RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/19/natos-challenge-is-germany-not-

During the recent NATO summit meeting, a rumbustious Donald Trump tore off a thin scab of niceties to reveal a deep and old NATO wound—one that has predated Trump by nearly 30 years and goes back to the end of the Cold War.

In an era when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact are now ancient history, everyone praises NATO as “indispensable” and “essential” to Western solidarity and European security. But few feel any need to explain how and why that could still be so.

Does NATO still protect the West? Does it prevent destructive European feuding? Does it ensure the postwar global order of free trade, commerce, travel, and communications? And is NATO—or the United States and its leadership of NATO—the real reason there has not been a World War III or a return to global tribalism and chaos?

NATO’s post-Cold War expansion to 29 nations and to the border of Russia meant the alliance became more expansive at the very time the old existential Soviet threat disappeared. Larger membership tended to weaken common ties, even as common dangers disappeared.

The result was that the idea of NATO membership became more important to the countries that are part of it than the reality and responsibility of actual military readiness.

Polls show that in most NATO countries, the idea of fighting on behalf of another country receives scant public support. The notion that the Dutch would march into Estonia to save its capital, Tallinn, from Russia is a cruel joke.

NATO’s 21st-century problem is not the United States, which provides a large percentage of its wherewithal, but Germany. As the most populous and most affluent of European nations, Germany still insidiously dominates Europe as it has since its inception in 1871.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2018/07/of-particular-importance-for-women-of.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=rtDvtc2EFak

Feministas, with very few exceptions, close their eyes and ears to the menace to European women and girls mass Muslim migration has wrought. And their mouths as well.

Not so Hungarian MEP Krisztina Morvai.

At the FEMM (Women’s Rights) Committee of the European Parliament (Austria’s Juliane Bogner-Strauss presiding) the charmingly feminine (will the leftist thought police hunt me down for saying that?) Ms Morvai, with admirable directness and clarity, raised the issue of the negative impact for women and girls that such migration into Europe is having.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/boris-johnson-declares-not-too-late-to-save-brexit/

In a resignation speech Wednesday, MP Boris Johnson castigated Prime Minister Theresa May for failing to uphold the British electorate’s vision of Brexit in negotiations with the European Union, insisting that it’s “not too late” to negotiate a return to complete British sovereignty.

Johnson began the speech by praising May’s initial vision for Brexit, laid out in a speech she delivered last year at Lancaster House, but quickly pivoted, accusing her of allowing a “fog of self-doubt” to compromise Britain’s position in talks with the E.U.

“Even though our EU friends and partners liked the Lancaster House vision — it was what they were expecting from an ambitious partner — we never actually went to Brussels and turned it into a negotiating offer,” Johnson said before the House of Commons.

The former foreign secretary and Mayor of London went on to detail the specific sacrifices he believed May had made thus far in negotiations, emphasizing Britain’s lack of autonomy to negotiate its own trade deals under the agreement she has proposed.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12723/germany-deportation-system

Aidoudi’s asylum request was rejected in 2007 after allegations surfaced that he had undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. During his training, he had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin-Laden.

The government in North Rhine-Westphalia confirmed that for years Aidoudi had been receiving €1,168 ($1,400) each month in welfare and child support payments.

“Salafists such as Sami A. have no business in Germany and should be deported. Germany should not be a retirement retreat for jihadists.” — Alexander Dobrindt, Member of the German Bundestag.

A court in Gelsenkirchen has ruled that deporting a self-declared Islamist — suspected of being a bodyguard of the former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden — was “grossly unlawful” and ordered him returned to Germany.

The case has cast a spotlight on the dysfunctional nature of Germany’s deportation system, as well as on Germany’s politicized judicial system, which on human rights grounds is making it nearly impossible to expel illegal migrants, including those who pose security threats.

