RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20711/the-russians-are-coming\

The Russians are coming. Again.

In a dramatic reminder that the Russians are seeking to intimidate the White House and launch a second chapter of the Cold War, a Russian nuclear-powered submarine, along with an accompanying flotilla of warships, recently spent five days visiting Cuba. In the event, the Oval Office missed the point; several of these vessels can deploy nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

Published reports suggest the Biden Administration’s response is studied indifference, telling reporters that missile test firings off the Florida coast by the Russian vessels were routine.

Hardly.

Putin’s navy is reminding the United States that it has recaptured the Soviet Union’s ability to project naval power where and when it wants. And by extension, that if it wishes to send a potent reminder that it has the coordinates of America’s cities if it ever came to unleashing the unimaginable, it doesn’t need to base ballistic missiles in Cuba.

This display of military power by an adversary on the march is not something that has gone unnoticed by the American public. In a recent poll conducted by McLaughlin Associates, it becomes clear that our citizens are seeking strong, resolute, and unequivocal national leadership at a time of historic international tensions.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/07/the-world-needs-the-west/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Reestablishing deterrence in a dangerous world

The world keeps getting more dangerous. It is now grappling with war in Ukraine; China’s increasingly bellicose actions in the South China Sea and its little-talked-about nuclear proliferation; and Iranian aggression that threatens the existence of Israel, the lives of U.S. forces and their allies in the Middle East, and the security of global shipping lanes. All of this is happening against the background of a project long held by authoritarian regimes, including Russia and China, to undermine the liberal order that has guaranteed peace in most of the West since World War II. The West needs to take seriously the threat. In response, it should double down on its investments in alliances, national-defense bases, and military institutions. Otherwise, it will learn the hard way how a steady erosion of military funding can break down deterrence and cause problems that ramify throughout the world, undermining security.

The liberal peace project was conceived after the horrors of the First World War but didn’t reach maturity until a quarter of a century later, in post–World War II Europe and North America. This resulting geopolitical order has largely held intact for the last 80 years, but now these revisionist powers are attempting to supplant it and develop an international regime more beneficial to their own interests. As they attempt to navigate these challenges, liberal democracies are struggling to reinforce military deterrence where prudent.

One large reason for that struggle is the prolonged “peace dividend” after the Cold War, which led many European nations to reduce national-defense spending by inordinate amounts. No longer did the specter of the Soviet Union threaten transatlantic security, and welfare states were established almost overnight, their budgets outstripping defense spending many times over. This led over the last 20 to 30 years to a military-capability erosion among many Western democracies, and thereby to the lack of a credible deterrent. Authoritarian states have sensed this decline and adjusted their force postures to exploit it. Russia’s invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022 are examples, as is China’s increasingly aggressive behavior throughout the Indo-Pacific and its illegitimate territorial expansionism in the South China Sea.

There are strong historical parallels in the last century to modern-day Ukraine and the South China Sea. A rejuvenated and expansionist Germany sought to sweep across much of central and western Europe in the 1930s. It was allowed to do so in part because leaders in London and Washington were at first naïve about its intentions. Today’s authoritarian dictatorships are similarly taking advantage of what is at best a perceived Western indifference to global affairs and turn toward isolationist foreign policy, and at worst a perceived Western military and diplomatic weakness. Whatever their exact assessment of the West at present, Moscow and Beijing are trying to rewrite historical borders much as last century’s fascist dictators did.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/23/loose-talk-about-the-end-of-everything/

After a recent summit between new partners China and Russia, General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin issued an odd one-sentence communique: “There can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be fought.”

No one would disagree, even though several officials of both hypocritical governments have previously threatened their neighbors with nuclear attacks.

But still, why did the two feel the need to issue such a terse statement—and why now?

Rarely has the global rhetoric of mass annihilation reached such a crescendo as the present, as existential wars rage in Ukraine and Gaza.

In particular, Putin at least believes that he is finally winning the Ukraine conflict. Xi seems to assume that conventional ascendant Chinese military power in the South China Sea has finally made the absorption of Taiwan practicable.

They both believe that the only impediment to their victories would be an intervention from the U.S. and the NATO alliance, a conflict that could descend into mutual threats to resort to nuclear weapons.

Thus the recent warnings of Xi and Putin.

Almost monthly, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un continues his weary threats to use his nuclear arsenal to destroy South Korea or Japan.

A similarly monotonous, pro-Hamas Turkish president, Recep Erdogan, regularly threatens Armenians with crazy talk of repeating the “mission of our grandfathers.” And he occasionally warns Israelis and Greeks that they may one day wake up to Turkish missiles raining down upon their cities.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-china-exports-its-totalitarian-ideology-to-the-rest-of-the-world/

Rev. Bob Fu was a former student leader during the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989. He was a house church leader in Beijing until he and his wife, Bochun “Heidi” Cai, were imprisoned in 1996. In 1997 he was exiled to the U.S. In 2002, he founded ChinaAid in Philadelphia to promote religious freedom and rule of law in China.

Fu has since been raising awareness regarding the totalitarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and how it affects the international community while striving to help persecuted minorities and prisoners of conscience in his country of birth.

In a recent interview with CBN News, Fu calls China “a real police state.” He says that facial recognition cameras are used to track every move of every individual in China. “There are two face recognition cameras following each citizen everywhere in China,” he says.

In a comprehensive report, journalist Alfred NG also confirms:

“China’s facial recognition system logs nearly every single citizen in the country, with a vast network of cameras across the country. A database leak in 2019 gave a glimpse of how pervasive China’s surveillance tools are — with more than 6.8 million records from a single day, taken from cameras positioned around hotels, parks, tourism spots and mosques, logging details on people as young as 9 days old…

Chinese officials have used surveillance tools to publicly shame people wearing sleepwear in public, calling it ‘uncivilized behavior.’

