RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/britain-tories-and-kemi-badenoch-bruce-bawer/

“Briefly put, she’s incredibly smart, broadly knowledgeable, articulate, self-possessed, and gutsy – a no-nonsense expounder of good old-fashioned British common sense. In debate, she shines in a way that brings Mrs. Thatcher to mind. So, given that the Tory establishment is essentially Labour lite, nobody expected her to be the last person standing when the game of musical chairs was over. She fell out of the competition after the fourth vote, on July 19; the next day, happily, Trade Minister Penny Mordaunt, a slavish advocate of gender ideology, authoritarian hate-speech legislation, and other progressive rubbish, was voted off the island. ”

These days, Britain’s Tory Party is not unlike the neverTrump GOP in the U.S. The problem is that so far, at least, there’s no close British approximation to Trump. When Boris Johnson ascended to the prime ministership, to be sure, some of us who had read and admired his Spectator columns for years thought that, after being handed the reins of power, he might very well deliver the goods in a way not unlike The Donald. Alas, no. As it turned out, being a sharp, snappy political writer – even one who, thinking on his feet in front of a live audience, can put up a witty argument for the superiority of classical Greece to ancient Rome – doesn’t necessarily mean that one will be a first-rate head of government.

It’s still depressing to look back on it all. The Tories won the 2020 election by a landslide – giving them a clear mandate to take back Britain from the London-based progressives – but Boris, for all his power, did less with it, at least in that regard, than any of his admirers could ever have expected. Yes, he got Brexit done. But taxes went up anyway. So did rates of illegal immigration. He ordered a very strict lockdown (which he famously violated) and pursued an environmental policy that might have been cooked up by the EPA. As “woke” ideology spread – a far more dangerous virus than COVID-19 – he repeatedly resisted opportunities to score meaningful victories against it that would only have enhanced his level of public support. Perhaps most appalling, during his tenure, horrific revelations of mass grooming-gang rapes kept on coming even as the nation’s police, to their everlasting discredit, remained far more interested in locking up critics of Islam than in nabbing Muslim rapists. But B.J. just shrugged it all off, seeming strangely detached – perhaps, some wondered, uneasy with power.  

Which, of course, is why the Conservatives, taking advantage of a relatively trivial scandal or two, finally decided a few weeks back to give old Boris the heave-ho and find a new party leader.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18715/turkey-torture

“We saw his body while washing it. There was a scar on his neck as if he had been hanged with a clothesline. Both of his eyes had burst. Blood was coming from his eyes. His nose was completely broken and filled with cotton. There was such a large swelling and bruise on his chest it looked as if a tree had been stuck there. His upper lip was almost as big as a palm. His right foot was stitched.” — Hikmet Yılmaz, elder brother of Ferhan Yılmaz, evidently tortured to death in Silivri prison on April 10, 2022.

“There are thousands of cases like this. I spoke to his brother a while ago…. There is ill-treatment and torture in all prisons, systematically everywhere.” — Sezgin Tanrıkulu, deputy of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), bianet.com. July 14, 2022.

“[W]e learned that the transferred prisoners told their families, ‘We are at risk here too. Do not make any more statements to the press.'” — Monitoring Delegation of Prisons in the Marmara Region, press conference, tihv.org.tr, April 15, 2022.

“Both of his hands have cuts and stitches…. His whole body is bruised…. He can’t see any more. They tortured him so much he has lost his eyesight. They hit him so much in the head that his head shakes all the time. His eyes start moving as if he had a stroke…. He has seven stitches on one arm and six on the other…They put him in a cell where there was feces of other prisoners. They told him to eat the feces. They beat my son and hanged him twice. And then removed him from the rope. He also hanged himself once… He said they made him do it… They put a razor blade there and told him to cut himself. They waited there so he had to cut himself.” — Beyaz Çelik, mother of prisoner Halil Kasal, who was tortured at Silivri Prison.

“I emphasize that there is no torture or ill-treatment in Turkish prisons… Almost all of the allegations against prisons are exaggeration, distortion and fiction… Such allegations were made by terrorist organizations, circles that support terrorist organizations or those who support them politically.” — Turkey’s Minister of Justice Bekir Bozdağ, t24.com.tr, April 20, 2022.

“Prisoners are under torture. There are massive violations of rights. Prisoners die, they are killed, but [authorities] say that they committed suicide.” — Fatma Kurtulan, MP of the HDP party and member of the Parliamentary Human Rights Investigation Commission, Yeni Yasam Gazetesi, April 20, 2022.

