RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/why_did_the_biden_administration_approve_a_pipeline_for_russia_to_germany_but_not_from_canada_to_the_us.html

President Biden blocked the Keystone pipeline from Canada to the U.S., ostensibly due to environmental concerns and claims about global warming, even though the long planned project had cleared all environmental hurdles.

Yet the Biden State department just effectively approved an energy pipeline from Russia to Germany.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The State Department in a report to Congress didn’t name new companies as targets for sanctions related to an $11 billion pipeline designed to transmit Russian natural gas to Germany, allowing work on the pipeline to continue unabated for now.

Some Republican lawmakers criticized the State Department over the Nord Stream 2 report, which was required by Congress, and both Republicans and a key Democrat requested an explanation of the administration’s position.

Count that as a win for pipelines — for others, just not us.  The rest of the press is focusing on Biden making his “decisions,” but with this news, the direction of this administration is clear.

It is clear that jobs in Europe and Russia are more important to Biden than jobs in the United States.  Energy from fossil fuels is also OK in Europe, just not here.

https://worldisraelnews.com/
Why would Biden go back to the Iran deal? Frankly, we’re baffled.

It didn’t make sense in 2015 when Obama did it. It makes even less sense in 2021. The agreement is a proven disaster, its failings exposed, its critics vindicated.

As Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi write in the January Atlantic: “The agreement did not shut down a single nuclear facility or destroy a single centrifuge.

The ease and speed with which Iran has resumed producing large amounts of more highly enriched uranium – doing so at a time of its own choosing – illustrates the danger of leaving the regime with these capabilities.”

Nor did the deal stop Iran from developing advanced centrifuges and ballistic missiles. Nor did it address the Koran-infused ayatollahs’ malignant designs. (Iran’s parliament even debated a bill to set a time limit of 20 years for wiping out Israel.)

All the deal did was limit Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, and that for 10 or so years. That’s not a prohibition, that’s a countdown.

As John Bolton summed it up in The Room Where It Happened: “The deal was badly conceived, abominably negotiated and drafted, and entirely advantageous to Iran: unenforceable, unverifiable, and inadequate in duration and scope. Although purportedly resolving the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear-weapons program, the deal did no such thing.”

If nuclear bombs were skyscrapers, it would be like OK’ing the foundation, superstructure and interior, including the paint – and then telling the builder to hold off on flipping on the electricity until 2026. And here’s $150 million in cash to help you pass the time.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/23/afghanistan-biden-embraces-the-forever-war/

On 7 October this year, it will be 20 years since the US and the UK launched Operation Enduring Freedom. This was the start of what we now know of as the War in Afghanistan.

The operation may not have done much for freedom, but it has certainly endured, despite President Obama giving the operation a name change in 2014. In fact, it is the longest war that the US has ever been involved in. Longer than Vietnam. Longer even than the two world wars combined. It has cost the lives of tens of thousands of Afghan civilians, and hundreds of American and British soldiers. The Watson Institute at Brown University puts the overall death toll at over 157,000 and counting.

And for what? The continued impoverishment of one of the poorest nations on the planet? A territory which is held by roughly the same antagonists in the same proportions as it was held 20 years ago? Rarely have so many given so much for so little.

That grim 20th anniversary approaching in October was never meant to be reached, however. Under the conditions of the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, struck between the Trump administration and the Taliban on 29 February last year, the 2,500 US and the 6,500 NATO troops still based in Afghanistan were slated to be fully withdrawn by 1 May this year.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/biden-rationalizes-chinas-human-rights-abuses-joseph-klein/

President Joe Biden is so much in the tank for the Chinese regime that he is making excuses for the regime’s horrendous treatment of the Uyghurs, the mostly Muslim ethnic minority living in northwestern China. When asked about the human rights abuses against the Uyghurs during his townhall meeting hosted by CNN on February 17th, Biden chalked the problem up to Chinese history and cultural norms.

Biden said that when China “has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home.” Biden went on to explain that “the central principle of [Chinese President] Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China.” And then, in a nod to cultural relativism, Biden declared, “Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow.”

In other words, forget about universal inalienable human rights, which no government can take away. Biden has opted instead for the notion that each government gets to define human rights for its people that correspond with its country’s own cultural “norms.”

China has detained over 1 million Uyghurs in what amounts to concentration camps, where they have been subjected to gang rape, sterilization, and torture. Xi called the Uyghurs “criminals” who must be remolded and transformed. The purpose of China’s “re-education” of ethnic minorities such as the Uyghurs, Xi said, was to guide “all ethnic groups on establishing a correct perspective on the country, history and nationality.”

Biden said during his town hall meeting that he told Xi he would speak out against what Xi is “doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China.” However, when given the opportunity to condemn China’s ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs, Biden took a pass. He could have stood by his own Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s affirmation that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. But Biden did not do so.

https://nypost.com/2021/02/21/biden-is-set-to-repeat-obamas-mideast-failures/

Every now and then, America mislays one of its Mideast allies. “Who lost Iran?” they asked in 1979, as the shah’s regime went sideways, the answer being Jimmy Carter and the State Department. “Who lost Egypt?” they asked in 2012, as the Muslim Brotherhood took power, the answer being Barack Obama and the State Department.

“Who lost Israel?” will soon be added to this perplexed ­refrain. The answer will be President Biden and the State Department.

But this time, America will be losing the region as a whole — to its historic rival, Russia. Iranian mischief will wax again, and Washington’s Arab and ­Israeli allies will move on without anyone losing much sleep over what the White House thinks about anything. This is a deliberate strategic choice, and it will lead to the collapse of American ­influence in western Asia.

Team Biden appears bent on reviving the Iran deal at all costs. The costs include completing the Democrats’ turn away from the Jewish state and thoroughly alienating America’s Sunni-Arab clients. In reviving the nuclear deal, moreover, Washington will repeat a failed experiment in the hope of different results.

The Iranian regime won’t ­accept a tougher deal than the 2015 accord, and the Biden ­administration is Obama 3.0: The same team looks to rehabilitate its reputation, not to secure the ­national interest. The Obama-Bidenites will accept any humiliation from Tehran and call it a diplomatic breakthrough.