RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Doomsday Clock is now at two and a half minutes to midnight. That doesn’t mean that the world will be destroyed in 150 seconds. All it means is that some people who couldn’t find a better way to get on CNN will enact an ancient left-wing ritual that involves pretending to care about a fake clock.

The ritual moves a fake clock closer to midnight summoning hoarse cries of media anguish.

“Scientists: World Closer to Doomsday Than It’s Been Since the 1950s” is a typical media headline. “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the keepers of what is called the Doomsday Clock, took a look at the state of the world today and was expected to move the clock one minute closer to ‘midnight.’”

And it’s all Trump’s fault for not believing in Global Warming. No, seriously.

According to the official statement, “Board Marks 70th Anniversary of Iconic Clock By Expressing Concern About “Unsettling” and “Ill-Considered” Statements of President Trump on Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change.”

It was either that or go out for another round of Jagerbombs while actual nuclear scientists in Iran work to build bombs that will kill millions in Tel Aviv, New York or maybe even back in Chicago.

The heavily hyped announcement of the “Doomsday Clock” being the closest to midnight since 1953 (by no coincidence whatsoever the first year of Eisenhower’s term) bombed. Or maybe it was a dud.

The rollout was introduced by Rachel Bronson, the confused executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Bronson has a degree is in political science and her social media feed is filled with childish anti-Trump rants. She is less of an “atomic scientist” than your Aunt Sally.

Rachel informed attendees that John Mecklin, the Bulletin’s editor in chief, was in the audience. “He is the one who pulled together and helped the board develop this statement that accompanied this important announcement.”

John Mecklin’s qualifications for warning that the world is about to end can be found in his past as editor of High Country and Key West. Key West is “a high-end, monthly city magazine devoted to documenting the rich, quirky stories of the Florida Keys.”

He is not an “atomic scientist”.

Three men sat at the table to the right of Rachel. There was the scowling mug of Thomas Pickering. Pickering is a Hillary pal who played a role in whitewashing her role in Benghazi, a former State Department hack with dubious business interests and Iran deal lobbyist with ties to Boeing.

Pickering is not an “atomic scientist”, but he played a role in helping terrorists go nuclear.

At the rickety table, Pickering lobbied for the Iran nuke sellout. The Bulletin had certainly come a long way from its anti-war roots to seating a Boeing man at the table to argue for Iran’s nukes.

There are now many Catholic commentators who are questioning the Church’s blindness about the danger Europe is facing.

“Islam has every chance massively to strengthen its presence in Europe with the blessing of the Church…. the Church is not only leading Europe to an impasse, it is also shooting itself in the foot.” — Laurent Dandrieu, cultural editor of the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles.

“It is clear that Muslims have an ultimate goal: conquering the world…Islam, through the sharia, their law…allows violence against the infidels, such as Christians….And what is the most important achievement? Rome.” — Cardinal Raymond Burke, interview, Il Giornale.

“[T]hey are not refugees, this is an invasion, they come here with cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’, they want to take over.” — Laszlo Kiss Rigo, head of the Catholic Hungarian southern community.

François Fillon published a book entitled, Vanquishing Islamic Totalitarianism, and he rose in the polls by vowing to control Islam and immigration: “We’ve got to reduce immigration to its strict minimum,” Fillon said. “Our country is not a sum of communities, it is an identity!”

Everyone in Italy and the rest of Europe will “soon be Muslim” because of our “stupidity”, warned Monsignor Carlo Liberati, Archbishop Emeritus of Pompei. Liberati claimed that, thanks to the huge number of Muslim migrants alongside the increasing secularism of native Europeans, Islam will soon become the main religion of Europe. “All of this moral and religious decadence favours Islam”, Archbishop Liberati explained.

Décadence is also the title of a new book by the French philosopher Michel Onfray, in which he suggests that the Judeo-Christian era may have come to an end. He compares the West and Islam: “We have nihilism, they have fervor; we are exhausted, they have a great health; we have the past for us; they have the future for them”.

Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey’s leading journalists, was just fired from Turkey’s leading newspaper after 29 years, for writing what was taking place in Turkey for Gatestone. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

What makes Turkey look more like North Korea than a European democracy is the legal authorities’ reflex to launch probes into anyone accused, without evidence, of terrorist activity or insulting the president.

Philipp Schwartz was a Hungarian-born neuropathologist who worked for the Goethe University in Frankfurt for 14 years until he was fired in 1933 for being Jewish. After his — and other scholars’ — dismissal, he convinced the then decade-old modern Turkish Republic to admit persecuted German professors to positions at Turkish universities. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the secular founder of the Turkish state, enthusiastically agreed to Schwartz’s proposal. Turkey quickly admitted 150 German Jewish professors. Schwartz was appointed as director of the Department of Pathology at the University of Istanbul. More than seven decades after, a German initiative that bears Schwartz’s name is returning the favor.

In the first week of 2017, another 631 Turkish researchers and professors were dismissed from their universities, adding to thousands who were purged during the second half of 2016. Several Turkish scholars are now reversing Schwartz’s path: In the fall of 2016, the Philipp Schwartz Initiative received more applications from Turkey than war-torn Syria or any other country. Turks now account for 46% of all applicants worldwide. As the Brussels-based European affairs weekly newspaper Politico put it: “Turkey loses its brains.”

