RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.asiatimes.com/2020/01/article/huawei-fortinbras-and-xi-jinping/

TS Eliot’s summary judgment on Shakespeare’s Hamlet – “So far from being Shakespeare’s masterpiece, the play is most certainly an artistic failure” – brands the Nobel laureate as a ninny. Eliot propounded a cramped, Aristotelian, pettifogging, aestheticizing view of art, and crouched tight-jawed and squinty-eyed before Shakespeare’s sprawling genius. Hamlet is both a tragedy – a national tragedy as well as a personal one – and a sprawling comic romp. It is a tragicomedy in the mold of the first great dramatic work of the modern period, de Rojas’ 1499 play Celestina.

Hamlet is also a play for our times, an object lesson for the United States and a solemn warning to us all. 

Here is the plot of Hamlet in a nutshell: The soldiers who meet the Ghost of Hamlet’s murdered father on the ramparts of Elsinore Castle were not posted there by accident: As they explain in the play’s opening lines, the King of Norway, young Fortinbras, will invade Denmark soon, and they are set as lookouts. The Ghost comes along and distracts them and young Hamlet, and the dramatis personae engage in various machinations until, at the end, all of them lay dead on the stage. Just as Hamlet expires, who should enter but Fortinbras, who asks: “Who’s in charge here? Uh, everybody’s dead. I guess I am.”

Shakespeare’s audience doubtless rolled in the aisles. Fortinbras, the play’s shadow protagonist, typically is cut from modern productions (for example, the 1948 Laurence Olivier film version), which makes the rest of the action meaningless. Such is the atrophy of the modern sense of humor.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-stronger-germany-could-save-europe-11580169200?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Hamburg

It’s time for Berlin to take a more assertive stance in world affairs—that’s the opinion of German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer is the heir apparent to Chancellor Angela Merkel and replaced her in 2018 as party chairman for the Christian Democratic Union. This soft-spoken woman, known as AKK, told me her views on Germany’s position in world politics in an interview here last week and a follow-up exchange of emails.

Germany, and for that matter Europe, can no longer go on in the old way, she said. In a new international reality marked by the “return of great-power competition for spheres of influence and supremacy,” Germany “cannot just wait for others to act. . . . We must develop our own concepts, present our own options. . . . It is our duty as Germans, and it is very much in our own interest, to join in these international debates, to drive them forward, to play a part in protecting the international order.”

Since becoming defense minister last summer, AKK has been making waves, most notably when she delivered a speech in Munich last fall that called on Germany to raise military spending gradually to 2% of gross domestic product and urged Germans to consider deployments as far afield as the Sahel and the Indo-Pacific. Germany already has about 1,000 troops in Mali as part of the United Nations peacekeeping mission there.

In the cautious world of German foreign policy, these are radical ideas. After the terrible experiences of the 20th century, many Germans reject power politics. With the fall of the Soviet Union and German unification at the end of the Cold War, most Germans shared the American feeling that history had ended. Germany slashed military spending and focused on issues such as human rights and climate change. Many also believed that the European Union, with its massive consumer market and values-driven approach, would emerge as a major power in a peaceful and rule-driven world.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/classified-report-reveals-150-islamist-no-go-zones-daniel-greenfield/

Five years ago, Mayor Anne Hidalgo, the socialist boss of Paris, threatened to sue FOX News for reporting on the existence of no-go zones: territories in France under Islamist control.

“When we’re insulted, and when we’ve had an image, then I think we’ll have to sue, I think we’ll have to go to court, in order to have these words removed,” she told CNN.

There was no lawsuit, but FOX News issued repeated apologies, with hosts “correcting” experts like Steve Emerson and Jessie Jane Duff who actually knew what they were talking about.

Two years later, Pamela Geller came under attack from the media for discussing French no-go zones.

The media had mocked Emerson and Geller as Americans who didn’t know anything about France.

But the wall of silence on no-go zones has been coming down. And it is indeed a wall of silence. The existence of a classified report by the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) identifying 150 areas in France under Islamist control has leaked. That leak comes just as the DGSI busted 7 Muslims for plotting a terrorist attack. The perpetrators were just another of the 400,000 on the Fiche S watch list.

