RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/opinion/winds-of-mideast-change-worth-remembering-at-the-ballot-box/

The significance of two events that have been upstaged this week by the Hebrew media’s incessant coronavirus coverage cannot be overemphasized—particularly with the fast approach of the March 2 Knesset elections.

One was the rejection of an appeal by an activist in Bahrain sentenced to three years in prison for burning an Israeli flag during a pro-Palestinian protest last May. The other was the flight of an Israeli plane over the skies of Sudan.

Each occurred over the past weekend. Both indicate winds of change (one quite literal) in the Middle East, made possible through policies promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose enhancing of ties with Arab leaders in the effort to keep the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regional and global hegemonic ambitions at bay is bearing fruit.

The Bahraini verdict comes amid the now-overt warming of ties between Manama and Jerusalem, which do not have official diplomatic relations. In October, for instance, Israeli Foreign Ministry counter-terrorism department head Dana Benvenisti-Gabay attended the “Working Group on Maritime and Aviation Security” conference in Bahrain. The gathering of 60 countries—co-hosted by Manama, Washington and Warsaw—was referred to by the Bahraini foreign ministry as “an occasion to exchange views on how to deal with the Iranian menace and to guarantee freedom of navigation.”

That conference took place four months after the White House gave a preview of the economic side to its “Peace to Prosperity” plan during a two-day workshop in Bahrain last June, attended by businesspeople and diplomats from the Middle East and elsewhere. The much-touted happening—the preview of Trump’s “deal of the century” that was unveiled on Jan. 28 in the presence of Netanyahu—was boycotted by the Palestinian Authority, in whose interest it was held in the first place. (The Israeli government wasn’t even invited as a gesture to the P.A.)

It is in the above context that Manama’s intolerance for the desecration of the Israeli flag can and should be understood.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15605/trump-expanded-travel-ban

General justifications for the travel ban include: poor vetting of travelers to the U.S. by the restricted countries; an unwillingness on the part of those countries to share personal data on would-be visitors to the U.S.; and the refusal to accept the return of their nationals if expelled by U.S. authorities.

Kyrgyzstan made the travel-ban list largely because of its lax passport issuance, which has caused a global glut of false Kyrgyzstani passports used by criminals and terrorists to enter Eurasian countries. Kyrgyzstan is also notable for its poor counter-terrorism efforts.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2018 that the U.S. president has the authority to issue such travel bans as part of his duty to protect American citizens. The ruling also determined that the first list of countries placed on the restricted visa program in 2017 did not constitute a “Muslim ban,” as North Korea and Venezuela were also included…. Eritrea has more Christians than Muslims. Myanmar is almost entirely Buddhist.

Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, arguing for the administration, opined that it is only logical that any people applying for a visa to the U.S. be properly vetted.

There are general and specific justifications for U.S. President Donald Trump’s January 31 order to add Nigeria, Tanzania, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Sudan and Myanmar (Burma) to the list of seven other countries — Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen — subjected to a restriction on travel to the United States.

General justifications for the travel ban include: poor vetting of travelers to the U.S. by the restricted countries; an unwillingness on the part of those countries to share personal data on would-be visitors to the U.S.; and the refusal to accept the return of their nationals if expelled by U.S. authorities.

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/time-for-a-high-tech-manhattan-project/

We’re getting our heads handed to us. I don’t like to be the bearer of evil tidings, but I hate losing. The only I hate more than losing is trying to make ourselves feel better while we’re losing, rather than winning. We need to wrest the initiative in high tech from China and re-establish American dominance in telecommunications, computation, artificial intelligence, materials science, chip design and lithography, manufacturing, and other key fields. I don’t care how much it costs. If we don’t spend the money to ensure America’s number one position now, we’ll go broke in any case.

We sat on our hands while China’s Huawei took the lead in the game-changing technology that will usher in what the Chinese call the Fourth Industrial Revolution. 5G telecommunications (which we are rolling out at a snail’s pace while China surges ahead) make possible industrial robots that design production processes by themselves, driverless cars, virtual-reality controlled surgery at long distance, and a dozen other breakthroughs. China is getting the jump on us while we dither. Think Manhattan Project. Think Sputnik moment. Think JFK’s Moonshot. Think Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. We need a grand mobilization of material and human resources to meet the challenge of the 21st century.

