RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/r-i-p-gorby-the-man-who-watched-others-tear-down-the-iron-curtain/

Mikhail Gorbachev was born in 1931 and was old enough to remember the suffering of his family during World War II and the great Stalinist purges, in which one of his grandfathers was tortured and another executed. Many obituarists will focus on his tentative reforms of the Soviet Union, and rightly so. He allowed more political freedom in elections, though less than any of us would recognize as legitimate. He reestablished relations with the Vatican, eased up on official state atheism, and conducted successful arms treaties with the United States. He broke the taboos on talking openly about Russian history and the quality of life in the Soviet Union.

But all this was not enough to save Russia from the collapse.

In this space, it is important to state clearly that Gorbachev’s dull optimism and his dull passivity was turned into the end of the Soviet Union by more nimble statesmen like Hungary’s prime minister Miklós Németh, and German chancellor Helmut Kohl, with big assists from forward-seeing activists like Poland’s Lech Walesa and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. Németh first and Kohl later would present one fait accompli after another to the cautiously optimistic Americans (Bush and Secretary of State James Baker) and the dithering and overwhelmed Gorbachev. The statesmen and political movements of Central and Eastern Europe wanted to get into Western political structures like NATO and the European Community faster than the White House or Brussels wanted to accept them. Some obituarists will claim that Gorbachev tore down the Iron Curtain. No. The end of the Soviet Union and reunification of Germany as a full NATO member was a stampede through a door that Gorbachev was unwilling to bolt shut again. But his optimism and passivity in the face of fast-moving events prevented these days from becoming the bloodbath that history would lead us to expect during a European security realignment. With the exception of Lithuania, most Soviet member states were allowed to escape peacefully. This was a miracle, and Gorbachev can be thanked inasmuch as his awareness of his and Russia’s then limitations allowed the Cold War to end without going hot again.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-mariupol-show-trials-ukraine-prisoners-of-war-denis-pushilin-vladimir-putin-11661894589?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Ukrainian prisoners of war already face deprivation and torture, and Russia now plans to subject them to a show trial that violates the laws of war and international agreements that Russia has signed.

In May some 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers under siege in Mariupol surrendered to save the lives of severely wounded comrades. Last week Denis Pushilin, the Russia-backed head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said a tribunal in Mariupol would hear some 80 cases of war crimes.

The trials will focus on captured members of the Azov Regiment of Ukraine’s national guard. Formed in 2014, the unit was accused of including anti-Semites. The regiment says it has since dishonorably discharged extremists in its ranks, and its members now include Jewish soldiers. The unit fought alongside Ukrainian marines and other soldiers in Mariupol, and their stand pinned down Russian troops that could have been deployed elsewhere.

But the Kremlin claims it is “de-Nazifying” Ukraine, and it is using the Azov Regiment as propaganda to justify the invasion. In August Russia’s Supreme Court designated the Azov Regiment a terrorist organization, paving the way for lengthy jail sentences for its captured members. Leonid Slutsky, a deputy of the Russian Duma, has said Azov Regiment members “do not deserve to live.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mikhail-gorbachev-dies-at-91-russian-media/

Mikhail Gorbachev, the final leader of the Soviet Union died after a long illness on Tuesday, Russian media outlet RIA reported.

Gorbachev was 91 years old.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18793/china-threatens-to-destroy-elon-musk-starlink

Chinese military researchers are threatening that Musk’s Starlink satellites must be destroyed. The problem, however, does not appear so much to be the fear of collision, but rather that China believes that Starlink could be used for military purposes and thereby threaten what China calls its national security.

“[A] combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some Starlink satellites lose their functions and destroy the constellation’s operating system.” — Five senior scientists in China’s defense industry, led by Ren Yuanzhen, a researcher with the Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications, under the People Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) Strategic Support Force, by Stephen Chen, scmp.com, May 25,2022

Soft kill methods target software and operating systems of the satellites, whereas hard kill methods physically destroy the satellites….

