RUTHFULLY YOURS

Last month’s anti-corruption demonstrations in Russia are being interpreted, again, as a sign that the reign of Russian President Vladimir Putin is nearing its end. Some in the West even claimed that in his haste to interfere with foreign countries’ domestic affairs, Putin has neglected to pay attention to the growing influence of the local opposition, especially social media, on the young generation that grew up in Russia, since he was first elected President in 2000.

The demonstrations that followed opposition politician Alexei Navalny’s expose online of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s vast corruption raised little concern in the parliament, which rejected Russia’s Communist Party’s request to probe Medvedev’s wealth.

The Prime Minister shrugged off the allegations. However, he is far from being popular in Russia, while Putin’s popularity is soaring.
According to Gullp’s December 2016 survey, Russia’s economic and corruption problems are not attributed to Putin. “More than eight in 10 Russians (81 percent) in 2016, said they approved of the job Putin is doing,” said the report. With such popularity, expect Putin, who describes his presidency as “service to the Fatherland” to run for his fourth term as president in next year’s election. He may even scarify Medvedev to satisfy the public’s demand to curb the State’s corruption. After all, Putin has been successfully using corruption as a strategy in domestic and often foreign affairs for the past 17 years. Nonetheless, to many Russia observers, the recent demonstrations are a sign of the public’s growing dissatisfaction with Putin. As former Director of CIA, R. James Woolsey put it, “Putin has taken things back, maybe not all the way to Ivan the Terrible, but to, say, Nicholas II on a bad day.”

While Putin faces many problems, the U.S. Tomahawk missiles’ retaliation attack on Syria’s Shayrat Air Base and American declarations that it was Russia’s complicity or inability to stop Assad’s chemical weapons attack that killed at least 85 men, women, and children in Khan Sheikhoun, offered him a new opportunity to defend Russia’s honor and demonstrate his leadership’s skills. Russian Patriotism is in his favor and is likely to increase Putin’s popularity at home.

“What Will Follow Putin?” asks Norman Bailey, Professor of Economics and National Security, The National Security Studies Center, University of Haifa. “From the lower depths of despair (and the offices of the KGB) Vladimir Putin emerged. Putin reestablished despotic control internally and externally executed a series of brilliant maneuvers to restore the status of Russia in the world. He used all the instruments of statecraft: diplomacy, propaganda, economic measures, subversion, military display and war (in Georgia and Ukraine).

The woman sitting opposite me, dressed in a charcoal pantsuit and a duck-egg-blue turtleneck, can’t go anywhere, at any time of day, without a bodyguard. She is soft-spoken and irrepressibly sane, but also—in the eyes of those who would rather cut her throat than listen to what she says—the most dangerous foe of Islamist extremism in the Western world. We are in a secure room at a sprawling university, but the queasiness in my chest takes a while to go away. I’m talking to a woman with multiple fatwas on her head, someone who has a greater chance of meeting a violent end than anyone I’ve met (Salman Rushdie included). And yet she’s wholly poised, spectacles pushed back to rest atop her head like a crown, dignified and smiling under siege.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia in 1969, is Islam’s most eloquent apostate. She has just published a slim book that seeks to add a new four-letter word—dawa—to the West’s vocabulary. It describes the ceaseless, world-wide ideological campaign waged by Islamists as a complement to jihad. It is, she says, the greatest threat facing the West and “could well bring about the end of the European Union as we know it.” America is far from immune, and her book, “The Challenge of Dawa,” is an explicit attempt to persuade the Trump administration to adopt “a comprehensive anti-dawa strategy before it is too late.”

Ms. Hirsi Ali has come a long way from the days when she—“then a bit of a hothead”—declared Islam to be incapable of reform, while also calling on Muslims to convert or abandon religion altogether. That was a contentious decade ago. Today she believes that Islam can indeed be reformed, that it must be reformed, and that it can be reformed only by Muslims themselves—by those whom she calls “Mecca Muslims.” These are the faithful who prefer the gentler version of Islam that she says was “originally promoted by Muhammad” before 622. That was the year he migrated to Medina and the religion took a militant and unlovely ideological turn.

At the same time, Ms. Hirsi Ali—now a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, where I also work—is urging the West to look at Islam with new eyes. She says it must be viewed “not just as a religion, but also as a political ideology.” To regard Islam merely as a faith, “as we would Christianity or Buddhism, is to run the risk of ignoring dawa, the activities carried out by Islamists to keep Muslims energized by a campaign to impose Shariah law on all societies—including countries of the West.” CONTINUE AT SITE

When the Bush Administration failed to find the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was thought to have, opponents used the intelligence failure to discredit the war in Iraq and call George W. Bush a liar. Will there be any even remotely similar accounting after the Obama Administration’s intelligence failure in Syria, where Bashar Assad has used chemical weapons we were told he didn’t have?

On Tuesday at least 85 civilians, including children, were killed by a gas attack in the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun. The World Health Organization says the attack likely involved banned nerve agents, with other medical experts pointing to sarin as the culprit.

