RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18634/ukraine-russia-new-munich

Mr Macron, in particular, has emerged as the chief European cheerleader in favour of Ukraine making concessions to Russia to end the fighting, while the leaders of Germany and Italy, which both rely heavily on Russia for their energy needs, are also said to favour Ukraine ceding territory to Moscow – a result that would only whet the appetite of other predators looking on.

Rather than agreeing to their demands, Mr Zelensky responded by pointedly reminding his visitors that the more weapons Ukraine receives from the West, the faster it will be able to liberate its occupied land and end the war.

In this context, plans by the European Union to offer membership to Kyiv represent a welcome gesture of support for the Ukrainian people, one that should provide a much needed morale boost for Ukrainian forces.

In what amounts to a significant geo-political shift in Europe, the European Commission has given its backing to Ukraine’s bid to be given candidacy status, the first step towards achieving full EU membership.

The challenge for the EU now will be to make sure priority is given to processing Kyiv’s application, and not allow it to become caught up in the stultifying bureaucracy of Brussels.

Any attempt by the EU to delay Ukraine’s membership of the bloc will simply be taken as a sign by Mr Putin that Europe is not prepared to defend its allies, and encourage the Kremlin — and others — to launch further acts of aggression.

At a time when there is mounting concern that European leaders are suffering from “war fatigue” over the Ukraine conflict, the prospect of Kyiv becoming an official candidate for European Union membership constitutes a much-needed morale boost for the Ukrainian people.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/saudis-crow-over-biden-coming-hat-hand-riyadh-hugh-fitzgerald/

What was once planned as a quick visit to Israel-and-the-Palestinians by President Biden has become a three-way affair, with Saudi Arabia not only added to the itinerary, but has become the main event, the meeting in Riyadh with the Saudi Crown Prince will overshadow his lightning visits to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. In Israel, Biden will attend the Maccabiah Games and no doubt discuss with Prime Minister Bennett ways for Israel to tamp down “tension” in the area – even though all such tension is provoked by the Palestinians – and he will repeat, in his conversations with both Israel and the Palestinians, the latest mantra of the Bidenites, that he “looks forward to reaffirming his lifelong commitment to a two-state solution and to discuss the ways in which we might rekindle a new political horizon that can ensure equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity, and dignity to Israelis and Palestinians alike.“

I’m not sure Israel and the Palestinians can have “equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity, and dignity,” given the failure of the Palestinians to create a free and democratic society – a failure that we see in all 22 states of the Arab League, where either despots or monarchs rule, but nowhere is there a true democracy, of citizens rather than subjects. Nor can the Palestinians, with Islam stunting their mental growth, ever hope to rival the advanced state of Israel, with the astonishing inventiveness of its people. In Israel innovation is welcome; Muslim Arabs regard innovation, or bida, with deep suspicion. As for “equal measures of…..dignity,” both Hamas and the PA have shown how little they care for the “dignity” of those they rule over, people who are not permitted to choose their rulers by elections, and who are arrested or even executed for daring to criticize those rulers. Why would the people in a “Palestinian state” fare any better than they do now under Hamas in Gaza, or under the PA in the West Bank? It will be amusing, however, to hear Biden repeat that mantra to Mahmoud Abbas – all that guff about “equal measures of freedom, security, prosperity and dignity” – that is, to the very man who is now in the 17th year of his four-year term, who had his harshest critic, Nizar Banat, beaten to death, and who has amassed a fortune of $400 million consisting mostly of aid money he stole.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/collapsing-pillars-iranian-regime-struan-stevenson/

There were three pillars on which the Iranian regime was founded, following the 1979 revolution, hi-jacked by the elderly fanatical cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The first pillar was the system of velayat-e-faqih, or guardianship of the Islamic jurist, which laid the foundations for the first fundamentalist Islamic state and was written into the constitution. The second pillar was the complete transfer of all power and authority to the Supreme Leader and from him to the theocracy of ayatollahs and mullahs, who perversely claimed their authority came directly from God. The third and final pillar, carefully designed by Khomeini, was the creation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), his own version of the Gestapo, to spread their revolutionary policy of violence and terror at home and beyond Iran’s borders.Today, the theocracy is so hated by 80 million repressed and impoverished Iranians, that only two pillars remain, velayat-e-faqih and the IRGC. Everyone knows that a stool with only two legs cannot persist.

The IRGC controls around 70 percent of the Iranian economy, including its monetary and financial institutions. It pays no taxes and funnels resources into the pockets of the ruling elite. It also commands the regime’s clandestine campaign to build a nuclear weapon. Khomenei moved rapidly to eliminate opposition to his clerical dictatorship, ruthlessly using the IRGC to murder tens of thousands of political opponents whom he said were guilty of ‘moharebeh’ or ‘waging war against God.’ The secret massacre of over 30,000 supporters of the main democratic opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin of Iran/Mojahedin e-Khalq (PMOI/MEK), in the latter half of 1988, stands out as one of the worst crimes against humanity of the late twentieth century and is now under active investigation by the UN. Startling as these figures may be, they are only a fraction of the estimated 120,000 political prisoners executed so far during the clerical dictatorship in Iran.