RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18186/china-space-cooperation

“[Chris] Hadfield has consistently fronted for cooperation with China in space, never acknowledging how the Chinese Communist Party seeks to dominate Low Earth Orbit and the moon to gain military dominance on Earth to impose a new global hegemony.” — Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center to Gatestone, January 2022.

It seems fanciful that Chinese cooperation in space could proceed while the Communist Party maintains its goal of destroying the United States.

“Tackling pandemics” is definitely not an argument for space cooperation with China. Wherever SARS-CoV-2 came from…China’s leaders deliberately spread COVID-19 beyond their borders by, among other things, lying about contagiousness and, while locking down their own country, pressuring others to take arrivals from China without restrictions or quarantines.

And because a specific group was targeted—non-Chinese—the crime [deliberately spreading COVID-19 beyond China’s borders] constitutes a “genocide” as defined in Article II of the Genocide Convention of 1948. That toll includes 884,000 in the United States.

So how could Washington consider cooperation, on space or in any other area, with a regime that deliberately took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans?

“We all have our better angels and our worst devils in each of us,” Hadfield, who has worked for NASA, correctly notes. The problem is that the worst of humanity is now running the Chinese regime, and cooperation with China, in space or below, is morally and strategically wrong.

“It is completely mind boggling how, after decades of doing deals with China over a variety of issues that only seem to end with the further weakening of the United States and the strengthening of China, the same voices are now calling for massive space cooperation with Beijing, which would only be the world’s largest technological transfer in history,” Weichert, who produces The Weichert Report, says. “The insanity must stop and America must hold firm against the siren song of cooperation with China in space.”

China’s militant regime wants the United States to aid its space program, and some, including those in the U.S. space community, are eager to provide assistance. Such cooperation, however, would be extremely disadvantageous for the United States, as it has always been.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/03/truckers-vs-tyrants/

As a caravan of Canadian truckers, composed of thousands and stretching 45 miles, made its way to the Canadian capital of Ottawa in protest of leftist tyranny, the propagandist media moved swiftly to downplay the size and scope of it all. A USA Today “fact checker” wrote: “Canada truck convoy not an official Guinness World record.”

The current Guinness record for the longest “truck parade” is 480 vehicles stretching across 4.6 miles. The 45-mile-long Canadian freedom caravan would easily have beaten the current Guinness record by a factor of 10 had protest organizers applied to beat the record. But setting a Guinness record was not at the top of the freedom truckers’ agenda. Instead, the brave truckers were going to Ottawa to protest against tyranny and its Canadian poster child, Justin Trudeau.

So while USA Today’s “fact check” was technically true, it was nothing more than a desperate, pedantic effort to dismiss the overwhelming size and significance of the freedom caravan. 

Other propagandists simply lied.A Washington Post writer claimed the caravan was made up of “hundreds of trucks and personal vehicles.” The same Post propagandist described the protestors as a “fringe group” and “unfortunate minority.” Prime Minister-in-hiding Justin Trudeau repeated the totalitarian talking point, condemning the protestors as a “small fringe minority.” 

Trudeau and the media know the protestors aren’t a “fringe minority.” On the contrary, these tyrants know it is they who are the fringe minority. But they also understand that what power they have is derived exclusively from a fearful and obedient patriotic majority; a majority, which accepts the tyrants’ big lie that they are a powerless and outnumbered minority.

As I said on my latest podcast, those of us standing against tyranny are like a 6-foot-2, 185-pound boxer. Before we’ve even seen our opponent, the media—acting as our tyrannical opponent’s surrogates—tell us that we’re about to get into the ring with a 6-foot-6, 250-pound monster, who is going to annihilate us. It’s a lie intended thoroughly to dispirit us by sowing doubt, insecurity, and fear in our minds in the hope that we will give up even before we get in the ring.

https://bit.ly/3sajvsJ

The Congressional Research Service highlights SOUTHCOM Commander Admiral Kurt Tidd’s statement that “as a state sponsor of terrorism, Iran’s nefarious involvement in the Western Hemisphere is a matter for concern.” The Admiral noted that Iran expanded ties with Latin America.

Moreover, according to the Washington, DC-based Lawfare Institute: “…. U.S. authorities believed that Hezbollah [Iran’s proxy] helped the Sinaloa cartel build smuggling tunnels under the US-Mexican border, drawing on expertise from Hezbollah’s work digging tunnels under the Lebanese-Israeli border [and Hamas’ experience in building tunnels from the Sinai Peninsula to Gaza and from Gaza to Israel, smuggling weaponry and terrorists]…. Hezbollah has been suspected of partnering with Mexican drug cartels such as the Sinaloa cartel, the preeminent drug trafficking organization in that country for much of the 2000s…. Iran’s area of influence is not limited to its region. Over the past decade, it has launched operations, either through Hezbollah or its own agents, around the world—including in Latin America, Eastern Europe, East and South Asia, Western and Central Africa, and within the United States itself….”

