RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iranian-court-sentences-u-s-navy-veteran-human-rights-lawyer-11552347406
DUBAI—An Iranian court has sentenced a U.S. Navy veteran for an unspecified crime, according to Iranian state-linked media, in a move that threatens to further strain relations between Washington and Tehran.

Michael White was detained last year in the northeastern city of Mashhad after an individual accused him of wrongdoing, while authorities also were investigating possible security-related charges against him, an Iranian prosecutor said in January.

On Monday, the semiofficial Fars news agency quoted the prosecutor, Gholamali Sadeghi, as saying Mr. White had been sentenced but the report didn’t give any details of the verdict.

A court in Tehran, meanwhile, sentenced Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent human-rights lawyer who has become an international symbol of resistance in Iran, to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes, her husband wrote on Facebook Monday. State-linked media reported a different verdict, quoting the judge in the case as saying Ms. Sotoudeh had been sentenced to seven years in prison, five for conspiring against the state and two for insulting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Ms. Sotoudeh’s husband, Reza Khandan, insisted that his wife had received the longer reported sentence, though he didn’t know the exact charges, according to the New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran, which spoke to him.

The verdicts against both Mr. White and Ms. Sotoudeh underscore regular criticism from human-rights advocates and Western government’s of the opacity of Iran’s judiciary system. They have accused the courts of systematically conducting unfair trials, targeting activists and arbitrarily arresting dual and foreign nationals—often charging them with espionage or spreading propaganda, setting up their use by the government as political bargaining chips.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brussels-jewish-museum-terrorist-sentenced-to-life-in-jail-11552385511

BRUSSELS—A French-Algerian man found guilty last week of murder in a terrorist shooting at the Jewish Museum of Brussels was sentenced to life in prison, concluding the first conviction of a European who joined Islamic State in Syria and returned to stage attacks.

Mehdi Nemmouche, 33, who was convicted Thursday of killing four people in May 2014, received the maximum possible sentence, but could be released from prison under surveillance in as soon as 15 years.

“Life goes on,” Nemmouche said in court before the sentence was read, according to Belgian state broadcaster RTBF.

Nemmouche’s accomplice, Nacer Bendrer, was sentenced to 15 years for supplying him with the weapons for the attack. He could be released after five years.

The decision, reached after roughly eight hours of deliberation, was read out late Monday night, according to RTBF.

The European Jewish Congress said “this appropriate sentence sends a message that terror and anti-Semitic attacks will be judged to the fullest extent of the law.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-parliament-votes-down-mays-brexit-deal-11552418563

LONDON—British lawmakers rejected Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit divorce deal for a second time, making a delay in the U.K.’s scheduled March 29 departure from the European Union all but inevitable and intensifying political turmoil and business uncertainty.

The defeat on Tuesday—by 391 votes against to 242 in favor—opens a new chapter in Britain’s chaotic exit from the EU, a process that has already cost banks and companies billions, riven British society and splintered its political landscape.

The deal was meant to set the terms of the end of the U.K.’s decadeslong membership in the EU and its separation from a bloc that represents half of all British trade. Mrs. May’s defeat makes it likely that Parliament will force the government to delay Brexit beyond the end of the month to allow for further negotiations.

Mrs. May could now seek further concessions to her bill from the EU. However, a delayed departure increases the chances for a range of other outcomes, including another referendum over the U.K.’s membership in the EU or a general election.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13881/ukraine-mariupol-report

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin has not articulated the final objective of his proxy war in eastern Ukraine, his actions seem to indicate that he is determined to create a land bridge from Mariupol to Odessa — two major seaports vitally important to Ukraine’s economy. Putin’s overall strategy in Ukraine, also not publicly stated, seems to be to strangle it economically by disrupting shipping between the Odessa and Azov Sea ports, with the aim of eventually subjugating Ukraine to Russia.

“If Putin wants to do something about Mariupol,” a Ukrainian sailor said, “he has only a short time in which to do it. We have a small navy. We hope your country [America] will give us more ships to defend the port.”

“This time,” said a Ukrainian army platoon leader at the front, “if the Russians come, we are not going to let them through. We would rather die.”

On April 3, 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin — upon winning the war Syria while protecting his beleaguered client, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, from a rebel uprising supported by the U.S. and Sunni Gulf states — had some more good news. US President Donald J. Trump had given instructions to the American military to begin planning for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria. Although the official decision was announced only on December 21, the Kremlin evidently gambled that Trump might be serious about the withdrawal.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13885/north-korea-human-rights

American leaders have been wrong. The best way to get what we want from North Korea, whether it be “denuclearization” or anything else, is to reverse decades of Washington thinking and raise the issue of human rights loudly and incessantly. The same is true with regard to North Korea’s sponsor and only formal ally, the People’s Republic of China.

Kim Jong Un knows how inhumane his rule is — he has, after all, had hundreds of people executed — so if we do not talk forcefully about, say, Otto Warmbier, Kim will think we are afraid of him. If he thinks we are afraid of him, he will see no reason to be accommodating. It is unfortunate, but outsiders cannot be polite or friendly.

It is time to let Kim know that America no longer cares about how he feels or even about maintaining a friendly relationship with him. That posture, a radical departure from Washington thinking, is both more consistent with American ideals and a step toward a policy that Kim will respect.

“I’m in such a horrible position, because in one way I have to negotiate,” U.S. President Donald Trump said at CPAC on March 2, while talking about efforts to disarm North Korea. “In the other way, I love Mr. and Mrs. Warmbier, and I love Otto.”

