RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/iran-shoots-down-university-windsor-five-lloyd-billingsley/

Early last Wednesday, Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 took off from Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport. Within five minutes, the Boeing 737-800 came flaming down in what the Iranian regime initially claimed was an accident due to engine failure. Before week’s end, the regime admitted the missile launch that downed the aircraft killing 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three British citizens, and three Germans.

Thirteen of the victims were involved in engineering and scientific research at four universities in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Grieving relatives have cause to wonder about the way the shootdown was brokered to the public.

Victims from the University of Windsor included Zahra Naghibi, 32, a PhD student in engineering, and her husband Mohammed Abbaspour Ghadi, 33, a civil engineer and UW graduate. Samira Bashiri, 29, was a research assistant in biology and her husband Hamidreza Setareh Kokab, 31, was a PhD student in industrial engineering. Pedram Jadidi, 28, was a PhD student in engineering.

According to a January 10 report by Doug Schmidt of the Windsor Star, “Just minutes after takeoff, the Boeing 737-800 crashed, with some news reports on Thursday accusing the Iranian military of an accidental missile strike. Just hours earlier, Iran had launched a missile attack on U.S. military bases in neighboring Iraq in retaliation over the U.S. assassination of a top Iranian general last Friday.”

On January 11, the Star’s Julie Kotsis covered a memorial service for “five University of Windsor colleagues killed Wednesday in a plane crash in Iran,” with no speculation about an Iranian shootdown, and no quest for answers. That marked a stark contrast to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/freedom-stages-a-comeback-11578956042?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

Pity the world’s struggling despots. Just when everything seemed to be going their way, life got messy.

China appeared poised to tighten its grip on Hong Kong last summer with the infamous extradition bill. That hasn’t quite panned out. Not only have the protesters kept their movement alive in the face of relentless hostility from Beijing; they humiliated the Chinese Communist Party in local elections in November by taking majorities in 17 out of 18 district councils. Meanwhile in Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, whose re-election prospects seemed doubtful last summer, swept to a landslide victory Saturday as voters embraced her party’s determination to defend Taiwanese freedom from an increasingly menacing mainland.

In Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro’s thuggish regime had enjoyed some success in repressing Juan Guaidó, who is recognized as the legitimate president of Venezuela by more than 60 countries. But last week regime pressure failed to keep the National Assembly in line and 100 of its 167 members defied Mr. Maduro to support Mr. Guaidó’s re-election as the assembly’s president.

Tehran’s attempts to gain greater regional hegemony haven’t gone smoothly either. In Iraq, anti-Iranian protests shook up the political system late last year. Iraqi security forces and Iranian-backed militias killed hundreds of demonstrators but failed to quell protests in the strongly Shiite south against political corruption and Iranian influence. Lebanon has seen its own wave of protests also aimed at a corrupt political elite and Iranian influence.

In Iran itself, where authorities hoped the American killing of Qasem Soleimani would unite ordinary Iranians behind the regime, the opposite has come to pass. Waves of antigovernment protests spread across the country as authorities first launched an awkward and unconvincing effort to cover up Iran’s shooting down a Ukrainian passenger jet—killing 176 people—then tardily admitted it. Cities all over Iran witnessed spontaneous demonstrations with crowds chanting, “America is not our enemy,” ripping down posters of Soleimani, and calling for death to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7881661/PIERS-MORGAN-playing-despicable-race-card-Meghan-Harry-libeled-Britain.html

It’s all down to racism And sexism. And bullying. And, of course, damaging to their mental health.

Yes, poor downtrodden vulnerable innocent Meghan and Harry have been suffering the full gamut of victimhood issues, as befits the most woke, over-sensitive, woe-is-me couple in the world.

That’s why they want to get off the royal train, we’re told.Except they don’t want to get off it at all. They just want to get off the boring bits.

They still want to be royal stars, they still want British taxpayers to fund a lot of their luxury lifestyles, and they still want to parade around the world as global celebrities trading off their royal titles.

But they don’t want to do any of the less glamorous hard yard stuff that goes with being a full-time working royal.

I’ve been watching this unedifying saga unfurl over the past few days with mounting fury.

