RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/israel_is_worried_about_ebrahim_the_butcher_raisi_irans_new_president.html

In the last two days, three interesting stories have emerged from the Middle East. The first story is about Ebrahim “the Butcher” Raisi’s election as president in Iran; the second is Israel’s announcement that this election forces it to protect itself against this butcher; and the third is news that Iran’s sole nuclear power plant abruptly shut down. The first and second stories are quite obviously connected. The real question is whether the third story is a promise of things to come or is just a coincidence.

That Raisi was going to be president is no surprise to regular American Thinker readers. Both Hassan Mahmoudi and Hamid Enayat wrote that Ayatollah Khamenei, who is the ultimate power in Iran, was backing Raisi’s election, making it a done deal. They also wrote that the men (and women) on Iran’s streets are deeply distressed by Raisi’s elevation because he is known to be a mad butcher, who willingly turned his sadism on his own citizens.

This is not hyperbole. Even the New York Times has acknowledged that Raisi’s crimes against humanity are so bad that both the U.S. and the European Union have placed him on sanctions lists. The Times, though, is a bit shy about telling the details, simply noting that,

In 1988, when he was Tehran’s deputy prosecutor general, Mr. Raisi was implicated in one of the bloodiest episodes in the history of the Islamic Republic. He sat on a four-man committee that sent about 5,000 imprisoned government opponents to their deaths, according to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other organizations. Many were executed in prison even though they had not been sentenced to death, according to rights groups and relatives of the dead.

Britain’s Sun is not so shy. And while there are doubts about whether Raisi was responsible for 5,000 deaths or as many as 30,000, the details about what he did seem clear. According to first-hand reports, in true Che Guevara fashion, Raisi and his fellow committee members lined men, women, and children up against walls and had them shot.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/canada-university-uses-critical-race-theory-fight-robert-spencer/

The Agassiz-Harrison Observer out in British Columbia reported Thursday that at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV), a vanguard academic institution if there ever was one, is striking a blow this week against one of the great evils of our time: “As part of the Peace and Reconciliation Centre’s (PARC) Peace Talks series, on June 23 the centre will host a webinar from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., addressing Islamophobia.” What a relief! And even better, in a meeting of academic fads that one day will look as dated as Nehru jackets and bell-bottom trousers, they’re hauling out Critical Race Theory to fight “Islamophobia.”

As if that weren’t enough modern academic street cred, the university’s website explains that the university is “situated on the unceded traditional territory of the Stó:lō peoples. The Stó:lōhave an intrinsic relationship with what they refer to as S’olhTemexw (Our Sacred Land); therefore, we express our gratitude and respect for the honour of living and working in this territory.”

Dr. Keith Carlson, director of UFV’s Peace and Reconciliation Centre, and his colleagues certainly would never dream of suggesting that the Stó:lō peoples practice “systemic Islamophobia” on their unceded traditional territory, but those evil white Canadians certainly do, apparently, and so the good Dr. Carlson is here to fix the problem. To do so, the upcomingwebinar offers a hodgepodge of the currently trendy academic shibboleths and superstitions.

The webinar will “draw on lived experience, post-colonial studies, and critical race theory to help understand the roots of Islamophobia and the structures that continue to sustain it.”

Islam is not a race, and Muslims are not all of one race. There are Muslims, and Islamic jihadis, of all races. To bring critical race theory into a discussion of “Islamophobia” is like a child who has a new toy and has to bring it everywhere, no matter how inappropriate the setting, and demonstrates the Left’s determination to racialize every issue and portray everyone who disagrees with their agenda as a “racist.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/honoring-jimmy-lai-11624248153?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The Committee to Project Journalists was founded 40 years ago to fight for journalists who are “attacked, imprisoned or killed.” In this spirit, the CPJ on Monday announced it is honoring Hong Kong’s Jimmy Lai with its 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. Mr. Lai, the founder, owner and contributor to the Apple Daily newspaper, won’t be able to accept the award in person because he sits in prison in Hong Kong.

