RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17430/turkey-arms-shipments-jihadis

Erdoğan’s government claimed the cargo was humanitarian aid to Turkoman locals in Syria but then filed criminal charges against the editors Cumhuriyet, for being members of a “terrorist organization,” espionage and revealing state secrets…. The prosecution asked for life sentences for two Cumhuriyet editors. Since then, Can Dündar, then-editor-in-chief, has been living in Germany in exile.

At the beginning of May, Sedat Peker, a convicted Turkish mob boss and a fierce supporter of Erdoğan — until now — began posting videos on social media in which he made uncorroborated accusations of corruption, murder and drug-running against top politicians.

After weeks of silence, Erdoğan… ordered prosecutors and judges to investigate and establish that all of Peker’s claims were lies and a smear campaign against his government. Who will trust the independence of a legal probe when the president has already ordered its verdict?

On January 19, 2014, the Turkish Gendarmerie command in southern Turkey searched three trucks heading for Syria. Accompanying the trucks were Turkish intelligence officers; the trucks had a bizarre cargo: In the first container, were 25-30 missiles or rockets and 10-15 crates loaded with ammunition; and in the second, 20-25 missiles or rockets, 20-25 crates of mortar rounds and anti-aircraft ammunition in five or six sacks. The crates had markings in the Cyrillic alphabet. One of the drivers testified that the cargo had been loaded onto the trucks from a foreign airplane at Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport and that, “We carried similar loads several times before.”

It was evident that the arms were bound for jihadists fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regional nemesis. Nearly two years later, Erdoğan would almost confess to the arms shipments. “What does it matter,” he said in November 2015, “if it [the cargo] was arms or not?”

https://www.newsweek.com/western-silence-gaza-summer-camps-train-future-terrorists-opinion-1605704

The teenage boys of Gaza, some of whom are still in junior high, are learning how to shoot guns, launch anti-tank missiles and protect themselves while peering around walls.

The boys are attending summer camp, but it’s not the swimming and softball, hiking and cookouts that many of us fondly recall. It’s camp as run by the terrorist groups Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). It aims “to fan the flames of jihad among the generation of liberation, instill Islamic values and prepare the long-awaited army for the liberation of Palestine,” as the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas put it.

Through these camps, which Hamas and PIJ have run for more than a decade, the terrorist groups glorify military operations against Israel and recruit the next generation of terrorists – all of which suggests that Israeli-Palestinian peace will remain as elusive as ever.

One might expect that the terrorist-run camps in Gaza would engender some attention among Western intelligentsia, for which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is always a front-burner issue. That the camps, in fact, attract so little notice shows just how committed leading media and academic institutions are to a narrative of Israeli oppression and Palestinian victimization.

Information about the camps isn’t hard to find, if one is willing to look. The terrorist groups promote them on social media, announce their openings at news conferences and post pictures and videos from them.

Moreover, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which brings news from the region to non-regional audiences, has written reports about the camps while posting pictures and videos, and distributes its reports for free.

https://www.newsweek.com/ban-ki-moon-gets-it-wrong-opinion-1605816#slideshow/183474

Ban Ki-moon, former secretary-general of the United National, has had a thought. It is, unfortunately, not a good one. Acknowledging that the Oslo Accords are a failure (true), he then posits two things.

First, that the Israelis and Palestinians must recognize “the fundamental asymmetry between [them]. This is not a conflict between equals that can be resolved through bilateral negotiations, confidence-building measures or mutual sequencing of steps—the traditional conflict-resolution tools.” (Both untrue and true.)

Second, the negotiation failure is because “Israel has pursued a policy of incremental de facto annexation in the territories it has occupied since 1967, to the point where the prospect of a two-state solution has all but vanished.” (Just untrue.)

