RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19631/iran-workers-strike

Iranian workers… have launched a series of strikes and sit-ins to protest what they regard as “systemic exploitation.”

By the time of this writing, over 100,000 workers were on strike in 122 businesses in 35 cities, relatively small numbers yet significant for two reasons: the protests seem to be spreading and the strikes begin to affect the nerve-centers of the economy including the vital energy industry.

“What we see is the first hissings of the coming explosion.” — Jawad Zar’e, who monitors the Iranian workers’ movement.

Rahmatallah Partovi, head of the Islamic Workers’ Council claims that over 70 percent of Iranian workers live below the official “poverty line”. Alireza Mahjub, a member of the Islamic Majlis (ersatz parliament) puts the figure at 90 percent.

If you listen closely you may hear the time bomb that is ticking in work-place across Iran: tick-tack, icky-tack!

Having retreated in the battle over mandatory hijab, the Islamic Republic leadership in Tehran may be facing a potentially far more dangerous challenge to its hold on power. The challenge comes from Iranian workers who have launched a series of strikes and sit-ins to protest what they regard as “systemic exploitation.”

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/06/an-americans-view-of-the-coronation/

The coronation of King Charles III was a stirring spectacle. I watched only a few of the more elaborate bits—some climactic moments in Westminster Abbey, some of the procession up the soldier-lined Mall in that nifty golden carriage, the King’s recognition of the troops assembled in the garden behind Buck House. 

As an Anglophile, I appreciated the pageantry. No one does it better than the Brits. They manage to make ostentation tasteful and regal display humane and welcoming. It’s impressive without being forbidding. I am an American democrat of Madisonian inclination, but I harbor fond feelings about the British monarchy. I enjoy the ceremony and heartily approve of this affirmation of “the rich tapestry of our island story.” 

Nevertheless, I came away with an impression of something bittersweet, not to say melancholy. As a performance, the coronation was thrilling. As a reality? I am not so sure. I fear there was something posthumous about the production. 

To date, Charles has acted with greater dignity and discretion than I would have predicted. His Christmas address to the nation was pitch-perfect. And he seems to be soft-pedaling some of his woke enthusiasms about “climate change” and the like. All that augurs well for the future of his reign—if “reign” is the correct word for the ceremonial bureaucracy of a man who assumed the throne at the end of his 73rd year. 

The Crown’s real estate is intact. So are the family jewels and haberdashery (the ermine fringed robes that he and Queen Camilla modeled were especially striking). 

But that may be the extent of his domain. Perhaps one should resist the temptation to peek behind the curtain. The English essayist Walter Bagehot, writing in the 1870s, was right. “Above all things our royalty is to be reverenced,” Bagehot wrote, “and if you begin to poke about it, you cannot reverence it. . . . Its mystery is its life. We must not let in daylight upon magic.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19617/eu-appeasement-iran

The beneficiaries of EU’s increased trade with Iran are most likely the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The EU’s trade with Iran, which helps increase the Iranian regime’s revenue, is doubtless making it easier for the theocratic establishment to provide weapons to Russia…

The Iranian regime has, in fact, set up a specific route across the Caspian Sea in order to supply large quantities of munitions to Russia… “posing a growing challenge for the U.S. and its allies as they try to disrupt cooperation between Moscow and Tehran,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

The Iranian regime, probably because it knows that the European Union will not take any action, is ratcheting up its engagement and weapons exports to Russia.

The Iranian regime is simultaneously profiting from its trade with the EU and from its weapons sales to Russia, thereby empowering Putin to escalate his war against Ukraine.

In spite of the Iranian regime’s increasing involvement in the war against Ukraine, the European Union appears more than happy to continue appeasing the Iran’s ruling mullahs, which should officially be considered an accomplice to war crimes committed by Russia.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/ireland_is_on_the_verge_of_enacting_the_most_draconian_antispeech_law_in_the_west.html

Ireland, a country that long chafed under England’s repressive governance, is about to become very repressive itself. It’s about to put into effect a speech bill so repressive that anyone who even receives a text that runs afoul of the law could be arrested if he does not immediately delete and disavow the text. This is where the Western world, once the bastion of intellectual liberty, has ended.

The law, entitled “Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022,” passed through the legislature in February, with only 4 representatives out of 160 voting against it. Most in the public weren’t even aware of the bill and, if they’d thought about it, they probably would have congratulated themselves on being a nice country in which “hate” speech is barred.

