RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/boris-takes-charge-11581621621?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Boris Johnson doesn’t do things by halves, and his reshuffle of the U.K. cabinet on Thursday is a case in point. Having exiled Chancellor Sajid Javid, the Prime Minister now is solely responsible to voters for Britain’s economic performance after Brexit.

Mr. Javid jumped instead of being pushed, but Mr. Johnson won’t be unhappy. The two increasingly butted heads on economic and fiscal policy, and Mr. Javid also disagreed on many matters with Mr. Johnson’s senior adviser Dominic Cummings. The breaking point came Thursday when Mr. Johnson insisted that Mr. Javid fire most of his policy advisers and hand the economic reins to Mr. Johnson’s office. Mr. Javid couldn’t stay on as a matter of reputation and self-respect.

The new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has been a member of Parliament for fewer than five years and is a relative unknown on the public stage. This means Mr. Johnson is now effectively responsible for economic policy. It’s just as well. An oddity of British governance is the traditional division of responsibility between the prime minister and the chancellor, with chancellors wielding outsize power to chart their own course independent of their nominal political boss. Now voters will know exactly whom to credit or blame.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15581/iran-not-saudi-arabia-is-to-blame-for-yem

Now, with the humanitarian crisis reaching a critical juncture with an estimated 80% of Yemen’s 24 million population in need of assistance, aid organisations are finally waking up to the central role the Iranian-backed Houthis have played in creating the disaster.

As humanitarian officials prepare to meet in Brussels this week — Thursday — to discuss the Yemeni aid crisis, the main topic of discussion will be what has been described as the unprecedented and unacceptable obstruction tactics being employed by the Houthis that are preventing vital aid supplies from reaching the country’s starving population.

In their latest bid to seize control of the aid distribution, the Houthis have recently imposed a 2 percent levy on all the international aid agencies operating in the country, prompting one aid worker to claim that the Houthis could be using the aid money to finance the war.

Whatever the outcome, no one will be in any doubt that it is the Iranian-backed Houthis, and not the Saudi-led coalition, who are primarily responsible for creating Yemen’s disastrous humanitarian crisis.

In the five years since Yemen was plunged into its bitter civil war, it has invariably been the Saudi-led coalition, which enjoys the support of the US, Britain and France, that has been blamed for causing what is widely regarded as the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster.

Throughout the conflict the main focus of coverage in most of the Western media has been on the role played by the Saudi military in intensifying the conflict, with Riyadh taking the lion’s share of the blame for the estimated 100,000 Yemenis that have died.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15518/qassem-soleimani-iran-martyrs

Esmail Ghaani, Soleimani’s successor as head of the Quds Force, has promised: “to continue martyr Soleimani’s path with the same force and the only compensation for us would be us would be to remove America from the region.”

So much terrorism has come from Tehran…. as distant as Latin America.

One might also ask why has the United Nations never held Iran accountable for these violations?

One might also ask if the time has finally come for the UN’s largest donors — read the US — to rethink their generosity? Why not, as Ambassador John R. Bolton long ago recommended: “that we should pay for what we want and insist that we get for what we pay for.”

When news broke on the morning of January 3 that Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian general who for many years had headed the Quds Force, the powerful extraterritorial operations arm of the regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), had been assassinated — along with Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, head of the Iraqi Ketaib Hezbollah militia — in a US drone strike at Baghdad airport, pundits across the globe burst into print, some to condemn, others to praise his killing.

Neither side seems to want an all-out war. On October 7, 2019, US President Donald J. Trump tweeted:

“… it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous Endless Wars, many of them tribal, and bring our soldiers home. WE WILL FIGHT WHERE IT IS TO OUR BENEFIT, AND ONLY FIGHT TO WIN.”

One can only hope that this statement is not as un-thought-through as it appears. While in a democracy war is never a first choice — least of all in an election year — the Western fight against Islamist terrorism and territorial predation is far from at an end. As President Trump has already found out in both Syria and Iraq, when it was even mentioned that troops might be withdrawn, evidently that was understood by some countries as an invitation to help themselves, and more troops had to be sent, often within days. The same “misunderstanding” might be now be taking place in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean and Libya as well.

