RUTHFULLY YOURS

London, Paris, Rome—cities that are familiar to most Americans. And even if you can’t find them on the map, you know that it only takes a few clicks to learn all you need to know about them. (Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives. The Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889. Three coins in the Trevi Fountain.)https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/20/jerusalem-is-the-capital-of-israel/

If you do look at the map—Siri has probably found one for you by now—you’ll notice that all three cities are the capitals of their respective countries.

You may wonder how cities get to be capitals. Stop. Don’t ask Siri. It’s very simple. The countries just pick a city, and the word out gets out. That’s it. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Unless the city is Jerusalem. Yes, Jerusalem is Israel’s capital city. It’s not something new, and it has nothing to with anything President Trump said. Remember the rule: A country gets to name its capital. No other country or individual has any say in the matter. Pretty simple, right?

But if you find it surprising, you’re in good company. Israel chose Jerusalem as its capital almost 70 years ago. Yet most of the press and political leaders worldwide are just now getting up to speed.

To his great credit, President Trump was not constrained by whatever handicap prevented so many others from stating the obvious. “Israel is a sovereign nation with the right like every other sovereign nation to determine its own capital,” said Trump

In May 1948, the State of Israel declared its independence, and Israel’s founding fathers chose Jerusalem to be the fledgling state’s capital. It was an easy choice. In fact, it was a fait accompli. When you have a city that was good enough to be the capital for King David some 3,000 years earlier, and that city is where Solomon chose to build the Holy Temple, you don’t need to look elsewhere.

As clear a choice as this was for Israel, it didn’t go over well with most countries, including the United States. They had their reasons: bad ones. But, of course, nothing really mattered. The choice was Israel’s to make, and Israel would not be deterred.

And the United States and other nations, what did they do? They took a very diplomatic approach: they punted . . . all the way to Tel Aviv. Nice city—restaurants, beaches. But it wasn’t Israel’s capital.

That’s why, just the past week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a “read my lips” moment, had to state the obvious to the visiting French President Emmanuel Macron: “Paris is the capital of France. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.”

According to a 2007 study by the Rockwool Foundation, after ten years in the Danish school system, two-thirds of students with an Arabic background remain functionally illiterate. In Bradford, Yorkshire, 75 per cent of Pakistani Britons are married to their first cousins, many of whom are themselves the children of first cousins. In the new west, why even bother worrying about IQ? Professor Bates says he wants to get to the bottom of the “why” and the “what”. But as I wrote eleven years ago in America Alone:

Stick a pin almost anywhere in the map, near or far: The “who” is the best indicator of the what-where-when-why.

Which is why a gay bathhouse got nixed in Luton: The mosque has more muscle.

And the more demographic transformation transforms, the more ill-advised it becomes to mention it. Before 9/11, even the BBC was happy to discuss whether the resurgence of rickets in the United Kingdom is due to Muslim dress. Sixteen years later, when UKIP bring it up, it’s cited as proof they’re a laughingstock. A question for Professor Bates and his colleagues is whether a society in which more and more subjects are ruled out of public discourse should expect its measures of intelligence to do anything other than head south – for native and non-native alike. Thus:

The quality of what we called the student “clientele” had deteriorated so dramatically over the years that the classroom struck me as a barn full of ruminants and the curriculum as a stack of winter ensilage… The level of interest in and attention to the subjects was about as flat as a fallen arch. The ability to write a coherent English sentence was practically nonexistent; ordinary grammar was a traumatic ordeal. In fact, many native English-speakers could not produce a lucid verbal analysis of a text, let alone carry on an intelligible conversation, and some were even unable to properly pronounce common English words.

A man rammed a car into pedestrians and Christmas shoppers in a bustling area of Australia’s second-largest city on Thursday, injuring more than a dozen people, in an act that police said was deliberate.

Police in Melbourne said they arrested the male driver of the vehicle at the scene, along with another man, and that several of those injured were in critical condition.

“At this stage we believe that it was a deliberate act. However, we do not know the motivation,” Commander Russell Barrett of Victoria Police told reporters.

Witnesses said a white sport-utility vehicle accelerated after running a red light and plowing into pedestrians at high speed adjacent to Flinders Street Station, one of Melbourne’s busiest transportation hubs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/car-plows-into-pedestrians-in-central-melbourne-1513842409?cx_testId=17&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=related?cx_campaign=poptart&mod=cx_poptart#cxrecs_s

The incident occurred near the location of a similar incident in January, when a driver plowed through a pedestrian mall, killing four people and injuring 20 others. That incident wasn’t terrorism-related.

The January incident, coming after terrorist attacks in Europe and the U.K. in which attackers used vehicles to mow down pedestrians, prompted Australia’s government and police countrywide to strengthen defenses in an effort to guard against vehicle-based attacks. Concrete or metal poles were erected at popular locations and more armed police have been patrolling the nation’s streets.

Earlier this month, police in Sydney began patrolling with military-style rifles for the first time. Other deterrent measures have included fences and additional installations of CCTV cameras, as well as improved screening procedures across the country.

Heavily armed officers had parts of central Melbourne locked down after Thursday’s incident, which occurred at the start of rush hour at about 4:30 p.m. local time, during the busy Christmas shopping period.

An ambulance-service spokesman said at least 13 people had been transported to hospitals, while two others were being assessed by paramedics at the scene.

“The intersection was full of pedestrians and he just plowed through,” one bystander, who gave his name only as Jim, told Australian television, describing the car as a white Suzuki traveling fast. CONTINUE AT SITE

Dec. 20 marks the fourth anniversary of what will, in my life, always be a day of rebirth: my release from a Russian prison, where I had been jailed for 10 years by Vladimir Putin for crimes I did not commit. I remember my police escort, as he walked down the boarding ramp of the plane that was to take me to Berlin, telling someone on his walkie-talkie that I was on board. I remember the door closing.

Later I learned how many governments and people had applied pressure for my release. Among them was Amnesty International, which added me to its “prisoners of conscience” list in 2011.

On this, the anniversary of my freedom, I again thank AI—and I am urging it to put its weight behind Russia’s longest-serving political prisoner, Alexei Pichugin, who is stuck in the same vortex that entrapped me.

Mr. Pichugin, a former midlevel supervisor in the security office of Yukos Oil, was arrested in 2003 and has been convicted of multiple murders based on “evidence” fabricated by the Kremlin’s minions. Western democracies and even Interpol have decreed his case to be political and devoid of real evidence. In short, Russia holds Mr. Pichugin hostage, in hope that he will buy his freedom by giving false testimony against me.

There are protocols, I know, for determining who is a prisoner of conscience, as well as academic debate on the precise meaning of the term. I can tell you the simple test I apply. For 14 years and counting—more than 5,000 days—Mr. Pichugin has held in his hands the key to his freedom: All he needs to do is bear false witness against me and other Yukos executives. Lie, and walk free.

Every day, he wakes to that invitation. Every day, he refuses. There is only one way to describe his condition: Mr. Pichugin is a prisoner of conscience.