It was only when an Irish conservative commentator, Keith Woods, who was reinstated on Twitter thanks to Elon Musk’s commitment to free speech, that word got out:

It’s a little hard to tell from that snippet exactly what’s going on, so let me fill in a few blanks. First, the bill has all sorts of sections and subsections for different speech offenses. They all revolve around silencing anything but positive speech about people with “protected characteristics.” Those characteristics are race, “colour,” nationalist, religion, national or ethnic origin, descent, gender, sex characteristics, sexual orientation, or disability.” “Gender,” the bill explains, includes the whole nonsensical panoply of gender identity.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19555/west-training-china-military

China is reportedly recruiting former air force pilots from the West to understand better how Western military aircraft and pilots operate. Up to 30 former UK military pilots are believed to have traveled to China since 2019 to work as instructors in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

“It’s taking Western pilots of great experience to help develop Chinese military air force tactics and capabilities. Money is a strong motivator.” — Unnamed Western official, BBC, October 28, 2022.

“It was very specific that it had to be frontline military aviators in current flying practice…. why send military pilots rather than teachers?” — Sky News, October 28, 2022.

Perhaps most incredibly, the US Army, as late as November 2020, conducted the Disaster Management Exchange (online, due to coronavirus) with China’s PLA…. Unbelievably, the November 2020 remote exercise took place just one month after President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, Robert O’Brien, had pronounced China to be the threat of the century….

China is reportedly recruiting former air force pilots from the West to understand better how Western military aircraft and pilots operate. Up to 30 former UK military pilots are believed to have traveled to China since 2019 to work as instructors in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19605/ukraine-iron-harvest

The media prefer to talk of mansions and opulent yachts rather than the corporate assets which continue to generate profits for the oligarch class that includes men like Alexei Miller, Igor Sechin, Roman Abramovich, Boris Rotenberg, Vladimir Potanin, Viatcheslav ‘Moshe’ Kantor, and Igor Shuvalov as well as their sons and daughters who occupy key banking and business roles too. All of these have been sanctioned and some of their assets frozen.

Serious consideration should be given to finding a way to hold the beneficiaries of Putin’s largesse even more accountable, if possible, and direct their assets to rectifying the damage that their patron-in-chief has caused. It is likely that tens of billions of US dollars of Putin’s oligarchs’ assets have already been frozen under international sanctions. This means Russia cannot use them, but as things stand, they cannot be confiscated and put to work to help Ukraine re-build, much as there is the desire in the US, UK and EU to do so.

A series of bills has already been introduced in the US Congress towards this aim, but they would all appear to fall foul of domestic laws as well as international investment laws. What is now needed therefore is a coordinated legislative effort in Washington, London and like-minded capitals to permanently deprive Russia of these funds and use them to help offset the massive reconstruction bills that will otherwise fall entirely to US, British and European taxpayers.

The World Bank estimates an overall reconstruction bill for Ukraine at $349 billion, an eye-watering sum that is rising by the week. Ukrainian government sources put it at more like $700 billion. Somehow this has all got to be paid for, and it’s not going to come from Ukraine, whose economy is in tatters after months of fighting for its very survival. The chances of getting Russia to cough up are close to zero, whatever the talk of war crimes trials and reparations.

Meanwhile, sanctioned Russian oligarchs, who themselves bear considerable responsibility for Putin’s aggression, simply alter the ownership of their corporations to avoid penalties, often with their vast fortunes residing in Western banks and property empires. It is time for their wealth to come under greater scrutiny as the world figures out how to put Ukraine back together when the war eventually comes to an end.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19593/armenian-genocide-remembrance

The evidence is overwhelming.

“Each girl had been nailed alive upon her cross, spikes through her feet and hands…” — Aurora Mardiganian, Ravished Armenia.

Often overlooked… is that this was less a genocide of Armenians and more a genocide of Christians. Thus the opening sentence of U.S. House Resolution 296, which passed on the hundredth anniversary of the genocide (2019), correctly mentions “the campaign of genocide against Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other Christians.”

Christianity is what all of those otherwise diverse peoples had in common, and therefore it — not nationality, ethnicity, territory, or grievances — was the ultimate determining factor concerning who the Turks would and would not “purge.”

“Christians were considered infidels (kafir). The call to Jihad… was part of the plan.” — Joseph Yacoub, author of Year of the Sword: The Assyrian Christian Genocide

An eyewitness recalled that… “outrages” [were] committed against “even children”….

“The opportunity [World War I] presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race.” — Winston Churchill.

“Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention…. The question is settled. There are no more Armenians.” — Talaat Pasha, the de facto leader of the Ottoman Empire during the genocide, June 1915.