*Notwithstanding their soothing diplomatic talk, the violent walk of Iran’s Ayatollahs – since the 1978/79 Islamic Revolution – attests that the worldview of this rogue Shiite regime is not amenable to Western values and institutions such as peaceful-coexistence, democracy and human rights, nor good-faith negotiation.

*Iran’s Ayatollahs have been preoccupied with guns rather than butter, since the February 1979 Islamic Revolution, which transformed Iran from “the American policeman of the Gulf” to the anti-US Islamic Republic of Iran.

*Iran’s Ayatollahs have not been driven by despair and frustration (supposedly triggered by global sanctions and non-recognition as a major regional power), but by their 1,400-year-old fanatic, imperialistic Shiite vision, which transcends the subjugation of the Persian Gulf and the Middle East, extending all the way to the American continent. 

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/public-health/2022/01/the-wholesale-banishment-of-reasonable-doubt/

Daniel Andrews wants ‘fully vaccinated’ redefined to require a booster. National cabinet didn’t go along last week. It will. And can a second booster — the fourth jab overall — be far behind? No, it can’t. Notice, too, that the interval between the second and third shot is now down to three months. Anyone for two months? Boosters for your five-year-olds anyone? Get one at your local 7-Eleven.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that Omicron is mild. Of that you have to be disabused with extreme frighteners. NSW health minister Brad Hazzard is on the job. “The numbers of boosters are not where we need them to be to keep people safe,” he said. Personally speaking, I think we need to be kept safe from Hypodermic Hazzard. Bar the doors and lock up your children.

In spruiking three doses, Andrews reportedly said, “We can all be proud, as a Victorian community, that 93 per cent-plus of us have had two doses.” Well, strictly speaking, Dan, only 93 percent-plus can be proud. The rest are mongrels with a penchant for disobeying orders; orders which, as you well know, must be obeyed or we’ll all die horribly.

There’s now a coronavirus unity ticket between NSW and Victoria. Perrottet in league with Despot Dan. Birds of a feather. What a disappointment Perrottet has turned out to be. Really, expectations of politicians of whatever complexion should be kept extremely low.

There, for example, is ex-IPA free-marketeer Tim Wilson the other day gifting $37 million of taxpayers’ dollars to yet another renewable-energy boondoggle. If they’re not boondoggles, why do they need handouts? How about another $1 billion to save an extremely healthy reef. Money’s no object. And just think. It’s never so bad that it can’t get worse. Albanese and Adam Bandt are lurking in the wings, stage left.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/frances-macron-tries-reclassify-muslim-terrorism-daniel-greenfield/

There’s hardly a Muslim terrorist attack committed by a single perpetrator in Europe or America in the last five years that the authorities and the media haven’t tried to spin as mental illness.

Both Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, the Syrian Muslim mass killer who shot up a Boulder supermarket, and Faisal Akram, who took a Texas temple hostage to secure the release of ‘Lady Al Qaeda’, had their attacks blamed on mental illness.

But France continues to lead the world in whitewashing Muslim terrorism as mental illness.

When Sarah Halimi, a 65-year-old Jewish kindergarten director, was murdered by her Muslim neighbor while shouting, “Allahu Akbar”, the authorities gave her antisemitic killer a pass because his pot smoking had supposedly brought on a “psychotic” episode.

The Halimi murder had strong echoes of the previous killing of a Jewish DJ by a Muslim killer where the expert shrink had insisted that “it is not an anti-Semitic act but an act of delirium”

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-60186538

North Korea has conducted what is thought to be its biggest missile launch since 2017.

It said the ballistic missile was an intermediate range Hwasong-12.

Japan and South Korea said it reached a maximum altitude of 2,000km before coming down in the Sea of Japan or East Sea. Both countries have condemned the launch, the seventh test this month.

The UN prohibits North Korea from ballistic and nuclear weapons tests, and has imposed strict sanctions.

But the East Asian state regularly defies the ban, and leader Kim Jong-un has vowed to bolster his country’s defences.

North Korean state news agency KCNA said the missile had been launched to “verify its accuracy”. Mr Kim was reportedly not present.

It was launched to “the highest angle firing system from the north-western area to the East Sea of Korea in consideration of the security of the neighbouring countries”, the agency added.

