RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/01/indonesia-tsunami-appeal-international-help-mass-grave-dug-1300/

Some 1,200 Indonesian convicts are on the run from three different detention facilities in devastated Sulawesi after the region was rocked by a powerful earthquake and tsunami, a justice ministry official said Monday

The warning came as volunteers began to dig mass graves for the bodies of more than 1,000 victims in an attempt to prevent an outbreak of disease.

Four days after a 7.5 magnitude quake triggered a tsunami that slammed into the city of Palu, the country also appealed for international help on Monday as it struggled to cope with the sheer scale of the disaster.

At least 832 people so far are confirmed dead after the waves battered the Sulawesi coastline but the toll was expected to rise sharply as rescue workers reached areas that had been cut off in the disaster.

Authorities said prisoners had seized on the opportunity to break free. One prison in Palu city – built to hold just 120 people – saw most of its 581 inmates storm past guards and escape to freedom through walls collapsed by the massive 7.5 magnitude shake.

Inmates had also fled from another overcapacity facility in Palu by breaking down its main door and another in Donggala, an area also hit by the disaster. The Donggala jail was set on fire and all 343 inmates were now on the run, Utami said.

Fears are growing of a humanitarian emergency as supplies of medicine, food and water run low. A shortage of heavy equipment has left rescuers struggling to reach desperate victims calling out from the ruins of collapsed buildings.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/10/kavanaugh-rorschach/

At this point, we don’t know how the SCOTUS nominee’s saga will turn out. And it is precisely because we don’t, and can’t, that the pro forma, gender wars projections of misandrist opinionistas tell us much more about them than they realise, or, lets face it, than they care.

No one knows whether Dr Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations describe an event that actually happened, or happened exactly as she describes it. We may learn more, from the FBI investigation, or not. Whatever the result, the lurid circus that is the U.S Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation process, and now the hearing into Dr Blasey Ford’s allegation of sexual assault by Judge Kavanaugh, (when she was 15 and he was 17) is a Rorschach screen to the American mind.

For those who don’t know, the Rorschach test is a series of inkblot prints used to explore unconscious thinking, or bias. Since the black-ink images represent nothing in particular, the interpretations given to them by subjects can only come from the mind of the subject. It was popular in the early twentieth century when psychoanalysis held sway, but is very seldom, if at all used these days. It survives best as a prop for jokes, like the one where the frustrated subject, looking at image after image of meaningless black smudges, berates the psychologist: “I don’t see how showing me pictures of my parents having sex is supposed to help me with my problems.”

And the famous Get Smart sketch where the doctor testily upbraids Smart for crassly remarking that all the ink blots look like a man and a woman having sex:

Doctor (with German accent): “You’ve got a very one track mind, Mr Smart”.

Smart: “Well doctor, you’re the one with the all the dirty pictures.”

You get the point.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/nationalists-in-germany-now-the-second-largest-party/

Despite charges from mainstream politicians that it is “fascist,” the right-wing Alternative to Germany party is now polling second, ahead of the left-wing Social Democrat Party.

The party’s growing popularity may be due to its strong stand against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s lax immigration policies. Or, it could be because it offers a clear alternative to the oddball coalition cobbled together by Merkel of Social Democrats and the chancellor’s CDU party.

Last month, when an AfD politician in parliament stood up and lambasted Merkel for her lax policies, the chamber erupted in insults and smears of AfD. That caused the 19 AfD deputies to walk out of parliament.

NPR:

It is the latest sign that many citizens are drawn to a populist movement that is reshaping politics in Germany, a trend that’s playing out in Europe and elsewhere. AfD politicians are regularly accused of extremism and don’t shy from the type of nationalist rhetoric that mainstream German politicians largely have shunned since World War II. After launching in 2013, Alternative for Germany has grown powerful by focusing especially on the public’s fears and frustrations over the country taking in record numbers of migrants and refugees in recent years.

That’s the superficial view. But there’s a lot more to the AfD’s growing popularity than stoking nativist fears:

So, how has the AfD managed to garner so much support for its “alternative” for the country?

According to Werner Weidenfeld, a political scientist at the University of Munich, the party appeals to a variety of sectors. “The AfD supporters are not all right-wing radicals,” he says. There is a range of backers, including “disappointed middle-class” citizens and “some right-wing extremists.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-canada-scramble-for-nafta-deal-beforemidnightdeadline-1538330067

U.S. and Canadian officials were nearing a deal Sunday afternoon on rewriting the North American Free Trade Agreement, hoping to complete the new accord by the U.S.-imposed midnight deadline, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Trump administration officials told stakeholders over the weekend that they were on a path toward reaching their goal of having a draft of a trilateral agreement between the two countries and Mexico that could be published by late Sunday.

