RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15423/soleimani-death-iran-plan

Soleimani had his own network of lobbyists in many Arab countries and some Western democracies. Hundreds of Iranian and Arab militants have enrolled in Western universities with scholarships from the Quds Force.

Soleimani, who loved making and publishing “selfies” showing himself close to battlegrounds in the Middle East, was never present anywhere near a battle but was always to come after the dust had settled, to take “selfies” and claim the credit.

Some analysts in Tehran believe that Khamenei was planning to promote Soleimani further by making him President of the Islamic Republic in 2021. An image-building campaign started last year as Soleimani was marketed as “the Sufi commander”…. A committee of exiled Iranians in Florida also started campaigning to draft Soleimani as president. If that was Khamenei’s game plan, there is no doubt that Soleimani’s demise will lead to more uncertainty regarding the future course of Iranian politics.

While analysts and policymakers are busy speculating on ways that Tehran’s ruling mullahs might avenge the killing of their most hyped general, the real question that needs considering may be elsewhere.

The question is: what effect Soleimani’s death might have on the power struggle that, though currently put on hold, is certain to resume with greater vigor in Tehran.

https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/01/iran-publishes-film-portraying-jihad-attack-on-th

Heshmat Alavi@HeshmatAlavi

You know the regime in #Iran is utterly weakened & desperate when their propaganda machine produces short films literally portraying an attack on the White House & Congress, and killing Trump & Netanyahu.

Me:
While we must be alert about Tehran’s threats, the mullahs are weak.

Heshmat Alavi@HeshmatAlavi

You know the regime in #Iran is utterly weakened & desperate when their propaganda machine produces short films literally portraying an attack on the White House & Congress, and killing Trump & Netanyahu.

Me:
While we must be alert about Tehran’s threats, the mullahs are weak.

https://greekcitytimes.com/2020/01/06/turkey-how-the-greek-presence-in-cappadocia-came-to-an-end/

An international academic conference on the multicultural history of the Anatolian city of Kayseri in the historic region of Cappadocia has recently been banned by Turkish authorities.

The conference on “The Social, Cultural and Economic History of Kayseri and The Region” organized by the Hrant Dink Foundation, was set to discuss issues relating to the local changes in Kayseri between 1850 and 1950. Several scholars from Turkey, the US, France, Greece, and Armenia would present their research at the conference on October 18 and 19.

The Hrant Dink Foundation, an organization founded after the assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, first tried to hold the event in Kayseri, but their attempts failed.

The Foundation announced on its official website that the governorship of Kayseri called to inform them that it would be “inappropriate” to gather the conference in the city. The phone-call came weeks after the organizers asked to have a face-to-face meeting with the governorship, and their request for an explanation and to justify the refusal received no answer at all.

When the conference could not take place “due to the interference of the Kayseri Governorship”, the Hrant Dink Foundation intended to proceed with it in Istanbul at the premises of the Foundation.

But this time, the conference was prevented by the authorities in Istanbul (Constantinople). The Foundation once again announced on its website that “After all the preparations were made, and speakers from around the world had arrived in Istanbul,” the conference was banned. The organizers added that the Şişli Governorship gave the official notice of the ban to the Foundation and this notice included no explanation for the Governorship’s decision.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/iran-admits-it-unintentionally-shot-down-ukrainian-passenger-jet/

Iran admitted on Friday that its military had accidentally shot down a civilian passenger jet on Tuesday that belonged to Ukraine International Airlines and that took off from Tehran several hours after Iran attacked U.S. positions in Iraq.

All 176 passengers and crew were killed in the crash, most of them Iranian or Canadian citizens.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15411/iraq-us-troops-iran

“They [surviving ISIS fighters] have better techniques, better tactics and a lot more money at their disposal. They are able to buy vehicles, weapons, food supplies and equipment. Technologically they’re more savvy. It’s more difficult to flush them out. So, they are like al-Qaeda on steroids.” — Lahur Talabany, a top Kurdish counter-terrorism official, in an interview with the BBC.

Calling on America to withdraw its forces from Iraq could therefore prove to be utterly self-defeating for the Iraqi government… they will simply be placing themselves at the mercy of a new, and bolder, generation of Islamist fanatics.

A US withdrawal from Iraq would also suit Tehran, where Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not only called for the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq, but the entire Middle East. Not having the US to provide moral and military support to the Iraqi government would allow Iran to continue its meddling in Iraq’s internal affairs, as well as consolidating its malign influence throughout the rest of the region.

The most likely consequence of any attempt by the Iraqi government to demand the removal of American forces will be the return of ISIS as a major terrorist force, as President Donald J. Trump singled out in his televised address January 8.

The issue of whether the estimated 5,200 US troops currently based in Iraq will be allowed to remain in the wake of the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qassem Soleimani has been raised following a nonbinding vote by the Iraqi parliament calling for the withdrawal of American forces.

President Trump immediately responded by threatening Iraq with sanctions and a bill for billions of dollars if Baghdad insisted on the withdrawal taking place, although questions remain about the legitimacy of the Iraqi parliament’s demand.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15412/france-islamic-republic

In a country that used to stand for freedom of expression, self-censorship is soaring.

“For the past five years, I’ve been going to the police station every month or so to file a complaint about death threats, not insults, death threats”. — Marika Bret, a journalist at Charlie Hebdo today, January 8, 2020.