Seoul-based website NK News tweeted the first pictures from the launch.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/01/29/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-canadian-today-n1554296

I have always thought of myself as a normal and law-abiding citizen of Canada — nothing special, merely respectable on the whole, reasonably informed, a responsible voter, and a contributor to the well-being of the country, no different from many of my fellow Canadians. I have taught several generations of students, including Police Tech classes, lectured as a Canadian scholar at embassies and universities abroad, and traveled under the auspices of the Department of External Affairs to represent the country at Canada Day ceremonies in Europe. My wife was a professor at two major Canadian universities, organized several large-scale conferences on Canadian themes, sponsored doctoral candidates from foreign countries who wished to study in and learn about Canada, and authored as well as edited several books on Canadian history, literature, and culture.

In short, we believed that we were decent and productive Canadian citizens. The result is that we are now pariahs in our own country.

The reason for this strange turn of events is common knowledge. We object to the ruinous official response to the pandemic — the mask mandates, the lockdowns and curfews, and now the mandatory vaccination protocols and vaxxports. My research over the last eighteen months and counting has been thorough and my determinations based on dispositive evidence. My working premise is to always go where the genuine evidence leads, even if it should make me feel uncomfortable.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18179/persecution-of-christians-december

Days before Christmas, on December 17, a Muslim cleric told his congregation, following mosque prayers, that wishing non-Muslims a Merry Christmas is “like congratulating murderers and pedophiles” — Breitbart.com, December 23, 2021, Canada.

The imam concluded by calling on Allah to “give strength to Islam and Muslims, to humiliate infidels and polytheists, to destroy the enemies of (our) religion and to annihilate heretics and atheists.” — Breitbart.com, December 23, 2021, Canada.

“Get lost, this [France] is not your country….” — Muslims confronting a Catholic procession, Medforth.biz, December 11, 2021, Nanterre, France.

After decapitating a Christian pastor, Islamic State-linked Muslims handed the pastor’s severed head to his widow and ordered her to deliver it to the police. — Daily Mail, December 17, Mozambique.

“The [ISIS-linked] group… forced younger, healthy-looking, and lighter-skinned women and girls in their custody to ‘marry’ their fighters, who enslave and sexually abuse them.” — Human Rights Watch, December 7, 2021, Mozambique.

“Quranic texts are not the only way to teach Arabic in schools. There are other methods such as literature, poetry and rhetoric…. The government always backs down from any removal of Quranic texts in school curricula or the subject of religion, fearing attacks and criticism by extremist groups.” — Isaac Hanna, journalist and head of the Egyptian Association for Enlightenment, Al Monitor, December 15, 2021, Egypt.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18181/russia-ukraine

Putin’s propaganda tries to portray NATO as the putative invader. At the same time, he makes much of Russia’s money out of selling oil and gas to NATO members in Europe who, in turn, allow his money to be nested in their banks.

Putin tries to pose as a potential victim of a non-existent aggression.

Putin seems to be dreaming of a cordon sanitaire for Russia, one that is more of a cultural-political shield rather than a glacis in military terms. He wants Russia surrounded by Finlandized countries from China to the Caspian Basin, the Middle East and East and Central Europe.

Rather than threatening invasion, Putin should try to make his Russia so attractive that Ukrainians and others wish to choose it as a model rather than looking to old Western democracies. That, however, means that Russia must change and deal with its centuries-long identity crisis between European aspirations and Asiatic fears.

By the time you read this article, Russian troops may have entered Ukraine or even captured its capital Kiev in a blitzkrieg that would have made Field Marshal von Paulus green with envy. Or, maybe you would witness nothing but more sabre rattling by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18143/turkey-istanbul-mayor-erdogan

“If we lose Istanbul, we lose Turkey.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

It appears that [Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu’s] “terrorists” are actually people who are being probed for links with illegal organizations but who have not been prosecuted — let alone being found guilty by courts.

This kind of intimidation, further victimizing Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu in the eyes of the voters, will simply boost his popularity — and at a time when Erdoğan’s ratings are plummeting.

Erdoğan, it seems, did not want opposition mayors to gain further popularity by helping the poor.

It would be premature to conclude that there will be a historic shift in Turkish politics in 2023. All the same, the reports are real, and so are Erdoğan’s fears, panic and increasingly reckless governance.

Turkey’s secular state establishment was shocked when a young militant Islamist won the mayoral elections in Turkey’s biggest city, Istanbul, in 1994. “Who wins Istanbul wins Turkey,” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, at that time Istanbul’s mayor, would often say. History would prove him right.