RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/iran-and-pakistan-cross-fire-puts-the-world-on-edge/

On the menu today: We glance up from the Republican presidential-primary season’s coverage to notice that two heavily armed Muslim countries are now launching military strikes in each other’s territory. Taiwan has a new incoming president, and for that country to deter a Chinese invasion, promised U.S. arms sales must get delivered a lot faster. And one new poll shows a reason for Nikki Haley fans to feel optimistic about New Hampshire, while two other polls show Trump winning the Granite State primary comfortably.

Oh, Hey, No Big Deal, Just Iran and Pakistan Shooting at Each Other

On a regular basis, news comes across the wires that seems like it ought to make us sit up and take notice — like Iran, one of America’s preeminent foes and a country knocking on the door of developing a nuclear weapon, launching military strikes against targets within the territory of Pakistan, which is a complicated U.S. semi-ally that has an estimated 170 nuclear warheads.

Baluchistan is a region where the Iranian, Pakistani, and Afghan borders meet, stretching from the southernmost chunk of Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea, and encompassing the southwestern chunk of Pakistan and a southeastern chunk of Iran. Among the Baluchis are plenty of militant groups who want independence or just plain hate the Iranian or Pakistani government.

On Tuesday, the Iranian military launched missile and drone attacks against what it contended were targets in Pakistan associated with Jaish ul-Adl, a Sunni Muslim Baluch separatist organization. The Pakistani government contended the strikes killed two children and wounded three others and called them an “unprovoked violation” of its airspace. Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Iran and has blocked Tehran’s envoy from returning — less than ideal for the prospects of talking down either side from escalating the conflict further, or minimizing any confusion or misunderstanding. Sure, Iran thinks it’s only striking at Baluch separatists, but does the Pakistani military know that? How does the Pakistani military know that Iran isn’t directly attacking it?

https://www.nysun.com/article/argentinas-feisty-president-javier-milei-stuns-davos-with-attack-on-secret-socialist-agenda-of-moneyed-western-elites?lctg=1

Just when you thought it was safe to write off Davos as irremediably dull — think Antony Blinken with a side order of Tom Friedman — along comes the self-described “anarcho-capitalist” president of Argentina, Javier Milei, to shake up the Swiss town with a one-two punch to what he perceives to be the “socialist agenda” of various elites.

The tirade came in the form of a half-hour long speech to a full house of policy wonks and boldfaced names in the business world who were advised by Mr. Milei to choose freedom over socialist-style state control, “dammit.”

With a late-career Elvis-style haircut that makes Boris Johnson’s unruly locks look tame, and his dim view of taxes — Jesus didn’t pay them, he says — Mr. Milei had all of Davos buzzing even before he touched down in Switzerland on Tuesday. 

His mission, he said before departing Argentina, was to “plant the idea of ​​freedom in a forum polluted by the socialist 2030 agenda.” He elaborated on that to a packed conference room Wednesday afternoon, declaring that “socialism is an impoverishing phenomenon and a failure whenever it has been attempted.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20301/islam-overtaking-europe

What seems to have created the current chaos is the well-meaning but calamitously unthinking jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), combined with the disastrous “Wir schaffen das” (“We can manage this”) of Germany’s then Chancellor, Angela Merkel. The ECHR’s extreme interpretation of “open borders” hinders the development of a workable asylum policy.

Immigration is not a natural disaster that befalls Europe, like a plague of locusts or a drought. The migration chaos we are experiencing in Europe is purely a human catastrophe, caused by dreamy policies and faceless judges who are accountable to no one.

[F]urther mass influxes of migrants, such as many countries are experiencing, can be stopped the day after tomorrow by neutralizing the ECHR — simply by opting out of it.

To think now that Brussels, London, Paris, Berlin, Antwerp will inevitably become Islamic is to promise victory in advance. It is defeatist thinking, which Winston Churchill, in his six-volume series, The Second World War, described as more threatening than all the Nazi divisions put together.

A moratorium on immigration might be a good place to start.

In New York, as in the Belgian parliament, you can meet more and more people who are convinced that the Islamization of Brussels — and London and other capitals, they often add — is now inevitable and only a matter of time.

The growth of the Muslim population in Brussels has been both enormous and meteoric. Over the past 50 years, the number of Muslims has grown steadily, and given the erasure of Europe’s borders, thanks to the 1985 Schengen Agreement, there seems to be no end in sight.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20302/taiwan-voters-just-cut-china-xi-jinping-down-to

The Taiwanese, especially after seeing how Beijing suffocated Hong Kong in the past four years, do not want to be ruled by the Chinese regime.

Xi Jinping at the moment must be fuming. In his 2024 New Year’s message, he signaled he is soon going to annex Taiwan. “China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” the Chinese leader declared in a paragraph that appears to list what will happen this year.

The people of the small island of Taiwan are not afraid of large China. They are an inspiration to free people everywhere.

The results are in. Taiwan’s voters stood up to China and all its war talk of recent weeks.

Vice President Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party won the presidency on Saturday in a three-way race with 40.1% of the vote. Hsiao Bi-khim, recently Taipei’s representative in Washington, was elected vice president.

New Taipei City Mayor Hou Yu-ih, of the opposition Kuomintang received 33.5%, and Ko Wen-je of the new Taiwan People’s Party came in third with 26.5%.

The election was historic. For the first time since 1996, when the island republic held its first democratic presidential election, a party has won a third straight presidential term.

