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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13064/turkey-alliances-russia-china

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Chinese President Xi Jinping are discussing more trade — and in their local currencies, rebuffing the dollar.

As of now, Turkey sees the United States as an ungrateful ally and Russia is Turkey’s new love affair. For Erdoğan, it is still “Russia time.”

Germany needs Turkey’s cooperation in halting the flow of Islamic jihadists currently stationed in Syria but who may always use Turkish territory to reach the EU. Turkey needs German technology, investment and money.

Turkey’s President does it all the time. In 2009, then-prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused China of genocide for the deaths of hundreds of Uighur Turks. Less than a decade later, with his newfound “Eurasianism,” Erdoğan’s Turkey and President Xi Jinping’s China are discussing more trade — and in their local currencies, rebuffing the dollar .

In 2015, the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian Air Force fighter jet along Turkey’s troubled border with Syria. Russia responded strongly in 2016 by imposing punishing sanctions on Turkey. At the time, Erdoğan was courting Washington. In fear of further — and even military — punishments from Moscow, Erdoğan described Turkey’s relations with Washington as a “strategic partnership.”

A Turkish apology for the downed Russian plane eventually ended sanctions in 2016 and Erdoğan, once again, rediscovered his anti-Western, pro-Eurasian self. This time, Erdoğan described Turkey’s relations with Russia as a strategic partnership. This strategic partnership will probably survive until Erdoğan will have to turn to his NATO partners after potential — and possibly serious — divergences with Russia over the future of Syria.

As of now, Turkey sees the United States as an ungrateful ally and Russia is Turkey’s new love affair. Earlier this year, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum at a time when Turkey’s national currency had lost 40% of its value since the start of the year. The nominal NATO allies had found themselves in a multitude of geostrategic and other disputes, including Turkey’s arrest of an America pastor on bogus terrorism and espionage charges (he is now under house arrest in Turkey).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/france-freezes-iranian-assets-over-bomb-plot-blamed-on-tehran-1538487926

France froze assets of Iran’s intelligence agency and two agents in retaliation for an alleged Iranian terror plot on French soil, seeking to punish Tehran for planning terror activities in Europe even as the French government tries to salvage the Iran nuclear deal.

The freeze will apply for at least six months to two officials—Assadollah Asadi and Saeid Hashemi Moghadam—whom European authorities allege were involved in the foiled attack, and the internal security directorate of Iran’s intelligence ministry.

The moves mark an attempt by the French government to discipline Iran for a plot it has linked directly to Iranian government officials without undermining talks over the Iranian nuclear accord, Europe’s top diplomatic priority with Tehran. European governments are scrambling to keep Iran signed on to the deal after Washington withdrew from the agreement and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.

The U.S. and Israel, Iran’s main international opponents, have used the foiled attack to urge Europe to abandon its support for the accord. They allege that Iran has an extensive covert-operations network that is hunting down opponents of the regime on European soil.

The alleged Iranian operation “confirms the necessity of a forceful approach in our relations with Iran,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Tuesday.

It remains unclear what assets the Iranian intelligence officials and the directorate hold in France, if any. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-n-atomic-agency-rebuffs-israeli-criticism-over-iran-sites-1538494912

The United Nations atomic agency hit back Tuesday at Israeli claims it is failing to police Iran’s nuclear work, rebuffing criticisms of the agency’s credibility.

The dispute comes as European countries, China and Russia seek to uphold the 2015 deal that placed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities, a deal which the Trump administration quit in May. Israel has consistently opposed the agreement, arguing it wouldn’t prevent Tehran obtaining a nuclear weapon.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency oversees compliance with the agreement and polices Iran’s nuclear work. Tehran claims its nuclear program, which was scaled back under the 2015 deal, was for peaceful purposes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has twice alleged over the past six months that Iran is cheating on the deal and is still harboring a nuclear-weapons program.

In April, Mr. Netanyahu said Israeli agents had extracted thousands of documents and material from what he alleged was a nuclear archive in Tehran. The information was passed to Washington and to the IAEA.

Last week he showed images of what he said was a secret atomic warehouse in Tehran that he said the Iranian government is now trying to cleanse. Iran has denied the claims.

Speaking at the U.N. last week, Mr. Netanyahu said that despite sharing the nuclear archive information with the IAEA, the agency had “still not taken any action” and that he was therefore going public in disclosing the alleged nuclear site.

“Well, Mr. Amano, do the right thing,” he said of IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano. “Go inspect this atomic warehouse. Immediately. Before the Iranians finish clearing it out…And Mr. Amano, while you’re at it, inspect the other sites we told you about. Once and for all, tell the world the truth about Iran.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-pivots-to-china-with-nafta-deal-in-hand-1538431208

White House officials are betting that concluding a trade deal with Mexico and Canada will give them more ammunition in their high-stakes battle with China on economic issues and national security.

A renegotiated North American Free Trade Agreement, Trump advisers argue, removes the possibility that a trade war could break out on the continent and will make North America a more attractive place for investment.