The CPJ honor comes after another police raid on the newsroom last week. Five Apple Daily execs were arrested, and two—editor-in-chief Ryan Law and chief executive officer Cheung Kim-hung —were charged under the new national security law and thus denied bail. The CPJ notes that Mr. Lai “fights for the right of his Apple News organization to publish freely, even as China and its backers in Hong Kong use every tool to quash them.”

The grim news is that those who want Apple silenced may be succeeding. We have learned that Apple may be only days away from stopping its presses. This itself is a lesson in freedom. Instead of directly censoring the publication, Hong Kong authorities, backed by China, have targeted the lifeblood of any news organization, its business operations.

The lesson of Apple is that freedom of the press doesn’t exist in the abstract. It depends on property rights. By freezing Apple’s corporate accounts, by stopping Mr. Lai from voting his shares (he holds 72% of the company), and by scaring people from advertising in Apple or doing business with it, Hong Kong has been trying to deny the paper the wherewithal to continue. Lenin understood this more than a century ago, recommending that Communists control newsprint and advertising to bring the press to heel.

There’s a warning here for other Hong Kong business enterprises that may not think they have a stake in what happens to Mr. Lai or Apple. Hong Kong authorities are stealing Mr. Lai’s company because they don’t like his political views—and they have done it by police orders, without due process or judicial review. If they can do it to his company, does anyone really believe they won’t do it to a bank or tech company that offends China?

The men and women at Apple have been making a valiant stand to keep publishing despite the risk of arrest and imprisonment. They are an example of real journalistic courage that should educate an American media that likes to play up its bravery in challenging the government while living under the protection of the First Amendment and a free society. Mr. Lai and his journalists have put their freedom at risk to challenge a real tyranny.

The CPJ award is richly deserved, and it should put a global spotlight on what is happening to Mr. Lai and Apple. As China’s Communist Party seeks to expand its political control over critics world-wide, often with the acquiescence of Hollywood and U.S. tech companies, Jimmy Lai speaks for everyone fighting for the cause of liberty.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-sends-a-message-to-biden-11624130662?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t a real democracy. But the result of Friday’s presidential election still reveals important truths about the government that the U.S. and Europe are trying to appease on nuclear weapons.

Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s chief justice, won the presidency with about 62% of the vote, according to preliminary results published Saturday. Sometimes discussed as a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei —who wields the real power in Iran, particularly over foreign affairs—Mr. Raisi had the race wrapped up before the polls opened.

The Guardian Council, Iran’s election watchdog, has long barred candidates not to the Supreme Leader’s liking. But past races have been competitive and even unpredictable, giving Iranians a small voice in deciding their future. Approved candidates are always loyal to the Islamic Republic and its revolutionary ideology. But some, like lame-duck President Hassan Rouhani, spoke the language of moderation and reform even as they followed the Khamenei line.

Iranians understand they live in a dictatorship but have often voted in high numbers to choose their least bad option. Initial results suggest this year’s race had turnout around 50%—down from more than 70% four years ago and the lowest of any vote since 1979. Millions decided to boycott this year’s election as the country’s already small spectrum of permissible views grew even smaller.

Last month the Guardian Council culled dozens of candidates, including many ostensible centrists or reformers. Of the seven candidates approved to run, three dropped out shortly before the contest—paving the way for Mr. Raisi, who is typically described as a hard-liner or ultraconservative cleric.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17469/china-and-russia

The actions of the Beijing government since the earliest days of concern about the disease have shown in stark relief how a closed, authoritarian society tries to deny and shift blame for its misdeeds. How it seeks to co-opt international health agencies. How it tries to bribe foreigners to do its bidding. How it has infected more than not just American bodies, but American society and its institutions at many levels.

