RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-stop-a-south-african-land-grab-1542992109

Global economic jitters make this an especially bad time for developing economies to embark on bad policy experiments, yet that’s what South Africa did this month in advancing a sweeping plan to expropriate private land. The only saving grace is that voters will have a chance to weigh in before this scheme becomes law.

A parliamentary committee on Nov. 15 recommended a constitutional amendment that would allow the government to expropriate land without compensation. The idea has been a fixation in South Africa for years, in the belief that bouts of poor economic growth arise because colonial rule left whites with a majority of the country’s farmland.

But anyone seeking the roots of South Africa’s recent malaise should look elsewhere. Agriculture accounts for less than 3% of gross domestic product, and the number of acres owned by nonwhites or the government nearly doubled between 1994 and 2016 under the “willing buyer, willing seller” land policy adopted by Nelson Mandela.

Weak rule of law and bad policies during the nine-year left-wing administration of former President Jacob Zuma are better explanations for the country’s woes. Land expropriation will make matters worse by deterring investors worried about property rights, especially if such a policy is written into the country’s constitution as the current proposal envisions.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-costs-of-the-euro-1543016358

The euro celebrates its 20th birthday in January, and as if on cue the fiscal costs of the common European currency finally are coming into view for voters. That’s the best reading of the budget principles French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed to this month.

The bilateral deal, part of the pan-EU negotiation about the European Union’s budget, for the first time contemplates a special fund solely for the 19 countries that use the euro. A pot of money would be created within the EU’s existing budget exclusively for public works or other “investment” projects in euro members. The goal is to create fiscal stabilizers that can moderate economic swings and encourage “convergence” in productivity to avoid future crises.

Most critics have seized on the economics, which aren’t impressive. The size of the budget and funding sources remain up for debate. Keynesians fret that this budget will be too small, reckoning that a budget would need to amount to several percentage points of eurozone GDP to do any good. Their answer to every problem is more public spending.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13336/palestinians-trump-peace-plan

According to the reports, the White House “peace team,” led by senior adviser Jared Kushner and special envoy Jason Greenblatt, has been working on the plan for two years — and President Trump wants it published between December 2018 and February 2019.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his representatives in Ramallah have radicalized their people against the Israeli government to a point where meeting or doing business with any Israeli official is tantamount to treason. This is why Abbas does not and cannot return to the negotiating table with Israel and also why Abbas cannot change his position toward the Trump administration.

Wasel Abu Yousef, a senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official, said this week that the Palestinians were moving on three levels to thwart Trump’s upcoming plan: rallying worldwide support for the Palestinian position against the plan, uniting all Palestinians, and opposing attempts to normalize relations between the Arab countries and Israel.

Hardly a day passes without the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) affirming its strong opposition to US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-announced Middle East peace plan, also referred to as the “deal of the century.” Palestinian leaders have convinced their people that Trump is the worst person on the face of the earth and that no one should be doing business with him.

The Palestinian Authority is not the only Palestinian party that continues to voice its opposition to the upcoming peace plan. No Palestinian group or individual has come out in favor the plan, although no one in the Middle East seems to have seen it or knows anything about its details. Trump has united the Palestinians in a way that no Palestinian or Arab has been able to do since the beginning of the Hamas-Fatah war 11 years ago.

The Palestinians are united in their opposition to the Trump administration and its policies, especially in the aftermath of the US president’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as well as its decision to cut US funding to the Palestinian Authority for paying terrorists and to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). The Palestinians have already determined that the US peace plan is “biased” in favor of Israel, and that is why, they say, they cannot accept it.

The Palestinian Authority and its rivals in Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian factions appear to disagree on everything except their hostility to Trump and his administration. They all refer to the “deal of the century” as a “conspiracy aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause and rights.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13301/european-court-human-rights-islam

The ruling of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is not only wrong for establishing a precedent for sharia-compliant adherence to Islamic blasphemy laws, but appears to be based on a number of false premises.

The real message the ECHR sent, as it succumbed to fears of “disturbing the religious peace,” is that if threats work, keep threatening! What sort of protection of human rights is that?

Just who is it, by the way, that gets to decide what is “incriminating”? Formerly, it was the Inquisition.

Islamic blasphemy laws have now been elevated to the law of the land in Europe.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on October 25 that to state that the Islamic prophet Muhammad “liked to do it with children” and “… A 56-year-old and a six-year-old?… What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?” goes “beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate,” and could be classified as “an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace.”

The Court’s judgment has a long history.

In 2011, free speech and anti-jihad activist, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, was convicted by an Austrian court of “denigrating religious symbols of a recognized religious group” after she gave a series of small seminars: “Introduction to the basics of Islam”, “The Islamization of Europe”, and “The impact of Islam”.[1]

No Muslims appear to have attended Sabaditsch-Wolff’s seminars. The court case against her came about only because a magazine, NEWS, filed a complaint against her after secretly planting a journalist at her seminars to record them.

