RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/paris-olympics-worst-opening-ceremony-ever/

The opening ceremonies of Olympic games have always followed the same pattern. A parade of national teams enters the stadium, led by Greece, and followed by the other countries in alphabetical order, with the host nation coming last. When that’s done, the stadium turns into a stage for an splendiferous show of some kind, an extravaganza marked by lights, dance, fireworks, that is meant to reflect the very best of the host country, its culture and history. Over the years these displays have grown more and more ambitious.

Thomas Jolly, the man who put together last Friday’s opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics, decided to take another route. First of all, the parade of athletes took place not in a stadium but along the Seine, where the nations’ representatives rode in on yachts, barges, and other vessels. As usual, the parade was led by the Greek team. It was followed by something called the “Refugee Olympic Team.” After that, the teams appeared in French alphabetical order, although the signs identifying them were in English, which made for some confusion, if you cared to give the matter any thought.

Indeed, the mixture of those two particular languages brought to mind the annual Eurovision song contest, and unfortunately this event, like that one, was not lacking in terrible music. Instead of holding off the entertainment, to use the word loosely, until after the parade, Jolly mixed it all together, cutting away from the parade repeatedly to focus on a wide range of performances, most but not all of them taking place along the riverbank. Almost every bit of it was absolutely horrible. Lady Gaga did an extraordinarily annoying (and endless) song and dance number (in French) while being circled energetically but with very little in the way of artistry by a couple of dozen guys in black body tights. (It brought to mind Danny Kaye’s “Choreography” number in the movie White Christmas, a wicked parody of some of the more pretentious varieties of modern dance.)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20819/trump-china-tariffs

This is a contest that the United States cannot lose. In short, trade-surplus countries, such as China, cannot prevail over trade-deficit ones, such as America. Last year, America’s merchandise trade deficit with China was $279.4 billion.

That is why, ultimately, China will have to pay the cost of tariffs that Trump — or any other American leader — may impose. Clearly, China’s regime knows this. People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s self-described mouthpiece and therefore the most authoritative publication in China, this month is arguing that America should not raise tariffs.

China steals each year somewhere in the neighborhood of a half trillion dollars of American intellectual property. Critics of tariffs, whether they make valid points or not about increased costs, have an obligation to say how they would eliminate or reduce this criminal practice through other means.

Why should Americans want to decimate the Chinese factory sector? The Communist Party of China sees the U.S. as an enemy and seeks the destruction of the American republic. The struggle, in short, is existential. China’s regime cannot wage the fight against America without American money.

So why should Americans supply the cash to their enemy?

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2024/07/spectre-of-the-fall-is-the-west-doomed/

Conclusion As this brief survey indicates, there is a considerable body of scholarship and commentary illuminating the dire future into which Western societies are allowing themselves to descend. Tragically, there seems to be little political will or capacity to confront this challenge, in itself a marker of the extent of the decline, but at the same time there are several political events approaching that may give rise to hope. Time will tell, but time is running out.

A spectre haunts Western Civilization – the spectre of its decline and fall. And invariably, it seems, this spectre is envisaged in terms of Rome, as Bryan Ward-Perkins confirms in The Fall of Rome & the End of Civilization (2006): “Deep within the Western psyche lies an anxiety that, if ancient Rome could fall, then so too can the even the proudest of modern civilizations”. Indeed, unfolding events “make it possible to use Roman history to show the West is experiencing only the beginnings of what will be an unfolding and, potentially, even an existential crisis, and secondly, that this crisis is revolving around the same key components that undermined its ancient Roman counterpart.” (Peter Heather & John Rapley, Why Empires Fall: Rome, America & the Future of the West,  2023)

Death Spiral The West may already have entered a ‘death spiral’ comparable to that which doomed the Roman Empire 1500 years ago, as Adam Creighton points out in a recent article, ‘Joe Biden’s decline is a perfect mirror of West’s slow decay’. He quotes prominent Stanford academic John Ionnidis, who defines such a precipitant societal collapse as a “vicious cycle of self-reinforcing dysfunctional behaviour characterised by continuous flawed decision making, myopic single-minded focus on one set of solutions, denial, distrust, micromanagement, dogmatic thinking and learned helplessness.”

Contrived Panics Climate change hysteria and the Covid-19 over-reaction may be cited as two example of this phenomenon. In particular,

Nothing confirms the collapse in governing wisdom so much as the destructive response to COVID-19, when across a few years almost all advanced governments crushed their citizens living standards, rights, and educational outcomes over a new virus whose fatality rate was known among experts from early 2020 to be less than 0.05%.

One result of this carefully contrived panic was that several gigantic pharmaceutical corporations made absolutely immense profits supplying vaccines that may have been either unnecessary or harmful, or both, but which were compulsory. Meanwhile they fund the regulators that were to meant to oversee their activities and ensure public health. It’s very notable that no comprehensive, properly empowered inquiry– e.g., a Royal Commission — into the Covid-19 disaster has been undertaken.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20817/persecution-of-christians-june

One elderly and ailing Orthodox priest, Fr. Nikolai Kotelnikov, had his throat slit by the Muslims yelling “Allahu akbar” [“Allah is the greatest”]. – asianews.it, June 24, 2024, Russia.

