RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/sweden_heading_over_the_cliff.html

Recently, the Muslims of the city of Malmö in Sweden flexed their collective strength and gave their non-Muslim neighbors a taste of things to come when they rioted in a response to the publicized burning of a Quran by activists of Stram Kurs (Hard Line).  Stram Kurs is a far-right political party infamous in Sweden for its racialism and its anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic positions.  Electorally speaking, Stram Kurs is a non-entity and is mainly a zoological curiosity that exists both as an outlet for denizens of Sweden’s intellectual slums and as a boogeyman for the Danish establishment and Muslim community.

As a result of its rather pathetic situation within Sweden’s political system, it must resort to the “propaganda of the deed” (like the anarchists of old), hence the burning of a Quran right near a migrant community in a city where about one out of every six inhabitants is a Muslim.  The Muslims reacted almost cartoonishly true to form by instantaneously turning what was supposed to be a protest against an act of religious desecration into a full-on riot.

Almost all cases of immigration are followed with some sort of assimilation.  Either the immigrant populations are assimilated into the host country, or the host country (or part of it) acclimatizes itself to the immigrant population.  It is quite clear which of these two situations is occurring in Europe (the latter).  This entire episode is indicative of the fact that Muslims in the West and their Western hosts have failed to absorb certain fundamental political lessons to the detriment of all involved.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijings-bullying-escalates-down-under-11598916533?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Australia is the Western nation most exposed to China’s military, economic and diplomatic power, so their relationship bears watching as an indicator of how the Communist Party in Beijing wants to treat other countries. In the latest example of bullying, China has detained with no public explanation Cheng Lei, an Australian citizen and television anchor for a Beijing media outlet.

It’s becoming clear that foreigners work and travel in China at their peril. Australian writer Yang Hengjun has been held on vague “espionage” accusations since last year. And don’t forget the two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, held in China since 2018 as hostages to pressure Canada not to extradite to the U.S. Huawei’s chief financial officer for violating Iran sanctions.

Australia has faced the brunt of Beijing’s ire since the spring for daring to back an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. A state media representative compared Australia to “gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes” and in May China imposed tariffs on Australian barley and restricted imports of beef. Over the weekend China launched a new probe of Aussie wine exports, threatening another trade blow.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16433/us-accommodate-china

For decades, the U.S. had tried to regularize contacts with the Chinese military…. Unfortunately, rules-of-the-road agreements have failed…. “China has routinely violated the letter and spirit of CUES,” James Fanell, a former director of Intelligence and Information Operations at the U.S. Pacific Fleet, told Gatestone. “The problem,” he wrote “is that agreements can work only if both sides really do wish to avoid a military crisis and violent encounter.”

Shultz — and most Americans — underestimate the audaciousness, ruthlessness, and maliciousness of China’s Communist Party. Chinese Communists… are continually propagating the line that China has the right and obligation today to rule the entire world.

In the 1930s, the Western democracies knew about the Third Reich’s persecution of the Jews but did little. That feebleness emboldened Hitler, leading eventually to the destruction of much of Europe. Now, the world is emboldening another once-in-a-century tyrant, Xi Jinping. The international community should not expect timidity to produce a better outcome this time.

Americans love agreements, but no treaty, convention, compact, code, or agreement will restrain a belligerent state that seeks to take down the rules-based international system. There is, Secretary Shultz, no “off-ramp” from confronting the horror of China’s crimes.

America’s goal should be to defeat Chinese communism, not accommodate it.

George Shultz, writing a Wall Street Journal op-ed first posted August 26, believes America has a “collective future” with China.

Yes, Americans have one with the Chinese people — as they do with all other people — but is it possible to have a common future with a hostile state openly committed to overthrowing you and, among other things, committing crimes against humanity?

No, that is not possible.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/cyprus-46-years-turkish-occupation-uzay-bulut/

What does the international community often think when they hear “Cyprus”? A beautiful island country in the Eastern Mediterranean? A heavenly holiday destination? Warm weather and scenic beaches? All of these are true. However, this small and resilient island country also has a dark and criminal history – a history shaped by the Turkish occupation since 1974.

Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960 but full independence across the island would not last for long. In the summer of 1974, the Turkish military invaded northern Cyprus twice – first on 20 July and then on 14 August, committing ethno-religious cleansing and crimes against humanity in an attempt to terrorize the Greek Cypriots to push them southward.  

Turkey “launched a full scale aggressive attack against Cyprus, a small non-aligned and virtually defenseless country, possessing no air force, no navy and no army except for a small national guard,” Zenon Rossides, the then-Cyprus representative to the United Nations, sent a letter on 6 December 1974 to the UN Secretary General. “Thus, Turkey’s overwhelming military machine embarked upon an armed attack including napalm bombing of open towns and villages, wreaking destruction, setting forests on fire and spreading indiscriminate death and human suffering to the civilian population of the island.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/rising-islamic-terrorist-threat-austria-strikes-daniel-greenfield/

On a summer Sabbath day, Elie Rosen, President of the Jewish Community of Graz, spotted a suspicious man hanging around the synagogue. The synagogue had recently been vandalized and the man had a backpack full of rocks that he was about to start throwing at the synagogue.