Unsurprisingly, China has eagerly copied Elon Musk’s SpaceX to achieve its own space ambitions: China’s Long March 2C rocket, for instance, which China launched in the summer of 2019, had parts that were “virtually identical” to those that are used to steer the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

China’s threats against Musk’s Starlink is more proof that the country is not ready to let anyone stand in the way of its “fierce space game”, as China puts it.

In addition… China is forging ahead with a number of projects that will significantly accelerate the country’s space capabilities.

China has reportedly sped up its program to launch a solar power plant in space. The purpose of the plant is to transmit electricity to earth by converting solar energy to microwaves or laser and directing the energy to Earth, according to the South China Morning Post… It is probable that China got the idea from the US; NASA reportedly proposed a similar plan more than two decades ago but never went on to develop it.

China’s explicit goal is to become the world’s leading space power by 2045. It is important to keep in mind that China’s space program – even what might look like harmless, civil aspects of space exploration… – is heavily militarized.

Chinese military researchers recently called for the destruction of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites, an extraordinary threat for a state to make against a private foreign enterprise.

In December 2021, China filed a complaint with the United Nations, claiming that two of Musk’s Starlink satellites had nearly collided with the Tianhe module of its Tiangong Space Station — in April and October of 2021– and that Chinese astronauts had been forced to maneuver the module of the station to avoid the collision. Starlink is part of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the satellites are part of a plan to make internet coverage from the satellites available worldwide, with the goal of launching nearly 12,000 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18786/europe-christianity-islam

Comparing only the weekly frequency of Friday prayers in the mosque and Sunday Mass in the church, the future is clear: 65% of practicing Catholics are over 50 years old. By contrast, 73% of practicing Muslims are under the age of 50.

In an essay on L’Incorrect Frédéric Saint Clair, political scientist and analyst, explains that “the milestone of 10,000 mosques, at the current rate, will be reached around 2100”. Will we have 10,000 full mosques and 10,000 practically empty churches?

“[A] mosque is erected every fortnight in France, while a Christian building is being destroyed at the same rate.” — Edouard de Lamaze, president of the Observatory of Religious Heritage in Paris; Catholic News Agency, May 4, 2021.

“During my first trips to the Middle East, in the early 1980s, I did not see veiled women and gradually the veil spread everywhere. It is the sign of the re-Islamization of Muslim societies and, in this sense, it takes on a political and geopolitical dimension. It is part of a conquest strategy. France is in a state of self-dhimmitude…. a legal and political status applicable to non-Muslim citizens in a state governed by Islam according to a prescription of the Koran (9:29). [Dhimmis] do not enjoy equal citizenship with the ‘true believers,’ who are Muslims.” — Annie Laurent, essayist and scholar author of several books on Islam, Boulevard Voltaire, May 19, 2022.

“…France, due to a colonial complex and a sense of guilt, anticipates a legal and political situation that is not (yet) imposed on it but which could be a day in which Islam it will be a majority and therefore able to govern our country…. [T]he situation is really worrying. Before it becomes dramatic, it is urgent to put an end to the concessions we are multiplying to Islamism by hiding behind our values. Because by doing so we erase our own civilization”. — Annie Laurent, Boulevard Voltaire, May 19, 2022.

Christianity in Germany “seems stable, but in reality it is on the verge of collapse. Pastors and bishops, but also many actively involved lay people, see landscapes in bloom where in reality there is nothing but the desert “. — Markus Günther, essayist, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, December 29, 2014.

“Muslims, the winners of demographic change,” headlined Die Welt. “US researchers predict that for the first time in history there will be more Muslims than Christians. Societies change. Even Germany’s”.

In Trier, Germany, where Karl Marx was born, the diocese announced an unprecedented cut in the number of parishes which, in the next few years, will be reduced from 900 to 35.