Quite often, troop deployment in these areas does not so much mean “endless wars” as forward deployment. While President Trump is indeed a dazzling negotiator, there are sizeable differences between negotiating, say, business deals and geopolitical ones. Business deals tend to be “win-win”: You have the land and I have the money, or I have the land and you have the money. Geopolitical deals can be stickier: You would like to have — nuclear weapons capability? The Middle East? Control of all the sea lanes on the planet? What is supposed to disabuse a despot of his wish? Will a despot cheat? Will a despot take money given to him not to cheat and use it to cheat? Why would a despot not cheat? Or try to?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/meghan-markle-disaster-british-monarchy-katie-hopkins/

‘Tell us about Megxit!’

It’s the question I am most asked when I open the floor for questions after giving a speech about Brexit and the state of Britain.

And my answer is a straight one: Meghan Markle has been an absolute disaster for the British monarchy. Like some gangster, she has committed a smash-and-grab on the Palace, snatching what can be easily sold, trashing anything of sentimental value.

Her latest stunt – pocketing an alleged $500K for ratting out her husband’s mental health issues in front of a crowd of deep-pocketed JP Morgan bankers – is proof of what many of us suspected from day one: that she was only ever in this for the publicity and the cash.

Markle saw an opportunity for stardom and she pounced on it, like a black widow spider eating her mate, the male redback, when she is done. In nature the male spider has a taste for sacrificial sex, flipping his bare abdomen into the hungry female’s mouth during mating. So too at the Palace, where the Prince-Formerly-Known-as-Harry has been consumed by the woman he was desperate to be loved by.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/north_korea_goes_all_out_to_hide_its_coronavirus_cases.html

China’s coronavirus epidemic has spread to nearly every country in Asia, with one little curious exception: North Korea.

Sure, a casual outside observer might note that North Korea is a tightly controlled communist country, but actually, it’s got a pretty porous border with China and, being a totalitarian hellhole, a vigorous black market trade moving in and out for goods.

This might just mean it’s got more coronavirus than it’s letting on.

That’s what the reports are now saying, starting with Australia’s Daily Mercury:

The North Korean capital of Pyongyang was supposed to stage a massive military parade on Saturday to spark its 72nd anniversary celebrating the founding of the country’s armed forces. Last year, the country’s dictator Kim Jong-un presided over a grand procession displaying all of the hermit nation’s new weapons, with an onslaught of soldiers marching in perfect step. This year, nothing like that took place. Local media reports, heavily controlled by Mr Kim and his ruling party, said the Workers’ Party had been successful combating “severe and dangerous difficulties” but didn’t mention the parade at all. That sparked suspicion the coronavirus, which originated in mainland China and has spread to almost 30 countries worldwide, had reached the hermit nation.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/justin-trudeau-is-up-to-his-old-tricks-again-as-canada-heads-down-the-totalitarian-road/

The true north strong and free, as the Canadian national anthem has it, is no longer true, strong or free. It is still north, of course, but this is no cause for celebration. While retaining its position on the geographical compass, it has lost its place on the moral compass. Our “basic dictatorship”-loving Liberal Prime Minister, friend of the late Fidel Castro, is taking the country down the path of increasing socialist control and totalitarian closure: unsustainable debt, skyrocketing taxes, rising unemployment, media bribery, the stink of corruption and—the cake under the icing—“totalitarian tendencies” and gradual police state governance.

As Lee Harding writes in the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, “Canada has no explicit re-education camps. But Trudeau’s leadership has introduced softer forms of forced belief, religious oppression, political indoctrination, restricted communications and mass surveillance.” Bills such as C-16, C-25, C-59, C-75 and C-76 reduce and even criminalize freedom of expression, infringe on rights, compromise due process and render government transparency dark as night.

We know that Justin Trudeau is a thin-skinned prima donna with a vindictive and imperious nature who cannot tolerate criticism. His latest caper is to go after dissident journalist and author Ezra Levant, founder of Rebel News, for publishing and promoting a book, The Librano$: What the Media Won’t Tell You About Justin’s Trudeau’s Corruption, during the October 2019 election campaign. As one of the very few honest media sites in the country, the network has been consistently maligned in the press and in politically left platforms such as Wikipedia where terms like “far right” and “neo-fascist” are bandied about indiscriminately. Trudeau is clearly counting on public sentiment and media collusion in pressing an utterly fraudulent and indeed farcical case against Levant.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15576/china-coronavirus-li-wenliang

[T]he disease ravaging the country could be, as is now said, China’s “Chernobyl,” the cover up of a disaster eventually leading to the downfall of the regime.

