RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16999/china-test-biden

Not a week has passed since the inauguration of President Joe Biden — whose son reportedly engaged in business deals with China worth $1.5 billion — and the Chinese Communist Party, which illegally seized Hong Kong last summer, has already sent more than two dozen warplanes, including bombers, into Taiwan’s airspace for two days in a row.

China also issued a new law permitting its “coastguards to launch pre-emptive strikes without prior warning” on any foreign ship that might enter disputed waters that China would like to consider its own.

Biden’s team should not misinterpret any Chinese conciliatory rhetoric as being a sign of a less aggressive CCP effort to push US military assets out of the Western Pacific.

Xi, a stalwart of the “One China Policy,” may still demand not words but actions, such as: a moratorium on Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS) by US Navy vessels in the South China Sea, a cessation of US criticism of Chinese human rights violations, and a promise to reduce American VIP visits to Taiwan following President Trump’s high-level contacts with Taipei.

China has clearly assessed Biden’s capacity for bold leadership as highly improbable.

The Biden administration should not assume that Chinese objectives are negotiable. The CCP is committed to becoming the premier power in the world at the expense of US interests and is most likely willing to risk war to accomplish it.

Not a week has passed since the inauguration of President Joe Biden — whose son reportedly engaged in business deals with China worth $1.5 billion — and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which illegally seized Hong Kong last summer, has already sent more than two dozen warplanes, including bombers, into Taiwan’s airspace for two days in a row.

China also issued a new law permitting its “coastguards to launch pre-emptive strikes without prior warning” on any foreign ship that might enter disputed waters that China would like to consider its own.

Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping is certain further to test the mettle of the new Biden Administration within the context of China’s “great power rivalry” with the United States. China’s leadership will determine the manner and speed in which to pursue the CCP’s geopolitical goals based upon Beijing’s assessment of Biden’s response to any test. Historically, the timing and the circumstances of China’s tests of previous administrations have been unpredictable, but there are a few that it seems likely will happen.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16987/europe-iran-nuclear-antics

In recent weeks Iran announced that it had begun work on enriching uranium to 20 percent — just short of the level required to produce nuclear weapons — as well as informing the International Atomic Energy Agency… that it was to resume work on producing uranium metal.

Both these developments represent a clear breach of the JCPOA. Under the agreement, Iran committed to keep uranium enrichment at 3.5 percent, the level required for civilian use, and signed up to a 15-year ban on “producing or acquiring plutonium or uranium metals or their alloys”.

Iran’s announcement that it was proceeding with the production of uranium metal has prompted a furious response from the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany, who, in a joint statement earlier this month, warned that there was “no credible civilian use” for the element, and that “The production of uranium metal has potentially grave military implications.

[W]hat makes anyone think Iran would honour a new deal any more than they honoured the old one? Why enter a new sham deal at all?

When the European Union starts warning the ayatollahs that the Iran nuclear deal is at a “critical juncture”, it is a clear sign that Tehran’s increasingly aggressive conduct in relation to its nuclear activities will make incoming US President Joe Biden’s hopes of reviving the deal almost impossible.

From the moment the nuclear deal was agreed to between Iran and six of the world’s leading powers — the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — in 2015, the EU has been an enthusiastic champion of the deal.

Even though neither Iran nor the EU itself was a signatory to the deal, the organisation’s then foreign policy chief, the British Labour politician and veteran Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament activist Catherine Ashton, led a sustained campaign on behalf of the EU to support the agreement.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinping-wows-them-at-davos-11611617879?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Chinese President Xi Jinping knows his audience. In his Monday address to the World Economic Forum, the annual meeting of global luminaries in Davos, Mr. Xi sounded like a liberal internationalist in good standing. He pulled out all the buzzwords that make Davosians swoon: “inclusive growth,” “green development,” “global governance” and “consensus building.”

The Davos website effused that this was a “historic opportunity for collaboration.” But Mr. Xi’s People’s Liberation Army told a different story over the weekend, menacing Taiwan with back-to-back military flyovers of more than a dozen planes. The provocation is a reminder that while the government has changed hands in Washington, it hasn’t in Beijing, which still sees extending sovereignty over Taiwan—possibly by force—as a priority.