Trump believes he faces a dilemma: that his efforts on behalf of the parents of Otto Warmbier — the University of Virginia student whom North Korean authorities detained, brutalized and killed — undermine his ability to take away nuclear weapons from Kim Jong Un, the leader of that horrific regime.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/so-what-if-the-clinton-foundation-fleeced-norway-bring-on-the-chardonnay/

Hillary Clinton visited Norway last week, an event that brought to my mind, anyway, the fact that, adjusting for population, no country has been more generous to her family’s stupendously sordid con operation than has the land of the fjords.

The numbers are scandalous. Between 2007 and 2016, the Norwegian government transferred no less than 640 million kroner in taxpayer money to the Clinton Foundation. Given the average exchange rate during that period, that sum would’ve been roughly equivalent to $100 million. This means that each and every Norwegian citizen, without being asked, put about twenty dollars into the pockets of that crooked enterprise.

The official reason for these massive payouts was that the Norwegian government wanted to help mothers and children in Africa. In 2016, Norway’s purported newspaper of record, Aftenposten, ran an article in which Stephen Gillers, an expert on legal ethics at NYU, said that the real motive was to buy influence for Norway in the corridors of American power.

Well, that’s one reason, but there are others. One is this: Top-level Norwegian politicians are as ambitious as politicians anywhere. For many of them, becoming a member of parliament or cabinet official or even prime minister in a country of six million people isn’t quite enough to satisfy the old ego. How to solve this problem? Fortunately, a solution is already in place. Norway has long paid a hell of a lot more into major world organizations, from the UN on down, than other countries of its size. In fact, it spends more per capita on international development than any nation on Earth. Yes, this means that Norwegian citizens are getting ripped off.

https://quillette.com/2019/03/10/the-french-genocide-that

This is horrific history.  While the atrocities against the Vendees took place the American Constitution was crafted by our remarkable founding fathers which guaranteed limited government, checks and balances, separation of powers, popular sovereignty and individual rights. rsk

The Secret History

On March 4 2011, the French historian Reynald Secher discovered documents in the National Archives in Paris confirming what he had known since the early 1980s: there had been a genocide during the French Revolution.1 Historians have always been aware of widespread resistance to the Revolution. But (with a few exceptions) they invariably characterize the rebellion in the Vendée (1793–95) as an abortive civil war rather than a genocide.

In 1986, Secher published his initial findings in Le Génocide franco-français, a lightly revised version of his doctoral dissertation.2 This book sold well, but destroyed any chance he might have had for a university career. Secher was slandered by journalists and tenured academics for daring to question the official version of events that had taken place two centuries earlier.3 The Revolution has become a sacred creation myth for at least some of the French; they do not take kindly to blasphemers.

Keepers of the Flame

The first major Revolutionary mythographer was the journalist and politician Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877), who became the first President of the Third Republic of France in 1871. He made his name in the 1820s with a bestselling 10-volume history of the Revolution. Purely as history his work was sloppy and unreliable; but the point was to celebrate the subject, not examine it. Thiers does not excuse atrocities in the Vendée; indeed he scarcely mentions them.

Unlike Thiers, Jules Michelet (1798-1874) actually looked at documents when researching his seven-volume history of the Revolution (1847–53). Michelet, more than any other historian, is responsible for the official mythology representing the Vendée rebellion as a would-be civil war instigated by deluded, credulous peasants who did not understand that they were fighting against Progress itself—a kind of 18th Century version of the gilets jaunes protests.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/juan-guaido-nicolas-maduro-regime-murdered-blackout-victims/

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó said Sunday that the 17 people who reportedly died as a result of the country’s electricity blackout were “murdered” by President Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

“I can’t call it anything else, due to lack of electricity,” Guaidó told CNN. “Imagine if in your country, you wake to the news that there’s been four days without electricity because they steal from electricity plants and 17 people died. That’s murder.”

About 70 percent of Venezuela was plunged into darkness on Thursday and it remains unclear when much of the country, including the capital, Caracas, will get its electricity back. The blackout has resulted in looting and violent crime, and has left hospitals struggling to keep patients alive. The crisis comes as the impoverished country remains in turmoil and the opposition clashes with the Maduro regime’s forces.

Guaidó alleged to CNN that 16 states had zero power and six had partial power as of Sunday, and said the private sector has lost $400 million because of the blackout.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/brexit-house-of-commons-vote/

Tomorrow the House of Commons will take another “meaningful vote” on Theresa May’s latest Brexit deal. The whole thing hinges largely on the backstop.

A reminder: The “backstop” is the temporary arrangement which would keep the U.K. in the customs union and single market in order to prevent a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.

The trouble with the backstop is that the U.K. and the EU want diametrically opposing outcomes with regards to regulatory systems and trade. Indeed, the fact that the EU allowed no clear way out of the backstop in May’s previous deal (rejected by the Commons in January’s “meaningful vote”) was largely why it failed.

Britain’s attorney general Geoffrey Cox has since been tasked with finding a way out of this problem. He offers official legal advice to the British government. Has he found a solution?

Last week Michel Barnier, Europe’s Brexit negotiator, suggested on, um, Twitter, that Brussels is open to giving Britain a concession on the backstop. The trouble is that this is effectively back to square one: Barnier’s concession does not solve the Northern Irish problem, but rather offers an arrangement that the U.K. has already rejected.

Brexiteers believe it is impossible to the integrity of the Union to split the baby — in other words, to have Northern Ireland in a different regulatory system than the rest of Britain. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland agrees. However, if Ireland (still in the EU) and Northern Ireland (out of the EU post-Brexit) were to be under different economic rulebooks, many are concerned that there would essentially need to be a “hard border.”

The EU is exploiting this dilemma for all it’s worth — and has been since day one. At present, May’s latest deal fails to address this adequately. Which is why, in its current form, it will likely fail tomorrow.