RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17826/prowler-preaching-neighborliness

Raisi has not managed to impose some discipline on the few hundred mullahs and brigadier-generals who form the core of the ramshackle regime. Thus the mullah from back of the beyond and the brigadier-general who has never seen a battle except on television, continue to make foreign policy comments mostly to threaten the very neighbors that the Dr. Ayatollah hopes to seduce.

Tehran’s disregard for Iraqi sovereignty came in other forms as well. The official media threatened Baghdad and Erbil with “consequences” unless those who had organized a private seminar on normalization with Israel were “dealt with”. The fact that the seminar in question was in conformity with Iraq’s constitution and law, guaranteeing freedom of opinion and expression, was conveniently ignored.

However, the biggest show of “good neighborliness” promised by Raisi came inside the (former Soviet) Republic of Azerbaijan and along its borders with Iran and Armenia.

What Tehran media described as “a multi-faceted task force” consisting of helicopter gunships, tanks, armored vehicles and elite Special Units under the personal command of IRGC’s Chief of Land Forces Gen. Pakpur was assembled on full alert within sight of Azerbaijani troops and their Russian “advisers”.

In his first statements on foreign policy, Islamic Republic’s new President Dr. Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi made two claims: First that he would be the ultimate arbiter of Tehran’s foreign relations and, second, that his top priority is to “establish close ties with neighbors and promote peace and stability in West Asia.

(The ruling mullahs now use the term West Asia, which was circulated by the Soviet Union, instead of the Middle East, which they regard as a term coined by “Infidel powers.”)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17825/nuclear-armed-iran

General Hossein Salami, the chief of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has made the Iranian regime’s plans vehemently clear: “Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map,” he stated on Iran’s state-controlled Channel 2 TV in 2019. Supreme Leader Khamenei, in 2015, also published a 416-page guidebook, titled “Palestine”, about destroying Israel.

“The mission of the constitution is to create conditions conducive to the development of man in accordance with the noble and universal values of (Shiite) Islam.” The regime’s constitution goes on to say that it “provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the revolution at home and abroad.”

There is the dangerous likelihood of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Iran’s proxy and militia groups, or that the Iranian regime will share its nuclear technology with its proxies and allies such as the Syrian regime or the Taliban in Afghanistan.

If this is how Iran’s leadership treats its own citizens, what makes anyone think they would treat their perceived adversaries any better? As others have asked: If Hitler had acquired a nuclear weapon, do you think he would have hesitated to use it?

Once such leaders have weapons of mass destruction, it is far more costly in life and treasure to try and stop them. Iran might not even need to use its nuclear weapons; the threat should be more than enough.

The Iranian regime is nearing an atomic milestone in acquiring nuclear weapons. In the meantime, the Biden administration does not seem to have a clear agenda to prevent the mullahs from going nuclear. Even the New York Times reported that the Islamic Republic is “within roughly a month of having enough material to fuel a single nuclear weapon”.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/mitchpicasso/2021/09/30/kabul-university-shuts-down-as-taliban-ban-women-n1520839

All women have been banned from studying or teaching in any public university in Afghanistan, and the students from Kabul University have been sent home, according to the Washington Post.

Kabul University, which is normally very active, was quiet today. Classes were suspended and all students, male and female, were sent home until the two genders can be segregated.

In a message to the Washington Post, Taliban official Bilal Karimi stated that they are “working on a comprehensive plan to ensure a peaceful environment for female students.” He said that when  this is done “[women] would be allowed to continue their education.”

Ironically, the women in Afghanistan were already in a generally “peaceful environment” until the Taliban seized power after Biden pulled out U.S. troops.

The Taliban’s new minister of higher education, Abdul Baqi Haqqani, stated that Afghanistan under the Taliban “will not allow boys and girls to study together.” Haqqani said that the country “will not allow coeducation,” according to The Hill.

Not to worry. Haqqani assured the public that things will not be the way they were the last time the Taliban was in charge 20 years ago, saying, “We will start building on what’s today.”

So far, they are off to bad start.

Not only are women not allowed to study, but they are not even allowed to work at the university “until an Islamic environment is created,” said the school’s new Taliban-appointed chancellor Mohammad Ashraf Ghairat.

https://www.newsweek.com/irans-sco-entry-could-complicate-us-israeli-strategic-options-opinion-1633488

Iran’s impending entry into the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Eurasian bloc that China and Russia lead, has great potential to limit U.S., Israeli and Western leeway in confronting Tehran’s nuclear and hegemonic aspirations, sponsorship of international terrorism and efforts at regional de-stabilization.

