RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/claudiarosett/the-sky-high-stakes-in-hong-kong/

In Hong Kong’s huge protest over a proposed law that would allow extradition from the territory to mainland China, there is far more at stake than “confidence” in the integrity of Hong Kong’s legal system, or the health of Hong Kong’s economy — important though those both are. The real showdown going on in Hong Kong has long been between despotism and democracy, between tyranny and the Free World. And whether we, the free people of America, and our allies, choose to think of it this way or not, the reality is that the showdown now taking place in Hong Kong will shape our future as well.

For two reasons, the people of Hong Kong — in their efforts to stop this ruinous extradition law — deserve the strongest support we can muster. One reason is quite simply that it is the right thing to do, though in international politics that is often a backseat priority. The other reason– perhaps more compelling to those inclined to think of Hong Kong as a faraway foreign place and none of our business — is that it is a high-risk precedent for the Free World to abandon its own. It invites aggression by the likes of China (and Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc.) against us and our allies. Which is what it will boil down to, if the U.S., the U.K. and other democratic powers do not find some way to buttress the demands of Hong Kong’s demonstrators. It is vital that Washington persuade Beijing and its satrap in Hong Kong, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, that it would be wise to scrap this proposed law, and moronic –or at least astoundingly expensive — to push it through.

Please, make no mistake. Officially Hong Kong these days may be a “Special Autonomous Region” of the “People’s Republic” of China, destined under treaty to fall entirely under Beijing’s jackboot in 2047. But in spirit, in character, in history, in the inheritance of British rule of law, and for another full 28 years according to China’s promise of “One Country, Two Systems,” Hong Kong is one of our own, still part of the Free World. If we do not stand up for its people, China’s rulers will all too likely read that abandonment as one more sign of Western weakness, one more invitation to commit the next act of aggression.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/06/12/president-xis-strongman-tactics-have-severely-backfired-hong/

Hong Kong’s reunification with the mainland looks increasingly problematic

This week’s scenes from Hong Kong are eerily reminiscent of another battle for Chinese democracy, one that took place just 30 years ago in Beijing. While it’s true that the clashes between Hong Kong’s protesters and the Hong Kong police have been nowhere as violent as that dished out by the People’s Liberation Army that warm June evening in 1989, the use of tear gas and rubber bullets against the crowds are a troubling sign.

From one perspective, this is just a battle between the Hong Kong government and its people over an extradition law, which might make it possible for people in the city to be extradited to the mainland. 

Seen from another perspective, however, it’s a single battle in the war between closed, authoritarian states and open, democratic ones – a conflict between those who believe that a single party should be the arbiter of law, of social taste, of economic life, of education, and even, of thought – and those who believe that it is down to the individual to decide on much of this, and that dignity and happiness lay in the latter – not the former.

As one Hong Kong-watcher wrote this week, “It’s not easy to turn a million prosperous people into political dissidents. But that’s what China might have pulled off in Hong Kong.” Given the fact that Hong Kong’s approval rates for Chinese rule in 1998 were as high as 60 per cent, it is astonishing to think how Beijing has mismanaged the former British colony.

On the 20th anniversary of the handover, just two years ago, less than 3.1 per cent of Hong Kong youth identified as Chinese, while a University of Hong Kong poll found that less than 40 per cent of the city’s residents were satisfied with Chinese rule. It is astonishing, and tragic.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-extradition/hong-kong-police-fire-rubber-bullets-as-extradition-bill-protests-turn-to-chaos-idUSKCN1TC1WR

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at demonstrators who threw plastic bottles on Wednesday as protests against an extradition bill that would allow people to be sent to mainland China for trial descended into violent chaos.

Tens of thousands of protesters had gathered peacefully outside the Chinese-ruled city’s legislature before tempers flared, some charging police with umbrellas.

Police warned them back, saying: “We will use force.”

Ambulances sped toward the protest area as panic spread through the crowd, with many people trying to flee the stinging tear gas, according to a Reuters witness. More than 10 people were wounded in the clashes, Cable TV reported.

Police used pepper spray, tear gas and batons to force the crowds back. Some shops put up their shutters at the nearby IFC, one of Hong Kong’s tallest buildings.

