RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/14/ukraine-with-a-whimper-or-a-bang/

Russia started the war with Ukraine in late February with a shock-and-awe effort to grab Kyiv. It failed both to decapitate the government and absorb half the country in one fell swoop. 

Soon the conflict descended into a war of attrition in Eastern Ukraine over the occupied majority Russian-speaking borderlands. 

That deadlock was eventually going to be resolved by relative morale, manpower, and supply.

Would the high-tech weaponry and money of the United States and Europe allow heroic Ukrainian forces to be better equipped than a larger Russian force—drawing on an economy 10 times greater and a population nearly four times larger than Ukraine’s?

After the latest sudden Ukrainian territorial gains and embarrassing Russian retreats, we now know the answer. 

Russia may be bigger and richer than Ukraine, but it is not up to the combined resources of the United States, along with the nations of NATO and the European Union. 

Most are now in a de facto proxy war with an increasingly overwhelmed Russia. And so far, a circumspect China has not stepped in to try to remedy the Russian dilemma. 

So, what will become the next, and most dangerous, stage III of the war? 

A heady Ukraine believes it now has the wherewithal to clear out the entire occupied Donbass and turn southward to free Crimea. To complete that agenda of rolling back all Russian aggression since 2014, it may step up hitting strategic targets across the Russia border and on the Black Sea.

Again, what will a nuclear Russia—run by an ailing, desperate autocrat—do when a far smaller Ukraine finally and deservedly humiliates her before a global audience?

Will Putin cut off all European energy supplies to force a European end to supplying Ukraine? 

Russia has all but done that. But so far Putin has gained little strategic advantage on the battlefield, despite current European fears of an impending bitter winter.

Will Putin go fully medieval on Ukraine, like the carnage in Chechnya when he leveled Grozny in 2000? 

But a European Ukraine is vast compared to tiny Chechnya. And the Chechens even without allies still withstood a decade of savage Russian brutality.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18903/iran-russia-alliance

Significantly, Russia and Iran’s cooperation extends to the military and space fields, with Russia recently helping Iran to launch a new satellite into space.

Iran’s Khayyam satellite “will greatly enhance Tehran’s ability to spy on military targets across the Middle East… [and give] Tehran “unprecedented capabilities, including near-continuous monitoring of sensitive facilities in Israel and the Persian Gulf.” — The Washington Post, August 4, 2022.

“Iran could share the imagery with pro-Iranian militia groups across the region, from the Houthi rebels battling Saudi-backed government forces in Yemen to Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria.” — Unnamed Middle Eastern official, The Washington Post, June 10, 2021.

“As Iran perfects its missile arsenal… alongside its growing UAV capability throughout the Middle East –being able to sync those capabilities with satellite capabilities and surveillance will only increase the lethality of the Iranian threat.” — Richard Goldberg, former Iran analyst in the Trump administration’s National Security Council, The Washington Post, August 4, 2022.

Iran has also become a major developer and producer of drones…. Most recently, Iran claimed that it had developed a long-range suicide drone “designed to hit Israel’s Tel Aviv, Haifa.”

Despite this acknowledged “profound threat” emanating from the mutually beneficial alliance between Russia and Iran, the Biden administration nevertheless has been making dangerous concessions to revive the nuclear deal, which would only deepen the threat and benefit not only Iran, but also Russia.

Let us hope that the new “Iran nuclear deal,” reportedly “off the table for the time being” is off the table for good.

Iran and Russia have been strengthening their alliance recently, growing it gradually to such an extent that the Wall Street Journal wrote on August 27 that the two countries were “forging tighter ties than ever,” as both countries face continued international isolation.

https://bit.ly/3eQDji5

*Is the diplomatic option viable when dealing with Iran’s Ayatollahs, who have promoted – since 1979 – child martyrdom in their school curriculum and on the battlefield?!

*Is the diplomatic option viable when dealing with Iran’s Ayatollahs, who have espoused child martyrdom in the service of their Islamic Revolution, which aims to topple all pro-US Arab Sunni regimes and bring “the Great American Satan” and other Western “infidels” to submission?!

*Is the diplomatic option viable when dealing with Iran’s Ayatollahs, who have urged Iranian children to participate in the annual November 13 “National Day of Fighting Arrogance” (commemorating the takeover of the US Embassy in Tehran and holding over 50 Americans hostages for 444 days), declaring their hatred toward “the bullying and oppressive USA” and chanting “Death to America”?!

