RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/09/article/merkels-in-beijing-pence-is-in-poland/

A senior Polish official explained to me recently why his country couldn’t accept American demands to exclude Huawei from Poland’s buildout of 5G broadband. During the early 2010s, the United States ignored Poland entirely, but Huawei made a long-term commitment, and built the country’s entire telecommunications infrastructure. To exclude Huawei at this point would be disruptive as well as prohibitively expensive. Besides, the official explained, Poland’s economic future was bound up with China’s. Its flagship national project, an enormous new airport 40 kilometers east of Warsaw, will be “China’s gateway to the continent.”

That is the background to Vice President Mike Pence’s appearance in Poland on Tuesday to sign a “security pact” requiring “rigorous review” of telecommunications suppliers, that is, Huawei. The pact declares, “We believe that all countries must ensure that only trusted and reliable suppliers participate in our networks to protect them from unauthorized access or interference.” 

One strains to recall another such “security pact,” or to comprehend just what such a pact means in terms of diplomacy. It obligates the Poles to nothing except a formal review process. Germany’s telecom regulator undertook such a review process and declared last April that “no equipment supplier, including Huawei, should, or may, be specifically excluded.” German and Chinese government and industry sources report that the Chinese telecom giant persuaded the German government that its 5G technology would not enable China to spy on the Germans, but rather would prevent the United States from doing so. A senior German official is said to have told US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Germany was not aware of China tapping Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone, as the US reportedly did in 2013.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14804/iran-zarif-welcome-europe

The behavior of European leaders towards Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif during his visit illustrates how frightened they are of the Iranian regime and how these non-stop moralists will seemingly do anything for money. Iran’s strong anti-Israel rhetoric apparently does not bother them, either.

Trade with Iran is crucial to many European countries. That is one possible explanation for the seeming doublespeak in which European leaders have been engaging since the establishment of the Islamic Republic 40 years ago — boasting among themselves and with the United States about setting a shining example of human rights, yet giving their Iranian counterparts a pass on this issue.

Those of us who sought refuge away from the brutality of the Iranian regime observe with sadness and horror these desperate attempts by many European leaders to please Tehran. Europeans should be viewing the situation with equal sadness and horror.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif made a surprise appearance at the Group of Seven (G7) Summit in Biarritz, France, which ended on August 26. Prior to his attendance at the gathering in France, he stopped in Sweden and Norway. Denmark was not part of his itinerary, of course, due to Copenhagen’s rocky relations with Tehran, over last year’s assassination attempt against an Iranian Sunni separatist on Danish soil.

The purpose of Zarif’s trip to Europe, apparently, was to discuss ways to ease tensions in the Persian Gulf and rescue the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the nuclear deal with Iran from which US President Donald Trump withdrew in May 2018.

Zarif’s European tour spurred many human rights activists and Iranian opposition groups abroad to protest. Zarif, after all, represents a regime that is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading violators of human rights. Those in Iran who raise a voice against Tehran’s policies in any realm are often incarcerated: Among them are labor activists, lawyers and women’s rights activists, children’s rights activists, journalists, members of ethnic and religious minorities, environmental activists and even wildlife activists.

Days before Zarif’s trip, in fact, UN human rights experts called on the regime in Tehran to release three women recently sentenced to decades in prison for violating the law that women must wear the hijab.

The demonstrations in Europe were aimed both at Zarif and at European authorities for hosting him. In Stockholm on August 21, peaceful protesters outside the Swedish Parliament were so harassed and beaten by police that Reza Pahlavi — the Maryland-based heir to the throne of the former Iranian monarchy (his father’s ouster coincided with the 1979 Islamic revolution that ushered in the reign of the ayatollahs) — released the following statement:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274720/chinas-organ-harvesting-john-glynn

In June of this year, an independent tribunal based in London came to a chilling conclusion: detainees in China are being killed, their organs are being harvested and some victims find themselves falsely accused of committing crimes that never occurred.

The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, determined that:

forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale, [and] the tribunal has had no evidence that the significant infrastructure associated with China’s transplantation industry has been dismantled and absent a satisfactory explanation as to the source of readily available organs concludes that forced organ harvesting continues till today.

Before coming to their damning conclusion, the tribunal members spoke with medical experts and human rights investigators. According to the committee, thousands of people “have died indescribably hideous deaths for no reason.” The committee members warn “that more may suffer in similar ways and that all of us live on a planet where extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those, for the time being, running a country with one of the oldest civilizations known to modern man.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rules-of-geopolitics-are-different-in-asia-11567460320

Colombo, Sri Lanka

The drama in Washington sometimes makes this difficult to remember, but the most important foreign-policy development of the current presidential term isn’t the president’s tweets. It is the slow, inexorable shift in American strategy from the Atlantic and Mediterranean theaters of world politics to what U.S. diplomats and military officials call the “Indo-Pacific.” That shift, which the Obama administration called the “pivot to Asia,” isn’t the special property of Republicans or Democrats, of national-security hawks or doves.

Yet if Americans are increasingly united on the importance of the Indo-Pacific, we are very far from united on strategy there. This is partly because the executive branch is led by a president with unconventional views who is often at daggers drawn with the network of professionals and institutions that have shaped American foreign policy for many decades. But larger forces are at work than President Trump.

Never in human history have so many people and states faced such an avalanche of political and economic change as the Indo-Pacific faces today. If American policy makers find it challenging to understand and respond, they aren’t alone. The teams around Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe are often similarly perplexed.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/everyone-loses-in-germany-11567445967

European elections these days are generally contests between a beleaguered mainstream and insurgent alternatives. Voters in two German states on Sunday chose a form of “none of the above” as the country stumbles out of the Angela Merkel era.

