RUTHFULLY YOURS

James A. Lyons, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations. He is a Member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi

China’s determined efforts over the past two decades to seize control of almost the entire South China Sea is nothing short of classic aggressive imperialism. What’s remarkable is that it has been done without basically firing a shot, using the Chinese People’s Liberation Army concept of “military soft power.” This tactic is designed to defeat the enemy without fighting. Make no mistake: China views the United States as the enemy. Under President Obama’s strategy to fundamentally transform America, our country doesn’t confront our enemies, it embraces them. China has the perfect enemy.

When the United States withdrew its forces from the Philippines in 1992, this created a vacuum, which presented China with an unprecedented opportunity to expand its influence and territorial objectives. In 1993, China announced its illegal claims to almost the entire South China Sea as part of its territorial waters. The claim is based on China’s questionable Nine-Dash Line maritime claim and includes large sea areas of internationally recognized economic zones belonging to Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Japan.

There is no question that what China has accomplished over the past two decades – both economically and militarily – has been remarkable. When I took the first U.S. Navy Task Force back to mainland China on Nov. 3, 1986, 37 years after the Communists seized power in 1949, its navy was nothing more than a coastal navy, and not a threat to anyone. However, since then, China – with a double-digit increase in its military budget – has dramatically modernized its military forces and specifically built a navy designed to confront the U.S. Navy. More recently, Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the process of transforming China’s military force’s mission from just a defensive posture and regional power to one that will potentially be capable of challenging the United States globally.

As we have seen, China has instituted an aggressive reclamation program, creating man-made islands out of shallow reefs and inlets to reinforce its South China Sea claims. Since 2014, China has reclaimed more than 3,200 acres. Airfields and other permanent facilities have been built on these islands. The islands, in effect, have become stationary aircraft carriers. China has already deployed significant air, naval and missile forces to its newly reclaimed stationary carriers.

The history of nations is mostly characterized by ethnic and racial uniformity, not diversity.

Most national boundaries reflected linguistic, religious, and ethnic homogeneity. Until the late 20th century, diversity was considered a liability, not a strength.

Countries and societies that were ethnically homogeneous, such as ancient Germanic tribes or modern Japan, felt that they were inherently more stable and secure than the alternative, whether late imperial Rome or contemporary America.

Many societies created words to highlight their own racial purity. At times, “Volk” in German and “Raza” in Spanish (and “Razza” in Italian) meant more than just shared language, residence, or culture; those words also included a racial essence. Even today, it would be hard for someone Japanese to be fully accepted as a Mexican citizen, or for a native-born Mexican to migrate and become a Japanese citizen.

Many cultures reflected their suspicion of diversity by using pejorative nouns for the “other.” In Hebrew, the “goyim” were all the other non-Jewish nations and peoples. “Odar” in Armenian denoted the rest of the world that was not ethnically Armenian. For Japanese, the “gaijin” are those who by nationality, ethnicity, and race cannot become fully Japanese. In 18th-century Castilian Spain, “gringo” meant any foreign, non-native speakers of Spanish.

The Balkan states were the powder kegs of 20th-century world wars because different groups wanted to change national boundaries to reflect their separate ethnicities.

The premise of Nazi Germany was to incorporate all the German “Volk” into one vast racially and linguistically harmonious “Reich” — even if it meant destroying the national borders of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

The constitution of Mexico unapologetically predicates national immigration policies on not endangering Mexico’s ethnic makeup.

Countries, ancient and modern, that have tried to unite diverse tribes have usually fared poorly. The Italian Roman Republic lasted about 500 years. In contrast, the multiracial Roman Empire that after the Edict of Caracalla in AD 212 made all its diverse peoples equal citizens endured little more than two (often violent) centuries.

The Islamic State has given us a rather horrific string of public executions, some of which they have recorded for the entire world to see their unbridled brutality. They burned a captured Jordanian pilot alive. They executed Christians for refusing to renounce their faith. They reportedly blew up a baby for “training purposes.” It was a demonstration in how to properly use explosives. There was also the video where they killed “16 men by drowning them in a cage, decapitating them with explosives and firing a rocket-propelled grenade into a car.” Oh, and let’s not forget the beheadings of American journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley. Now, they’ve reportedly burned to death 19 Yazidi women for refusing to have sex with their ISIS husbands (via YNetNews):

Nineteen Yazidi women were brutally executed last weekend in Mosul, Iraq, after refusing to have sex with their husbands – all members of ISIS.

Eyewitnesses told news agencies that the women were put in an iron cage and burned alive in front of a crowd of hundreds of spectators.

They were burnt to death while hundreds watched,” an eyewitness told the Syrian news agency ARA. “No one could do anything to save them from the horrific punishment.”

Abdullah al-Mala, another witness, said that “they were punished because they refused to have sex with ISIS militants.”

ISIS militants kidnapped the nineteen women, along with thousands of others, after having taken control of Yazidi territory in Iraq in August 2014, and used them as sex slaves.

