RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.aol.com/news/labour-party-set-end-14-215636362.html

Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak conceded defeat to the opposition Labour Party as voters in the UK general election delivered a devastating verdict on 14 years of Conservative rule.

As results poured in from around the UK, the center-left Labour Party was on course to win Britain’s general election by a landslide. Party leader Keir Starmer celebrated the victory in front of supporters at the Tate Modern art gallery in London. “Change begins now. It feels good, I have to be honest,” he said.

Sunak said he had called Starmer to congratulate him, and added that he took personal responsibility for the crushing defeat. “I am sorry,” Sunak said after becoming one of a lonely band of Conservative figures to retain their seats.

An exit poll predicted that Labour would win 410 seats, while the Conservatives will drop to just 131 seats, a rejection of the ruling party by Britain’s electorate that had been anticipated for months.

“The Labour Party has won this general election,” Sunak said. “The British people have delivered a sobering verdict tonight. There is much to learn and reflect on, and I take responsibility for the loss,” he said.

Reform UK, an insurgent rightwing populist party led by Nigel Farage, was on course to take a handful of seats – and split the right-wing vote around the country, contributing to the Conservatives’ defeat. “This, folks, is huge,” Farage said in video message, shortly before it was announced he had won his first seat in the UK parliament.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/02/the-green-partys-bigotry-problem-is-far-worse-than-reforms/

There’s a political party in the UK that is fielding candidates who seem to have ‘praised’ the slaughter of hundreds of members of an ethnic group. This party has put forward candidates for the 4 July General Election who appear to have favourably compared racist murderers to the French Resistance. It’s a party with candidates who allegedly accused victims of racist violence of bringing the violence on themselves in a bid to win some pity. What awful party is this? What dreadful organisation might have such bigotry coursing through its ranks? It must be Reform, right? No. It’s the Greens.

We need to talk about the Green Party’s anti-Semitism problem. All the comments mentioned above – the praising of bigoted violence, the likening of such violence to resistance – were made by Green Party candidates in the wake of Hamas’s 7 October pogrom. The world witnessed the worst act of anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust and these people were crowing about Hamas’s ‘freedom to resist’. More importantly – far more importantly – we need to talk about why the Greens’ seeming Jew problem has caused far less concern in chattering-class circles than Reform’s handful of mad candidates who’ve said vile things about black and Asian people. It’s the most glaring double standard of this election, and it demands interrogation.

Election followers will be keenly aware of the racist invective that has been spouted on the fringes of Reform. For the simple reason that it is never out of the headlines. Everywhere you look there is media fury over ‘Reform’s racism’. Every time party leader Nigel Farage appears on TV he is grilled about the bigoted tweets and hateful blather of some of his candidates.

And, to be clear, dreadful utterances have been made. A Reform campaigner in Clacton, where Farage hopes to be elected to parliament, was filmed by an undercover journalist referring to Rishi Sunak as a ‘Paki’. The Reform candidate for Barnsley North reportedly said black people should ‘get off [their] lazy arses’ and stop acting ‘like savages’. Another allegedly referred to the people arriving on small boats as ‘scum’. Another seemed to make sneering comments about the IQ of sub-Saharan Africans. The Clacton campaigner and these three candidates have now all been unceremoniously dumped by Reform, and quite right too. Language like this has no place in 21st-century Britain.

But here’s what I want to know: why is the racism of a small number of Reform-linked people hogging the headlines while the horrific post-pogrom commentary of certain Green candidates is being treated as a small, troubling affair, at best? Or to put it another way: why has there been more cappuccino-spilling in right-think circles over that Reform candidate’s gross likening of black people to ‘savages’ than there has been over some Greens’ seeming sympathy for the real-world savagery visited on Israelis by Hamas? Is saying the word ‘savage’ worse in these people’s minds than praising the savagery of fascistic violence? If so, I’d hate to see the state of their moral compasses.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/irans-gulag-archipelago/

More news of Iran’s brutal crackdown on dissidents — from murders during protests to death sentences and torture. “Two Iranian Protesters Face Charges Punishable by Death,” Iran International, June 30, 2024:

Eight detainees from Iran’s 2022 nationwide uprising following Mahsa Amini’s death in police custody were tried in a Revolutionary Court on Sunday, with some facing charges punishable by death.

The individuals—Nasim Gholami Simiyari, Hamidreza Sahlabadi, Amin Sokhanvar, Ali Harati Mokhtari, Hossein Mohammad Hosseini, Amir Shah-Velayati, Ehsan Ravazjian, and Hossein Ardestani—were tried by Branch 26 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court.

Among them, Gholami Simiyari and Sahlabadi faced charges of “armed rebellion against the Islamic Republic,” which can lead to harsh sentences including the death penalty.

During the court session, Gholami Simiyari denied all charges, stating that her confessions were coerced through pressure and torture by security officers, and prolonged solitary confinement….

Another case in Iran: Mona Bakhtiari, whose 27-year-old brother, Pouya Bakhtiari, was shot in the head by Iran’s police during the 2019 wave of pro-democracy protests, reports that her mother, Nahid Shirpisheh, is being harshly beaten in prison. At least 1,500 people were killed by regime security forces in 2019.

Bakhtiari says that the Ministry of Intelligence summoned her mother two months ago, demanding she confess on camera that her son Pouya was a “troublemaker who intended to shoot at officers.”

https://www.jns.org/frances-right-wins-big-in-first-round-of-parliamentary-vote/

France’s far-right topped the country’s first round of legislative elections on Sunday for the first time, with the National Rally, the party of Marine Le Pen, winning about one-third of the vote.