ISIS militants, using machetes and rifles, slaughtered more than 80 Christians….ISIS emphasized the religious identity of its victims in a post, saying that “Caliphate soldiers” killed “Christians.” According to one report, many of the slain were “very young” and were targeted for “refusing to convert into Islam”…. some bodies were found “tied up” and “decapitated.” – premierchristian.news, June 18, 2024, Democratic Republic of Congo.

In Lahore Pakistan, authorities arrested Jameela Khatoon, a 62-year-old mentally ill Christian woman, after a Muslim shopkeeper, Muhammad Asif, complained that she had committed blasphemy against his namesake, the prophet of Islam. Jameela is being charged under Section 295-C of Pakistan’s Penal Code, which carries a mandatory death sentence for those who insult Muhammad. Earlier that day, after Jameela had entered Asif’s shop, they argued about shampoo. – britishasianchristians.org, June 7, 2024, Pakistan.

[A]n “anti-terrorism” court, despite lack of evidence, handed out another death sentence to Ehsan Masih, a 27-year-old Christian man, for allegedly sharing a “blasphemous” video against Muhammad on a social media platform. – morningstarnews.org, June 7, 2024, Pakistan.

[A]n impoverished Christian rickshaw driver, [Dennis Albert], is facing a long prison sentence, possibly for life, for stepping out of his carriage onto some papers alleged to have been pages of the Koran. – morningstarnews.org, June 18, 2024, Pakistan.

“Dennis has studied till 10th grade, but he had no clue that the pages he was standing on had religious value. He’s a simple rickshaw driver earning an honorable livelihood for himself. He did not have any intention of hurting religious sentiments of any person or community… He’s losing hope for his freedom. He’s being kept in a special barrack reserved for blasphemy accused…” – Imran Albert, the rickshaw driver’s brother, morningstarnews.org, June 18, 2024, Pakistan.

“Typically kidnapped girls in Pakistan, some as young as 10, are abducted, forced to convert to Islam and raped under cover of such Islamic ‘marriages’ and are then pressured to record false statements in favor of the kidnappers, rights advocates say. Judges routinely ignore documentary evidence related to the children’s ages, handing them back to kidnappers as their ‘legal’ wives.” — morningstarnews.org, July 9, 2024, Pakistan.

[A] Muslim factory owner tortured his Christian employee to death — Waqas Salamat, age 18 — for refusing to continue working for him…. Muhammad instantly sent some factory workers to collect him; they bound his hands and feet and carried him to Muhammad’s factory. There, Muhammad, his son, and several Muslim employees began torturing Waqas for hours—beating him with pipes and administering electric shocks to him—until he died. He was the main breadwinner for his impoverished family. According to his mother, Rubina.

“Our financial condition is such that we didn’t even have enough money to arrange for his burial… Waqas was my beloved son and my biggest support. He would often tell me that he’ll work very hard to make life easier for us….” — morningstarnews.org, June 11, 2024, Pakistan.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-new-polish-star/

Not all that long ago, Spain and Ireland and Poland were seriously Catholic countries, famous for cultures that – in comparison with most of Western Europe – seemed downright old-fashioned, and famous, too, for the severity of their laws on matters like divorce and abortion. No more. In the post-Franco era, the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) has held the reins of power in Madrid longer than any other, and Spanish culture has changed accordingly. During the same period, Ireland has undergone a no less dramatic transformation.

Poland’s big political metamorphosis has happened more recently. When I visited Warsaw a few years ago, it was conservative, pristine, obviously proud of its history and heritage. I’ve been to a lot of cities in Western Europe, but, for reasons I probably need not expatiate upon, none felt as safe as Warsaw. Like most other Eastern European countries, Poland belonged to the EU but was fiercely skeptical about its leaders’ globalist agenda, their attempt to turn duly elected national governments into mere puppets, and their determination to fill Europe with Muslims who despise Western values.

Perhaps above all, I was impressed – and touched – by the Poles’ staunch pro-Americanism: unlike some Europeans, the Poles, who have always had the exceedingly bad luck of being located between Germany and Russia, those two chronically aggressive powers, and who spent much of the twentieth century under the brutal heel of Nazism and Communism, have never fallen for the widely promoted delusion that it is the EU, and not NATO – with America at its head – that keeps them safe from the threat of Russian predation.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20791/eu-funding-iranian-aggression

The continued funding of Iran’s regime by the EU is crucial in bolstering Iran’s ability to attack its neighbors and US troops in the region, both directly and through its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis — and to accelerate enriching uranium to complete its nuclear weapons program.

The regime’s actions appear part of a broader strategy aimed at ultimately annihilating not only Israel but also oil-rich Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

While the EU loves to portray itself as a front-runner in human rights, often lecturing the world about those values and global security, its actions — all mercenary, all the time — tell a very different story.

