RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15401/china-arctic-power

Unfortunately, the US is largely dependent upon China for these materials, which also lie beneath the huge ice masses of Greenland…. Beijing is proposing to build several airports, harbors, roads and railways in Greenland, which would facilitate the transport of rare earth materials — once they are excavated — to China.

China’s drive for eventual primacy in the Arctic region also extends to the Danish-owned, self-governing network of the 18 Faroe Islands, located midway between Norway and Iceland in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Although China is a latecomer to great-power competition in the Arctic, its Arctic profile could rise quickly if Moscow pools its efforts with Beijing. The Russian Air Force has long had a separate branch for polar aviation, and Russia maintains an extensive nuclear- and diesel-powered fleet of icebreakers.

Also at risk under such a scenario would be the US military facility in Thule, Greenland, which serves as an early-warning node for a nuclear attack on the North American continent.

One important element of the $738 billion National Defense Authorization Act for the Fiscal Year 2020, which US President Donald Trump signed into law in mid-December, is the directive to examine and monitor “Chinese military activities in the Arctic, as well as Chinese foreign direct investment in the Arctic.”

The administration in Washington is right to be concerned about China’s increasing interest in the northern polar region. Two years ago, Beijing published a White Paper outlining its Arctic policy, which includes creating a “Polar Silk Road.” If fully implemented, this policy will challenge the United States and Russia for primacy in the region, where beneath the glaciers lie vast quantities of coal and natural gas.

Two Chinese polar icebreaking research vessels, Xuelong and Xuelong II, are presently carrying out the regime’s 36th scientific expedition in the waters off Antarctica. The crews of these vessels will help complete China’s fifth Antarctic scientific station for the gathering of data and establishment of under-the-ice submarine deployments similar to those operated by Washington and Moscow.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15375/hamas-support-turkey-invasion

The American pullout from the area, which borders on Turkey, was evidently perceived by Erdoğan as a green light for an invasion for which he had been waiting for nearly a decade.

Hamas, like Turkey, not only seeks Israel’s destruction, but also has close ties with the Erdoğan government.

Like its terrorist counterparts across the Middle East, many of which are funded by the Iranian regime, Hamas aims to annihilate Israel not only for being a Jewish state, but for sharing American values of freedom and democracy. In Hamas’s eyes, the Kurds are an extension of that Western alliance.

In mid-October, following US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a withdrawal of American troops from northern Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s military invaded the Kurdish-held area.

Ankara views the Kurds in northern Syria as PKK-affiliated terrorists who, for wanting freedom, are regarded as a serious threat to Turkish national security. Eliminating Kurdish autonomy has been a key priority for Erdoğan since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

The American pullout from the area, which borders on Turkey, was evidently perceived by Erdoğan as a green light for an invasion, for which he had been waiting for nearly a decade. Although there is no doubt about the devastating effect that this move is having and will continue to have on the Kurds, there is a question about whether and to what extent it will affect Israel, a neighboring country that has been a supporter of Kurdish independence and rightly fears an even greater Iranian power-grab in Syria.

Israel’s enemies, unsurprisingly, immediately championed Trump’s announced exit and praised Erdoğan’s invasion. Take Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, for example.

https://www.city-journal.org/french-court-acquittal-of-kabili-traore

The recent decision of a French court would, if taken as precedent, in effect legalize murder—provided that the act was committed in a state of temporary madness caused by intoxication with cannabis.

In 2017, Kabili Traoré, a Muslim of Malian origin, who had no previous psychiatric history but a long criminal record, with 22 convictions—including for robbery, attempted robbery, drug-dealing, and possession of illegal arms—climbed over the balcony of the flat of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish woman age 66, tortured her, and then threw her over the balcony to her death. Traoré appeared to be in a state of religious excitation, for he was heard to shout “Allahu Akbar” and “I have killed Shaitan” (Satan). There is no doubt that he was psychotic at the time, or that his psychotic state was precipitated by his use of cannabis.

The court acquitted Traoré of any crime because he was psychotic when he committed the act, sending him instead to a psychiatric hospital for 20 years. Its decision caused widespread public alarm, repugnance, and derision. But from the strictly juridical point of view, the court might have been right. According to the French criminal code, a man is not to be held criminally responsible if his “discernment”—his judgment—is abolished by a psychiatric or neuropsychiatric state. The code does not make voluntary intoxication an exception to this rule.

Of course, what constitutes the abolition of discernment or judgment is itself a question of judgment. Traoré knew, for example, that his victim was Jewish (she was the only Jew on the block, and he knew this in advance); he also knew that he was killing her. He must have had at least intermittent awareness of his illegal act, for at one point he shouted that there had been a suicide and that the police should be called. On the other hand, it is unlikely that he would have acted as he did had he not been psychotic.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/08/what-iran-started-president-trump-will-finish/

Yes we are at war. Not it didn’t start Tuesday night with the missile attack on an air base housing American troops in Iraq. Or last week when President Trump ordered the strike against the Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

The war was started 40 years ago by Iran when then-Ayatollah Khomeini’s fundamentalist followers invaded our embassy in Tehran and took 55 Americans hostage. 

Over the years since then,Iran has continued to escalate the war that they started. 

For example, in 1983, Iranian-backed terrorists murdered 241 Americans in the Beirut barracks bombing which, at the time, was the greatest loss of life in one day for the U.S. Marine Corps since Iwo Jima. 

And that casualty figure would be eclipsed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, once our troops deployed to Iraq. According to a 2019 report, Iran has killed at least 603 U.S. servicemen and women through the use of the squash-head molten cooper IEDs it smuggled into the country and provided its proxy militias to use against our forces. Then there are the thousands of our brave men and women who were maimed by these coward’s weapons and who lost a limb, or multiple limbs. 

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/irans-options-in-showdown-with-america-are-all-bad/

After losing its top strategist, military commander and arch-terrorist, Qassem Suleimani, the Iranian theocracy is weighing responses.

One, Iran can quiet down and cease military provocations.

After attacking tankers off its coast, destroying an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia, shooting down a U.S. drone and being responsible for the killing and wounding of Americans in Iraq, Iran could now keep quiet.

It might accept that its strategy of escalation has failed to lead to any quantifiable advantage. Trump did not prove a passive “Twitter tiger,” as his critics mocked. Instead, he upped the stakes to Iran’s disadvantage and existential danger.

The chances, however, for such a logical and passive readjustment by Iran are nil.

Iran believes that Trump’s beefed-up sanctions have all but destroyed its economy and could now extend to secondary boycotts of nations trading with Iran. U.S. sanctions have also squeezed Iranian expeditionary efforts to forge a permanent hegemony and a Shiite crescent extending to the Mediterranean.If unchecked, American economic pressure could eventually lead to a popular rebellion that would topple the theocracy. In sum, a return to the status quo is unlikely.

Two, Iran can agree to re-enter talks about its nuclear program and offer a few concessions.