L’Echo, the main Belgian economic newspaper, says: “Brussels was at the forefront of secularization before confronting an active Muslim minority. The first religion in Brussels today is Islam”…. Belgian anthropologist Olivier Servais confirmed a Muslim presence in Brussels at 33.5 percent, predicting a majority in 2030.

French writer André Malraux said it: “A civilization is everything that gathers around a religion”. And when one religion declines, another takes its place.

Sarcelles, Saint-Denis, Mulhouse, Nantes, Chambéry, Strasbourg, La Rochelle… The impressive images of stadiums full of Muslim faithful, who arrived from all over France for the feast of Eid Al Kabir, seventy days after the end of Ramadan. In Saint-Denis, the city where the kings of France rest; in Nantes, the city of the Dukes of Brittany; in Strasbourg, the city of the cathedral and seat of the European Parliament, in Mulhouse, in the heart of Alsace.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18840/tehran-debates-the-bomb

Interestingly, none of the problems that nation-states might have with one another, problems such as border disputes, competition for sources of raw materials and markets, water-sharing disputes, irredentism, maltreatment of kith-and-kin, and bitter historic memories, exist between Iran and Israel.

No Iranian leader, even under the present regime, could rationally explain why Israel should be regarded as Iran’s enemy.

The danger is that the mullahs might regard the bomb as a status symbol, using Biden’s weakness as an opportunity to humiliate the “Great Satan.”

After more than three decades, a debate that started during the Iran-Iraq war seems to be making a comeback in Tehran: Should the Islamic Republic take the final steps towards building a nuclear arsenal?

The original debate that took place behind the scenes was prompted by the revelation that, with French help, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had been trying to build a nuclear capacity around Osirak, a nuclear power station and research center which was wiped out in a surprise attack by the Israeli Air Force.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/26/lockdown-and-the-price-of-suppressing-dissent/

‘You must stay at home.’ That simple instruction from prime minister Boris Johnson, issued before the first Covid lockdown in March 2020, changed the fate of the nation forever.

You might have imagined that in a democratic country such as Britain, a decision of this magnitude would not simply have been imposed by executive fiat. That the shutting down of schools, the economy and society might have been something worth debating and discussing. But for much of the pandemic, lockdown was never subjected to proper scrutiny, even though its harms were obvious from the start.

Indeed, the harms of lockdown are becoming clearer by the day. The near-collapse of the NHS, the crisis in education and runaway inflation can all be traced back, at least in part, to March 2020. And while the Russian invasion of Ukraine has since sparked a global energy crisis, lockdown is part of what left us so vulnerable to its effects.

After all, the lockdown was the biggest shock to the UK economy in the history of industrial capitalism. And in the words of one High Court judge, it was ‘possibly the most restrictive regime on the public life of persons and businesses ever’. Many of its awful impacts were predictable and predicted.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/08/26/the-trouble-with-trudeau-n1624567

It is no secret that Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau is a believer in and advocate for totalitarian forms of government. We recall his gushing eulogy for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and his candid admiration for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with its facility for “turning on a dime” in making and executing policy.

The fact that Miami has over the years become a haven for Cuban escapees and boat people and that Vancouver welcomes a steady stream of Chinese immigrants, who approximate 20% of the municipal census (as of 2019) and rising steeply like the city’s towering skyline where Chinese billionaires park their money, must mean something — more precisely, it must mean that Trudeau is grossly mistaken or even rather daft in his political loyalties, convictions, and affiliations.

As a graduate of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Young Global Leaders Programme and a disciple of its founder Klaus Schwab, Trudeau enjoys an intimate relationship with the proponents of the Great Reset that seeks to replace the successful free-market system of Western nations with an oligarchic model of top-down governance and corporatist domination, presumably for the benefit of all its “stakeholders.” What could go wrong?

