RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019

By the time you read this, you will know whether Brexit has or has not happened. And if it has not—either through postponement or because Theresa May’s Brexit-in-Name-Only traps Britain under EU control indefinitely—then Brexit may never happen. It may seem odd to argue therefore that even so Brexit could be one of two events this spring—the other being EU elections in May—likely to accelerate Europe’s drift towards turmoil.

The reason is that frustrating Brexit would almost certainly stimulate more hostility and conflict than simply getting on with it. Contrary to what Remainers claim, there wasn’t much of either during the referendum campaign and the first year afterwards. The driving force of Euroscepticism was the feeling that though the EU’s supranational institutions may have suited continental Europe, they were too remote, bureaucratic and undemocratic to suit the Brits. Most Eurosceptics admired much of what the EU had achieved and liked changes such as the right to live throughout Europe.

That relaxed patriotism began to change to anger in response to the hostile remarks about Britain to which EU leaders gave vent in the last year. If the country is now kept inside EU structures against its democratic will, powerful anti-EU political sentiment will grow in British politics. It would be directed not only against the EU but also against those who have blocked or reversed Brexit. Brexit betrayed would dominate UK politics indefinitely.

Thus the Brexit paradox (one of many). Reversing Brexit was intended to restore stability, but in fact it would aggravate instability. Something similar can be foreseen for the European elections.

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/turkeys-voters-stun-erdogan-stoking-his-ire/90635/

Turkish voters punished their ruling party in municipal elections over the weekend. That could be a good omen for America — unless the strategically crucial country has already drifted too far from Washington.

For the first time in a quarter-century, parties opposing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan scored major victories in local elections. Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party, or AKP, lost eight major cities to secularist candidates. Especially stinging for the AKP were losses in the capital, ­Ankara, and in Istanbul, the country’s economic nerve center.

The Istanbul mayoralty was where Mr. Erdogan in 1994 launched his meteoric political career, one that has brought middle-class prosperity to millions of Turks — but at the price of the country’s democratic institutions and Western alliances.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-s-may-to-seek-talks-with-labour-further-brexit-extension-11554226292

LONDON—British Prime Minister Theresa May made an about-face in her Brexit strategy Tuesday by saying she would pursue a different deal with the opposition Labour Party, an approach that could keep the country more closely bound to the European Union than she previously envisioned.

Following a marathon seven-hour cabinet meeting, Mrs. May outlined plans to request a short extension of Brexit negotiations, ideally no longer than to May 22, to give the government time to hammer out an agreement with Labour and avoid leaving the bloc without a deal to smooth the U.K.’s exit.

“It requires national unity to deliver the national interest,” she said during a televised speech from inside her Downing Street residence.

The plan, which will likely lead to a softening of her Brexit deal, marks a last-hour roll of the dice for Mrs. May as she tries to find a path out of the Brexit logjam that has dominated her tenure.

After months of trying to appease euroskeptics in her Conservative Party, Mrs. May is now looking to lure opposition lawmakers instead. The Labour Party has pushed for the U.K. to remain in a customs union with the EU, a significantly different vision for Brexit than Mrs. May has espoused.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-rebuke-for-turkeys-strongman-11554247334

After President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan easily won re-election amid a currency and debt crisis last year, it seemed nothing could loosen his grip on Turkish politics. The results of Sunday’s local elections are welcome evidence that the strongman isn’t invincible.

Mr. Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) received perhaps its biggest rebuke since coming to power in 2002. Preliminary results show AKP controlling 39 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, down from 48. More significant, the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) won the mayoral election in the capital city Ankara. The opposition also leads a tight race in Istanbul, where Mr. Erdoğan launched his political career as mayor in 1994.

An AKP-led alliance still won about 52% of the overall vote, while the biggest opposition coalition trailed with some 38%. But this is an embarrassment for the president who held dozens of rallies and effectively made the local elections a referendum on his rule.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13995/china-third-reich

China’s ruler, Xi Jinping, demands that the five recognized religions — official recognition is a control mechanism — “Sinicize.” The Chinese, as a part of this ruthless and relentless effort, are destroying mosques and churches, forcing devout Muslims to drink alcohol and eat pork, inserting Han officials to live in Muslim homes, and ending religious instruction for minors.

In recent years, there have been many ugly portrayals of Africans in Chinese media, and although the skit last year was not the worst, it was striking because the main state broadcaster, by airing it to about 800 million viewers, made it clear Chinese officials think of Africans as both objects of derision and subhuman.

Concentration camps, racism, eugenics, ambitions of world domination. Sound familiar?

There is a new Third Reich, and it is China.

More than a million people, for no reason other than their ethnicity or religion, are held in concentration camps in what Beijing calls the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and what traditional inhabitants of the area, the Uighurs, say is East Turkestan. In addition to Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs are also held in these facilities.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/turkey-ukraine-and-israel-an-electoral-comparison/

Israelis across the political spectrum have been talking a lot lately about “fearing” the results of the April 9 elections. This is not only preposterous when contrasted with the situation in Turkey, but also reeks of ingratitude towards Israeli democracy.

Ahead of next week’s Knesset elections, Israelis disgusted with the ugliness of the current campaign would do well to consider the results of Sunday’s ballots in Turkey and Ukraine.

