RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18754/tyranny-liberty-democracy

When presidents and prime ministers make and enforce their own laws under the pretext of “emergency powers,” then citizens should not be surprised when their leaders discover an endless supply of “emergencies” requiring urgent action.

The opposite of tyranny is not democracy, but rather liberty and individual rights. Is it not startling, then, that Western leaders extol democracy, yet pay such little homage to personal freedoms?

Yet freedom, liberty, and individual rights are rarely mentioned. In their stead, political leaders cherish the “virtues” of democracy and little else. It is as if a linguistic sleight of hand has robbed Western citizens of their most valuable heritage.

Is it not strange that Western leaders laud democracy over authoritarianism while simultaneously diminishing the power of their voters and strengthening the authority of foreign institutions [such as the EU, the UN, and the WHO]? Shouldn’t “democratic” nations decide their own fates?

Why should bigger, broader forms of international government, however, be seen as more virtuous and less corrupt than their national forms?…. For that matter, had Hitler’s Nazi Party succeeded in conquering all of Europe, would his “European Union” have deserved greater legitimacy than the national governments of Poland, Belgium, or France?

When national populations are denied self-determination and personal liberties are treated as privileges, not rights, then tyranny is never far from taking hold.

Political language manipulates political debate. Abortion opponents who define themselves as “pro-life” semantically render abortion proponents as “pro-death.” Abortion supporters who define themselves as “pro-choice” semantically render any opposition as “anti-choice.” Who wants to be “pro-death” or “anti-choice,” after all? Such is the nature of politics. Words are weapons: when wielded deftly, they shape the battlespace for our minds.

So what does it mean when Western leaders these days speak so much of democracy but so little of individual rights? Or that they preach the virtues of international institutions, while demonizing nationalism as xenophobic and dangerous? It means that national sovereignty and natural, inviolable rights are under direct attack throughout the West.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18764/biden-iran-masochistic-nail

There is no way that you or anyone else could help the Iranian people return to normalcy as long as the present regime is in place in Tehran. A people that finds itself in the hands of a brutal authoritarian regime that claims a divine mandate and is ready to do whatever it takes to remain in power, no holds barred, is beyond help by any outsider with the best of intentions.

If you help the Islamic Republic improve its economy, the bulk of the proceeds will go to strengthening the apparatus of repression, with the people receiving mere crumbs to keep their mouths shut.

If you make a deal with the supposedly “reasonable” faction within the regime, its rivals will do whatever they can to sabotage the deal. Haven’t you noticed that each time that the faction you consider as reasonable comes close to normalization, other factions start seizing hostages, putting bombs in your cities, or raiding your embassies to derail the process?

President Barack Obama even smuggled $1.7 billion in cash to “help the Iranian people” but the money went to the regime’s repressive machine. Each time, however, that cursed “goodwill” led to the seizing of new hostages and a more virulent campaign of vilification against “the evil foreign powers.”

Whatever helps this foreign power, with the best intentions one could offer, will go to the regime, not to the Iranian people.

Remember how Prince Charles of Great Britain, Queen Rania of Jordan and US President George W Bush helped collect vast sums to help the earthquake-stricken people of Bam in southeast Iran? Well, not a single farthing reached those people while Khomeinist propaganda claimed that “the evil foreigner” was using humanitarian aid as a cover for espionage and the conversion of Iranians to “canceled (manuskh) religions such as Christianity.

[T]he late Shinzo Abe went to Tehran to play peacemaker, he was insulted and told to return home empty-handed. It is interesting that President Joe Biden or whoever is his ventriloquist still thinks they can normalize the quintessentially abnormal.

“How can one help the Iranian people restore their normal life?”

This was the question that a Japanese friend put to me in 2019 in what at the time seemed to be a casual chat in a Persian restaurant in London. Three years later, I have just learned that the question had been something more than a dinner-table note to prolong the conversation. The friend in question had been sounding out a few people about the tactics that then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should pursue during a visit to Tehran to persuade the ruling mullahs to lead Iran back into “normal life.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/30/eu-appeasement-of-iran-will-only-increase-the-threat-of-terrorism/

In retaliation for a series of setbacks in the European courts, the fundamentalist Iranian regime has been accused of instigating terrorist threats to attack an annual rally of anti-regime dissidents and their supporters in Albania, leading to the postponement of the event on security grounds.

