RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://worldisraelnews.com/saudi-arabia-reports-

An oil pipeline that runs across Saudi Arabia was hit Tuesday by drones, the Saudi energy minister said, as regional tensions flared just days after what the kingdom called an attack on two of its oil tankers near the Persian Gulf.

While both President Donald Trump and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said they were not planning for conflict, the volatility was felt in oil markets with benchmark Brent crude trading over $71 a barrel, up more than $1 on the day.

The pipeline that runs from the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province to a Red Sea port was shut down, but Saudi Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih Al-Falih vowed that the production and export of Saudi oil would not be interrupted.

The Houthis, who are at war with Saudi Arabia, said earlier Tuesday they launched seven drones targeting vital Saudi installations, without elaborating. They later claimed responsibility for the pipeline attack in comments broadcast by Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Sari.

In a statement carried by the state-run Saudi Press Agency, al-Falih called the pipeline attack “cowardly,” saying recent acts of sabotage against the kingdom were targeting not only Saudi Arabia but also the safety of the world’s energy supply and global economy.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/china-strategy-build-economic-military-technological-superiority/

Slowly but steadily they build up their economic, military, and technological superiority at our expense

The Chinese Communist government does not have so much a strategy to translate its economic ascendance into global hegemony as several strategies. All of them are brilliantly insidious.

On matters of trade, China is always flexible in responding to critics of its asymmetrical, 30-year mercantilism. In the initial stages of Westernization, China was exempted from criticism over serial copyright and patent infringement, dumping, and espionage. Western elites assumed that these improprieties were just speed bumps on the eventual Chinese freeway to liberalism. Supposedly the richer China got, the more progressive it would become. Huge trade deficits or military technological appropriation were small prices to pay for an evolving billion-person Palo Alto or Upper West Side.

After a time, the now-worrisome huge trade deficits and Chinese cheating were further contextualized as “our fault.” The Tom Friedman school of journalism chided our clumsy republican government as lacking Chinese authoritarian efficiency that could by fiat connect new planned utopias by high-speed rail and power them with solar-panel farms. The Wall Street–investor version of this school saw flabby, pampered Americans getting their just deserts as more productive and deserving Chinese workers outhustled and outproduced us. In such tough-love sermonizing, the more Michigan or Pennsylvania rusted, the quicker culpable Americans would either emulate China or die. China of course again agreed.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273544/inside-brexit-bruce-bawer

Paul Oakley is a London barrister who’s also been a member of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) leadership since 2011. In No-One Likes Us, We Don’t Care he has given us a brisk, gossipy, whimsical diary of these years, during which a small pack of Brexiteers who were alternately dismissed and demonized by the British political and media establishment soared in influence – a process that climaxed in the stunning referendum of June 23, 2016 – only to lose its high-profile leader, Nigel Farage, and, as Brexit itself stumbled, plunge back into insignificance, after which, under Gerard Batten, it began a turnaround that’s still in process, even as the fate of Brexit remains in question.

An ardent opponent of Brussels rule – he proudly boasts of burning the EU flag and tearing the Maastricht Treaty in two at a conference – Oakley tells a rollicking story of political infighting, personality conflicts, organizational screw-ups, negative press, dull meetings, thrilling speeches, endless hours of conversations (and dart games) in pubs, good and bad polls, good and bad election results, sex scandals, financial scandals, scandals that pop up because some party flack said something that some reporter considered homophobic or xenophobic or racist, defections by Tories (beginning with Oakley himself) to UKIP, and, later, defections (not many) by UKIP members to Anne Marie Waters’s newly formed For Britain Party.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273723/how-us-citizen-may-soon-control-libya-victor-soehngen

As evermore congressional hearings dominate American headlines, a shadowy leader and a massive new offensive are quietly engulfing Africa’s most oil-rich country. In a place already marred by violence, this is different. The new operation began in March and is both larger and better coordinated than anything since the 2011 revolution. Having already secured the nation’s largest oil terminals, A force of 60,000 well-equipped men are now attacking the gates of Tripoli, threatening the UN-backed government forces defending the city. If their successful, this could dramatically change the balance of power and US interests in the region.

Much of the world seems split on the situation or unaware it is happening. Egypt, the UAE, and Moscow are supporting the offensive. France and Italy- whom both have competing oil interests in Libya- have divided the EU on the matter. The UN has predictably condemned the offensive but offered no tangible solution. Meanwhile, the State Dept called for an “immediate halt to these military operations against the Libyan Capital” the same week as President Trump praised the leader behind it.

The attack is being led by a former CIA asset and US citizen with a storied past. He is someone that Al-Qaeda has called “an enemy of Islam”. An old Gadhafi loyalist turned revolutionary and cunning enemy to ISIS. The polarizing figure who has helped both unify and divide modern Libya. He is managing to attack an internationally recognized government with Russian weapons and the complicity of everyone else- but who is he?

A man long prepared to exploit the chaos: “Field Marshall “Khalifa Haftar.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/vladimir-bukovsky-legendary-dissident-conversation/

All Soviet dissidents are legendary, to one degree or another. Vladimir Bukovsky is especially so. He is held in awe by people whom the rest of us hold in awe. I’m speaking of his fellow dissidents. Bukovsky is a dissident’s dissident, so to speak.