Why is this an intelligence failure? Because the Obama Administration assured the world that it had forced Mr. Assad to give up all chemical weapons. In an interview with National Public Radio on January 16, Susan Rice, then the White House national security adviser, was unequivocal:

“I think the President [Obama] stated the U.S. view, which is the use of chemical weapons is not something we’re prepared to allow to persist, and we didn’t. We managed to accomplish that goal far more thoroughly than we could have by some limited strikes against chemical targets by getting the entirety of the declared stockpile removed.” The residents of Khan Sheikhoun beg to differ.

Ms. Rice’s assurances were part of the Obama Administration’s foreign-policy victory lap as it ended its time in office. But did she or others know at the time that Mr. Assad still had stockpiles of sarin gas? Were there dissenting intelligence reports raising doubts about the Assad-Russian pledges that the regime had turned everything over to United Nations monitors?

Can you imagine making a joke and facing death as a result?

“During his interrogation, Sina was told that if he signed a confession and repented, he would be pardoned and let go,” said the source in an interview with CHRI on March 21, 2017. “Unfortunately, he made a childish decision and accepted the charges. Then they sentenced him to death.” “Later he admitted that he signed the confession hoping to get freed,” said the source. “Apparently the authorities also got him to confess in front of a camera as well.” — Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

When the Islamists gain power, they immediately create their own “judiciary system” in order to “legitimize” their implementation of sharia law. In fact, the judiciary system is used less as a tool for bringing people to justice, and more as a tool to suppress freedom of speech and of the press.

To radical Islamist groups, Islam is not a religion which all are free to pursue; it is a weapon. It is the most powerful tool that can be wielded with manipulative skill to control entire populations. Beneath their fierce rule, every aspect of daily life is dictated. What is worn, what is eaten, what you say and what you write are all scrutinized; violations of these stringent laws are met with extreme punishments. Can you imagine making a joke and facing death as a result? Can you imagine the constant fear of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, when you have seen people beaten, stoned, or killed in the street for nothing more than a mild transgression?

Freedom of speech and press are the Islamists’ top enemies. They are targeted on a regular basis, making it difficult or impossible for the truth to be revealed to the world. While others may take their privacy for granted, the people living under this kind of tyranny must think about everything they say and do. Sometimes even the bravest of souls turn away in the face of such intimidation. Can it really be as restrictive as described? Yes, and far worse than you can imagine.

Sina Dehghan, 21, for example, was arrested by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) when he was 19 for “insulting Islam”. Charges were brought against him for insulting the Prophet Muhammad on the messaging app LINE.

According to the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI):

“During his interrogation, Sina was told that if he signed a confession and repented, he would be pardoned and let go,” said the source in an interview with CHRI on March 21, 2017. “Unfortunately, he made a childish decision and accepted the charges. Then they sentenced him to death.” “Later he admitted that he signed the confession hoping to get freed,” said the source. “Apparently the authorities also got him to confess in front of a camera as well.”

Such a sentence may seem like madness, but in fact there is a cold and calculated pattern to these actions. When extremist Muslims gain power, they immediately create their own “judiciary system” in order to “legitimize” their implementation of sharia law. This judiciary system is, in fact, used less as a tool for bringing people to justice, and more as a tool to suppress freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Once this silence is ensured, they are able to oppress the entire society, restrain any budding opposition, imprison and torture innocent people and sentence thousands to death.

WASHINGTON — Declaring “no child of God should ever suffer such horror” as the “Black Tuesday” neurotoxin attack on a Syrian neighborhood, President Trump ordered a flurry of cruise missiles fired at the airbase from which the Assad regime planes that struck Khan Shaykhun originated.

Fifty-nine Tomahawks from two U.S. warships in the Mediterranean, the USS Ross and USS Porter, targeted Shayrat Airfield in Homs province at 4:40 a.m. local time. Defense officials reportedly used radar tracking to pinpoint the base as the originating location of the planes bearing an agent that produced symptoms consistent with sarin.

Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said the missiles “targeted aircraft, hardened aircraft shelters, petroleum and logistical storage, ammunition supply bunkers, air defense systems, and radars.”

“As always, the U.S. took extraordinary measures to avoid civilian casualties and to comply with the Law of Armed Conflict,” Davis said. “Every precaution was taken to execute this strike with minimal risk to personnel at the airfield.”

“The strike was a proportional response to Assad’s heinous act. Shayrat Airfield was used to store chemical weapons and Syrian air forces. The U.S. intelligence community assesses that aircraft from Shayrat conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4. The strike was intended to deter the regime from using chemical weapons again.”

Defense officials informed Russia ahead of time about the planned airstrike time and location, citing their previous deconfliction agreement to improve flight safety after near-misses as the Russians flew missions with Assad forces against Assad’s opposition and the U.S. flew missions against ISIS. “U.S. military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield,” Davis said.

The Pentagon is assessing the results of the strike, but “initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat Airfield, reducing the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons,” Davis said.

“The use of chemical weapons against innocent people will not be tolerated,” he added.

Pentagon sources told CNN that they believe Russians were at the airfield when the sarin attacks were launched earlier in the week. Arab reports tonight indicated Hezbollah were among the casualties at the base. CONTINUE AT SITE