RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/brexit-diary-how-would-disraeli-see-one-nation/91208/

Victorian England was not adverse to the aiding state, but with limits.

“Circumstances are beyond the control of man,” Benjamin Disraeli wrote, and he should know. He will be linked forever with the idea of One Nation Toryism, even though Stanley Baldwin coined the phrase in 1924 as a political ploy to limit Labor’s appeal among the working classes. Baldwin adapted the phrase from Disraeli’s novel “Sybil,” in which the author empathizes that England was in reality two nations: “The Rich and the Poor.” In many respects, though, that is where Disraeli’s connection with One Nation Conservatism begins and ends. What a pity for those who want to coast-by on his dandy’s coat-tails.

One Nation Tories today want more state intervention and welfare redistribution, disguised as a “leveling up agenda . . . absolutely in that tradition.” Disraeli, ever the aristocratic arriviste, wanted social responsibilities to remain with the ancient and noble families of England. Sybil, remember, was written at the height of Disraeli’s “Young England” movement of the 1840s. Its aims, partly romantic but motivated by real concerns for the “condition of England,” was a return to the “merrie” times of feudal responsibilities and noblesse oblige.

Victorian England was not averse to the aiding state, and it became more so as the century progressed, as Herbert Spencer lamented of “reform liberalism” in his famous essay, “The New Toryism.” It was limited, though, and often took the form of permissive legislation: allowing government to intervene if necessary, but trusting that the threat of state action would compel social and economic malefactors to voluntarily mend their ways.

Contemporary Conservatives are constrained by no such compunction. Breitbart London notes that among the One Nation wishlist are “spending high amounts of public money on foreign aid, attaining ‘carbon New Zero’, and raising taxes on so-called ‘unearned’ income.” Such a welfare initiative would have made Dizzy dizzy.

What, though, would Disraeli do differently? First, as an imperialist with global aspirations, he would heartily approve of bilateral trade deals with the world, increasing UK trade and encouraging entrepreneurship and economic growth. The British Empire may no longer color the globe “red,” but Dizzy could hardly object if trade made Britain “great” once more.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/the_slow_and_ugly_implosion_of_south_africa_continues.html

In 2018, Tucker Carlson highlighted the expropriation of land from white farmers in South Africa.  He stated, “As land seizures based on skin color shows, South Africa is once again becoming a place where an entire group of people is targeted for discrimination and violence on the basis of their skin color.”

Twenty-six years ago, “South Africans engaged in a peaceful revolution.  As late as the 1980s commentators predicted that any transition from white minority domination and black majority rule would precipitate a bloody civil war.  Instead, in 1994 South Africans replaced president F.W. de Klerk with Nelson Mandela in a free and fair election that astonished the world.”  Thus, “South Africans of all races voted in the country’s first democratic elections, choosing Mandela as their first black president.  The inhumane apartheid regime seemed to be miraculously ending peacefully, though much work remained to improve the lives of all South Africans.”  By the “late 1980s, however, South Africa’s economy was in a deep recession and large segments of the country were becoming ungovernable.”

Former president Jacob Zuma (2009–18) “brought the country a reputation for corruption and ineptitude.”  In fact, in 2018, the World Bank ranked South Africa as the most corrupt country in the world.

In 2018, Hammond and Tupy, “in reviewing South Africa’s flirtation with the idea of changing its constitution to let the state expropriate farmland without compensation, wrote that South Africa need only look north to Zimbabwe to see the disastrous consequences of this kind of policy.”  Zimbabwe’s former dictator, Robert Mugabe, gave “the green light to his paramilitary supporters to invade commercial farms, seize some 23 million acres of land and the confiscated farms were resettled with small scale agriculturalists.  Many of the new would-be-farmers had no real knowledge of commercial agriculture and many soon returned to subsistence farming.  The actual commercial farmers left for other African countries and the result was devastating food shortages in a nation once dubbed the ‘bread basket of Africa.'” 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16279/iran-mullahs-excited

The ruling mullahs of Iran are excited. They are convinced that a new US president, like his previous boss, former President Barack Obama, will throw them the lifeline so badly needed for their survival, their hold on power, and their ability to advance their nuclear and other imperialist plans — both in Venezuela against the United States, and in the Middle East.

Iran’s economic conditions have become so dire that even some officials are warning of possible revolt and the collapse of the Islamic Republic.

