RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/germanys-year-islamic-terrorism-stephen-brown/

Last year, like preceding years, was a busy year for Islamic terrorists in Germany.

Germany’s year of terrorism began in March with a lovely Muslim couple — the husband a Tunisian, the wife a German citizen — arrested for planning a chemical attack. The federal prosecutor’s office said the husband, 30-year-old Sief Allah A., had acquired knowledge of how to turn ricin into a weapon and had ordered 3,300 grams of the poison online.

Arrested in Cologne, the married pair also face charges of planning attacks using metal balls and homemade explosives. They also both had sought membership in the Islamic State (IS). They had started planning their attacks in 2018 after Sief Ali had failed twice to cross over Turkey’s border into Syria.

Also in March, German police raided and arrested 11 Salafists in the Hesse and Rhineland-Pfalz areas, two of whom were brothers. According to the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, they “jointly agreed to carry out an Islamic terrorist attack employing a vehicle and firearms in order to kill as many ‘unbelievers’ as possible.”

The men were between 20 and 42 years of age and had contacted weapons dealers, rented a large truck and gathered money for the attack, $22,000 of which was seized in the raid. They had even committed a crime to get money for their evil plan.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/trump-speaks-directly-iranian-people-michael-ledeen/

The Iranian people are demonstrating. You can see the protests on Twitter, and read about the internal ferment online at the Free Iran Herald, which appears on Gateway Pundit.

The current round of demonstrations erupted all over the country after the destruction of the Ukrainian commercial airplane taking off from Tehran. The security forces are reacting with even greater than usual violence, shooting the protesters with live ammunition. At the same time, supporters of deceased General Qassem Soleimani within the Revolutionary Guards are being rounded up in significant numbers, suggesting that there was a power struggle underway within his Quds Force for the succession after the death of the supreme leader—Ali Khamenei—who is now eighty years old.

According to the Free Iran Herald, published in the Gateway Pundit blog,

This news is increasing the speculation that Soleimani, who was known to act on his own initiatives, and who was being seen as a possible future dictator-in-waiting for Tehran, was betrayed to American intelligence by his own colleagues within the regime, who feared that he would deprive them of their power and privileges.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/taiwan-rejects-communist-china-as-hong-kong-watches/

Taiwan’s voters went to the polls Saturday and sent a strong message to Beijing. The island also known as the Republic of China since 1945 re-elected President Tsai Ing-wen in a massive landslide. Tsai earned nearly 58% of the vote with more than 99% of precincts reporting, leaving no hanging doubts or chads in play. This was a clear victory that will ripple across Asia. Tsai’s victory hasn’t stopped the mainland’s state-run media of casting it as “evil” to undermine it.

President Tsai campaigned on taking a hard line against the mainland and in favor of independence. Today she wasted no time in sending another strong signal that Taiwan is not interested in adopting the “one country, two systems” Beijing insists on. Tsai met with the head of the American Institute in Taiwan today.

Fresh from a landslide re-election victory, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met Sunday with the de facto U.S. ambassador to Taipei.

William Brent Christensen, a U.S. diplomat who is director of the American Institute in Taiwan, congratulated Tsai on her victory in Saturday’s election, and she thanked him for his support.

The meeting came as China warned that countries should stick with recognizing communist-ruled Beijing as the rightful government of “one China,” including Taiwan.

This follows a strong statement of support from the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, observers from Hong Kong were on hand to witness Taiwan’s vote.

At a raucous election rally for Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, Hong Konger Karen Leung surveyed the huge crowd of excited flag-waving voters as a rap song blasted over the loudspeakers and sighed: “We want to have elections like this.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-taiwan-election/taiwan-president-wins-landslide-victory-in-stark-rebuke-to-china-idUSKBN1ZA009

Anti-government unrest in Chinese-ruled Hong Kong took center stage during a campaign in which Tsai held up Taiwan as a beacon of hope for protesters in the former British colony and rejected Beijing’s offer of a “one country, two systems” model.

China claims Taiwan as its sacred territory, to be taken by force if needed, a threat President Xi Jinping reiterated a year ago while saying he preferred a peaceful solution.

“One country, two systems,” which gives a high degree of autonomy, much as Beijing uses in Hong Kong, has never been popular in Taiwan and is even less so after months of protests in Hong Kong.

China made itself even more unpopular in Taiwan in the run-up to the election by twice sailing its newest aircraft carrier through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, denounced by Taipei as an effort at military intimidation.

“We hope that the Beijing authorities can understand that a democratic Taiwan with a government chosen by the people will not give in to threats and intimidation,” Tsai told reporters.

Beijing needs to understand the will of Taiwan’s people, and that only Taiwan’s people can decide its future, she added, repeating her firm opposition to “one country, two systems”.

https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/01/article/how-fragile-is-irans-regime-2/

Smartphone videos of anti-regime protests in Tehran circulated in global news media this weekend, after the Iranian government admitted it shot down a Ukrainian civilian airliner. The latest demonstrations followed a national wave of protests last November in which up to 1,500 demonstrators were killed. Hard information about the origins and extent of the anti-regime protests is difficult to find. But there is a good deal of evidence of extreme dissatisfaction with the regime due to economic stress.

Iran’s average monthly after-tax wage was US$318.53, according to the website Numbeo, which tallies thousands of user inputs to arrive at wage and price data.

Using Numbeo’s prices I constructed a monthly survival budget in US dollar equivalents: