RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15424/eastmed-pipeline-conflict-turkey

The bilateral agreement between Turkey and Libya — which establishes a new Turkey-Libya economic zone that the EastMed pipeline would now have to cross — appears aimed at giving Turkey more leverage over the project.

“The recent Turkey-Libya Memorandum of Understanding on the delimitation of maritime jurisdictions in the Mediterranean Sea infringes upon the sovereign rights of third States and does not comply with the Law of the Sea and cannot produce any legal consequences for third States.” — Charles Michel, President of the European Council, Consilium.Europea.eu, January 9, 2020

In May 2019, Turkey announced that it would begin drilling for gas in waters claimed by Cyprus…. In October 2019, Turkey defied the European Union by sending another drilling ship, the Yavuz, to operate inside waters claimed by Cyprus. Cyprus accused Turkey of a “severe escalation” of violations of its sovereign rights.

Israel, Greece and Cyprus have signed an agreement for a pipeline project to ship natural gas from the Eastern Mediterranean region to Europe. The deal comes amid increasing tensions with Turkey as Ankara seeks to expand its claims over gas-rich areas of the Mediterranean Sea.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, along with their energy ministers, signed the so-called EastMed pipeline deal in Athens on January 2.

The 6-billion-euro ($6.6 billion) project envisages the construction of a 1,900-kilometer (1,180-mile) undersea pipeline that would carry up to 20 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Israeli and Cypriot waters to Crete and then on to the Greek mainland. From there, the gas would be transported to Italy and other countries in southeastern Europe.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15438/iran-advantage-trump

Europe, too, will have to draw a few conclusions. The European attempt, initiated by France, Germany and the United Kingdom, to circumvent American sanctions on Iran should cease.

In reality, the Iranian regime has just lost a round in its long conflict with the United States. Such air disasters have a lasting effect on people’s minds. The Iranian regime is emerging from this crisis weaker and more isolated than ever before. Trump wins for now.

Iran has emerged completely discredited from the recent phase of conflict with the United States and US President Donald J. Trump appears, for the time being, to be the big winner.

The Iranian regime is proving to be totally incompetent: incapable of managing the funeral of the so-called “martyr” Qassem Soleimani, which resulted in the deaths of more than 50 people, but capable of shooting down “as a result of human error” a commercial flight with 82 of its own nationals on board and killing a total of 176 passengers and crew members. This is the same regime that now announces the resumption of its nuclear weapons program. The bomb could be launched “by mistake,” of course, at Israel – or dropped on a neighboring country, such as Sunni states in the Gulf, or even on Iran itself.

The Iranian people know that the plane was shot down by their own government. There are anti-regime protests across Iran. There is anger over the incompetence and the lies of the last few days. The regime will come out of it weakened. After the death of Soleimani, images of mass rallies may have given the impression of a popular rally against the United States, but it has long been known that such impressions can be misleading.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/protests-erupt-again-iran-joseph-klein/

After the Iranian regime first denied and then finally admitted that it had shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane killing all 176 people aboard, protests broke out against the government in Tehran as well as in other Iranian cities. As many as tens of thousands of Iranian people are said to be involved. Protesters are risking their lives denouncing the government, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

“Khamenei is a murderer!” some protesters exclaimed. Others shouted slogans such as “Death to liars!”, “Death to the dictator!”, and “You have no shame!” Whatever national unity there was in the immediate aftermath of the American killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani is now gone. Indeed, protesters were seen ripping up pictures of Soleimani. Even some hardline conservatives in Iran, who generally support the regime, were critical of how the government had handled the downing of the plane.

Riot police, plainclothes security men, and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have been out in full force, trying to keep things under control. Police even arrested the British ambassador to Iran, Rob Macaire, who was attending a vigil for the victims. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described Ambassador Macaire as “an unknown foreigner in an illegal gathering” before confirming the ambassador’s identity and allowing him to be freed. The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab denounced the arrest of Ambassador Macaire as “a flagrant violation of international law.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/germanys-year-islamic-terrorism-stephen-brown/

Last year, like preceding years, was a busy year for Islamic terrorists in Germany.

Germany’s year of terrorism began in March with a lovely Muslim couple — the husband a Tunisian, the wife a German citizen — arrested for planning a chemical attack. The federal prosecutor’s office said the husband, 30-year-old Sief Allah A., had acquired knowledge of how to turn ricin into a weapon and had ordered 3,300 grams of the poison online.

Arrested in Cologne, the married pair also face charges of planning attacks using metal balls and homemade explosives. They also both had sought membership in the Islamic State (IS). They had started planning their attacks in 2018 after Sief Ali had failed twice to cross over Turkey’s border into Syria.

Also in March, German police raided and arrested 11 Salafists in the Hesse and Rhineland-Pfalz areas, two of whom were brothers. According to the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, they “jointly agreed to carry out an Islamic terrorist attack employing a vehicle and firearms in order to kill as many ‘unbelievers’ as possible.”

The men were between 20 and 42 years of age and had contacted weapons dealers, rented a large truck and gathered money for the attack, $22,000 of which was seized in the raid. They had even committed a crime to get money for their evil plan.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/trump-speaks-directly-iranian-people-michael-ledeen/

The Iranian people are demonstrating. You can see the protests on Twitter, and read about the internal ferment online at the Free Iran Herald, which appears on Gateway Pundit.

The current round of demonstrations erupted all over the country after the destruction of the Ukrainian commercial airplane taking off from Tehran. The security forces are reacting with even greater than usual violence, shooting the protesters with live ammunition. At the same time, supporters of deceased General Qassem Soleimani within the Revolutionary Guards are being rounded up in significant numbers, suggesting that there was a power struggle underway within his Quds Force for the succession after the death of the supreme leader—Ali Khamenei—who is now eighty years old.

