RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16395/turkey-greece-heading-for-war

Turkey has threatened to invade the Greek islands in the Aegean since at least 2018. A recent Egyptian-Greek maritime deal appears to have escalated Turkey’s regional aggression.

“Turkey’s policy is part and parcel of a broader strategy to expand Turkey’s influence in the Middle East, the Gulf, and Africa. The aim is to impose geopolitical dominion: an undisputed regional hegemonic regime whereby Turkey is be able to determine big and important developments…. It appears willing to use military force in order to impose its revisionist plans.” — Dr. Giorgos Kentas, Associate Professor of International Politics and Governance at the University of Nicosia, in an interview with Gatestone.

“Turkey is currently attempting a similar policy of revisionism against Greece. The aim is to impose a hegemonic regime over Greece’s maritime zones and/or maritime zones that Greece claims in Eastern Mediterranean.” — Dr. Giorgos Kentas.

“The Turkish economy found itself on its knees last time US President Donald Trump cared to send Erdogan a message over the arrest of American Pastor Andrew Brunson. What is keeping President Trump from doing that now?” — Anna Koukkides-Procopiou, a Senior Fellow and Member of Advisory Board of the Center for European and International Affairs of the University of Nicosia, interview with Gatestone.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16393/appeasement-europe

Now, Britain and France seek to appease the three powers that most threaten the world today: Iran, China and Russia.

Both countries [Britain and France], as well as Germany and the EU itself, knew only too well that, rather than its stated purpose of denying Iran a route to nuclear weapons, the JCPOA in fact paved Iran’s pathway — not just to acquiring nuclear capabilities, but doing so legitimately.

The re-imposed sanctions will then leave China, Russia and the European countries with tough choices about whether they observe them or take the damaging consequences to their own trade with the US.

And for what? Perhaps for the benefit of Russia and China, whose weapons sales to Iran will both bring financial benefit and extend their influence in the region at the expense of America and Europe.

If US snapback sanctions succeed, that can only hasten the end of the terrorist regime in Tehran. It will also boost confidence and security among the Arab countries, increasingly fearful of a nuclear-armed Iran.

Europe is in the grip of a uniquely virulent and pernicious disease that threatens the wellbeing of its peoples and of the world: not Coronavirus, but appeasement. Anglo-French foreign policy in the 1930s was also dominated by appeasement — of Nazi Germany — a policy that failed to prevent one of the greatest catastrophes that ever engulfed civilisation and that led to the deaths of millions.

Now, Britain and France seek to appease the three powers that most threaten the world today: Iran, China and Russia. As permanent members of the UN Security Council, last week both Britain and France genuflected to their arch-enemies by refusing to support their greatest ally, the United States, in its resolution to extend the UN arms embargo on Iran. The US resolution was of course opposed by China and Russia, both of which intend to sell advanced conventional weapons to Iran as soon as the embargo runs out in October.

Back in the 1930s, the aggressive intentions of Nazi Germany were clear. Although appeasement of Hitler was inexcusable, the main reason was perhaps understandable: a prevailing attitude of “peace at any price” following the unexampled butchery of World War I, then still so fresh in everybody’s minds.

Today, the intentions of Khamenei’s Iran are just as clear, and have been frequently demonstrated in imperial aggression across the Middle East, especially against Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, as well as in its unwavering threats and military actions against Israel.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16392/iran-criminal-enterprise

Venezuela, Iran’s ally, has also made clear its intention to buy Iranian missiles that can reach American cities.

It is not as if China’s criminal track record is not well known. The CCP deliberately let the Covid-19 virus spread around the world. It has directed the theft of trillions worth of intellectual property from the United States and Europe. It has hollowed out some eight million US manufacturing jobs, and it is illegally sending tons of the opioid fentanyl across US borders in partnership with the Mexican drug cartels.

As for Iran, desperate for cash and weapons and pummeled by US-led sanctions, the mullahs are contemplating signing on as a partner of the Communist Party of China (CCP). In return for sending China cheap oil and giving the CCP military bases in the region, Iran will get billions in cash.

