RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15689/iran-train-hits

After weeks of debate, the outgoing Majlis had rejected the budget with a clear majority. The “Supreme Guide”, however, needed the budget to release funds for the various military and security organizations on which the regime is built not to mention stipends for Bashar al-Assad, Hassan Nasrallah, the Houthis, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Iraqi militias and kindred groups across the globe.

In other words, Trump’s policy has forced the Islamic Republic to assume its true identity as a typical “Third World” regime based on the military-security apparatus with a pseudo-theocratic façade.

The daily Kayhan, believed to reflect Khamenei’s views, claimed last Tuesday that, in a letter transmitted through the Swiss ambassador, Tehran had “indicated agreement” to return to a de facto recognition of “The Zionist regime”, disarming of the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah and end of support for Hamas

No longer enjoying access to massive amounts of easy money from oil exports, the Khomeinist leadership is growing daily more desperate to loosen the lasso thrown by the Trump administration. Always anxious not to lose face, it has modified aspects of its behavior, confirming the view that the Khomeinist train, which according to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had no reverse gear, would stop only if it hits something hard.

One of the arguments advanced by Democrat critics of US President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy towards Iran is that, far from persuading Tehran to change its behavior, it has helped marginalize the so-called “moderate faction” and propelled the “radicals” into an even more aggressive posture.

At first glance, the criticism may appear justified. In last month’s parliamentary election, the “moderate” faction, always the Cinderella of the system, was reduced to the status of a mouse in the Khomeinist kitchen.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/world/coronavirus-news.html?emc=edit_na_20200307&ref=cta&nl=breaking-news&campaign_id=60&instance_id=0&segment_id=21987&user_id=2dfc89bd6c52e6103e5ac62f916a8f0d&regi_id=2636639

Italy’s government is taking the extraordinary step of locking down entire sections of the country’s north to fight the virus.

Italy’s government is taking the extraordinary step of locking down entire sections of the country’s north, restricting movement for a quarter of the population in a sweeping effort to fight the coronavirus not seen outside of China.

“We are facing an emergency, a national emergency,” Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said in announcing the government decree in a news conference after 2 a.m.

The move is tantamount to sacrificing the Italian economy in the short term to save it from the ravages of the virus in the long term. The measures will turn stretches of Italy’s wealthy north — including the economic and cultural capital of Milan and landmark tourist destinations such as Venice — into quarantined red zones until at least April 3. They will prevent the free movement of roughly 16 million people.

Funerals and cultural events are all banned under the measures. The decree required distance of one meter, including in sporting events, bars and supermarkets.

The Italian outbreak, already the worst in Europe and the worst outside of Asia, has inflicted serious damage on one of the Continent’s most fragile economies and triggered the closing of Italy’s schools.

Italy’s cases more than doubled this week from about 2,500 infections on Wednesday to more than 5,800 on Saturday, according to Italian authorities and the World Health Organization. Deaths rose by 36 to 233.

https://www.meforum.org/60539/islamists-very-good-chance-of-conquering-france

Michel Gurfinkiel, founder of the Paris-based Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute and a writing fellow at the Middle East Forum, spoke to Middle East Forum Radio host Gregg Roman on February 12 about the consequences of massive Muslim immigration into France.

Domestically, the past fifty years of steady immigration from Islamic countries into France is “transforming the fabric of French society” from within. Demographic and sociological surveys indicate that 10-15% of the French population is now of Muslim origin, including 20-30% of French citizens or residents under the age of 25. Some integrate successfully, but many align with the most radical and militant expression of the religion. Their rejection of France’s secular constitution is matched by resentment of the French military’s fight against global jihadism in Africa and the Middle East, seen as a “deliberate assault … on Islam.”

Whereas religious zeal is steadily increasing among French Muslims, Gurfinkiel said that “the classic national religion of France, Catholicism,” is declining, citing research found in The French Archipelago (L’archipel français) by French pollster, demographer and sociologist Jérôme Fourquet. Traditional family and marriage are “unraveling among the native French,” while birthrates drop.

Islamic groups observing this change respond in two ways: those who support jihad to take control of France and those who see the inevitable ascent of Islam through non-violent “dawah” (proselytism) as the answer to a society “ripe for change.” One way or another, according to Gurfinkiel, “Islam stands a very good chance to simply conquer … this country.”

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/03/understanding-and-misunderstanding-china/

The Hong Kong protesters should demonstrate to us once and for all that the Chinese are not genetically conditioned, compliant and quietist “yellow ants”, as many in the West still assume. Nor must we forget 1989 when young freedom protesters surrounded a Statue of Liberty on Tiananmen Square. About one million Beijing residents from all walks of life, including numerous party and union officials, demonstrated for reform and greater freedom. Most remarkably, Zhao Ziyang, the general secretary of the Communist Party of China after a long career in the Party elite, addressed the crowds on the square. He advocated freedom of the press and freedom of association, free markets and parliamentary democracy. Could a leader like that again one day emerge from the bosom of the CPC?

Of course, earlier generations of Chinese had to knuckle under to survive, buy a decent apartment and give their children a good education. Many still do. But many of their children and grandchildren now have attained middle-class living standards or better, together with the education and knowledge which come with that. More and more Chinese—in the PRC and the diaspora, including in Australia—now aspire to civic, economic and political rights. And they are prepared to stand up for their liberties.