Luring children into mine-sweeping

Brainwashing children into martyrdom is presented by the Ayatollahs as an extension of the Shiite mythology surrounding the 680 AD Battle of Karbala, which was the Big Bang of the Sunni-Shiite conflict and the role model for martyrdom. During the battle, Hussain ibn Ali, the third Shia Imam and the grandson of Muhammad, and his warriors – including children – were betrayed and massacred by the Sunni Caliph Yazid.

“During the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war, children were sent to be slaughtered on mine-sweeping missions…. Iranian officials forced underage Afghan refugees to fight in the Syrian civil war on the side of Bashar al-Assad’s government….”

According to the Geneva-based Refworld (an arm of the UN High Commissioner on Refugees), “[Iranian] child soldiers, some as young as nine, were used extensively during the Iran-Iraq war…. They were given ‘keys to paradise’ and promised that they would go directly to heaven if they died as martyrs against the Iraqi enemy….   

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/ukraines-incredible-success-turns-the-tables-on-russia-kharkiv-kherson/

Ukraine’s swift counter-offensive has captured more territory in four days than Russia’s huge army did in six months. The victories go beyond the 3,000 kilometers of liberated land. The Ukrainians have managed to break and scatter the enemy army across city after city in Kharkiv (in the country’s northeast) and are now moving swiftly into Luhansk (in the north Donbas region).

Russian commanders have abandoned major cities and supply hubs, forfeited their hard-won control of vital rail lines and highways, and fled eastward for their lives. Their soldiers have dropped their guns and abandoned vast stores of heavy weaponry, from tanks to anti-aircraft batteries. It has been a complete rout.

How did Ukraine accomplish this swift and unexpected victory? With very shrewd tactics, courageous fighters, superior intelligence, and precision weapons donated by the US, Britain, Poland, and other NATO partners. The intelligence was supplied by the US and NATO, plus partisans behind the lines and Ukrainian drones. Their work pinpointed Russian troops, supplies, and command centers, which were then destroyed by HIMARS missiles and advanced artillery.

Not only was the Kharkiv offensive well-coordinated and efficiently executed, it completely surprised Russian forces in the area. That’s extraordinary in today’s information age. Yet the Ukrainians managed it, completely blocking any leaks about a forthcoming attack. Ukraine’s operational security bespeaks both a skilled military and a nation united by Russia’s unprovoked aggression.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18854/persecution-of-christians-july

After raping a Christian woman, her Muslim employer told her and her family—both still not over the shock—to get back to work. — Pakistan.

“The scale of killings, displacement and wanton destruction of property by these Fulani jihadist militia only buttresses the now revealed agenda to depopulate Christian communities in Nigeria and take over lands. Tellingly, the government in power in Nigeria at the moment continues to do nothing about these persistent attacks, save to give laughable reasons like ‘climate change’ or that some Muslims too are sometimes killed in attacks by so-called bandits.” — Bishop Wilfred Chikpa Anagbe, Independent Catholic News, July 19, 2022, Nigeria.

On July 4, a Christian mechanic [Ashfaq Masih, 34] who had been imprisoned for the last five years while awaiting trial under a false accusation of allegedly insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad, was sentenced to death by hanging in a Pakistani court. — churchinchains.ie, July 19 2022, Pakistan.

“I told the real story to a police officer but he did not record my version but conducted investigation ex-parte.” — Ashfaq Masih, churchinchains.ie, July 7, 2022, Pakistan.

“The judges are aware that such cases are made to punish and settle personal grudges with the opponents, especially against the Christians…. Masih’s case was very clear—the shop owner wanted him out and Naveed was a business rival who implicated him in a false blasphemy case. He is innocent and has already spent five years in prison for a crime he never committed.” — Nasir Saeed, Director of the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement, claas.org.uk, July 7, 2022, Pakistan.

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of July 2022:

The Muslim Abuse and Rape of Christian Women in Pakistan

After raping a Christian woman, her Muslim employer told her and her family—both still not over the shock—to get back to work. Rimsha Riaz, 18, and several others of her Christian household worked at a glass crushing company, where they were described as “hard-working loyal employees for Haji Ali Akbar, a successful Muslim businessman.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18876/west-russia-enemy

On a broader tableau, Putin started blocking NATO’s plans to gain a presence in Central Asia and Transcaucasia. Moscow helped overthrow the pro-West regime in Kyrgyzstan, acquired military bases in Armenia and Tajikistan, and clinched a $4 billion deal to supply arms to Iraq.