Iran’s SCO entry comes as the Institute for Science and International Security, a leading nonproliferation think tank, reported that due to its aggressive nuclear enrichment of recent months, the Islamic Republic now has enough enriched nuclear fuel to produce a single nuclear weapon within no more than about a month – if it chooses to do so.

Iran’s entry also comes amid mounting evidence that it continues to impose roadblocks to international monitoring of its nuclear activities. Tehran admitted recently that it removed surveillance cameras that the International Atomic Energy Agency had previously installed at a key centrifuge manufacturing site in the city of Karaj.

Nuclear experts have cautioned that, in advancing its nuclear program, Tehran may be seeking to pressure Washington to quickly resurrect the 2015 global nuclear deal with Iran, from which former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in 2018, prompting Iran to surpass the deal’s limits on its nuclear activity.

By focusing on U.S.-Iranian maneuvering over the nuclear deal, however, policymakers and pundits may miss the strategic forest for the trees. That’s because whether the issue is Iran’s nuclear progress or its regional behavior, its entry into the SCO will raise increasingly serious strategic issues for Washington, Jerusalem and the West.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17810/aukus-security-alliance

“If an authoritarian nation, such as China, displaces America as the dominant global power, then democracies all over the world will feel the consequences.” — Gideon Rachman, columnist, Financial Times.

“Too many European elites still do not want to admit that democracies are in a systemic rivalry with autocracies. Refusing to acknowledge reality is convenient for them since it justifies their inaction. But we need to do the opposite and double down in our defense of democracies.” — Andreas Fulda, China expert, University of Nottingham.

“The US thinks about how to contain China. And Australia too is in the position of thinking about how one contains, as opposed to how one accommodates; that’s the fundamental difference with France. As a consequence, the US looks like the better partner.” — Richard Whitman, professor of politics and international relations, University of Kent.

“I think it was the only option for Australia because the French were not going to annoy or unnecessarily irritate Beijing. They wanted trade, economic, and investment relations. Now, Australia will have the capability to sink the Chinese navy in 72 hours; that’s what this is all about. The Chinese know they have been outmaneuvered, and they’re very angry. In a very short period of time, Australia has gone from a doormat to something very considerable — it’s an extraordinary development.” — Joseph Siracusa, geopolitical analyst, Sky News Australia.

“The lesson of the past few weeks is that the world does not run on Brussels time, with its long periods for consultation, courteous attention to the electoral cycles of 27 countries, and sacrosanct weekends, evenings, and lunch breaks.” — Edward Lucas, Europe analyst, Center for European Policy Analysis.

“France underestimated how China’s naked military ambition, chronic disregard for international order, and barely concealed aspirations to control the deep Pacific and Antarctica pushed Australia to make tough decisions about the future.” — Craig Hooper, geopolitical analyst, Forbes.

“It is hard to overstate the importance of the so-called Aukus alliance between the US, the UK and Australia — and the implicit geopolitical disaster for the EU.” — Wolfgang Münchau, commentator, The Spectator.

“The extent of Emmanuel Macron’s fury is absurd, and only shows the sublime lack of self-awareness that has come to characterize Europe’s myopic political elites…. The European establishment has a long history of treating its geopolitical partners abysmally while wearing a mask of moral superiority.” — Editorial board, The Telegraph.

“The EU continues to decline to take any serious responsibility for global peace and security, preferring to see the economic and commercial opportunities in the relationship with China, rather than the threat the Chinese Communist Party represents.” — Gerard Baker, columnist, The Wall Street Journal.

Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have announced a new tripartite strategic alliance aimed at countering China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. The AUKUS defense agreement, under which Australia will acquire American-designed nuclear-powered submarines, is a welcome paradigm shift intended to enhance the projection of Western military power in the region.

http://dev.ruthinstitute.org/

A recent United Kingdom Appeals Court decision to allow puberty blockers for children was “ill-considered and dangerous,” said Ruth Institute President Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.

The court reversed a 2020 ruling that those under 16 lack the capacity to give informed consent to potentially life-changing drugs, which stop the onset of puberty.

The court, while acknowledging “the difficulties and complexities” of the issue, nevertheless held that “it is for the clinicians to exercise their judgement knowing how important it is that consent [from a minor] is properly obtained according to the individual circumstances.”

Morse called this absurd. “You’re going to rely on a ‘gender-identity’ clinic, which makes money from dispensing these drugs, to assure that consent is properly obtained from a child?”

Morse noted that Keira Bell, the original plaintiff, was given hormone blockers at age 16 after just three one-hour sessions at the Tavistock clinic. She was later prescribed testosterone and had a double mastectomy at 20. Now, at 23, she is in the process of de-transitioning.

