RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/23/loose-talk-about-the-end-of-everything/

After a recent summit between new partners China and Russia, General Secretary Xi Jinping and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin issued an odd one-sentence communique: “There can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be fought.”

No one would disagree, even though several officials of both hypocritical governments have previously threatened their neighbors with nuclear attacks.

But still, why did the two feel the need to issue such a terse statement—and why now?

Rarely has the global rhetoric of mass annihilation reached such a crescendo as the present, as existential wars rage in Ukraine and Gaza.

In particular, Putin at least believes that he is finally winning the Ukraine conflict. Xi seems to assume that conventional ascendant Chinese military power in the South China Sea has finally made the absorption of Taiwan practicable.

They both believe that the only impediment to their victories would be an intervention from the U.S. and the NATO alliance, a conflict that could descend into mutual threats to resort to nuclear weapons.

Thus the recent warnings of Xi and Putin.

Almost monthly, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un continues his weary threats to use his nuclear arsenal to destroy South Korea or Japan.

A similarly monotonous, pro-Hamas Turkish president, Recep Erdogan, regularly threatens Armenians with crazy talk of repeating the “mission of our grandfathers.” And he occasionally warns Israelis and Greeks that they may one day wake up to Turkish missiles raining down upon their cities.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-china-exports-its-totalitarian-ideology-to-the-rest-of-the-world/

Rev. Bob Fu was a former student leader during the Tiananmen Square democracy movement in 1989. He was a house church leader in Beijing until he and his wife, Bochun “Heidi” Cai, were imprisoned in 1996. In 1997 he was exiled to the U.S. In 2002, he founded ChinaAid in Philadelphia to promote religious freedom and rule of law in China.

Fu has since been raising awareness regarding the totalitarian regime of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and how it affects the international community while striving to help persecuted minorities and prisoners of conscience in his country of birth.

In a recent interview with CBN News, Fu calls China “a real police state.” He says that facial recognition cameras are used to track every move of every individual in China. “There are two face recognition cameras following each citizen everywhere in China,” he says.

In a comprehensive report, journalist Alfred NG also confirms:

“China’s facial recognition system logs nearly every single citizen in the country, with a vast network of cameras across the country. A database leak in 2019 gave a glimpse of how pervasive China’s surveillance tools are — with more than 6.8 million records from a single day, taken from cameras positioned around hotels, parks, tourism spots and mosques, logging details on people as young as 9 days old…

Chinese officials have used surveillance tools to publicly shame people wearing sleepwear in public, calling it ‘uncivilized behavior.’

The punishing of these minor offenses is by design, surveillance experts said. The threat of public humiliation through facial recognition helps Chinese officials direct over a billion people toward what it considers acceptable behavior, from what you wear to how you cross the street.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/01/chinese-spy-ships-stalking-u-s-warships-in-military-drills/

Two Chinese surveillance ships have been seen stalking American Navy vessels in the South China Sea, as the latter were conducting military drills outside of Philippine territorial waters.

As the Daily Caller reports, the exercise was a joint effort between U.S., Philippine, and French warships that first set off from Puerto Princesa on Thursday, to conduct the maritime portion of the Balikatan 2024 military exercises. But shortly after the vessels entered international waters, two ships with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) were seen pursuing them within a few nautical miles.

One of the Chinese ships was the Tianwangxing, a Type 815-class electronic surveillance ship, seen about 50 nautical miles from Western Palawan, which is located in the Philippine exclusive economic zone. One of the American warships, the USS Harpers Ferry, had to halt its live-fire drill because the Tianwangxing drew too close, coming within two nautical miles. Then on Sunday, a third Chinese ship was seen within nine nautical miles of the same formation.

However, American spokesmen denied that any part of the exercise was disrupted by the Chinese ships.

“I cannot speak for them but we are monitoring them, and we record then we report whatever our ships are monitoring in the area,” said Captain Ariel Joseph Colom Armed, from the Forces of The Philippines Western Command (Wescom). “As long [as] we continue to monitor and report them, we are in control of the situation.”

