RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/01/australia-day-matters/
Why Australia Day Matters by Leo Maglen

The heroes of our nationhood were not resistance leaders or freedom fighters, but politicians and statesmen, most now forgotten or only half-remembered. Their creation is an achievement worth celebrating.

An amazing, but little remarked, fact in the current concern about securing Australia’s borders – cue ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ – is that they are entirely maritime. We have no land borders, and Australia is the largest country in the world not to have any any. According to Geoscience Australia, we have a coastline of almost sixty thousand kilometres (mainland plus islands). The perimeter of our territorial waters is probably longer, and the outer edge of our exclusive economic zone (EEZ) longer again. Back on shore we have, of course, state borders, and we once built a rabbit-proof fence over thousands of kilometres of outback, but only at sea do we share international borders with other countries (PNG Indonesia and East Timor).

Australia is the only inhabited continent that is not criss-crossed with international boundaries and a patchwork of nation states. Not for us razor-wire fences, concrete barriers, guard-posts, check-points, manned border-crossings, heavily armed border patrols, disputed terrain. We are one country, one nation, spanning an entire continent and its offshore islands. The shape is so iconic, so much the image of our country, that we take it for granted.

It is pertinent to ask how this happy situation came about. It was not, it must be said, anything to do with the first inhabitants, the Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders. Whilst they had spread across the entire continent and adjacent islands, and shared a nomadic hunter-gatherer existence, they were divided into around 250 separate tribal groups, each with its own traditions, customs, language and territory, with which it had a strong and deep affinity. Whilst there was, of course, contact between adjacent groups, it is doubtful whether there was any knowledge of, or affinity with, groups beyond this range of contacts, with those living on the other side of the continent. Nor is it likely that the first inhabitants had any concept of the country, of the continent, of Australia, in its entirety. This awareness could only come in the modern era.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/02/11/close-enough/

European ‘integration’ is a threat to Nato, Europe, and the U.S.

Alexander Herzen wrote that after any revolution, “the departing world leaves be­hind it not an heir but a pregnant widow.” Yet ever since the election of Donald Trump convulsed the world, Western Europe’s leaders have been speaking as if a new international order had already been born. Last August, French president Emmanuel Macron told his diplomatic corps that “Europe can no longer entrust its security to the United States alone.” Heiko Maas, the German foreign minister, a few days later wrote that “the outstanding aim of our foreign policy is to build a sovereign, strong Europe” that can “form a counterweight when the US crosses the line.” In the thinking of Macron, Maas, and their confreres in Brussels, the heir to the dearly departed American-led postwar system has already been named, and that heir is ever-closer European union.

This has been a premature christening. While President Trump has indeed turned up the temperature on Europe with his brash criticisms of trans­atlantic relations, especially in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the labor pains jolting Europe are not of America’s creation. Instead, the continent is in a political turmoil of its own making — a crisis that is directly linked to, and exacerbated by, aspects of the European Union (EU). With Paris and Berlin eying a second Élysée Treaty and Great Britain in the throes of Brexit, today’s Europe is the pregnant widow of Herzen’s imagination. Now is the time for the U.S. to promote the birth of a new alternative to the dogma of integration — a model that gives European nations the flexibility to choose their own destinies.

Over the past two decades, Western European leaders have made two broad claims in support of greater European union. First, they have argued that European integration is responsible for the post–World War II peace. On this point European leaders regularly echo the sentiments of European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker: “You only need to visit a war cemetery to see what the alternative to European integration is.” Second, EU leaders have often contended that the Union promotes discussion and coordination without impinging on national sovereignty. In defense of Brussels, one senior European diplomat often emphasizes in private conversations that “where we once fought, we now talk.”

https://www.foxnews.com/world/how-socialism-turned-venezuela-from-the-wealthiest-country-in-south-america-into-an-economic-basket-case

Venezuela was once the wealthiest country in South America, but in recent years millions have fled the country amid mass starvation and violence after socialist policies were enacted and government seized private industries.

Now, as Venezuelans struggle against the country’s current dictator, some Venezuelan exiles in the U.S. are desperately warning Americans to avoid going down a similar path.

“Socialism not only takes away from people the access to basic food and medicines, but also creates an environment in which life is worth nothing,” Giannina Raffo, who fled Venezuela in 2016 but who still works with activist organizations there, told Fox News.

VENEZUELA’S INTERIM PRESIDENT GUAIDO OFFERS MADURO AMNESTY IF HE CEDES POWER

Despite that situation in Venezuela, polls show Americans warming to the term “socialism” in recent years.

Venezuelans who have fled their country warn that their country’s history shows what others must watch for and avoid.

Venezuela’s journey to disaster began in 1992, when a Venezuelan lieutenant colonel named Hugo Chavez led several army units in a coup against the government. More than 100 people were killed in fighting, but his coup was defeated.

However, in the name of national unity, the government released Chavez from prison after just two years.

NIKKI HALEY LED THE WAY WITH VENEZUELA CONDEMNATION AT UN

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25

Conspicuous by its absence in much of the mainstream news coverage of Venezuela’s political crisis is the word “socialism.” Yes, every sensible observer agrees that Latin America’s once-richest country, sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, is an economic basket case, a humanitarian disaster, and a dictatorship whose demise cannot come soon enough.

But … socialist? Perish the thought.

Or so goes a line of argument that insists socialism’s good name shouldn’t be tarred by the results of experience. On Venezuela, what you’re likelier to read is that the crisis is the product of corruption, cronyism, populism, authoritarianism, resource-dependency, U.S. sanctions and trickery, even the residues of capitalism itself. Just don’t mention the S-word because, you know, it’s working really well in Denmark.

Curiously, that’s not how the Venezuelan regime’s admirers used to speak of “21st century socialism,” as it was dubbed by Hugo Chávez. The late Venezuelan president, said Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, “showed us there is a different and a better way of doing things. It’s called socialism, it’s called social justice, and it’s something that Venezuela has made a big step toward.” Noam Chomsky was similarly enthusiastic when he praised Chávez in 2009. “What’s so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela,” the linguist said, is that “I can see how a better world is being created and can speak to the person who’s inspired it.”