RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.steynonline.com/9798/scheer-genius

A few random thoughts on a grey morning after:

~According to the deranged dominion’s useless and government-subsidized media, Canadians’ priorities in this election were climate change and indigenous reconciliation, and the breakout star of the campaign was NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.

Back in the real world, Mr Singh’s party lost over a third of its seats, and twenty per cent of its vote, and is no longer the third biggest caucus in the House of Commons. And, whatever voters may tell pollsters about global climate concerns and indigenous reconciliation, the real consequences of the last four years are a resurgent Québécois nationalism and Albertan alienation. Both are testament to what Justin’s “sunny ways” boil down to in practice.

~As has often been said, Canadians rarely deny a party promoted to majority a second majority. The last time it happened was in 1935 – to R B Bennett’s Tories. However, to the best of my recollection, during the ’35 campaign old flickering silent movies did not surface of milord Bennett capering about in blackface with a banana stuffed down his trousers. As I pleaded three weeks ago:

Couldn’t we have contemplated the sheer weirdness of Canada’s head of government a while longer? On the election debate stage, [Trudeau] will be the only blackface devotee. Likewise at the G7 summit. And indeed at the G20. And Nato. If I’m not entirely confident about making the same claim of the Commonwealth Conference, it’s only because Her Majesty’s biennial beano has commanded the presence of some rum coves over the years, but nevertheless I am certain that Justin with his thrice-confessed blackface has worn it more than all the other prime ministers combined.

And yet Andrew Scheer couldn’t lay a glove on the guy – notwithstanding that he’s micro-managed and minded by some of the sleaziest low-down bare-knuckled dirty-tricksters in Canada, from Hamish Marshall even unto Warren (Catsmeat) Kinsella. These are self-proclaimed mean motherf**kers. But not apparently mammyf**ckers. If you can’t make hay while the Sonny Boy shines, what’s the point?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/10/isis-caliph-dead-after-us-raid-daniel-greenfield/

Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, to whom Islamic terrorist groups around the world had sworn fealty to, is dead after US forces raided his family compound. In a seeming echo of Osama bin Laden’s death, Baghdadi exposed family members to risk by taking shelter among them, while ‘hiding out’ in an unlikely place, but likely, once again, under the protection of Sunni Islamist allies.

Idlib was really the last Sunni Islamist stronghold in Syria. Considering Turkey’s influence in Idlib and the longstanding rumors about ties between ISIS and Turkey, it’s not implausible that Erdogan’s Islamic terror state had been shielding the ISIS leader. If so, that would be a close repetition of the relationship between Pakistan and Osama bin Laden. It’s also less than impossible that recent US actions in Syria were part of a trade with Erdogan giving up the Caliph’s location, before the Russians and Syrians were likely to nail him anyway with their offensive, in exchange for getting the Kurds. But all that is just speculation.

The Caliph of ISIS is dead and that’s significant. He appears to have blown himself up with a suicide vest, but unlike Obama, President Trump was unlikely to have wanted him alive anyway. Obama had wanted to capture Osama and put him through a civilian trial.

No such agenda here.

Assuming al-Baghdadi is indeed dead, and if ISIS confirms as much (if they don’t, their allies will probably assume that he isn’t), this will affect the various pledges that Islamic terrorist groups around the world have made to ISIS. And the status of the Islamic State.

While Osama bin Laden was an important symbolic figure, the leader of ISIS had actually declared himself the Caliph. That significantly raised the theological stakes and convinced many Muslims that a new age was here. His death will bury that age for some terrorists.

The Islamic State was supposed to usher in a new era in history. That era is now dead. The endless war against the Jihad however goes on.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15078/iran-lebanon-soleimani

I think Soleimani is wrong to write-off Lebanon as a nation-state and reinvent it as an Iranian bridgehead. Having known Lebanon for more than half a century, I can tell him that there is such a thing as “Lebanese-ness” that transcends sectarian and political divides. The Lebanese look to the Mediterranean and the exciting possibilities of the modern world rather than the recesses of the Iranian Plateau under the mullahs with their antediluvian ideology. As a matter of taste, Lebanese-ness is closer to the beach than to the bunker.

The way the state-controlled media in Tehran put it, the wave of protests in Lebanon is about “showing solidarity with Palestine.” Photos of a dozen people burning Israeli and American flags in Beirut come with surreal captions about “Lebanese resistance fighters” calling for jihad against “baby-killing Zionists” and the American “Great Satan.”

What is certain is that the uprising has shaken the parallel universe created by Major-General Qassem Soleimani’s Madison Avenue depiction of Lebanon as the bridgehead for the conquest of the Middle East by Khomeinist ideology. Those familiar with Tehran’s propaganda know that the mullahs regard Lebanon as their most successful attempt at empire-building, worth every cent of the billions of dollars invested there.

The Iranian media often boast that Lebanon is the only country where the Islamic Republic controls all levers of power, from the presidency to security services, passing by the Council of Ministers and parliament. More importantly, perhaps, Tehran has forged alliances with powerful figures and groups within every one of the ethnic and sectarian “families” that constitute Lebanon.

In Iraq, Iran has to contend with the presence of powerful Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties and personalities that, while prepared to accommodate Tehran, refuse to act as puppets.

In Yemen, though dependent on Tehran’s money and arms for survival, the Houthis try not to be dragged into the Khomeinist strategy of regional hegemony.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15044/iraq-government-protests-christians

“The Iraqi government should accept the protesters’ demand for early elections, with a new electoral system to be organized and monitored by the UN: the current Iraqi electoral system is corrupt.” — Ashur Sargon Eskrya, head of the Assyrian Aid Society, to Gatestone.

“It’s time to pay attention. The country [Iraq] is riddled by protests by members of almost every ethnic or religious group, and the government is unstable and ineffective, with an uncertain future If the Iraqi regime were to collapse, most of the country that Americans fought so hard and long to liberate could become, de facto, a colony of Iran.” — Juliana Taimoorazy, founding president of the Iraqi Christian Relief Council, to Gatestone.

“We [Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac Christians] were the group most ruthlessly ethnically cleansed, right under the noses of US troops, as our people became the scapegoats for any angry Muslim fundamentalists who resented America’s policy. They treated us as honorary Westerners, but the West did nothing for us.” — Juliana Taimoorazy, to Gatestone.

“Now we are asking again for the right to self-governance and self-defense…. The answer for Iraq is still the one that doesn’t appeal to the powerful or the connected, but offers the best chance of civil peace: real, effective decentralization of political, military and economic power.” — Juliana Taimoorazy, to Gatestone.

Iraq’s security forces recently were joined by Iran-backed militias in a violent crackdown on anti-government protests. These protests have been taking place, since October 1, throughout much of the country as well as in Baghdad.

The mass demonstrations were sparked by widespread fury on the part of Iraqi youths at Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and what they view as his corrupt government’s failure to rehabilitate Iraq after its battle against ISIS and provide basic necessities, such as electricity, clean water and jobs. According to Amnesty International, activists and journalists have been brutally intimidated by Iraqi authorities and gunned down in the streets by snipers. The death toll has passed 180, with figures in the thousands for those wounded.