RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16259/afghanistan-bounty-iran

Some U.S. media and politicians have been expressing their indignation of late over Russia’s alleged offers of bounty money to the Taliban for every American soldier it kills in Afghanistan…. These same journalists and political figures, however, never raise a similar accusation against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been offering the Taliban bounty money to kill American servicemen for years.

One of Iran’s motivations in extending help to its erstwhile enemy, the Taliban, is probably to foil any U.S. effort to exercise influence in Afghanistan.

Iran also may be hoping to frustrate progress in armistice talks between U.S. and Taliban representatives currently being conducted in Qatar. Iran might wish to maintain its own historical influence in the Afghan provinces adjacent to Iran. Iran seems to have allied itself with those Taliban cells opposed to the talks and has hosted these radical Taliban groups in its eastern provinces bordering Afghanistan.

The real issue here is why the U.S. media, journalists, and politicians remain silent about it.

Some U.S. media and politicians have been expressing their indignation of late over Russia’s alleged offers of bounty money to the Taliban for every American soldier it kills in Afghanistan. This unsubstantiated story is then expanded to include an insinuation that the Trump Administration has failed to take action against Russia.

These same journalists and political figures, however, never raise a similar accusation against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been offering the Taliban bounty money to kill American servicemen for years.

Iran’s bounty program for killing U.S. troops began as early as 2010. In one instance, a report indicated that a Taliban messenger was dispatched from Kabul to Iran to pick up $18,000 to be distributed to Taliban cells in Wardak Province, Afghanistan. The U.S. Treasury Department’s Terrorist Finance Targeting Center (TFTC) confirmed the relationship between the Taliban and its Iranian sponsors by sanctioning both parties. Money is passed from Iranian companies in Kabul to Taliban agents; Taliban offices in the Iranian cities of Mashhad, Yazd, and Kerman also help facilitate military and intelligence cooperation between Iran and the Taliban.

During the time when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, Shia Iran opposed Kabul’s radical Sunni regime. But after Al-Qaeda’s Afghanistan-based 9/11 attack on the United States, Iranian intelligence agencies began to open links both to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), for instance, issued Iranian passports to Al-Qaeda and presumably the Taliban.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2020/07/20/report-china-is-using-forced-labor-to-manufacture-face-masks-n666122

The New York Times reports that China is using what amounts to slave labor to manufacture face masks.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to drive demand for personal protective equipment, Chinese companies are rushing to manufacture the gear for domestic and global consumption. A New York Times visual investigation has found that some of those companies are using Uighur labor through a contentious government-sponsored program that experts say often puts people to work against their will.

The Uighurs are an ethnic minority in China, which is majority Han Chinese.

The report may shed some light on video we and many others posted last week.

The video dates to at least Sept. of 2019, and apparently shows Chinese government officers in black guarding Uighurs who are blindfolded and shackled, kneeling, before being loaded onto trains. The video reportedly originates in Xinjiang, the province in which the Uighurs live and are forcibly moved from to work in factories elsewhere. Interestingly, many of the officers in black are wearing face masks.

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/can-britain-find-a-leader-like-benjamin-disraeli/91193/

“Conservatism,” wrote Disraeli in his novel Coningsby, “assumes in theory that everything established should be maintained; but adopts in practice that everything that is established is indefensible.”

Much like the Conservative Party in Britain today, the party that Disraeli joined as a young MP was suffering a crisis of faith. Would it maintain old verities at the risk of political annihilation? Or jettison them for faddish ideals and make a play for popular esteem?

This is a moment for Boris Johnson to study his famous 19th century predecessor. Disraeli’s genius was to recognize that Conservatism’s roots remained vital and cherished by the British population. Only electors were denied the best that Toryism could offer, since the party’s leading politicians either abandoned their heritage or lacked the courage to defend it.

Tories are once more at a crossroads. And, like the 1840s, a conservative disposition remains alive in the United Kingdom while its leaders choose to curry favor more with the press than with the voting public. Apostasy starts at the head. Boris Johnson, James Delingpole writes, “is going to go down as the Prime Minister who cancelled London.”

The Prime Minister’s problem, Mr. Delingpole believes, “is that he is a fundamentally unserious person.” Cometh the times, cometh the man? Not with BoJo. Resolving the political and economic crises overwhelming the UK “requires courageous, principled leadership of a kind Boris is quite incapable of providing,” is Mr. Delingpole’s assessment.

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.