WASHINGTON, D.C. (TIP): US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed frustration on Wednesday at surprise escalations that he said threaten to derail efforts to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. He said the US is still assessing the previous day’s deadly pager explosions, linked to Israel, in Lebanon.
Blinken spoke in Egypt, where he travelled for talks on the Gaza cease-fire negotiations and US-Egyptian relations. The United States and international partners, including Egypt, are working to broker a cease-fire in the nearly year-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and to tamp down tensions as Israeli leaders threaten to step up military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
“Time and again” when the US and other international mediators believe themselves to be making progress in a cease-fire deal for Israel’s and Hamas’s war in Gaza, “we’ve seen an event that makes the process more difficult, might derail it,” Blinken said, speaking in answer to a question about the previous day’s explosions in Lebanon.
Explosive attacks using personal pagers used by members of the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon killed at least 12 people Tuesday, including a child. Israel has not publicly spoken on whether it was responsible.
Blinken spoke of Hamas’ killing earlier this month of six of the several dozen hostages that Hamas-led militants have held in Gaza since capturing them October 7, in the attack in Israel that launched the war.
Blinken on Wednesday repeated administration statements that the US was still gathering information on the circumstances of the pager attacks.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (TIP): There has been a “concerning increase” in anti-conversion laws, hate speech, and demolitions of homes and places of worship for members of minority faith communities in India, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said. In his remarks at the release of the annual State Department report on international religious freedom, Blinken said on Wednesday, June 26, that at the same time, people around the world are also working hard to protect religious freedom.
The report stated that senior US officials continued to raise concerns about religious freedom issues with their Indian counterparts in 2023.
“In India, we see a concerning increase in anti-conversion laws, hate speech, demolitions of homes and places of worship for members of minority faith communities. At the same time, people around the world are also working hard to protect religious freedom,” the secretary of state said.
Ten of 28 states have laws restricting religious conversions for all faiths. Some of these states also impose penalties specifically against forced religious conversions for the purpose of marriage, the 2023 Report on International Religious Freedom stated for India.
During the year, some members of religious minority groups challenged the government’s ability and willingness to protect them from violence, investigate crimes against members of religious minority groups, and protect their freedom of religion or belief, it stated.
India has previously rejected the US state department’s annual human rights report on the country, saying they continue to be based on “misinformation and flawed understanding”.
“Motivated and biased commentary by some US officials only serves to undermine further the credibility of these reports,” the Ministry of External Affairs said last year. “We value our partnership with the US and will continue to have frank exchanges on issues of concern to us,” it said.
In this year’s report, the US state department said that Christians and Muslims were arrested under laws banning forced religious conversions, which religious groups said in some cases were used to harass and imprison members of religious minority groups on false and fabricated charges or for lawful religious practices.
Observing that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reiterated calls to enact a Uniform Civil Code (UCC) at the national level as called for in the Constitution instead of a system of separate personal laws for religious communities, the state department said Muslim, Sikh, Christian and tribal leaders and some state government officials opposed the initiative on the grounds it was part of a project to turn the country into a “Hindu rashtra (a Hindu nation)”.
Some UCC proponents, including opposition politicians, said a UCC would promote greater equality, including for women, by preventing polygamy or inequitable inheritance within personal religious laws.
Welcoming the report, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC) said it echoes findings presented in the annual report released by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom that calls on the State Department to designate India as a “Country of Particular Concern (CPC)” for ongoing and severe violations of religious freedoms for minorities.
“Once again, it is clear from the State Department’s own reporting that India more than qualifies as a CPC,” IAMC executive director Rasheed Ahmed said and added that “now it is time for Secretary Blinken to act on these facts, as well as the facts that have been presented by USCIRF for years, and designate India as a CPC”.
Compensation Is Due from China; and If We Were Pearl Harbored, Then Reparations too- Ravi Batra
New York based attorney Ravi Batra, on 14thApril 2020 wrote an open letter to then President Trump making out a case against China for the pandemichavoc, which has taken away millions of lives, created terrible health issues, and ruined the global economy. Mr. Batra called upon President Trump to demand from China due compensation from China for causing colossal losses in terms of men and material to America and Americans, and additionally, if China Pearl Harbored America, reparations. A year later, Mr. Batra wrote an open letter to President Biden repeating his accusation against China and asking the US President to demand due compensation, and reparation, if required.
