RUTHFULLY YOURS

How can an otherwise failed dictatorship best suppress internal dissent while winning international attention, influence—and money?

Apparently, it must openly seek nuclear weapons.

Second, the nut state should sound so crazy and unpredictable that it might just use them, regardless of civilization’s deterrent forces arrayed against it.

Third, it must welcome being “reluctantly” pulled into nonproliferation talks to prolong the farce and allow its deep-pocket enemies to brag of their diplomatic “strategic patience” and sophistication.

The accepted logic of the rogue state is that the Westernized world is so affluent and leisured, and life is so good, that it will understandably grant almost any immediate geostrategic or monetary concession to avoid serious disruptions of the international order. The logic of appeasement is always more appeasement — especially in the one-bomb nuclear age.

North Korea sounds as if Pyongyang is an expendable hellhole, but not so Seoul, one of world’s great commercial and industrial powerhouses that exports Hyudais, Kias, Samsung, and LG appliances.

The logic is that of the proverbial crazy country neighbor, whose house and yard are a junkyard mess, whose kids are criminals, and who periodically threatens to “mess you up” unless you put up with his antics, give him attention, and overlook his serial criminality.

The renegade neighbor’s logic is that you have lots to lose by descending into his world of violence and insanity, while he has nothing to forfeit by basking in it, and that such asymmetry allows him to have something on you. And it makes him something other than just the ex-con, creep, and failure that he otherwise is.

Short-term appeasement of unhinged monsters is always felt to be a safer and less dangerous choice than solving the problem once and for all, which one might do by calling the bluff of a rabid entity believed capable of inflicting grave damage on the civilized order.

And so for nearly the last half century we have found new and creative ways of feeding our pre-civilized dragons in fear that otherwise they will immediately scorch civilization. The logic, in other words, has been “let the next administration handle this temporarily placated monster when he gets hungry again.”

For nearly the last half century, the logic has been ‘let the next administration handle this temporarily placated monster when he gets hungry again.’

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, Saddam Hussein sounded and acted murderously unhinged: He preemptively attacked Iran, issued threats against most of his neighbors, gassed thousands of Kurds at Halajba, bragged about his human flesh-chipper, ran a gestapo police state that murdered hundreds of thousands of its own, invaded Kuwait, sent missiles into Israel, violated U.N. resolutions, and all the while slyly suggesting that Iraq had a huge arsenal of WMD.

A crazy, dangerous Iraq was all over the front pages — in a way that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, and other oil-exporting Arab countries were not.

Ah, the UN. Spewing poisoned hot air with all its hateful talk, thus contributing to the oh-so-feared climate change while polluting the planet and endangering it even further with its corrupt and harmful actions, it really should be abolished for the safety of humanity, new sheriff in town, Nikki Haley, notwithstanding.

Consider the latest Alice-In-Wonderland, reverse film negative (remember those?) where black is white and white is black (calm down sensitive, safe-space culture appropriation victims) oxymoronic action: Saudi Arabia has just been elected to the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), reports Hillel Neuer of UN Watch. Yes, you read that correctly, Saudi Arabia, the country where women can’t drive or be seen in public without a man, among other repressive restrictions, has been elected to a commission which is, according to their official statement “the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women…established 21 June 1946 ”
For some reason terrorist enabler Linda Sarsour, co-organizer of the recent so-called Women’s March and her committee didn’t complain about this insult to women while the so-called mainstream media did not highlight this farce.

(I warned you it was Alice in Wonderland, reverse film negative.) From the UN’s own claptrap, read about all the good and progressive stuff Saudi Arabia is going to enforce on the CSW. NOT!

The CSW is instrumental in promoting women’s rights, documenting the reality of women’s lives throughout the world, and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women.

In 1996, ECOSOC in resolution 1996/6 expanded the Commission’s mandate and decided that it should take a leading role in monitoring and reviewing progress and problems in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and in mainstreaming a gender perspective in UN activities. Following the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015, the Commission now also contributes to the follow-up to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development so as to accelerate the realization of gender equality and the empowerment of women (ECOSOC resolution 2015/6).

During the Commission’s annual two-week session, representatives of UN Member States, civil society organizations and UN entities gather at UN headquarters in New York. They discuss progress and gaps in the implementation of the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the key global policy document on gender equality, and the 23rd special session of the General Assembly held in 2000 (Beijing+5), as well as emerging issues that affect gender equality and the empowerment of women. Member States agree on further actions to accelerate progress and promote women’s enjoyment of their rights in political, economic and social fields. The outcomes and recommendations of each session are forwarded to ECOSOC for follow-up.
UN Women supports all aspects of the Commission’s work. The Entity also facilitates the participation of civil society representatives.

