RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-navy-china-taiwan-military-spending-great-power-competition-war-combat-beijing-11628784300?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

The Chinese military will likely attack Taiwan within six years, Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told Congress in March, just before retiring from the Navy. More generally, he said, Beijing’s long-term objective—supplanting the U.S. and remaking the global order to benefit the Chinese Communist Party—will feature confrontation.

Adm. Davidson’s assessment is the clearest articulation of contemporary strategic realities by a major government or military official in the past decade. China is showing its ambitions, increasing its assertiveness in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, and ratcheting up military pressure against Taiwan. The Chinese strategic tradition prizes both patience and decisive action when the balance of forces appears favorable.

The implication of Adm. Davidson’s assessment—and a similar one offered this spring by his successor, Adm. John Aquilino —is that any major reduction in U.S. combat strength, particularly naval power, will tempt the Chinese Communist Party to strike.

This assessment should inform the Navy’s recently announced “divest to invest” plan. The Navy will “divest” from older, larger platforms such as the Ticonderoga-class cruiser and reduce its large surface combatant force, including Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, by around one-third.

In turn, the Navy will “invest” in smaller, more numerous platforms, specifically a new Constellation-class frigate and a variety of unmanned surface combatants and undersea vehicles. The Navy will also speed up production of its Virginia-class submarines, the most modern in the fleet, and develop a yet-to-be-defined new submarine class. The Navy hopes “divest to invest” will make the fleet more distributed, more survivable and more lethal.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17619/china-illegal-actions-south-china-sea

“The Chinese government’s position on the arbitration is clear, ‘not accept, not participate, and not recognize’… The ‘arbitral award’ deemed by China as ‘a piece of scrap paper’ has long been thrown into the dustbin of history.” — Wu Shicun, President of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, Global Times, July 12, 2021.

“China’s military recently deployed electronic warning and surveillance aircraft and helicopters on two disputed islands in the South China Sea in what analysts say is a sign that the People’s Liberation Army has begun routine air operations from the bases.” — The Washington Times, July 13, 2021.

In March, a huge Chinese fishing fleet descended on Whitsun Reef, which lies within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. The Philippine government called on China to cease “militarizing the area”.

China also claims sovereignty over — and has militarized some of — the Paracel Islands, which it has occupied since 1974, and are also claimed by both Vietnam and Taiwan.

It has been five years since the Permanent Court of Arbitration, in a legally binding decision known as the South China Sea Arbitration Case, ruled against Communist China’s claims to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea.

The Philippine government filed the case against China in 2013 after China seized a reef over which both countries claim sovereignty. In addition to ruling against China’s claim of historic rights to the South China Sea, the court found that China had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone by interfering with its fishing and petroleum exploration, as well as by constructing artificial islands in the Spratly Islands archipelago, which had caused “severe harm to the coral reef environment”.

China has constructed artificial islands around seven reefs in the Spratly Islands archipelago. The islands are central to Beijing’s apparent ambition to “have absolute control” over the South China Sea, which holds an estimated 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion barrels of oil in proven and probable reserves, in addition to maritime resources such as fish. Crucially, the South China Sea is also an essential sea route, which sees a third of the world’s global shipping pass through it every year. Already in 2018, US Navy Admiral Philip Davidson, then Commander of United States Indo-Pacific Command, said that China’s construction of the artificial islands meant that China is capable of “controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States”.

On the fifth anniversary of the Permanent Court of Arbitration’s decision, China continues vehemently to reject the ruling in its entirety. According to Wu Shicun, president of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies:

“The Chinese government’s position on the arbitration is clear, ‘not accept, not participate, and not recognize.’ This has come to be widely recognized and accepted by the international community. The ‘arbitral award’ deemed by China as ‘a piece of scrap paper’ has long been thrown into the dustbin of history.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/germany-will-spend-41-million-dollars-discover-hugh-fitzgerald/

Yes, it’s a puzzlement, all right. What makes so many people – mainly Palestinians and Turks in Germany, Palestinians and Moroccans in the Netherlands, Palestinians and Egyptians in Italy, Palestinians and Pakistanis in Great Britain, Palestinians and North Africans in France – so full of hatred for Jews and the Jewish state? What moves Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, and Nihad Awad, and Linda Sarsour, to come down so hard on “the Jews”? This question requires, the Germans believe, generously subsidized deep research, and they are – it’s understandable, given their regrettable past — eager to fund it. And that is what they have just announced they will embark upon such research, as discussed here: “German Government to Spend $40 Million on Researching What Fuels Antisemitism, Racism,” by Sharon Wrobel, Algemeiner, August 4, 2021. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/totalitarian_madness_comes_to_australias_new_south_wales.html

