RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16092/turkey-erdogan-conquests

In Turkish jargon, the difference is simple: It is “conquest” when we do it and “invasion” when others do it.

In this year’s celebrations, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan raised the stakes when he spoke of the conquest prospectively not just retrospectively. “I am wishing that God grant this nation many more happy conquests,” he said….

A serious question remains to be asked: When Erdoğan wished God to grant Turks “many more happy conquests” which non-Turkish lands is he hoping to “conquer”?

In Turkey, every May 29 brings up the country’s “conquest fetish.” Turks are proud that their Ottoman ancestors, in 1453, “conquered” (not “invaded”) then-Constantinople, today’s Istanbul. It is bizarre enough that a proud nation is commemorating, every year, the capture from another nation of its biggest city by the “force of sword.” This year’s 567th anniversary was no exception: The celebrations euphemistically referred to the fall of Constantinople as “conquest” — not “invasion.”

In Turkish jargon the difference is simple: it is “conquest” when we do it and “invasion” when others do it. In this year’s celebrations, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan raised the stakes when he spoke of the conquest prospectively not just retrospectively. “I am wishing that God grant this nation many more happy conquests,” he said at a celebration where he recited from the Quran.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/06/19/iran-once-again-is-denying-un-inspectors-access-to-suspected-nuke-sites-n555063

The International Atomic Energy Agency has passed a resolution that demands Iran open two sites suspected of harboring nuclear material or trace elements of uranium. Iran, which is still party to the 2015 nuclear deal with the West, has refused access to the sites, saying it was based on intelligence gathered by Israel.

Reuters:

A resolution, adopted in a vote called after China expressed opposition to it, raised pressure on Iran to let inspectors into the sites mentioned in two International Atomic Energy Agency reports because they could still host undeclared nuclear material or traces of it.

The text of the resolution submitted by France, Britain and Germany and obtained by Reuters said the board “calls on Iran to fully cooperate with the Agency and satisfy the Agency’s requests without any further delay, including by providing prompt access to the locations specified by the Agency.”

The IAEA has tried for several months to get Iran to comply, to no avail.

The IAEA suspects activities possibly related to developing nuclear weapons were carried out in the early 2000s at these sites. Iran has suggested the IAEA is seeking access based on the Israeli information, which it argues is inadmissible. It also says the IAEA file on its old activities has been closed.

The resolution, the first by the board since 2015 and the implementation of the nuclear deal, was passed by a 25-2 margin with seven abstentions, diplomats said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/14-policy-challenges-new-head-unrwa-david-bedein/

The appointment of Swiss diplomat Phillipe Lazzarini as the new head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) provides a window of opportunity for UNRWA donor nations, which are mandated to oversee UNRWA policy, to demand a reform of UNRWA — especially in  UNRWA schools, which for the past 20 years have used the new Palestinian Authority curriculum to indoctrinate Palestinian Arab children to conquer all of “Palestine” by force of arms, a goal hardly appropriate to a UN agency.

Here are 14 policy challenges which the new UNRWA commissioner will now have to grapple with:

1. UNRWA textbooks which do not jive with UN Values of peaceful reconciliation. UNRWA has introduced a new schoolbook which features Dalal el Mugrabi, whose terror squad commandeered a bus and murdered 38 passengers, including 13 children, as a role model for UNRWA pupils. In the new UNRWA text, Dalal is portrayed in full terror garb, followed by a lesson plan which presents her life story for adulation and emulation. In another new text, UNRWA pupils are taught to chant and sing a poem which encourages children to “exterminate the usurpers” after the Arabs return to Palestine it back. The new UNRWA commissioner could confiscate such textbooks.

