RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19255/united-nations-terrorists

Hammouri’s affiliation with the PFLP and his involvement in planning terror attacks against Israelis, does not, however, seem to concern the UN Human Rights Office. Instead of condemning the convicted terrorist, the UN Human Rights Office chose to condemn Israel for daring to take measures to protect its citizens against terrorism.

This is also the same UN whose representatives have failed to condemn Hamas for building tunnels beneath schools run by its United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the Gaza Strip.

Take note: here is a senior UN official sitting with representatives of a terror group whose charter calls for the elimination of Israel and who is expressing “concern” over the rise of right-wing parties in Israel.

The UN official appears unaware that many Israelis voted for right-wing parties because of the increased terror attacks by Hamas and other terrorist groups.

It is ironic that a UN official, whose title is “Special Coordinator of the Middle East Peace Process”, sits with a Palestinian group that is entirely dedicated to sabotaging peace.

As Article 13 of the Hamas charter states: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

This is hardly how to “prevent and remove threats to peace,” as the UN claims in its charter. In fact, the actions of the UN clearly demonstrate that the organization is actually cozying up to terrorists while denouncing those who combat terrorism.

In its defense of, and engagement with, terrorists, the UN is boosting the ability of Hamas and the PFLP to continue their slaughter and genocide.

According to the United Nations, the deportation of a convicted Palestinian-French terrorist from Israel constitutes a “war crime.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19265/erdogan-turkey-syria-gambit

Since the violence resumed, Erdogan has threatened to launch a full-scale military incursion into Syria’s Kurdish areas — which would be the fourth such major Turkish incursion since 2016.

Erdogan most likely calculates that fresh epic tales of military heroism would further consolidate his nationalistic voting base [before June 2023 presidential elections], especially at a time when most Turks are struggling to survive after their incomes have severely eroded under a year-on-year inflation rate of 84%.

A Turkish military incursion would be a fight in a land that already looks like hell.

An estimated 15.3 million Syrians (out of a population of 22.1 million) will require humanitarian assistance in 2023, compared to 14.6 million people in 2022, according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. — Washington Post, December 12, 2022.

The report also cited… [that] at least 25% of children under the age of five in some [Syrian] districts are stunted and at risk of irreversible damage to their physical and cognitive development as well as “repeated infection, developmental delay, disabilities and death.” — Washington Post, December 12, 2022.

In the predominantly Kurdish northeast Syria, the number of malnourished children has surged by over 150% just in the past six months. — UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, November 8, 2022.

“Washington… is urging Turkey in ever stronger terms not to launch an operation. The Turks do not appear to be heeding Washington’s call, in part because they heard the same tune before their 2018 incursion against the SDF in Afrin, Syria, and didn’t suffer any long-term consequences for ignoring it that time.” — James Jeffrey, Chair of the Middle East program at the Wilson Center and former U.S. ambassador to Ankara, Foreign Policy, December 9, 2022.

The only advantage of a Turkish military incursion might be for Erdogan, who may well be using a war in Syria to distract potential voters from the wretched economy he gave them.

The northernmost region of Syria, which has a 910-kilometer border with Turkey, offers one of the world’s most complex war theaters. That is so not only because of the countless number of state and non-state actors operating in this third-world land with limited hydrocarbons, but also because of shifting alliances, conflicts with conventional and asymmetrical warfare tactics, and the surreal bedfellows that these factors often create.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/david-solway-2/2022/12/26/whither-canada-2-n1656418

How much can one country endure of this arrogance and deception?
– Brian Peckford, Peckford42

Canada has been much on my mind these days, weeks, months, and years, not only because I am a Canadian citizen, but because, like many of my American friends, I am witnessing firsthand the destruction of a country.

The current prime minister’s campaign, amounting to a kind of jihad, to destabilize the nation and create the world’s first “post-national state” proceeds on many levels. Among them, as I have previously catalogued, are a burgeoning national debt, a series of repressive bills making their way through parliament (C-4, C-11, C-12 and C-18), a prohibitive and unnecessary carbon tax, the deliberate destruction of the energy sector, the impending rollout of digital ID surveillance technology, and the notorious invoking of the deeply flawed and inappropriate Emergencies Act to deal with the Truckers’ Freedom Convoy protesting the vaccine mandates. This last travesty was compounded by the government’s striking a Commission of Inquiry in which it set its own terms and appointed its own Commissioner.

