RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.settimananews.it/informazione-internazionale/us-and-china-difficult-coups-and-institutions/

American newspapers are voicing growing concern that Donald Trump, who is running for president, is sounding more like Mussolini and Hitler.[1] Also, following the 2020 January 6 attack on Capitol Hill, something like a preview of an attempted coup, some fear Trump may be tempted to repeat the game, only this time better organized.

However, there are substantial differences between Trump and Hitler, Mussolini, or Lenin, the master of it all. In all these cases, the tricks worked because they had the backing of the army and the national police, who thought they had been wronged; one way or another, they had no voice, and they were ready to support whoever gave them that representation.

With Lenin, the army was tired of fighting a war they deemed unwinnable against Germany, and the German command, who aided his return to Russia, saw clearly that he was the man to deliver on it.

With Mussolini, the army and many veterans felt deprived of better results from the victory in World War I. They wanted to topple a political system they thought was giving in to dangerous communist revolutionaries. With Hitler, the army felt stabbed in the back because the terms of surrender were too harsh and chafed under a civilian government ready to give in, again, to socialists and communists.

To stage a coup

Presently, the situation in the US, like in Israel at the time of the protests against the constitutional reforms, looks pretty different. The army and the security apparently do not side with Trump; they are neutral, if not hostile to him.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to implement reforms that would remove some powers from the judiciary and concentrate them on the executive. The reform was bitterly opposed by large parts of the population and most of the army and the security bodies.

The long Israeli struggle between the government and part of the military — and the ensuing mutual distrust — was certainly the breeding ground for the intelligence failure leading to the October 7 Hamas attack.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/19/the-sinister-rise-of-the-islamo-left/

Is Hamas a terrorist group? This was the question posed to former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn by Piers Morgan on his Monday evening TalkTV show. It wasn’t a difficult question. Corbyn was being invited to condemn a group that had raped, tortured and slaughtered hundreds upon hundreds of Israelis just over a month ago, on 7 October.

Yet Corbyn couldn’t do it. Morgan asked the same question no fewer than 15 times. Each time, Corbyn, growing ever more irascible, avoided answering. He preferred instead to witter on about needing to ‘start a process that leads to a ceasefire’. His programming just wouldn’t allow him to respond. He was in the grip of the political equivalent of ‘computer says no’. (To be fair, Corbyn has now referred to Hamas as a ‘terrorist group’ in an article for Tribune, a full four days after refusing to do so on TalkTV, and a full seven years after referring to the group as ‘friends‘ at a public meeting.)

Corbyn’s shocking reluctance, when challenged by Morgan, to call out Hamas for what it is – a violently repressive Islamist group committed to the annihilation of Israel and Jews – is not just a personal failing. It is also the failing of much of what passes for the left in general today, from Labour’s Corbynista fringe to bourgeois academic ‘theorists’ to the hard-left activists organising those interminable ‘pro-Palestine’ demos. They all labour under the same delusion as Corbyn – namely, that Islamist groups like Hamas are at the vanguard of the global resistance to the West. And that Israel and its Western allies are inherently evil.

This is what needs to be interrogated here. Not Corbyn’s absurdist performance on Piers Morgan Uncensored. But the broader leftist milieu that enabled Corbyn’s performance. A milieu that now cleaves so closely to Islamism that it actually sees its regressive, violent antipathy to modernity as progressive. Indeed, a milieu among which there have even been some willing to hail Hamas’s pogrom and declare 7 October a ‘day of celebration’.

The roots of this moral and political degeneration run deep. Most of the blame lies with the left’s abandonment of class politics in favour of identity politics. This wasn’t deliberate exactly. It was primarily a response to the political defeats endured by the British working class in the 1980s, followed by the collapse of Communism abroad. By the 1990s, some on the left, disoriented and disillusioned, were turning away from – and increasingly turning against – the working class. In its place, they were starting to champion particular identity groups and to campaign around identitarian issues.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20153/france-two-demos

Sunday’s march… attracted over 100,000 people, five times larger than the pro-Palestine demo.

There were also many Muslim figures [Sunday] including imams of mosques who ignored the “advice” of the Grand Mosque of Paris not to attend.

Anti-Semitism isn’t a byproduct of the Israel-Palestine conflict; it is an evil in its own right and a threat to what even the politically correct Macron says he upholds as “values of our civilization.”

Anti-Semitism challenges the fundamentals of what one may call modern civilization. It denies the existence of human beings as individuals with inalienable rights beyond religious, ethnic, racial and other backgrounds. It dissolves the concept of citizenship as the basis of the relationship between the individual and the state.

Anti-Semitism also violates the principle under which guilt by association and collective punishment could not be accepted. Worse still, it rejects the principle of innocence until proven guilty by a court of one’s peers, thus sapping the roots of civilized legal systems.

A week after Paris witnessed a march in support of the “Palestinian cause” it hosted another march on November 12, this time against anti-Semitism.

