RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-one-arkady-babchenko-murdered-for-journalism/

The Oslo Freedom Forum is now taking place here in Norway. Earlier this year, there was a Freedom Forum event in New York, devoted to Russia. It was called “PutinCon.” I wrote a little about it here. One of the speakers on that occasion was Arkady Babchenko, an incredibly brave Russian journalist. Moscow-born, he served in the army, fighting in the Chechen wars. Then he embarked on his career as an investigative journalist. He fled his country last year, living in Prague, Israel, and Kiev. Addressing us in New York, he said that he had fled “after being afraid for years that they would arrest me, that they would find me at my building’s door and beat me in the head. I was afraid that they would come for me.”

They came for him at his apartment in Kiev yesterday. They shot him in the back three times as his wife was in the bathroom. He died at 41.

The chairman of the Human Rights Foundation, the organization behind the Oslo Freedom Forum, is Garry Kasparov, the onetime chess champion who became a human-rights champion. In a statement, he said, “Arkady Babchenko’s murder is a cowardly act by those threatened by the truths he told. . . . Arkady persisted in telling the truth because he believed in a free, democratic, and humane Russia.”

One by one, they are killed — not just journalists, but any critic of the Putin regime. Why do they keep criticizing, knowing the danger? Love of country, no doubt. And love of truth. A compulsion to tell it. Russia is lucky to have such men as Arkady Babchenko, and so is the world (whether we know it or not).

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/post-war-order-over-not-caused-by-trump-foreign-policy/And not because Trump wrecked it.

The 75-year-old post-war order crafted by the United States after World War II is falling apart. Almost every major foreign-policy initiative of the last 16 years seems to have gone haywire.

Donald Trump’s presidency was a reflection, not a catalyst, of the demise of the foreign-policy status quo. Much of the world now already operates on premises that have little to do with official post-war institutions, customs, and traditions, which, however once successful, belong now to a bygone age.

Take the idea of a Western Turkey, “linchpin of NATO southeastern flank” — an idea about as enduring as the “indomitable” French Army of 1939. For over a decade Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insidiously destroyed Turkey’s once pro-Western and largely secular traditions; he could not have done so without at least majority popular support.

Empirically speaking, neo-Ottoman Turkey is a NATO ally in name only. By any standard of behavior — Ankara just withdrew its ambassador from the U.S. — Turkey is a de facto enemy of the United States. It supports radical Islamic movements, is increasingly hostile to U.S. allies such as Greece, the Kurds, and Israel, and opposes almost every foreign-policy initiative that Washington has adopted over the last decade. At some point, some child is going to scream that the emperor has no clothes: Just because Turkey says it is a NATO ally does not mean that it is, much less that it will be one in the future.

Instead, Turkey is analogous to Pakistan, a country whose occasional usefulness to the U.S. does not suggest that it is either an ally or even usually friendly.

The often-crude imposition of a democratic socialism, pacifism, and multiculturalism, under the auspices of anti-democratic elites, from the Atlantic to the Russian border, is spreading, not curbing, chaos.

There is nothing much left of the old canard that only by appeasing China’s mercantilism can there be a new affluent Chinese middle class that will then inevitably adopt democracy and then will partner with the West and become a model global nation. China is by design a chronic international trade cheater. Trade violations have been its road to affluence. And it seeks to use its cash as leverage to re-create something like the old imperial Japanese Greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere. U.S. trade appeasement of Beijing over the last decades no more brought stability to Asia than did nodding to Tokyo in the 1930s.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/05/saving_tommy_robinson_and_english_civilization.html

Tommy Robinson faces the near certainty of assassination while being held in the general prison population at Hull Prison, following his arrest outside the courthouse in Leeds, where he was making a video about the trial of a Muslim grooming gang underway inside. (For background, see this and this.) Thanks to the gag order preventing the British press from reporting on his case, only help from overseas can bring pressure and raise funds for his defense.

Make no mistake: the entire U.K. government and establishment are committed to cultural suicide, by surrender to jihad, allowing no criticism of the spread of sharia law in Britain, and suppressing those who dare expose the costs. Recall that talk show host Michael Savage has been banned from Britain for supposedly causing “unrest” by remarks critical of jihad. He cannot be jailed, but Tommy Robinson can.

An American Thinker contributor currently visiting London emails this morning:

I am staying in London and saw a small protest on Monday near 10 Downing Street. I have seen nothing on TV or in the papers.

FWIW, SKYNews has been running a story on Rotherham on multiple shows. Same story, same reporter but edited differently to create a different package. It’s not like I am sitting in my hotel watching TV, but I have seen this three times. I am sure the most Brits know about Rotherham.

