RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18624/war-change-the-world

Shaped over the past seven decades, that is to say after the Second World War, what is known as the international order has been based on three principles which, although not always observed, have helped keep the edifice intact.

The first principle was what is known as international law, built around the United Nations Charter and over 10,000 international treaties and protocols endorsed by a majority of the existing 193 states. The invasion of Ukraine has violated that principle in a dramatic way. Because the aggressor is a veto-holding member of the UN Security Council, the issue cannot even be handled even formally by the United Nations.

The second principle was consensus in favor of free trade, subject to bilateral and/or international accords. It took decades of negotiations at various levels for the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to morph into the World Trade Organization. With the advent of globalization, support for the free flow of goods and capital, and in some cases labor, cut across ideological divides among the larger nation-states.

That principle, too, has been violated….

Suddenly a global economic system [protecting capital] that worked like a clock is hit with numerous hitches.

As you can see, we have more problems than not trying to humiliate Tsar Vladimir.

Is the war in Ukraine no more than a patch of cloud in an otherwise bright sky? This seems to be the Panglossian opinion of some elites in Western democracies who, like French President Emmanuel Macron, are anxious not to humiliate Russian President Vladimir Putin over a mere peccadillo.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israelis-get-out-of-turkey-right-now/

For well over a week, the Israeli government has been urging Israelis in Turkey to return home as soon as possible. It has also admonished those unable or unwilling to cut short their holidays not to frequent shops, restaurants or tourist attractions and, if possible, not to leave their rooms at all.

The warning stems from an immediate and concrete threat from Iran. According to accounts in some media outlets last week, a group of Israelis enjoying themselves in Istanbul received a phone call from security services ordering them not to return to their hotel, as Iranian terrorists were lying in wait. These travelers were picked up and promptly put on a plane without their belongings.

A far more specific report emerged on Saturday night, with an anonymous defense official revealing that Iran’s mission to murder Israelis in Istanbul was ongoing and in full swing. While praising the close cooperation with Ankara authorities that enabled the thwarting of a number of imminent attacks, he announced that the Iranian cells operating in the area know exactly which hotels have Israelis guests and how to recognize them.

His revelation followed a meeting on Friday afternoon between Mossad chief David Barnea and National Security Council head Eyal Haluta, after which they issued similarly warnings: Israelis in Turkey should refrain from posting on social media and riding in taxis, and should lock their hotel-room doors and refuse to open them for anyone, including chambermaids.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/hard-slogging-donbas-ukraine-russia-artillery/

A brutal artillery battle: that’s what the latest phase of Russia’s war on Ukraine has become. Vladimir Putin failed in his original goal of seizing the entire country swiftly, beginning with the capital of Kyiv, and installing a puppet government. When Ukrainian resistance prevented that, Putin shifted to a smaller, more achievable objective: establishing complete control over two eastern provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk, which border Russia and are jointly known as the Donbas region. That’s where the war is being fought now, with an uncertain outcome. Victory will depend on who wins the artillery battle. Russia has more blunt firepower; Ukraine has more precise, longer-range weapons — or at least it will have them when more NATO supplies reach the frontlines.

Seizing the Donbas provinces would complete a project Russia began in 2014, when it captured parts of that region, plus the Crimean peninsula. Establishing complete control now would give Russia a secure “land bridge” from its own territory to Crimea, as well as a base to continue destabilizing Ukraine. From there, it could launch further attacks and seize still more territory after regrouping and resupplying its battered army. Putin’s ultimate goal is the same as it has been since the beginning: seize as much Ukrainian territory as possible, terrorize the population, eliminate the country’s independence and turn Ukraine into a subordinate satellite.

Ukraine’s goals are to prevent that conquest, retake as much land as possible, reestablish complete sovereignty over its territory and prevent future attacks and destabilization. Its immediate, minimal goal is to push Russia back to the territory it held in February, before Putin launched this unprovoked war.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18612/china-new-way-of-war

“Chinese thinkers have clearly stated that the core operational concept of intelligentized warfare is to directly control the enemy’s will. The idea is to use AI to directly control the will of the highest decision-makers, including the president, members of Congress, and combatant commanders, as well as citizens.” — Colonel Koichiro Takagi, senior fellow of Training Evaluation Research and Development Command, Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, War on the Rocks, April 13, 2022.

