying the plight of Assyrians in Iraq and Syria. And then a new NGO  was established in Sweden, calling themselves A Demand for Action (ADFA) with representatives in cities hosting Middle Eastern Christian populations, among them Washington, Toronto, Melbourne and Berlin with a mandate to protect all Assyrians/Chaldeans/Syriacs, along with other Middle Eastern minorities.

AFDA is active in projects supporting all minorities from the Middle East, funded by Middle Eastern Christians of all denominations around the world, and staffed entirely by volunteers. And here is where the irony kicks in. In Sweden, in Australia, in Germany and elsewhere where Christians from the Middle East have sought haven and found sympathy, Muslims too have converged in even greater numbers, as refugees and haven seekers, opportunists and economic migrants fleeing turmoil in their countries of birth and bringing with them the same prejudices and hatreds that resulted in the tragic persecution that the Christians have fled.

Shutterstock

Terrorists and False News

"Stop the violence. Today we have seen pictures of small children killed by Burma's security forces. Over the last several years, I have repeatedly condemned this tragic and shameful treatment."
"I am still waiting for my fellow Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same. The world is waiting and the Rohingya Muslims are waiting."
Malala Yousafzal, Pakistani Nobel Peace Laureate

State security forces have been killing men, women and children. They have been slitting throats, there have been beheadings."
"Soldiers have opened fire on groups of people and then set the bodies on fire, including children."
Matthew Smith, chief executive, Fortify Rights humanitarian group

"[The situation in Rakhine is] really grave [marking time for Suu Kyi to] step in."
"The de facto leader needs to step in -- that is what we would expect from any government, to protect everybody within their own jurisdiction."
Yanghee Lee, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar

AFP/Getty Images:  Myanmar's de-facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi said tensions were being fanned by fake news

Under Myanmar's military junta rule it seemed to the outside world to represent a sad and sorry situation that the Rohingya were persecuted, but it was fully anticipated once the military stepped back and a democratic election resulted bringing the world-famed human-rights campaigner Aun San Suu Kyi to the executive administration of the nation, steps would be taken to protect this religious and ethnic minority. Instead, they continued to be viewed as despised interlopers with no legal status.

Rohingya families have lived in Rakhine for generations, yet they remain, in the view of the Buddhist majority and the government, illegal migrants whose presence is unwanted. Without citizenship rights in Myanmar the 1.1-million Rohingya require permission to travel outside their established villages, as well as needing to acquire official permission to even marry among themselves.

The most recent outbreak of violence, caused by an armed Rohingya group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, that attacked a military base resulted in the army invading villages and burning down the homes of the Rohingya living there, forcing them to move on to avoid being killed. Pushed out of their traditional towns and villages, Rohingya, fleeing death have crossed into neighbouring Bangladesh.

Photo: More than 120,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh due to the violence. (AP: Bernat Armangue)

All they possessed is gone, they are famished and have no resources to maintain life. Smugglers were paid for passage across the Naf river between Myanmar and Bangladesh, leaving the refugees with nothing to support themselves with. The new government of Suu Kyi could have restored the Rohingya with the citizenship that the military junta had stripped them of, but did not.

Myanmar's National League for Democracy appears to support freedom and democracy for Buddhist Burmese, but sees it being of little value to Muslim Rohingya. They are thus stateless, with close to 400,000 searching for haven in Bangladesh now living in squalid refugee camps. The "clearance operations" to flush out insurgents from Rohingya villages has flushed out innocent civilians with nowhere to go, no resources to sustain them.

Photos of a Rohingya man holding mines on the Myanmar side of the border were sent to CNN by activists and examined by a mine expert, who confirmed that the two objects are PMN1 antipersonnel devices

The government of Myanmar insists it was the insurgents themselves who set fire to their own houses and took to slaughtering Buddhists in the western state of Rakhine, while the starving refugees speak of targeted shootings by Myanmar troops who warned them to leave, if they valued life. In their desperation to flee they faced danger crossing the border into Bangladesh as well, thanks to the explosives the Burmese military has planted there.

But this is all, of course, 'fake news'.

