RUTHFULLY YOURS

The fact that two key ministers, Tony Burke and Jason Clare, will face Muslim candidates running on pro-Palestinian platforms at the next federal election should be welcomed, as it provides an opportunity for their community to engage in the nation’s political process. It will also highlight for the rest of Australia the dangerous waters into which the country is sailing as sectarian political parties emerge while confidence in the mainstream parties continues its radical decline.

Australia will be able to make up its mind about what sort of future: a thriving liberal democracy or some sort of stifling, hybrid theocratic-socialist dystopia.

Australia has not yet gone very far down the path followed by Britain and France, but under this ALP federal government we are not far behind. To understand how Australia could slide into a theocratic-socialist dystopia, people need to recognize only one thing: key élites of Western countries would sell them out in a heartbeat. That is the primary lesson to be drawn from the two best-selling books about the crisis of Islam in France: Soumission (‘Submission’, 2015) a novel
by Michel Houellebecq; and Le Suicide Français (‘The French Suicide’, 2014) a history of French decline by Éric Zemmour. Let us review the frightening scenarios they depict.

For Houellebecq, this treachery begins with academics and the universities, as emphasizes by making François, the protagonist (or anti-hero) of his narrative, a professor of literature at Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle. There he specializes in the work of the influential nineteenth century novelist of decadence, J-K Huysmans, most famous for À rebours (1884), published in English as Against Nature. This is a work saturated with hatred and contempt for the West, Christianity, and the values and conventions of middle-class life, as is the vast bulk of the work done by arts and humanities academics today. François lives vicariously in this realm of aestheticist indulgence, musing nihilistically how the Western masses are little more than animals, living their lives mindlessly, without feeling the least need to justify themselves. “They live because they live, and that’s all”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20855/china-goading-iran-attack-israel

As countries around the world pressure Iran not to strike Israel — Tehran blames the Jewish state for the bomb that killed Haniyeh on July 31 — China was, in effect, publicly goading Iran to act.

Hamas is a proxy of Iran. Iran’s regime believes that it is no one’s proxy, but the Chinese seem to think that Iran is indeed theirs.

First, there is Beijing’s direct economic lifeline to the ailing Iranian economy.

Beijing also provided diplomatic cover for the assault on Israel. Propaganda support may have been even more important: Some 96.5% of the videos on Hamas carried on the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok support the terrorist group. China’s Communist Party uses that platform to amplify favored narratives.

[T]he [Gulf] region is now especially concerned about the flood of Chinese weapons into the hands of Iran and its terrorist proxies. Regional leaders should be: All three of Iran’s main proxy groups—Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — fight with Chinese arms.

China’s President Xi Jinping, apparently adopting the views of Mao Zedong, has been promoting “chaos” to pave the way for worldwide Chinese rule. Wang Yi in his call on the 11th to Tehran made a bold chaos move.

China, from all indications, wants more war in the world’s most war-torn region.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on August 11 told Iran’s acting foreign minister that Beijing supports the Islamic Republic defending its “sovereignty, security, and national dignity.” Wang said that killing Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, the terrorist group’s political leader, in Tehran violated Iran’s sovereignty and threatened regional stability.

As countries around the world pressure Iran not to strike Israel — Tehran blames the Jewish state for the bomb that killed Haniyeh on July 31 — China was, in effect, publicly goading Iran to act.

Why would the Chinese foreign minister do that? Perhaps because Beijing believes that its proxy, Iran, is losing a war and has to act fast.

Hamas is a proxy of Iran. Iran’s regime believes that it is no one’s proxy, but the Chinese seem to think that Iran is indeed theirs.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20852/britain-authoritarianism-free-speech

The teenage son of a Rwandan migrant family stabbed three little girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop in Southport, a city near Liverpool, on July 29. The murders triggered protests and riots by Britons who have apparently had enough.

Within a day of the first protests, Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave a speech in which he barely mentioned the murdered little girls, yet painted those who protested as “far right thugs…” He added that he was creating a special Violent Crime Unit, dedicated to fighting — guess who — the protesters.

Incredibly, Starmer’s first act after the murders was not, as one might expect, to deal with concerns over the safety of British citizens, but to dedicate funds to new emergency security for mosques.

