RUTHFULLY YOURS

Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was investigating President Cristina Kirchner’s links to Iran in January 2015 when he was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment with a gunshot wound to the head. Now a judge has ruled that he was murdered.

In 2015 Mrs. Kirchner’s secretary of security immediately declared Nisman’s death an apparent suicide. That made little sense to those who knew Nisman, in part because he was hours away from presenting evidence to Congress that Mrs. Kirchner had made a deal with Tehran to cover up Iran’s responsibility for the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center that killed 85 people.

When President Mauricio Macri took office in December 2015 he pledged that investigators would have the independence to discover the truth. The Journal reported in September that “twenty-eight government forensic experts, toiling at a secret facility for seven months, concluded” that Mr. Nisman was killed. They handed their findings to a federal court.

On Tuesday in a 656-page opinion, Argentine federal judge Julián Ercolini ruled that “the death of Prosecutor Nisman was not a suicide, and was brought about by a third party and in a painful manner.” He charged Diego Lagomarsino, who was an aide to Nisman, as an accessory to the murder.

The judge says Mr. Lagomarsino was the last person in the apartment and the bullet that killed the prosecutor came from the aide’s gun. Mr. Lagomarsino denies any role in Nisman’s death and says his boss asked him for the gun for protection.

Nisman is being vindicated in death. His thorough investigation led to the indictment of Mrs. Kirchner on treason charges earlier this month. As a sitting senator she has immunity for now but her former foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, is under house arrest. Let’s hope investigators keep following the trail to Tehran.

So there will be more empty seats round the Christmas table this year, after an “Australian citizen” mowed down pedestrians at the junction of Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street in Melbourne. The casualties include “a pre-schooler with serious head injuries”. The “Australian citizen” (I presume this designation is being used to emphasize that he’s entirely eligible to serve in Mr Turnbull’s cabinet) did it deliberately, but relax, lighten up, there’s no need to worry because, according to Victoria’s police commissioner, all this terrifying terror is “not terror-related”.

So he’s not a crack operative with the Islamic State’s Australian branch office, he’s just, as The Age’s cheery headline writer puts it, “of Afghan descent and mentally ill”. A second man, arrested while filming the scene and found to have three knives in his bag, is believed to be nothing to do with the first man. Just another Australian citizen taking his knife collection out for a stroll.

You’ll recall there was a previous “vehicle attack” in downtown Melbourne earlier this year, after which the authorities ordered up the bollardization of every pedestrianized precinct in the vicinity. As Andrew Bolt writes:

All the bollards put up after six people were killed in Bourke St Mall in January have not stopped this.

After the Halloween jihadist killed eight people on a bike path in Lower Manhattan, New York’s bollardizers commanded similarly extravagant installation of Diversity Bollards up and down the city. As I wrote:

Last week I was tootling through Williston, Vermont, which has just reconfigured its highway system to run green-painted bike paths down the center of the streets. And the thought occurred to me that, once you’ve bollarded off every sidewalk, what’s to stop jihadists mowing down cyclists? After all, if the eco-crowd are installing them in the middle of the roadway, they’re kind of hard to bollard off.

I was over-thinking the issue. One of the problems with bollarding off pedestrians behind a wall of Diversity Bollards is that they still occasionally have to emerge from behind the bollards to cross the street, and it’s hard to bollard off a pedestrian crossing. In this case, the non-terror-related Australian citizen simply waited until the little green sign indicated it was safe for pedestrians to cross the street and then floored it. In an amusing touch, his car eventually came to a rest against a bollard.

What’s the solution? Maybe automobile manufacturers could replace airbags with Diversity Bollards timed to inflate whenever non-terror-related drivers with mental-health issues accelerate near pedestrian crossings. Or perhaps it would be easier to issue citizens of western nations at birth with an individual ring of bollards to wear about their persons at all time, starting with when they leave the maternity ward.

Alternatively, instead of attempting to ring-fence every potential target – ie, everything and everyone – with Diversity Bollards, we could try installing bollards where they matter – around the civilized world. To reiterate what I reiterated last time:

I don’t want to get used to it – and I reiterate my minimum demand of western politicians that I last made after the London Bridge attacks: How many more corpses need to pile up on our streets before you guys decide to stop importing more of it?

Palestinians say that what they are facing in Iraq is “ethnic cleansing.” The new Iraqi law deprives Palestinians living in Iraq of their right to free education, healthcare and to travel documents, and denies them work in state institutions.