Of course, given this group’s history with women, this shouldn’t be surprising, though it’s horrific all the same. In March, the State Department finally declared that the Islamic State was engaging in genocide against Christians in Iraq and Syria. On top of their barbarism, they have also engaged in a prolonged campaign against countless historical sites. Lastly, they’ve engaged in terror attacks across Europe. Last November, they killed over 100 people in coordinated attacks in Paris, and they’ve claimed to be responsible for the recent bombing in Belgium.

Horrific executions, sex slavery, genocide against Christians, and involvement in international terrorism—all the more reason to take them out, though we won’t see such actions from the Obama administration.

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

Muslims often insist that other religions are just as violent
as theirs and that the bigger problem is “Islamophobia.”
We put that narrative to the test each Ramadan with a
running count of ALL terror attacks, categorized by motive.

Public anger is also being fueled by the growing number of diktats issued by the unelected officials running the Brussels-based European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the bloc, which has been relentless in its usurpation of sovereignty from the 28 nation states that comprise the European Union.

Although the survey does not explicitly say so, the findings almost certainly reflect growing anger at the anti-democratic nature of the EU and its never-ending power grabs.

On May 31, the EU, in partnership with Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Microsoft, unveiled a “code of conduct” to combat the spread of “illegal hate speech” online. Critics say the EU’s definition of “hate speech” is so vague that it could include virtually anything deemed politically incorrect by European authorities, including criticism of mass migration, Islam or even the EU itself.

On April 20, the European Political Strategy Centre, an in-house EU think tank that reports directly to Juncker, proposed that the European Union establish its own central intelligence agency, which would answer only to unelected bureaucrats.

Public opposition to the European Union is growing in all key member states, according to a new survey of voters in ten EU countries.

Public disaffection with the EU is being fueled by the bloc’s mishandling of the refugee and debt crises, according to the survey, which interviewed voters in Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden.

Public anger is also being fueled by the growing number of diktats issued by the unelected officials running the Brussels-based European Commission, the powerful administrative arm of the bloc, which has been relentless in its usurpation of sovereignty from the 28 nation states that comprise the European Union.

With their goodhearted eagerness to be inclusive, not to discriminate and to defend freedom of religion, Swedish politicians are easy prey for Islamists with an anti-democratic agenda.

“The presumption is that Muslims want nothing more than to adapt to a Western way of life and Western values. … the presumption is also that Islam can be tamed…” — Jimmie Åkesson, Sweden Democrats party leader.

“Democracy is a man-made system, meaning rule by the people for the people. Thus it is contrary to Islam, because rule is for Allaah… it is not permissible to give legislative rights to any human being…” — Sheik Muhammad Saalih al-Munajjid, in fatwa number 07166.

Everyone knows what happens to anyone who criticizes Islam — first, you get labeled an “Islamophobe racist,” then, like the artist Lars Vilks, you might get a fatwa of death on your head.

The question is where the democratic Muslims will be when Islam has gained even more influence in Sweden — will they stand up for Swedish democracy if that means openly going against the tenets of Islam?

It should not be a mystery whether Islam is compatible with democracy or not. All you have to do is look at the Islamic sources or call any imam and pretend to be impressed that Islam does not separate religion and politics.

Yet, when Gatestone Institute called Swedish politicians at all levels to ask if Islam and democracy were compatible, they gave assurances that there were no problems whatsoever with Islam’s capacity for democracy — or they hung up.

The two most common answers given were:

Islam is definitely compatible with democracy!
I cannot discuss this matter right now.

The question cuts through all parties; apparently no one dares to face the facts. So far, throughout history, and now in the world’s 57 Muslim countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), nowhere has Islam been compatible with democracy, freedom of speech, human rights and legal certainty. These Muslim states have not signed the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights, a document Swedish politicians seem to cherish. Instead, those countries have joined the Cairo Declaration, which stipulates that sharia is the only foundation for human rights. In short, human rights are all well and good so long as they do not conflict with sharia — if they do, sharia wins. In practice, this means that in the Islamic world, there are, in the Western sense, no human rights.

China’s military has an interesting way of greeting U.S. officials. In 2011 the People’s Liberation Army unveiled its first stealth fighter—a crude knock-off of an F-22 called the J-20—during a visit by then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. This week a Chinese fighter made an “unsafe intercept” of a U.S. reconnaissance plane while John Kerry and Jack Lew were in Beijing for the annual U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. Call it the diplomacy of recklessness.

Tuesday’s midair intercept of the U.S. Air Force RC-135 over the East China Sea is the second such incident in less than a month, after two Chinese jets came within 50 feet of a U.S. Navy EP-3 flying over the South China Sea. Far from apologizing for the incidents—or denying them—the Chinese foreign ministry accused the U.S. of provoking them by flying “in China’s relevant airspace.” On both occasions the U.S. planes were flying in international airspace. CONTINUE AT SITE

With every new speech in English, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, becomes more comfortable with the language. Yet his audience at a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress on Wednesday would have been grateful for their printed copies of his address—not merely because the text would have been helpful when Mr. Modi did trip up, but also as a keepsake: The speech offered the clearest Indian promise to date of a 21st-century alliance with the U.S.