Starmer could have stopped the demonstrators in their tracks by listening to — and addressing — the concerns of “ordinary” people in the wake of the murders. Instead, he chose to brand them as “far right thugs”, thereby inflaming an entire country…

Police further inflamed matters by setting their dogs on harmless protesters, arresting many, and handcuffing a 73-year-old lady with a pacemaker who had never been arrested before, and was guilty of just peacefully protesting the murders of young girls.

“I’m 73 years old and I’ve here because of them babies that has died and I’m being arrested,” said the woman, who was surrounded by riot police.

In Plymouth, according to one report, while leftist radicals were destroying a church… police were not stopping the radicals, but instead beating the protesters.

The director of public prosecutions of England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson, chillingly warned that sharing and retweeting online material of the riots was a serious offense that would lead to arrest.

So, retweeting posts on X now gets you sent to the pokey. A Muslim brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle on social media, however, while threatening to blow people’s heads off, is apparently acceptable.

What the police did not do was arrest the gangs of armed Muslim men who took to the streets across British cities. In Birmingham, Bolton, and Middlesbrough, “Muslim patrol” members beat white people, whom they accused of being part of the anti-mass migration protests.

Why were no police officers present? When West Midlands police were asked why they did nothing about “an awful lot of people armed with various weapons” (Muslim gangs) in Birmingham, the answer was that the Muslim communities had been allowed to “do their own policing”.

“We have really strong business and community relations [with Muslim communities]… we had the opportunity to meet with [Muslim] community leaders, meet with [Muslim] business leaders… to kind of understand the style of policing that we needed to deliver…” — West Midlands Police Superintendent Emlyn Richards.

He [Richards] then went on to note that the counter-protesters (the Muslim gangs) had “the right intentions” and that only “a small minority” of people had been intent on causing “either criminality, disorder or fear within our communities.”

Curiously, British police did not acknowledge “right intentions” of those protesting the Southport murders and that only “a small minority” had engaged in violence and riots against the police, hotels hosting illegal migrants, and mosques.

Contrary to what the police said, Muslim “elders” appeared to incite members of their community in Birmingham, telling them to “protect the house of Allah” against the “far right” and messaging Starmer that they were fully able to “defend themselves”.

The Chief Constable of the West Midlands… released a video statement addressed to the Muslims in the region, greeting them deferentially with “Salam Alaykum,” and reassuring them of the police’s support and giving “huge thanks” to their “elders” for their “cooperation.”

Using the ongoing protests across Britain to crack down — one-sidedly — on basic rights, Starmer has successfully exacerbated racial conflict, inflamed tensions, created division, penalized free speech and neatly sneezed at legitimate concerns.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/battle-for-britain/

Should anyone be surprised that what has been called a “wave of violence” swept the cities of Britain this past weekend?

For years, while the mass immigration of Muslims has utterly transformed their country, the overwhelming majority of Brits have stuck to form – keeping a stiff upper lip, queuing politely for buses, and biting their tongues as they watched entire neighborhoods, such as the traditionally cockney East End of London, converted to Muslim enclaves. In the months since October 7, they sat home and sipped their tea while armies of Muslims filled their streets weekend after weekend, screaming their support for anti-Western terrorism and shouting their plans to turn Britain into an Islamic caliphate. Those decent Britishers even tended to stay quiet while the few heroic members of their race who protested these outrages – men like Tommy Robinson and Laurence Fox – were abused, insulted, and unjustly arrested by a police force that has strayed far from the civilized rules of police behavior set down two centuries ago by Sir Robert Peel and has practiced “two-tier policing” – turning a blind eye to actual Muslim violence while imprisoning ethnic Englishmen who dare to criticize that violence online.

Well, eventually something’s got to give. This weekend, according to the Guardian, “bricks were hurled at police officers in Stoke-on-Trent, fireworks were thrown amid tense exchanges between an anti-Islamic group and an anti-racism rally in Belfast, and windows of a hotel which has been used to house migrants were smashed in Hull, where three police officers were injured and four people arrested. Several officers were also injured during ‘serious disorder’ in Liverpool city centre, where bricks, bottles and a flare were thrown and one officer hit on the head with a chair. Greater Manchester police said a dispersal notice had been authorised for the city centre and scuffles broke out as opposing groups faced each other in Nottingham’s Old Market Square with bottles and other items thrown from both sides.”