At the same time, Putin armed secessionists in Moldova and eastern Ukraine and, in August 2008, invaded Georgia to annex Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The US reacted by sending a warship on a brief tour of the Black Sea.

In hindsight, it seems that Putin had worked out a careful plan to test the Western powers’ limit of tolerance as he went from one mischief to another.

In 2012 Putin started getting involved in the Syrian civil war on the side of President Bashar al-Assad, backed by Tehran. After testing the waters, Putin also cast himself as a big player in Libya in the hope of getting a chunk of it when and if it was broken into pieces.

Each time Putin misbehaved, Western powers reacted with bland statements, the expulsion of a few diplomats, and expressions of sympathy for Alexei Navalny, one of Tsar Vladimir’s more colorful critics. Meanwhile, Putin built a political support base in the West by financing several parties of both left and right.

Putin at first seized control of chunks of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk and, once convinced that no one would stop him, went along and annexed the whole of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. He also obtained a base in Syria, restoring Russia’s military presence in the Mediterranean for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Empire. His next move was to turn the Caspian Sea into a Russian lake, excluding “outsiders”, meaning the Western powers.

It is hard to know what goes on in Putin’s mind. But his favorite “philosopher,” Alexander Dugin, has dismissed the leaders of Western democracies as a bunch of lily-livered pansies interested in nothing but money and show-off.

Western money, technology and, above all, greed helped Putin become, in the words of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, a threat to world peace.

“One would think the Tsar is back!” This is how a colleague covering the G8 summit in Saint Petersburg in July 2006 commented after a visit by President Vladimir Putin to the facilities provided for journalists covering the “historic event.” Historic because this was the first time that Russia, admitted as a full member of the club of “great powers” in 1997, was hosting the summit.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18871/iran-terrorist-proxies

Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran have done nothing to help end the disastrous economic crisis in Lebanon, where nearly 80% of the people live below the poverty line. The World Bank has warned that the crisis ranks as one of the three most severe the world has seen since the mid-19th century.

Hezbollah does not pose a threat just to Israel, but also to the Lebanese people, America’s Arab allies, including Saudi Arabia, and to America itself, especially from Cuba and Venezuela. ” Iran’s outreach to Venezuela, Asia Times notes, ” is partly driven by economic interests and partly a desire to gain a foothold in ‘America’s backyard,’ as the government parlance asserts. That explains the increasing appetite of the Islamic revolutionary God corps for building up ties in Latin America and even entertaining the idea of a military presence in Venezuela’s waters….

“The problem for each of the states,” according to Richard Hanania, president of the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at the University of Texas, this July “is lack of access to global capital.” It is a problem that the promised billions from the Biden administration would immediately fix.

Yet, instead of working to alleviate the suffering of the Lebanese people, Hezbollah is continuing to gin up for war with Israel, a move that will bring still more disaster on Lebanon.

“What is happening in Lebanon today is an organized terrorist threat by Iran and its militias, especially the terrorist Hezbollah. Hezbollah wants to destroy Lebanon and turn it into a state similar to Iran. We appeal to all the Arabs to help Lebanon before it drowns in the sea of Iran.” — Rami Naeem, Lebanese political analyst, Twitter, August 29, 2022.

“Who cares about a country such as Lebanon that has no water, electricity, university, school, hospital, and banks? Lebanon has no Arab, Gulf or international relations. Forty years have passed since Lebanon was brought into the [Iranian-led] axis of conflicts, wars, misery, bankruptcy and the collapse of the state.” — Dr. Charbel Azar, member of the Sovereign Front for Lebanon, Akhbar Al-Yawm, August 25, 2022.

“The Kingdom [of Saudi Arabia] has seized over 700 million narcotic pills and hundreds of kilos of hashish smuggled from or via Lebanon since 2015.” — Waleed Bukhari, Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon, Saudi Gazette, August 30, 2022.

“The terrorist party that brought Lebanon to the brink of political, economic and social precipice seeks, with Iranian support, to export chaos and destruction.” — Okaz, August 24, 2022.

The Arabs fear that an influx of billions of dollars pouring into the mullahs’ coffers will result in Hezbollah and the rest of Iran’s terrorist proxies stepping up their aggression not only against Israel, but also against America’s Arab allies and friends in the Middle East, not to mention the United States and Europe. The Arabs want the Biden administration to grasp that appeasement of Iran’s mullahs will further embolden the terrorists and undermine America’s strength in the Arab world.

