RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/iaea-says-iran-continues-to-violate-2015-nuclear-deal/?utm_sour

Tehran has also been enriching uranium up to a 4.5 percent purity, higher than the 3.67 percent allowed under the 2015 nuclear deal.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Wednesday that Iran is still in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal by continuing to increase its low-enriched uranium stockpile.

As of Nov. 2, Iran had a stockpile of 5,385.7 pounds of low-enriched uranium, up from 4,641.6 pounds reported on Aug. 25, reported AP, which obtained a confidential document distributed to IAEA member countries.

Iran has also been continuing to enrich uranium up to a 4.5 percent purity, higher than the 3.67 percent allowed under the deal, according to the IAEA report.

In March, the IAEA warned that Iran was tripling its production of enriched uranium and dramatically increased the number of machines used to enrich uranium and make more nuclear fuel at a faster pace.

Also in the new IAEA report, according to Reuters, Iran has installed advanced centrifuges in the underground Natanz uranium-enrichment facility. The 2015 deal stated that the centrifuges can only be used for first-generation IR-1 machines.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16751/china-ant-group-financial-system

Beijing has cast doubt on the soundness of China’s equity markets and, more broadly, on the long-term viability of the country’s private sector.

China is not big enough for two big personalities. Xi is building a personality cult, and so is Ma Yun, better known as Jack Ma to the international financial and business communities.

Ant’s lending volumes grew fast because the company was largely unregulated.

“The message is that no big private businessman will be tolerated on the mainland.” — Chen Zhiwu of Hong Kong University, Financial Times, November 6, 2020.

Xi demands absolute obedience, something incompatible with a modern financial system.

Investors in Hong Kong this week dumped more than $250 billion in Chinese tech stocks. Particularly hard hit were Alibaba Group, JD.com, Tencent, and Meituan Dianping.

The rout followed the stunning postponement of what would have been the largest initial public offering in history. Ant Group Co., Ltd., an Alibaba Group affiliate, was set, with the overallotment option, to raise $39.5 billion.

Investors were valuing the six-year-old company at $359 billion, making it worth more than American-based behemoth J.P. Morgan and the world’s largest bank by assets, the state-backed Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

On November 3, Shanghai’s Nasdaq-like STAR Market and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange announced the suspension about 36 hours before the scheduled start of trading in Hong Kong. The unprecedented actions shocked domestic and international investors.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16741/iran-mullahs-celebrate

At the beginning, U.S. President Donald J. Trump pulled the US out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal, which Iran never signed and which paves the way for Iran to have nuclear weapons.

Tehran’s diminishing resources have also caused Iranian leaders to cut funds to the Palestinian terror group Hamas and the Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah. Hamas was forced to introduce “austerity plans” while Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, has also called on his group’s fundraising arm “to provide the opportunity for jihad with money and also to help with this ongoing battle.”

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has already called for restoring the nuclear deal. It could well be a loss for continuing peace in the region and for finally restoring the violated Iranian people’s hoped-for human rights.

The Iranian regime has excitingly announced former U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden’s possible victory in the US presidential elections and is celebrating that the next US administration will, they hope, be from the Democrat Party.

Iranian authorities view even the chance that Biden might take over the White House as a definite win for Tehran. Hesameddin Ashena, an advisor to Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, tweeted that Iranians “stood their ground bravely until that coward’s time [Donald Trump] came to leave”. Headlines in the state-controlled newspapers, which celebrated the news, included, “World without Trump!” (Aftabe Yazd newspaper), “Mr Withdrawal is Close to Being Kicked Out of White House”, “Go to Hell You Gambler!” (Sobhe Now newspaper) “Trump’s Card No Longer Valid for Media!” (Aftabe Yazd newspaper), “The Bankrupt US President Got Humiliated” (Mardom Salari newspaper), and “Trump Must Leave” (Donyaye Eghtesad newspaper).