“Iran has to take a decision whether it wants to be a nation or a cause,” Henry Kissinger, former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, told The Washington Post in 2006. He was referring to the tension between Iran’s national interests and the religious ideology that took over the country after Iran’s 1979 revolution.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, however, is neither a nation nor a cause: it is a criminal enterprise. The button men for ayatollahs are the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, (IRGC), the Quds Force, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi mountain bandits in Yemen.

Like the Salvadoran MS-13 and Mexican Sinaloa cartel, Iran specializes in regional aggression and “death to America” — and has used specially made improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to kill more than 600 American soldiers serving in the Middle East. But killing is not Iran’s only criminal activity. The Tehran thugs are the ones who make the deals with drug dealers, cigarette smugglers and human traffickers in the Middle East and in the Western hemisphere.

To rein in the mullahs’ criminality, the US had implemented tough economic sanctions on Iran. On January 3, 2020, the US also took out Qassem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC who had ordered the killing of more than 600 Americans. While the death of Soleimani was welcome news, it did not end Iran’s criminal empire any more than did the arrest in July 2019 of the head of the powerful Sinaloa Mexican drug cartel. The cartel remains in business today, smuggling tons of drugs into America.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/francis-buk-video-my-escape-slavery-sudan-frontpagemagcom/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Francis Buk, a former slave in Sudan who escaped his enslavement and is now an abolitionist. (Read his memoir Escape from Slavery and help him to free modern-day slaves by supporting iabolish.org.)

Francis shares The Nightmare I Experienced Under Slavery and My Escape, revealing also how the Left has betrayed African blacks enslaved — till this day — by Muslim-Arab slave-masters.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Dr. Charles Jacobs, the president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, discuss Do Black Slaves’ Lives Matter?, where he sheds a disturbing light on: When did the Left first go woke? When they betrayed black slaves.

He takes us into the horrific world of Racist Muslim Arabs Barbarizing Black Slaves in Africa.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16389/world-affairs-slippery-patch

Today, as in the 1880s, big, small and even mini wannabe empire-builders are engaged in a ruthless power game…. The most intense activity comes from Russia and China.

China, for its part, is projecting power all over the world while bullying some neighbors and bribing others into submission. When deemed necessary, it also acts with military force, as it did recently along the ceasefire line with India. China treats some African, Asian and Latin American countries, notably Congo-Kinshasa, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Ecuador as abatis or territory left by previous masters and open for pickings by new reapers.

Overall, in economic, political and even military terms, Western powers, still nominally led by the United States, remain involved in all continents but are increasingly behaving as if their hearts, not to say their pockets, are no longer in it.

As for Germany, it seems that its hapless Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has no ambition beyond caressing the corpse of the Obama “nuclear deal” with Iran.

The current lukewarm war may never morph into a hot one, but the risk should not be dismissed. Today, projecting power with low-intensity war, often waged through inexpensive proxies as Iran does in Lebanon, or through mercenaries as Russia does in Syria and Libya, enables even relatively poor countries to cast a larger shadow than they deserve.

“The world has stepped into a slippery patch, and we need to steady it.” This is how Benjamin Disraeli saw the international scene in the early 1880s.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16391/persecution-of-christians-july

“[T]here are young girls who have been abducted and enslaved, forced into sexual slavery by some of these guerrillas, these insurgents, these terrorists… We know that the recruitment of boys and adolescents, some of them very young, aged 14, 15, 16, is also happening. It is obvious that these young boys are under coercion. If they refuse to join the group, they could be killed.” — Paulo Rangel, Portuguese Member of European Parliament, Catholic San Francisco, July 23, 2020; Mozambique, where Islamic State (ISIS) seized a port.

In one week in June, 15 people were beheaded in the Christian-majority nation. Discussing the situation, Bishop Lisboa said: “The world has no idea yet what is happening because of indifference.” — Mozambique.

A 16-year-old Muslim refugee from Syria pleaded guilty to four counts of terrorism. His schemes were shared with and exposed by an undercover FBI agent posing as a fellow ISIS supporter online…. “It was a bomb lab,” the report said. — Global News, July 31; Canada.

“Somalis generally believe all Somalis are Muslims by birth and that any Somali who becomes a Christian can be charged with apostasy, punishable by death.” — Morningstar News, July 9, 2020.

