RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dying Germany has only one item on its bucket list, and that is redemption. The Germans cannot seek redemption from the crimes of their grandparents because they do not understand what motivated them to do such terrible things.

For Merkel and most of Germany’s elite, the appearance on Germany’s threshold of millions of Muslim refugees is a final chance at redemption, an opportunity for Germany to redeem itself from the crimes of its past through a transcendent act of selflessness.

Denke ich an Deutschland in der Nacht
Dann bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht

If I think of Germany in the night
It kills my sleep.

– Heinrich Heine.

Once there was an old man who in his youth committed a terrible crime, the murder of many innocents. He no longer could remember what drove him to do this; he tried not to think about it, and his memories came to mind unwillingly and infrequently. Rage and guilt had faded long ago into a vague residue of disgust. He worked hard and found some distraction in the monotony of daily tasks. He sought diversion in tasteless entertainment; he followed football, looked at pornography, watched the dubbed version of American comedies, and took vacations at the beach.

He had a child but no grandchildren; his child knew that he once did unforgivable things, but did not want to know what they were, and the old man did not want to tell him. The old crime hung like a black curtain between them.

The old man could feel that he did not have long to live. Ahead of him he saw only days clouded with boredom, illuminated only by the occasional flash of regret. He let the days come and go one at a time until their count might come to an end, for he did not know any other way to live. Because he had no ties to life, he had no way to prepare for death.

One day the old man met a street urchin and on an impulse invited him back to his apartment. He fed the strange boy and gave him a place to sleep. The next morning the old man bought the urchin new clothes, and gave him things — a smartphone, a video-game system, a football jersey. The street kid made himself at home and said little.

Israelis live under constant threat of attacks that can occur anywhere, anytime, any way – from suicide bombings to stabbings to being run over with cars. (And this doesn’t even address the threat of large-scale attacks that loom on the horizon.)

The West has had the relative luxury of looking at Israel from afar and feeling a sense of how different life is here, compared to there. But times are changing as evil gains ground. Westerners can no longer cast their eyes to Israel and sense a great divide between us and them anymore. The Israeli reality has become the West’s reality as we face increasing terror attacks that crop up anywhere, anytime, any way.

These events are no longer occasional (though that would be bad enough). They’re not even every month or two (though that would be bad enough). Jihad has become a daily reality. Here is a sampling from just last week of some of the horror that the religion of horrors served up.

Bavaria: A group of Nigerian “refugee” women attacked a refugee center worker, attempting to strangle him while they held their babies in front as human shields so the man would not fight back. (here)

Brussels: Muslim adolescent boys sexually assaulted a teenage girl on a train. (here)

Denmark: A 15-year-old convert to Islam was arrested for possessing explosives. (here)

Canada: Two Muslims attempted to shoot up a nightclub full of people. A Muslim serial rapist was arrested after having raped at least ten teenage girls. (here, here, and here)

Germany: Three Muslim teenagers stoned two “transgender” people. (There really is no such thing as a “transgender” person, but for the sake of this report, the term is being used.) The attackers were apprehended and told the police: “such persons must be stoned.” Teenage girls were sexually assaulted and raped by “Syrian migrants” at a swimming pool. A Muslim man kicked a woman in her face and broke her cheekbone while attempting to rape her. Christians continued to be targeted by Muslims at asylum centers. (here, here, here, and here)

France: A Muslim teenager attacked a Jewish teacher with a machete and a knife, stating that he was acting in allegiance with the Islamic State. (Life for Jews in France has become so perilous that Jewish men are being urged not to wear yarmulkes in public.) Women continued to come forward to report sexual assaults from New Year’s eve. (here, here, and here)

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is yet another toothless U.N. body that is in for a whirlwind of frustration when it inspects Iran’s nuclear program sites. The provisions of the agreement negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry and his team of sycophants make Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” negotiations with Hitler look like a stroke of genius.

Iran’s Islamic regime is an incredibly dangerous foe. Like ISIS (or Daesh, a moniker that group loathes), Iran has an apocalyptic view of current and near-future events. But this time around, a group of believers in Shia Iran, with tremendous resources, are intent upon forcing the issue, making the conditions so dire that they leave the reluctant Saheb-ul-Zaman, the Lord of the Age, the Mahdi, their messianic myth, no choice but to appear and assume his universal reign.

Devotees drive both, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic State, to quicken the End Times apocalypse. Iranian leaders hold to a Shia brand. ISIS leaders hold to a Sunni brand. But both are obsessed by a belief that their messiah is coming. The Iran Shiites believe they must lay the groundwork for the messiah (Mahdi) to come and build their Kingdom or Imamate. ISIS isn’t really waiting. They have propelled a jihadist storm to build the Caliphate now, so that the Mahdi will come soon.

TAIPEI — Taiwan’s first female president, Tsai Ing-wen, takes a novel approach to politics on an island renowned for its legislative brawls and fiery standoffs with Beijing.

The 59-year-old former law professor, who won a landslide election victory on Saturday, shuns confrontation, listens rather than lectures, and is happiest poring over policy details, say people who know her.

Even so, in over two decades in politics and government, they say she has proven to be a tough negotiator, having shepherded Taiwan’s entry to the World Trade Organization, and she’s a passionate believer in Taiwan’s democracy as its defining feature — rather than its divisive relations with China, which sees the island as its territory.

Her quiet pragmatism struck a chord with voters, winning the presidency and helping secure a legislative majority for her Democratic Progressive Party, or DPP, which espouses independence from the mainland.

The presidential nominee for Taiwan’s pro-independence opposition defeated rival Eric Chu, of the ruling Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, in Saturday’s election. The KMT also lost control of the legislature for the first time.