We are publishing here Mr. Batra’s open letter to President Biden, without editing it. -EDITOR
“April 13, 2021
H.E. Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
President of the United States of America
H.E. Nancy Pelosi
Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives
H.E. Chuck Schumer
Majority Leader, U.S. Senate
Re: 1 Year after My April 14, 2020 “Open Letter” – M/O Novel Coronavirus Aka Covid19 Aka “2019-n-CoV” or “2019-nCoV” – Compensation Is Due from China; and If We Were Pearl Harbored, Then Reparations too.
Honorable President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Schumer:
As an un-conflicted American, I love and admire the Chinese culture; always have, and find Confucius wiser as I age. With God’s Grace I and my family survived Covid19 on or about March 29, 2020. Treating this Virus as a cancer case that I needed to crack, and after learning biochemistry and epidemiology during an intense effort, I did so, and a year ago, on April 14, 2020, I wrote a 6-page “Open Letter” to then-President Trump, Speaker Pelosi and then-Senate Majority Leader (“OL”; copy enclosed, with uniform spelling of “Wuhan”), and for POTUS, emailed it to a former Marine: Deputy NSA Matt Pottinger at 8:31pm. In the OL, I had the science, the facts, and recommendations, including, bringing our “supply chains” home. The next day, April 15, 2020, about 1 p.m. the United States opened a preliminary investigation into inter alia the origin of SARS-CoV2 from PLA-run Wuhan Virology Lab, and the motives of CCP China in causing its global-spread without sounding a pandemic-alarm directly or thru the WHO. I remain grateful for the start of the April 15, 2020 “all hands-on deck” Investigation.
It remains an open secret that my analysis was and is correct, and that this is a lab-created Frankenstein that transplanted the “Spike Glycoprotein(S)” (“Spike”) from Bats – a unique feature in bats, as they are either “cold” or “warm” blooded, and still, a warm Bat can procreate with a cold Bat due to the “Spike.” OL at 3. I called “Covid19,” aka “Wuhan Virus,” a Trojan Horse, as its Spike feature does not cause our immune system to sound an alarm upon infection (and the T-cells remain asleep). Disturbingly, CCP has not turned over, to this day, the genome of Patient Zero who was admitted in Wuhan hospital on or about December 1, 2019, while a different protein string-virus was released on or about December 31, 2019 at the Wuhan Wet Market. The animal farms about 1000 miles away from Wuhan, did not experience a Covid19 outbreak, thereby decimating the WHO’s coddled-team’s report, after a 3-hour chaperoned visit to the Wuhan Virology lab, falsely asserting a virus jump from an animal to a human.
WHO dishonored its high fiduciary obligations, and did not promptly alert the leaders of every nation that a pandemic was afoot and ask to lock-down CCP’s China. President Trump said we were fighting an invisible enemy. I disagree; the cascading events in just the South China Sea – from creating Mischief Reef, to sinking of Filipino Fishing boats with Fishermen to their death, to sinking Vietnamese Fishing boats, to the recent squatting of 245 Chinese Militia ships, lashed together to appear as part of “9-Dashes” in Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone – are in violation of inter alia the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (“UNCLOS”). The Virus is surely invisible, but this string of protein, despite its lab-based default programing, has no animus towards us and does not benefit by causing death and destruction – and by my last count, our needlessly dead well exceed our losses at Pearl Harbor. A substantial question arises: is Covid19 a biowarfare agent? The death and destruction we have suffered suggests a motivated animus, which is a human phenomenon that renders us unworthy in the eyes of God.
Despite Truth-in-Labeling laws, CCP has succeeded in blocking this Virus from being origin-labeled by deeming it racist. Our misguided citizens criminally attacking innocent law-abiding Asian-Americans has provided cover, while shaming us as a nation that celebrates diversity, and staining E Pluribus Unum. Our shameful chapter of interning innocent and loyal Japanese-Americans during WWII, when we did no such thing to German-Americans while fighting Nazi Germany, is a lesson we need to learn perpetually, exactly, as Kristallnacht teaches: remember always. It is a singularly important ingredient in our effort to form a more perfect union – a point recently well made by Secretary Blinken in Anchorage.
