RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/09/26/italians-have-dealt-another-blow-to-the-establishment/

Here I was thinking the populist revolt was over. After all, the neoliberal elites said it was. They pronounce populism dead every six months or so – seemingly convinced that one election result or external event has finally finished it off for good. Covid was supposed to kill populism, by reminding the supposedly ignorant oiks of the importance of experts. Then Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was supposed to kill populism, by reminding ‘nativist’ voters of the importance of international cooperation and the folly of authoritarian strongmen – something they are supposedly enamoured of. And yet those pesky voters just keep on electing the ‘wrong’ governments. If the triumph of the Sweden Democrats in supposedly sensible Sweden earlier this month wasn’t symbolic enough, Italy has just made the right-wing, anti-immigration Brothers of Italy the largest party, paving the way for what the media breathlessly call the ‘most right-wing government since Mussolini’.

After the elections yesterday, Meloni’s party is projected to win 26 per cent of the vote. The right-wing coalition she leads, along with Matteo Salvini’s League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, looks primed to take control of both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, with around 44 per cent of the vote. The centre-left coalition, led by Enrico Letta’s establishment Democratic Party, came a distant second. The surge in support for Meloni’s party specifically was stunning, securing its position as the anti-establishment choice. At the 2018 election, Brothers of Italy won just four per cent of the vote. Meanwhile, the Five Star Movement (M5S), which came top at the last election, has had its support cut in half this time around. And even then that was a better-than-expected result. The League – Meloni’s populist-right coalition partner, which formed a government with M5S after the 2018 election – was polling in the high 30s a few years ago, but got less than nine per cent of the vote yesterday.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/iranian-women-cast-off-their-hijabs/

The death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, has ignited nationwide protests across Iran. Amini was beaten to death by the mullahs’ morality police after she was detained in Tehran on 13 September, after failing to comply with the regime’s strict hijab (headscarf) rules. Women in Iran have been treated as second-class citizens by the mullahs for more than four decades. The misogynist lunacy of the clerical regime has even extended to a demand by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that cartoon character women must wear the hijab. Now, in Iran, even animated female characters in cartoons cannot reveal their hair!

Women’s dress codes are under constant scrutiny. They must wear the hijab and ‘morality police’ are on relentless patrol to enforce the law. Women, particularly young women, are singled out for brutal attacks for the ‘crime’ of mal veiling. Girls who were deemed to be improperly dressed in the street have suffered horrific acid attacks and stabbings, in assaults openly condoned by the mullahs. Teenage girls, arrested for the offence of posting videos of themselves dancing or singing on social media, have been publicly flogged. Young female students attending end-of-term parties have been fined and beaten. This is what gender equality looks like in Iran today.

The toll of women executed in Iran’s medieval prisons continues to rise. Most of these women were executed for killing an abusive husband or partner. But this is another example of how the regime fails women, because they are mostly victims of domestic abuse who kill in defence of themselves or their children, because they have no legal recourse to end a violently cruel marriage. These killings often occur after women have suffered years of humiliation, insults, beatings and even torture, by abusive husbands, from whom they have no escape…no right to divorce.  In other countries, they would be granted leniency based on their circumstances, but not in Iran. And this, of course, does not even touch upon those executed for crimes that are not capital offences under international law, like drug offences, or for non-crimes, like political activism.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18886/china-massive-threat

“The most game-changing challenge we face comes from the Chinese Communist Party.” – Ken McCullum, MI5 Director General, Joint Address by the heads MI5 and FBI, July 6, 2022.

Both directors emphasized that one of the greatest challenges to Western economies is China’s theft of Western technology through a variety of means….

China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) uses its regional bureaus to “key in specifically on the innovation of certain Western companies it wants to ransack…. companies everywhere from big cities to small towns — from Fortune 100s to start-ups…. We’ve even caught people affiliated with Chinese companies out in the U.S. heartland, sneaking into fields to dig up proprietary, genetically modified seeds, which would have cost them nearly a decade and billions in research to develop themselves.” — Christopher Wray, FBI Director, address to London business leaders on National Security Threats Posed by the People’s Republic of China, MI5 HQ, July 6, 2022.