Wolff was convicted of having said that Muhammad “liked to do it with children” and “… A 56-year-old and a six-year-old? … What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?”

On February 15, 2011, the Vienna Regional Criminal Court — according to the summary in the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) — found that “these statements implied that Muhammad had had paedophilic tendencies”, and convicted Sabaditsch-Wolff “for disparaging religious doctrines” under §188 of the Austrian penal code, which states:

“Anyone publicly denigrating or mocking any person or thing that is the object of worship of a domestically existing church or religious society… among whom his conduct is liable to cause legitimate annoyance, is punishable by imprisonment of up to six months or a fine of up to 360 daily rates”.

Sabaditsch-Wolff was ordered to pay a fine of 480 euros and the costs of the proceedings. The Vienna Court of Appeal upheld the decision in December 2011. Sabaditsch-Wolff then appealed the Austrian court decisions to the European Court of Human Rights. She stated that her right to freedom of expression, safeguarded in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, had been violated.

On October 25, the ECHR reached the conclusion that there had been “no violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights”.

In its ruling, the ECHR stated:

“The Court found in particular that the domestic courts comprehensively assessed the wider context of the applicant’s statements and carefully balanced her right to freedom of expression with the right of others to have their religious feelings protected, and served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace in Austria. It held that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate, and by classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.”

The ECHR’s ruling is not only wrong for establishing a precedent for sharia-compliant adherence to Islamic blasphemy laws, but appears to be based on a number of false premises.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13327/brexit-northern-ireland-protoco

lArticle 20 of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland should be supplemented by a sentence of the form: “If not earlier, this Protocol shall cease to apply [x] years after the end of the transition period unless both the European Union and the United Kingdom agree to extent its application in whole or in part.” Here “[x]” should be a number (of years) that is sufficiently large to convict the EU of bad faith if it refuses to countenance such a sentence, but sufficiently small not to be absurd. We think that “three” would be a suitable number of years, but even “five” would establish the principle that the United Kingdom must have a guaranteed prospect of liberty.

Theresa May presented her Brexit deal to her cabinet on November 14, 2018 and to the House of Commons the next day. It consists of two documents, the “Draft Agreement on the withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community” (585 pages) and the “Outline of the political declaration setting out the framework for the future relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland” (8 pages). The documents were released to the public only after the conclusion of that cabinet meeting.
The Problematic Protocol

The Members of Parliament hardly had time overnight to read the Draft Agreement in its entirety. Instead, they rushed to read the “Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland” because they knew that this had been the most controversial element in the negotiations between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

The Protocol recalls in its preamble that “the Withdrawal Agreement… does not aim at establishing a permanent future relationship between the Union and the United Kingdom” while noting that both parties recognize the need to maintain the “soft border” that exists between Northern Ireland, as an integral part of the United Kingdom, and the Irish Republic. Although it is hoped that that “permanent future relationship” will have been negotiated by the end of the “transition period” during which the United Kingdom completes its withdrawal from the EU, this may not happen. The aim of the Protocol, therefore, is to serve, if necessary, as a “backstop” arrangement to preserve the soft border even after the transition period while negotiations on the permanent future relationship are completed.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13333/interpol-president-election-russia

It is well-established that Russia has abused Interpol as a tool to persecute abroad the political opponents of the ruling Russian regime who have been forced to emigrate.

Such an influential organization as Interpol cannot be led by a representative and functionary of an unfree nation that violates the rights and freedoms of its own citizens, violates its international obligations, annexes the territories of other states, and is currently the protagonist of several wars of aggression.

Would Interpol target these people on Russian request? It is difficult to imagine otherwise should a Russian official becomes the head of Interpol. The candidate for the post of the head of Interpol also raises questions. Alexander Prokopchuk is a major general of the Russian police, an organization known for its corruption and persecution of representatives of the Russian opposition.

On November 21, the election of a new President of Interpol will take place. The leading candidate for this post is the representative of the Russian Federation, Major General of the Russian Police Alexander Prokopchuk. The Standing Committee of the Free Russia Forum expresses its categorical protest against the election of this candidate to the post of head of Interpol. Such an influential organization as Interpol cannot be led by a representative and functionary of an unfree nation that violates the rights and freedoms of its own citizens, violates its international obligations, annexes the territories of other states, and is currently the protagonist of several wars of aggression.

It is well-established that Russia has abused Interpol as a tool to persecute abroad the political opponents of the ruling Russian regime who have been forced to emigrate. Critics and other targets of the Putin regime residing outside of Russia have repeatedly been victimized by Interpol mechanisms such as Red Notices and “diffusion” notices, as a result of which they were detained and put through lengthy legal procedures before they managed to convince Interpol of the political nature of their persecution — often requiring political intervention on their behalf.