I write to seek from you dear and respected President Biden, given your distinguished tenure and natural God-given abilities – a clear American policy – both as to our injury from Covid19 and holding the sending-nation reasonably responsible (turnover all biomedical information, indemnify our losses, etc.), and to restore global peace and security, by avoiding a war if we can. Indeed, pre-Covid19, troubled by the years-long effort by China to create Mischief Reef into a military base, in September 2017, I had a respectful conversation with China’s distinguished FM Wang Yi, which in sum and substance, I explained the above facts and said, you are inviting a little war now or a big war later, and since I don’t like wars, I prefer a little war now. Minister Wang, with concern, immediately responded: No war! No war!, and left to end this conversation.
Diplomacy is always needed, even to arrange a surrender to end a war. It has been reported that President Xi, whom I consider to be at least as much an exceptional mastermind as Chairman Mao was, if not more, has asked his diplomatic corps to unsheathe their swords to be Wolf Warriors – a function or definition that defies diplomacy, even as it weaponizes it. Given that backdrop, we, as hosts at Captain Hook Hotel in Anchorage on March 18, 2021 – instead of a protocol-based public welcome, private candid talks, and a public press conference at the end – started with our honest expressions in public. In a moment that evokes – albeit, in part – a declaration of independence [sadly, from us], CCP’s Foreign Affairs Chief Yang Jiechi effortlessly responded in public, what I believe was intended for private talks. We are at the cusp of a modern-day Gordian Knot.
While I take note of William Stanton’s recent April 9, 2021 piece on “Agents of Influence,” I particularly take note of former NSA H.R. McMaster’s May 2020 piece in The Atlantic, entitled “How China Sees the World,” I freely admit that it was our then-President Nixon who opened the world for China and granted CCP a permanent seat on the UNSC. Whether we have a rules-based or law-based system of sovereigns co-existing in the comity of nations, we ought not be in the position of having to pick between the ever-reasonable and well-calibrated go-along and get-along Neville Chamberlain or Winston Churchill as being necessary to maintain our cherished freedoms and never surrender our sovereignty. Methinks, a new joint Yalta and Brentwood Conference is needed, before over-due structural reforms can occur, and global peace and security re-harnessed, without endless regional wars.
Mr. President, you and I have had several meaningful exchanges, including, in the White House, and most relevantly, in the UN’s Hall of Flags in Fall 2015 – when I urged you to run in 2016, as an election you were born for – to revive the American Dream. The American Dream belongs more to everyday Americans, than Wall Streeters, custodians of international money and achiever of maximum profit, as it was everyday Americans in 1814 who during heavy bombardment of Fort McHenry, kept our Flag high by paying the ultimate sacrifice repeatedly, and caused Francis Scott Key to pen our Star-Spangled Banner. Please let it wave high, and free, in this 21st Century.
If I can assist, as you wished of me during our substantive talk in the Hall of Flags, as a citizen-patriot, devastated by January 6th more than by 9/11, I would be happy to re-find diplomacy’s respect-based ability to “round the edges” and fashion justice-based remedies that are equitable – as the Jesuits teach us everything must be. Sometimes, davening with the right Minyan helps to be better able to turn swords into ploughshares. As Honor and WWIII walk into the ring to face off, the time is now for your leadership to make foreign policy into domestic policy – just as your infrastructure plan is our OBOR/BRI within our borders. Retail solutions will not work in the East or in the West; but, wholesale solutions will turn adversaries into allies. God Bless you, and continue to Bless these United States of America – I prefer “united,” the verb.
Respectfully,
/S/
Ravi Batra
Encl: April 14, 2020 Open Letter to POTUS et al
C: Leader Addison Mitchell McConnell, Jr., Leader Kevin McCarthy, HFAC Chairman Greg W. Meeks, Ranker McCall, Chair Carolyn B. Maloney, Ranker Jim Jordan, SFRC Chairman Bob Menendez, Ranker Risch, Secretary Anthony Blinken, Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, NSA Jake Sullivan.”
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