RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/europes_coming_trade_storm.html

“With America insisting on actual fair trade and tightening access to her markets, China and Europe will be like two scorpions in a bottle. ”

The European Union has consistently enjoyed hefty trade surpluses with the United States. According to the United States Census Bureau for, the past four years, those surpluses were $168, $151, $147, and $156 billion respectively. For the first six months of 2019, the EU ran a near $100 billion surplus. And this is before the European Central Bank’s devaluation of the euro via negative interest rates and more quantitative easing.

In a world where the U.S. economic establishment proclaims ‘free trade’ as the cause of American prosperity, this is an anomaly. If anything, under ‘free trade,’ it is the U.S. that should run multi-billion-dollar surpluses with Europe. That’s because America is the source of innovations and the development of cutting-edge technologies, not Europe. Add to that the fact that European industries are grossly inefficient by U.S. standards due to the EU’s extensive welfare-state laws, which are essentially pseudo-socialistic.

This anomaly exists only because past U.S. leadership has allowed it. Far too often, our ruling class has shown a greater affinity for the European elite than for their fellow citizens. They found it easier to sell out the American middle class than to inconvenience their friends in Europe.

Fortunately Donald Trump is a different breed of cat. And although the president’s main focus right now is on China, he will get around to the trade inequity with Europe in due time.  When this happens, it will be a tremendous blow to the Europeans. It will especially hurt Germany, Europe’s industrial powerhouse. This is because almost 50% of the German GDP is due to exports. A drop here and the affect ripples through the Germany and on to the rest of the Continent. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14907/france-saudis-critics

“Mohammed Al-Issa, who heads the World Islamic League, is credited for more than 500 executions when he was Minister of Justice of Saudi Arabia from 2009 to 2015, and countless orders of torture including the conviction of the famous Raif Badawi with 1.000 lashes.” — Michel Taube, Le Figaro, September 16, 2019.

Raif Badawi has just launched a hunger strike over mistreatment by the Saudi prison officials. “As part of their cruel crackdown, they’ve just confiscated his books & crucial medication.” — Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Justice Minister and head of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, in a tweet.

How can France, the country of the “liberty, equality, fraternity,” welcome the former Saudi minister who was in charge of Badawi’s torture and imprisonment… who condemns apostates to death and inflicts public flagellation on dissidents such as Badawi?

Right after the extremist massacre at the weekly Charlie Hebdo, then-French President François Hollande invited the Saudis to join the march of solidarity in Paris. When the Saudis returned home, they started flogging Badawi.

Among the French Muslims, political Islam is rapidly increasing. Instead of embracing the West where they were born, the youngest generations are rejecting it.

Éric Zemmour, apparently, was found “guilty” by a French court of saying that Muslims should be given “the choice between Islam and France” and that “in innumerable French suburbs there is a struggle to Islamize territory”. Freedom of expression… [is] under threat in France.

The French Institute of Muslim Civilization opened in Lyon on September 19, in the presence of the French Minister of the Interior, Christophe Castaner. He welcomed the project for an “open Islam” dedicated to the “fight against prejudice”. The building, of five stories and 2,700 square meters, which now adjoins the Grand Mosque, will offer courses in Muslim civilization and languages, along with symposia, conferences and debates. The project is co-funded by the World Islamic League, the diplomatic and religious arm of Saudi Arabia, which has “ties” with the Federation of French Muslims.

A few years ago, in 2016, the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, Laurent Wauquiez, sparked a heated debate by refusing to finance the project; he said he feared interference by Islamist countries. He was right.

This month, Mohammed Al-Issa, general secretary of the World Islamic League, was in Lyon at the inauguration of the institute. “As everyone knows, the World Islamic League is a Saudi organization based in Mecca”, wrote the scholar Razika Adnani in the weekly Marianne.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14905/latin-america-hezbollah

“Transnational terrorism poses an immediate threat to us here in the Western Hemisphere. Although the perceived center of gravity seems far away, groups like ISIS, al-Qa’ida, and Lebanese Hizballah operate where they can find recruits, raise support, operate unchecked, and pursue their terrorist agendas.” — U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan; ministerial conference on counterterrorism, December 11, 2018.

[W]hen the Department of Justice (DOJ), on October 15, 2018, designated Hezbollah as one of the world’s top five transnational criminal organizations, many Latin American governments turned their attention to Hezbollah’s illicit networks.

Argentine President [Mauricio] Macri’s leadership and political will have succeeded in establishing tremendous momentum for other Latin American governments to think critically about Hezbollah, as evidenced in President Abdo’s recognition of the Lebanese terror group in Paraguay last month.

At this moment, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, and President Ivan Duque of Colombia, are working potentially to designate Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization.

Recent Hezbollah-related cases in Peru and Paraguay show that [Hezbollah’s] crime-terror actions in Latin America are far from over.

The counterterrorism conversation in Latin America is changing. On July 16, the Macri government of Argentina made history by becoming the first country in Latin America to officially designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization. Less than one month later, on August 9, the Paraguayan government followed suit and also officially recognized Hezbollah as a terror organization. Now, at least two other countries in the region are seriously considering issuing the same counterterrorism designation in the near future.