RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-return-handshake-11568578218

Since President Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Islamic Republic has tested U.S. resolve with military escalation across the Middle East. Likely Iranian involvement in attacks on Saudi oil production over the weekend marks a new phase in this destabilizing campaign, and it’s no coincidence this happened as Mr. Trump is considering a softer approach to Tehran.

Saudi Arabia reduced daily oil production by about 5.7 million barrels after strikes against facilities in the country’s east on Saturday. Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed credit, though Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that Iran was responsible and there was “no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.” Iran denies this, but it usually uses proxies to avoid a direct confrontation and there are no other plausible culprits.

This is more than a local dispute between two regional powers. The attacks have caused a roughly 5% reduction in global daily oil production. The Saudis have promised to dip into reserves to offset the losses, but oil prices could rise and harm an already fragile global economy if the Kingdom isn’t able to restore production fast enough.

American shale oil production can take up some of the slack but that would take time. Long-term damage to oil supplies would increase the pressure on the U.S. to ease sanctions on Iranian oil exports, which Mr. Trump has been considering.

The attack continues what is already a hot proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, an important U.S. ally. The extent of the damage raises doubts about how well the Saudis can defend against future drone assaults. Saudi intelligence and air defenses don’t seem up to the job. Saudi revenues would be hurt by a reduction in oil output, and uncertainty will complicate an initial public offering of the country’s national oil company, Aramco.

Even if the Houthis didn’t carry out this attack, Iran is backing their war against an Arab coalition in Yemen. The Houthis have become increasingly aggressive in attacking sites in Saudi Arabia and oil tankers in the Red Sea. If the Saudis cede Yemen to the Houthis, Iran will have won another proxy war, this one on the Arabian peninsula. The Saudis are far from ideal allies, but U.S. Senators who want to end U.S. support for Riyadh should consider the alternative of Iranian regional dominance.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14882/russia-solvophilia-occidentalists

Russia may be talking in Slavophile tones but deep in its heart, desires to be readmitted into the Western camp. This is seen in the way Russians dress, the kind of food they eat, the beverages they drink, the music they listen to, the TV shows and the films they watch, and the books they read. Queues in front of McDonald’s joints may be a vulgar sign of creeping Westernization.

The results of this month’s municipal elections, declared last week, show a clear setback for Putinism in its Slavophile version. The president’s United Russia party lost more than a third of its seats in Moscow that, as in other metro-centric countries, has set the tone for national politics at least since the 1920s.

Putin wants to fool the Western democracies into helping negotiate a bad patch before he returns to his old shenanigans. President Macron’s call for reintegrating Russia into the G7 summit last month was dismissed by other participants even before it made it onto the agenda.

If every nation, like every language, has its grammar, what is the grammar that might help us understand Russia today?

Even the least observant foreign visitors to Russia these days are likely quickly to discover the first rule of that metaphorical grammar: the unity of opposites. On one side, we have a Russia that is attached almost obsessively to its “otherness”. On the other, we have a Russia that craves after “sameness” as a member of the family of Western nations.

This “otherness-sameness” duality is not new in Russian history.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/sahar_the_blue_girl_of_iran_struck_down.html

Like Neda, a young woman whose chest was ripped up by the bullet of a murdering Islamist as she peacefully walked with a throng of peaceful demonstrators, Sahar’s tragedy gives us a glimpse of the true face of Islamofascism and its brutality inside Iran.  The Sahars and Nedas of Iran shall remain as an eternal testament to the depravity of Islamofascism and the horrors it has visited upon innocent people.  And these young victims of the Islamic tyranny are by no means isolated cases.  Tragically, women as a sex suffer incredibly under Islam.  Women are systematically exploited, maltreated, and disenfranchised.

Twenty-nine-year-old Sahar Khodayari died several days after setting herself on fire on September 2, 2019 outside a courthouse, where she had been summoned after being arrested for trying to enter Tehran’s Azadi Stadium in March dressed as a man.

Her nickname was the “Blue Girl” because of her favorite team’s color, which is blue, the famous Tehran club Esteghlal or former Taj.  She was reportedly told she could be sentenced to six months in prison.

As soon as this brutal Islamic regime took the power in 1979 in an Islamic invasion, it directed its efforts to cleanse Iran of the symbol of its Persian cultural heritage.  The Muslims particularly went after women.  Sharia law was implemented.  The Blue Girl’s only “offense” was being a woman in a country where women face discrimination that is established in law and plays out in the most appalling ways imaginable in every area of their lives, and even in sports.