Previously, the DPP, as the governing party is known, and the Kuomintang or KMT, traded the presidency every eight years.

https://www.ft.com/content/bc1b9521-8381-4fb8-aebd-80846a18085d?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9

Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive party won an unprecedented third term in office on Saturday as voters defied China’s warnings against electing presidential candidate Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing called a dangerous separatist. With more than 90 per cent of votes counted, Lai had won 40 per cent, according to the Central Election Commission. Hou Yu-ih from the Kuomintang, the largest opposition party, had 33.5 per cent of the vote and Ko Wen-je from the smaller Taiwan People’s party had attracted 26.5 per cent.

Although the DPP lost its parliamentary majority and Lai’s vote was more than 17 percentage points lower than President Tsai Ing-wen’s when she was re-elected in 2020, the party won a higher share of votes for its nationwide list of legislators-at-large than expected. It is the first time since Taiwan began holding free and direct presidential elections in 1996 that any party has held power beyond two four-year terms.

In a reference to Lai’s failure to win an absolute majority and his party’s loss of its majority in parliament, China said the result “shows that the DPP does not represent majority public opinion on the island”. The Taiwan Affairs Office, the Chinese government department implementing Taiwan policy, said: “We will work with relevant political parties, groups and people from all walks of life in Taiwan to promote cross-Strait exchanges and co-operation, deepen cross-Strait integrated development and jointly promote China culture, promote the peaceful development of cross-Strait relations and promote the great cause of the reunification of the motherland.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20299/iran-ballistic-missiles

Because of the apparent lack of oversight from world leaders, especially the United States, the rising provision of ballistic missiles by Iran to non-state actors –including terrorist and militia groups, as well as rogue states — now presents a significant source of concern for global security.

The regime continues to hide behind its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Those are Iran’s human shields. That is why they have proxies in the first place: then it is the proxies doing the dirty work and being attacked, not Iran.

Unfortunately, unless Iran’s leaders themselves feel seriously disrupted, why would they ever stop? The Obama and Biden administrations tried giving Iran billions of dollars in “carrots.” Clearly that was a flop. The answer, all the same, is not: “Maybe there weren’t enough carrots. So next time, we will give more of them!”

To stabilize the Middle East, it is essential to apply ongoing pressure on the Iranian leaders themselves, to disrupt their accelerating programs to produce nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them, and to convince them, the old-fashioned way, that their hegemonic dreams of taking over the Middle East simply will not work.

One of the key but lesser-known reasons behind the immense expansion of Iran’s ballistic missile program in the last few years can be attributed to the U.S. Treasury Department declaring in October 2021 the removal of sanctions on Iran’s Mammut Industrial Group and its subsidiary, Mammut Diesel. These companies had previously faced sanctions imposed by the Trump administration in September 2020 due to their identified roles as “key producers and suppliers of military-grade, dual-use goods for Iran’s missile programs.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-s-u-k-launch-air-strikes-against-houthi-rebels-in-response-to-attacks-on-ships-in-red-sea/

The U.S. and Britain launched air strikes in Yemen on Thursday in response to the Iran-backed Houthis’ recent attacks against vessels in the Red Sea.

The strikes came hours after White House national-security spokesman John Kirby called on the Houthis to “stop these attacks” and warned that the group would “bear the consequences for any failure to do so.”

The militants have launched 27 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea since November 19, the U.S. military said earlier on Thursday. The group says the attacks are in protest of the Israel–Hamas war.

The retaliatory strikes targeted a source of the group’s attacks, Bloomberg News reported, noting that heavy explosions were seen in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and the port city of Al Hudaydah. The attacks were carried out with support from Australia, the Netherlands, Bahrain, and Canada, while the U.K. contributed aircraft.

President Biden confirmed the strikes in a statement on Thursday evening, explaining that the action was “in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea — including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20297/qatar-built-hamas-terrorism

If the ruler of Qatar really wanted to end the hostage saga, all he has to do is issue an ultimatum to Hamas that if the hostages are not released within, say, 48 hours, he will expel all the Hamas leaders who are still in Qatar and stop funding and providing political support to the group. Arab dictators are not known to be merciful toward those who defy them.

Apparently, Qatar does not feel that it is under any pressure from the Biden administration to end the ordeal of the hostages.

If Hamas released the hostages and laid down its weapons, the war would end tomorrow. However, with Biden and Blinken handling both Iran and Hamas’s patrons in Qatar with kid gloves, Doha and Tehran have no reason whatever to stop it.

The Biden administration is evidently continuing to pretend that Qatar, the Gulf state that funds and sponsors Hamas, is an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Qatar, in addition to the billions of dollars it has been pouring on Hamas, is still hosting several leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist terror group, whose members, on October 7, 2023, beheaded, raped, tortured, burned alive more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped hundreds more.

Not only is Qatar far from being a neutral mediator, it is massively biased in favor of Hamas and other Islamist terror groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/houthis-still-attacking-ships-in-the-red-sea/

Remember last week when the White House issued a joint statement that called for “the immediate end of these illegal attacks” in the Red Sea? The attacks are still happening.

Military Times reports that American jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, three U.S. destroyers, and one U.K. destroyer shot down 18 drones, two cruise missiles, and an anti-ship missile in an attack on Tuesday.

Fortunately, nobody was injured or killed. Eventually that fortune will run out if these attacks persist. The U.S. has a massive technological advantage over the Houthis, but even the best equipment doesn’t have a perfect success rate. U.S. sailors have been under attack in the Red Sea.

U.S. Central Command counts Tuesday’s attack as the 26th by the Houthis on commercial shipping since November 19. It described Tuesday’s barrage as a “complex attack” and stated that the weaponry used was “Iranian designed.”

The White House statement from last week said, “The Houthis will bear the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives, the global economy, and free flow of commerce in the region’s critical waterways.” Six days later, they are continuing to do all of those things. Will the 27th Houthi attack on commercial shipping be the one that leads to consequences? The 28th? The 29th?