RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/nato-needs-reset-bruce-thornton/

Last week Joe Biden and his foreign policy team attended the NATO Heads of State and Government summit in Brussels. This gathering was more consequential than usual given the ongoing brutal war Russia is waging against Ukraine. Though Ukraine is not a member of NATO, this conflict on the borders of several NATO nations highlights the long-evident dysfunctions of the treaty, some of which are only now being acknowledged.

Yet little went on last week to suggest that NATO member-states are serious about making the deep reforms that should have taken place in the decade after the Cold War ended.

The official NATO statement was certainly filled with “rules-based international order” clichés typical of large bureaucracies suffering from professional deformation and fossilized narratives. It spoke of Russia’s “assault on international norms” that don’t exist, any more than the “international community” it implies will “hold accountable those responsible for violations of humanitarian and international law, including war crimes.” No more substantial are phrases like the “values and norms that have brought security and prosperity”; or “the foundations of international security and stability”; or the “international order including the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, as enshrined in the UN Charter.”

In reality, all these laws, institutions, and principles are the result of treaties made among sovereign nations that join them not because of shared “norms” or “values,” but because they serve those nations’ interests. And when a treaty stops doing so, those nations will ignore or violate them. That fact of history calls into doubt the statement’s claim that “Our commitment to Article 5 of the Washington Treaty is iron-clad.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/russia-is-screwed/#slide-1

Even aside from the war in Ukraine, a demographic crisis and climate change threaten Russia’s future.
 I n the short to medium term, Russia is fairly screwed. But in the long term, Russia is really screwed.

We all know that the Russian economy is in dire straits as it faces unprecedented sanctions from the West, and that countries pulling out of the Russian market now are unlikely to return for a long, long time. The ruble is now almost worthless outside the country, interest rates jumped to 20 percent, and inflation in Russia could rise to a jaw-dropping 20 to 30 percent. Even the longer-term outlook for Russian oil production is darkening.

The Russian military is performing badly, has lost its fearsome reputation, and will need a major expenditure to replace all its lost tanks and transport trucks in addition to its expended precision-guided missiles, artillery, and other weapons.

But the Russian invasion is exposing other weaknesses that Moscow would rather the world didn’t notice.

Douglas London, a former CIA operations officer, writes in the Wall Street Journal that the outlook for recruiting Russians spies has rarely looked better: “Some of the CIA’s best agents have been volunteers who finally are pushed over the edge by a life-altering event and offer their services to an intelligence service. Tolkachev, Polyakov and Kuklinski were volunteers. Thanks to Mr. Putin’s deplorable behavior, I expect an increase in Russian volunteers who have toyed with the idea of doing something to better Russia’s future and might now be receptive to an encouraging nudge.” The FBI is sending Russian-language recruitment ads to cellphones in and around the Russian embassy that read: “If you have information that could help the FBI, please contact us.”

But it is in the long term — say, a generation from now — that Russia is screwed . . . really, really screwed.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18360/persecution-of-christians-february

Authorities called on ten other Muslim converts to Christianity, who were earlier cleared of all charges, to take “re-education” classes led by Islamic clerics… Earlier, the prosecutor in the case against these Christians had said that “apostasy” from Islam was punishable under Islamic law, or sharia, “and in the hereafter,” even though it was “not criminalised in the laws of Iran.” . – articleeighteen.com, February1, 2022, Iran

“It’s not clear why or how he [a Christian] came to be arrested. Other charges, relating to violations of Egypt’s cyber-crime law and using religion to promote extremist thought, were added later without offering Gerges or his defence team an opportunity to respond…. A law banning ‘insulting the heavenly religions’, criminalising blasphemy, has been repeatedly used to silence Egypt’s religious minorities….” — worldwatchmonitor.org, February 9, 2022, Egypt

“He accused me of being an infidel by converting to Christianity, and that Allah will reward them in Jannah [garden paradise] if they kill me. He said to me that it is now the right time for me to receive punishment from Allah, whereby I was going to be burned alive and the birds of the air will enjoy me as their meat….They started beating me up as others gathered firewood, while another was sent to go for petrol because they wanted to use it to burn me alive…. They found me behind the house about 100 meters away, tied and with firewood around me.” – Morningstarnews.org, February 16, 2022, Uganda

“Jihadists came by motorbike….The invaders told the Christians that “they don’t want to see crosses.” – catholicnewsagency.com, February 11, 2022, Burkina Faso