If and when the Biden administration signs a new nuclear deal with Iran, the mullahs’ Lebanese terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, will undoubtedly benefit from the billions of dollars that the Iranian regime is expected to receive once the sanctions on their country are lifted. Hezbollah will use the money to obtain more weapons, tighten its grip on Lebanon and prepare for more war with Israel. It will also use the money to undermine the security and stability of America’s allies in the Arab world.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18855/arabs-iran-deal-war

“A few days ago, US officials announced that it was Iran, not America, that had given up core demands. They lie. Iran has not given up on anything essential. On the contrary, Iran has obtained the essential demands it wants.” — Sayed Zahra, deputy editor of Bahrain’s Akhbar Al-Khaleej, August 31, 2022.

“[T]he most dangerous concession made by the US was to waive the inclusion of Iran’s expansionist terrorist role in the region, its threats to the security and stability of Arab countries, the terrorist subversive role that Iran’s proxy militias play in the Arab countries, and the issue of the Iranian missile program.” — Sayed Zahra, Akhbar Al-Khaleej, August 31, 2022.

“He [Obama] did not hide his hatred of Arabs and his admiration for Iran. What Biden is doing today is following the same path, with full conviction on his part.” — Sayed Zahra, Akhbar Al-Khaleej, August 31, 2022.

“Syria has been taken hostage by a regime that is affiliated with the Iranians and Russians…. The Iranian regime…does not differ from the Taliban regime or from Islamic State (ISIS). Terrorism, destabilization, and domination of people are almost the only goals of such regimes.” — Ibrahim Allush, Syrian author, Enabbaladi, August 28, 2022.

“Washington has been very late in holding Iran accountable, or at least trying to hold it accountable for the systematic sabotage that it has practiced and is practicing in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza. This is the largest international sabotage operation that the Security Council has not been able to consider. None of the Security Council resolutions related to the region’s crises mentions Iran, even though its role is essential in tampering with the four countries and destroying their institutions.” — Abdul Wahab Badrakhan, Lebanese journalist, Al-Watan, August 28, 2022.

“President Biden’s administration is trying to create an image in the eyes of the Americans that Iran’s return to the nuclear agreement will bring it under control. Washington appears to be in a weak and precarious position, especially in light of the absence of an armed option.” — Emil Amin, Egyptian author, Asharq Al-Awsat, August 27, 2022.

“[I]f these billions flow into the coffers of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force, how will Washington guarantee the security of these countries [Gulf states, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen] ?” — Mashar Al-Thaydi, Saudi commentator, Asharq Al-Awsat, August 26, 2022.

The Arabs… appear convinced that that pouring billions of dollars on the mullahs will eventually bring terrorism and violence to the US and the other Western powers involved in the new deal, if not a major war.

The talk about an imminent revival of the nuclear deal between Iran and the Biden administration and other Western countries has raised serious concerns among many Arabs. They state that they are especially worried about the billions of dollars that Iran’s mullahs will receive once the deal is done. The Arabs say they have no doubt that the money would be used by the mullahs to promote more terrorism and violence and expand Tehran’s terrorist proxies in the Middle East, including Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and various militias in Iraq.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/britain-new-prime-minister-jeremy-corbyn-liz-truss/

Many years ago, when the earth was young and leaving the European Union was a position espoused only by those trying to stay on the right side of Bill Cash at a drinks party, former British MP Ken Clarke stood for the Tory leadership against Iain Duncan Smith. He said one memorable thing while making his doomed bid for the captaincy — which was that the Tories needed to decide whether they were going to be a political party or a debating society.

What I understand him to have meant by that was that ideological purity buttered no parsnips in politics. For most of its history, its friends and its enemies alike would agree that Britain’s Conservative party has been a magnificent machine for winning and retaining power. While the Left frittered its energy denouncing ideological deviationists, reciting parrot-like dogmas about collective ownership, and purging its own ranks, the Tories were pragmatists. They believed something firmly until it became a vote-loser; and then they found a way of believing something else. I don’t say that as a sneer but as a sincere compliment. Toryism has tended to recognize that there’s no point in having a brilliant scheme for government if you can’t get into government in the first place. Tony Blair struck gold when he had the humility to copy that page of his rivals’ homework.

