RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/11/pushing-shoving-south-china-sea/

Warships pushing and shoving in the South China Sea might be nothing to worry about in the short term, but what implications do such incidents have for the area, including countries further abroad such as Australia?

Aggressive naval manoeuvring between the warships of nations who don’t like each other is nothing new. A standard tactic is to deliberately plot a collision course, and then, if you’re the aggressor, change speed or course by a few knots or degrees and just miss your opponent. Crossing his bow then dumping garbage over the stern of your ship so he has to steam through it is another one.

These doings might seem silly but they have a method in their madness. Forcing your opponent to back down is pushing him onto the back foot, as boxers say. Warfare is won by aggression, something warriors learn in the Principles of War. And being a successful aggressor heightens morale on your side, another imperative if you want to win.

The recent shoving between the US destroyer Decatur and the Chinese Luyang-class destroyer Lanzhou was not nearly as fraught as it might have been. These manoeuvres can quickly escalate—if both nations want them to—to fire-control radars “lighting up” their target; missiles and guns being trained towards the potential enemy, and in the more physical sense, one vessel refusing to back down from contact. Having your ship “T-boned” might involve costly damage, injuries, even loss of life, but it shows your ship, and by implication your nation, is not in a mood to back down.

It needs to be understood, though, that such aggressive manoeuvring is almost always done with the full knowledge of the senior command of the navies involved, and from there the political structure above them.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272041/dodging-very-long-vacation-dubai-bruce-bawer

Quick quiz. What do these universities have in common: New York University, London Business School, Michigan State University, Middlesex University, Murdoch University (Australia), Heriot-Watt University (Scotland), the Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Birmingham, the University of Bradford, the University of Exeter, the University of South Wales, City University London, and the University of West London?

Answer: they all have branches in the United Arab Emirates. This is a perfect set-up for the petroleum millionaires of the Persian Gulf, who want their sons to have American or British degrees but who may not want them to be exposed to the haram aspects of life in the U.S. or U.K. It’s thus also a perfect set-up for the universities themselves, because these oil sheikhs can afford whatever price these universities charge them to educate their little darlings.

A few decades ago, the idea of establishing branches of Western universities in a country like the UAE would be considered ethically problematic. No free speech, no free press, no due process, and all that. Premarital sex and the drinking of alcohol are punishable by flogging. The penalty for adultery and apostasy is death by stoning.

Fortunately for the American and British universities in question, these drawbacks are more than balanced out by the huge piles of cash that are in it for them. In any event, as you know, it’s politically incorrect – Islamophobic, in fact – to get too worked up about sharia law. And nowhere are people more determined not to be politically incorrect or Islamophobic than at your typical American or British university.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-american-fracking-changes-the-world-1543276935

The most important news in world politics this month isn’t about diplomacy. Bigger than Brexit, more consequential than presidential tweetstorms, the American shale revolution is rapidly reshaping the global balance of power as energy prices plummet.

Until recently, observers expected American energy production to reach a plateau. A lack of pipeline capacity was expected to constrain output in the Permian Basin through 2020. Instead, shippers found ways to use existing pipelines more efficiently, and new pipelines were constructed faster than expected. U.S. crude-oil production is expected to average 12.1 million barrels a day in 2019, 28% higher than in 2017. Surging production has roiled world energy markets.

The biggest loser is Iran. Shale has been pummeling Tehran for some time. The economic benefits Iran hoped to gain from President Obama’s nuclear deal were largely offset by the sharp 2016 fall in the price of oil. Now the pesky Permian is blighting Iranian hopes again. Rising American output made it easier for the U.S. to slap tough sanctions on Iran without risking a sharp rise in world energy prices. Low prices also reduce Iran’s income from the oil it still manages to sell.

The next biggest loser is Russia. Oil is a key revenue source for the Kremlin. But the shale boom doesn’t only pick Vladimir Putin’s pocket; it also attacks his foreign-policy strategy.

Russia wants to control the world oil price and use that power to boost its diplomatic weight. Mr. Putin has two ways to influence the price of oil. The first is to increase geopolitical tensions. If threatening Ukraine or bombing Syria spooks traders and jacks up energy prices, Russia has a better hand in negotiations with Europe and the U.S.

Mr. Putin’s second option is to cooperate with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on price fixing. Building a closer relationship with Saudi Arabia over their common interest in inflated oil prices might loosen the kingdom’s U.S. ties and generate lucrative commercial and arms deals for the Kremlin.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13346/greece-organ-trafficking

Greek diplomats were issuing visas to unaccompanied children in order to facilitate illegal removal of their organs, “but the press did not write about them.” — Nikos Kotzias, Greece’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, in an interview on November 20, 2018.