The rally was scheduled to take place over the weekend of 23 and 24 July in Ashraf 3, headquarters of the People’s Mojahedin of Iran/ Mojahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK). In January 2020 Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama expelled the Iranian ambassador and his first secretary for planning a terrorist bomb attack on the PMOI/MEK.

The Albanian government called for the last-minute postponement of the event on Friday 22 July, due to “terrorist threats and conspiracies.” Ashraf 3, in Durres, is 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Albania’s capital, Tirana, and is home to over 3,000 members of the main Iranian democratic opposition movement.

The “Free Iran World Summit 2022” was due to be attended by dozens of U.S. Senators, Congressmen, world leaders and distinguished international politicians and personalities.

The theocratic regime in Tehran has been infuriated by the jailing in Sweden on 14 July of Hamid Nouri, a senior Iranian official, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the notorious 1988 massacre of more than 30,000 political prisoners.

https://asiatimes.com/2022/07/sino-forming-of-global-south-passes-point-of-no-return/

China’s exports to the largest economies of the Global South have nearly doubled from pre-Covid levels to a seasonally-adjusted US$70 billion in June 2022 from $38 billion in June 2019.

Several factors have impelled the surge in Chinese exports, but the most important impulse comes from China’s strategic investment in digital and physical infrastructure, ranging from broadband networks in Indonesia and Brazil to power plants in Turkey and railways in Southeast Asia.

As Western nations question the benefits of globalization, China has become the world’s leading globalizer.

What I called “China’s plan to Sino-form the world” in a 2020 book has advanced so far that it is beyond the capacity of the United States and its allies to impede. Half a billion people in neighboring countries now depend on Chinese technology for communications, data processing and logistics, providing China with a nearly limitless source of young workers for its industries and an ever-expanding export market.

For China, economic outreach to the Global South is key to breaking through American efforts to contain China’s drive for economic predominance. China, wrote the influential “Observer” columnist Chen Feng on July 28, “has to solve the problem of generating its own independent growth momentum, after breaking through the critical point of the ‘Matthew Effect,’” the economic maxim that rich countries get richer and poor countries get poorer.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18755/eu-appeasement-iran

In 2015, the European powers — France, Germany and the United Kingdom — changed their Iran policy from imposing pressure to adopting diplomacy. The diplomatic route included lifting oil and gas sanctions on Iran as well as removing some Iranian individuals and entities from the list of countries to be sanctioned.

According to the preface of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action: “The JCPOA will produce the comprehensive lifting of all UN Security Council sanctions as well as multilateral and national sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear programme, including steps on access in areas of trade, technology, finance, and energy.”

The EU immediately allowed transfers of funds between Iranian and EU persons and entities, banking relationships between Iran’s banks and the EU financial institutions, financial support for trade with the Islamic Republic, financial assistance and concessional loans to the Iranian government, the import of Iranian oil, petroleum products, gas and petrochemical products, investment in the oil, gas and petrochemical sectors, as well as export of gold, precious metals and diamonds, among others.

The EU continued with this policy even though the Iranian regime was found to violate the JCPOA.

Just as Europe disregarded warnings that relying on gas from Russia would leave them open to Russian blackmail, they are again ignoring warnings that a nuclear Iran will leave them open to Iranian blackmail.

Iran will not even have to use any nuclear weapons to persuade the leaders of Europe to do whatever it likes; the threat alone should do the trick. The mullahs might even sell or give a few to their terrorist militias. The tea leaves are not that hard to imagine; one only need look at Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

Thanks to the EU’s complete appeasement policy towards the Islamist mullahs, the Iranian regime is now capable of building a nuclear bomb.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18762/iran-military-expansion-europe

The Iranian regime’s decision to give its backing to Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine… represents an alarming expansion in Iran’s military ambitions beyond the Middle East.

Arguably Khamenei’s most revealing comment during the visit was his call for Iran and Russia to increase what he termed “reciprocal cooperation” between the two countries to counter the threat of Western sanctions.

The concern now, say Western security officials, is that the commercial ties between the two countries will lead to closer military cooperation.

Iran’s very public displays of support for Russia certainly undermine the long-standing assumption of American and European policymakers that the Iranian threat, allowing Iran unlimited nuclear weapons, relates only to the Middle East — and specifically against Israel.

