RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14772/biarritz-g7-summit

In one of those delicious ironies that add flavor to history, as the G7, which ended up including Russia after the fall of the USSR, saw its real power to affect global trends decline while its ambitions to rule the world spiraled. The group could do nothing about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the disintegration of the USSR, the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the seizure of power by the mullahs in Iran, China shifting gears towards a capitalist system, the wars triggered by Saddam Hussein and the rise of international terrorism in the name of religion. More importantly, perhaps, the “global politburo” had no role in the dramatic technological changes that dragged the world into something bigger than the Industrial Revolution.

By the mid-1990s the G8 summit, as it was before Russia was kicked out, had morphed into a talking shop and a photo-op for political leaders in search of relevance in a new world they could no longer control. In one of the summits, hosted in Lyon by France, the participants made “decisions” on almost everything under the sun, knowing all along that they had neither the intention nor the power to act on any of them.

Well, how relevant is the G7 today? The short answer is: not very much.

Journalists across the globe have always regarded this time of the year, the heart of the summer, as the silly season in which nothing of much interest happens, at least on the political front. The silly season is filled with news of the birth of double-headed sheep in New Zealand, the discovery of the remains of Atlantis, the lost continent, in the Algerian Sahara or, to add a bit of spice, the suicide of a pedophile billionaire in a high-security prison in America.

Thus, one might say that the G7 summit in the French resort town of Biarritz, starting Saturday, is an exception to the silly season rule. Or is it?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14766/persecution-of-christians-june

Three men and one woman robbed, beat, and poisoned Sagheer Masih, a 35-year-old Christian auto-rickshaw driver. “He was well-mannered, polite and very friendly. Knowing he had the responsibility of taking care of three younger siblings… he ensured that he always got to work early and left late in order to gather as much money as he could to care for them…. Instead of killing him in on the spot, they forced him to drink poison and acid and left him there to die….” — International Christian Concern, June 20, 2019, Pakistan.

“Their tactic is to befriend someone when they come in [to prison]. If they don’t convert, they will then start spreading rumours about them, that the person is a snitch, so that they will be ostracised. Then the beatings follow.” — An inmate, according to a Ministry of Justice report; The Times, June 7, 2019, United Kingdom.

“We cannot allow the Christians… to allege that Jesus is the Son of God,” explained one mosque leader; “this [is] a serious blasphemy to Muslims.” — Morning Star News, June 3, 2019, Uganda.

Slaughter of Christians

Mali: On June 9, Islamic Fulani gunmen massacred at least 95 Christians — including women and children. During their rampage of a Christian village, they it set ablaze before leaving; several of the slain were burned alive. “About 50 heavily armed men arrived on motorbikes and pickups,” a survivor recalled. “They first surrounded the village and then attacked — anyone who tried to escape was killed…. No one was spared — women, children, elderly people.” Security sources confirmed that the raiders also randomly killed domestic animals in the village. It was “virtually wiped out.”

Burkina Faso: Islamic terrorists slaughtered 29 Christians over the course of two separate raids. The first took place on Sunday, June 9, in the town of Arbinda; 19 Christians were slaughtered. The next day, another ten Christians were murdered in a nearby town. An additional 11,000 Christians fled the region and were left displaced; they feared if they were to remain in their villages they would be next. “There is no Christian anymore in this town [Arbinda],” said a local contact. He added that “It’s proven that they [terrorists] were looking for Christians. Families who hide Christians are [also] killed. Arbinda had now lost in total no less than 100 people within six months.” These June attacks follow a string of Islamic terror attacks in the West African nation over the preceding six weeks that left at least another 20 Christians dead.

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/trade-wars-the-empire-strikes-back/

Wars happen because the opposing sides have different views of the likely outcome. In the case of wars between Asians and the West, the West chronically underestimates the Asians. The Romanov Dynasty fell in large part because it lost its entire fleet in two catastrophic engagements with Japan’s Imperial Navy, at Port Arthur in 1904 and the Tsushima Strait in 1905. Britain would have lost the whole of its Asian Empire to Japan after the fall of Singapore in February 1942, except for the United States. Just before Singapore fell, Churchill told a journalist (as Andrew Roberts reports in his new Churchill book) that the Japanese were “the wops of Asia” and would fold like the Italians. Never before in the course of human events did such a smart man say anything so stupid.

So at the risk of spending the next month dodging rotten eggs and ripe tomatoes, I’ll say it: The way things stand, we’re going to get our heads handed to us, and President Trump’s chances of re-election will drop considerably. I’m a Trump supporter, and I want him to be re-elected, but I think he’s walking into a Chinese trap. Remember, Xi Jinping doesn’t have an election in 2020.

Today’s announcement of Chinese tariffs on $75 billion of U.S. goods and President Trump’s promise of retaliation may mark a turning point. China has taken the offensive. In fact, it did so August 6 when it allowed the RMB to depreciate to less than 7 RMB per U.S. dollar, as I explained in an Asia Times analysis at the time (below).

China appears to believe that it can win a trade war against the United States. Of course, no-one wins. Both sides lose. The question is how each side deals with the consequences of losing. For the past year, I’ve argued that the time is long past when the U.S. can inflict sufficient pain on China to impose our will. Since the 2008 crisis, China has been shifting its economy toward the home market and away from exports. Only 5% of its manufacturing now goes to the U.S., and most of that is on the low end of the value-added spectrum. When President Trump tweets that we don’t need China, by contrast, he appears unaware of the vast network of specialized manufacturers, skilled engineers and workers, and suppliers that produce the computers and consumer electronics we buy from China. You can’t wave a magic wand and replace twenty years’ worth of investment and training.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/hong-kong-crisis-taiwan-defense/

The future of democracy in the Indo-Pacific depends on our reinforcing Taiwan.

In October 1950 the People’s Liberation Army entered Tibet. The Communists made short work of the Tibetan military. The following year, representatives of the Dalai Lama signed a treaty with the People’s Republic of China (then all of two years old). The “Agreement of the Central People’s Government and the Local Government of Tibet on Measures for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet,” or the “Seventeen-Point Agreement” for short, promised that Beijing would uphold Tibetan autonomy, refrain from interfering with Tibetan politics or with the affairs of the Dalai Lama, and respect the religious freedom of Tibetan Buddhists.

These were words on a page. Before long, the Chinese Communists began to exert pressure over the Tibetan people. Occupation forces spread throughout the region. The authorities collectivized agriculture and broke down institutions of civil society. Farmers and militia rebelled. The resistance was quashed, and the Dalai Lama began an exile that continues today. Tibet, like Xinjiang province to its north, is a cantonment of the People’s Republic.

The Seventeen-Point Agreement is the model for Chinese territorial acquisitions. Verbal pledges of freedom are meaningless. What matters is the correlation of forces and facts on the ground. Communists have no trouble speaking of autonomy and local control. Until the moment Beijing dominates the councils of government and independent power centers have been crushed.