The last three years has indeed been a nightmare for the Iranian regime and its proxies. No US administration before the current one has imposed such a draconian pressure on the mullahs, their rogue state and their allies.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-isnt-obamas-middle-east-11604963875?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Even in the closing weeks of America’s presidential campaign, the grisly murder of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty made an impression. As part of a civics lesson, Mr. Paty showed his class of 13-year-olds the Charlie Hebdo caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. Soon afterward, Mr. Paty was attacked and beheaded in the street. President Emmanuel Macron, whose government has been moving right on law and order as the electoral competition with Marine Le Pen of the National Rally heats up, announced a series of measures aimed at limiting what he called “Islamist separatism.”

The reaction from Muslim religious and political leaders around the world ranged from supportive (the United Arab Emirates and some imams) to perfunctory (Kuwait and Saudi Arabia) to sulfurous, with Malaysian former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad helpfully tweeting that Muslims had the right to kill “millions of French people” in retribution for French colonialism.

But the most significant reaction came from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country is embroiled in confrontations with France in the Eastern Mediterranean. “Macron needs mental treatment,” Mr. Erdogan said, calling for a Turkish boycott against French products. “What is the problem of this person Macron with Muslims and Islam?”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/why-biden-presidency-would-be-gift-iran-joseph-klein/

Unlike the Obama-Biden administration, President Trump saw right through the Iranian regime’s deceptive veneer all the way through to its malevolent core. Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran had the regime on its knees. If President Trump had been reelected, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his henchmen would have had no choice but to agree to major concessions in order to get any sanctions relief.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s claim last week that “the next US administration will surrender to the Iranian nation” no matter who won the election was empty braggadocio. Behind the scenes, the Iranian regime did its best to interfere in the U.S. election on behalf of Joe Biden. Iran’s leaders have now reaped the fruits of their efforts as they look forward to the Biden-Harris administration’s return to the Obama-Biden administration’s appeasement policies.

On Sunday, after the media projected Biden as the election winner, Rouhani proclaimed, “The next US administration has now an opportunity to make up for the past mistakes and return to the path of commitment to international undertakings by respecting the global rules.” Joe Biden will almost certainly take Rouhani’s advice to heart, falling again for the Iranian regime’s siren song.

Expect Biden to immediately set about reversing President Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. This will mean trying quickly to lift at least some of the harsh sanctions imposed by Trump to force the Iranian regime to the negotiating table, which Trump will reportedly be adding to every week until Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. Biden has already proposed to “streamline channels for banking and public health assistance from other countries in response to the health emergency in Iran,” as if Iran’s brutal regime could give a hoot about the health of its people.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16732/pope-francis-encyclical-fratelli-tutti

The Pope, for instance, implies that the twilight of the planet’s centuries old diplomatic nation-state system has arrived, prompting the need for a more globalist political system. Regrettably, that usually brings with it no transparency, no accountability and no recourse. Think of the United Nations, the UN Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court or the European Union.

In the Pope’s encyclical, the “stranger” is always a desperate, impoverished refugee seeking solace, never an aggressor with the will to conquer.

Although Francis may have been especially aware of his Muslim guests, Catholics must wonder if they, too, were included as part of the intended audience. There was simply little or no mention in the encyclical of core Catholic beliefs.

In truth, however, “Fratelli Tutti” seems more a contrived, secular attempt to fashion a model for the governance of humankind that could attract the support of believer and non-believer alike. Unfortunately, it may also rally those hoping to bring down Judeo-Christian civilization to assume that the West is unfurling a flag of surrender.

The Pope’s Encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” (“Brothers All”) sadly seems more a massive and unwieldy political document than a religious guide to the Catholic faithful. The encyclical’s intended audience appears to be secular world rather than people of faith. The 43,000-word tome contains almost no discussion of Catholic dogmas. Although the Pontiff’s diagnosis of the world’s ills seems accurate enough, unfortunately his proposed antidotes — equality of result rather than equality of opportunity and individual liberty, the bedrocks of Western democracies — would seriously threaten freedom.

