RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/22/why-germany-is-ripe-for-revolt/

As Germany’s federal elections approach this weekend, chancellor Olaf Scholz and his Social Democrats (SPD) are bracing for their worst results since 1887. The SPD is battling with its equally unpopular coalition partner, the Green Party, for a humiliating third place, behind the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The coming bloodbath for Scholz’s government speaks to far more than the haplessness of his leadership or the unpopularity of his party. Germany has just endured two years of recession – the longest economic slump in its postwar history. Industry is in freefall, shedding almost a quarter of a million manufacturing jobs since the start of the pandemic. A series of terror attacks by Islamists and asylum seekers has made many Germans wonder if the state can do its basic duty to keep them safe. Talk of German efficiency and punctuality now sounds like a sarcastic joke, as roads and bridges fall into disrepair, trains are routinely late and infrastructure projects are plagued by delays and cost overruns. One in five German children lives in poverty. Germany is not merely in an economic downtown – it faces a profound structural crisis, largely of its elites’ own making.

None of these problems began in earnest in the Scholz era. The chancellor is merely the current frontman for a long-running ‘consensus’ that has now become unsustainable and unsupportable. Tellingly, at the last federal elections in 2021, Scholz campaigned as the continuity candidate following the long reign of CDU chancellor Angela Merkel, under whom he served as vice-president and finance minister in a ‘grand coalition’. He even aped her signature ‘Merkel rhombus’ hand gesture to ram this point home. The accusation that ‘politicians are all the same’ rings far truer in Germany than elsewhere. Every mainstream party is implicated in this crisis.

Foreign admirers of Germany praise the ability of its politicians to form a consensus, rather than squabble or try to score partisan points. This is what makes Germany a ‘grown-up country’, as John Kampfner puts it in his staggeringly poorly aged 2021 book, Why the Germans Do it Better.

A less charitable interpretation of contemporary German politics would be that its leaders are gripped by groupthink. Policies, ideologies, ways of doing things become easily entrenched. The result is that when the ideas of the day are bad, they are shared not only across parties, but also by the broader elites, in business, media and culture. The main challenge to this received wisdom comes from the fringes, and so it can comfortably be ignored. Not even a change of governing party will necessarily lead to a change of course.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21418/iran-same-nuclear-game

Adding to the regime’s apprehensions, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently repeated the need to enhance Iran’s military capabilities. His statement exposes the real intentions behind Iran’s diplomatic overtures…. The regime has absolutely no interest in abandoning its nuclear ambitions or curbing its support for terrorist groups; rather, it seeks to buy time and resources precisely to maintain its long-term strategic goals.

The only way to curb Iran’s aggressive ambitions is through sustained economic sanctions, military deterrence, dismantling its nuclear program, and especially regime change. No one must ever again receive 74 lashes or prolonged imprisonment for a song protesting women’s mandatory head coverings. Girls must be able to go to school again without fear of being gassed. People must be able to practice the religion of their choice without being flogged or imprisoned. And no woman or girl must ever again be murdered or flogged for declining to wear a headscarf…. In 2024 alone, 975 Iranians were executed – a “horrifying escalation.”

The world must not make the same mistake — leaving a fanatic regime in power to wield its fanaticisms — ever again.

In 2015, the Iranian regime successfully manipulated the West into believing that it was ready to embrace moderation and diplomacy. Under the so-called “moderate” president, Hassan Rouhani, Iran engaged in negotiations that led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the “Iran nuclear deal.” This agreement provided Iran’s ruling mullahs with significant sanctions relief, unfreezing billions of dollars in assets, allowing it to resume selling oil on global markets, and the ability legitimately to have as many nuclear weapons as they liked in just a few years – well after the deal’s father, President Barack “not on my watch” Obama was safely out of office — which just so happens to be this coming October 2025.

While Western governments portrayed the JCPOA as a diplomatic victory, the Iranian regime saw it as a lifeline. Iran’s economy had been severely weakened by sanctions imposed during the George W. Bush administration, but the Obama administration’s eagerness to secure a deal gave Tehran exactly what it wanted: money, legitimacy, time and a path to nuclear weapons.

