RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/swiss-nix-carbon-tax-just-before-biden-arrival-11623786757?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

Talk about awkward. Right after President Joe Biden and other leaders of advanced economies celebrated their expensive climate promises in Brussels, Mr. Biden had to fly to Switzerland—where voters have just rejected expensive climate promises made by the country’s politicians.

Judging by the photograph accompanying this column, Swiss Federal President Guy Parmelin and President Biden kept things cheerful and may have done their best to avoid the topic as they discussed Wednesday’s planned meeting in Geneva between Mr. Biden and Russian strongman Vladimir Putin.

But to the extent that Mr. Biden is aware of where he is and what’s just happened at the polls, he must be disappointed. John Revill of Reuters reports from Zurich:

Swiss voters rejected a trio of environmental proposals on Sunday, including a new law intended to help the country meet its goal for cutting carbon emissions under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change…
The result was a defeat for the Swiss government which supported the new law that included measures such as increasing a surcharge on car fuel and imposing a levy on flight tickets.
The rejection meant it would now be “very difficult” for Switzerland to reach its 2030 goal of cutting carbon emissions to half of their 1990 levels and to be become net neutral on emissions by 2050, Environment Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17416/china-war-on-india

China’s border actions against India have been described as a “salami tactic”. China seems to be seeking to dominate territory through incremental operations too small to attract international attention and not large enough to spark an actual war with India — but sufficient to accumulate real results over time in the form of gained territory. It is similar to the tactic China has been using in the South China Sea.

For this purpose, China uses gray-zone warfare, a maneuver at which the country has become expert, especially against Taiwan. The concept entails actions that fall just short of war — others have termed it “indirect war” — but the purpose is the same: to overcome resistance — or a perceived enemy — by inducing exhaustion.

“Overall, China’s increasing ties to the Indian Ocean and beyond have expanded enormously over the past two decades…. Crucially… it appears that China does intend to develop some sort of Indian Ocean force.” — Christopher Colley, Wilson Center, Washington D.C., April 2, 2021

“If India is weakened militarily and economically… its value as a counterweight to China and the broader U.S. goal of countering China’s regional influence would also be undermined.” — Daniel S. Markey, Council on Foreign Relations, April 19, 2021.

One year after China ordered an attack on the disputed border between India and China in the Himalayas — which deteriorated into a situation in which 20 Indian soldiers and several Chinese soldiers were killed — tension along the border remains high.

“China’s occupation since May 2020 of contested border areas is the most serious escalation in decades and led to the first lethal border clash between the two countries since 1975,” according to the “2021 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” published on April 9, 2021 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Military tensions between China and India go back nearly six decades to the 1962 Sino-Indian war, when China began attacking India. Although relations subsequently improved, the shadow of the war remains partly in the form of disagreement between the two countries about where the exact border — or the Line of Actual Control (LAC), as it is called — is located.

In January, China reportedly withdrew nearly 10,000 soldiers from depth areas on its side of the LAC while keeping front-line soldiers in place. Despite 11 rounds of talks — the latest on April 9 — de-escalation remains elusive. China refuses to disengage from two friction points in Hot Springs and Gogra.

In May, Indian Army Chief General MM Naravane told Indian troops to keep a watch on Chinese activities along the LAC. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has reportedly begun annual war drills in “in-depth areas… located 100 to 250-km from the Line of Actual Control (LAC).”

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/boriss-mind-turns-to-mush

Whatever you may think about Boris Johnson’s character or fitness for the great office of Britain’s prime minister that he currently occupies, there has never been any serious questioning of his brain capacity. This is deemed to be sufficient to negotiate with the EU in Latin while simultaneously writing his book on Shakespeare and beating Emanuel Macron at strip poker. 

However, something horrible appears to have happened to the Johnson grey matter. An early symptom of this affliction (which he seems to have contracted directly from an earlier and distressing victim of Cabinet Cognitive Collapse, Michael Gove) was his evangelical promotion of “net zero” carbon emissions to arrest “climate change”.