The 42-year-old failed asylum seeker from Tunisia — identified by German authorities as Sami A., but known in his native country as Sami Aidoudi — had been living in Germany since 1997. Aidoudi, a Salafist Islamist, is believed by German authorities to have spent time in Afghanistan and Pakistan before the al-Qaeda attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001. Since then, he was under surveillance by German intelligence for propagating Islamist teachings and attempting to radicalize young Muslims. He had “far reaching” relationships with Salafist and jihadist networks, according to an official report leaked to the German newsmagazine, Focus.

Aidoudi’s asylum request was rejected in 2007 after allegations surfaced that he had undergone military training at an al-Qaeda jihadi camp in Afghanistan between 1999 and 2000. During his training, he had allegedly worked as a bodyguard for Osama bin-Laden. Aidoudi denied the charges and claimed to have been studying during that time in Karachi, Pakistan.

Despite rejecting Aidoudi’s asylum application, German courts repeatedly blocked his deportation out of fears that he could be tortured or mistreated in his homeland.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/theresa-may-covert-third-way-brexit-plan-sparks-backlash-constitutional-crisis/

The prime minister covertly tried to impose a ‘third way’ and now faces a backlash.

A massive political and constitutional crisis is gathering pace in Britain. It began earlier this year, perhaps as early as February, when Prime Minister Theresa May began to run her own private policy on Brexit through officials in Downing Street and the Cabinet Office — a policy that was different from, and arguably opposite to, the Brexit policy that had the approval of the cabinet and the public. But it emerged that something unorthodox might be happening only two weeks ago, when reports began to circulate in Whitehall and Westminster that the prime minister would advise a Chequers cabinet meeting on the next Friday to choose a hitherto unknown “third way” rather than two earlier options for leaving the European Union Customs Union.

When an alarmed David Davis — the secretary of state for exiting the European Union — saw her on the Wednesday before Chequers (interestingly, the Fourth of July), she allegedly denied to him that any such third-way document existed. In the following two days, however, leaks from Downing Street made it clear that a showdown of some kind was in the offing. One aide, apparently thinking he was some kind of hard-nosed White House staffer from the West Wing television series, told the media that if a cabinet minister resigned at Chequers, he would immediately lose his official car and be compelled to stand on principle and take the long walk of shame to pick up a taxi at the gate.

I’ll let an extract from my account in the Australian pick up the story from there:

That didn’t seem the worst of threats — it’s a fifteen minutes stroll through pleasant countryside. But it did set the tone for one of the least agreeable country-house weekends in history — one apparently designed by someone with training in East German psy-ops and hostage psychology management: Isolate them in a remote location, cut off their escape, take away their phones, give them complex bureaucratic papers to read, cut the time for reading short, examine them on their reading, confuse them, mock any mistakes they make, demand they sign the document, threaten them with non-personhood if they refuse, and if they do refuse, tell them the decision has already been made by the Party and that their refusal is meaningless. It was a brilliant technique — call it Applied Stockholm Syndrome — and it worked. Most of those present nodded smilingly and signed; some were reluctant but they signed too in order not to spoil the occasion, and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson even proposed a toast to Big Sister. Happy to be still in power, they all got into their cars and returned to London.

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/greece-israel-cyprus-alliance/

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The Eastern Mediterranean Alliance (Israel, Greece, and Cyprus) is emerging at a time of increasing global instability. All three states are firm democracies that promote peace, security, and environmental stability in the region. The tripartite alliance is strategically the most significant anchor of Greek security and economic progress.

Concrete steps over the past three years have set the foundations of an Eastern Mediterranean Alliance (EMA) comprising Israel, Greece, and Cyprus. The convergence of the three nations is the natural outcome of close democratic similarities and a joint desire for stability and progress in a region tormented by perennial Middle East strife, radical Islamism, and the morphing of Turkey into a fundamentalist Islamic autocracy.

The EMA is emerging at a time of increasing global instability. American retrenchment from traditional postwar strategic arrangements, the resurgence of Russia, a troubled EU, the illegal migration crisis, China’s rise as a global power, and much else leave little room for complacency.