Got that? But wait…there’s definitely more hypocrisy with Saudi Arabia and the UN that Neurer illuminates!

Amid tightened security following last Thursday’s deadly terrorist attack in Paris, French voters turned out in high numbers to the polls on Sunday for the first round of the country’s presidential election. Globalist Emmanuel Macron and populist Marine Le Pen, the two top finishers amongst the eleven candidates running to replace the Socialist French President Francois Hollande, will face each other in a run-off on Sunday, May 7th. Mr. Macron came out on top, with slightly over 23 percent of vote, and is the favorite to win the presidency outright in the May 7th run-off. Ms. Le Pen ran a close second. Neither of the top two finishers were candidates of France’s major mainstream left and right parties. The incumbent president is very unpopular, which no doubt burdened the Socialist candidate. The major right-of-center candidate has been mired in a scandal.

Not surprisingly, the lackluster economy, including 10 percent unemployment, and security concerns emanating from repeated terrorist attacks emerged as the leading issues in the race.

French voters will be choosing as their next president between two individuals with starkly different world views. As of now, according to Politico, Emmanuel Macron is ahead of Marine Le Pen by 20 to 30 percent in a one-on-one match-up. Moreover, in an initial positive response from investors to Mr. Macron’s first-place finish and prospects in the run-off, the Euro rose to a 5½-month high against the dollar. Nevertheless, given Ms. Le Pen’s close finish in the first round and her enthusiastic constituency, it is premature to count her out. After all, the pundits and pollsters were virtually unanimous in picking Hillary Clinton to win last fall over Donald Trump. We know how that turned out.

Emmanuel Macron, 39, who founded his own independent party just a year ago, is a pro-European Union centrist. He believes in gradual deregulation and fiscal discipline, while at the same time espousing even closer cooperation among the EU’s 28 member states. Several EU leaders expressed delight with Mr. Macron’s strong finish and prospects in the run-off. For example, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said, “He is the only pro-EU candidate.” Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel said he was “happy that Macron will represent in the second round democratic and European values that I share.”

Mr. Macron, speaking after the election results came in, congratulated the other candidates he ran against, except Ms. Le Pen. In a barb at his opponent in the May 7th run-off, he said he would lead “the patriots facing the nationalists.”

Marine Le Pen, 48, is the leader of the nationalist Front National party. She ran on a platform combining anti-globalist sentiments with economic populism.

In a recent debate, Ms. Le Pen summed up how she viewed her candidacy: “I’m a French woman, a mother and a candidate for the presidency. For me this election is about a choice of civilizations. Our country is overrun by insecurity, economic and social disorder and Islamist terrorism. Our values and identity are under threat.”

While not endorsing Ms. Le Pen outright, President Trump remarked that she was “strongest on borders, and she’s the strongest on what’s been going on in France.”

The Arab states that reject Israel today forget that they themselves would not exist without the Mandate system – a point seldom if ever acknowledged in public forums where the legitimacy of Israel is debated.

If there is any Palestinian desire for a two-state solution, it is questionable: according to current maps of “Palestine,” and the New Hamas Charter, it is supposed to be on its neighbouring state, Israel; not next to it. The wish of Palestinian leaders to have a Palestinian state is never realized solely due to the unending rejection of their Jewish neighbour.

Article 19 of the New Charter repeats that there will never be peace so long as Israel still exists. It declares: “We do not leave any part of the Palestinians’ land, under any circumstances, conditions or pressure, as long as the occupation remains. Hamas refuses any alternative which is not the whole liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

Anyone with a serious interest in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians will be familiar with the oft-cited Charter (or Covenant [mithaq]) of the terrorist group currently ruling the Gaza Strip, Hamas. The Charter (in Arabic here) was published on 18 August 1988. Its proper title is “The Charter/Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement ‘Hamas’ Palestine”, Hamas being an acronym for “the Islamic Resistance Movement”.

This April, the Lebanese news site al-Mayadeen leaked a draft version of a much-revised version of the 1988 Charter, due to be released “in the coming days”. The anti-Israel website Mondoweiss subsequently provided an English translation of the draft, made by someone from the Ayda refugee camp in the West Bank. So far, I have been unable to find the Arabic text of the draft online, even though it has been discussed many times in the wider Arabic media. We shall turn to it later, but it is obviously sensible to look first at the 1988 version as a basis of comparison. And even before that, we need to see how the Hamas Covenant differed from, and resembled, the PLO Covenants of 1964 and 1968.

