RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.settimananews.it/italia-europa-mondo/china-one-world-two-systems/
 
How Hong Kong’s and China’s position in the world is no longer tenable, as it was seen 20 years ago.

In the late 1990s, Beijing decided to adhere to the newly established World Trade Organization (WTO), which was to replace GATT (General Agreement on Tariff and Trade), regulating trade in the free world that had been battling the Soviet empire. The USA, leading those talks and promoting the new organization, had settled on allowing a grace period for China to fully integrate into the global system. This system was not just commercial, but also political.

China had then barely managed to skirt the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, which brought down governments and regimes all over Asia and proved in this part of the world that the US was the paramount example of a well-managed economic system. In the previous decade, the US also caused the USSR to disband and later overawed the Europeans, whose monetary system was disrupted by the 1992 financial crisis. The euro, then an objective challenge to dollar dominance, had been approved by the EU but only in return for an eastward expansion of the Union, something that would weaken European ability to easily reach a unified consensus on the moves of the new currency.

Basically, in the late 1990s, the USA and China agreed on establishing a situation parallel to that of Hong Kong. The territory had just in 1997 been returned to Beijing under the principle of “one country, two systems” (一国两制): that is, China and Hong Kong were to be run according to different sets of rules, although both agreed they belonged to one China and eventually they would be united under one rule. Similarly, China was joining the WTO under the provision that we could call new “one world, two systems”, or to be more Chinese: “one heaven, two systems” (一天两制). The two systems were to be run differently although both understood they would eventually merge into one – the free market/free politics one would spread all over the world.

https://madmimi.com/p/3bc55f?pact=527997-154157172-7235361215-a2bf1295d0adda667967478eaacccbfeb5cd35c2

In a short interview I gave yesterday evening, I discuss not only the continuing substantial coverage about Israel in media outlets such as France 24 and the international New York Times, where Israel continues to be the lead story.

I also ask why there has been so little coverage in the western media after the US military admitted killing over 30 innocent Afghan farmers in a drone strike last Thursday:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/afghanistan-dozens-civilians-killed-drone-attack-190919072728303.html

I’m not making a military judgment regarding the Afghan conflict. I’m wondering why the western media does not even want to report and discuss dozens of other conflicts (even those the west is involved in) in anything like the way it scrutinizes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a conflict where far fewer people have died compared to many of these other conflicts.

This is particularly the case in the New York Times’ international print edition which, day after day, fills much of its news and opinion pages with generally very one-sided pieces seemingly designed to portray Israel in a negative and misleading light.

At the same time, there is almost no coverage of, for example, West Papua where up to half a million people have been killed (and thousands raped) since it was illegally occupied by the Indonesian militarily in 1963.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/West-Papua-the-forgotten-people-481450

https://thediplomat.com/2014/01/the-human-tragedy-of-west-papua/

https://www.ipwp.org/about-west-papua/

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14908/india-mod-kashmir

Since the partition of India in 1947, which established the two independent states of India and Pakistan, Pakistan has infiltrated soldiers into Indian Kashmir, assisted anti-Indian Muslim terrorists in Jammu-Kashmir and sponsored many murderous operations inside India proper.

India is determined to safeguard its standing as the world’s most populous democracy, particularly in the shadow of the rising power of totalitarian China, which enjoys a close relationship with Pakistan. Revoking Article 370 sends a clear signal to both Pakistan and China that India will resolutely defend its territory against efforts by Islamabad or Beijing to whittle away at Indian sovereignty in any portion of its territory.

India may therefore consider a strategic alliance with the U.S. to protect the Indo-Pacific region from Chinese territorial aggression and acquisitive claims of sovereignty in the South and East China Seas.

“Pakistan has threatened to use nuclear arms. Pakistan is somewhere where terrorists have been able to plan bloody terrorist attacks in Europe without mentioning tremendous human rights violation in Pakistan.” — Fulvio Martusciello, Italian MEP, speaking at the European Parliament, September 18, 2019.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently responded to the heavy criticism he has been receiving — and to violent protests that erupted — over his controversial decision to revoke Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted a certain degree of autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, by calling for “hugging each Kashmiri” and for the creation of a “new paradise” in the valley.

Modi accused elements “from across the border” in Pakistan of spurring the protests that have been taking place since August 5, when New Delhi announced the revoking of Article 370 – a move he said “is going to be the medium for fulfilling the aspirations and dreams of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”

Modi insisted that what the “youth, mothers and sisters in Jammu and Kashmir” want is “development and new job opportunities.”

