RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19921/china-influence-activity-us

[President Joe] Biden’s closing the China Initiative played, of course, right into the Chinese Communist Party’s hands.

While the Biden administration worries about political correctness, the Chinese Communist Party is successfully using every means at its disposal to weaken the US in all fields.

“[A] significant portion of America’s intellectual and political elites share the responsibility for perpetrating key CCP propaganda agendas, including misleading the American public to minimize the degree to which the PRC is still a country ruled by a Marxist-Leninist communist party. The manipulation of language is a prime example of this endeavor.” — Miles Maochun Yu, Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, hoover.org, May 5, 2021

The FBI has named China as “a grave threat to the economic well-being and democratic values of the United States” and said that confronting this threat is “FBI’s top counterintelligence priority.” However, instead of focusing all available resources on countering this “grave threat” from the CCP on all fronts, the Biden administration has been busy institutionalizing woke ideology in the federal bureaucracy — including in the military….

The Biden administration, under an executive order issued in February 2023, now requires all federal agencies to present annual “equity action plans” in order to “advance an ambitious, whole-of-government approach to racial equity and support for underserved communities.” Since Biden became president, the military alone has spent close to 6 million hours on diversity, climate change and “extremism.”

The other focal point for the Biden administration has been mitigating “climate change” – all while China, during 2022, has been approving the construction of two new coal plants per week.

The US under Biden is arguably not even close to countering the threat that China poses or perhaps even properly understanding it.

The Biden administration has unfortunately shown itself to be unable to stop, or even limit, China’s continued rise. On the contrary, the connections of Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to China could mean that the US president is beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.

Meanwhile, at a recent press conference, when asked whether the administration is concerned that Hunter Biden’s ties to China “pose a national security issue,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan replied, “I don’t have any comment on that.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/indias-battle-against-jihad/

Despite historical persecution, ethnic cleansing campaigns, as well as ongoing pressure at the hands of jihadists supported by Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir remains part of India, whose sovereignty in the region helps improve the civil rights of the residents, enables it to battle the Islamist threat, and enhances stability in South Asia.

Today, Jammu and Kashmir is demographically majority-Muslim, but it is within the borders of India, which has millennia-long historic and spiritual ties with the region.

Indigenous Hindus are the original inhabitants of Kashmir and possess a unique ethno-religious culture existing for more than 5,000 years. Kashmir had a majority Hindu population ruled by Hindu kings until the 14th century when Muslims from Central Asia invaded the region.

Under Islamic rule, Hindus in Kashmir were subjected to persecution. In the early 1800s, Sikh rulers controlled the region, and then a Hindu dynasty from the mid-1800s through 1947.

In 1947, the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir became part of the secular Republic of India. Shortly thereafter, Pakistani Armed Forces invaded the area. In response, Indian Forces deployed to counter Pakistan’s attacks. In Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, the areas of Kashmir which remained outside of India, thousands of Hindu families were forced to flee for their lives.

In 1948, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 47 urging the Pakistani military to withdraw. Pakistan, however, refused.

Since then, Pakistan has increased its military presence and fomented unrest and terrorism in the region. Thousands of civilians have been killed in terrorist acts carried out by militant groups supported by Pakistan.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/25/the-china-century-is-over/

For decades we’ve heard that China will some day, very soon, be the world’s hegemon, both through its stunning economic growth and its rising military might. Move over, America, here comes China. Just as the 1900s were the “American Century,” the 2000s would be the “China Century.” Not so fast.

Google “The China Century” and you get 1 billion hits. It’s that ingrained as an economic truism.

But in recent years, China has entered a kind of doom loop of debt accumulation, population shrinkage and a productivity slowdown that is eroding its once powerful economic growth and threatens to halt many of the economic advances it made over the last 50 years.

We’ve watched as decades of 10% annual GDP growth, a result of Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 market-oriented reforms, began dropping sharply under Chairman Xi Jinping, China’s born-again Communist leader. The nation’s traditional growth engines of soaring government debt, consumer spending, and foreign investment are now sputtering.

There are two big reasons for this.

One, is China’s single-child policy. Soon the nation of 1.4 billion will shrink outright. Economic growth usually follows population growth.

