RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-collusion-in-venezuela-11557271219

‘I had a very good talk with President Putin — probably over an hour,” President Trump said on Friday. “And we talked about many things. Venezuela was one of the topics. And he is not looking at all to get involved in Venezuela, other than he’d like to see something positive happen for Venezuela. And I feel the same way.” Mr. Trump added: “I thought it was a very positive conversation I had with President Putin on Venezuela.”

It’s also the opposite of what the rest of his Administration and nearly every outside observer believes.

Since the mid-2000s Mr. Putin has made it a priority to strengthen economic, military and diplomatic ties with Venezuela. Moscow has sold more than $10 billion in weapons—assault rifles, jet fighters, tanks and missile systems—to Caracas. In 2008 Mr. Putin sent two Russian Tu-160 bombers on a training mission to Venezuela. The late dictator Hugo Chávez celebrated their arrival, declaring “Yankee hegemony is finished.”

In 2014 Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu announced plans to put Russian military bases in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. Last December Venezuela and Russia again held joint training exercises.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ronald-mcdonalds-at-the-helm-leftist-clown-justin-trudeau-follows-in-the-footsteps-of-obama/

Over the last year, I’ve met a growing number of fellow Canadians who have begun to yearn for a Donald to lead the country. They have belatedly recognized that they have a Ronald McDonald at the helm in Justin Trudeau, whose antics may delight children but who is quite incapable in any adult capacity.

Most recently, our dear leader in sensitive trade talks with the Japanese prime minister referred to the country as China. We recall that Trudeau wished the Canadian Olympic team in Seoul, South Korea, best of luck in Pyongyang, North Korea. We learn from an interview in The New York Times that Canada has no core identity—not how a sober statesman speaks of his country. This is the man who, as the beneficiary of a family trust fund, never had to run a household out of his own earnings, could say “The budget will balance itself,” while leading the country into astronomical debt. According to his way of thinking, the Boston Marathon bombers needed to be sympathetically understood, since they must have felt “completely excluded.” He sought a gender-balanced cabinet “because it’s 2015.” This is the zany who on a diplomatic visit to India can affect Bollywood and dress in a ceremonial costume to the bemusement of his hosts.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14188/eu-courts-arab-league

[President of the European Council, Donald] Tusk referred to the value gap between the states of the Arab League and those of the European Union as “differences between us”. Such euphemisms however, do not explain the evident lack of even the pretense, on the part of the EU, to comply with its own stated human rights policies.

“We’ve been witnessing a spike in gross human rights violations across the Arab region, including in extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and torture and other ill-treatment. The region is in dire need of a credible and independent judicial mechanism to provide justice for human rights violations, the overwhelming majority of which presently go unaddressed”. — Said Benarbia, MENA Programme Director of the International Commission of Jurists.

In uncomfortably Orwellian fashion, the summit “Reaffirmed our resolve to combat cultural and religious intolerance, extremism, negative stereotyping, stigmatisation and discrimination leading to incitement to violence against persons based on religion or belief and condemn any advocacy of religious hatred against individuals that constitutes incitement, hostility or violence, including on the internet and social media”.

Instead, Mogherini’s words came across as references to the EU’s own continued efforts to monitor and police free speech and thus, gradually, to extinguish any kind of diversity of opinion within the EU.

The first summit between the European Union (EU) and the Arab League, formally known as the League of Arab States (LAS), took place on February 24-25. “Europeans and Arabs have a long and rich history of cultural, economic, commercial and political exchanges. This, together with the geographical proximity and interdependence, has contributed to institutionalise a strong relationship between the EU and the League of Arab States (LAS). Within this framework, the common aim is to develop closer cooperation to realise their shared aspirations to ensure peace, security and prosperity in both regions,” the website of the European Union announced.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273678/palestinian-rocket-terror-against-israel-joseph-klein

