RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/kofi-annan-represented-all-that-is-wrong-about-the-united-nations

Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general between 1997 and 2006, died on Saturday in Bern, Switzerland. Messages of sympathy after the loss of a high-profile public figure are understandable, but praise for Annan’s legacy is misplaced. Simply put, Annan’s U.N. tenure was marked by cravenness, corruption, and cover-ups.

He was in charge of U.N. peacekeeping in 1994 but dismissed warnings of an impending genocide in Rwanda. Annan’s apologists might cite a narrow definition of his bureaucratic mandate, but they ignore his decision to not inform the U.N. Security Council when evidence of plans for genocide surfaced. In short, if Annan had done what was morally right rather than easy, he might have saved a million lives. To do so, however, might have made waves and complicated his career.

Annan’s Rwanda experience should have been disqualifying enough, but the U.N. is more about quotas and regional rotations than it is about principle. In short, Annan was in the right place at the right time and so, in 1997, he became the U.N.’s secretary-general.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12881/denmark-welfare-socialism

Danes actually pay for their brand of socialism through heavy taxation. In Denmark, everyone pays at least the 25% value-added tax (VAT) on all purchases. Income tax rates are high. If you receive public support and are of working age and healthy, the state will require that you look for a job or it will force a job on you.

In Denmark, it is uncomplicated for enterprises to fire workers, which gives them great flexibility to adapt to shifting market conditions. In fact, Denmark is more free-market oriented than the US.

“Very high taxes and the vast public sector clearly detract in the capitalism index and reduce economic freedom. But Denmark compensates by… relatively little regulation of private enterprise, open foreign trade, healthy public finances and more. This high degree of economic freedom is among the reasons for Denmark’s relatively high affluence.” — Mads Lundby Hansen, chief economist of Denmark’s CEPOS think tank.

Here are some facts to consider before American “democratic socialists” look to Denmark for guidance, as Senator Bernie Sanders did during the 2016 presidential campaign.

First of all, Danes actually pay for their brand of socialism through heavy taxation. In Denmark, everyone pays at least the 25% value-added tax (VAT) on all purchases. Income tax rates are high. If you receive public support and are of working age and healthy enough to work, the state will require that you look for a job or it will force a job on you.

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.