Source: CNN  

Rohingya Muslims flee violence in Myanmar

Baha'i Persecuted in the Islamic Republic of Iran

"One reason clerics in Iran have targeted the group with such zeal is the fact devout Muslims see the Baha’i faith as heresy and an insult to the teachings of Islam. The religion started in 1844 in the southern city of Shiraz when a man named Bab announced the coming of a messenger of God. In 1863, one of Bab’s followers named Baha’ullah declared himself to be the messenger and began preaching a message of unity among faiths. His followers were attacked and he spent years in exile, dying in the city of Acre, in what was then Palestine, in 1892."
"The Islamic Republic’s 34-year rule has hurt many religious and political groups in Iran, but one community has borne an especially heavy burden: the Baha’is, a religious minority viewed as heretics by some Muslims."
"Dozens of Baha’is were killed or jailed in the years immediately following the Islamic revolution in 1979. Billions of dollars worth of land, houses, shops and other Baha’i belongings were seized in subsequent years by various Iranian organizations, including Setad, the organization overseen by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei."
Reuters Staff

(Multiple pictures of Baha’i religious leaders arrested in Iran are seen during a protest at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro June 19, 2011. Picture taken June 19, 2011. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes)

The Baha'i assemble seven of their faithful as leading members of their religious community; they are called the Yaran, the "Friends" and represent the needs of Baha'is in Iran, for in their tradition there is no clergy and the Friends serve as a kind  of administrative group to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of Iran. All seven of the current Friends are languishing in Iranian prisons. Previous groups were "disappeared" during the 1979 Iranian revolution under the Khomeinist regime. And in 1981 the last eight members of the Spiritual Assembly were executed by firing squad.

The current seven Friends were charged and tried singly for espionage, insulting religious sanctity, collaboration with Israel, propaganda against the regime and "spreading corruption on Earth". Convicted, they were sentenced to twenty years in prison, and have now been incarcerated for ten years. Baha'i originated out of a schism with Shia Islam and unlike Islam the Baha'i religion places its emphasis on human unity, equality between men and women, the alleviation of poverty, and respect for science.

They preach world peace, and unlike most other religions, including Islam that do likewise, world peace is their actual goal which they work assiduously toward achieving. As for religious devotion, it is meditation, teaching and good works that spur them to honour their religious dedication. An estimated six million faithful live around the world, half of whom live in India. Canada has 35,000 Baha'i faithful. Although Baha'i faithful originally came from Iran, an estimated 300,000 are left there and remain persecuted and despised.

Baha'i are considered under Iranian law to be "unclean". They are not permitted to work in specific employment categories and nor are they within the Islamic Republic of Iran legally persons; there their legal protections have been severely attenuated. Government services are withheld from them, marriages in the Baha'i religion are unrecognized in law, and their progeny are considered to be illegitimate. They may not enrol in post-secondary education. In short, these beleaguered people of peace live with unrelenting fear.

They are arrested and placed in jail for being Baha'i. Baha'i owned businesses such as toy stores, optometrist offices auto-body repair shops, stationery stores, etc., were shut down after it was noted by authorities that they were not open for business on Baha'i holy days. When Baha'i are picked up by police, their families are given no notice of their whereabouts, and tend to know nothing of their fate. Baha'i men are sentenced to prison for the crime of "acting against national security" through teaching the Baha'i faith.

The "moderate" president Hassan Rouhani's administration has overseen a worsening situation for Iranian Baha'i, along with Iranian journalists, gays, reformists and dissidents. The Baha'i World Centre is located in Haifa, Israel. There the faithful live in peace and serenity and security. They find haven in Israel, their centre located there where their holy figures lived and died. Perhaps because of the presence of the centre in Israel, Iranian authorities accuse them of collaboration with Israel.

Pictured to the right is the Seat of the Universal House of Justice and on the left is the International 

Teaching Centre building. Both are located on Mt. Carmel in Haifa, Israel. (Photo: Iain Simmons via Flickr) 

"The Baha’i Faith is entirely non-political and we neither take sides in the present tragic dispute going on over the future of the Holy Land and its peoples nor have we any statement to make or advice to give as to what the nature of the political future of this country should be."
"Our aim is the establishment of universal peace in this world and our desire to see justice prevail in every domain of human society, including the domain of politics."
"As many of the adherents of our Faith are of Jewish and Moslem extraction we have no prejudice towards either of these groups and are most anxious to reconcile them for their mutual benefit and for the good of the country."
 Shoghi Effendi, head of the Faith from 1921-1957

