RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17998/biden-summit-democracy

[W]hen you lack a foreign policy, why not pretend that you have one by holding an international summit?

To start with, what does Biden mean by democracy?

Biden’s invitation excludes at least 20 long-standing allies of the United States.

… Obama went around the UN and its agencies on a number of issues, including the “nuclear deal” with the mullahs of Tehran, the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria, and the public-relations hoax known as “saving the planet”.

The doppelganger may furnish the emptiness for a few days and furnish a rudderless administration with a few favorable headlines. But it will provide no answer to problems the world faces today, problems that cannot be tackled without the participation of all nations within the framework of a world order based on law, not ideology.

What do India, Iraq and the Solomon Islands have in a common?

The answer is that US President Joe Biden has certified all three as “democracies” along with 106 other countries, by inviting them to a virtual “Summit for Democracy” on December 9-10, 2021.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17986/iran-killing-protesters

“We call on President Joe Biden, Secretary Antony Blinken, and all members of Congress to stand with the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism is never going to produce a favorable result that benefits the American people or the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the Islamic Republic was destined to fail from day one.” — Iranian Americans for Liberty, reported by Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, November 27, 2021.

“[W]hen millions of Iranians took to the streets in June of 2009, when they demanded freedom from a cruel regime that threatens the world, when they cried out, ‘Are you with us, or are you with them?’ – the American president was silent,” — Mitt Romney, October 8, 2012.

“If the free world wants to stand on the right side of history, they should support the Iranian people who have been fighting for their freedom for the last 43 years. The Iranians need free internet because the regime has already shut down the internet in Isfahan. They want to kill the protesters ….” — Iranian dissident Sheina Vojoudi, Jerusalem Post, November 26, 2021.

Will the Biden administration stand with the Iranian people?

The Biden administration appears to be repeating the Obama Administration policy of choosing to be silent in the face of the Iranian regime’s bloodshed, human rights violations, and crackdowns that kill and wound peaceful protesters.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/tehran_seeks_a_better_deal_.html

“Iran is prepared to reach a ‘good agreement’ quickly, with the goal of protecting the Iranian people’s rights and interests,” the Iranian foreign minister announced as Ali Bagheri Kani, the country’s chief negotiator, was arriving in Vienna for another round of nuclear negotiations. Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper posits that the Islamic Republic is coming to Vienna to reap economic and political benefits for its people.

Go with it for a moment. Accept that Tehran only wants to take care of its people and seeks a better deal than the one that imposed sanctions, limitations, and inspections.

But be careful.

Western media and politicians like to date Iranian cheating from the Trump administration pullout of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). But Iran cheated on the terms of negotiations with both the IAEA and the P5+1 before, during and after the deal. No less an authority than President Barack Obama said after cheating on agreements with the IAEA over the Fordow site was exposed in 2009, “As the international community knows, this is not the first time that Iran has concealed information about its nuclear program.”

The JCPOA was intended to halt all enrichment at Fordow and make it an R&D facility. Now, Iran has acknowledged not only continuing enrichment, but at higher levels with advanced centrifuges barred by the JCPOA.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/china-michael-ledeen/

China has long held a distinct advantage in the field of competitive intelligence, with its enormous edge in population.  This enables the People’s Republic to penetrate anywhere with a substantial ethnic Chinese population bloc with consummate ease, either by offering substantial amounts of money to potential allies or threatening to crack down on reluctant collaborators.

The Chinese have an ancient drive toward ethnic unity, and they do not accept the division of their people into tribes or clans. The current dictator, Xi, regards this unity in racial terms.  He believes that all Chinese share common characteristics, wherever they are born or raised.  Hence Xi believes that all Chinamen owe obeisance to the rule of China itself.  

It was no great surprise, then, when the United States discovered China at the heart of an espionage ring in the United Arab Emirates. The U.A.E. is one of the closest United States allies in the Middle East and has long manufactured American weapons and ammunition parts, but until recently there were only suspicions, not facts, to support the suspicions.  So far as Washington could tell, the U.A.E. was unaware of the military content of the Chinese project. So far as Washington could tell, the U.A.E. was unaware of the suspicions.  As the Wall Street Journal put the matter recently, the Middle East increasingly appears to be a primary ground for U.S.-Chinese competition.

The Chinese effort to penetrate the U.A.E. began like many of its previous espionage ventures, with considerable investment.  They apparently hoped to expand their outreach into directly manufacturing American equipment.  But their plot was discovered by American counter-espionage in time to prevent its fulfillment, and the plot was foiled.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17987/biden-agenda-turkey

Since the summer, everything on the Washington-Ankara axis seems to have gone wrong.