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/09/prompted-elan-carr-becomes-1st-us-special-envoy-on-antisemitism-to-acknowledge-the-disproportionate-global-pandemic-of-muslim-antisemitism-video-transcript/

“Virtually all of the violence against Jews in Western Europe has been from the Arab [Muslim] and [broader] Muslim population—virtually all.”—Elan Carr

U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Elan Carr, participated in a panel discussion of Antisemitism Tuesday evening, 9/10/19, sponsored by Bnai Zion, in Manhattan, which can be viewed in its entirety here. Addressing a question posed to him which was introduced by this tweet of mine and ADL data [here; here; here] I have written about extensively, for example here, which demonstrate the alarming excess prevalence (i.e., 2 to 4.5-fold all other religious groups or agnostics, studied) of extreme Muslim Antisemitism worldwide, Elan Carr became the first such Special Envoy to openly acknowledge the global pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism.

TRANSCRIPT

[Moderator, Rabbi Elie Abadie]: “Let me just introduce this section by saying that today (Tuesday 9/10/19) Andrew Bostom tweeted https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/1171393543925092352, he’s the author of The Legacy of Jihad, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, Sharia Versus Freedom, –so he tweeted today that ‘The Islamic Society of North America [ISNA] conference featured Sanders, Bernie Sanders, and Linda Sarsour, promoted mainstream Islamic, Al-Azhar-endorsed manual on Islamic law*, which admonishes Muslims to wage jihad on Jews.’ [*“Reliance of the Traveller,” certified  by Sunni Islam’s Vatican equivalent, Al-Azhar University as conforming to the contemporary ‘practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community.’]

https://pjmedia.com/trending/climate-activists-try-to-shut-down-heathrow-by-flying-drones-in-front-of-passenger-planes/

Brain-dead climate activists came up with the scathingly brilliant scheme of protesting against airplanes at Heathrow Airport by flying drones in front of passenger planes to prevent them from taking off or landing. I guess the climate activists got it in their heads that making airplanes crash would be an excellent way to reduce the world’s carbon footprint.

Fortunately, British police foiled their plan by jamming drone frequencies. Several nutcases were arrested and, for the moment, plane passengers have been spared the ordeal of being grounded by idiots who think threatening to kill people is a legitimate way of battling global warming.

Reuters:

“We’ve got a little technical glitch. The drone isn’t flying,” an unidentified campaigner says in the video, as another holds a drone in the air.

Determined to avoid disruption, police invoked extra powers to move people away from the area around the airport until Sunday morning.

“The order has been implemented to prevent criminal activity which poses a significant safety and security risk to the airport,” they said in a statement.

On Friday, they arrested five people in the vicinity of the airport, in addition to seven people who had been arrested on Thursday on suspicion of conspiracy to commit a public nuisance.

What makes this “protest” so ludicrous is that passenger planes are responsible for only a tiny percentage of carbon emissions.

Heathrow Pause is a splinter group of Extinction Rebellion, which blocked streets in central London this year. It had said it would fly the drones no higher than head height and had no wish to endanger life.

Air travel accounts for just 2.5% of global carbon emissions, but the industry is attempting to reconcile airlines’ growth plans with a pledge to cut carbon emissions.

https://madmimi.com/p/3c294f?pact=522126-154007720-7235361215-f8ab6d49db488d1618810b117c05cf6bb587e08a

I attach a very long piece below by Jay Solomon, the former national security reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

For those who don’t have time to read it in full, I have extracted some lines from it below and added one or two comments of my own.

One of the Trump administration’s point persons for the current US negotiations with North Korea is an Israeli-born American friend of mine, who travels regularly to meet with negotiators from the North Korean regime.

EXTRACTS AND COMMENTS
▪ North Korea and Israel, though separated by two oceans and 5,000 miles, have been engaged in low-intensity conflict and high-stakes spy games for more than five decades.

The so-called Hermit Kingdom in Pyongyang has been actively bolstering states hostile to Israel, and facilitating attacks on the Jewish state, since the 1960s. Despite occasional attempts to broker a truce between the two nations, the Israeli-North Korean relationship has been defined for decades by covert hostility and proxy conflict – a shadow war between the two nations. The pattern continues through the present day in North Korea’s alliance with Iran and Syria.

North Korea has long transferred military capabilities to Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Libya and Myanmar, including, in some cases, nuclear technologies or materials.

And yet despite this enmity, North Korea and Israel have also secretly engaged in intermittent diplomacy in recent decades to try and safeguard their national security, at times behind Washington’s back.

