RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/09/18/iranian-justice-3-teens-will-have-fingers-cut-off-for-stealing-n943072

Three teenagers convicted of stealing had their sentences upheld by the Iranian Supreme Court. The court ordered that the sentence be carried out; four fingers from their right hands will be severed, in accordance with Islamic law.

The three young men claim that their confessions were tortured out of them. One of the young men is in very bad health after slitting his wrists earlier this year.

Fox News:

“Article 278 of the Islamic Punishment Law, the four fingers of their right hands will be cut off for four counts of robbery,” IRM noted. “The fingers must be cut off from the bottom, leaving only the palm and the thumb. According to Article 667 of the same law, they were also ordered to return the stolen goods.”

As a strict Islamic Republic, amputation is legal in Iran based on the Sharia law, which enables “amputation of the full length of four fingers of the right hand of the thief in such a manner that the thumb and palm of the hand remain” — although it remains relatively rare, with the death penalty the more common sentence handed down by the courts.

Nonetheless, it is not apparent how many Iranians are levied with judicial amputation each year, as the cases are kept clandestine to avoid heat from human rights advocates and the broader international community.

Iran apologists argued for years that the practice had been “phased out” and that Iran was actually a decent, enlightened country. Barack Obama thought so. He signed a deal that kept Iran from getting the bomb for a long time. At least, that’s what the Iranians told him.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-flies-warplanes-near-taiwan-as-senior-u-s-diplomat-visits-11600449576

TAIPEI—Beijing flew military aircraft close to Taiwan on a day that a senior American diplomat met with Taiwan’s president as part of a series of recent U.S. moves to improve ties with the self-ruled island.

Undersecretary of State Keith Krach, the highest-ranking State Department official to visit the island since Washington cut formal ties with Taipei four decades ago, expressed U.S. support for deeper cooperation at a dinner Friday evening hosted by President Tsai Ing-wen, her office said.

The Trump administration has pushed to further relationships with Taiwan as tensions grow with Beijing over technology, trade and global influence. The status of the island, which Beijing considers part of Chinese territory, is one of the most sensitive issues between the U.S. and China. Beijing sees high-level U.S. interactions with Taiwanese officials as provocations.

The State Department said earlier this week Mr. Krach’s trip was to attend a memorial service honoring former President Lee Teng-hui, who died in July. Mr. Lee’s legacy of helping Taiwan transition to a multiparty democracy gave the U.S. and Taiwan an opportunity to highlight shared political values around democracy, a point emphasized in statements from both sides.

Hours before the meeting, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said it scrambled jet fighters after at least 18 Chinese aircraft crossed the so-called median line in the Taiwan Strait that roughly marks the halfway point between the island and mainland China.

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

Journalist Drew Holden kept a list of politicians and mainstream media outlets that have been denigrating, downplaying and outright mocking President Donald Trump’s approach to the Middle East. From Samantha Power to John Kerry to Senators Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer to Rep. Mark Pocan; from Reuters to CNN to The New Yorker to Foreign Policy to the Guardian to…well, you get the point.

Mostly, it is a litany of how much more dangerous the region has become for a variety of Trump’s moves, and how the U.S. is doomed to failure. Following the Israel-United Arab Emirates and Israel-Bahrain peace agreements, witnessed by the United States, criticism has largely been centered around the idea that it really isn’t a big deal. They’re little countries. They don’t matter. They would have done it without Trump. The U.S. doesn’t need the oil, so who cares?

Wait. Wait. What was that about oil?

Who doesn’t need oil?

It is true that with President Trump’s support of fracking, the U.S. no longer relies on the import of oil from the Persian Gulf. But our allies—in particular, our Asian allies—do. And China certainly does.

And herein lies the almost entirely unremarked upon the importance of regional peace, freedom of navigation, the United States and the connection between Middle East policy and China policy—a connection that appears to have escaped left-leaning punditry.

The Shiite Islamic Republic of Iran has been threatening oil shipping from the Persian Gulf by the other oil-producing states, which are predominantly Sunni. The United States Navy guarantees freedom of navigation in the Gulf, and we have bases in Oman, Qatar (odd, but true), Kuwait, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain with which to do it. There are those in the U.S. who say, “We don’t import Persian Gulf oil, so why should we pay for the security that allows the Arabs to profit?” “Why do we provide security for ships going to China?” China, which is in the process of building a much bigger navy and has established a Middle Eastern base in Djibouti on the Red Sea near the U.S. base there, could conceivably take over that responsibility.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-once-germanys-partner-in-growth-turns-into-a-rival-11600338663

An informal partnership that kept Germany’s economy tethered to China’s for decades is unraveling, threatening Berlin’s—and Europe’s—post-pandemic recovery as the Asian giant stages a powerful comeback.

The relationship that saw Germany provide China with the machines to power its economy helped the German economy recover rapidly after the financial crisis. But German business leaders say the model is no longer working as China turns from partner to rival.

Germany should see its gross domestic product shrink by between 5.8% and 7.1% this year according to German public- and private-sector economists—better than most other Western economies but much worse than China’s expected 2.5% growth.

