RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19237/eight-billion-minds

This is a new kind of war against civilians for control of their minds.

Governments are relying increasingly on controlling public “narratives” and vilifying dissent.

[F]or all the harms their actions have caused, governments have issued no apologies for enforcing such life-altering policies while silencing critics. It is as if “narrative engineers” have adopted an official position that they are incapable of being wrong.

The more nervous about the future policymakers are, the more committed they seem to enforcing a standard “narrative” they can control.

In an age when information has never been more easily accessible, the world is awash in lies.

A citizen either accepts Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” as “Russian disinformation,” or that person is labeled a “Russian sympathizer.” Daring to say otherwise could get one banned from social media, professionally sanctioned, or even fired from a job. Except none of these established “narratives” has proved true.

In each case, the “narrative” proved to be either misleading propaganda or an outright lie. Yet they were created and sustained by online communication platforms that pushed the lies and excluded the truths.

As global events increasingly threaten Western stability, governments have demonstrated no inclination to entertain a diversity of viewpoints or discussions along the way. Instead, the more serious the issue, the more committed to a single, overarching “narrative” they seem to become.

This war for eight billion minds means that citizens must be more vigilant than ever in processing and evaluating what they see and read. Whether they like it or not, they are under attack at all times from those who seek to manipulate and control them. As in the last century, we are surrounded by totalitarian propaganda routinely disguised as “the truth.”

The heavy perils we face today include centralized governments micromanaging society, the growing prospect of global war, the growing prospect of forced surrender, and the replacement of reasoned debate and free speech with state-sanctioned “narratives” and censorship: totalitarian governance seems not far behind. This is a new kind of war against civilians for control of their minds.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-725005

In a two-part interview with Israel’s Channel 14 on Tuesday and Wednesday, the nephew of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised the masses who’ve been risking and losing their lives to extricate themselves from the grips of the ayatollah-run regime.

A France-based expat, Dr. Mahmoud Moradkhani has been following from afar the ongoing protests in his home country, spurred by the murder in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of the Islamic Republic’s morality police for not wearing her hijab properly.

Moradkhani, who left Iran in 1986, seven years after the Islamic Revolution, to study medicine in Paris, is the son of Khamenei’s sister, Badri Hosseini Khamenei. Her whereabouts have been in question since December 7, when he tweeted an open letter that she penned in support of the rallies.

“I oppose my brother’s actions,” she began in the post that went viral. “I express my sympathy for all mothers mourning the crimes of the Islamic Republic regime [from the time of its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] to the current era of the despotic caliphate of Ali Khamenei.”

She concluded the lengthy missive by declaring that “the people of Iran deserve freedom and prosperity, and their uprising is legitimate and necessary to achieve their rights,” adding, “My brother wrongly considers the voice of his mercenaries and money-grubbers to be that of the Iranian people. He is rightly deserving of the disrespectful and impudent words that he uses to describe the oppressed, but brave, Iranian people.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19231/belgium-energy-suicide

Security of energy supply seems, for some officials, to be an abstract concept. It is anything but. In practice, when energy security is not guaranteed, it means blackouts and an explosion in energy costs, as well as, for many, having to choose between “heat or eat”.

When energy costs become insane — even higher than neighboring countries — industrial companies stops investing. Then they stop maintaining the existing productive apparatus. In the end, they leave the country.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, Belgium is the only Western country that has shut down a fully operational nuclear reactor… The closure of a second nuclear reactor, under exactly the same conditions, and without the slightest operational alternative, is planned for the beginning of 2023.

Most of the major environmentalist organizations have been actively supported and financed by the Russian Federation, with Russia hoping that if they could discourage the West from developing energy sources, the West would turn to Russia for energy imports — as it did. This financial support did not have to be direct: it was enough to create “environmental foundations”, headed by the leaders of the major environmental organizations, and massively financed by Moscow.

The current Belgian Minister of Energy… was a 50% partner in the law firm BLIXT, which represented, in Belgium, the interests of Russia’s state-controlled Gazprom, the country’s main energy company.