Perhaps because of its incredibly brave troops in WWI and WWII, not to mention the Crocodile Dundee films, Australia shared with America a reputation for being a wild and free place. That’s not so anymore. New South Wales, home to Sydney, the largest city in Australia, has gone so overboard with COVID hysteria that the state is under martial law, and people are not only being told not to talk to each other anymore, they’re also being urged to spy and report on scofflaw neighbors. North Korea couldn’t have done it better. And all this is happening in a state with 5.3 million people solely because of 12,588 cases and 91 deaths since last February.

The Daily Mail summarized where New South Wales stood vis-à-vis COVID as of August 11:

New South Wales has recorded 345 new cases of Covid-19 and two deaths of men in their 90s – as more suburbs are slapped with harsher restrictions in Sydney’s west.     

One of the men had a single dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine while the other had two doses of Pfizer.

Both vaccines are around 90 per cent effective at stopping death after two dos

One died at Liverpool Hospital after catching the disease as part of the hospital’s outbreak which has now killed seven.

The other died at Royal North Shore Hospital and was a resident at Wyoming Residential Aged Care Facility in Summer Hill, in Sydney’s inner west.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/11/after-flirting-with-china-philippines-back-in-u-s-camp/

Chinese aggressiveness has entered a new phase, with military activities ranging from the South China Sea to Taiwan and even vulgarity used as a weapon. Britain would be a “bitch . . . asking for a beating” if its aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth challenged China’s territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea, state media have declared.Bac

Oh, and don’t forget the late, great Hong Kong. Sigh.

With the world’s largest Army, a rapidly-expanding navy, and an air force apparently being stocked with rip-offs of advanced Western technology, the Middle Kingdom is becoming stronger by the year. China has been fairly open about its aim to take over or euphemistically “lead” the world within a generation. Economically, that is. But it sees staking a military claim to anything nearby as a step towards that goal.

Which is why America needs as many allies as possible in the area and why a sudden if difficult-to-explain Filipino about face on a U.S. treaty is a welcome move.

Last February President Rodrigo Duterte announced that The Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) treaty would be abrogated within six months unless renegotiated. The VFA provides rules for the rotation of thousands of US troops in and out of the Philippines for war drills and exercises.

Under the agreement, U.S. military aircraft and vessels are allowed free entry into the Philippines. U.S. military personnel are subject to relaxed visa and passport policies. Abrogating the agreement would put at risk roughly 300 joint military exercises and engagements, said R. Clarke Cooper, until earlier this year U.S. assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.

The VFA is not the entire Mutual Defense Treaty, signed in 1951, but it’s the “nuts and bolts,” Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst with the RAND Corporation told Voice of America. The Mutual Defense Treaty would be severely weakened, and the Chinese regime would be delighted.

It not only costs the Philippines nothing, but brings in revenue from the visiting Americans. Consider that those are essentially the only visitors allowed since March 2020 due to COVID restrictions and those restrictions aren’t likely to be lifted any time soon (the country has never left lockdown and the metro regions just took a step backwards). So even that’s consequential.

Now Duterte suddenly says of the VFA, “Walay problema!” That’s “No problem!” in his mother tongue.

Which is excellent news for Filipinos, Americans, and pretty much the rest of the world but probably has Chinese President Xi “Winnie the Pooh” Jinping in fits because of the message abrogation would have sent Beijing.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17634/vaccine-passports-europe

Judging from the large number of banners with the words “Liberty” and “Freedom” that have been present at the events, it seems safe to conclude that many if not most of the marchers simply want freedom of choice.

“If tomorrow you infect your father, your mother or myself, I am a victim of your freedom when you had the possibility of having something to protect you and me. And in the name of your freedom, you may be having a serious form of the virus and you will arrive at this hospital. It is all these personnel who will have to take care of you and perhaps give up taking care of someone else. That’s not freedom, it’s called irresponsibility, selfishness.” — French President Emmanuel Macron.

