RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/11/ireland-on-the-verge-of-establishing-an-oppressive-censorship-regime/?utm_source=

Despite superficial similarities to First Amendment jurisprudence in the U.S., the proposed Irish hate-speech statute would all but guarantee its politicized use.

The ferocious desire of Ireland’s myopic and feckless governing class to crack down on speech that it considers “hateful” seems at last to be reaching fruition. After a riot in Dublin was blamed on “far-right” agitators, the country’s taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, renewed his push for a stricter set of legal restrictions on the free expression of the citizenry. “It’s now very obvious to anyone who might have doubted us,” Varadkar said last week, “that our incitement-to-hatred legislation is just not up to date.” “We need that legislation through,” he insisted, “and we need it through in a matter of weeks.”

When selling its proposal, Ireland’s government is careful to use words that do not appear suggestive of censorship. Far from being about “enforcing politeness or political correctness,” the country’s minister of justice, Helen McEntee, maintained last week, the statute she covets is about preventing forms of “criminal hate speech” that “recklessly incite” or “stir up acts of hostility, discrimination or violence.” “People may hold different views and opinions,” McEntee vowed. Her target, she explained, was instigation.

Rhetorically, this is quite a clever trick — akin to describing welfare spending as “insurance” or defining McCarthyism as “accountability culture.” But a trick it is nevertheless. If Ireland truly wished to crack down on reckless incitement while leaving “views and opinions” alone, it could simply have adopted the American standard of review, which, by design, does precisely that. That, instead, the Irish government has developed a system for the wholesale regulation of debate is telling.

Examined superficially, the guts of Ireland’s law seem similar to the holding in America’s controlling First Amendment case, Brandenburg v. Ohio. If enacted, Ireland’s measure would enable the punishment of speech that is “likely to incite hatred or violence” — which appears to channel Brandenburg’s exemption of speech that is “directed at inciting or producing imminent lawless action” and is “likely” to do so. But this resemblance is a mirage.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/evan-gershkovich-prison-russia-biden-administration-alsu-kurmasheva-2d31322b?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

A Russian court on Tuesday extended the unjust detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich through at least Jan. 30. That would extend his imprisonment to 10 months on false charges of espionage since his arrest in March.

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow criticized the court’s decision, and thanks for that. But the question Americans should ask the Biden Administration is what price has the Russian government paid for imprisoning an American journalist?

We can’t think of anything that would discomfit Vladimir Putin, who is responsible for Mr. Gershkovich’s arrest. The dictator has been denounced around the world, but the bomber of Ukrainian civilians hardly cares about that. No real Russian spies have been arrested in the U.S., nor any Russian journalists or diplomats even expelled, in response.

The White House seems to be focusing on some kind of prisoner exchange for Mr. Gershkovich, as it has for others such as basketball celebrity Brittney Griner. The problem is that Mr. Putin doesn’t seem interested in anyone currently in U.S. custody, and Russia’s official position is that Mr. Gershkovich must go on trial first. Russia could finish its Potemkin trial in days if it wanted to.

The harsh reality of Mr. Gershkovich’s detention for all American journalists working abroad is that the failure to impose costs on Russia will encourage the Kremlin and other rogue states to grab others. And sure enough, it recently escalated by detaining American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20187/should-nazis-economy

The new index does not include Chinese and Hong Kong stocks, so to match the assets of the I Fund to the new index, the Thrift Board will have to sell Chinese and Hong Kong stocks and not buy them in the future.

Investors have noticed. More than three-quarters of the foreign cash invested in Chinese stocks in the first seven months of this year has already been withdrawn from China. In excess of $25 billion has exited the country.

Chinese stocks listed in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and New York have lost about $955 billion of market capitalization this year…. The plunge in the renminbi against the dollar this year has further eroded returns.

Chinese economic news has become downright scary, and, unfortunately for China, there is no such thing as a brave money manager.

China’s companies for decades essentially had a free ride: As a practical matter, they did not have to meet U.S. disclosure requirements, which applied to companies from all other countries. This unjustified preferential treatment was reduced somewhat in August of last year when the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board surprisingly clinched an agreement with Chinese regulators to give the U.S. access in Hong Kong to the audit papers of Chinese companies.

So why should companies continue to get special access to American equity markets just because they come from China? Or why should they have any access at all?

The Chinese economy and financial markets are fragile. It is time to cut off all the blood supply to the Nazis of the 21st century.

They certainly cannot be happy in Beijing. An exceedingly technical administrative decision in Washington, D.C. will soon result in investors pulling tens of billions of dollars in investments from a cash-strapped China.

On November 14, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board changed the benchmark for the Thrift Savings Plan’s International Stock Index Investment Fund, better known as the I Fund.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/26/sweden-and-the-explosive-consequences-of-multiculturalism/

Where did it all go so wrong for Sweden? The nation once known for ABBA, IKEA and its social-democratic welfare state has now become a byword for gangland killings and grenade attacks. Crime has soared to unprecedented levels. Grenade attacks have become an unwelcome feature of suburban life. Islamism is spreading unchecked. Even some on the Swedish left have been forced to acknowledge that multiculturalism is unravelling and that the state has failed to integrate vast numbers of migrants.

Swedish journalist Ivar Arpi joined Brendan O’Neill on the latest episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show to discuss all this and more. What follows is an edited extract from their conversation. Listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: Sweden has found itself in the middle of a global battle between liberalism and Islamism. There have been frequent violent clashes over Koran burnings, as well as a terrorist attack on Swedes in Brussels last month. How are Swedish people navigating this?