Palestinian terrorists fired at least 650 rockets into Israel this past weekend. Although most of the rockets either landed in open fields or were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, the rocket attacks killed at least four Israelis and injured more than 100 others. Israel retaliated with airstrikes against more than 320 key targets that included an attack tunnel, an underground rocket factory, rocket launcher sites and other military facilities used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second-largest terror group and a proxy of Iran. Israel also went after specific militants, including, the New York Times reported, “a man who the Israeli military said had been responsible for large transfers of cash from Iran to Hamas…”

Moreover, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) appears to be preparing for a possible land war by deploying to the Gaza area on Sunday two reinforcement brigades – the Golani Infantry Brigade and the 7th Armored Brigade. Commenting on the deployment of the 7th Armored Brigade, IDF Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said, “An armoured brigade is ready for various contingencies but earmarked for an offensive mission being by definition a mission that goes inside enemy terrain.” The Golani Brigade is considered one of the IDF’s most highly decorated infantry units and has fought in all of Israel’s wars.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14164/iran-targeting-christians

“In Iran, any practice that contradicts Islam is regarded as a national security threat, punished severely by the court system.” — International Christian Concern, 2019.

“Revolutionary courts were created to guard against all threats to Islam. These courts have evolved into a well-oiled machine of oppres­sion that operates with impunity under state protection. The courts are closely intertwined with the Intelligence Ministry. Judges have at their disposal Revolutionary Guards (secret police) and a network of prisons used to torture and interrogate Christians.” — International Christian Concern.

“If you recant and repent, you’ll go to jail. And if you don’t, you’ll be killed.” — Dr. Mike Ansari from Heart4Iran, an Iranian Christian minister, reported by International Christian Concern.

“Christians may be looking at large fines, detention, lengthy prison sentences, or even execution under Islamic Sharia law. The sentences of Christian converts are left up to the interpretation of the judge and may be founded on anything — the judge’s mood that day, what he had for breakfast, his interpretation of Sharia law, or his level of hatred toward Christianity.” — International Christian Concern.

The daughter of a former pastor in Iran — Dabrina Bet-Tamraz — recently described the persecution and suffering to which her family is being subjected after being sentenced to lengthy prison terms for “crimes” related to Christianity.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14180/iran-two-losers

Forty years after the Islamic Revolution, the clergy-led ruling elite was still behaving like a sect rather than a state, thus preventing Iran from behaving like a normal nation with all its merits and defects.

The fifth and highest stage is that of “statehood,” which becomes possible when society is used to the rule of law regardless of the quality of the law in force, and respects the primacy of state institutions as representations of the public will and interest.

Ruling elites in the Islamic world, including even empire-builders such as the Ottomans and Safavids, progressed through the first four stages described above but never reached the fifth stage, that is to say, the creation of a proper “state” based on the rule of law.

Last November, Westminster University in London organized a seminar with an enticing theme: Is a Plan B for Iran possible?

In its simplest form, the main argument was that 40 years after the Islamic Revolution, the clergy-led ruling elite was still behaving like a sect rather than a state, thus preventing Iran from behaving like a normal nation with all its merits and defects.

In the paper that I presented, I drew on the teachings of several Iranian classical historians, most notably Abul-Fazl Beyhaqi (died in 1077 AD). Tracing the course through which the Ghaznavids, a Turkic warrior tribe, seized power in Iran and established a dynasty, Beyhaqi identifies five stages.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/30/bryen-iranian-cbs

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s appearance over the weekend on CBS’ Face the Nation showed him trying to convince someone — his minders at home, perhaps — that Iran is a moderate, trustworthy, terror-fighting country.

The designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terror organization and the end of oil waivers, he said, would “show the Iranian people that the U.S. is not worthy of being a negotiating partner,” and the Trump administration as “squeezing the Iranian people, not the government.”

He added, “When the Iranian people are pressured, they do not respond with submission, they respond with resistance. They want us to represent them.”

That last one is a dead giveaway that the mullahs are nervous.