Turkey, in 2020, sent sharia-enforcing “jihadist groups,” from Syria and Libya…. These Muslim groups committed numerous atrocities. These included raping an Armenian female soldier and mother of three, before hacking off all four of her limbs, gouging her eyes, and sticking one of her severed fingers inside her private parts. — Greek City Times, September 25, 2020.

Not only has it gone unpunished; NATO ally Turkey has resumed the genocide against the very descendants of those whom the Turks nearly exterminated over a century ago — namely Armenians and Assyrians.

More recently, in late 2022, Turkey launched thousands of attacks — air, mortar, drone, artillery, etc.—several miles deep into Syria’s northern border. This is, of course, where most of the religious minorities live — Christians, Yazidis, and Kurds, who a few years earlier experienced a genocide at the hands of the Islamic State (“ISIS”).

“These military attacks by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime are part of a wider Turkish policy of annihilation of the Kurdish and Assyrian [Christian] people in northern Syria and Iraq. Turkey has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including bombing, shelling, abduction, torture, and extrajudicial killings. The attacks are part of Turkey’s genocidal policies towards Kurds, Christians, and Ezidis.” — Genocide Watch, December 7, 2022.

“This genocide is a pattern we see, and it’s certainly nothing new…. For those who say ‘Not on our watch!’ or ‘Never again!’— here it is, happening again!” — Charmaine Hedding, president of the US-based Shai Fund, webinar on Turkey’s genocidal assault on Christians in Syria, rumble.com, December 15, 2022.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19592/pakistan-school-blasphemy

They had both been asked to clean a store room. During the cleaning they gathered all the rubbish (Paper etc) and later burnt them.

Since they are both illiterate therefore they didn’t know what kind of paper they were burning, and there were some Qurans page in that rubbish.

After taking a statement from the witnesses, the police have registered a case under section 295- B of blasphemy law against Musarrat Bibi and Mohammad Sarmad and taken them into custody at Police Station Sadar Arifwala Park Pandan [Punjab].

Nasir Saeed, Director CLAAS-UK thar, [said] it is very sad that two illiterate people are charged with blasphemy. They are completely innocent as both didn’t know what they were doing, they were just doing the work they were asked….

“The case against Bibi and Sarmad should be dismissed and those people who asked them to clean the store and didn’t supervise them should be investigated and should be punished for their carelessness…. This is completely unfair and unjust. Such people who don’t how to read and write are given such a job and then they are charged with blasphemy. It is misuse of the blasphemy law and it has to be stopped.” — Nasir Saeed, Director CLAAS-UK, April 22, 2023.

On 15 April, 2023, a First Information Report (FIR) was registered against two people working in Government girls’ higher secondary school, EB 66, Arifwala, Punjab.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19182/issues-of-concern

Hamas is an enemy [of Israel], but it is a much weaker enemy than Iran, which is determined to go ahead and develop nuclear weapons with the sole objective of destroying Israel… Hamas is extreme in its ideology, which is radical Islam. They have absolutely no desire to resolve this conflict with Israel in the ways that Western leaders hope and expect — which is settling the conflict by accepting what we have been calling a two‑part state for a very long time. That is not the objective of Hamas. The objective of Hamas is to destroy the State of Israel.

The Palestinians are unfortunate to have, on the one hand, a leader who is corrupt and really does not care very much about average Palestinians and may even want the conflict to continue so that he can continue to cash in on international handouts from the EU, America and others; then on the other hand, there is Hamas. This terrorist deadly group, also does not care about Palestinian lives. That is where the problem lies…. Both Hamas and the PA are deeply cynical: if they wished to increase the well-being of the average Palestinian, they would pursue peace…. One has to ask if peace with Israel is in their interest….

Hamas is an enemy, but it is a much weaker enemy than Iran, which is determined to go ahead and develop a nuclear weapon with the sole objective of destroying Israel.

In terms of foreign policy, it is important to realize that the threat of radical Islam, it may have faded away from the desks of policy‑makers in the United States…but it has not gone away…. If anybody is paying attention, Islamists remain a force to be reckoned with in Africa: think of Somalia, the Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger), the Lake Chad Basin (Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, Niger), Mozambique, and Egypt.

The Muslim Brotherhood and sympathetic groups are very much active on American soil, in the UK, and in many other Western countries. Their front organizations pretend to be humanitarian, charitable, educational or religious organizations. In its world view…the Brotherhood is not that different from that of violent groups such as Al‑Qaeda or ISIS. Where they differ is on the tactics to get there. Their activities are just coated in a language that is appealing to the leadership… and especially appealing to Westerners, often including support for “democracy”. It is time that we expose the Muslim Brotherhood for what it is.