Predominantly, at the disgracefully disrespectful way the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are treating Her Majesty the Queen.

How dare they try to lay down the law to our long-serving Monarch in this way?

How dare they not inform her about their demands before telling the world?

And how dare they so arrogantly announce they’re going to pursue a more ‘progressive’ agenda for the Royal Family without having the courtesy to run it past a woman who has presided on the throne for more than six decades – and done a magnificent job of it.

But I’m also enraged by the specific growing narrative that the only reason Meghan’s been so harshly criticised by the media is because we’re all a bunch of racists living in a racist country.

That’s just a downright lie.

And a particularly nasty, disingenuous lie.

https://www.aol.com/article/entertainment/2020/01/13/meghan-markle-prince-harry-refuse-to-live-in-la-until-trump-leaves-office-report/23899886/

Ever since Meghan Markle and Prince Harry announced they were stepping back from royal duties last week, royal fans have been speculating about where the couple will call home. 

In the Sussex’s bombshell announcement on Wednesday, the couple revealed that they intend to split their time between the United Kingdom and North America, leaving many to believe that Canada will become the couple’s second home. Not only is the Commonwealth country where Meghan and Harry spent the bulk of their six-week break from duties over the holidays, but it’s also where the duchess and Archie have been living since the royal shakeup.

However, according to new reports, Meghan and Harry have their eyes set on Los Angeles as their “long-term plan,” but not while President Trump is in office. 

“It’s by no means an immediate thing but there is a long-term plan to end up back in the US with a second home in Canada, where they will also spent a great deal of time,” a source told the Daily Mail.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/01/12/top-uk-jewish-group-issues-ten-pledges-labour-party-must-take-to-regain-trust-of-british-jews/

Britain’s leading Jewish group announced on Sunday that it was issuing “Ten Pledges” the UK Labour party must take if it is to regain the trust of the country’s Jewish community.

Labour, which was resoundingly defeated in the December 2019 general election, has been wracked by antisemitism scandals since 2015, when the party’s far-left — often violently hostile toward Israel — took control of it.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15424/eastmed-pipeline-conflict-turkey

The bilateral agreement between Turkey and Libya — which establishes a new Turkey-Libya economic zone that the EastMed pipeline would now have to cross — appears aimed at giving Turkey more leverage over the project.

“The recent Turkey-Libya Memorandum of Understanding on the delimitation of maritime jurisdictions in the Mediterranean Sea infringes upon the sovereign rights of third States and does not comply with the Law of the Sea and cannot produce any legal consequences for third States.” — Charles Michel, President of the European Council, Consilium.Europea.eu, January 9, 2020

In May 2019, Turkey announced that it would begin drilling for gas in waters claimed by Cyprus…. In October 2019, Turkey defied the European Union by sending another drilling ship, the Yavuz, to operate inside waters claimed by Cyprus. Cyprus accused Turkey of a “severe escalation” of violations of its sovereign rights.

Israel, Greece and Cyprus have signed an agreement for a pipeline project to ship natural gas from the Eastern Mediterranean region to Europe. The deal comes amid increasing tensions with Turkey as Ankara seeks to expand its claims over gas-rich areas of the Mediterranean Sea.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Greek counterpart Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades, along with their energy ministers, signed the so-called EastMed pipeline deal in Athens on January 2.

The 6-billion-euro ($6.6 billion) project envisages the construction of a 1,900-kilometer (1,180-mile) undersea pipeline that would carry up to 20 billion cubic meters of gas a year from Israeli and Cypriot waters to Crete and then on to the Greek mainland. From there, the gas would be transported to Italy and other countries in southeastern Europe.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15438/iran-advantage-trump

Europe, too, will have to draw a few conclusions. The European attempt, initiated by France, Germany and the United Kingdom, to circumvent American sanctions on Iran should cease.

In reality, the Iranian regime has just lost a round in its long conflict with the United States. Such air disasters have a lasting effect on people’s minds. The Iranian regime is emerging from this crisis weaker and more isolated than ever before. Trump wins for now.

Iran has emerged completely discredited from the recent phase of conflict with the United States and US President Donald J. Trump appears, for the time being, to be the big winner.