US President Joe Biden’s confused position on the Iran issue has been further exposed by the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, who told this month’s Aspen Security Forum that, in his view, Iran had shown little interest in negotiating a new nuclear deal.

The truth of the matter is that Mr Biden’s policy on Iran has become completely untenable, and the sooner he and his officials recognise their courtship of Tehran is doomed to end in failure, the better it will be for all concerned.

Iran’s deepening involvement in supporting the Russian war effort against Ukraine should serve as a wake up call to Western leaders that Iran’s military threat is no longer solely confined to the Middle East.

Ever since the ayatollahs seized control of the country more than 40 years ago, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s standard bearers, have mostly confined their military activities to the Middle East region, whether it is waging war against neighbouring countries like Iraq or threatening Israel through its proxies in Lebanon and Syria.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/britain-tories-and-kemi-badenoch-bruce-bawer/

“Briefly put, she’s incredibly smart, broadly knowledgeable, articulate, self-possessed, and gutsy – a no-nonsense expounder of good old-fashioned British common sense. In debate, she shines in a way that brings Mrs. Thatcher to mind. So, given that the Tory establishment is essentially Labour lite, nobody expected her to be the last person standing when the game of musical chairs was over. She fell out of the competition after the fourth vote, on July 19; the next day, happily, Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, a slavish advocate of gender ideology, authoritarian hate-speech legislation, and other progressive rubbish, was voted off the island. ”

These days, Britain’s Tory Party is not unlike the neverTrump GOP in the U.S. The problem is that so far, at least, there’s no close British approximation to Trump. When Boris Johnson ascended to the prime ministership, to be sure, some of us who had read and admired his Spectator columns for years thought that, after being handed the reins of power, he might very well deliver the goods in a way not unlike The Donald. Alas, no. As it turned out, being a sharp, snappy political writer – even one who, thinking on his feet in front of a live audience, can put up a witty argument for the superiority of classical Greece to ancient Rome – doesn’t necessarily mean that one will be a first-rate head of government.

It’s still depressing to look back on it all. The Tories won the 2020 election by a landslide – giving them a clear mandate to take back Britain from the London-based progressives – but Boris, for all his power, did less with it, at least in that regard, than any of his admirers could ever have expected. Yes, he got Brexit done. But taxes went up anyway. So did rates of illegal immigration. He ordered a very strict lockdown (which he famously violated) and pursued an environmental policy that might have been cooked up by the EPA. As “woke” ideology spread – a far more dangerous virus than COVID-19 – he repeatedly resisted opportunities to score meaningful victories against it that would only have enhanced his level of public support. Perhaps most appalling, during his tenure, horrific revelations of mass grooming-gang rapes kept on coming even as the nation’s police, to their everlasting discredit, remained far more interested in locking up critics of Islam than in nabbing Muslim rapists. But B.J. just shrugged it all off, seeming strangely detached – perhaps, some wondered, uneasy with power.  

Which, of course, is why the Conservatives, taking advantage of a relatively trivial scandal or two, finally decided a few weeks back to give old Boris the heave-ho and find a new party leader.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18715/turkey-torture

“We saw his body while washing it. There was a scar on his neck as if he had been hanged with a clothesline. Both of his eyes had burst. Blood was coming from his eyes. His nose was completely broken and filled with cotton. There was such a large swelling and bruise on his chest it looked as if a tree had been stuck there. His upper lip was almost as big as a palm. His right foot was stitched.” — Hikmet Yılmaz, elder brother of Ferhan Yılmaz, evidently tortured to death in Silivri prison on April 10, 2022.

“There are thousands of cases like this. I spoke to his brother a while ago…. There is ill-treatment and torture in all prisons, systematically everywhere.” — Sezgin Tanrıkulu, deputy of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), bianet.com. July 14, 2022.

“[W]e learned that the transferred prisoners told their families, ‘We are at risk here too. Do not make any more statements to the press.'” — Monitoring Delegation of Prisons in the Marmara Region, press conference, tihv.org.tr, April 15, 2022.

