RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/iran-building-precision-guided-missiles-hezbollah-hugh-fitzgerald/

Iran claims that its citizens are in Syria mainly to help with rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. Israel has good reason to think — and act — otherwise. Asked to comment on reports that Iran was building highly lethal weapons– precision-guided missiles — for Hezbollah, Iran feigned indignation. “Israel Intensifying Air War in Syria Against Iranian Encroachment,” Algemeiner, April 22, 2021:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Iran has said it has military advisers in Syria to help Assad’s forces, and will continue a policy “resisting” US and Israeli power in the wider Middle East.

Nothing says “resisting” Israeli power like shipping 150,000 missiles to Hezbollah for future launches against Israel, even though at the time those missiles were shipped Israel had not attacked a single Iranian target, inside or outside Iran.

Over the past year, Israeli warplanes, missiles and drones have hit a far wider range of targets — from suspected Iranian guided missile research and production sites to arms storage depots — than in the previous five years, said three Israeli officials and a senior Western official based in the region.

In the latest strike on Thursday, Israel hit al Dumair on the northeastern outskirts of Damascus which it has repeatedly hit in the past and where suspected Iranian-backed militias have a strong presence.

Jane’s defense news analysts said that over a three-year span Israel had used 4,239 weapons against 955 targets with 70% of Israeli pilots involved in the campaign, with the new F-35I Adir fighter jets leading dozens of missions.

It’s a fantastic record. In the last decade of bombing sites in Syria, the Israelis have lost exactly one plane, an F-16, which crashed inside Israel, as did the pilot, who has since recovered from his wounds. In the last three years alone, Israel has hit almost a thousand targets, and many of them have been hit repeatedly, as 4,239 weapons were used. Israel keeps upping both the number of targets, and the number of hits, whether by bombs, missiles, or drones.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/appropriating-apartheid-to-bash-israel-11620663819?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

“So why the lie? Because Human Rights Watch seeks to delegitimize Israel, to portray it falsely as a state founded on the cardinal sin of racism, thereby denying it the moral right to exist.”

Johannesburg, South Africa

Human Rights Watch accuses Israel of apartheid. Yet in making the accusation in an April 27 report, the group brazenly acknowledges that it has “detached the term apartheid from its original South African context.”

This is immoral. “Apartheid” has a sacred historical meaning, sanctified by the blood and suffering of millions of South Africans who were oppressed and discriminated against on the basis of race. In appropriating the word, Human Rights Watch presents a grotesquely distorted picture of both South African history and the current reality in Israel.

Apartheid was a state-enforced national system of racial discrimination that manifested in a slew of oppressive laws aimed at obliterating the human rights of an entire race—among them the Population Registration Act, the Group Areas Act, and the Separate Amenities Act. Black South Africans were denied the vote and equality before the law until 1994.

In contrast, within the borders of the state of Israel, all citizens—Jews, Arabs or otherwise—have the right to vote and complete equality before the law. They participate side by side in elections, and Israeli Arabs hold high-ranking positions throughout the Israeli government, including the Knesset and the Supreme Court. After the recent election, an Arab-led party holds the balance of power in the Knesset, and it was an Arab judge that convicted former Israeli president Moshe Katzav.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/afghanistans-terror-future-11620679849?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan undermines American security interests, but the humanitarian disaster may be more immediate. The attack on a school in Kabul over the weekend is a likely preview.

Even in Afghanistan, Saturday’s bombings stood out as particularly depraved. It began when a suicide bomber detonated a car at the gates of a mixed-gender school. As surviving students fled, two more bombs exploded nearby. This left more than 80 dead and nearly twice as many wounded.

The bombings were timed to ensure that schoolgirls, who attend classes on a different schedule than boys, were the primary victims. And it’s no accident that the attack took place in a predominantly Shiite Hazara part of Kabul. Religious minorities and women were among those who suffered the most under Taliban rule in the 1990s. They won’t fare any better if the group retakes control of the country.

Expect even more violence as U.S. and allied forces complete their withdrawal sometime this summer: Attacks on girls for going to school and on religious minorities simply for existing, and terrorist violence to scare anyone who thinks of resisting.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17306/china-space-power

“China is taking steps to establish a commanding position in the commercial launch and satellite sectors relying in part on aggressive state-backed financing that foreign market-driven companies cannot match.” — US-China Economic and Security Review Commission in its 2019 Annual Report to Congress.

“Chinese and Russian space activities present serious and growing threats to U.S. national security interests. Chinese and Russian military doctrines also indicate that they view space as critical to modern warfare and consider the use of counterspace capabilities as both a means of reducing U.S. military effectiveness and for winning future wars.” — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, written testimony prior to his confirmation hearing. Space.com, March 19, 2021.

“The PRC continues to strengthen its military space capabilities, despite its public stance against the weaponization of space…. the PRC is developing electronic warfare capabilities such as satellite jammers….and China probably intends to pursue additional ASAT [Anti-Satellite] weapons capable of destroying satellites….” — Pentagon report about China’s military capabilities, Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020.

Given the chance, China will also move ahead to use space to dominate not only the US but also the rest of the planet. Any defense budget cuts or flatlines in the in the US military budget — or any monetary transfers out of it — should be regarded as suicidal.

Shortly after becoming president in March 2013, Xi Jinping made his ambitions for China’s space power clear. “Developing the space program and turning the country into a space power is the space dream that we have continuously pursued”, he said. “The space dream is part of the dream to make China stronger”. China aims to become the world’s leading space power by 2045: “China will become an all-round world-leading country in space equipment and technology. By then, it will be able to carry out man-computer coordinated space exploration on a large scale,” wrote China Daily in 2017.

One cornerstone of China’s space program is the Beidou Navigation Satellite system (BDS), a global navigation satellite system that provides positioning, navigation and timing, in addition to data communication. The People’s Liberation Army created the program in order not to be dependent on the US-controlled GPS network. “In recent years, the PRC has actively sought to promote the image of Beidou as a civilian-led program intended primarily for commercial and scientific purposes,” stated a report by the Jamestown Foundation. “However, the program is under overall military direction, with the PLA in charge of Beidou’s senior-most program management organizations,”

Beidou is also known as China’s “Space Silk Road”, which expands China’s land-based “Silk Road Economic Belt” and sea-based “21st Century Maritime Silk Road” — better known collectively as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) — into space. Beidou makes participants in the Belt and Road Initiative dependent on China for precision navigation and other space based services. According to a report by Malcolm Davis from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in 2017:

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.