RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2019/09/09/the-political-excommunication-of-erin-weir-betrays-the-face-of-modern-political-cowardice/

Erin Weir is not well-known outside of Canada. Even many Canadian readers won’t recognize the politician’s name. But the story of how he was smeared and excommunicated by his own political party presents a stunning indictment of political cowardice in the age of #MeToo. And what happened to him could happen to virtually anyone who runs for office.

Weir is a federal Member of Parliament (MP), having been elected in 2015 to represent the Saskatchewan riding of Regina-Lewvan. He ran in that election as a candidate for the New Democratic Party (NDP), which sits to the political left of Justin Trudeau’s governing Liberals, and constitutes the third-largest party in the Canadian parliament. His downfall began on January 30, 2018, the day he announced his candidacy for NDP caucus chair by sending an email to other NDP MPs, and to the leader of the federal NDP, Jagmeet Singh (who, at the time, had not yet become a Member of Parliament). The email set off a chain of events that eventually led to his expulsion from the NDP caucus, and stripped him of the opportunity to stand as a candidate for the party in the upcoming Fall, 2019, federal election. Under the Canadian political system, party leaders are free to unilaterally block candidates, no matter the views of voters or the rank-and-file. Without party affiliation, Weir’s political career is effectively over.

Weir’s undoing was the work of Christine Moore, an NDP MP for the Quebec riding of Abitibi-Temiscamingue. In a reply-all email responding to Weir’s expressed interest in becoming caucus chair, she wrote that she could never support him because “there are too many women (mostly employee[s]) who complained to me that you were harassing to them.” She then added: “As a woman, I would not feel comfortable to meet with you alone.”

Like Weir, Moore was not well-known—except insofar as she already had helped ruin the career of two MPs in Justin Trudeau’s Liberal party after advancing claims that they, too, were sexual harassers (a subject discussed in more detail below). And her new accusation would have come as a surprise (and still does) to anyone who knows Weir, a 37-year-old economist who once worked for the Canadian section of the United Steelworkers union.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14845/why-arabs-hate-palestinians

You simply cannot burn pictures of the Saudi crown prince one day and rush to Riyadh to seek money the next. You cannot shout slogans against the Egyptian president one day and go to Cairo to seek political backing the next.

Remarkably, Turki al-Hamad, a Saudi writer, did what even some Western countries refuse to do: he dared to condemn Hamas and other Gaza-based groups for firing rockets at Israel.

“Palestinians bring disaster to anyone who hosts them. Jordan hosted them, and there was Black September; Lebanon hosted them, and there was a civil war there; Kuwait hosted them, and they turned into Saddam Hussein’s soldiers. Now they are using their podiums to curse us.” — Mohammed al-Shaikh, Saudi author, RT Arabic, August 13, 2019.

Many people in the Arab countries are now saying that it is high time for the Palestinians to start looking after their own interests and thinking of a better future for their children…. The Arabs seem to be saying to the Palestinians: “We want to march forward; you can continue to march backward for as long as you wish.”

“We should not be ashamed to establish relations with Israel.” — Ahmad al-Jaralah, a leading Kuwaiti newspaper editor, arabi21.com, July 1, 2019.

Is it true? If so, why? Sadly, the Palestinians are known for betraying their Arab brothers, even effectively stabbing them in the back. The Palestinians, for example, supported Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait – a Gulf state that, together with its neighbors, used to give the Palestinians tens of millions of dollars in aid each year.

This disloyalty is precisely how a growing number of Arabs, particularly those living in the Gulf states, have been describing the Palestinians for the past few years.

In recent months, however, Arab criticism of the Palestinians, mostly aired through traditional and social media, has further escalated, and sometimes turned ugly.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macrons-bad-bargain-with-iran-11567973948

Iran on Saturday took another giant step toward gaining nuclear weapons by admitting it is now using arrays of advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium. This is its latest violation of the 2015 nuclear deal and puts more pressure on Europe to decide whether it wants to keep subsidizing this nuclear breakout.

First the European signatories tried to evade U.S. sanctions by creating a new trade and finance system. That failed, so now French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed giving Tehran a roughly $15 billion credit line, guaranteed by Iranian oil, if the regime renews compliance with the nuclear deal.

Mr. Macron would do better to save the money and help Mr. Trump ’s Iran efforts. Sanctions the U.S. has imposed since last year are designed to coax Tehran to renegotiate a better deal. This has included designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization and sanctions that have reduced Iranian crude oil exports some 80%. U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook announced fresh measures against the IRGC and Iranian oil last Wednesday.

This appears to be working. Iranian leaders such as Foreign Minister Javad Zarif have gone from refusing talks with Washington to probing ways to get back to the negotiating table. That’s important context for Iran’s provocations that are supposed to scare Washington into offering a new deal, such as attacks on oil infrastructure in the Middle East, threats against a Washington think tank, and news that Tehran is now openly violating the 2015 deal by stockpiling highly enriched uranium.

The mystery is why, in light of all this, Mr. Macron is eager to send Iran more money—especially since Mr. Trump can block the transfer by refusing to waive U.S. sanctions. Perhaps Mr. Macron and the Europeans hope to buy off Iran in the short term as they wait to see if Mr. Trump wins re-election. But in the meantime they are advancing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/surprise_iaea_finds_uranium_traces_in_tehran_where_netanyahu_told_them_to_look.html

Samples taken by investigators from the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency at the so-called “secret atomic warehouse” in Tehran — where Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told them to look — have come up glowing.

Iran has yet to explain those traces of uranium, says the nuclear watchdog agency, according to two diplomats who are tightly connected with the agency’s inspection work

According to Reuters, a quarterly IAEA report issued a week ago did not mention the sample results because inspection-related matters are highly confidential. But it did say Iran’s cooperation could be better.

