RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/04/trans-ideology-is-messing-with-childrens-minds/

The rise of gender ideology in British schools has me fearing for my three young granddaughters. You might think that is excessive, but the trans takeover of British schools is no small matter. An unscientific belief system is now being pushed as fact, and our children are being bombarded with two ludicrous ideas – namely, that a person can change sex and that there are countless made-up genders to choose from.

Alarmingly, many teachers buy into this, or at least they toe the line with school diktats. This poses a serious problem for our children’s developing personalities. Trans ideology is exceedingly regressive and is based on old-fashioned attitudes about gender roles – that boys should wear blue and play with toy soldiers, and girls should wear pink and play with dolls. And, worryingly, if children don’t fit into these stereotypical moulds, it is assumed that something is wrong with them.

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows that little girls and boys have various interests and behaviours, many of which might be called ‘gender non-conforming’. We should celebrate these unique behaviours, rather than constricting children with a set of fantasy labels.

Placing new and confusing genders on kids who are just starting to figure out who they are is not helpful – especially when these labels are simply made up by activists. For instance, one gender group (which has helped inform Irish government legislation) claims that there are 58 genders to choose from. Another offers 72. Meanwhile one 2021 BBC programme, aimed at children aged between nine and 11, said there were over 100 genders. New genders are being invented all the time.

These made-up ‘gender identities’ tend to pander to childish, fanciful minds. After all, what young child, interested in science and outer space, wouldn’t enjoy calling themselves ‘astralgender’ and feeling somehow connected to the galaxy? And I imagine many children might identify with the so-called burstgender, when they experience sudden spikes of intense emotion and liveliness. It takes only a smidgen of common sense to realise that letting children’s personalities shine through is far more sensible than assigning them a new ‘gender’.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20121/war-isnt-what-it-used-to-be

[T]his strange war [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] is morphing into a pointless struggle that ignores the first rule of war, which is the setting of a final objective, in other words, a clear-cut victory.

Wars do not end with one protagonist declaring victory; they end when one protagonist admits defeat. In our postmodern era, however, a loser is not always allowed to accept his loss.

What Israel wanted from Hamas was for it not to launch an attack, something that Hamas could have easily offered. But what Hamas wanted, the elimination of Israel as a nation-state, was and remains impossible for Israel to contemplate let alone deliver.

Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rhetorical outbursts, the current struggle, presented as a war, may end up as a trompe l’oeil version of war. Even if possible, a return to the status quo that was shattered by the Hamas attack is undesirable, if only because of its conceptual fragility. A new status quo based on full reoccupation of the enclave is equally undesirable because, tested for decades, it provided no security for Israel.

Throughout history, at least until our post-modernist times, war was regarded as the highest of human pursuits, one that enlisted other pursuits such as politics, industry and even literature in its service. Aristotle gave war a thumbs-up because it was “the key to peace.” Neo-Platonics regarded war as the ultimate organizer and guardian of hierarchies within the polis (city-state) and among various states.

Over time, however, war, like some other human pursuits, has lost part of what the French would call its “authenticity”, leaving us with ersatz wars motivated by folie de grandeur, racial and religious hatred, and mercenary interests.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20122/iran-war-against-jews

Iran has not only been threatening the US with attacks, it has attacked US assets in Syria and Iraq 83 times since Biden became president, and at least 24 times in the past two weeks. Iran also recently threatened again to annihilate Israel, and has reportedly begun ordering its elite militias based in Syria into southern Lebanon “to participate in attacks on Israel.”

Worse, Biden is reportedly again trying to meddle again in the government of a sovereign democracy by strongly intimating that he wants Israel’s duly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gone. The reason, presumably, is so that Biden can install some weakling who will do whatever Biden and his newly minted, extremely pro-Iran ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, tell him. That doubtless includes approving some horrendous “nuclear deal” enabling Iran’s to have as many nuclear weapons as the mullahs like after Biden leaves office…

By effectively crippling America’s oil production his first day in office and enabling Russia to sell its oil at inflated prices, Biden has literally financed Russia’s war with up to $1 billion a day. In addition, by cancelling sanctions on Iran, Biden financed Iran’s proxy war against Israel. The Biden administration, then, has funded both sides of two wars in two years.

