RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/opinion/desmond-tutus-moral-failures/?fbclid=IwAR3Bqb6LZGwKsQuqnBOTL1S9cGpUJ1yNE0l5zpvn6eW86MDJ15idQSqURkA

Bishop Desmond Tutu deserves the flow of glowing eulogies celebrating his role in ending apartheid in South Africa, and his momentous work reconciling his black and white countrymen in its aftermath. He fearlessly stood up against racism and tyranny. He merits much praise for helping to achieve a peaceful end to the horror which was apartheid.

But an honest account of Tutu’s life cannot ignore two glaring moral flaws in his behavior: his hateful rhetoric against Jews and Israel, and the shameful shirking of his responsibility to protest against black slavery in Africa. Tutu’s sins must not be forgotten in the midst of the plentiful homage.

Attorney and emeritus Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz has published a collection of the late bishop’s statements—slanders against Israel and classic curses against the Jewish people. Over the years, Tutu has said that:

The world is in the grips of the “powerful” and “scary” “Jewish lobby.”
The gas chambers the Nazis used to murder Jews during the Holocaust made for “a neater” death than those meted out to the black victims of apartheid.
Jews cling to an unjust “Monopoly of the Holocaust.”
Israel’s counter-terrorism policies are identical to South African apartheid, characterizing them as “things that even apartheid South Africa had not done.”
The “Jews thought they had a monopoly of God: Jesus was angry that they could [in the manner of apartheid] shut out other human beings.”
Zionism possesses “very many parallels with racism,” and Israel may one day “perpetrate genocide and exterminate all Palestinians.”
The Jews have always been “fighting against” and “opposed” to Christ while they “persecute others.”

Another Tutu critic, Professor David Bernstein of George Mason University, points to this stunning Tutu statement: “[W]hether Jews like it or not, they are a peculiar people. They can’t ever hope to be judged by the same standards which are used for other people.” Tutu always denied that he was anti-Semitic—maintaining his dentist was a certain “Dr. Cohen”—but judging Jews differently from others is the very definition of anti-Semitism.

Tutu’s statements about Jews would be deemed “racist” if applied to any other people. They echo the basest of lethal hatreds. As a Christian bishop, Tutu should have been shamed for these statements. His statements about Israel are not simply untrue. As we know from history, such libels incite hatred, and—as we are seeing across the West—physical attacks.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/uks-cost-living-crisis-katie-hopkins/

We are used to counting down to good things: Advent before Christmas, New Year’s Eve fireworks, a rocket blasting into space, anything that ends with the word “GO!”

Here across the pond, Brits are counting down to something altogether darker. On 7 Feb, the British government regulator (Ofgem) has to reset the energy price cap — an artificial limit on the amount energy companies can charge customers. And the new figure is terrifying.

Analysts warn that energy bills will probably rise more than 50 percent to £2,000 a year for millions of households. This could plunge millions more people into fuel poverty and contribute to a cost of living crisis. We are back to the dark days of choosing between heat or eat.

Alongside a punitive inflation rate trending upwards from 5.1%, the ordinary working classes of this country are feeling the pain, thinking hard about what they can afford to buy in a supermarket or if they can afford to turn on their heating.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/jihads-afghan-base-andrew-harrod/

In Soviet-occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s, the “United States was convinced that it was supporting a genuine national liberation struggle, albeit with a strong Islamic foundation,” wrote Yossef Bodansky in 1999. In reality, as this House Taskforce on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare Director analyzed in his book, Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, this Muslim war against Soviet infidels would become a base for global jihad.

While President Ronald Reagan spoke of supporting Afghan “freedom fighters” within a worldwide Cold War struggle against Communism, in Afghanistan jihadists such as the previously discussed Palestinian Abdullah Azzam had other ideas. These mujahideen such as Osama bin Laden coming from countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia fought the Soviets and their Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) puppet regime not for market democracies but God’s rule under sharia. These holy warriors meanwhile received a warm embrace from Afghanistan’s neighbor Pakistan, whose Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) ran America’s covert aid operation to the mujahideen.