There are currently 3,050 unaccompanied children in Greece, and 1,272 of them (42%) are either homeless, or they live in a non-permanent residence or in an unknown location, according to the newspaper Kathimerini. They all face the risks of sexual exploitation and illicit organ removal.

“The Trafficking in Persons Protocol states that if the victim is a child, that is a person below the age of 18, consent is irrelevant regardless of whether any improper means (such as deception, force, abuse of a position of vulnerability) have been used.” — United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Greece’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nikos Kotzias, in an interview on November 20, disclosed — for a second time — that he sent to the prosecutor 93 cases that involved Greek diplomats issuing visas to unaccompanied children in order to facilitate illegal removal of their organs. These diplomats are already in jail. “The fact that I saved a few souls will make me sleep quietly when my life is over,” Kotzias said.

The first time Kotzias revealed illegal trafficking of organs from children in Greece was in October 2018, when he said:

“We sent 93 cases to the Prosecutor, highly evaluated ambassadors went to jail, but the press did not write about them. Because the person who gives a visa in Constantinople [Istanbul] to an unaccompanied child is not just a criminal, he is traitor. A visa for a 14-month-old unaccompanied baby and they tried to cover it up for him.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13355/palestinian-victims

The 3,903 Palestinians killed in Syria in the past seven years are of no interest to the Western correspondents and their editors.

The Western media’s obsession with Israel has created the impression that the only Palestinians living on this planet are those who are residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This impression does injustice to the Palestinians who are facing horrendous conditions, torture, and death in the Arab countries, especially Syria.

Who cares about the suffering of these Palestinians? No one. Every week, scores of foreign journalists travel to the Israel-Gaza border to report on clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian rioters. Have any of these journalists thought of travelling to Syria or Lebanon to report about the atrocities that are being committed against the Palestinians there? Of course not. Why should they do so when the story lacks an anti-Israel angle?

The number of Palestinians killed in Syria will soon reach 4,000. Perhaps then, with that gruesome milestone reached, will Western correspondents in the Middle East wake up to the enormity of the crimes that are really being perpetrated against Palestinians?

Here’s some “good” news: In October, only five Palestinians living in Syria were pronounced dead. The London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria reports that in October 2017, 12 Palestinians were killed due to war-related incidents in that country. “The list of victims who died in October 2018 includes four Palestinians who were pronounced dead in Teloul Al-Safa, in Al-Sweida desert, south of Syria, and one Palestinian in Damascus,” the group said.

According to the human rights watchdog that monitors the situation of Palestinians in Syria, the number of Palestinians killed in Syria since the beginning of the civil war there in 2011 now stands at 3,903. Another 1,712 Palestinians in that country have been arrested by the Syrian authorities, and 316 are listed as missing.

The latest victim was identified as Ahmed Abdullah Balbisi who, according to the human rights group, died of torture in a Syrian prison eight years after his incarceration. The group said that Balbisi was arrested then for participating in peaceful demonstrations organized by the Syrian opposition. Balbisi is the latest victim added to the 3,903 Palestinians killed in Syria during the past seven years. His death was reported by the group on November 22.

A day earlier, the human rights group reported that two other Palestinians, Mohammed Khalil al-Kurdi and Wael Abu Hamdeh, died due to lack of proper medical treatment. On November 19, reports surfaced that a third, Mohammed Ahmed Farhat, was killed during an exchange of gunfire between the Syrian army and the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorist group.

A photograph recently emerged of Jeremy Corbyn making the four-fingered rabbi’ah or Muslim Brotherhood salute at the Finsbury Park Mosque. A Muslim counter-extremist commentator compared Corbyn’s activist-Salafist salutation to a right-wing politician offering his solidarity for the British National Front. Rod Liddle, writing in the Spectator, wondered whether the current leader of the British Labour Party was “either deeply sinister—or a total idiot”. The correct answer is both, and then some more. The tragedy of Jeremy Corbyn, like the tragedy of so many social-justice warriors, is that he believes his modern-day leftist ideology places him on the unassailable moral high ground. It does nothing of the sort—and that is a calamity for him and his supporters and apologists, and something worse for the local Jewish population.

