RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://premium.telegraph.co.uk/newsletter/article4/the-tragedy-of-venezuela-shows

In 2014, John McDonnell, now Labour’s shadow chancellor, said that the socialist regime in Venezuela showed “the contrast between capitalism in crisis and socialism in action”.

In a way he never intended, he has turned out to be right. For the people of that country are now enduring a situation worse than any crisis of capitalism, anywhere in the world, at any time in the last 100 years. Their economy has shrunk by at least half – far worse than the Great Depression or the recent economic woes of Greece.

Three million people have fled the country. Inflation, having reached 1.7 million per cent, has made money worthless. Basic commodities are scarce and hardship widespread. More than half the population are now living in extreme poverty.

Yes, this is socialism in action. This is what happens when you take a promising nation, rich in natural resources and human talent, and subject it to nationalisation, excessive spending, state control of prices and the discouraging of enterprise and foreign investment. These were the policies of the egotistical Hugo Chavez, and his utterly corrupt and tyrannical successor, Nicolas Maduro.

This catastrophic approach was praised endlessly by the current leadership of the Labour Party. Diane Abbott said “it shows another way is possible”.

As for Jeremy Corbyn, he appeared on every possible platform to praise Chavez and support Maduro. On the death of Chavez in 2013, he went out of his way to laud his “inspiring” leadership and to say: “Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared”.

In practice, Chavez was one of the world’s most outstanding hypocrites, amassing a fortune estimated at a billion dollars while campaigning as a friend of the poor. Now that most people in Venezuela are desperate for change, there are three charges that can be levelled against Corbyn, McDonnell, Abbott and their acolytes.

The first is that their economic beliefs are verging on madness – if they don’t understand that trying to control the prices of everything in the shops soon leads to severe shortages of everything from food to toilet paper, then their understanding of economics is near zero. A set of policies they were happy to support has led to countless starving people searching for food among the rubbish piled high in the streets. Yet these are the people who would be running our economy if Labour wins the next election.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/280121/henryk-broder-in-the-lions-den
When Germany’s most famous Jewish journalist chose to address a party tied to his country’s far right, it wasn’t the groveling performance some have claimed but a brave challenge

“When does a Jew have the opportunity to appear in a room full of Nazis, neo-Nazis, crypto-Nazis and para-Nazis?” said the German-Jewish writer Henryk Broder, speaking in Germany’s Bundestag to the parliamentary caucus of the right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) on Jan. 19. “Many of you may never have seen a living Jew in the flesh, and are waiting for the room to fill up with the stink of garlic and sulphur” Broder told his audience, confronting the AfD’s members of parliament in the best tradition of Jewish irony and setting in relief Germany’s great political dilemma: Is it possible to speak of a German national revival without apologizing for the unspeakable crimes of German nationalism in the past?

“It would be good if there weren’t a shitstorm” Broder said of his speech to the AfD, “and if there is one, even better.” At the eye of the storm, such as it was in the American press, was Clemens Heni’srecent denunciation in this publication, lambasting Broder for not only speaking to, but embracing, “the closest thing contemporary Germany has to a Nazi Party.” Heni wrote, “Broder has now openly embraced the AfD and just days after the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution began an investigation into whether the party poses a serious threat to the German constitution and society.”

I do not know whether Heni read Broder’s text (which can be found here and followed with Google translate), but he surely misrepresented it by omission. Broder gave the AfD the harshest critique it had ever received in the Bundestag. Heni found it “strange and alarming, then, when a photo appeared last week showing Broder being hugged by a smiling Alice Weidel, co-chair of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.” But he did not report that Broder did not pose for the photo—Weidel came in back of him and put her arms over his shoulders—and that Broder apologized for the photo in Die Welt.