The biggest vote-getters were the main parties of the center. Mrs. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) came out on top in Saxony, a state they’ve governed since 1990. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD), with whom Mrs. Merkel maintains an awkward coalition at the national level, are on track to maintain their long-time control in Brandenburg.

Yet both parties emerged with diminished support. The CDU’s share in Saxony fell to 32% from above 39% in 2014, while the SPD’s Brandenburg total dropped to 26% from 32%. The result raises new questions about Mrs. Merkel’s preferred successor to lead the CDU and the country, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who doesn’t excite voters anywhere. It also accentuates the crisis of confidence afflicting the leaderless SPD, which can’t decide whether its national coalition with Mrs. Merkel is hurting or helping its fortunes.

The alternatives also underperformed expectations. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party did increase its vote totals to 27.5% in Saxony and 23.5% in Brandenburg from 10% and 12% five years ago, respectively. But this is unlikely to be a harbinger of national success, even if the AfD is currently the largest opposition party in the national parliament.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/18/quantum-revolution-is-coming-chinese-scientists-are-forefront

China’s drive to dominate a field with big economic and military applications outpaces some U.S. strides

HANGHAI — More than a decade ago, Chinese physicist Pan Jian-Wei returned home from Europe to help oversee research into some of the most important technology of the 21st century.

At a conference in Shanghai this summer, Pan and his team offered a rare peek at the work he described as a “revolution.”

They spoke of the hacking-resistant communications networks they are building across China, the sensors they are designing to see through smog and around corners, and the prototype computers that may someday smash the computational power of any existing machine.

All the gear is based on quantum technology — an emerging field that could transform information processing and confer big economic and national-security advantages to countries that dominate it. To the dismay of some scientists and officials in the United States, China’s formidable investment is helping it catch up with Western research in the field and, in a few areas, pull ahead.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu/johnson-threatens-brexit-rebels-with-party-expulsion-idUSKCN1VN0BS

Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday ruled out ever asking the European Union to delay Britain’s departure from the bloc, making an implicit warning to lawmakers that he could be forced to call an election if they tied his hands on Brexit. Johnson’s promise to take the country out of the European Union on Oct. 31 with or without a divorce deal has propelled the United Kingdom towards a constitutional crisis and a battle with the 27 other members of the bloc. 

An alliance of opposition lawmakers are plotting with rebels in Johnson’s Conservative Party to take control of parliament and tie the government’s hands with legislation that would block a no-deal exit.

Johnson, giving an hastily organised statement at a lectern outside Number 10 Downing Street, said he would never delay Brexit which was delayed twice by his predecessor, Theresa May.

“I want everybody to know there are no circumstances in which I will ask Brussels to delay: we are leaving on 31st Oct, no ifs or buts,” Johnson said.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14787/erdogan-elections-losses

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan promised party fans a clear election victory in Istanbul [on the June 23 rerun] — but lost, this time, by a margin of more than 800,000 votes, compared to only 13,000 in the original race.

“Your wrath stems from the fear in you.” — Meral Danış Baştas, Kurdish MP, replying to Erdoğan.

By using an administrative decision as a pretext to oust elected mayors, Erdogan is effectively nullifying millions of Kurdish votes. Moreover, if the ousted mayors actually had proven links to terrorist organizations, why were they allowed to run in an election in the first place?

This drama will probably continue: Kurds will elect their leaders, Erdoğan will sack them. Kurds again will elect their leaders, Erdoğan will sack them too. Kurds will vote for other leaders and Erdoğan will sack them too.

Erdoğan should sit down, think and find out: why do his country’s 20 million or so Kurds insist on invariably electing “terrorists” as mayors to their cities and towns, and defying his calls to do otherwise?

No one in the saner parts of the world has ever claimed that Turkey’s Islamist President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is a liberal democrat who never in the slightest rigged election results. But he was, at least, known to respect the ballot box. No longer. Erdoğan has taken to ridiculing even further whatever little remains of Turkey’s democratic culture.

Claiming vote-rigging, he pressured Turkey’s supreme election board for a recount of ballots cast on March 31 in Istanbul, Turkey biggest city, which boasts more than 10 million registered voters. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) had lost municipal elections in Istanbul by a small margin of 13,000 votes. This was the first time Erdoğan’s party had lost elections in Istanbul since 1994. The man who is notorious for saying “who wins Istanbul, wins Turkey” immediately ordered a rerun.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274810/uk-you-could-soon-be-arrested-crimes-you-havent-robert-spencer

Philip K. Dick’s story “The Minority Report,” made into a movie in 2002 directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise, takes us to a nightmarish Washington, DC, in the year 2054, where police arrest people based on crimes that psychics say they’re going to commit in the future. That dystopia could come to Britain 35 years early if the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change gets its way. According to the Guardian, the Institute has recommended that “a new law allowing for hate groups to be designated and punished before they turn to violence is needed in order to tackle far-right extremists.”

“Before they turn to violence” — that is, even if there is no indication that they will ever be violent.

The Guardian notes that the authors of Narratives of Hate: The Spectrum of Far-Right Worldviews in the UK, the Tony Blair Institute report calling for this, “acknowledge that the issue of linking violent and nonviolent extremism is contentious and steps would need to be taken to protect free speech.”

That’s window dressing meant to deceive the public into complacency. There is no way to criminalize certain opinions while protecting the freedom of speech.

The Guardian continues: “The law…would designate hate groups as organisations that spread intolerance and antipathy towards people of a different race, religion, gender or nationality, the report said.”

The danger of this is that it is universally taken for granted among the political and media elites that honest analysis of how jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify their actions and make recruits among peaceful Muslims constitutes spreading “intolerance and antipathy towards people of a different race, religion, gender or nationality.” Such analysis is consistently lumped together with racist groups, as if race hatred were the same thing as opposition to jihad mass murder and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others.