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WORLD NEWS

China: Modern Blueprint for Global Power by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14959/china-global-power

President Xi Jinping’s doctrine includes rejecting as illegitimate any “unequal treaties” forced on China by Euro-Atlantic powers, such as Great Britain’s imposition of the McMahon Line, which awarded to the British Crown Colony of India hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of Chinese territory.

Chinese military exercises, new weapons systems and the surreptitious militarization of several landfill and disputed islands in the South China Sea, all indicate that Beijing intends to become — at the very least — East Asia’s dominant regional power, thereby supplanting the US as the pre-eminent authority in the Western Pacific Ocean.

According to one American analyst on Chinese military affairs, in 2018 alone, China conducted approximately 100 military exercises with 17 countries.

In recent years, the Chinese Navy has been demonstrating better precision targeting by its anti-ship missile system, the presumed target being US aircraft carriers.

The People’s Republic of China, which celebrated its 70th anniversary on October 1, is led by the Chinese Communist Party’s General Secretary, President Xi Jinping. In his speeches, Xi often refers to “Qiang Zhong Gwo Meng” (“the Chinese dream”), a code phrase for the era of rejuvenation when China will eventually overtake the United States as the most powerful nation in the world.[1]

Xi claims that China offers the world a different type of rising global leader — a “guiding power.”[2]

Beijing apologists depict China as a non-predatory power, comparing it favorably to Europe’s colonial countries in the past and to today’s United States.

British Police Arrest Over 800 Climate Change Protesters Trying to Shut Down Airport By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/british-police-arrest-over-800

London’s Metropolitan Police arrested over 800 climate change activists this week throughout the city, some of whom attempted to shut down London City Airport on Thursday.

Demonstrators with Extinction Rebellion, a climate activism movement that says it encourages civil disobedience to compel government action, have cropped up around London over the past four days. Activists said they planned a “Hong Kong-style occupation of the terminal building,” a reference to pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong who shut down the city’s international airport in August.

The group targeted the London airport over the travel hub’s £2 billion expansion plan, which activists say does not comply with Britain’s goal to have net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

At least 29 people have been charged with crimes. The protests have so far not forced the airport to close but have caused some delayed flights.

One protester, former Paralympic cyclist James Brown, even climbed on top of a British Airways plane. Another activist refused to resume his seat on a plane as the flight was preparing to depart and began lecturing the other passengers on climate change before police removed him from the plane for “disruptive behavior on board,” the airline said.

The London protests come as climate change emerges at the forefront of the political debate in the U.S.

Don’t Romanticize The Kurds: Longstanding jihadist butchery; PKK Marxist terrorism evolved to fight Ataturk’s ethno-racist Turkey; Created sharia-based Iraqi “Kurdistan” Andrew Bostom

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/10/dont-romanticize-the-kurds-longstanding

Johny Messo, is head of the World Council of Arameans. In 2014 Messo issued this statement when Israel’s Minister of Interior, H.E. Gideon Sa‘ar, signed a document that recognizes “Aramean” as a distinct national identity in Israel’s population registry: 

We greatly commend Israel for being the first state in the world to recognize our people in keeping with international law. This fantastic news has had a major impact on the global Aramean population. It encourages us to continue our legal struggle for recognition by our home countries of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon”  

Messo, was quoted from this story published today (10/10/19) from about the depredations and duplicity of the Kurdish Marxist brigades operating within Northern Syria:

“The PYD/YPG is threatening Syriacs and still forcibly detaining some children to join them,” Johny Messo, head of the World Council of Arameans (Syriacs), told Anadolu Agency on Thursday. Telling how the terrorist PYD/YPG fought other terrorist groups only to pursue its own territorial aims, he explained: “The aim of the PYD/YPG in its struggle against Daesh was to seize their territories and integrate them as part of the autonomous Kurdish region envisaged by them.” The U.S. had enlisted the PYD/YPG to fight Daesh, while Turkey objected that using one terror group to fight another makes no sense. Messo said the PYD/YPG and Daesh are both terror groups, differing only in aims, and sometimes even working together. “For example, the BBC showed that the PYD/YPG signed an agreement with Daesh. And, according to our own sources, the PYD/YPG took former Daesh members with them,” he added. Messo said it is the PYD/YPG — the Syrian branch of the [MARXIST] terrorist PKK….