The previously autonomous region of Jammu-Kashmir is an 86,000-square-mile Muslim-majority area in the north of India Proper, nearly half of which is controlled by India and the rest is divided between Pakistan and China. Territorial control of the area has been the prime cause of wars in 1947 and 1965, and of many deadly skirmishes between India and Pakistan.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14903/iran-negotiation-war

It is likely that whoever planned the attacks was more interested in testing the waters, seeing how far it was possible to go in provocation…

What the mullahs did not realize was that the new status quo came at no cost to the Americans, who could thus afford to prolong it as far as needed. All that Trump did was announce that anyone trading with the Islamic Republic could not trade with the US, and that the US would no longer allow the mullahs to use American global banking and trade facilities.

In every case, the tyranny of the underdog worked and the mullahs managed to continue crushing their opponents at home and fattening their cohorts abroad while casting themselves as champions of the downtrodden resisting the diktats of the “Great Satan.”

Khamenei’s best hope is for Trump to go for a pin-prick operation that would shake but not topple the Khomeinist regime while mobilizing Iranian and international opinion in its support as a victim, thus forcing the easing of sanctions that are beginning to break the bones of his regime.

Will the attacks on Saudi oil installations last week upset the status quo that has taken shape in the past 17 months, that is to say, since President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the “Iran nuke deal” concocted by Barack Obama?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14904/persecution-of-christians-july

“How ready is the government to go up against certain groups that try to impose their own will on others.” — Reverend Timotheus Halim, head of the Family of God Church ucanews.com, July 25, 2019, Indonesia.

Fatemeh Azad, a 58-year-old Muslim woman who had converted to Christianity against her Muslim husband’s will and fled to Germany, was denied asylum there and deported back to Iran. There she was immediately arrested by authorities waiting for her plane to land…. “When Fatemeh made her asylum appeal, her lawyers argued that apostasy (conversion away from Islam) is punishable by the death penalty in Iran.” This, however, was insufficient for Germany…. — Persecution.org; July 25, 2019.

Finally, a 14-year-old Christian girl was abducted, forcibly converted to Islam, forced to marry a Muslim man, and then taken before a Muslim judge to sign a statement saying she had acted on her own free will….”[G]irls often give such statements because they are already living with their kidnappers,” and “death threats are made towards their family, and therefore the victims have no choice but to say what their kidnapper wants them to say in court…..” — Lawyer, AsiaNews.it; July 26, 2019; Pakistan.

Slaughter of Christians

Syria: Islamic jihadis gang-raped a 60-year-old Christian woman before stoning her to death. When no one in Yaqoubiya, a small Christian village in Idlib governorate, saw Susan Grigor (or “Gregory”) on July 9, the worried priest sent parishioners to search for her. They eventually found her mangled and bloodied corpse on the ground of a field adjacent to her home.

The autopsy revealed that Susan had been repeatedly raped and tortured over the course of nine hours before finally being murdered by stoning. The men responsible are believed to be members of the al-Qaeda-linked jihadi group, al-Nusra. Described as a pious Christian, Susan had never married and lived her entire life as a virgin. Although she never children, Susan reportedly loved them and, after retiring, volunteered much of her time helping educate the youths of her local church.

https://www.israpundit.org/merkels-germany-an-antisemitic-terrorist-state/

It is time to call a spade a spade.

Some or a good number of the readers may or will find the heading to be an outrageous and gratuitous one.

Yet, facts speak for themselves.

It is my intention to demonstrate that the heading is indeed a timely one that must be addressed and that Merkel is indeed a homicidal anti-Semite while Germany is a terrorist state.

A general principle of the Canadian criminal law

A person can be criminally responsible as a member of a party acting together in the commission of an offence. In terms of guilt, there is no difference between an aider, abettor or principle to an offence. They are all equally culpable. More specifically, section 21 of the Criminal Code of Canada provides:

Parties to offence

s.21 (1) Every one is a party to an offence who

(a) actually commits it;

(b) does or omits to do anything for the purpose of aiding any person to commit it; or

(c) abets any person in committing it.

(2) Where two or more persons form an intention in common to carry out an unlawful purpose and to assist each other therein and any one of them, in carrying out the common purpose, commits an offence, each of them who knew or ought to have known that the commission of the offence would be a probable consequence of carrying out the common purpose is a party to that offence.

I am sure that this principle and similar provisions are operative in most, if not all, of the western countries, including Germany.

Antisemitism

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/jeremy-corbyns-incoherent-brexit-politics/

The Labour party leader continues to try to stake out the empty middle ground between Remain and Leave, apparently unaware that it’s empty for good reason.

Well, now it is official. Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the United Kingdom’s Labour party, has finally outlined his party’s new position on Brexit in an editorial in the Guardian. Spoiler alert: It is completely daft.

Just a refresher. Three years ago, citizens of the U.K. voted in simple referendum. The choices were “Remain a member of the European Union” and “Leave the European Union.” Leave won by a small percentage. The Leave and Remain causes are more passionately felt than party attachments for many Brits.

