RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17871/afghanistan-withdrawal-terrorist-cocktail

Despite their promises to deny terrorists safe haven, the Taliban will do the opposite. They and Al Qaida are joined at the hip, with both Osama Bin Laden and his successor Ayman Al Zawahiri having sworn unbreakable allegiance, bay’ah, to the leaders of the Taliban.

The Islamic State’s Khorosan branch, with several thousand fighters in Afghanistan, will pose a similar threat. Many political leaders in the US and UK claim the Taliban are sworn enemies of the IS, with some even suggesting that we might form an alliance against IS with Taliban terrorists. But this abhorrent proposition is merely an attempt to help limit the political fall-out from their ill-judged actions that facilitated the Taliban’s conquest.

Today, all these actors know there is no prospect of further large-scale US intervention in the country, no matter how great their atrocities. The US remains capable of air strikes and even special forces raids against serious threats emanating from Afghanistan, but these require high-grade intelligence which, despite the powerful technical capabilities of the agencies, is extremely difficult to gain now that we have withdrawn all forces.

The prospect of a successful jihadist insurgency in Pakistan, with its nuclear arsenal, has been a long-standing concern for the US, which invested huge intelligence and military resources to help prevent it. Most of this capability was withdrawn with the exit from Afghanistan.

Like Pakistan, China supported the Taliban insurgency for many years. In return, the Taliban have frequently hunted down and killed many of the Uighur leaders — fellow Sunni Muslims — who took refuge in Afghanistan. Desperate for Beijing’s funds and political backing, the Taliban can be relied on to do all they can to prevent any export of jihadism into China.

But we can expect no such efforts from Beijing to prevent terrorist actions against the West. On the contrary, as the new cold war intensifies, China is more than capable of using its increasing cooperation with the Taliban to enlist jihadists from Afghanistan as proxies against the US.

Twenty five year-old Ali Harbi Ali has been arrested on suspicion of the murder last week of British Member of Parliament Sir David Amess in a church in Essex. Ali is a member of a well-to-do Somali family who were given refuge in Britain from the war-torn East African country in the 1990s. British authorities had previously been alerted to his radicalisation and he was referred to the UK’s “Prevent” anti-terrorist scheme.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/577738-is-a-sanctions-rethink-in-the-works

The Biden administration’s announcement that it will limit economic sanctions as a tool of foreign policy could prove significant, since it follows two decades in which policymakers of both parties dramatically increased the use of sanctions against governments, individuals, and entities that they considered bad actors.

“After the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks,” the Treasury Department wrote in a new report after a nine-month review, “economic and financial sanctions (‘sanctions’) became a tool of first resort to address a range of threats to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. This tool rests on the formidable strength of, and trust in, the U.S. financial system and currency.”

Looking forward, the Treasury wrote, “Economic and financial sanctions should be tied to clear, discrete objectives that are consistent with relevant presidential guidance — such as countering forces that fuel regional conflict, ending support to a specific violent organization or other malign and/or illicit activities, stopping the persecution of a minority group, curtailing nuclear proliferation activities, enhancing multilateral pressure, or ceasing specific instances of atrocities.”

Fine. But the notion of limiting the use of sanctions — e.g., trade embargoes, investment restrictions, asset freezes on governments or individuals — could prove a sea change for U.S. policymakers who, in recent years, have viewed sanctions as the go-to response to global bad behavior.

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/state-department-laughing-stock-pronouns-antony-blinken/

Last week, the State Department learned that twice this summer China had tested a new hypersonic missile weapon with nuclear capabilities. According to the Financial Times, the rocket employed a “fractional orbital bombardment” that also had the guidance ability to “glide” around the earth in orbit.

The test reportedly stunned the Biden administration, and comes on the heels of a string of embarrassing global events for the US, including the fall of Afghanistan and Russia opting not to raise natural gas supplies to Europe after the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Secretary of State Tony Blinken reacted with a series of “deeply concerned” letters. The State Department had once again been caught flat-footed.

But fear not: Blinken has his priorities straight. This week, his State Department responded forcefully and with great clarity to its adversaries and hostile foreign regimes around the world: by recognizing International Pronouns Day. The agency stands in solidarity with people who list pronouns “on their email and social media profiles” through ShareAmerica, the department’s platform for communicating American foreign policy worldwide.

The State Department’s blog brags that “the White House also debuted a website contact form with gender-neutral pronouns and the non-binary prefix ‘Mx.’ And the Department of State announced June 30 that US passport forms will allow applicants to choose male or female gender, regardless of what their other documents indicate, and will eventually include an option for non-binary, intersex and gender-nonconforming people.” Neat!

