RUTHFULLY YOURS

The U.S. and China are headed for a showdown at sea. U.S. officials say that within days the U.S. military will conduct “freedom of navigation” patrols to challenge Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea’s strategic Spratly archipelago. That area lies more than 700 miles off China’s coast, between Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, but China’s government has warned that it is “seriously concerned” about U.S. action and “will absolutely not permit any country to infringe on China’s territorial waters.”

Now’s a good time, then, to clarify what’s going on. The U.S. and its Asian partners are trying to curb a Chinese campaign to conquer one of the world’s most vital international waterways. The South China Sea is home to rich natural resources and half of all global shipborne trade: some $5 trillion a year in oil, food, iPhones and more. By asserting “indisputable sovereignty” over its nearly 1.35 million square miles, including vast swaths of sea belonging to its neighbors, Beijing threatens to hold hostage—and to wage war over—the economic heart of East Asia.

If a “mere” 11.3% of Turks thought so generously of the Islamic State, it meant that there were nearly nine million Turks sympathetic to jihadists. Only 5% of that would mean an army of nearly 450,000.

Apparently, the people of Turkey did not “rise up and fight against these atheists [Kurds], these Crusaders and these traitors.” So they had to be killed by jihadists in suicide-bombing attacks. IS promised to attack, and it did.

450,000 minus two (suicide-bombers) leaves behind too big a number. Turkish cities are unsafe.

Davutoglu cannot admit that jihadists alone had simply murdered people en masse in a twin bomb attack.

It’s necessary to take another short break from the endless coverage of the 2016 election. There are a lot of things of more immediate importance going on in the world, and they demand our undivided attention for at least a few minutes.

Those of us who of skeptical mind wonder why so little attention is being paid to the story out of Moldova (where?) about smugglers trying to sell nuclear material to ISIS. And to the statement of FBI Director Jay Comey about the problem his agency is having with the Syrian refugees coming to America.

Even though Cold War 2 has been going on for about ten years, it didn’t take nearly that long for the Russians to re-learn old habits. We haven’t kept pace with our abilities to spot anomalies in their behavior. We’d better re-learn our abilities not only to spot anomalies but to connect them to Russian capabilities and intents when they fit.

Moldova – now that you’re wondering – is a very poor nation of 3.5 million people on the Black Sea wedged in between Ukraine and Romania. Its government is enthusiastically corrupt and its economy is agricultural except for the part that’s supported by smuggling.

The United Nations is dedicated to the notion that men and women of good will can do much to promote peace. Alas, something must have been garbled in translation, as the global body’s legions of grafters and grifters keep their focus on pocketing a piece of the action
“To dismantle corruption’s high walls, I urge every nation to ratify and implement the UN Convention against Corruption. Its ground breaking measure have made important inroads, but there is much more to do.”

— UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

In 2003 the United Nations declared that December 9 would be “International Anti-Corruption” Day. The global body’s celebrations this year will be muted. The 2013-14 president of the UN General Assembly, John Ashe, is now accused by US prosecutors of successfully soliciting bribes of some $US1.3m from Chinese tycoons and understating his income by the same amount. Free after posting $US1million bail on the tax charges, he denies wrong-doing.

Ashe can’t possibly be guilty! His priority is saving the planet from CO2 emissions, not taking bribes. Look what he says on his UN website by way of “summing up his philosophy”:

Guided by a passion for sustainable development, Mr. Ashe has been in the forefront of international efforts to address the adverse effects of climate change and the fight to eradicate poverty… We only have the planet we live on, and if we are to leave it in a reasonable state for the next generation, the quest for a safer, cleaner, and more equitable world is one that should consume us all.

Some innocents are still starry-eyed about saving the planet from CO2 hell. They want the UN’s minions and members to start the job in the Paris, where the world’s warmists will convene in December, the latest confab in the long series of global parleys intended to mandate expensive energy for rich and poor alike. They also hope that First World taxpayers will pony up $US100 billion a year as a climate-compensatory present for the Third-World’s kleptocrats.