The Biden administration has apparently decided to totally ignore the involvement of Iran in Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel. The Iranian regime, meanwhile, has been assisting Russia militarily in its war against Ukraine and is reportedly behind the latest Hamas terrorist massacre in Israel. The Biden administration, by ignoring sanctions against Iran’s oil and gas exports, thereby enabling Iran to accumulate close to $60 billion with which to fund the Hamas war, as well as to advance its own nuclear weapons program.

Iran has not only been threatening the US with attacks, it has attacked US assets in Syria and Iraq 83 times since Biden became president, and at least 24 times in the past two weeks. Iran also recently threatened again to annihilate Israel, and has reportedly begun ordering its elite militias based in Syria into southern Lebanon “to participate in attacks on Israel.”

Worse, Biden is reportedly again trying to meddle again in the government of a sovereign democracy by strongly intimating that he wants Israel’s duly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gone.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20123/new-war-armenia-azerbaijan

After Azerbaijan besieged and starved 120,000 Christian Armenians in the Republic of Artsakh in the South Caucuses for nine months, on September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan bombed Artsakh’s communities.

Hundreds of civilians, including children, were murdered. Almost all the Armenians of Artsakh have fled: they know that after all military raids, Armenians who have fallen into the hands of the Azerbaijani military have been treated with maximum cruelty.

Beheading and mutilating Armenians appears to be a long-standing tradition of Azeri soldiers. These actions are promoted and rewarded by the State of Azerbaijan. Azeri soldiers who commit such ISIS-like war crimes not only escape accountability and are never prosecuted, rather they are treated as national heroes by their government.

During Azerbaijan’s military incursion into Armenia in September 2022, Azeri soldiers raped, mutilated and slaughtered a 36-year-old Armenian woman who served in the Armenian forces. They then posted a video demonstrating their war crime on social media. In it, the dead woman appears naked, with both of her arms and legs dismembered. One of her eyes is gouged out. A severed finger appears to be sticking out of her mouth, and another appears out of her private parts…. The Azeri soldiers videotaping can be heard laughing and joking in the background.

So, will the US finally hold the government of Azerbaijan to account? Will it cut US military aid to Azerbaijan? Will it once again watch as Turkey and Azerbaijan massacre more Armenians and invade more Armenian lands?

https://bit.ly/479MlfKThe Iran-Hamas-US connection

*National Security advisor Jake Sullivan said in an October 10, 2023 White House press briefing: “Iran is complicit in this attack in a broad sense because they have provided training, they have provided capabilities, they have provided support, and they have had engagement and contact with Hamas over years and years. And all of that has played a role in contributing to what we have seen [on October 7].”

*Iran’s Ayatollahs, who have been courted and appeased by the West, are committed to bring the West – and especially “the Great American Satan” – to submission. They are the chief architects and enablers of the Israel-Hamas and Israel-Hezbollah wars, determined to escalate them into a regional pandemonium, which would undermine Western interests.

*Iran considers its military and financial support of Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists – as well as many terror entities in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America – as a means to fueling instability, toppling pro-US regimes, and severely downgrading the US’ strategic posture. Therefore, Iran has been – since the 1980s – an epicenter of global, anti-US terrorism, drug trafficking and proliferation of advanced military systems. Iran’s rogue foreign and national security policy has been matched by its rogue domestic policy, which has been replete with ruthless oppression and suppression of the population, in general, and religious and ethnic minorities and especially women, in particular.

However, irrespective of this rogue policy, the US adheres to the diplomatic option, which has bolstered the Ayatollahs’ global posture since their ascension to power in 1979. Moreover, the US’ response to sustained Iranian attacks on US installations in the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Syria has been restrained, further eroding its posture of deterrence. Furthermore, the US has lifted most sanctions against the rogue Ayatollahs and is eagerly seeking another nuclear accord with Tehran.