This self-proclaimed Islamic republic has always pursued national security in its Central and South Asian neighborhood by supporting allied jihadist proxies such as Gulbaddin Hekmatiyar’s Hizb-I Islami. Accordingly, Bodansky noted,

ISI adamantly opposed supporting Afghan resistance organizations associated with the predominantly tribal-traditional Pushtun population, who were essentially pro-Western. Instead the ISI insisted on diverting some 70 percent of the foreign aid to the Islamist parties—particularly Hizb-I Islami—who were inherently and virulently anti-American.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18096/russia-putin-nato

The Russian demands, which effectively require NATO to commit suicide, are so obviously outrageous and unmeetable that Western analysts are split over interpreting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s motives. Some say he is using the impossible list of demands as a pretext to invade Ukraine. Others think he is playing a weak hand to try to divide the West and reorder Europe’s security architecture in Russia’s favor.

Germany appears to be the West’s weak link the face of Russian pressure. On January 3, the German newspaper Bild reported that Scholz is seeking “a new beginning” in relations with Moscow. This has alarmed smaller European countries which fear that Germany will reach an accommodation with Putin behind their backs.

“The Russian leader… believes he has a window of opportunity to act. He is worried that the risk of Kiev joining NATO will increase if a stronger U.S. leader… comes to power…. Regretfully, the Biden administration’s ‘experts,’ like Obama’s before them who fecklessly sought a ‘reset’ with Russia, are likely to fall into Putin’s trap.” — Rebekah Koffler, a Russian-born U.S. intelligence expert.

“A second Russian attack on Ukraine, should it happen, ought to serve as a long-overdue wake-up call for the West about Russia’s intentions to establish an exclusive sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and assert Moscow’s claims to exercising influence in Central Europe, within NATO’s perimeter…. Europe’s security would deteriorate dramatically. The zone of competition would shift from Eastern Europe to Central Europe and the Baltic states.” — Andrew Michta, geopolitical analyst

“The West should immediately impose tough sanctions on Russia, provide serious defense assistance to Ukraine, demonstrate unambivalent support for Ukrainian sovereignty, and project moral and strategic resolve. Unfortunately, current trends and past behavior provide little cause for optimism that the ‘free world’ will rise to the challenge.” — Anne Pierce, foreign policy expert

“Westerners do not seem to understand what is at stake. They think that only the fate of Ukraine is being decided, which is of less concern to them than that of Armenia…. They resemble those who in 1939 believed that Hitler’s demands would be limited to Danzig. However, one only has to look at the texts proposed by Moscow to understand that the stakes are quite different.” — Françoise Thom, French historian of Russia.

“In 1946-7 we knew that freedom was worth dying for, something that is obviously forgotten today. After Munich in 1938, the West was ashamed to have abandoned Czechoslovakia into Hitler’s clutches. Today we are cowardly letting down Ukraine, but we do not even realize our dishonor, nor the danger of giving in to an aggressor. We are like the Byzantines who were discussing the sex of angels while the Ottoman forces were destroying the city walls.” — Françoise Thom.

Russia has threatened war if the United States and its NATO allies fail to comply — unconditionally — with sweeping demands for a new security arrangement in Europe.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18090/mohammed-bin-zayed-man-of-the-year

The Abraham Accords would not have been possible without Mohammed bin Zayed’s pioneering efforts and willingness to embrace the trailblazing proposals.

His major confidant is his brother, H.H. Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, National Security Adviser. He stands out both for the breadth of his role and his ability to remain under the radar, as a pragmatic, probing and analytical man. He is described as “The Man of Difficult Missions.”

The leadership of Mohamed bin Zayed has been demonstrated in a broad range of areas. He is helping to transform the UAE into a beacon of hope and change in the Middle East. We wish him, his brilliant close advisors, and the UAE future success in their many visionary and pace-setting initiatives.

One of the most intractable issues over the last 40 years has been the instability and hostilities in the Middle East. The conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, the persistent threat of terrorism, Al Qaeda, and ISIS have kept the region as a major international trouble-spot.

Mideast leaders and U.S. presidents from Clinton to Trump had invested enormous amounts of time and energy in trying to find a breakthrough peace formula – with no result.

All that changed on August 13, 2020, when President Donald J. Trump’s designee for identifying a path forward, Jared Kushner, approached the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with a historic plan for a breakthrough. It was immediately pioneered by His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. A historic peace agreement was unveiled.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2022/01/a-belated-christmas-message-from-eric-zemmour/

According to Their ABC, French presidential candidate Eric Zemmour is — yes, you guessed it — a “far-right” rabble-rouser, that description appearing as if by rote in a report relating how “anti-racism protesters” stormed the stage and roughed up his supporters for holding opinions of which they disapprove. Such is the view through the ABC’s looking glass: thugs represent decency and free speech the threat.