“Both of his hands have cuts and stitches…. His whole body is bruised…. He can’t see any more. They tortured him so much he has lost his eyesight. They hit him so much in the head that his head shakes all the time. His eyes start moving as if he had a stroke…. He has seven stitches on one arm and six on the other…They put him in a cell where there was feces of other prisoners. They told him to eat the feces. They beat my son and hanged him twice. And then removed him from the rope. He also hanged himself once… He said they made him do it… They put a razor blade there and told him to cut himself. They waited there so he had to cut himself.” — Beyaz Çelik, mother of prisoner Halil Kasal, who was tortured at Silivri Prison.

“I emphasize that there is no torture or ill-treatment in Turkish prisons… Almost all of the allegations against prisons are exaggeration, distortion and fiction… Such allegations were made by terrorist organizations, circles that support terrorist organizations or those who support them politically.” — Turkey’s Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdağ, t24.com.tr, April 20, 2022.

“Prisoners are under torture. There are massive violations of rights. Prisoners die, they are killed, but [authorities] say that they committed suicide.” — Fatma Kurtulan, MP of the HDP party and member of the Parliamentary Human Rights Investigation Commission, Yeni Yasam Gazetesi, April 20, 2022.

“[S]ometimes the prison guards show counter-reflexes by complaining about the prisoners that they abuse, and the prisoners get arbitrarily and illegally punished for the abuses from which they have suffered…. These incidents are due to sentences arbitrarily and unlawfully implemented in Turkey, and the widespread impunity policy for state authorities who are perpetrators of crimes.” — Mehdi Ozdemir, attorney, board member of Diyarbakir Bar Association, to Gatestone, April 23, 2022.

What makes this situation even worse is that the international community, including the UN, has enabled the Turkish government to carry out its policy of destruction of human rights with no consequences, but many rewards.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/muslims-slaughter-20-nigerian-christians-raymond-ibrahim/

Last May, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (“ISIS”) published a video of the execution of about 20 Christian civilians in Nigeria.  As with many other such ISIS-type videos, the terrorists stood behind their bound and kneeling victims, before knocking them over and carving their heads off to cries of “Allahu Akbar.”

Before doing so, one of the masked Muslims, speaking in the Hausa language, said that the execution of these Christians was “to avenge the killing of the group’s leaders in the Middle East earlier in 2022.”  This is apparently a reference to ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi—a man with a reputation for extreme brutality—who was killed last February during an airborne raid by U.S. and Kurdish forces in northwestern Syria.

The reader may be pondering how impoverished Christian civilians in Nigeria are connected to or responsible for the activities of U.S. and Kurdish forces in Syria.  The fact is, Muslim terrorists are notorious for offering any number of pretexts—many of which border on the absurd—to justify their cowardly targeting and murdering of the Christian minorities in their midst.

For example, ISIS cited similar “grievances” to justify its grisly slaughter of 21 Christians—20 Copts and one Ghanaian—on the shores of Libya in 2015.  An article in Dabiq, the Islamic State’s online magazine in English, titled “Revenge for the Muslimat [Muslim women] Persecuted by the Coptic Crusaders of Egypt,” claimed that the 21 Christians were slaughtered in “revenge” for two Coptic women who, back in 2010 and according to Islamic propaganda, were compelled by Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church to recant their voluntary conversion to Islam and return to Christianity.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18728/china-moon-explorers

“We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out,'” — Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, interview with Bild, July 2, 2022.

The Chinese have made it clear that, if they get there [to the moon] first, they will shoot down visitors.

“Many are beginning to wonder if China will soon do to the moon and the rest of space that which it has done to the South and East China Seas, Taiwan, and northern India: claim them as sovereign.” — Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, to Gatestone, July 6, 2022.

Unfortunately, President Joe Biden has no apparent interest in getting to the moon. Only Elon Musk, with his Starship effort, is developing the means to compete with the Chinese.

“We are in a second moon race, this time it’s for keeps. Whoever gets to the moon with the mostest gets to keep the moon, and the United States is lagging.” — Richard Fisher, International Assessment and Strategy Center, on John Batchelor ‘s CBS Eye on the World radio program, July 6, 2022.

“This is not the first time that the NASA administrator has lashed out at China in disregard of facts,” said Zhao Lijian, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, at his July 4 regular press briefing. “Some U.S. officials have spoken irresponsibly to misrepresent the normal and legitimate space endeavors of China. China firmly rejects such remarks.”

Zhao, known for rabid anti-Americanism, was reacting to attention-grabbing comments of NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out,'” Nelson told German newspaper Bild in an interview published July 2.