Through this policy, he intends to fleece the poor for the high-minded privilege of freezing to death, ramp up inflation and cripple the economy while undoing much of the industrial revolution. This is in order to alter the composition and course of the climate, a system which is impenetrably complex, non-linear and chaotic but whose alteration he seriously proposes to achieve by reducing one already minute factor in its composition — the equivalent of the attempt to extract sunbeams from cucumbers in Jonathan Swift’s satirical island of Laputa.

Further evidence of alarming prime ministerial brain malfunction emerged recently when, in the wake of the row over the England football team being booed by fans for “taking the knee” before a qualifier match for the Euros, the prime minister first urged fans not to boo the England players for “taking the knee;” but after pressure to go further in backing the team’s gesture, his spokesman then said: 

The Prime Minister respects the right of all people to peacefully protest and make their feelings known about injustices.

But “taking the knee” is not to protest against injustice. It is to support the agenda of Black Lives Matter, a violent, anti-west and anti-white movement which pioneered the gesture. This has been adopted by well-meaning but ignorant people, who naively believe they are signalling their opposition to racial prejudice and injustice when in fact they are signalling their support for racial prejudice and injustice — against white people. So deeply has this mind-rot penetrated society that, as one journalist told me in all seriousness the other day in a radio discussion: 

There’s no such thing as racism against white people.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/breaking-back-my-return-uk-katie-hopkins/

After three months on the road in America giving our side a reason to gather and be reminded that America remains the greatest nation on the face of the planet, my heart finally decided it was time to make a break for Britain.

Each time a concerned-looking patriot asks me at my events, “When are you going home?” I tell them truthfully that I don’t know, that I throw myself to the wind without caution or a sell-by date and wait for my heart to decide.

I truly believe that our paths are already set out in front of us, and in order to walk in your truth every day you have to let go of the control of some of the big stuff that you are taught as a child to think important — like having a plan, or living in certainty.

(I sometimes wonder if those asking me “When are you going home?” are really asking me “When are you ever going to leave?”, like hosts whose guests have overstayed their welcome at a party. But I suspect I am overthinking somewhat.)

Of course, it’s no mean feat breaking back into a country you weren’t supposed to leave (it was illegal to leave the UK or travel to America when I left the country) and returning from a country you weren’t supposed to have been in (the USA still has a ban on Brits entering the country due to our very special kind of COVID).

Patriots at events would ask, “What’s going to happen to you when you return?” And in truth, I didn’t know. But I accepted it might not be pretty. I had an agreement with Frank Gaffney (of the Center for Security Policy) that if I were ever locked up at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in a British jail, he would co-ordinate with Mike Lindell to secure me a mattress topper for my bunk.

Given the plight of the 1/6ers and the threat to liberty facing all patriots under Biden and the Global Cabal of COVID Idiots, a prison line could be a big seller for MyPillow, I am sure of it.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17465/china-iran

Sheikh Jarrah, the ostensible cause of the latest conflict in the Middle East, is not so complicated. It is a private rent dispute, caused by squatters and by Palestinian tenants who acquired protected tenancies (not ownership) during the period of Jordanian occupation in 1948-1967, when Jordan illegally sequestrated the property rights of Jewish landowners. The Palestinian tenants and squatters are refusing to pay their Israeli landlords rent for properties that have been in undisputed Jewish ownership since the middle of the 19th century….

The Ayatollahs have, since Iran’s Revolution of 1979, like their proxies, vowed the total destruction of Israel… This goal is also inscribed in the charters of Hamas, Hezbollah and the current Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas….

This agreement between China and Iran strengthened the hands of both countries to test the resolve of a Biden administration filled with Obama era appointees committed to two of his signature foreign policy errors, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and a dogmatic prioritisation of the so-called “Two State Solution” that is now dead and buried. With people such as Hady Amr, now the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for “Israel-Palestine,” who implausibly Biden sent to “mediate” what cannot be mediated, hope dies. Amr is parti pris: someone who once said that he was “inspired by the Palestinian intifada.” He has in the past wrongly accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and apartheid….

Obama’s third signature error in foreign policy forms a bridge to the other set of dots to be joined up. Fifteen years ago, the many small islands and reefs in the South China Sea which are now China’s military bases with runways and ports, were uninhabited, many of them tidally submerged and marked with metal poles (which confer no territorial rights under UNCLOS – the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea). It was mainly on Obama’s watch that this militarisation proceeded, unchallenged, when it could and should have been nipped in the bud… If the militarisation of the South China Sea is left intact, Communist China’s navy — the Peoples’ Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) — will soon have a second and secure southern approach to Taiwan for the invasion which it has threatened for so long….