Ostensibly provoked by the ongoing war in Gaza the two marches may persuade the French to take a closer look at the messages they convey and their impact on French politics.

Despite denials by its organizers, the leftist and extreme left parties, the first march, which took part on the right bank of the River Seine, was clearly anti-Israel, at times with anti-Semitic undertones.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20148/bangladesh-secularism-islamism

Bangladesh’s first constitution, adopted in 1972, the year after the war for independence, created the legal foundation for secular governance. Secularism was declared one of the fundamental principles of the state, and the use of religion for political ends was prohibited.

“The rise of violent extremism and militancy not only in Bangladesh, but also in the South Asia region and the worldwide phenomenon of religious extremism is one of the greatest contemporary threats to global security that can lead to violence and terrorism, and which can permeate all sovereign borders.” — European Bangladesh Forum, Voice of European Bangladeshis.

It is thus critical to neutralize such radical Islamist forces, as Israel is now doing to Hamas, for both ideological and security-related reasons.

The 1971 Bengali genocide is an urgent reminder of the depths to which political ideologies can lead, and why, if one wants to preserve freedom in the West, it is essential to confront them.

As Bangladesh, a nation that is majority Muslim, prepares for January elections, its secular government has come under increasing pressure from Islamists.

The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), and their allies are holding rallies regarding a single demand: the resignation of the secular government. They insist that the prime minister step aside for an “impartial caretaker administration” to oversee January’s polls.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20018/erdogan-muslims-un-seat

Editor’s note: The following is the last article written for Gatestone by Burak Bekdil, a few days before he tragically passed away last month. Burak was an extraordinary person, and a brave and brilliant journalist. May he rest in peace.

In [Erdoğan’s] speech [at the UN General Assembly], greeted as a brave international challenge by the Turkish media (90% of which he controls), he called on the international community to collectively fight what he thinks is the greatest malady of mankind: Islamophobia. He wants, he said, to revolutionize the post-World War II international political order by giving Muslim nations a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

That is not all. Erdoğan wants the world to recognize the breakaway Turkish statelet of Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey. That statelet emerged after Turkey’s illegal invasion of Cyprus in 1974.

Still not all. Erdoğan admitted he was holding NATO hostage. On September 26, he said that the Turkish parliament would abide by his pledge to ratify Sweden’s accession to NATO if the US sticks to its commitments to deliver F-16 fighter jets to Ankara.

Meanwhile, at home, a brave Turkish journalist broadcast a video showing Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists being detained in Turkey, then released and sent to government-run camps for military training.

In Erdoğan’s worldview, Islamophobia is the greatest threat to humanity. Radical Islamist suicide bombers and torturers are not.

The world’s “strategic eyes” should have looked closer at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s speech in September at the UN General Assembly. It was another warning to the West about his intended Islamist design for the entire world — not that he can accomplish this ambition, but what he aims for comes in with several red flags with it.

In his speech, greeted as a brave international challenge by the Turkish media (90% of which he controls), he called on the international community to collectively fight what he thinks is the greatest malady of mankind: Islamophobia. He wants, he said, to revolutionize the post-World War II international political order by giving Muslim nations a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. “The world is bigger than five” has been his dictum over the past several years. He wants Muslim nations, preferably Turkey, to have a veto power, via the UN, over a new world order.

https://hotair.com/david-strom/2023/11/13/london-has-fallen-n591974

I have been following London’s decline for a while now, and have written a fair amount about the societal decline in Britain.

I often speak of Western culture, and the Anglosphere as a subset of it. Generally speaking, the Anglosphere comprises Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the USA–the countries that not only predominately speak English, but whose traditions and legal practices derive from English Common Law and the Scottish Enlightenment.

Obviously, these countries differ in important respects. Still, aside from knowing what side of the road to drive, citizens from one country would feel pretty comfortable navigating the streets of any of the others.

I happen to be a fan of the English Common Law and the Scottish Enlightenment and believe that the modern concept of human rights derives from the traditions embodied within them. It’s not that I believe that the ideals embodied in these traditions have been universally upheld by the societies built upon them–that is hardly the case. Rather, we judge the failures to do so based on these very ideals.

When people acknowledge that America’s record of slavery is shameful, we don’t do so based on superior non-Western values, but rather in reference to our own belief in the equality of all men.

This is why I am so saddened to see the obvious decline of London as a home for the values of the Anglosphere. While Washington D.C. may be the informal political capital of these nations, London has been its spiritual hometown.

And London has fallen to the barbarians.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20141/israel-iran-and-the-biden-administration-if

Above all, to have the hostages released faster, there must be as few “pauses” as possible and no let-up by Israel in military pressure.

While the Israelis were urging the residents of northern Gaza to move south to avoid airstrikes, Hamas’s leaders were ordering the Gazans, to stay in their homes, or were shooting at them as they tried to flee — presumably so that Hamas could have more dead bodies to show the television crews how evil the Israelis supposedly are.