Sadly, my guess is most Brits (or at least Londoners) probably support his arrest. These people seem to value order over freedom. And the PC tone of their news broadcasts, even supposedly right-wing SKYNews, makes our MSM look right of center.

I like London. But the older I get the more I think that culturally these folks would be OK with a benign dictator running the show. It’s probably no accident that some [of the] best fiction ever written about living under soft or semi-hard tyranny or dystopia – Huxley, Orwell, maybe Wells – was written by people who called London home.

At The Rebel Media, for which Robinson wrote, Ezra Levant has established a legal defense fund for Tommy and makes the case for his innocence.

You can watch the entire incident of Tommy approaching the courthouse and getting arrested below. It is complete – an hour and 15 minutes long:

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-safest-country-for-european-jews-try-hungary/

Last Friday evening I put on a kippah and walked half an hour across Budapest to the Keren Or synagogue maintained by the Budapest Chabad. After violent attacks on Jews in German streets, the leaders of Germany’s Jewish community warned Jews last month not to wear a kippah or any other visible sign of Jewish identification in public. The French community issued such warnings years ago. Belgian TV could not find a single Jew in Brussels willing to wear a kippah in public. I walked across Budapest four times (for Friday evening and Saturday daytime services), and no-one looked at my kippah twice. At services I met Hasidim who had walked to synagogue with kaftan and shtreimel, the traditional round fur hat. Whatever residual anti-Semitism remains among Hungarians, it doesn’t interfere with the open embrace of Jewish life. There are no risks to Jews because there are very few Muslim migrants.

On any given Friday evening, the Keren Or synagogue—one of several Chabad houses in Budapest—hosts two hundred people for dinner. Jewish life isn’t just flourishing in Budapest. It’s roaring with ruach, and livened by a growing Israeli presence. About 100,000 Israelis have dual Hungarian citizenship; many own property in the country and vote in Hungarian elections.

Prime Minister Orban has been a close friend of Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu for twenty years. When Orban first was elected prime minister in 1998 in the thick of an economic crisis, he asked then-Finance Minister Netanyahu for help, and Netanyahu lent him some of his staff to shape Hungary’s economic program. I asked everyone at Keren Or who spoke English what they thought of Orban. In that gathering the prime minister would have polled 100%.

Orban, in turn, is one of Israel’s few staunch supporters overseas. Earlier this month Hungary, along with Rumania and the Czech Republic, vetoed a European Community resolution condemning the U.S. for moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Cynics dismiss this as an instance of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” That isn’t the case. Hungary is in the middle of a nasty fight with the European Community over migration, and stands to lose up to $4 billion in EC subsidies—roughly 3% of the country’s GDP. It doesn’t help Hungary to provoke Brussels by sabotaging its diplomatic efforts, as in the case of the Jerusalem embassy vote. On the contrary, Hungary is spending precious political capital in defense of the Jewish state, to its own possible disadvantage.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/u-s-walks-out-as-syria-assumes-presidency-of-un-disarmament-panel/

The U.S. delegation staged a walkout today in protest of Syria assuming the rotating presidency of the Conference on Disarmament at the United Nations in Geneva.

The U.S. Mission to the United Nations said in a statement today that they would have tried to block Syria from holding the leadership role but were unable to do so because of the conference rules requiring unanimous consent. Instead, over the next four weeks of Syria’s presidency, the U.S. delegation “will limit participation in informal sessions convened by the presidency and will continue to highlight the hypocrisy of Syria holding this position in spite of its continued use of chemical weapons and disregard for its other disarmament obligations.”

Tweeted Robert Wood, a career State Department official who serves as U.S. ambassador to the conference: “I informed CD members that throughout Syria’s four-week presidency, the US would not attend any subsidiary body mtgs. or any informal sessions convened by the presidency. Syria’s presidency cannot be business as usual. I will, however, call out the regime’s crimes in plenaries.”

“It is shameful that a regime that continues to use chemical weapons to murder its own people has the audacity to accept the presidency of the very organization that established the Chemical Weapons Convention,” Ambassador Nikki Haley said. “The Assad regime does not have the moral authority to chair an organization that helped establish the global norms for ending the use of these heinous weapons.”

“It should immediately relinquish the presidency, and every country that supports accountability for the use of weapons of mass destruction should share our outrage and join us in opposing Syria’s presidency,” she added.

The monthlong presidency rotates alphabetically among the 65 conference members. Last up was Switzerland; next up will be Tunisia.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/assads-disarmament-chair-1527633758

Anyone who still thinks that world peace and order can be enforced from something called the United Nations might want to consider that Syria this week assumed the rotating presidency of the U.N.-backed Conference on Disarmament. That’s Syria as in Bashar Assad, as in sarin gas, as in barrel bombs dropped on innocent civilians.