Almost no one in American politics, on the Left or Right, has been hailing the Chinese communist government for its efforts to stem the fourth deadly pathogen to come from its shores and devastate the rest of the world. The Chinese government concealed all information about how the virus originated, encouraging speculation they did so intentionally. According to Gordon Chang, they may even be preparing to do so again, only worse…. By comparison, Russia’s crimes against the West, real and imagined, amount to a relative nuisance.

Foreign policy, however, is made towards nations, not individual leaders. In geo-political terms it asks: What is another country’s ability to help you, or harm you?

In the 1980s no one would have suggested that Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, or Muamar Qaddafi was America’s greatest enemy. They were obnoxious sideshows, annoying tinpot dictators with a flair for the microphone, but not existential threats on the order of the Soviet Union.

What this poll suggests is that threat assessment has somehow become a partisan issue, based on political grudges and perceptions that have little to do with a particular nation’s real capacity to damage American interests. The divide among Republicans and Democrats between China and Russia as our largest threat fails to account for a modern analysis of China’s power, influence, aggressiveness in action, and willingness to corrupt American political and cultural leaders. It should not be a partisan issue, no matter how obnoxious one nation’s current leader may be.

Putin loves to tweak America; Xi prefers quieter, more damaging forms of aggression.

It is vital for American voters to understand that bribery is a key part of doing business for both China and Russia.

No matter how much he might like to, Vladimir Putin cannot threaten the balance sheets of huge American companies such as Apple and Microsoft; China could do it tomorrow.

Imagine yourself sitting at a poker table with one opponent who fingers his dwindling stack of chips while glowering at you and daring you to bump the pot. Meanwhile, your other opponent with more chips sits quietly behind his cards while his paid spies behind your chair signal him the contents of your hand.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17481/china-g7

While Obama looked the other way, China militarized a string of atolls in seas around it as part of a long-term plan to forge an aggressive profile against its neighbor and the United States.

The Chinese challenge can and must be met both in the global arena and inside the People’s Republic itself. Any move in that direction would require a realistic assessment of the People’s Republic in terms of hard and soft power.

China’s pursuit of global power and influence is modelled on the Western empire-buildings of the 19th century, which consisted of importing raw material, exporting manufactured goods, and weaving networks of trade with the help of a seemingly endless flow of settlers, gunboats and colonial outposts across the globe. China cannot fully adopt that model for a number of reasons. Its model is based on the assumption that capitalism can forever do without democracy, something that the experience of the Western imperial powers of the past proved to be fallacious.

At the G7 summit in Cornwall last weekend, US President Joe Biden warned his fellow-summiteers that unless something was done “China would eat our lunch.” Did Biden overegg the pudding with his colorful language or is the world ignoring the invisible chopsticks at work?

In a sense China, as the biggest trading partner of almost all the G7 members, is already eating part of their lunch while it is clear that without Western investment, technology and, of course, markets, China might have remained hungry and stuck between the madness of Maoism and the inertia of Ah-Quism.

Biden, of all people, should know all that. For it was during the Obama administration in which Biden was part of the décor that the “Asia-Pacific” cliché was launched as the principal future direction of the US global strategy. While Obama looked the other way, China militarized a string of atolls in seas around it as part of a long-term plan to forge an aggressive profile against its neighbor and the United States.

The Europeans saw the “Asia-Pacific” motif as a signal that China was the future and that they had better put as many chips on its number as they could.

Like his other grandiose schemes, Obama’s “Asia-Pacific” failed because his administration was unable to define China’s place in the global system and its relations with the United States. Unable to decide whether China was friend or foe, Obama, the quintessential ego-worshipper, believed his charm would be sufficient to coax China into the channel he desired.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/18/is-it-racist-to-confront-a-suicide-bomber/

The independent inquiry into the Manchester Arena bombing of May 2017, in which 22 pop fans were killed by an Islamist extremist, has published the first volume of its report. It makes for chilling reading. The inquiry has found there were numerous ‘missed opportunities’ to confront Salman Abedi, the bomber, and potentially stop him from detonating the device in his rucksack. Most chilling of all is the reason given by one of the key security guards on patrol that evening as to why he failed to question Abedi. He was worried, he said, that asking a brown-skinned man why he was hanging around the arena might be construed as racist.