When combined with U.S. tariffs against China, which boost the costs of production there, foreign companies will start moving investment out of China, the administration calculates. That would weaken China’s ability to produce next-generation technology and put additional pressure on Beijing to make trade concessions sought by the U.S.

The U.S. will “reclaim a supply chain that has been off-shored to the world,” President Trump said at a press conference Monday.

Former White House strategist Steven Bannon said the Trump strategy from the outset was to pull investment out of China and remake global supply chains, but then the effort got thrown off track when administration deputies battled over steel and other trade issues and the U.S. launched fights with Europe, Canada and other allies.

“Nafta was the key to pick the lock on the global supply chain,” he said.

Some big technology companies have said privately that they have begun weighing whether to shift some production out of China to avoid U.S. tariffs. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13063/turkey-mosques-christianity

While Turkey’s latest mosque is being inaugurated in Germany, the greatest Christian Orthodox theological school has remained closed for almost 50 years by the order of the Turkish government. Moreover, less than a kilometer away from the shuttered Christian seminary, a major new center of Islamic studies spanning a total area of 200 acres is scheduled to be built.
The Greeks of Turkey — the remnants of the once great Byzantine Empire — are a severely persecuted and even almost completely exterminated people. They have been exposed, among other crimes against humanity, to a genocide, pogroms and forced deportations at the hands of multiple Turkish governments. As a result, there are only around 1,300 Greeks left in Istanbul. But in spite of its tiny size, the dying Greek community still suffers from discrimination and violations of its rights.
The Turkish government, which keeps the country’s greatest Christian theological school closed, is spending a large portion of its annual budget on the worldwide construction of mosques.

The Turkish government spends hundreds of millions of dollars building mosques as part of a long-term effort to promote Islam around the world. Many Muslims hope that new mosques throughout Europe will advance and facilitate their wish to spread Islam to non-Islamic countries and persuade the Christian “infidels” to abandon their faith in favor of Islam.

On September 29, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated Turkey’s latest European mosque, “The Cologne Central Mosque,” located in the Cologne, Germany.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

‘We believe that significant parts of the UK media have failed their audiences by producing flawed reports that have contributed to an undeserved witch-hunt against the Labour leader [Jeremy Corbyn] and misdirected public attention away from antisemitism elsewhere.’

Flawed reporting on antisemitism claims against the Labour party Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis, Ken Loach, Brian Eno, Des Freedman, Justin Schlosberg and 21 others write about a recent report by the Media Reform Coalition.”We have long had serious concerns about the lack of due impartiality and accuracy in the reporting of allegations of antisemitism against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party. The recent report by the Media Reform Coalition examining coverage of Labour’s revised code of conduct on antisemitism shows that we are right to be concerned.”

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/hezbollah-south-of-the-border-a-rare-u-s-government-update/

As a working journalist in 2007, I traveled to Nicaragua to find out why Iran had just set up shop in the country after the election of U.S nemesis President Daniel Ortega. In Managua, I found the Iranian compound in a posh neighborhood, guarded by a coterie of Nicaraguan troops. For about three days, I episodically knocked on the tall metal gates asking to interview the new Iranian ambassador. “Soon, very soon, but not today,” a polite aide always told me.

Frustrated that all I was getting to see was the peak of a limp Iranian national flag jutting up over the tall gates, I clambered up to the roof of a tall neighboring building and shot some photos of the compound’s interior, spy-like, then went off to interview Sandinista leaders and regular citizens about the Iranians encamped in their country.

Then, just as now, there was good reason for public interest and inquiry. What Iran and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah were doing at that time in Venezuela, Bolivia, and the Tri-Border Area of South America mattered on several American security and foreign policy counts. For one thing, as the 1992 and 1994 Hezbollah bombings of Jewish facilities in Argentina demonstrated, Iran and Hezbollah in America’s backyard projected a credible threat of physical retaliation against American interests and allies should saber-rattling ever go military over Iran’s nuclear program. That’s no less true today, as President Trump and various Iranian leaders trade war cries over sanctions and nukes. A U.S.-Mexico border, meanwhile, beckons just a few countries away.

For years, the main source of updated reporting about Hezbollah south of our border came from think tanks and some media, sometimes citing sources of unknown provenance. Certainly, not much ever came from the U.S. government or American intelligence agencies tracking the situation because that stuff is kind of secret.

However, an update of sorts on Hezbollah in Latin America is available from an official government source. The U.S. State Department released its annual “Country Reports on Terrorism” last month, looking back on the year 2017. The information about Hezbollah in Latin America had to be stitched together from tidbits here and there in its 340 pages (the entirety of which can be read here). What gives this information more gravitas than other sources about Hezbollah in Latin America is that State Department analysts put it in, and it survived internal review processes. Decent intelligence probably backs it up.

