RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18533/lebanese-election

To win that referendum, Tehran last month wrote a $25 million cheque in “extra help” for Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

More money was raised through a number of concerts in Iran, where mullahs also invited “the believers” to dig into their pockets to help Hezbollah and its allies in all Lebanese communities secure “a glaring victory” (fath al-mobin). Nasrallah was portrayed as a caricature of Khamenei, who is himself a caricature of the late Khomeini.

In contrast, Najib Mikati, Lebanon’s ephemeral Prime Minister, hopes that the election will persuade the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to sign its promised cheque of $5 billion in “emergency aid”.

Pie-in-the-sky projects such as reviving the Beirut port, building a railway hub, and removing Bank of Lebanon from the life-support machine may never go beyond after-dinner talks.

Lebanon’s problem is fundamentally geopolitical in the sense that those who hold the reins of power regard the country either as a bunker or a glacis where the interest of outside powers trump those of the nation-state.

Worse still, those who exercise power have proved their utter incompetence, not to mention their corruption, for almost two decades.

[R]eal decision-making is centralized in Khamenei’s office in Tehran.

Regardless of the results, likely to be “arranged”, Sunday’s election may yet turn out to be a referendum on resistance: the resistance of the Lebanese people against forces that try to de-Lebanize their country.

A general election in Lebanon is bound to be news if only because it is years overdue.

But what is it for?

Is it a step towards the exit from the maze of misery and terror that the Lebanese have endured for years or a step deeper into it?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18531/eu-biden-iran-mullahs

The European Union is basically admitting that it views the nuclear deal with Iran’s ruling clerics from the perspective of economic opportunity. That should not be the objective of the nuclear talks. Instead, European leaders ought to be seeking a strong deal that will prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons, especially — as they should have learned from Russia by now — because those nukes may soon be aimed at their countries.

By revealing its desperation to buy oil, the EU is empowering Iran’s ruling clerics to gain the upper hand in the nuclear talks and obtain even more concessions to revive the nuclear deal. Desperation, to the Iranian regime, means weakness.

To appease Iran’s mullahs, the EU and the Biden administration are also turning a blind eye to China’s violating the sanctions on Iran… Reportedly, the Iranian regime is exporting more than 1.5 million bpd. The ruling mullahs of Iran are exporting approximately 80% of the oil they used to export before the sanctions. Iran’s revenues heavily rely on oil exports; the sale of oil accounts for more than 50% of the regime’s export revenues.

The EU, moreover, has yet to join the US in imposing sanctions on the Iranian regime. In fact, European countries are still trading with Tehran in spite of the US sanctions. Tehran Times reported: “The value of trade between Iran and the European Union reached €4.863 billion in 2021, registering a nine-percent growth compared to the previous year….”

It seems clear that the nuclear deal was never about stopping the predatory regime of Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. For the EU, the nuclear deal is about trade, making money and buying oil from the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism; for the Biden administration, it is about a “diplomatic win”. In return, the ruling mullahs will have a legal path to blackmail the world, using nuclear weapons and missiles, into sending Iran’s regime billions for their terror and militia groups to torment everyone.

The Biden administration and the European Union are trying hard to appease the Iranian regime in order to revive a nuclear deal that will provide the ruling mullahs of Iran with additional billions of dollars of revenue, enhance the regime’s legitimacy on the global stage, and actually open the path for Iran to have a nuclear arsenal.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/tens-of-thousands-of-xinjiang-detainees-killed-by-organ-harvesting-expert-says/

A researcher who last month published a paper detailing the Chinese Communist Party’s forced organ-harvesting techniques told a congressional panel yesterday that his research proves that Chinese organ-harvesting doctors killed their patients. Another expert presented analysis indicating that 25,000 to 50,000 Xinjiang prison-camp detainees are subjected to organ harvesting, then cremated, each year.

“In plain language, the papers appear to show that the donors, who were prisoners, were alive at the time of surgery, and were killed by the transplant surgeons in the process of heart extraction,” said Matthew Robertson, the co-author of a groundbreaking article in the American Journal of Transplantation.

His paper, published in April, looked at a number of cases up through 2015, in which surgeons effectively admitted to execution by organ harvesting. The analysis looked at 124,000 Chinese-language medical papers, finding at least 71 papers outright describing that practice.