“War has started to shift from the pursuit of destroying bodies to paralyzing and controlling the opponent. The focus is to attack the enemy’s will to resist, not physical destruction” and to cause “the brain to become the main target of offense and defense of new concept weapons… To win without fighting is no longer far-fetched.” — Bill Gertz, describing a report written in 2019 by China’s People’s Liberation Army, in the Washington Times, December 29, 2021.

“The PLA plans to employ all available tools to the overarching objective of reducing an enemy’s will to resist.” — Ben Noon, research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute and Dr. Chris Bassler, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Defense One, September 17, 2021.

“Influencing human cognition requires a large amount of detailed personal information to identify influential individuals or to conduct influential operations according to the characteristics of subgroups of people. China has already collected a massive amount of personal information on government officials and ordinary U.S. citizens…. China has even succeeded in identifying CIA agents operating in foreign countries using such data. These activities are particularly aggressive and coercive in Taiwan and Hong Kong, which the Chinese government considers its territory. Attempts to use digital means to influence elections have also been seen in Taiwan’s recent presidential election.” — Colonel Koichiro Takagi, War on the Rocks, April 13, 2022.

While cognitive warfare may sound like science fiction to most people, experts have cautioned that the US needs to take the threat seriously.

“They should also designate the cognitive arena as a new operational arena, along with land, air, sea, space, and cyberspace, to raise awareness and invest resources. Furthermore, it is necessary to consider how to win the ‘battle of narratives’ to counter the manipulation of public opinion in wartime.” — Colonel Koichiro Takagi, War on the Rocks, April 13, 2022.

 https://bit.ly/3OdedpM

Iran’s Constitution – the roadmap of Iran’s global strategy

*The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran lays the foundation of the systematic, rogue, fanatic, domestic, regional and global conduct of Iran’s apocalyptic Ayatollahs since assuming power in February 1979.

*The Ayatollahs’ Constitution provides a roadmap for the exportation of the Islamic Revolution by utilizing subversion, terrorism, civil wars, the proliferation of ballistic technologies, drug trafficking and proselytization.

*The Ayatollahs’ Constitution aspires for the triumph of the oppressed “mustadafun” (e.g., Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua) over the oppressive and arrogant “mustakbirun” (e.g., “The Great American Satan,” Saudi Arabia, Israel).

*The strategic goal of the Ayatollahs’ Constitution is to establish a universal Shiite society, based on the teachings of Ayatollah Khomeini, and bring to submission the Sunni Moslem “apostates” and the non-Moslem “infidels.”

*According to the Ayatollahs’ Constitution, the Islamic Republic’s armed forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are responsible for the safeguarding of Iran’s frontiers, as well as the fulfillment of the mission of Jihad (Holy War), striking fear into the hearts of the enemies of Allah, and extending the supremacy of Shiite Islam throughout the entire world.

*The Ayatollahs’ Constitution considers the 1979 Islamic Revolution – and the 1978 toppling of the pro-US Shah of Iran – as a crushing victory over despotism and the US, a prelude to global Shiite domination. 

*The Constitution regards the 1979 Iranian Revolution as a basis for the continuation of that revolution both inside and outside Iran.  

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/black-south-africans-denounce-un-report-israel-and-hugh-fitzgerald/

The UN Commission of Inquiry tasked with investigating Israel for supposed “crimes” against the Palestinians, headed by the virulently anti-Israel Navi Pillay, has just issued its report, which includes, among other calumnies, the charge that Israel practices apartheid. Black South Africans who were victims of the original, South-African brand of apartheid were incensed at this charge and have answered it, citing the real situation in Israel and invoking both Martin Luther King (“When People Criticize Zionists, They Mean Jews”), and Nelson Mandela (“Israel Has The Right To Exist”). A report on their demonstration against the Pillay Report is here: “‘Nelson Mandela Would Not Approve’: South Africans Denounce UN Report on Palestinians,” by Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, June 10, 2022:

A group of pro-Israel South Africans has invoked the figure of the late Nelson Mandela, the iconic leader of their country’s anti-apartheid struggle, in a forthright condemnation of the recent UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry (COI) report that blamed Israel’s “perpetual occupation” for the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.

How can Israel be accused of “occupying” the very territory that was assigned to the future Jewish National Home by the League of Nations in its Mandate for Palestine (1920), that included all the land “from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean sea”? Were the Jews “occupiers” in 1948, when five Arab armies invaded to snuff out the young life of the Jewish state? Were they “occupiers” in 1967, when three Arab armies, led by Egypt’s Nasser, tried to undo the “nakba” of 1948 and destroy the Jewish state, but instead lost the Sinai, the Golan, and Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank) to a victorious Israel?

