RUTHFULLY YOURS

Taiwan was betrayed by Nixon/Kissinger and then Carter who all bowed to Beijing’s demands for the “one China policy.” Carter infamously implemented the betrayal by removing the embassy in Taipei, and transferring it to mainland China….Taiwan is an economic success and was a staunch ally during the Cold War. This is another instance of appeasement of tyrants at the expense of allies which has become a sad part of our foreign policy….rsk
TAIPEI—The widely expected election victory this week of an independence-leaning candidate as Taiwan’s president is injecting new uncertainty to the island’s fraught ties with China and adding a potential headache for Washington.

Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the Democratic Progressive Party, holds a substantial lead in most polls ahead of Saturday’s election on the island of 23 million people that Beijing regards as its territory. The vote follows nearly eight years of tightening relations between Taiwan and China under Taiwan’s president, Ma Ying-jeou, whom critics say has been too accommodating of Beijing’s interests at the expense of the island’s deteriorating economy.

Ms. Tsai’s party, known as the DPP, supports Taiwan’s formal independence from China, while Mr. Ma’s Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, doesn’t. Though Ms. Tsai has pledged not to provoke Beijing, her elevation poses a challenge to Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has promoted a vision of a strong, politically unified China.

A change in Taiwan’s government also would further complicate the region’s strained security picture. After years of building up its military, Beijing is increasingly asserting control over disputed territories in the East China Sea and South China Sea, alarming Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam, which have turned to Washington for support.

Barack Obama has a history of humiliating photo-ops associated with his full-blown Radical Islam Denial Syndrome: the burning consulate in Benghazi juxtaposed with Obama partying it up in Vegas with Beyonce; the dead bodies of ISIS-slain Parisians juxtaposed with Obama telling the world that ISIS could be fought with a climate change summit; corpses in San Bernardino juxtaposed with Obama simultaneously telling a national audience that ISIS was contained.

Perhaps the worst one yet happened on Tuesday.

As Obama prepared for his last State of the Union address – an event he pitched with hijinks and mugging for the cameras – the Iranian Revolutionary Guard arrested 10 American sailors and seized two Navy boats. Obama never mentioned it in his State of the Union address; the day after the address, Iran returned the sailors, unharmed.

But the message was clear to those who were watching: Obama had been castrated on the world stage by Iran, a country he once termed “tiny compared to the Soviet Union.”

That message became clearer on Wednesday morning, when Iran also released photos of American sailors on their knees, hands behind their heads, at the beck and call of a Shiite terrorist army; a female sailor forced to wear a hijab; a male sailor forced to apologize on camera for supposedly encroaching into Iranian waters. The IRG accused the Americans of “snooping” and Iranian army chief Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said, “This incident in the Persian Gulf, which probably will not be the American forces’ last mistake in the region, should be a lesson to troublemakers in the U.S. Congress.”

http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2016/01/13/iran-released-footage-photos-of-us-sailors-held-overnight/ Iranian state-controlled news outlet Tasnim released video Wednesday afternoon that shows a U.S. sailor apologizing for purportedly infringing upon Tehran’s sovereignty. On Tuesday, Iran seized two U.S. naval boats, arguing they illegally entered Iran’s territorial waters. The Pentagon said they encountered mechanical troubles, forcing their boats to go off course. “It was a mistake, […]

Europe has voluntarily begun the process of giving up its liberal and hard-fought-for freedoms. Free speech no longer exists, only — straight out of totalitarian ideologies — “responsible” free speech: “free” only if it does not “offend” anyone.

The desire of many Europeans and other self-declared devotees of “human rights” to cover up, downplay or explain away what is happening in Europe, in fact represents the opposite of respect for others and equality before the law.

Absolving such criminal behavior is not only the very opposite of justice, it is also a kind of “inverted racism” — against its own native Europeans.

The statistics in other countries are similar. In 2014, Jews in Europe were murdered, raped, beaten, stalked, and chased, for being Jewish. Signs in the street read, “Sale Juif” (“dirty Jew”), “Death to the Jews,” and “Jews to the gas.” None of these side effects of Muslim immigration seems to concern the liberals, the media, or the purported defenders of human rights — who so loudly claim to be against “racism.” Or, once again in Europe, does “racism” not include Jews?

After the mass sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve in the European cities of Cologne, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Bielefeld, Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Vienna, Salzburg, Zürich, Helsinki and Kalmar, it is clear that something profoundly disturbing has occurred in Europe. By Sunday, in Cologne alone, 516 women had filed criminal charges — around 40% of them relating to sexual assaults.

The initial reactions to the sexual assaults from German authorities, the media, as well as feminists and others have not been less disturbing.

The German police first claimed, in a surreal statement the morning of Jan. 1, that the situation on New Year’s Eve had been “relaxed.” Cologne Police Chief Wolfgang Albers later admitted “this initial statement was incorrect” and, for his role in what appeared as a cover up, has since been forced into early retirement.

“Cultural enrichment” has brought us a new word: Taharrush. Remember it well, because we are going to have to deal with it a lot. Taharrush is the Arabic word for the phenomenon whereby women are encircled by groups of men and sexually harassed, assaulted, groped, raped. After the Cologne taharrush on New Year’s Eve, many German women bought pepper spray. Who can blame them?

A culture that has a specific word for sexual assaults of women by groups of men is a danger to all women. The existence of the word indicates that the phenomenon is widespread. Frau Merkel, Prime Minister Rutte and all the other open-door politicians could and should have known this.

The Islamic world is steeped in misogyny. The Koran explicitly states that a woman is worth only half a man (Suras 2: 228, 2: 282, 4:11), that women are unclean (5:6), and that a man can have sex with his wife whenever he wants (24:31). The Koran even says that men are allowed to have sex slaves (4:24), and that they have the right to rape women whom they have captured (24:31).

The hadiths, the descriptions of the life of Muhammad, the ideal human being whose example all the Islamic faithful must follow, confirm that women are sex objects, that they are inferior beings like dogs and donkeys, and that there is nothing wrong with sexual slavery and raping female prisoners.

At this point, it’s a sad joke — a form of gallows humor shared in times of trouble. When there’s a shooting, and the hours tick by without any identification of the suspect, one can presume that it’s a jihadist. When there’s a riot in Europe, and the perpetrators are described as “youths,” one can presume it’s Muslim men. When an Islamist goes on a shooting spree or stabbing spree or beheads a coworker, authorities will latch onto any explanation but the obvious.

But now even gallows humor is inappropriate. Western denial of Islamic crimes is so common, so systematic, that we can no longer have any confidence that we understand the true dimensions of the jihadist threat. Consider the following:

In Germany, police actively “tried to obfuscate” what happened on New Year’s Eve, when thousands of Muslim men systematically sexually assaulted hundreds of German women — an act that my colleague Andrew McCarthy has aptly termed a “rape jihad.”

The New York Times reported yesterday that Swedish authorities now stand accused of covering up a wave of sexual assaults at a concert last summer. A Swedish newspaper wrote today that national media refused at the time to report factual accounts from the concert assaults, claiming they were nothing but far-right “propaganda.”