These Paris-bound carbonphobics might profitably ponder the allegations against ex-UN President Ashe. He’s been a standard-bearer in the UN climate campaign since way back in 1995. He represented the Group of Latin and American States (GRULAC) as vice-president of the first and fourth climate conferences (1995 and 1998), and in the next few years chaired the Subsidiary Bureau for Implementation (SBI) five times. In 2009 he chaired the Kyoto Protocol Negotiating Track, preparing groundwork for the Copenhagen conference. His bright idea was First World emissions cuts in the near term of 25-40%, because that is what “the science is telling us”, he said. After Copenhagen’s debacle, he chaired the Negotiating Track again in 2010, preparing draft decisions for the Cancun round of talks, including “carbon market mechanisms”.

The remarkable crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, donated land for the Hindu temple, to foster cultural and religious tolerance, and bring diversity to Abu Dhabi. The temple also fit newly passed UAE legislation establishing religious freedom.

As the prince explained, a “civilized, advanced” Abu Dhabi with sustainable development requires “concerted efforts from all sectors of the community” — Hindus included.

“This is a huge leap from medieval ways of thinking. Humanity is against aggression and stopping others from practicing their faith.” — Saleh Al Turigee of Saudi Arabia, who has 143,000 Twitter followers.

Positive voices from the UAE and elsewhere in the Middle East, especially Egypt, supported the temple. It shows that the non-extremist segment not only exists, but is ready to take on the extremists.

“Religion is for Allah only. All Imams agree that building temples for idol worshipping is a blasphemy.” — Waseem Yousef, imam of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi. He quickly found his television show canceled.

Modern education sets aside the pursuit of wisdom and truth in favour of the approved narratives, most particularly how wicked capitalists enforce inequality. Don’t expect a muscular defence of liberty from those whose minds were sealed shut before they could be opened.
Samuel P. Huntington, over twenty years ago in The Clash of Civilizations, argued, “The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural.” How prescient he was is proven by the fact that Western civilization and the culture it embodies and safeguards are under threat. Islamic terrorism, the impact of the culture wars and postmodernism, the rise of statism, the pervasive influence of celebrity culture and new technologies, to name a few, are all conspiring to undermine certainties and absolutes that, until recently, have stood the test of time.

The violence, death and destruction associated with Islamic terrorism both overseas and on Australian soil not only represents a physical threat; the nihilistic and evil ideology underpinning terrorist acts like 9/11 and the more recent murder of 21 Christians by Islamic state threaten democratic values and beliefs, since Magna Carta, that have evolved to safeguard the peace and prosperity of English speaking nations.

Even worse, apologists for those seeking to destroy our way of life refuse to acknowledge the true nature of Islamic terrorism, preferring to blame Western culture, supposedly, for excluding and marginalizing disaffected groups whose only recourse is to turn to violence. The cultural left, instead of developing a strong and convincing narrative about the strengths and benefits of Western culture (what is worth fighting for) engage in a narrative of self-recrimination and self-doubt. Whereas our universities and our schools were once committed to the pursuit of what Matthew Arnold in Culture and Anarchy describes as “the best which has been thought and said”, given the impact of deconstruction and postmodernism, there are no longer any truths that we can hold in common or consider absolute.

The established disciplines of knowledge, instead of having any inherent meaning or worth, are simply socio-cultural constructs that enforce false consciousness and the hegemony of the ruling class. The purpose of education is not to seek wisdom or truth but to reveal how all relationships are based on power and how capitalist societies enforce inequality and disadvantage.

The latest carnage in Turkey comes as President Erdogan prepares to face the voters in a contest it is almost impossible to believe he can win. Will the man who destroyed freedom of speech, debased the judiciary and rode roughshod over secularism accept the will of his people?
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s despotic quest to become the indubitable boss of the Republic of Turkey, if the polls are to be believed, will be rejected at the November 1 parliamentary re-election. Even the Anatolian hinterland has, reputedly, gone cool on their one-time hero. Turkey’s homegrown demagogue increasingly appears to be more trouble than he is worth. Sectarian war, which Erdogan has been hell-bent on inciting since his Justice and Development Party (AKP) was denied a plurality at the June 7 parliamentary election, can hardly be in anybody’s interests except Erdogan’s. That is not to say, of course, that the crash-through-or-crash Erdogan is going to play by (what remains) of the rules of Turkish democracy and go quietly into the night.