Wray emphasized that effectively all Chinese companies are in the pockets of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)… those [companies] that aren’t owned outright are effectively beholden to the government all the same, as Chinese companies of any size are required to host a Communist Party cell to keep them in line…. almost like silent partners.”

Wray unconditionally warned businesses against partnering with Chinese companies. “Maintaining a technological edge may do more to increase a company’s value than would partnering with a Chinese company to sell into that huge Chinese market, only to find the Chinese government, and your ‘partner,’ stealing and copying your innovation, setting up a Chinese competitor, backed by its government, that is soon undercutting you — not just in China, but everywhere.” — Christopher Wray, July 6, 2022.

The deal [to purchase farmland near a military base in North Dakota] has caused concerns that the purchased land could be used to spy on the base, as China most likely has done on other bases.

Additionally, there is widespread Chinese theft and spying in academia…. European scientists have been empowering China’s military by sharing “militarily sensitive knowledge with the Chinese army on a large scale.” Out of an astounding 353,000 scientific collaborations between Europe and China around 3,000 had taken place with the Chinese military, defined as “studies where scientists from Western European universities collaborated with Chinese colleagues directly linked to an institute that is part of the Chinese army.”

Despite the massive threat that China poses, the Biden administration nevertheless ended the Department of Justice’s “China Initiative” in February 2022. That same month, the head of the FBI said in an interview that Chinese spying had become so prevalent in the US that on average, the FBI was opening on average two counterintelligence investigations a day, with more than 2,000 such cases already underway.

Instead of the China Initiative, “the administration would be using a “broader approach one that looks across all of these threats [from China, Russia, and Iran; ed.] and uses all of our authorities to combat them.” — Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen, Politico, February 23, 2022.

All right. Where is it? No need to shut down the China Initiative; just increase investigations of other threats, which the US should presumably be doing anyway.

The unmistakable signal that the Biden administration sent to China by closing down the China Initiative was one of weakness — again — this time, underscoring that the US does not consider countering China a priority at a time when China, according to two international prominent intelligence directors — is unquestionably the greatest threat to US interests.

Could there be a signal to an intransigent adversary more dangerous than that?

In an unprecedented move, the head of the FBI, Christopher Wray, and the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, the MI5, Ken McCallum, came together in July to warn against the “massive” threat that both intelligence services consider China presents.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/09/25/the-trudeau-dynasty-a-political-reset-in-the-making-n1632016

Political dynasties are inherently problematic and ambiguous. When politics becomes a family business, enabling bloodline clans and generational households to occupy the seat of power, we have what will often amount to the very antithesis of responsible political function. Indeed, countries like Indonesia have passed laws prohibiting relatives from immediately succeeding each other in public office.

As Siddhartha George argues in a paper on the descendant effects of political dynasties, employing “regression discontinuity design” (RDD), if political capital is heritable, that is, deriving from a prominent name or a powerful network, “dynastic politics may render elections less effective at selecting good leaders and disciplining them in office.” One of the factors involved in the likelihood of negative effects is, in his term, “moral hazard.” Descendants face moral hazard, he explains, “because they inherit voters loyal to their family predecessor (typically a father), dampening incentives to exert effort and perform well in office”—the common problem of the epigone. 

This is especially true in the economic realm. Dynastic politics tend to issue in a “reversal of fortune,” that is, “a standard deviation decrease in wealth percentile rank.” Inherited political capital, George concludes, “allows descendants to persist in power even when they underperform,” as well as weakens “the ability of elections to select talented leaders.”

Dynastic families are a predictable feature of despotic regimes, such as the Kims in North Korea. They can be prominent in secular patristic regimes, such as the Peróns in Argentina or the Abes in Japan. Dynastic families readily assume office in democratic countries through name recognition and the accumulation of powerful resources, consisting of politically acquired wealth, long-haul expertise and extensive influence. One thinks of the Pitt family in Britain, the Adams and Roosevelt families in the U.S., and the Papandreous in Greece, each having produced two national leaders. One notes three generations of Nehru/Ghandi relations in India and the Bush family in the U.S. that enjoyed three terms in the White House, with indifferent results. The Clintons, for their part, almost achieved a regime by marriage. 

