RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.atimes.com/writer/david-p-goldman/

The United States starts a tariff war with China. Japan and Germany jump at the chance to gain market share in China’s booming auto industry and boost their capacity in China, the world’s fastest-growing passenger car market.

The United States imposes sanctions on Turkey. Germany announces that it will offer economic aid to Turkey, Qatar pledges $15 billion in new investment and a $3 billion foreign exchange swap line, and Chinese banks provide billions of dollars in new loans to the cash-strapped Turks. Chinese commentators declare that crisis is a great opportunity to integrate Turkey into China’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy.

US President Donald Trump chides German Chancellor Angela Merkel for buying Russian natural gas through the Nord Stream II pipeline. Merkel summits with Russian President Vladimir Putin and confirms the pipeline arrangement, and also strikes a deal to aid the reconstruction of Syria in cooperation with Russia.

The United States imposes economic sanctions on Iran, and Western insurance companies stop insuring Iranian oil cargoes. China responds by accepting Iranian insurance on oil imports, increasing oil imports from Iran, and shipping the oil in Iranian tankers, Reuters reported August 20. India was offered Iranian insurance on oil shipments as well, but Indian refiners reportedly will reject the offer. Western insurance companies have told them that if they import Iranian oil, they will cancel insurance on refinery operations.

And German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas proposes a new international payments system independent of the dollar sphere, a new interbank transfer system, and a European Monetary Fund, to “protect European businesses from [American] sanctions. He also proposed a digital tax on American Internet firms. Writing in the German daily Handelsblatt on August 21, Maas declared, “We will not let the United States go over our heads.” No representative of a major Western European government has suggested anything remotely like this in public before.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/08/dead-wood-best-burning/

Trump is good because he has good policies, as did Thatcher and Reagan. Big deal if the Liberals get a new leader! Dutton or Hastie, whoever it might be, will inherit a dearth of good policies, bad ones aplenty, shifty colleagues and a party withered in root, branch and wallet. We need a new one.

How times change. Dow plummets as Trump beats Clinton. Dow futures edged down when news just broke that Trump’s ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty to making hush payments to Trump’s putative casual squeeze before the election. Why the change? Well it isn’t because Trump has proved himself to be a sophisticate after all. It is because his policies are working and the market likes that and is nervous about him being undermined.

Trump has good policies. Here are just some of them. Lowering corporate taxes and red-tape regulations to get the private sector investing. Lowering regulatory burdens on the energy sector in order to produce more coal, oil and gas. Tightening immigration to fight terrorism and crime, to protect America’s social services, and to prevent cheap labour from undercutting wages for those at the bottom of the rung. Putting North Korea and Iran on notice of America’s resolve to prevent them ever using nuclear weapons. Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem to show solidarity with the only beacon of hope in the Middle East. Renegotiating trade deals to prevent America being ripped off by unfair tariffs. Putting the hard word on NATO allies to pay a fairer share of their own defence. Ensuring that the Supreme Court is not dominated by left-wing activists by appointing originalists to the court.

These are the policies that had Deplorables coming out to vote. I would have been lining up from the early hours to vote for these policies. And, totally unsurprisingly, they are working.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2018/08/enough-is-enough-uk-antisemitism.html

As most readers will know, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, adopted in May 2016, includes

Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.

Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).

Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/08/sly-smart-going/

Turnbull is now just a few party-room votes away from getting his marching orders. A rash of Cabinet resignations would speed that exit and establish for the record those best qualified to begin repairing the immense damage this Prime Minister has wrought, not least bringing back the base

So it was 48-35 for the Black Hand gang and its various hangers-on in today’s Liberal Party leadership spill. Mr. Turnbull might be just about the most incompetent politician ever when it comes to choosing policies that appeal to his supporters and his party’s base and then defending them in the court of public opinion. But put Malcolm into the Machiavellian world of provoking or fighting off leadership spills and the man comes into his own. He can white-ant and leak and undermine a first-term PM who won a huge majority better than anyone.

Make him the target of others who might want his leader’s mantle and a prodigious rat cunning comes into play. It was a tactical move of immense intelligence to vacate the leadership at the start of today’s party room meeting, and then force a vote of MPs a week or so before the challengers were ready. You can expect the Prime Minister’s office to go into overdrive undermining the naysayers from today forward too, by which I mean even more than usual for those outside his Black Hand inner circle.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/south-african-government-begins-seizing-land-white-farmers/

The South African government has begun seizing land from white farmers as part of a nation-wide redistribution effort that commenced Monday with the appropriation of two large game farms.