The primary beneficiaries of the JCPOA were not the Iranian people. Instead, the biggest winners were the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the regime’s network of proxy militias and terrorist organizations across the Middle East and beyond. With the influx of cash, Iran expanded the IRGC’s operations, funneled weapons and cash to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, bolstered Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and raced ahead with its nuclear weapons program.

https://www.thefp.com/p/kemi-badenoch-i-dont-think-doge-is

On Monday at the ARC Conference in London I sat down with Kemi Badenoch, who has been in charge of the Conservative Party for a little more than 100 days. When I last spoke to her—in December, on Honestly—Trump had just become the president and she had just become opposition leader. I asked her if she could turn her party—and ultimately, her country—around? And if so, how? This week, we sat for a follow-up conversation on immigration, the economy, whether the vibe shift has made it to the UK, and more.

Bari: One of the things that everyone has been talking about over the past few days is the blistering speech that J.D. Vance gave in Munich in front of a stunned group of European bureaucrats. And I want to read just one line back to you. “The threat that I worry about most vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia. It’s not China. It’s not any other external actor. What I worry about most is the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” What did you think of the speech?

Kemi: I thought he was dropping some truth bombs, quite frankly. The Munich Security Conference clearly was not expecting what he had to say. And I found it fascinating that the chair of the conference burst into tears at the end of it and needed a hug because of how tough J.D.’s speech had been.

This is what I was talking about when I gave my speech this morning. It’s not liberal values that are the problem. It’s weakness. And that’s what J.D. was trying to tell that conference, too, that we need to get tougher. There’s this belief that tolerance is the core fundamental European value. To the extent that we are tolerating things that are actually destroying everything else, it’s this extreme view of tolerance that is undermining our security.

BW: What are some of the things that Europe and specifically the UK have tolerated that you think are no longer going to be tolerated in our new political moment?

KB: Well, the UK is not having a new political moment just yet. That’s what I want to bring about.

BW: Do you agree there’s been a global vibe shift?

KB: No, I don’t think so. I think that that is premature. I think there has been a big shift in the U.S. There has not been a global shift. Because of the dominance of U.S. media it can sometimes mean that people think that’s everything that’s going on—but it is absolutely not.

Nothing has changed in the rest of the world, as far as I can see. It looks like something may be about to change in Ukraine. But what Europe needs to look at and what we need to fix right now is our understanding of what it is that we are protecting. And it’s not just protecting tolerance of things that will destroy us. One example is what’s happening in the courts. We are having novel and expansive interpretations of law used in a way that was never the intention of Parliament. Parliamentary sovereignty is being eroded. We need to fix all of that.

https://www.jns.org/icrc-despite-criticism-still-taking-part-in-hamas-hostage-ceremonies/

Although the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) previously issued a plaintive call for hostage releases to be carried out in a “dignified manner” following criticism from U.S. Senate leaders over its participation in Hamas’s handover ceremonies, the ICRC still took part in Thursday’s exhibition involving the transfer of four dead bodies.

While Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the ICRC had refused to cooperate in the ceremony, almost leading to a “blowup,” Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights attorney and CEO of the Israel-based International Legal Forum, said that report wasn’t accurate.

“Apart from some timid request by the ICRC for a ‘private, dignified handover of hostages’, today’s release again descended into an obscene and macabre propaganda display, in which a Red Cross representative even joined a masked Hamas terrorist on stage, alongside the coffins of the four murdered hostages,” he told JNS.

Ostrovsky noted: “Under the Geneva Conventions, for which the ICRC serves as guardian, ‘humiliating and degrading treatment,’ such as what Hamas is doing in parading the hostages on stage, including the murdered captives, is considered a gross violation of international law and a war crime.” 

The ICRC, in a statement on Wednesday, urged “those with the responsibility and the authority over these releases, and those with influence on them, to ensure that they are conducted with privacy, respect, and care.” 

Hamas prisoner ceremonies, in which hostages are presented to braying Gazan crowds and forced to thank their tormentors, have been denounced by Israeli and U.S. leaders. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the crowds of Gazans who mobbed three Israelis during a Jan. 30 release. 

U.S. President Donald Trump expressed shock at the emaciated condition of three others released on Feb. 8. American lawmakers condemned the ICRC for its part in the ceremonies, saying the agency risked jeopardizing its image as an unbiased actor. (The Red Cross claims two of its seven principles are “impartiality” and “neutrality.”)