Mr. Xi said in his speech that “the strong should not bully the weak,” but that admonition doesn’t seem to apply to his own government. “We should stay committed to international law and international rules, instead of seeking one’s own supremacy,” he added. Tell that to the people of Hong Kong who were promised autonomy through 2047 in a treaty Beijing signed with Britain but are now being arrested for even mild political dissent.

Judging from comments by Secretary of State nominee Tony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in their Senate hearings, the new Administration seems to recognize the importance of Taiwan’s independence and U.S. predominance in the Western Pacific.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/indonesia-moderate-islam/

Indonesian president Joko Widodo’s recent cabinet reshuffle suggests that Indonesia may adopt a more critical attitude toward China and reinforce government support for efforts by Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), the world’s largest Muslim movement, to reform Islam and position the Southeast Asian state as a key player in a battle with Middle Eastern rivals for the soul of Islam.

Indonesian president Joko Widodo signaled some potential policy moves with the recent appointment of ambassador to the US Muhammad Lutfi as trade minister and prominent Nahdlatul Ulama official Yaqut Cholil Qoumas as minister of religious affairs.

Lutfi’s appointment came two months after a visit by Mike Pompeo to Jakarta in October at the invitation of Nahdlatul Ulama during which the Secretary of State extended Indonesia’s access to a preferential tariff arrangement and opened the door to a free trade agreement with the US.

Pompeo emphasized in talks with Widodo and in an address to a Nahdlatul Ulama conference the need to challenge China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea as well as its brutal crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the People’s Republic’s northwestern province of Xinjiang.

Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy, extradited to China three Uighurs, the dominant Turkic ethnic group in Xinjiang, just days before Pompeo’s arrival.

Qoumas’s appointment is significant not only because of his prominent Nahdlatul Ulama background but also because he is one of the leaders of the movement’s most influential wing, which has adopted a tough position on China’s repression of the Uighurs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-overtakes-u-s-as-worlds-leading-destination-for-foreign-direct-investment-11611511200?mod=hp_lead_pos2

China overtook the U.S. as the world’s top destination for new foreign direct investment last year, as the Covid-19 pandemic amplifies an eastward shift in the center of gravity of the global economy.

New investments by overseas businesses into the U.S., which for decades held the No. 1 spot, fell 49% in 2020, according to U.N. figures released Sunday, as the country struggled to curb the spread of the new coronavirus and economic output slumped.

China, long ranked No. 2, saw direct investments by foreign companies climb 4%, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said. Beijing used strict lockdowns to largely contain Covid-19 after the disease first emerged in a central Chinese city, and China’s gross domestic product grew even as most other major economies contracted last year.

The 2020 investment numbers underline China’s move toward the center of a global economy long dominated by the U.S.—a shift accelerated during the pandemic as China has cemented its position as the world’s factory floor and expanded its share of global trade.

Investment RetreatsForeign investment in the U.S. fell sharply in2020 as the country ceded its position as thetop destination for overseas businesses toChina.FDI inflows for some leading hosteconomies, change from 2019 to 2020Source: United Nations Conference on Trade andDevelopment

ChinaU.S.IrelandSingaporeIndiaBrazilCanadaMexico-60%-40-20020

While China attracted more new inflows last year, the total stock of foreign investment in the U.S. remains much larger, reflecting the decades it has spent as the most attractive location for foreign businesses looking to expand outside their home markets.

https://dianebederman.com/justin-trudeauthe-most-immoral-unethical-politician-in-canadian-history/

Justin Trudeau, son of Pierre Elliot and Margaret, is the most arrogant, entitled, corrupt, immoral and unethical politician in the history of Canada. He is a dictator in waiting, turning Canada into a Banana Republic. He makes Fidel Castro, a man he truly admired, and Venezuela’s Madura, look good.