Take that in. There was a very shifty-looking young man around the foyer and mezzanine of the Manchester Arena towards the end of an Ariana Grande concert, carrying a ‘bulging’ rucksack so large he ‘struggled’ under the weight of it, and a security guard was reluctant to confront him lest he be accused of racism. In the words of the report, this was a significant ‘missed opportunity’. The ‘inadequacy’ of the security guard’s response to the presence of a highly suspicious individual was one of the many misjudgements made on that black, fateful night, the report says. Is it possible that the fear of being thought of as racist is screwing up everyday life, and even hindering sensible action in threatening situations?

To be clear, the security guard who was cagey about questioning Abedi is not responsible for the failure to stop Abedi from detonating his device. The first volume of the inquiry’s report – which covers security at and around the arena on the night of 22 May 2017 – criticises certain individuals, including the security guard, for not doing their jobs diligently enough. But it says that it was the organisations responsible for security at the arena – the arena’s own security firm and also the British Transport Police – that were ‘principally’ to blame for the ‘missed opportunities’. It also makes the reasonable point that it is impossible to know what would have happened if Abedi had been confronted. It proposes that there may still have been loss of life – if, for example, he had detonated his device while being questioned – but that it would have been less severe than the horrors that shortly unfolded.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17473/iran-fake-presidential-election

The genuine power in Iran is made up of unelected, authoritarian, religious and fascist military elites who, for decades, have, frozen in place the revolutionary, theocratic ideology of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The nomination mechanism for presidential candidates is itself part of the fraudulent process.

Past elections have either been rigged in favor the hardliners, as in today’s election, or so overshadowed by the power of the regime’s deep state, that no president is been able to effect any substantive reforms to loosen the chokehold that the mullahs maintain on Iranian citizens.

The most likely dark horse is former Central Bank of Iran President Abdolnasser Hemmati, a (relative) moderate…. Hemmati’s biggest obstacle is the lack of interest by the majority of Iran’s electorate. They seem to have despaired of any real change in the Islamic Republic, at least in the near future. The US negotiating team, seemingly desperate for a deal — any deal — with the mullahs, could cause far less global damage if they despaired of it, as well.

Iran’s so-called presidential election today, June 18, is a fraud, a ruse for the world to observe and seemingly domestically designed to release some pent-up popular pressure.

Iran’s presidency itself is a weak institution of weak political superstructure which also includes the legislative branch (the majles, the sort-of equivalent of a parliament). This highly visible but insubstantial governmental apparatus masks the real power in Iran: the “deep state” of the Islamic Republic.

The genuine power in Iran is made up of unelected, authoritarian, religious and fascist military elites who, for decades, have, frozen in place the revolutionary, theocratic ideology of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The nomination mechanism for presidential candidates is itself part of the fraudulent process. All candidates must first be approved by the hardline and powerful Council of Guardians (COG), which decides whether the prospective candidate is loyal enough to Islamic revolutionary principles. Any candidate who is judged by the appointed 12 member Council of Guardians (six mullahs, six laymen) to be insufficiently “Islamic” or unwanted by the clergy is rejected. Almost always, this process favors conservative hardliners, thereby serving its intended purpose.

The office of the Supreme Leader (Rahbar), who is the titular head of the “Deep State,” is occupied by the autocratic Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It is the Supreme Leader who can always intervene and make known his preferences to the Council of Guardians behind the scenes before the COG announces its final list of approved candidates

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/beating-down-brits-katie-hopkins/

It has been quite the week here in the UK. On Monday, Boris Johnson canceled ‘Freedom Day’. On Wednesday, he started the forced vaccination of Care Home staff. And the week isn’t over yet.