The maritime portion of the exercise ended on Monday. The ships involved in the exercise were the USS Harpers Ferry, the BRP Ramon Alcaraz, the BRP Davao Del Sur, and the FS Vendemiaire.

The exercise was conducted for the primary purpose of strengthening the alliance between the U.S. and the Philippines, in response to increasing aggression by China in the region.

“Balikatan is a tangible demonstration of our shared commitment to each other. It matters for regional peace and stability. When we increase our mutual response and defense capabilities, we strengthen our ability to promote regional security and protect our shared interests,” said Lt. Gen. William Jurney, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific commander.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dont-count-on-biden-to-protect-planes-over-the-baltic-sea/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

What will we do about Russian GPS jamming over the Baltic Sea, which is starting to increase the risk of civilian passenger airliner accidents?

Nothing. We’re not going to do anything.

Someday, after Biden’s prepared remarks have been workshopped to death by U.S. State Department bureaucrats, the president may offer another one of his patented, “don’t… don’t,” warnings that have been ignored by everyone from Hamas to the Iranians to the Houthis.

Any type of retaliation or warning shot, telling Russia to knock it off, is likely to be considered too “escalatory” and “provocative” by this administration.

Biden was shaped by the Vietnam War, and his foreign policy instincts – the ones former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates characterized as “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades” – are always to avoid anything that could remotely be considered escalatory, hawkish or aggressive by a foe that is inclined to interpret any U.S. action as intolerably provocative. Remember, Biden’s the guy who urged President Obama to wait on the bin Laden raid, deeming it too risky.

What’s amazing is that Biden takes this hesitant, irresolute stance while simultaneously believing that he’s the toughest guy on the block. “Putin knows that I am president of the United States his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over,” Biden declared in 2019. Biden also claims he went nose-to-nose with Putin and told the Russian dictator, directly to his face, that he didn’t think Putin has a soul. Of course, there were no witnesses.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/04/king_deep_state_sits_on_a_stolen_throne.html

The Bill of Rights doesn’t mean much when the Deep State uses it for toilet paper.

All hail King Deep State!  That is essentially what we have now, is it not?  An unelected, all-powerful, mercurial king — and certainly not a binding constitution limiting government’s authority and preserving Americans’ rights.  

Our First Amendment forbids Congress from restricting an individual’s free speech, but that hasn’t stopped King Deep State from conspiring with Big Tech to silence every voice deemed offensive to the realm.  Our Fourth Amendment forbids nosy officials from poking around in Americans’ private records and communications without first securing particularized warrants establishing probable cause that a crime has been committed, but that hasn’t stopped King Deep State from rummaging through our emails, text messages, and bank statements or eavesdropping on our intimate phone conversations in the name of “national security.”  Our Second Amendment forbids the government from infringing the people’s right to keep and bear arms, but that hasn’t stopped King Deep State from restricting gun purchases, tracking gun owners, and disarming those he doesn’t like.  The Bill of Rights doesn’t mean much when King Deep State uses it as royal toilet paper.  Perhaps it should be renamed, “The Bill of Humble Suggestions, Should His Most Excellent Majesty Approve…or Require Some Gentle Two-Ply.”

If the first step to recovery is admitting that we have a problem, then let’s be honest with ourselves: this is no longer a country of, by, or for the people.  It is an imperial stompy-foot of, by, and for “elites.”  A private central bank decrees the value of our dollars.  Covert espionage agencies advance secret foreign policies in our name.  The Pentagon conducts illicit foreign wars for our alleged benefit.  The National Security Agency monitors what we privately tell each other.  King Deep State’s Silicon Valley vassals tell us what we can publicly say out loud.  The Fascist Bureau of Intimidation decides when dissidents’ doors must be broken down.  The king’s obedient press corps prints only pre-approved news.  The Supreme Court holds up a wet finger in the Deep State’s manufactured winds to determine which rights we may temporarily retain.  And a small contingent of multinational investment firms and industrial behemoths write the bills and budgets that the people’s pretend representatives in Congress never read but obligingly pass.  