After a month of difficult negotiations between Washington and Ottawa— talks that seemed to break down altogether last week—there now appears to be a broad agreement by the top political leaders in both countries to pull out the stops and finalize an accord over the weekend, these people said.

Negotiators cautioned that, as of Sunday afternoon, disagreements between the two sides remained, especially on the nettlesome U.S. demand for greater access to Canada’s politically sensitive dairy market. And, people familiar with the talks said it wasn’t clear there would be enough time to close the gaps by the end of the day, especially since the two countries didn’t resume intensive negotiations to resolve differences until the weekend.

Still, the weekend activity was the most optimistic signal in weeks that the Trump administration was working to keep the quarter-century-old commercial bloc continentwide, rather than breaking it up, as President Trump has repeatedly threatened to do.

The U.S. and Mexico reached their own agreement a month ago on overhauling the agreement and invited Canada to sign on by Sept. 30.

Talks with Ottawa stalled last week, and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer told Congress Thursday he didn’t think an agreement with Canada was likely by that deadline. Mr. Trump has said he would be willing to consider a new Nafta that excludes Canada if Ottawa didn’t make what he considered sufficient concessions on his timetable. The deadline doesn’t preclude Canada from joining a revised Nafta later. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazils-trumpian-candidate-1538329424?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=4&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

Donald Trump’s candidacy was “the empty gin bottle” that voters had “chosen to toss through the window,” David Gelernter wrote in an October 2016 Wall Street Journal op-ed. As Brazilians go to the polls Oct. 7 to elect a new president, they’re tossing their own empty bottle, perhaps one that once held the potent sugar distillate called cachaça.

The Trumplike candidate is Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party, a 63-year-old, thrice-married former army captain. Although he has been in Brazil’s Congress since 1990 he is widely viewed as an outsider and wears his political incorrectness as a badge of honor. He’s also leading in the polls, much to the consternation of “experts” in places like New York and London.

Mr. Gelernter’s America was more than simply frustrated with an anemic economy. President Obama and Hillary Clinton had “emasculated” voters, he wrote. Their rebellion was against progressive snobs who belittled conservatives and their traditional values.

Yet the Trump base alone couldn’t have elected the president. It took voters like Mr. Gelernter, whose profile as a professor of computer science at Yale puts him squarely in the category of the “elite,” to produce the unforeseen victory. Confessing no admiration for the real-estate developer, Mr. Gelernter said he would vote for him “grimly.” Why? Because the alternative was too awful to contemplate.

With 28% support, according to a Datafolha poll released Friday, a Bolsonaro victory is far from certain. Electoral rules require a candidate to earn 50% plus one of valid votes cast to win in the first round. If necessary, a runoff election will be held Oct. 28.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13042/eu-internet-censorship

Even before such EU-wide legislation, similar ostensible “anti-terror legislation” in France, for example, is being used as a political tool against political opponents and to limit unwanted free speech.
In France, simply spreading information about ISIS atrocities is now considered “incitement to terrorism”. It is this kind of legislation, it seems, that the European Commission now wishes to impose on all of the European Union.
Social media giants — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Microsoft, Google+ and Instagram — act as voluntary censors on behalf of the European Union.
The European Commission states that it is specifically interested in funding projects that focus on the “development of technology and innovative web tools preventing and countering illegal hate speech online and supporting data collection”, and studies that analyze “the spread of racist and xenophobic hate speech in different Member States…”

In March, the European Commission — the unelected executive branch of the European Union — told social media companies to remove illegal online terrorist content within an hour — or risk facing EU-wide legislation on the topic. This ultimatum was part of a new set of recommendations that applies to all forms of supposedly “illegal content” online. This content ranges “from terrorist content, incitement to hatred and violence, child sexual abuse material, counterfeit products and copyright infringement.”

