RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12881/denmark-welfare-socialism

Danes actually pay for their brand of socialism through heavy taxation. In Denmark, everyone pays at least the 25% value-added tax (VAT) on all purchases. Income tax rates are high. If you receive public support and are of working age and healthy, the state will require that you look for a job or it will force a job on you.

In Denmark, it is uncomplicated for enterprises to fire workers, which gives them great flexibility to adapt to shifting market conditions. In fact, Denmark is more free-market oriented than the US.

“Very high taxes and the vast public sector clearly detract in the capitalism index and reduce economic freedom. But Denmark compensates by… relatively little regulation of private enterprise, open foreign trade, healthy public finances and more. This high degree of economic freedom is among the reasons for Denmark’s relatively high affluence.” — Mads Lundby Hansen, chief economist of Denmark’s CEPOS think tank.

Here are some facts to consider before American “democratic socialists” look to Denmark for guidance, as Senator Bernie Sanders did during the 2016 presidential campaign.

First of all, Danes actually pay for their brand of socialism through heavy taxation. In Denmark, everyone pays at least the 25% value-added tax (VAT) on all purchases. Income tax rates are high. If you receive public support and are of working age and healthy enough to work, the state will require that you look for a job or it will force a job on you.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12848/china-syria-belt-road

China reportedly intends to build a railway through Iran and Turkey into Syria. Meanwhile in Greece, a Chinese state-owned company, Cosco, “purchased a controlling stake in the port of Piraeus, near Athens.” Piraeus is the biggest and busiest port in Greece and the busiest container port in the Eastern Mediterranean.

If China were to invest large amounts of money into the reconstruction of Syria, which has long been a hub for terrorist groups, Chinese funds could easily fall into the hands both of corrupt members of the Assad regime and of Hezbollah, the regime’s main supporting terrorist organization. Chinese reconstruction funds could also be diverted to purchasing nuclear weapons technology from Iran and North Korea.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – a term coined in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping to evoke the ancient Silk Road trade routes connecting China with lands to its west – should be cause for great concern in the West. Although it is described by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) as “a long-term project which, for years to come, will give China a key role in guiding and supporting cultural, economic, political, and trade developments around the world,” it is actually part of China’s increasingly apparent plan for regional and global hegemony.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/08/dear-senator-faruqi/

You’re a Green with all goofy self-importance that implies, but as a representative of the people — all the people, that is — could you quit slandering your adopted homeland? I mean, if Australia is a hotbed of injustice and oppression, how does that square with your defence of arranged marriages?

Dear Senator Faruqi,
In the early hours of this morning, I happened to hear your appalling interview as it went to air on the BBC World Service. You are entitled to your views, but you are not entitled to trash your (and my) country to the world with your misrepresentation of facts.

First, a little humility would be in order. You may have been slotted into a seat in the red chamber, but you are in no real sense there representing New South Wales. Nobody elected you. Nobody voted for you. Winning a pre-selection contest in a minority party to replace a disgraceful crypto communist did not invest you with any special virtue – although you seem to believe it entitles you to proclaim your jaundiced views.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/south-africa-move-to-seize-private-land-threatens-rule-of-law/

Government seizure of private land is a grave threat to the rule of law.

An almost certain sign that a nation’s economic future and rule of law are in danger is the decision by its government to seize private land without paying compensation. From Cuba to Zimbabwe to Venezuela, expropriating private property has almost inevitably meant a slide into authoritarian rule.

That’s why many South Africans are worried at the news last week that its African National Congress (ANC) government has for the first time moved to seize land without going through the courts first, with two game farms in Limpopo the first test cases.

The planned seizures are part of a larger government plan to use its two-thirds majority in Parliament to change the nation’s constitution to legalize unilateral seizures. Once it has that new constitutional power, the government could in theory posture at being magnanimous and merely force landowners to give up their land for only a token or very small payment. But the rule of law would still be bruised, if not broken.

It’s been a quarter century since apartheid ended, and since then each ANC government has scrupulously followed the pledge of the late Nelson Mandela that private property wouldn’t be seized except on the basis of “willing buyer, willing seller.” But Mandela’s moderate voice has increasingly been replaced by the likes of Julius Malema, who heads the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a breakaway party from the ANC.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271083/leftists-own-uks-grooming-gang-crisis-and-tommy-danusha-v-goska

Her broad, sunny smile fairly bursts through the photograph. Her joy is so bright you almost squint. She is a child, innocent of life. Charlene Downes was 14 in 2003. She’s been missing ever since. During a trial, jurors heard a tape in which a suspect stated that he chopped up her body and cooked it into kebabs. The case was tossed out because of problems with the gathering of evidence. Charlene’s sister, Emma, was later tried for “racially aggravated assault.” Emma slapped the face of the murder suspect’s brother. Emma was convicted for her crime.