U.S. Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told The Washington Free Beacon website on Wednesday, “Participating in Hamas’s propaganda ceremonies definitely calls into question their supposed neutrality. Seems like the ICRC is more concerned about their public image than actually fulfilling their mission to protect the lives and dignity of victims of armed conflict.” 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21419/prosecuting-unacceptable-opinions

On CBS television recently — in a scene straight out of the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police for political repression — three German prosecutors being interviewed explain that their job is to suppress “unacceptable opinions.”

The question, however, clearly is not actually about repressing all false information – just that, it seems, which displeases the so-called “left” as well as many of Europe’s newcomers. As one of the three German prosecutors put it, “Freedom of expression is fine, but there are limits.” There are, and they are carefully laid out in the 1969 US Supreme Court decision Brandenburg v. Ohio…

The so-called “left”, nevertheless, appears to have reinvented itself in a form that rejects everything that is not itself.

Marie-Thérèse Kaiser, a politician from Germany’s right-wing political party Alternative für Deutschland… had posted on social media in 2021, questioning the socialist mayor of Hamburg’s decision to welcome Afghan refugees, by citing statistics about Afghan men’s involvement in gang rapes in Germany. The court ruled that her statements violated the “human dignity” of Afghan refugees as a group…. The court did not contest the validity of the statistics. She was therefore convicted not for peddling “false information,” but for telling the truth.

The good news is that the funding of this industry of lies by the US government is over. You can be skeptical of certain practices in Islam without being “phobic” and refuse to allow biological men (xy) to take part in women’s (xx) competitions without being “hateful”. Let us hope this trend will jump the pond.

A cultural war appears to be brewing between Europe and the United States.

At the Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2025, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance surprised attendees by downplaying external threats to Europe, instead emphasizing what he called “the threat from within” Europe. Vance argued that the greatest danger to European democracy stems from its own leaders’ retreat from fundamental values, such as freedom of speech and democratic principles. He lambasted European governments for suppressing free speech, citing examples like Sweden’s conviction of a Christian activist for burning a Quran, Germany’s crackdowns on anti-feminist online comments, and the UK’s restrictions on religious expression near abortion clinics. Vance compared these actions to “Soviet-style” censorship, suggesting Europe is abandoning the liberties it once championed during the Cold War.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/muslim-terrorists-behead-70-christians-in-church-in-the-congo/

Open Doors International, a worldwide organization which supports Christians who suffer persecution and discrimination for their faith, reports that the bodies of 70 Christians were found in a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). They had been beheaded by jihadists in the latest horror of the ongoing Islamic genocide of Christians in that country and elsewhere throughout Africa.

According to local sources, at around 4 a.m. last Thursday (13 February) militants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) – a group with direct ties to the ISIS (Islamic State) terror group – seized 20 Christian men and women from their homes in Mayba in northeast DRC. Later, the militants surrounded the village and captured 50 more believers. All 70 were held hostage for a short period and then taken to a Protestant church in nearby Kasanga and slaughtered, reportedly with machetes.

You wouldn’t know any of this by checking in with the mainstream media, partly because they don’t care about the massacre of Christians anywhere in the world, partly because they can’t figure out how to blame Israel and the Jews for the beheadings of African Christians, and partly because they’re too busy ginning up outrage over Trump firing IRS employees and dismantling the DEI grift.

But some accounts on social media tried to raise awareness. The X account “Libs of TikTok” tweeted, “Seventy Christians were found beheaded in a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They were reportedly hostages of the Islamist group ADF—an ISIS affiliate. Why isn’t the MSM covering this story??”

Pro-life activist Lila Rose posted about the massacre as well: “Horrific. 70 Christians were brutally beheaded by an Islamist group inside a church in the Democratic Republic of Congo Where’s the media outrage? Pray for persecuted Christians.”

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/21/temper-tantrums-by-zelensky-and-european-leaders-could-scuttle-trumps-ukraine-peace-efforts/

You would think that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be extremely grateful to President Trump for his extraordinary full-court press to end the war in Ukraine. You might also assume that America’s European allies would appreciate that America now has a president who is reasserting strong American leadership on the international stage to promote peace in the Ukraine/Russia War, the Middle East, and around the world.