The following are among the abuses that were inflicted on Christians throughout the month of July 2020:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16390/arab-world-change

“What is the difference between a Jewish person and an Israeli?” my mother, a religious and traditional Emirati, asked.

“Well,” she said, “when they start coming here, we shall get to know them better.”

For women trapped in the dogma of tradition, half in-half out, adventurous but guilt-stricken, we now feel proud of the choices we made to carve a niche for ourselves, because this niche is the new center. We can finally be ourselves and create the lives we wanted: to be out in the world, not in the confinements of a golden cage.

There was for so long the mantra of “Israel is the enemy.” It was a mantra that people could not break out of and that they believed without proof. These people are now quiet. We need this change in the Arab world. It has taken so long to come.

It was easier than we thought, that joint statement of the United Arab Emirates, Israel and the United States.

There were so many steps that were skipped, though: you can tell by reading on Twitter the voices of opposition from other countries that were in shock at the news. They resist the possibility, but to us, now that we are capable of acknowledging the peace that was created, the opposition feels no bigger than ants with puny pincers.

This is perhaps the first time that peace has happened without a war. It is peace for the sake of peace

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16375/turkey-erdogan-new-enemies

All those Turkish-Greek tensions in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas bolster a century-long Turkish nostalgia to take back some of the Greek islands. Yeni Safak, a fiercely pro-Erdoğan newspaper, suggested that the Turkish military should invade 16 Greek islands.

“Discussion of wars and invading Greek islands is… a tactic used by the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to distract the Turkish population from the woeful economic situation.” — Greek City Times.

Erdoğan needs epic stories of military might against real or fabricated foreign enemies to tell an increasing number of grudging voters in the face of an ailing economy. That is bad news for the entire region.

Fearing a sharp decline in his approval rating, especially in view of a looming economic crisis, Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appears to be chasing new wars with real or imaginary enemies.

Election data and research show that Turks have a tendency to unite behind their leader in times of crises or confrontation with foreign enemies. According to the Turkish pollster Metropoll, for example, Erdoğan’s approval rating peaked to 71.1% in December 2013, when he portrayed a slew of corruption allegations about him and his family as “a coup attempt.” In parliamentary elections in 2015, Erdoğan’s nationwide vote fell to 37.5% and his Justice and Development Party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/iran-israel-uae-deal/

The peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates presents the Iranian regime with dilemmas on both the foreign and the domestic front. The regime fears the emergence of a new international alliance that will have greater power to contain its hegemonic regional aspirations, and there is a new urgency to the need to prove to the Iranian people that the government’s imperialist foreign policy works to their benefit.

The condemnations in the Iranian media of the nascent Israel-UAE peace agreement are hardly surprising. The regime’s leadership is covering its embarrassment and apprehension with a stream of defamation and threats. Parliament Speaker Muhammad Bakr Qalibaf called the agreement “despicable and a betrayal of human and Islamic values,” while President Rouhani warned the UAE leaders “not to open their gates” to Israel. (An interesting exception to this pattern was the statement of former MP Ali Motahari, who tweeted, “Apart from the betrayal of UAE rulers, the blame was also on us for scaring the Arabs and pushing them into Israeli arms”.)

Israel’s rapprochement with the Gulf state is raising concerns in Tehran for a number of reasons. First, the regime fears that an alliance comprising Israel, the Gulf States, and other countries, supported by Washington and Riyadh, would be a serious roadblock in the path of Iran’s goal of regional hegemony. A multinational system of that kind would strengthen its constituent members not only on the security level but also on the economic, commercial, and cultural levels—a worrisome prospect for Tehran.

The prospect of such an alliance is particularly troubling to the regime at a time when its regional status is declining. Recent events in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon have negatively affected Tehran’s ability to promote its “axis of resistance” in the region. Its status in Iraq has been weakening since the October 2019 uprisings, a pattern that gathered new momentum after the killing of Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. The deep crisis now engulfing Lebanon and the Hague’s conviction of a Hezbollah member for the assassination of PM Rafiq Hariri do not contribute to Iran’s prestige. On top of all this, Israeli air strikes in Syria are severely hampering the regime’s attempts to turn the country into a front line against Israel.