RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.org/irans-bad-luck-must-continue/

There’s an element of chance that affects the lives of men and nations. You can make your own luck or suffer what the world imposes on you.

Napoleon, always one to make his own luck, once was criticized that he won his battles by luck alone. He is reputed to have responded, “I’d rather have lucky generals than good ones.”

Iran has had a long run of bad luck this year. We need to do everything we can to keep it going.

In May, the Iranian regime reported that cyberattacks damaged computers at Bandar Abbas. That non-coincidence followed an Iranian cyberattack on Israel seeking to damage its water supply.

Iran’s bad luck continued in late June with what Iran contends was an accidental explosion at its Parchin military base. Parchin is, of course, where warheads and missiles are being developed. Around then, several damaging cyberattacks have reportedly occurred at other Iranian military facilities.

The best-reported explosion occurred on July 2 at the Natanz nuclear facility in a building where advanced centrifuges for enriching uranium were being constructed.

Gen. Gholam Jalali, the head of Iran’s civil defense organization, tried to blame the United States for the explosions but — in an enormously significant admission — conceded that “anti-revolutionary” elements might have committed sabotage.

Last week, at least seven ships caught fire at the port of Bushehr. Two fires could be coincidental. Seven can’t be.

On Saturday, a petrochemical plant and oil pipeline in western Kuzhestan province exploded, producing enormous fires.

https://spectator.us/oxford-vaccine-surpassed-expectations/

It has been yet another busy medical day in our ‘new-normal’ coronavirus world. Today, the Phase One results of the University of Oxford vaccine were published, confirming positive reports tantalizingly leaked last week. Also making the news is a press release from the pharmaceutical company Synairgen, touting very positive initial results from its inhaled protein, interferon-beta, in treating hospitalized patients with coronavirus.

In days gone by the publishing of results of a Phase One vaccine study would barely generate a ripple, even in the relevant medical speciality. But of course, this is no ordinary trial and we are truly in extraordinary times.

All medical products undergo a trial process, starting with studies which look purely at safety (not efficacy). Many trials fail at this stage. You may recall the disastrous Northwick Park study in 2006 which saw six healthy young people develop multiple organ failure from exposure. Once this hurdle is passed then a larger scale trial to look at efficacy is undertaken and if successful, a license is applied for and distribution follows.

Today, the preliminary findings for ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (the COVID-19 vaccine) appear to show that it has surpassed expectations. Firstly, the safety hurdle seems to have been met, although 70 percent of the 1,077 volunteers apparently did report fever or headache. Secondly, and in line with the bullish press releases last week, the vaccine garners both an autobody and T-cell response which it is hoped may provide lasting immunity to the disease. This is vital as studies have shown that patient antibody levels may fall after just three months.

There are the usual caveats: the study was over a very small timeframe and was not intended to show if it is a working vaccine, so we know little of its long-term safety or effectiveness. Nevertheless, it is now full steam ahead for the larger Phase Three study and the likely riches of being first on the market.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-uses-forced-uighur-labor-in-global-medical-supply-chain/

Workers labor in a production line manufacturing protective suits and masks at a factory of a medical equipment maker in Urumqi, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China, January 27, 2020. (cnsphoto/Reuters)

China is using Uighur labor as part of the global supply chain for personal protective equipment in an effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The workers are assigned as part of a Chinese program to turn Muslim minorities in Xinjiang Province, mostly Uighurs and Kazakhs, into factory workers and indoctrinate them to become more obedient and loyal to the state. The program is considered by observers to employ forced labor, in an attempt to eradicate the workers’ ethnic and religious identity.

Out of 51 companies in Xinjiang that currently produce medical equipment, primarily for domestic use, 17 participate in the labor program. Several other companies outside of Xinjiang that produce supplies for export also make use of Uighur labor.

The Times traced one shipment of face masks that ended up in Georgia in the U.S. to a factory in Hubei Province. That factory uses a contingent of Uighur laborers who are required to learn Mandarin and pledge loyalty to the Chinese state.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-teachers-fired-and-afraid-as-china-targets-liberal-thinkers-11595175839

Teachers who backed antigovernment protests in the city—by taking to the streets or supporting the demonstrators on social media—are being reprimanded and, in some cases, fired as China’s Communist Party increasingly moves to stamp out dissent.

Many observers say they fear the tradition of liberal education and critical thinking in what has been a major world financial center will be supplanted by Chinese-style pro-government lessons and suppression of political discourse. Pressure has mounted since Beijing imposed a sweeping new national-security law here at the end of June following a year of protests.

The law gives China’s government much greater powers to police the city and punish those accused of subversion and supporting separatism. Police officers have moved swiftly to quash dissent and implement the law.

