RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/taiwans-leader-hurt-by-recent-setbacks-11622907613?mod=hp_lead_pos5

TAIPEI—Taiwan and its leader, Tsai Ing-wen, were riding high last year as the island fended off the coronavirus, expanded its economy and won vocal support from Washington.

Now, President Tsai faces a trio of setbacks threatening to dent her popularity amid increasing pressure from China: a crippling drought, ongoing blackouts and Taiwan’s worst-yet surge in Covid-19 cases.

Some of the tension has eased in recent days. It has rained again, and more vaccines are on their way. Still, the confluence of crises is creating a rare opening for the opposition Kuomintang, or Nationalist Party, which has struggled for a path back to relevance and which favors closer ties with Beijing.

Ms. Tsai—who thumped the Kuomintang last year to win a second term in office—has seen her popularity plummet to below 50% for the first time since her re-election in one poll run by a former member of her party.

The crises have dented her image as a pragmatic and capable technocrat, and complicate her efforts to maintain a delicate status quo with an increasingly assertive Beijing, which never ruled the democratic island but claims it as part of Chinese territory.

Though Ms. Tsai is unable to run again for re-election, the crises are chipping away at the political fortunes of her Democratic Progressive Party.

“Popularity and elections are not our priority at this moment. It’s people’s health,” a spokeswoman for Taiwan’s Presidential Office said, adding that the administration is aware of and open to the criticisms.

With Covid, the Taiwanese leader is in part a victim of her own success. More than 2½ weeks of daily triple-digit increases have brought the island’s total number of cases to 10,956, with 224 deaths. Those numbers are relatively small but still startling for a population that previously had fewer than 1,200 cases, thanks to a swift response to the initial outbreak last year.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/facing-a-tsunami-of-antisemitism?token

The tsunami of antisemitism over the past few weeks is the work of an axis of anti-Jewish evil that spans continents and has the whole Jewish world in its cross-hairs in both Israel and the diaspora.

It’s the product of an alliance between the Islamic world and the western left, making common cause against the Jewish people ostensibly over the Palestinian issue.

In both Britain and America, antisemitic attacks have been going through the roof. Jews have been singled out for assault in the street and in restaurants, baited on social media or from passing cars, their synagogues attacked and their children harassed in school.

These attacks were triggered by the 11-day Israeli bombardment of Hamas in Gaza aimed at stopping the thousands of rocket attacks against Israeli towns.

Despite Hamas’s war crimes against both Israeli and Gazan civilians — and despite the incitement to mass murder of Jews by the Palestinian Authority and the consequent terrorist attacks on Israelis in Jerusalem that preceded the hostilities in Gaza — the western media added to this incitement by recycling Hamas propaganda and falsely depicting the Israelis as wanton killers of Palestinian children.

This trans-national neo-pogrom is thus being facilitated by western elites who, if they aren’t actually taking part in this war against the Jewish people either on the streets or in the media, are piously wringing their hands but not taking the action necessary to put a stop to it.

The flimsy veil has therefore been torn off the hypocritical west to reveal a culture that is predominantly either hostile to the Jewish people or indifferent to their fate.

It treats no other people in this way. The killing of George Floyd produced breast-beating denunciations of “white privilege”; mass movements of illegal immigrants across the English Channel or the Mexican border with America elicit savage condemnation not of the migrants but of anyone who wants to stop this traffic; but when it comes to antisemitism (with some honorable exceptions), people look the other way.

Yet the reaction to all this by diaspora Jews has been woefully weak — a combination of outraged protest at the attacks with a refusal to acknowledge the shattering implications of what’s happening.

A video podcast made by a British Jew illustrates this skewed reaction. He was responding in particular to the recent shocking antisemitic episode in London where a masked youth was filmed telling a Muslim crowd: “We’ll find some Jews here … We want the Zionists, we want their blood!”

Minutes earlier, another Muslim had whipped up the mob against the “terrorist apartheid state of Israel” by declaring: “We love death”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17431/iran-fake-elections

The unelected Guardian Council has a history of arbitrarily disqualifying reform-minded candidates, women and those who are perceived as disloyal to the principles of the state and the Islamic revolution, from running for office.

Out of 592 individuals who registered to run as candidates in the Iranian regime’s 13th presidential election, the unelected Guardian Council only approved seven individuals to run for the presidency.

Of course, for the ayatollah, the elections are “flawless” because his regime gets to pick who runs.

Instead of condemning the mullahs for this charade of fake elections, the Biden administration — after feathering the nests of American enemies such as Russia and China — continues to try to make a deal that will not be kept, shower Iran’s regime with masses of money it demands from America’s hard-working taxpayers, and lift sanctions to further empower yet another corrupt and predatory regime.

Iran’s presidential “elections” will be held in less than three weeks. Do not, however, be deceived by any narrative that suggests the mullahs’ system is democratic or that the people of Iran freely or fairly get to elect their president.

Iran’s mullahs claim that the Islamic Republic is a “democratic” system of governance. Iran’s Supreme Leader recently boasted about the Islamic “democracy,” the regime’s political system and people’s crucial role in influencing and shaping the political establishment:

“The Islamic Revolution transformed the rule of a country from a despotic monarchy into a popular, democratic republic run by the people. Today, the nation of Iran rules over its own destiny. It is the people who choose. They may make a right choice or a wrong choice, but it is they who choose. This is very important.”

In reality, though, the Iran is an authoritarian, theocratic regime masquerading as a democracy. The ordinary people of Iran do not run the system and have no influence whatsoever in choosing who will be their leaders.

To clarify, let us begin with the top position in the Islamic Republic: the Supreme Leader. The Supreme Leader of Iran is not elected. This position is held by an ayatollah who enjoys the final say in the nation’s domestic and foreign policy issues; who is the chief of Iran’s military institutions including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), its elite branch the Quds Force and the paramilitary group Basij, and who also appoints the IRGC’s senior cadre and generals and the head of the judicial system.

Next in line are the positions of the president and members of the parliament (Majlis) in the Iranian regime. The President of the Islamic Republic basically does not have power. He acts as a puppet for the Supreme Leader and the IRGC, and facilitates their achieving their parochial and ideological goals, both regionally and internationally. One example, for instance, is the 2015 nuclear deal that the Iranian president reached with the US Obama administration and getting sanctions lifted for the Iranian regime.