Month: July 2022

Abe Shinzo, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, was assassinated during a campaign speech on Friday. Abe had continued to exert political influence, heading a powerful faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Under Abe, Tokyo had faced considerable US pressure to end almost a decade of outreach to Russia.

It seems increasingly clear that more than any particular policy achievement, Abe’s greatest legacy was a more substantial global leadership for Japan and peace with Russia and China.

One focus of Abe’s foreign policy was to secure a treaty with Russia on their territorial dispute. Abe had pursued this initiative even after some of his closest foreign policy advisers tried to scupper his efforts. The operation in Ukraine gave current PM Kishida Fumio room to join US sanctions targeting Moscow – marking a changed course from Abe’s foreign policy legacy.

Japan had been happy to offer economic concessions on the disputed islands in the Kurils, but Kishida – even before the Ukraine crisis – had abandoned Abe’s Russia policy. There is little question that Abe’s diplomatic initiative was stymied by his successors, particularly given that the goal was ultimately strategic: to forge a friendship with Russia that would stabilize Japan’s northern flank.

Ironically, Abe often spoke throughout his career about revising the Japanese Constitution to give the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) greater room to expand. On Friday, he was murdered in cold blood by an alleged member of the Self-Defense Forces.

Even if constitutional revision never happened, other defense-related reforms under Abe did. The former premier had managed to make meaningful changes to Japan’s security policy without revising Article 9, permitting the SDFs to perform new roles, despite significant public opposition. He continued the SDF’s shift to a flexible posture focused on the defense of Japan’s outlying southwestern islands.

“Under Abe, the Japanese government passed a state secrecy law to strengthen penalties for leaking designated state secrets. It created a national security council, supported by a secretariat, which moved substantial foreign and security policymaking initiative to the prime minister’s office. The prime minister’s office gained broader powers over senior administrative personnel decisions, and Abe – along with Yoshihide Suga, who was chief cabinet secretary for the duration of Abe’s second administration, fostered a cadre of national security officials who occupied key posts in the Kantei,” according to Tobias Harris.

Kishida’s rule fully depended on the willingness of Abe and his faction to back him, and a confrontation with the still-powerful former prime minister would have been too costly.

https://freewestmedia.com/2022/07/08/does-assassination-of-shinzo-abe-signal-strategic-shift-for-japan/

By Olivia Murray

The ‘Climate Change’ agenda is a global, existential threat to prosperity and freedom from tyranny – nowhere else is that more apparent right now than in the small European country of the Netherlands. Under the tutelage of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte became a “golden pin-up boy” for the Agenda 2030 cause. Rowan Dean, a reporter for Australian outlet Sky News said:

Currently the Dutch government is embarked upon insane efforts to slash greenhouse gases [sic] and reduce the amount of nitrogen ammonia in the soil by 30 to 70 percent by 2030….

The Netherlands House of Representatives has released a state which said: ‘The honest message is that not all farmers will continue in business. Those who do will have to farm differently.’

In practice, the government’s plans could mandate farmers to use less fertilizer, and quell their livestock herds. In response, farmers are resisting en masse – blocking supermarkets, distribution centers, and key infrastructure.

The Dutch Farmers are not messing around. Amazing. #Netherlands pic.twitter.com/H56HtLuygF

— Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦 (@ryangerritsen) July 4, 2022

Tucker Carlson said:

This new order in the Netherlands would have the effect of destroying agriculture in the Netherlands. So farmers weren’t for it, and to their great credit there’s still enough testosterone among Dutch farmers to protest it.

But it doesn’t end with the farmers, and now fishermen have joined the fray. According to political writer Brendan O’Neill:

As of next year, fishing permits will be given out on the basis of eco-friendliness of the trawler the fisherman is using…. They have blocked harbours [sic] in solidarity with the farmers.

Global issues regarding the supply chain and food shortages have only worsened with the political turmoil and dissent, and supermarket shelves across the Netherlands are completely bare.

Netherlands 🇳🇱

Supermarkets are running out of food as the farmers protest begins to bite.

Truckers and farmers are the pipeline of our food supply. Their power is the fear of corrupt governments everywhere. pic.twitter.com/B4w0aUzQSj

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) July 7, 2022

As O’Neill noted, it’s not just the Dutch rising up against the beast of Green fanaticism and the “Cult of Net Zero” – but the French and Sri Lankans too. ‘Progressive’ environmentalism has gone over like a lead balloon with ordinary, working-class people – as it turns out, they’re more concerned with economic stability, food security, and an optimal standard of living than supporting totalitarianism and the narcissism of the global elites.

It seems as though the globalists have overplayed their hand. They’ve failed to adhere to conventional wisdom – boiling the frog and slowly eroding rights – and the historical lessons of Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution – starving people have nothing else to lose.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/dutch_farmers_are_fed_up_with_totalitarianism_rebranded_as_climate_change.html

According to Britain’s Defence Secretary, the Second World War was fought to advance the notion that Black Lives Matter.