You can’t stop something with nothing, and all of our attempts to slow Huawei down have failed miserably. Excepting Japan, Israel and Australia, every one of our allies has invited Huawei in to build 5G networks because the alternative would cost another two years and 50 percent more. Either they don’t believe what we’re saying about Huawei’s capacity to spy on them, or they don’t care. We shut down component sales to Huawei, and Huawei now builds smartphones and base stations with zero U.S. components. It now makes chipsets for smartphones and AI processers that rival the best America can produce.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europeans-try-to-have-it-both-ways-11581974424?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

How solid is the West? At last weekend’s Munich Security Conference, the world’s largest gathering of security policy makers and officials, the theme was “Westlessness,” referring to the sense of disorientation that many Europeans feel in this age of America First.

Since the 1940s, U.S. leadership in the service of a united and secure Europe has been the one unchanging feature in the Continental landscape. For generations, the U.S. committed to protect Europe from Russia, maintain bases in Germany to prevent it from threatening its neighbors, and promote European integration. Now Europeans don’t know where they stand, and a mixture of bafflement, anger, disappointment and fear fills the atmosphere at conferences like the one in Munich.

There’s little doubt that Trump administration policies, ranging from trade wars to toughness on Iran, have tested trans-Atlantic relations to the breaking point. But to understand the growing weakness of the Western alliance, Europeans need to spend less time deploring Donald Trump and more time looking in the mirror. A good place to begin is with a Pew poll released earlier this month on the state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Superficially, the poll looks like good news. In 14 European countries plus Canada and the U.S., a median 53% of respondents said they had a favorable view of NATO, while only 27% saw the alliance unfavorably. Despite double-digit declines in NATO’s favorability among the French and the Germans, these numbers aren’t bad. Mr. Trump, Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel are all less popular in their home countries than NATO is.

https://voiceofeurope.com/2020/02/hungarian-mep-mass-illegal-migration-fueling-anti-semitism-in-western-europe/

One of the primary forces fueling anti-Semitism in Western Europe is the enormous number of illegal immigrants from Muslim countries that places like the UK, Germany, Sweden, and France have taken in, a Hungarian MEP said earlier this week.

Balázs Hidvéghi, an MEP from Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, said on Wednesday at a European Parliament session on fighting anti-Semitism and racism, that mass illegal migration from Muslim countries is one of the major factors that has contributed to the unsettling trend of growing anti-Semitism in the western part of the continent, Remix News reports.

“Attacks against Jews also support the [position that] illegal immigration into Europe cannot be allowed,” Hidvéghi argued during the discussion.

The Fidesz MEP also argued that by supporting the mass movement of people from the Middle East into Europe, the EU is effectively importing Middle Eastern conflicts unnecessarily into Europe.

Hidvéghi mentioned that while anti-Semitic incidents have risen throughout Western Europe, in Hungary – which is home to a Jewish diaspora of roughly 100,000 – the Jewish community doesn’t have to worry about being attacked in public places.

“The only possible approach to anti-Semitism is zero tolerance,” Hidvéghi said, adding “Hungary’s public and politicians fully agree on that point.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15615/spain-migrants-deportations

The Strasbourg-based court — which has jurisdiction over 47 European countries, and whose rulings are binding on all 27 member states of the European Union — ruled that in order for migrants to benefit from certain human rights protections, such as access to lawyers, interpreters and the right to remain in Europe, they must first enter European territory in a legal, as opposed to an illegal, manner.

The ruling is being viewed as a major victory for those who believe that sovereign nation states have the right to decide who is and is not allowed to enter their territory.

“The ECHR’s ruling determines that a nation state has the right to defend its borders. When someone is dedicated to violating those borders, the nation state has the right to return that person to their place of origin as quickly as possible.” — Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, spokesman for the Vox Party, November 13, 2020.

It remains unclear if the ECHR’s ruling will have a deterrent effect. Migrants, often using extreme violence, are increasingly using the tactic of mass attacks against the border fences in Ceuta and Melilla in an effort to overwhelm border police.

In a landmark decision that will have potentially seismic implications for immigration policy in Europe, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that Spain acted lawfully when it summarily deported two migrants who illegally tried to enter Spanish territory.

