RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15624/afghan-election-winners

Of the country’s 9.6 million registered voters (among a total population of 37 million), a total of just 1.82 million votes were counted. Of these, nearly one million were discarded due to irregularities, meaning that Mr Ghani achieved his victory by winning a paltry 400,000 votes, which can hardly be described as a commanding mandate.

The result should serve as a warning to US officials as they enter a crucial phase in peace talks with the Taliban about the organisation’s true motives.

Far from having an interest in achieving a negotiated settlement of the long-running Afghan conflict, the Taliban’s ultimate goal is to persuade the Trump administration to end its military presence in the country so that it can once again seize control of the country and turn it into a safe haven from which Islamist terrorists can again plot their devastating attacks against the West.

The announcement that Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has emerged as the victor in the country’s election contest could well prove to be a hollow victory so far as the survival of Afghanistan’s fragile democracy is concerned.

Declaration of the election’s outcome, which took place in September last year, was delayed because of allegations of vote-rigging in the contest, as well as claims that many Afghans did not vote because of intimidation tactics by the Taliban.

Even when the final result was announced this week, with election officials confirming that the 70-year-old Mr Ghani had narrowly claimed victory with 50.64 percent of the vote, the main opposition candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, continued to insist that the contest had been marred by massive fraud and technical problems.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15603/greece-islands-migrants

“We want our islands back… We want our lives back!!!” — Posters across Greece’s northeast Aegean islands.

The owner of the beautiful tavern… “recollects how the ‘refugee business’ works… the distance between the Turkish mainland and Lesbos is shortest here (just five miles): “It’s 1,500 euros per person and one boat takes up to 60 persons. One boat’s turnover is thus 90,000 euros if it travels once a day.”

At Moria, the largest camp on the island of Lesbos, 19,000 refugees presently seek shelter at a facility with a capacity of 2,840 people.

In 2016 Ankara and Brussels reached a deal in which the EU committed six billion euros ($6.6 billion) in migrant assistance and a more liberal visa regime for Turkish nationals in return for Turkey stopping migrants from crossing. The deal has not stopped the refugee flow from the Turkish coast. Turkey claims that so far, only about $2 billion has been paid.

Locals are angry. So are the migrants. Tens of thousands of migrants have illegally landed here, on the islands of Greece, since 2015. Some leave, some stay but most wait to be “processed’ in the hope of finding their ways into Europe’s richer countries, such as Germany.

“Theloume piso ta nisia mas…, Theloume piso ti zoi mas!!!” echo poster slogans across Greece’s northeast Aegean islands, inviting locals to debate the poisoning refugee catastrophe: “We want our islands back… We want our lives back!!!” Lesbos, an island situated on the easternmost corner of Europe and neighboring Turkey, is one of the victims that once was a paradise.

There is always the lighter side of things. A tavern owner recalls a 2015 dialogue with a Syrian migrant who had just disembarked from the rubber boat that carried him to a faraway corner of Lesbos after a perilous journey. The refugee arrives at the tavern and, in broken English, asks: “Tell me, quick, where does the train leave for Germany?”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-facade-of-stability-11582156842?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

There exists today no vaccine for the coronavirus now engulfing China. That is a challenge for President Xi Jinping as he struggles to contain it. But the spread of the coronavirus has revealed a truth that poses a much greater risk to Mr. Xi: There is no cure for Chinese communism except the collapse of the party.

The more Mr. Xi pursues his authoritarian agenda, the more distrust he will sow at home and abroad. Far from transforming Beijing into the world’s leading superpower, his policies will instead keep China from taking its rightful place of honor in a peaceful, modern and integrated world.

This much should already be clear from how badly Chinese authorities have botched their response to a virus that each day claims more innocent Chinese lives. The first culprits were the local authorities in Wuhan. When Dr. Li Wenliang tried to alert people about a potential outbreak, the official response was to have the police pressure him to sign a letter that accused him of spreading rumors and disturbing public order.

Then, when the outbreak did happen and a seafood market was identified as the probable origin of the virus, local authorities closed it down. They hid the threat, telling the public that the market was merely being renovated. In other words, as the outbreak was already under way the local government did what Communist governments always do: cover up.

Deception is China’s true rule of law. Now the world must start asking something that Chinese people living under communism ask themselves every day: How reliable can China’s political, social and economic institutions be when its local government leaders routinely lie to their citizens and superiors alike?

Mr. Xi has no understanding of this. He talks of a “people’s war” on the coronavirus and has mobilized vast resources to combat it. Communist governments excel at mobilizing resources because they are command economies, and these big actions—quarantining entire cities, deploying the military, building hospitals overnight—can look impressive.

But their efficacy is hobbled by the lack of free communication.

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/chinas-government-is-like-something-out-of-1984/

The Chinese communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens but to the world at large.

China is currently in a dangerously chaotic state. And why not, when a premodern authoritarian society leaps wildly into the brave new world of high-tech science in a single generation?

The Chinese technological revolution is overseen by an Orwellian dictatorship. Predictably, the Chinese Communist Party has not developed the social, political or cultural infrastructure to ensure that its sophisticated industrial and biological research does not go rogue and become destructive to itself and to the billions of people who are on the importing end of Chinese products and protocols.

Central party officials run the government, military, media and universities collectively in a manner reminiscent of the science-fiction Borg organism of “Star Trek,” which was a horde of robot-like entities all under the control of a central mind.

Thirty years ago, American pundits began gushing over China’s sudden leap from horse-drawn power to solar, wind and nuclear energy. The Chinese communist government wowed Westerners. It created from nothing high-speed rail, solar farms, shiny new airports and gleaming new high-density apartment buildings.

Western-trained Chinese scientists soon were conducting sophisticated medical and scientific research. And they often did so rapidly, without the prying regulators, nosy elected officials and bothersome citizen lawsuits that often burden American and European scientists.

https://www.jns.org/what-explains-germanys-persistent-quixotic-friendship-with-iran/

A bungled telegram marking the 40th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, coming on the heels of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, puts some Jewish groups on edge.

At the World Holocaust Forum at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem on Jan. 23 marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier declared: “Germany’s responsibility does not expire. We want to live up to our responsibility. By this, you should measure us.”

On Feb. 5, his office sent, by mistake, a congratulatory telegram to the Iranian regime on the occasion of “Islamic Revolution’s Victory Day” on Feb. 11.

According to a spokesperson from Steinmeier’s office, the error resulted from a coordination issue with the German embassy in Tehran. The spokesperson added that the text of the telegram erroneously sent also contained critical remarks, although it has not been publicly released.

The intent to mark the founding of a regime that pledges to wipe Israel off the map is just a small string of German actions vis-à-vis Iran that prompt pro-Jewish and human-rights activists to measure Germany’s contrition over the Holocaust unfavorably.