RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20003/oligarchs-plutocrats

The disastrous consequences of oligarchs meddling in politics are too well known to need more attention here. But what about the plutocrats’ record? The question merits attention, because right now two American plutocrats are engaged in erratic attempts at solving two of the hottest international problems. Elon Musk, the owner of X (Twitter), Tesla and SpaceX, and reputed to be the richest on the man planet, says he has a plan to end the Russian war in Ukraine. For his part, George Soros, now operating through his son Alexander, is busy campaigning for a deal between Tehran and Washington to give President Joe Biden’s forthcoming election campaign the boost it badly needs.

George Soros has been engaged in his grand plan for bringing the Islamic Republic of Iran into the fold for almost three decades.

The scheme reached the peak of its success when the so-called “New York Boys” seized control of the executive branch of government in Tehran under President Hassan Rouhani, a British-educated junior cleric dreaming of leading the Islamic Republic into the “modern world”.

However, as might have been expected, the Soros scenario ultimately failed because “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has bigger dreams for the Islamic Republic. Khamenei believes that the West is heading south to decline while China, Russia and Iran have emerged as leaders for a “New World Order”. Now, however, we know that Khamenei’s leadership troika exists only in his fantasies. China and Russia treat Iran as an untouchable to be kept at arm’s length.

Will the plutocrat’s peace scenario work? I doubt it. Being anti-American and anti-Israel form the Iranian regime’s core identity.

In the 1920s, the American plutocrat Armand Hammer orchestrated a similar scenario with the newly-born Soviet Union under Vladimir Lenin. He persuaded Washington to give the Bolsheviks a chance to learn the beauty of getting rich through capitalism and trade. Hammer won the argument and Lenin won the civil war that without the “Great Satan ” pumping money into his war machine, he would have lost.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19988/belgian-f16s-ukraine

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, the most advanced Free World circles have been calling for Belgian F-16s to be delivered to Ukraine, and the Ukrainian pilots to be trained as quickly as possible. The fact is that by giving the Russians control of the skies, they are almost automatically guaranteed to keep their troops in the Donbass.

If the overall Western policy is just “not to let Ukraine lose” rather than to defeat an unprovoked attack against a democracy, Russian President Vladimir Putin will be emboldened to continue his aggression, and China will read the weakness as a green light to invade Taiwan… The US cannot afford another display of weakness or surrender. Putin sent his troops to the Ukraine in September of 2021, just a few weeks after the US abandoned Afghanistan. He got the message that “the coast was clear.” Unless there is a clear strategy to defeat Russia, anything short of that will look globally like Afghanistan, the sequel; another example of US fecklessness, and a good reason not to be an ally.

The environmentalists do not want to hear about the delivery of F-16s to Ukraine — first because they are pacifists, in the most ideological, surrendering sense of the word, and second because they know what the European environmental movement owes to Russia. The Russian government has massively financed German environmental foundations, and in addition, the Belgian Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten (Groen/Ecolo Party), was a 50% partner in a law firm called BLIXT, one of whose main clients was Gazprom — in other words, the Russian government.

These are just two of many examples of European environmentalists effectively becoming a fifth column in Europe of the Russian Federation….

There is also a technical obstacle: the F-35 fighter jets intended to replace Belgium’s F-16s will be delivered late, and the country cannot do without fighter jets. Its air force is the last sector in which the Belgian military is credible in the eyes of its partners.

According to sources who asked not to be named, the solution Belgium is heading for is the initial delivery of four F-16s to Ukraine, then progressively more when Belgium’s F-16s are replaced by F-35s.

However, a movement has recently emerged within the Belgian military, which considers that the Belgian interest is that on the one hand the Russians do not sweep away the Ukrainians and on the other hand that the Belgians regain the respect of their NATO allies.

Belgium’s reputation with its NATO partners is on the line. There needs to a delivery of at least a limited number of Belgian F-16s to Ukraine, and their Ukrainian pilots trained at once.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20000/danger-to-western-lives-takes-off-thanks-to

Even though the current Iranian government is a party to the International Convention against the Taking of Hostages, Tehran has long violated it, as it has other commitments, by taken foreign hostages as pawns to extract economic concessions and achieve geopolitical and financial gains.

We can now expect the ruling mullahs of Iran to attempt to target, detain, capture, arrest, and kidnap more Americans anywhere they can. Collecting hostages is now Big Business. Other hostile governments will most likely be tempted to capture Americans, as well.

