RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14118/erdogan-friendless

In reality, with the exception of Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Venezuela’s troubled man, Nicolás Maduro, Erdoğan is increasingly friendless.

China’s ambassador to Ankara, Deng Li, diplomatically showed Turkey the most frightening stick. Deng told Reuters: “If you choose a non-constructive path, it will negatively affect mutual trust and understanding and will be reflected in commercial and economic relations.”

It was a shock to the Turkish president to wake up the other day and learn that the genocide suspect whom he embraced as “brother”, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, had been ousted by a coup d’état.

“World leaders hail Erdoğan on local vote win,” the news headline ran, referring to the outcome of Turkey’s local elections on March 31. They laboriously ignored that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamist AKP party lost in all of Turkey’s three biggest cities — and for the first time in 25 years in Ankara and Istanbul. They were nevertheless able to find one element to hail regarding Turkey’s strongman. But, “world leaders?”

Here is the full list: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Chairman Milorad Dodik, former Bosniak member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bakir Izetbegovic, Guinean President Alpha Conde, and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14162/finland-iran

Just a little more than ten years ago, Finland’s flagship telecommunications company, Nokia, was found to have sold to Tehran surveillance technology, which was used a year later to suppress dissident demonstrators’ use of social media.

“[T]here are two documented instances where [the Finnish company] Cargotec-tied cranes have been used for public executions.” — United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) press release.

How Finland behaves today is eerily reminiscent of its behavior with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. During that time, Finnish politicians, academics and journalists practiced self-censorship. They knew whom not to talk about, let alone criticize. Today it is criticism of Islam that is aggressively prosecuted under the guise of combating “hate-speech” or “disparaging of religious groups”. It is the same M.O., just a different place and time.

There is a special saying in Finland describing a person’s naïvety: it is called being “blue-eyed”. Unfortunately, there is not a saying that describes the same trait for an entire political class.

Successive Finnish governments could be accurately described as extremely “blue-eyed,” especially during the last decade or so in their relations with Iran.

Part of the problem seems to lie with Finnish politicians, who seem truly to believe that having a dialogue — any dialogue — regardless of who is on the opposite side of the table, is better than having no dialogue at all. So you can easily end up with the equivalent of a businessman trying to reach an agreement with Al Capone, while each holds completely different assumptions about the underlying terms of an agreement, including whether agreements are even meant to be kept.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273607/tommy-robinson-mep-bruce-bawer

Tommy Robinson’s announcement on April 25 of his candidacy for the European Parliament met with precisely the kind of media response you would expect. In the Guardian, Josh Halliday gave the term “far-right” a workout. He described the For Britain party, whose founder Anne Marie Waters introduced Tommy at his campaign kickoff event in Wythenshawe, a largely working-class Manchester neighborhood, as “far-right.” Halliday made sure to point out that Tommy had “founded the far-right English Defence League” – but omitted to mention that Tommy had left the EDL precisely because it had become “far-right.” And Halliday noted that local MP Mike Kane had “signed a joint letter with Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith leaders saying Tommy’s ‘far-right political views are not welcome in our town.’”

In the same letter, Kane, a Labourite who serves as Shadow Minister for Education, and the “faith leaders” – a Baptist preacher, a Roman Catholic priest, an Anglican rector, a Muslim imam, and a Jewish rabbi – explained that they would not welcome Tommy because Wythenshawe is a “welcoming” place. Neither the signatories nor Halliday seemed to be aware of the blatant self-contradiction. The letter further noted that Wythenshawe contains “thriving Chagossian and Keralan communities, among others, living and working here. If we were to welcome this man we’d be dismissing the valued contribution these people have made to the area.” In fact Chagossians, an Indian Ocean people, are Christians, and most people from Kerala, a state in the south of India, are Hindus. Tommy’s problem, of course, is with the ideology of Islam, in accordance with which jihadists have murdered countless Christians and Hindus.

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/new-party-emerges-in-britain-to-rescue-brexit/90665/

It Leads the Polls for European Parliament, Our Diarist Reports

The British Prime Minister is a wrecking crew of one. Theresa May scuttled Britain’s March 29 exit from the European Union. Her preferred withdrawal option places the UK in a worse position in relation to the EU. Not content to wreak havoc in foreign relations, she is effectively destroying the Conservative party.

This is a moment to harken to Newton’s third law — “to every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.” It’s starting to look as if the third law applies in politics too, and is now in full force in Britain. Mrs. May has midwifed the Brexit party.

