RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/iran-winning-or-losing-caroline-glick/

There’s an old Jewish joke where a young man walks up to his grandfather man and asks him how he’s doing.

The grandfather answers, “In a word, good.”

“And in two words?” the grandson presses.

“Not good,” his grandfather replies.

The events of the week call the joke to mind in relation to Iran and its war against Israel and the United States.

Sunday, a crowd of thousands gathered outside the US embassy building in Tehran and chanted, “Death to America, Death to Israel.” The Iranians sounded their customary death chants to mark the 40th anniversary of the seizure of the US embassy and the hostage crisis it precipitated.

Sunday’s demonstration was the opening shot in a week of hostile actions by Iran. On Monday and Tuesday, senior Iranian officials announced they are abandoning key limitations set on their nuclear activities by the nuclear deal they concluded with the Obama administration, the EU, Russia and France in 2015. Monday Iran announced it expanding its uranium enrichment at the Natanz nuclear installation with advanced IR-6 centrifuges, and that it is doubling the number of IR-6 centrifuges presently being used.

Tuesday Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced that Iran is renewing enrichment activities at its Fordo nuclear installation, built inside of a mountain outside Qom. According to Rouhani, beginning Wednesday Iran would begin enriching uranium at Fordo to five percent by injecting its centrifuges with uranium gas.

Many commentators responded to Iran’s announcements by declaring that the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy for scaling back Iranian aggression and thwarting its nuclear program has failed. President Donald Trump’s maximum pressure campaign, which is enthusiastically supported by Israel and the Sunni Arab states is comprised of continuously escalating US economic sanctions against Iran. Those sanctions are reinforced by US-supported military operations by US allies – primarily Israel and Saudi Arabia — against Iranian forces and Iranian proxy forces in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-isnt-dead-but-its-ailing-11573516002

NATO is brain-dead. So said French President Emmanuel Macron in an interview published last week.

He’s not wholly wrong. A generation after the collapse of communism, the Western alliance that won the Cold War is adrift and confused. The trans-Atlantic gap is wider than ever, and the fissures between Brexit-minded Britain, Gaullist France and an increasingly powerful Germany seem to deepen and grow from year to year.

Mr. Macron’s description of Europe’s current predicament is brutally frank. With the U.S. losing interest in NATO (a shift Mr. Macron believes predates the Trump administration), Europe can no longer count on American protection as much as it did in the past. Intensifying U.S.-China competition leaves Europe high and dry; neither China nor the U.S. seems particularly interested in what Europe wants or thinks.

In its own neighborhood, Mr. Macron believes Europe is almost helpless before rival powers like Russia and Turkey. Europe’s continuing failure to develop its own Silicon Valley means that the continent risks losing control of its own future. Dependent on American or Chinese tech giants, Europe won’t be able to guarantee the security of its own data or communications. Meanwhile, even as a rigid adherence to outdated ideas about fiscal austerity limits the growth of the eurozone economies, the EU has overstressed the market side of the European project, and paid too little attention to the concept of “community.”

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/11/after-the-wall-three-decades-of-cultural-despair/The Politburo of the East German Communist Party had made a fatal mistake. It had met in emergency session on the cold evening of November 9, 1989, as the country’s border controls were collapsing and hundreds of thousands of people were in the streets of East Berlin demanding democratic reforms and human rights. Other communist regimes were disintegrating in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Romania, and similar irreversible processes were underway in the Soviet Union itself. The party chiefs knew that there would be no Soviet support for a brutal crackdown, as Mikhail Gorbachev pursued his campaign to modernize communism. Almost casually there emerged a proposal to lift the ban on East Germans leaving the country. Incredibly, the Politburo grasped at it, hoping to relieve the pressure while aligning itself with the liberalization being promoted by Moscow. Just before 7pm the order was given, and by midnight thousands of Ossis were surging through the checkpoints to be greeted by Wessis waiting with flowers and champagne on the other side.

It was the moment of ‘people power’. Soon German folk, delirious with joy, were dancing on top of the Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate, where eight months later half a million people joined Roger Waters of Pink Floyd in a massive star-studded concert version of The Wall, culminating in a stirring rendition of “The Tide is Turning” that helped embed the idea of ‘people power’ in popular culture. In one hugely symbolic moment the Cold War effectively came to an end. The dismantling of the Soviet bloc and the foundation of democratic states in its stead had still to unfold, but the Wall was down and the Curtain had parted. It seemed that the world had evaded the abyss of a new dark age and could finally move forward into “the broad, sunlit uplands of freedom” that Churchill had so eloquently evoked 50 years before as he galvanized the besieged liberal democracies after France had capitulated to the other great totalitarian force of the 20th Century.

For one intellectual it was a career-defining moment. In an act of astonishing prescience (or incredible good luck), a young academic, Francis Fukuyama, had submitted an article “The End of History” only months before to the National Interest where it was published in its Summer issue of 1989.  It seemed to relate directly to the epoch-defining events in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Fukuyama argued that the world had reached not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such. That is, he believed humanity had reached the end point of its ideological evolution and seen the vindication of Western liberal democracy as the ultimate form of human government. It was an apotheosis: the previously intractable conflicts inherent in global politics had finally been resolved and liberal democracy had emerged victorious over communism and its other opponents in the great war of ideologies. The logic of modern history had led “the greater part of humanity to liberal democracy.”

