RUTHFULLY YOURS

Reprinted from InvestigativeProject.org.

Why has the West been so supportive of Palestinian nationalism, yet so reluctant to support the Kurds, the largest nation in the world without a state?

The Kurds have been instrumental in fighting the Islamic State (ISIS); have generously accepted millions of refugees fleeing ISIS to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG); and embrace Western values such as gender equality, religious freedom, and human rights. They are also an ancient people with an ethnic and linguistic identity stretching back millennia and have faced decades of brutal oppression as a minority. Yet they cannot seem to get sufficient support from the West for their political aspirations.

The Palestinians, by contrast, claimed a distinct national identity relatively recently, are less than one-third fewer in number (in 2013, the global Palestinian population was estimated by the Palestinian Authority to reach 11.6 million), control land that is less than 1/15th the size of the KRG territory, and have not developed their civil society or economy with nearly as much success as the Kurds. Yet the United Nations, the European Union, the Arab League, and other international bodies have all but ignored Kurdish statehood dreams while regularly prioritizing Palestinian ambitions over countless other global crises.

Indeed, in 2014 the UK and Sweden joined much of the rest of the world in recognizing a Palestinian state. There has been no similar global support for a Kurdish homeland. Moreover, Kurdish statehood has been hobbled by U.S. reluctance to see the Iraqi state dismantled and by regional powers like Turkey, which worries that a Kurdish state will stir up separatist feelings among Turkish Kurds.

It is an old story: A self-hating leftist willing to sacrifice anyone and anything, even herself, on the altar of political correctness for the sake of the latest, trendy, political cause.

Last January, Selin Goren, the spokesperson for the national youth wing of the Left Party, a far-left German political party, was attacked late one night close to her family’s apartment in Mannheim. With her grandparents visiting from Turkey, Goren had stepped out to get some fresh air.

At a playground, she noticed three young men hanging around, drinking alcohol. But unfortunately, she did not notice one of them sneaking up on her. He threw her to the ground and, with his two accomplices, forced her to perform a sex act before robbing her.

This is not an uncommon event nowadays in Germany. The number of young female and child victims of sexual assault has increased dramatically since Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed, unscreened, more than one million migrants, primarily from the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa, to pour into the country in a few months.

But what Goren, described as a “convinced socialist,” did next was not only uncommon, but disgraceful – and probably illegal: She lied to police. Which Goren herself revealed in an interview in the German publication, Der Spiegel, in early July.

The nature of Goren’s lie concerned her attackers’ ethnic background. She told police they were a “mixed group” of white Germans and youths of immigrant appearance. And they spoke only German.

Twelve hours later, however, after being persuaded by a friend, Goren, of immigrant background herself, returned to police with the truth. There were no white Germans and her assailants spoke only Arabic or Farsi.

So why did Goren lie about her own violation?

The future, socialist politician, who is involved in migrant issues and has visited Middle Eastern refugee camps, provided the answer herself in “an open letter to a fictional refugee,” which she posted on Facebook (since deleted). Namely, she did not want her rape to bring migrants into disrepute and “fuel aggressive racism.”

“I am really sorry that your sexist and line-crossing treatment of me could help fuel aggressive racism,” she wrote. “I’m going to scream…I will not stand by and watch, and it can happen, that racists name you as the problem. You’re not the problem. You’re usually a wonderful human being who deserves as much as any other to be safe and free.”

This incident is a good example of how poisonous and self-destructive the leftist ideology really is.

Firstly, it seems incredible that someone who postures so publicly as such a compassionate and caring human being as to visit refugee camps would so heartlessly sacrifice and endanger other women’s safety for the sake of her twisted beliefs. In case she had forgotten, her lie had caused police to look for the wrong persons, leaving the culprits free to rob and rape again. And equally hypocritical is the fact that she is a “representative of a political organization that, next to feminism, has anti-racism inscribed on its flag.”

Secondly, her rapists are not “wonderful” human beings, but criminals who need to be removed from society as quickly as possible. They have already brought themselves into disrepute by their actions. So there is no cause for worry on that account.

A move by Italy — the third-largest economy in the eurozone — to abandon the euro could strike a potentially fatal blow to the currency and to the bloc itself.

Meanwhile, at more than 130% of GDP, Italy has one of the biggest public debt burdens in Europe, second only to Greece.

“A perfect storm of slow or zero Italian economic growth, low interest rates and politically connected, often corrupt, lending have combined to create a situation where the Italian financial system is in need of a large rescue.” — Mihir Kapadia, Sun Global Investments.

M5S blames the euro for Italy’s woes, and many Italians agree.

The eurosceptic Five Star Movement (M5S) has overtaken Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic Party (PD) in several opinion polls and is now the most popular political party in Italy.

The poll results represent a significant shift in Italy’s political landscape and have potentially far-reaching implications for the future of the European Union.

M5S, which would win national elections if they were held today, has called for a referendum on whether Italy, which is facing the collapse of its banking system, should keep the euro, the single currency of the European Union, or bring back the Italian lira.

A move by Italy — the third-largest economy in the eurozone — to abandon the euro could strike a potentially fatal blow to the currency and to the bloc itself.

An Ipsos poll, published by the newspaper Corriere della Sera on July 5, gave M5S 30.6% of the vote, up from 28.9% in April, while Renzi’s center-left PD fell to 29.8% from 31.1%.