Tsai Ing-wen easily won Taiwan’s presidential election on Saturday, as expected, and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took its first-ever majority in the legislature. The party platform stressed Taiwan’s right to democratic self-government, and the victory margins received a last-minute boost from an unexpected source: the political bullying of a teen pop star.

Hours before voting began, Taiwanese social media exploded with anger over a video in which Chou Tzu-yu, a 16-year-old Taiwanese member of a South Korean “K-pop” group, was forced by her management to apologize for waving Taiwan’s flag on a TV show. “There is only one China and the two sides of the Strait are one,” she read from a script, promising to “seriously reflect” on her behavior. The glum scene resembled a hostage video.

It would have been hard to concoct a display more likely to reinforce Taiwanese fears that China’s economic and military power threatens their democratic way of life. Candidates across the political spectrum defended Ms. Chou, but the episode was bad news for the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT), which since 2008 has prioritized closer ties with China. Several tight legislative races may have tipped for the DPP as a result.

SOLO, Indonesia—This city in central Java is ground zero in Indonesia’s fight against extremism.

One man—a native of this community of half a million people—financed and encouraged the terrorists who carried out the gun and bomb attacks against the capital, Jakarta, on Jan. 14. It wasn’t the first time Solo had incubated violent radicals.

Police said Bahrun Naim, an Islamic State adherent now based in Syria, sent money to the Jakarta attackers. Radicals from Solo, also known as Surakarta, were prominent in a wave of attacks against Western targets at the turn of the century, including the bombings on the resort island of Bali in 2002 that killed 202 people, mostly tourists.

Mr. Naim became radicalized while attending an Islamic school in Solo, local police and a person who knew him said. Over the past decade, Indonesian police have arrested or killed scores of local terrorists from a generation inspired by and linked to al Qaeda. Some had been to Afghanistan pre-9/11; many had studied in Solo. Improved policing eviscerated the leadership until only scattered cells capable of little more than drive-by shootings remained, experts said. Until last week there had been no major attack on Jakarta since 2009.

But the emergence of a new cohort of militants impressed as youngsters by the previous heyday of terror here demonstrates the deep roots of radicalization.

Odds are after this weekend’s Jan. 16 presidential election, Taiwan (an island which Beijing says is officially part of one China but de facto self-governing), will be ruled by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate Tsai Ing-wen.

The DPP is an organization created decades go to push for the formal independence of Taiwan. Beijing has for years made clear that any such move would be tantamount to a declaration of war.

Yet even without such a rupture, which seems far-fetched in the current upbeat mood on the both sides of the Straits, Beijing is especially wary of any step that might rock the region’s very delicate political balance. With the Chinese economy hitting a speed bump in the past months, with a Hong Kong anti-communist student movement still brewing, tensions in the South/East China Sea and with Japan still high, any “wrong” development in Taipei about Beijing or in Beijing about Taipei could kindle dangerous chain reactions.
Benjamin Lim

Benjamin Lim

An authoritative and comprehensive book that was recently published in Taiwan, Bamai zhongguo (“Taking the Pulse of China”), offers some key insights on the sensitive conundrum facing China and Taiwan. It was written by Reuters Beijing correspondent Benjamin Lim and deals with everything that Taiwan deeply worries about — Xi Jinping, Taiwan, Sino-US relations, and the future of China.

Born in Manila to Chinese parents, Lim studied engineering in the Philippines and Chinese in Taiwan. He has been a journalist for more than 30 years.

According to Lim, the Taiwan elections aren’t simply a contest between old-fashioned Nationalists of the KMT and the newly ambitious DPP. The huge elephant in the room is China, with its potentially enormous impact on the future of the island and the rest of the world.

News Flash: When the rich and mighty meet next week at the World Economic Forum’s annual pow-wow, Jan 20-23, in the ski resort of Davos, Switzerland, North Korea will have no envoy among them. If that sounds intuitively obvious, think again. It was only this Wednesday, following North Korea’s Jan. 6 nuclear test, that the WEF organizers of the Davos conference told the press they had disinvited North Korea’s delegation.

Well done. Except this leaves us with the question of why the World Economic Forum decided to invite North Korea in the first place.

Until Kim Jong Un’s regime carried out its Jan. 6 underground nuclear test, with the added frill of advertising it — true or not — as a hydrogen bomb, North Korea’s Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong and his entourage were comfortably ensconced on the WEF guest list for Davos. At this international pajama party for the global elite, they were going to be welcomed to rub shoulders with such luminaries as Bono, Leonardo DiCaprio, Secretary of State John Kerry, Vice President Joe Biden, more than 40 heads of state and government, 1,500 business leaders and the heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.

They were going to be included in the Forum’s 2016 effort, as described in the WEF mission statement, “to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance.”

Secretary of State John Kerry declared that the world became a safer place today as the Obama administration repealed sanctions on Iran.

Implementation Day came as the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report “confirming that Iran has completed the necessary preparatory steps to start the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.”

“It was issued after Agency inspectors on the ground verified that Iran has carried out all measures required under the JCPOA to enable Implementation Day to occur,” IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said. “This paves the way for the IAEA to begin verifying and monitoring Iran’s nuclear-related commitments under the agreement, as requested by the U.N. Security Council and authorised by the IAEA Board.”

In releasing guidance on the lifting of sanctions, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said the administration “will continue to target sanctionable activities outside of the JCPOA – including those related to Iran’s support for terrorism, regional destabilization, human rights abuses, and ballistic missile development.”

Members of Congress, particularly a group of Senate Democrats, have been pressuring the administration to act against Iran’s missile program in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.