Declaratory PLAN doctrine states that in the event of war, it holds at risk US assets from Guam to the far side of Hokkaido: hence US bases in Japan. The PLA has also threatened missile attacks on Australia, where key Five Eyes intelligence assets are situated. PLA planners must be aware that these are red lines as much as an attempt to invade Taiwan. Any such actions would trigger US escalation, as recent speeches by senior USN officers have confirmed. It appears that the Communist Chinese are throwing down a gauntlet to test our resolve….

But Communist China is not ten feet tall. As the recent failure of the PRC space station suggests, we should not automatically assume technological omnipotence. In any event, equipment does not equal capability. We should also remember, as Sun Tzu’s Art of War and the Thirty Six Stratagems of the Warring States/Three Kingdoms period both observe, that perception of power has a power of its own and that the most elegant defeat is the one incurred by the moral disarmament of the enemy….

Over recent months, the US Department of Defence has been engaged in a series of technical moves of significance… They have not been much remarked… but all can be found in the professional military literature, as they should be if they are to compose a credible deterrent to make Xi Jinping think again and stay his hand….

Iran… needs little encouragement to attack Israel, especially via its proxies, where it can claim “plausible deniability”. The current bout of violence and its sequel suit Xi Jinping’s command group well as a “Dead Cat” tactic: a misdirection so that eyes are off the prime area of interest for the PRC. That area is…. the recent illegal occupation of the South China Sea by this untraditional maritime power [and] the “continentalisation” of this sea-space…..

In short Xi Jinping’s command group must be aware that many windows are closing for it and that time is not on their side unless they can persuade the Free World to self-harm sufficiently that we disarm morally. For this, there is evidence of intent and, unfortunately, of current success….

Therefore the Free World must not fall for the Dead Cat gambit. We must firmly support Israel, the window of the west in the middle east, and we must maintain the Abraham Accords as the best road to normalisation in that region. If we ensure that we are all awake but not woke, we thereby can resist cultural subversion and moral disarmament through the PRC Ministry of State Security… ‘make friends for China’ strategy within our body politic. In these ways, the threat posed to us by the most patient, intelligent, malign and formidable enemy that we have faced, can be defeated….

By preference, a Free World united front of firm deterrence and ostracism may cause the Mandate of Heaven to move from Xi Jinping’s communist dictatorship, as it has from over-reaching Chinese leaders many times before…. We have a duty to the betrayed democrats of Hong Kong and by extension to all decent Chinese people to help them to liberate themselves. But for 20 years we have averted our eyes and so the hour is now late. Many in the Western establishments who were defeatist or complicit over the last two decades have much to answer for. Therefore, to prevail, the Free World may have to use force if needs be; and if force must be used, then sooner is safer than later.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17464/biden-putin-g7

[Putin] wants a return to the good or bad old days, when the USSR and the United States were regarded as arbiters of world affairs on an equal footing.

Today, thanks to the Obama era, that vast region [Central Asia] is morphing into a race course between China and Russia, with the US as a distant observer.

The summit with Biden would be an opportunity for Putin to impose a number of “events” as faits-accomplis, notably the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Putin has exploited Obama’s numerous mistakes in the Middle East. He has built bridgeheads to a number of countries that were once in the Soviet orbit, notably Egypt and Iraq, while casting itself as the arbiter of Syria’s fate. Using the Islamic Republic in Iran as his Trojan horse, Putin is also gaining a foothold in Lebanon.

What Putin wants from Biden with regard to Iran is the lifting of sanctions against Iran…. With sanctions lifted, Russia could gain control of Iran’s immense energy resources. That would enable Russia to control Iran’s market share, thus heightening its own profile as the key source of supply for Europe and, in time, for China. In exchange, Iran would be helped to secure enough money to keep the regime in place….

Putin also hopes that Iran will quickly ratify the so-called Caspian Convention, which would turn the world’s largest lake into a Russia pond and shut Western powers out.