The Strasbourg-based court — which has jurisdiction over 47 European countries, and whose rulings are binding on all 27 member states of the European Union — ruled that in order for migrants to benefit from certain human rights protections, such as access to lawyers, interpreters and the right to remain in Europe, they must first enter European territory in a legal, as opposed to an illegal, manner.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/coronavirus-live-updates-south-korea-singapore-japan-report-new-infections_3240306.html

Countries around the world are taking measures to stem the spread of the new coronavirus that causes COVID-19, as the death toll continues to rise.

One New Infection in Hong Kong

A 69-year-old retired man who lives in Hong Kong’s Tseung Kwan O has contracted COVID-19, according to Chuang Shuk-kwan, head of the Communicable Disease Branch of the Center for Health Protection.

The man, who already had diabetes and high blood pressure before being tested positive for the virus, had not traveled outside Hong Kong recently. He was hospitalized on Feb. 16.

The new case brings Hong Kong’s known cases of coronavirus to 58.

Chuang added that there are also two cases with preliminary test results showing that they have been infected. One is a 45-year-old man who is a coworker of the 69-year-old retired man.

Another case involves the wife of an infected patient.

China’s Legislative Meeting Could Be Delayed

The 13th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s rubber-stamp legislature, could delay its upcoming annual session that is scheduled for March 5, state-run media Xinhua reported on Monday.

The annual political meeting is one of the biggest held by the Chinese regime.

The standing committee of the NPC will hold its 16th bi-monthly session on Feb. 24 in Beijing. According to Xinhua, the committee is expected to consider postponing the annual session.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/02/canada_a_totalitarian_stateinprogress.html

To describe Canada as a totalitarian state-in-progress sounds like a gross and indeed absurd exaggeration. Yet many premonitory signs are present. In the words of political philosopher William Gairdner, author of The Book of Absolutes, The Great Divide and The Trouble with Canada, Canada “has just crossed the red line between soft-socialism and soft-totalitarianism.”

Gairdner has assembled a virtual mountain of evidence for his claim: Bill C-25 seeking to impose “diversity” on all corporations; financial penalties against organizations that do not comply with government programs; a teeming brigade of government surveillance “Inspectors,” that is, spies — wage spies, speech spies, feminist spies, pay-equity spies, Human Rights spies; paralegal bodies known as Human Rights Tribunals with the power to levy crippling fines, bankrupt families and shut down businesses, to impose prison time for contempt of court, and to compel conformity via “re-education.”

The list goes on. Bill C-16 prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression, which sounds unexceptionable except for the obvious fact that “discrimination” is in the eye of the offended beholder and the government enforcer. The bill effectively mandates that citizens must address others by their preferred pronouns and transgender fantasies — or else! It’s “zir,” “ze,” “zem” or “zeir” or you’re done for. It’s Emily, not Brian, or your job’s in peril. The Ontario Human Rights Code stipulates that “refusing to refer to a trans person by their chosen name and a personal pronoun that matches their gender identity… will likely be discrimination” in social areas like employment, housing, education and so on. As Queen’s University law professor Bruce Pardy writes, “human rights have become a weapon to normalize social justice values and delegitimize competing beliefs.” There are other laws on the books, bills such as C-59,  C-75 and C-76 that reduce and even criminalize freedom of expression, infringe on privacy rights, compromise due process and render government transparency a thing of the past.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/16/eu-must-develop-appetite-for-power-top-diplomat-says/

European Union governments need to be willing to intervene in international crises or risk prolonging paralysis in their foreign policy, the EU’s top diplomat said on Sunday.

The EU is the world’s largest trading bloc but it often fails to speak with one voice on foreign policy because its policy-making requires consensus among members. EU governments are divided on issues from Libya to Venezuela.

“Europe has to develop an appetite for power,” the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told the Munich Security Conference, stressing that did not only mean military power.

“We should be able to act … not everyday making comments, expressing concern,” he told leaders, lawmakers, and diplomats.

With its economic power, the bloc has been able to boast of a “soft power,” but its influence in the world has waned, partly because US President Donald Trump’s “America First”‘ policies have undermined European priorities.

Trump’s decision to pull out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, as well as the Paris climate accord, his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital before a final peace settlement, and his criticism of NATO are at odds with European positions.