RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/02/07/us_asset_or_us_adversary_why_qatar_looks_worryingly_like_both_1008791.html

After Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, one of the terrorist organization’s chief financial sponsors, hosts of its leaders, and backers of its propaganda found itself singled out by America’s leaders – not for condemnation, but praise.

Timmy Davis, Biden envoy: “Qatar could not have done more than it did in 2023 to play an indispensable role on the world stage.” 
Department of State/Wikimwedia

“The U.S.-Qatar partnership could not be stronger, and Qatar could not have done more than it did in 2023 to play an indispensable role on the world stage,” U.S. ambassador to Qatar Timmy Davis wrote on X last December.

The Biden administration, from the president on down, has lauded the emirate throughout the Israel-Hamas war, especially for its shepherding of negotiations between the two sides for a ceasefire and hostage releases – a role Qatar is singularly capable of filling in part because it maintains Hamas’ “political office” in its capital city, Doha.

At the annual Qatar-led Doha Forum last December, Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham echoed the Democratic administration, while also thanking Qatar for its assistance evacuating Americans during the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal – a success attributed in part to its harboring of another terrorist group, the Taliban.

Graham too thanked Qatar for accommodating “10,000 American airmen who live better than [at] any air base in the … world” – a reference to Al Udeid, the largest such facility in the region

House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Jack Bergman, a Michigan Republican, highlighted the irony of this bipartisan praise, noting, “Our brave men and women in uniform who have served out of Al Udeid … have gone on missions to combat terrorist groups funded by Qatar.”

Richard Goldberg: Qatar’s playing a “kind of terror-finance double game.”
Foundation for Defense of Democracies

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20340/21st-century

If you add to this the European Union’s obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of “energy transition”, it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

China talks tough about Taiwan, but seems leery of using its considerable military force if it can count on the US failing to respond.

Above all, the Chinese regime is a ruthless dictatorship in which people and their property disappear, and there are no mechanisms for peaceful reform.

If there is a single element of the American system that Europe should replicate, it is this flexibility in the labor market.

Will that never happen? No, of course not. That is why Europe will continue to stagnate, while America, despite all its current difficulties, opens up the way of the future.

If the economic and geopolitical facts examined here are anything to go by, the 21st century will be more American than ever.

We are not quite a quarter of the way into the 21st century, but already a few clear structural trends have emerged, even if it is impossible to predict the next “black swans” — radically unpredictable events with far-reaching consequences – that might occur. Here are four of the trends.

Since 2000, Europe has stagnated on many fronts — anemic growth, a crashing birth rate, military disinvestment — from which countries such as Belgium and Germany have still not emerged. Perhaps most worrying of all, according to criteria such as patents, capital investment, and stock market giants such as GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), Europe has stopped innovating. People innovate in the United States; they still innovate in Asia, but in Europe – hardly at all. If you add to this the European Union’s obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of “energy transition”, it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20382/war-with-iran

There are, of course, alternatives less than all-out war, and more than attacks on proxies. They involve the bombing of military targets inside Iran. These include sites used for Iran’s nuclear program, its naval bases and ships, its military drone production, its oil and gas facilities and its command centers. All of these could be accomplished from the air and sea without a ground invasion, and without the loss of American lives an invasion would risk.

One conclusion is clear: in the short term, a US attack on Iran itself would contribute to destabilization in the region. But in the longer term, it might well contribute to stability by reducing the power and influence of the most destabilizing entity in the Middle East, namely Iran.

Israel, too, is at war with Iran. Iranian operatives have targeted Israeli civilians and Jews around the world. Iran has effectively called Israel a “one bomb state” and has threatened to destroy it with nuclear weapons. Israel, too, has a perfect right to respond to these acts of war. Indeed, it may have no choice but to do so, to prevent Iran from carrying out its threats of nuclear annihilation.

The Middle East and the world would be a safer place without the current Iranian regime. It would be a far more dangerous place with a nuclear-weaponized Iran that could protect its surrogates under a nuclear umbrella.

So, Biden’s strategy should be given a chance to work. But if it fails — as history suggests it may— all options must be kept on the table. These include attacks within Iran, even if that means war. That may be the least worst among the many available options.

Every discussion about the current Middle East conflict begins with the mandatory mantra, “We don’t want war with Iran.” Why not? That question is rarely asked.

Iran has declared war on the United States — militarily, legally, diplomatically, morally and politically. They have engaged in repeated casus belli (legal causes for war) since the mullahs took Americans hostage in 1979. Since that time, they have used their surrogates to attack American targets. We are entitled to respond militarily, as we are doing. But we are also entitled to go much further and treat them as aggressors who have effectively declared war on us. We are entitled to destroy their capacity to continue to wage war against us and our allies. The policy question in not whether we have a right to wage war against Iran. It is whether it is in our interest to do so.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20368/christians-persecuted-worldwide

Overall, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 365 million believers suffering “high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.”