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/09/breaking-italy-elects-first-female-populist-leader-history/

The Italian Center Right Party won big in national elections on Sunday making Georgia Meloni the first female leader in the country’s history.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18928/how-civilizations-will-be-decided

Fewer babies will be born in all of Europe than in Nigeria alone.

More than half the increase of the global population projected by 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries, mostly in Africa, according to The Economist Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines and Tanzania. Nigeria will have more inhabitants than Europe and the United States.

This crisis is not a projection, it is happening right now. By 2050, 60% of Italians will have no brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles or aunts. The Italian family, with the father who pours the wine and the mother who serves the pasta to a table of grandparents, grandchildren and grandchildren, will be gone, as extinct as dinosaurs.

Yemen, on the other hand, a failed country in the middle of a terrible civil war, will show a population increase that is double Italy’s.

“In 1887 there was only one Muslim registered in Melilla, he was originally from Casablanca and worked as a servant; today Muslims exceed 40 percent of the population and are approaching the majority”, reported the newspaper El Pais…. Ceuta and Melilla are what most of Europe’s cities will look like in 20-30 years. Melilla is now the first Spanish city that has surpassed a 50% Muslim population due to immigration, family reunification and a high birth rate.

The Western world has provided more wealth and convenience to more citizens than any other civilization in history. We are practically inundated with resources, but we are running out of people, the only truly indispensable resource.

“Islam to become Russia’s predominant religion by 2050?” — Pravda, July 21, 2008

By 2050, more than half the increase of the global population projected will be concentrated in just eight countries, mostly in Africa, according to The Economist: Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines and Tanzania. Nigeria will have more inhabitants than Europe and the United States.

In addition, Islam will have overtaken Christianity as the first world religion. It never happened before in world history. The Islamic population of the European Union, depending on the migratory flows, could reach 75 million within a generation — like an entire Muslim Germany or, if one prefers, like Denmark, Austria, Hungary, Greece, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and Sweden combined. Does that sound better?

“They have not managed to change us. It is we who will change them. Look at the development of the population in Europe, where the number of Muslims increases like mosquitoes. Each Western woman in the E.U. produces, on average, 1.4 children. Each Muslim woman in these same countries produces 3.5 children. By 2050, 30% of the European population will be Muslim… Our way of thinking in Islam stands in opposition to the Western way of thinking. Today it is our way of thinking that comes in and shows itself stronger than theirs….” — “Mullah Krekar”, Norwegian imam, Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, March 13, 2006

The population of Birmingham will soon be half Muslim…. [The Birmingham Mail reveals that] the number of Muslim children in the city has surpassed the number of Christian children. “In addition to Birmingham, Islam is now the dominant religion among children in Leicester, Bradford, Luton, Slough and the London boroughs of Newham, Redbridge and Tower Hamlets.” – Quote from business-live.co.uk, September 21, 2014

Do we fantasize that immigration at this rate will be able to integrate happily into host societies and that the migrants will become like us? Do we hope that before long, Europeans will return to having more children? What if we are wrong and these projections become reality? Are we resigned to the disappearance of our civilization?

“Great demographics, great power”, Nicholas Eberstadt, the American political economist summed up in Foreign Affairs. Crumbling demographics, crumbling powers …

Fewer babies will be born in all of Europe than in Nigeria alone.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18940/shanghai-cooperation-organisation

The Russian media, echoing President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the summit, say the SCO is designed to end “the unipolar world “by creating a “multipolar system”.

The Chinese media offer a different version. The SCO is meant to offer a new political system for the whole world as an alternative to the Western democratic model.

To the Islamic media in Tehran, celebrating the Islamic Republic’s admission to the club after 11 years of supplication, the SCO is an extension of the “Resistance Front” created to contain and defeat the American “Great Satan.”