The Iranian regime is proving to be totally incompetent: incapable of managing the funeral of the so-called “martyr” Qassem Soleimani, which resulted in the deaths of more than 50 people, but capable of shooting down “as a result of human error” a commercial flight with 82 of its own nationals on board and killing a total of 176 passengers and crew members. This is the same regime that now announces the resumption of its nuclear weapons program. The bomb could be launched “by mistake,” of course, at Israel – or dropped on a neighboring country, such as Sunni states in the Gulf, or even on Iran itself.

The Iranian people know that the plane was shot down by their own government. There are anti-regime protests across Iran. There is anger over the incompetence and the lies of the last few days. The regime will come out of it weakened. After the death of Soleimani, images of mass rallies may have given the impression of a popular rally against the United States, but it has long been known that such impressions can be misleading.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/protests-erupt-again-iran-joseph-klein/

After the Iranian regime first denied and then finally admitted that it had shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane killing all 176 people aboard, protests broke out against the government in Tehran as well as in other Iranian cities. As many as tens of thousands of Iranian people are said to be involved. Protesters are risking their lives denouncing the government, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.

“Khamenei is a murderer!” some protesters exclaimed. Others shouted slogans such as “Death to liars!”, “Death to the dictator!”, and “You have no shame!” Whatever national unity there was in the immediate aftermath of the American killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani is now gone. Indeed, protesters were seen ripping up pictures of Soleimani. Even some hardline conservatives in Iran, who generally support the regime, were critical of how the government had handled the downing of the plane.

Riot police, plainclothes security men, and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have been out in full force, trying to keep things under control. Police even arrested the British ambassador to Iran, Rob Macaire, who was attending a vigil for the victims. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described Ambassador Macaire as “an unknown foreigner in an illegal gathering” before confirming the ambassador’s identity and allowing him to be freed. The United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab denounced the arrest of Ambassador Macaire as “a flagrant violation of international law.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/germanys-year-islamic-terrorism-stephen-brown/

Last year, like preceding years, was a busy year for Islamic terrorists in Germany.

Germany’s year of terrorism began in March with a lovely Muslim couple — the husband a Tunisian, the wife a German citizen — arrested for planning a chemical attack. The federal prosecutor’s office said the husband, 30-year-old Sief Allah A., had acquired knowledge of how to turn ricin into a weapon and had ordered 3,300 grams of the poison online.

Arrested in Cologne, the married pair also face charges of planning attacks using metal balls and homemade explosives. They also both had sought membership in the Islamic State (IS). They had started planning their attacks in 2018 after Sief Ali had failed twice to cross over Turkey’s border into Syria.

Also in March, German police raided and arrested 11 Salafists in the Hesse and Rhineland-Pfalz areas, two of whom were brothers. According to the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office, they “jointly agreed to carry out an Islamic terrorist attack employing a vehicle and firearms in order to kill as many ‘unbelievers’ as possible.”

The men were between 20 and 42 years of age and had contacted weapons dealers, rented a large truck and gathered money for the attack, $22,000 of which was seized in the raid. They had even committed a crime to get money for their evil plan.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/trump-speaks-directly-iranian-people-michael-ledeen/

The Iranian people are demonstrating. You can see the protests on Twitter, and read about the internal ferment online at the Free Iran Herald, which appears on Gateway Pundit.

The current round of demonstrations erupted all over the country after the destruction of the Ukrainian commercial airplane taking off from Tehran. The security forces are reacting with even greater than usual violence, shooting the protesters with live ammunition. At the same time, supporters of deceased General Qassem Soleimani within the Revolutionary Guards are being rounded up in significant numbers, suggesting that there was a power struggle underway within his Quds Force for the succession after the death of the supreme leader—Ali Khamenei—who is now eighty years old.

According to the Free Iran Herald, published in the Gateway Pundit blog,

This news is increasing the speculation that Soleimani, who was known to act on his own initiatives, and who was being seen as a possible future dictator-in-waiting for Tehran, was betrayed to American intelligence by his own colleagues within the regime, who feared that he would deprive them of their power and privileges.