For starters, Hezbollah has indeed “maintained an interest in the region” through 2017, primarily “in financial and fundraising activities.” The report also hints at darker Hezbollah pursuits in the region. Countries where Hezbollah has been active in recent years include Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Panama, Bolivia, and Argentina. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13058/yemen-crisis-united-states

Despite hard fighting and air strikes from Saudi and United Arab Emirates warplanes, the Houthis still control about one-quarter of Yemen’s sprawling desert lands, including its capital city, Sana’a.

The UAE Red Crescent Society recently distributed food aid in Southern Yemen, temporarily sparing some 1,000 families the horror of starvation. Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, directed the emergency response project.

Meanwhile, the Trump Administration, has quietly met the challenge. The U.S. has shipped more than $854 million in aid since the start of fiscal year 2017. The good news about the bad news is that the U.S. in engaged and helping.

“The world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” said U.N. World Food Program Executive Director David Beasley, is in Yemen.

He is not exaggerating. More than 75% of the country needs humanitarian aid—a greater percentage than any other nation on Earth, according to the U.S. Department of State

Some 18 million Yemenis (out of a total population of 22 million) are hungry, homeless and increasingly hopeless.

Civil war has driven them from their homes, burned their schools and bombed their hospitals. In the markets, the shelves are empty as few trucks arrive from sea ports and rebel roadblocks menace the few deliverymen that dare to take the roads into the sun-scorched interior. As a result, mothers, some too hungry to nurse their children, have flooded into refugee centers, overwhelming

international aid workers. The men, those who have not been murdered or maimed by war, wait in the shade of U.N. tents for food and medicine that too often is not enough.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-instincts-triumph-on-trade-1538433226

The midnight Sunday deal between U.S. and Canadian negotiators was a decisive victory for President Trump’s unconventional approach to trade. Even the administration’s fiercest critics are calling the revisions significant. For the first time, Mr. Trump and his allies can point to significant progress toward his core campaign promise of renegotiating trade deals to the benefit of the U.S. workers.

The U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement requires that cars be made with 75% North American components to escape tariffs. Forty percent of each car must also be manufactured in facilities where workers earn $16 an hour or more on average. Crucially, Canada has also cracked open the door to its dairy markets for American farmers.

President Trump’s critics will ask, not unfairly, if the incremental gains are worth a year of upheaval and strained relationships among the Nafta partners. Free-trade supporters will argue that the new, more restrictive pact will slow growth in the North American economy and erode the foundations of the global trading system. Indeed, there is no guarantee the USMCA will make it through Congress, especially if the Democrats take one or both houses in the coming midterms.

But for Mr. Trump, trade deals with Mexico, Canada and South Korea—and progress in discussions with the European Union and Japan—allow him to wrong-foot his critics once again. Contrary to the dire warnings in many quarters, Mr. Trump’s unorthodox methods haven’t set off ruinous trade wars or caused a global depression. And while the new agreements are hardly revolutionary, many Americans not familiar with the fiendish complexity of trade negotiations will take the USMCA as a sign that Mr. Trump’s aggressive methods work. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-wages-a-religious-war-against-ukraine-1538329125

Russia’s assault on Ukraine unfolded along military, economic and diplomatic lines. Vladimir Putin’s Moscow also is waging a less-noticed war on Ukraine’s religious sovereignty. To understand this, look at the structure of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The church consists of 14 autocephalous, or self-governing, churches. Religious and national identities often overlap, as in the Orthodox Churches of Russia, Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia. Each national church falls under a particular patriarchate, and the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople is considered first among equals.

In recent centuries, Ukrainian believers had belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. Shortly before the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, a council of bishops in Ukraine declared the church’s independence from Russia. In the ’90s, the new leader of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church—Filaret, the metropolitan bishop of Kiev—came under pressure from Russian church and security officials to resign. He refused. In 1997 the patriarch of the Russian church excommunicated him and declared his followers schismatics.

An estimated 12,300 parishes in Ukraine continue to follow Moscow and belong to what is known as the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Meantime, some 5,100 parishes switched to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kiev Patriarchate, led by Filaret.

Patriarch Filaret seeks recognition of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church as autonomous and independent, and he is about to get it. The ultimate arbiter in this dispute is Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople. On Sept. 23 he confirmed his intention to issue a tomos, or decree that confers the independence of a local church, for Ukraine.

The ties between the Kremlin and the Moscow Patriarchate are as old as Russia itself. Throughout its history, the Russian Orthodox Church had been subservient to the state and an unshakable supporter of autocracy. Since the late 15th century, the church provided Moscow’s rulers with a political theology of manifest destiny, asserting that Moscow had become the Second Jerusalem and the Third Rome (Constantinople being the second).

The emergence of the atheist Soviet state in 1922 dealt a severe blow to the church. The state confiscated most ecclesiastical property. It destroyed many churches while turning others into storage places. Steeples that rose high enough became jamming stations to prevent Voice of America or the BBC from reaching Soviet citizens. Few seminaries survived. Those that did, trained a small number of priests. The KGB infiltrated the priesthood, informing on clergy and promoting Soviet interests abroad.