Finishing second was the left-wing coalition, New Popular Front (NFP), with 27.99% of the vote. Third was French President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling Ensemble, or “Together,” coalition with 20.76%.

The vote was a rebuke to Macron, who called the snap General Assembly elections after his party suffered a heavy defeat to National Rally in European Parliament elections on June 6-9.

The vote solidified the fact that National Rally, once considered a fringe party, has moved to the mainstream. Voters, when queried by press, frequently expressed the view that while they once found the party scary, they now no longer do.

A pre-election study by the Ipsos polling institute of a representative sample of 10,000 registered voters found that National Rally voters had “grown and diversified,” The New York Times reported.

While still strongest among the blue-collar working-class, the study found National Rally’s electoral base had “considerably widened,” improving its vote by 15 to 20 percentage points among retirees, women, the under-35 age group, high earners and big-city residents.

It signifies how far National Rally has come from when it was known as National Front and headed by Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was convicted of Holocaust denial. His daughter expelled him from the party in 2015.

She then raised her protégé, Jordan Bardella, 28, charismatic and telegenic, to president of the party.

“Marine Le Pen’s smartest move was to appoint Bardella as number two if not as co-leader,” Michel Gurfinkiel, a French author, journalist and public intellectual, told JNS.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/french-elections-stormy-weather/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

I have no idea what is going to happen in the next (and final) round of the French parliamentary elections, and I’m not convinced that many do. With all the runoffs ahead, some of which will be three-way runoffs, only so much can be extrapolated from Sunday’s vote.  One key problem for those who wish to opt for a “republican front” of (essentially) all the other parties against Marine Le Pen’s RN is the presence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left LFI (France Unbowed) in the second-place NFP (New Popular Front). If blocking the RN was their goal, the parties of the center Left may have blundered badly by going along with LFI in the NFP, an alliance that is likely to make some, particularly on the center right, pause as they consider how to vote.

After all, as Anne-Elizabeth Moutet writes in the Daily Telegraph:

Only three weeks ago, on June 12, Macron could not find hard enough words for the Jean-Luc Mélenchon-led New Popular Front. “The socialists, greens and communists are allying themselves with an anti-democratic, anti-parliamentarian, anti-Semitic, anti-nuclear power, pro-Russian party”, he thundered, meaning the hard-Left, which had grabbed the lion’s share of winnable NPF constituencies. Yet he now wants his own candidates to support them.

I watched footage of a large left-wing demonstration in Paris last night. Perhaps the camera angles were unfair, but there were quite a few red flags, while the tricolor was hard to find.

If I had to guess (not very bravely: A lot of people seem to think the same), the RN will be the largest party after Sunday’s vote, but will fall short of an overall majority (289 seats). Under those circumstances, the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, has said that he would not want to be prime minister. Moutet thinks that could change if the RN is within five or ten votes of the magic 289. Strategically that could make sense. The RN has repeatedly emphasized that it has come a long way from its disreputable predecessor, Le Pen senior’s National Front, but saying that in opposition and showing it in government are different things. This could be Bardella’s chance.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20737/we-dont-want-churches-we-want-mosques

A raging Muslim mob attacked and savagely beat a 74-year-old Christian man, on what turned out to be a false accusation of “blasphemy”. Nine days later, on June 3, Nazir Masih Gill died from his many injuries, including a smashed skull. — Morning Star News, June 3, 2024, Pakistan.

The Muslim employer of Saima Bibi, a 24-year-old Christian woman, dragged her outside and shoved her toward an electric chaff cutter—which sliced off one of her ears, cut off most of her scalp, and injured an eye. Her husband, Shahzad, who worked on the same farm and was present, said that one of their employers, Muhammad Mustafa, was angry that they were taking a break and ordered them to cut fodder for the cattle. — Morning Star News, May 15, 2024, Pakistan.

Shahid Masih, a 35-year-old Christian dairy worker, was falsely accused of theft and subjected to “merciless torture” at the hands of Muhammad Ijaz. It included forcing him to ingest acid, from which he died in the hospital 11 days later…. Last reported, authorities are refusing to prosecute Muhammad Ijaz and his murderous accomplices. — britishasianchristians.org, May 15, 2024, Pakistan.

“Christian sanitation workers work long shifts even in extreme weather conditions…. these workers are often ridiculed and mistreated because of their Christian faith…. They often face salary delays and no job security. They are discriminated against even by their Muslim colleagues, and now we are witnessing incidents of physical violence against these weak people.” — Sunil Gulzar, Christian socio-political activist, Morning Star News, May 29, 2024, Pakistan.

Many other attacks on churches in France persisted throughout the month of May, including arson attacks, general desecrations, desecrations of cemeteries, defecations in churches and urination in their baptismal fonts, and bomb threats. — France.

“Imagine the uproar if it was Christians throwing rocks at a mosque? MPs and the media would be all over it screaming ‘Islamophobia!'” — Tommy Robinson, British activist, x.com, May 1, 2024, England.

The Church of the Holy Trinity was vandalized with Islamic graffiti, which included “Allah Akbar,” “Remove this church from here,” “Only Muslims are here,” “We don’t want churches, we want mosques,” and “Islam is the only true religion!” — orthodoxtimes.com, May 15, 2024, Kosovo.