Over the last two weeks, Trump began an aggressive diplomatic effort to end the war in Ukraine. He enlisted his National Security Adviser, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Treasury, Russia/Ukraine special envoy, Middle East special envoy, and other officials to engage with Ukrainian, European, and Russian officials on how to end the war. Trump spoke on the phone with Putin and Zelensky. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff arranged the release of American prisoners from Russia, which hopefully was a sign of good faith by Putin in joining future peace talks.

This week, Secretary of State Rubio, National Security Adviser Waltz, and Witkoff held four hours of meetings in Riyadh with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Russian foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov. This meeting was intended to repair U.S.-Russian relations after years of neglect by the Biden administration and start a conversation with Russian officials on how to reach a cease-fire and a peace agreement in the Ukraine War.

Instead of promoting and supporting Trump’s peace efforts, European leaders and Zelensky threw temper tantrums. They have opposed everything Trump has tried to do, asserted that Trump is siding with Putin against Ukraine, and claimed they are being excluded from U.S. peace efforts.

European leaders, Zelensky, and the mainstream press have harshly attacked President Trump and his national security team for appeasing Putin, claiming that the U.S. talking with Russian officials rewards Russia by ending its isolation. This argument doesn’t make sense because it obviously is impossible to negotiate an end to the war without dialogue with Russia.

The real issue here is that Zelensky and European officials want to stick to the fantasy policy on the war they pursued with the Biden administration. This included no compromises whatsoever to Russia. Russia must withdraw from all Ukrainian territory. They want Russia to pay reparations to Ukraine and Russian officials to be tried for war crimes.

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/africa/on-the-road-to-bulawayo/

In 1980 Bulawayo was the pearl of Rhodesia. Beautifully maintained, it was well laid out with attractive gardens, public spaces, excellent utilities and competently functioning services. Former residents speak nostalgically of their happy memories.

Try it now (above). Berlin 1945 is not too much of an exaggeration. Buildings are crumbling, closed and shuttered ruins, exuding an air of emptiness, desolation and gloom. The railway station is permanently closed. Giant potholes making the road look like the surface of the moon ensure travel over 20kms is impossible. There are no shoulders and cars just cruise on regardless through the unsigned intersections. Alongside the road sit or lie listless ghost people with pathetic displays of goods. The museum, formerly one of the best in Africa, now has dusty untended cabinets mostly invisible due to the theft of light bulbs.

It is a picture of utter dystopia, African style. In one of the worst examples of vicious irony, a statue of Joshua Nkomo, the leader of ZAPU, has displaced Cecil Rhodes – no doubt intended as a reminder to the locals of the near-genocide of Nkomo’s followers by Mugabe’s North Korean thugs should they have any ideas about protesting their fate.

What produces this oasis of desolation and despair, no different to the state of the rest of Zimbabwe? Forty-five years of rule by ZANU, that’s what, a depressing rebuttal to Ian Smith’s comment that had Rhodesia Front been left to gradually bring in full voting while retaining white expertise and institutional memory there would have been a far superior outcome.

What does this tell us? Every independence or liberation party in Southern Africa, if not the rest of Africa, once in power has held on regardless, running their economies into the ground and producing desolation, poverty and misery for their people that dwarfs anything they experienced in the colonial days. Look at Mozambique, Angola, Namibia where the governing parties have held on, going to any lengths to ensure that no democratic process can evict them, regardless of the desire of the suffering population.

It is not difficult to find how this comes about. These parties are run by unreconstructed Stalinists, hardwired with the National Democratic(!) Revolution ideology. This template is the map for centralising all state institutions, stripping away democratic rights and crushing all opposition to create a one-party state. The results are predictable and appalling. The mass of the population are driven into severe poverty, infrastructure is ruined, the remaining middle class is crushed while the party and its acolytes become enormously richer, stripping the country of every resource they can lay their hands on. It is kleptocracy that dwarfs countries like Nigeria, even Russia.

Consider Zimbabwe. Infrastructure gone, farming ruined – the former breadbasket of Africa now has to import food – and fully one-third of the population has fled to other countries. Mozambique is no better. The government has ruthlessly suppressed all protest after an election it lost. Such is the desolation and poverty that an ISIS group has invaded the oil-rich north, where they have no difficulty finding supporters among the wretched population.