2. UNRWA contracts for exclusive use of school books of the Palestinian Authority, in Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and Gaza. UNRWA, like all UN agencies, is supposed to run schools based on the UN slogan “Peace Begins Here”. PA education, however, runs schools based on the ideology of the Palestine Liberation Organization: Conquest of Palestine by force of arms. The new UNRWA commissioner can cancel the UNRWA-PA contract

3 .UNRWA schools are adorned with posters and murals of “martyrs” who died while murdering Jews. The new UNRWA commissioner can order the removal of all violent images in UNRWA facilities

4. El Kutla youth clubs in UNRWA schools inspire pupils with the mantra of the armed struggle from a young age. The new UNRWA commissioner can order El Kutla clubs in to cease and desist from violent incitement.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/death-europe-joseph-puder/

Douglas Murray is a rare commodity on the European scene, a conservative intellectual and author of numerous best-selling books. His recent (2017) book, The Strange Death of Europe, is a dire warning to the European elites of their impending demise. Murray’s book is a personal account of Europe caught in the “act of suicide.” He addresses the dismal failure of multiculturalism, the lack of repatriation of the migrants, existential tiredness and guilt.

In an interview Peter Robinson (of the Hoover Institute Uncommon Knowledge Program) had with Douglas Murray (October 7, 2019), he quoted from Murray’s book, “Europe today has little desire to reproduce itself, fight for itself, or even take its own side in an argument. By the end of the lifespan of most people currently alive in Europe, Europe will not be Europe, and the peoples of Europe will have lost the only place in the world we had to call home.”

The symptoms of Europe’s terminal diseases were not new or first revealed by Douglas Murray, they go back for at least a generation. Murray simply confirmed the diagnosis. In his 2009 book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, Christopher Caldwell writes: “In the U.S., there was a ‘race problem’, and there was an ‘immigration problem,’ and the two did not always have much to do with one another. Even if they were sometimes confused, they could generally be disentangled by the people of good faith. In Europe, the immigration problem was the race problem.  So, declaring immigration a success and an ‘enrichment’ became the only acceptable opinion. To hold immigration a failure was to reveal oneself a racist; to express misgivings about immigration was to confess racist inclinations… People still talked about immigration and its consequences, but only along preapproved lines. Real discussions – about increasing ‘diversity’ of European society, and whether it was a good or bad thing – were all but shut down.”

Europe has undergone a demographic revolution it never expected. After WWII, shortage of labor compelled European industrialists to import foreign labor. Millions came to Germany from Turkey, virtually all of them Muslim. They were not just religiously different, but culturally as well. Many came from rural areas who never integrated into Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s secular Turkey. Former colonial subjects, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian Arabs, and some Berbers, all of them Muslims, flooded France. Britain brought former colonial subjects from Pakistan and India, and once again, many of them Muslims. When these immigrants/workers arrived, they were not required to adopt European values including secularism, tolerance, and equality. Many of those immigrants in Britain, France and Germany took their inspiration and values from their mosques and imams, and not from the European societies they lived in. Lack of integration (unlike America’s “melting pot”) created Muslim ghettos that resembled their home countries. This writer experienced one in Stockholm, Sweden, where the garb, language, and interactions remained largely within the ghetto.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/world-has-gone-mad-2020-katie-hopkins/

You’ve probably asked this yourself over the last few weeks or days: where is this all heading and how will it end up?

It’s a question being asked on both sides of the Atlantic, whether you are watching the people’s republic of CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) in Seattle or Black Lives Matter protestors ripping statues from their foundations in Bristol, UK. It makes you wonder: how do we make it stop?

And just when you think we have reached peak madness, something even crazier comes along. As we speak, Algerian and Chechen Muslims are waging street battles with Kalashnikovs on the streets of Dijon in France. Armed warfare in sleepy Dijon is about as surprising as a vegan wedding in Texas.

Because, like many others, you are probably struggling to keep up with it all, I thought I would create a showreel of 2020, a kind of lightning recap of the year to date, with hysteria ratings as a handy guide to how outraged you should be*. I do not apologize if you find this kind of flippancy offensive; it is a human truth that humor is essential in times of crises. And if you don’t think we are in crises you are either ex Special Forces or in a deep vegetative state.