Two, the return to communist principles under Xi, whose totalitarian policies and crackdowns on dissent and human rights since 2012 have led to an exodus of foreign investment and know-how, and created a stagnant domestic economy.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/24/mercenary-chief-prigozhin-dead-wagner-boss-plane-putin/

“Never strike a king,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “unless you are sure you shall kill him.” Good advice, but it comes too late for Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian leader of the Wagner mercenary army.

Vladimir Putin, that old KGB man, already knew Emerson’s message, deep in his guts. He also knew the unstated part: if you try to kill the king and you fail, you will be the dead one.

And so Prigozhin was.
 
Prigozhin, once Putin’s ally, should have known the limits of their ties

The leader of the Russia’s most effective mercenary force had once been Putin’s chef and ally. He had the Kremlin’s support when he formed Wagner. He had it, too, when he led his soldiers in the grinding, brutal battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, where Wagner lost tens of thousands of soldiers in the house-to-house fighting. As the fighting wore on, however, Prigozhin learned the limits of Putin’s support.

The Kremlin’s fear was that, if Prigozhin and his mercenaries got credit for this prominent victory in Bakhmut, Wagner’s success would undermine the prestige of the regular Russian army and ultimately threaten Putin’s own power.

Preventing that erosion is why the regular military’s two leaders, Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and military chief of staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov, ultimately denied Wagner the ammunition and supplies they needed to complete their victory. Then Shoigu and Gerasimov, presumably at Putin’s direction, tried to deny Wagner credit for taking the city.

Prigozhin’s Fatal Decision to March on Moscow
 
Prigozhin was furious at this betrayal and said so repeatedly on his widely-circulated social-media posts. When his PR campaign failed, Prigozhin took much more drastic—and ultimately fatal–action. He mobilized his troops to march on Moscow.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19917/atrocities-blasphemy-laws-pakistan

“What began as accusations against two Christian brothers has escalated into a devastating wave of violence, resulting in the destruction of over 20 churches and 500 homes. The situation remains tense as the community grapples with the aftermath of this unfortunate incident.” — Pakistan Christian Post, August 18, 2023.

“Both men were taken into custody on the next afternoon and handed to the Counter-Terrorism Department, Punjab for investigation. Section 295-B relates to desecration of the Koran and carries a punishment of life in prison. Section 295-C relates to insulting Muhammad and is punishable by death.” — Morning Star News, August 18, 2023.

After the Pakistani Supreme Court’s 2018 acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Christian who was charged with blasphemy and kept in solitary confinement for eight years until TLP members held protests across Pakistan. Muhammad Afzal Qadri, a TLP co-founder, also called for the murder of the three Supreme Court justices involved in hearing Bibi’s appeal, stating: “The Chief Justice and two others deserve to be killed.”

“Videos circulating on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms showed a violent mob dragging a half-dead man on the streets of Sialkot, Pakistan on December 1, 2021. Young men were throwing stones at him and kicking his body as he was dragged mercilessly by those who called themselves the ‘protectors’ of the sanctity of the Prophethood. The videos go on to show ghastly scenes of the mob burning a corpse as dozens of men not only look on, but use their cell phones to take selfies….” — Atlantic Council, January 15, 2022.

On July 8, 2023, police arrested a 35-year-old Christian for allegedly sharing a post on Facebook, although “Even the imam of the village mosque told them that the post contained nothing derogatory against Islam, and that they should desist from stoking religious tension.” — Morning Star News, July 12, 2023.

“Pakistani authorities need no more evidence to see how dangerous the blasphemy laws are – they are abused to make false accusations that can, and have, led to unlawful killings and even whole communities being attacked and their homes burnt.” — David Griffiths, Director of the Office of the Secretary General of Amnesty International, August 25, 2020.