“[S]ometimes the prison guards show counter-reflexes by complaining about the prisoners that they abuse, and the prisoners get arbitrarily and illegally punished for the abuses from which they have suffered…. These incidents are due to sentences arbitrarily and unlawfully implemented in Turkey, and the widespread impunity policy for state authorities who are perpetrators of crimes.” — Mehdi Ozdemir, attorney, board member of Diyarbakir Bar Association, to Gatestone, April 23, 2022.

What makes this situation even worse is that the international community, including the UN, has enabled the Turkish government to carry out its policy of destruction of human rights with no consequences, but many rewards.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/muslims-slaughter-20-nigerian-christians-raymond-ibrahim/

Last May, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (“ISIS”) published a video of the execution of about 20 Christian civilians in Nigeria.  As with many other such ISIS-type videos, the terrorists stood behind their bound and kneeling victims, before knocking them over and carving their heads off to cries of “Allahu Akbar.”

Before doing so, one of the masked Muslims, speaking in the Hausa language, said that the execution of these Christians was “to avenge the killing of the group’s leaders in the Middle East earlier in 2022.”  This is apparently a reference to ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi—a man with a reputation for extreme brutality—who was killed last February during an airborne raid by U.S. and Kurdish forces in northwestern Syria.

The reader may be pondering how impoverished Christian civilians in Nigeria are connected to or responsible for the activities of U.S. and Kurdish forces in Syria.  The fact is, Muslim terrorists are notorious for offering any number of pretexts—many of which border on the absurd—to justify their cowardly targeting and murdering of the Christian minorities in their midst.

For example, ISIS cited similar “grievances” to justify its grisly slaughter of 21 Christians—20 Copts and one Ghanaian—on the shores of Libya in 2015.  An article in Dabiq, the Islamic State’s online magazine in English, titled “Revenge for the Muslimat [Muslim women] Persecuted by the Coptic Crusaders of Egypt,” claimed that the 21 Christians were slaughtered in “revenge” for two Coptic women who, back in 2010 and according to Islamic propaganda, were compelled by Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church to recant their voluntary conversion to Islam and return to Christianity.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18728/china-moon-explorers

“We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out,'” — Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, interview with Bild, July 2, 2022.

The Chinese have made it clear that, if they get there [to the moon] first, they will shoot down visitors.

“Many are beginning to wonder if China will soon do to the moon and the rest of space that which it has done to the South and East China Seas, Taiwan, and northern India: claim them as sovereign.” — Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, to Gatestone, July 6, 2022.

Unfortunately, President Joe Biden has no apparent interest in getting to the moon. Only Elon Musk, with his Starship effort, is developing the means to compete with the Chinese.

“We are in a second moon race, this time it’s for keeps. Whoever gets to the moon with the mostest gets to keep the moon, and the United States is lagging.” — Richard Fisher, International Assessment and Strategy Center, on John Batchelor ‘s CBS Eye on the World radio program, July 6, 2022.

“This is not the first time that the NASA administrator has lashed out at China in disregard of facts,” said Zhao Lijian, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, at his July 4 regular press briefing. “Some U.S. officials have spoken irresponsibly to misrepresent the normal and legitimate space endeavors of China. China firmly rejects such remarks.”

Zhao, known for rabid anti-Americanism, was reacting to attention-grabbing comments of NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out,'” Nelson told German newspaper Bild in an interview published July 2.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18716/death-blasphemers-pakistan

“Muhammad Irfan came to my shop for wheel balancing for his motorbike. I balanced the wheel and demanded my amount of labour as settled between us. Muhammad Irfan refused to give me money and said, ‘I am a follower of Peer Fakhir [a Muslim ascetic] and don’t ask for money from me.'” — Ashfaq Masih, Christian falsely accused of “blasphemy” and sentenced to death by hanging, chuchinchains.ie, July 7, 2022.

“They both made conspiracy against me and lodged a false FIR [First Incident Report] against me. I told the real story to a police officer but he did not record my version but conducted investigation ex-parte. I neither uttered any derogatory word against Prophet Muhammad nor can think about it.” — Ashfaq Masih, chuchinchains.ie, July 7, 2022.

The Muslim judge, Khalid Wazir, presiding over the case, went so far as to state that “it could not be believed that a Muslim will spin a story in this regard,” while simultaneously describing the evidence presented by Masih’s defense team as “not believable. ”

“I don’t remember any case where the lower court decided to grant bail or freed anyone accused of the blasphemy law. The judges are aware that such cases are made to punish and settle personal grudges with the opponents, especially against the Christians…. Masih’s case was very clear—the shop owner wanted him out and Naveed was a business rival who implicated him in a false blasphemy case. He is innocent and has already spent five years in prison for a crime he never committed.” — Nasir Saeed, Director of the Centre for Legal Aid Assistance and Settlement, claas.org.uk, July 7, 2002.

