RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21378/china-tests-trump-resolve

If the US fails to support its ally by treaty, the Philippines, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda machine and Chinese diplomats will likely seek to sow doubts about US resolve into the capitals of America’s Pacific allies.

China seems to claim a lot of waters, such as “almost all” of the South China Sea, as well as land, including Tibet; Arunachal Pradesh in northern India; the “near-Arctic,” and Taiwan, which has never been part of mainland China.

The Trump administration immediately needs to short-circuit all “exploratory” moves by China. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth might order Seventh Fleet and US Pacific Command’s air assets to strengthen their presence near the Philippines and the Pacific. Any firm message to China that America will stand by its allies throughout free Asia would be of help.

The “Tariff Wars” have begun.

China’s State Council Tariff Commission released a list of 72 items that would fall under the 10% tariffs. Much of that list was related to agriculture, including several types of tractors, harvesters and other large pieces of farming equipment.

The list of U.S. imports that will be subject to 15% tariffs was far shorter, listing just eight types of coal and natural gas.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) President Xi Jinping might gin up further crises to test the mettle of President Donald J. Trump, just as he has tested the resolve of all recent incoming administrations.

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/world/what-usaids-dark-dollars-did-to-brazil/

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula, is a far-left politician who served as the 35th president of Brazil from 2003 to 2010. His government is notoriously responsible for the severe undermining of fundamental human rights in Brazil, especially free speech and property rights. Curiously, however, there was a decisive external element in the re-election of this far-left politician.

In July 2021, then-president Joe Biden sent CIA director William Burns to Brazil to meet with senior officials. During the meeting, Burns warned President, Jair Bolsonaro he should “stop casting doubt in his country’s [electronic] electoral process”.[1] A month later, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also visited Brazil to issue a similar warning: do not even dare even to question the reliability of the electronic voting system.[2] Then, in June 2022, at a Summit of the Americas meeting in Los Angeles, the Biden administration repeated the same warning: the US would not tolerate anyone casting doubt on the reliability of electronic voting machines.[3]

As these threatening messages came before the election they amounted to a warning of dire consequences should anyone in Brazil contest the transparency of electronic voting machines. On September 28, 2022, the US Senate approved a resolution threatening the suspension of US-Brazil relations in case of any questioning of the security of the electronic voting system, “otherwise the US must consider its relations with the Brazilian government and suspend cooperation programs, including in the military area”.[4] As reported by Revolver,

The Biden administration mounted a sustained pressure campaign aimed at Brazil’s military, which began as early as 2021. The effort, as first reported in Folha de São Paulo and also covered by Foreign Policy, involved explicit public warnings by US senators about not respecting election results as well as continuous back-channel conversations to make clear that a democratic rupture would leave Brazil isolated on the international stage—and lead to a downgrade of US-Brazil security cooperation, which is highly valued by Brazil’s military establishment.[5]

As also reported by Revolver,

The campaign involved the US White House, State Department, CIA, Senate, and—notably—the Pentagon. In retrospect, including that last agency may have been the Biden administration’s most decisive move. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was employed as Biden’s chief public emissary to Brazil’s generals.

It was a natural choice given the tense relationship between Biden and Bolsonaro, the latter of whom followed Trump’s lead in parroting falsehoods about supposed fraud during the 2020 US presidential election. Austin was also a more credible interlocutor since Brazil’s military was the intended target of the U.S. campaign.[6]

This helps explain why, after just a few outlets called the Brazilian presidential election on October 30, 2022, the Biden Administration almost immediately orchestrated a formidable international embrace of the former president. In an official statement, Biden contended that Lula had won “following free, fair, and credible elections”.[7] Quickly afterwards, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak all released similar statements congratulating Lula. “The people of Brazil have spoken”, claimed Trudeau, writing within an hour and a half of the result.[8]

As can be seen, the controversial election of the notorious ex-convict and far-left politician was strongly encouraged by the oligarchical leadership of the world. However, millions of Brazilians have protested  Lula’s alleged victory. The spontaneous mass-movement has no defined national leader.[9] These grass-roots protests are solely motivated by a strong — and reasonable — belief that the latest presidential election in Brazil suffered from massive electoral fraud. However, writing on his X account, President Macron, reacting to the protests in Brazil, stated that President Lula can count on France’s “unfailing support”.[10]

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21379/iran-fear-and-braggadocio

In a year or so, Khamenei has tried to repackage those setbacks as great victories for his now defunct “Axis of Resistance.” His assumption was that if the worst came to the worst, he would play his joker: signaling readiness to revive the defunct Obama “nuclear deal” with a shaky Biden administration keen on securing any deal with Tehran to justify Kumbala’s “greatest diplomatic achievement.”

Here is the ayatollah’s latest masterpiece:

Iranian “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s great masterpiece.

After weeks of speculation about “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei’s strategy for dealing with the new Trump administration in Washington, it seems that he has opted for a cocktail of tantalizing pledges and boastful threats. Tehran circles sum the posture up with a simple formula advanced by Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi: We don’t want war but are ready for it!

The signal that the Supreme Guide has decided to authorize new talks about his nuclear project but is also preparing for a putative war with the US or Israel came with a poem he put in circulation last week.

Khamenei has been writing or, as his unkind critics suggest, committing poetry since he was in his teens in the 1950s. But he has always been reluctant to offer his oeuvre to the public, refusing to publish a diwan as even the greenest saplings in the garden do.

Thus, those who follow his poetic career know that he publishes a poem only when a major challenge faces him or the regime he inherited from another poet, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The latest poem is a sonnet (ghazal in Persian and Arabic) of 14 rhyming hemistiches or seven lines (be it in Persian and Arabic) and is supposed to depict the poet’s inner struggle with rising fears and persistent doubts.

The message it wishes to pass is one of steadfastness regardless of the Islamic Republic’s recent setbacks in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and parts of Yemen held by Houthis.