Secret attempts by the Biden administration to reach an interim deal with the mullahs have threatened to add not only an estimated $100 billion into the treasury of the Iranian regime’s economy, but also, worse, to catapult an Iranian nuclear menace onto the world.

“This exchange operation is in fact one of the most successful and effective negotiation [efforts] ever to happen to the Islamic Republic of Iran. In essence, we released a few Iranian prisoners in exchange for some prisoners whose sentences were about to end, and, on the other hand, we succeeded in releasing billions of dollars of our blocked resources without committing to anything else.” — Anonymous senior Iranian security source, interview with the Fars news agency, August 12, 2023, reported by MEMRI on September 6, 2023

After Obama transferred this $1.7 billion to the Iranian regime to release five Iranian-American prisoners, the theocratic establishment became more emboldened than ever.

“The Trump administration secured prisoner releases without ransom payments….” — Saeed Ghasseminejad, Iran expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Foxnews.com, September 18, 2023

Increased revenues will also allow the IRGC to crush more easily any domestic protests against the government. Other priorities of Iran’s regime are to “export the revolution,” and military domination. Targeted for this project are Yemen, Syria, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad Latin America, Lebanon and Iraq — and strengthening the regime’s militias and terror groups. America and Israel are presumably being fattened up for eventual extermination.

That is what $6 billion has bought us. And the “Iran Deal” that will enable the Iranian regime to have as many nuclear weapons as it likes, is not even dead.

The Iranian regime has lately been collecting hostages: Topher Richwhite and Bridget Thackwray from New Zealand, detained in July 2022, Johan Floderus, a European diplomat from Sweden detained in April 2022, and Bernard Phelan from France detained in October 2022.

This escalation in hostage-taking of Europeans by Iran’s regime should not come as a surprise: the Belgian government last year proposed and ratified legislation that paved the way to transfer terrorists who have been convicted abroad back to Iran. The so-called treaty between the Belgian government and the Iranian regime was designed to secure the release of Iranian diplomat-terrorist Assadollah Assadi.

Assadi was arrested in 2018 for plotting to bomb a huge rally held outside Paris, organized by an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Last year, Assadi was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison by a Belgian court for masterminding the terror plot. Had it been successful, it could well have been the worst terrorist incident in modern European history.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/praising-a-nazi/

On September 22, after Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Canadian Parliament, Speaker Anthony Rota praised Yaroslav Hunka, 98, “who fought [for] the Ukrainian independence against the Russians and continues to support the troops today.” The Speaker, a member of the Liberal Party, was a big fan.

“I’m proud to say that he [Hunka] is from North Bay and from my riding of Nipissing-Timiskaming” and according to Rota, Hunka “is a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and New Democratic Party (NDP) boss Jagmeet Singh joined Rota and their respective parties in honoring Hunka with two standing ovations. As Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other Jewish groups pointed, Yaroslav Hunka was a strange sort of hero.

Hunka served under Nazi command with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, a voluntary unit also known as the SS 14th Waffen Division or the First Ukrainian Division. During World War II, Hunka’s unit committed atrocities against the Polish resistance and in the village of Huta Pieniacka massacred adults and children alike. The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg declared Hunka’s unit a criminal organization.

Canadians had a right to wonder what this Nazi was doing in Canada and how his murderous past remained hidden for so long. As the people might recall, key historical issues are in play.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/28/the-ukrainian-gordian-knot/

Most Americans understandably favor the Ukrainian resistance against Vladimir Putin’s Russian naked 2022 aggression.

Yet for Ukraine to break the current deadlock—our generation’s Verdun with perhaps 600,000 combined casualties so far— and “win” the war, it apparently must have the military wherewithal to hit targets inside Russia.

Such strategically logical attacks might nevertheless provoke a wounded and unpredictable Russia finally to carry out its boilerplate and ignored existential threats.

From the last 75 years of big-power rivalries, the operational “rules” of proxy wars are well known.

In Vietnam, Korea, and Afghanistan, Russia supplied America’s enemies—sometimes even sending Russian pilots into combat zones.

Thousands of Americans likely died due to our adversaries’ use of Russian munitions and personnel.

Likewise, Russia lost 15,000 fatalities in its decade-long misadventure in Afghanistan. In part, Moscow’s defeat may have been due to deadly American weapons, including sophisticated Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

In the bloody decades of these big-power proxy wars, many were fought on or near the borders of Russia or China.