We’ll no doubt hear more from the national broadcaster over the months to come of Zemmour and his campaign, so just for the record here he is in his own words — a message he broadcast to mark Christmas. It might be worth bookmarking when the ABC foreign correspondents, in their usual Pavlovian fashion, open the spigot on a slobber of cliches about “the French Trump”, “Islamophobia” “white supremacy”, “xenophobia” and perhaps, despite Zemmour being a Jew of North African origin, accusations of Nazi sympathies. — RF

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MY DEAR countrymen, my friends: Tonight, Christianity celebrates Christmas. But not only Christianity. For one need not be Christian to celebrate Christmas. It suffices to love the West in general, and France in particular.
The night of Christmas Eve begins the celebration of a civilization – ours – that has enlightened human history. A civilization that believes man is absolutely free, whatever his birth, his past, his environment, his path.

In the Christian world, liberty has a divine nature and must be protected as the most precious treasure.
A civilization that believes men are equal in dignity. Everyone, from the prostitute to the king, and all in between – the beggar, the rich man, the widow, the orphan, the soldier, the leper – are children of god and all are equal before him. No race, no class – a holy equality.

A civilization that believes the beautiful is also holy. The civilization of Rembrandt, da Vinci, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven. Paintings, sculptures, works of technical perfection and awesome depth.

The whole world admires Western art. It is impossible not to be overwhelmed by the Pietà of Michelangelo.
A civilization that believes truth is neither theoretical nor relative but concrete, incarnated, and holy. To deny truth is to deny the Good. The lie is both the day-to-day and the eternal face of evil.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/abraham-accords-gift-keeps-giving-hugh-fitzgerald/

Four Arab countries – the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco – have now joined the Abraham Accords and “normalized ties” with Israel. While much attention has been paid to the business deals – involving trade, technology, and tourism – made between Israel and the UAE, that in the first year now amount to $675 million worth of agreements, from Morocco comes another sort of tie that binds, and that transcends business: It Is the rediscovery and restoration of Morocco’s Jewish past. A report on this effort is here: “Moroccan King Orders Restoration of Hundreds of Jewish Sites,” Algemeiner, December 13, 2021:

King Mohammed VI of Morocco recently introduced an initiative to restore hundreds of historical Jewish sites in the kingdom, according to Arab media reports.

The move is part of the rapprochement between Rabat and Jerusalem, which resumed diplomatic relations earlier this year as part of the Abraham Accords, according to the reports.

The rapprochement was helped along by the Trump Administration, which persuaded Morocco to join the Abraham Accords and, by way of encouragement, announced that Washington recognized Morocco’s claim to the western Sahara, long disputed between, and fought over by, Morocco and the Algerian-backed Polisario Front.

Morocco’s recent royals have been well-disposed to Jews. The present king’s grandfather, King Mohammed V, protected the 250,000 Moroccan Jews during World War II from both the Nazis and Vichy authorities. He prevented roundups, most famously in Casablanca. He refused to enforce Vichy’s anti-Jewish legislation. He publicly declared that “There are no Jews in Morocco. There are only Moroccan subjects.” No Moroccan Jews were deported or killed during the war.

His son King Hassan II was similarly well-disposed to Jews, and employed a Moroccan Jew, Andre Azoulay, as one of his advisors. Azoulay has for many years been the senior adviser to his son, King Mohammed VI.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18087/sanaa-mystery-man

He [the late Ambassador Hassan Ayerloo] had reorganized Ansar Allah, the armed wing of the Houthi movement, raising the number of its fighters from 1,000 in 2005 to over 10,000 last year. Thanks to Ayerloo’s leadership, the Houthis, initially a small tribal group in Saada, northern Yemen, was built into a major political movement seeking to rule the whole of Yemen.

Ayatollah Ali Yunesi includes Sanaa among the four Arab capitals he claims Iran now controls, the others being Baghdad, Damascus and Beirut.

The news last week of the death in mysterious circumstances of the Iranian ambassador to Sanaa reminded me of a 19th century English limerick:

Who and where and when and what
Is the Akhund of Swat
Is he lean or is he fat
Is he cold or is he hot
The Akhund of Swat?