Civil Human Rights Front, which organized a protest on Sunday that it estimated saw more than a million people take to the streets in protest against the extradition bill, accused police of using unnecessary violence.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14366/arabs-nightmare-absorbing-palestinians

Lebanon says it fully supports the Palestinians in their fight against Israel — but would like to see them leave the country as soon as possible.

This is the modern-day version of Arab “solidarity” with their Palestinian brothers: discrimination and apartheid — no jobs, no citizenship, no health care and no social services.

Nor do Palestinian leaders give a damn about the welfare of their people. If they did, it would be hard to justify their impressive efforts to foil an economic conference whose main goal is to lift their people out of the economic hell these very leaders created and vigorously maintain.

The Lebanese are worried that a new law for the management of Palestinian refugee camps will pave the way for the “resettlement” of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon. The prospect of “resettling” Palestinians is a nightmare that has been haunting the Lebanese for decades.

Like most Arab countries, Lebanon has long treated Palestinians as second-class citizens. It has been depriving them of basic rights, including citizenship, employment, heath care, education, social services and property ownership. The vast majority of the 450,000 Palestinians living in Lebanon do not have Lebanese citizenship.

In 2001, the Lebanese Parliament passed a law prohibiting Palestinians from owning property, and Lebanese law also restricts their ability to work in as many as 20 professions. Lebanon continues to ignore calls by various human rights groups to the Lebanese authorities to end discrimination against Palestinians.

A 2007 report by Amnesty International noted:

“We urge the Lebanese to take immediate measures to eliminate all forms of discrimination against Palestinian refugees in order to enable them to exercise their economic, social and cultural rights on the same basis as the rest of the population of Lebanon. Continuing restrictions which deny Palestinian refugees access to their rights to work, education and adequate housing and health are wholly unjustified and should be lifted without further procrastination or delay.”

Instead of improving the living conditions of the Palestinians, the Lebanese seem to be brainstorming on how to rid themselves of their unwelcome Arab brothers.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14359/turkey-attacks-journalists

“We sincerely hope that, in the coming weeks… journalists across the country will be able to disseminate news and information without fear of retaliation…. Attacks like those against Demirağ and Özyol, if left unpunished, will have a serious chilling effect on the country’s journalists and further strengthen a climate of fear, which seriously hinders Turkey’s credibility as a democracy…” — Letter sent by The International Press Institute along with 20 other press freedom and freedom of expression organizations, to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, May 16, 2019.

Less than a week after that letter was sent, Ergin Çevik, the editor-in chief of the Güney Haberci news site, was badly beaten in Antalya by three assailants. Those detained in relation with the attack were released on probation.

On May 24, Hakan Denizli, founder of the Adana-based daily, Egemen, was the victim of an armed assault, which landed him in intensive care. On May 26, Sabahattin Önkibar, a columnist for the Odatv news site, was beaten while on his way home from work. Önkibar filed a complaint, yet the four suspects who were detained by police were subsequently released.

Journalists also face the risk of losing their jobs if the government does not approve of their reporting.

A new trend of physically attacking journalists has been emerging in Turkey. The country has already incarcerated of at least 146 members of the media, who are in prison serving sentences or are in pre-trial detention. A number of recent assaults not only illustrate this trend, but suggest approval for it on the part of Turkish authorities.

The first victim of this type of violence was Yavuz Selim Demirağ, a columnist for the Yeni Çağ daily, who was attacked in front of his house in Ankara on May 10 by a group of assailants with baseball bats.

Turkey’s Journalists’ Association (TGC) immediately issued a statement calling for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, and laying blame for the attack on the atmosphere created by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“The constant targeting of newspapers and journalists by politicians having difficulty embracing freedom of the press, thought and expression plays a major role in such attacks,” the TGC statement read.

As if to vindicate the statement, the six suspects arrested and taken into custody for the assault on Demirağ were shortly released on the grounds that “Demirağ had not been at risk of death.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/06/24/land-and-demagogy-in-africa/

An author’s up-close view of how disregarding property rights entrenches misery

In starting to confiscate land from white farmers without compensation, the South African government is acting in one of Africa’s most destructive patterns. But to make that case I need the testimony of a most special inside-outsider, who died a number of years ago.

