RUTHFULLY YOURS

“I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful sanctions aimed to contain our country’s development: all what you wanted to impede with your policies have already happened. You have failed to contain Russia.”

Thus spake Vladimir Putin in his annual state of the union address Thursday. The Russian strongman and KGB veteran brought along a video of the weapons his regime military-industrial complex had developed.

“It can attack any target, through the North or South Pole,” Putin said. “It is a powerful weapon and no missile defense system will be able to withstand.” According to Putin, an admirer of the late Josef Stalin, Russia can deploy nuclear-armed cruise missiles that can “avoid all interceptors.”

Bombs falling from the sky again, Russia is on the rise again, as the militant leader might say, and new boats are sailing once more. Putin also touted Russia’s nuclear-armed underwater drone with an “intercontinental” range and capable of targeting aircraft carriers and coastal military bases.

This was all ready to go and “nobody else” has anything similar. According to the Russian strongman, the new Doomsday Machine is a response to U.S. withdrawal from a treaty banning missile defense and U.S. efforts to develop a missile defense system.

U.S. experts told reporters that Putin’s cruise missile has “crashed a few times,” the underwater drone is still in the research stage, and neither system was currently deployed. On the other hand, the menacing new hardware was hardly the most troubling part of the speech.

“We would consider any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies to be a nuclear attack on our country,” the former KGB man said. “The response would be immediate.” Russia’s major allies used to be Bulgaria, East Germany and such. They are now Syria and Iran, so that is the key takeaway.

Russian ally Bashar al-Assad, son of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled from 1971-2000, is currently deploying chemical weapons against rebels and civilians alike. Assad ally Russia is doing nothing to halt Syria’s use of such weapons. The Syrian regime also harbors Islamic State fighters and Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian affiliate of al Qaeda, which like ISIS seeks a global caliphate.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, another key Russian ally, in 1979 invaded the U.S. embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Iran’s Islamic regime is also the major sponsor of terrorism in the world. At the nadir of their foreign aggression and domestic repressions, Soviet Russia and National Socialist Germany never ever infiltrated terrorists to murder American civilians.

This willingness to indulge even the most anti-liberal beliefs and behaviour finds many of its roots in the general disdain many left-wingers and liberals seem to feel for Western democracy, human rights and individualism. But that does not explain why so many people, often decent people, are drawn to defend Islam, Islamic patriarchy, Islamic discrimination against women, violence and more, even when such defence is obviously anti-liberal in the extreme.

I have never known a liberal to say a bad word about a more prevalent and arguably more damaging imperialism: Islamic imperialism. There have been many more imperialist Muslim empires than European ones.

One might have thought that historical facts such as these would provoke human-rights activists to put the Muslim empires into the same category as the later European ones. Not a word of it. Nor do liberals mention another issue that should be close to their hearts: the Islamic slave trade.

Feminists are far from the only so-called left-wing or liberal group to betray their own basic principles out of a bizarre admiration for Islam, whether its history, its values, or its self-proclaimed victimization. Real liberals believe in human rights, women’s rights, racial equality, free speech, and more, rejecting extremism on both the right and left. However, the left in the UK and elsewhere seems to have abandoned those principles and betrayed the very people they had previously supported.[1]

This willingness to indulge even the most anti-liberal beliefs and behaviour finds many of its roots in the general disdain that many so-called left-wingers and liberals seem to feel for Western democracy, human rights and individual freedom. This disdain, however, does not explain why so many people — often decent people — are drawn to defend Islam, Islamic patriarchy, Islamic discrimination against women, or violence in the name of Islam, especially when such defence is obviously anti-liberal in the extreme. Examples are not hard to find, for instance feminists who urge Muslim women to submit to the veil and abandon their rights as free women in favour of Muslim men and their power over them.

What possesses so many Westerners to regard Islam, Islamic religion, Islamic law, and Islamic intolerance through rose-tinted spectacles that obscure the obvious and blind observers from seeing what is in front of them?

Another of the most notable examples is the virtually universal attitude toward imperialism. We might all agree that imperialism is a thing of the past and that, for the most part, it has brought considerable suffering on indigenous peoples who found themselves under British, French, Belgian, Spanish or Portuguese rule. No country in the modern West would seek to bring back an imperial system that, mercifully, was dealt a death blow by the First and Second World Wars. This change, however, does not prevent Marxists and others of a similar ilk from claiming that imperialism continues to this day, through the power exerted by strong nations in the West such as Israel or the U.S. Even the United Nations has been condemned as “a tool of imperialism”.

Mystifyingly, however, I have never known a liberal to say a bad word about a more prevalent and arguably more damaging imperialism: Islamic imperialism.[2] From the year 632 until 1918, there have been many more Muslim empires than European ones.

The brave women in Iran who inspired the world and became the face of a revolution by removing their face veils in protest to the theocratic government are now being beaten, tortured, and charged with “inciting prostitution” in Iranian prisons.