No changes in the situation have yet been observed.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19909/killing-christians-paradise

“The Taliban are working to completely erase Christianity or any religious minority from the country, even stating that there are no Christians in Afghanistan, an obviously false claim. Many Christians have gone underground to avoid being kidnapped by the Taliban ‘courts.’ The rising starvation rates and increasing poverty in Afghanistan create an even higher security threat to these believers since now the Taliban are offering financial compensation to anyone who reports on Christians… and Afghans are desperate, further heightening the security risk [to Christians.] Unless ransomed by their families, Christians captured by the ‘courts’ face brutal torture and even death. If redeemed, the survivors and their families, often bankrupt from the exorbitant ransom demands, must flee their homes to avoid repeated kidnappings from the various Taliban gangs. Because of the persecution, many Christians escape to Pakistan and risk capture and death by the Taliban. Even if they make it to Pakistan, they must conceal their faith for fear of receiving worse treatment in already poor conditions. Some Christian refugees decide to return to Afghanistan, deciding they have a better chance of survival under the Taliban than in Pakistan.” — Report by International Christian Concern, July 13, 2023, Afghanistan.

Arguing that churches should never exist in Muslim-majority regions, on Sunday, July 2, Muslims broke up a Christian worship service even as police stood by looking on. — Morning Star News, July 17, 2023, Indonesia.

She was heard yelling, “You the minorities should not always ask to be respected!” — Morning Star News, July 17, 2023, Indonesia.

This video captures some of the most recent damage of beheadings and desecrations. The report concludes by saying the motivation of the “unknown vandals” remains “a mystery to police.” — Kronen Zeitung, Austria.

“Blasphemy laws are often used as a weapon of revenge against both Muslims and non-Muslims to settle personal scores or to resolve disputes over money, property or business. A mere allegation is enough to provoke a mob to riot and lynch falsely accused suspects in Pakistan. At least 1,949 persons were accused under the blasphemy laws between 1987 and 2021, according to the Center for Social Justice. A large number of these blasphemy cases are still awaiting justice.” — Morning Star News, July 12, 2023, Pakistan.

These laws are, moreover, becoming more, not less, severe….

“The… situation became tense after the Friday prayers when announcements were made from mosque loudspeakers asking people to gather for a protest.” — Tahir Naveed Chaudhry, a Christian and former lawmaker, Morning Star News, July 4, 2023, Pakistan.

“The blasphemy charge against Shahzad stems from personal grudges against him by the complainant, Ullah … [who] had engaged in legal battles with Shahzad over a piece of land allotted by the government for constructing a church building.” If found guilty, [he] faces up to ten years in prison. — Morning Star News, July 4, 2023, Pakistan.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19908/brexit-politics

It depends on what we mean by Brexit….If we go by its simplest meaning, that is to say ceasing to be a member of the European Union, Brexit has succeeded.

Leaving aside control of borders and curbing immigration, Brexit became a vehicle for all sorts of fantasies. The UK was to regain its imperial role as leader of the Commonwealth, albeit in the service of world peace and prosperity. Creative trade agreements were to be signed with the United States, China, Japan and any other nation that recognized the advantages of having the UK as partner.

Needless to say, that hasn’t happened.

In the UK today, more than 25 percent of children have foreign mothers. (In London it is 52 percent). Of every ten British children, one is a Muslim-born citizen. In a decade or two, “little Englanders” may even be a minority as a new globalized society takes shape.

“Brexit has failed!” This is what Nigel Farage, the politician who was the cheerleader for Britain leaving the European Union, said in a television interview last week.

A day later it was the turn of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the man who railroaded Brexit through the parliament, to echo Farage. In his newspaper column, he said the UK “is still stuck in the European Union orbit.”

For a brief moment, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak seemed to amplify that echo with a tweet that implied the UK was still part of the EU. (Needless to say the tweet was hastily corrected.)

Well, has Brexit failed?

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/08/how_china_is_winning_the_narrative_war_and_whos_helping.html

In their 1999 book Unrestricted Warfare, Chinese colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui posited that the battlefields of the future would be “virtually infinite.” Much of the fighting, they said, would be done without fighting: using ideological infiltration and propaganda to craft a narrative, the Chinese brand of communism could be made to find acceptance in the world of the free market and individual rights, ultimately causing the latter’s collapse. Expectedly, the chief target of this “smokeless war” is the U.S. 