The Symbol of Intolerance : Sanctimony and Islam

"The Justice Department, Homeland Security, the FBI, and the White House, alongside congress and local officials, must speak out -- and speak out forcefully -- against this scourge of anti-Semitism impacting communities across the country."
"Members of our community must see swift and concerted action from federal officials to identify and capture the perpetrator or perpetrators who are trying to instill anxiety and fear in our communities."
David Posner, spokesperson, JCC Association of North America

Melanie Steinhardt comforts Becca Richman at the Jewish Mount Carmel Cemetery in Philadelphia    Credit: AFP

"[The vandalism and bomb threats represent serious, unacceptable behaviour which the Department of the Attorney-General will] do what it can to assist in pushing back ... and prosecuting anybody that we can prove to be a part of it."
"We are a nation that is a diverse constituency, and we don't need these kind[s] of activities."
U.S. Attorney-General Jeff Sessions

The rising tide of viral anti-Semitism appears to be nowhere near abating. Democrats insist that the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency of the United States and his catering to the dark forces of the right wing has emboldened society's anti-Semites to come out of the sewers where they usually slither, undetected but for occasional poisonous attacks. Certainly, some of the followers of Donald Trump during the election campaign, even more unsavoury that himself, give a bit of credence to that theory.

On the other hand, because of his personal animus and distrust of Muslims -- where the Obama administration went out of its way to consult with the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR, where the President of the United States would avoid speaking of attacks on Jews by Muslims at home and abroad as nothing but 'random attacks on folks', seemed to keep blatant anti-Semitic attacks to a minimum -- perhaps President Trump's statements and actions have created a backlash from within that community.

It is, after all, a community whose growing presence throughout Europe has been almost entirely responsible for the rising persecution and violence against Jews in France, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands and Sweden and virtually across the continent where Jews have lived for centuries and Arabs more recently, leading to mass 'protests' by Arabs and Muslims slandering Israel and pillorying any Jews that support Israel as hated Zionists.

There have always been, from time to time, random episodes of anti-Semitism wherever Jews have settled in the diaspora. Where Jewish community centres, parochial schools and synagogues have been defaced, sometimes fire-bombed, and cemetery monuments upturned. These latest threats against Jewish community centres have taken on a deeper, even more malevolent tone of terrorism. Jewish cemeteries where hundreds of gravestones have been upturned and smashed have a pattern, appearing in various states across the country.

Where, a Jewish cemetery dating to the 1800s was the scene of another several hundred headstones overturned and damaged in Philadelphia, hard on a suburban St.Louis cemetery reeling from a similar desecration. The much-publicized involvement of someone like Linda Sarsour whose Hamas associations identify her sentiments and others of her ilk from the Muslim community taking to social fundraising sites profiling themselves as sympathetic to the Jewish community reeling from these attacks belie their otherwise Israel-bashing normalcy.

The "abominable crime" of desecrating graves for the purpose of demonstrating contempt for Jews is an old story brought to life in an excess of hatred reflective of an acceleration of an old brand. The safety and security of Jews in North America has not yet reached the critical levels of fear and potential danger now being seen in Europe which has become drenched in the weight of a growing population of Muslims among whom Islamists thrive.

Muslim authorities tend to ignore the rare moderates among them who plead for a cessation of the Friday sermons condemning Infidels, Christians and Jews to the fires of hell, to no avail. A religion that considers itself god's final and complete salvation for the human race, one which holds that only where Islam prevails is there peace, while elsewhere war prevails, and it is Islam's duty to bring peace to non-Muslim nations by waging the war of jihad cannot be anything but what it is: an intolerant, bigoted, hate-mongering fascist ideology.