Voters have eyes to see their dwindling bank accounts and their 17-degree living rooms in the winter. Belgian voters see the winter bristling with looming blackouts, leading to darkness and cold. They also see unemployment and the accelerated disappearance of their savings.

There is an overwhelming majority in the Chamber to repeal the 2003 law on the destruction of Belgian civil nuclear power. The repeal would allow the government to enter into serious negotiations with ENGIE-Electrabel for the extension of the entire Belgian nuclear power system. The government could then decide whether or not to allocate massive investments in the construction of new nuclear reactors, after the example of what has recently been approved in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

Is it not high time for a new parliamentary majority, supported by an overwhelming majority of the Belgian population, to accept the responsibility to avoid returning to “the cold and the dark”?

Belgium’s situation is dramatic. While our neighbors have taken and are taking measures to cushion the energy crisis, maintain their budgetary health and guarantee their energy supply, Belgium is in a situation of clear and obvious failure on all three counts. I will only deal here with the energy misery, which is entirely avoidable and caused by the anti-nuclear tendencies of two environmentalist political parties, Ecolo and The Greens.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-night-the-lights-went-out-in-europe/

Politico Europe, a publication marinated in green politics, has named Russian President Vladimir Putin as one of its “power players of the year” — for, in the publication’s words, “advancing Europe’s green agenda.”

“By invading Ukraine and manipulating energy supplies to undermine European support for Kyiv, Putin has achieved something generations of green campaigners could not — clean energy is now a fundamental matter of European security,” the news outlet explained approvingly.

It went on to note that Putin “invaded Ukraine after the EU had spent two years laying the foundations of its Green Deal program for zeroing out emissions by 2050. That meant the policy machinery for a total remake of the European energy economy was already moving. All it needed was a nudge.”

You would have to be pretty severely afflicted with Climate Change Derangement Syndrome to celebrate a silver lining in Putin’s murderous attack on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Europe has sprinted so far ahead of the United States in its quest to end the use of fossil fuels that many U.S. politicians, environmentalists and media voices look on with envy.

But how is Europe’s Green New Deal going now that Putin has given it “a nudge”?

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/11/how-xi-misreads-the-taiwan-battlefield/

EXCERPTS:

In any war between China on the one hand and Taiwan, Japan, the US and their allies on the other, Chinese vessels of all kinds will be prevented from significant access to the Pacific Ocean. The Chinese (and Russian) Pacific fleets will almost certainly be enclosed in their coastal waters.

This is because the First Island Chain running parallel to the mainland from Sakhalin Island in the north down through Japan, the Ryukyu islands, Taiwan, and on to the Philippine Islands and Indonesia, is a natural barrier now being fortified by the Japanese and Taiwanese militaries and the US Marines. The Commander of the US Marine Corps, General David Berger, recently announced that the Marines were changing their policies and missions in reaction to developments in Asia. He said a “new mission” for the Marines would be “island hopping” in the Indo-Pacific armed with anti-ship missiles to meet the growing China threat. (see The Times, London dispatch, Weekend Australian 6-7/11/21). Presumably, they would carry Tomahawk anti-ship missiles and be supported by US specifically designed shallow-hulled coastal patrol vessels, armed with the same Tomahawks, as well as Japanese submarines.

This would make transit through the Chain almost impossible for hostile surface ships and submarines. One of the difficulties for Chinese and Russian submarines is the difference between the relatively shallow waters of the seas between mainland China and the First Island Chain and the vast depths and trenches of the Pacific Ocean east of the Chain. Submarines would have to surface or near surface to transit the Chain either way, making them easily detectable and vulnerable.

Furthermore, at the southern end of the Chain, other US forces along with the navies of Australia, France, Britain and hopefully India and Indonesia could block Chinese and Russian naval and merchant shipping transiting the Malacca Strait and contiguous Indonesian waterways and passages. As a result, China could suffer a serious trade blockade.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19230/qatar-migrant-workers-world-cup

Qatar claims that 37 workers died during the construction phase of its World Cup infrastructure projects. The organization Amnesty International asserts that authorities in Qatar failed to investigate the deaths of thousands of migrant workers who lost their lives working on construction projects associated with the World Cup. One UK press report puts the total number of victims at 6,750.

