RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/09/22/trumps-peace-deal-anything-in-it-for-jordan/

Jordan presents itself to the world as a constitutional monarchy – a state supporting a multiparty political system, an elected parliament, and a prime minister who is the head of government.

Constitutional experts beg to differ. Most maintain that Jordan is an autocracy in which authoritarian power is exercised by the king through legal manipulation, described by the Journal of Democracy as “selective economic reforms, new civil society regulations, and hollow pluralism initiatives.” In fact, the king is the country’s ultimate authority in respect of all three branches of government – executive, legislative, and judicial. He appoints the prime minister and chooses the cabinet. The judges are appointed and dismissed by royal decree. Political parties were legalized in 1992 provided they acknowledge the legitimacy of the monarchy.

These democratically dubious constitutional arrangements do not, however, affect the popularity of the monarchy, and there is no demand within Jordan for constitutional change. However, the usual consequences of autocratic rule – corruption, unemployment, poverty, high taxes, rising food prices, and poor government services – regularly result in outbursts of popular protest. Over the course of 2019, the scale and depth of Jordan’s economic problems have been unprecedented, and massive public demonstrations have been the result.

In May and June, the public took to the streets in great numbers to protest increased taxes and soaring prices. The rebellion was nationwide, uniting all sectors of Jordanian society. In response, King Abdullah dismissed the government, froze prices, and appointed a new prime minister, Omar al-Razzaz, whom he ordered to produce reforms.

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/09/the-2019-muslim-man-of-the-year-the-antisemitism-envoy-and-the-pandemic-of-muslim-antisemitism/

Appositely, Columbia University Jewish students are protesting the slated appearance of “proud” Jew-hating Malaysian Muslim Prime Minister Mahathir ibn Mohamad, Wednesday, September 25th at Columbia’s World Leadership Forum. Their protest petition references a comment this bigoted Muslim head of state made October 16, 2003, at the Putrajaya (Malaysia) summit for the leaders of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now dubbed Organization of Islamic Cooperation), a de facto Sharia supremacist global Islamintern.

…the Jews rule this world by proxy and get others to fight and die for them.

But this isolated remark is completely de-contextualized from Mohamad’s mainstream Muslim worldview, rooted in sacralized Islamic jihadism and Jew-hatred, which these overarching statements from the same 2003 address, elucidate:

To begin with, the governments of all the Muslim countries can close ranks and have a common stand…on Palestine…We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships…We may want to re-create the first century of the Hijrah, the way of life in those times, in order to practice what we think to be the true Islamic way of life. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counter-attack. As Muslims, we must seek guidance from the Al-Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet (i.e., Muhammad who waged a bloody proto-jihad which slaughtered and subjugated the Medinan Jews). Surely the 23 years’ struggle of the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as to what we can and should do.

Moreover the Columbia student protest petition also ignores this baleful reality: Mahathir Mohamad was designated the 2019 Muslim Man Of The Year in the 2019 Muslim 500, a yearly publication of the highly influential, mainstream, moderate Jordanian Muslim think tank, The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Institute/Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, renowned for its very active role in “interfaith dialogue.”    

http://www.settimananews.it/italia-europa-mondo/china-one-world-two-systems/
 
How Hong Kong’s and China’s position in the world is no longer tenable, as it was seen 20 years ago.

In the late 1990s, Beijing decided to adhere to the newly established World Trade Organization (WTO), which was to replace GATT (General Agreement on Tariff and Trade), regulating trade in the free world that had been battling the Soviet empire. The USA, leading those talks and promoting the new organization, had settled on allowing a grace period for China to fully integrate into the global system. This system was not just commercial, but also political.

China had then barely managed to skirt the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, which brought down governments and regimes all over Asia and proved in this part of the world that the US was the paramount example of a well-managed economic system. In the previous decade, the US also caused the USSR to disband and later overawed the Europeans, whose monetary system was disrupted by the 1992 financial crisis. The euro, then an objective challenge to dollar dominance, had been approved by the EU but only in return for an eastward expansion of the Union, something that would weaken European ability to easily reach a unified consensus on the moves of the new currency.