Jeremy Corbyn, let us recognise, is one of the most successful left-wing or progressive characters in Europe right now. In the 2017 British general election, for instance, the Labour Party under his stewardship increased its voting share from 30.4 per cent to 40 per cent. Is there any other mainstream European social democratic (or democratic socialist) party that can, in the past few years, match that kind of accomplishment? Membership of Labour has doubled to significantly more than half a million, and the party faithful are overwhelmingly in support of their unapologetic champion. The ethical disaster for Jeremy Corbyn is that he has been co-opted, along with the British Labour Party and the latter-day Left in general, by Islamist-inspired anti-Semitism. Detractors will say the Opposition Leader is a polarising force in British politics, but Jeremy Corbyn happens to be an effective politician in today’s intemperate electoral climate—not despite his boundless radical provocation but because of it.

A growing majority of British Jews are alarmed by the prospect of a Jeremy Corbyn government. On July 25, 2018, the three main Jewish newspapers in Britain, the Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph, each produced front pages warning of “the existentialist threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government”. Two of the pillars of Jewish public life, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council, voiced a corresponding concern. Why this particular reproach? Labour’s National Executive Committee, controlled by Corbyn’s faction, had just announced it was going to deviate from the definition/explanation of anti-Semitism submitted by the intergovernmental agency International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and accepted by the British government. The refusal to simply accept the IHRA’s definition/explanation of anti-Semitism and move on was considered especially galling, since the frequency of Labour officials, members, councillors and even parliamentarians making crude anti-Semitic jibes has skyrocketed during Corbyn’s tenure as leader.

https://www.jns.org/austrian-chancellor-sebastian-kurz-stakes-staunchly-pro-israel-position-at-vienna-conference/

“Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are getting blurred, but they are two sides of the same coin,” said the Australian leader, noting his country’s laden past regarding European Jewry. “We can’t undo history, but we can do justice to our history.”

Amid debate about the European right and a wave of anti-Jewish sentiment and actions, conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurtz of Austria has positioned himself and his government as a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism by convening the Nov. 21 conference “Beyond Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism: Securing Jewish Life in Europe” in the context of the Austrian Presidency of the European Council.

The event evolved into a celebration of friendship between Austria and Israel, with Dr. Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, presenting Kurz with the “Navigator to Jerusalem Award” at the conference gala.

“This is possibly the first time a nation which holds the European Union Presidency has attempted to address anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in a constructive and holistic manner,” Kantor told JNS. “We are grateful to the Austrian government for partnering with us, and accepting the role of pushing for lasting and durable solutions to increasing anti-Semitism.”

The European Jewish Congress presented senior leaders with a “Catalogue of Policies to Combat Antisemitism,” which includes, first and foremost, the worldwide adoption and implementation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/asia-bibi-blaphemy-charges-religious-freedom-asylum/Why hasn’t she been granted asylum?

Asia Bibi got into an argument with her co-workers and ended up in jail. Bibi is a Pakistani Catholic and mother of five. She cannot read. For years, she picked fruit in her rural village. One day in June 2009, her peers refused to share a pitcher of water with her because she is a Christian. She argued with them, muttering some caustic words about the founder of Islam. They responded by accusing her of blasphemy: a capital crime in Pakistan. The next year she was sentenced to death row.

No longer. In October the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted and released Asia Bibi after a long legal battle, during which Islamic radicals assassinated a Pakistani official for supporting her cause. The response to her acquittal was unsurprising. Global media and human-rights organizations cheered, while Pakistani fundamentalists demonstrated and hung Asia Bibi in effigy. The outrage spooked Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan into making it more difficult for her to leave the country. Facing the risk of extrajudicial killing, Bibi remains in hiding. Her lawyer Saiful Malook fled to Europe. Protests greeted his arrival.

The other day in Frankfurt, Malook called on the German government to provide Asia Bibi and her family with documents that would allow them to exit Pakistan. Why no Western government has yet granted her asylum is something of a mystery. It is possible that Bibi and her family may be using the negotiations to secure the release of additional people whose safety they feel is also in jeopardy. European governments, including the United Kingdom’s, may also worry that Asia Bibi’s arrival would provoke a backlash from their own militant Islamists. Nor is Europe exactly the global standard in free speech. Around the same time the Pakistani Supreme Court reversed the verdict against Asia Bibi, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a verdict against an Austrian woman for “publicly disparaging religious doctrines,” namely Islam. She and Bibi should compare notes.

How lucky one is to be born in the United States. The American tradition of religious freedom is strong, and it is neither to be under-appreciated nor to be tossed off lightly. Religious dissenters founded several of the original colonies. The first clauses of the Bill of Rights prohibit an established church as well as abridgments of the free exercise of religion. George Washington’s letter to the Touro synagogue in Newport reflects the American (and Biblical) ideal: “Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Asia Bibi’s story pricks the conscience because it is so outside the American understanding of public speech, of religious practice.