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&

It was barely more than a month ago — October 3 to be exact — that I made fun of a big spread the previous day in The Nation, declaring the country of Bolivia to be the latest, greatest “Remarkable Socialist Success Story”! This was in the midst of the run-up to the October 20 election, in which Socialist hero President Evo Morales was to stand for his fourth term. By October 24, Morales had claimed outright victory in the election, and a mandate to serve another five years..

And then yesterday, Morales may or may not have resigned. That was quick! How could this all have gone so wrong so fast?

To start with, there was the small problem of allowing the electoral machinery to be fully controlled by people loyal to the incumbent bent on re-election. Surely then, wouldn’t Morales’s people have no problem turning any remotely close result into a clear victory? Sometimes what seems like an advantage may not turn out that way. As it happened, the governing rules required the leading vote-getter to achieve a margin of 10 points or better over the runner-up to avoid a run-off. As returns came in on election night, Morales was leading, but by less than the 10 points. Then suddenly, officials suspended reporting the results for 24 hours. When the count was supposedly complete on October 24, Morales claimed 46.95% of the vote, to 36.6% for his top opponent, Carlos Mesa. Sure, Evo!

https://www.jns.org/opinion/netanyahus-bullseye-on-iran/

Of all world leaders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been the most vociferous in warning of the danger to the Jewish state and the rest of the world posed by Tehran in general and by its race to obtain nuclear weapons in particular.

(November 12, 2019 / JNS) The Israeli Air Force conducted a strike in Gaza in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, killing Islamic Jihad senior commander Baha Abu al-Ata. According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the bloodthirsty Palestinian terrorist, responsible for multiple rocket barrages on Israel from Gaza, was a “ticking time bomb.”

In other words, his death was a necessary step in preventing a series of imminent terrorist attacks on innocent Israelis. It was also a message not only to Islamic Jihad, but to Hamas—ruler of the terrorist enclave—that recent Israeli threats about a major military campaign in Gaza being inevitable were not empty. As Netanyahu has been emphasizing for the past few months, Hamas can’t keep blaming Islamic Jihad for launching missiles as a way of avoiding an Israeli ground invasion, such as “Operation Protective Edge” in the summer of 2014.

The trouble with the hit on Abu al-Ata, of course, is that it sparked a heavy—albeit anticipated—round of revenge attacks, sending Israelis across the south and center of the country into bomb shelters, and prompting the Israel Defense Forces to launch further airstrikes on targets in Gaza, among them an Islamic Jihad training facility and underground facility for the manufacture and storage of weapons.

The Home Front Command, which clearly was given a heads up prior to the targeted killing and the likely response it would elicit, is treating the situation seriously, keeping a wide geographical berth on high alert, and out of school and many public buildings.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/british-founder-of-syrian-white-helmets-aid-organization-found-dead-in-istanbul/

James Le Mesurier, co-founder of the Syrian Civil Defense aid organization in Syria, also known as the White Helmets, was found dead on Monday near his apartment in Istanbul.

According to reports, Le Mesurier, 48, appeared to have fallen from a balcony and was found with multiple fractures in his head and legs. The Istanbul Governor’s Office said “comprehensive administrative and judicial investigations” into his death were underway.

“The family of the Syrian Civil Defense extends its deepest condolences to his family, and we express our deepest sorrow and solidarity with his family, as it is our duty to commend his humanitarian efforts, which the Syrians will always remember,” the Syrian Civil Defense wrote on its Facebook page.Last week, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Le Mesurier of being a former British intelligence agent who was “spotted all around the world, including in the Balkans and the Middle East.”

“Given the role of the West in undermining stability in these regions, it is not difficult to assume what the British intelligence officer did there,” Zakharova said.

Le Mesurier founded Mayday Rescue, a nonprofit group that organized and trained the Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer disaster-response organization that has saved thousands of lives in the aftermath of Russian and Syrian government attacks during the Syrian civil war. The organization’s members wore white construction helmets, which gave the group its nickname.

https://www.youtube.com/watcah?v=orAGU04T0rc

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15154/austria-kurz-agenda

The Greens would be happy to replace Europe’s Judeo-Christian cultural order with a radical multiculturalism that includes an acceptance of, and presumably a possible replacement by, the laws of Islam.

Replacing Europe’s historical values could be the very path that [former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian] Kurz and his party have claimed to oppose.

Austria’s recent general election has implications for the West as a whole. The snap legislative election, held on September 29, was spurred by what has come to be called the “Ibiza scandal” – a scandal named after the location of a shady meeting that took place earlier in the year between Heinz-Christian Strache — Austria’s deputy chancellor and head of the right-wing Freedom Party (FPÖ) — and a woman claiming to be the niece of a Russian oligarch.

According to a video that surfaced in May of the clandestine meeting, the woman indicated her wish to take control of Austria’s leading daily newspaper, Kronen Zeitung, and Strache said that he could assist her through governmental contracts in exchange for the financial backing of his party.

When the video emerged, Strache resigned and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz — leader of the conservative, Christian-democratic Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) — terminated his partnership with the FPÖ, causing the coalition to dissolve and the government to fall.

Subsequently, Kurz himself was removed from office by a no-confidence motion in parliament, and new elections were called.