The Pope, for instance, implies that the twilight of the planet’s centuries old diplomatic nation-state system has arrived, prompting the need for a more globalist political system. Regrettably, that usually brings with it no transparency, no accountability and no recourse. Think of the United Nations, the UN Human Rights Council, the International Criminal Court or the European Union.

The Pope denigrates the concept of nationalism by referring to it as “local narcissism.” His support for “open borders” would deny nations the right to sovereignty over their national territories. Pope Francis, a lifelong priest of the Jesuit order, appears to be calling for a system of international organizations that would possess the power to override the will of individual states and have the potential to become a global despotism.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16731/turkey-return-of-demons

Though Empire-builders of the first order, the Ottomans were always careful not to bite more than they could chew. Erdogan, however, is leading Turkey into empire-building adventures which it does not want and cannot afford.

It has… launched a war of words with the European Union as a whole. Ostensibly, Turkey’s beef is about old maritime demarcation lines that deny it the right to tap underwater oil and gas resources. What Erdogan does not realize is that the potential market for those resources is the very European Union he is now casting as enemy. In any case, the disputed resources cannot be tapped without massive investment from the West, not to mention the technology needed.

By promoting a strategic break with Europe, Erdogan is leading Turkey into the unknown, with demons whispering in his ears.

“Our past was in Asia but our future is in Europe!” This was how Mesut Yilmaz portrayed his vision for Turkey in a panel debate in Davos in the 1990s.

At the time, Yilmaz, who died last week at the age of 73, was one of the rising stars of Turkish politics and a generation that seemed destined to complete a revolution that had started in the 1880s in the Ottoman Empire. That revolution had aimed at transforming the moribund empire into a modern Western-style state capable of reversing more than a century of decline that had earned the caliphate the sobriquet of “Sick man of Europe.”

By the start of the 20th century, however, it had become clear that building a modern European-style state, based on the Westphalian principles, required the existence of a nation also in the European sense of the term; an impossible task as long as the Ottoman state remained a multi-national empire whose legitimacy was based on religion which, by definition, excludes the very concept of a nation-state.

https://lawliberty.org/treating-evil/

The ease with which Kujtim Fejzulai, the young North Macedonian terrorist responsible for the recent terrorist outrage in Vienna, was able to deceive psychologists, police, and other supposed experts into believing that he had abjured Moslem extremism, would have been funny, even hilarious, had its consequences not been so terribly tragic and deadly.

Fejzulai, a citizen of both Austria and North Macedonia, was released early from a prison sentence, imposed because he had tried to cross from Turkey into Syria in an attempt to fight for ISIS, with which he sympathised. He was released early from prison for two reasons: his youth (he was 20) and because he claimed to have seen the error of his extremist ways.

On statistical grounds, his youth might more sensibly have been a reason for detaining him in prison for longer, even for much longer, because it is precisely during their youth that young men such as he, who are attracted to violence, are most likely to commit it. A sentimental view of youth, however, prevailed over a more realistic one.

But the second reason for his release was even more absurd, and revealed the arrogant technocratic mindset of so many western authorities and governments, which suppose not only that there is a technical solution to all human problems, but that they have found it. They imagine that, since they are representatives of the richest and most advanced societies in the world, they must have techniques to change the “primitive” mindsets of Moslem extremists. Surely it is not possible for people with a world outlook that belongs more to the seventh than to the twenty-first century, to fool people with doctorates from reputable and even venerable universities, who have access to the latest technology and all the information in the world?

The fact is, however, that any ignorant and stupid seventh century-minded extremist is more than a match for any number of psychologists, criminologists, sociologists, computer scientists, etc. While I cannot sympathize with his outlook to the slightest extent, in a sneaking or convoluted way, I am glad that he is up to the task. His ability so easily to deceive means that technocracy is still not triumphantly successful—as I hope that it never will be. Our humanity is preserved by the fact that so-called deradicalization is a charade. What Fejzulai needed was not a technical procedure, with a technical assessment as to whether or not it had worked, but thirty years or more in prison to cool his heels: for society’s sake, of course, rather for than his, though it is probable also that it would have saved his life.