RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/alexei-navalny-gets-another-19-years-dfc7e4db?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The world hardly needs another reminder of the true nature of Vladimir Putin’s Russian state, but last week brought one anyway: On Friday the opposition figure Alexei Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges of extremism, after a trial that took place in the penal colony where he is already imprisoned.

Mr. Navalny, age 47, has galvanized protests and publicized criticisms of Mr. Putin’s personal wealth. In 2020 he survived a poisoning by what investigators later said was the Russian nerve agent Novichok. He was arrested in 2021, and his anti-corruption foundation was shut down as a purported “extremist” organization.

In comments posted to social media after the 19-year sentence came down, Mr. Navalny made clear that he has no illusions about what he’s up against. “The number doesn’t matter,” he said. “I understand very well that, like many political prisoners, I am serving a life sentence—where life is measured by the duration of my life or the life of this regime.” He added that Mr. Putin’s goal in persecuting him is to frighten and intimidate everyone else who might be tempted to resist: “You are being forced to surrender your Russia without a fight to a gang of traitors, thieves and scoundrels who have seized power.”

What a thing to say from the confines of a Russian prison. Bravery, Mr. Navalny has it. So does Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, who could easily be living a billionaire’s life in exile instead of sitting in a prison cell, and so do countless others who defy autocratic regimes, as far away as Iran and Afghanistan, and as close to home as Cuba, only 90 miles off Florida.

The U.S. has its share of problems, but it remains, as much as ever, a beacon of freedom and democracy, and if Americans ever take that for granted, they should take a look around.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19858/prestige-biotech-china

There were on site at least 20 potentially infectious pathogens including those causing coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis, and herpes.

We know enough to be alarmed, however.

The lab was supposed to be producing COVID-19 and pregnancy tests, but the facility contained items inconsistent with that explanation. The seizures at the lab strongly suggest China’s regime is preparing to spread disease in America, undoubtedly in the months before a war.

In all probability, it is from locations like this one where China will “fire the first shot” in the next war.

General Chi Haotian, when he was China’s defense minister two decades ago, reportedly gave a secret speech advocating the extermination of Americans with disease. His plan was to clear out the hills, plains, and valleys of North America so that the Chinese people could settle in the vast spaces left uninhabited.

Since then, the mass murder of Americans has been a popular theme in Chinese society. The Communist Party, which tightly controls discourse in the People’s Republic of China, permits and even encourages incitement to kill Americans . “We are ahead of schedule in terms of overtaking the United States…. There will be no problem reaching this goal in 2027. The U.S. will not survive.” — LI Yi, prominent Chinese sociologist, October 2020.

Americans now have to assume that China’s Communist Party is executing a plan to exterminate Americans.

Will Americans, now warned, act to protect their society? After the discovery of the kamikaze lab near Fresno, they should act first and ask questions later.

Americans now have to assume that China’s Communist Party is executing a plan to exterminate Americans.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/07/hungary-and-the-future-of-western-conservatism/

At the centre of Europe lies Hungary, a country of 10 million souls with a long and proud history that can be traced back to the tenth century. Hungary is rapidly becoming the hub of intellectual conservatism in the West. This is in part due to the remarkable success of the stridently conservative Fidesz government, led by Viktor Orbán, which has been in power in Hungary since 2010.

One of Orbán’s leading advisers, and one of the most influential people in the conservative renaissance in Hungary, is Balázs Orbán (no relation; above). He is the political director for Prime Minister Orbán, a member of the Hungarian Parliament, and the chairman of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Budapest. He also chairs the advisory board of the National University of Public Service (Nemzeti Közszolgálati Egyetem). However, Balázs Orbán is more than a politician. He is the equivalent of a court scholar, if such a thing still exists in a modern-day parliamentary democracy. He has been a lecturer in law, has completed his Juris Doctor, and is working on his PhD at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. He has also recently published a book, The Hungarian Way of Strategy. For these reasons and more, Balázs Orbán is the ideal person to ask about Hungary’s history, the Fidesz government’s philosophy and success, and Hungary’s perspective on this fraught geopolitical moment. I spoke with Mr Orbán in his offices in Budapest, and the following is an edited version of our discussion.