By excluding itself from Afghanistan, the US leaves the field open for new players in the latest version of the “Great Game”. China, using Pakistan as its local “fixer”, is already courting the Taliban as Islamabad’s surrogate to rule Afghanistan.

For its part, Russia is developing an axis with India and Iran to counter the Beijing-Islamabad duo. Here, too, the US will be distant spectator.

Putin will cast several skillfully baited hooks for Biden. He would talk of stabilizing Europe, containing China, keeping the North Koreans within the red lines, not allowing the mad mullahs of Tehran to go beyond certain limits in their pretended “Jihad” against Israel, and preventing the Taliban from seizing control of Afghanistan and undoing all that has been done with blood and money from the US and its Afghan and Western allies.

The question that Biden needs to ponder is this: Is Putin turning Russia into a mere competitor for power and prestige for the US or is he, as some of his barely concealed misdeeds indicate, an enemy of the democratic world, formerly known as “The Free World”?

By holding a tete-a-tete with Vladimir Putin just after the G7 summit in Cornwall, US President Joe Biden may signal a move towards a G7 and a half arrangement in which Russia, once a full member of the club, secures a side chair in its ante-chamber. The arrangement suits Putin just fine. For his strategy has always aimed at taking the Western democracies one by one and not as a bloc such as NATO, the European Union or the G7.

But what does Putin want?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17451/iran-record-rouhani

During Rouhani’s tenure, thousands of people were executed, including women and children. In its 2019 global review of the death penalty, Amnesty International stated: “Iran retained its place as the world’s second-most prolific executioner after China.”

In total, according to official estimates of the Iranian regime, more than 4,000 people were executed in Rouahni’s two-term presidency: an average of 10 executions a week for eight years.

Rouhani’s two terms as President taught many Iranians that the idea of moderates in the Iranian regime is laughable and a myth. Many chants became popular in Iran for the first time, such as “Reformist, hardliner, the game is now over”, “Death to Rouhani,” “Shame on you Khamenei, step down from power,” and “Death to the Islamic Republic.”

The Biden administration must not lift sanctions against the Iranian regime and should immediately halt all negotiations with Rouhani’s administration. It has presided over unspeakable human rights violations; record-setting executions of men, women and children; suppression of Christians and other minorities, and a brutal crackdown on its population. If a country does not treat its own people well, why would it treat its neighbors any better?

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has long been labeled in the West a “moderate” or “diplomatic sheikh” who will change the Iranian regime for the better. The Obama administration reached a deal with the Rouhani’s administration and lifted sanctions against the Iranian regime; and now the Biden administration is forging ahead to revive former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Rouhani before he leaves office.

Here, for perusal, are the eight-years of records of the so-called moderate President of Iran.

In his first term of presidency, beginning in 2015, Rouhani sealed the nuclear deal — which, incidentally, Iran never signed — with the Obama administration. As a result of the deal, both the United Nations’ four rounds of sanctions and US sanctions against the Iran’s regime were swiftly lifted and the ruling mullahs joined the global financial system. Billions of dollars flew into the regime’s treasury.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/world-leaders-must-demand-answers-on-covid-19-origins/

G7 leaders should use their collective power to demand answers from the Chinese Communist Party on the coronavirus.

After a year and a half of stonewalling, destruction of evidence, and lies by the Chinese government, a growing chorus of international opinion is demanding a full and transparent investigation into the origins of COVID-19. As G7 leaders gather in Cornwall this weekend for the annual summit, they have the opportunity — and arguably an obligation — to use their collective power to demand answers from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and prevent future pandemics.

Early in 2020, a three-line whip was essentially imposed across the scientific, public-health, and political establishments, holding that the novel coronavirus likely emerged through zoonotic transfer. Despite the many scientific and circumstantial holes in this explanation, the alternative hypothesis that COVID-19 may have spread via a lab accident from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) — located at the epicenter of the initial outbreak — was dismissed as a fringe theory. The zoonotic hypothesis also happened to be the preferred explanation of the CCP, which vigorously pushed this narrative while silencing its scientists, destroying evidence, and stage-managing the World Health Organization (WHO) investigation.

Now that an increasing number of scientists, reporters, and political figures are finally taking the lab-leak hypothesis seriously, elected leaders owe their citizens answers about the who, when, where, how, and why of the origins of COVID-19.