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-danger-of-self-induced-national-security-crises-intensifies/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

Open war between Israel and Iran — as distinguished from the always thrumming war Tehran has waged through its jihadist proxies for decades — is a higher likelihood in this moment than it has ever been. Despite President Biden’s reckless distancing of the United States government from Israel — while it is at war with Hamas and Hezbollah, and while Hamas is still holding American hostages — the high alert that the Israeli armed forces are on in anticipation of an Iranian onslaught, which Western intelligence services believe could be imminent (as in: as early as today), means an increased likelihood of Iranian-backed attacks on the United States — not just in the Middle East but in our own territory.

I say “Despite” advisedly. Keeping alive his streak of being wrong on every consequential foreign-policy matter in his half-century career — with the wages of his inanities now higher than ever — President Biden has bashed our Israeli ally to appease Iran (and woo the “Death to America” precincts of Dearborn, Mich.). As ever, the result will not find Iran overlooking American support for Israel (support which is still very strong in the public and much of Congress); the result will be — it already is — to embolden Iran to attack in the conceit that the Biden administration may not be fully committed to Israel’s defense. Biden’s ongoing display of weakness can only further embolden Iran to step up attacks against us.

On that score, I observed back in January that Biden’s self-created border crisis has been overlapping with the crisis caused by his mishandling of Iran policy:

For many years, Iran has had an operational alliance with the Marxist totalitarian regime in Venezuela. This gives Iran a toehold in the West and a well-trod route to infiltrate operatives across the southern border. Biden has appeared blithely indifferent to this — which is no surprise when we remember the debacle last fall: Biden agreed to a “prisoner exchange” in connection with the $6 billion ransom that he paid Iran for the release of American hostages. Then it turned out that most of the Iranian prisoners, who had been or were being prosecuted by the Justice Department for clandestine activities on behalf of Tehran, were “U.S. persons” who got to stay in the United States rather than being returned to Iran.

Biden is facilitating illegal immigration from Venezuela (among other South and Central American countries) through a lawless visa scheme. In a post earlier today, I drew on a report by Andrew Arthur (of the Center for Immigration Studies) about the staggering number of illegal immigrants (371,000) who entered the country last month. Arthur relates that, despite the fact that Biden reserves for Venezuela a healthy share of the annual (illegal) parole grants from his CHNV program (Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela), tens of thousands of additional aliens from those countries are showing up illegally every month. Last month, of 61,500 such illegal aliens, 47,000 were from Venezuela. That’s bad . . . but not as bad as the 51,833 from Venezuela in September.

The mind reels. Does any rational person think Iran is not capitalizing on this scheme?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20487/iran-latin-america

The Iranian regime, which… has been calling for “Death to America,” now has ballistic missiles which it says can reach the US, and claims to have a hypersonic missile that, according to one report, “Can Destroy US In 40 sec.”

Venezuela appears to have willingly embraced Iran’s overtures.

The Iranian regime, in addition to Venezuela, has evidently also been exploring avenues for military cooperation with Nicaragua and Cuba.

It is critical to recognize now the gravity of this exponentiating national security threat.

Venezuela, near the US, emerges as a key player in Iran’s Latin American ambitions. As a potential launching pad for attacks on the U.S., Venezuela appears to have willingly embraced Iran’s overtures. Iran’s growing military capabilities, with ballistic missiles and armed drones capable of reaching Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas from Latin American soil, already pose a direct threat to the United States.

A threatening development has been brewing largely under the radar of the Biden administration and the mainstream media attention: Iran’s calculated expansion into Latin America, from Argentina to Mexico.

With alarming nonchalance, the Biden administration appears to have turned a blind eye to the Iranian regime’s concerted efforts to establish a military foothold right in America’s backyard. The ramifications of this complacency are profound. The Iranian regime, which, since it began in 1979, has been calling for “Death to America,” now has ballistic missiles which it says can reach the US, and claims to have a hypersonic missile that, according to one report, “Can Destroy US In 40 sec.”

Historically, Iran’s playbook in the Middle East involved the arming and sponsoring of proxies and terror groups such as Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas, with the ultimate aim of annihilating Israel and has carried out more than 180 attacks just since October 7 on U.S. interests in the region.