Iranian police sent an official warning that traveling and spending time in public places without a religious hijab would carry a penalty of one to two months in prison which could be reduced to a lower sentence, but encouraging people not to have the veil would put them in jeopardy of one to ten years in prison and could not be converted into a substitute penalty. This criminal charge, “inciting corruption and prostitution,” is not only dangerous but demeaning.

Two women arrested for protesting the hijab have been already been informed that they face charges of “inciting corruption and prostitution” for their protest. Narges Hosseini was put on trial last week before an Ershad (Moral Guidance) court in Tehran on this charge. Shaparak Shajarizadeh, who is being held in solitary confinement in a prison near Tehran, faces the same charge.

In addition to facing the prostitution charge, Shajarizadeh has also been subjected to torture and beatings, according to her lawyer. She was also injected with an identified substance several times by force against her will.

“This is a deeply retrograde move by the Iranian authorities in their ongoing persecution of women who dare to speak out against compulsory veiling,” Magdalena Mughrabi, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement. “It places many women at serious and immediate risk of unjust imprisonment while sending a chilling message to others to keep quiet while their rights are being violated.”

Vida Movahed and Azam Jangravi, two other women arrested for peaceful protests against compulsory veiling, are currently out on bail. Maryam Shariatmadari and Hamraz Sadeghi remain in detention.

According to Amnesty International, police have become increasingly brutal in their crackdown on the forced hijab. Women who take off their headscarves in public and wave them on the end of a stick have been beaten and gruffly treated by authorities.

Last Thursday, another hijab protester’s video went viral on Persian social media. Shariatmadari stood atop a concrete structure waving her hijab, but a police officer recklessly pushed her off. Her friends have reported that the fall resulted in injuries requiring surgery, but the woman is being held in prison without access to adequate medical care. CONTINUE AT SITE

Europe’s biggest problem with Hungary is that Europe doesn’t have any good ways to deal with a problem like Hungary. A brief visit here ahead of April’s elections shows the extent to which that truth is challenging the European Union’s central beliefs about itself.

Prime Minister Viktor Orban on April 8 will win his third consecutive term since 2010—his fourth term overall, including his first stint from 1998-2002. The main question is whether his Fidesz party can eke out a two-thirds supermajority in Parliament, which would enable Mr. Orban to amend the constitution at will.

This feels like another blow to democracy. Mr. Orban said in 2014, in a speech that rang alarm bells around the West, that he aspires to build an “illiberal state” on the model of Singapore, China, Russia or Turkey. He’s succeeding. Press freedom has deteriorated as the government has withdrawn its taxpayer-funded advertising from unfriendly outlets, and as ownership has been consolidated in the hands of Orban loyalists. In rural areas, independent newspapers have disappeared.

The major media are turning into propaganda arms for Fidesz, and Mr. Orban is using them to Orwellian effect by creating a foreign bogeyman to rally patriotic fervor. The bogeyman is George Soros, the left-wing Hungarian-born American financier. On a random Wednesday in February, the front pages of at least three big newspapers contained attacks on Mr. Soros for supposedly conspiring in various ways against Hungary. These particular fusillades didn’t appear overtly anti-Semitic, but that’s common enough too.

American and British conservatives may spar with Mr. Soros on policy, but sometimes the enemy of your enemy is also your enemy. Mr. Orban is using the anti-Soros sentiment he has stirred up to justify clamping down further on Hungarian civil society. The so-called Stop Soros Law under debate would impose a 25% tax on foreign donations flowing into civil-society groups and other nongovernmental organizations, whether Soros-funded or not.

Do these illiberal factors alone explain why Fidesz is cruising to an all-but-unopposed victory? No, because, let’s be honest, the rest of Hungarian politics is a mess. CONTINUE AT SITE

South Africa is going the way of Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa and a stable and productive nation which is now a hell hole of famine, epidemic and crime…..One day historians will write of the terrible outcome of Africa’s decolonization and home rule….rsk

No country ever became rich through its government’s seizure of private property (exhibit A: the Soviet Union), but politicians in South Africa want to give it another go.

That’s the disheartening news from Cape Town this week, where the National Assembly voted 241-83 on Tuesday to start a process to amend the constitution and allow land expropriation without compensation. A parliamentary committee will review the motion and report by Aug. 30.

Land long has been a fraught issue in South Africa, where during the apartheid era blacks were barred from buying property in white areas. Post-apartheid, the government bought land and offered compensation to South Africans whose property had been forcibly seized after 1913.

Many of those claims are now settled, and more than 90% of claimants chose to receive cash instead of land titles, a reflection of the country’s rapid urbanization. According to a 2016 Institute of Race Relations survey, less than 1% of South Africans think land is one of the country’s “serious unresolved problems.” Unemployment, public services, housing and crime rank far higher.

