RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16817/eu-mourns-iranian-scientist

“There is no gloating about death, but the Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh…. was not the scientist who discovered the anti-coronavirus vaccine, but the scientist called the father of the Iranian nuclear bomb…” — Tareq Al-Hameed, Saudi author, Okaz, November 30, 2020.

“[H]ow can they condemn the killing of a man who devoted his life to making a sinister bomb for an evil regime, but they do not condemn Iran’s killing of innocent people in the region. Iran kills Syrians, Iraqis, and Lebanese, and destroys Yemen, and sponsors all terrorist groups…” — Al-Hameed, Saudi author Okaz, November 30, 2020.

“[D]isrupting the Iranian regime’s access to nuclear weapons is a long-term service to humanity.” Iran… sees nuclear weapons as a tool “that enables it to occupy the rest of the world….” — Mohammed Al-Saaed, Saudi political analyst, Okaz, November 30, 2020.

“We are talking about a gang that hijacked Iran, and its defeated people became its captive. It seeks to hijack the entire region, fueled by intense hatred for the Arab. Is it acceptable to allow it to produce nuclear weapons and use them to kill millions of people?” — Mohammed Al-Saaed, Saudi political analyst, Okaz, November 30, 2020.

While the European Union has condemned the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, widely regarded as the father of Iran’s modern nuclear program, many Arabs and Muslims expressed relief over the assassination.

By condemning the killing of Fakhrizadeh, the EU has found itself on the side of Palestinian terror groups such as the Iran-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. These factions, together with Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group, another Iran proxy, and the Muslim Brotherhood, have also voiced outrage over the killing of the scientist.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macron-seeks-an-enlightened-islam-11607037298?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Emmanuel Macron has resolved to be the president who finally eases tensions over France’s young and growing Muslim population. Every president since Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in the 1970s has resolved to do that. None succeeded, and the stakes have risen with each failure.

On Oct. 16, a Chechen-born 18-year-old living west of Paris decapitated the schoolteacher Samuel Paty, who had lately shown cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad to junior-high-age kids in a civics class on free speech. On Oct. 29, a 20-year-old Tunisian, who had been refused asylum in Italy after arriving by boat the month before, showed up in the south of France. He stabbed to death two worshipers and a sacristan in the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice.

Even before the incidents Mr. Macron had made a major speech about Islamist “separatism.” He aims to limit the sponsoring of imams by foreign governments. He has dissolved organizations allegedly sympathetic to Islamic radicalism, such as the charity BarakaCity and the “antiracist” Collective against Islamophobia. He plans to ban home schooling, popular among religious Muslims.

Mr. Macron is putting almost all his eggs in the basket of laïcité, the 115-year-old French system for regulating religion. (The word means “secularism.”) At a meeting with the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), an official Islamic umbrella group created almost two decades ago by then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr. Macron added more detail. The CFCM would create a “national council of imams.” Preachers would be accredited, or licensed, like doctors and lawyers. By next week the CFCM is expected to create a “Charter of Republican Values” to which the organizations that make it up will adhere. “Some will sign and some will not,” the president reportedly said at the meeting. “We will be watching. Either you are with the Republic or you are not.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/what-hell-happened-boris-johnson-katie-hopkins/

It’s what many of you ask me the most, and the question I feel most ashamed to answer.

Partly because I don’t have proof of what I am about to tell you. But also because I was once the one banging on about how blooming marvelous he was and why he was lined up to be my fourth husband (or was it fifth?).

Not only did I announce this publicly, but the last time I saw him in person I actually reminded him personally that he was destined to be Mr Hopkins. (No, that was not fear in his eyes; he had indigestion. Probably.)

If you are reading this, Boris Johnson, please know that the offer of my hand in marriage has been rescinded. You have been nothing but a huge disappointment and, as populist leaders go, are about as much use as a potato in a wig.

I did try to answer the “What the hell happened?” question six months ago, though looking back on my answer I fear I was being too easy on the man, blaming his failings on his inability to work the COVID problem, rather than on Boris himself. Six months on I realize it is the weakness of Johnson, not the strength of the COVID conspiracy, that is the issue.

One minute he was crashing along like a sexually profligate rhino looking for a Brexit mate, full of Get Brexit Done, and doing splendid things like proroguing (suspending) Parliament and firing treacherous MPs who were working AGAINST the will of the people.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16816/mozambique-terrorism-islamists

Radical Muslims from Kenya and Tanzania are transforming what was initially a low-intensity ethnic rebellion, into a full-fledged Islamic jihad against Mozambique’s central government.

Ansar al-Sunna, estimated to consist of about 20 cells operating throughout northeast Mozambique, is responsible for the murders of about 2,000 people, mostly civilians.

The terrorist group has driven approximately 200,000 people from their homes and burdened the majority Christian country’s central government.

The Islamic State’s Central African Province may have bigger plans for Mozambique’s Ansar al-Sunna. If the terrorists are able to establish an Emirate under Sharia in Cabo Delgado Province, it could serve as a jihadi model, threatening the stability of other states in southern Africa. Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, as well as Africa’s Indian Ocean states of the Comoros and Madagascar, could be targeted.