Basically, in the late 1990s, the USA and China agreed on establishing a situation parallel to that of Hong Kong. The territory had just in 1997 been returned to Beijing under the principle of “one country, two systems” (一国两制): that is, China and Hong Kong were to be run according to different sets of rules, although both agreed they belonged to one China and eventually they would be united under one rule. Similarly, China was joining the WTO under the provision that we could call new “one world, two systems”, or to be more Chinese: “one heaven, two systems” (一天两制). The two systems were to be run differently although both understood they would eventually merge into one – the free market/free politics one would spread all over the world.

https://madmimi.com/p/3bc55f?pact=527997-154157172-7235361215-a2bf1295d0adda667967478eaacccbfeb5cd35c2

In a short interview I gave yesterday evening, I discuss not only the continuing substantial coverage about Israel in media outlets such as France 24 and the international New York Times, where Israel continues to be the lead story.

I also ask why there has been so little coverage in the western media after the US military admitted killing over 30 innocent Afghan farmers in a drone strike last Thursday:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/afghanistan-dozens-civilians-killed-drone-attack-190919072728303.html

I’m not making a military judgment regarding the Afghan conflict. I’m wondering why the western media does not even want to report and discuss dozens of other conflicts (even those the west is involved in) in anything like the way it scrutinizes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a conflict where far fewer people have died compared to many of these other conflicts.

This is particularly the case in the New York Times’ international print edition which, day after day, fills much of its news and opinion pages with generally very one-sided pieces seemingly designed to portray Israel in a negative and misleading light.

At the same time, there is almost no coverage of, for example, West Papua where up to half a million people have been killed (and thousands raped) since it was illegally occupied by the Indonesian militarily in 1963.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/West-Papua-the-forgotten-people-481450

https://thediplomat.com/2014/01/the-human-tragedy-of-west-papua/

https://www.ipwp.org/about-west-papua/

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14908/india-mod-kashmir

Since the partition of India in 1947, which established the two independent states of India and Pakistan, Pakistan has infiltrated soldiers into Indian Kashmir, assisted anti-Indian Muslim terrorists in Jammu-Kashmir and sponsored many murderous operations inside India proper.

India is determined to safeguard its standing as the world’s most populous democracy, particularly in the shadow of the rising power of totalitarian China, which enjoys a close relationship with Pakistan. Revoking Article 370 sends a clear signal to both Pakistan and China that India will resolutely defend its territory against efforts by Islamabad or Beijing to whittle away at Indian sovereignty in any portion of its territory.

India may therefore consider a strategic alliance with the U.S. to protect the Indo-Pacific region from Chinese territorial aggression and acquisitive claims of sovereignty in the South and East China Seas.

“Pakistan has threatened to use nuclear arms. Pakistan is somewhere where terrorists have been able to plan bloody terrorist attacks in Europe without mentioning tremendous human rights violation in Pakistan.” — Fulvio Martusciello, Italian MEP, speaking at the European Parliament, September 18, 2019.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently responded to the heavy criticism he has been receiving — and to violent protests that erupted — over his controversial decision to revoke Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted a certain degree of autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, by calling for “hugging each Kashmiri” and for the creation of a “new paradise” in the valley.

Modi accused elements “from across the border” in Pakistan of spurring the protests that have been taking place since August 5, when New Delhi announced the revoking of Article 370 – a move he said “is going to be the medium for fulfilling the aspirations and dreams of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”

Modi insisted that what the “youth, mothers and sisters in Jammu and Kashmir” want is “development and new job opportunities.”

The previously autonomous region of Jammu-Kashmir is an 86,000-square-mile Muslim-majority area in the north of India Proper, nearly half of which is controlled by India and the rest is divided between Pakistan and China. Territorial control of the area has been the prime cause of wars in 1947 and 1965, and of many deadly skirmishes between India and Pakistan.