PM Justin Trudeau’s declared purpose of protecting Canadians’ health via the vaxx mandates by, among other initiatives, attacking the Truckers as violent, racist, and homophobic was a false-flag operation. As constitutional lawyer Leighton Grey persuasively argues, Trudeau’s “ultimate goal, which the COVID-19 pandemic helped governments like Trudeau’s to advance,” is nothing less than “total surveillance and corresponding control of human populations.”

Grey cites Ayn Rand’s dictum from The New Left: “Civilization is the progress of a society towards privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” The surveillance state pursued by autocratic governments like Trudeau’s Liberals seeks to achieve the precise opposite: a society of obeisant serfs controlled by an all-powerful panoptic administrative regime. One recalls H.L. Mencken’s pregnant adage: “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false-front for the urge to rule.”

https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-politics-china-7ca84c323b8ed15253c9cb5c04789805?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_04

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China’s military sent 71 planes and seven ships toward Taiwan in a 24-hour display of force directed at the self-ruled island, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Monday, after China expressed anger at Taiwan-related provisions i n a U.S. annual defense spending bill.

China’s military harassment of Taiwan, which it claims is its own territory, has intensified in recent years, and the Communist Party’s People’s Liberation Army has sent planes or ships toward the island on a near-daily basis.

Between 6 a.m. Sunday and 6 a.m. Monday, 47 of the Chinese planes crossed the median of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial boundary once tacitly accepted by both sides, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense.

Among the planes China sent towards Taiwan were 18 J-16 fighter jets, 11 J-1 fighters, 6 Su-30 fighters and drones.

Taiwan said it monitored the Chinese moves through its land-based missile systems, as well as on its own navy vessels.

“This is a firm response to the current U.S.-Taiwan escalation and provocation,” said Shi Yi, the spokesman for the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command, in a statement on Sunday night. It announced that the PLA was holding joint combat patrols and joint strike drills in the waters around Taiwan.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19258/ukraine-appeasement

Kissinger is reluctant or afraid to say what he really demands, which is appeasing Russia.

The grand old man of American diplomacy claims that the mumbo-jumbo he has just spewed would somehow create “a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation.” Later, however, he reduces “peace” to a “peace process” like the one he launched in the Middle East almost 50 years ago and which is supposed to be still going on fast to nowhere.

This war isn’t about territory.

Russia has more “territory” than any other nation on the planet. Some claim that annexing Crimea was necessary to maintain Russia’s naval presence in the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. But that claim too could be dismissed as an excuse for aggression.

With his policy of détente during the Nixon and Ford administrations, Kissinger arguably helped prolong the life of the Soviet Empire by treating it as an equal partner, playing a leading role in the Helsinki Accords, and providing it with access to global capital markets among other favors bestowed.

If he skims through the Kremlin media, Kissinger would see that Putin won’t be satisfied with just a chunk of Ukraine, as he has said many times, and has already set the theme for “protecting our kith-and-kin” in Moldova and Estonia, with less direct musings about a pan-Slav empire that could include Poland, Bulgaria, Serbia and Montenegro.

If implemented, Kissinger’s “peace plan” could become a prelude to endless war, cold, lukewarm and hot, in Europe, and the most disastrous attempt at appeasement since the Chamberlain-Daladier duo went to Munich.

Russian military lore is full of references to the cold months ahead in that part of Europe as “General Winter”. So, it is no surprise that President Vladimir Putin, disappointed in the performance of his generals, is looking at “General Winter” to help him snatch victory from the jaws of defeat as it had helped Kutuzov against Napoleon.