Liz Truss, who on Monday was selected by Conservatives to be their next party leader and Britain’s newest prime minister, has been doing the same thing on the face of it. She can’t invent and promulgate Trussism until she has her bottom planted on Boris Johnson’s old chair in No. 10. And she can’t plant her bottom thither without the support of the 160,000-odd paid-up members of the Conservative party who select the party’s leaders.

Some people grumble that her policy platforms have been a bit vague, and what specifics we have had — such as her hastily revised scheme to cut public sector pay — are getting pushback from the supposed experts. One police chief has called her policing policy “meaningless.” Economists have been skeptical about her confidence that all it will take is a few tax cuts to put a tiger back in the national tank. She has pledged to help those about to be clobbered by rocketing energy bills, though she’s done so by promising what you might describe as “an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is.”

A defense can be made there — and has been — that Truss is doing what politicians always do: she is campaigning in poetry that she might govern in prose. You come up with a series of resonant slogans that don’t tie you down to a specific policy position — “Build Back Better,” “I’m Backing Britain,” “For the Many, Not the Few,” or what have you — wave a few flags and hope for the best. Once you’ve promised your core supporters the moon, you set about gently revising their expectations after you’re safely ensconced in the reality-based world of actual government.

I don’t, by the way, presume here to editorialize on why a Truss premiership will be a Bad Thing, still less to describe the horrible face I made as I read the list of her rumored cabinet appointments. Obviously Liz Truss isn’t specially interested in appealing to soaking wet liberal centrist dads like me — and fair enough. That’s not the game she’s in. She might throw the likes of us a bone come a general election, but we’re a way off that yet. If people like me are complaining that she wants to cut taxes so people can keep more of their own money, rather than spend other people’s money on handouts to the needy, that’s probably a sign she’s doing something right by her natural constituency.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/09/04/the-tyranny-of-pride/

Imagine there was a political movement so powerful and so intolerant that you might be visited by the cops for making fun of it. A movement so dominant that desecrating its symbols came to be treated as a kind of blasphemy. A movement so fawned over by the elites that any town or village that refused to bow down to it – to wave its flag and shout its slogans – risked being written off as unsafe, and essentially as unclean. A movement so embedded in the ruling class that every wing of the establishment, from the political set to the military to the financial elite, was duty bound to display its insignia.

Well, such a movement exists, right here in 21st-century Britain. And it isn’t Toryism or ‘Brexshit’ or any of the other ideologies the liberal elite is constantly telling us to fear. It’s Pride.

We’re living under a tyranny of Pride. Its eyesore rainbow flag dominates every major highway during Pride month. Back in June London looked like a city under occupation, with vast boulevards like Regent Street festooned in this ugly new standard. Scores of them fluttered as far as the eye could see, in perfect and sinister militaristic formation. The capitalist class drapes itself in the Pride flag, too. Banks splash it across their windows, Morgan Stanley staff march behind it in the street. Even the armed wing of the state now comes in Pride colours. Cop cars have been repainted in the hues of this ideological rainbow. Top officers wear Pride-themed insignias and lanyards. The Ministry of Defence’s vast headquarters in London have been illuminated in the Pride colours. The Royal Air Force even did a flyover of the Pride march in London last year, with 10 fighter jets pumping out rainbow-coloured contrails to the whooping and cheering of the crowd below. How long before they start dropping Pride-painted bombs on their missions overseas?

And woe betide anyone who refuses to wave the Pride flag or – sin of sins – violates it in some fashion. Ockbrook and Borrowash Parish Council in Derbyshire was branded a sinful backwater when it refused to fly the flag last year. ‘Anger as Pride Month flag snubbed by Derbyshire council…’, reported a horrified BBC. As for profaning Pride and its sacred symbols – that is so serious it can become a police matter. A few weeks ago a man in Hampshire was visited by cops, and put in handcuffs, for the blasphemy of retweeting a meme showing four Pride flags arranged to look like a swastika. The literal speech police who knocked on his door accused him of ‘causing anxiety’.

Defiling Pride is to the 21st century what desecrating an image of Christ was to the 14th. Modern-day liberals puff themselves up as superior to little religious people, and yet they are far more rashly hostile to acts of iconoclasm. Most Christians let out a weary sigh when their beliefs or their book are mocked by the woke (who would never, of course, say an untoward word about Islam). It is the secular right-on who kick off when their holy symbols are befouled.