After the synagogue had been vandalized a few days earlier, Rosen had warned that in the Austrian city, “we are dealing with a stronger left wing and anti-Israel antisemitism,”

Rosen’s concern was understandable since some of the graffiti smeared on the wall around the synagogue read, “Free Palestine” and “Our language and our country is Palestine”. A second attack by the same perpetrator on the Sabbath Eve had smashed the synagogue’s windows.

The wall that the Islamic attacker had vandalized was made out of bricks from the ruins of the original Graz synagogue that had been destroyed by the National Socialists. The synagogue, which had been rebuilt only two decades ago, serves Graz’s tiny surviving Jewish community.

Austrian Jews know better than to take such slogans lightly. One of the worst episodes of  antisemitic violence after the National Socialist period had been an assault by two PLO Islamic terrorists on a synagogue where a Bar Mitzvah was taking place. The terrorists had opened fire with machine guns and thrown hand grenades into the synagogue. A woman who had rolled on a hand grenade to protect the children died. A number of other congregants were wounded.

When Rosen asked the bearded man what he was doing, the vandal attacked him with a chair leg, and fled on a mountain bike. When the police caught him, he expressed no remorse.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-stop-iran-from-terrorizing-dissidents-abroad-11598822066?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Jamshid Sharmahd, a California-based Iranian opposition activist, disappeared in late July while traveling to a technology conference in India by way of Dubai. Mr. Sharmahd’s family tracked his movements using mobile phone data to a remote region of neighboring Oman before he dropped off the map. Days later, he appeared blindfolded on Iranian state television as a result of what the Islamic Republic termed a “complex operation” by “anonymous soldiers.”

More frightening than the apparent kidnapping of the U.S.-based dissident is the fate that likely awaits him. This summer Tehran sentenced to death another kidnapped opponent, who had been living as a refugee in France. And in recent weeks a prominent Iranian women’s rights activist based in the U.S. revealed that her family had been pressured to invite her to a get-together in neighboring Turkey so she could be abducted.

Iranian democracy activists living in Western countries are understandably alarmed by this apparent uptick in kidnappings and hope that their adopted democratic homes will protect them. But safeguarding these dissidents will require world leaders to stop thinking of such incidents as isolated crimes, and instead confront them as state-sanctioned intimidation policy.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/european-allies-fail-to-support-us-effort-to-reinstate-sanctions-on-iran_3477629.html

The U.S. effort to renew the arms embargo against Iran set to expire on Oct. 18 met with opposition from its European allies, France, Germany, and the UK. However none of them supports giving Iran the opportunity to buy and sell weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with Fox News.

For almost two years, the United States “has made every diplomatic effort” to renew the arms embargo against Iran. On Aug. 21, the United States officially requested that the United Nations restore UN sanctions on Iran that had been lifted by a UN Security Council Resolution adopted in 2015, which also endorsed the Iran nuclear deal.

This request was met with criticism by European signatories of the Iran nuclear deal. The E3 countries—France, Germany, and the UK—refused to support the U.S. initiative because it withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018.

The EU top diplomat Josep Borrell said in a statement that the United States can’t request the snapback of sanctions for the same reason.

“I will continue to do everything possible to ensure the preservation and full implementation of the JCPOA by all. The JCPOA remains a key pillar of the global non-proliferation architecture, contributing to regional security,” Borrell said.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/30/chinas_brand_of_communism.html

Communism is back in the news. That’s in part because the Trump administration has made a national priority of informing the public about the China challenge. Earlier this summer four senior officials — National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General William Barr, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — gave a series of speeches highlighting the communist roots of China’s autocratic conduct and of its ambitions to reconfigure world order.

Those speeches, however, did not include any scoops. They addressed a widely neglected — and sometimes aggressively downplayed — development stretching across the better part of a decade. Since his accession in 2012 to the position of general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping has ruled China with dictatorial powers while consistently reaffirming the centrality of communism to the CCP’s quest to transform China into the world’s most powerful and influential nation.

According to the “South China Morning Post,” Xi wrote in an article published this month that “The foundation of China’s political economy can only be a Marxist political economy, and not be based on other economic theories.” Therefore, “The dominant position of public ownership cannot be shaken, and the leading role of the state-owned economy cannot be shaken.” 

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/

When Britain’s foreign Secretary Dominic Raab visited Jerusalem last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly chewed his ear off.

Small wonder. It’s hard to exaggerate the perfidy, cynicism and head-in-the-sand cowardice currently being displayed by Britain, along with France and Germany, over Iran.

Instead of joining forces with those trying to neutralise the growing threat from the Iranian regime, Britain and these two other key European powers are actually acting in concert with the world’s twin empires of evil, Russia and China, in shoring up this terrorist rogue state.

Earlier this month, the United States proposed at the UN Security Council to extend the Iran arms embargo, which is due to expire on October 18.

This was strongly supported by the Gulf states, which said that Iran has continued to supply conventional weapons to terrorists and separatists in the region and to intervene militarily in neighbouring countries.