In a statement issued this week by the South African Friends of Israel (SAFI), a collection of church and community leaders argued that Mandela — South Africa’s first post-apartheid president — would have rejected the report’s findings.

“We sincerely doubt that our first democratically elected president, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, would approve of a situation where the antisemitism of Hamas was put on the same moral standing as the righteous fight of black people against the white supremacy of apartheid,” the statement declared.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/bizarro-world-mega-terrorist-turkey-david-boyajian/

Welcome to bizarro world.

That’s where Turkey, a notorious state sponsor of international terrorism, has the sheer gall to accuse Finland and Sweden of supporting terrorists.

Even more bizarre: Neither Finland, Sweden, the U.S., NATO, EU, nor any country or leader has, to my knowledge, pointed out Ankara’s glaring hypocrisy.

Turkey claims that Finland and Sweden host members of the PKK, the militant Kurdish organization that the U.S. and EU regard as terrorists. Both Nordic nations deny the charge.

Like many Europeans, however, Finns and Swedes sympathize with Kurds. Turkey has long repressed and ethnically cleansed the latter.

Regardless, Ankara is blocking uber-civilized Finland and Sweden from joining NATO.

Ironically, Turkey — autocratic, infamously violative of human rights, and systemically corrupt — would be unqualified to join NATO today were it not already a member.

The point is, who is Turkey to accuse others of terrorism?

Mega-Terrorist Turkey

https://www.wsj.com/articles/united-nations-un-dictator-michelle-bachelet-cuba-china-xinjiang-uyghur-human-rights-genocide-havana-san-isidro-luis-alcantara-maykel-osorbo-castillo-11655056624?mod=opinion_featst_pos3

Humanitarians were up in arms last month when Michelle Bachelet, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, came away from a China tour spouting Beijing propaganda.

For those who fight for liberty in Cuba, the high commissioner’s performance was no surprise. During the Cold War she was on the side of the Soviets, and she’s a lifelong admirer of the Cuban revolution. Let’s face it: Human rights are not her thing.

According to Axios, the 70-year-old Ms. Bachelet “used Chinese government talking points to frame her remarks” on the situation in Xinjiang, where the regime has detained some one million Uyghurs and other minorities. Ms. Bachelet described China’s policies “as a form of ‘counter terrorism’ intended to combat ‘violent acts of extremism.’ She also referred to mass detention facilities as ‘vocational and educational training centers,’ the government’s euphemism for the camps,” Axios reported.

China seized on Ms. Bachelet’s words to its own advantage, with the consul general in Kolkata tweeting that Beijing was “not only vindicated, but justified” after the U.N. visit.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18606/putin-nationalism-disease

Putin would have been wiser to focus on his strategy of using Russian culture and the post-Soviet economic boom as means of strengthening the cohesion of the federation. By embarking on an adventure that offers no obvious gain, he may have awakened the very nationalism, and mini-nationalisms, that he labeled “a disease.”

“I am not Russian!” This is the message on a new T-shirt that it is reportedly selling like hot cakes in Kazan, capital of the autonomous Republic of Tatarstan. A different version, bearing the slogan “I am not Russian, Love me!” is doing well in Ufa, capital of Bashkortostan, another autonomous republic within the Russian Federation.

The message the makers and wearers of the T-shirts wish to pass is that Vladimir Putin’s war may have the support of the Russian majority but should not lead to universal dislike of “other nations” within the sprawling federation.

The same message is relayed through social media and by a growing number of ethnic Russian citizens of the federation now seeking shelter, at least temporarily, in Turkey, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

No one knows how the Ukraine adventure might end for Putin. But, no matter how it ends, it could affect the delicate, not to say fragile, modus vivendi forged in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Empire among the “nations” of the federation.

A clear victory could rekindle the smoldering ashes of Russian nationalism, or “the Great Russian Chauvinism” as Lenin described it. Putin himself has warned against the return of that “monster” on a number of occasions, depicting nationalism as “a disease.”

According to Putin, the fall of the USSR pushed the country “to the edge of civil war,” something that President Boris Yeltsin managed to deal with through a series of compromises with the “nations” that remained in the newly minted federation.