With Nigel Farage at its head, the Brexit party was formed when Britain failed to exit the EU as Britons — and Parliament — ordained. In a few short weeks it will contest the European Parliament elections and fight a polite but firm guerrilla campaign for Brexit in Brussels. Tories truculence at home augurs that Mr. Farage must take the fight to Westminster as well.“We want the European election to be the first step of a massive change that re-steps entirely British politics and actually makes it look more like the country,” Mr. Farage told the London Sun. “MPs will realize that if they carry on trying to stop Brexit, they’ll lose their seats at the next General Election.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/can-china-dislodge-russia-in-central-asia-11556577788

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

A trip to the picturesque capital of this mountainous landlocked republic in Central Asia feels a bit like traveling through time. The brutalist architecture and the monumental scale of the avenues and city squares show just how deeply the Soviet Union left its imprint, and the scarcity of Western-style shopping malls and food chains shows how slowly the local economy has grown since the Soviet collapse.

Bishkek also offers a window into the future of Chinese power. The five countries in Central Asia—Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan—stretch from the Tien Shan mountains to the Caspian Sea. They contain majestic mountains, fertile valleys and vast reserves of minerals, oil and gas. They are also central to China’s ambitious attempt to transform international trade so that land routes across Asia replace the sea routes between Europe and Asia.

Many Western observers think China’s rise to primacy in Central Asia, where Russia has traditionally dominated, is inevitable. Russia’s economy is stagnant, while the appeal of China’s vast market, its cheap consumer goods, and its multibillion-dollar commitment to build a rail and road network throughout the region all tend to pull these countries away from Moscow and toward Beijing.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/29/authorities-arrest-canadian-father-refers-trans-child-real-sex/

Last Wednesday, The Federalist reported that the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada, declared a father guilty of family violence for his polite refusal to refer to his daughter as a boy in private, and his repeated choice to affirm in media interviews that she is a girl.

At about the same time that story was published, the Supreme Court issued an additional, more heavy-handed “protection order” from the same ruling. The three-page document declares that the father, Clark*, will henceforth be subject to arrest, immediately and “without warrant” if any police officer has “reasonable” grounds to believe that he has in any way referred to his daughter as a girl in public or in private.

The new order further stipulated not only that Clark must not discuss his daughter’s sex or gender identity in public, but also that he cannot share court documents describing his own gag order. On the one hand, this demand may seem ironic, since it covers a publicly available court ruling. On the other hand, the injunction is so broad that it naturally includes the very document upon which it is written and that document–with its threats of immediate arrest without warrant–has not, as of yet, been made available on the court’s website.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/smearing-of-roger-scruton-analysis-of-the-interview-recording/

Regular readers may know that I have spent a certain amount of time in recent weeks exercised by a British hack called George Eaton and the left-wing magazine that he is deputy editor at (the New Statesman). I have no personal animus against Mr. Eaton, who I believe I only met briefly once, some years ago, in a radio studio. His editor at the New Statesman, Jason Cowley, has always seemed to me a good person and a good editor in charge of a magazine with some fine writing in it.

But three weeks ago Eaton flagged up an interview he had conducted with Sir Roger Scruton with claims which seemed suspect from the start. Eaton claimed that Scruton had made a succession of “outrageous” remarks during their interview. In addition to anti-Chinese racism, he claimed, Scruton had said awful things about Muslims, Jews, and various other groups of people. All of this had an effect. Believing that what the New Statesman’s deputy editor said was true, Scruton was widely defamed across the British media. He was then swiftly and ignominiously fired (without even being personally informed) from his position heading a government quango. This latter decision was taken by the relevant minister, James Brokenshire MP, within five hours of Eaton’s original tweets.

The malicious intent which Eaton brought to the interview was evidenced not just by the manner in which he announced its alleged contents, but in his posting on Instagram of a photo of himself swigging champagne from a bottle and saying that this was how he was celebrating the sacking of “homophobe and racist” Roger Scruton.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14137/turkish-prison-for-journalists

“The magnitude of these punishments, and the fact that the court failed to implement a related, binding ruling of the Constitutional Court, also raise fundamental questions about the ability of the [Turkish] judiciary to uphold the constitutionally protected right to freedom of expression.” — Harlem Désir, Representative on Freedom of the Media for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

“The court decision condemning journalists to aggravated life in prison for their work, without presenting substantial proof of their involvement in the coup attempt or ensuring a fair trial, critically threatens journalism and with it the remnants of freedom of expression and media freedom in Turkey.” — David Kaye, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression.