“The government has thought out the measures very well — anything that is kind of fun is made dependent on vaccination. Do you want to sip an aperitif in a café? Get vaccinated. Do you want to visit your mother by train? Get vaccinated. Do you want to go shopping? Get vaccinated.” — Manfred Haferburg, German commentator, writing for the blog Achgut.

“We are neither anti-vaccine nor pro-vaccine. We are for free choice. Those of us who do not want to get vaccinated do not do so out of ideology but because we realize that there are so many doubts and perplexities about this which is in fact an experimental mass vaccination.” — Protester, Genoa.

“The limits of freedoms are [when they impact on] the rights of other people. One cannot expose others to the loss of life or health.” — Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński.

Protests are erupting in cities across Europe in response to government efforts to impose so-called Covid passports, documents that show proof of immunization against Covid-19. The passports, which effectively reward the vaccinated and punish the unvaccinated, have sparked a heated debate over the constitutionality of government attempts to force people to get vaccinated.

In the last two weeks alone, hundreds of thousands of people of all political persuasions have gathered in at least 300 European cities to protest government overreach and to defend civil liberties. So far, the protests have not had the intended effect of reversing government policies, but they have highlighted that Europeans are thoroughly divided on the issue of Covid vaccines.

https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/lebanon-and-the-geography-of-arab-change/

In a summer of brewing crises, from Havana through Caracas to Tehran (and other Iranian cities), Lebanon’s descent into crisis tends to be overlooked. And yet, it is part of a larger picture in which our greatest adversaries are on the ropes (Communists in Cuba and Venezuela, the Khomeinist regime in Iran, and Hizballah in Lebanon). While this is clearly a fortuitous moment, the emergence of which can properly be attributed to the policies of the previous administration, the Obama administration’s catastrophic failure to turn previous crises into opportunities should provide a cautionary tale. These crises can be weathered by our adversaries or hijacked by others as dangerous (or even more so) if the United States abandons the underlying policies that led these inimical regimes into their cul de sac. There is no predetermined arc of history, for better or worse: decisions matter. And this administration is dangerously close to fumbling.

The dream palace of Arab nationalism
Lebanon and to some extent Syria have always been both a bellwether and symbol of regional politics. The land of the cedars is an incubator of Arab politics, and thus its history is the first draft of the regional history of ideas. And nobody embodies the swirling development of ideas better than my old doctoral advisor, Fouad Ajami, who himself is a child of Ansar from the heart of the Jabal Amel Shiite community in Lebanon’s embattled south. The progression of his books are like a roadmap to understanding the ebb and flow of both the content and geography of ideas in the region.

In The Arab Predicament (1981), Ajami reflected upon the crises of Arab nationalism. It promised to deliver the great renaissance of the Arab world. Instead, it suffered its most decisive and humiliating defeat in 1967 at Israel’s hands. While in the West, the 1970s may have been the heyday of admiration for the international symbol of Arab nationalism – the Ray-Ban bespectacled Yasir Arafat – those in the region understood something was dying. For those who cared to see, Arafat’s expulsion from south Lebanon in 1978 and Beirut in 1982 marked the end of his Arab nationalism.

Courting Arab nationalists remained the foundation of policy in Western capitals (and still does via the Oslo peace process obsession) – with the exception of the great scholar of the region, Bernard Lewis, who was the first westerner to discern the resurfacing of Islam as politics. But the rubble of Arab nationalism was not given to reconstruction and instead yielded new forces. Fouad Ajami captured the final tortured moment and despairing departure of the soul of the idea in The Dream Palace of the Arabs (1999), and the immense swath of destruction of Arab society left regionally in its place.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/bangladesh-muslim-mob-vandalizes-and-loots-hindu-ashlyn-davis/

More on this story: days after a Hindu temple dedicated to the Hindu deity Ganesh was vandalized and burned down in Bhong city, Pakistan, another South Asian Islamic country, the erstwhile East Pakistan, has followed the same line of bigotry. We must give credit to Bangladesh for outdoing its former masters and taking down not just one Hindu temple, but four.