Put the burden of uncertainty on your opponent: more advice from Richelieu By David P. Goldman

https://pjmedia.com/columnist/david-p-goldman/

Turkey has begun an offensive against America’s Kurdish allies in northern Syria, and warned it will send a flood of refugees into Europe if anyone complains. Few leaders in recent memory have bluffed so successfully with such a weak hand. The “Turkish” part among American strategists, e.g. the Wall Street Journal’s Walter Russell Mead, have argued that we need Turkey in the NATO alliance and therefore have to do a lot of what Turkey demands. Dr. Mead has a point, and makes his argument in good faith, but I do not think this approach will succeed. China already has bailed out Turkey and Russia is becoming its most important supplier of military systems. The choice appears to lie between abandoning the Kurds, our allies in the fight against ISIS, and “losing” Turkey.

There is another way to go about this. It isn’t pretty, but if I were Secretary of State, I would consider it carefully.

The following interview with the late Cardinal Richelieu materialized in Asia Times on Feb. 5, 2018. Of course, I would never advocate the terrible things that the butcher of the Thirty Years War proposes, but I thought his point of view worth recalling to public attention. He ridicules American policy for seeking stabiity in the Middle East and proposes instead to embrace the instability and turn it to America’s advantage.

Guidance from the Ghost of Richelieu

Five years ago I interviewed Cardinal Richelieu, the evil genius of the Thirty Years War and best known as the bad guy in ‘The Three Musketeers.” Richelieu is long dead, to be sure, and Asia Times does not print interviews with ghosts, so I had to make up the answers for him. But I tried to do so in the spirit of Europe’s supreme grand strategist, who undermined the hegemony of the Hapsburg Emperors and established France as Europe’s dominant power for a century and a half, albeit at an unspeakable human cost. Now that a new ‘Thirty Years War’ is underway in the Middle East, I returned to the secret places beneath Paris to interview Richelieu once again. As a matter of full disclosure, I made up the answers this time, too.

CHARLOTTE’S NEWS WEB

www.nydailynews.com/news/world/photos-life-child-bride-article-1.1182062

PICTURED: Agony of the child brides forced to marry as young as SIX to men up to EIGHT TIMES their age

https://abcnews.go.com/International/photos/pregnant-child-brides-15157730/image-15157834

Child Brides from Pregnant Child Brides: Frightened and Vulnerable

Right from Wrong: Merkel’s shameless deflection The killer, since identified as 27-year-old Stephan Balliet, is a white, right-wing extremist/neo-Nazi, not one of the flood of Muslim migrants German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed. Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-Merkels-shameless-deflection-604267

Israelis were jolted on Wednesday night by the news of a shooting attack outside a German synagogue and Jewish cemetery earlier in the day, during Yom Kippur services. 
 
When all the Hebrew TV channels opened their 8:00 p.m. broadcasts – after the customary annual airwave blackout in honor of Judaism’s highest and most somber holy day – the national sigh of “here we go again” accompanied the meal that ended the 25-hour fast. The frightening increase in the frequency and degree of antisemitic violence in Germany has become a topic of international reportage, after all. So this latest disturbing assault, which left two people dead and two others wounded, did not come as a complete surprise.
 
Another upsetting and predictable aspect of the incident – involving a man clad in military fatigues and equipped with a GoPro camera trying to shoot his way into the locked and guarded synagogue to massacre Jews – was the way in which Israeli anchors stressed repeatedly that the perpetrator “is a native German, not an immigrant.” 
 
In other words, the killer, since identified as 27-year-old Stephan Balliet, is a white, right-wing extremist/neo-Nazi, not one of the flood of Muslim migrants from the Middle East whom German Chancellor Angela Merkel has welcomed into her country. 

Turkey Flooding Europe with Migrants by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14970/turkey-europe-migrants

The Greek government has said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan personally controls the migration flows to Greece and turns them on and off to extract more money and other political concessions from the European Union. In recent months, the Turkish government has repeatedly threatened to open the floodgates of mass migration to Greece, and, by extension, to the rest of Europe.

“If they [the European Union] do not give us the necessary support in this struggle, then we will not be able to stop the 3.5 million refugees from Syria and another two million people who will reach our borders from Idlib.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“If we open the floodgates, no European government will be able to survive for more than six months. We advise them not to try our patience.” — Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu.

More than six million migrants are believed to be waiting in countries around the Mediterranean to cross into Europe, according to a classified German government report leaked to the newspaper Bild… More than three million others are waiting in Turkey.

Greece has once again become “ground zero” for Europe’s migration crisis. More than 40,000 migrants arrived in Greece during the first nine months of 2019, and more than half of those arrived during just the past three months, according to new data compiled by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The surge in migrant arrivals to Greece during the third quarter of 2019 — 5,903 arrivals in July; 9,341 in August; and 10,294 in September — has coincided with repeated threats by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and other members of his government to flood Europe with Muslim migrants.