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-boundaries-of-free-speech?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

To loud and horrified criticism, Britain’s new Labour government scrapped a law on free speech days before it was about to come into force.

This law, which had been introduced by the previous Conservative government, was designed to enforce freedom of speech in universities, colleges and student unions. This was in response to “cancel culture”, the shocking suppression of ideas on campus that challenge left-wing orthodoxies and which has resulted in the hounding of conservative speakers and persecution of academics with heterodox views, such as “gender critical” feminists who believe that sexual identity is dictated by biological fact.

Not surprisingly, such embattled feminists along with numerous conservative thinkers and writers have reacted viscerally to the scrapping of this law. 

However, a number of Jewish organisations opposed it. They feared that it would hand a weapon to antisemites and anti-Zionists that would enable them to claim legal backing for their promulgation of poisonous views that threatened the safety of Jews on campus and elsewhere.

So which camp is right?

The Free Speech Union, which has threatened to launch a judicial review of the government’s decision, said that killing off the legislation would make it “virtually impossible for students and academics to challenge radical progressive ideology on campus”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20837/iran-mullahs-view-us-election

Since assuming office, the Biden-Harris administration, in the tradition of former President Barack Obama, released billions of dollars to Iran. In addition, there was lax enforcement of existing sanctions, waiving of other sanctions and no secondary sanctions whatsoever — meaning that any country that does business with Iran is banned from doing business with the US — placed on Iran to discourage other countries from financing it.

China therefore has become Iran’s largest customer, and Europe conducting business as usual. This financial relief has come alongside a lenient attitude towards the advancements in Iran’s nuclear program. These include more than 160 Iranian military attacks against US troops just since October; virtually shutting down the Suez Canal, thereby forcing ships, unable to buy insurance, to detour around Africa; Iran’s and its terror groups’ military actions in the region, including the war against Israel, and Iran’s military support to Russia to attack Ukraine.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, openly acknowledged that without Iran’s financial and military support, many militia and terror groups might have been unable to survive.

The Trump administration’s sanctions forced Iran’s leaders to cut funding to militias, allies, and terror groups. The regime’s militants reportedly were not receiving their salaries or benefits, preventing them from fighting. As one Iran-backed militia fighter in Syria told The New York Times, “The golden days are gone and will never return. Iran does not have enough money to give us.”

It is no wonder why Iran is apprehensive about the prospect of a Trump victory. Under Biden-Harris or Democratic leadership, the Iranian regime enjoys financial benefits and total impunity. Under Trump, the “golden days” might again come to an end.

In Iran’s latest presidential elections, the candidates revealed that they are concerned about the possibility of former President Donald J. Trump winning the upcoming US election. From their perspective, a victory for Trump would be detrimental to their interests.

Since assuming office, the Biden-Harris administration, in the tradition of former President Barack Obama, released billions of dollars to Iran. In addition, there was lax enforcement of existing sanctions, waiving of other sanctions and no secondary sanctions whatsoever — meaning that any country that does business with Iran is banned from doing business with the US — placed on Iran to discourage other countries from financing it.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20835/iran-desperately-seeking-gorbachev

Gorbachev had a thin resume as an apparatchik who had risen in the party by doing nothing, in fact, by being nobody.

When he came to London to be promoted by Margaret Thatcher, his 10-line resume introduced him as the Central Committee’s agricultural tsar who had risen to be party boss and later president of the USSR.

He was a blank face on which one could draw one’s ideal face for a Soviet leader.

Iran’s President Pezeshkian offers that kind of blank face. His thin resume inspires a variety of fanciful images.

Could Pezeshkian be Iran’s Gorbachev?

Referring to President Masoud Pezeshkian, the question was headlined in a Tehran daily Tuesday and triggered a torrent of comments.

The paper’s commentator described Pezeshkian as a man trusted by the system and thus capable of introducing unspecified reforms to save Iran from unspecified dangers.

This is not the first time that regime insiders call for adjustments in its trajectory.

The first to do so was Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, who issued an 8-point reform manifesto which, had it been implemented, would have made Iran a Scandinavian-style democracy minus the monarchy.

Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

Instead, the nation witnessed mass executions, the pursuit of an unwinnable war against Iraq and flood-like spread of corruption.