RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/war-memorials-do-nazi-or-islamist-soldiers-qualify-howard-rotberg/

In our war memorials and our remembrance holidays, whom do we honor and why?

On November 17th, reporter Jeff Outhit of the Waterloo (Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario Canada) Record, wrote about German Remembrance Day, which takes place in Kitchener, a day or so after Canadian Remembrance Day. The German Remembrance Day takes place in a section of Woodland Cemetery where about 137 Nazi soldiers and about 50 soldiers from the First World War are buried.

Apparently the bodies of the Nazi soldiers and others who died during their detention in Canada during World War 2 were moved from cemeteries near the facilities where they were kept to all be re-buried in Kitchener, known for its large number of German immigrants, especially in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Mr. Outhit writes that “It’s no small thing to see former enemies mourned.” He states that a crowd came to remember their sacrifice, to honor all who are victims of war, and to reflect on how to stop it from happening again.”

The reporter talked to three young people, of German heritage, who attended the ceremony.

“It’s very moving to have all of us be able to get together, and pay our respects,” said one. Another was struck by how the ceremony aims to remember not just the fighters but also the civilians who perished.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15310/boris-johnson-us-uk-relations

The US president said a future US-UK trade agreement has “the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative” than any deal that could have been made with the EU.

Compared with the calamitous impact a victory for Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose politics is defined by his visceral anti-Americanism, would have had on transatlantic relations, Mr Johnson’s return to Downing Street will have been greeted with enormous relief in the White House, as it means Washington now has a firm ally in London, someone who is committed to breathing new life into the vital and long-standing partnership between Britain and America.

Boris Johnson has only been back in Downing Street a few days following his stunning victory in Britain’s general election, but there are already early signs that his premiership will preside over a dramatic revival in transatlantic relations not seen since the heyday of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

First and foremost, the British prime minister has made it abundantly clear that his first priority will be to break the Brexit deadlock that has effectively paralysed British politics, and the country’s ability to make its voice heard on the international stage, at the earliest possible opportunity, thus opening the way for a trade deal with Washington.

As a start, Mr Johnson has committed his new government to fulfil its election pledge to complete Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union by the end of January. Furthermore, he will enshrine in law his promise that the complicated trade negotiations that are due to take place next year to finalise Britain’s future trading relationship with the EU bloc will be completed by the end of 2020.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15233/turkey-east-west

In addition, Turkey is in talks with Russia to purchase a second batch of the S-400 system, including coproduction and technology transfer options. If the S-400 system is operated in Turkey, Moscow could find a built-in cyber backdoor to spy on NATO assets.

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said in September that it was unacceptable for Turkey not to have its own nuclear weapons – although Turkey is a signatory to both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

In 2016, Erdoğan said that Turkey did not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and could instead become part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations

Erdoğan thinks that he can forever benefit from the East-West divide by officially belonging to West but more-than-courting the East. He seems to love playing the Russia card to Americans and the America card to Russians. He should be led to understand that he cannot play this carpet trading game forever.

While NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, celebrated its 70th anniversary on December 4, these days it is sitting on a different paradigm than it did since its birth in Washington DC in 1949. Three years later, in 1952, Turkey, along with its Aegean rival Greece, became a member.

In the 67 years since its membership, Turkey has moved from being a staunch ally defending Europe’s southeast flank in the Cold War to being NATO’s unresolved burden.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/corbyn-crushed

British citizens went to the polls this past Thursday and handed opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn a humiliation that will permanently stain his already tarnished reputation. His Labor Party sustained a stunning rout at the hands of the conservatives and suffered its worst showing since before World War II.

True to form, Corbyn and his die-hard acolytes refused to take any responsibility for the calamity befalling their party and instead, blamed Brexit and the media for their defeat. Corbyn’s vapid explanations and denials are steeped in a combination of hubris, venality and fantasy. Britain’s citizens plainly recognized Corbyn for what he was, a vile, hard-core socialist and anti-Semite who could not be trusted to lead the nation.

As noted by Katie Hopkins at FrontPage, Corbyn ran on a platform that would have fostered an atmosphere inimical to the free market system. He called for the nationalization of utility companies. Wanted illegal aliens to have access to Britain’s already heavily burdened healthcare system and wanted to restructure the inheritance tax in a manner that would have further punished those who managed to accumulate some measure of wealth during their lifetime. 