Let’s began with the latter, as a bit of comic relief—in this case, literally—is always welcome. Yes, the person who garnered the majority of votes in Ukraine’s presidential election is comedic actor Volodymyr Zelensky, the star of a popular TV series about a schoolteacher who becomes president as a result of a rant against corruption that goes viral on YouTube. Apparently, his performance on “Servant of the People” was so convincing that it caused the public to want him in the role for real.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13984/christchurch-murders-accomplices

Two days before the tribute to the victims and the broadcasting of the call to prayer, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern invited an imam to read the Koranic verses of Surah al Baqarah before the opening of a parliamentary session. Surah al Baqarah speaks of “those who are killed in the way of Allah” and evokes a “great punishment” for “those who disbelieve”. Do New Zealanders really deserve a great punishment because an Australian came to New Zealand and committed a mass murderer?

In Saudi Arabia, the good news is that in 2018, a few laws were changed to allow women to drive. The bad news is that women are still not allowed to travel, get married or divorced, file a police report, or even leave prison, without the permission of a male guardian. If they try to flee, they risk being arrested or killed. In November, “dozens” of activists involved in the “right to drive” campaign were arrested and are currently on trial. Apple and Google, in their app stores, offer a Saudi Arabian government app that “allows Saudi men to track women under their sponsorship.”

The real accomplices of Christchurch mass murderer are not those who sounded the alarm about Muslim immigration to the West, but those in the West who embrace this passive submission, weakness and cultural suicide and refuse to see the potential storms ahead.

The Christchurch massacre — in which dozens of innocents were slaughtered in cold blood because of their religion, as they were assembled to pray — was a despicable, indefensible act. The murderer, Brenton Tarrant, is a criminal. The manifesto text he left to justify his act is in no way a justification.

The reactions that followed were marked by legitimate indignation. Unfortunately, the attack was also used to launch a campaign both dangerous and treacherous.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/legacy-of-an-african-genocide-11554160620

This poor country once brutally occupied by Belgium has had no surcease in conflict-ignored by the so called African-American legislators in Congress who have shown no interest in the turmoil in Africa but choose rather to spend their days criticizing Israel…..rsk

April marks the 25th anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide, in which almost 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were indiscriminately set upon and murdered—in their homes, in schools, in churches and in the open air. Victims were often killed by machete, sometimes by neighbors they’d known for years.

Foreign governments, including the U.S., dithered while Rwandans died. The end of the genocide came only when the Rwandan Patriotic Front, led by Paul Kagame and supported by Uganda, marched into Rwanda, defeated the genocidal government forces, and drove the remaining loyalists into the bush.

Twenty-five years after the Rwandan genocide, neither the ethnic conflicts in the Great Lakes region of Africa nor the problems that made the world’s response so tepid and slow have been resolved. Commendable and even heroic measures by both Hutu and Tutsi survivors in Rwanda have restored order, enabling victims and perpetrators to live side by side without further violence. The economy is growing at a rapid clip, but political life in Rwanda is constrained. Opposition politicians risk arrest; some of the regime’s critics have mysteriously died; and well into President Kagame’s third term, there is no alternative to his rule in sight.

Meanwhile, the prospect of an effective, consistent international system that could act swiftly to prevent new genocides is even more remote now than in the 1990s. The “international community” is better at wringing its hands than at stopping crimes against humanity. The U.S.-led response to ISIS demonstrates that multinational intervention against outrageous behavior is possible. But the world’s indifference to the wider slaughter in Syria is a sobering reminder of the limited political will to enforce even the most basic humanitarian standards.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tension-over-the-taiwan-strait-11554159931

Two Chinese J-11 fighter jets crossed the Taiwan Strait’s “median line” on Sunday, stoking a 10-minute standoff with Taiwanese jets in the island’s airspace. Taipei’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the incident “intentional, reckless, and provocative,” and it underscores why President Trump should bolster Taiwan’s defenses with a sale of American F-16s.Taiwanese media called the incursion the first since 2011, and the one eight years ago was considered an accident. Chinese planes have skirted the island’s airspace for years with little consequence, and Sunday’s deeper breach underscores the danger of that impunity.

Beijing is smarting from the voyage a week ago of a U.S. Navy destroyer and Coast Guard cutter through the Strait, as well as President Tsai Ing-wen’s speech in Hawaii a few days later. Speaking via video link to the Heritage Foundation, Ms. Tsai confirmed her government’s request to buy American M-1 Abrams tanks and F-16V fighters.

The Chinese may hope Sunday’s escalation will convince Washington that its support for Taiwan’s democracy isn’t worth the risks. This strategy has worked for decades to convince American Presidents not to sell fighters to Taiwan, and the island’s forces are now heavily outnumbered. Taiwan has 144 fourth-generation F-16s from the 1990s compared to 600 fourth-generation planes on the Chinese side, an advantage that has made Beijing more aggressive.

https://www.firstpost.com/india/new-zealands-hijab-gesture-is-deeply-flawed-6351781.html/amp?__twitter_impression=true

(Ruchika Sharma is a doctoral scholar in history at the Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Last week, New Zealand’s women, including prime minister Jacinda Ardern, wore headscarves to show solidarity with the Muslim community in the wake of terrorist attacks that targeted mosques. The act drew mixed reactions: while some praised New Zealand for the show of support, others questioned whether donning the hijab, a symbol of oppression in several Muslim majority countries, was necessary to express togetherness.

It is seminal here to consider the repercussions of Scarves in Solidarity—not only because the hijab has oppressive origins, but it is still used in several Muslim majority countries to control women’s bodies. Furthermore, the idea that hijab signifies the Muslim community stereotypes Muslim women in particular and the community in general.Yet, the biggest flaw of the Scarves in Solidarity movement is regarding women as active identity bearers of a community. The idea that women must bear the burden of a community’s identity, which is at the core of so much religious practice and belief, is one of the core dictates of patriarchy.