*The lifting of most sanctions without Congressional consent – especially on the exportation of oil and natural gas – has enabled Iran to supply Hezbollah, Hamas and additional terror organizations and drug traffickers more advanced military systems (e.g., missiles, drones, electronics and explosives) to the detriment of the US and its allies, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-deadly-wages-of-western-secularism/

The Enlightenment project to diminish faith––or as the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said, “to see God eradicated once and for all from the public life of humanity and shut up in the subjective sphere of cultural residues from the past”––has nearly succeeded in the West.

Even in the U.S., long mocked by Europeans as a hotbed of religious irrationality and bigotry, the younger generations are increasingly alienated from traditional religion. This estrangement, reinforced by the Christophobia and chronocentrism of schools and most of our culture, has gotten worse over the last two generations. According to an American Enterprise Institute report, 34% of Gen Z, and 29% of Millennials are unaffiliated with any religion, compared to 18% for Boomers, and 9% for the Silent Generation (1928-45).

The wages of this historical sea-change are legion, but nowhere more deadly than the long, profound misunderstanding of Islam, gruesomely obvious in the commentary and protests concerning the current savagery of Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israel. One effect of our diminishment of faith is that our political leaders, charged with protecting the interests and security of we the people, have failed to understand or even know the doctrines of Islam, its history, and the intensity of its adherents’ faith that all inspire and motivate the attackers.

As a consequence, policies and strategies are based on a materialist calculus that emphasizes Western goods like “national self-determination,” democracy, prosperity, or political rights like freedom and equality. Religion, a Freudian “illusion” or a Marxist “opiate,” is either ignored or, in the case of Islam, refashioned in terms that gratify the West’s parochial prejudices like identity politics based on a historical victim status.

As long ago as the Thirties, this historical amnesia and its dangers were pointed out by Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc:

Millions of modern people . . . have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past. . . . The final fruit of this tenacity, the second period of Islamic power, may be delayed —but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed.

Our ignorance and indifference reflect the long retreat of Islamic power and influence since the 17th century, and its increasing domination by the West. These have had two effects in our times: the West became uninterested in Islamic nations other than as Cold War allies and sources of the fossil fuels that have powered our rich economies; and the deep sense of grievance on the part of Muslim nations, especially after the “disaster,” as Osama bin Laden put it, of the 1923 dismantling of the Ottoman Caliphate.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20107/china-overwhelming-response

Biden meeting Xi at this time would be a mistake…. Anything Beijing wants cannot, by definition, be good for America.

How, exactly, can Biden “stabilize relations” with a militant regime that has declared America to be its enemy?

Worse, China’s regime thinks it is already at war with the U.S.

Now, therefore, is the time to use all the resources of the federal government. The Secretary of the Treasury, for instance, can designate, pursuant to Section 311 of the USA PATRIOT Act, Chinese banks to be of “primary money laundering concern.” Designated banks can no longer clear dollar transactions through New York, where every dollar transaction clears.

Such designations would put the large state banks out of business everywhere outside China. If large state banks were to fail, so would China’s state-dominated banking system. The failure of the banking system would undoubtedly mean the end of the Chinese economy and financial system. The end of the political system would soon follow.

On October 24, a Chinese J-11 fighter jet recklessly maneuvered within ten feet of a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber flying in international airspace over the South China Sea, endangering the crew of the American plane. There have been provocative Chinese intercepts of U.S. planes and vessels in the global commons for decades, but now the pace of the belligerent actions has increased.

What was the response of the Biden administration?

President Joe Biden has desperately tried to arrange a meeting with Chinese ruler Xi Jinping. They have finally agreed in principle to meet next month in San Francisco during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. The agreement came during the just-concluded visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to Washington. Wang met with Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/irans-fellow-traveler-in-mexico-city-obrador-latin-america-migration-3f551ffe?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

The high cost of declining American power in the world is being felt in the Middle East and Ukraine. But it doesn’t stop there. Iran is moving into the Western Hemisphere with no effective pushback from Washington. The latest trouble comes from the U.S.’s North American neighbor, Mexico.

