RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14838/jihadi-jack-letts-isis

“He [Jack] is a very humane person and he wanted to do something to help.” Mr Letts said about his son, then adding, “He is a really kind, funny kid who is very gentle. He is totally non-violent.”

As with so much of the mitigating rhetoric that follows the imprisonment of captured British Muslims, Mr Letts’s words sit very much at odds with his son’s previous murderous statements. How mystifying then, that such a peacenik should end up in the bloody killing-fields of Raqqa.

A far bigger problem than what to do with the likes of Jack Letts and Shamima Begum is the possibility of missing British ISIS fighters returning and making their presence felt.

No matter how heartfelt a plea their parents might make on their behalf after they are captured, their children’s real inclinations might best be measured by their actions while they were free to do as they wished.

“This power [to remove citizenship] is one way we can counter the terrorist threat posed by some of the most dangerous individuals and keep our country safe.” — UK Home Office spokesperson, August 2019.

Jack Letts, dubbed “Jihadi Jack”, the British convert to Islam who travelled to Syria in 2014 to join ISIS, has been stripped of his British citizenship. The former dual-national, whose British mother and Canadian father stand by their son, exchanged his picturesque hometown of Oxford for Raqqa, to join the ranks of ISIS. He is currently awaiting his fate in the custody of Kurdish forces.

Letts, who had previously claimed to be an “enemy of Britain” and had posted on social media messages, such as “his threat to behead a group of young British soldiers on Facebook”, now says that he regrets his past misdeeds, and the pain he has caused his parents. “I feel guilty, because I am the reason (my parents) are going through this.” He told a Sky News reporter in June, evidently oblivious to the fact that his actions caused a lot more harm than merely upsetting his parents — both of whom received a suspended prison sentence for — “making money available for a terrorist purpose”.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/09/17/dictator-robert-mugabe-is-what-happens-when-a-country-falls-for-charismatic-socialist/

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s dictator and lifelong communist, died on Sept. 6, 2019, at the age of 95. In a country where the average life expectancy was only 44 years (according to a 2006 census), he outlived most of his countrymen.

However, his protracted and long life was constructed upon inflicting enormous and unimaginable suffering upon his people and country. For the rest of us, his incumbency should serve as a constant warning about why we should not fall for the next charismatic socialist who heedlessly promises everything.

Mugabe’s Life Before His Dictatorship

Mugabe was born into poverty. Abandoned by his father at age 10, he attended a Jesuit missionary school and eventually graduated from the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, the same university Nelson Mandela attended.

While Mugabe was receiving educator training in Ghana in the 1950s, he joined one of Africa’s nationalist movements, calling for the establishment of an independent country led by the black majority in his homeland, which at the time was still a British colony. The emergence of these nationalist movements coincided with the Cold War. The Soviet Union and Communist China expanded their influence in Africa, hoping to turn former colonies into client states.

Mugabe was imprisoned for a decade due to his anti-government political activities, and while in prison, he was elected as the president of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). During his long imprisonment, Mugabe thoroughly studied Marxist-Leninist ideology. He became a firm believer that only socialism could save his homeland, and that only his ZANU could lead the people’s revolution and bring true socialism to Zimbabwe. Therefore, ZANU must “always remain in power” and remain the only power.

Mugabe also came to see private property owners, such as the white farmers, as a threat to the socialist paradise he wanted to build. Upon his release, Mugabe led the ZANU guerrillas to fight against the white minority rule from Mozambique. Somehow, between prison and guerrilla warfare, he managed to obtain seven college degrees and was commended as an intellectual freedom fighter.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14329/britain-criticism-of-islam

“We are concerned that the definition… could be used to challenge legitimate free speech on the historical or theological actions of Islamic states. There is also a risk it could also undermine counter-terrorism powers, which seek to tackle extremism or prevent terrorism.” — Martin Hewitt, Chair, National Police Chiefs’ Council.

Islam represents an idea, not a nationality or an ethnicity. The conventional purpose of most hate-speech laws is to protect people from hatred, not ideas.

The new proposed definition would criminalize criticism of Islam. Considering the origins of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, that is probably the whole point.

“[A]n alternative definition of Anti-Muslim Hatred should be specific and narrow. It should focus on addressing bigotry directed at individuals, and avoid censoring debate or freedom of expression on religion. Finally, a comprehensive definition of Anti-Muslim Hatred must take intra-Muslim hatred into account to protect those who want to speak freely or express themselves differently.” — Nikita Malik, Forbes, May 20, 2019.

In April 2018, Britain’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims began work on establishing a “working definition of Islamophobia that can be widely accepted by Muslims, political parties and the government”.

In December 2018, the group concluded its work with a “Report on the inquiry into a working definition of Islamophobia / anti-Muslim hatred.” The report defines “Islamophobia” as a form of racism, conflating religion with ethnic origin or nationality: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”[1]

The report, furthermore, claims that a definition of Islamophobia is “instrumental” to “the political will and institutional determination to tackle it.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14887/turkey-crackdown-journalists

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention was held on September 13. Sadly, no one at the meeting addressed the persecution of journalists in Turkey — not José Guevara Bermúdez, Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group, nor Béla Szombati, who represented the European Union, nor any other participant.

Amnesty International recently tagged Turkey the “world’s largest prison for journalists.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council, if it wishes to change its image from that of a laughing stock, should put at the top of its agenda calling Ankara to task. Meanwhile, however, Erdoğan’s violations of freedom of speech need to be exposed daily and loudly condemned — not only by members of the UN and the media, but by any and all allies of Turkey — and freedom of expression — in the West.

International human-rights and press-freedom organizations recently appealed to the United Nations to take action against the ongoing abuse of journalists by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

In a letter to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on September 3, eighteen organizations — led by the group ARTICLE 19, which promotes freedom of expression — called on “all Member and Observer States committed to media freedom, democracy and the rule of law” to “speak out and address the Turkish government’s repressive campaign against freedom of expression” in the forum of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention during the UNHRC’s 42nd regular session.

The letter reads, in part:

“The right to hold and express dissenting opinions and to access information has been systematically undermined by the Turkish government in an intensive crackdown on journalists and independent media, academics, civil society, oppositional voices and the judiciary. Since 2016, the human rights situation in Turkey has steeply declined, facilitated by the misuse of sweeping emergency powers and the concentration of executive power. At the time of writing, at least 138 journalists and media workers are imprisoned, with hundreds more currently on trial facing lengthy sentences on manifestly unfounded terrorism charges … Access to thousands of websites and platforms has been blocked after a government decree authorising removals and blockages of websites without judicial oversight.”