Many analysts expect Beijing to stimulate the economy, but stimulus works only if there is underlying economic activity. With much of the economy shut down, there is not much to stimulate. A dead economy is an existential crisis for a regime whose primary basis of legitimacy is the continual delivery of prosperity.

The boldness of recent demands shows that, due to the outbreak, the Chinese people are starting to lose their fear of Xi and the Communist Party. Rudd and Chinese propagandists are saying the Party will weather this crisis, but when people are no longer afraid, anything can happen.

“If they do not give us an explanation, we will not give up,” said Lu Shuyun, the mother of Dr. Li Wenliang, demanding to know why Wuhan police harassed him while he was trying to save patients.

In this contest, bet on the mother. After all, she has about 1.4 billion angry people on her side.

On hearing the news that Dr. Li Wenliang had died from the coronavirus on January 31, people in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, under strict quarantine, opened their windows and cried. Others took to the streets to blow whistles for the whistleblower. Grief and anger, expressed from China’s streets and balconies and social media platforms, has reached almost unprecedented levels in recent days.

Li, reprimanded with seven other doctors for warning of the outbreak in December, was accused of “spreading false rumors” and “disrupting social order” and, for his brave efforts, was briefly detained, interrogated, and forced to sign an “admonishment notice.” Li undoubtedly contracted the virus treating patients at Wuhan Central Hospital.

The first official announcement of his death, on Thursday night, sparked online outrage. State media, perhaps to mollify public opinion, then said he was alive but critically ill. When he was pronounced dead for a second time, the announcement was followed by a white-hot uproar. Chinese censors scrubbed millions of social media postings supporting the young doctor. Li was 34 years old.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15557/russia-wagner-group

The Kremlin under President Vladimir Putin still manages to exploit opportunities in Africa and Latin America that threaten to diminish U.S. influence. To this end — to extend its power to regions beyond its borders and limited resources — Moscow established the Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group masquerades as a private commercial enterprise, but it is actually a mercenary arm of the Russian Defense Ministry, run by a long-time Putin associate, the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Putin has pledged support to rebel leader General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA), in his effort to overthrow the UN-recognized government in Tripoli.

One motivation for Putin’s support for Haftar’s rebel army may be Moscow’s desire to gain access to Libya’s oil wells, almost all of which are under Haftar’s control.

The Wagner Group provides Putin with an aggressive force to safeguard his interests, while allowing him plausible deniability in the event of a confrontation with Washington…. One hopes the White House is listening.

Although Russia is no longer the superpower it was during the days of the Soviet Union, when it posed a genuine threat to U.S. interests around the world, the Kremlin under President Vladimir Putin still manages to exploit opportunities in Africa and Latin America that threaten to diminish U.S. influence. To this end — to extend its power to regions beyond its borders and limited resources — Moscow established the Wagner Group.

The Wagner Group masquerades as a private commercial enterprise, but it is actually a mercenary arm of the Russian Defense Ministry, run by a long-time Putin associate, the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin. A paramilitary organization that enjoys technical support from the Russian Army — receiving armor, artillery and rocket systems — the Wagner Group may receive direct orders from the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU), the institutional successor to the old Soviet KGB spy organization, in which Putin was a career officer.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/11/israel-upset-at-belgium-for-inviting-terror-supporters-to-un-security-council/

JNS.org – Israel is furious at Belgium for continuing to act against Israel at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), including inviting a “one-sided, radical” pro-Palestinian activist to address council members.

Belgium, who currently holds the rotating presidency for the UNSC, has invited Brad Parker, a senior official for a non-profit called Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), to speak at the council’s session.

DCI-P accuses Israel of committing war crimes, supports the BDS movement and has ties to the US-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

“Belgium has positioned itself as one of the Security Council member states most hostile toward Israel,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat told The Times of Israel. “Inviting a one-sided radical activist such as Mr. Parker to brief the Security Council is yet another negative record.”