RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/emmanuel-macron-envies-america/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=more-in&utm_term=second

Three conclusions from France’s vaccine failures.

O f all the peoples of the Earth, perhaps only Americans and Russians spend more time thinking about the soul of their nation than the French do. There’s a preoccupation with the national character in France — a kind of incessant introspection, obsessed with diagnosing the metaphysical maladies of the country — that’s especially pronounced. General de Gaulle summed up the attitude of the French to their motherland when he said that “France cannot be France without greatness.” When this greatness is manifestly absent, a crisis of confidence habitually flares up in the French body politic.

The global race to vaccinate the public against COVID-19 has triggered just such a crisis. As I detailed this past week, the European Union’s handling of vaccine procurement and distribution has been criminally bad. The Europeans are desperately in need of new vaccine patents after the EU bungled its contract with AstraZeneca.

France’s failure to develop its own vaccine has bruised the characteristic national pride of her elites. The country has an illustrious history of vaccination, stretching back to the great Louis Pasteur, who invented vaccines for rabies and anthrax. The storied Pasteur Institute was later at the cutting edge of treatment for HIV.

However, the Pasteur Institute abandoned its main COVID-19 vaccine project last week, and another French pharmaceutical company, Sanofi, also threw its hands up in defeat. This has triggered the typical soul-searching among French politicians.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/02/alexei-navalny-russias-24-carat-hero/

For those of us who had the misfortune to be born in the former USSR, the recent happenings in Russia are as fascinating as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Warsaw  Pact and the regained independence of the USSR’s peripheral republics. Today, watching the TV footage of defiant and mostly young Russians turning out to protest the Putin regime and be arrested in their thousands, one cannot help but feel admiration for their bravery, sympathy for their cause and a deep chill at the thought of what might happen next.

That so many Russians have taken so eagerly to the streets, not only in Moscow but in regional centres across the country, braving bitter cold and a threat of violence by the hated siloviki militarised police, is unprecedented. Their movement’s leader and inspiration, Alexei Navalny, has just been sentenced to three-plus years on the most ridiculous of trumped-up charges. He was denied the help of a lawyer, and his supporters are being similarly treated — arrested in daily tranches for the threat their demands for democracy and reform pose to the regime. Of the matters on Vladimir Putin’s mind, the challenge Mr Navalny represents must right now be foremost. When more than 150,000 protesters fill Moscow’s streets, braving tear gas, water cannons and truncheons, the man who inspires such courage must be taken seriously.

Immediately upon his January 17 return to Russia from a Berlin clinic, where he was recovering after Putin’s henchmen almost succeeded in assassinating him with the Novichok poison, Navalny was dragged before a kangaroo court which ordered him detained him for 30 days pending trial for allegedly violating the parole terms associated with the suspended sentence he received in 2014 after being framed on charges of fraud.  That conviction, assailed by the European Court of Human Rights as “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”, saw him denied a lawyer’s presence in court. Nor were members of the foreign and non-state media allowed to observe Putin’s version of ‘justice’ in action. Early in February, Navalny was hauled before one of Putin’s hack judges court, convicted and sentenced. Given that he is in custody, and in the light of the failed attempt on his life, the gravest fears must be held for his survival.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/05/how-china-exploits-commerce-to-curb-stomp-th

America must acknowledge that every transaction with any Chinese entity may well be a deal with a genocidal regime hellbent on becoming the dominant world power.

China wants the West to know it loves “openness,” “inclusiveness,” and “cooperation,” Communist dictator Xi Jinping told the World Economic Forum on Jan. 25. This is the same Jinping who is perpetrating the Xinjiang genocide and working to crush freedom from Hong Kong to Taiwan and far beyond.

One can understand why Xi’s speech was titled, “Let the Torch of Multilateralism Light up Humanity’s Way Forward.” Economic, military, and political relations with the mostly free world have been very good to China. These ties have enabled a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that cares nothing for any of the principles Xi claims to espouse to pursue hegemony.

Particularly as a consequence of the Western ruling class’s desire to do business with China in numerous strategically significant areas, virtually all of America has been left vulnerable. Here’s one indicator of the extent America has been compromised by the CCP: According to the former head of U.S. counterintelligence, William Evanina, “80% of American adults have had all of their personally identifiable information stolen by the Communist Party of China.”

This was largely achieved through subterfuge. But such efforts at extracting our most precious assets and information — right down to our individual health data — are also transpiring right out in the open. Is anyone going to stand up and say “Enough!”?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/02/04/iran-threatens-retaliation-as-diplomat-convicted-of-paris-terror-plot-n1423262

On Thursday, a Belgian court convicted an Iranian diplomat for plotting to bomb a 2018 meeting of the Iranian opposition in Paris. The Iranian government condemned the ruling as “illegal and a clear violation of international law.” Iran threatened to use “all possible legal and diplomatic means” to defend the diplomat and “hold responsible governments that have breached their international obligations.”