The Iranian regime, largely thanks to the backing of a powerful ally, the European Union, has managed to sustain and even increase its revenue streams.

The continued funding of Iran’s regime by the EU is crucial in bolstering Iran’s ability to attack its neighbors and US troops in the region, both directly and through its proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis — and to accelerate enriching uranium to complete its nuclear weapons program.

Support from the EU has enabled Iran to continue its regional and international militaristic endeavors without the looming threat of financial insolvency.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20789/hostage-diplomacy-iran

That Iran can, through hostage-taking and extortion, force countries such as the United States, Belgium and Sweden to hand over a convicted criminal who has clearly violated international law shows that gangster methods, used by the Iranian mullahs and others, evidently carry more weight than international law.

This blackmail essentially teaches rogue states that through violence and extortion they can get Western states to make concessions, massive payments, and to de-prioritize and deviate from international law.

If a state takes foreign visitors hostage, and all power then lies with those who kidnap the most, threaten the most and have the largest capacity for violence — including the imminent probability of nuclear weapons — then international law will soon mean nothing.

Apart from effectively having a public budget to support terrorism, Iran’s regime acts as lawlessly as the regimes of Russia or North Korea, and behaves in general as terrorists.

It seems clear that hostage diplomacy is a deliberate strategy for Iran and Russia’s current regimes. Why should it not be? It works!

Countries in the West might do well to communicate this situation and disclaim responsibility for anyone who, despite that lawlessness, chooses to travel to Russia, Iran or other such states. Hostage diplomacy must be stopped.

On June 15, the Swedish government announced that it had conducted a prisoner exchange with Iran’s regime. An Iranian citizen, Hamid Noury, was exchanged for two Swedish citizens, Johan Floderus and Saeed Azizi.

Noury stood convicted by a Swedish court of the torture and mass execution of political prisoners he had committed in Iran’s Gohardasht prison in the late 1980s, following a fatwa from Iran’s then Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20784/iran-president-moderate-hardliner

[Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN-sponsored body that is responsible for monitoring the mullahs’ nuclear programme] also warned that it could take Iran just a month or so for the Iranians to assemble a nuclear warhead, given the progress they have made in recent months in their enrichment programme.

The acknowledgement by an internationally respected body such as the IAEA that Iran has now acquired sufficient material to build several nuclear warheads, which could be assembled within the space of a month, is a devastating indictment of the Biden administration’s policy of appeasement towards Iran since US President Joe Biden took office.

Biden’s refusal to hold Iran accountable for its actions has resulted in the Iranian regime receiving billions of dollars in added revenue because of Washington’s decision not to enforce oil sanctions against Iran. As a result, the extra funds received by Iran have been used to fund the regime’s terrorist networks across the globe, including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

As a senior official with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps admitted to The Telegraph, in the wake of the election, that Pezeshkian had only been allowed to compete in the election to “legitimise the vote”.

It is vital, therefore, that the Biden administration fully understands the cynicism shown by Iran’s hardliners in seeking to legitimise their brutal regime before making any further overtures to the country’s so-called moderate president.

In the uncompromising world of Iran’s autocratic Islamic republic, there is no such thing as a moderate Iranian president — a fact that Iran’s long-suffering people know only too well.

Before the Biden administration gets too carried away celebrating the election of Iran’s so-called moderate president, it should understand that Masoud Pezeshkian’s victory is nothing more than a ploy to distract world attention away from Iran’s nuclear weapons programme.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/07/in_france_it_s_left_vs_left.html

The right-leaning media and pundits are excited: Marine Le Pen’s party gained twice as many seats in recent French elections.  The left-leaning media and commentariat are thrilled, too: Le Pen’s right-wing party won the popular vote but landed only third place in the French National Assembly.  If both sides of the political spectrum are so enthusiastic, it could mean only one thing: something is missing here.

The answer lies most likely in conflating two different political spectra: absolute and relative.  Since Stalin proposed the modern relative political spectrum, it garnered popularity, and members of the Frankfurt School of socialism brought it to American soil.

As it is known, in the 1930s, Joseph Stalin altered the game’s rules: he decided to utilize the pre-existing left-right conceptual dichotomy (in a pretty narrow setting) to crush any opposition to his dictatorial rule.  Any aberration from the orthodox communist party line — no matter how small — had to be labeled.  Thus, the “Right-deviationists” and “Left-deviationists” were born.

The “Left-deviationists” were deemed “too orthodox,” “too revolutionary,” as strange as it may seem, for the taste of bloodthirsty revolutionary Bolsheviks.  In contrast, the “Right-deviationists” were considered traitors to the idea of the planet-wide socialist revolution because they dared to consider building a workers’ paradise by cleverly exploiting the mechanisms of state capitalism.  Unquestionably, the word “capitalism” was anathema to communists.  The “Left-deviationists” were to the left of Stalin, and the “Right-deviationists” were to his right.