RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12848/china-syria-belt-road

China reportedly intends to build a railway through Iran and Turkey into Syria. Meanwhile in Greece, a Chinese state-owned company, Cosco, “purchased a controlling stake in the port of Piraeus, near Athens.” Piraeus is the biggest and busiest port in Greece and the busiest container port in the Eastern Mediterranean.

If China were to invest large amounts of money into the reconstruction of Syria, which has long been a hub for terrorist groups, Chinese funds could easily fall into the hands both of corrupt members of the Assad regime and of Hezbollah, the regime’s main supporting terrorist organization. Chinese reconstruction funds could also be diverted to purchasing nuclear weapons technology from Iran and North Korea.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – a term coined in 2013 by Chinese President Xi Jinping to evoke the ancient Silk Road trade routes connecting China with lands to its west – should be cause for great concern in the West. Although it is described by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) as “a long-term project which, for years to come, will give China a key role in guiding and supporting cultural, economic, political, and trade developments around the world,” it is actually part of China’s increasingly apparent plan for regional and global hegemony.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/08/dear-senator-faruqi/

You’re a Green with all goofy self-importance that implies, but as a representative of the people — all the people, that is — could you quit slandering your adopted homeland? I mean, if Australia is a hotbed of injustice and oppression, how does that square with your defence of arranged marriages?

Dear Senator Faruqi,
In the early hours of this morning, I happened to hear your appalling interview as it went to air on the BBC World Service. You are entitled to your views, but you are not entitled to trash your (and my) country to the world with your misrepresentation of facts.

First, a little humility would be in order. You may have been slotted into a seat in the red chamber, but you are in no real sense there representing New South Wales. Nobody elected you. Nobody voted for you. Winning a pre-selection contest in a minority party to replace a disgraceful crypto communist did not invest you with any special virtue – although you seem to believe it entitles you to proclaim your jaundiced views.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/south-africa-move-to-seize-private-land-threatens-rule-of-law/

Government seizure of private land is a grave threat to the rule of law.

An almost certain sign that a nation’s economic future and rule of law are in danger is the decision by its government to seize private land without paying compensation. From Cuba to Zimbabwe to Venezuela, expropriating private property has almost inevitably meant a slide into authoritarian rule.

That’s why many South Africans are worried at the news last week that its African National Congress (ANC) government has for the first time moved to seize land without going through the courts first, with two game farms in Limpopo the first test cases.

The planned seizures are part of a larger government plan to use its two-thirds majority in Parliament to change the nation’s constitution to legalize unilateral seizures. Once it has that new constitutional power, the government could in theory posture at being magnanimous and merely force landowners to give up their land for only a token or very small payment. But the rule of law would still be bruised, if not broken.

It’s been a quarter century since apartheid ended, and since then each ANC government has scrupulously followed the pledge of the late Nelson Mandela that private property wouldn’t be seized except on the basis of “willing buyer, willing seller.” But Mandela’s moderate voice has increasingly been replaced by the likes of Julius Malema, who heads the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a breakaway party from the ANC.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271083/leftists-own-uks-grooming-gang-crisis-and-tommy-danusha-v-goska

Her broad, sunny smile fairly bursts through the photograph. Her joy is so bright you almost squint. She is a child, innocent of life. Charlene Downes was 14 in 2003. She’s been missing ever since. During a trial, jurors heard a tape in which a suspect stated that he chopped up her body and cooked it into kebabs. The case was tossed out because of problems with the gathering of evidence. Charlene’s sister, Emma, was later tried for “racially aggravated assault.” Emma slapped the face of the murder suspect’s brother. Emma was convicted for her crime.

Lucy Lowe’s smile is not as explosive as Charlene’s. Her blonde brows are shallow crescents; her nose is a pretty little button. Lucy has that loving look that suggests that she will hit her stride as a kind, middle-aged matron. In fact, Lucy gave birth at 14. The child’s baby daddy, Azhar Ali Mehmood, pimped Lucy and other underage girls. By 16, Lucy was pregnant with their second child. Mehmood then murdered Lucy, her mother, and her sister by setting fire to the family home. Mehmood is now in jail. Even so, Lucy’s father received an anonymous threat warning him not to discuss grooming gangs.