In Response to a Desperate Need, Yazidis to Find Refuge in Canada

"The reality is that if the international community doesn't wake up to the plight of these people, they will be wiped off the face of the Earth."
"And that's why it's so important to look at resettlement of these people as only one very small piece of the broader puzzle."
Michelle Rempel, Conservative Member of Parliament, Ottawa

Displaced people from the minority Yazidi sect walk toward the Syrian border on Aug. 11, 2014.
(STRINGER/IRAQ/REUTERS)

"[Canada has long given haven to refugees noting their "vulnerability, not religion or ethnicity [and turns its focus on] highly vulnerable [survivors of Islamic State predations. A] significant majority [of the 1,200 slated to be brought to Canada will be Yazidi resulting from the] high level of violence [they have suffered. The Yazidi people represent] an integral part [of Iraq's society that should be preserved which explains why the Government of Canada focuses on] a small number of people for whom resettlement is the best option."
"As many have experienced unimaginable trauma, both physical and emotional, many will have unique psychological and social needs such as trauma counselling,"
Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen, Government of Canada

"Some of these women haven't even told their own families about what they experienced [as victims of Islamic State violent atrocities]."
Dawn Edlund, associate deputy immigration minister

The Government of Canada lauds itself for ensuring that 40,000 Syrian refugee families fleeing conflict in their own country were expedited entry into Canada to begin a new life, with assistance in housing, settling in, and financial aid through government tax-funded coffers. Canadians felt, by and large, fairly satisfied with the effort, though some might have felt it would have been useful to focus on the plight of women and children, with a special emphasis to begin with, on Christian Syrians and Yazidis, both of whom as minorities, were singled out for violent predation.

Yazidi women and children in particular have faced the horrific reality that the maltreatment they were singled out for destroyed families when Islamic State targeted Yazidi men for annihilation, piling them into mass graves, and taking the women and children into perpetual bondage status, as slaves to be bartered for, maltreated and violated. The 40,000 Syrians absorbed into Canada were victims of their own government, when the Shiite Alawite President of Syria took vicious exception to his Sunni Syrian population protesting their inferior place in Syria.

Few championed the plight of the thousands of Yazidi women who were sold in the marketplace as sex slaves. Those who were able to escape, were sheltered and protected by the Kurds, but the world at large seemed to take little notice of their misery and the plight they faced, destined to be slaughtered or their freedom taken from them, in an abysmal reality where they were considered less than human, and free for the taking. Michelle Rempel had a better understanding than most in government, having interviewed some Yazidi women.

That this current government has finally turned its attention to alleviating the plight of a relative handful of these vulnerable people is a welcome change. Erring on the side of caution reflecting their fears, the move to absorb 1,200 refugees comprised partially of entire families as well as individuals owes to the fact that many among them fear repercussions against other members of their families should much information be made available identifying them and their imminent move to Canada, and the government is respecting that cautionary need.

Immigration Minister Hussen spoke of close to 400 Yazidi refugees who have been accepted in the last four months, quietly and without fanfare, in contrast to the intense public exposure the intake of the Syrian refugees had been given. And, it seems that the absorption of 1,200 Yazidi refugees through government initiative won't be the end of the effort. The government is prepared to become involved in authorizing private sponsorships of Yazidi refugees, where groups associated with churches, for example, pool resources to sponsor refugees.

Four months ago the House of Commons was unanimous in its support of a motion brought by Conservative Members of Parliament, calling on the government to provide asylum opportunities to Yazidi women and girls, in recognition of their conditions of fraught existence in a geography where a ferociously inhumane Islamist jihadi group threatens their very survival to the point where the atrocities conducted upon the Yazidis have been named as genocidal in intention.

"Helping to resettle all child survivors is vital to this work", stated Immigration Minister Hussen, in acknowledgement of Islamic State's focus on targeting young boys as well as girls and women. The hope is that this government will continue to focus on the rescue of Yazidis, well deserving of Canadian efforts to offer them another opportunity to live life to its fullest potential, distanced from the horrors of their homeland where a Medieval fascism attempted to deprive them of their very existence.

Yazidis refugees carry their belongings on January 3 in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey as they change their refugee camp and move to Midyat, further south. The Trudeau government is poised to announce today that Canada will give asylum to 1,200 primarily Yazidi refugees by year end. While the majority of the refugees will come from Iraq, the government says some will also be accepted from Lebanon and Turkey.   (ILYAS AKENGIN / AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Pakistani Values of Religious Persecution