While Germany’s exporters are benefiting from a recovery in international trade, they aren’t getting the lift from China that they did a decade ago. In July, German exports were up from June but still 11% lower from a year earlier. China’s exports have exceeded last year’s levels for two months.

This divergence, economists and German business leaders say, is partly the result of Beijing’s strategy to encourage manufacturers to produce more sophisticated machinery that is more competitive with high-end German capital goods that were previously unmatched.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16519/eu-hizballah-partner

The reality is, should the EU get its way, contrary to its claims to try and uphold the Good Friday Agreement, its demands would harm future prospects for peace and stability in Northern Ireland by undermining and destabilising the union.

Where does Hizballah get the weapons and explosives it is reportedly providing to the New IRA? Iran. The EU has been at the forefront of supplying funds to Iran, including cash used for its terrorist proxies across the Middle East and beyond.

The EU’s bungling foreign policy does not proscribe Hizballah in its entirety, mulishly maintaining a fictitious separation between “political” and “military” wings, despite the terrorist group’s own insistence that there is no distinction. Meanwhile Hizballah has attempted large-scale terrorist attacks in Britain, France and Germany….

[T]he EU falsely claims to uphold peace in Ireland while itself facilitating the greatest threat to that peace.

Intersectionality has become a cynical craze among woke activists determined to promote division and undermine the fabric of Western society. But long before these Johnny-come-lately militants launched their campaigns of disruption, cancelling all who disagree, doing their best to get dissenters fired and tearing down historic statues, other militants were putting their brand of intersectionality into action to kill, maim and destroy the targets of their own hatred.

Sinn Fein’s campaign of violence against the British state and the people of Northern Ireland, fronted by the Provisional IRA, lasted 30 years until their comprehensive infiltration by British intelligence, especially the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch, forced them to lay down their arms under the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Sinn Fein-IRA’s intersectionality included close cooperation with a wide range of fellow terrorists, including the Basque separatist movement, ETA. For many years, Sinn Fein-IRA also colluded with terrorist gangs in the Middle East, themselves masters of intersectionality, sometimes crossing the Shia-Sunni divide as they still do today.

Perhaps the most significant of these unholy alliances involved Colonel Muammar Gadaffi’s regime in Libya. Gadaffi helped re-energise IRA terrorism in the mid-1980s by supplying cash and weaponry, including rifles, pistols, machine guns, rocket launchers, surface-to-air missiles, flamethrowers and high explosives. Four massive arms shipments from Libya — totalling more than 100 tons — made it through to the IRA strongholds and a fifth was intercepted by the French navy. These bombs and guns were used to murder large numbers of innocent people in Northern Ireland.

https://bit.ly/3kqHaj3

The Saudi position

A brief expose’ of the Saudi position on the Israel-UAE and Israel-Bahrain peace treaties is provided by Salman Al-Dossary, the former editor-in-chief of the influential Saudi daily, Asharq al-Awsat, which reflects the worldview of the Saudi royal family:

“The angry [Palestinian] reaction has confirmed that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was right in its sovereign decision to search for its vision of peace in the Middle East…. The feverish [Palestinian] attack on the new Bahrain-Israel peace agreement confirms not just to Bahrain, but to the rest of the Gulf that the support for the [Palestinian] cause for long decades has resulted in nothing but [Palestinian] aggression, attack and ingratitude…. There is more than one door to peace, not necessarily through the Palestinian Authority….

“In 2011, when Bahrain [a generous supporter of the Palestinians] faced the most dangerous threat [attempted coup] in its modern history… Iran stood behind that coup attempt… while the leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian components continued to strengthen their relationship with Tehran…. Not a single Palestinian demonstration in support of Bahrain too place….  

“The relations with Tel Aviv… are a necessity in light of the current circumstances and the search for peace and stability….”

Current circumstances in the Middle East

While political correctness has been preoccupied and infatuated with the Palestinian issue, the recent peace agreements have shed light on the following Middle East reality:

1. The more lethal the threats of Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey’s Erdogan to every pro-US Arab regime, the more realistic is the Arab order of priorities, which increasingly focuses on threats, that transcend the Palestinian issue and disagreements with Israel.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16517/china-russia-cooperation

China even recently claimed that Vladivostok, the most prominent city in Russia’s Far East, is historically Chinese territory.

China seems to see Russia less as an economic partner than as a source for extraction of energy and raw materials.

While disapproving Russia’s assaults on sovereign states, China seems to have no problem asserting its own will in and around other states, for instance, in the South and East China Seas, India, and the Galapagos Islands.

China is already successfully challenging Russia for influence among the post-Soviet states in Central Asia, particularly in Tajikistan.

Mainly, this bilateral condominium might be doomed to collapse because there is no trust in the relationship.

China and Russia’s coordinated policies in foreign affairs and economic endeavors belie deep-seated fissures that might well prevent their current period of cooperation from evolving into a sustained alliance.

Despite China’s planned participation in Russia’s annual Caucus 2020 exercises on September 21-26, Sino-Russian history is so replete with war, unequal treaties and racism, there seems little probability that their present military cooperation will succeed in developing into a military alliance.