First, Boris and his G7 chums stopped milling about on a private beach in Cornwall having BBQs and taking pretend-socially-distanced photographs while leg humping each other in private. Then, Boris posed like a stranded beluga whale on the Cornish shoreline for the press, before returning to Number Ten.

Next, replete with tan and sea salt in his hair from his morning swimming adventures, Boris crushed the hopes of every hardworking Brit hoping to go overseas on holiday by canceling Freedom Day.

The cursed day was supposed to be June 21. I say cursed because all fabricated ‘goalposts’ are cursed by their very nature. Remember ‘three weeks to flatten the curve’ before it became ‘freedom is a vaccine’? That was just before it became ‘hospitalizations and deaths’, before it became cases, and only slightly after it becomes ‘vaccination rates in the 18-40 age group’. And all that before we get going on the so-called “variants” that are imagined up to cage the nation a little longer.

Either hung-over or just bored by his own lies — it was difficult to tell which under his weird hair which now grows at a constant 40 degrees from his head — Boris even managed to conjure up a new ‘pretend’ Freedom Day, announcing it first as July 29, then July 19. The British people are so sick of all this painful captivity that they barely flinched — like a patient who’s been stuck with so many needles that another one doesn’t even register.

The British Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty, was on hand to bore everyone into disinterest with a series of slides pretending to provide the data for this decision. Given there is no data, this was a tough job. But Whitty has been well-lubricated by Bill Gates in the past and is absolutely prepared to keep bending over in the name of the state injectable he likes to refer to as a ‘vaccine’.

I should point out for the unaware what Chris Whitty (our Fauci) looks like.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/racist-xenophobe-tyrant-raymond-ibrahim/

Criticism against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is again on the rise, now that his nation is set to take the presidency of the Visegrad group of Central European nations next month.  According a recent report, “Britain’s government has condemned comments made by Viktor Orbán about Muslims and migrants on the eve of a bilateral meeting between the Hungarian leader and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.  In a statement, No. 10 Downing Street said that Orbán’s 2018 comment to a German newspaper about ‘Muslim invaders’ and his later description of migrants as ‘a poison’ were ‘divisive and wrong.’”

In fact, Orbán’s ultimate motive is to secure his nation against the crimes and problems that come along with Muslim migrants.  Speaking back in 2015, during the heyday of mass Muslim migration into Europe, he clearly laid out his logic:

Those [migrants] arriving [into Europe] have been raised in another religion, and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims.  This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity….  We don’t want to criticize France, Belgium, any other country, but we think all countries have a right to decide whether they want to have a large number of Muslims in their countries. If they want to live together with them, they can. We don’t want to and I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. We do not like the consequences of having a large number of Muslim communities that we see in other countries, and I do not see any reason for anyone else to force us to create ways of living together in Hungary that we do not want to see….

The prime minister went on to invoke history—and not in the politically correct way (to condemn Christians and whitewash Muslims) but according to reality:

I have to say that when it comes to living together with Muslim communities, we are the only ones who have experience because we had the possibility to go through that experience for 150 years.

Orbán was referring to Islam’s conquest and occupation of Hungary from 1541 to 1699.  Then, Islamic jihad, terrorism, and Christian persecution were rampant.

Indeed, on this very day in history, on June 15, 1389, a horde of Muslim Turks met and crushed a coalition of Serbs, Hungarians, Poles, and Romanians, at the pivotal Battle of Kosovo.  Thereafter, much of southeastern Europe, including Hungary, and portions of modern day Russia, was conquered, occupied, and terrorized by the Turks—sometimes in ways that make Islamic State atrocities seem like child’s play.  (Think of the beheadings, crucifixions, massacres, slave markets, and rapes that have become IS trademarks—but on a much grander scale, and for centuries.)