“The man, Mohammed Derrab, remains in detention for anti-conversion charges brought against him.” — –International Christian Concern, persecution.org, February 28, 2022, Algeria

“The threats come as a result of failure to comply with the 2006 ordnance that requires non-Muslim worship to operate only in licensed buildings. However, the licensing commission has yet to issue a single permit.” –International Christian Concern, persecution.org, February 28, 2022, Algeria

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of February, 2022:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18359/mariupol-guernica

To justify his invasion, Putin has cited irredentist demands coupled with kith-and-kin claims and national security interests. If adopted as acceptable behavior, Putin’s scenario would be applicable to numerous other cases across the globe.

The most obvious example is that of China, where the Communist regime can threaten Taiwan on the basis of Putin’s arguments. But the same arguments could also be used against Russia by China and Japan. Russia occupies large chunks of Chinese territory along with the Japanese Kuril Islands archipelago.

And what about Mexico trying to “liberate” California and Texas from the Yankee Imperialists?

If we adopt the Putin Doctrine, we end up with a lawless world in which Hitler’s slogan “Force is Right” operates. We would take a giant leap back into an age in which war was the principal arbiter of relations along nations.

It would be absolute folly to ignore the message of Mariupol and not to try and stop the spiral to global hell created by a senseless war.

Whatever the outcome of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the crisis it triggered may have one lasting effect: the return of war as a routine instrument of politics on a global scale.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18355/china-southeast-asia

“China has fully militarized at least three of several islands it built in the disputed South China Sea, arming them with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment, and fighter jets in an increasingly aggressive move that threatens all nations operating nearby… that buildup of weaponization is destabilizing to the region.” — US Admiral John C. Aquilino, Associated Press, March 21, 2022.

“Relevant construction activity that China is undertaking does not target or impact any country and there is no intention to militarize.” — Communist Chinese President Xi Jinping, in 2015, The Times, March 21, 2022.

“[T]his presents a security risk to all countries in southeast Asia… where China has now built itself the capacity to control the skies and control the sea lanes through that region very effectively… It reflects the overall growth of the Chinese military… control of the South China Sea would be a major step for the PRC in prosecuting a military campaign against Taiwan. It certainly makes it much harder for the United States for example to get its military forces closer to Taiwan… it really becomes a mechanism to control all of southeast Asia, this is a region of ten countries, 650 million people… if you are the military dominant power in the South China Sea you dominate south east Asia. That at least was the strategic thinking of the Japanese in the Second World War and I think it is the strategic thinking of China right now.” — Peter Jennings, Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, interview with ABC Radio Australia, March 22, 2022.

The drill coincided with China’s announcement of its annual military budget for 2022, according to which China will be increasing its defense spending by 7.1% to $230 billion, up from a 6.8% increase the year before…. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has found that China consistently under-reports its actual defense budget.

China, however, is not transparent about what its defense budget includes — and does not include.

“Beijing conducts dozens of operations in its neighbors’ EEZs every year which, if civilian in nature, are illegal or, if military, are exactly what China claims other countries are not allowed to do in its own EEZ.” — Greg Poling, Center for Strategic and International Studies, rfa.org, March 1, 2022.

While the world is preoccupied with Ukraine, China continues to make aggressive moves in the South China Sea, almost the entirety of which China claims to be part of its territory.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/expansionist-islam-william-kilpatrick/

While the world justifiably worries about the expansion of Russia under Vladimir Putin, another world power is slowly expanding its reach.

It’s called Islam.  Unlike Russia, Islam is not one large land mass, but it does cover a lot of territory. There are 57 member nations in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) making the OIC the largest voting bloc in the United Nations.

The world’s attention is currently focused on Russia, but it would be unwise to forget about Islam.  Whereas the population of Russia is about 145 million and declining, Islam’s global population is approximately 1.8 billion and growing.  

It’s becoming clear that Russia under Putin is expansionist.  But it’s difficult to know to what extent.  Will Russia be satisfied in neutralizing Ukraine?  Or does it hope to reassert control over its former satellites in Europe? Or does it seek to control all of Europe?

Coincidentally, some of the territory that Russia covets was once controlled by Islam, and many Muslims believe that any territory once conquered by Islam still belongs to Islam.

Like today’s Russia, Islam is expansionist.  Subjugating the entire world under the rule of Allah is, arguably, the chief purpose of Islam.  And history confirms that gobbling up land in order to spread the faith is precisely what Islam has always done.

