RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brexit-and-britains-broken-parliament-11571696172

Is Britain broken? That’s the question a bemused world has been asking since the unexpected result of Remainer David Cameron’s Brexit referendum plunged the U.K. into a three-year political crisis.

Two things are striking about this period of national agony and debate. The first is how sensible and peaceful the British people have remained. The Brexit referendum carried by 52% to 48% (a margin of roughly 1.3 million out of more than 33.5 million votes cast) and the consequences are unpredictable and large. Will the United Kingdom even stay united as Scotland and Northern Ireland react to Brexit? Will Britain’s economy flourish as it opens to the world or wither without privileged access to European markets? From the City of London’s financial sector to the Sunderland Nissan factory, hundreds of thousands, even millions of jobs may be at stake.

Faced with all that, the British kept calm and carried on. Across a country of 66 million, Brexit has generated less political violence than a modestly sized Antifa march can gin up on a good afternoon in Portland, Ore. Scotland may be looking for an exit from the U.K. even as the U.K. looks to exit the European Union, but there are no Barcelona-style separatist riots in Edinburgh or anywhere else. This is an extraordinary testimony to the depth of Britain’s democratic culture.

https://www.criticalthreats.org/briefs/iran-file/iran-file-october-21-2019?

Iran highlighted its willingness to target opposition figures abroad. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organization *announced that it arrested exiled anti-regime activist Ruhollah Zam on October 14. Zam had been living in Paris, France, where he operated anti-regime outlet Amad News. The IRGC stated that the arrest involved deception and surprise. Iranian officials *have celebrated the IRGC and its operation in recent days.

The IRGC likely coaxed Zam to travel to Iraq, where pro-Iran agents detained him. An unidentified individual reportedly lured Zam to travel to Iraq under the false pretense that he would meet with prominent Iraqi Shia cleric Ali al Sistani. A source from Sistani’s office *denied any plans for a meeting. The French Interior Ministry confirmed that Zam left France for Iraq. The regime has boasted of its ability to feed Zam false information before when it published a *documentary on the matter in March 2019. An unidentified Iraqi source claimed that Iraqi intelligence agents arrested Zam when he arrived in Baghdad at Iran’s request and transferred him to Iranian interrogators. The IRGC then moved Zam to Iran and arrested him.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/10/20/poll-majority-of-germans-alarmed-over-anti-semitism-following-synagogue-attack/

A majority of Germans expressed that “a lot more” anti-Semitism has spread throughout their country, according to a new poll taken one week after the Oct. 9 attack on a synagogue in the German town of Halle.

“That’s a lot more – +19 points – than one year ago,” stated the German broadcaster ARD, which conducted the poll, on its website, in comparison to last year’s finding that just 40% of Germans believed anti-Semitism in the country is alarming.

Only 35% of respondents thought Jew-hatred wasn’t increasing in Germany.

The poll was published after German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announced on Thursday a six-point plan to combat anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism through tougher regulations to limit online hate speech along with cracking down on purchases of illegal guns and other weapons by members of the far Right.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/20/time-critics-saw-boris-churchillian-figure/

Boris Johnson was fantastic yesterday. I’m not going to bother to be objective about it. No one else does, so why should I?

Ever since the blond magnificence threw his hat into the leadership ring, we’ve been told he’s incompetent and far-Right. Well, an idiot doesn’t do “the impossible” and renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement, and as for far-Right, his words in the Commons were so temperate and liberal they could teach the world to sing.

Let us “bring together the two halves of our hearts”, he told the Commons, meaning Leave and Remain. It was a strategic appeal, of course: the deal can only pass if enough Labour MPs back it, so he has to soften his language. But this also happens to be what the PM believes. He sits in the One Nation tradition and his Euroscepticism has always been nuanced by a love of the continent. He is anti-EU but pro-European.

That’s the sense in which he’s truly Churchillian. I can hear teeth itching when I write that. No, I’m not saying he’s a reincarnation of one of the greatest Britons who ever lived: BoJo has never won a war or the Nobel Prize for literature. But the comparison is there in the rhetoric.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15045/trade-china-cheating

[I]t is especially difficult to trade with a thief, especially when the thief views commercial contact as an opportunity to steal more…. This crime is essential to the achievement of the extraordinarily ambitious Made in China 2025 initiative [to dominate 11 crucial technology sectors].

By his silence, Liu allowed Trump to think he had a deal when, in reality, he did not. So Trump made a real concession — the tariff deferral — for a promise that was not a promise.

