RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://asiatimes.com/author/spengler-david-p-goldman/

Recent reports of a possible US$400 billion Iran-China trade deal took Washington by surprise, prompting US Secretary of State Pompeo to threaten China with comprehensive economic sanctions.

If the deal is signed, Pompeo said, “We will be sure to enforce all the provisions we have – all the sanctions we have on the Islamic Republic of Iran – applied to the Chinese Communist Party and their businesses and state-owned enterprises as well.”

That would seem to imply a complete shutdown of economic relations between the US and China, which is unlikely because China’s exports to the US comprise about a quarter of its manufacturing GDP.

Inveighing against Beijing Sunday on Fox News, Pompeo warned that “China’s entry into Iran will destabilize the Middle East. It will put Israel at risk. It will put the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates at risk as well. Iran remains the world’s largest state sponsor of terror, and to have access to weapons systems and commerce and money flowing from the Chinese Communist Party only compounds that risk for that region.”

Earlier, two senior State Department officials offered a more cautious assessment of reports that Iran and China will sign a $400 billion investment deal. “The scale and feasibility of the deal deserve healthy skepticism,” Keith J Krach and Brian H Hook wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/lebanon-struck-by-blast-at-beirut-port-11596556605?mod=hp_lead_pos5

BEIRUT—Dozens of people were confirmed dead and thousands more injured after a massive explosion caused by a warehouse fire rocked Lebanon’s capital city of Beirut.

The warehouse held highly explosive material, said an official with Lebanon’s army who added that the blast was likely caused by a fire and wasn’t an attack. President Trump, however, on Tuesday evening called it a “terrible attack” and said U.S. military leaders believe the explosion was caused by “a bomb of some kind.”

The explosive material, which Lebanese officials identified as ammonium nitrate, had been kept at the warehouse for the past six years, according to Prime Minister Hassan Diab. “All those responsible for this catastrophe will pay the price,” Mr. Diab said.

The explosion, which produced a giant orange mushroom cloud over the city, was yet another trauma for Beirut residents who have survived wars and numerous bombings in the past. They now face the challenge of rebuilding at a time of strained resources due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The blast is the latest blow for Lebanon, a country already reeling from multiple crises in recent months, ranging from large street protests over government corruption to an economy on the brink of collapse after years of mismanagement. Before the explosion, which shook the whole of Beirut, Lebanon’s economy was in free fall and ordinary Lebanese citizens were struggling with soaring prices of food and other goods, as well as long daily power cuts.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/china-rising-superpower-crumbling-totalitarian-machine/

To the West, the country may appear to be a rising global superpower. In truth, it’s an aging, dysfunctional, slowly crumbling totalitarian machine.

 T he national-security law that the Chinese Communist Party is using to complete its takeover of democratic Hong Kong has pretty much everyone agreeing that the era of the “One Country, Two Systems” framework developed for Hong Kong’s handover from the British to the PRC is over. From the time of the 1997 handover until now, the framework has allowed Hong Kong to exist as a semi-autonomous administrative region that has its own economic and political system but is technically a part of the PRC. But since Beijing unilaterally imposed the national-security law in June, Hong Kong elections have been canceled, pro-freedom professors have been fired or arrested, and democrats have been banned from politics. For Hong Kong, “one country, two systems” is finished.

On the mainland, though, “one country, two systems” isn’t a framework so much as an accurate description of the status quo. Ironically, Beijing is all too happy for the world to focus on the demise of the official “one country, two systems” policy in Hong Kong if it distracts from the decay and systemic weakness that plague the mainland. The CCP’s crackdown on Hong Kong, its trade standoff with the U.S., its growing militarism in the Pacific, and other ostentatious public displays of Chinese strength are meant to hide the rot underneath.

