RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/23/british-metoo-scandal-cannot-revealed/

A leading businessman has been granted an injunction against The Telegraph to prevent this newspaper revealing alleged sexual harassment and racial abuse of staff.

The accusations against the businessman, who cannot be identified, would be sure to reignite the #MeToo movement against the mistreatment of women, minorities and others by powerful employers.

#MeToo became a worldwide social media campaign last year after revelations about Harvey Weinstein, the American movie mogul. Like Weinstein, the British businessman used controversial non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to silence and pay off his alleged victims with “substantial sums”.

NDAs have been commonly used in business to protect matters of commercial confidentiality but there are concerns they are now being abused to cover up wrongdoing and deter victims of potential crimes from going to police.

Theresa May has already indicated that she plans to restrict the use of NDAs to prevent abuse, but Parliament has yet to consider changes to the law and campaigners are urging the Prime Minister to act now.

On Tuesday night, Maria Miller, who chairs the Commons Women and Equality committee, said it was “shocking” that NDAs were still being used to gag victims and should not be used “where there are accusations of sexual misconduct and wider bullying”.

Zelda Perkins, Weinstein’s former aide who broke a non-disclosure agreement from the late 1990s to allege sexual harassment, said it was “ridiculous” that The Telegraph had been prevented from reporting the allegations. She said: “NDAs have become weaponised.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13176/turkey-khashoggi-affair

Turkey, pursuing its own Islamist agenda and trying to rival Saudi influence in the Sunni world, is just too happy to have discredited the Wahhabi royals.

Turkey’s message to the Western world was: See the difference between our peaceful Islamism and rogue-state Islamism? Stop discrediting us for our democratic deficit — also, presumably, for “only” imprisoning more than 100 journalists there.

It looked like a first-class spy thriller: A prominent writer enters the Saudi consulate in Istanbul but never leaves the building. Saudi officials said he left the building but could not offer footage from security cameras. When they did, the image was of a dark-haired body-double dressed in the writer’s clothes.

Turkish police and intelligence start leaking evidence of the man’s murder, drop by drop. The day before the Saudi journalist’s disappearance, two private Saudi jets had arrived in Istanbul, with 15 passengers aboard belonging to security agencies in Riyadh. Both jets left for Saudi Arabia shortly after the consulate incident. Unnamed Turkish officials fed (mostly foreign) media stories of how the man had been killed, how his body was dismembered and disposed of after the murder — all by the Saudi death squad. As the Saudi consul-general rushed to Riyadh, Turkish police searched the consulate. More unnamed Turkish officials tell the press that they found forensic evidence for the murder. Unsure if the Turkish police really have evidence, the House of Saud decides to admit that the man had been killed “in a brawl” at the consulate but Saudi officials claim to have no idea where his body was — not convincing anyone in the world’s more democratic parts.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-growth-problem-in-italian-1540336936

There’s little new in the budget battle roiling Rome—but when did that ever stop the European Commission? The mandarins of Brussels on Tuesday issued an unprecedented demand that Italy rewrite its bad budget in line with Brussels’ bad fiscal principles. The tangle contributed to a selloff in global equities.

The Commission wants Rome to deliver a budget deficit equal to no more than 0.8% of GDP next year, a commitment made by the previous Italian government. In theory that discipline should matter to an Italian government whose debt is more than 130% of GDP. But elections have consequences, and one result of the winning coalition of the right-wing League and vaguely left-wing 5-Star Movement is a new budget with a deficit of 2.4% of GDP annually for the next few years.

Other European governments and their taxpayers—and investors—have cause to be wary about parts of the Italian plan. Tens of billions of euros in new spending are slated for welfare handouts and public works that Italy can’t deliver without waste and corruption. None of this will boost economic growth, potentially leaving other eurozone countries to bail out an insolvent Italian state down the road.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13167/palestinians-saudi-arabia

As Mahmoud Abbas was busy praising the Saudis for their “fairness, values and principles,” the London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria issued a statement in which it accused the Saudi authorities of preventing Palestinian refugees from entering the kingdom.

Many Arabs and Muslims can hardly afford to alienate a country as rich as Saudi Arabia. This is a good example of “money talks.” However, this does not mean that the Saudi money will ever change the hearts and minds of Palestinians, especially regarding a peace agreement with Israel.

The mistreatment of Palestinians at the hands of their Arab brethren has never been of concern to Abbas and his leadership. They are silent when Palestinians are killed and expelled from their homes in Syria. They are silent when Palestinians face discrimination and apartheid laws in Lebanon.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not wait for Saudi Arabia to admit that Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in its consulate in Turkey. Days before the Saudi announcement, Abbas decided that he and the Palestinians have “absolute confidence” in King Salman bin Abdel Aziz and this son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

As Abbas was busy praising the Saudis for their “justice, values and principles,” the London-based Action Group for Palestinians of Syria issued a statement in which it accused the Saudi authorities of preventing Palestinian refugees from entering the kingdom.

“Palestinian refugees fleeing war-ravaged Syria have been denied access into Saudi territories,” the group said. It pointed out that the Saudi ban excluded Palestinians heading to the kingdom to perform the Islamic hajj, or pilgrimage. The group also pointed out that Palestinians who fled Syria to Saudi Arabia “have been shorn of their right to visas, education, and health care, among other vital services.” Saudi Arabia, the group added, “continues to opt for a closed-door immigration policy regarding Palestinian refugees seeking asylum in its territories.”