It is not a “conflict between equals,” but it is true that “confidence-building” and so forth will not work—because the Palestinians remain in a self-avowed state of war with Israel. It is the last remnant of the pan-Arab war against the Jewish state that began before 1948 and is now slowly resolving as follows: “Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

Those words should sound familiar to Ban because they are from UN Resolution 242, adopted in the wake of 1967’s Six Day War. Starting with Egypt and Jordan, followed by the Sunni Gulf states, then Sudan and Morocco openly as well as other Arab and African countries quietly, the normalization movement represents precisely the “new approach” Ban seeks.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chinese-communist-word-games/

The most memorable passage of Xi Jinping’s speech marking the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s existence is easily this:

We Chinese are a people who uphold justice and are not intimidated by threats of force. As a nation, we have a strong sense of pride and confidence. We have never bullied, oppressed, or subjugated the people of any other country, and we never will. By the same token, we will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.

I’ve emphasized a portion of the last sentence of this selection, because it’s gotten tied up in a debate over translation with political implications. The translation above is from the official version disseminated by the Xinhua News Agency.

Some analysts, however, say that Xi’s remarks were far more violent. The China Media Project and NPR, among others, have translated the line like this: “Anyone who tries to do so will find their head broken and blood flowing against a great wall of steel built with the flesh and blood of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people!”

On Twitter, a Xinhua News employee notes that emphasis on the phrase “seems to be gaining traction, w/ some gruesome translations being floated.” But, he writes, “one of those words that gradually lost their literal meaning over the [years], to [Chinese] ears it conveys total failure, not broken skull & blood”

Xi’s bellicose speech, marking the centenary of a singularly vicious regime, would maintain its broadly defiant message no matter the translation of the phrase in question. In any case, the Party’s violent past and present (and Xi’s promise today to “reunify” Taiwan with the mainland) do not inspire much confidence that the true meaning of the line is anything other than what we have come to expect from Communist Chinese conduct.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17516/germany-hamas

German lawmakers said that banning the Hamas flag was aimed at sending “a clear signal” of support “to our Jewish citizens.” Others, however, dismissed the ban as an empty gesture aimed at silencing critics of the German government’s pro-Islamist foreign policy ahead of upcoming federal elections this September.

“A ban on flags remains a superficial measure if the structures of the associations and parties concerned are not or only insufficiently affected.” — Alex Feuerherdt, Mena Watch

“What we have been experiencing in Germany for some time testifies to deep-seated Muslim anti-Semitism. One would have therefore wished that politics would have been active as early as 2015.” — Ramin Peymani, German-Iranian author

“Wherever anti-Semites appear, politicians and the media try to place them in the right-wing camp, although time and again it is declared leftists who incite against Israel and urge others not to ‘buy from the Jews.’ The political lie of mostly right-wing extremist anti-Semitism was told so often that at some point no one raised an objection.” — Ramin Peymani, German-Iranian author

“Political leaders in Europe are only gradually waking up from their multicultural daydreams. However, this is less based on the mature realization that one’s own policy has failed, rather than due to the pressure of voters who fear for their prosperity and security.” — Ramin Peymani, German-Iranian author

Germany’s ban of Hamas flags follows a well-established pattern of announcing half-hearted measures to tackle radical Islam in Germany. In particular, the German government has a long track record of hypocrisy on Israel and the Jewish people.

The German Parliament has amended Germany’s Criminal Code to ban the flag of Hamas, the terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip.

The move comes after the green and white flags of Hamas, which seeks the destruction of Israel, featured prominently at pro-Palestinian rallies across Germany during the Gaza conflict in May. Some of those rallies ended in anti-Semitic violence in German cities and towns.

German lawmakers said that banning the Hamas flag was aimed at sending “a clear signal” of support “to our Jewish citizens.” Others, however, dismissed the ban as an empty gesture aimed at silencing critics of the German government’s pro-Islamist foreign policy ahead of upcoming federal elections this September.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17510/biden-administration-rewarding-iran

“I told judges not to write death sentences for girls. This is what I said. But they perverted my words and quoted me as saying: Don’t execute girls. First marry them for one night and then execute them.” — Grand Ayatollah Hussain-Ali Montazeri, theologian and human rights activist, in his diaries.

