RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/irans-ayatollah-khamenei-signals-regime-split/

Has the ongoing insurrection in Iran, now into its seventh month, exposed glaring splits in the theocratic regime? In his Nowruz (Persian New Year) address to the nation, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the elderly and increasingly delusional Supreme Leader, insisted that the main priority of the theocratic regime was to fight inflation. Unveiling his concept of ‘The Year of Curbing Inflation,’ he indirectly acknowledged that his country is bankrupt, but failed to offer any way of resolving the perilous state of the Iranian economy. His mumbled remarks may have disappointed his hard-line followers, who prefer to hear pledges to “wipe Israel off the map” or cries of “death to America,” and have little appetite for economic reforms. But splits and divisions amongst the mullahs are now the trademarks of this failing fascist regime.

The Iranian economy is in plummeting decline. Spiralling inflation, currently at 43.4 percent, and a collapsing currency, have combined with tough western sanctions to bring the country to a virtual standstill.  Food prices in particular have suffered massive spikes over the past year, including a 125 percent increase for meat, 250 percent for onions, 82 percent for eggs, and 78 percent for rice.The active Iranian workforce is 26 million, of whom at least 10 million were jobless even before the Covid pandemic. Youth unemployment is at a staggering 40 percent. At least 60% of the population are living in poverty, unable to meet their essential daily needs.

Combined with the mullah’s own venal corruption and regional warmongering, it is little wonder that the country with the world’s second largest gas reserves and fourth largest crude oil reserves is now facing economic meltdown. Iran, despite its once rich, civilized and open culture, has become an international pariah, its religious fascist regime condemned for human rights abuse and the export of terror, while its 85 million beleaguered citizens struggle to feed their families.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/could_the_partition_of_india_and_pakistan_repeat_itself_in_uk_and_scotland.html

When India was liberated from British rule more than 75 years ago, the territory was divided, or partitioned, into India and the new state of Pakistan; East Pakistan later became Bangladesh.

The British oversaw the partition along with the newly appointed Indian and Pakistani leaders in their respective newly formed nations.

British civil servant Sir Cyril Radcliffe drew up the borders between India and Pakistan, in 1947, dividing the sub-continent very roughly into:

a central and southern part, where Hindus had the majority
two parts in the north-west and north-east that mostly  Muslim population

But Hindus and Muslims were scattered throughout British India.

Hence, after the declaration of the partition, more than 15 million people traveled, often hundreds of miles, to cross the new frontiers to their respective nations. It has been called the largest exodus in human history.

Almost 75 years later, history may be repeating itself.

Last October, the United Kingdom swore in Rishi Sunak as their new prime minister. Sunak’s parents are Indian Hindus who migrated to the U.K. from East Africa. Sunak was born in Southampton in 1980. His father was a doctor, his mother was a pharmacist. He went to the boarding school Winchester College, then studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford, and business at Stanford University in the U.S.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19572/bankrupt-china-regime

America can stop China’s nuclear weapons development and other monumental programs.

The Chinese Communist Party needs America for, among other things, money, and the U.S. does not have to provide it.

In reality, China’s economy in 2022, after price adjustments, almost certainly contracted, perhaps by as much as 3%.

Exports fell 6.8% year-on-year. More significantly, imports, one of the best reflections of domestic demand, plunged 10.2%.

“Everything is down, whether plane travel, freight, or buying on the Alibaba platforms.” — Anne Stevenson-Yang, author of China Alone: Return to Isolation, to Gatestone, April 2023.

China, therefore, needs factory orders from abroad and foreign investment. The American president can crimp both of these lifelines by, among other things, using his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and by joining or liberalizing free-trade agreements with other countries. For instance, U.S. President Joe Biden could encourage factories to move to the Western hemisphere by making a few fixes to the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). The American market is the largest in the world, and the president can use it to redirect trade flows.

“We now know that China spent $240 billion on country bailouts from 2008 to 2021, correlating with a drop in Chinese lending for infrastructure projects that are the core of this Belt and Road Initiative. It is clear that China is now overstretched and unable to continue with the BRI overall plan into the foreseeable future.” — China analyst Charles Burton of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, to Gatestone, April 2023.

Municipalities and cities across China have not been able to pay civil servant salaries and promised benefits, and for months there have been protests, even in wealthy cities like Wuhan in Hubei province and Dalian in Liaoning.

There is a lot America can do to stop China’s fast buildup of its most dangerous arsenal, and in any case Americans must not under any circumstances fund, with trade and investment, the weapons pointed at them.