According to the Free Iran Herald, published in the Gateway Pundit blog,

This news is increasing the speculation that Soleimani, who was known to act on his own initiatives, and who was being seen as a possible future dictator-in-waiting for Tehran, was betrayed to American intelligence by his own colleagues within the regime, who feared that he would deprive them of their power and privileges.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/taiwan-rejects-communist-china-as-hong-kong-watches/

Taiwan’s voters went to the polls Saturday and sent a strong message to Beijing. The island also known as the Republic of China since 1945 re-elected President Tsai Ing-wen in a massive landslide. Tsai earned nearly 58% of the vote with more than 99% of precincts reporting, leaving no hanging doubts or chads in play. This was a clear victory that will ripple across Asia. Tsai’s victory hasn’t stopped the mainland’s state-run media of casting it as “evil” to undermine it.

President Tsai campaigned on taking a hard line against the mainland and in favor of independence. Today she wasted no time in sending another strong signal that Taiwan is not interested in adopting the “one country, two systems” Beijing insists on. Tsai met with the head of the American Institute in Taiwan today.

Fresh from a landslide re-election victory, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met Sunday with the de facto U.S. ambassador to Taipei.

William Brent Christensen, a U.S. diplomat who is director of the American Institute in Taiwan, congratulated Tsai on her victory in Saturday’s election, and she thanked him for his support.

The meeting came as China warned that countries should stick with recognizing communist-ruled Beijing as the rightful government of “one China,” including Taiwan.

This follows a strong statement of support from the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, observers from Hong Kong were on hand to witness Taiwan’s vote.

At a raucous election rally for Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, Hong Konger Karen Leung surveyed the huge crowd of excited flag-waving voters as a rap song blasted over the loudspeakers and sighed: “We want to have elections like this.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-election/taiwan-president-wins-landslide-victory-in-stark-rebuke-to-china-idUSKBN1ZA009

Anti-government unrest in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong took center stage during a campaign in which Tsai held up Taiwan as a beacon of hope for protesters in the former British colony and rejected Beijing’s offer of a “one country, two systems” model.

China claims Taiwan as its sacred territory, to be taken by force if needed, a threat President Xi Jinping reiterated a year ago while saying he preferred a peaceful solution.

“One country, two systems,” which gives a high degree of autonomy, much as Beijing uses in Hong Kong, has never been popular in Taiwan and is even less so after months of protests in Hong Kong.

China made itself even more unpopular in Taiwan in the run-up to the election by twice sailing its newest aircraft carrier through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, denounced by Taipei as an effort at military intimidation.

“We hope that the Beijing authorities can understand that a democratic Taiwan with a government chosen by the people will not give in to threats and intimidation,” Tsai told reporters.

Beijing needs to understand the will of Taiwan’s people, and that only Taiwan’s people can decide its future, she added, repeating her firm opposition to “one country, two systems”.

https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/01/article/how-fragile-is-irans-regime-2/

Smartphone videos of anti-regime protests in Tehran circulated in global news media this weekend, after the Iranian government admitted it shot down a Ukrainian civilian airliner. The latest demonstrations followed a national wave of protests last November in which up to 1,500 demonstrators were killed. Hard information about the origins and extent of the anti-regime protests is difficult to find. But there is a good deal of evidence of extreme dissatisfaction with the regime due to economic stress.

Iran’s average monthly after-tax wage was US$318.53, according to the website Numbeo, which tallies thousands of user inputs to arrive at wage and price data.

Using Numbeo’s prices I constructed a monthly survival budget in US dollar equivalents:

amgreatness.com/2020/01/11/of-causation-and-emojis/

My favorite literary expostulation from the last couple of days came from Javad Zarif, foreign minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It entered the world in the form of a tweet, that contemporary answer to the haiku, and concerned the fate of Ukrainian flight 752, which met its end shortly after taking off from the Tehran International Airport last week. Everyone on board was killed, all 176 people, including 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, and a handful of Swedes, Afghans, Germans, and Brits.

When the news of the disaster was first flashed, there was some speculation that a fault in the plane—a Boeing aircraft, much in the news of late because of problems with its 737 Max—might have been responsible. Iran itself initially insisted that the plane had crashed because of a technical fault.

But it soon transpired that the plane (a Boeing 737-800) did not simply crash. On the contrary, it had been shot down.

Iran initially denied any involvement. Suggestions to the contrary were part of a “big lie.” “No one will assume responsibility for such a big lie once it is known that the claim had been fraudulent,” said one Iranian spokesman on Friday.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15321/turkey-islamized-christians

“The Turkish persecution of Pontian Greeks and other Christian peoples began after the fall of Trabzon, starting slowly at first and gradually becoming more widespread and terrifying… Many Christians reluctantly converted to Islam to avoid oppression… and merely to survive. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, approximately 250,000 Pontian Greeks were forced to convert…. and speak Turkish.” — The Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center, 2014.

The conquests by Turks resulted in the violent and destructive Islamization of the Byzantine civilization.

The Turkish people need to learn the truth about the history of both the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. Only the truth can liberate the people of Turkey from the past that haunts them to this day.

A recent statement by a Turkish mayor belonging to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was particularly noteworthy in the wake of the US Senate’s December 12 resolution to “commemorate the Armenian Genocide through official recognition and remembrance.”

Mayor Hayrettin Güngör of Kahramanmaraş was caught on camera telling a woman from Trabzon, “We made you Muslim.”