Bell said that when she began trying to reverse the process, “it was heartbreaking to realize I’d gone down the wrong path.” The drugs she started taking at 16 “irreparably damaged” her body and likely left her sterile.

“This ruling doesn’t address the fact that the previous court described these so-called gender affirmation treatments as ‘experimental,’” Morse noted. “This court ignored the seriously under-studied, long-term consequences of puberty blockers. If adults don’t fully know what these powerful hormonal interventions do to a young person’s body, how do we expect someone under age 16 to know?

“You can’t drive, vote, or enlist in the military in the United Kingdom when you’re under 16. But, according to ‘trans’ activists, minors have the maturity and discernment to take drugs that could radically alter their body chemistry in preparation for chemical castration and surgical alteration in the future. Something is clearly wrong here.”

The Ruth Institute is a global non-profit organization, leading an international interfaith coalition to defend the family and build a civilization of love.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/xis_desperate_roll_of_the_dice.html

Wall Street and the big international corporations have suddenly awakened to the threat China poses.  And no, it has nothing to do with the danger China poses to American national security, the massive theft of U.S. intellectual property, the release of the Wuhan virus on the world, or even its use of Uighur Muslims in forced labor.  Rather, it has to do with the threat to Wall Street profits.  This is what had George Soros criticizing BlackRock’s recent investments in China and the Wall Street Journal clutching its pearls.  Here’s the backdrop to the story.

As the WSJ put it, Xi is trying to forcibly get the country back to the vision of Mao Zedong, who saw capitalism as mere transition phase on the road to socialism.  Accordingly, Xi’s plans call for more government intervention in the economy.  Since he has consolidated power, the Chinese president is putting the entire state apparatus behind making private companies serve the state.  Also, private business and the wealthy are now being “encouraged” to donate more of their wealth and profits toward Xi’s “common prosperity” goals.  Alibaba alone has pledged the equivalent of $15.5 billion.  And Western investments in China are not being ignored by Xi.

For foreign businesses, the campaign likely means more turbulence ahead. Western companies always had to toe the party line in China, but they are increasingly asked to do more, including sharing personal user data and accepting party members as employees. They could be pressed to sacrifice more profits to help Beijing achieve its goals.

https://www.aol.com/north-korea-fires-projectile-sea-230129296-064556810.html

North Korea fired a short-range missile into the sea early Tuesday, its neighboring countries said, in the latest weapon tests by North Korea that has raised questions about the sincerity of its recent offer for talks with South Korea.

In an emergency National Security Council meeting, the South Korean government expressed regret over what it called “a short-range missile launch” by the North. South Korea’s military earlier said the object fired from North Korea’s mountainous northern Jagang province flew toward the waters off the North’s eastern coast.

The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement the launch doesn’t pose an immediate threat to U.S. personnel or territory, or to our allies. But it said the missile launch “highlights the destabilizing impact of (North Korea’s) illicit weapons program” and that the U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea and Japan “remains ironclad.”

Details of the launch were being analyzed by South Korean and U.S. authorities. But Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said North Korea fired “what could be a ballistic missile” and that his government stepped up its vigilance and surveillance.

A ballistic missile launch would violate a U.N. Security Council ban on North Korean ballistic activities, but the council typically doesn’t impose new sanctions on North Korea for launches of short-range weapons.

Tests of ballistic and cruise missiles earlier this month were North Korea’s first such launches in six months and displayed its ability to attack targets in South Korea and Japan, both key U.S. allies where a total of 80,000 American troops are stationed.

https://www.aol.com/news/taliban-issue-no-shave-order-191041723-204954563.html

The Taliban on Monday banned barbershops in a southern Afghanistan province from shaving or trimming beards, claiming their edict is in line with Shariah, or Islamic, law.

The order in Helmand province was issued by the provincial Taliban government’s vice and virtue department to barbers in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.

“Since I have heard (about the ban on trimming beards) I am heart broken,” said Bilal Ahmad, a Lashkar Gah resident. “This is the city and everyone follows a way of living, so they have to be left alone to do whatever they want.” 

During their previous rule of Afghanistan, the Taliban adhered to a harsh interpretation of Islam. Since overrunning Kabul on Aug. 15 and again taking control of the country, the world has been watching to see whether they will re-create their strict governance of the late 1990s.

Some indication came on Saturday, when Taliban fighters killed four alleged kidnappers and later hung their bodies in the public squares of the western city of Herat.

“If anyone violates the rule (they) will be punished and no one has a right to complain,” said the order issued to the barbers. It wasn’t immediately clear what penalties the barbers could face if they don’t adhere to the no shaving or trimming rule.