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.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/the_islamification_of_large_parts_of_england.html

In 1981/1982, for my junior year abroad, I attended Leeds University in Leeds, a city in Yorkshire, up in the north of England. At the time, being there was tremendously satisfying because, while southern England was then a very international (and tourist-ridden) region, Leeds was still extremely British, as was the surrounding countryside. By 2004, though, while in Florida, I met a woman from Leeds who told me that large parts of Yorkshire had come under Muslim control. A new book reveals that, in the ensuing 17 years, it’s only become worse.

Ed Husain, a former Muslim radical who is now a professor at Georgetown University, traveled across England to find out just how much Islamification has occurred in the country that provided the template for American liberties. What Husain found is disheartening, especially in the north of England where Islam took root while London ignored it.

Bradford, for example, is a former industrial hub about 25 minutes east of Leeds. It was a quintessentially England manufacturing city during the industrial revolution. Now, though, as Husain described to the Daily Mail, it’s becoming a hardline Islamic city:

In nearby Bradford, Ed was amazed by the lack of white English people in the city, and asked a Muslim taxi driver ‘where they are’.

He was told they had all ‘gone with the wind.’

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17432/china-coronavirus

Even if the coronavirus did not start out as a biological weapon, the world now has enough information to conclude that China’s regime turned it into one.

Proponents of sovereign immunity make valid points, but there are overriding factors. Crimes against humanity are so heinous that no one should be barred from seeking compensation.

Plaintiffs, at least as a technical matter, should be able to overcome the sovereign immunity defense: The Communist Party of China, which controls the Chinese central government, is not a sovereign.

As of this moment, 3,579,000 people have died from COVID-19, including 596,000 Americans. The Chinese regime committed mass murder…. Mass murderers do not deserve sovereign immunity protection.

It is absolutely essential that the Biden administration disabuse Chinese leaders of the notion that they can spread the next pathogen, or whatever else they are planning, without a cost.

Let us remember what is at stake. In China’s laboratories, researchers are now cooking up far more deadly pathogens than SARS-CoV-2, including those that would leave the Chinese immune but sicken or kill everyone else.

For the first time in history, one country has attacked — at the same time and in one audacious move — all the other ones.

China committed that horrific crime by taking steps, in December 2019 and January of last year, to deliberately spread COVID-19 beyond its borders.

The international community must now impose the most severe costs on the Chinese regime to, among other things, establish deterrence. Why? China’s regime committed the crime of this century and may well be planning another horrific act.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-police-make-arrests-on-tiananmen-square-massacre-anniversary-11622793577

HONG KONG—Police arrested two people they accused of using social media to promote a banned candlelight vigil commemorating the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, an annual event that is now seen as testing the limits of China’s crackdown on dissent.

One of those arrested Friday morning was Chow Hang-tung, a lawyer and human-rights activist, who is a senior member of the group that organized previous vigils. The group had canceled the vigil after police banned it citing social-distancing rules tied to the coronavirus pandemic.

Pro-democracy groups say the government is trying to dim the flames of the only mass Tiananmen remembrance held on Chinese soil. Restrictions on gatherings remain in place in Hong Kong, which hasn’t recorded a local and untraceable Covid-19 infection for more than a month.

Tensions were high in parts of the city Friday after police said they would put the vigil’s traditional venue of Victoria Park on lockdown and local media reported 7,000 officers, or more than a fifth of the force, would be deployed to avert protests Friday evening. Officials have warned that anyone attending or publicizing unlawful assemblies faces arrest and up to five years in jail.

Every year since the 1989 gunning down of student-led protesters by Chinese troops around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, crowds have gathered in the park, exercising freedoms that were enjoyed for decades by residents in the former British colony, in contrast with their mainland counterparts.

Police Senior Superintendent Law Kwok-hoi said a woman surnamed Chow and a man were arrested Friday because they had used their social-media accounts to advertise or publicize an unauthorized assembly. The two were “extremely irresponsible” and could cause others to break the law, he said.

https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=190674&sec_id=190674

France is embroiled with protests over the court decision not to try the Muslim killer of the Orthodox Jewish retired teacher, Sarah Halimi, for alleged mental incapacity to stand trial. The decision gave rise to protests in France, Canada, UK, and Israel seeking justice. The Jerusalem Post reported in late May 2021, “Leaders and officials from France, Canada, Israel and the United Nations held a special digital rally demanding justice for Sarah Halimi, a French Jewish grandmother murdered by Kobili Traore.” France hosts Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim Communities.

        This news came shortly after the cease fire ending the 11 day Fourth Israel-Hamas war during which more than 4,000 rockets and missiles were launched by the Gaza Muslim Brotherhood extremists and Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad. That reign of terror was thwarted by Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system in a nightly ‘Star Wars’ display with a 90 percent downing of incoming rockets fired indiscriminately by these Islamist extremists. Hamas aroused sectarian protests in the West Bank, Temple Mount, Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah section—originally a Jewish area seized by Jordan during the 1948—over legal evictions of Arabs who lacked deeds of ownership. Add to the outbreak pogroms in joint Arab-Jewish towns in Israel like Lod, Jaffa, Acre, and others. Israel made ‘precision’ attacks on Hamas tunnels, command structures sparing as much as possible Gazan civilians. That was, admitted by the UNWRA director before being forced to recant by Hamas. Because the US and international media provocatively portrayed Israel’s defense as “excessive” the Jewish nation’s usual Democratic supporters in Congress were riven given calls by so-called progressives of “apartheid” and “occupation” insinuating a racist anti-Semitic toxic meme. That led to an outburst of Palestinian protesters attacking Jews in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles spiking anti-Semitic incidents. Concerns over existential threats to Israel and the American Jewish community were expressed by the Biden White House, major Jewish communal leaders, and condemned by the leaders of the Democratic majority and Republican opposition in Congress.

        France by contrast banned Palestinian protests given nightly protests and burnings during Ramadan among the Muslim banlieues suburbs. The French National Assembly had introduction legislation against “separatism” —a euphemism for dealing Islamic extremism. In late April, a French policewoman was killed by a Tunisian émigré. Those illegal Palestinian protests that did occur through France were relatively smaller than in prior outbursts. The National Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse protesters in Paris and other major French cities. The separatism issue was the subject of an open letter from 1,000 French Servicemen, including 20 former generals raising the threat of insurrection, especially in the predominantly Muslim banlieues. The separatism issue will figure prominently in the upcoming 2022 Presidential election in France pitting President Macron against Marine Le Pen of the National Rally. There is also concerns about France commitment to combatting rising Islamist extremist threats to the G-5 countries in former French Equatorial Africa region of Sahel.

        Against this background we brought back very dear friend, Nidra Poller, long-term American expat in Paris, talented writer, author, and activist for her views. Nidra (right) has written extensively on Islamic Antisemitism, murders of French Jews, terrorist events in France and elsewhere. She is most noted for being one of the earliest investigators in the Muhammad al-Dura affair that involved a 12-year-old Palestinian boy who was allegedly killed by Israeli gunfire on September 30th, 2000, at the start of the second Intifada. That was a piece of classic Palestinian propaganda. It was made up. Unfortunately, it involved a French, Jewish producer for France 2 tv whose 54-second film clip triggered this entire investigation. I met Nidra Poller nearly 18 years ago in Boston to go over some of the original findings in that groundbreaking effort. Much of that has been captured in a book that she wrote, published in 2014, called Al Dura: Long-Range Ballistic Myth  Poller contributes commentary on English-speaking media for ELNET which is a strong international organization defending Israel and defending democracy.