Vicky Round is not so much smiling in her photo as sizing you up. She looks pretty, young, and afraid. Vicky dreams of becoming a model. She is hooked on heroin and crack. She died of an overdose at age 20. The pimps and rapists who gave her drugs and “who made her life hell still walk the streets.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/08/celebrities_and_dictatorship.html

Back in the days of “the Contras”, Daniel Ortega was given the red carpet treatment that so many Hollywood celebrities saved for their anti-US idols.

Back in July 1986, Peter, Paul, & Mary, the famous folk trio that I honestly enjoy listening to, gave Daniel Ortega a special day:

Peter, Paul and Mary are singing the praises of Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, despite its shutdown late last month of La Prensa, the last opposition newspaper in the country.

The veteran folk group has been in Managua performing public concerts. Among the attendees: President Daniel Ortega and about 100 Sandinista soldiers (they got in free).

“As the daughter of two journalists, censorship is something I abhor,” said the trio’s Mary Travers. “It signals a great disturbance and it is not good for any society. But I believe that the government of Nicaragua has a war on its hands. I believe that the aggressor of that war (the Contras) is funded by the United States. I also believe La Prensa has a history of publishing things that are likely to destabilize the government. It has supported the American aid to destroy the government.”

During one performance, the singers stunned internationalistas — as persons from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc countries are called here — as well as Sandinista dignitaries with a stanza from the song “El Salvador.” It compares U.S. involvement in El Salvador to the Soviet Union’s involvement in Poland.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/19/salvini-threatens-send-migrants-stuck-coastguard-ship-back-libya/

Italy’s far-Right interior minister threatened Sunday to send “back to Libya” nearly 180 people stranded for three days on an Italian coastguard ship if the EU did not step in to resolve another migrant row with Malta.

The 177 people have been sat off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa since Thursday after being saved by the coastguard’s Diciotti vessel, and Italy is battling with Malta over who should take them in.

“Either Europe decides to seriously offer Italy some concrete help, beginning with for example the 180 immigrants on board the Diciotti ship, or we will be forced to do what will definitively end the human traffickers’ business. That means taking the people saved in the sea back to Libya,” Mr Salvini said in a statement.

Numerous human rights abuses have been reported in detention centres that hold migrants hoping to make the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean and arrive in Europe.

The Diciotti has been stood off Lampedusa while Italy’s populist government, in power since June, demanded that Malta take in the passengers.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/
In very recent Tweets, Lebanese-born New South Wales Labor MP Shaoquett Moselbane is a vigorous pro-Palestinian proponent. In March 2013, Mr Moselmane sparked outrage when he gave, inside that chamber, what Dan Goldberg writing in Haaretz described as “a firebrand speech … a vituperative tirade” alleging that the creation of Israel was a “corruption of justice,” that Gaza is “the world’s largest open-air prison camp,” and that Israel ran “torture camps” in southern Lebanon.
Continued Goldberg:

‘Moselmane also accused Israel of “massive violations of human rights,” saying: “If there was ever a group in need of protection from war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, it is the Palestinians.”

The first Muslim ever elected to the NSW parliament added this: “I salute the [Lebanese] resistance. Imagine what the response would have been in 1941 or 1942 if we had condemned resistance against Nazi Germany. Guns would have been blazing at us for not resisting Nazi Germany. In Lebanon the resistance was able to force the Israelis out.”

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

Strongman politics are ascendant,” Barack Obama warned in South Africa. He spoke passionately about “the politics of fear and resentment” at the Mandela Lecture. He worried that we were entering a world, “where might makes right and politics is a hostile competition between tribes and races and religions.”

