RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-boundaries-of-free-speech?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

To loud and horrified criticism, Britain’s new Labour government scrapped a law on free speech days before it was about to come into force.

This law, which had been introduced by the previous Conservative government, was designed to enforce freedom of speech in universities, colleges and student unions. This was in response to “cancel culture”, the shocking suppression of ideas on campus that challenge left-wing orthodoxies and which has resulted in the hounding of conservative speakers and persecution of academics with heterodox views, such as “gender critical” feminists who believe that sexual identity is dictated by biological fact.

Not surprisingly, such embattled feminists along with numerous conservative thinkers and writers have reacted viscerally to the scrapping of this law. 

However, a number of Jewish organisations opposed it. They feared that it would hand a weapon to antisemites and anti-Zionists that would enable them to claim legal backing for their promulgation of poisonous views that threatened the safety of Jews on campus and elsewhere.

So which camp is right?

The Free Speech Union, which has threatened to launch a judicial review of the government’s decision, said that killing off the legislation would make it “virtually impossible for students and academics to challenge radical progressive ideology on campus”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20837/iran-mullahs-view-us-election

Since assuming office, the Biden-Harris administration, in the tradition of former President Barack Obama, released billions of dollars to Iran. In addition, there was lax enforcement of existing sanctions, waiving of other sanctions and no secondary sanctions whatsoever — meaning that any country that does business with Iran is banned from doing business with the US — placed on Iran to discourage other countries from financing it.

China therefore has become Iran’s largest customer, and Europe conducting business as usual. This financial relief has come alongside a lenient attitude towards the advancements in Iran’s nuclear program. These include more than 160 Iranian military attacks against US troops just since October; virtually shutting down the Suez Canal, thereby forcing ships, unable to buy insurance, to detour around Africa; Iran’s and its terror groups’ military actions in the region, including the war against Israel, and Iran’s military support to Russia to attack Ukraine.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, openly acknowledged that without Iran’s financial and military support, many militia and terror groups might have been unable to survive.

The Trump administration’s sanctions forced Iran’s leaders to cut funding to militias, allies, and terror groups. The regime’s militants reportedly were not receiving their salaries or benefits, preventing them from fighting. As one Iran-backed militia fighter in Syria told The New York Times, “The golden days are gone and will never return. Iran does not have enough money to give us.”

It is no wonder why Iran is apprehensive about the prospect of a Trump victory. Under Biden-Harris or Democratic leadership, the Iranian regime enjoys financial benefits and total impunity. Under Trump, the “golden days” might again come to an end.

In Iran’s latest presidential elections, the candidates revealed that they are concerned about the possibility of former President Donald J. Trump winning the upcoming US election. From their perspective, a victory for Trump would be detrimental to their interests.

Since assuming office, the Biden-Harris administration, in the tradition of former President Barack Obama, released billions of dollars to Iran. In addition, there was lax enforcement of existing sanctions, waiving of other sanctions and no secondary sanctions whatsoever — meaning that any country that does business with Iran is banned from doing business with the US — placed on Iran to discourage other countries from financing it.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20835/iran-desperately-seeking-gorbachev

Gorbachev had a thin resume as an apparatchik who had risen in the party by doing nothing, in fact, by being nobody.

When he came to London to be promoted by Margaret Thatcher, his 10-line resume introduced him as the Central Committee’s agricultural tsar who had risen to be party boss and later president of the USSR.

He was a blank face on which one could draw one’s ideal face for a Soviet leader.

Iran’s President Pezeshkian offers that kind of blank face. His thin resume inspires a variety of fanciful images.

Could Pezeshkian be Iran’s Gorbachev?

Referring to President Masoud Pezeshkian, the question was headlined in a Tehran daily Tuesday and triggered a torrent of comments.

The paper’s commentator described Pezeshkian as a man trusted by the system and thus capable of introducing unspecified reforms to save Iran from unspecified dangers.

This is not the first time that regime insiders call for adjustments in its trajectory.

The first to do so was Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, who issued an 8-point reform manifesto which, had it been implemented, would have made Iran a Scandinavian-style democracy minus the monarchy.

Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

Instead, the nation witnessed mass executions, the pursuit of an unwinnable war against Iraq and flood-like spread of corruption.