1) The Chinese virus from Wuhan.

Pictures of Chinese people shoving bats into soup and sucking them up with chopsticks and a side order of live rat help explain where the global plague might have come from, but did nothing to stop the World Health Organisation’s eagerness to defend China, deny the existence of Taiwan and talk rubbish about plague.

To the apparent delight of China (and socialists disguised as Democrats), lockdown spread faster than the plague itself, paralysing entire Western economies and straining the pants of the petty corona-Stasi tighter than the wallet in Bernie Sanders’ pocket.

https://thehill.com/policy/international/503105-flights-to-and-from-beijing-canceled-amid-new-coronavirus-outbreak

Both of Beijing’s major airports have seen a large portion of their flights canceled, as China’s capital tries to snuff out the country’s latest coronavirus outbreak.

More than 60 percent of flights at Beijing Capital International Airport were canceled Wednesday, while around 50 percent were canceled at Daxing, the city’s other main airport, according to multiple reports.

The Associated Press reported that 1,255 flights to and from both airports had been canceled, roughly two-thirds of those scheduled. Reuters reported that the majority of those flights were domestic.

Beijing officials reported 31 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, bringing the total of new cases since Thursday up to 137. The source of the outbreak has been determined to be Xifandi, a market that sources nearly all of the city’s fresh produce.

Since the outbreak was identified, Beijing has locked down surrounding neighborhoods and closed schools and some bars and restaurants.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/iran-builds-target-aircraft-carrier-michael-ledeen/

As tensions mount between Washington and Tehran, the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, aided by its Chinese and Arab allies, staged a variety of imminent threats. In keeping with its failed policies of the past, Tehran has apparently constructed a phony model of an American aircraft carrier in an Iranian port in order to stage “attacks” on it:

The head of the Imam Reza Islamic Center in Berlin has declared in an interview with an Iranian state-controlled news outlet on June 3 that Tehran’s Islamic revolution has no borders.

The Middle East Media Research Institute first revealed the video of Sabaheddin Torkilmaz, the head of the Imam Reza Islamic Center, on its website…

Torkilmaz stressed the anti-Western worldview of the Islamic Republic of Iran, stating: “The world needs to know that the system of the Rule of the Jurisprudent stands in opposition to the system of liberal democracy in the world and in opposition to the democracy in America.”

“Since the Revolution [in 1979], Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine – and now Yemen and countries in Africa and in Latin America – have been inspired directly by Imam [Khomeini].” He added: “We need to examine what was the purpose of the Revolution.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-china-india-clash-11592435121?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Monday’s skirmish along the China-India border was the deadliest in decades. It’s impossible to confirm what triggered the fighting, but the big picture is clear: Tensions between New Delhi and Beijing are escalating while the latter steps up its regional bullying.

Both countries have sent thousands of troops to their disputed border in the Himalayas, though a “de-escalation process” was under way when the deadly confrontation began Monday night. Reportedly no firearms were used, but the Indian government said at least 20 Indian soldiers died. China won’t confirm any deaths but probably suffered some after hours of high-altitude, hand-to-hand combat.

Each country says the other instigated the confrontation, but the clash fits China’s recent habit of pressing territorial claims on all fronts. In the South China Sea, China has militarized artificial islands and is asserting its claims with force. Chinese vessels, often backed by the country’s coast guard, hound foreign ships operating in contested waters. This led to standoffs with Indonesia and Malaysia earlier in the year. This spring a Chinese government vessel sank a Vietnamese fishing boat.

In the East China Sea, Chinese ships have appeared near the disputed Senkaku Islands every day for more than two months, leading to protests from Japan. Chinese jet fighters intruded into Taiwanese airspace this month while state-run media and senior generals muse about a possible invasion. Beijing is exerting more political control over Hong Kong.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16127/isis-terrorists-iraq

Iraqi security officials say the number of ISIS fighters in Iraq is now between 2,000-3,000, which includes around 500 militants who have made their way to Iraq after escaping from prisons in Syria.