Christians suffer “extreme levels of persecution” in the top 13 of the 50 nations. They are: 1) North Korea, 2) Somalia, 3) Libya, 4) Eritrea, 5) Yemen, 6) Nigeria, 7) Pakistan, 8) Sudan, 9) Iran, 10) Afghanistan, 11) India, 12) Syria, 13) and Saudi Arabia.

In the worst of the Muslim nations, Christianity has been so stamped out over the years that there are no indigenous Christians to persecute, only converts—apostates, who, according to most interpretations of Islamic law, deserve death.

The wildly popular late Sunni cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi noted on television that if not for the apostasy law [proposing death], Islam would have died out long ago.

Afghanistan: “When the Taliban came to power, they did so with pledges to recognize more freedoms than in the past. But that hasn’t happened—if an Afghan’s Christian faith is discovered, it can be a death sentence, or they can be detained and tortured into giving information about fellow believers.” — World Watch List 2024, opendoors.org

In 2023, around the world, 4,998 Christians — on average, 13 a day — were “killed for faith related reasons.” Another 4,125 Christians were illegally detained or arrested, and 14,766 churches and other Christian institutions were attacked.

Overall, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 365 million believers suffering “high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-u-n-s-long-history-of-failure/

No one should be shocked or surprised by the news that some United Nations Relief Works Agency staff directly participated in the heinous savagery of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7.

According to Israeli intelligence, AJC reports, “six UNRWA workers were part of the wave of terrorists who breached the Gaza-Israel border and massacred civilians inside of Israel. Additionally, two helped to kidnap Israelis, two others were tracked to sites where hundreds of Israeli civilians were shot and killed. Others coordinated logistics for the assault, including procuring weapons.” Seven were identified as primary school teachers, and one is a Hamas commander.

By the way, U.S. taxpayers finance a third of the UNRWA’s budget, including paying for schools where terrorist sympathizers indoctrinate half a million students with murderous hatred for Jews. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres implied that those staffers were just a few bad apples, but Israeli intelligence estimates that 10% of UNRWA’s 12,000 employees have links to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

Again, no surprise there. Ever since its birth, the UN has been rife with corruption, politicization, and failure. Until we start making this “cockpit in the tower of Babel” ––as Churchill in 1946 presciently warned that the most important institution of the “new world order” might become–– accountable to U.S. taxpayers, our national interests and security will remain hostages to those of other nations, many of whom are sworn enemies of the free world.

That failure should have been predictable from the start, given the sorry record of its precursor, the League of Nations, which included future aggressors like Germany, Japan, and Italy as signatories. The UN repeated the same incoherence that compromised the League. The Versailles settlement had enshrined the sovereign, self-governing nation as the universal political order, but at the same time created a supranational institution that required member states to cede some of their sovereignty, and be bound by its rules and resolutions, which reflected Western political principles and goods like political freedom and human rights.

Given the complex, cultural diversity of the world’s nations and governments, there could be no “harmony of interests” that could satisfy every nation and honor its particular culture and political ideology. National self-interest and cultural goods like religion would trump the UN’s collective interests, usually by exploiting for illiberal and tyrannical ends the lofty Western rhetoric of “national liberation,” “national self-determination,” and “human rights.”

Moreover, like the League, no credible force was created to enforce the UN’s decrees that often collide with a nation’s interests or territorial ambitions. The UN quickly became a paper tiger, its offices and resolutions hostage to such interests, especially those of the great powers that comprise the permanent, veto-bearing, nuclear-armed members of the Security Council.  Parochial political ambitions––including those of autocratic, totalitarian, and gangster states–– and economic interests replaced the UN’s lofty principles.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/london-theater-cancels-douglas-murrays-pro-israel-event-citing-threats-to-employees/?utm_source=recirc-

A theater in central London canceled British journalist Douglas Murray’s pro-Israel event at the last minute after employees refused to work Sunday night due to outside pressure.

Staff at the Apollo Theatre backed out of working the public event on Sunday after receiving threats via email, Technion UK CEO Alan Aziz told Jewish News. Technion UK is the nonprofit that organized the fundraiser, in which Murray was set to dialogue with British actress Louisa Clein in front of an audience to raise money for Israeli soldiers. The event was eventually moved to a new location.

Staff at the theater can decide individually whether to work events on Sunday, when the theater is normally closed, Aziz said.

“The Apollo told us that they had struggled to put together enough staff to work at the evening, but that eventually they did have a working crew,” he said.

However, the number of Apollo employees willing to work the event dwindled when an anonymous person at the theater shared the email addresses of the employees with someone outside the theater who opposes Israel amid its war with Hamas.

“All of them received threatening emails and told the management that they no longer wanted to work,” Aziz said.

In addition to the threats, the theater company backed out because it must use approved staff who are trained in evacuation and fire-security procedures. If it doesn’t, its insurance could be invalidated.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/unrwa-nominated-for-nobel-peace-prize-amid-investigation-into-staffers-hamas-links/

An Norwegian parliamentary official said that he nominated the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for the Nobel Peace Prize this week, after Israeli intelligence alleged that UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel.