[T]he “engagement” of China is Washington’s “greatest foreign policy failure.” – Arthur Waldron, University of Pennsylvania.

If all this were not bad enough, Xi’s future plans are especially pernicious… Americans are going to have to make a choice: take Chinese money or maintain a free marketplace of ideas. The disengagement of the two economies is, of course, unfortunate, but it is necessary as China presses Americans and leaves them no choice if they are to defend freedoms and sovereignty.

On October 11th, Beijing harvested another big benefit. Trump agreed to defer a tariff increase scheduled for the following Tuesday. Having gotten what it wanted, China then began to play hardball. On October 17, Beijing denied it had made a commitment to buy $40 billion to $50 billion of American farm products.

Judging from Beijing’s breaking one more trade arrangement in recent days, it is evident the communist regime in China is not able to work with the United States — or any other country for that matter. So let’s not trade with a China that lies, cheats, and steals.

“This won’t revolutionize the U.S.-China relationship or the terms of trade between us, but it shows that the two countries can work together on an important issue,” said Clete Willems of Akin Gump to Bloomberg, referring to President Trump’s “phase one deal” announced October 11. “Learning to do so is critical to avoid a broad deterioration of all aspects of our relationship, which is not in anyone’s long-term interest.”

Despite what Willems said, it now is in the long-term interest of the United States to walk away from trade deals with the People’s Republic of China.

Why? Four reasons: First, communist China has never accepted the notion of comparative advantage, which underpins the global trading system. Yes, the mercantilist Chinese believe we should buy their products, but they, the masters of non-tariff barriers and other forms of predation, have worked hard to keep foreign goods out of their market. How can America trade with a state that does not believe in the benefits of trade?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-exciting-finish-in-canadas-election-11571599515

As Canadians head to a federal election on Monday, polls have Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of the Liberal Party and Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer in a dead heat.

Mr. Scheer has turned out to be a more serious contender than many, including many conservatives, expected. But Mr. Trudeau’s biggest headaches are on his left, where Jagmeet Singh, the personally engaging candidate of the New Democratic Party, and Bloc Quebecois candidate Yves-François Blanchet threaten to siphon off progressive votes from the Liberals. This has greatly increased Mr. Scheer’s chances of winning a minority government.

Voter surveys say the race is too close to call. As Darrell Bricker of the polling company Ipsos put on Oct. 15, the multiparty jockeying “points to an Election Night which could be full of surprises and close calls.”

Some meaningful number of Canadians appear ready to punish Mr. Trudeau for his performance since taking office in 2015. A carbon tax that wasn’t supposed to hurt a bit has harmed consumers in key provinces. Liberals promised fiscal discipline but Mr. Trudeau finishes four years with a C$20 billion deficit. The ruling party now counsels Canada not to expect a balanced budget until at least 2040.

The prime minister’s authenticity deficit is his bigger problem. The self-described champion of women and minorities took a hit when photos emerged last month showing that in years past, more than once, he darkened his face at costume parties.

Mr. Trudeau has apologized profusely and by most accounts Canadians don’t brand him a racist. For good measure he got President Obama to endorse him last week.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15028/sweden-church-hate

Although Good Shepherd’s Swedish School is marketed by the Swedish Jerusalem Society as a school that promotes peace, Tobias Petersson, Director of the think tank Perspective on Israel, has revealed that the textbooks used by Good Shepherd’s Swedish school have jihadi content that encourages holy war against the State of Israel. Also, in those textbooks, Jews are described as liars and corrupt.

Maps in the schoolbooks and on the walls of Good Shepherd’s Swedish School do not show the State of Israel; instead the outline of Israel had been displaced by the identical outline of the “State of Palestine”.

That such a large institution as the Church of Sweden gathers church collections throughout the country to support a school that spreads hatred and warmongering should doubtless be seen as enormously problematic.

The practice also shows that not only does Swedish aid go to organizations that spread hate, but also that large institutions in Sweden have opened back-channels to send millions of Swedish kronors every year to schools, such as Good Shepherd’s Swedish School, that also spread hate.

To understand how harmful this situation is, can you imagine what would happen if one of Israel’s — or another country’s — largest institutions were raising money to support a school that taught children to hate Sweden and celebrate terrorists who murdered Swedes? It would, of course, be a great scandal and totally unacceptable. But in Sweden, this is exactly what is happening now.

