RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/trudeaus-china-syndrome-lloyd-billingsley/

December 10 marked two years since China’s Communist regime seized Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor.  “These two Canadians are an absolute priority for our government,” Canadian foreign minister Francois-Philippe Champagne told reporters, “and we will continue to work tirelessly to secure their immediate release and to stand up for them as a government and as Canadians.” According to another story that broke last week, the government’s true priority is to ignore the captives and stand up for China.

Secret government documents obtained by Rebel News reveal that the Trudeau government invited the People’s Liberation Army to conduct a “winter survival training exercise” at the Canadian Armed Forces base at Petawawa, Ontario. Defense chief Jonathan Vance canceled the training when China kidnapped Kovrig and Spavor. That came days after Canada detained Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou, sought in the United States for fraud.

The government documents name Meng Wenzhou, but not Kovrig and Spavor, who show up only as “consular cases,” with no reference to their status as hostages. The biggest revelation was the cooperation between the Trudeau government and the People’s Liberation Army of Communist China.

“That cold-weather warfare you are referring to is just one of 18 different joint projects the Canadian armed forces had with the People’s Liberation Army in 2019 alone, Rebel News founder Ezra Levant told Tucker Carlson of Fox News. “Canada is training one- and two-star Chinese generals in our war colleges, training lieutenants and majors, commanders. We’re sending Canadians over to China, we’re bringing Chinese — I think they are not just soldiers, I think they’re spies, as well, and I don’t know a single person in this country knew about it.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16864/europe-coronavirus-second-wave

On December 11, Germany recorded 29,875 new coronavirus cases, a one-day record, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases.

Economists are warning that the second coronavirus lockdown has increased the risk of another recession in Europe’s largest economy.

“After the coronavirus crisis, Germany will look different: Now many companies, such as car factories, suppliers, steelworks and mechanical engineering companies will be closed forever. Even if the country is unlocked again, companies that are gone cannot start up again. Consumers and entrepreneurs are unsettled. This is poison for the economy and jobs.” — Tichys Einblick, German blog, December 1, 2020

In Sweden, which has stood out for its “no lockdown” approach to the coronavirus pandemic, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven imposed the toughest restrictions yet after a spike in the number of infected people filling intensive care units. He said that the “unprecedented” response was needed if Sweden is to “curb transmission.”

The German government has reimposed strict lockdown measures in an effort to reverse a spike in Covid-19 infections. Beginning on December 16, all non-essential shops and businesses, as well as all schools and daycare centers, will be closed until at least January 10.

The new restrictions, which were agreed upon after talks between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Germany’s 16 federal states, come after less intrusive lockdown measures that began on November 2 failed to significantly bring down the number of infections.

On December 11, Germany recorded 29,875 new coronavirus cases, a one-day record, according to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for infectious diseases. Germany’s intensive care unit capacity — the most important measure of a health system’s ability to deal with the pandemic — is at a critical level, with only 5% to 10% of intensive care beds available in some parts of the country, according to the Association of Critical Care and Emergency Medicine (DIVI).

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/12/macrons-vain-hope-for-an-enlightened-islam/

In the course of a few weeks, France, which has the highest proportion of Muslim citizens in Europe, has been subjected, once again, to bloody assassinations by attackers shouting “Allahu Akbar”. The first was the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty, who had been discussing the Charlie Hebdo cartoons with his class. This was followed two weeks later by the killing of three Christian worshippers inside Notre Dame church in Nice. The Nice attacker cut the throats of Nadine Devilliers, sixty, and sexton Vincent Loques, fifty-five. Simone Barreto Silva was repeatedly stabbed and died of her wounds. These two atrocities were perpetrated by young male immigrants from Chechnya and Tunisia. In a third incident, an Orthodox priest was wounded by a shotgun blast when he was closing his church in Lyon. These three attacks were all symbolic: targeting non-Islamic faith and criticism of Islam.

These attacks came not long after President Macron had delivered a “Fight Against Separatism” speech on October 2 to the French parliament, announcing stricter measures to crack down on the growing influence of what he called “radical Islamism”, an ideology which has

a proclaimed, publicised desire, a systematic way of organising things to contravene the Republic’s laws and create a parallel order, establish other values, develop another way of organising society which is initially separatist, but whose ultimate goal is to take over it [the Republic] completely.

Describing the threat to France of Islamism as “existential”, Macron unveiled a series of measures to counter radicalisation, and at the same time restore and renew confidence in the Republic. Lamenting the ground already lost, he called for a “new awakening” to unite citizens behind the values of the Republic. Challenged on the one hand by Islamic radicalism, and on the other by widespread disillusionment and fear over the authorities’ failure to curb the growth of radicalism, Macron hopes to retrieve lost ground and rekindle hope for the future of France. He said that France must “tell things as they are, and also admit that we’re up against a challenge which has formed over decades in our country and that we won’t defeat it in a day”.

Macron was responding to deep-seated fears about the future of France. In 2016, after 147 people had been killed in Paris atrocities, Patrick Calvar, head of France’s Security Services, spoke of a looming civil war:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16794/china-britain-threat

The UK’s new MI5 director, Ken McCallum, said that countries such as China and Russia were no longer focused just on traditional espionage activities, such as stealing government secrets, but also on targeting Britain’s economy, infrastructure, and academic research, while seeking to undermine its democracy.