For in truth, on the mainland today, there are two Chinas. There is the China of densely populated, modern urban centers such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chongqing, and there is the China of everywhere else. The China of everywhere else is dollars-a-day poor, uneducated, and aging. It is also vast, containing some 600–700 million people, or about half of the total Chinese population.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-american-troops-pulled-from-germany-as-nato-falters

The first troop reductions in Germany under President Donald Trump’s order have taken place, and many in the national security community are aghast, even The Wall Street Journal.

The President based his decision on Germany’s failure to contribute adequately to NATO defense, flouting an agreed on 2% (of GDP) threshold for national defense contributions, but the story – like the alliance – is more complicated.

NATO requires consensus. The validity of the alliance hangs on whether states would be willing to approve a military response to a Russian action against any NATO member. Without it, the U.S. would lack the ability to use NATO airfields in Germany, Italy, Turkey, and the UK.  It would not have permission for ground forces to transit much of western Europe.

Today, Germany’s military is a shambles.  It has few operational tanks, not very many aircraft, and a navy in serious decline.  But the Germans really don’t care. Because Germany is Russia’s biggest paying customer for natural gas, Berlin believes there is no incentive for the Russians to bother it.

If there is a threat to outliers such as Poland or the Baltic States, Germany is far from committed to responding. There is a strong likelihood that Germany would veto any NATO response to a (highly unlikely) Russian aggression outside of a direct attack on Germany itself. If Germany uses its veto, France and Italy will likely align with it.  So too would Turkey, increasingly estranged from NATO.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16300/china-containment

After China’s many transgressions over the past 50 years… the military containment of Chinese expansionism and Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping’s stated goal of world domination needs to be the highest foreign policy priority of the Free World.

Countries could also be enjoined to cancel all commercial activity with China. Why fund one’s enemy and make him stronger?

China’s walk-in-the-park takeover of Hong Kong — an illegal appropriation — undoubtedly served to whet China’s expansionist appetite.

The firm tone of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s July 13 declaration that the U.S. rejects China’s fake claims in the South China Sea as mostly illegal will probably be seen as “just words.” The U.S. might need to convince Beijing that the U.S. and its allies have the political will to implement this containment.

China’s leaders are surely hoping that the current U.S. administration’s aversion to war will enable the Communists to pick off new territory with relative ease; the U.S. should not even let them think of such a possibility.

The Chinese Communist Party’s narrative is that the U.S. administration is threatening all the people of China. One Chinese state CCTV anchor added that the “U.S. fights for greed and arrogance,” but that “China will fight for a new world.” It certainly will — if we let it.

After China’s many transgressions over the past 50 years — including the theft of $600 billion of U.S. intellectual property each year; Beijing’s malignant cover-up of the Covid-19 virus; the Communist regime’s attempts to blind US airmen with lasers; constructing military islands in the South China Sea, and last month sending a massive fleet of 250 Chinese fishing vessels near the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, to name but a few — the military containment of Chinese expansionism and Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping’s stated goal of world domination needs to be the highest foreign policy priority of the Free World.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16277/turkey-brain-drain-youths

Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey’s leading journalists, was recently fired from the country’s most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing in Gatestone what is taking place in Turkey.

SODEV, another pollster, found that 60.5% of youths supporting Erdoğan said they would prefer to live in Christian Switzerland with half the salary they would have earned in Muslim Saudi Arabia.

“These kind of social engineering efforts targeting the younger mind almost always end up with opposite results, primarily because the new generation do not like to be told what’s good and what’s bad for them. Freedoms for most youth are more important than prayers. This is what conservative politicians often miss.” — Turkish university professor who asked not to be named.

In just the first 65 days of the COVID-19 pandemic, 510 Turks were arrested for “spreading baseless and provocative messages in social media.” Before that, by the end of 2019, Turkey had banned access to 408,494 web sites, 7,000 Twitter accounts, 40,000 tweets, 10,000 YouTube videos and 6,200 Facebook accounts.

Erdoğan might sit down and ask himself: Why do the youths whom he wanted to make “devout” want to flee their Muslim country and live in “infidel” lands?

Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, once declared his political mission as “raising devout (Muslim) generations.” Research in recent years has shown that Turkish youths have defied Erdoğan’s most ambitious social engineering project.

Konda, a pollster, found in 2019 that Turkish youths were less likely than the wider population to identify themselves as “religious conservative.” They were less likely to fast, pray regularly or (for females) cover their hair. Ipsos, an international pollster, found that only 12% of Turks trust Islamic clerics. SODEV, another pollster, found that 60.5% of youths that support Erdoğan said they would prefer to live in Christian Switzerland with half the salary they would earn in Muslim Saudi Arabia. SODEV’s study also found that 70.3% of respondents think a talented youth would never be able to get ahead in professional life without political/bureaucratic “connections,” i.e., without a hidden touch of nepotism. And only 30% of them think one could freely express his opinion on social media.

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/brexit-diary-how-would-disraeli-see-one-nation/91208/

Victorian England was not adverse to the aiding state, but with limits.

“Circumstances are beyond the control of man,” Benjamin Disraeli wrote, and he should know. He will be linked forever with the idea of One Nation Toryism, even though Stanley Baldwin coined the phrase in 1924 as a political ploy to limit Labor’s appeal among the working classes. Baldwin adapted the phrase from Disraeli’s novel “Sybil,” in which the author empathizes that England was in reality two nations: “The Rich and the Poor.” In many respects, though, that is where Disraeli’s connection with One Nation Conservatism begins and ends. What a pity for those who want to coast-by on his dandy’s coat-tails.

One Nation Tories today want more state intervention and welfare redistribution, disguised as a “leveling up agenda . . . absolutely in that tradition.” Disraeli, ever the aristocratic arriviste, wanted social responsibilities to remain with the ancient and noble families of England. Sybil, remember, was written at the height of Disraeli’s “Young England” movement of the 1840s. Its aims, partly romantic but motivated by real concerns for the “condition of England,” was a return to the “merrie” times of feudal responsibilities and noblesse oblige.

Victorian England was not averse to the aiding state, and it became more so as the century progressed, as Herbert Spencer lamented of “reform liberalism” in his famous essay, “The New Toryism.” It was limited, though, and often took the form of permissive legislation: allowing government to intervene if necessary, but trusting that the threat of state action would compel social and economic malefactors to voluntarily mend their ways.

Contemporary Conservatives are constrained by no such compunction. Breitbart London notes that among the One Nation wishlist are “spending high amounts of public money on foreign aid, attaining ‘carbon New Zero’, and raising taxes on so-called ‘unearned’ income.” Such a welfare initiative would have made Dizzy dizzy.

What, though, would Disraeli do differently? First, as an imperialist with global aspirations, he would heartily approve of bilateral trade deals with the world, increasing UK trade and encouraging entrepreneurship and economic growth. The British Empire may no longer color the globe “red,” but Dizzy could hardly object if trade made Britain “great” once more.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/the_slow_and_ugly_implosion_of_south_africa_continues.html

In 2018, Tucker Carlson highlighted the expropriation of land from white farmers in South Africa.  He stated, “As land seizures based on skin color shows, South Africa is once again becoming a place where an entire group of people is targeted for discrimination and violence on the basis of their skin color.”

Twenty-six years ago, “South Africans engaged in a peaceful revolution.  As late as the 1980s commentators predicted that any transition from white minority domination and black majority rule would precipitate a bloody civil war.  Instead, in 1994 South Africans replaced president F.W. de Klerk with Nelson Mandela in a free and fair election that astonished the world.”  Thus, “South Africans of all races voted in the country’s first democratic elections, choosing Mandela as their first black president.  The inhumane apartheid regime seemed to be miraculously ending peacefully, though much work remained to improve the lives of all South Africans.”  By the “late 1980s, however, South Africa’s economy was in a deep recession and large segments of the country were becoming ungovernable.”