NORTH KOREA BEHIND ATTACK AT TEL AVIV AIRPORT

▪ For North Korea, confronting Israel emerged in the 1960s as a central plank in its campaign to fight U.S.-backed governments. The communist regime aggressively funded and trained Arab and other terrorists who targeted Israel in the 1960s and 1970s.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14877/iran-britain-shipping-seizure

The ensuing diplomatic stand-off between London and Tehran eventually resulted in Britain agreeing to release the Grace One, but only after the British authorities received written assurances from Iran that the oil would not be delivered to Syria.

Now it appears that Iran has deliberately misled the British government about its intentions after satellite photographs revealed the ship, which has now been renamed the Adrian Darya 1, is in Syria, where its $130 million oil cargo has been handed over to the Assad regime.

“Anyone who said the Adrian Darya-1 wasn’t headed to #Syria is in denial. Tehran thinks it’s more important to fund the murderous Assad regime than provide for its own people. We can talk, but #Iran’s not getting any sanctions relief until it stops lying and spreading terror!” — Ambassador John Bolton, then US National Security Advisor, September 7, 2019.

The sorry saga of the Iranian oil tanker that was originally seized by Britain before making its way to Syria to unload its cargo in breach of EU sanctions highlights the confusion that lies at the heart of the British government’s policy towards Tehran.

The Iranian-registered tanker, which at the time sailed under the name Grace One, was seized by British Royal Marines in early July off the coast of Gibraltar on suspicion that it was delivering its cargo of 2.1 million barrels of oil to Syria, a clear violation of EU sanctions that are in place against the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Iran responded two weeks later by seizing the British-registered tanker Stena Impero as it passed through the Strait of Hormuz, thereby causing deep embarrassment for the government of then British Prime Minister Theresa May, which had failed to put adequate measures in place to protect British shipping from any act of Iranian retaliation.

The ensuing diplomatic stand-off between London and Tehran eventually resulted in Britain agreeing to release the Grace One, but only after the British authorities received written assurances from Iran that the oil would not be delivered to Syria.

Now it appears that Iran has deliberately misled the British government about its intentions after satellite photographs revealed the ship, which has now been renamed the Adrian Darya 1, is in Syria, where its $130 million oil cargo has been handed over to the Assad regime.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/england-europe-never-fully-integrated/

Britain has a last chance to re-embrace the free-market democratic world that it once helped to create.

British prime minister Boris Johnson is desperate to translate the British public’s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union into a concrete Brexit.

But the real issue is far older and more important than whether 52 percent of Britain finally became understandably aggrieved by the increasingly anti-democratic and German-controlled European Union.

England is an island. Historically, politically, and linguistically, it was never permanently or fully integrated into European culture and traditions.

The story of Britain has mostly been about conflict with France, Germany, or Spain. The preeminence of the Royal Navy, in the defiant spirit of its sea lords, ensured that European dictators from Napoleon to Hitler could never set foot on British soil. As British admiral John Jervis reassured his superiors in 1801 amid rumors of an impending Napoleonic invasion, “I do not say, my lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea.”

Britain’s sea power, imperialism, parliamentary government, and majority-Protestant religion set it apart from its European neighbors — and not just because of its geographical isolation.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14815/turkey-religious-backlash

It is notable, however, that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s efforts to create “devout generations” of Muslims, through the establishment of numerous state-funded Imam Hatip religious schools, may not be having the desired results.

“Since [last summer], seventeen students with headscarves who identify as atheists have come to my office and [told me that] the reason [for their atheism] is the actions of the people who say they represent religion.” — Dr. İhsan Fazlıoğlu, Istanbul Medeniyet University, T24, March 19, 2018.

“The religion that the [Turkish] government is trying to ‘impose’ on society is emotionally unsatisfying: it is loveless.” — Professor Murat Belge, Head of the Department of Comparative Literature, Bilgi University, Istanbul, to Gatestone.

“Mosques or churches in your neighborhoods are no longer your only sources of information… Of course, societal pressures and the situation of the country are also [important] elements, but they are only elements that get the questioning started. This situation makes many people ask, ‘Is this what my religion is about?’ or they say, ‘If this is religion, I am out.'” [Emphasis added] — Selin Özkohen, head of the Atheism Association, Euronews, March 19, 2019.

In a radio interview on July 23, Temel Karamollaoğlu — the head of Turkey’s Islamist opposition party, Felicity — accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of driving young people, particularly those from religious families, away from Islam and towards deism, a belief in a non-interventionist creator, or a god of nature.

According to a 2018 survey conducted by Turkey’s leading polling company, KONDA, Karamollaoğlu appears to be correct, at least about the growing number of young Turks who no longer consider themselves “religious” Muslims.