China’s ambassador to the UK, Liu Xiaoming, later denied threatening the UK by making still another threat: “We make no threats, we threaten nobody. We just let you know the consequences. If you do not want to be our partners and our friends, you want to treat China as a hostile country, you will pay the price. That means you will lose the benefits of treating China as a friend.”

Meanwhile, Huawei’s plans to build a research center in Cambridgeshire are going ahead.

“[China’s] implementation strategy is to target elites in the West so that they either welcome China’s dominance or accede to its inevitability, rendering resistance futile”. — Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg, Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World.

In the UK, according to Hamilton and Ohlberg, the CCP has managed to “groom” British power elites to support Chinese interests, especially through the networking group the “48 Group Club”…. The group features members such as former ministers, including former Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, five former British ambassadors to China, leading business people, directors of large cultural institutions and professors, as well as a number of highly ranked CCP officials, including several former Chinese ambassadors to the UK.

Much of Chinese influence on British campuses is done through the CCP’s Confucius Institutes, of which there are at least 29 in the UK, according to a February 2019 report on the topic by the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission.

“If the question is which state will be shaping our world across the next decade providing big opportunities and big challenges for the UK, the answer is China,” Britain’s new MI5 Director Ken McCallum recently told journalists. He added that Russia is currently “providing bursts of bad weather, while China is changing the climate”. McCallum said that countries such as China and Russia were no longer focused just on traditional espionage activities, such as stealing government secrets, but also on targeting Britain’s economy, infrastructure and academic research, while seeking to undermine its democracy.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16848/iran-ask-then-what

Reacting to the killing of Major-General Qassem Soleimani and Brigadier-General Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, regime “thinkers” promise “revenge” and suggest this could be done with a single deadly blow to the “enemy”…. Needless to say, when Khomeinists speak of “the enemy,” they mean the American “Great Satan” and its sidekick Israel.

Even Ghulam Esmaili, spokesman for Islamic Judiciary, has joined the armchair strategists by suggesting “the clearing out of America and Israel” with a “single blow.”

Launching the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese high command also forgot to ask “what next?”.

[T]he Kayhan editorialist who urged the attack on Haifa… says because the Islamic Republic has “all US bases within range”, cowardly Americans won’t react to a destructive attack on Israel. And if they did, he says, Tehran could pour missiles against US bases in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, the US 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, the CENTCOM in Qatar, bases in Omani part of Musandam Peninsula. The editorialist believes the US would simply grin and bear each attack.

In the One Thousand and One Night tale of the princes of Serendip, all three have one desire: To achieve all their wishes with a single throw of the dice.

However, not confined to the world of oriental tales, that dream has dictated quite a few tragic, comical and tragi-comical events in history.

The latest appearance of the “one throw” theme could be witnessed in Tehran these days, where Islamic Republic leaders offer both tragic and comical versions of it.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16841/iran-al-qaeda

In addition, a trove of 470,000 documents, released by the CIA in late 2017, point to close ties between the Iranian regime and Al-Qaeda…. According to the documents, Iran also provided Al Qaeda with “money and arms and everything they need, and offered them training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia.”

Eight of the 9/11 attack hijackers passed through Iran before coming to the US. Tehran provided funding, logistical support and ammunition to Al-Qaeda leaders, and sheltered several of them in exchange for attacks on US interests.

As sanctions against Iran were lifted during the Obama administration, it quickly became clear that those actions, instead, gave Iran’s brutality to its own people and its adventurism abroad a global legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. This newfound legitimacy and the lifting of sanctions generated billions of dollars for Iran’s military institution, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as for Iran’s militia and terror groups. Tehran used those revenues to expand its influence throughout the region, including in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon. The expansion campaign proved to be immensely successful.

If Biden becomes the next US president and if he pursues the same policies towards Iran as former President Barack Obama, he will not only embolden this predatory regime, but also empower its allies, as well as terror groups such as Al Qaeda.

While the presumptive President-Elect Joe Biden is advocating for pursuing appeasement policies with Iran’s ruling mullahs as did his former boss, President Barack Obama, it should be noted he will be assisting a regime that has close ties not only to Shia militia groups but also to the terrorist group Al Qaeda.

Some people might attempt to convince you that Iran and Al Qaeda are enemies because the Iranian government is Shia and Al Qaeda is Sunni, but evidence shows strong collaboration between the two.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/12/10/after-destroying-hong-kong-democracy-china-turns-toward-taiwan-n1202427

China took full advantage of the world’s preoccupation with the pandemic they caused to destroy democracy in Hong Kong. Now that they have one major domestic problem solved, they are turning their attention to their biggest unfinished business: bringing Taiwan to heel.

In more than 70 years, Beijing has never wavered an inch in its insistence that Taiwan is a province of China. This has made for an interesting diplomatic dance by the United States, which technically recognizes Taiwan as an independent state but rarely treats them like one. Donald Trump sought to change that by selling arms to Taipei and thumbing his nose at China by sending high-level representatives of the U.S. government to the island.

China fumed and raged but did little to retaliate. But with the Hong Kong “problem” solved, China will now turn its full attention and focus its power on crushing the resistance to its rule in Taiwan.

Reuters: 

It’s not the final, titanic clash that Taiwan has long feared, with Chinese troops storming the beaches. Instead, the People’s Liberation Army, China’s two-million-strong military, has launched a form of “gray zone” warfare. In this irregular type of conflict, which stops short of an actual shooting war, the aim is to subdue the foe through exhaustion.