The G7 countries should launch a joint investigation into the origins of the virus to complement the ongoing Five Eyes inquiries. Countries such as Japan, Germany, France, and Italy with world-class intelligence services and medical-research institutions can share the benefits of their expertise and their insights on China. France’s cooperation is particularly important. After all, the French built the BSL-4 laboratory for advanced pathogenetic research on viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Undoubtedly, the French know many of the most sensitive secrets regarding this facility and the personnel inside the WIV, with whom they previously collaborated, and can do a great deal to help solve this mystery.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/06/china-can-help-us-out-of-its-inflation-trap/

NEW YORK – “Goods produced by China’s hundreds of millions of workers are a strong anchor for stabilizing global inflation” read the banner headline at China’s “Observer” (guancha.cn) website June 10, quoting People’s Bank of China official Guo Shuqing, the Communist Party representative at the central bank.

The “Observer” site frequently floats trial balloons for China’s top policymakers.

Guo dismissed the reassurances of Western central bankers and offered an alarming assessment of inflation risk: “Inflation is coming as scheduled. Moreover, the magnitude is higher than the expectations of central bankers in the United States and Europe, and the duration of inflation does not seem to be as short as many experts predict.”

He added, “When fiscal expenditures are already largely supported by the central bank’s printing of money, it is like an airplane entering tailspin, and it is difficult to pull out of the dive. Before 2008, the Fed’s balance sheet was only more than US$800 billion, and now it is nearly $8 trillion, and the ratio of US federal debt to GDP has surpassed the highest record created during World War II.”

Nonetheless, Guo argued, China can help: “For a considerable period of time, China has supplied about half of the world’s finished goods, and on the whole has not increased export prices, laying a solid foundation for global epidemic prevention and control, and for economic recovery. If the large amounts of currency issued by the most developed countries have been the driving force for global inflation, then the goods produced by China’s hundreds of millions of workers are the anchor for stabilizing global inflation.”

Beijing is sending a message to Washington: You have a big problem with inflation, and we can help – in return for other consideration. China and the United States had a tacit deal during the 2000s: You buy our goods, and we invest the proceeds in US Treasury securities. That kept US interest rates artificially low during the housing bubble years.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-new-power-play-more-control-of-tech-companies-troves-of-data-11623470478?mod=hp_lead_pos7

Shortly after rising to power in late 2012, Xi Jinping made his first company visit in his new job as China’s Communist Party chief, to Tencent Holdings Ltd. There, he raised a topic that has become both an opportunity and a challenge for his rule: the vast troves of personal data being gathered by the country’s technology companies.

Mr. Xi complimented Tencent’s founder, Pony Ma, on the way the company was accumulating information from millions of users, and harnessing that data to drive innovation. He also suggested that data would be useful to Beijing.

“You have the most sufficient data, then you can make the most objective and accurate analysis,” he told Mr. Ma, according to state media accounts. “The suggestions to the government in this regard are very valuable.”

More than eight years later, those suggestions are becoming demands. The government is now calling on big tech companies like Tencent, online retailing giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd. to open up the data they collect from social media, e-commerce and other businesses, according to official documents and interviews with people involved in policy-making.

The complex new web of laws and regulations around sharing digital records is being driven by the huge growth in data held by China’s tech giants—and a belief that the government should be able to access it. The efforts are also part of Mr. Xi’s quest to rein in the increasingly powerful tech sector, which has pushed back on some of Beijing’s previous data-sharing efforts. The most recent law, passed Thursday, will make it harder for companies to resist such requests.

China’s leaders worry that the country’s tech giants could be using their extensive personal and corporate digital records to build alternative power centers in the one-party state. That concern led Mr. Xi to halt a planned initial public offering by Jack Ma’s financial-technology behemoth Ant Group Co. late last year.

Chinese government entities involved in the effort to regulate data, including the State Council and the Cyberspace Administration of China, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Beijing is also intensifying the pressure on foreign firms operating in China to keep records gathered from local customers inside the country, so the government has more authority over the records. Western companies have long complained such “data-localization” requirements could stifle innovation in their global operations or enable Chinese authorities to steal their proprietary information.