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight

The United Nations General Assembly (GA) doesn’t take itself seriously. Unlike U.N. Security Council resolutions, GA pronouncements have no enforcement mechanism and often serve only to permit countries to vent — mostly at Israel. But this travesty helps determine the allocation of general U.N. funds — American tax dollars among them, albeit fewer under the Trump administration. So, it is worth parsing the activity of the GA last week.

Thirty-five resolutions were proposed in the GA by the U.N. Special Political and Decolonization Committee. The Committee, which includes Syria, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Bolivia, and Venezuela, has no North American, Western European, or Scandinavian members. Twenty-seven resolutions used general language and named no specific country; eight targeted Israel.

If you thought this would be a good time for the U.N. to recognize the desperate efforts of the people of Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran to throw off repressive and kleptocratic governments — and specifically, to rid themselves of the destructive machinations of the mullahs of Iran — the GA didn’t agree with you.

If you were waiting for the U.N. to condemn horrific violations against the people of Syria by its own government and aided by Russia and Iran, or to stand up for the Rohingya who have been forced out of Myanmar, or to consider the plight of the Muslim Uighurs of China herded into camps, you’re still waiting.

Slave labor in Qatar; Venezuelans reduced to eating garbage; North Koreans with no discernible human rights; Palestinian-Arab children taught that the highest form of life is death — their own and that of as many Jews as possible; civil war in Libya; increasing repression of the press and of dissent in Russia — all ignored. Turkey, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia — ignored.

https://quillette.com/2019/12/05/tensions-in-nato-and-the-looming-end-of-pax-americana/

As NATO leaders gathered in London this week to mark the 70th anniversary of history’s most venerable military alliance, it has been widely forgotten that not so long ago the specter of armed conflict haunted the European continent. When the Washington treaty establishing NATO was signed in April 1949, the Soviet Union occupied the captive nations of Eastern Europe and an invasion of Western Europe by the Red Army was not a remote possibility. On current trends, the Atlantic alliance may well suffer a premature demise as the world moves into another great power rivalry that is also an ideological contest between democracy and autocracy.

A terse review of the historical record is in order here. In the aftermath of World War Two, the United States committed itself to a revolutionary foreign policy. The extraordinary task of maintaining some semblance of international order after two global conflagrations was premised on a controversial but compelling notion of enlightened self-interest. The guiding principle of U.S. statecraft was that the peace of the world was in grave and permanent jeopardy, and thus that it needed to be imposed and kept by force, or at least the credible threat of it. This momentous undertaking required that American power remain second to none, and for it to be deployed in outposts far from the American mainland. It was only through this forward engagement, providing moral and material succor to vulnerable allies and international norms, that would prevent a breakdown in order that would draw the world into yet another violent maelstrom.

America’s reluctant but immense decision to take the lead in upholding a decent international order did not enjoy a long honeymoon. It rapidly came under ferocious challenge by Soviet power pressing to extend its imperium from Berlin to Baghdad, from Helsinki to Havana, and from Seoul to Saigon. The containment doctrine that flowed from the novel understanding of America’s self-interest aimed to thwart Soviet expansion. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, set up in 1949 as a key pillar of containment, upheld the principle of anticipatory self-defense. However, the “self” that was being defended, as was pointed out by isolationists of the day, was not exactly the American homeland, but the sovereignty of American allies and the security (as well as the prevalence) of the American way of life.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/18/chinese-woman-gets-10-months-in-prison-for-birth-tourism-scheme/

The New York Post reports, “A judge on Monday sentenced a Chinese woman to 10 months in prison for her role in a business that helped wealthy pregnant Chinese women lie on visa forms and to immigration authorities and travel to Southern California, to give birth to children who would automatically receive US citizenship.”

US District Judge James Selna issued the sentence to Dongyuan Li, who was expected to be released on Monday due to time served, New York Post writes.

Federal prosecutors opposed the sentence and said they believed Li should be sentenced to years in prison to deter others from helping women lie on visa applications and hide pregnancies in these so-called birth tourism schemes.

“I just think it sends the wrong message,” Charles Pell, the federal prosecutor, told the judge.

Li pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy and visa fraud for running a birth tourism company in Southern California known as “You Win USA.”

Federal authorities said the company helped more than 500 Chinese women travel to the United States to deliver American babies, and that Li used a cluster of apartments in Irvine, California, to receive them.

Authorities said the company coached the women to lie on their visa applications and hide their pregnancies when  moving through customs in U.S. airports.