The workers often arrive in debt, due to extortionate fees charged by recruiters who facilitate the employment process. Qatar’s kafala (sponsorship) system is so fraught with abuse that it approaches the level of human trafficking.

Working conditions are medieval. Laborers have little to no access to health care: they cannot afford health insurance and there are no on-site clinics. They are also forced to work long hours, often seven days a week. Many migrants die from the extreme heat during Qatar’s summer: temperatures sometimes reach above 44 degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit).

Despite the presence of a large US military base, Qatar’s ruling Al-Thani family is a huge financial supporter of various terrorist groups, including Hamas. This wealthy, conservative Sunni mini-state is also a sanctuary for several terrorist operatives.

The violation of migrant workers’ human rights in Qatar has been massive and woefully underreported by the Arab Gulf State and many others. Qatar’s dismal treatment of “guest workers” has become more pronounced and visible since its selection in 2010 by FIFA as the site of this year’s World Cup football (soccer) tournament.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19215/iran-mullahs-when-will-the-eu-wake-up

Does the EU know that the Russian President Vladimir Putin has received huge support for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine from the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Iran has been supplying kamikaze drones to Russia. That is why the Ukrainian foreign ministry reportedly stripped Iran’s ambassador in Kyiv of his accreditation and reduced the embassy’s diplomatic staff there.

The Biden administration is also not putting any pressure on the EU to stop its business dealings with Iran’s ruling clerics….

“Russia has used almost 4,500 missiles against us. And their stock of missiles is dwindling. Therefore, Russia went looking for affordable weapons in other countries to continue its terror. It found them in Iran.” — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Jerusalem Post, November 4, 2022.

“Each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last. All of them hope that the storm will pass before their turn comes to be devoured. But I fear — I fear greatly — the storm will not pass…. It will spread to the South; it will spread to the North.” — Winston Churchill, January 20, 1940.

Even though the Iranian regime has been increasing its military support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a gift that poses a significant threat to the European Union – the EU’s appeasement policy toward the ruling mullahs of Iran barrels on.

It is shocking that the EU continues to trade with the predatory regime of Iran, openly referred to as the “world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.” The Tehran Times bragged in a recent report that Iran’s exports to the EU have gone up “28% in 9 months on year”.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-parallel-universe-of-the-ccp-and-the-world-economic-forum/

For decades Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum (WEF) has been recruiting and cultivating corporate and political leaders from all over the world to embrace a vision and plan for a complete social, political, and economic transformation—a “Great Reset”—which is nothing short of a communist “New World Order.” This plan calls for the end of sovereign states; the end of private property and the remaking of the economy based on environmental, social, and governance rankings; the replacement of oil and gas with so-called green and sustainable sources of energy; the transformation of agricultural production; the replacement of traditional money with social credit score-linked digital currency; and the requirement of universal health passports—to name some of the key WEF objectives.

After the G20 meeting in Indonesia on November 15-16, 2022, WEF chairman Klaus Schwab broadcast on CGTN TV that “the Chinese model is certainly a very attractive model…” For Schwab, China is the model because the totality of its social controls is what is needed to facilitate the Great Reset and consummate the New World Order. So, let’s recap the main elements of the Chinese model and then examine the correlation to the WEF program.

China is a one-party state ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which now has the distinction, along with North Korea, of having the most complete totalitarian control over its people of any state in all human history. The CCP has now accomplished:

the near total control of peoples’ thinking and knowledge of history through state control of schools, the internet, and all media
the control of people’s behavior through a digital currency controlled by the state with accounts for every Chinese citizen—accounts that the government can turn off when account holder’s social credit score drops or when the account holder travels outside a zone prescribed by government
the control of people by requiring universal health passports
the control of people by way of wall-to-wall facial-recognition camera surveillance