Within 100 years of Muhammad’s death, Islam had conquered all of North Africa and Spain as well. And the conquests continued for many centuries.  About half of the world’s great empires were Islamic empires and some of them were of immense size and power.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/03/ukraine-where-news-goes-to-die/

War is hell, and truth doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance. With all stories of violence and bloodshed coming out of eastern Europe, readers might be forgiven for missing the news that Ukraine’s defender of democracy and champion of freedom Volodymyr Zelensky suspended 11 opposition political parties over the weekend. This comes just after he nationalised all broadcast media to enforce a “unified information policy” under martial law. Ukraine’s liberal president Volodymyr Zelensky is looking increasingly like Canada’s Liberal prime minister Justin Trudeau. As the war drags on, he is approaching the stature of New Zealand’s “single source of truth”, Jacinda Ardern. No wonder the global media loves him.

State media has at least one advantage over private media: it’s not paywalled. Well, unless it’s the ABC. Let’s hope for Ukraine’s sake that Zelensky’s state media also gets the news out more quickly than America’s private media. Just last week, the New York Times finally confirmed that Hunter Biden’s laptop actually was his and the e-mails revealing how he traded on his father’s influence actually were real. Then this week the Gray Lady verified Ashley Biden’s diary, which detailed disturbing aspects of her family’s home life. Both stories originally surfaced in October, 2020. Thank you, Rupert.

Truth will out—eventually. And what better time to out it than during a war, with wall-to-wall news coverage featuring images of death and destruction, and all the chat shows debating the risks (and benefits?) of provoking a nuclear exchange with the latter-day Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Putin. Anyway Hunter’s laptop had to be acknowledged sooner or later: Biden fils may soon be indicted on tax and foreign influence charges. And with the liberal establishment pushing to have Project Veritas indicted for “stealing” Ashley’s diary, it is getting increasingly difficult to maintain that it is a fabrication.

If there are any other dead bodies in the Democratic Party cupboard, now is the time to dump them.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/will-battlefield-stalemate-end-ukraine/

The simplest description of the war in Ukraine is this: stalemate, accompanied by constant, deadly bombardment.

For the Ukrainians, that bombardment is aimed at the Russian military. For the Russians, it is aimed mostly at civilian targets, a deliberate strategy that is also a war crime. Russian artillery shells, cluster bombs and cruise missiles are killing tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and destroying their homes, schools and businesses. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s counterattack is imposing huge, irreplaceable losses on Russia’s army, killing soldiers, destroying their equipment and liquidating incompetent military leaders who come to the front to untangle the mess.

Russia’s initial war plan failed, abysmally. That plan was to seize Kyiv swiftly (expecting to be welcomed), decapitate the Zelensky regime and install a puppet government. Not only did they fail to seize the capital city, their brutal, unprovoked attack fostered a nationalist resistance so intense that neither the Russian army nor a puppet regime will ever be able to pacify the country. In fact, they don’t have the soldiers to take cities in house-to-house fighting (which takes about ten attackers for each defensive fighter), much less to hold those cities. Other than that, the plan is going just great.

https://gatesofvienna.net/2022/03/ukraine-field-test-of-the-great-reset/

Recommended by Janet Levy.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the Austrian weekly Der Wochenblick:

In the shadow of war: Ukraine as the Great Reset laboratory of the global tech elite

While a very real conflict is raging in Ukraine, naturally no spotlight falls on the digital distribution battles. The advocates of radical world restructuring and total surveillance have long recognized the potential of the Eastern European country. With the strong participation of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine would not only be a Mecca for US bio-weapons laboratories, but also pave the way for digital networking, the Metaverse and the transparent citizen. The lynchpin is the digital ID app “DiiA”, an abbreviation for “The State and I”.

Zelensky’s social credit system

The journey takes us back to 2019. Zelensky had only been a few months in office, and founded a “Ministry for Digital Transformation”. Its most important task was to create a platform for the “state on a smartphone”, the DiiA app finally rolled out in February of 2020. Since then everything has been going fast: more than 50 applications, proofs and official channels are now running via the app: driver’s license, Covid vaccination pass, student card, starting a business, insurance, social benefits. A French tech portal writes: “A model that we only knew from China with its social credit system.” By the way: “ID Austria” is supposed to go in this direction in the final phase.