"Luckily I escaped. [Evading arrest in Pakistan, charged with terrorism] That's how I am safe here, thank God. It's all work of God, I believe, because had I been caught it would have been not good for my health at all."
"They [Ahmadiyya Muslims] have claimed that we attacked. It was not an attack. It was an agitation. They attacked us. The rest of what happened was a natural reaction."
"[Questioned by authorities at Pearson airport in Toronto] and they were satisfied and said that I can go. And then CSIS [the Canadian Security Intelligence Service] came and asked me questions and they said, 'Okay, no problem'."
"There was some frustration at the time [when demands were made to authorities to divest the Ahmidiyya of their mosque] and also quite a few people from close-by communities started coming because they learned about the incident."
"I mean what do you expect from a large crowd? They will sit tight and get shot at and stones throwed at them and wrong type of words used against them? There are elements, they will do something and they did it. Some of them who are youngsters tried to climb the [mosque retaining] wall. But none of the Ahmadis got hurt at all, not even a scratch."
"This is an incident where the government is trying to protect the minorities and working against the majority That's why we all are punished."
Rashid Ahmed, Mississauga, Ontario

"Rest assured, we have rule of law in Pakistan and all those individuals who are responsible for the incident [December 12 mosque attack] will be taken to task with the due process of law."
Nadeem Kiani, press secretary, Pakistan High Commission, in Canada

Army, police disperse protesters, take control of worship place. PHOTO SOURCE: TWITTER @RAZA AHMAD RUMI

This fine, upstanding Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin has lived in Canada for the last 40 years. Through immigration, Canada has a sizeable Pakistan-Canadian population. There is also a good-sized population of Ahmidiyya Muslims living in Canada, where they migrated to avoid the kind of persecution they have lived under in Pakistan. In Pakistan, Ahmidiyya are looked upon as
apostates, they are forbidden to call themselves Muslims, and they must not, by law, pray in mosques.

"They should not have anything to do with mosques and they cannot be called Muslims", said Mr. Ahmed upon enquiry in Canada why he had organized a 'protest' against the Ahmidiyya while on a visit to Pakistan. "Why are they occupying a mosque which is built for Muslims by Muslims? This is aggression", he averred. He informed an enquiring journalist that the procession he organized was meant to pass alongside the Ahmidiyya mosque, when it turned into a protest.

In Canada, Pakistani-Canadians insist on their rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for Canadians, given full equality under the law. A Pakistani-Canadian woman insisted on her right to wear a niqab, leaving only her eyes visible, during a citizenship ceremony. A Pakistani-Canadian newly-elected Member of Parliament feels entitled to produce a motion to Parliament for the condemnation of "Islamophobia". The very people who wrap themselves in the protection that Canada affords all its citizens practise bigotry against others while demanding recognition of their exceptionalism.

Mr. Ahmed had previously arranged for a petition which 580 villagers from Dulmial, roughly 150 kilometres south of Islamabad had signed, to be addressed to local authorities.  The petition spoke of "extreme measures" should police fail to take action to clear the mosque of Ahmidiyyas. The first name signed on the petition was that of Mr. Ahmed, the visitor from Canada. This is a mosque said to have been built in the 1800s, and which had been "occupied" since 1996 by the Muslim Ahmidiyya sect. An unresolved court dispute over ownership of the mosque rankles villagers.

Safwan Choudhry, speaking for Ontario's Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at, view Mr. Ahmed and his escape from justice in Pakistan where he was busy persecuting members of his sect, with fear and trepidation, appalled that the man could travel abroad, incite to violence, then return unpunished to Canada. Mr. Choudhry is urging Canadian authorities to undertake an investigation into the fact that a mob of a thousand launched a violent attack upon the minority Ahmidiyya community in Dulmial.

The Canadian High Commission in Islamabad had posted a comment on Twitter, commending the Punhab government "for undertaking to hold mob leaders in Chakwal to account". But that it was a Pakistani-Canadian who felt free to organize and incite the mob does not appear to have entered the equation of justice and the rule of law. A rather peculiar situation in Pakistan where minority religions are given little protection under the law, leading religious bigots to feel free to persecute and demean Christian, Shiites and Ahmadiyya communities.

At the point where the 'procession' of a thousand villagers came abreast of the mosque they demanded of the police that the building be sealed and the Ahmidiyyas be ousted. The police made no move to accommodate the mob's demands. At this juncture, claims Ahmed, the Ahmidiyyas taunted the protesters, inciting them to begin scaling the mosque walls. An Ahmidiyya man suffered a fatal heart attack within the mosque as the protesters forced their way into the building.

