RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/07/29/keir-starmers-blackmailing-of-israel-is-a-depraved-new-low/

With ‘allies’ like Keir Starmer, who needs enemies? Today the PM said Britain will recognise Palestine unless Israel agrees to a ceasefire in Gaza. This, truly, is a new low for this government. It is moral blackmail masquerading as diplomacy. It is a barely veiled threat against a supposed ally. Starmer is essentially telling Israel that unless it lays down its arms, Britain will reward its enemies. This will go down in history as one of the most scandalous betrayals of a ‘friend’ of modern times.

Starmer says he will recognise Palestine in September, ahead of the United Nations General Assembly, unless Israel bows to his demands. Israel, he says, must call a ceasefire in Gaza, end the ‘appalling’ suffering there, and commit to a ‘wider peace plan’ that delivers a ‘two-state solution’. And if it doesn’t, Britain will join the 147 other nations that recognise Palestine. Shorter version: do as I say, or suffer the consequences.

The imperial arrogance is off the scale. Maybe Starmer thinks it’s the 1920s and there’s still a British Mandate for Palestine that lets London boss around the Jews and Arabs of the Middle East. To make such haughty demands of any ally at war would be bad enough – to make them of an ally that is fighting a brutal battle against an army of anti-Semites that hates the West as much as it does Jews is flat-out psychotic.

Like President Macron before him – who announced last week that France would recognise Palestine in September – Starmer has clearly not thought through his imperious actions. Where would this State of Palestine be? Who would govern it: the corrupt Palestinian Authority or the demented Jew-killers of Hamas? Starmer paid lip service to the need to disarm Hamas, but he cannot escape the sick fact that he is rewarding terrorism. That he is gifting the Palestinian territories with statehood less than two years after a neo-fascist army from those territories launched a barbarous assault on the Jews of southern Israel.

Hamas won’t hear Starmer’s criticism of its actions or his demand that it release the remaining hostages. It will only hear that killing Jews has benefits.

Recently, Jordan joined the list of countries that have banned the Muslim Brotherhood: Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Austria. The move came after Jordanian authorities announced that they had arrested 16 people suspected of planning attacks aimed at “targeting national security, sowing chaos and sabotage.”
• The Muslim Brotherhood, in addition, has served as an inspiration for Islamist terror groups Islamic State (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda. According to the Counter Extremism Project, a nonprofit international policy organization working to combat the growing threat exposed by extremist ideologies: “Before ascending to the highest positions of ISIS and Al-Qaeda, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Osama bin Laden, and Ayman Zawahiri belonged to a common ideological precursor, the Muslim Brotherhood.”
• The Muslim Brotherhood has been able to fool many Westerners by pretending that most of its work is based on charity and humanitarian aid. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mujama al-Islami (Islamic Center) in the Gaza Strip started as a charity and was even licensed by Israel.
• “Since the 1970s, the Muslim Brotherhood has been aggressively whitewashing its image. By doing charitable work, the Brotherhood pretends to be a humanitarian agency. The charitable work, however, is camouflage for the Brotherhood’s real mission — undermining Western society, promoting Sharia law, and pursuing global domination…. The Brotherhood will use any tactic, including subversion and violence, to dismantle Western societies.” — Pastor Michael Youssef, Daily Wire, June 24, 2025.
• Designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a Foreign Terrorist Organization would give US law enforcement and intelligence agencies the legal tools they need to protect Americans. It would allow them to:
• Freeze financial assets used to fund radical networks;
• Block the travel of known Brotherhood operatives;
• Investigate and prosecute U.S.-based affiliates;
• Expose front groups that serve as recruitment pipelines;
• And cut off the flow of resources from foreign governments and donors.
• Designating the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization is vital not only for the national security of the United States, but also for combating Islamist terrorism around the world. If America’s Arab allies have reached the conclusion that the Muslim Brotherhood is a dangerous Islamist terror organization, there is no reason why the US and other Western countries should continue to pretend that it is all about charitable and humanitarian work.

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-mileis-manmade-miracle-argentina-economy?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The great English lexicographer Samuel Johnson said of the actor David Garrick that his demise “eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.” If the Argentine president Javier Milei were ultimately to fail in his bid to extricate his country from a century of economic underachievement, I would feel the same way. Happily, I don’t think he will.

Since he burst onto the Latin American political scene a few years ago, Milei has added immeasurably to both the gaiety of nations and the public stock of harmless pleasure. With his shaggy sideburns and loopy facial expressions, there is more than a hint of the Mad Hatter about him.

Yet there is a method to Milei’s madness. While the world fixates on Donald Trump’s populist cocktail of reciprocal tariffs and big, beautiful deficits, Milei is delivering a man-made miracle that should gladden the heart of every classical economist and quicken the pulse of all political libertarians.

Consider what Milei has achieved in just a year and a half.

When he was sworn in as president in December 2023, the Argentine economy was a seemingly incurable basket case. In 2023, its gross domestic product had shrunk by 1.6 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Perhaps more strikingly, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) on an inflation-adjusted basis was lower than it had been in 2007. Public finances were in disarray. The last time the government had run a surplus was in 2008. The IMF estimated total public debt at around 90 percent of GDP, but the important thing was how much of that debt—more than $40 billion—Argentina owed to the IMF, the culmination of no fewer than 22 programs.