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https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-bad-brexit-deal-1542239961

Theresa May has finally struck a deal with Brussels for Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, and it reminds us of what Winston Churchill said about democracy—the worst form of government except for all the others.

Mrs. May sold the plan to her balky cabinet in a five-hour meeting on Wednesday. And if her plan survives vetting in Parliament, the policy outline will manage Britain’s departure from the EU, with a second round of talks on the post-Brexit trading relationship to come.

Most details aren’t controversial. Those include provisions on the status of EU citizens in Britain and Brits living in the EU, and the money Britain will contribute to the EU budget under commitments made before the 2016 Brexit referendum.

The rub concerns the indefinite trading agreement that Brussels demanded to avoid imposing a hard border between Northern Ireland, which is part of the U.K., and the Republic of Ireland that is remaining in the EU. Mrs. May has agreed that the entire U.K. will remain within the EU customs union if some other U.K.-EU trade deal isn’t struck. Britain will accept some EU regulations, and economic rules still could diverge over time between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

Pro-Brexit Tories are right to call this a bad deal—“vassal state stuff,” in the words of the always colorful Brexiteer Boris Johnson. It limits Britain’s ability to negotiate its own trade deals unless Britain can first negotiate a new trading arrangement with Brussels.

But it’s the best, and currently the only, serious option on the table. Reimposing a hard border for Northern Ireland, which would be necessary without a withdrawal deal, would renege on Britain’s commitments under the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 and risk re-igniting sectarian strife. Britain also has refused to accept a Brussels proposal to create a new customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., though this would make the most economic sense.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-a-crisis-of-civilization-in-mexico-250-000-dead-37-400-missing-1542213374?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=3&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

EL FUERTE, Mexico—One recent day, a line of grieving mothers armed with picks and shovels worked their way across a muddy field looking for Mexico’s dead and missing, their own children among them.

“It smells bad here,” said Lizbeth Ortega, a member of Las Rastreadoras de El Fuerte, or the Trackers of El Fuerte, a group of mothers who look for missing people.

The mothers literally wear their pain. Some don white T-shirts, like Ms. Ortega’s, which has a blown-up photograph of her daughter Zumiko, kidnapped almost three years ago and still missing. On the back, her shirt says “I’ll search for you until I find you.”

Other mothers wear green shirts with the words “Promise Fulfilled.” They are the ones who have found the bodies of their missing children.

That day, the mothers scoured the site outside El Fuerte, a town in Sinaloa state, on Mexico’s northern Pacific Coast, looking for one of two men presumably kidnapped by cartel gunmen in recent weeks. One body had already been found in a field. The women believed the other may be nearby. In the end, they came up empty.

“This is my life,” said Mirna Medina, a forceful woman who holds the group together. “Digging up holes.”

Her son, who sold CDs by a gas station, was kidnapped in 2014. Three years later to the day, she and the other mothers of the search group dug up his remains. “I felt his presence,” she said, remembering the day and breaking out in tears. “I wanted to find him alive, but at least I found him.”

Some 37,000 people in Mexico are categorized as “missing” by the government. The vast majority are believed to be dead, victims of the country’s spiraling violence that has claimed more than 250,000 lives since 2006. The country’s murder rate has more than doubled to 26 per 100,000 residents, five times the U.S. figure.

Because the missing aren’t counted as part of the country’s official murder tally, it is likely Mexico’s rate itself is higher.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/uk-reaches-draft-brexit-deal-with-eu/

The United Kingdom has agreed to a draft agreement with the EU to withdraw from the European Union. But analysts warn that there is much uncertainty over whether the deal will be accepted by a majority of Prime Minister Theresa May’s cabinet and Tories in parliament.

The New York Times explains May’s dilemma:

Details of the agreement were not immediately available. Presumably, it contains language pertaining to the “backstop” plan to settle the contentious issue of the Irish border, the part of the agreement that is likely to set off the most sparks in the cabinet discussions.

The breakthrough followed months of discussions over an issue that has divided Britons and split the governing Conservative Party. But the prime minister’s problems are far from over.

Even assuming she gains the cabinet’s approval on Wednesday without a politically damaging raft of resignations — not a given — Mrs. May faces daunting odds in pushing the compromise plan through Parliament, where it has many opponents.

Britain is scheduled to quit the European Union on March 29. The draft agreement, if approved, would at least avert the prospect of a disorderly and chaotic departure without any deal — something that could clog ports and lead to shortages of food and some medicines.

If Mrs. May’s cabinet signs off on the draft agreement, the next step is for European Union leaders to give it their blessing at a meeting at the end of the month.

It would then need the approval of the European Parliament and of British lawmakers in London. If that is forthcoming, the agreement would lead to a standstill transition period during which very little would change before the end of 2020.

This is a long, slow, treacherous path to a Brexit. If May can convince her cabinet to back the deal — a big if — the parliamentary brawl to approve it could very easily lead to May’s ouster. If that happens, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, a hardline Brexiteer , is waiting in the wings to replace her.

A change in Conservative leadership at this point would almost certainly lead to a “no deal” Brexit and widespread chaos, the effects of which could plunge the UK into an economic and political crisis that would drive the Tories from power and hand the government to the odious ant-Semites of the Labor Party. CONTINUE AT SITE

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/14/macron-picking-fight-trump-empty-arrogance/
Trump and Macron alternate between clashing with and fawning over one another, because although they are quite different people, they seek similar goals.

President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron have a unique and often strained relationship. They alternate between clashing with and fawning over one another, because even though they are quite different people, they seek similar goals: the greatness of their countries.

The age difference and generational dynamic explain some of the ups and downs of this relationship, as do the different political cultures of the two countries. But there is more to it than that. There is the history of each country and our relationship across history; there is the current state of world affairs with the United States’s continuing dominance while France is in its second century of declining importance and influence; and there is the failure of the European Union to create the kind of home and institutions that would satisfy the great powers of Europe vis a vis a power like the United States.
Latest Battle in This War of Words: The United Nations

The latest clash between Trump and Macron was Macron’s strong rebuttal Saturday to Trump’s United Nations speech in September. That Trump speech was the clearest and starkest explanation of Trump’s views on international affairs and his plans for the U.S. role in the world. Trump rejected globalism and embraced patriotism, which many of his critics say is really nationalism. Trump seems to be fine with that term nationalism, too, because he has embraced it as meaning patriotism.

The globalism he rejects maintains that each nation-state should defer to international organizations or other nation-states when confronting challenges both at home and abroad. In the patriotism, or nationalism, he embraces, each nation-state naturally prefers itself and seeks its own interests above all others.