RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21815/israel-taiwan-china

The MKs are calling for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in global bodies, with a particular emphasis on health, transportation, environmental protection, and human rights.

The declaration, signed at the end of July, praises Taiwan as “a vibrant democracy committed to promoting the values of freedom, equality, human rights, and the rule of law, all in a challenging geopolitical environment.” It highlights Taiwan’s “impressive contributions during times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, during which Taiwan was a global leader in finding solutions and assisting other countries,” and arguing that its exclusion from organizations such as the World Health Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is both “unjustified and irresponsible.”

This is the first and important step to counter the “one-China” policy. To break this “one-China” policy — a policy that leaves the door open for China’s military to attack Taiwan — members of parliament from other countries, as many as possible, would do well immediately to band together and issue similar declarations. Such a move in a large number of countries at the same time could prevent a great deal of bloodshed down the road.

In a significant diplomatic gesture, 72 Israeli Members of Knesset (MKs), representing parties from both the ruling coalition and the opposition, have signed a declaration advocating for Taiwan’s inclusion in international organizations. This unprecedented cross-party initiative underscores a growing sentiment of solidarity with Taiwan, particularly in light of its steadfast support for Israel following the massacre of October 7, 2023.

The declaration, spearheaded by MK Boaz Toporovsky (Yesh Atid), chair of the Israel–Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, and joined by MK Ohad Tal (Religious Zionist Party), chair of the Israel–US Relations Caucus, explicitly states that “Taiwan’s systematic exclusion from international forums is unjustified.” The MKs are calling for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in global bodies, with a particular emphasis on health, transportation, environmental protection, and human rights.

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-talks-to-javier-milei

The prerequisite for an economic miracle is an economic disaster. As I wrote in these pages late last month, Argentine president Javier Milei inherited just such a disaster from his Peronist predecessor in December 2023: a currency on the brink of hyperinflation, a contracting economy, a government reliant on the International Monetary Fund.

What he has achieved in the subsequent year and a half is one of the wonders of the world economy today. (Read here; it really is a miracle.)

But—as he himself acknowledged during our conversation last week at the presidential palace in Buenos Aires—it is too early to celebrate an Argentine economic miracle. Political obstacles remain, not just sustaining his achievement thus far, but also launching the next and crucial phase of his radical plan to make Argentina “the world’s freest country.”

The Milei I met was not what I had expected. On social media, he presents himself as a rock star, cavorting onstage, yelling into the mic, tossing his mop of dark hair. Most profiles emphasize his eccentricities, most famously the pack of cloned dogs he has named after his favorite economists.

In the crepuscular light of the presidential office in the Casa Rosada (the Pink House), where the shutters are kept closed as he dislikes bright light, he cuts a very different figure. He is soberly dressed in a dark suit and blue tie. He has a smooth routine for greeting visitors, pointing out the chainsaw that has become the symbol of his drastic cuts in government spending—as if it were time-honored presidential regalia. Photographs are taken and we sit down at a large, glass-topped table.

Only when Milei begins to answer my questions does it become clear that he is no ordinary president.

To call Milei professorial would be an insult. He has always been too much of a dissident—too libertarian on economics, too conservative on social questions—to have played any part in modern academic life. But he is, first and foremost, an intellectual, a man so in love with ideas that nothing excites him as much—certainly not the formal trappings of presidential authority. Yet he is also a man of the people, who relishes his occasional lapses into profane language. And he is learning, late in life, the realities of South American politics.

I spent an hour and a half talking to President Milei. Below is our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity:

Niall Ferguson: What have you learned since becoming president that you didn’t know before?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21790/the-rise-of-radical-islamism-in-bangladesh-a-new

The rise of radical Islamic influence under Yunus’s watch threatens to transform Bangladesh from a secular democracy into a theocratic state.

The passive response of Mohamad Yunus’s interim government’s to these demands signals either weakness or tacit approval of the country’s Islamization.

Yunus’s interim government lifted the bans imposed on Jamaat-e-Islami, its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir, and “all associated organizations.” At the same time, the interim government banned Sheikh Hasina’s secular Awami League party. Yunus also freed hundreds of jihadists, and in the post-Hasina era, Islamist flags and “Islamic State” banners have been seen on the streets of Dhaka.

Islamist candidates from Jamaat-e-Islami will be allowed to run in the next elections, but not the secular Awami candidates.

The new Cyber Security Ordinance 2025, which has been criticized for potentially suppressing dissent, and the amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act, which have enabled the banning of all activities of the Awami League, demonstrate how quickly the country is descending into chaos.

Even with Bangladesh Bank’s desperate measure of raising the policy rate to 10%, citizens continue to bear the brunt of economic mismanagement. The promise of economic recovery under a Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist, who has been a darling of the American Democratic administrations, has turned into a nightmare for millions of Bangladeshis who struggle with basic necessities as their purchasing power decreases daily.

Meanwhile, [Yunus’s] courtship of China and Pakistan, reveals a foreign policy that lacks strategic thinking. In April 2025, Yunus invited China to establish an economic base in Bangladesh, stressing that Dhaka is the “sole guardian of the ocean” in the subcontinent…. On June 19, 2025, China hosted a first trilateral meeting with Bangladesh and Pakistan, aimed at enhancing cooperation in trade, and revealing an intent to isolate India in the subcontinent.

The economic indicators paint a grim picture of Bangladesh under Yunus’ stewardship.

The political situation under Yunus reveals a government sliding into being another failed state, ripe for terrorists, and unable to chart a constructive course.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamad Yunus’s transition from economist to head of Bangladesh’s interim government has proven fatal for Bangladesh. Since assuming power in August 2024, Yunus has presided over a nation sliding into political chaos, radical Islamism, economic distress, and social fragmentation. Bangladesh has devolved into a governance crisis that threatens Bangladesh’s economic stability and democratic future.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/canada-indigenous-identitarianism-settlers-race

It is increasingly fashionable in some progressive circles to label non-indigenous North Americans as “settlers,” mere guests on indigenous land. Who would have thought that blood-and-soil nationalism—the odious ideology that claims that only certain races belong to certain territories—would return, wrapped in the mantle of social justice?

This movement—call it “indigenous identitarianism”— is gaining traction across North America but has been especially influential in Canada, my home country. There, it has already begun to erode democratic decision-making in favor of race-based hierarchies. Americans would do well to look north to see how this path, if followed, could shape their own political and civic life.

Indigenous identitarianism generally posits that North America’s non-indigenous residents should be considered second-class citizens, either legally or symbolically. It suggests that they continually express gratitude for the “opportunity” to live on a continent “owned” by indigenous peoples.

To illustrate: Deanne LeBlanc, an award-winning academic at the University of British Columbia, wrote in a 2021 issue of the Canadian Journal of Political Science that non-indigenous Canadians should “consider themselves ‘foreigners’ in need of invitation onto Indigenous lands,” even if their families have lived on this continent for several generations. Similarly, Kaitie Jourdeuil, an academic at Queen’s University, published a 2022 article in The Conversation arguing that indigenous peoples should be given the right to make and enforce laws over 89 percent of Canadian land. That would mean some degree of disenfranchisement for millions of people.