The country’s defence chief Ben Wallace, appears to be the Conservative party favorite to replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. British daily The Guardianreported on Thursday that Wallace was “emerging as a favourite among Conservative party members” and has become “a bookmakers’ favourite based on polling of party members by ConservativeHome”.

Wallace tweeted his support for Black Lives Matter rioters after they had defaced the Cenotaph war memorial in London. He said Allied soldiers had landed on the beaches of Normandy “so that Black lives would matter”.

According to Wallace, “76 years ago British , Commonwealth, French and US soldiers landed on the Normandy beaches. Thousands died. They did so to end fascism, they did so so that Black lives would matter. Perhaps those protesters who defaced the Cenataph [sic] should reflect on that.”

76 years ago British , Commonwealth, French and US soldiers landed on the Normandy beaches. Thousands died. They did so to end fascism, they did so so that Black lives would matter. Perhaps those protesters who defaced the Cenataph should reflect on that.

— Rt. Hon Ben Wallace MP (@BWallaceMP) June 6, 2020

Wallace misspelt Cenotaph as “Cenataph”. The war memorial in Whitehall, London was unveiled in 1920 as the United Kingdom’s national memorial to the British and Commonwealth dead of the First World War, but was rededicated in 1946 to include those of the Second World War, and has since come to represent British casualties from later conflicts.

Tories betting on war candidate

The Conservative Party has meanwhile descended into chaos. One influential Tory MP told The Spectator with a mixture of exhaustion and despair: “Please God, make it stop.”

Wallace is now the clear favorite over Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt due to his “leadership on Ukraine”. Those who are promoting Wallace tend to be primarily interested in military spending and a larger war. This would be the only way to secure a next Tory victory.

“At the moment, the most likely result of the next election is a hung parliament with an anti-Tory majority. But the Tories should not take any comfort from this: Keir Starmer would not need a landslide. He would just need enough support to change the first-past-the-post voting system and enfranchise 16-year-olds. If he does, the Tories could be locked out of power for a generation,” argued James Forsyth, political editor.

Wallace told LBC radio as recently as a week ago that Ukraine was winning the war. He ascribed the victory to president Putin’s stature: “I certainly think Putin’s view of himself and the world is a small man syndrome, macho view. You rarely hear the phrase small woman syndrome. You always hear small man syndrome and he’s [Putin] got it in spades.”

Wallace said that if he had been leading an invasion as “disastrous as Putin’s assault on Ukraine”, he would have been fired or overthrown. “I would still say Ukrainians are winning,” he added only days before the Luhansk Oblast declared itself liberated from Ukraine.

“Russia has failed on all its major objectives. It is now reduced to a grinding advance of a few hundred metres every few days at massive cost in one small part of eastern Ukraine.

“If it happened the other way round I would have been fired by now, the government would have been overthrown in Britain and there would have been thousands of very angry parents and girlfriends who have lost their husbands,” Wallace said.

He as called for increased military spending.

In March, Wallace discussed the possibility of the UK helping Ukraine develop nuclear weapons with Russian pranksters, believing he was talking to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal.

https://freewestmedia.com/2022/07/08/favorite-to-replace-boris-johnson-believes-ww2-was-fought-for-blm/

Germany’s largest housing provider, Vonovia, has announced that it will reduce the nighttime room temperature in its rental apartments amid a coming energy crunch, a move that is expected to affect hundreds of thousands of tenants.

“From the beginning of the next heating period, the plan is to throttle the heating between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., so that the heating only heats up to 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) at night,” said Vonovia spokesman Matthias Wullf to BZ.

According to the company, the measures are aimed at reducing gas consumption and limiting heating costs through “optimized system operation.” The move will likely result in savings of up to 8 percent.

Vonovia owns over half a million apartments, with 350,000 of those units in Germany, with most of the rest in Sweden and Austria. Some 40,000 of those apartments are in Germany’s capital city of Berlin.

Electricity and gas prices have already tripled on the wholesale market in Germany and end-consumers are expected to be hit with massive utility bill increases. Officials are warning about the potential loss of 5 million jobs, mass bankruptcies, and economic “shockwaves” that could slam the German economy if Russia cuts gas supplies to the country. The German government has urged citizens to start saving energy now, including taking shorter showers, in order to allow German gas reserves to fill up before the winter months begin.

Vonovia is not the only massive housing provider expected to cut heating.

Against the background of high energy prices, the housing group Deutsche Wohnen, which owns 150,000 apartment units in Berlin alone, is also considering measures for possible savings.

“Basically, we take the current situation very seriously and are examining various options for saving natural gas or optimizing the operation of our systems,” a company spokeswoman told the Bild newspaper.