It is important to note that without Iran’s financial and military assistance, many militia and terror groups could not survive. As Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, admitted, “… Hezbollah’s budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, are from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

One of the best gifts that the ruling mullahs of Iran can receive is if Joe Biden, former Vice-President, becomes president of the United States.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/turkey-openly-declares-commitment-jihad-non-raymond-ibrahim/

While monuments to heroic Americans of a former age—including abolitionists who died fighting slavery—get toppled and dishonored, a land-grabber, mass-slaver, terrorist, and pedophile—Ottoman sultan Muhammad II—was recently honored by the president of Turkey.

During his recent public address celebrating the July 10, 2020 decree to transform the Hagia Sophia, which for a millennium had functioned as Eastern Christendom’s greatest church, into a mosque, Turkish president Erdoğan repeatedly saluted Sultan Muhammad (1432-1481), also known as al-Fatih (“the Conqueror”), for violently transforming Christian Constantinople into Islamic Istanbul. 

Of the apparently intolerable decades when Hagia Sophia served as a museum (1935 to the recent decision), Erdoğan began by quoting a Turkish poet:

Hagia Sophia, O magnificent temple, do not worry: the grandchildren of Muhammad al-Fatih will overthrow all the [Christian] idols and convert you into a mosque; they will perform their ablutions with tears and prostrate; tahlils [recitations of the Islamic credo] and takbirs [cries of “Allahu akbar”] will replenish your empty domes … Your minaret balconies will light up in honor of Allah and his Prophet Muhammad. The whole world will think that Muhammad al-Fatih has resurrected.  This will be Hagia Sophia; this will be a second conquest, a new resurrection”

Erdoğan’s and much of Turkey’s adoration of and desire to emulate Muhammad al-Fatih—this, to quote Erdoğan, “happy, blessed servant of Allah,” who in fact behaved like an ISIS chieftain—should (but won’t) be cause for alarm.

Consider: Sultan Muhammad’s sole justification for conquering Constantinople was that Islam demands the subjugation of “infidels,” in this case, Christians. He had no other “grievance” than that.  In fact, when he first became sultan, he “swore by the god of their false prophet, by the prophet whose name he bore,” a bitter Christian contemporary retrospectively wrote, that “he was their friend, and would remain for the whole of his life a friend and ally of Constantinople.” Although they believed him, Muhammad was taking advantage of “the basest arts of dissimulation and deceit,” wrote Edward Gibbon. “Peace was on his lips while war was in his heart.”

During the siege of Constantinople, he regularly exhorted his followers with jihadi ideology, including by unleashing throngs of preachers crying, 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16278/turkey-warpath

The Erdogan regime has been militarily targeting Syria and Iraq, sending its Syrian mercenaries to Libya to seize Libya’s oil, and continuing to bully Greece. It is now provoking ongoing violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

“Until the Syrian people are free, peaceful and safe, we will remain in this country.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Reuters, July 21, 2020.

“Crimes committed against Yazidis [in Syria] include forced conversion to Islam, rape of women and girls, humiliation and torture, arbitrary incarceration, and forced displacement.” — Yazda.org, May 29, 2020.

One of Turkey’s main targets also seems to be Greece…. If such an attack took place, would the West abandon Greece?

Turkey is currently involved in quite a few international military conflicts — both against its own neighbors such as Greece, Armenia, Iraq, Syria and Cyprus, and against African nations such as Libya and Yemen. These actions by Turkey suggest that Turkey’s foreign policy is increasingly destabilizing not only several nations, but the region as well.

In addition, the Erdogan regime has been militarily targeting Syria and Iraq, sending its Syrian mercenaries to Libya to seize Libyan oil and continuing, as usual, to bully Greece. Turkey’s regime is also now provoking ongoing violence between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-scandal-finally-sink-trudeau-11595795221?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has miraculously survived scandals that would have destroyed many political careers. These include three instances of wearing blackface, a decades-old allegation of groping a woman, and two ethics violations.

Now Mr. Trudeau is about to make his third trip to Canada’s ethics commissioner in five years—and it’s a controversy that could lead to his political demise.