On Friday night, a group of Hindu women in the Shiali village of Rupsha Upazila in Khulna took out a religious procession from the local Purba Para temple and were headed for the Shiali crematorium. They had to pass by a local mosque to reach their destination, and crossed paths with an Islamic cleric, who registered his objections to the procession. This spiraled into a heated altercation between the Hindu devotees and the Muslim cleric. As it was already past 9PM, both parties decided to take the matter up with the police the following day.

However, on Saturday, August 7 between 3 and 6PM, a mob of Muslims launched an ambush attack on the Hindus of Shiali village. Hundreds of Muslims joined this frantic mob and entered the village armed with locally-made makeshift weapons including cleavers, hatchets, and axes. Their first target was the four major Hindu temples in the village; they were desecrated and torn down in minutes by the mob. Six smaller temples in the proximity became the next targets, and were razed to the ground as well. Idols of Hindu deities at the Govinda Temple, Shiyali Purbpara Durga Temple, Shiyali Purbapara Hari Temple, and Shiyali Mahasmashan temple were crushed to bits.

But the ire of the Muslim mob was not placated by the desecration of these Hindu temples alone. They shifted their ire to human beings and their livelihood. Dozens of shops belonging to the Hindus, including Ganesh Mallick’s drug store, Sourav Mallick’s tea and grocery store, Srivastava Mallick’s grocery store, Anirban Hira’s tea shop and his father Majumdar’s shop situated in the local marketplace, were plundered; over fifty-five Hindu houses were ransacked and emptied of valuables. The jihadi crowd also looted milching cows and other cattle belonging to the Hindus, which provided a source of nutrition as well as income to the hapless people from the marginalized community. Numerous unarmed Hindu villagers were assaulted and suffered severe injuries in this clash; many were brutally beaten when they tried to defend their shops from the jihadist plunderers.

The mayhem lasted for hours. Once the thirst for Hindu misery was satiated, the mob decided to disperse. By this time, some Hindus had informed the local police, and some had formed groups to confront the jihadis. However, Shaktipada Basu, the president of the Rupsha Thana Puja Celebration Parishad, accuses the police of chasing away the Hindus when they first went to complain to the Shiali Camp police station. “Police of the Shiali camp resisted the Hindu villagers when they wanted to chase the attackers during the attack,” alleges Basu.

Khulna Superintendent of Police Mahbub Hasan informed the media that a heavy police contingent had been deployed in the area of clash and claimed that the unrest had been brought under control. “We are working with local people,” Hasan briefed the press.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17630/china-crisis-testing-us-presidents

Trump’s adoption of a realistic relationship with China successfully slowed any CCP plans for military expansion in the South and East China Seas. What ended any possibility of a warming trend in US-China diplomatic ties was Beijing’s repeated lies that there was no human-to-human transmissibility of its Wuhan virus. Soon, Chinese propaganda organs were labeling America racist for closing US airports to flights from China, even as the CCP itself had already stopped all domestic flights out of Wuhan.

China’s deceit, and its continued refusal to help investigate the cause of the release of the Wuhan virus, not only killed more than 4.3 million people worldwide, but shattered countless economies. To date, there have been no reprisals and no accountability.

To date, Communist China has not been held accountable for any of its damage or duplicity, or for obstructing all investigations into the origins of the Wuhan virus, or for enslaving and torturing more than a million Uyghurs, or for destroying Tibet and Hong Kong. Instead, China is being rewarded for unspeakable behavior by being allowed to host the 2022 Winter Olympics.

This event presents Biden with an opportunity: there is still time to move the Olympics to a country more deserving — one that will not potentially use the DNA of the world’s greatest athletes to genetically-engineer its future newborns. Will the US finally stand up to Communist China’s provocations, let alone future ones — whether to Australia, Taiwan, Japan, India, Malaysia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Jamaica or the Bahamas — that are already on the way?

China has tested the mettle of all recent US presidents, usually early in their terms of office, and China’s Communist Party (CCP) has already certainly been testing President Joe Biden. Just four days into the Biden presidency, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) fighter aircraft violated Taiwan’s Air Defense Zone. The provocation was a clear message to remind the new president of China’s “Red Line”: not to build upon the Trump administration’s increased military cooperation with Taiwan.

Beijing’s harsh rhetoric, accusing the US of hypocrisy on human rights at the March 2021 meeting in Alaska with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, was probably an indication that China is still calculating to what degree it can intimidate the Biden administration into settling for policies more accommodating to Chinese military, political, security and commercial interests.