Kano, Nigeria (CNN)The Nigerian government has released the names of the 110 missing girls, some as young as 11 years old, who have not been seen since a raid on their school in Dapchi last week.
Fighter jets, helicopters and surveillance planes have all been deployed in the search for the girls, who vanished after suspected Boko Haram militants attacked the Government Girls Science Technical College.
According to a list of names released by the authorities Tuesday, the missing are aged between 11 and 19. The names have been verified by a panel of school administrators and government officials, according to a statement by Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s Minister of Information and Culture.
As of Monday evening, the Nigerian Air Force had flown a total of 200 hours while searching for the girls. Nigeria’s Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshall Sadique Abubakar, has been relocated to Yobe State, where Dapchi is located, to personally supervise the search, the government statement said.

The school is only 275 kilometers (170 miles) from Chibok, where Boko Haram militants kidnapped nearly 300 girls from a school in 2014.

If efforts to expose Iran’s and Hezbollah’s roles in the Argentinean bombings are successful, the information will elucidate for regional leaders the dark side of Iran’s ties to sub-state terrorist groups to increase even further its influence in Latin America.

For decades, Iran has seemingly been employing both normative diplomatic ties and criminal links to export its Islamic revolution to the Western Hemisphere. By using similar methods of subversion, Iran appears already to have penetrated other Latin American nations, including Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil and some island countries in the Caribbean.

Iran’s activities in Latin America are a direct challenge to U.S. primacy in the Western Hemisphere. Iran, it seems, wants to replace the U.S. as the power ally of Latin American countries.

While Iran’s nuclear, ballistic missile, and expansionist policies in the Middle East are well known, most of the Islamic Republic’s operations in Latin America appear to have been proceeding underway, below the radar, for several decades.

During a joint news conference on February 4 in Buenos Aires with Argentina’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Faurie, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pledged to combat Hezbollah’s fundraising in Latin America, which is used to finance its terrorist operations. This indicates that U.S. intelligence and enforcement agencies could be closely following Iranian and Hezbollah incursions into Central and South America. The Department of Justice, for instance, recently announced that it had established a Hezbollah Financing and Narcoterrorism Team (HFNT) to monitor and prosecute the criminal activities of Hezbollah, Iran’s allied terrorist network in the region.

Last week, Russia escalated its military profile in Syria by dispatching its top of the line fighter bomber to the war-ravaged country. Based on publicly available Israeli satellite imagery and eyewitness accounts, the Russians have deployed between 2 to 4 Su-57 fighter bombers to Khmeimim Airbase. In addition to the Su-57, the Russians also deployed advanced Su-36 fighter jets, and an A-50U airborne command and control plane.

The Su-57 is a fifth generation fighter bomber, and according to Russia, is said to possess stealth characteristics and performance features similar to the U.S. F-22 Raptor and the F-35 Lightning II. The Israeli Air Force has adopted the F-35 (which it calls the Adir) as its premier fighter and has outfitted the plane with an indigenously designed avionics package. The Su-57 is almost certainly the product of stolen U.S. technology, obtained through corporate espionage, cyber penetrations and surprisingly, open sources. The Russians have over the years developed a penchant for stealing or otherwise appropriating Western technology. Regardless, the F-22 and F-35 are still considered far superior to the Russian plane.

But if Russian reports regarding the aircraft’s performance are accurate, the Su-57 platform poses a serious challenge to U.S. and Israeli aerial operations. Both Israeli F-35s and U.S. Raptors are active over the cluttered skies of Syria.

In June 2017, a U.S. F/A-18E Super Hornet shot down a Syrian Su-22 after it dropped bombs on Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) positions. The SDF is an anti-Assad militia which is working with the U.S. to defeat ISIS and also operates as an effective bulwark against Iranian expansion. On December 14, two U.S. F-22s intercepted two Russian-piloted Su-25s and a third Su-35 which flew into coalition airspace on the east side of the Euphrates River.

One of the most beautiful towns in England, Lewes is relatively unspoiled by the twentieth-century British architectural incompetence that has proved so destructive of urban grace, spreading the most hideous ugliness almost everywhere as a kind of metonym for social equality. From Lewes’s streets can be seen the lovely, rolling downs of Sussex, and it is curious how the sight of green hills from the center of a town or city (still possible in Dublin, for example) soothes the mind. Among Lewes’s most famous residents were Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man, and Charles Dawson, the man most likely to have forged Piltdown Man, the hoax human fossil whose inauthenticity was not exposed until 40 years after its “discovery” in 1912. To my great delight, Lewes’s High Street has three excellent secondhand or antiquarian bookshops.

I had been invited down to a literary event, the Lewes Speakers Festival, to talk about my recently published memoir of life as a prison doctor, The Knife Went In. I was to be the penultimate speaker, followed by a controversial conservative journalist, Katie Hopkins, who was to talk about her own recently published memoir, Rude.

The event ended in violence.

The festival organizer, Marc Rattray, had informed me in advance that there might be trouble from demonstrators who would want to prevent Hopkins from speaking. No doubt it is a measure of how detached I am from the ordinary life of my country that I had until then scarcely heard of her, for she is either loved or abominated by millions of my fellow countrymen. (I would have guessed, if put to it, that she was an actress or a pop singer.) Some love her because she says things that many think but dare not say, while others abominate her, accusing her of bigotry and spreading hatred—hatred directed at the wrong people, that is.