RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/10/yemen-magician-bidens-misdir

When the magician tells you to look right, look left, because that’s where the action is.

Unfortunately, Congress looked right.

In a striking bipartisan vote, the Senate voted to keep the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. Good move, but not where the action is. Instead, the Biden administration has announced it has a  series of steps planned to restore funds and political status to the Palestinian Authority, including the possibility of reopening the Jerusalem Consulate – understood as the American Embassy to the Palestinians.

The UN, EU, and U.S. all sanctioned Iran at some point since 1980. While effective in some areas, the sanctions did not prevent Iran from cheating on its nuclear and ballistic missile obligations. President Biden has announced an intention to return in some form to the 2015 JCPOA – and from there, to negotiate another, stronger deal. In response, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said the U.S. must first lift sanctions – most importantly, oil and banking sanctions, which are terrorism-sponsorship-related, not nuclear or missile related. Congress is working to prevent that. Good idea.

But the action on Iran is on the other side.  In Yemen.

The President announced the lifting of the terrorism designation from Houthi rebels in Yemen, couched in diplo-speak: “This decision has nothing to do with our view of the Houthis and their reprehensible conduct, including attacks against civilians and the kidnapping of American citizens. We are committed to helping Saudi Arabia defend its territory against further such attacks.”

So, the Houthis are acknowledged to behave like a terror organization, and their “reprehensible conduct” includes the use of child soldiers, but the Biden administration plans to ignore that. Why?

Look left.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/02/sino-forming-south-of-the-border/

Huawei’s development of Mexico’s mobile broadband infrastructure has powered extraordinary growth
Mexico’s retail ecommerce sales growth led the world in 2019.

Sometime in 2015, I sat in the back of a Mexico City taxi, reading instructions from Waze to the driver. We took detours through small residential streets, zigzagged from one major artery to another, and hung risky U-turns – all of which cut half an hour from our travel time. I had to give the directions because the driver didn’t use Waze, because, like most Mexican taxistas in 2015, he couldn’t afford the mobile broadband, which cost more in Mexico than in any other large country.

That was then. By 2020 about a third of Mexico City drivers were using the navigation app. In 2019 Mexico had 77 mobile broadband accounts per 100 people, vs. only 23 accounts in 2013. And Mexico last year had the world’s highest percentage growth in e-commerce.

This transformation had something to do with my taxi ride of 2015, at least tangentially. I had a cabinet-level meeting at Mexico’s Ministry of Telecommunications, in my then capacity as head of Americas for a Hong Kong investment banking boutique. As I reported in my book You Will Be Assimilated: China’s Plan to Sino-Form the World, I introduced top Huawei executives to senior Mexican officials, then debating an overhaul of the country’s woefully inadequate broadband system.

Nothing happened in 2015; later that year Jack Ma acquired the boutique and within a few months fired the Western bankers. But in 2017 Mexico invited Huawei and Nokia to build a “shared network” (red compartida) for mobile broadband. Banned from the United States, Huawei flourished in Mexico, and its broadband base stations provide service for dozens of Mexican cities, including a few that originally were assigned to Nokia. The cost of broadband service plunged and the number of subscribers more than tripled. Waze, a luxury that only a visiting gringo could afford in 2015, now serves 2 million users per day in Mexico City alone, and Mexico has become the app’s number four market globally. Anyone who has tried to negotiate the Mexican capital’s paralytic traffic knows how much that improves quality of life.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/re-election-londons-sadiq-khan-

In a little under three months, Sadiq Khan will be re-elected Mayor of London.

It is not guaranteed, of course. Londoners will head to the polls on May 6 to cast their votes in local elections, both for the office of Mayor of London and for members of the Greater London Assembly, a body designed to scrutinize the office.

But it feels horribly like a forgone conclusion.

The Conservatives are putting up about as much fight as Switzerland. Their candidate, Shaun Bailey, feels like a token effort, put up to tick the box but not expected to achieve much.

Others are making a bolder effort. Brian Rose from London Real has acquired a blazing black and red bus bearing his name and is valiantly touring the 32 London boroughs in his attempt to get elected, but faces impossible odds. As I know from personal experience, campaigning alone is hard. The fastest way to learn about the power of the party is to try to run without one. Brian is up against the might of the Labour Party and its vice-like grip on the levers of power in this city.

It is exasperating. Because of Labour and Union support, and Muslim majority in inner city London, it is impossible to still the wrecking ball that is Khan.

London is unrecognizable from the city many Americans once knew and loved. It is screaming out in pain, like a stuck creature desperate to be put out of its misery. This week there were 14 stabbings in one 24-hour period, leaving two dead in the street where they were cut down. And not a word was heard from the gilded cage of the London Mayor.

Stabbings are so often gang-related, confined to certain zip codes and certain segments of the population (young, black, living in sink estates), that it is easy for the Mayor to turn a blind eye.

It is the reason British natives are fleeing the capital in their droves. Burglaries and assaults are so commonplace as not to merit an officer in attendance, while the opportunity to do some politically-correct policing has the boys in blue falling over themselves to be seen. When diversity is the end goal, all else is lost along the way.