The Akhund of Swat was a cleric leading a tribal rebellion against the British Raj in the badlands of Pashstunistan. The questions posed in the limerick went unanswered as, one foggy day in the mountains, the Akhund disappeared. And since no one could claim to have actually seen the Akhund, an endless number of fables were woven around his name.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18089/biden-legacy-dismantling-democracies

Biden inflicted untold damage on the free world by his catastrophic surrender in Afghanistan, demonstrating to America’s enemies and friends alike that, under his administration, the US was no longer willing to stand by its allies nor to protect its own vital national interests.

Now Biden is planning discussions in early 2022 between Russia and selected NATO members to “defuse” the situation [Russia threatening the Ukraine]. Can he really believe that any negotiations short of capitulation to Russian demands would satisfy Putin or achieve anything? So-called diplomacy down the barrel of 90,000 Russian guns looks a lot like even more appeasement.

Biden has failed to respond to Iranian attacks on Saudi Arabia, Iranian aggression against Israel and even Iranian attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq. Iran’s contempt for Biden was further displayed last week in the launch of multiple ballistic missiles during manoeuvres that Iranian commanders explicitly said were intended to threaten Israel.

In the face of Iranian nuclear provocation, Biden’s officials have refrained from any threat of military action — taking off the table the only truly effective deterrent against regimes that respect strength alone.

Biden’s policies of appeasement towards Iran and Russia are bad enough. But the greatest threat to the free world today comes from China. Biden has a long record of appeasing Beijing.

Biden’s administration has projected only confusion over China’s ambitions against Taiwan. The president twice suggested the US might be willing to defend the country in the event of Chinese invasion, with his comments immediately walked back by officials… Similarly mixed messages coming from London led the Argentinian junta to believe Britain, despite its vast military superiority, would not fight to defend the Falkland Islands on the other side of the world, and actually encouraged the 1982 invasion.

“One of [Biden’s] first acts on assuming the presidency was to shut down the investigations into the origins of Covid-19 — including the one I led at the State Department in 2020, which presented troubling scientific and circumstantial evidence on the secret activities of the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] that bolster the lab-leak theory”. — Dr David Asher, who spearheaded the State Department task force investigating the origins of Covid-19 and the role of the Chinese government, Hudson Institute, November 17, 2021

None of Biden’s acts of appeasement are isolated to their targets alone; they are widely observed and cumulative in effect. They embolden America’s enemies and unnerve its friends, potentially fracturing alliances that are vital to defending democracy. So much damage has already been done in just one year that even were Biden to change course, his legacy might well be the dismantling of democracies and the free world.

When US President Joe Biden took office, he removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. He should have replaced it with one of Neville Chamberlain. After Chamberlain’s infamous appeasement of Hitler at Munich in 1938, Churchill told him: “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18081/germany-china-business

* Olaf Scholz, who succeeded Angela Merkel as chancellor on December 8, pledged [in a telephone call with China’s President Xi Jinping] to strengthen economic ties with China, but he failed to mention human rights or the destruction of democracy in Hong Kong.

*The telephone call will disappoint those who had hoped that Germany’s new government would break with the past and take distance from Merkel’s policy of appeasing dictators and sacrificing human rights on the altar of financial gain.

*If Scholz promised to advance bilateral economic relations without linking them to the protection of human rights, it would be a direct violation of Germany’s coalition agreement, which pledged to make human rights the centerpiece of German foreign policy.

*The Merkel government, apparently under pressure from German industry, largely ignored human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

*China is Germany’s biggest trading partner, with €212 billion in goods exchanged in 2020, according to the German Foreign Ministry. More than 5,000 German companies operate in China, according to the German Chamber of Commerce in China.

* “Did the new German Chancellor pressure the Chinese dictator during their phone call over the Chinese blackmail of Lithuania, EU and NATO ally of Germany? Or does Germany still not care about the strategic reality and is its foreign policy still driven by greed and appeasement?” — Jakub Janda, Director of the Prague-based European Values think tankץ

* “Merkel will be judged harshly by future historians. She has done little to prepare Germany and the European Union for the challenges that the Putin and Xi regime pose to liberal democracies. And Scholz is doubling down on her failed foreign policies vis-a-vis autocracies. It will end in tears.” — Andreas Fulda, German political scientist and expert on EU-China relations