RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14839/denmark-crime-sweden

“Denmark is still relatively far from having reached the kind of crime epidemic that is currently plaguing Sweden. However, given the proximity of the two countries, the open borders and the apparent free flow of criminals across the borders — not to mention Denmark’s own crime level — there seems little to stop the situation in Denmark from getting out of control and becoming increasingly more like Sweden. ”

Sweden is exporting not only its bombings to Denmark. Gang crime, with its shootings and murders, has also traveled across the border.

Denmark has experienced 10 bombings since February. The latest took place on August 27 in a residential complex, Gersager, in the Greve area, very close to Copenhagen. No one was injured, but the building was seriously damaged. This year, the Swedish city of Malmö has experienced 19 bombings. An August 16 editorial in the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende said:

“No one wants Swedish conditions where shootings and bombings have reached an extreme degree. In addition to conflicts in the gang environment, there have been bombing attacks against police stations as well as courthouses, a town hall and the Swedish Tax Agency in Malmö in recent years.”

The piece was published after the Danish Tax Authority in Copenhagen was bombed on August 6, destroying its façade; one person was injured. Two Swedish citizens were charged with the attack. “The Swedish suspects have names that indicate that they have a different ethnic background than Swedish, but there is as yet no knowledge of the motives that may have driven them,” Berlingske wrote.

A few days later, on August 10, Copenhagen experienced another bombing that caused material damage, this time against a police station in Nørrebro.

Shortly after the bombings of the Danish Tax Authority and the Copenhagen police station, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen held a press conference. The government, she said, views the bombings “as an attack on our authorities and thus also our society”. She added that the government plans to strengthen the border with Sweden. “We have a challenge. It should not be the case that you can travel from Sweden to Denmark and place dynamite in the middle of Copenhagen”. She stressed that the border “has our full attention. And it needs to be strengthened”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14848/turkey-israel-revolution

“Hatice Karahan, Erdogan’s top economic advisor, told DW that economic relations between the countries represented a ‘win-win situation’ for both: ‘Turkey exports automobiles, iron, steel, electrical devices and plastic to Israel. And in return, it imports Israeli fuel and oil.'” — Deutsche Welle, December 12, 2017.

Erdoğan was unjust, wrong and unrealistic in his quest internationally to isolate Israel. The world has not quite moved in the direction he wished for.

“[T]he rapprochement that significant sections of the Israeli military and security establishment have long wanted with the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] has taken root since 2011, as the post-Arab Spring landscape has provided the opportunity to deepen unofficial ties in areas of shared concern.” — Baker Institute, Rice University.

Turkey’s Islamist leaders, including President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have been pledging to their voters that they would “internationally isolate Israel” ever since they launched a diplomatic war on the Jewish state in 2010.

In a 2011 speech, Turkey’s foreign minister at the time, Ahmet Davutoğlu (later prime minister), said that his country’s Turkey’s policies in the Middle East “have brought Israel to its knees” and isolated the Jewish state both regionally and internationally.

The facts, however, could not have been more distant.

According to official reports, Israel’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose by a healthy 3.3% in 2018, compared to 1.3% in 2009, while Turkey reported a drop from 8.5% in 2010 to 2.8% in 2018. The unemployment rate in Israel stood at 3.7% in July 2019. Turkey, meanwhile, boasted an unemployment rate of 14.7% in the December-February 2018-2019 period, its highest level in nearly a decade.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-myanmars-military-duped-the-west-11568069031

Yangon, Myanmar

Is the American foreign-policy community wise enough, disciplined enough, and knowledgeable enough about Asia to build an effective coalition to balance a rising China? The example of Myanmar is a worrying one.

Myanmar received extraordinary attention from the last administration, with visits from both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama. But the crucial Southeast Asian country turned out not to be the human-rights miracle many in both parties envisioned. And when events in Myanmar failed to follow the idealistic script written in Washington, the U.S. responded in ways that undermined the country’s reformers, empowered its military and strengthened China’s hand. The U.S. failed even to demonstrate a balanced approach to human rights the people of Myanmar might have respected.

In the early years of the Obama administration, many Americans fell in love with a fantasy: the idea that Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese political leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and endured 15 years of house arrest, was in the process of taking power from a defeated military junta. They misread the situation fundamentally.

In 2010 the military was frustrated. Decades of failed socialist planning had left the economy relatively backward, even as other Asian countries grew rich. Myanmar was largely dependent on Chinese investment, which made the generals nervous. They decided to begin to liberalize their domestic economy to promote faster growth and attract investment from Japan, the U.S. and Europe.