Masih’s case is now at least the third death sentencing of its kind since the start of this year.

In February 2022, Zafar Bhatti, 58 — another Christian man who had been serving a life sentence under a false accusation of blaspheming Muhammad in a text — was given a death sentence.

In January 2022, Aneeqa Atteeq, a Muslim woman, was sentenced to death after a Pakistani court pronounced her guilty of insulting Muhammad in text messages she had sent to a man via WhatsApp. She had offered a more plausible if not prosaic explanation: the man who reported her was getting “revenge” on her because she had refused his advances.

Horrific as it is to be accused of blasphemy in a Pakistani courtroom, it is even far worse to fall into the hands of a Pakistani mob. A decade-old report found that in Pakistan, between just 1990 and 2012 alone, “fifty-two people have been extra-judicially murdered on charges of blasphemy.”

“Anyone Who Touches the Prophet, No Punishment—Just Kill!” — Yello Babo, Muslim cleric in Nigeria, Persecution.org, May 16, 2022.

On July 4, 2022, a Christian mechanic who had been imprisoned for the last five years, awaiting trial under a false accusation of “blasphemy” for allegedly insulting the Muslim prophet Muhammad, was sentenced to death by hanging in a Pakistani court.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18707/britain-pm-iran

[U]nder [Boris Johnson’s] premiership, Britain backed attempts by other Western signatories to the deal — the US, France and Germany — to revive the JCPOA in the face of mounting evidence that Tehran has absolutely no interest in abiding by its commitments.

In the latest indication that Iran is in breach of its JCPOA commitments, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN-sponsored body responsible for monitoring Tehran’s nuclear activities, has reported that Iran has recently escalated its uranium enrichment activities at its underground Fordow facility.

Experts say this will enable Iran to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels without being detected by IAEA inspection teams.

Consequently, with Mr Johnson soon to depart from Downing Street, there is a golden opportunity for his successor to adopt a new, more robust policy towards Tehran, one that clearly identifies the ayatollahs as posing a clear and present danger to the security of Britain and its allies.

The scale of the Iranian threat is reflected in last week’s statement by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that Iran had agreed to supply Russia with hundreds of drones to support its war effort in Ukraine.

The revelations concerning Iran’s deepening involvement in the Ukraine conflict should certainly concern the British government….

The recent upsurge in Iranian military activity, both in the Arabian Gulf and Ukraine, provides incontrovertible evidence that, far from trying to reach an agreement with the West, Iran appears determined to intensify hostilities.

Britain, together with other signatories to the JCPOA, must base its policy on the assumption that Iran is a hostile regime, not one that has any interest in reaching a peaceful accommodation with the West.

Boris Johnson’s dramatic removal from office gives Britain a superb opportunity to adopt a new policy towards Iran, one that takes proper account of the deadly threat the Iranian regime poses to Britain and its allies.

From his time as foreign secretary to his more recent tenure as prime minister, Mr Johnson’s attitude towards Iran and its illicit nuclear activities can most charitably be described as equivocal.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/opinions-it-s-not-just-us-western-democracies-are-fragmenting/ar-AAZCpNO?cvid=4689798c14724d5fab4b32a8a5fa9bf7

Three major elections on the same Sunday in June — in France, Colombia and Spain — tell the fundamental story of democracy in our era: the continuous disaffection with government, the collapse of traditionally dominant parties and figures, and the constant search for alternatives — which is quickly followed by yet more disaffection and the search for yet other alternatives. This is no longer a narrative of dysfunction distinctive to one country, if it ever was. The Conservative Party in Britain is now scrambling to find a new prime minister; the government in Italy is near collapse. The nature of political authority has fundamentally changed. Political power has become fragmented, as voters abandon traditional parties and turn to upstart, insurgent parties or independent, free agent politicians from across the political spectrum.