The SCO’s identity as a club of queer fellows has been further emphasized by the admission of a host of new members all of whom have territorial disputes with each other.

Some Western commentators have dubbed the SCO “a new power bloc”. That may be jumping the gun a bit. SCO members are more dependent on trade with the European Union, the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia than with each other.

The Samarkand club represents some 40 percent of the world’s population and over 20 percent of the global GDP, not to mention four of the 9 nations with nuclear arsenals. Yet, it seems unlikely to become an anchor of stability in Eurasia; its members are more interested in petty schemes than grand ideas of peace and cooperation.

But what is it for? This is the question that the media in Russia, China, Iran and half a dozen countries were posing all last week in the wake of a summit in Samarkand that brought their leaders together as members or aspiring members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

The Russian media, echoing President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the summit, say the SCO is designed to end “the unipolar world “by creating a “multipolar system”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18856/erdogan-turkey-russia

Erdoğan is bringing NATO member Turkey more and more into Russia’s orbit.

Turkey is once again blackmailing the U.S. that “it would further deepen its defense cooperation with Russia if Congress blocks its request to buy 40 F-16 Block 70 fighter jets from the U.S.”

“Europe Should Be Grateful to Erdoğan”: The quote is the praise Russian dictator Vladimir Putin bestowed upon Turkey’s Islamist strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Translated into realpolitik, what Putin is saying is: “Russia is grateful to Erdoğan’s anti-Western ideology.” He is right. Erdoğan is bringing NATO member Turkey more and more into Russia’s orbit.

Erdoğan is overtly challenging the alliance of which his country is a member. Here is a brief account of how Erdoğan steered Turkey further away from Western interests, in favor of his Eurasian adventurism, in just a couple of months:

In early July, Erdoğan told a group of top party executives that Putin, during a meeting in Tehran, suggested a deal in which Turkish drone maker Baykar, whose chief engineer is Erdoğan’s son-in-law, cooperates with Russia. “Putin told me that he wants to work with Baykar,” Erdoğan said.
At the end of July, a Russian state-owned company was caught transferring money to a subsidiary that is building a $20 billion nuclear power plant on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, thereby alleviating concerns that the project could be delayed by war sanctions. Rosatom Corp. sent around $5 billion to the Turkey-based builder, formally known as Akkuyu Nuclear JSC.
The beginning of August. Putin proudly announced that the trade between Russia and Turkey doubled in the first five months of 2022, and had surged 57% in the last year.
After a face-to-face meeting with Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Erdoğan said that Turkey would now pay Russia in rubles for its natural gas purchases. Meanwhile, Erdoğan happily accepted Putin’s invitation to join the September meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Uzbekistan. The SCO, launched in 2001, consists of Eurasian member states and declares its mission as combating radicalism and other security concerns in China, Russia and four ex-Soviet Central Asian republics.
As part of the Sochi deal, Erdoğan announced, five Turkish banks adopted Russia’s Mir payments system, another blow to Western sanctions on Russia. Turkey had earlier abstained from joining the U.S. and Europe’s sanctions on Russia after it invaded Ukraine.
In a joint statement after the Sochi summit, Erdoğan and Putin “reaffirmed their determination to act in coordination and solidarity in the fight against all terrorist organizations in Syria.” Shortly after that statement, the Turkish government stepped up its lethal drone attacks against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria ahead of a threatened full-scale invasion. A Turkish drone attack was reported to have killed four people in a town on the Syria-Turkey border.
Dmitri Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said that “Military-technical cooperation between the two countries is permanently on the agenda, and the very fact that our interaction is developing in this sensitive sphere shows that, on the whole, the entire range of our interrelations is at a very high level.”
A few days after Peskov’s opaque statement, Dmitry Shugayev, the head of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, said that a contract had been signed to deliver a second shipment of the S-400 missile system to Turkey, with the production of some components to be localized [some parts made locally] in Turkey. Now that is a real challenge.

Turkey had earlier been expelled from the U.S.-led, multinational partnership that builds the F-35 fifth-generation fighter jet, and been taken under the scope of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.