This is only one example of Saudi discrimination against the Palestinians. The group’s announcement was published on the same day that Abbas was heaping praise on the Saudi leaders.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/population_stabilization_or_suicidal_demographics.html

Population Connection (formerly Zero Population Growth) proclaims that ever since the group’s founding “[t]he Western Hemisphere as a whole is now below [population] replacement rate.” When they formed in 1968, “only four nations were at or below replacement rate fertility… today there are nearly a hundred such nations.”

To cement the direction of progressive solutions for the earth, one letter to the editor took issue with the fact that “some of [the] authors talk about ‘slowing down population growth.’ We have to talk about ending population growth. If all we want to accomplish is slowing down population growth, then we’re just debating whether to go over the cliff running or to go over the cliff walking.'”

It would appear that human extinction is the ultimate goal.

The group is outspoken about Trump’s “trying to cancel all funds for bilateral international family planning assistance” while they maintain that in the U.S., Trump “and his congressional accomplices attack [their] friends at Planned Parenthood day and night. And from Neil Gorsuch to district and appellate judges, Trump schemes to shove [the] courts to the far right for decades to come.” As such, Population Connection is hosting hundreds of college student activists to raise the alarm and be “an unapologetic voice for population stabilization.” Too bad that Population Connection completely ignores the Project Veritas expose depicting Planned Parenthood engaging in the illegal and immoral act of selling baby parts.

Thus, given their ideological bent, President John Seager and his group would herald Europe’s ongoing demographic suicide. Moreover, it is vital to keep in mind that progressives do not mourn the death of Western values. It is integral to the progressive/leftist game plan.

Giulio Meotti writes that it is estimated that there “will be a reduction of about 25 percent in the Greek population by 2050. Even more worrying is the forecast of the country’s statistical agency (Elstat), according to which by 2080 the population of the country could fall to 7.2 million.”

Moreover, “births in public hospitals have dropped by 30 percent and Greece has become a world leader in abortion.” Only Italy has a higher percentage of older people.

Ahead of a possible meeting next month between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, the White House tempered any optimism that a trade truce with Beijing is imminent when top economic advisor Larry Kudlow accused China on Sunday of doing “nothing” to defuse trade tensions.

But some Chinese officials and government advisers recently emphasized that China will show patience in addressing American trade demands, postponing if necessary some of its plans to become self-sufficient in high-tech industry.

China’s “Made in China 2025” plan, which envisions a rapid expansion of domestic high tech industry, figures prominently in the US administration’s complaints about Chinese economic policy. US negotiators accuse China of using state subsidies to gain an unfair advantage against US competitors, quite apart from tariffs, non-trade barriers, theft of intellectual property and pressure on Western joint-venture partners to transfer technology.

China told the United States that it would buy whatever the United States wanted to sell in order to reduce the trade deficit, and is ready to work with Washington on improving intellectual property protection, but the American challenge to China’s economic model is a deal-breaker.

By backing off from the 2025 target, Chinese officials believe, Beijing can placate the US Administration, and give President Trump a coup in public relations while keeping its own industrial program intact. The government is exploring a number of ways to present such a deal.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-passing-of-a-wwii-hero-joachim-ronneberg-1919-2018/

The worst thing about living in Norway for the past nineteen years (twenty next April) has been contemplating the dire future that lies in wait for the Norwegian children of today, whose feckless leaders are surrendering their beautiful country to a totalitarian religion. One of the best things about living here has been learning about Norway’s history. What is especially stirring to me is the story of the Norwegian resistance — which is a story almost entirely about a group of very young men who, faced with the occupation of their kingdom by a totalitarian foe, chose not to knuckle under and lie low but to risk their lives in an effort to (at the very least) cramp the enemy’s style. It has been moving just to be alive at the same time as some of these men.

Among them was Max Manus, who was 25 years old at the time of the Nazi invasion. A fearless saboteur, he was captured by the Gestapo only to escape, flee to Sweden, make his way to the Soviet Union and to travel, from there, mostly by ship, to the U.S., then Canada, and finally Britain, undergoing training in all three of the last-named countries for undercover work. He died in 1996 and was memorialized in a terrific movie, Max Manus (2008).

Then there’s Gunnar Sonsteby, who was a 22-year-old accountant in Oslo when the Nazis invaded. Joining the Resistance, he was soon head of the Oslo Gang, described by one historian as “the best groups of saboteurs in Europe.” A master of disguise and a gifted forger, Sonsteby, after the war, became Norway’s most decorated citizen. When he died six years ago, his state funeral was broadcast live on national TV.

Now a third Norwegian hero has joined them. On Sunday evening came news that Joachim Ronneberg, one of the nation’s last remaining World War II heroes, had died at age 99. Only twenty when the Germans invaded, Ronneberg was the youngest member — but also the leader — of the team that carried out the famous 1943 raid on the heavy-water plant in Vemork that has been dramatized on film in the 1948 Norwegian-French co-production Kampen om tungtvannet (currently available on YouTube with English subtitles), the historically unreliable Kirk Douglas vehicle Heroes of Telemark (1965), and, most recently, the excellent six-part Netflix miniseries The Heavy Water War (2015). CONTINUE AT SITE