In response to a U.S. request that Mexico set up migrant-processing centers funded by Washington, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said no earlier this month. Instead, he proposed a regional summit, excluding the U.S. and Canada, to discuss the migration crisis.

Last week, at the gathering with representatives of 10 Latin American governments, Mr. López Obrador gave President Biden the middle finger. Not literally, but the effect was the same.

A photo taken at the meeting features a smiling Mr. López Obrador with pro-Iranian dictators Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro alongside Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, a former terrorist and a card-carrying Israel hater.

Honduras’s President Xiomara Castro, a Cuba sympathizer and wife of Manuel Zelaya, the former Honduran president who famously tried to extend his elected term with help from Hugo Chávez, was also in the picture. So too was Haiti’s acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry.

This gang of six, according to the Spanish daily El Pais, were the heads of state who drafted the communique that emerged from the AMLO-organized conclave held in the state of Chiapas. It blames U.S. sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela for the migration crisis and demands they be lifted unconditionally. The group also wants debt restructuring. Mr. López Obrador used the event to complain that the U.S. spends too much on defense and not enough to help its neighbors.

https://twitter.com/clashreport/status%2Fworldisraelnews.com%2Fwatch-muslim-rioters-search-for-jews-at-russian-airport%2F

A lynch mob of Muslim rioters gathered at an airport in Makhachkala, in the Russian republic of Dagestan Sunday, with plans to assault Jewish passengers on an incoming flight.

The rioters chanted “Allahu Akbar,” while waiting for a flight from Israel to land at the airport.

In the wake of the riot, however, airport officials rerouted the Israeli flight.

Total chaos at Makhachkala airport now in Dagestan, Russia. Angry crowd in search of Israeli citizens breaks into every room, frightened airport workers try to lock themselves.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20105/persecution-of-christians-september

[O]ne young seminarian, Brother Na’aman, 25, who was on the verge of completing his priesthood training, was burned alive. Police were contacted even before the attack, but came only after the terrorists had fled. — Morning Star News, September 8, 2023, Nigeria.

“They then proceeded to separate Christians from Muslims, apparently based on their names and ethnicity. They opened fire on the Christians, riddling them with bullets.” — acninternational.org, September 21, 2023, Mozambique.

“Today, I have nothing. I saw my house and my place of worship burn in front of my eyes. I was helpless. I saw my [Muslim] neighbours betray us. We have never done them any harm; we always respected them. Then why?” — Open Doors UK, September 6, 2023, Pakistan.

The following are among the murders and abuses inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of September 2023.

The Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria: As the genocide there of Christians continues, a Sept. 1 report found that “Of the 5,500 Christians who were killed last year because of their faith, 90 percent”—or about 4,950—”were Nigerian.”

On the night of Sept. 7, Muslims torched a Catholic seminary in Kaduna State. Although two priests managed to escape, one young seminarian, Brother Na’aman, 25, who was on the verge of completing his priesthood training, was burned alive. Police were contacted even before the attack, but came only after the terrorists had fled. “It is sad that killings and this type of evil against Christians are still going on in spite of our appeal and pleading to Nigerian government to take measures towards ending these attacks,” said the Rev. John Hayab, chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Kaduna State Chapter Hayab. In a statement he elaborated:

“What is disheartening about this particular attack is the … Parish is located at the heart of Kamantan town…This causes us to wonder some more, ‘Where is the hope, how much more terrible could the situation get?…. [W]e invite the Governor of Kaduna State… [to]ensure that those responsible for the Kamantan evil night are apprehended and made to face the law. Security is everyone’s business; it is disappointing that this kind of unholy activity could be recorded at the heart of the… community, and the criminals will operate unchallenged.”