A powerful new security agency for the city rapidly set up a headquarters, and Beijing installed an official with experience battling protests and media as the law’s chief enforcer. Public libraries have removed books by pro-democracy figures.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/turkish-supreme-court-sultan-mehmet-bought-hagia-robert-spencer/

No one should be concerned about the conversion of Hagia Sophia, the foremost cathedral in the Christian world for nearly a thousand years, into a mosque – at least according to Shahid Qureshi, writing Monday in a Muslim publication known as the London Post. Why not? Because Mehmet the Conqueror, the Ottoman Sultan who conquered Constantinople and destroyed the Byzantine Empire on May 29, 1453, bought the place fair and square. So who could object? Once a mosque, always a mosque, and after all, the Christians sold it to him!

Qureshi claims that Mehmet “purchased the property of Hagia Sophia from his personal wealth before converting it into a Masjid (Mosque). The details of the transaction are still stored in the Turkish Museum,” and he even helpfully includes a photo of the bill of sale in his article. “This is the main reason,” Qureshi explains, “why the court ordered Aya Sofya to be re converted into a Masjid.”

Christians, you see, have no right to complain that Hagia Sophia will no longer be a museum, a monument of the human spirit open to all people, but will instead become a house of worship for Muslims only. If the Christians are going to be upset over this, they have only the Christians who sold the cathedral to Mehmet to blame. “The credit,” Qureshi asserts, “really goes to the forward thinking Sultan Mehmet, the conqueror of Constantinople for purchasing the church and then creating a waqf (endowment). Had it not been for his wisdom, Kemal Ataturk’s decision [to convert the mosque into a museum in 1935] would not have been able to be legally overturned.”

The claim that Mehmet bought Hagia Sophia fair and square has been making the rounds this week among Muslims in social media, and has spread so far and wide that I’ve received quite a few emails asking me whether it is true, as apparently both Muslims and non-Muslims are shutting down criticism of the conversion of the building by invoking this supposed real estate deal. But whether or not the sales document that has been circulating and is reproduced in the London Post is authentic, this entire claim is a transparent attempt to whitewash an act of cultural appropriation and annihilation on a massive scale.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/black-lives-matter-scores-ma

Can you spot the difference in the image above?

I suspect you can.

I also suspect you will be able to guess the story behind these two “statues” before I even begin with the detail. But do not despair: this is a story with a sting in its tail. It is a story of a massive own goal by Black Lives Matter.

The fine gentleman on the left is Edward Colston. Born in 1636 to family of shipping merchants, he followed his father into the shipping business and went on to become one of the most celebrated philanthropists of his time, changing the lives of the very poorest in his home city of Bristol and elsewhere. He endowed schools, funded hospitals, gave money for almshouses and paid for churches to be built.

The “lady” on the right is a Black Lives Matter protestor with big hair and a cheap dress. Her name is Jen Reid. When the statue of Colston was defaced and torn down by the Black Lives Matter mob, she climbed atop the empty plinth and made a fist to the sky because she thought she was Beyonce…or something.

Obviously she is now supposed to be some kind of heroine for the movement. I am not sure why — maybe it’s because she says the “f” word a lot? She describes herself as a “Black Lives Matter activist,” which, if Meghan Markle is anything to go by, means she is unemployed and squatting in someone else’s home.

Ms. Reid says she “did it for George Floyd,” which seems to be the stock answer for any kind of violent act by Black Lives Matter, from smashing storefronts to burning flags to looting cheap underwear from Target. I am sure George Floyd is thrilled with these meaningful tributes* (*British sarcasm).

When the Black Lives Matter mob tore down the Edward Colston bronze on Sunday June 7 and rolled it into the river they celebrated their thuggery as if they had really achieved something. They had claimed a scalp (albeit in bronze) of a man who was actively involved in the slave trade and the shipping of human flesh.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16214/united-nations-institutional-racism

There is simply a whopping international double-standard here on what passes as institutional racism and what does not — and it needs to be acknowledged.

At the very least, people might question whether an organization that has made discrimination against one country in the world one of its operating principles… is worth the exorbitant cost. The United States, for instance, as the organization’s single largest donor, in 2018 funded the UN to the tune of $10 billion.

At a minimum, instead of paying a mandatory “slightly less than one-fifth of the body’s collective budget” every year, the US — and the UN — would fare far better if the US paid for what it wanted and got what it paid for. At present, the UN has long ceased being a force for good and is being used, first, to prop up its majority of un-transparent, unaccountable anti-democratic despots, and second, to perpetuate conflicts — largely at the US taxpayers’ expense.

All those who truly care about the eradication of discrimination and racism should ask themselves why, if racism is unacceptable everywhere else, it should still be a matter of course at the UN.

As accusations of “institutional” racism in organizations, professions, universities and cultural institutions continue to make the headlines, no one is calling out the institutional racism of the United Nations (UN).

What is institutional racism? The first entry on Google tells you, “Institutional racism is a form of racism that is embedded as normal practice within society or an organization”.

If you google “racism”, a Google dictionary defines it as:

“Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized”.