No one will pay any attention to the misery of the Palestinians in any Arab country. Major media outlets around the world will barely cover the news of the controversial Iraqi law or the displacement of thousands of Palestinian families in Iraq. Journalists are too busy chasing a handful of Palestinian stone-throwers near Ramallah. A Palestinian girl who punched an Israeli soldier in the face draws more media interest than Arab apartheid against the Palestinians.

Palestinian leaders, meanwhile care nothing about the plight of their own people in Arab countries. They are much too busy inciting Palestinians against Israel and Trump to pay such a paltry issue any mind at all.

Iraq has just joined the long list of Arab countries that shamelessly practice apartheid against Palestinians. The number of Arab countries that apply discriminatory measures against Palestinians while pretending to support the Palestinian cause is breathtaking. Arab hypocrisy is once again on display, but who who is looking?

The international media — and even the Palestinians — are so preoccupied with US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem that the plight of Palestinians in Arab countries is dead news. This apathy allows Arab governments to continue with their anti-Palestinian policies because they know that no one in the international community cares — the United Nations is too busy condemning Israel to do much else.

So what is the story with the Palestinians in Iraq? Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Iraqi government has approved a new law that effectively abolishes the rights given to Palestinians living there. The new law changes the status of Palestinians from nationals to foreigners.

Under Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, the Palestinians enjoyed many privileges. Until 2003, there were about 40,000 Palestinians living in Iraq. Since the overthrow of the Saddam regime, the Palestinian population has dwindled to 7,000.

Thousands of Palestinians have fled Iraq after being targeted by various warring militias in that country because of their support for Saddam Hussein. Palestinians say that what they are facing in Iraq is “ethnic cleansing.”

The conditions of the Palestinians in Iraq are about to go from bad to worse. The new law, which was ratified by Iraqi President Fuad Masum, deprives Palestinians living in Iraq of their right to free education, healthcare and to travel documents, and denies them work in state institutions. The new law, which is called No. 76 of 2017, revokes the rights and privileges granted to Palestinians under Saddam Hussein. The law went into effect recently after it was published in the Iraqi Official Gazette No. 4466.

“Instead of protecting the Palestinian refugees from daily violations and improving their living and humanitarian conditions, the Iraqi government is making decisions that will have a catastrophic impact on the lives of these refugees,” said Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

But what of NATO? Is Turkey a reliable NATO partner? Here the picture is more mixed.

Turkey of late, with the purchase of two batteries of the Russian S-400 air defense system, appears to have taken a big step away from the NATO alliance. The Erdogan regime’s nationwide post-coup purge of civil and military personnel, and its threatening acts against freedom of speech, such as the mass arrest of journalists, are eviscerating the country’s independent civil society institutions. In addition, Turkey’s crackdown on the activities of non-governmental organizations in Turkey is another sign that Turkey is turning away from democratic values shared by NATO Alliance members.

Is Turkey still a reliable ally? After repeated endorsements by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of policies inimical to U.S. interests, the answer seems to be not really.

Erdogan recently announced he will seek United Nations support to annul President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

In addition, the Turkish Ministry of Justice has issued warrants for the arrest of two American Turkey specialists, in effect placing a bounty of $800,000 on their heads.

Additionally, there is the somewhat comical furor in Turkey over the adoption by Turkish entrepreneurs of the American “Black Friday” sales concept. Several Turkish businesses, which had attempted to increase sales by borrowing the U.S. “Black Friday” market lure, were attacked by devout Muslims who accused store owners of disrespecting Islam’s day of prayer. The perceived insult to Islam’s Friday Prayer obligation is just another example of a widening antipathy towards the U.S.

While the misunderstanding by Turks over “Black Friday,” will likely fade quickly, the diplomatic damage brought on by the early October arrest by Turkey’s police of a Turkish employee at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul allegedly for espionage is likely to be more long-lasting.

The arrest of the U.S Consulate’s employee precipitated the U.S. Ambassador’s suspension on October 8, of all non-immigrant U.S. visas for Turkish citizens. The incident underscores how bilateral relations have plummeted since Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan first came to power.

Shortly after Erdogan was elected in 2002, Turkey appeared to start turning away from its U.S. alliance when it refused to grant permission for U.S. troops to cross Turkish territory into northern Iraq. Turkey’s parliament, the Grand National Assembly, voted down the request. Erdogan seems now to be focusing on regional affairs rather than on Turkey’s traditional ties to the United States and Europe. Since Erdogan came to power, Turkey has increased its economic and diplomatic ties to Arab states.