[A]ny human being who is suffering, regardless of their color, regardless of their geographical location, whatever language they speak, awakens your compassion, your empathy, and your sympathy. I hope that we can do that — so an African, or an Arab, or anyone from any part of the world will feel empathy with a white person who is suffering and the other way around. That is where the message of common humanity is powerful. That is the only way to defeat these ideologues who are trying to divide us.

What we are seeing happen to women in Islamic communities in Western countries, as well as in majority-Muslim countries, is what has been happening for decades. Everyone has been looking away. There are a number of Muslim women, individuals, who were able to escape their families. The oppression really comes for these women… from their own families, from brothers, fathers, husbands, cousins, nephews…. It’s just that there is this constant struggle within the West of trying to undermine the values that are the tools of emancipation and dismissing them as white supremacy, or colonialist, or ethnocentric.

Now, there are women who really want no trouble at all, they just want to emancipate themselves from this straight jacket. They want to go to school. They want to work. They want to pursue a profession of their choosing. They want to live like the average European woman or American woman — fend for themselves and control their own destiny. Those are the women that are often regarded as abnormal by those around them. their immediate environment…. We can help them by empowering the women who want to emancipate themselves… their right to autonomy in their life.

What if you have hundreds of thousands of young men who come from a society with the opposite norms, and they come into various parts of Europe…? They just come, they are shocked, and then they act — and people react. It is a huge problem. There have been lots of journalists, commentators, scholars who have been warning European leaders for decades about this collision of values….They have all been ignored or demonized as racists and xenophobes.

Parts of Paris, parts of Marseille are now completely locked in with this confrontation between what they call Islamist separatism, which for decades they pretended did not exist. Many French intellectuals were trying to sound the alarm for decades and were demonized. They continue to be demonized. If you look at some of the entrenched Islamist groups in France, the ideology is hostile towards the civil Republic just as the ideology of Hamas is hostile to co-existence with Israel. They reject the French Republic as much as Hamas rejects the Israeli government. They call it a parallel society. It is like having an alien state within the state…. [T]he objective of the leadership of that infrastructure is to create these parallel states.

With the Internet now, there are opportunities for women that we did not have before. Where we can connect like‑minded people with like‑minded people. It is just that there is this constant struggle within the West of trying to undermine the values that are the tools of human emancipation and dismissing them as based on white supremacy, or as colonialist or ethnocentric.

The problems we have been seeing in Europe is that the punishment and the legal frameworks — prosecuting, sending people to prison, fines, and other corrections they have in place — for whatever reason, do not seem to make an impression on some of the perpetrators. When I talk to men who have come to Europe, they say that what would make an impression on them is to be sent back to the country they came from. One of the reasons why, is that the families have invested so much in these young men to send them to Europe. For them to be sent back, the families are going to be met with shame and embarrassment that their child was sent back.

Also, a number of the men who are coming from Syria, Iraq, even as far as Bangladesh and Pakistan, or Somalia and Eritrea have entrenched prejudices against European women that reflect their societies of origin. They look at white women, and they see them from Hollywood, they see them in pornographic movies, and they think when they go to Europe, that is what they are going to encounter. They have an inaccurate picture. Women, they think, are going to have sex with them readily. Then the reality hits, and they see that this is not the case, then they use force and act in groups, and do not understand why they are being punished when the women are out and about. The women are in the parks. Women are going to work, they are dressed as they please. The men are very confused by that.

Now, if we take in hundreds of thousands of Arabs and Muslims, do we sit back and say, well, you can continue to treat women as you like, it is your prerogative, it is none of our business — even though you now want to build a future within our societies?

Do we say, there are red lines that you cannot cross, and we are going to uphold our norms and values, and particularly, our laws? For me, integration or assimilation means that you uphold those laws, and values, and norms, and that you tie credible consequences to those who refuse to abide by the laws.

Where I grew up, I was raised to believe that unless you had almost your entire body covered, you were regarded as naked. When I first encountered women in parts of Germany and the Netherlands who were in tank tops, and shorts, and mini-skirts, and out and about during the day and all hours of the night I thought this was crazy. It was a revolution; it was shocking…..

I have colleagues, professors who are terrified of publishing papers, of giving lectures, of sharing their views, for fear of being fired, canceled, shamed. It is really horrific. Many of them are just speaking the truth.

Hamas is extreme in its ideology, which is radical Islamist. They have absolutely no desire to resolve their conflict with Israel in the ways that Western leaders hope and expect — which is settling the conflict by accepting what we have been calling a two‑part state for a very long time. That is not the objective of Hamas. The objective of Hamas is to destroy the State of Israel. Keeping the conflict going is, in a way, beneficial to them as a group even if it hurts normal people.