“Nobody dares to publish caricatures of Mohammed anymore. Self-censorship prevails…. Hate is directed against those who resist obscuring information rather than against those who obscure it. Not to mention the psychiatrization of terrorism in order better to exonerate Islam. If we had been told in the early 2000s that in 2020, around 20 French cartoonists and intellectuals would be under police protection, no one would have believed it.” — Pascal Bruckner, author.

A Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, was tortured and murdered in her Paris apartment by her neighbor, Kobili Traoré, who was yelling “Allahu Akbar.” A court of appeals recently ruled that Traoré, because he had smoked cannabis, was “not criminally responsible” for his actions. As France’s Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia said, it is a “license to kill Jews”.

“Five years after the killings at Charlie Hebdo and Hyper Cacher, France has learned to live with the Islamist threat,” wrote Yves Thréard, deputy editor at the daily newspaper Le Figaro.

“Not a month goes by… without a murderous attack with the cry of ‘Allahu Akbar’ taking place on our soil…. But what is the point of fighting the effects of Islamism if we do not tackle the origins of this ideology of death? On that front, however, denial continues to compete with naiveté. Nothing has changed in the last five years. On the contrary.

“In the name of diversity, non-discrimination and human rights, France has accepted a number of blows to its culture and history… Islamists are a hot-button issue. They continue the fight which, even without weapons, has all the allure of a war of civilizations. Is the famous ‘Charlie spirit’, which some people thought was blowing after the January 2015 attacks, just an illusion?”

France has been marking the fifth anniversary of the deadly jihadist attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which took place on January 7, 2015. Last month, French Senator Nathalie Goulet warned that more attacks were likely. “In France we have a serious problem and we need to do more to prevent extremists from acting. As it stands, there will be more attacks,” said Goulet said.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/hungary-takes-on-the-feminist-goliath-and-wins/

Feminism is a social and political movement. It is not an academic discipline on par with, say, mathematics, economics, business administration, engineering or physics. Gender studies, feminism’s academic wing, does not constitute an appropriate subject for an academic degree. At best it is a subset of a complex of ideas, issues, and events properly canvassed by the History Department, along with a myriad other themes and developments in the study of Western civilization.

Moreover, such programs have no business infesting legitimate areas of study to the extent that an astronomer must sign an affidavit attesting to his involvement in social justice projects or an engineer proclaim his fealty to the feminist manifesto if he is to be considered for promotion. The same proviso applies to any applicant for a university position. It should be obvious that gender programs and initiatives have nothing to do with mapping the universe, finding a cure for cancer, investigating quantum entanglement or stochastic electrodynamics, studying the economic effects of the Protestant Reformation, assessing the impact of political theories from Plato and Aristotle to the present, resolving truss and anchorage problems in suspension bridge engineering, tracing the history of epic poetry from Homer to Michael Lind’s The Alamo, or any canonical field of authentic endeavor. The fact that a bogus discipline, which has no reason for existing sui generis, can spread outward to influence and dilute genuine subjects is beyond comprehension.

Enter Hungary. In an effort to restore curricular and administrative sanity to university education, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz Party have passed legislation to abolish Gender Studies as an area of official study. Hungary’s Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjen has stated that such programs “ha[ve] no business in universities” as they represent “an ideology, not a science,” with a market profile “close to zero.” Similarly, Orban’s Chief of staff Gergely Gulyas said, “The Hungarian government is of the clear view that people are born either men or women. They lead their lives the way they think best [and] the Hungarian state does not wish to spend public funds on education in this area.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/horror-flight-752-and-mullah-cover-ari-lieberman/

At 6:12 a.m., Kiev-bound, Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 took off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport. Less than five minutes later, the Boeing 737-800 was a smoldering wreck. All 176 passengers and crew members perished. Among the dead were 82 Iranian citizens, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Brits and three Germans. Some of those on board had dual citizenship.

Almost immediately following the tragic incident, Iranian aviation authorities made two announcements. First, they declared that the plane crashed because one of the engines caught fire. Second, they said that they would not transfer the black boxes, which contain critical data, to Boeing officials, National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) officials or to any Americans. On Thursday morning, Iranian officials announced that they had retrieved the black boxes but that they were severely damaged, and data was missing.

There is ample reason to conclude that the Iranian authorities are lying through their teeth on this one and are engaged in a massive and pernicious cover-up. Preliminarily, all the evidence points to the fact that the plane was actually shot down by a Russian manufactured, Iranian anti-aircraft missile, though Iranian officials have dismissed this allegation as “scientifically impossible.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/british-parliament-passes-brexit-bill-allowing-jan-31-date-for-withdrawal-from-e-u/

The U.K. House of Commons on Thursday passed a law allowing the country to separate from the European Union by January 31.

In a vote of 330-231, elected lawmakers approved the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which determines the parameters of Britain’s separation.  The bill will make its way to the unelected House of Lords, which cannot overturn the legislation but can delay its passage into law.

“I have no doubt that their lordships will have heard the resounding message from the British people on the 12th of December,” commented Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay. On that day Brits voted an overwhelming conservative majority into Parliament, handing the opposition Labour Party its worst defeat in decades.

The election and the bill’s passage were resounding victories for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has repeatedly pledged to “get Brexit done.” The U.K. voted in 2016 to leave the E.U., however Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May was unable to pass legislation authorizing the separation.

If the U.K. withdraws on January 31 as expected, the country will then have to renegotiate its trading relationship with the 28-member E.U. bloc.