RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/death-of-a-dictator-11567796547

Africa’s postcolonial era produced many tyrants, but few as destructive as Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. The perverse accomplishment of the dictator, who died Friday at age 95, was to make a thriving country impoverished, corrupt and oppressed.

Mugabe was born in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia and studied in South Africa. He became an enthusiastic Marxist and joined his country’s independence movement in the 1960s. The former schoolteacher turned into a guerrilla commander and served more than a decade in prison. After Zimbabwe became an independent state, he was elected Prime Minister in 1980.

Widely reviled at the end of his life for his many abuses of power, he was feted across the globe earlier in his career by politicians and intellectuals who should have known better. He became a champion of anticolonialism on the left and was even knighted by Britain in 1994. By then the military he controlled had killed thousands of political opponents and civilians.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/05/a-fine-mess/

It comes to something when the one of the most serene and sensible of political voices stems from a newspaper dedicated to the violent overthrow of capitalism.

Yet, The Morning Star—Britain’s only Communist newspaper, and once reliant on bulk orders from the Soviet Union—this week offered much in the way of common-sense; a commodity vanishingly rare in modern Britain.

“The Morning Star believes that the referendum result should be respected, and Britain should leave the EU on October 31, with or without a deal,” the paper proclaimed, parroting almost verbatim the mantra of  Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a man the same newspaper routinely daubs “fascist.”

Yes, dear reader, the beacon of democratic propriety appears to be a Leninist newspaper that papered over the barbarism of the Soviet Union and still harbors fantasies of violent revolution.

The ‘Rebel Alliance’ vs. the People

Over the past week, the formerly serious country of Great Britain perhaps seared its joke status into history.

First, Remainers armed with cheese, olives, and a good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon, blocked London streets in picnic fashion, without threat of harm or arrest, to protest an apparent “coup.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274826/duped-us-travelers-cuba-infected-zika-virus-humberto-fontova

“A new analysis of Zika-infected travelers who returned to the United States or Europe in 2017 or 2018 has found that 98% had visited Cuba, which did not report any cases to world health officials at the time the country’s outbreak apparently peaked.”

“It was startling,” says Kristian Andersen, a genomic epidemiologist at Scripps Research in San Diego, California, who led the work conducted by 38 researchers from five countries. The group estimates that Cuba had 5,707 unreported cases, with most occurring in 2017 (the year, by the way, when Obama’s “opening” made U.S. travel to Cuba very chic — and very important to the Stalinist regime’s coffers, especially those of the secret police and military who majority own Cuba’s tourism infrastructure).

“Of 91 travel-associated Zika cases identified in Florida from June 2017 to October 2018, the team found that all but one infected individual was returning from Cuba. …Likewise, 63 of 64 travel-associated cases caught in Europe during that time frame involved travel to Cuba. Cuba’s unrecognized [no–it was fully recognized by the Stalinist regime which kept it hush-hush!] Zika outbreak may have ‘silently’ spread the virus to other parts of the world and continues to infect international visitors today.” (Zika News)

So what’s the big deal, some might ask? Well, “Zika virus can be passed from a pregnant woman to her fetus and can cause a birth defect called microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects… Zika primarily spreads through infected mosquitoes. You can also get Zika through sex without a condom with someone infected by Zika, even if that person does not show symptoms of Zika.” (Center For Disease Controls.)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14805/despots-deals

The European Union wants the world to welcome Iran back into the international community because as far as the Europeans are concerned, it appears that the stronger Iran is, the better: a renewed Iran would further Europe’s hope of seeing Israel and the Jews wiped off the face of the earth. Heard just a few months ago were calls such as, “send Jews to the ovens,” “Hitler didn’t finish the job,” and “kill the Jews.”

The Trump administration has created the impression in the Arab and Muslim world that it is ready to beg the leaders of Iran to engage in direct negotiations with Washington. This approach is exceptionally harmful to US interests: it sends a message to many Arabs and Muslims that Americans are prepared to surrender again and humiliate themselves for the sake of any kind of deal with the Iranians. As Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said last month, America should “bow down” to Iran. Seems it is.

Advice to the Trump administration is: Stay strong. As Osama bin Laden correctly observed, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”

Strength and more strength is the only way to earn the respect of those running the show in Beijing, Kabul, Moscow, Pyongyang, and especially in Tehran, Gaza and Beirut.

The European Union says it will support talks between the US and Iran, but only if the current nuclear deal with Tehran is preserved.

The idea of direct talks between the US and Iran seems to have developed after President Donald Trump recently said he was ready to meet Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani.

“We are always in favor of talks, the more people talk, the more people understand each other better, on the basis of clarity and on the basis of respect,” EU diplomatic chief Federica Mogherini said last month.

The EU wants the world to welcome Iran back into the international community because — this might sound harsh, but it is increasingly hard not to believe it — they are hoping that the leaders of Tehran will focus their efforts on achieving their goal of annihilating Israel. As far as the Europeans are concerned, it appears that the stronger Iran is, the better: a renewed Iran would further Europe’s hope of seeing Israel and the Jews wiped off the face of the earth. Heard just a few months ago were calls such as, “send Jews to the ovens,” “Hitler didn’t finish the job,” and “kill the Jews.”

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/russia-nuclear-missile-engine/

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The fatal explosion that occurred recently during testing of the Russian Burevestnik nuclear cruise missile raises many questions. Could it have been avoided? Was it a fundamental failure of the ambitious armaments plan declared by President Putin in 2018? Whatever the answers to these questions, the renewed trend toward an unconventional armaments race could deteriorate into a second Cold War.

On August 8, during a test of the nuclear-powered engine of the 9M730 Burevestnik cruise missile (petrel in Russian; nicknamed the SSC-X-9 Skyfall in the West), held on a floating platform in the White Sea near the Nyonoksa missile test site in the far north of Russia, a mysterious explosion occurred that killed eight people. The blast raised questions about the status of a new generation of five advanced weapons introduced by Putin in 2018, of which Burevestnik, described by the Russian president as supersonic and of unlimited range, occupied pride of place.

Five of the eight people killed in the explosion were Rosatom (Russian State Atomiс Energy Corporation) employees, and three more employees were injured. According to the company’s announcement, the disaster occurred while testing an “isotopic energy source for a liquid propulsion system.”

Shortly after the explosion, the weather monitoring agency Roshydromet reported a significant spike in radiation 40 km from the blast site. Also, in the city of Severodvinsk, which is near the explosion site in the Archangelsk district, the radiation level was reported to have jumped to 16 times the normal level. This led the alarmed residents to rush to stock up on iodine, which reduces the effects of radiation exposure.