Boris Johnson’s Bold Brexit Proposal by Malcolm Lowe

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14964/boris-johnson-brexit-proposal

It must be acknowledged that Johnson’s proposal for a replacement Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland has evident merits. But if EU leaders do agree – even against expectations – that Johnson’s proposal is the way forward, why rush to complete all the legal complexities of that agreement in a few days instead of gratefully accepting an extension of time in order to let a good job be done?

If Johnson’s approach does not get off the ground, the UK could still fall back to one last attempt to leave without no-deal. It is to demand a change to Article 20 of the original Protocol, the so-called “Backstop,” such that instead of enduring for ever unless both sides agree to terminate it, the Protocol will endure for only an initial year, but can be renewed annually if both sides agree to continue it. If the EU refuses even this minimal demand, then it will have made it clear to the UK government, Parliament and the public that no-deal is indeed the UK’s only way of escape.

In the turbulent weeks since Boris Johnson became prime minister of the United Kingdom, he has registered his first comparative success with his proposal for a change in Theresa May’s Brexit deal. On the one hand, he has forced the EU negotiators to abandon their adamant refusal hitherto to reopen the wording of that deal; on the other, his proposal – with its firm emphasis upon the UK’s essential interests – has united almost all Conservative MPs behind it.

The contrast with his previous missteps is striking. There was his unprecedented, unlawful and unnecessary attempt to prorogue Parliament for a whole month instead of the customary few days. This, in turn, prompted opponents of a no-deal Brexit to rush through legislation on the one day left before the prorogation: the European Union (Withdrawal) (No 2) Act 2019, which orders Johnson to request from the EU a deferral of the looming Brexit day from October 31 to January 31 if there is still no agreed Brexit deal on October 19. Johnson then expelled from the party 21 Conservative MPs who voted for that legislation – also unprecedented in recent times. Remember that dozens of Conservatives, including Johnson himself twice, had voted against May’s deal earlier in the year, yet she did not even think of punishing them. With their expulsion, moreover, Johnson lost a majority in the Commons for anything.

Iran: Acting to Make Trump a One-Term President by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14979/iran-trump-elections

The second initiative in which the Iranian government is engaged is to increase tensions in the region, destabilize the region, target the global energy market, cause oil and gas prices to increase, and then blame all these problems on the Trump administration.

The threat Iran poses to US presidential elections is real and urgent — for Iran to be stopped, it should finally be held accountable.

Do not underestimate the power of the Iranian government to influence public opinion in the US, interfere in elections, and sway the 2020 presidential elections in its favor.

Iran began its post-Islamic-Revolution era by taking 52 American diplomats and citizens from the US Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979 and holding them as hostages for 444 days.

The newly established theocratic government evidently wanted to project the new power it possessed to manipulate its new enemy, which it called the “Great Satan.” Minutes after President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, however, on January 20, 1981, Iran released the hostages. It was obvious that Iran’s move to create the hostage crisis and the inability of President Jimmy Carter to bring the American citizens home was doubtless one of the reasons for his defeat in the presidential election of 1980.

Similarly, with recent developments in President Donald J. Trump’s administration, the ruling mullahs of Iran are taking concrete steps to try to make him just a one-term president.

UK: New Subversive “Guidance” for Journalists by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14906/britain-guidance-journalists

Policy Exchange’s report on the leaked guidance gives rise for concern. In the words of the report, the guidance, “seems designed to bind the hands of UK newspapers when it comes to reporting on stories relating to Islam and Muslims – with potentially serious long-term consequences for the workings of a free and independent press”. — Policy Exchange Report, “Eroding the Free Press,” by Will Heaven and Sir John Jenkins.

As the Policy Exchange authors write, “In all of this, there seems to be a suggestion that journalists should take a different approach to covering Muslims than that employed towards other faith groups. This all seems remarkably ill-conceived. If we ruled out reporting on matters specific to Muslims not only would we miss some big issues – not least the threat from Islamist extremist terrorism, which continues to dwarf other global terrorist threats – but we would also be unable to report properly on discrimination against Muslims. More generally, we must ask: is it really the role of journalists to consider community cohesion before truth and accuracy? And what are the potential consequences of such an ethos?” — Policy Exchange Report, “Eroding the Free Press,” by Will Heaven and Sir John Jenkins.

“As Policy Exchange has previously pointed out, one of the things that makes the APPG’s attempts to institutionalise an illiberal definition of Islamophobia so unpalatable, is the fact that it resembles a form of blasphemy law, protecting Islam specifically, implemented by the back door”. — Policy Exchange Report, “Eroding the Free Press,” by Will Heaven and Sir John Jenkins.