Jihadists in northern Mozambique have intensified their military operations this year in an apparent attempt to establish an Islamic Emirate in the province of Cabo Delgado. The Islamist insurgency, which began in October 2017, remained below the radar until recently. The escalating violence, however, has become a security concern for Mozambique’s regional neighbors, including South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya and Somalia. Radical Muslims from Kenya and Tanzania are transforming what was initially a low-intensity ethnic rebellion, into a full-fledged Islamic jihad against Mozambique’s central government.

Ansar al-Sunna (Supporters of Sunni Tradition), aka Ahlu wa Jamo, is affiliated with the Islamic State’s Central African Province and is inspired, in part, by Somalia’s leading terrorist organization, Al-Shabaab. Ansar al-Sunna, estimated to consist of about 20 cells operating throughout northeast Mozambique, is responsible for the murders of about 2,000 people, mostly civilians. These martyred innocents are largely from the same ethnic Kimwani tribe as their murderers, who reside in villages in Cabo Delgado Province. The terrorist group has driven approximately 200,000 people from their homes and burdened the majority Christian country’s central government.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16812/iran-mullahs-want-nuclear-deal

Iran’s mullahs love the nuclear deal because of its fundamental flaws, especially the sunset clauses that remove restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after the deal expires soon. The nuclear deal, rather than preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, as it was falsely touted to do, in fact paves the way for Tehran to become a legitimized nuclear state.

With the nuclear deal, the regime would gain global legitimacy, making it even more difficult to hold Iran’s leaders accountable for any malign behavior or terror activity across the world.

Finally, Iran’s ruling clerics want immediately to rejoin the nuclear deal because it would again alienate other governments in the Middle East and inevitably lead to a worsening of relations between the US and its traditional allies, especially Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.

This flawed deal, in favor of Iran, failed to recognize the rightful concerns of other countries in the region about Iran’s potential nuclear capability, missile proliferation or funding of violent proxies — both within and next door to their territories.

Iran’s ruling mullahs, who are celebrating presumptive President-Elect Joe Biden’s possible presidency in 2021, are already calling on him to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal, which, incidentally, Iran never signed.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani — already urging the next US administration, which he hopes is the Biden administration — also pointed out, according to the state-run IRNA agency:

“Now, an opportunity has come up for the next U.S. administration to compensate for past mistakes and return to the path of complying with international agreements through respect of international norms.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif also advised Biden on Twitter to abandon President Trump’s Iran policy of maximum pressure and rejoin the nuclear deal.

The Trump administration, after pulling out of the nuclear deal, imposed significant pressure politically and economically on the Iranian regime and re-imposed sanctions on the mullahs.

https://asiatimes.com/author/david-p-goldman/

Beijing’s warning to fintech and property firms to raise equity and pay debts will hit stocks now but lift their long term prospects
Beijing’s warning to fintech and property firms to raise equity and pay debts will hit stocks now but lift their long term prospects

China’s economy and stocks have outperformed Western counterparts during the Covid recession. Image: Twitter

China’s regulators are fixing the roof while the sun is shining. With the economy in full rebound from the second-quarter Covid recession, Beijing has warned fintech and property companies to raise more equity and pay down debt.

That’s good news for China’s financial system but mixed news for some of this year’s best-performing stocks, including food-delivery service Methuan and smartphone maker Xiaomi. Financial stocks, by contrast, turned in their best relative performance of 2020 during the past month.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16796/arabs-warn-biden-do-not-embolden-hezbollah

The message they [the nationals of Lebanon] are sending to a new US administration is: The Lebanese people are hoping that you will help them get rid of Hezbollah. Cozying up to Iran would further embolden Hezbollah and allow it to destroy Lebanon by turning it into an Iranian-controlled colony.

“The Lebanese people… are being held hostage today by a militia that is financed by Iran, whose weapons are coming from Iran, and even whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is stating clearly and publicly that he takes orders from Iran.” — Samy Gemayel, leader of the Christian Kataeb Party, kataeb.org, November 23, 2020

“Hezbollah is the only party in Lebanon that has 20,000 soldiers on the ground….it can do a lot to make our democracy totally fictive. Today, we are being treated as hostages, and therefore the international community must help us.” — Samy Gemayel.

Rabi’s expressed hope that Biden would refuse to follow the policies of former President Barack Obama toward Iran. “This mistake needs to be corrected,” Rabi wrote, referring to Obama’s policy of appeasement toward Iran. “Correcting it can only be done by adopting a policy different from the Obama policy.”

The Lebanese and Arab warnings about a possible return to the nuclear deal with Iran and the resulting empowerment of Hezbollah need to be taken seriously by the new US administration. The Lebanese and Arabs are trying to tell Biden what they and the Trump administration have known for the past few years, namely, that Iran and its proxies — such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis — are poised to wreak havoc in the Middle East.

The Iran-backed Hezbollah terror organization in Lebanon will be the first to celebrate if and when a Biden administration returns to the 2015 nuclear deal between the world superpowers and Iran.

Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, has called on Biden to give Iran more money and return to the nuclear deal. “Now, an opportunity has come up for the next US administration to compensate for past mistakes and return to the path of complying with international agreements through respect of international norms,” Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency quoted Rouhani as saying.