Broder writes a column for Die Welt, a right-of-center broadsheet that is most sympathetic to Israel among Germany’s major press, and appears regularly on German news shows. As Heni allows, he is one of the country’s most vocal defenders of the Jewish state. I do not know him personally, but I would like to shake his hand and congratulate him for a brilliant defense of Judaism “in the den of the brown-tufted lion, in the viper’s pit of reaction, in the dark room of history,” as he put it.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/02/labour-and-the-banality-of-anti-semitism/

Is there a name for the moment something objectionable becomes so mainstream that those responsible can solemnly lament it as a fact of life? I propose that we call it the Formby Point. This week, Labour’s general secretary Jennie Formby reportedly told a parliamentary party meeting that it was ‘impossible to eradicate anti-Semitism and it would be dishonest to claim to be able to do so’. Note the sly wording, the subtle distancing; you can almost hear the affected sigh of resignation. The woman who runs an institutionally racist party that refuses to challenge its institutional racism can, with a straight face, regret the inevitability of racism.

As a matter of fact, it is possible to eradicate anti-Semitism from a membership-based organisation. You just revoke the membership of all the anti-Semites. Of course, Formby can’t do this because it would mean sacrificing a tidy sum in monthly subs and having to find a new leader. In a broader sense, no, you can’t eliminate Jew-hatred from the general population but nor can you fully be rid of inequality or poverty or unemployment. That doesn’t mean you don’t try. There used to be an entire political party dedicated to just this proposition.

The Formby Point allows Labour to abdicate responsibility for its own anti-Semitism and for its role in replenishing the reserves of anti-Semitism in the world at large. Here too we have arrived at a tipping point. Anti-Semitism was kept at bay in the decades after the Holocaust. As a result it was channeled through anti-Zionism (the denial of Jewish national rights) and anti-Israelism (the political stigmatisation of the Jewish state). This has been the uneasy truce for the last few decades, tolerated even as a steady growth in anti-Semitism was recorded because it was most loudly expressed as hatred of Israel. (Israel enjoys a unique position as both the dark heart of the international Zionist conspiracy and imposter state that has nothing to do with Jews. It’s the only country you can despise without ever being accused of xenophobia.)

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13659/britain-labour-party-israel

Why are Labour members not speaking out loud about the need to boycott or overthrow such a regime as Iran, but instead focus all their venom on Israel, a country they demonize on wholly false grounds, especially considering the full IHRA definition of anti-Semitism which Labour has technically adopted — while reserving the right, however, to criticize Israel as an apartheid or Nazi state?

Whatever its faults, Israel is a utopia for human rights that many self-congratulatory moralists identify as their personal preserve. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country to uphold all the rights the Labour Party claims to hold precious. Yet, Israel is the only country in the world that the Labour party reserves for its censure, while other countries are ignored, mildly rebuked or even cosied up to.

In reality, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas have largely governed their own people since 1994, following the signing of the Oslo Accords. The Palestinians, however, continue to go through inconceivable suffering due to the atrocious governance by their own often corrupt and manipulative leaders. They continue to blame Israel and the Jews — preferable, apparently, to blaming themselves.

“Victimization is the pain-orientated version of privilege. If it suffices to call oneself oppressed in order to be in the right, everyone will fight to occupy that slot.” — Pascal Bruckner, An Imaginary Racism: Islamophobia and Guilt.

The 2018 annual conference of Britain’s Labour Party proved that, however strong the criticism, and however embarrassing the scandal, there are many in England who will get on with their top priority: slandering and libelling one of the world’s most outstanding countries, Israel. At the same time, they seem never to tire of singing the praises of the Palestinians, regardless of the savagery with which they govern their own people.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-iran-terror-comments-draw-ire-in-tehran-11549456108

Iran hit back at President Trump’s State of the Union address in which he called Tehran the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, saying the U.S. has a history of backing brutal regimes in the Middle East.

“U.S. hostility has led it to support butchers & extremists, who’ve only brought ruin to our region,” Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif tweeted Wednesday.

Responding to Mr. Trump’s allegations that Iran has threatened genocide against the Jewish people, Mr. Zarif said that all Iranians, including Jewish compatriots, were commemorating 40 years of progress despite U.S. pressure.