Few modern-day politicians have been given the benefit of the doubt more than Erdogan. An Islamist firebrand in his days as mayor of Istanbul (1994 to 1998), he is on record from that period arguing “you cannot be secular and a Muslim” because “Allah, the creator of the Muslim, has absolute power and rule”. A four-month spell in jail in 1999 for contravening Turkey’s Kemalist (secular) constitution gave Erdogan a chance to rethink his political strategy and, until recently, he insisted that the ideology of the AKP was not Islamist but “social conservatism” mixed with “economic liberalism”.

Šid, Serbia — Mohammad Jamal al-Mousa would say his home was in Aleppo, but bombs from Bashar al-Assad’s planes razed the house. So now, just his family remains there, he says nervously. He thinks the place he left them is relatively safe. He still calls often.

Standing under the shelter of a tent where migrants can stop to charge their phones, he shows me their pictures. His two daughters, the eldest 10, pose grinning in matching white tights, black skirts, and red shirts. One has red bows in her pigtails. His son, a little younger, sits between them. The five-month-old baby boy isn’t pictured.

Al-Mousa worries most for his daughters, growing up not only under Assad’s repressive regime but also as the Islamic State seizes large portions of Syria.

“Can you imagine a child seven years old, who has to be fully covered in a hijab?” he asks me. “They took away her childhood. I want my daughters to be educated and happy. Now, my children are so small, but they’ve learned what a bomb is, and they can recognize warplanes.”

ISIS is expected to execute 180 Assyrian Christians kidnapped as a part of an ethnic-cleansing campaign, international monitors report.

The terrorist group “has specifically targeted Assyrians, looking to drive them out of their millennia-old communities,” according to the Christian Post. Reuters reports that the captives were taken from northeastern Syria in February, and that three of them were executed last month in conjunction with an Islamic holiday. Negotiations intended to secure their release for a ransom have been “suspended due to [ISIS’s] unbearable demands,” Assyrian Human Rights Network executive director Osama Edward said.

The news comes about two weeks after Russia began bombing actions in Syria to assist Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime. Though the Kremlin claims the campaign is intended to fight terrorism in the country, Russian jets appear to be targeting the U.S.-backed anti-Assad rebels instead of ISIS. For months, the Obama administration has been bombing ISIS while calling for Assad’s departure from power, so Russia’s actions put the two nations at cross-purposes in Syria.

On Sunday, Russian president Vladimir Putin mocked President Obama’s efforts to bolster the Free Syrian Army (FSA). “It would have been better to give us $500 million,” Putin said. “At least we would have used it more effectively from the point of view of fighting international terrorism.”

How did Vladimir Putin — with his country reeling from falling oil prices, possessing only a second-rate military, in demographic free-fall, and suffering from an array of international sanctions — find himself the new play-maker of the Middle East?

Putin’s ascendency was not foreordained. It followed a series of major U.S. miscalculations and blunders of such magnitude that it almost seems they must have been deliberate.

What exactly was our road to perdition in the Middle East?

1. Reset with Putin

When Barack Obama came into office, the outgoing Bush administration had crafted a moderate response to Putin’s aggression in Ossetia. The U.S. had made missile-defense agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland. Some Georgian forces were airlifted by the U.S. from Afghanistan back home. Indeed, at the time, many liberals complained that America was too soft on Putin. Perhaps. But the Obama administration entered office claiming the exact opposite, suggesting that the Bush pushback was part of a needless American-caused estrangement from Russia.

Pushing the plastic reset button was Hillary Clinton’s sad gesture signaling Putin and his team that Bush was gone, that a new, more receptive administration was in power — and thus that relations must naturally improve. Putin was somewhat perplexed, given that he knew Russia was to blame for the new estrangement. Naturally, then, he saw the Obama–Clinton reset grandstanding as more critical of America’s past behavior than of Russia’s present aggression — a fact that fueled Putin’s further calculations that he could safely move into Crimea and Ukraine.