His credentials to be the PM? He is a failed drama teacher. How do I know that he is a failed drama teacher? Because he can barely remember the words fed to him by his ventriloquists Gerald Butts, former top advisor to Justin Trudeau who left government following the Jody Wilson-Raybould scandal and Katie Telford, two more unethical people.

I am listing the various unethical, immoral and who knows, illegal actions, of our Dear Leader in no particular order. I apologize if some have been left out.

First, Trudeau has spent more time in his basement than Joe Biden.

When he comes out he commits treason. He harms Canadians and Canada. How is that vaccine roll out coming along Mr. PM?  What – no vaccine available? Begging the newly inaugurated Mr. Biden are you?

But you reached out to China to work with them on a vaccine. You know, China the country you so admire. Our Dear Leader, the man elected to protect our freedoms and democracy, actually prefers China’s methods. “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say, ‘We need to go green … we need to start investing in solar.’”

China, the home of the virus. Like Canadians want a vaccine from a country that put melamine in baby powder formula. And  you sent our PPE to China in February 2020. What did you get in return? The #TwoMichaels, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were picked up for nothing except in retaliation for Canada holding Ms.Meng from Huawei at the behest of America?   Who have been in solitary confinement 24/7 with lights on while she sashays around Vancouver, leaving her mansion whenever because she has an ankle bracelet. And then what did you do? By gosh by golly you invited her family from CHINA to come over for Christmas while you sentenced Canadians to their rooms. And then the Meng’s went shopping. And what did you get in return? The two Michaels who were picked up for nothing except in retaliation for Canada holding Ms. Meng and are re in solitary confinement 24/7 with lights on all the time? Oh wait. No.

Guess you never learned from history that appeasement breeds contempt.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16985/persecution-of-christians-december

Muslim fighters tortured a 58-year-old Christian woman of Armenian descent by hacking off her ears, hands, and feet before finally executing her. — Medium.com, January 14, 2021, Artsakh.

As to why she was mutilated before being killed, jihadis often cite the Koran’s calls to cut off the hands, feet, and throats of infidels (e.g., Koran 5:33, 47:4). — Artsakh.

One of the survivors… managed to escape his home in time and hide in the outside bathroom: “through the ventilator of the latrine he saw the rebels killing 4 members of his family including his wife and 3 children.” — Virtueonline.org, December 3, 2020, Democratic Republic of Congo.

“My husband began reading verses in the Koran that allowed men to beat their wives if they disobey them, and after that he started beating me….” — Morning Star News, December 17, 2020, Uganda.

The following are among the abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of December, 2020:

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria: In a video that appeared on Dec. 29, Islamic terrorists executed five Christians. The footage shows five armed members of the Islamic State (West African province) standing behind five men dressed in orange suits, and on their knees with their arms tied behind their backs. The terrorists order each of the men to say their names and the hostages oblige, each adding, “I am a Christian.” One of the terrorists then says “This is a warning to Christians in all parts of the world and those in Nigeria…. Use the heads of these five of your brethren to continue with your ungodly celebrations,” a reference to Christmas. The five Muslims then open fire into the back of the Christians’ heads and kill them.

A few days earlier, on Christmas Eve, and into the early morning of Christmas Day, Muslim raiders terrorized a Christian village, where they slaughtered between seven and 11 people, including a 5-year-old, and kidnapped 11 more (it is believed that the five Christians who were executed on video were from among these 11). Riding on trucks and motorcycles, the jihadis opened fire indiscriminately, torched 10 homes and one church, and plundered the food supplies meant to be distributed on Christmas Day. Although traumatized, some Christians remained defiant. A text by Markus Bulus, a local, on Christmas Day states:

“Whatever Boko Haram planned against us has failed. Whatever it is, we shall still celebrate Christmas. Jesus, we’re so grateful this day even with the bad experience we had last night. We have nothing to offer as our thanksgiving, but we offer our hearts in deep supplication to your majesty on this Christmas Day.”

Elsewhere throughout month of December, Muslim Fulani herdsmen “killed 33 Christians, destroyed 18 homes and displaced more than 2,500 people.”