The punishing of these minor offenses is by design, surveillance experts said. The threat of public humiliation through facial recognition helps Chinese officials direct over a billion people toward what it considers acceptable behavior, from what you wear to how you cross the street.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/01/chinese-spy-ships-stalking-u-s-warships-in-military-drills/

Two Chinese surveillance ships have been seen stalking American Navy vessels in the South China Sea, as the latter were conducting military drills outside of Philippine territorial waters.

As the Daily Caller reports, the exercise was a joint effort between U.S., Philippine, and French warships that first set off from Puerto Princesa on Thursday, to conduct the maritime portion of the Balikatan 2024 military exercises. But shortly after the vessels entered international waters, two ships with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) were seen pursuing them within a few nautical miles.

One of the Chinese ships was the Tianwangxing, a Type 815-class electronic surveillance ship, seen about 50 nautical miles from Western Palawan, which is located in the Philippine exclusive economic zone. One of the American warships, the USS Harpers Ferry, had to halt its live-fire drill because the Tianwangxing drew too close, coming within two nautical miles. Then on Sunday, a third Chinese ship was seen within nine nautical miles of the same formation.

However, American spokesmen denied that any part of the exercise was disrupted by the Chinese ships.

“I cannot speak for them but we are monitoring them, and we record then we report whatever our ships are monitoring in the area,” said Captain Ariel Joseph Colom Armed, from the Forces of The Philippines Western Command (Wescom). “As long [as] we continue to monitor and report them, we are in control of the situation.”

The maritime portion of the exercise ended on Monday. The ships involved in the exercise were the USS Harpers Ferry, the BRP Ramon Alcaraz, the BRP Davao Del Sur, and the FS Vendemiaire.

The exercise was conducted for the primary purpose of strengthening the alliance between the U.S. and the Philippines, in response to increasing aggression by China in the region.

“Balikatan is a tangible demonstration of our shared commitment to each other. It matters for regional peace and stability. When we increase our mutual response and defense capabilities, we strengthen our ability to promote regional security and protect our shared interests,” said Lt. Gen. William Jurney, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific commander.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dont-count-on-biden-to-protect-planes-over-the-baltic-sea/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

What will we do about Russian GPS jamming over the Baltic Sea, which is starting to increase the risk of civilian passenger airliner accidents?

Nothing. We’re not going to do anything.

Someday, after Biden’s prepared remarks have been workshopped to death by U.S. State Department bureaucrats, the president may offer another one of his patented, “don’t… don’t,” warnings that have been ignored by everyone from Hamas to the Iranians to the Houthis.

Any type of retaliation or warning shot, telling Russia to knock it off, is likely to be considered too “escalatory” and “provocative” by this administration.

Biden was shaped by the Vietnam War, and his foreign policy instincts – the ones former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates characterized as “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades” – are always to avoid anything that could remotely be considered escalatory, hawkish or aggressive by a foe that is inclined to interpret any U.S. action as intolerably provocative. Remember, Biden’s the guy who urged President Obama to wait on the bin Laden raid, deeming it too risky.

What’s amazing is that Biden takes this hesitant, irresolute stance while simultaneously believing that he’s the toughest guy on the block. “Putin knows that I am president of the United States his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over,” Biden declared in 2019. Biden also claims he went nose-to-nose with Putin and told the Russian dictator, directly to his face, that he didn’t think Putin has a soul. Of course, there were no witnesses.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/04/king_deep_state_sits_on_a_stolen_throne.html

The Bill of Rights doesn’t mean much when the Deep State uses it for toilet paper.

All hail King Deep State!  That is essentially what we have now, is it not?  An unelected, all-powerful, mercurial king — and certainly not a binding constitution limiting government’s authority and preserving Americans’ rights.  

Our First Amendment forbids Congress from restricting an individual’s free speech, but that hasn’t stopped King Deep State from conspiring with Big Tech to silence every voice deemed offensive to the realm.  Our Fourth Amendment forbids nosy officials from poking around in Americans’ private records and communications without first securing particularized warrants establishing probable cause that a crime has been committed, but that hasn’t stopped King Deep State from rummaging through our emails, text messages, and bank statements or eavesdropping on our intimate phone conversations in the name of “national security.”  Our Second Amendment forbids the government from infringing the people’s right to keep and bear arms, but that hasn’t stopped King Deep State from restricting gun purchases, tracking gun owners, and disarming those he doesn’t like.  The Bill of Rights doesn’t mean much when King Deep State uses it as royal toilet paper.  Perhaps it should be renamed, “The Bill of Humble Suggestions, Should His Most Excellent Majesty Approve…or Require Some Gentle Two-Ply.”

If the first step to recovery is admitting that we have a problem, then let’s be honest with ourselves: this is no longer a country of, by, or for the people.  It is an imperial stompy-foot of, by, and for “elites.”  A private central bank decrees the value of our dollars.  Covert espionage agencies advance secret foreign policies in our name.  The Pentagon conducts illicit foreign wars for our alleged benefit.  The National Security Agency monitors what we privately tell each other.  King Deep State’s Silicon Valley vassals tell us what we can publicly say out loud.  The Fascist Bureau of Intimidation decides when dissidents’ doors must be broken down.  The king’s obedient press corps prints only pre-approved news.  The Supreme Court holds up a wet finger in the Deep State’s manufactured winds to determine which rights we may temporarily retain.  And a small contingent of multinational investment firms and industrial behemoths write the bills and budgets that the people’s pretend representatives in Congress never read but obligingly pass.