Assadollah Assadi, now 49, supplied explosives for the attempted bombing while he worked at the Iranian embassy in Austria. After authorities foiled the attack, they arrested Assadi in Germany in July 2018, where he could not claim diplomatic immunity.

Assadi provided explosives to Belgian-Iranian couple Nasimeh Naami, 36, and AmirSaadouni, 40. Another accomplice of Assadi’s, Belgium-based Iranian poet Mehrdad Arefani, planned to guide the couple to the June 30, 2018, gathering of the Iranian opposition in Villepinte, near Paris.

The 2018 gathering featured senior leaders of the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI) and some high-profile supporters, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The Belgian court sentenced Assadi to 20 years in prison, Naami to 18 years in prison, Saadouni to 15 years in prison, and Arefani to 17 years in prison.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16964/gaza-human-rights

Last year, the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank revealed that Hamas was planning to confiscate large areas of privately-owned lands in the Gaza Strip. According to the PA, Hamas formed the Palestinian Land Authority in the Gaza Strip to facilitate “land-theft.”

A recent report by the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights documented the death in 2020 of at least 30 Palestinians in various “internal violence” incidents in the Gaza Strip, including six children and four women. Another 155 Palestinians were injured, including 17 children and 19 women.

The ongoing human rights violations by Hamas show that the Islamist movement does not care about reports issued by Palestinian human rights groups such as the Al Mezan Center. The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip know that they can continue doing anything they want there because the international community only pays attention when there is way to blame Israel.

In 2006, the US and European Union made a mistake by allowing Hamas, whose charter openly calls for the annihilation of Israel, to participate in the parliamentary election. If the Americans and Europeans repeat the same mistake, Palestinians in the West Bank will join their brothers in the Gaza Strip and find themselves also living under Hamas’s repressive Islamist regime, which has no respect for human rights.

On January 3, 2021, the Hamas-controlled Palestinian Land Authority (PLA) in the Gaza Strip “removed” three houses — one of which had been inhabited by a family of three — and bulldozed about 30 dunums (7.4 acres) of agricultural land in the as-Salam neighborhood west of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

The decision to bulldoze the houses and fields — which came on short notice and did not include direct notifications to those affected by it — inflicted financial damage on farmers and displaced several Palestinians from their houses, according to the Gaza-based Al Mezan Center for Human Rights.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/islams-greatest-university-lies-about-islams-raymond-ibrahim/

Al Azhar, the Muslim world’s most prestigious if not authoritative Islamic university, recently blasted Jerome, the archbishop of Athens and all Greece, for saying during a January 14 interview that: “Islam, its people, is not a religion but a political party” — that Muslims are “the people of war … who seek expansion,” which is a “characteristic of Islam.”

Instead of replying with outrage and accusations of “Islamophobia” — as Turkey and other nations did—on January 19, the Observatory, a branch of Al Azhar, denounced “these irresponsible statements by the archbishop of Athens,” adding that they are “merely farcical and empty claims — trivialities unworthy of responding to or discussing.”

Why?  Because, continued Al Azhar, “Islam is the final, heavenly message that Allah Almighty sent to our master Muhammad, the seal of the prophets and apostles, to bring humanity from out of the darkness and clutches of ignorance and into the light of truth and the sun of guidance.”

To anyone unconvinced by this hagiographic explanation, Al Azhar continued:

Accusing Muslims of being people of war and expansion is a pure lie — a fraud and falsification of Muslim history, which is replete with forgiveness and pardon[.] … The Prophet’s invasions were either in defense of Muslims or to discipline those who reneged on their pacts[.] … [Islamic history] is inconsistent with the claim that Muslims want to expand!

Indeed, the only thing not inconsistent here is Al Azhar’s denial of the militant, expansionist history of Islam.  For example, on April 30, 2020, during his televised program, which is watched by millions in Egypt and the Arab world, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb — Al Azhar’s grand imam and Pope Francis’s close ally — declared that “Islam doesn’t seek war or bloodshed, and Muslims only fight back to defend themselves.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/trip-vietnam-reconfirmed-my-hatred-communism-dennis-prager/

Ten years ago, I wrote a column reflecting on my reactions to visiting Vietnam. Given the lack of revulsion to, and even flirtation with, communism (or its more mildly named version, socialism) among many young Americans, it is worth revisiting.