SK: Hungary is simultaneously understood in the West as a leading light of conservative political action, and a totalitarian dictatorship. Having spent several months in Hungary myself, the former is obviously the truth. But plenty of people in the West believe the latter. What do you think underlies the division of opinion about Hungary?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19854/racist-states

In some political circles in the West, there is a popular tendency to consider Israel a “racist ” or “apartheid” country.

Israel does indeed have a sizable Arab community… who enjoy rights and liberties that for most other minorities in other countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia are still only a dream.

Unlike many other countries, especially in the area, Israel recognizes and respects the rights of all of these minorities. You are welcome to go to Israel and see for yourself. Most critics of Israel, however, would probably prefer not to be “confused by the facts.”

[Congresswoman Pramila] Jayapal, unfortunately, is also totally wrong about Palestinian Arabs’ not having a right to self-determination…. Some territory, according to the Oslo Accords, is still waiting to be negotiated, but for several years, the Palestinian leadership has seemed uninclined to come to the table. Israel has offered the Palestinians statehood—not just once, but on at least six separate occasions…. Each time, the Palestinian leadership has rejected all offers — perhaps because they were only for 97% and not 100% of everything demanded; perhaps out of fear of seeming a traitor; perhaps because there might be a greater preference for a “cause” than for a solution, unless the solution entails the elimination of Israel. Perhaps, also, there is the hope that the international community will simply hand the Palestinians a state, without the need for them to give anything on their end, or perhaps there is just a strong aversion to signing an “end of conflict” resolution. In any event, each time there was an offer, the Palestinians not only rejected it, but did not even propose a counteroffer.

Muslim Arabs in Israel hold senior positions in all walks of life: senior posts in the Israeli parliament (the Knesset); the medical profession; private industry, various government posts, and on the supreme court. There is also no legal obstacle for Israeli Arabs who wish to join the military or the police.

What about the rights of minorities of other nations in the region?

In Lebanon, Palestinian refugees , according to UNRWA, “are socially marginalized, have very limited civil, social, political, and economic rights, including restricted access to the Government of Lebanon’s public health, educational and social services and face significant restrictions on their right to work and right to own property.” UNRWA also reports that the Palestinians are still prevented from employment in 39 professions such as medicine, law, and engineering.

In Turkey, the Civil Servants Law of 1926 has made it virtually impossible for Christians and Jews to work as civil servants at state institutions. Consequently, thousands of non-Muslims lost their jobs. The law required that civil servants had to be “Turkish” – meaning that the government saw its non-Muslim citizens as “non-Turkish”…. As human-rights lawyer Orhan Kemal Cengiz noted, “Not even one single non-Muslim army officer, policeman or judge exists in Turkey. Non-Muslims are absent not only from the security and judiciary establishment but from the public sector altogether.

Turkey, a NATO member… appears perfectly comfortable — as does the rest of the international community –with its hostile 1974 invasion of Cyprus , where the Turks still occupy the north of the island and might be eyeing the south.

Perhaps, if Jayapal genuinely wants to help suffering people, she might focus on the more than 360 million Christians around the world who are being murdered and persecuted on a daily basis.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19833/china-arctic

This month, Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post reported that the Shanghai-based Polar Research Institute of China revealed that “China has completed the field testing and evaluation of an underwater listening device that will be deployed on a large scale in the Arctic Ocean.”

The innocuous-sounding report tells us that China intends to wage war against the United States and Canada from the Arctic.

Other than this buoy, the institute said, China had “never planted a listening device there.”

That assertion is not truthful. Last fall, the Canadian military, according to Canada’s Globe and Mail in February, removed buoys placed by China in Canadian waters in the Arctic.

“China is now covertly preparing the groundwork for militarization of the largely undefended northern territory and critical Arctic sea routes.” — Charles Burton of the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute, to Gatestone, July 2023.

All of this data is needed to listen for submarines, specifically American ones. China wants to track and destroy American subs from the top of the world before they can flood into Asian waters.