The Biden administration should understand that Ebrahim Raisi is an extremely dangerous man partially because, from his perspective, anyone who criticizes the Islamic Republic or protests against it is rising against God and his representatives on earth. Whatever his regime does is presumed to be fully justified and rewarded by God because the Islamic Republic is a divine political establishment and all its actions are enforcing God’s will on earth.

The Biden administration truly needs to halt talks with the Iranian regime, stop appeasing the ruling mullahs, impose sanctions and hold the Iranian regime accountable for handpicking a mass murderer to be the next president, and most likely, the next Supreme Leader of Iran.

The Biden administration’s attempts to appease the ruling mullahs of Iran do not seem to have an end. A few days after the Iranian regime handpicked a mass murderer to be its next president — in a blow to the Iranian people and advocates of democracy and human rights — the Biden administration is rewarding the regime. The US announced that it is now considering lifting sanctions against Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The Biden administration should instead halt negotiations with the Iranian regime and open an investigation into the next president of Iran — Ebrahim Raisi who, in addition, is likely to be the next Supreme Leader of Iran. This mullah, known in Iran as “The Butcher,” was a member of the “Death Commission” which, according to Amnesty International, “forcibly disappeared and extrajudicially executed in secret thousands of political dissidents” and sent thousands to their deaths, often “without a shred of due process.” Raisi is extraordinarily unpopular among the Iranian people, who, apparently amid calls to boycott the elections, largely refused to vote.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/07/the_significance_of_chinas_unrestricted_warfare_on_us_ally_india.html

In 1999, two Chinese officers explored potential strategies that militarily inferior nations might use against a superpower like the U.S. In their book Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America, they expounded on alternatives to direct military confrontation — often defined as “gray-zone” or indirect war, and including tactics such as assaults on economic and financial systems, gaining control of infrastructure, disrupting networks, cyberattacks, political propaganda, and replacement of populations. Of course, China has employed this strategy, reminiscent of Sun-Tzu’s conviction that wars should be won without firing a single shot, against other adversaries. But nowhere is this more evident than in its actions against U.S. ally India.

Since the advent of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949, the newly independent India, under prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was viewed by the American leadership as “potentially a great counterweight to China” in the region. But it was more than 70 years before a strong alliance was forged between the two countries by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump, during the latter’s visit to India in 2020. Simultaneously, the revival of the Quad alliance — India, U.S., Japan and Australia — solidified the relationship as a bulwark against China’s growing dominance in the region. During his India visit, President Trump remarked approvingly on the difference “between a nation that seeks power through coercion” and one that “rises by setting its people free… and that is India.” Therefore, China’s attempts to weaken India militarily and economically will certainly diminish our regional ally’s value as a counterweight.

Several events of the past two years highlight China’s insidious war of sabotage against India, the world’s largest democracy. These include skirmishes along the Sino-Indian border; stealth appropriation of territory; the use of unorthodox weapons; several crippling cyber-attacks, including one that caused an extensive power outage in India’s financial hub Mumbai; the diversion of shared water resources; and a treacherous geostrategic alliance with India’s archenemy Pakistan. China is deploying both Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and the PLA officers’ Unrestricted Warfare as playbooks.

Last summer, Indian and Chinese troops clashed at Galwan, in a disputed Himalayan border region that’s part of Ladakh, a Union Territory (UT) of India. China had amassed troops on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), violating bilateral agreements limiting border deployments. India was forced to respond with a sizable number of troops. In the ensuing skirmish, 20 Indian soldiers were killed and 75 injured. Upon the cessation of the conflict, Jin Canrong, a professor of international relations at Beijing’s Renmin University, proudly reported that China had prevailed by deploying “microwave weapons” that were effective up to a kilometer, cleverly dodging the “no live shot” rules of engagement. He was referring to microwave technology that heats up fluid under the skin, causing intense pain and vomiting and that resulted in Indian troops retreating after becoming violently ill.