Israel, Greece, and the Republic of Cyprus are the only Eastern Mediterranean actors that are firm democracies. As such, they do not only see a common interest in promoting peace, security, and environmental stability in the region, but also seek to promote strong economic bonds following the discovery of rich hydrocarbon deposits in their respective Exclusive Economic Zones.

While each of the EMA partners faces individual challenges, all three are united against the regional spoiler and strutting Islamic “superpower” of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey. The Turkish president misses no opportunity to vow that Ankara will “take what is rightfully hers” – and is just a step away from declaring the international treaties that settled Turkey’s fate after WWI null and void.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12715/russia-czech-republic

It is wrong to view Russia’s political warfare as merely a kind of “competition” that lacks the seriousness of an actual military confrontation. As the Center for Strategic and Budget Assessments (CSBA) report — detailing Russia’s political warfare — indicates, politics is war by other means.

Since then, however, the Czech Republic seems to be moving in the opposite direction, with an openly pro-Russian leader, President Milos Zeman. As one colleague of mine put it: “Could the land of the Velvet Revolution be slowly falling under the spell of Putin’s propaganda?”

Jakub Janda, director of the European Values Think-Tank in Prague, worries that one measure of the success of Russian propaganda is that four out of ten Czechs blame the U.S. for the Ukrainian crisis, although there are Russian troops occupying part of the territory of Ukraine. And only 20% of Czechs believe that Russian-organized troops are not operating in Ukraine, a view held by President Zeman.

That countries with such promise as the Czech Republic are possibly sacrificing all that they gained after the end of the Cold War for the Russian government is a sad commentary on the condition of European societies. The good news is that there are brave elements within these societies who seek to push back and reclaim their freedom and sovereignty. Their efforts deserve not only our praise, but our full support.

With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the official dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, NATO assumed that the newly freed countries of Eastern and Central Europe (commonly referred to as the ECE) would join with Western Europe and become both free and prosperous. It was not an entirely reasonable assumption, however: the Russians did not want to accept the end of the Soviet empire; nor were they ready to jettison decades of deep suspicion about the aims of the West, particularly the United States and NATO.

Although the Russians sought economic influence throughout Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War, they were nevertheless supportive of Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev’s full acceptance of the reunification of Germany and independence for the former members of the Soviet bloc.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270740/ethiopias-new-direction-joseph-puder

Ethiopia recently elected Prime Minister Dr. Abiy Ahmed: a 42-year-old reformer intent on making Africa’s second-largest country the only true democracy on the continent. Last week, Prime Minister Abiy’s trip to Eritrea’s capital city Asmara was promising, signaling a thawing of relations with its arch-enemy following two decades of conflict.

During the historic summit, Abiy and Eritrea’s rebel-turned-dictator Isaias Afwerki agreed to jointly open up shared airspace, to rekindle joint communications, and to re-open embassies. Importantly, Eritrea will now permit Ethiopia to use its port, which became landlocked as a result of Eritrea’s secession from Ethiopia 25-years ago. Ethiopia’s trade capital, Addis Ababa, will finally have access to the Red Sea.

According to Abiy, the two leaders agreed,

To bring down the wall between us. Now there is no border between Ethiopia and Eritrea. That borderline is gone today with the display of a true love…love is greater than modern weapons like tanks and missiles. Love can win hearts, and we have seen a great deal of it today here in Asmara. From this time on, war is not an option for the people of Eritrea and Ethiopia. What we need now is love.

Since his swearing in on April 2, 2018, Abiy has promised to reform Ethiopian governance. During his first speech, Abiy espoused western principles including promoting the idea of Ethipoians’ right to choose their own occupation, supporting protections to ensure human rights, and he extolled the virtues of economic security. But what raised eyebrows was Abiy’s bold invitation to Ethiopian exiles saying, “We will welcome you home,” and promised, “the coming season in Ethiopia is a season of peace and reconciliation.”