Ivar Arpi: Right now the majority opinion in Sweden is that you shouldn’t be able to do things like burn the Koran. And, like in much of the West, the response of the Swedish media and political class to any Islamist terror attack is to immediately consider the feelings of Muslims who might now face discrimination.

In the past, we’ve seen prominent figures in Sweden saying things like: ‘Now remember, all Islamists are Muslim, but not all Muslims are Islamists.’ That shift in focus away from the actual victims takes place almost immediately. This was definitely the case after Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October.

But there are also many people in the public sphere, such as journalists and academics, who are waking up to the fact that they were wrong about Islamism and multiculturalism. It’s been an ongoing development, but it’s visible.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/26/election-of-milei-wilders-and-cogswell-has-the-left-worried/

Is there a disturbance in the force? I think there might be. In just the last week, the chainsaw-wielding “anarcho-capitalist” Javier Milei won the presidential election in Argentina, the Freedom Party of Islamo-realist Geert Wilders trounced its opponents in the snap general election in the Netherlands, and, here at home, a Republican was elected mayor of Charleston for the first time since 1877. The Zeitgeist would seem to be awake and on the move. What is it waking from? I agree with those who say it is waking from wokeness.

In this context, it is not irrelevant to point out that Donald Trump, who has consistently been leading in almost all GOP polls since the 2024 election campaign began, has surged even further ahead. As I write, an Emerson poll has Trump ahead of his competition by 64 to 8 for DeSantis, and 9 for Nikki Haley. The hoary meme of conventional wisdom cautions that even if Trump wins the nomination it won’t matter because he is unpopular with the American people. Alas for that scrap of anti-Trump prognostication, the former president has also pulled ahead of his likely opponent Joe Biden. Some earlier polls had Trump tied or ahead by a fraction of a point. The current polls have him ahead in the general election by some 4, 6, or more points.

Are these phenomena related? I say yes. They are all part of a growing revulsion against the real-world, reality-show version of The Camp of the Saints, the dystopian novel, originally published in French,  about what happens when mass immigration from the third-world overwhelms Europe and America. I will not be giving anything away when I note that the result is the collapse of civilization. If you look up “Camp of the Saints” on Wikipedia, you will be told that the book has been criticized “for conveying themes”—odd locution—of “racism, xenophobia, nativism, monoculturalism, and anti-immigration.” “The novel,” we read, “is popular within far-right and white nationalist circles.” It is popular with me, too. But good luck, if you don’t already know the book, finding out for yourself. Camp of the Saints has been out of print for years and efforts to prise loose the rights from its publisher have been for naught. Currently, a paperback copy of the English version sells for about $200 on Amazon; the hardcover will set you back $4,155.15. (I think the 15¢ is a nice touch).

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20175/iran-accomplice-eu

Germany is the top European trade partner buying oil and non-oil commodities from Iran.

“UANI [United Against Nuclear Iran] said that research had led to the identification of 2,500 businesses around the world, suspected of having involvement with Iran, with hundreds in Europe. They will publish their names if they do not receive satisfactory answers.” — The National, September 22, 2023.

The EU’s trade with Iran, increasing the Iranian regime’s revenue, is doubtless making it easier for the theocratic establishment to provide weapons to Russia, repress its own people even further, strengthen its military presence in Venezuela and Cuba, help its proxies escalate their goals of trying to annihilate Israel and the Jews, and above all, top off its nuclear weapons program with which to blackmail everyone.

If this is the damage the Iranian is doing without nuclear weapons, just think what it will do with them.

The Europeans’ continuing business with Iran repeats the same mistake they made with Nazi Germany: feeding a war machine that will ultimately turn on them. Appeasing anyone will only encourage him to become an even greater threat. Although Europe and the US most probably will not do it, the time has come to stop.

In spite of the Iran’s increasing involvement in the war against Ukraine and against Israel and Jews, the European Union, as well as the US, appear more than happy to continue appeasing the Iran’s ruling mullahs. Shouldn’t this make them considered accomplices?

Iran and Russia are fast making headway constructing a plant based in Russia that will mass-produce Iranian-designed kamikaze drones, presumably to help Moscow attack Ukrainian targets.

Yet, no sanctions or pressure have been imposed either by the United States or the European Union just on this project, let alone Iran’s lethal nuclear program or the 60+ attacks on US troops in Syria and Iraq just since October 17.

https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2023/11/24/fiery-but-peaceful-when-irish-eyes-arent-smiling-n594433#google_vignette

Yesterday afternoon an absolutely horrific attack occurred in Dublin, Ireland’s city center.

Three little kiddoes and their teacher were standing by a creche in front of their Catholic school when a man appeared, and, out of the blue, began slashing at them.

A FIVE-YEAR-old girl who was seriously injured in a stabbing incident near a school in Dublin city centre yesterday afternoon is in a critical condition in hospital.

Gardaí said they are continuing to investigate all of the circumstances of the incident, which occurred near Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire on Parnell Square shortly after 1.30pm yesterday afternoon.

In an update this morning, gardaí said the five-year-old girl remains in a critical condition in CHI Temple Street.

A six-year-old girl is still receiving treatment for less serious injuries at CHI Crumlin.

A five-year-old boy was discharged from CHI Crumlin yesterday evening.

A woman in her 30s, who is the children’s carer, remains in a serious condition in the Mater Hospital.

The man was disarmed by passers-by, and taken into custody quickly by the Gardaí, who’d arrived within minutes on scene.

It is eerily reminiscent of the ghastly attack on little children in the French park this past spring.

What made it all the more disquieting is that none of the news reports of the stabbing itself mentioned a name or description other than age. As the day progressed – nothing. Even the Gardaí press conference last evening was devoid of detail concerning the attacker.

He’s described as simply “a male.”