It was difficult to control my emotions — specifically, my anger — during my visit to Vietnam. The more I came to admire the Vietnamese people — their intelligence, love of life, dignity and hard work — the more rage I felt toward the communists who brought them (and, of course, us Americans) so much suffering in the second half of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, communists still rule the country. Yet, Vietnam has embraced the only way that exists to escape poverty, let alone to produce prosperity: capitalism and the free market. So, then, what exactly did the 2 million Vietnamese who died in the Vietnam War die for? I would like to pose that question to some of Vietnam’s communist rulers. “Comrade, you have disowned everything your Communist Party stood for: communal property, collectivized agriculture, central planning and militarism, among other things. Looking back, then, for what precisely did your beloved Ho Chi Minh and your party sacrifice millions of your fellow Vietnamese?”

There is no good answer. There are only lies and truths, and the truths are not good.

The lie is the response offered by the Vietnamese communists, repeated by the world’s noncommunist left, taught (until today) in virtually every Western university, and spread by virtually every news medium on the planet: The Vietnam communists, i.e., the North Vietnamese regime and the Viet Cong in South Vietnam, were merely fighting for national independence against imperialism, i.e., foreign control of their country. First, they fought the Japanese, then the French and then the Americans. American baby boomers will remember being told over and over that Ho Chi Minh was Vietnam’s George Washington, that he loved the American Constitution, after which he modeled his own, and that he wanted nothing more than Vietnamese independence.

https://dianebederman.com/end-jew-hatred-stop-ajax-from-keeping-a-street-named

In Germany no streets or squares are named after Hans Langsdorff and there has been no official military representation at the annual ceremonies at his grave.

Seventy six years after the end of World War II and the revelation of the Holocaust; the deliberate extermination of 6 million Jews for the crime of being Jewish, a small town in Ontario is debating whether or not to keep a street named for Hans Langsdorff, the captain of the German ship, Graf Spee. Now, keep in mind, the town of Ajax took its name from the HMS Ajax and most of the streets in the Town are named for veterans of the Ajax. The HMS Ajax was one of three Allied vessels involved in the fight against the Graf Spee!

The street naming for Hans Langsdorff took place in a lovely ceremony in 2007. Why?  Apparently, Langsdorff was a “remarkable leader” a “true naval officer;”  a kind and gentle man, not a Nazi; after all, not all Germans were Nazis.  Now Langsdorff lauded Adolf Hitler as “a prophet, not a politician.” Less than a year before Langsdorff made that comment, the Nazi dictator had infamously prophesized that if another world war broke out, “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe” would inevitably follow. Jew hatred promoted by the Germans began long before the actual murder of the Jews in Europe.

Granted he scuttled his ship rather than follow Hitler’s orders to fight to the last man when facing impossible odds against a superior force. As a result, Langsdorff saved many lives and prevented the ship’s modern and secret technology from falling into the hands of the British. Three days later, he committed suicide (as did Hitler, Himmler, Goering and Goebbels), shooting himself in the head in a Buenos Aires hotel room.  In his suicide note he wrote:

“I shall face my fate with firm faith in the cause and the future of the nation and of my Führer.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-n-refugee-agency-with-few-actual-refugees-

Lost amid President Trump’s unceremonious send-off were a pair of Jan. 14 tweets from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo : Of the more than five million people identified as “Palestinian refugees” by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, fewer than 200,000 meet the criteria for refugee status.

This is a breach of trust by a U.N. agency, but Unrwa is not the only one to blame. One administration after another, Democrat and Republican, enabled Unrwa to perpetuate its fiction. It’s time for a new U.S. policy that promotes regional peace, advances Palestinian human rights and defends the U.S. taxpayer.

History can explain, in part, how this mess was created. In 1948, five Arab armies invaded the fledgling state of Israel but lost. Unrwa was established to care for Arab residents displaced by that conflict. The organization was dedicated solely to Palestinian Arabs—independent of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which took responsibility for all other world refugee populations.

Unrwa became part of a new Arab narrative: Millions of Palestinians were trapped as refugees, living in destitution and yearning for home. Until these people achieved their “right of return,” the Arab world insisted, the Middle East would never see peace. Meanwhile, Israel absorbed 800,000 Jewish refugees who were exiled from Arab states.

Over time, America somehow allowed itself to become Unrwa’s leading donor. From 1950 to 2018, American taxpayers contributed more than $6 billion, even as legislators from both parties raised concerns about the agency. Employees moonlighted as terrorists. Schools were used to store weapons and launch rockets against Israel. Concerns in Congress mounted over waste, fraud and abuse.