While the media used the remarks to attack Trump’s meeting with Putin, Obama had shared a stage with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa who had come to power promising to seize land from white farmers. Ramaphosa was the latest in a series of ANC strongmen, including his predecessor, an alleged rapist, beginning with the Communist terrorist whose legacy Obama was commemorating.

President Ramaphosa had vowed early on to seize land from white farmers without compensation. “The expropriation of land without compensation is envisaged as one of the measures that we will use to accelerate redistribution of land to black South Africans,” he had declared. And denied that such racist Communist tactics were unconstitutional. Now he’s moving to modify South Africa’s constitution.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/08/white_south_african_farmers_preparing_to_run_as_land_reform_gets_closer_to_reality.html

White South African farmers find themselves under the gun as the ruling ANC party prepares plans to sieze farms from whites without compensation.

What the ANC is calling “land reform” would be “catastrophic” according to one lobbying group. Even black farmers are saying any plan to take land without compensation would be “unrealistic.”

Sunday Express:

Tensions among the country’s white farming community have been rising since the election of Cyril Ramaphosa assumed office earlier this year and committed his African National Congress (ANC) to land expropriation.

And ANC chairman Gwede Mantashe sparked panic last week when he said: “You shouldn’t own more than 25,000 acres of land.

“Therefore if you own more it should be taken without compensation.

“People who are privileged never give away privilege as a matter of a gift.

The group representing white farmers reports that a record number of farms are up for sale – but no one is buying:

Omri van Zyl, head of the Agri SA union, which represents mainly white commercial farmers, said: “The mood among our members is very solemn.

“They are confused about the lack of any apparent strategy from the government and many are panicking.

“So many farms are up for sale, more than we’ve ever had, but no one is buying.”

Analysts warn the move could undermine property rights and deter investment.

In neighbouring Zimbabwe, violent land seizures authorised by Robert Mugabe in the 1990s sent the country into a spiral of decline from which it has never recovered.

Analyst Henrik Gullberg said: “Markets are sensitive to anything perceived to be ‘Zimbabwe-fication’ on the land-reform front.”

Black farmers – the supposed beneficiaries of expropriation – are dubious of the plan:

The National African Farmers’ Union (Nafu), which represents the country’s black farmers, said the scheme would lead to job losses.

Nafu president Motsepe Matlala said: “From a practical and economical point of view it will not work.”

Political analyst Marianne Merten said: “The narrative that expropriation without compensation is the silver bullet is simplistic and unrealistic.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12879/mauritania-slavery

The arrest of Abeid — a prize-winning human rights activist whose latest “crime” was being a candidate in an election — should sound alarm bells in Washington.

The Trump administration needs to demand Abeid’s immediate release and make any further financial aid to Mauritania conditional upon proof of concrete moves to eradicate slavery and indentured servitude.

To state that Mauritania is engaged in the kind of “reform” that is “needed to improve people’s living standards” is both false and unconscionable. Not only are Mauritania’s minorities so impoverished that being enslaved is often their only perceived alternative to starving, but its deceitful government is responsible for perpetuating the situation.

Although referred to as the “world’s last country to abolish slavery,” it actually remains “slavery’s last stronghold.”

On August 7, the Islamic Republic of Mauritania arrested Biram Dah Abeid, the founding head of the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA), a human rights organization dedicated to eradicating slavery in the west African nation. Abeid described the police waking him in his home in the capital city of Nouakchott, and taking him into custody without charges.

Abeid and those petitioning for his release have good reason to suspect that his arrest – one of many over the past few years — is related not only to his persistent anti-slavery activism and critique of Islamic texts, but to the fact that he is running for a seat in parliament in the legislative elections slated for September 1.

Abeid, a member of the Haratin, Mauritania’s largest minority group, established the IRA in 2008, the year in which Mauritania’s first democratically elected president, Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, was ousted in a coup led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who has been in power ever since. Abeid has been described as a “thorn in the side” of Aziz, particularly when he challenged Aziz in the 2014 presidential election, and came in a “distant second.”