(A) No, this is not a “bizarro world” headline: the largest Muslim country (by population)in the world, Indonesia, is seeking to normalize relations with Israel!
No, they haven’t suddenly been overcome with love for us, but… they are seeking entry to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) — effectively a membership in the club of the industrialized nations. Israel became a member in 2010 (full list of member states here) and admission of any new member state requires unanimous approval of the current members.
(B) Meanwhile, the European Court for Human Rights keeps engaging in further and further overreach. Allister Heath, in the Telegraph (paywalled; cached copy herehttps://archive.fo/TXrWW ). Read the whole thing, but here is a taste
[…] In an incendiary judicial coup this week, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) greatly expanded its own remit while downgrading democracy another notch. In a ruling that would almost be funny if it weren’t so serious, its Grand Chamber ruled that countries that don’t reduce carbon emissions fast enough are violating their citizens’ right to private and family life. […] The problem is obvious: if a rise in temperature violates our right to a private and family life, what doesn’t? Where will the ECHR power grab end?
The game here is clear. By making everything about “human rights” that cannot be questioned, then the democratic sphere, where we can debate and disagree and vote for different approaches, is drastically curtailed, and the influence of Left-wing lawyers massively increased. […] I spent hours wading through the judgment, Verein KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz [“Association of Seniors for Climate, Switzerland” — Ed.] and Others v Switzerland, and found it hard to discern anything in it that could qualify as actual legal reasoning, as opposed to verbiage from a “court” that has given up on any pretence of self-restraint.
It simply decrees that the meaning of Article 8 of the Convention must now encompass “a right for individuals to effective protection by the State authorities from the serious adverse effects of climate change on their lives, health, well-being and quality of life”.
The Convention’s original authors never had anything like that in mind, and surely never dreamt that their post-Second World War document would be traduced and distorted in such a way.
Today’s ultra-activist judges are treating the Convention as a “living document”, reinterpreting its meaning as they see fit. The only legally rigorous section in the ruling was the partly dissenting view by Tim Eicke, the sole British judge, who perhaps realises this latest preposterous overreach will one day be remembered as the moment the UK was finally tipped over the edge on the question of withdrawal.
One line in the judgment reveals the deeply authoritarian impulse underlying the decision: in a classic case of Orwellian doublespeak, it reverses the meaning of “democracy” to justify disregarding what the public actually wants. “Democracy cannot be reduced to the will of the majority of the electorate and elected representatives, in disregard of the requirements of the rule of law”, we are told.[…]This might be interpreted simply as meaning that an angry mob has no right to impose its will without going through proper constitutional procedures.[…] Yet this isn’t what the ECHR has in mind, and it conflates the “rule of law” with “rule by lawyers”. It believes democracy should be radically constrained, that the people aren’t wise enough to take decisions […] If you trust the voters, you can get Brexit – horror of horrors – or the Swiss rejecting net zero, which is clearly intolerable. Democracy is the political equivalent of pocket money: it should only hold sway over unimportant matters. The real decisions should be taken by objective judges. “
They say they want to protect “democracy” from threats — even if that requires destroying the village in order to save it. But what they really stand for is not democracy at all, but kritarchy [rule by judges] as a manifestation of what I have been calling “transnational oligarchic collectivism” for many years. (This is a portmanteau of John Fonte’s “Transnational Progressivism” and George Orwell’s “Oligarchic Collectivism“.)
ADDENDUM: “Vodkapundit” had suspected for some time that most of the hostages held by HamaSS were dead. He is saddened to be (probably) vindicated.
Spin, strangeness, and charm 