Putin’s reading of history, however, is slanted in favor of his illusions. In the Napoleonic war, “General Winter” was on the side of the defender, not the aggressor. With “General Winter” unlikely to work for Putin, he may have to look at another grand old man, this time a diplomat, to help him out of the hole he has dug for Russia.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19256/iran-basij-trained-killers

That members of the Basij appear in plainclothes makes it extremely difficult for people to identify them before being attacked. Iran International news agency reported: “According to Rouydad24 news website in Tehran, when people produce evidence that they were beaten or arrested by plainclothes individuals or even when videos of plainclothes officers arresting, beating or shooting at protesters emerge, the government always claims that they were ‘rogue elements…’ Since 1999… some regime insiders have been trying to convince the security forces to issue uniforms to all law enforcers, to no avail. Security forces are under the command of Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei who needs the plainclothes agents to save the regime from the people.” — Iran International, October 19, 2022.

The ruling mullahs claim that the Basij is a voluntary group, but its members are paid. In fact, the regime designates a large budget to the group every year. The Basij… is reportedly one the largest investors in the Iran Stock Exchange. Those who join the group are given financial and non-monetary incentives, such as easier entry to universities, obtaining bank loans, grants and getting employment.

Instead of preaching about human rights, the United Nations and the European Union urgently need to impose severe sanctions and cut the flow of funds to the regime and IRGC’s paramilitary and mercenary group to compel them to stop.

The Iranian regime’s mercenary paramilitary group, the Basij, consists of millions of members, and they are killing protesters with full impunity. Pictured: Basij commanders and forces attend a speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in honor of “National Basij Week,” on November 23, 2016. (Image source: khamenei.ir)

While the European Union is busy appeasing the ruling mullahs of Iran who are delivering weapons to Russia with which to kill Ukrainians, and while the United Nations is turning a blind eye to the massive crimes against humanity committed in Iran, neither the UN nor a single European country has yet to hold accountable the Iranian regime’s mercenary paramilitary group, the Basij. It consists of millions of members and they are killing protesters with full impunity.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19175/turkey-crushes-human-rights

Torture and abuse of citizens in Turkey is systematic and commonplace.

Kurds in Turkey are not only exposed to racism and discrimination; they are murdered simply for being Kurdish.

At the same time, those who call for an investigation on Turkey’s alleged use of chemical weapons against members of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) in Iraqi Kurdistan — journalists, lawyers, medical doctors, and members of parliament — have been detained by police and criminally investigated. On November 4, lawyer Aryen Turan was detained and released on condition of judicial control, with a ban on leaving the country, after she called for an investigation about Turkey’s alleged use of chemical weapons.

For Turkish government officials to accuse Europe of racism, discrimination or Islamophobia, while Turkish authorities victimize hundreds of thousands of their own citizens, is beyond hypocritical. It is not in Europe that Turks, Kurds and other Muslims are exposed to torture, rights abuses and other illegal acts. It is the government of Turkey that is violating and abusing their own citizens for either thinking differently or belonging to an ethnic or religious group of which the government is not fond.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-and-improved-taliban-afghanistan-women-and-girls-education-antony-blinken-11671664770?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

During President Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, U.S. officials expressed hope that the reconquering Taliban regime might be interested in joining modernity and the roll call of civilized nations. Maybe the mullahs would like Davos.

“The Taliban seeks international legitimacy and support,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Aug. 30, the official end of the evacuation. “Our message is: Any legitimacy and any support will have to be earned.” How? By “respecting the basic rights of the Afghan people, including women and minorities” and “forming an inclusive government that can meet the needs and reflect the aspirations of the Afghan people.”

On Wednesday the Taliban banned girls from attending elementary schools, as well as female teachers and other staff, the Journal reports. “My daughter has locked herself in a room since this morning and won’t stop crying,” said the father of a rising fifth-grader who wanted to become a doctor for her home village. “All her hopes are broken.” A day earlier, universities were also closed to women.

Two weeks ago the Taliban presided over its first public execution since returning to power. The convicted man had been found guilty of a murder. “Under the Islamic legal tenet of ‘qisas,’ which allows personal retribution for crimes, the father of the murder victim carried out the death sentence as a crowd watched, shooting the killer three times,” the Washington Post reports.