How alarmingly successful the Chinese have been has been brought home by a recent New York Times exposé of the activities of Marxist millionaire Neville Roy Singham. China’s tentacles reach wide and deep to control newspapers, TV, the internet, non-profits and sundry groups espousing far-left causes – all in the service of China’s quest for global hegemony. Under President Xi Jinping, not only have state media operations been expanded, sympathetic foreign influencers and news outlets have been cultivated. It is in these operations that Singham plays a major role.

The 69-year-old Singham is the son of the late Archibald Singham, a Sri Lankan Marxist scholar who consorted with Fidel Castro and was committed to the “liberation of Third World peoples.” As a young man, the junior Singham joined the Maoist group League of Revolutionary Black Workers. After graduating from Howard University, he founded ThoughtWorks, a tech consulting firm, in 1993. It grew to employ 4,500 people across 15 countries, and made him a millionaire. From 2001 to 2008, he was a consultant to Huawei, which tested face recognition software used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to target Uyghurs for repression and is deemed a national security threat by the U.S.

Ironically, during this successful entrepreneurial journey, Singham seems to have concluded that the Chinese economic system was preferable to that of the West. In 2017 – also the year he married Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans – he sold ThoughtWorks for $785 million and devoted himself to leftist propaganda. He now works from offices in Shanghai and New York’s Times Square, playing benefactor to far-left groups, which he funds through a network of shell companies and NGOs. He denies the NYT allegation that he works closely with the Chinese government. 

Through the shell firms – some of which have no more presence than UPS store mailbox addresses – Singham bankrolls American leftist groups, a Massachusetts-based think tank, a political party in South Africa, and media groups in Brazil and India. His funds also support training for left-leaning activists and politicians across Africa. The common factor in all his beneficiaries is that they push Chinese propaganda, presenting China as benign even as it gobbles up land in Africa, bribes politicians, and creates debt crises in Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, many other countries, and virtually across Africa, to eventually gain strategic leverage.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19905/china-russia-and-north-korea-nukes

Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un see the world in the same terms, and they all realize that none of them will accomplish their goals unless they get the United States out of the way.

Perhaps of greatest concern is that all three regimes [China, Russia and North Korea] share a nuclear weapons doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate” or “escalate to win”: threatening the use of nuclear weapons to keep others from defending their intended victims. Xi and Putin appear capable of actually using their most destructive weapons.

Kim has made threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively. His regime last year even enacted a law authorizing such use.

When aggressors threaten the use of nuclear weapons, anything can happen. America will have to be prepared that China, along with its friends, are willing to do anything to get what they want.

The regimes of China, Russia and North Korea share a nuclear weapons doctrine of “escalate to de-escalate” or “escalate to win”: threatening the use of nuclear weapons to keep others from defending their intended victims. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin appear capable of actually using their most destructive weapons. Kim Jong Un has made threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively. His regime last year even enacted a law authorizing such use.

This week, the U.S. Navy’s Carrier Strike Group 5, centered around the USS Ronald Reagan, has been steaming off the east coast of Taiwan.

http://www.settimananews.it/informazione-internazionale/you-say-taiwan-say-korea/

In theory, it is a peninsula, but actually, for all practical purposes, it is an island. South Korea is separated from the rest of the Asian continent by its intractable half-brother to the North, making any land contact with its neighbors impossible.

The gap between the reality (being an island) and the theoretical aspiration (being a peninsula) is compounded by being one of the world’s wealthiest and most dynamic locations, bordering one of the most backward and stagnant places globally, its northern half-brother.

This reality makes the Korean peninsula one of Asia’s most dangerous flash points for future strains.

Tempest on the South Korean Island

Tension is on the rise around China. Saber rattling has become frequent around Taiwan, the island de facto independent but, in theory, part of One China. Strategists’ risk assessments consider the possibility of a clash around Taiwan because the PLA might attempt to invade the island.

There are also risks of skirmishes that could get out of control in the contested waters of the South China Sea between China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. A fight that gets out of hand could also start in the high altitudes of the Himalayas between Chinese and Indian troops. Yet, the North Korean scenario could be the most significant jeopardy.

It is impossible to assess Chinese intentions on all these borders. However, a war in the Korean peninsula could be less risky and more advantageous to Beijing in the present situation.