My friend John Broom, white and British-born, was a partner in the Zimbabwean branch of Deloitte & Touche, and then a long-term exile to South Africa and the finance director of the Quaker Peace Center. In 2000, shortly after the Zimbabwean farm invasions began, he nudged me into visiting his modest apartment in a Cape Town suburb: He had things he needed to say to me. Arriving, I found he had a small album lying ready on a table. It was a folder for business cards, more than a hundred of them from the Eighties, and he invited me to page through while he explained what this and that card represented.

Some of the businesses would have been small and ordinary — a picture-framing service and a gift shop, for example. The cards of individuals whose lines of work I couldn’t have identified on my own proved far more interesting. This guy, said John, was an engineer overseas, an expert in processing gold. He explained that, as a rule, Africa controlled too few stages in the addition of value to the raw commodities it produced. Gold, a big part of this natural wealth, was a painful example. Why couldn’t there be a broad-based jewelry trade in a place like Zimbabwe?

John was one of those people who know everybody’s business. He was talking to me because he knew I was stringing for a South African investigative magazine that I found too politically correct (it even supported President Thabo Mbeki in his AIDS denial) and also publishing in conservative journals back in the States. I was going to listen to him about the essential post-liberation role of capitalism.

About the gold processor, God alone knows how John had connected the dots over thousands of miles, but the 1979 end of the black–white civil conflict in Rhodesia, which turned it into liberated Zimbabwe and saw the lifting of international sanctions, coincided with the retirement of this man, whose wife wanted him out of the kitchen. He had agreed to set up shop in Zimbabwe if John would write him the business plan and obtain a license from the new government.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2019/06/dirty-predatory-reptilian-vile-wicked.html

Gee! Nobody’s perfect, but that’s a bit thick!

It’s what this devastatingly handsome young fella thinks of “the enemies” of Iran, and he lists those enemies in ascending order of, well, all those things, “the Zionists” (now, ain’t that a surprise?) being the worst of all.To quote the translator and uploader, Memri.org:

‘Ayatollah Alireza Ebadi, Khamenei’s representative in the Iranian city of Birjand, said in a May 31, 2019 Friday sermon that aired on Khorasan Jonoobi TV (Iran) that Iran’s “impure and evil” enemy are a “fusion” of Jews and polytheists, and he described it as a dirty, predatory, reptilian, satanic, vile, and wicked “crossbreed of dogs and wolves” that has “pounced on the convoy of humanity.”
 He said that the U.S. was built by oppressive Europeans on the graves of 80 million indigenous people, but that the Zionists are the worst of Iran’s enemies.
 Ayatollah Ebadi then told a story about a doctor who wanted to cure himself of feeling connected to the village fool, and Ebadi said that, likewise, anyone who is attached to the West and its “dirty, anti-human, liberal-democratic ideology that has destroyed the world” should cure themselves.’

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oafFiOonf4Y)

From the distracted, embarrassed looks on some of the listeners’ faces, I’d wager that not everyone takes what he’s saying too seriously …

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/11/rise-fall-oxfam-billion-pound-charity-mired-sex-scandal/

“”Controversies would follow. For example, Scarlett Johansson, the Hollywood actress, quit as an Oxfam ambassador in a row over her endorsement of an Israeli company operating in the West Bank. She had, said the actress, a “fundamental difference of opinion” with the charity.”

The mixed bag of academics, Quakers and general do-gooders who had gathered inside the Old Library at the University Church in Oxford on October 5 1942 had wanted to help the people of Greece.

The country, occupied by the Nazis and subjected to an Allied naval blockade, was suffering a catastrophic famine. From humble origins – the meeting was chaired by the local vicar Dick Milford – a £1 billion a year international aid empire would be born; an empire whose tentacles stretch into politics, entertainment and trade and which grew so large it covered up a sex scandal that, when it finally became public, almost brought it down.

The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, first begun almost 77 years ago and later shortened to the nifty moniker Oxfam, is now far more than just a famine relief charity. Oxfam is a brand. And now a damaged one.