Turkey’s problem is bigger than just literally losing its brains. The country apparently is also figuratively losing its brains. News headlines are so confusing that often one cannot decide whether he is reading a real newspaper or the Turkish version of The Onion, reflecting a collective, socio-pathological frenzy — ironically Schwartz’s work of science.

An Islamist and militantly pro-Erdogan newspaper, Yeni Akit, ran the photo of what looks like a main battle tank, claiming that this weapons system had been developed by Aselsan, a state-controlled defense company, and was capable of “even stopping an atomic bomb.” Yeni Akit belongs to an “elite” group of media outlets whose editors often find a seat aboard Erdogan’s private jet when he travels abroad for state visits. What is more worrying than the absurdity of Yeni Akit’s claim is that few Turks would question the story’s authenticity.

The Austrian Military Intelligence Service has predicted that up to 15 million migrants from Africa could arrive in the EU by 2020.

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, recently admitted on Austrian television that he had come to “rethink” his approach to the migrant crisis: Instead of accepting all the refugees, aid should be given in the Middle East and Africa, so that migrants could stay there.

“Will there be an Islamic conquest of Europe? Many Muslims want that and say: Europe is at the end.” — Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna, Festival of the ‘Holy Name of Mary’, September, 2016.

Cardinal Schönborn subsequently backtracked, saying that his words had been misinterpreted as an attack against Muslims and refugees: “Europe’s Christian legacy is in danger, because we Europeans have squandered it. That has absolutely nothing to do with Islam nor with the refugees. It is clear that many Islamists would like to take advantage of our weakness, but they are not responsible for it. We are.”

In his Christmas sermon, broadcast live on Austria’s ORF and Germany’s ZDF TV channels, Catholic diocesan Bishop Aegidius Zsifkovics of St. Martin’s Cathedral in Eisenstadt, Austria, pontificated that tightening borders is an “erroneous opinion”:

“Barbed wire, fences and walls are now many people’s answer to the refugees [coming into] Europe. The terror of a few, as last seen in Berlin, reinforce many of us in this erroneous opinion”.

Bishop Zsifkovics declared that we cannot let “Cowardly terror attacks, like that in Berlin, succeed in destabilizing our society, making us colder and less solidary. Let us not allow the terrorists this triumph — we will not be ice cold like them!”

Erdogan will effectively consolidate the power of three legislative bodies into one powerful executive office: himself.

Erdogan’s “Turkish-style presidency” is already a presidency with too much power held by one man. If approved at the referendum, the changes will make Erdogan head of government, head of state and head of the ruling party — all at the same time.

It would transfer powers traditionally held by parliament to the presidency, thereby rendering the parliament merely a ceremonial, advisory body.

The opposition looks fragmented and helpless in telling the masses that reforms would concentrate excessive powers in the hands of a leader who has increasingly displayed authoritarian tendencies.

At the moment, Erdogan is effectively the absolute ruler. If he wins the vote he becomes the absolute ruler. If he loses, he remains effectively the absolute ruler until he tries again to become the absolute ruler.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s one-man show goes on; he may soon progress from effectively having absolute authority to actually having absolute authority. He would apparently like to put an official seal on his increasingly autocratic regime. If a simple majority of Turks vote “yes” in a national referendum on proposed constitutional amendments in April, Erdogan will effectively consolidate the power of three legislative bodies into one powerful executive office: himself. He would then be installed as a leader with virtually unlimited authority.

Although the current constitution grants him largely symbolic powers, Erdogan has acted as the effective head of the executive branch since he became Turkey’s first elected president in August 2014. He has explicitly — and, it appears, happily — violated the constitution by acting as an absolute head of government. In May 2016, he forced Ahmet Davutoglu, his own confidant and prime minister, out of office; Erdogan evidently suspected that the man was not working hard enough to push for the absolute executive presidential system Erdogan has evidently been craving. Only seven months ago, Davutoglu had won a parliamentary election with 49.5% of the national vote.

Erdogan replaced Davutoglu with Binali Yildirim, who has proven to be more enthusiastic about terminating the prime minister’s office and transferring all powers to an all-powerful president. As Erdogan’s (and Yildirim’s) ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lacked the parliamentary majority to put any constitutional amendment to public vote, the proposed changes therefore required support from the opposition benches. (A minimum of 330 votes is required in the country’s 550-member assembly, as opposed to 317 seats controlled by the AKP.)

A year ago, that would have looked unimaginable. But a nationalist opposition party, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), made a U-turn from its public pledges of “never letting Erdogan become the executive president,” and decided to support the reform bill. Political observers are still trying to figure out what may have pushed the MHP from one extreme to the other; there is not yet a clear explanation.

Erdogan’s “Turkish-style presidency” is already a presidency with too much power held by one man. If approved in the referendum, the changes will make Erdogan head of government, head of state and head of the ruling party — all at the same time. Erdogan would have the power to appoint cabinet ministers without requiring a confidence vote from parliament, propose budgets and appoint more than half the members of the nation’s highest judicial body. He would also have the power to dissolve parliament, impose states of emergency and issue decrees. Alarmingly, the proposed system lacks the safety mechanisms of checks and balances that exist in other countries such as the United States. It would transfer powers traditionally held by parliament to the presidency, thereby rendering the parliament merely a ceremonial, advisory body.