Better.  Uh…  yeah!  And so could IAEA’s communications, not to say honesty, on the matter, even with the need for secrecy.  But don’t expect it.  

 Although Prime Minister Netanyahu is too restrained and too diplomatic while President Donald Trump  is not, now that both have been more than vindicated, they should crow loudly “I told you so!  I told you so! Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah!”  And then demand more information on what Iran is really doing.  And demand more access from Iran.  And demand other countries condemn and also restrain Iran.  

https://www.steynonline.com/9726/johnson-vs-johnson

Across the continent and an ocean, Westminster continues to be roiled by Brexiteers and Remoaners locked, like the latter seasons of Dynasty, in ever more demented plot twists. Today Her Majesty’s Government suffered its first resignation since Boris Johnson took over as Prime Minister. The Minister for Universities and Science quit, and is leaving Parliament. His name is Jo Johnson. Any relation? Why, yes. He’s Boris’ brother. In the normal course of events, no normal person knows who the Minister for Universities is, or indeed that such a post exists, or, if aware of this grand office, what the chap who holds it does all day long: He ain’t a heavy, he’s his brother – that’s all. But the junior Johnson, a Remainer, has walked out on the senior Johnson, a Leaver, so it’s the biggest thing since Cain fired his Secretary of State for Sheep-Herding. Boris was his brother’s keeper, but he couldn’t keep him. So the Remainer leaves, putting a question mark over whether the Leaver can remain.

~All sides are throwing around media accusations of “constitutional outrage”, ever since Boris got the Queen to prorogue Parliament and was instantly ungraded from PM to Caudillo of the new dictatorship. I am more sympathetic to the charges against his opponents: Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, has been claiming for months to want a general election. Indeed, there is no reason not to have one. On Tuesday the Prime Minister formally lost his majority, when some Tory nobody I’d never heard of crossed the floor and became a Liberal. So Boris and his team cannot govern. Indeed, even their minority is shrinking by the hour, as he removes the whip, expels and deselects those who vote against him on Brexit.

And yet Corbyn voted down Boris’ motion for a general election – because the Opposition Leader is determined to force the Government to enact not its own but the Opposition’s policy, by making Boris go to Brussels, grovel, and beg for another extension of Britain’s zombie membership in the European Union. To put it in American terms, the legislative branch wants to maintain the executive branch in power purely as its dead-eyed sock puppet. That is certainly a constitutional abomination, and, cautious as she is in such matters, I have no doubt the Queen regards it as such.

https://youtu.be/VzpaMf3pZGU

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14827/christians-massacred-media-ignore

“In the same week as the awful attack on the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand… more than two hundred Christians were killed in Nigeria. There was hardly any mention of the latter in the news. There were no marches for martyred Christians, no tolling of church bells ordered by governments, no ‘Je suis Charlie’ t-shirts… no public outrage at all.” — Fr. Benedict Kiely, Crisis Magazine, September 4, 2019

NASA’s satellites observed the Amazon fires, prompting world leaders to pledge to protect the rainforest. But the burning, chopping and murder of Christians is not tracked by satellites and their suffering is not seen on our televisions and newspapers. Actually, it seems in the West as if the persecution of Christians does not even exist.

The Vatican and Pope Francis have a choice: to shed light on these persecuted Christians or be accused of willful blindness…. The Vatican should dedicate the next synod to them.

“In the Amazon rainforest, which is of vital importance for the planet, a deep crisis has been triggered by prolonged human intervention, in which a ‘culture of waste’ (LS 16) and an extractivist mentality prevail”, the Vatican stated.

“The Amazon is a region with rich biodiversity; it is multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and multi-religious; it is a mirror of all humanity which, in defense of life, requires structural and personal changes by all human beings, by nations, and by the Church.”

That is why a Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region has been scheduled to meet in Rome from October 6 to 27. In an interview with Italian paper La Stampa, Pope Francis said that one of the biggest challenges to the Amazon region is the “threat to the life of the populations and territory which derives from the economic and political interests of the dominant sectors of society.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14828/moscow-divided

Putin has also succeeded in establishing Russia as the key player in war-torn Syria by marginalizing not only Iran but also Turkey and the United States. Putin adulators are especially proud of his success in playing the Iran card against the United States while squeezing the Tehran mullahs for unprecedented concessions.

The impression one gets in Moscow these days is that reality may have started to bite at the edges of the hubris nurtured by Putin’s opportunistic tactics and the weakness of the Western, especially European, response.

Well-to-do Russians, the backbone of Putin’s system, are sore about the fact that they are no longer treated as welcome friends in the Western world, to which they think they belong. The less privileged Russians are equally unwilling to find their nation grouped together with a number of “Third World” countries such as Syria, Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

In Russia, August is often regarded as the uncertain season closing the short summer and opening the path to the long duet of autumn and winter. It was, therefore, no surprise in a recent visit to Moscow to see that sense of uncertainty reflected in the political mood of the Russian elites.

To be sure, the uncertainty one notices is still in filigree. Officials and intellectuals supporting the current government are still full of self-confidence, not to say bombast, defending President Vladimir Putin’s “strongman” politics. Nevertheless, conversations regarding the political situation in Russia soon reveal three sources of uncertainty, perhaps even anxiety.

The first is an as yet tentative concern that though Putin’s current presidential term has some four more years to conclude, it is not at all certain that the current ruling elite could find someone of similar stature to carry the torch. In other words, Putinism may end as other “isms” formed around a charismatic leader, something like Gaullism, Peronism or even Titoism.