RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/being_a_journalist_in_iran_is_one_of_the_worlds_most_dangerous_jobs.html

According to the United Nations, May 3 was World Press Freedom Day. That makes this a good time to stop and contemplate how dangerous it is to be a real journalist in Iran. There, a journalist takes his life into his hands if he tries to report facts with honesty and transparency. This regime has no qualms about using repression, censorship, and imprisonment to control the flow of news. Put simply, there is no press freedom in Iran

Although Iran has always been a dangerous place for journalists in the past decade it’s become increasingly risky to try to report the truth there. It is common for journalists and bloggers across Iran to be summoned, arrested, and sentenced to prison for expressing facts and real news.

Because the Iranian regime, like all tyrannies, is inherently unstable and it is currently facing serious economic problems, the mullahs are terrified that real news could act as a spark in a society on the verge of explosion. The last thing they want is another uprising such as the ones in 2018 and 2019. One way to try to deter uprisings is to cut off the Internet and sensor news, which it did during the recent uprising in Balochistan.

Even without the Internet, though, Iran fears those people within the country who may tell the truth. Reporters Without Borders ranks it as one of the world’s most oppressive countries for journalists:

Iran is still one of the world’s most repressive countries for journalists, subjecting news and information to relentless control. At least 860 journalists and citizen-journalists have been prosecuted, arrested, imprisoned and in some cases executed since the 1979 revolution. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17347/g7-cliches

The real bad news, however, is that the London conference failed to develop a coherent and mutually agreed analysis of the international situation, without which no serious policy-making is possible. The Americans came to London with a set of clichés used during their presidential campaign last year, notably the catch-all “America is back!”, but were unable to say where that “back” was or whether it was necessary to go there.

They also talked a lot about “multilateralism” without making it clear what it was they wanted to be multilateral about. Multilateralism is a method of doing things, not the substance of policy. You could do both wise and foolish things multilaterally. The Libyan disaster resulted from President Barack Obama’s “leading from behind” multilateralism. The latest example of foolish multilateralism is the cut-and-run policy the Biden administration is marketing on Afghanistan.

What seems clear is that both China and Russia are trying to project power in a 19th-century colonial style… Putin’s strategy… copying General Paskevich’s warning: “to keep the land you grabbed today, you will have to grab more land tomorrow.”

Does anyone believe that, short of a shock-and-awe operation, Kim Jung-on could be leashed in without help from China? And could the G7’s habitual cat-and-mouse game with the Khomeinist regime in Tehran produce positive results while Russia plays cheerleader for the mullahs?

The current G7 position could only persuade Beijing and Moscow to set their differences aside and promote a low-intensity global war against the democratic world.

Even if the so-called G7 group of industrial democracies is no longer as powerful and/or relevant as it was when it was first launched more than four decades ago, it is still capable of making a difference on the global stage where a difference is necessary. It is therefore good news that the group, consisting of the US, Canada, Britain, Germany France, Italy, and Japan managed to convene a face-to-face conference of its foreign ministers in London, the first in two years.

The ministerial conference, also attended by the European Union foreign policy spokesman, had the task of preparing the agenda for a full summit of the seven nations, again in Britain, next month. The planned summit will provide Joe Biden with his first foray into the international arena as US President.

While the holding of the London conference was good news, it also contained an element of bad news. To start with, the British host tried to promote one of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s many brainwaves by inviting India, Australia, and South Africa as guests with a wink and nod in the direction of the Commonwealth.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/05/eurasian-anti-west-alliance-didnt-have-to-happen/

The Russian pessimist says things are so bad they can’t possibly get worse; the Russian optimist says, “Don’t worry, they will!”

If Western leaders think that Russia and China are aggressive now, the Russian-Chinese alliance now emerging will be a nastier combination than most Western observers can imagine.

It doesn’t have to happen, but probably will, given the West’s toxic combination of aggressive posturing and inherent weakness. The former tempts China to use force, and the latter causes China to think that it can get away with using force.

Case in point: On May 6 the hawkish Chinese policy site “Observer” (guancha.cn) led with a 5,000 word screed by Russia’s “Eurasianist” ideologue Aleksandr Dugin, the inspiration for younger officers in Russia’s military and intelligence services who think that Vladimir Putin is too soft on the West.