“These findings show a uniquely close and long-running collaboration between the PRC’s medical establishment and its public security system,” he said. “This would make PRC surgeons, many of whom were trained in the West, involved in medicalized extrajudicial killing.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18529/britain-illegal-immigration

The plan to outsource the processing of asylum applications overseas — if it survives legal challenges that are certain to come from human rights groups and the European Court of Human Rights — could become a model for other European countries seeking to crack down on illegal immigration.

The legal basis for the plan is enshrined in a new Nationality and Borders Act 2022 approved by Parliament on April 28. The new law, which integrates changes to British immigration law, includes offshoring asylum — processing claims at overseas facilities — and making it a criminal offense to knowingly arrive in the UK illegally.

“Access to the UK’s asylum system should be based on need, not on the ability to pay people smugglers…. If you illegally enter the UK via a safe country in which you could have claimed asylum, you are not seeking refuge from imminent peril — as is the intended purpose of the asylum system — but are picking the UK as a preferred destination over others.” — New Plan for Immigration, UK Home Office.

“We cannot sustain a parallel illegal system…. We can’t ask the British taxpayer to write a blank cheque to cover the costs of anyone who might want to come and live here…. Nor is it fair on those who are seeking to come here legally, if others can just bypass the system. It’s a striking fact that around seven out of ten of those arriving in small boats last year were men under 40, paying people smugglers to queue jump and taking up our capacity to help genuine women and child refugees.” — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, April 14, 2022.

“We can no longer accept the status quo. People are dying and the global migration crisis requires new ways to find new partnerships and to find new solutions.” — British Home Secretary Priti Patel, April 14, 2022.

The British government has announced a new plan to fight illegal immigration by giving some migrants seeking asylum in the United Kingdom a one-way ticket to Rwanda to have their applications processed in the East African country.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/another-year-another-un-scandal-bruce-bawer/

It doesn’t happen too often anymore, but every now and then we’re reminded that that wretched left-wing propaganda sheet, the New York Times, is still capable of publishing objective works of investigative journalism. Witness its bombshell May 7 report on corruption at the United Nations. Yes, the reporters bylined on the story are David A. Fahrenthold, who won a Pulitzer for smearing Donald Trump,  and Farnaz Fassihi, who’s been accused of shilling for Iran. But this time around their work looks legit.

Over the decades, of course, there’s been a lot of shameless, bald-faced corruption at the U.N. But the story served up by Fahrenthold and Fassihi is particularly ludicrous. It involves an obscure U.N. agency called the Office for Project Services (UNOPS), which, until May 8, was headed by Grete Faremo, formerly Norway’s Minister of Defense. The agency, as the Times reporters noted, serves as “a kind of general contractor,” hired by other U.N. agencies “to build schools and roads, deliver medical equipment or perform other logistical tasks.”

In short, UNOPS is low-profile and unsexy. But Faremo, after taking over in 2014, sought to change that. UNOPS “had stockpiled tens of millions of dollars in excess fees paid to it by other U.N. agencies,” and Faremo’s idea was “to lend out the money, like a bank, to fund profit-making projects in the developing world,” thereby converting UNOPS into “a revolutionary in-house investment firm.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/cardinal-zens-arrest-is-an-inflection-point/

It signifies the end of religious freedom in Hong Kong, the last of the fundamental freedoms to be extinguished there.

Cardinal Joseph Zen, bishop emeritus of Hong Kong, was arrested yesterday evening under the vaguely worded National Security Law, formally charged, and released on bail several hours later. He likely faces a three-year prison term, according to a Hong Kong lawyer I spoke with, raising the prospect that the 90-year-old cleric would spend his last years behind bars.

The arrest of this world-renowned champion of religious freedom, human rights, and democracy goes beyond the personal. It signifies the end of religious freedom in Hong Kong, the last of the fundamental freedoms to be extinguished there. It is a moment of truth for both Pope Francis and President Biden.

Collusion with foreign powers, the specific charge against the cardinal, could apply to every Catholic bishop and priest, who pledge fidelity to the pope in Rome. These charges, though, were based on Zen’s role as a trustee of the now defunct 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, set up for the legal and medical aid of pro-democracy protesters. Three other trustees were arrested at the same time.