According to RBB, the association of Berlin-Brandenburg housing companies expects the costs for heating and hot water to increase by half before the end of the year. That means additional expenses of €410 euros for a 60-square-meter apartment, and further increases are possible in the coming year.

https://rmx.news/germany/germanys-largest-housing-group-will-throttle-the-heat-at-night-for-tenants-to-save-energy/

Minneapolis: Groups of Somalian males and youths attacked people on the street with fireworks. One woman walking a dog was targeted. pic.twitter.com/nCatKOzIjr

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) July 6, 2022

By Monica Showalter

Like a pockmarked piece of rotten wood, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has seen his government collapse over a series of petty, stupid, self-inflicted scandals, and now he’s going down with it.

According to NBC News:

LONDON — Scandal-ridden British Prime Minister Boris Johnson capitulated to mounting pressure to step down Thursday, announcing his decision after days of high-profile government resignations and calls from fellow Conservative Party members to quit.

“In the past few weeks, I have been trying to convince my colleagues it would be eccentric to change governments when we have achieved so much,” he said in his speech outside No. 10 Downing St. amid loud booing from the crowd nearby. “I regret not to be successful in those arguments and, of course, it’s painful not to be able to see through those projects myself.”

Johnson also said he planned to remain as prime minister until a successor is chosen — a move that may face opposition from others in an increasingly hostile Parliament. 

Obviously, it’s a sign that the Christine O’Donnell rule holds, even in U.K. politics — that a party with a good plan still needs to have good candidates, and Johnson, though he was a known factor with his shambly disorderliness, engaged in a lot of petty dishonesties and hypocrisies, similar to those of many Democrats, such as, say, Gavin Newsom of California, who’s been just caught vacationing in Montana despite signing a law saying that no state official is to travel there based on California’s wokester objections to Montana’s social policies, and who partied hearty in a maskless French Laundry excursion with Big Pharma lobbyists during the days when he had the entire state on COVID lockdown. Johnson got caught doing that, too, triggering a narrowly survived vote of confidence in parliament for it recently. He also appointed a sex harasser he knew about to a high government post and met a Russian intelligence linked official off the books in Italy out of official channels, to cite his most recent scandals. None of these scandals compare to the scale of scandal seen in Joe Biden — from stealing an election to the laptop from hell. Guys like Newsom survive these things with no repercussions.

Johnson didn’t.

Little scandals like this are tinder when other factors are in play. 

Based on a back-of-the-envelope analysis (it’s early), it seems that the real problem was that Johnson wasn’t governing as a true Thatcherite conservative as the voters who had elected him had hoped he would.

The top issue in Britain, as in the U.S. is inflation, or as it’s put in Britain, according to the U.K. press, the “cost of living.” Any plans to fix that? Apparently not.

Issue two was Brexit — he’s still futzing around on that though he was better than his predecessor. Leave means leave.

Three is immigration — the migrants are still rolling in and claiming benefits, going to the front of the line for five-star housing and other things denied ordinary Brits. No sane leader worth their salt would permit that kind of thing going on to please E.U. bureaucrats. There were other assorted bunglings such as refusing to allow Ukrainian refugees in who had sponsors willing to house and feed them. Obviously, something wasn’t working.

Four was global warming. He just couldn’t stop himself promoting that and shutting down Britain’s viable energy putting in place worthless greenie substitutes. Bad policies like that are not only not rooted in science, they are hell on consumers who must deal with higher costs and less reliable energy. To cling to that junk science was absolute poison for his government.

Five was COVID lockdowns — which were as badly managed and driven by quacks as the ones seen in our country and in places like Colombia, where another conservative leader was recently thrown out. The whole thing was the mother of bad ideas and unfortunately, conservatives pay for these things.

In short, he played a conservative on T.V. but he governed as a leftist. That’s a failure to lead, and sure enough, the discontent in Britain is over his leadership, not the Thatcherite elements of his party platform. Johnson’s citation of his “successes” as prime minister — such as lockdowns and Ukraine intevention are rather telling in this regard. He didn’t cite any that Margaret Thatcher would be proud to call her own.

It put his polling numbers in the crapper. It prompted a huge slew of resignations from his cabinet, each character huffing out in a bid to save his or her political skin. It certainly was the same thing did in the president of Colombia’s party a few weeks ago, this claim to be a conservative while governing as a leftist, but Johnson didn’t heed that warning. 

Now Britain faces the dangerous prospect of early elections, and the real prospect of the Labour Party leftists taking over. They will dismantle Brexit and print money like maniacs, driving inflation sky-high. 

The California experience of having a RINO in office offers a mordant precedent for Britain. Following the exit of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California, leaving the state in a mess, the net result has been California’s hard turn toward becoming a blue state. One hopes against hope that this isn’t what happens to Great Britain, too.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/boris_johnson_resigns_and_sadly_good_riddance_heres_five_reasons_why.html