RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

Journalist Drew Holden kept a list of politicians and mainstream media outlets that have been denigrating, downplaying and outright mocking President Donald Trump’s approach to the Middle East. From Samantha Power to John Kerry to Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer to Rep. Mark Pocan; from Reuters to CNN to The New Yorker to Foreign Policy to the Guardian to…well, you get the point.

Mostly, it is a litany of how much more dangerous the region has become for a variety of Trump’s moves, and how the U.S. is doomed to failure. Following the Israel-United Arab Emirates and Israel-Bahrain peace agreements, witnessed by the United States, criticism has largely been centered around the idea that it really isn’t a big deal. They’re little countries. They don’t matter. They would have done it without Trump. The U.S. doesn’t need the oil, so who cares?

Wait. Wait. What was that about oil?

Who doesn’t need oil?

It is true that with President Trump’s support of fracking, the U.S. no longer relies on the import of oil from the Persian Gulf. But our allies—in particular, our Asian allies—do. And China certainly does.

And herein lies the almost entirely unremarked upon the importance of regional peace, freedom of navigation, the United States and the connection between Middle East policy and China policy—a connection that appears to have escaped left-leaning punditry.

The Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran has been threatening oil shipping from the Persian Gulf by the other oil-producing states, which are predominantly Sunni. The United States Navy guarantees freedom of navigation in the Gulf, and we have bases in Oman, Qatar (odd, but true), Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain with which to do it. There are those in the U.S. who say, “We don’t import Persian Gulf oil, so why should we pay for the security that allows the Arabs to profit?” “Why do we provide security for ships going to China?” China, which is in the process of building a much bigger navy and has established a Middle Eastern base in Djibouti on the Red Sea near the U.S. base there, could conceivably take over that responsibility.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-once-germanys-partner-in-growth-turns-into-a-rival-11600338663

An informal partnership that kept Germany’s economy tethered to China’s for decades is unraveling, threatening Berlin’s—and Europe’s—post-pandemic recovery as the Asian giant stages a powerful comeback.

The relationship that saw Germany provide China with the machines to power its economy helped the German economy recover rapidly after the financial crisis. But German business leaders say the model is no longer working as China turns from partner to rival.

Germany should see its gross domestic product shrink by between 5.8% and 7.1% this year according to German public- and private-sector economists—better than most other Western economies but much worse than China’s expected 2.5% growth.

While Germany’s exporters are benefiting from a recovery in international trade, they aren’t getting the lift from China that they did a decade ago. In July, German exports were up from June but still 11% lower from a year earlier. China’s exports have exceeded last year’s levels for two months.

This divergence, economists and German business leaders say, is partly the result of Beijing’s strategy to encourage manufacturers to produce more sophisticated machinery that is more competitive with high-end German capital goods that were previously unmatched.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16519/eu-hizballah-partner

The reality is, should the EU get its way, contrary to its claims to try and uphold the Good Friday Agreement, its demands would harm future prospects for peace and stability in Northern Ireland by undermining and destabilising the union.

Where does Hizballah get the weapons and explosives it is reportedly providing to the New IRA? Iran. The EU has been at the forefront of supplying funds to Iran, including cash used for its terrorist proxies across the Middle East and beyond.

The EU’s bungling foreign policy does not proscribe Hizballah in its entirety, mulishly maintaining a fictitious separation between “political” and “military” wings, despite the terrorist group’s own insistence that there is no distinction. Meanwhile Hizballah has attempted large-scale terrorist attacks in Britain, France and Germany….

[T]he EU falsely claims to uphold peace in Ireland while itself facilitating the greatest threat to that peace.

Intersectionality has become a cynical craze among woke activists determined to promote division and undermine the fabric of Western society. But long before these Johnny-come-lately militants launched their campaigns of disruption, cancelling all who disagree, doing their best to get dissenters fired and tearing down historic statues, other militants were putting their brand of intersectionality into action to kill, maim and destroy the targets of their own hatred.

Sinn Fein’s campaign of violence against the British state and the people of Northern Ireland, fronted by the Provisional IRA, lasted 30 years until their comprehensive infiltration by British intelligence, especially the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch, forced them to lay down their arms under the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Sinn Fein-IRA’s intersectionality included close cooperation with a wide range of fellow terrorists, including the Basque separatist movement, ETA. For many years, Sinn Fein-IRA also colluded with terrorist gangs in the Middle East, themselves masters of intersectionality, sometimes crossing the Shia-Sunni divide as they still do today.

Perhaps the most significant of these unholy alliances involved Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s regime in Libya. Gadaffi helped re-energise IRA terrorism in the mid-1980s by supplying cash and weaponry, including rifles, pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers, surface-to-air missiles, flamethrowers and high explosives. Four massive arms shipments from Libya — totalling more than 100 tons — made it through to the IRA strongholds and a fifth was intercepted by the French navy. These bombs and guns were used to murder large numbers of innocent people in Northern Ireland.