That should alarm Washington, although I doubt anyone in the White House took notice.

Western commentators demonize Putin, and distract attention from the fact that Russia’s long-serving president is a centrist figure by his country’s standards.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17336/china-pollution-climate

If China were serious about reducing emissions, that intent would have been evident from its new five-year plan for the years 2021-2025, released in March. This plan, however, has been described as containing “little more than vague commitments to tackle carbon dioxide emissions.”
As the Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial in February, initiatives like this explain why “Beijing loves Biden and Paris”. They allow China, in the words of the editorial, to get “a free carbon ride” — meaning unfettered economic growth at a time when China is looking to become the world’s dominant economic and technological power.
How much will fulfilling President Biden’s climate accord pledges actually cost and for what actual benefit to whom, and how much of a further edge will it actually give to China?
At a time when China is so obviously saying one thing and doing another, and clearly not fulfilling its share of the world’s commitments to reducing CO2 emissions — as the world’s second-largest economy should — increasing America’s climate pledges sends all the wrong signals. What China and others see is that no matter what it does — even if it deceives the world and continues its predatory behavior — the US is willing to reduce its own competitiveness, leaving China a thick red carpet to become the world’s dominant superpower, the very role to which it aspires.

Communist China, in 2020, built over three times as much new coal power capacity as all other countries in the world combined — the equivalent of more than one large coal plant per week, according to a report released in April by Global Energy Monitor.

Also in 2020, China’s CO2 emissions rose by 1.5% while those of most other countries fell. Although, in 2020, the world retreated from coal, these retirements were eclipsed by China’s new coal plants.

Even before China built those new plants, it was already the world’s biggest emitter of fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2): In 2019, China was responsible for almost 30% of CO2 emissions — roughly twice the amount emitted by the US, then the second largest emitter. China, the planet’s primary coal consumer, already has the largest concentration of coal plants globally; in 2020, it produced 3.84 billion tons of coal, its highest output since 2015. In addition, China, in 2020, imported 304 million tons of coal, up 4 million tons from 2019.

According to the International Energy Agency, “79.7 percent of China’s emissions came from coal in 2018 compared to 70.6 percent in India, 25.8 percent in the United States, and 27.9 percent in the European Union” and “Since 2011, China has consumed more coal than the rest of the world combined.”

Despite being the world’s reigning climate polluter, China keeps virtue signaling, falsely marketing itself as the champion of the environment. “We should protect nature and preserve the environment like we protect our eyes, and endeavor to foster a new relationship where man and nature can both prosper and live in harmony,” said Xi Jinping at the recent Leaders Summit on Climate hosted by U.S. President Joe Biden.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17341/iran-drugs-terrorism

While Israel is seeking to dissuade the Biden administration from rejoining the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran… Tehran’s mullahs and their Lebanese Hezbollah terror proxy are busy drowning the Arab countries with drugs.

“Israel is far more honorable than the drug-dealers…. [The drug dealers’] ultimate goal is to destroy Saudi Arabia by every available means. They are smuggling weapons and drugs to the Gulf states, but when they are confronted, they accuse the governments of these states of siding with Israel, and they raise the slogan of liberating Jerusalem, while their missiles are only targeting Riyadh and Mecca.” — Turki Al-Hamad, Saudi academic, Rai Al-Youm, April 25, 2021.

“[Hezbollah has become] a criminal organization whose danger has gone beyond the stage of terrorism and military operations…. The Hezbollah project has become the destruction of people through drugs.” — Mohammed Al-Maskary, Emirati writer and journalist, Al-Ain, April 27, 2021

“Hezbollah is increasingly dependent on the revenues from terrorist activities, drug smuggling and money laundering with Colombian, Mexican and Cuban cartel networks.” — Fahim Al-Hamed, Saudi writer, Okaz, April 25, 2021.

While Israel is seeking to dissuade the Biden administration from rejoining the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran — currently the subject of indirect negotiations in Vienna — Tehran’s mullahs and their Lebanese Hezbollah terror proxy are busy drowning the Arab countries with drugs.

Last week, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Lebanon, Walid Al-Bukhari, revealed that Saudi authorities recently foiled an attempt to smuggle large quantities of drugs from Lebanon. The smuggled drugs, he said, were “enough to drown the whole Arab world. The drugs were not meant to be distributed in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia only, but also in different parts of the Arab world.”