The comments were the latest in a string of rhetorical attacks from Iranian officials using the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution on Feb. 11 to attack the U.S. for perceived aggression and imperialism around the world.

The 1979 Iranian revolution, which toppled the authoritarian regime of the U.S.-backed shah, began four decades of hostility between Tehran and Washington. To the U.S., countering Iranian influence remains a primary objective of its presence in the Middle East.

In his State of the Union address, Mr. Trump also noted that his withdrawal last year from the multination nuclear pact with Iran and the subsequent imposition of sanctions were to ensure Tehran never acquired nuclear weapons.

“We will not avert our eyes from a regime that chants death to America and threatens genocide against the Jewish people,” Mr. Trump said during the address to U.S. lawmakers.

And in an interview with CBS on Sunday, Mr. Trump said he wanted to keep U.S. troops in Iraq, who are there to fight Islamic State, “because I want to be able to watch Iran.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://quillette.com/2019/02/06/understanding

On January 15, and well into the morning of the next day, terrorists affiliated with the Somali Jihadi group Al Shabab forced their way into an upscale Nairobi hotel and business centre, killing 21 innocent civilians. Kenyan authorities, with some help from Western allies, killed some of the terrorists and captured the rest. Al Shabab justified the attack by denouncing the Kenyan government’s participation with African Union forces in Somalia, which has been in a state of civil warfare since the early 1990s.

I had driven by the targeted complex a couple of days before the attack, and once lived in this neighbourhood back when Kenya was my permanent home. On this visit to the country, I’ve noticed that—notwithstanding January’s terrible tragedy—tourism is booming, agriculture is bountiful and the Kenyan elite are benefiting from the massive Chinese investments that have transformed the landscape. The overall degree of improvement depends on which expert you believe. But the plethora of expensive cars that now jam the streets of Nairobi, and the building boom on display in many parts of the city, do suggest a surging economy.

Anyone who knows the history and tribal dynamics of East Africa and the Horn will understand that even if the Kenyan government pulled all its troops out of Somalia, Al Shabab likely would still try its best to destabilize this country. I outlined the reasons for this decades ago, when I first briefed visiting Canadian and U.S. military personnel here in Nairobi. Many of the things I told them remain as true now as they were then. That’s because the most important factors at play are rooted in history, not in recent geopolitical developments.

Specifically: Many modern problems in the area are rooted in the Indian Ocean slave trade—a scourge that was distinct from the better known slave trade that preyed on West Africa. In the eastern part of the continent, there was little to no European involvement. The practice was indigenous and ancient, and lasted more than a thousand years.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272756/swedens-fallacious-feminism-bruce-bawer

If you ever want to get a good hearty dose of global-elite received opinion on any imaginable topic, head straight for the website of the magazine Foreign Policy. With recent articles bearing the bylines of Davos-type luminaries like Fareed Zakaria (CNN’s serial plagiarist and reliable purveyor of the blindingly obvious), Christine Lagarde (doyenne of the International Monetary Fund), and any number of Council on Foreign Relations hotshots, FP – whose annual list of “Top 100 Global Thinkers” is routinely topped by the likes of Angela Merkel, Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman, and both Bill and Hillary Clinton – isn’t a place to seek out original thoughts or fresh ideas, but is, rather, the #1 go-to spot for strident asseverations of current left-liberal orthodoxy.

Case in point: a January 30 article by Rachel Vogelstein and Alexandra Bro (both of the CFR) entitled “Sweden’s Feminist Foreign Policy, Long May It Reign.” Noting the recent return to office of Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, Vogelstein and Bro advised that “Lofven should ensure that one of Sweden’s most contentious governing strategies remains firmly in place: its feminist foreign policy.” What is meant by “feminist foreign policy,” they explained, is that Sweden places “the promotion of gender equality and women’s rights at the center of its diplomatic agenda.” As an example, they cited Sweden’s insistence “on women’s participation in critical Security Council debates” and, ultimately, its success at “ensuring gender parity among those providing input” into such UN deliberations.