These 150 neighborhoods that are held by Islamists not only overlap many of the territories that had been previously listed as no-go zones, but point to a problem that has is expanding across France. Beyond the suburbs of Paris, Lyon and Marseille, the report identifies areas of concern in Maubeuge, Roubaix, Denain, Haute-Savoie, Annemasse, Bourg-en-Bresse, Bourgoin-Jallieu, and Nogent-le-Rotrou.

Why did a report listing the existence of 150 no-go zones have to be classified? The inciting incident behind the secret report was a mass stabbing by a Muslim terrorist in early January. While the media insisted, once again, that the terrorist, who had shouted, “Allahu Akbar”, was suffering from mental illness, behind the scenes the wheels had begun to turn leading to the creation of the secret report.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/chilly-winter-norway-bruce-bawer/

Once upon a time, Norway’s Progress Party was anti-establishment. Founded in 1973, it stood for individual liberty, lower taxes, and fewer regulations in a country whose postwar welfare state had been built on collectivism, high taxes, and ubiquitous government intrusion into every aspect of life. In later decades, as the perils of mass Muslim immigration became more and more obvious, only the Progress Party opposed the nation’s self-destructive policies on this front. Some Progress Party politicians even said that if handed power, they’d seek to end the state monopoly on liquor sales and to privatize NRK, the taxpayer-funded government broadcaster and Labor Party propaganda organ.

For years, establishment parties and mainstream media dishonestly painted the Progress Party as a bunch of far-right Islamophobes; but for a growing number of Norwegians who were unimpressed with the twin faiths of statism and Islam, it stood for freedom and competition, law and order, and common sense about the Religion of Peace.

In September 2013, the day of which Progress Party voters had dreamed finally arrived: a general election swept the Progress Party into the government for the first time, as the junior partner in a coalition with the Conservatives. While Conservative leader Erna Solberg became Prime Minister, Siv Jensen, head of the Progress Party, was named Minister of Justice. Writing at this website shortly thereafter, I discussed a recently published anthology about Norwegian society and politics that contained essays by both women. Solberg’s “toothless” essay, I wrote, painted an absurd, PC picture of “innocent Muslims being denied social acceptance by bigoted Norwegians”; Jensen’s, by contrast, was “a call to arms” in which she “tackle[d] head-on the Muslim leaders in Norway who spread conspiracies about Jews and who refuse to reject the death penalty for gays.” I called Jensen Norway’s “Iron Lady.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15496/iran-lobbyists

Recently, three Republican senators, Ted Cruz (TX), Tom Cotton (AK) and Mike Braun (IN) have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
According to the Iranian American Forum: “Some of these documents are posted here and reveal NIAC’s relation and collaboration with Iranian officials and business interests inside Iran. They show that NIAC coordinated its lobby with the Iranian ambassador to the UN to influence the US policy with Iran.”
Why do those who may lobby for the mullahs attempt to fly under the radar, act less conspicuously and fail to register?
Now is the time for the US and other Western governments to investigate and closely watch those who beat the drum for the anti-American and anti-Israeli Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran’s leaders have freely admitted that they have lobby groups and operatives in the West, including the US, working hard to advance Tehran’s anti-Western, anti-American, fundamentalist ideas. Iran’s Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi even boasted that Tehran runs a lobby group in Washington that promotes the hardline agenda of his country’s ruling mullahs. According to the Washington Examiner:

“A ‘lobby group for the Islamic Republic of Iran’ is actively bolstering Tehran’s status in the international stage and helping to sell and legitimize its nuclear ambitions as just causes to the globe, Alavi claimed.”

The chairman of “Oil Contracts Restructuring Committee” in Iran, Mehdi Hosseini, when asked whether there are Western entities that pressure their governments on behalf of the Islamic Republic, stated: “Yes. They have done this in the past.” These efforts, he added, “will help us and we should exploit these opportunities.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15291/germany-antisemitism-selective-fight

“[T]here is no reason to give the all-clear. The threat situation in Germany remains tense; it has stabilized on a high level…Germany continues to be a target of jihadist organizations such as ISIL or al-Qaeda. Consequently, Germany as well as German interests in various regions in the world are facing a constantly serious threat, which may any time manifest itself in terrorist attacks motivated by jihadism.” — 2018 Annual Report on the Protection of the Constitution, Germany.

The new governmental initiative, however, appears to be directed only against anti-Semitism committed by right-wing extremists.

The question, then, is why jihadi anti-Semitism does not appear to have been included in the German government’s package of initiatives to combat anti-Semitism?