Al-Bukhari’s remarks came days after Saudi Arabia announced that it had thwarted an attempt to smuggle 2.4 million narcotic tablets into the Kingdom hidden in a shipment of pomegranates.

The smuggling attempt drew sharp criticism from many Arabs, who accused Hezbollah and Iran of exporting various types of drugs to the Arab world and other countries.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/missing-justuce-sarah-halimi-joseph-puder/

Seventy-six years after the Holocaust, in a continent drenched with Jewish blood, Jews still continue to be victimized in Europe, particularly in France. In recent decades, France has been a dangerous place for Jews, and as a consequence, many French Jews have moved to Israel. The murders that shook French Jewry were the gruesome Halimi murders, and there has been no justice for the victims or true punishment for the perpetrators.

The brutal murder of Dr. Sarah Halimi happened to be the second time a Jewish person named Halimi was viciously killed in Paris. The first was Ilan Halimi who was only 23 years old when he was kidnapped on January 21, 2006, by a gang called the “Barbarians,” comprised largely by Arab-Muslim immigrants. He was tortured and then died of his wounds. The French authorities in the case of Ilan Halimi, just like in Sarah’s case, did not attribute the murder to anti-Semitism. The murderers in both cases included Black Muslim men from sub-Sahara Africa (as well as Arabs from the Maghreb were involved in Ilan’s death). 

As ugly and upsetting as George Floyd’s killing was in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at least he received a measure of justice. The murder of Dr. Sarah Halimi’s in Paris, France, on April 4, 2017, was far more brutal, but justice in her case was not rendered. In fact, it showed the world that in France, even dogs get a larger measure of justice that was denied the late Dr. Halimi because of a deeply rooted anti-Semitism within the current French judicial system. No worldwide riots have however, taken place as the result of her brutal murder by a hate filled Muslim African immigrant from Mali, named Kobili Traore. The cowardly murderer shouted “Allahu akbar” as he attacked and tortured Sarah in her own apartment. Afterward, he proclaimed “I killed a “Shaitan (Satan).” The only reason Traore targeted Sarah Halimi was that she was the only Jewish person in the building located in the Belleville section of Paris. Aged 65, Dr. Sarah Halimi was the mother of three children.  

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/olympics-to-allow-a-male-weightlifter-in-the-female-category/

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has changed its rules, permitting a biological male to compete against women in weightlifting. Before transitioning in 2013, Laurel Hubbard competed in the men’s category.

The IOC’s guidelines require males to demonstrate that their testosterone levels have been chemically lowered. But messing around with testosterone levels does next to nothing to remove the innate male advantage.

Male puberty confers irreversible advantages. Adrogenization increases bone density and muscle mass. Moreover, the performance gap between males and females at the elite level is as much as 30 percent. As has been explained:

The 69kg male weightlifter hammers the 69kg female weightlifter on strength. Where are the females who are stronger than [the males]? How tall and heavy are they? The answer is, in Olympic weightlifting, they don’t exist. . . . The male 69kg Olympic weightlifting world record holder is 30% stronger than his female counterpart and lifts heavier than the female world record holder in the top weight category…

Males are stronger. The performance gap between male and female athletes is utterly astounding; it’s not a “gap”, it’s the Grand Canyon. Without sex-segregated sporting categories, the most wonderful 10.49s that female athletics has ever seen would be a footnote in history. We owe it to the female sports stars of today and to the girls who aspire to be tomorrow’s sporting heroes to fight for their right to take home gold.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-starts-to-come-around-on-china-11620341264?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

President Biden wants to work with traditional American allies to resist China’s increasing belligerence. While the European Union has tried to steer its own course, Beijing is doing its part to revive the trans-Atlantic alliance.

“We now in a sense have suspended . . . political outreach activities from the European Commission side,” EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told AFP on Tuesday. “The environment is not conducive for ratification of the agreement.” Mr. Dombrovskis is referring to the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, a deal meant to provide Europe and China greater access to each other’s markets.

Weeks before becoming U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan requested “early consultations” with Brussels about the pact. Europe responded by announcing it had reached an agreement-in-principle with China. But the European Parliament and 27 national leaders still have to approve the deal.