In multiparty democracies, such as the three that held elections last month, the fragmentation of political power makes it more difficult to form governments, causes those governments to be fragile and prone to collapse, and weakens their capacity to deliver effective policies. Politics in the United States, with our well-entrenched two-party system, are nonetheless being shaped by similar forces — although here fragmentation means the Democratic and Republican parties are torn by internal factional conflicts that party leaders struggle to surmount. Such battles made the House Republican caucus ungovernable when Reps. John Boehner and Paul Ryan took turns as House speaker, leading both to abandon that powerful position. They’re also why the Democratic Party damaged itself, perhaps irreparably for this year’s midterms, with a prolonged internal debate over whether to link major infrastructure legislation with the grander aspirations of the Build Back Better bill, as well as conflicts between the party’s moderate and progressive wings that have hamstrung immigration policy and kept critical bipartisan legislation to boost U.S. chip manufacturing in prolonged limbo. Even with unified control of government, the parties find it difficult to govern.

https://merionwest.com/2022/07/14/the-acute-danger-of-irans-belligerence/

“Our collective inability to push back against such a hateful worldview by holding Tehran accountable for the terror it is has funded and weaponized could soon prove to be a costly mistake.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran has seldom hid its desire to see Israel fall or, as its Leadership has put it, “annihilated.” But Tehran’s attitude toward its Jewish neighbor has grown significantly more heated as of late. It is a sign, no doubt, that due to its inability to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and see the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) rebranded as a legitimate apparatus, Iran may consider more radical actions.

Although Tehran has hidden behind its proxies for decades, and many have argued that it would never directly engage Israel militarily, we should not discount its newfound confidence as it believes to have Israel surrounded. Iran’s military strategy toward Israel was summarized in 2019 by Major General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the Research Division of Israeli Military Intelligence, as “the ring of fire.” The term refers to Iran’s efforts to expand its precision guided missile project throughout the Middle East to encircle Israel and overwhelm its defenses.

For decades now, the Islamic Republic has architected a narrative around anti-Zionism, advocating not only for the destruction of Israel but also for the expulsion of its people, the Jews, from the region altogether–painting its motive as an act of grand liberation. Our collective inability to push back against such a hateful worldview by holding Tehran accountable for the terror it is has funded and weaponized could soon prove to be a costly mistake.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18711/reviled-institutions

A Monmouth University poll released on July 5 reveals that 57% of Americans believe that U.S. federal government actions over the last six months have directly hurt their families. In that same poll, Monmouth compiles the 22 most important priorities of the American people. Neither Russia’s war in Ukraine nor Congress’s January 6 Committee hearings appear anywhere on the list; instead, the top four issues all deal with skyrocketing inflation and economic uncertainty.

A new Gallup poll documents a precipitous drop in Americans’ confidence across 16 major institutions, including historic lows for confidence in newspapers, the criminal justice system, big business, police, and all three branches of the federal government. The survey’s results represent the lowest overall institutional confidence ever recorded in its decades-long survey history, and not a single institution reflected an increase in confidence over last year’s measures. Only 7% of Americans have a “Great deal / Quite a lot” of confidence in Congress, while only 11% feel similarly about television news.

Only adding to Westerners’ perception of widespread institutional corruption, an investigation by the British Medical Journal recently documented pervasive conflicts of interest within Western drug and health regulatory agencies whose budgets are funded primarily by monetary gifts from major pharmaceutical companies, the very industry players whose products the government agencies are charged with regulating.

Westerners increasingly do not trust their governments or their major news media to report accurate and reliable information. They increasingly view government actors as perpetuating two standards of justice and economic security — one for those at the very top of society’s pyramid of wealth and power and one for everyone else.

Westerners increasingly do not trust their governments or their major news media to report accurate and reliable information. They increasingly view government actors as perpetuating two standards of justice and economic security — one for those at the very top of society’s pyramid of wealth and power, and one for everyone else.

Surely Western authorities cannot expect to maintain long-term legitimacy if their populations judge governing institutions as irredeemably marred by corruption and political leaders as indifferent, if not downright hostile, to ordinary citizens’ wants and needs.

It has become fashionable for Western politicians to divide up the global chessboard between virtuous “democracies” struggling for world peace and threatening “dictatorships” causing hardship and chaos. Whatever the West’s “democracies” are today, however, they are not bastions for representing honestly their peoples’ most dire concerns, nor are they above doling out to their citizenries hefty portions of hardship and chaos.

Institutions can be broadly categorized as those that are created and maintained through human cooperation and consent and those that require force and coercion to endure. In a “democratic” society, cooperation and consent are the principal building blocks, as well as tools, for fashioning strong institutions capable of surviving unknown threats and unexpected emergencies.

What happens when consent is replaced by government force and coercion? Laws lose legitimacy. News sources are reduced to pure propaganda. Political disagreement turns to bloodshed and murder. It is as if society’s cement has instead been replaced by strongmen trying to squeeze humanity’s discreet blocks together with sheer muscle…

Western authorities cannot expect to maintain long-term legitimacy if their populations judge governing institutions as irredeemably marred by corruption and political leaders as indifferent, if not downright hostile, to ordinary citizens’ wants and needs.