Given the official threat scenario, the German government owes all its citizens an explanation as to why it is so “selective” in its response to anti-Semitism.

The German government recently announced that it would be cracking down on free speech, with Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht claiming that the German government “is confronting right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism by all means enabled by the rule of law.” The government presented a package of measures, including some that will limit free speech. According to German news outlet Deutsche Welle:

“[O]nline service providers, such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter will be obliged to report hate speech to German authorities, and also pass on the IP address of the conspicuous user. Until now, such social media giants have only been required to delete hate speech within a certain time period.”

Germany’s controversial censorship law, known as NetzDG, which came into effect on October 1, 2017, requires social media platforms to delete or block any online “criminal offenses” such as libel, slander, defamation or incitement, within 24 hours of receipt of a user complaint. Social media companies receive seven days for more complicated cases. If they fail to do so, the German government can fine them up to 50 million euros for failing to comply.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15478/turkey-truthophobia

The ways through which the Turkish state silences dissent are typical of the unfree world.

A clear majority of Turks think that their rights are systematically violated and that they are not equal before law. Then half of them keep voting for Erdoğan (and his allies). These two facts point to a third, and unpleasant conclusion: Millions of Turks know that their country is not free and just, but they keep voting for the leader who is responsible for the gross democratic deficit…

This is a bad message to Erdoğan: You will keep winning votes no matter how maliciously you crush dissent. We are with you and your undemocratic rule.

In 2014 the government of Turkey’s strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan banned YouTube and Twitter, fearing that millions of young Turks could otherwise read “dangerous content” on social media. The Constitutional Court declared the bans unconstitutional. In 2017, the Turkish government banned Wikipedia. That ban was removed only recently, after two and a half years. It is not that Wikipedia is a reliable source of information. Banning it altogether is a rogue state behavior. It is not, however, only about Wikipedia: in Turkey, truth, regardless of its source, is feared and often banned.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15483/animal-cruelty-beheaded-christians

The Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria described the area as “killing fields”, like the ones the Khmer Rouge created in Cambodia to exterminate the population.

“We are Aramaic people and we don’t have this right to have anyone protect us? Look upon us as frogs, we’ll accept that — just protect us so we can stay in our land”. — Nicodemus Daoud Sharaf, the Syrian Orthodox Archbishop of Mosul the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, home to many of the Christians who fled jihadis, National Catholic Register, April 7, 2017.

In an era of round-the-clock information… the abominations suffered by Christians have been left without images, while the brutality against the Chinese pig was streamed all over. Christians are an endangered species; pigs are not.

One of the last Nigerian Christians was executed by an Islamic State child soldier. Slaughterhouses’ workers go on trial in France for abuses to animals. But the same France has already repatriated more than 250 ISIS fighters, the same people who turn Iraqi churches into slaughterhouses.

First there was the beheading of 11 Nigerian Christians during the recent Christmas celebration. The next day, a Catholic woman, Martha Bulus, was beheaded in the Nigerian state of Borno with her bridesmaids, five days before the wedding. Then there was a raid on the village of Gora-Gan in the Nigerian state of Kaduna, where terrorists shot anyone they met in the square where the evangelical community had gathered, killing two young Christian women. There was also a Christian student killed by Islamic extremists who recorded his execution. Then pastor Lawan Andimi, a local leader of the Christian Association of Nigeria, was beheaded.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51048366?utm_source=pocket-newtab

A virus – previously unknown to science – is causing severe lung disease in China and has also been detected in other countries.

More than 80 people are known to have died from the virus, which appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December.

There are already almost 3,000 confirmed cases, and experts expect the number will keep rising.

A new virus arriving on the scene, leaving patients with pneumonia, is always a worry and health officials around the world are on high alert.

Can this outbreak be contained or is this something far more dangerous?

Coronavirus: Your questions answered

Wuhan: The London-sized city where the virus began

China coronavirus: What we know so far

What is this virus?

Officials in China have confirmed the cases are caused by a coronavirus.

These are a broad family of viruses, but only six (the new one would make it seven) are known to infect people.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which is caused by a coronavirus, killed 774 of the 8,098 people infected in an outbreak that started in China in 2002.

“There is a strong memory of Sars, that’s where a lot of fear comes from, but we’re a lot more prepared to deal with those types of diseases,” says Dr Josie Golding, from the Wellcome Trust.