RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14727/iran-democrat-presidential-debates

“As long as Iran has money, we will have money….” — Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of the Lebanese paramilitary party; CNSnews.com.

“Iran Executed 110 In Six Months, Including Minors” — Radio Farda, July 5, 2019.

It is not hard to track Iran’s aggression and quest for regional dominance in the Middle East.

What should come as a surprise, is that the Democratic presidential candidates have apparently not learned a thing from the damage their nuclear deal inflicted — in Iran, in the region and even as far as Venezuela — under the leadership of their former president.

The ruling mullahs of Iran, whose undue influence and bullying in the region have been significantly restrained by America in times past, have, as expected, been championing hate and dissent against Washington. They have been monitoring events in the United States with keen attention; a vivid example is the massive interest the Democratic Party’s presidential campaign is receiving from the Islamic Republic of Iran. The mullahs seem to enjoy a cordial relationship with the Democratic Party — why not? The former administration of President Barack Obama was most generous and sympathetic to their cause: being able to create a nuclear-weapons capability.

As of now, nine or ten out of twenty candidates of the Democratic Party have been qualified to participate in the third round of presidential debate and Iran has been closely monitoring the situation examining the willingness and determination of each of the candidates to return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as Iran nuclear deal.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14728/desecration-christian-graves

While the persecution of a Christian can be motivated by particular circumstances — conflicts, sexual attraction, convenience, gain, and so on — attacks on inanimate symbols would seem to reflect a hatred for Christianity and its followers that needs no “reason” and seemingly gains nothing.

From one end of the Middle Eastern world to the other — and in Arab, African and Asian nations, and increasingly in the West — this sort of hate has become a regular occurrence, seemingly “normalized.”

Although so-called “mainstream media” reported some of the desecrations — probably mostly because the Islamic State had already publicized them — they rarely report that “everyday” extremists also engage in this macabre practice.

Sadly, despite the Western establishment’s insistence that religiously-inspired terror is a product of anything and everything but teachings, doctrines and text, the widespread appearance of people desecrating Christian graves and their crosses speaks of something else.

Although the persecution by members of some religions of live human beings, such as Jews and Christians, is certainly more monstrous, attacks on inanimate religious symbols possibly give an even clearer indication of a deadly hate borne for the “other.”

Consider, for instance, extremists desecrating and destroying Christian cemeteries and their crosses. While the act itself is largely “symbolic” — in that no living person gets hurt — it is also reflective of a committed hatred that transcends, say, responding to a physical threat. While the persecution of a Christian can be motivated by particular circumstances — conflicts, sexual attraction, convenience, gain, and so on — attacks on inanimate symbols would seem to reflect a hatred for Christianity and its followers that needs no “reason” and seemingly gains nothing.

From one end of the Middle Eastern world to the other — and in Arab, African and Asian nations, and increasingly in the West — this sort of hate has become a regular occurrence, seemingly “normalized.” A brief list follows, ordered by desecrations committed by formal terrorists, such as ISIS, al-Qaeda and similar organizations; informal terrorists, such as religious mobs; and theocratic governments.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274668/enabling-chinas-mass-surveillance-system-mark-tapson

In the 18th century, Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher, jurist, and social reformer, introduced the idea of the Panopticon, a disciplinary concept brought to life in the form of a central observation tower placed within a circle of prison cells. Each cell is flooded with light, which creates an environment in which prisoners are under constant watch. Even if no guard is on duty, a prisoner will always feel as if they are being watched. Bentham described it as “[a] new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind.” The Panopticon is the optimal prison; it enables an unprecedented level of surveillance.

When we discuss the concept of surveillance, one country automatically springs to mind.

China’s transition from what Rebecca MacKinnon calls a “networked authoritarianism” to what is now a form of networked totalitarianism is almost complete. The difference is not merely semantic. As John Naughton writes, “An authoritarian regime is relatively limited in its objectives: there may be elections, but they are generally carefully managed; individual freedoms are subordinate to the state; there is no constitutional accountability and no rule of law in any meaningful sense.”

In contrast, according to Naughton, totalitarianism “prohibits opposition parties, restricts opposition to the state and exercises an extremely high degree of control over public and private life.” The historian Robert Conquest put it best when he argued that a totalitarian state recognizes no limits to its authority.  Proponents of totalitarianism have no respect for privacy. In a totalitarian state, privacy is but an illusion.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274676/germans-under-siege-stephen-brown

“…civilization is precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace, can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within.”
-Will Durant, historian

It is a situation that the left-leaning German media averts its eyes from because it disrupts the multicultural idyll it promotes: that Germans are, overwhelmingly, the victims of migrant crime.

But leftist journalists’ looking away does not prevent German police from putting the real face on this terrible situation.

“Germans were more often the victim of a crime committed by a migrant than the other way around,” stated Germany’s Federal Crime Office in a publication titled “Criminality in the Context of Migration.”

And crime statistics provided by the German national newspaper, Die Welt, unfortunately, bear this out. The Federal Crime Office stated that in 2018 230 Germans fell victim to the crimes of murder and manslaughter, committed by a least one migrant suspect, while 33 asylum seekers were killed by German suspects.