India and the U.S. have been performing a mating dance since the early days of George W. Bush’s second term. Bruised by Iraq, he found a salve of sorts in India. By the end of his presidency, Mr. Bush had concluded a nuclear deal with India that was the historic turning point in a relationship between the two countries that had hitherto been cordial at its best and bristling at its worst. (The nadir came in 1971, when Bangladesh, aided by India, broke away from Pakistan, to President Nixon’s great consternation.) The vastly improved relations with India counted as one of the few Bush foreign-policy successes beyond dispute.

President Obama had things other than India on his mind in his first term. But in his second term, Mr. Obama made up for his neglect of the land Bush had won over, courting New Delhi so ardently that U.S.-India relations will also count as that rarity in the Obama presidency, an indisputable foreign-policy achievement.

The nationalist Mr. Modi and the cosmopolitan Mr. Obama aren’t natural soul mates. Neither were the folksy Mr. Bush and the mousy Manmohan Singh, Mr. Modi’s predecessor. So the coming together of India and the U.S. isn’t the product of passing brotherly love, or chemistry that might dissipate once new leaders come along. There have been tectonic changes in the world that have caused India to rethink its foreign, defense and economic policies. Foremost among them is the irruption onto the world’s stage of China—mercantilist, bellicose, sea-grabbing and covetous of ever-greater portions of global heft. India cannot cope with China without America. CONTINUE AT SITE

India’s prime minister Narendra Modi paid his second visit to the White House in two years on June 8. President Barak Obama was greatly pleased by Modi’s stated willingness to proceed with ratification of the Paris agreement to limit greenhouse gases, and this was the theme duly emphasized in the Western media coverage of their meeting.

To Modi, however, global warming was a peripheral issue. He is a foreign-policy realist who looks upon Obama’s climate-change obsession with quiet bemusement, while pretending to share his concern in order to obtain concessions on other issues. He is far more interested in the long-term geopolitical challenges facing India from the Islamic world to her west and from the Chinese colossus to her north. Pakistan is perceived—quite rightly—as a threat and a source of chronic regional instability, and its deep state (as embodied in the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI) as irredeemably jihad-friendly. China’s explosive economic growth over the past quarter-century, followed less spectacularly by India’s since the mid-1990’s, has not prompted the two Asian giants to resolve their border disputes and other feuds of long standing.

In order to meet various actual or potential threats, Modi wants to further develop and assert India’s status as a regional power; but to that end he needs closer relations with Washington on a number of fronts. His strategy vis-à-vis the United States is threefold. First of all, Modi wants to turn India into a major global manufacturing workshop—that is the theme of his Make in India campaign—and he sees the involvement of U.S.-based corporations as essential to its success. His second goal is to encourage the United States to terminate its policy of tolerating Pakistan’s duplicity in the fight against Islamic terrorism—as manifested in its schizophrenic attitude to the Taliban in Afghanistan—and to encourage the U.S. to look upon India as the only reliable and rational partner in the Subcontinent. Finally, Modi wants to diversify India’s arms supplies—most of which still come from Russia—but does not want to become (or to be seen as becoming) too close to the United States in the grand-strategic scheme of things.

All of Modi’s strategic themes and objectives broadly correspond to America’s interests in Asia. India occupies pivotal position in the Indian Ocean, the second most critical maritime highway in the world. Under Modi the Hindu nationalist, the government in Delhi may be more inclined to base its long-term strategy on the development of a community of geopolitical interests with the leading thalassocratic power in the world—the United States—than any of its predecessors since independence. America wants to contain China’s ambition to break through the bars of the First Island Chain in the Far East and Southeast Asia, while India would be loath to see Burma (“Myanmar”) provide China with direct access to the Indian Ocean by road, rail and pipeline.

Since Rouhani replaced Ahmadinejad as Iran’s president, all that has changed is U.S. policy towards Iran and the administration’s willingness to lie to the American people about it.

President Barack Obama personally guaranteed the peaceful nature of both Khamenei and Rouhani, saying: “Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons, and President Rouhani has said that Iran would never develop a nuclear weapon.” To date, no such fatwa has been seen by anyone. Rouhani seems to have been lying.

The Iranians also keep threatening to “walk away from the nuclear ‘deal,'” even though there is no deal to walk away from as Iran has not signed anything yet.

Within the leaders of Iran’s regime, those who fail to live up to the Supreme Leader’s expectations are impeached or killed.

Ever since Hassan Rouhani became president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Americans have been told that a fundamental change had occurred, that the latest Iranian election had been a once-in-a-lifetime event, and that Iran’s formerly adversarial regime had been transformed into a moderate one.

In Iran, however, what has changed is precisely nothing. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is as powerful and dangerous as ever. Iranian support for terrorists has increased. And Iran’s genocidal rhetoric regarding Israel (“the malignant Zionist tumor”) and America (the great Satan) has not softened.

Since Rouhani replaced Ahmadinejad, all that has changed is U.S. policy towards Iran and the administration’s willingness to lie to the American people about it.