A book of his, which originally appeared in 1995, is now being published in English for the first time. On his back patio, amid chirping birds, I talk with him about this and many other subjects.

And where is the back patio? In Cambridge, England, where Bukovsky has lived since the mid-1970s.

Bukovsky has had mighty health struggles — but he indulges his listener, his interviewer, gladly and ably.

• He was born in 1942 and quickly became dissident. Enrolled at Moscow State University for biology, he was kicked out at age 19. He had criticized the Komsomol, i.e., the Young Communist League.

I ask him, “Do you think you were born this way? Born to stick your neck out, born to get into trouble?” “Yeah,” he says. “There’s nothing you can do about it. I would feel uncomfortable if I tried to hide what I believe. It’s against my nature.”

https://saraacarter.com/leftist-finnish-party-embraces-homophobic-racist-mp/

How odd – the Social Democrat Party (SDP) in Finland just minted a brand new member of Parliament who insulted gays, Somalis, America, Israel, Jews and Sunni Muslims. The SDP is the leftist party of progressives, kind of like the Social Democrat wing of our own Democratic party. Notwithstanding their political “convictions,” the party has stood by the man whose election victory last month gave the SDP the majority over the right wing Finns Party.

The 35-year-old MP in question, pro-Iran Iraqi refugee Hussein al-Taee, enabled the SDP to reach 40 members in the Parliament, narrowly besting the Finns Party showing of 39. For months Al-Taee denied authorship of the offensive statements, that is until his party won the election.

Why a leftist party embraces as one of its own someone who ridiculed gays or Somalis on his Facebook page at first blush is puzzling. His homophobic post was perhaps the most shocking. In 2011 al-Taee posted a scandalously scatological reference to a gay Finn who attended a public event with Adam Lambert, an internationally known gay entertainer.

It is less surprising, if no less inappropriate, that Al-Taee slammed the U.S., Jews and Israel, and even Sunni Muslims.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/0/european-parliament-elections-2019-date-does-uk-vote-even/

With the date for the European Elections coming closer, we take a look at when the vote is, why we are still expected to take part and what it means for British MEPs.

Here’s everything you need to know ahead of polling day in May.
When is the vote?

The polls will take place on May 23 2019.
Why is the UK taking part?

Because Brexit has now been delayed for six months, with a new date set for October 31 2019, which means the UK must now participate in EU polls.
Seems crazy if the UK is leaving anyway. Can EU polls still be avoided?

Yes, but the timetable is very tight indeed. Leading Cabinet members are determined to avoid holding the elections, but that will mean Parliament agreeing on the Withdrawal Agreement well before the end of April.

The EU are insistent that the Withdrawal Agreement must be approved and all of the implementing legislation must be passed to avoid the need to hold EU elections.

Given the generally low expectations of an imminent breakthrough in cross-party talks, the overwhelming likelihood now is that the UK will take part in the polls.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14210/chinese-pakistan-sex-trafficking

Once purchased, women and girls are typically locked in a room and raped repeatedly, with the goal of getting them pregnant quickly so they can provide a baby for the family. After giving birth, some are allowed to escape — but forced to leave their children behind.

That women and girls are being abused throughout Asia is sickening enough, and warrants immediate attention by the international community. But that Christian girls in particular are being targeted in Pakistan makes the current prostitution ring a double human-rights abuse that needs urgent looking into.

The New York-based international non-governmental organization, Human Rights Watch, warned on April 26 that “Pakistan’s government should be alarmed by recent reports of trafficking of women and girls to China. These allegations are disturbingly similar to the pattern of trafficking of ‘brides’ to China from at least five other Asian countries.”

One week later, Pakistani authorities arrested 12 suspects — eight Chinese nationals and four Pakistanis — in a case involving the sex trafficking of young Pakistani women to China. Many had been sent as so-called “brides.” Most of them, some as young as 13, belong to Pakistan’s Christian minority.

After the arrests, Jameel Ahmed Khan, a senior official at Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), told Gatestone Institute that a preliminary investigation revealed that the sex traffickers lured young Christian girls from poverty-stricken families to China by promising them a “better life” there — and providing their parents with a monthly stipend. Khan said that although it appears that hundreds of girls have been sold this way into prostitution, the exact number is under investigation.

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/2019-south-africa-election-results-national-provincial-all-votes/

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s ruling ANC won re-election on Friday with an absolute majority in parliament, results showed, but with diminished support, complicating economic revival and anti-corruption efforts.

From ballot papers running out, scanners malfunctioning and allegations of double voting, more than half of the parties contesting the 2019 elections have vowed to take action against the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC).

Nonetheless, after a lengthy counting and auditing process, the results are out. Well, almost. The IEC first said they expected to reach the 90% counting mark by 21:00 on Thursday, but that turned out to be widely ambitious.

Then, they expected everything to be concluded by midnight on 10 May. After that clock struck, there were a few carriages yet to turn into pumpkins.

But the completion was at nearly 99% by 00:12 with Gauteng, one of the most hotly contested provinces, having the largest number of voting districts outstanding, the total vote count completed was 91%.

The rest of the results were pretty clear, however.