Two years ago, Jeremy Corbyn was able to have it both ways on Brexit. He said his party was committed to implementing the referendum’s result. But in fact, Labour benefited from a surge of Remain voters wishing to stick it to Theresa May, who had started to negotiate Brexit and who denounced Remainers as “citizens of nowhere.” That convergence nearly brought May down. At the time I predicted that the tectonic plates of Brexit underneath British politics would begin to grind Corbyn the way they had May. Now it is happening.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14899/france-macron-iran-mullahs

On September 14, just a few days after former National Security Advisor Ambassador John R. Bolton was comfortably disappeared from the administration, Iran inflicted major damage on a massive oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia,

Macron, in short, has done as much or more than any other European country to favor the Iranian regime — more than Germany, and even more than the European Union itself. He could have chosen to act as a reliable ally of the United States, but the choice he made was a different.

The French officials act and speak as if the Iranian regime was totally honorable, and as if they did not discern the obvious: that the Iranian regime has destructive goals. The nuclear deal did not divert the regime from its goal of building nuclear weapons. The deal, in fact, floated the regime toward precisely that end. The American strategy of applying maximum pressure through economic sanctions seems the only non-military way to pressure this regime to change course.

On August 25, in Biarritz, France, the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) reunited to discuss world problems. The situation in the Middle East was not on the agenda. French President Emmanuel Macron, the organizer of the summit this year, was about to force it in.

He had decided to invite to the summit Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Macron did not warn his guests of Zarif’s attendance until the last minute. His goal, it seems, was to bring about a meeting between the Iranian minister and US President Donald J. Trump. President Trump declined. Zarif had an informal conversation with Macron and some French ministers, then flew back to Tehran. But Macron did not give up. At a press conference the next day, he publicly asked President Trump to meet Iranian leaders as soon as possible.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14900/vaclav-havel-tribute

“The less the state is required to have a say in everyday economic affairs, the better.” — Václav Havel, Summer Meditations, p. 78.

“[A] functioning market economy can never guarantee any genuine social justice. They point out that people have, and always will have, different degrees of industriousness, talent, and, last but not least, luck. Obviously, social justice in the sense of social equality is something the market system cannot, by its very nature, deliver.” — Václav Havel, Summer Meditations, p. 17.

[A]ll of us… face one fundamental task from which all else should follow. That task is one of resisting vigilantly…the power of ideologies… bureaucracy, artificial languages and political slogans. We must resist…. the wellspring of totalitarian thought.” — Václav Havel, Summer Meditations, p. 84.

November 2019 will mark the 30-year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in former Czechoslovakia, led by the dissident author and playwright, the late Václav Havel (1936-2011), who subsequently became the first president of what became the Czech Republic. Havel’s works reflected the evils of Communism and its inversion and twisting of morality.

In an address to the US Congress in February 1990, Havel said:

“The Communist type of totalitarian system … unintentionally… has given us something positive: a special capacity to look, from time to time, somewhat further than someone who has not undergone this bitter experience. A person who cannot move and live a normal life because he is pinned under a boulder has more time to think about his hopes than someone who is not trapped in this way… We too can offer something to you: our experience and the knowledge that has come from it.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14896/turkey-erdogan-nuclear-weapons

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan now wants to make Turkey a rogue state with nuclear weapons.

For several decades, Turkey, being a staunch NATO ally, was viewed as the trusted custodian of some of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. In the early 1960s, the U.S. started stockpiling nuclear warheads at the Turkish military’s four main airbases

Presently, the nuclear warheads in Turkey at Incirlik airbase still remain at the disposal of the U.S. military under a special U.S.-Turkish treaty. That treaty makes Turkey the host of U.S. nuclear weapons. According to the launch protocol, however, both Washington and Ankara need to give consent to any use of the nuclear weapons deployed at Incirlik.

“Countries that oppose Iran’s nuclear weapons should not have nuclear weapons themselves.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Hürriyet, 2008.

If Turkey overtly or covertly launched a nuclear weapons program — as Erdoğan apparently wishes — the move could well have a domino effect on the region. Turkey’s regional adversaries would be alarmed, and Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Greece might be tempted to launch their own nuclear weapons programs. Erdoğan should not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons.

During the 17 years he has ruled NATO-member Turkey, the country’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has rarely missed an opportunity stealthily to convert Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s secular, pro-Western establishment into a rogue state hostile to Western interests. Erdoğan now wants to make it a rogue state with nuclear weapons.

“They say we can’t have nuclear-tipped missiles, though some have them. This, I can’t accept,” Erdoğan said in a September 4 speech, while conveniently forgetting that Turkey has signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1980. In other words, Turkey’s elected leader publicly declares that he intends to breach an international treaty signed by his country. Turkey is also a signatory to the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all nuclear detonations, for any purpose.