Sadly, such public denunciations have not worked. At least 144 intellectuals are languishing in Turkish jails for their work or political views.

Two recent criminal cases in Turkey underscore Ankara’s disturbing double standard when it comes to the concept of justice.

In February, three dissident Turkish journalists accused of “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order” — for their alleged “involvement in the 2016 coup attempt” against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — were sentenced to life in prison.

In March, Neil Christopher Prakash, an Australian ISIS terrorist caught in 2016 crossing the border into Turkey from Syria, was given a light sentence by the Kilis High Criminal Court.

Prakash, considered Australia’s “most wanted ISIS member,” was linked by the FBI to a failed plot to attack the Statue of Liberty in New York. In one of his many propaganda videos for ISIS, Prakash describes his conversion from Buddhism to Islam after a trip to Cambodia. He recounts attending meetings at a mosque and Islamic center in Melbourne. After reading the Koran and becoming a Muslim, he says, he traveled to Syria to join the jihad and the caliphate in 2013.

In 2015, the Australian government issued an arrest warrant for Prakash for membership in a terrorist organization and for his suspected involvement in a failed plot to behead a police officer on Anzac Day.

During his hearing on November 1, 2017 at the Kilis High Criminal Court — via video call from the Gaziantep prison, where he has been detained since 2016 — Prakash told the judges:

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14141/palestinians-own-goal

“We reject normalization and adopt the approach of resistance until the liberation of the entire Palestinian territory.” — Statement rejecting job offers, issued by Progressive Democratic Student Pole, affiliated with the radical PLO group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

“Resistance” is a term used by Palestinians to describe the “armed struggle” against Israel, which includes carrying out various forms of armed attacks against Israelis. When the students talk about the “liberation of the entire Palestinian territory,” they are actually saying that they want to destroy Israel because they do not believe in its right to exist.

A video of the protest at Bir Zeit University posted on social media shows dozens of angry students surrounding the companies’ representatives, and chanting: “Normalization [with Israel] is Treason.”

This is just another example of how the movement for boycotting Israel is causing damage to Palestinians. Perhaps the real motive of the people promoting these boycotts of Israel is not to help the Palestinians at all, but, like terrorist groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to destroy Israel.

On April 24, two Palestinian software development companies came to Bir Zeit University, north of the West Bank city of Ramallah, to offer jobs to Palestinian students. The companies were invited to campus as part of the university’s Annual Hiring Day — an event aimed at helping students find jobs with major Palestinian firms.

The event, however, turned ugly when students protested against the presence of the representatives of the two companies on campus. The protesters expelled the company representatives from the university premises after accusing them of engaging in “normalization” with Israel. In other words, the students attacked, humiliated and expelled Palestinian companies that came to offer them jobs at a time when the Palestinian economy is facing a crisis and thousands of young Palestinians remain unemployed.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/04/the-lessons-of-alberta-and-ontario/

Despite the massive increase in political correctness in Australia since I arrived here in 2005 there is nevertheless no doubt that we lag far behind my native Canada in the PC stakes. Okay, maybe today’s Jacinda Ardern Kiwis give the Canucks a run for their money when it comes to ‘don’t say anything, true or otherwise, that might give any group lest they be offended’. But I suspect there’s still enough South Island, sheep-farming, blunt-speaking types still around – a type I spent many enjoyable days with during my eleven years in New Zealand – that Canada would prevail in the PC Olympics.

It’s a little surprising, therefore, to observe what is happening in Canadian politics. Only some four years ago, when Justin Trudeau (trust fund son of the former lefty Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who managed to dodge serving in WWII) became the left-wing prime minister, the country’s provinces were almost all governed by left-wing premiers and parties. (Note: In Canada the Liberal Party is, and always has been, on the left side of politics, in some ways to the left of our Labor Party.) Out of Canada’s population of 37 million, some 33 million-odd inhabitants then lived in provinces governed by lefties. Today, not much more than a thousand days on from the mainstream media’s rapturous hysteria which greeted the victory of virtue-signalling, PC-revelling Trudeau fils, the number of those living in provinces run by the Liberals is down to under two million. The biggest province by far, Ontario, fell to a populist incarnation of the Tory Party led by Doug Ford (brother of the drug-taking Toronto mayor, the late Rob Ford). The Ontario Liberal Party was decimated, not even winning enough seats to retain official party status. Quebec also rid itself of the Libs. Last week, Prince Edward Island, the tiniest Canadian province and fictional home of Lucy Maude Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, tossed out the Libs in favour of a minority Conservative-Green Party grouping.