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/target-taiwan-jeff-crouere/

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was unleashed on the world from China. The evidence is now growing that the bioweapons laboratory in Wuhan, China was the original source of the virus. If this theory is true, the virus was either accidentally or intentionally released on an unsuspecting world. 

Of course, the government of communist China is not cooperating with an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, so the world may never know the truth. The mere fact that China is blocking this investigation should lead everyone to question what China is trying to hide.

The pandemic has killed over 700,000 people in the United States and over 4.7 million people worldwide. The economic costs in this country have been staggering. Millions of jobs that were lost may never return. 

In China, it is a much different situation. According to the World Health Organization, less than 6,000 people have died from the virus in China. Their economy has prospered as their products have continually been shipped to “big box” retailers like Walmart. 

In the United States, these large retailers, which are heavily dependent on Chinese goods, never closed. In contrast, American small businesses were closed during the pandemic lockdown. Sadly, many of these small businesses, the backbone of the American economy, will never reopen. 

China benefited in another important way from the pandemic. Until early 2020, President Donald Trump was a thorn in China’s side. Throughout his campaign and presidency, Trump warned of the Chinese threat to the American economy. He spent his entire administration working to bring home American factories from China. He also significantly raised tariffs on Chinese goods. His goal was to improve our economy by increasing the number of American jobs and boosting American manufacturing.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/blinken-gives-chinese-government-his-congrats/

The well wishes for the 72nd anniversary of the PRC come a month after Beijing’s new envoy told U.S. officials to ‘please shut up.’

S ecretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday congratulated China on the 72nd anniversary of the founding of the state controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, the latest in a flurry of activity that could undermine the Biden administration’s efforts to address Chinese atrocities and malign activity around the world.

The statement’s wording particularly could inflame worries that officials are willing to make concessions on core issues in order to jumpstart stalled cooperation.

“On behalf of the United States of America, I would like to extend our congratulations to the people of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the country celebrates its National Day on October 1. As the United States seeks to work cooperatively to solve the challenges we all face, we wish the people of the PRC peace, happiness, and prosperity over the coming year,” Blinken said.

In addition, China’s newly arrived ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, tweeted a message on Tuesday evening thanking Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Kritenbrink and others for joining a virtual reception at the Chinese embassy.

Although Kritenbrink, who was confirmed to his role this month, did not appear on video, a State Department spokesperson confirmed that he “sent digital greetings to the Embassy extending his congratulations to the People’s Republic of China on their national day and wishing the people of the PRC peace, happiness, and prosperity.”

Like Blinken’s own statement, Kritenbrink’s is fairly anodyne, but it’s worth asking whether the department should have sent its greetings at all. For one, Qin arrived in Washington with a stridently anti-U.S. message. As National Review exclusively reported, during a virtual welcome event attended by members of the National Committee on U.S.–China Relations at the end of August, Qin was asked how the two countries could rebuild their relationship. “If we cannot resolve our differences, please shut up,” he advised U.S. officials, in remarks that shocked meeting participants and indicated the hard line he will take in this post.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/biden-administration-blocks-rescue-persecuted-raymond-ibrahim/

The Biden administration is preventing the rescue of persecuted Christian minorities from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, where they face certain and likely gruesome death.

This information surfaced on August 26, 2021, during an interview between Glenn Beck and Tucker Carlson on Fox News.  Through his charity, the Nazarene Fund, Beck had managed to charter planes to airlift 5,100 Christians out of Afghanistan and into neighboring nations.  Before long, however, U.S. officials intervened and prevented the escape of a batch of 500 Christians, mostly women and children, who were ordered outside of the airport’s protection zone:  “I have pictures of them pleading to get back through the gate,” Beck continued:

And then I have pictures of blood and body parts and nothing but death in that same area [where they were confined].  We believe that our State Department is directly responsible…  I don’t know how many [of these 500 Christians] survived.  The State Department has blocked us every step of the way.  The State Department and the White House have been the biggest problem.  Everyone else, everyone else, has been working together, putting aside differences and trying to get these people to safety.  The State Department and the White House have blocked us every single step of the way.  In fact, an ambassador was called in Macedonia last night and told not to accept any of these people, as we were trying to get them off of the tarmac here, to keep the airport flowing, and getting these Christians out. We haven’t really been able to move anybody for about 12 hours.  Our mission is now changing greatly.  We have to send people into even greater danger to try to smuggle these Christians out, who are marked not just for death, but to be set on fire alive because they’re converted Christians.

Beck, it should be noted, is not exaggerating.  According to one recent report, “Taliban militants are even pulling people off public transport and killing them on the spot if they’re Christians.”  Similarly, any Afghan caught with a Bible app on their phone is executed.  “How we survive daily only God knows,” a Christian Afghani said earlier this year on condition of anonymity.  “But we are tired of all the death around us.”