Plenty. The WEF is obviously in a close, symbiotic relation with the CCP. It touts the necessity of constant surveillance to ensure compliance with its mandates and decrees, an agenda, in Jeffrey Tucker’s words, of “technocratic central planning rooted in deep suspicion of basic tenets of freedom.” The human being will be subject to enhanced biosecurity protocols, synthetic biology, detector algorithms, advanced AI, and genetic editing. The object is total control over the life of the individual, allowing the government to monitor all one’s activities — where we travel, what we buy, how we spend, where we save and invest, what we write, where we work, how many booster shots we have received, and so on. If we donate to the “wrong” cause or run afoul of social media, our credit card or passport can be instantly invalidated. The state’s credentialing system is all-powerful.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18825/great-reset-wef

Notice that no nation has managed merely to print money and tax its citizens on the path to prosperity. Real wealth cannot simply be conjured from thin air. There must be recognized value in what a nation and its citizens possess.

More than any other source for national wealth, however, one towers above the rest: innovation. The ability of the human mind to create something new and valuable provides society with endless wealth creation…. Innovation is the magic sauce for generating wealth.

Humans struggling merely to survive in the world do not waste time, labor, or resources on projects that offer no prospect for future reward. Humans working as servants to the state under centrally controlled economies have no incentive to innovate. Only when private ownership and personal liberty combine can human innovation flourish. Freedom is the secret ingredient to innovation’s magic sauce for increasing wealth.

A country whose institutions do not respect property rights or whose customs do not value freedom will remain a barren desert for human innovation. In this way, nations have a great incentive to liberalize over time. Should they not, they quickly become financially and militarily vulnerable to more innovative and wealthier nations. Observing this simple truth, classical liberals have always understood free markets as the gateway to human emancipation. Economic self-interest, in other words, ultimately leads to expansive human rights and liberties across the planet.

Nothing about Western politicians’ embrace of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” or “Build Back Better” paradigms protects property rights or liberty in the slightest. The WEF’s agenda promotes radically anti-liberal programs… [that] will smother human innovation by first depriving Westerners of their freedoms.

Wealthy free nations are a threat to the WEF’s New World Order. If censorship must be embraced to control the “narrative,” then so be it. If citizens must be denied freedom of movement under the guise of a “health emergency,” no big deal. If private bank accounts must be seized to intimidate protesters, then such threats are the price for ensuring compliance. In this way, the WEF’s plans for a controlled economy intentionally reverse centuries of liberal progress. Political leaders today are dragging the West into the past.

First, individual liberties will continue disappearing. Then, the greatest economic engine of all, innovation, will dry up. Finally, wealth will return solely to the hands of a small “ruling class” minority. This is the future the World Economic Forum hails as “progress.” It is not. It is a recipe for human bondage.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/08/iranian-state-media-features-american-prof-new-robert-spencer/

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been engaging in a bit of damage control since the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, affectionately known as “The Butcher of Baghdad,” is set to come to New York to address the United Nations, and the Iranians don’t want to make the possibility that Old Joe Biden’s ultra-woke handlers would ban him from entering the country any less remote than it is now. And so Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said Monday: “We categorically deny” any connection to the attack. “No one has the right to accuse the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

This being Iran, however, damage control is not always as smooth as we’re used to in the West. On Thursday, Iran’s state-controlled Press TV featured an American professor who said that the stabbing attack on Rushdie was the fault of…the Jews. The Press TV article was entitled “Rushdie attack might be Israeli plot to spread Islamophobia: Scholar.” Of course! Why didn’t anyone think of that before?

Press TV’s scholar was Kevin Barrett, whom it described variously as “an American writer and political analyst” and “an American author, journalist, and radio host.” Whatever else Barrett may be, he is a conspiracy-minded man who believes that he has been a victim of one himself. The bio he supplied to Amazon.com states that “From 1991 through 2006 Dr. Barrett taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris and Wisconsin.” But then he fell victim to the wicked conservatives: “In summer 2006 Dr. Barrett was attacked by a group of Republican state legislators who called for him to be fired from his job at the University of Wisconsin-Madison due to his political opinions. Since 2007 Dr. Barrett has been informally blacklisted from teaching in American colleges and universities.”