A Demos poll, published by La Repubblica on July 1, gave M5S 32.3% of the vote, compared to 30.2% for the PD. An EMG Acqua poll for TeleGiornale La7 television on June 28 gave M5S 31.7%, compared to 31.2% for the PD.

According to Ipsos pollster Nando Pagnoncelli, the polls show that M5S “is increasingly viewed as a political force that is capable of governing the country.”

The anti-establishment M5S was founded in 2009 by Beppe Grillo, a well-known comedian and blogger who has led a popular fight against rampant corruption in Italy’s political system. The party advocates for direct democracy — a system in which political decision making is devolved from the government to citizens — as a way to bypass traditional political parties embroiled in corruption scandals.

M5S, which portrays itself as post-ideological and draws support from both the left and right sides of the political aisle, has leveraged the internet to attract millions of voters, especially among the young.

The 67-year-old Grillo recently handed over the reins of the party to a new “directorate” of five young leaders, of which 30-year-old Luigi Di Maio has become the most prominent. He is widely expected to be the party’s candidate for prime minister at the next election.

Britain is a very small island, a tiny off-shore fragment. England taken alone has a population of over fifty million crammed into a land area about twice the size of Tasmania. Due to immigration England now has the highest population density in Europe and the fifth-highest in the world. The last thing such a country, one that was once a major source of emigration, needs is more people. Yet it is experiencing very high levels of immigration due to the stupidity and wilfulness of its political rulers, who are happy to ignore the resentment felt by the ordinary citizen at this influx and some of whom, like Gordon Brown when he was prime minister, even condemn these ordinary voters as “racist”.

Between 1995 and 2014 an extra four million foreign-born people settled in the United Kingdom. In any one year as many as half a million new long-term immigrants arrive. England now has 419 people per square kilometre, which is up from 379 in 2001. England has overtaken the Netherlands in population density and it is England, not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, where the immigrants are settling. It is projected that the density of population will rise to 460 people per square kilometre by 2030. The prospect is intolerable.

The result of this mass immigration has been a marked but deliberately concealed fall in the standard of living of the indigenous population and a large rise in inequality. The lying politicians, notably Tony Blair, have boasted about the rise in total national income due to the extra labour the migrants have provided, but most of this increase has gone in wages and welfare payments and services to the migrants themselves. Very little of it has ended up in the pockets of the indigenous population and that little has been completely offset by a rapid and substantial rise in house prices, as more people are crammed into a fixed space. Rents and mortgage payments have rocketed and these are of course a very large part of the expenditure of British citizens and particularly the poorer ones. Not only can the building industry not provide new dwellings fast enough, but as it tries to do so it gobbles up our unspoilt countryside. Britain is being concreted over and is ceasing to be a green and pleasant land. Travel has become impossible, with clogged roads and crowded trains. Our land has been stolen from us. Immigration is theft.

The Left-liberal proponents of an open-door policy, the ones who have imposed this hell on an unwilling people, are the same ideologues who whine about rising inequality. Yet immigration is a key cause of rising inequality. If there is an influx of relatively unskilled migrants, it is those among the indigenous population without skills or capital who are bound to lose out. The leftists were recently excited about Thomas Piketty’s best-selling and utterly misguided book Capital, which set out in an over-simple algebraic formula why we were getting more unequal. However, by capital Piketty meant wealth and a large part of that wealth consists of land and housing. It is the value of these that has risen enormously. When house prices rise there is a transfer of wealth in favour of those who own one from those who do not. Those who lose out are the ones struggling to purchase or rent one. My own modest house is worth ten times what I paid for it, far more than the rate of inflation. Today I could not afford to buy it. The situation is made worse by affluent foreigners buying up the better-quality housing purely as a speculative investment.

“Curse You, Curse You, Curse You, Mr Blair!”

Just what makes Anthony Charles Lynton Blair tick is very hard to fathom. Admired by some, and loathed by others, this “all-over-the-place” politician may well be judged by history (as he is judged by many already) the worst prime minister of the British twentieth century.

The usual suspects of the Left view Blair as a war criminal for the “lies” that took Britain into the war that toppled Saddam Hussein, and feel exonerated by the Chilcot Report, but to numerous men and women Blair’s crimes are those he committed against his own country during his prime ministership (1997-2007).

In the current issue of the Australian conservative intellectual and literary magazine Quadrant Welshman Christie Davies (author of The Strange Death of Moral Britain) articulates this viewpoint with clarity and passion.

Pointing out the societal, economic, and ecological problems associated with Britain’s record high levels of immigration over the last two decades, with England now the most densely populated country in Europe (419 people per square km) and projected to become even more congested by 2030 (460 people per square km), Davies notes that the warnings of demographers during the 1960s regarding future overcrowding if the birthrate did not fall are never alluded to today.

(Anyone seen the slogan “Zero Population Growth” lately? No. Didn’t think so. Since the immigrant population is driving up the birthrate these days it’s much too politically incorrect to suggest that the maximum number of babies per family should be two. Ever seen the Greens arguing that immigration numbers should be restricted, given the fact that swathes of unspoiled countryside and greenbelt land are now being cemented over to meet the need for housing consequent upon today’s massive population surge? Ah, that’ll be the day!)