Former president Jacob Zuma (2009–18) “brought the country a reputation for corruption and ineptitude.”  In fact, in 2018, the World Bank ranked South Africa as the most corrupt country in the world.

In 2018, Hammond and Tupy, “in reviewing South Africa’s flirtation with the idea of changing its constitution to let the state expropriate farmland without compensation, wrote that South Africa need only look north to Zimbabwe to see the disastrous consequences of this kind of policy.”  Zimbabwe’s former dictator, Robert Mugabe, gave “the green light to his paramilitary supporters to invade commercial farms, seize some 23 million acres of land and the confiscated farms were resettled with small scale agriculturalists.  Many of the new would-be-farmers had no real knowledge of commercial agriculture and many soon returned to subsistence farming.  The actual commercial farmers left for other African countries and the result was devastating food shortages in a nation once dubbed the ‘bread basket of Africa.'” 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16279/iran-mullahs-excited

The ruling mullahs of Iran are excited. They are convinced that a new US president, like his previous boss, former President Barack Obama, will throw them the lifeline so badly needed for their survival, their hold on power, and their ability to advance their nuclear and other imperialist plans — both in Venezuela against the United States, and in the Middle East.

Iran’s economic conditions have become so dire that even some officials are warning of possible revolt and the collapse of the Islamic Republic.

It is important to note that without Iran’s financial and military assistance, many militia and terror groups could not survive. As Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, admitted, “… Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, are from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

One of the best gifts that the ruling mullahs of Iran can receive is if Joe Biden, former Vice-President, becomes president of the United States.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/turkey-openly-declares-commitment-jihad-non-raymond-ibrahim/

While monuments to heroic Americans of a former age—including abolitionists who died fighting slavery—get toppled and dishonored, a land-grabber, mass-slaver, terrorist, and pedophile—Ottoman sultan Muhammad II—was recently honored by the president of Turkey.

During his recent public address celebrating the July 10, 2020 decree to transform the Hagia Sophia, which for a millennium had functioned as Eastern Christendom’s greatest church, into a mosque, Turkish president Erdoğan repeatedly saluted Sultan Muhammad (1432-1481), also known as al-Fatih (“the Conqueror”), for violently transforming Christian Constantinople into Islamic Istanbul. 

Of the apparently intolerable decades when Hagia Sophia served as a museum (1935 to the recent decision), Erdoğan began by quoting a Turkish poet:

Hagia Sophia, O magnificent temple, do not worry: the grandchildren of Muhammad al-Fatih will overthrow all the [Christian] idols and convert you into a mosque; they will perform their ablutions with tears and prostrate; tahlils [recitations of the Islamic credo] and takbirs [cries of “Allahu akbar”] will replenish your empty domes … Your minaret balconies will light up in honor of Allah and his Prophet Muhammad. The whole world will think that Muhammad al-Fatih has resurrected.  This will be Hagia Sophia; this will be a second conquest, a new resurrection”

Erdoğan’s and much of Turkey’s adoration of and desire to emulate Muhammad al-Fatih—this, to quote Erdoğan, “happy, blessed servant of Allah,” who in fact behaved like an ISIS chieftain—should (but won’t) be cause for alarm.

Consider: Sultan Muhammad’s sole justification for conquering Constantinople was that Islam demands the subjugation of “infidels,” in this case, Christians. He had no other “grievance” than that.  In fact, when he first became sultan, he “swore by the god of their false prophet, by the prophet whose name he bore,” a bitter Christian contemporary retrospectively wrote, that “he was their friend, and would remain for the whole of his life a friend and ally of Constantinople.” Although they believed him, Muhammad was taking advantage of “the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit,” wrote Edward Gibbon. “Peace was on his lips while war was in his heart.”

During the siege of Constantinople, he regularly exhorted his followers with jihadi ideology, including by unleashing throngs of preachers crying,