The Conference is a multinational body based in Geneva that was established in 1979 to promote reductions in armaments, especially weapons of mass destruction. Though independent from the U.N., it reports annually to Turtle Bay, and the director-general of the U.N. office in Geneva is secretary-general of the Conference. Syria is now leading the group because it follows Switzerland in the alphabetical list of member nations.
Photo: istock/getty images

The appointment is best understood in light of the Conference’s proudest achievement: The 1993 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction. Apparently no one at the Conference sees any contradiction with having at its helm a regime that has used such weapons on its own people.

In 2012 Barack Obama declared the use of chemical weapons by Syria a “red line” that would trigger U.S. intervention. Assad used sarin gas anyway. In 2017 Syria used gas again, and President Trump responded with a missile strike on a Syrian airbase. Assad used chemical bombs again in April, which provoked another U.S. strike on Syria joined by Britain and France. On Friday U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said Assad has used chemical weapons at least 50 times.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/05/war-tommy-robinson/

Explain why white men accused of pedophilia are allowed to be photographed and questioned by reporters on court steps, while Pakistani Muslims are not. Explain why a police force that took three decades to start dealing with Muslim rape gangs was able to arrest and incarcerate a journalist within a few scant hours. Explain why a man can be arrested for breaching the peace when no violence has taken place. To the British government: explain your actions, or open Tommy Robinson’s cell and let him walk free.

The rule of law is fragile, and relies on the self-restraint of the majority. In a just society, the majority obey the law because they believe it represents universal values – moral absolutes. They obey the law not for fear of punishment, but for fear of the self-contempt that comes from doing wrong.

As children, we are told that the law is objective, fair and moral. As we grow up, though, it becomes increasingly impossible to avoid the feeling that the actual law has little to do with the Platonic stories we were told as children. We begin to suspect that the law may in fact – or at least at times – be a coercive mechanism designed to protect the powerful, appease the aggressive, and bully the vulnerable.

The arrest of Tommy Robinson is a hammer-blow to the fragile base of people’s respect for British law. The reality that he could be grabbed off the street and thrown into a dangerous jail – in a matter of hours – is deeply shocking.

Tommy was under a suspended sentence for filming on courthouse property in the past. On May 25, 2018, while live-streaming his thoughts about the sentencing of alleged Muslim child rapists, Tommy very consciously stayed away from the court steps, constantly used the word “alleged,” and checked with the police to ensure that he was not breaking the law.

Tommy yelled questions at the alleged criminals on their way into court – so what? How many times have you watched reporters shouting questions at people going in and out of courtrooms? You can find pictures of reporters pointing cameras and microphones at Rolf Harris and Gary Glitter, who were accused of similar crimes against children.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12399/italy-president-eu

The political situation reflects the stranglehold on power wielded by the pro-EU establishment, which is evidently determined to preserve economic austerity at the expense of democracy.

“We need to prepare a plan B to get out of the euro if necessary… the other alternative is to end up like Greece.” — Paolo Savona, a former industry minister who has called Italy’s entry into the euro a “historic mistake.”

“In Italy, there is a problem of democracy. In this country, you can be a convicted criminal, convicted for tax fraud, under investigation for corruption and be a minister… but if you criticize Europe, you cannot be the Minister of the Economy in Italy.” — M5S leader Luigi Di Maio.

Italy’s new populist government-in-waiting resigned on May 28 after its choice of a eurosceptic finance minister was rejected by the country’s pro-EU president — who instead asked an unelected technocrat to form a pro-EU government.

The political wrangling ends a bid by Italy’s two anti-establishment parties — the left-leaning Five Star Movement (M5S) and the center-right League (Lega) — to form a populist coalition government, which would have been the first of its kind in Europe.

The political situation reflects the stranglehold on power wielded by the pro-EU establishment, which is evidently determined to preserve economic austerity at the expense of democracy.

Italian president Sergio Mattarella refused to accept the nomination for finance minister of Paolo Savona, an 81-year-old former industry minister who has called Italy’s entry into the euro a “historic mistake.”

In his latest book, “Like a Nightmare and a Dream” (Come un incubo e come un sogno), Savona called the euro a “German cage” and warned that “we need to prepare a plan B to get out of the euro if necessary… the other alternative is to end up like Greece.”

Mattarella, who was installed by a previous pro-EU government, said that the “uncertainty over our position in the euro has alarmed Italian and foreign investors who purchased our government bonds and invested in our companies.” He added that “membership of the euro is a fundamental choice for the future of our country and our young people.”