The farms, located in the northern province of Limpopo, were unilaterally seized after their owners refused to accept a combined $2.8 million payment from the government, claiming the properties are worth roughly ten times that amount, according to the Johannesburg-based newspaper City Press.

Akkerland Boerdery, the hunting company that operates the farms, was informed of the impending seizure earlier this year and immediately filed an injunction to prevent it, but the Department of Rural Development and Land Affairs blocked their appeal.

“Notice is hereby given that a terrain inspection will be held on the farms on April 5, 2018 at 10am in order to conduct an audit of the assets and a handover of the farm’s keys to the state,” a letter sent to the owners in April said.

“What makes the Akkerland case unique is that they apparently were not given the opportunity to first dispute the claim in court, as the law requires,” Annelie Crosby, a spokeswoman for the agricultural industry association AgriSA, told City Press.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12849/russia-war-west

If one examines Russia’s proposals, there is a shell game going on. Russia wants the United States to abide by treaties that they themselves are breaking. Russia, for instance, has been breaking the INF Treaty since the 1990s, a fact essentially admitted by the Russian press in 2007.

The real Moscow build-up of nuclear warheads and associated missiles and bombers are tailored for short, intermediate, and long-range missile strikes. These systems, along with Russian published doctrine and testing, reveals a Russian military preparing to use nuclear weapons (as well as chemical and biological weapons) for war-fighting purposes and to threaten not only military targets but population centers as well.

Russia’s proposals also aim to block American conventional global strike programs and capabilities and to seek guarantees that American and allied missile defenses, especially those in Europe, will either not be built or will be strictly limited.

Russia’s public displays of the new programs is no doubt designed both to intimidate the West into not responding to Russian provocations, and to force the U.S. into one-sided arms control deals in their favor, out of fear of emerging Russian nuclear arms.

After the Helsinki Summit was over, the Russian government, the Russian and American media, and many Russian experts in the West have been calling for the United States and Russia to agree quickly to either an extension of the 2010 New Start Treaty, or a new follow-on arms control agreement; the New Start Treaty between the two countries is scheduled to expire in 2021.

Many of these calls for new negotiations and a new treaty are primarily driven by alarm at the bad state of East-West relations, the belief in the inherent benefits of arms control in general, and that arms control remains the area where it is easiest to secure Russo-American dialogue.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271091/there-islamic-terror-group-uk-labour-leader-corbyn-daniel-greenfield

Some politicians are so ensconced in sex scandals that another one just doesn’t make a noise.

In recent weeks, we’ve learned that Jeremy Corbyn, the radical leftist leader of the UK Labour Party, had been caught making the Muslim Brotherhood’s version of its Nazi salute, and had laid wreaths at the graves of the Munich Olympics terrorists.

Professor Shaul Ladany, who represented Israel at the racewalking competition in the 1972 Munich Olympics and survived the massacre, told the Daily Telegraph of his feelings upon seeing photos of British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn laying a wreath on the terrorists’ graves.

The massacre, carried out by Black September terrorists, claimed the lives of 11 Israeli athletes.

“I was really upset,” he told the Daily Telegraph. “Going there and laying a wreath is a stand. It is saying, ‘Look, I am in favor of it, I admire it.'”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/kofi-annan-represented-all-that-is-wrong-about-the-united-nations

Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general between 1997 and 2006, died on Saturday in Bern, Switzerland. Messages of sympathy after the loss of a high-profile public figure are understandable, but praise for Annan’s legacy is misplaced. Simply put, Annan’s U.N. tenure was marked by cravenness, corruption, and cover-ups.

He was in charge of U.N. peacekeeping in 1994 but dismissed warnings of an impending genocide in Rwanda. Annan’s apologists might cite a narrow definition of his bureaucratic mandate, but they ignore his decision to not inform the U.N. Security Council when evidence of plans for genocide surfaced. In short, if Annan had done what was morally right rather than easy, he might have saved a million lives. To do so, however, might have made waves and complicated his career.

Annan’s Rwanda experience should have been disqualifying enough, but the U.N. is more about quotas and regional rotations than it is about principle. In short, Annan was in the right place at the right time and so, in 1997, he became the U.N.’s secretary-general.