Yet none of these surrogate conflicts of the nuclear age ever led to hot wars between the U.S. and Russia or China.

But Ukraine risks now becoming a new—and different—proxy war altogether.

Never has the U.S. squared off against Russia or China in a conventional proxy war over either’s respective historical borders (whether illegitimate or not).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jimmy-lais-1-000-prison-days-china-ccp-arrest-sentence-kong-truth-freedom-protest-5feea2a8?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Jimmy Lai marks his 1,000th day in Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison on Tuesday, an ignominious anniversary that should remind the world of Mr. Lai’s bravery and China’s disdain for international treaties and the rule of law.

Mr. Lai is the founder and owner of the pro-democracy paper Apple Daily, which the Hong Kong government confiscated without due process. What makes his sacrifice so compelling is that Mr. Lai could have avoided a prison cell by fleeing to one of his homes abroad.

China and its Hong Kong factotums have sought every way possible to target Mr. Lai for daring to advocate for freedom for Hong Kong’s people. The 75-year-old has been convicted for his peaceful participation in three protests, including a vigil to commemorate the Chinese victims of the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square.

He was also convicted on business fraud charges the U.S. State Department has rightly denounced as “spurious.” But his biggest trial, on national-security charges that could carry a life sentence, is scheduled for December. The government has denied Mr. Lai his choice of lawyer in the case.

Everyone in Hong Kong knows he will be found guilty—an example of how Hong Kong is following China’s dictates despite the promise Beijing made to Britain of autonomy for 50 years after 1997 in a formal treaty. The real question is how a city that holds political prisoners can purport to be a world financial center.

Mr. Lai is one of what the Hong Kong Democracy Council says have been 1,647 political prisoners since the start of the 2019 protests. While a financial center depends on the free flow of information and rule of law, in today’s Hong Kong people can be arrested for expressing the wrong opinion. Yuen Ching-ting was a 23-year-old student who in June was charged with posting seditious pro-independence posts on Facebook while studying at her university in Japan.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19997/hamas-sending-palestinians-to-die

During the past few days, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas has again been encouraging Palestinians living under its rule in the Gaza Strip to march toward the border with Israel and attack Israelis.

The latest attacks on Israelis by Hamas, however, appear to be less linked to Israel….

Hamas, instead of directing its grievances toward Qatar [for cutting grants to Hamas], responds by sending young Palestinian men to throw explosive devices, Molotov cocktails, and stones at Israeli troops near the border with the Gaza Strip.

Apparently, Hamas is hoping that the “Zionist enemy” (Israel) will come to its rescue by putting pressure on Qatar not to cut its financial grant. With many of its leaders sitting in Doha, Hamas must be rather fearful about coming out in public against Qatar.

The official said that civil servants, including senior Hamas officials, have not received full salaries because of the reduction in the financial grant. Hamas, in other words, is admitting that the renewed violence is not linked to Jerusalem or the Temple Mount, but to its leaders’ desire to obtain more funds from Qatar.

The real blackmail, however, is coming from Hamas. First, Hamas is implying that if it doesn’t get the funds, it will accuse the Qataris of collaboration with Israel, harming the Gulf state’s image in the Arab and Islamic countries. Second, Hamas is openly stating that it will continue to send Palestinians to attack Israeli soldiers near the border if the Qataris do not resume the financial aid.

Will the international community call out the Hamas leaders for sending young men to their deaths for the sake of the money being witheld? Based on experience: not likely. Far more likely is that we will hear loud and bitter condemnations of Israel for “opening fire” at Palestinian protesters along the border with the Gaza Strip.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19987/china-russia-axis-of-evil

Xi has been eyeing the South and East China Seas, coopting the Solomon Islands, building and militarizing his own artificial islands, and threatening not only Taiwan, but neighbours such as Australia, India and Japan.

It is more than twenty years since then US President George W. Bush first identified an “axis of evil” of rogue states that threatened global security, and now a new alliance of malign states is taking shape with Russia and China acting as its new lynchpins.

Back in 2002, when Bush first articulated his notion of rogue nations in his State of the Union address made in the wake of the September 11 attacks, he identified Iraq, Iran and North Korea as states that, together with their terrorist allies, “constitute an axis of evil…by seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger.”