The full title of the movement is crucial to an understanding of the document and its aims. Hamas had been founded in 1987 as an intransigent extension of the Palestinian Mujamma linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, and was explicitly hardline and neo-Salafi in its religious orientation. This was in conspicuous contrast to its rival Palestinian movement, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded by the Arab League in 1964 as an overtly secular and nationalist entity. The two PLO National Covenants of 1964 and 1968 exclude religion as a basis for the anti-Israel struggle.[1]

But in those versions, that secular nationalism takes two distinct forms. The 1964 PLO Charter is based on the concept of pan-Arabism as inspired by the Arab League and Egypt’s president at the time, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Palestinians are simply Arabs among millions of Arabs, and their struggle for liberation was carried out with little emphasis on the creation of a Palestinian state. This view changed, however, after 1967, when the Six-Day War showed the powerlessness of the Arab states to resolve the Palestinian issue. When Egypt and Jordan attacked Israel (Egypt’s closing the Strait of Tiran was a legitimate casus belli, cause for war), Israel repelled them and ended up sitting on land — Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, Judaea and Samaria — which it immediately offered to return in exchange for recognition and peace. That offer was rejected in a matter of weeks at the Khartoum Conference.

During and after the “peace process” and the Oslo Accords of the 1990s, the Palestinian leadership promised that it would delete the most offensive and anti-peace clauses of the 1968 Charter. Many years later, nothing has been done, and the existing Charter remains unchanged.

Nationalism is not an Islamic concept. Even pan-Arabism falls outside the remit of Islamic ideology and practice. Almost from the beginning, Islam has been predicated on the idea of a global community (the umma), which embraces all Muslims and Islamic regions, allegedly since the beginning of time, with a promise of eventual Islamic control over the Earth. According to a sound tradition in the canonical collection by al-Bukhari, among the five things given to Muhammad that had not been given to any previous prophet was that, “Every Prophet used to be sent to his nation only but I have been sent to all mankind.”[2] In another version, he is recorded as saying: “I have been sent to all mankind and the line of prophets is closed with me.”[3]

This sense of global scale has characterized the Islamic world from its beginning in the form of empires. These started with the Umayyads (661-750) and ended with the Ottomans (1299-1922). The long history of Islamic imperialism had two imperishable effects: it prevented the development of nation-state polity and imposed the theory of religious rule. Self-identification for imperial citizens functioned only through the family, clan, tribe, village or town or city; or according to religious affiliations of various kinds. Everywhere, the only true citizens were orthodox Muslims; subjugated minorities such as Jews and Christians were kept strictly as inferiors, with a separate set of harsh laws and a special tax, the jizya, to pay for “protection”.

This legacy of Islamic dominance, of jihad as a legitimate and regular policy towards non-Muslim Europe, African regions, Central Asia and India, combined with the illegitimacy and unacceptability of Jewish, Christian or secular rule over Islamic territory, has left a deep mark on the Palestinian sense of identity. Formerly subjects of the Ottoman Empire in Syria, almost overnight in the 1920s the Arab Palestinians found themselves adrift in a sea of international rules and regulations concerning territory and national identity. This was the never-acknowledged pivot around which the growing conflict with the Jewish Palestinians revolved — and still revolves.

A nuclear power plant on the sea would ensure a continuous supply of water as coolant — a necessity for any reactor.

China’s motive for building the nuclear reactors is clear: to exert its dominance and influence throughout the area.

In April 2016, reports began coming in that China has plans to build floating nuclear power plants in the South China Sea. A floating nuclear power plant consists of one or more nuclear reactors, located on a platform at sea. China apparently plans to “speed up the commercial development” of the South China Sea and views the nuclear power plants as part of that plan. [1]

Final assembly of the reactor is reported to start in coastal city of Huludao, in Liaoning province, and will be built by Bohai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co Ltd, a unit of China Shipbuilding Industry Corp (CSIC).[2]

China’s 2016 nuclear plan, a component of the China’s 13th five-year plan, is evidently to complete 58 nuclear reactors by 2020 and build another 100 gigawatt-sized reactors by 2030. These would make China the largest nuclear power producer in the world. China’s floating nuclear reactor initiative seems to be a component of this nuclear plan.
Reasons for such reactors

China’s stated reasons for venturing into such technologies include providing an inexpensive source of electricity and fresh water for both military and economic gains, as well as ensuring China’s strategic dominance in the South China Sea. Nuclear power plants could not only provide cheap electricity to defense facilities but also to desalination plants. Normally, the defense facilities such as airports and harbors depend on oil or coal for power generation. A nuclear power plant on the sea would ensure a continuous supply of water as coolant — a necessity for any reactor.

A 60 MWe reactor is said to be beneficial for supplying electricity, heat and desalination, and could be used on islands and on coastal areas or for offshore oil and gas exploration.