Sweden’s “feminist foreign policy” was introduced in 2014, and is only one aspect of what Sweden’s leaders describe as a comprehensive commitment to women’s equality. On the Swedish government’s official website, you can read the immodest claim that “Sweden has the first feminist government in the world.” An official handbook about the “feminist foreign policy” characterizes it as a response to the “discrimination and systematic subordination” confronting “women and girls around the world.” Though remarkably short on specifics, the handbook (which goes on for 111 pages) is long on proud references to the relentless promotion of the policy via speeches, forums, conferences, studies, training sessions, photo exhibitions, roundtable discussions, social-media memes and hashtags, media interviews, glossy brochures (such as the handbook itself), Power Point presentations, “sharing experiences,” and the like.

www.standpointmag.co.uk/february-2019-features-giles-udy-jeremy-corbyn-britain-road-to-socialism

Extracts (totalling 1,216 words) from an article (3,500 words):

Dramatis personae

As the 2003 Iraq war loomed, the fractious British Left, in a rare moment of unity, formed the Stop the War Coalition and brought a million people out on the streets. Few of the unwitting participants knew that the march’s organisers’ ultimate goal was the overthrow of parliamentary democracy; none could have guessed that, 15 years later, the movement’s first two leaders, the British Communist Party member Andrew Murray and left-wing activist Jeremy Corbyn, would be within reach of forming the first communist government in British history, Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, Murray appointed as his “Special Adviser”.

The crash of 2007 shook Western confidence still further. Left-wing commentators such as Guardian journalist Seumas Milne, an old communist comrade of Murray’s, openly voiced nostalgia for the “huge social benefits” enjoyed under Soviet communism in the USSR and Eastern Bloc. Milne is now Corbyn’s Director of Strategy and Communications.

In 1920 Lenin urged British communists to enter the Labour Party to subvert it from within. In 1936, Trotsky told his followers to do the same, but successive generations of Labour leaders resisted this “entryism”, most famously in Neil Kinnock’s 1980s campaign against the Trotskyite group Militant. Two young members of a group which tried to thwart Kinnock’s campaign were Corbyn and Jon Lansman, later the founder of Momentum. That failure, reinforced by Tony Blair’s New Labour reforms, convinced many leftists that the only option left was bring the government down by extra-parliamentary action. This was the context when John McDonnell, now Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor, made his call for “insurrection”, a general strike and street protests in 2013.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-nightmare-of-human-organ-harvesting-in-china-11549411056

China stands accused of a gruesome trade in human organs. It’s difficult to prove, because the victims’ bodies are disposed of and the only witnesses are the doctors, police and prison guards involved. Even so, the evidence supports a damning verdict.

The charge is that many prisoners of conscience—Falun Gong members, Uighur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists and “underground” Christians—have been subjected to medical testing and had their organs forcibly removed. Those organs have fed an enormous trade in organ transplants.

Patients in China—including foreigners—are promised matching organs within days. Former Canadian politician and prosecutor David Kilgour, lawyer David Matas, American journalist Ethan Gutmann and a team of researchers have confirmed this by posing to Chinese hospitals as patients. Dr. Huang Jiefu, China’s former vice minister for health and chairman of its organ-transplant committee, ordered two spare livers as backups for a 2005 medical operation. They were delivered the next morning. In most advanced Western countries, patients wait months or even years for transplants.

In 2016 Messrs. Kilgour, Matas and Gutmann published a report, “Bloody Harvest/the Slaughter: An Update,” building on research that dates back to 2006. In this latest version, the authors estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 organs are transplanted each year in Chinese hospitals.

Where are the organs coming from? China claims it has the “largest voluntary organ donation system in Asia” and stopped using prisoners in 2015. But the country has no tradition of voluntary organ donation. CONTINUE AT SITE