The U.S.’s generous “engagement” approach to China has resulted in China obtaining observer status in the Arctic Council although no Chinese territory is in or near the Arctic.

China already has two permanent research stations in the Arctic, one in Norway and the other in Iceland. That is two too many.

[F]or China the Arctic is primarily a military domain. In addition to the buoys they are leaving in the Arctic, the Chinese are surveilling the area by air. The spy balloon that flew over the lower 48 states this year initially crossed into Alaska and Western Canada.

China is not only pressing the United States and Canada from the north. In the other direction, China is establishing military bases in South America and the Caribbean and is infiltrating saboteurs across the border with Mexico. The Biden administration is allowing a hostile state to go hard against America from all sides. A menacing China is now everywhere in the Western Hemisphere.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19838/iran-friends

The Islamic Republic has been asking to be admitted into the BRICS group [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa] club since 2010 when the “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced his intention to create a “New World Order” through a triple alliance of Iran, China and Russia.

Tehran sources say the Iranian demand, though supported by South Africa and India, has been quietly vetoed by Russia and cold-shouldered by China.

Khamenei’s dream of a “New World Order” led by Iran, China and Russia, has proven to be a pipe-dream shaped in the mind of a leader that operates in a fantasy universe.

The pipe-dream was partly punctured last week when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his first foreign visit after his election victory to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, ignoring Iran altogether.

[F]or years, the former head of the Islamic Majlis’s National Security Commission Heshmatallah Falahat-Pisheh has warned that both China and Russia have treated the Islamic Republic as nothing but a source of profit for themselves.

Former Oil Minister Bijan Zangeneh has warned that Russia, having pushed Iran out of the European oil market is now trying to do the same in the Indian and Chinese markets by offering mouth-watering discounts. Since last March, China’s oil imports from Iran have fallen by almost 40 percent, according to unofficial estimates, with Russia claiming the part that Iran has lost.

Meanwhile, regarding what some Iranians see as an attack by Lavrov on the nation’s integrity, many are unhappy about Raisi’s refusal or inability to read the riot act to the Russians. The concern is that Tehran’s lack of reaction to the Russian and Chinese moves could encourage other nations to adopt a similar stance against Iran.

Khamenei, aged 84, seems unlikely to abandon what he had hoped would be his “historic legacy” or, in his own words “driving the Great Satan and its allies out of the region.” This is perhaps why, as long as Khamenei is in charge, neither Beijing nor Moscow is worried about angering Iran, whatever they do.

https://www.thefp.com/p/saudi-arabia-sportswashing-football-liv-golf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

I’ll never forget the moment Saudi Arabia arrived in global soccer. It happened at the World Cup last November, when the team faced Argentina—the overwhelming favorite to win. 

At halftime they were losing 1–0 and nobody was paying attention. I was finishing my halftime snack in the Pearl Lounge at Doha’s Lusail Stadium: a bowl of caviar in one hand and a glass of Taittinger champagne in the other. Then, suddenly, the Saudis scored a goal in the second half—and plutocrats clad in keffiyehs and thobes tipped over their plates of wagyu steak as they stampeded back to their seats. Saudi Arabia went on to beat the soccer legends 2–1, causing the biggest upset in World Cup history.

That game was just the beginning. In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has embarked on an extraordinary and record-breaking shopping spree, spending billions to acquire marquee-name players. The most recent foray is an attempt by Saudi soccer club Al-Hilal to sign French striker Kylian Mbappé, by most measures the best player in the world, for a quite staggering world record $332 million, plus a one-year contract worth $776 million. Money like this has never been seen in soccer before. Unsurprisingly, the bid was accepted by Mbappé’s club, Paris Saint-Germain, but the soccer star, so far, has refused the deal. 

Either Saudi Arabia really wants to be the global epicenter of soccer, or they really want to distract the world with their attempts to do so. 

Most Westerners believe it’s the latter, accusing the kingdom of “sportswashing.” Saudi Arabia is well aware of their reputation: they’re a country that oppresses women, executes dissidents, and disembowels Washington Post columnists. But—and this is a big but—if they buy enough soccer stars and sponsor enough sports tournaments, then maybe “human rights atrocities” won’t be the first thing mentioned when people discuss Saudi Arabia.