While the one-hour ultimatum was ostensibly only about terrorist content, the following is how the European Commission presented the new recommendations at the time:

“… The Commission has taken a number of actions to protect Europeans online – be it from terrorist content, illegal hate speech or fake news… we are continuously looking into ways we can improve our fight against illegal content online. Illegal content means any information which is not in compliance with Union law or the law of a Member State, such as content inciting people to terrorism, racist or xenophobic, illegal hate speech, child sexual exploitation… What is illegal offline is also illegal online”.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/As-I-see-it-Europes-appeasement-of-Iran-568240

Remarks this week about Iran by US National Security Adviser John Bolton contained some of the most ferocious language ever used by an American administration about a foreign state.

Bolton told the Iranian regime: “If you cross us, our allies or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay. Let my message today be clear: ‘We are watching, and we will come after you.’”

Earlier this year the US pulled out of the nuclear deal with Iran, re-instituting potentially crippling sanctions against the regime. At the UN, President Trump delivered a similar message. America, he said, would not allow “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism” to possess “the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth.”Bolton went further and threatened “terrible consequences” for those doing business with Iran. But Britain and Europe are intending to do exactly that.

Earlier in the week, the EU and the three European co-signers of the Iran deal – Britain, France and Germany – said they would set up a new payment system to allow oil companies and businesses to continue trading without relying on the US-led global market. Commentators agree this sanctions-busting ruse is unlikely to work.

Big companies are already pulling out of Iran because the US says they can trade with Iran or America but they can’t do both. The European maneuver is likely merely to antagonize the US. As its Secretary of State Mike Pompeo angrily said, the Europeans were now “solidifying Iran’s ranking as number-one state sponsor of terror” with “one of the most counterproductive measures imaginable for regional peace and security”.

So why are the Europeans hell-bent on propping up Iran and the wretched nuclear deal? Economic self-interest is an important factor, but it’s not the only one.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/venezuela-socialism-mass-exodus/

Its people are fleeing not war, famine, or natural disaster but economic mismanagement.

Venezuela is in crisis. This has been true for a number of years. The socialist government has chronically mismanaged the country’s resources and strangled the life out of its economy, such that Venezuela has essentially not had any real economic growth since 2009 or 2010. This nearly decade-long recession, triggered first by oil-price volatility, but prolonged and deepened by the economic authoritarianism of the Nicolás Maduro government, has created a political backlash. Anyone who wishes Venezuela well may rightly hope that the Venezuelan opposition will eventually win and restore some semblance of order to a desperate country — though, of course, as Argentina’s experience has shown, in dysfunctional governments, sometimes the opposition isn’t much better.

But beyond its political effects, the crisis in Venezuela has done something else: It has rewritten Venezuela’s entire demographic structure.

I estimate that, since 2015, somewhere between 1.4 million and 2.2 million Venezuelans have left their country. Most intend to return, or may even have returned and then left again, thanks to fairly fluid migration rules and enforcement in many parts of Latin America. Coming up with an exact estimate of emigrants can be hard, but at a minimum, the U.N. High Commission on Refugees identifies 1.1 million formal asylum seekers or other crisis migrants. Add in reported legal inflows in farther-afield countries, and make an estimate of unreported, unauthorized, or illegal immigrants from Venezuela around the world, and you arrive at the figure of 1.4 million to 2.2 million.

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/
The Russian military has delivered a significant challenge to Vladimir Putin. The Russian spy plane shot down by Syrian gunners was a manifestation of a major disconnect between the Russian President and his military over whether the Russian and Syrian Air Forces should defend Iranian operations in Syria. The Russian military sides with Iran and has displayed considerable hostility to Israel, neither of which is part of Putin’s approach to the Middle East or, for that matter, to the future of Russia.

Russia saved the Syrian regime from collapse by bringing in air power and encouraging the Iranians and their allies the Lebanese Hezbollah to provide renewed muscle for ground fighting. Russia brought in its top aircraft including the Su-35, protected its main base Khmeimim with the formidable S-400 Triumf missile defense system and worked out a deal with Israel. Iran contributed large numbers of Shiite mercenaries, including Jihadi fighters, Pakistani and Afghan men and children, led by Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers.

An Israel-Russia deal instituted a deconfliction system so Israel could maintain certain red lines in Syria without encountering Russian fighter aircraft or missiles launched from Khmeimim. The deal was recently upgraded to keep Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah forces away from the border with Israel.

Israel’s Interests

One Israeli red line is the acquisition by Hezbollah of sophisticated missiles. Iranians transports missiles to Hezbollah through Syria because the military part of the Damascus airport is heavily defended unlike Beirut (the alternative option) and because the airbase is better protected against commando operations.