Putin seized and occupied territory in Georgia in 2008, and Ukraine in 2014 (Crimea) and 2023, not to mention his relentless bellicosity towards the Baltic states and eastern Europe.

There are mounting concerns… in Western security circles that in return for providing any uplift in military support for Russia, Kim wants Moscow to provide technical assistance for his missile and satellite programmes, which would seriously enhance North Korea’s ability to threaten the West with its nuclear arsenal.

Any attempt by Russia to help improve North Korea’s military strength will also benefit China’s Communist rulers: it will provide North Korea with the ability to intensify the threat that all three countries pose to the US and its allies — and to global security.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19989/second-armenian-genocide

After besieging and starving 120,000 Armenians of the South Caucasus Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) since December 2022, Azerbaijan launched a large-scale military offensive against Artsakh on September 19, subjecting the capital Stepanakert and other cities and villages to intensive fire using heavy artillery and drones.

“My Facebook feed is full of pictures of missing children since yesterday. Most of them were at schools when the Azerbaijani military attacked so they were separated from their families. The lack of electricity, mobile and internet disruptions complicate the search efforts.” — Anush Ghavalyan, journalist in Armenia, on X (formerly Twitter), September 20, 2023.

Artsakh has never been part of independent Azerbaijan. Artsakh — ruled by Armenian monarchs, and even by Persian rulers — has always preserved its Armenian identity.

Today, Azerbaijan is falsely claiming Artsakh as Azeri land, on the pretext that in the 1920s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, as part of his strategy of divide and conquer, decreed that Artsakh should be part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic as an autonomous oblast (province) even though Christian Armenia could not be less compatible with Muslim Azerbaijan.

“Failure to stand up to Azerbaijan could also result in an escalation that leads not only to the total destruction of the Armenians of Artsakh but also to a wider war in the region as Azerbaijan and its ally Turkey pursue territorial ambitions in southern Armenia and northern Iran.” — Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, on X (Twitter), September 19, 2023.

The US government also has influence regarding Azerbaijan. President Joe Biden can discourage any such expansionist projects with one strong phone call to Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev, by urging him to stop the invasion of Artsakh and Armenia if he does not want serious consequences. Those could include U.S. sanctions on Azeri government officials and an end to U.S. military assistance to Azerbaijan. The latter would be consistent with the FREEDOM Support Act. The US should also send a humanitarian airlift to the starving population of Artsakh — consistent with America’s heralded tradition of aiding at-risk populations.

The frightening question is: Is the US internationally regarded as having leadership anymore?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19965/turkey-air-force

The ambition of Turkish Aircraft Industries today is to build the first indigenous Turkish fighter jet, which could also be the world’s first Muslim fighter aircraft, and it has invited friendly nations Azerbaijan and Pakistan join the effort. Meanwhile Turkey is trying hard to support its assertive regional policy with military might.

There is a problem: With a fleet consisting mostly of ageing F-16s and a per capita income of barely $9,000 Turkey cannot play the role of a major power.

Echoing the neo-Ottoman ambition, Colonel Ümit Yalım (ret.) recently claimed that the sovereignty of Greece’s islands in the North Aegean Sea belongs to Turkey.

Erdoğan wants modern F-16s, while the U.S. Congress has a different opinion: Why give Turkey modern fighter jets if we want peace over the Aegean Sea? That leaves Turkey with one option: Make your own fighter aircraft.

Turkey’s ailing economy is experiencing high inflation (at 59% year-on-year), and the country’s external debt reached nearly $476 billion in March. The international credit insurance company Allianz Trade reported that the stock of Turkey’s total external debt due within the next 12 months has risen to about $250 billion.

Erdoğan made one wrong strategic choice — trying to align with Russia and America — and left Turkey’s top military planners pondering how to minimize the military and operational damage. The Turkish president should be able to understand that he cannot fully benefit from two clashing civilizations at his convenience.

Turkey, once NATO’s staunch southeastern flank sentinel against the Soviet Union, still operates the alliance’s second-largest military. These days, NATO’s second-largest military has a problem with its aerial firepower.

Turks are proud that their Air Force (TuAF) is the world’s ninth-largest. But it is not necessarily the ninth-strongest. According to the World Directory of Modern Military Aircraft, TuAF is not among the world’s top 15 militaries listed. Turkey has 110 attack helicopters and 205 fighter/interceptor aircraft, according to Global Firepower. But its fleet of 1,065 military aircraft includes no dedicated attack aircraft.