At least twelve UNRWA staffers participated in the attack, an Israeli intelligence dossier revealed last week, and 1,200 of UNRWA’s 12,000 staffers in Gaza have ties to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Several countries, including the U.S., have since suspended funding for UNRWA.

Labour MP Asmund Aukrust said he nominated UNRWA “for its long-term work to provide vital support to Palestine and the region in general,” and added that “this work has been crucial for over 70 years, and even more vital in the last three months.”

Qualified officials select hundreds of individuals to nominate for the Noble Peace Prize annually. The Norwegian Noble Committee will announce the Nobel Peace Prize laureate in October, an award that should go to the individual “who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses,” Swedish industrialist and Nobel-prize founder Alfred Nobel wrote in his will.

UNRWA has made desperate pleas to the international community to regain its funding since Israel revealed U.N. employees’ links to Hamas. A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said last week that UNRWA funding is slated to run out by the end of February.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20364/iran-risky-elections-ahead

[T]hose wishing to stand for a seat in the Majlis must be approved by the Council of the Guardians whose members are named by the “Supreme Guide”.

Those elected won’t be considered elected unless the “Supreme Guide” approves.

In an arrangement that might have amused Alice [in Wonderland], candidates are not allowed to criticize the leadership or to offer programs that contradict choices already made by the ruling elite.

The Fundamentalists have never made it clear what their fundamentals are, and the Reformists have always shied away from suggesting any concrete reform.

The “Supreme Guide” has repeatedly said he prefers the Fundamentalists who praise his “Looking East” strategy.

In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a visual perversion deforms people and objects so that they look like what they are meant to be but are not quite the same.

The fantasy device used by the English poet in his comic tale has given its name to a neurological condition known as the Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (AIWS) which causes an incorrect perception of external reality.

The four decades’ long experiment that Iran has had with the Khomeinist ideology is a big-sized illustration of that syndrome.

To start with, you call yourself Islamic but end up as a regime that directly or indirectly has attacked all of Iran’s Muslim neighbors, sparing the only two that are not Muslims: Armenia and Russia.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20363/iran-proxies-head-of-snake

By not directly targeting the source of support and funding, the Iranian regime, the administration may inadvertently be treating the symptoms rather than the root cause of the problem, and, instead of decreasing Iranian aggression, escalating it.

One viable approach involves focusing on the economic lifelines that sustain the ruling ayatollahs. These lifelines include immediately restoring the “maximum pressure” sanctions the US had imposed earlier, targeting key components of Iran’s infrastructure — such as oil facilities, which serve as vital resources and revenue streams – and banning anyone who trades with them from trading with the US. Disrupting these critical elements not only weakens the economic foundation of this terrorist regime but also undermines its ability to finance proxy activities.

It is equally important to target the leaders and bases of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, where proxies are trained and the attacks originate. By hitting Iran’s economic and military infrastructure, the US can exert significant pressure, sending a clear message that the support for proxy warfare — and Iranian attempts to finalize their nuclear bombs — would come at an intolerably high cost.

The last few months unfolded with a marked escalation in the activities of Iran’s proxies, militias and terror groups. Iran’s proxy Hamas launched its attacks on Israel, unleashing a barrage of violence across the region. Simultaneously, Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq escalated their assaults on US bases and personnel. Another proxy of Iran, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, also caused turmoil in the Red Sea, which is vital to maritime traffic. Their actions not only threaten regional stability but also sent shockwaves through global trade routes and raised concerns about the broader implications of their destabilizing activities.

https://dianebederman.com/the-canadian-trucker-convoy-all-over-the-world/

The Canadian Trucker Convoy woke people up from their slumber, and now they are on the march

It’s been difficult to be a proud Canadian under the tyranny of Liberal PM Justin Trudeau – the clown and his leftist wing-man Jagmeet Singh – the court jester.

What kind of leader asks if citizens who disagree with political decisions should be tolerated?  Hmmm, so reminiscent of the Nazis. Two years ago a group of freedom-loving Canadians banded together and formed a trucker convoy to Ottawa to protest against the oppression put upon us by our “leaders.” In response, our PM called out the police to go after peaceful protesters in Ottawa and enacted the Emergencies Act rather than speak to the citizens. And if that were not enough, he arranged to have bank accounts of the truckers frozen. Well, the PM has shared his love of China. “There’s a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.”

And that Convoy, that Convoy For Freedom, gave hope to other countries suffocating from the strict shut down caused by “Covid.” And they began to fly the Maple Leaf.  A shining symbol of hope and freedom. What a proud moment in time for those of us who believe that government bends the knee to “we the people” and not the other way around.

France waved the Canadian flag.

New Zealand  and Australia waved the  Canadian flag.

“It became a rallying call with so much of the protest movement that we see based on populism and nationalism and that flag can be resonant with them. It can be a social movement tool, so we can see them finding unity.”