RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14936/huawei-china-trojan-horse

A refusal to grant a third waiver to Huawei, the world’s largest telecom networking equipment manufacturer and second-largest smartphone maker, would be the right move for the United States. After all, why should President Trump allow our companies to help Beijing steal the world’s data and remotely control devices connected to the internet?

On Tuesday, China’s Communist Party will celebrate the 70th anniversary of its coming to power. This is not a happy time for the communists, however, as their economy, the primary basis of their legitimacy, is crumbling.

In addition, the thought of licensing technology from Huawei is nothing short of hideous. The Chinese company, founded in 1987, was built on stolen Cisco Systems technology, and from all indications has never stopped stealing. Why should we pay China for tech it criminally took — and is still taking — from us?

Unfortunately, these two companies [ZTE and Huawei] despite Trump’s reprieves, have continued to engage in unacceptable behavior. ZTE has almost certainly violated its settlement agreement with the U.S, by installing Dell equipment in Venezuela, and Huawei is currently under investigation for additional instances of intellectual property theft. It is, therefore, time to impose “death sentences” on the pair of Chinese giants, in other words, cut both of them off from U.S. technology.

More fundamentally, why should we have any contact with Huawei? Trump’s instincts are to cut off all dealings. “We are not going to do business with Huawei,” the president said on August 9, “It’s much simpler not doing any business with Huawei.”

So, let’s not do business with Huawei.

“For China, trade with the United States is viewed as a bonanza to acquire — steal — American technology and bilk our people out of hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. Any compromise with Beijing would, in the long-run, be to America’s disadvantage.” — Brandon Weichert, tech expert, publisher of The Weichert Report.

We did not win the Cold War by enriching the Soviet Union. We should not try to enrich China now.

Rob Strayer, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Cyber and International Communications Policy, told reporters in Brussels on September 26 that the Trump administration is unlikely to grant another 90-day blanket waiver for transactions with China’s Huawei Technologies.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14934/turkey-ban-armenian-chess-champion

The tournament that three-time Armenian chess champion, Maria Gevorgyan, was invited to attend — and from which her invitation was subsequently withdrawn — was the 2019 Sivas Buruciye Chess Open, which was held August 19-24.

In a letter of complaint to the Lausanne, Switzerland-based International Chess Federation (FIDE), MP Mkhitar Hayrapetyan… demanded that FIDE take action…. The investigation is still ongoing.

The solution to the persecution of Armenians in Turkey and Azerbaijan lies in the victory of critical thinking and human rights over dogma and political corruption in those countries.

For there to be a chance of this happening, however, Turkey and Azerbaijan should be governed not by dictatorships that spread hate-filled propaganda, but by people who participate in a true democracy with equal human rights for all.

The banning of three-time Armenian chess champion, Maria Gevorgyan, from an international tournament in Turkey — due to pressure by the Azerbaijani delegation — highlights the discrimination and persecution that Armenians continue suffer in Turkey and Azerbaijan.

The tournament that Gevorgyan was invited to attend — and from which her invitation was subsequently withdrawn — was the 2019 Sivas Buruciye Chess Open, which was held August 19-24.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/30/antifa-goons-block-and-harass-elderly-couple-attending-conservative-event-in-canada/

A protest outside of a free speech event at a college in Ontario, Canada turned violent Sunday evening as far left demonstrators blocked and harassed supporters trying to enter the building.

The event at Hamilton’s Mohawk College featured People’s Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier and American political commentator David Rubin.

Masked agitators waved signs that read “White supremacy is terrorism” and “Refugees welcome here,” and chanted  “Nazi scum, off our streets” as attendees tried to enter the building.

According to a Rebel Media reporter on the scene, antifa members blocked the path of the attendees, shoved their middle fingers in their faces and pulled the hats off their heads.

Things turned positively surreal when a group of antifa agitators got in the faces of an elderly couple as they made their way across the street toward the entrance of building.

“Nazi scum, off our streets!” the antifa thugs screeched at the little old lady hunched over a walker. Three masked agitators moved in so close to the couple, they touched the frail woman’s walker. At that point, one of the goons screamed something and pointed an accusatory finger in the old man’s face as he tried to stand up for his wife.

Four protesters were briefly detained after assaulting conservative attendees, but they were quickly released without charges, according to Portland-based journalist Andy Ngo.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/30/american-b

America’s two parties have given up all pretense of pushing any program for the rest of the current president’s term (which still has over 30% of its length to run).

Forget about another round of growth-driving tax cuts, immigration reform, infrastructure, fixing the health care system, a common trade policy. Anything the American people might like to see.

The only objective on one side: impeachment. On the other: simple survival.

In the UK, the political system is similarly paralyzed. The government is seeking to achieve the people’s will on Brexit on reasonable terms — or even any terms at all. But rogue members of the ruling Conservative Party have voted to ensure it can’t leave the European Union without a deal, which means it has lost its negotiating leverage to achieve such a deal. Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to appeal to the people through a new election. But party rebels have scotched that path forward as well.

In Israel, neither of two major alliances won enough seats in this month’s election to cobble together a majority, and voices across the political spectrum are calling for a so-called “unity government.” But one side won’t join a coalition that includes Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces indictment on corruption charges. The prime minister’s party won’t form a government without him. A potential kingmaker (who forced the second election in a year) says he won’t sit with the prime minister’s party, either, unless it deep-sixes its Orthodox Jewish coalition partners, which the bloc refuses to do.

In short, the world’s three most important democracies, all rendered ungovernable.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-foreign-influence-is-on-the-rise-11569885340

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence,” George Washington warned in his Farewell Address, “the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.” Those words have rarely seemed more relevant than now, when both the president and the front-runner for the nomination to challenge him are embroiled in a scandal that began with attempts by Ukrainian figures to manipulate Washington politics and policy.

The Ukrainian firestorm is only the start. America and the world are changing in ways that will make the question of foreign influence in U.S. political life more fateful, and more difficult to police, than ever.

This isn’t about Facebook ads and voting machines. It is not even about more blatant forms of foreign meddling, like the alleged Russian leaks of damaging information stolen from the Democratic National Committee. Serious as these problems are, America’s greatest risk isn’t the vulnerability of its voting machines to foreign hackers or the susceptibility of party apparatchiks to phishing scams. It is the erosion of ethical standards in the American political and business establishments that most exposes the U.S. to the kind of foreign interference against which Washington warned.

This isn’t a partisan problem. Some members of the administration, including the tweeter in chief, have behaved in ways that earlier American presidents would have condemned, but they are hardly alone. The Clinton Foundation was perceived by many of its foreign donors to be a way to influence American politics during the years in which Hillary Clinton was a likely future president. And hardly anyone believes it was Hunter Biden’s experience, sagacity and business acumen that commended him as a candidate for board membership to a beleaguered Ukrainian gas company.