RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/a-trump-of-ones-own/

Here’s one reason to hold out some hope for 2019. On January 9 — while the British political class continued to bungle Brexit, French officials kept battling the gilets jaunes, and leaders across Europe persisted in waving the EU flag and waving in armies of Muslim immigrants — Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini went to Warsaw and, at a press conference with Polish Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński, envisioned Italy and Poland as ushering in a new “European spring” to challenge the primacy of the “Germany-France axis.”

The Guardian spelled out to readers just how they should feel about this “European spring.” Identifying Salvini — in the first two sentences of its article, mind you — as a “far-right interior minister” who seeks “far-right alliances” and leads “the far-right League” (later in the piece, Marine Le Pen, too, was labeled “far-right”), Guardian scribe Angela Giuffrida was quick to add that Salvini’s party and Brudziński’s “share similar anti-immigration, anti-Muslim and Eurosceptic views.”

It would be fairer, of course, to say “anti-Islam” here rather than “anti-Muslim,” and to describe Salvini and Brudziński not as “anti-immigration” but, rather, as opposed to suicidal immigration policies that have flooded much of Western Europe not with potential Nobel Prize winners but with likely rapists, Jew-beaters, gay-bashers, and lifelong welfare recipients, not to mention more than a few would-be jihadists and cheerleaders of terror.

Salvini further declared that if Europe follows along the path charted by himself and Brudziński, which involves “strengthening borders,” it might well experience a “renaissance of European values” and reverse the severe damage done to the continent by bureaucrats in Brussels and in the various national capitals. To any American, needless to say, this rhetoric will sound very familiar. And indeed, the fact is that while the Western European political class and its allies love to sneer at Donald Trump, millions of ordinary citizens across the continent wish dearly that they had a Trump of their own.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272521/beirut-paris-middle-east-joseph-puder

Lebanon has not had a functioning government since May of 2018. The reason? Squabbling among the various sectarian groups over ministerial posts. In the meantime, Lebanon’s national debt has soared to $84 billion or 155 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The unemployment rate, too has risen to 36 percent.

Frustrated by the prolonged political bickering of the politicians, public-sector agencies and businesses throughout Lebanon staged a strike last week expressing their anger over the economic downturn, which has been crippled by the eight months absence of a functional government. Beirut’s port was closed along with state institutions such as the National Social Security Fund, the electricity company, and the Rafic Hariri International Airport experienced hour long stoppages. The strike was called by the General Confederation of Lebanese Workers, with the backing of the new cross-sectarian Sabaa Party.

Nabih Berri, Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker, called on (January 9, 2019) the Arab League economic summit scheduled to take place in Beirut at the end of the month, to be postponed due to Lebanon’s failure to agree on a new government. The Shiite-Muslim leader also asserted “the necessity of having Syria participate in such a summit.” The Arab League suspended Syria’s membership following the Assad regime crackdown and butchery of protesters against the Bashar al-Assad regime.

At the birth of modern Lebanon in 1943, the National Pact established a parliamentary allocation of seats based on a 1932 census, which gave Christians a 6-to-5 ratio. In 1990, the ratio changed to a 50/50 allocation of parliamentary seats. Nevertheless, according to the National Pact and established customs, the President of Lebanon is always a Christian Maronite, the Prime Minister is always a Sunni-Muslim, and the Speaker of the Parliament is always a Shiite-Muslim.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13561/palestinians-women-torture

This is the kind of story that the “State of Palestine” does not intend to raise during its chairmanship of the largest bloc of developing countries at the UN. It seems that, from the point of view of the Palestinian Authority leadership, Jbara’s ordeal does not fall within the category of human rights.

Jbara’s story has barely attracted the attention of the international mainstream media. As far as many foreign journalists covering the Middle East are concerned, a Palestinian woman complaining about torture in a Palestinian prison is not newsworthy. Had she been detained by Israel, Jbara would have most likely made it to the front pages of the world’s leading newspapers and magazines in a matter of minutes.

The PA regularly complains about human rights violations of Palestinians held in Israeli prison for security-related offenses. But when the PA’s own security forces detain and torture a mother of three, Palestinian leaders are found elsewhere — like at the helm of a UN bloc.

A Palestinian mother of three has accused the Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces of torturing her and threatening to rape her during the two months she was held in a PA prison in the West Bank.

The accusation by the woman, Suha Jbara, 31, came on the eve of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s visit to New York, where he is scheduled to assume the chairmanship of the largest bloc of developing countries in the United Nations, known as the “Group of 77 and China.”

As chairman of the group, which represents 134 nations, Abbas and the “State of Palestine” will negotiate and co-sponsor proposals and amendments on various developmental, humanitarian and legal issues that are on the agenda of the UN.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13541/turkey-erdogan-syria-withdrawal

In May 2015, the secular daily newspaper Cumhuriyet published on its front page a video and photographic evidence of arms deliveries by the Turkish intelligence services to Islamist groups in Syria. A month later, President Erdoğan himself filed a criminal complaint against Cumhuriyet’s editor-in-chief and said, “He who ran this story will pay heavily for it.”

Clearly, Erdoğan’s “militarily speaking, the so-called Islamic State has been defeated in Syria. Yet we are deeply concerned that some outside powers may use the organization’s remnants as an excuse to meddle in Syria’s internal affairs” means “outside powers should not meddle in Syria but Turkey should.”

Erdoğan’s plan is merely about substituting jihadists hostile to him with ones friendly to him.

Shortly after President Donald Trump’s controversial decision to pull out U.S. troops from Syria, a move that exorbitantly pleased Turkey, Russia and Iran, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in a charm offensive, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, entitled, “Trump Is Right on Syria. Turkey Can Get the Job Done.”

Turkey, Erdoğan claims, is the only country with the power and commitment to perform that task of protecting the interests of the United States, the international community and the Syrian people.

This claim is grossly wrong. Despite some convergences, Turkey’s interests in the Syrian theater are widely different than those of the Western bloc of countries. Turkey’s ambitions over the future of Syria are largely sectarian (pro-Sunni) and, therefore, a good recipe for further violence in civil war-torn Syria and the potential slaughter of the Kurds, a job Turkey can get done.