To Blinken’s credit and that of the Biden administration… on November 5, he rebuffed the request of Egypt and Jordan for humanitarian aid, saying that “such a halt right now would only allow Palestinian militant group Hamas to regroup and attack Israel again.”

Unfortunately, Biden also announced that the US will send $100 million in “humanitarian aid” to Hamas and the West Bank, thereby freeing up other funds to be used for further attacks

Israel, regrettably, evidently under US pressure, has just agreed to four-hour “humanitarian pauses.” The concession sounds virtuous, but actually breaks a law that prohibits resupplying terrorists. To Hamas, any pause is a gift. It can restock and plan attacks, and keep re-hiding the hostages. What chance is there that a terrorist group that shoots its own citizens to keep them from fleeing to safety will hand out food water and medicine to anyone but its cohorts?

In fairness, Biden immediately sent US ships , welcome materiel, and a nuclear submarine to the area…

The US president, nevertheless, has not failed to repeat his support for a “two-state solution”, even though it is now clear more than ever that the creation of a genocidal Palestinian state on what is left of Israel’s small border must be unthinkable…. In such a volatile region what if Iran or Islamic State were to take over the new Palestinian State?

If the US were to incapacitate the port Iran uses to ship oil China, or take out base of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — or at the very least, as Gen. Jack Keane has been advocating, the base Iran uses to train troops — the war would likely be over in a minute.

The Ukraine is indeed a worthy US involvement: if Russia can keep the Donbass and Crimea, China’s Communist leader Xi Jinping will be encouraged to take Taiwan, perhaps the Philippines, all the sea lanes in the Indo-pacific, as well as further threaten Australia and Japan.

In January 2021, Iran was on the verge of economic asphyxiation, barely able to continue financing Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas. The Abraham Accords outlined the prospect of regional peace, and Saudi Arabia was considering joining the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kosovo, Morocco and Sudan. Israel was a respected regional power.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20138/paris-demonstration-gaza

A poll for the daily Le Figaro shows that 37 percent of the French still have sympathy for Israel, while Palestine gets 20 percent and Hamas 5 percent.

Those I talked to in the demo seemed as if they had forgotten October 7, reminding me of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s phrase “What a miser is a human memory!”

In the Saturday demo, there was no mention of the nearly 250 Israeli hostages held by Hamas. The so-called elites have adopted a one-way indignation posture against Israel.

“Paris could become a battlefield!” This was how commentators speculated about a “solidarity with Palestine” demonstration that the police had authorized for last Saturday. The concern was not groundless.

A few days before, a Harris opinion poll had shown that 82 percent of the French feared a wave of terrorism in France and 72 percent believed that something like the 7 October attack by Hamas would happen in Paris.

“People are right to have concerns,” says Brice Hortefeux, a former Minister of the Interior.

In the past decade, France has been hit by over 400 terrorist attacks or attempts, almost all related to the Middle East or what is shorthanded as “Islamic World.” The same concern was expressed in numerous editorials, reminding people that as home to Europe’s largest Jewish community, some 500,000, and highest number of Muslims, around 7 million, France was already “part of the Middle East.”

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/11/irans-less-than-nuanced-view-of-bi-lateral-relations/

One of the more odious aspects of the cornucopia of hypocrisy that is the Left’s “woke” ideology is how, after assuming its intellectual and moral superiority and “privilege” within society, the Left further assumed others cannot elevate their own status without the woke cult’s intercession and assistance. Not surprisingly, such a “top-down,” condescending ideology has consequences, though the affluent “woke” Leftists driving, voting, donating, and foisting these disastrous policies are often insulated from the consequences of their actions. Not so, however, for the “oppressed,” who through no fault of their own have been targeted for “liberation” by the woke cult’s offensive attitude and its injurious, unwelcomed “help;” nor for society as a whole.

For example, the woke cult’s “bail reform” has led to an increase in crime for residents of urban areas, especially those communities already suffering high crime rates.  Other residents and tourists in these cities also are now at greater risk of being victimized by criminals. But this is of no concern to the self-congratulatory Leftists who imposed these perilous policies upon them – unless, of course, these elitists happen to emerge from their gilded communities and are accosted by the physical incarnation of their own smug imbecility.

Yet, the woke cult’s physical incarnations of their own smug imbecility do not end at the city limits or even the waters’ edge.  And nor do the consequences of the woke ideology.

As reported by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei took to Iran’s Channel 1 on November 1 and reiterated his less than nuanced position on bi-lateral engagement with the United States: “The situation between America and Iran is this: When you chant ‘Death to America!’ it is not just a slogan – it is a policy.”

After carping how this is not the first time he has had to publicly state the obvious and his historically revisionist complaints for it, Iran’s Supreme Lesion deigned to do so again; and, waxing homicidal, railed against the U.S., Israel, and current events:

“For many years, from the 1940s to the 1970s – that is 30 years – the Americans did everything they could do against the Iranian nation.  They hit Iran in any way they could – financially, economically, politically, scientifically, and morally.