Its first shop at 17 Broad Street in Oxford, set up in 1948 also doubled up as its headquarters. Now Oxfam operates almost 750 shops in the UK – by comparison Waitrose runs half that number of outlets – that includes not only regular charity stores but specialist bookshops and furniture stores and even boutiques selling bridal wear.

Oxfam puts on its own music festival – called Oxjam – and even provides stewarding for Glastonbury. In the 1960s, Oxfam rolled out its first international franchise to Canada and there are now 19 Oxfam ‘confederations’ working in 90 countries worldwide.

The charity, under the 24-year stewardship of Leslie Kirkley, grew in the 1950s from a “local charity to a world-renowned aid agency”.  In the late 1970s Oxfam effectively got political, launching its first campaigns’ department and followed that with reports on topics that included “Bitter Pills”, which examined the relationship between pharmaceutical companies and poverty.

Controversies would follow. For example, Scarlett Johansson, the Hollywood actress, quit as an Oxfam ambassador in a row over her endorsement of an Israeli company operating in the West Bank. She had, said the actress, a “fundamental difference of opinion” with the charity.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/10/to-beat-china-recognize-taiwan/

The Sino-American trade war is only just beginning. Initial reports show that the American side is faring better than the Chinese, but these reports are hardly conclusive. As David P. Goldman has assessed, China still has a great deal of maneuvering room with which to bludgeon the United States.

What Washington needs in its ongoing trade war is greater leverage. And, that leverage will not be found in the economic realm.

True leverage would keep China’s leadership off-balance. To that end, the United States should recognize Taiwan’s independence.

Beijing has long insisted that Taiwan is part of China and that the two “will be united” . . . someday. Chinese President Xi Jinping, moreover, won’t rule out the use of force in achieving this long-standing aim. Beijing believes it is a fait accompli that Taiwan will be returned to Chinese rule just as the British ultimately gave up prosperous Hong Kong. And once Taiwan is brought under its dominion, China will have secured its maritime border.

One China, Two Systems?
The United States, for its part, has for 40 years tried to thread the needle between appeasing China and backing Taiwan’s independence in all but name.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14306/turkey-politics-violence

At the heart of the matter is a culture that programs most less-educated masses (and in Turkey average schooling is 6.5 years) into a) converting the “other” and, if that is not possible, b) physically hurting the “other.” A deep societal polarization since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002 has widened to frightening levels.
After opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was taken to a safehouse, members of the mob surrounded it and chanted, “Let’s burn down the house!”
Apparently each unpunished case of political violence committed on behalf of the dominant state ideology (Islamism) and its sacrosanct leader (Erdoğan) encourages the next. In May, a journalist critical of Erdoğan’s government and its nationalist allies was hospitalized after being attacked outside his home.

In most civilized countries, citizens go to the ballot box on election day — be it parliamentary, presidential or municipal — cast their votes, go home to watch news reporting the results and go to work the next day, some happy, some disappointed, to live in peace until the elections. Not in Turkey, where any political race looks more like warfare than simple democratic competition.

One reason is the dominance of identity politics in the country that has its roots deep in the 1950s, when Turkey evolved into multi-party politics. The fighting between “us” and “them” goes on since then. At the heart of the matter is a culture that programs most less-educated masses (and in Turkey average schooling is 6.5 years) into a) converting the “other” and, if that is not possible, b) physically hurting the “other.” A deep societal polarization since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002 has widened to frightening levels.

None of the incidents that opposition journalists are facing today is a coincidence. In September 2015, for instance, an angry group of AKP fans attacked the editorial headquarters of Hürriyet, Turkey’s largest newspaper, at that time an opposition media company. Smashing the building’s windows with sticks and stones, the crowd chanted: “Allah-u aqbar” (“God is great!”) as if they were in a religious war. In fact, they thought they were in one because Hürriyet at that time was a secular newspaper critical of Erdoğan. For a long time, security forces watched the incidents with only one police team. The crowd took down the flag of the Doğan Group (which then owned Hürriyet) and burned it. After repeated demands, extra police were dispatched. The AKP Istanbul deputy and the head of the AKP youth branch, Abdürrahim Boynukalın, was in the crowd. He announced on his Twitter account, “We are protesting false news in front of Hürriyet and we are reciting the Quran for our martyrs.” It was a jihad: attacking a newspaper…