The UN counts all the states in the world as its members, and all are ostensibly equal under international law, to which the UN claims to adhere. According to its own rationale, therefore, all the member states in the UN should be treated equally by the organization’s various bodies and be judged according to the same standards. If the UN would systematically single out a minority of only one member state to be condemned for alleged human rights abuses for example, while completely ignoring the documented human rights abuses of an entire host of member states, this double-standard would amount to systematic discrimination, or “racism”, against that state according to the definition of “institutional racism” mentioned above.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/china/2020/07/xi-jinpings-gambit-not-so-inscrutable/

What’s really behind the sudden belligerence of the Chinese Communist Party? Why is it so intent on picking fights with countries that are neither a threat to it nor wish to be? Why would a country so dependent upon overseas markets for its cheap consumer goods seek to alienate many millions of customers and force those markets to look elsewhere for supplies? Similarly, why would it alienate nations that are its principal suppliers of essential raw materials, and force them to look for new markets? And why would it want to destroy economies in which it has a very substantial capital investment? What might explain this seemingly self-destructive change in behaviour?

One explanation is that the CCP genuinely believes America is now a ‘paper tiger’, that China is now in pole position to become Global Hegemon, and that it can finally throw its weight around. In Australia’s case, it may be that we are being made an example to test both our national resolve and that of the West more generally. Clearly, the CCP believes it now has us tightly in its grip, and that its control of much of the Left, especially in Daniel Andrews’ Victoria, as well as the allegiance owed to it by most of Australia’s academic elite (buttressed by 13 Confucius Centres), along with its many agents of influence in the corporate world, the media, and key bureaucracies, means that we’re impotent to resist its demands and will ultimately do as we are told.

However, this article suggests an alternative or additional explanation: that this bellicose shift reflects not some new found confidence in the historic destiny of the CCP as Global Hegemon, but quite the opposite – that it may in fact reflect the growing re-emergence of a long-standing intrinsic weakness in the Chinese regime, one that’s been there from the outset and that might soon become apparent.

The simple fact: China is ruled as a personal dictatorship by President Xi Jinping, supported by his inner circle, relying on the de facto control of the country enjoyed by the CCP, exploiting the absence of an effective constitution. Combined with the fluidity of power and authority in the highest levels of governance, the endless manoeuvrings of various elites and claimants to power, the demands of the 90 million-strong CCP membership, and the approaching succession crisis (Xi is 67), this ramshackle arrangement ensures that endemic power struggles within the CCP might easily and quickly engulf the regime. Indeed, this may already be happening. Historically, such events led to the greatest disaster in modern Chinese history.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16224/iran-nuclear-rewards

On June 30, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo urged the United Nations Security Council to extend the arms embargo on Iran. The Security Council was reluctant to do so. The UN Security Council’s unwillingness seems yet another indication of why the United States, having pulled out of the Human Rights Council and threatening to pull out of the World Health Organization in 2021, should finally go all the way and pull out of the whole “Club of Thugs” that the United Nations has become… At the very least, as has been suggested, “We pay for what we want. We insist [on] what we get, what we pay for. We abolish the system of mandatory contribution….”

The United Nations seems to have turned into a place that, instead of preventing war, preserves war.

“Iran is already violating the arms embargo, even before its expiration date. Imagine if Iranian activity were sanctioned, authorized by this group, if the restrictions are lifted. Iran will be free to become a rogue weapons dealer, supplying arms to fuel conflicts from Venezuela, to Syria, to the far reaches of Afghanistan.” — Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, UN Security Council, June 30, 2020.

In short, thanks to the previous administration, the Iranian regime, the top state sponsor of terrorism, is about to be legally free to buy and sell, and import and export advanced weapons across the world.

While Iran’s ruling mullahs have been celebrating their rewards from the nuclear deal — which, by the way, Iran never signed — according to its terms, the arms embargo against the Islamic Republic is scheduled to be lifted on October 18, 2020.

On June 30, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo urged the United Nations Security Council to extend the arms embargo on Iran. The Security Council, however — particularly China — was reluctant to do so. The UN Security Council’s unwillingness seems yet another indication of why the United States, having pulled out of the Human Rights Council and threatening to pull out of the World Health Organization in 2021, should finally go all the way and pull out of the whole “Club of Thugs” that the United Nations has become. At the very least, as has been suggested, “We pay for what we want. We insist [on] what we get, what we pay for. We abolish the system of mandatory contribution….”

Rather than being the cure for world peace, the UN is now a major obstacle to world peace. The Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky, once suggested at a meeting attended by Gatestone that if delegates to the UN are not allowed to vote in their own countries, they also should not be allowed to vote at the UN. The United Nations appears to have turned into a place that, instead of preventing war, preserves war.

The primary objective of any nuclear talks with Tehran should have been to halt Iran’s nuclear program permanently, thereby eliminating the possibility of a nuclear arms race in the region and removing the strategic threat that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to the world.