Ahmed describes fires set by the Ahmidiyyas, torching their documents and furniture before exiting. Video footage, on the other hand, shows protesters looting the mosque and throwing items into piles, then setting them aflame. The Dawn newspaper in Pakistan reported Ahmed to be the "main suspect" in the incident where a charge sheet was made against 61 suspects by a Joint Investigation Team. The Senate Committee on Human Rights, reported Dawn, had recommended the Government of Pakistan seek Ahmed's extradition from Canada.

On the website of a group allied with a Mississauga mosque attended by Ahmed, there are descriptions of those of the Ahmidiyya faith as "evil", representing an effort "by anti-Islam forces to disunite Muslims". Mr. Choudhry looks to Canadian authorities to mount a "measured response", inclusive of taking action against people who "bring values that are both un-Canadian and dangerous to those living in Canada."

Haji Malik Rashid Ahmed  "The Qadianis (Ahmadis) are using the Mosque as their worship place which is illegal under the law, We request that you free the Mosque from the Infidels and save Muslim interests by saving the Mosque from these Infidels, If these steps are not taken we will be forced to take extreme measures in order to liberate this Mosque."

Photo Express

Iraq's Christians

"We will not have a light Christmas. Despite what we have suffered, we will have a real Christmas of understanding of the birth of Jesus on a cold night at a difficult time. Because that, too, is our situation."
"Those who make such decisions [Canada voting down a motion agreeing that Islamist threats to Christians represents a form of genocide] have lost nothing. They sit in their nice homes and make such decisions."
"Our people live in tents and suffer in the cold. Look at what ISIL did. This whole area is a crime scene. They captured women and tortured and raped them. They murdered us. They wrecked our churches."
Sister Diana, Syriac Catholic Church, Bartella, Iraq

"They tried to kill all of us and our traditional practices."
"Even the graves of our saints were destroyed. Nothing was sacred to them."
Matuos, Nineveh Protection Unit, Khidr Elias, Iraq

MEVAN88 ‏@MevanAkreyi

#ISIL group destroy latin Church in #Mosul, which was opened in 1873 as #Christians continue to face persecution.

Towns and villages situated close to Mosul that once were the homes of the majority Christian presence from antiquity forward, were largely vacated by the ancient Christian sect of Iraq under threat of conversion-or-die by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, when it entered Mosul and declared it part of the ISIL caliphate. The homes were plundered, the church interiors were looted and destroyed. Christian lives became forfeit to Islamist jihad in a land where Christians were established then imperilled, since the 7th Century.

In the 14th Century, Tamerlane according to history, had 150,000 Christians beheaded in Baghdad and Tikrit [centuries later the home town of Saddam Hussein]. Up to 12 percent of Iraq's population as late as 1947 was Christian with the pre-2003 Christian population as high as five percent of the population; roughly 1.5-million people. At the present time, the population has fallen to two percent. As many as 243 churches were destroyed by ISIL, Roads and buildings in Bartella and Khidr Elias along with other towns were left with booby-trapped explosives.

On the eastern outskirts of Mosul conflict is ongoing between the Iraqi military and their allies, in conflict with and opposing ISIL's presence. Mosul and its Nineveh region was once regarded as the cradle of Christianity. For the third consecutive winter, the venerable Christian enclave lacked worshippers at Christmas mass, absenting the Christian presence where Christianity arose and worshipped for the past two thousand years.

ISIL used a Syriac Catholic Church in the town of Khidr Elias as its regional headquarters. The church interior was scribbled with jihad-glorifying jihad. The Christian militiamen now occupying the church grounds expunged the words praising ISIL, and Qur'an quotations with their own sentiments, mocking the propaganda ISIL espouses, including that ISIL was prepared for eternal rule.

In Bartella, the church of St.George has survived relatively intact though its interior was trashed. Still, a battered statue of the Virgin Mary was resurrected and at the church nave a large cross recovered from the wreckage was erected back in place. Over 100,000 Christians who evaded death at ISIS's onslaught left Mosul for haven in Baghdad, Turkey or Ankawa, a suburb of Kurdish Erbil. Whether they will ever feel safe enough to return to their ancestral homes is another matter.