The upsurge in ISIS in activity in Iraq should certainly act as a wake-up call for the Trump administration as it reviews America’s military commitment to Iraq following the recent appointment of former Iraqi intelligence chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi as the country’s new pro-Western prime minister.

The reason Iraq is able to have elections in the first place is because of the enormous sacrifices made by American and other coalition forces to rebuild the country after the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, an achievement that the Trump administration cannot allow to be damaged by a resurgent ISIS.

With the primary focus of the Trump administration understandably concentrated on a variety of pressing domestic issues, from the forthcoming presidential election campaign to tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, there is growing concern that ISIS fanatics are seeking to exploit the situation to rebuild their terrorist infrastructure throughout the Middle East.

In countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, there is mounting evidence that the ISIS leadership is seeking to move on from the catastrophic defeats it has suffered in recent years and rebuild its fighting strength.

In Afghanistan, the most deadly manifestation of the group’s new-found strength was demonstrated when U.S. officials blamed ISIS for last month’s brutal attack on a maternity ward in the country’s capital Kabul in which 24 people died, including a number of mothers, children and new-born babies.

The deepening chaos in Libya caused by the country’s bitter civil war has also raised fears that ISIS is seeking to exploit the situation to rebuild its operational strength in the pivotal North African country. Last year U.S. drones carried out a series of attacks against ISIS positions in the Libyan desert, and Western intelligence officials remain concerned that the group is placing sleeper cells in some of the country’s major cities.

By far the greatest concern among Western security officials, though, is the prospect of ISIS rebuilding its infrastructure in Iraq, the country where the country’s former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi famously proclaimed the establishment of his so-called caliphate in June 2014.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16119/iran-arms-embargo

Who will benefit from lifting the arms embargo? Russia and China. They would most likely be the preferred weapons exporters to Iran. With prospects for multi-billion dollar deals, Moscow and Beijing would doubtless be delighted to sell weapons to Iran.

Tehran will likely utilize the sophisticated weaponry to advance its hegemonic ambitions in the region, increase its military adventurism in the Middle East, and ship arms to its proxies and militia groups to destabilize the region and trigger an arms race across the Middle East.

Among the many concessions that the Obama-Biden administration gave to the ruling mullahs of Iran, was one setting a date when Iran’s arms embargo would be lifted. The Obama administration agreed to add a provision in the nuclear deal — which, by the way, Iran never got around to signing — allowing the lifting of an arms embargo.

Now, again thanks to the Obama-Biden administration, the arms embargo is set to expire in October 2020.

It is important to point out that the Obama administration erased years of efforts and significant political capital that the international community had invested to impose the arms embargo in the first place.

From December 2006 to 2010, the five members of the United Nations Security Council finally agreed to pass series of resolutions (Resolution 1737, Resolution 1747, and Resolution 1929) imposing significant restrictions on Iran’s arms activities.

The UN Security Council resolution 1929 stated:

“Iran shall not undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using ballistic missile technology, and that States shall take all necessary measures to prevent the transfer of technology or technical assistance to Iran related to such activities”.

The ban encompassed a wide range of weapons, including large-caliber artillery, combat aircraft, battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, attack helicopters, some missiles and missile launchers, and warships.

The mullahs, in addition, scored a major political victory when the US administration in 2015 added a section to the nuclear deal permitting the lifting of the arms embargo through two sunset clauses.

It was mind-boggling that the Obama-Biden administration decided to include such an appeasing and dangerous provision in the nuclear deal. Both Democrats and Republicans were, in fact, stunned by the move. At the time, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and the leading Republican in Congress, John Boehner, pointed out : “It blows my mind that the administration would agree to lift the arms and missile bans.”