That process became more complicated in March, when the European Union announced sanctions targeting four Chinese officials involved with human-rights abuses in the Xinjiang region. Beijing responded by imposing sanctions on several members of the European Parliament and other Europeans critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

It’s hard to ratify a deal with a country that has sanctioned officials who will vote on ratification, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel is still trying. She spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron last month, and the German readout of the call didn’t mention human rights. The French later said it came up, but Ms. Merkel is trying to play down the issue as she seeks to solidify the deal before elections this year.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/major-swedish-hospital-bans-puberty-blocking-for-gender-dysphoria/

The actual science is beginning to overcome transgender ideology. First, the U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence — basically the NHS’s decision-maker for what to cover — determined that there was “very low” evidence of benefit to allow children with gender dysphoria to have their natural puberty blocked — which is an “off label” use of those drugs, by the way.

Now, Karolinska Hospital, a major health institution in Sweden, is stopping their use. First, there is little scientific to support such interventions. From the hospital’s official statement:

In December 2019, the SBU (Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services) published an overview of the knowledge base which showed a lack of evidence for both the long-term consequences of the treatments, and the reasons for the large influx of patients in recent years.

Even more importantly, the potential for harming the patient physically is very real:

These treatments are potentially fraught with extensive and irreversible adverse consequences such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, infertility, increased cancer risk, and thrombosis. This makes it challenging to assess the risk/benefit for the individual patient, and even more challenging for the minors and their guardians to be in a position of an informed stance regarding these treatments.

Yikes!

As a consequence the hospital wisely enacted the following policy:

In light of the above, and based on the precautionary principle, which should always be applied, it has been decided that hormonal treatments (i.e., puberty blocking and cross-sex hormones) will not be initiated in gender dysphoric patients under the age of 16.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17299/arabs-warn-west-iran-deception

“Those who commit the same mistakes and expect different results are deceiving themselves.” — Abdullah bin Bajad Al-Otibi, Saudi writer and researcher, Alarabiya.net, April 19, 2021.

After the deal expires in a few years…. Iran may build as many nuclear weapons as it wants. In that sense, the JCPOA deal was a runway to a full-blown nuclear weapons program.

“[T]he agreement did not address the Iranian regime’s ambitions of hegemony and its blatant interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries through direct and semi-direct occupation in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen…. Iran today is targeting Saudi oil and global energy supplies, as well as civilians, as the world is watching.” — Abdullah bin Bajad Al-Otibi, Alarabiya.net, April 19, 2021.

“All the concessions that the Western powers intend to make to Tehran do not bind anyone in the Middle East, and cannot force Israel or the Arab countries to respect the outcome of the talks in Vienna, especially if these negotiations increase the danger of the Tehran regime to stability and security.” — Syrian writer Bahaa Al-Alawam, Al-Ain, April 19, 2021

“The truth is that there is a political, military, security and economic Iranian occupation of four Arab countries – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.” — Former Jordanian Minister of Information and Culture Saleh Al-Kallab, Asharq Al-Awsat, April 15, 2021.

This message, directed mainly at the Biden administration, accuses the West of ignoring Iran’s ongoing occupation and terrorism in the Arab countries. Evidently, there is a profound fear among Arabs that a revival of the nuclear deal will add fuel to the mullahs’ fire and support their slash-and-burn policies of destabilizing Arab countries and promoting terrorism through their proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi militias in Yemen.

Arabs are growing increasingly concerned about Iran’s sinister intentions and deception as the Iranians and representatives of Germany, France, Britain, Russia, and China continue their negotiations in Vienna about reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration abandoned in 2018.

The deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is ostensibly aimed at preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Under the JCPOA, Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium, cut its stockpile of low-enriched uranium by 98%, and reduce by about two-thirds the number of uranium gas centrifuges for 13 years. After the deal expires in a few years, however, Iran may build as many nuclear weapons as it wants. In that sense, the JCPOA deal was a runway to a full-blown nuclear weapons program.

On May 8, 2019, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, which Iran had been secretly violating, and Iran has been repeatedly violating the terms of the accord ever since.

The Iranians appear optimistic that the talks will bring the US back to the deal, saying a “new understanding” seems to be taking shape.