The Swedish Jerusalem Society, founded in 1900, has devoted its mission to charity work in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. For several decades, however, the Swedish Jerusalem Society has been hostile to the Jewish State of Israel. The association has three official goals in the Palestinian territories:

Strengthen the position of women
Contribute to peace and reconciliation
Strengthen the Christian minority

Despite these noble goals, the Swedish Jerusalem Society publishes a journal in which the content, although often about Israel, has a tone that is extremely hostile and biased. In the journal’s first issue of 2018, one can read an interview with a Palestinian school principal, in which she states:

“We have suffered for so many years, and may suffer for a few more years, but it is unfair to give our capital to anyone else. Why not share it?”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15043/turkey-kurdish-obsession

The end of First World War left the Kurds in an even worse situation than before. President Woodrow Wilson’s promise of “self-determination” was soon forgotten, leaving behind the dream of independence on the Kurdish side and the fear of Kurdish secession in the Ottoman camp as reconstituted as the Turkish Republic under Mustafa Kemal pasha (Ataturk).

In much of history, at least until recently, systems sustained by ultra-nationalist and/or nativist ideologies have always seen “otherness” as a threat rather than an opportunity of cultural and social enrichment.

In other words, one can commit genocide as long as one makes a speech in favor of Palestine and attends a Shi’ite chest-beating ceremony.

A classical dictum cited by Clausewitz, the father of war studies as an academic discipline, tells us that starting a war is often easy while ending it is always difficult. Does that dictum apply to the war that Turkey has started against the Kurds by invading Syria? Right now, the answer is that no one knows. What is certain, however, is that the best outcome that Turkey might expect, is to be extricated from that hornet’s nest with a minimum of damage.

While the war could be blamed on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s autocratic style of decision-making, the deeper roots of the conflict must be sought in Turkey’s centuries-old Kurdish obsession.

That obsession was present, albeit in embryonic form, even during the Ottoman era, when the Sultan-Caliphs harbored suspicions about their Kurdish subjects on ethnic and religious grounds. Even when drawn into military service, Ottoman Kurds could not, or would not, be assimilated into the dominant Ottoman-Turkish identity. Subscribing to a variety of religious beliefs and traditions, including Alawism, Zoroastrianism, Yazidism and a panoply of Sufi orders stretching from the Balkans to Central Asia, the Kurds would not fit into the official Islamic identity of the empire.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/when-the-dust-settles-in-syria/

The United States has left the Middle East numerous times under several American presidents. But it has consistently returned—for better or worse.

 To speak about Kurds has suddenly become a cry in favor of human rights and self-determination by the Western press, and rightly so: The assault they are suffering is lethal and may become genocidal. More frightening is that it is being perpetrated by the Turks, who are already stained by the Armenian genocide and are led by a leader who considers himself an almighty sultan. And it’s really odd that Europe is only now discovering who he really is.

How can this be? Didn’t Europe know that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during these last 16 years in power has been possessed by a vicious fundamentalist Islamic and imperialist dream, who has repeatedly displayed unprecedented arrogance (he has closed newspapers and thrown more than 150,000 dissidents in prison) and expressed extreme ideas that have systematically dismantled the precious Kemalist heritage that once made Turkey the hope of a bridge between the Islamic world and the West? Didn’t it see that he inundated the world with slogans and anti-Semitic standpoints corroborated by his friendship with Hamas, who supported former Egypt President Mohammad Morsi as leader of the Muslim Brotherhood—a man he praised being himself the greatest Muslim Brotherhood politician in office? Is it coincidence that Erdoğan allowed the passage from his country of thousands of Islamic fundamentalists in possession of whatever passport to boost ISIS, which many claim he supported through trade and furnished with weapons?

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/rashida-tlaibs-hypocritical-stance/

The Democratic congresswoman, who claims to be a champion of human rights, supports Armenian aggression, occupation, and ethnic cleansing in Azerbaijan.

First-term US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) supports occupation and ethnic cleansing.

Having a clear problem with Jews and the Jewish state, Tlaib often blames Israel for “occupying Palestine” and holds it responsible for the Palestinian refugee issue, which she regards as an example of “ethnic cleansing.”

Yet, she makes a U-turn when it comes to Armenia’s illegal military occupation and ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region. She unabashedly supports this internationally condemned occupation, in opposition to 28 years of bipartisan US policy and four binding UN Security Council resolutions.

According to an October 8, 2019 article published by the Los Angeles-based Armenian newspaper Asbarez, the Armenian National Committee of Michigan recently met with Tlaib to discuss issues important to the American-Armenian community of Michigan and committed to co-sponsor two House resolutions aimed at improving relations between the US and Armenia.

The impression is that Tlaib has become a political prisoner the Michigan Armenian lobby that in all likelihood has been greasing her political career, helped her to gain a congressional seat.