The latest scandal involves WE Charity. Originally known as Free the Children, it was founded in 1995 by two well-known Canadian human-rights activists, brothers Marc and Craig Kielburger. WE has raised awareness of the plight of children in underdeveloped nations. It has fought to strike down abusive child-labor laws, improve education and promote healthy nutrition and access to clean drinking water.

Ottawa recently awarded the charity a contract worth 19.5 million Canadian dollars (around US$14.5 million) to administer the C$912 million Canada Student Service Grant program. WE had earlier received C$120,000 from several government contracts and C$5.2 million in government grants during Mr. Trudeau’s tenure. Mr. Trudeau asserted WE’s “extensive practice” with third parties and other charities made it “the best and only organization able to deliver on the scale.”

While few challenged the prime minister’s or WE’s motives, this changed when the charity’s ties to the federal Liberals—and Mr. Trudeau’s family—were revealed.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/the-shame-of-shamima/

She should live out the rest of her adulthood in jail — ideally a British one.

 L ast week, the British Court of Appeals ruled that Shamima Begum — one of three schoolgirls from east London who flew to Syria in 2015 to join ISIS — has the right to return to the United Kingdom, in order to appeal the government’s decision to revoke her citizenship.

The 20-year-old ISIS bride was discovered last year by Anthony Lloyd, the Times of London correspondent, who managed track her down to the Kurdish-run refugee camp in northeast Syria. Begum had left ISIS, was nine months pregnant (with a baby who would shortly die), and had lost two other children to malnutrition. She was informed by another journalist that the Home Office had revoked her citizenship.

The picture of Begum — young, mourning, exhausted, and far from home — would ordinarily have evoked pity. But she made the fatal mistake of opening her mouth.

In the course of the interview, Begum casually told Lloyd how “unfazed” she was upon finding the heads of captives in the bins. Sky News’s John Sparks asked what it was like to live with and under the Islamic State, to which she replied, “at first it was nice” and that things only “got harder” when “we lost Raqqa” to U.S.-backed troops (we being ISIS). As for second thoughts, she only had those towards “the end.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16274/persecution-christians-june-2020

A Christian teenager was sexually assaulted by his Muslim employer in early June. The boy’s father and brother were then beaten for trying to seek justice for him. — Persecution.org, June 19, 2020, Pakistan.

“These Muslim Fulani herdsmen have been attacking our communities because we are Christians. Their desire is to take over our lands, force us to become Muslims, and if we decline, they kill us….” — Ibrahim Agu Iliya, Morning Star News, June 3, 2020, Nigeria.

Police killed a man after he cited his Christian faith as reason not to falsify his testimony, as police were urging him to do….Police were trying to get Younas to recant his eyewitness testimony against a Muslim family accused of murder…. When beating him did not yield results, they tried to bribe him…. “During the attack, one of the officers shouted, ‘We will teach him a lesson for insulting us!'” — Persecution.org.; June 25, 2020, Pakistan.

“Is it wrong to have another religion? Is Christianity wrong?” — Fitri Handayani, a woman who converted from Islam to Christianity, describing her ordeals at the hands of her family, YouTube; June 17, 2020, Indonesia.

“These are our houses. In ten years, none of you will be left here and then your homes will be ours anyway.” — Kurdish representative in Qamishli to Christian family; World Council of Arameans (Syriacs); June 17, 2020, Syria.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16275/iran-make-believe-diplomacy

Now, however, it seems that, for the first time, the Khomeinist ruling elite is beginning to understand that it can neither reshape the world nor join it on its own antediluvian terms.

Unable to admit that reality, the Tehran ruling elite is trying to conjure a fantasy world in which the Islamic Republic retains some relevance.

Zarif is trying to square the circle by defining a place for an Islamic Republic that wants to be part of a world order which it hopes to destroy.

To please his hate-America audience, Zarif insists that the US no longer has a leadership position.

Zarif’s expose contains no mention of “exporting revolution”, the regime’s perennial obsession. In other words, the Islamic Republic no longer hopes to make the region like itself. Yet it is too early to say that it may be starting to think of becoming like the rest of the region.

How does the Khomeinist leadership in Tehran see the contemporary world?

The question has intrigued Iran-watchers for decades.

One reason for being puzzled is the fog of slogans that covers the reality of Iran’s behavior.

Besides that opacity, we have the reality of a bifocal foreign policy divided between a faction that dreams of reshaping the world and another that craves admission to it.