Lucy Lowe’s smile is not as explosive as Charlene’s. Her blonde brows are shallow crescents; her nose is a pretty little button. Lucy has that loving look that suggests that she will hit her stride as a kind, middle-aged matron. In fact, Lucy gave birth at 14. The child’s baby daddy, Azhar Ali Mehmood, pimped Lucy and other underage girls. By 16, Lucy was pregnant with their second child. Mehmood then murdered Lucy, her mother, and her sister by setting fire to the family home. Mehmood is now in jail. Even so, Lucy’s father received an anonymous threat warning him not to discuss grooming gangs.

Vicky Round is not so much smiling in her photo as sizing you up. She looks pretty, young, and afraid. Vicky dreams of becoming a model. She is hooked on heroin and crack. She died of an overdose at age 20. The pimps and rapists who gave her drugs and “who made her life hell still walk the streets.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/08/celebrities_and_dictatorship.html

Back in the days of “the Contras”, Daniel Ortega was given the red carpet treatment that so many Hollywood celebrities saved for their anti-US idols.

Back in July 1986, Peter, Paul, & Mary, the famous folk trio that I honestly enjoy listening to, gave Daniel Ortega a special day:

Peter, Paul and Mary are singing the praises of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, despite its shutdown late last month of La Prensa, the last opposition newspaper in the country.

The veteran folk group has been in Managua performing public concerts. Among the attendees: President Daniel Ortega and about 100 Sandinista soldiers (they got in free).

“As the daughter of two journalists, censorship is something I abhor,” said the trio’s Mary Travers. “It signals a great disturbance and it is not good for any society. But I believe that the government of Nicaragua has a war on its hands. I believe that the aggressor of that war (the Contras) is funded by the United States. I also believe La Prensa has a history of publishing things that are likely to destabilize the government. It has supported the American aid to destroy the government.”

During one performance, the singers stunned internationalistas — as persons from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries are called here — as well as Sandinista dignitaries with a stanza from the song “El Salvador.” It compares U.S. involvement in El Salvador to the Soviet Union’s involvement in Poland.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/19/salvini-threatens-send-migrants-stuck-coastguard-ship-back-libya/

Italy’s far-Right interior minister threatened Sunday to send “back to Libya” nearly 180 people stranded for three days on an Italian coastguard ship if the EU did not step in to resolve another migrant row with Malta.

The 177 people have been sat off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa since Thursday after being saved by the coastguard’s Diciotti vessel, and Italy is battling with Malta over who should take them in.

“Either Europe decides to seriously offer Italy some concrete help, beginning with for example the 180 immigrants on board the Diciotti ship, or we will be forced to do what will definitively end the human traffickers’ business. That means taking the people saved in the sea back to Libya,” Mr Salvini said in a statement.

Numerous human rights abuses have been reported in detention centres that hold migrants hoping to make the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean and arrive in Europe.

The Diciotti has been stood off Lampedusa while Italy’s populist government, in power since June, demanded that Malta take in the passengers.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
In very recent Tweets, Lebanese-born New South Wales Labor MP Shaoquett Moselbane is a vigorous pro-Palestinian proponent. In March 2013, Mr Moselmane sparked outrage when he gave, inside that chamber, what Dan Goldberg writing in Haaretz described as “a firebrand speech … a vituperative tirade” alleging that the creation of Israel was a “corruption of justice,” that Gaza is “the world’s largest open-air prison camp,” and that Israel ran “torture camps” in southern Lebanon.
Continued Goldberg:

‘Moselmane also accused Israel of “massive violations of human rights,” saying: “If there was ever a group in need of protection from war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, it is the Palestinians.”

The first Muslim ever elected to the NSW parliament added this: “I salute the [Lebanese] resistance. Imagine what the response would have been in 1941 or 1942 if we had condemned resistance against Nazi Germany. Guns would have been blazing at us for not resisting Nazi Germany. In Lebanon the resistance was able to force the Israelis out.”

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Strongman politics are ascendant,” Barack Obama warned in South Africa. He spoke passionately about “the politics of fear and resentment” at the Mandela Lecture. He worried that we were entering a world, “where might makes right and politics is a hostile competition between tribes and races and religions.”

While the media used the remarks to attack Trump’s meeting with Putin, Obama had shared a stage with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa who had come to power promising to seize land from white farmers. Ramaphosa was the latest in a series of ANC strongmen, including his predecessor, an alleged rapist, beginning with the Communist terrorist whose legacy Obama was commemorating.

President Ramaphosa had vowed early on to seize land from white farmers without compensation. “The expropriation of land without compensation is envisaged as one of the measures that we will use to accelerate redistribution of land to black South Africans,” he had declared. And denied that such racist Communist tactics were unconstitutional. Now he’s moving to modify South Africa’s constitution.