President Ronald Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by reducing the flow of cash to Moscow. It is now time to bankrupt China.

After all, no money, no nukes.

“We are probably not going to be able to do anything to stop, slow down, disrupt, interdict, or destroy the Chinese nuclear development program that they have projected out over the next 10 to 20 years,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley on March 29 at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. “They’re going to do that in accordance with their own plan.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macron-blunders-on-taiwan-and-ukraine-france-asia-military-china-xi-jinping-military-support-303181c5?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Emmanuel Macron fancies himself a Charles de Gaulle for the 21st century, which includes distancing Europe from the U.S. But the French President picked a terrible moment this weekend for a Gaullist afflatus following his meeting with Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Mr. Macron said in an interview with a reporter from Politico and two French journalists. “The question Europeans need to answer . . . is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”

No one wants a crisis over Taiwan, much less to accelerate one, but preventing one requires a credible deterrent. Mr. Macron seemed to rule out European help with that when he told the journalists that “Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it.”

If Mr. Macron wants to reduce American public support for the war against Russia, he couldn’t have said it better. Without U.S. weapons and intelligence, Russia would long ago have rolled over Ukraine and perhaps one or more NATO border countries. Mr. Macron says he wants to make Europe less dependent on U.S. weapons and energy, which is fine. But then how about spending the money and making the policy changes to do it?

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/369747

Sonia Backès, French secretary of state for citizenship, has just said that “political Islam wants to bring the Republic to its knees”. If only it were the République…
The French National Institute of Statistics has just provided us with numbers that tell of an unprecedented change of civilization in the history of a country that is the cradle of European culture. It is truly historic: there are more practicing Muslims than practicing Catholics between the ages of 18 and 59 in France. Reading the latest report from Insee, the French Statistical Institute, helps us understand the change of civilization we are experiencing in Europe.

One and a half million of Catholics pray and 800,000 go to church. Two million Muslims pray and 726,000 go to the mosque. There has already been an Islamic overtaking of Catholicism. And without considering the under 18s, where Muslims outclass Christians with Bulgarian percentages.

Le Monde reports that secularization is proceeding quickly only for Catholics. Muslim immigrants are not becoming “woke”. The postmodernist virus has not corroded their minds. 91 percent of Muslims educated as Muslims remain so. They remain religious, even after two generations. The use of the veil for women is also increasing: from 18 to 29 percent of all women in France in just ten years.

Three years ago, Muslims in France were 7 percent. Today they are 10 percent. Pierre Brochand, former director of the French internal secret service, has just said that “the critical point will be when Muslim immigrants cross the 50 percent threshold”. France is already teetering on Islam at 10 percent (in most big cities it’s 20 to 30 percent).

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19549/france-field-of-ruins

France, once again, is on the verge of chaos.

The subject of the discontent is the adoption of a law reforming the pension system in a minimal way: the legal retirement age in France has been set at 62 since 2010; the law raises it two years, to 64.

Neither members of the government nor economists on television dare to speak the truth: The French pension system is collapsing. The reform just adopted will not be enough to save it; just allow it to survive a bit longer.

The system has been bankrupt for years, but its bankruptcy is growing more costly.

The French pension system is not the only system collapsing. The country is facing a much larger crisis.

The French health insurance system, also based on mandatory contributions deducted from salaries, also is in terrible shape.

Food prices in 2022, meanwhile, increased 14.5%.

The center-left and center-right parties are dead. Neither the Rebellious France Party nor the National Rally Party would be able gather enough votes to constitute an alternative majority. The political situation is blocked.

France seems deadlocked, the possibilities of unblocking it nowhere in sight.

“A modest reform based on an implacable demographic observation has tipped France into an existential crisis in which everything is wavering… A much deeper malaise is rising to the surface. That of a country haunted by its decline”. — Vincent Trémollet de Villers, Le Figaro, March 23, 2023.

“Have we hit rock bottom?” asked journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert. “No, not yet.”

Paris, France. March 23, 8 p.m. A demonstration took place; as usual now, riots followed the demonstration and swept through the center of the city, then to other cities. Cars were burned, shop windows smashed, garbage dumpsters set on fire. A garbage collectors’ strike began two weeks earlier; nearly ten thousand tons of garbage, still strewn on the sidewalks, almost completely block some streets. The proliferation of rats threatens disease. Oil refineries are shut down; gas stations are running dry. More demonstrations took place March 28 — and more riots.

France, once again, is on the verge of chaos.