Is Biden the champion of human rights and universal democratic values that he claims he is? Or is he an unpleasant cheat with a disappointing fake democratic agenda?

U.S. President Joe Biden’s increasingly hypocritical policy on NATO’s increasingly difficult ally, Turkey, is badly zig-zagging between the U.S. leader’s self-declared advocacy for universal democratic values and Biden’s secret agenda, which he prefers dishonestly to hide: appeasing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan behind closed doors and condemning Turkey’s democratic deficit in public. In less than two years Biden has swung from a pledge to oust Turkey’s autocratic leader to appeasing him behind closed doors.

In a December 2019 interview, then-presidential candidate Biden said that Erdoğan should be ousted from power through a democratic process and that support for the opposition was crucial. Turkey’s human rights record has gone downhill from there. The Council of Europe has said that if Turkish courts keep ignoring rulings from the European Court of Human Rights, it would start infringement proceedings against Turkey at the end of November.

All the same, on October 31, Biden and Erdoğan apparently had a 70-minute meeting in a “very positive atmosphere” on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rome. They reportedly agreed to form a joint mechanism to improve ties. “During the meeting,” an Erdoğan aide told this author, “Biden’s lecture on human rights did not exceed two minutes.” It seems that a U.S. delegation will soon arrive in Ankara to work on that joint mechanism.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/dont-let-china-overshadow-russia-threat-196596

Even at this extremely polarized time in Washington, a bipartisan consensus continues to grow that China now represents the biggest threat to the United States.

President Joe Biden is implementing a “pivot to Asia” that President Barack Obama first enunciated, inking a new U.S. alliance with Britain and Australia that will help the latter deploy nuclear-powered submarines in the Pacific. Meanwhile, as Biden and China’s Xi Jinping prepared to chat this week, the House Armed Services Committee’s top Republican, Mike Rogers, called China’s Communist Party “the greatest threat to our nation today.”

Currently, however, some of the world’s most dangerous flashpoints emanate not from China but from Russia. They remind us that—while we must address China’s multifaceted efforts to supplant America as the world’s leading power—we also need to retain our focus on Russia’s machinations under the leadership of its strongman president, Vladimir Putin.

Putin has sent nearly one hundred thousand Russian troops to its border with Ukraine, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, setting off alarm bells in Washington and Europe that he’s planning to invade.

The alarm bells are particularly loud for at least two reasons. First, Russia has attacked Ukraine before, most prominently in 2014 when it annexed the Crimean Peninsula, triggering sanctions against Russia by the United States, European Union (EU), other countries, and international organizations.

Second, Russia’s present troop surge dwarfs its surge to the border of last spring, which also alarmed Washington and Europe. Putin later sent some of those troops back to their bases, easing concerns at that time, but Washington is now worried that—in the words of Congressman Mike Turner, a Republican on the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees—“Russia has different intentions this time.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/group-biden-removed-terror-list-storms-us-embassy-robert-spencer/

Isn’t great that America is back and the adults are back in charge? America is back, all right: all the way back to 1979, the last time we had a president so weak that enemies of the United States stormed one of our embassies and took hostages. On Thursday, the Yemeni media outlet Al-Masdar Online reported that Houthi jihadis in Yemen, which are backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, stormed our embassy in Sana’a, seizing “large quantities of equipment and materials.” Just days before that, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), they “kidnapped three Yemeni nationals affiliated with the U.S. Embassy.” Biden’s team promised America would be back, but didn’t say anything about Jimmy Carter coming around again as well.

A State Department spokesman confirmed the Yemeni report, saying: “The United States has been unceasing in its diplomatic efforts to secure their release. The majority of the detained have been released, but the Houthis continue to detain additional Yemeni employees of the embassy.” They are being “detained without explanation and we call for their immediate release.” The U.S., the spokesman continued, is “concerned about the breach of the compound” and is calling “on the Houthis to immediately vacate it and return all seized property.”

Yeah, I’ll bet the Houthis are shaking with fear now. Because Biden’s handlers are really going all out on this one: deploying the Navy? Sending in the Marines? Immediately imposing crippling sanctions? Come on, man! The Biden team, said the State wonk, “will continue its diplomatic efforts to secure the release of our staff and the vacating of our compound, including through our international partners.” That’ll show ‘em.