Irrespective of the pretext, the Cardinal’s arrest was expected. In February, in a report in the pro-Beijing newspaper Ta Kung Pao in Hong Kong, Zen was likened to Falun Gong, which, for the past 20 years, the Chinese Communist Party has been savagely targeting for “elimination” in the mainland. He was blamed for “inciting” in 2019 pro-democracy protesters who had been educated in Christian schools. Such hatchet pieces typically presage roundups.

https://dianebederman.com/the-time-has-come-canada-must-find-a-way-to-legally-remove-a-dangerous-prime-minister/

“People who are more vengeful tend to be those who are motivated by power, by authority and by the desire for status.” Ian McKee of Adelaide University in Australia

Canada must find a way to legally remove a dangerous Prime Minister. We are being led by a Prime Minister who is corrupt, inept, immoral, divisive, vicious, vindictive and vengeful towards those with whom he disagrees. If we are to remain a democracy, we must find a way to remove dangerous Prime Ministers so that this never happens, again.

To be blunt: Justin Trudeau is a traitor to our Constitution, a traitor to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a traitor to Canadians and is a wannabe dictator. He loves how the Chinese government functions. He even invited Chinese Troops to “train” in Canada.

He “forgets” that we have inalienable rights that he cannot take away at will.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18509/eastmed-pipeline-awaits-approval

“Germany must be prepared that it could be the next country to which Gazprom cuts gas deliveries. Europe, therefore, needs a multitude of alternatives to the Russian energy supply.” — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, The New York Times, April 28, 2022.

The pre-feasibility studies [of the EastMed pipeline that would transport gas to Europe from Israel and Cyprus through Greece], conducted from 2015-18 and paid for by the European Union, found that the project is “technically feasible, economically viable and commercially competitive.”

“The analysis conducted for the activity related to the economic, financial and competitiveness studies, evidenced that the [EastMed] Project contributes to the improvement of market integration of currently isolated countries such as Cyprus and some Greek regions, to the enhancement of energy security diversifying the supply sources for Europe and to the reduction of the EU-wide consumers’ gas bill.” — Conclusion of pre-feasibility studies published by European Commission, July 2019.

“Moreover, taking into account the need of additional net imports to satisfy EU gas demand by 2030 and the risk associated to the current production availability, procurement and transport of gas supply, the Project provides strategic contribution to the EU security of supply.” — Conclusion of pre-feasibility studies published by European Commission, July 2019.

The significant rise in natural gas prices in Europe favors the economic viability of the pipeline, according to energy expert Michalis Mathioulakis, of the ELIAMEP think tank.

[US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria] Nuland’s comments appeared especially odd as, after meeting with her counterparts in Turkey on April 4, she told the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet that more pipelines were needed in the Eastern Mediterranean. The US, it appears, prefers to steer the business to Turkey’s strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, rather than to America’s democratic allies, Cyprus, Israel and Greece.

According to the Biden administration, therefore, pipelines that go via Turkey are apparently acceptable, Algerian gas pipelines are also acceptable, but the long-planned Israeli-Greek-Cypriot EastMed pipeline is not acceptable.

“What we are waiting for is the final report which is financed by the EU. And I repeat, the position was from the start – and that is why the study is being carried out – if it is viable, if there are investors, if the seabed permits, then it will be carried out. The US government does not decide about a European project. What everyone can see, and this is very important, is the need for the EU to cease being dependent on specific markets and the alternative channels for natural gas to Europe and the closest is none other than the basin of the eastern Mediterranean.” — Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades, Cyprus Mail, April 8, 2022.

“[I]t must not be up to one of the parties, the United States, to impose its own energy policy upon the parties, but rather, it should be up to the parties to arrive at an energy policy that best serves their collective interest. Under Secretary Nuland’s contradictory messaging on Eastern Mediterranean pipeline projects…. gives the appearance of appeasement of Turkey.” — Nick Larigakis, American Hellenic Institute, Ekathimerini, April 12, 2022.

Turkey has been opposed to the EastMed pipeline project all along… [W]hen the Biden administration first announced its unofficial opposition to the project, the reasons given by the US were primarily environmental and financial. Then, suddenly, Nuland claimed that the timeline for the project is too long because Europe needs gas “now.” Whatever the reasons given, they come across as an ill-disguised attempt at placating Turkey at the expense of Europe’s energy security, and attempts to free itself of Russian energy dependency. The Biden administration is once again demonstrating how, unfortunately, it prefers to do business.

Russia is expected to make almost $321 billion from its energy exports this year — over a third more, according to Bloomberg, than last year.