At least that’s the theory. But is it working? Can you buy enough star athletes to make the world forget (or at least ignore) all of your tyrannical excesses? And is that even what they’re doing at all? 

What’s crystal clear is that the Saudis have been building up to this investment spree for some time, dipping into their Public Investment Fund (PIF) of more than $700 billion to pay for it. In 2019, the country hosted British heavyweight boxing champion Anthony Joshua’s fight against the Mexican American fighter Andy Ruiz Jr. Then in 2021, it hosted its first Formula 1 race, at the newly minted track in Jeddah. That same year, it made its biggest move so far by buying Newcastle United, a storied Premier League soccer team from the northeast of England. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19819/turkey-erdogan-fidan-kalin

Turkey’s two key appointments are new foreign minister and former intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan; and the newly-appointed intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalın, also an Erdoğan confidant.

Both men have interesting and impressive careers. How both of them have become the only two people who make policy and share power with Erdoğan is illuminating, especially where their careers intersected under the president.

During that meeting, Fidan told the others that if they decided to go to war with Syria he could easily arrange a false flag operation: “Easy for me. I can send four men into Syria, they send eight missiles [into Turkish soil], and there you go.”

The appointments mark formalizing executive cabinet jobs for two most important men in Erdoğan’s most inner circle.

As Turkey’s post-election dust is settling down, the international community has turned its attention to two key appointments announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who on May 28 won his 17th election victory in 21 years, and entered his third decade in power.

Turkey’s two key appointments are new foreign minister and former intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan; and the newly-appointed intelligence chief, Ibrahim Kalın, also an Erdoğan confidant.

Both men have interesting and impressive careers. How both of them have become the only two people who make policy and share power with Erdoğan is illuminating, especially where their careers intersected under the president.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/another-nato-summit-another-tranche-of-happy-talk/

Last week the annual Nato summit gathered in Vilnius. Like last year’s, the meeting was dominated by the Ukrainian crisis, and was accompanied by the usual cheerleading from foreign policy mavens and globalist media. Also like previous summits, this one didn’t seriously address the problems and weaknesses of the Alliance.

Ukrainian officials who attended the meeting were visibly and vocally disgruntled. One beef is the festering issue of Ukraine’s membership in Nato, promised 15 years ago after Putin’s unpunished territorial predations in Georgia. The long, formal process of meeting requirements hasn’t even begun yet, apart from certain conditions agreed upon at the summit that Ukraine must meet. Nato still made empty promises to Ukraine about membership, even though there’s no chance that all 31 Nato nations will give their approval, and membership requires the consent of every member.

There are several arguments for and against Ukraine’s membership, but one of the weakest against it is the claim that giving Ukraine Article 5 protection––an attack on one member is an attack on all––might ignite a nuclear war with Russia. Yet this provision, regularly and reverentially touted by Nato’s cheerleaders, is what James Madison called a “parchment barrier” riddled with loopholes. Notice the crafty wording of this provision: each state will respond to an attack “by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force”  [emphasis added].

But “deems necessary” invites a liberal interpretation about how any nation can respond; and “including armed force” makes a military response just one option among numerous less costly ones. That means actually funding and mobilizing a nation’s military can be replaced by speechifying at the UN, issuing blustering diplomatic demarches, or sending money or weapons and other materiel––just what the Nato nations have been doing in the case of Ukraine. This suggests that even if Ukraine had been a Nato member, the alliance’s response wouldn’t have been much different from the current one.

Exacerbating Ukraine’s frustration is the delays in the Nato nations’ provision of weaponry and ammunition. Yet those nations’ stockpiles of both are dangerously low, and as historian Niall Ferguson put it earlier this year, Nato nations’ “military industrial complex has withered away,” making it a challenge to ramp up production of armaments. It’s so bad in the U.S. that the Biden administration announced it would send shrapnel-spewing cluster bombs instead of artillery rounds, weapons most of the world’s nations have proscribed by treaty.