During my visits to the PRC over the past forty years, I have seen a pervasive shift from unquestioning compliance and the pursuit of narrow material aspirations to demands for individual freedoms. Many Chinese now complain about the oppressors in Beijing and the surveillance state. “It takes the authorities a mere seventeen minutes to know exactly where everyone is at the moment,” they joke. “China is so poor at soccer because the national team consists of players with money to bribe the selectors,” you are told. Ordinary folk one meets decry openly the blocking of Google, Wikipedia and YouTube by online censorship—and show you how to circumvent the ban. America-based, Mandarin-speaking bloggers, whose political comments are critical and often well-informed, have hundreds of thousands of tech-savvy, VPN-enabled followers in the PRC. Their blogs often attract a hundred times the number of viewers that the PRC’s main broadcaster gets.

The professors and students of Shanghai’s Fudan University, whose charter contains the motto “freedom of thought”, but who have been officially instructed to drop it, now defiantly sing their campus anthem daily, extolling “freedom of thought and academic independence”. Many in the rapidly growing middle class speak admiringly of the individual freedoms they have observed in the West during holiday trips or semesters of study.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/06/coming-migrant-wave-set-to-exact-consequences-in-europe/

The Obama era, it is often falsely suggested, was one of “no corruption” and a “strong multilateralism” on the international stage where Atlanticism held sway and challenges to U.S.-led western liberal democratic order were easily neutralized. Then, we were assured, the policymakers at the U.S. State Department and their like-minded allies at Langley had everything under control.

This is the impression left by a horribly biased media on both sides of the pond, still raging at the audacity of hoi polloi who dared not only to elect the unpalatable Donald Trump as president of the United States, but who also saw to it that Brexit be seen through to the end.

Upon closer inspection, one will note that Afghanistan continues to be a raging quagmire, with the Taliban threatening what little is left of the U.S.-backed Afghan National Army. Presidential candidate Joe Biden promised everyone way back in 2012 that U.S. forces were on the way out within months. This is America’s longest historical conflict, soon to break the two-decade milestone should current peace talks collapse (a very safe bet).

Libya, where the United States “led from behind” (as per President Obama), continues to be ravaged by civil war between various tribal and jihadi factions. Muammar Gaddafi’s removal was sold as an easy “pick off” but Obama’s legacy (and to be fair, the legacies of the UK’s David Cameron and France’s Nicolas Sarkozy) is one of modern-day slave markets, a destroyed economy, an annihilated society, and a continuing migrant crisis for which Europe continues to foot the bill.

And as they are paying the price for Obama’s Libya policy, Europe is still paying the price for his Russia policy. Wrenching Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit has been presented as a victory for liberal democracy and the Western-led global order against an “authoritarian” and “revanchist” Russia.

What could have been the biggest strategic victory of Obama’s foreign policy instead descended into a stalemate whereby a horribly corrupt rump Ukraine has exposed all sorts of shady practices and practitioners, ranging from Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort to the clearly corrupt Hunter Biden. The steadily increasing sanctions regime leveled at Moscow and key Russians by the United States had the added effect of harming European business interests, leading to resentment among both German and French manufacturers. Ukraine’s conflict continues to fester as an open wound, with resolution still far off in the distance.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15670/china-coronavirus-lies

“The epidemic has exposed this country completely in its corruption, bureaucracy, information control and censorship.” — Phillip Wu, a freelance writer in Beijing, The Guardian, March 1, 2020.

Then there are many instances of journalists and activists who told the truth, but who were arrested or “vanished”. The Chinese regime is now even announcing plans to publish a book in six languages about the outbreak that portrays President Xi as a “major power leader” with “care for the people”.

Italy’s main fatal mistake was trusting China’s regime. Instead of checking everyone — Chinese or Italian — returning from China since January, Italy kept its borders open. We are now dealing with tens of thousands of Italians under quarantine….

The idea that the coronavirus might be related to Wuhan’s virus research laboratory is considered by some a “conspiracy theory”, yet China’s refusal immediately to accept help from the US Centers for Disease Control understandably arouses suspicion.

“On current course, China is liable to do significant damage to the rest the world, by accident or intent,” wrote columnist Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal on January 29.

“The Chinese Communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens but to the world at large”, wrote the noted historian Victor Davis Hanson on February 20.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/06/how-bad-is-antisemitism-in-europe-surveys-suggest-its-rampant

Hesitating to dub strangers antisemites is wise, especially based on limited information. But the blatant bigotry on parade in Europe underscores that open antisemitism has come roaring back.

The Belgian city of Aalst celebrated this year’s Carnival with grotesque displays of overt antisemitism. Revelers mocked the Wailing Wall, with some dressed as ants in Hasidic hats and others as Nazis. That theme continued in Campo de Criptana, Spain, where Carnival participants dressed up as Nazis and concentration camp prisoners, flanked by chimneys.

The blatant bigotry on parade underscored that open antisemitism has come roaring back. What’s less certain is how many people are fueling that resurgence. Pew Research and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) surveys have approached that question, but it’s easier to ask than to answer.

Calculating that number requires not only a good definition of antisemitism (like International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition) but also a clear understanding of why we’re even asking. Do we want to know where Jews can most comfortably live as visible Jews, most easily assimilate, or simply live in safety, free of physical attacks?

European Attitudes About Jews Are Changing For Worse