RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sick-man-of-europe-is-europe-11558989783

Two takeaways from Sunday’s European Union elections: First, the centrists—the moderate right and left—were decimated. For the first time since 1979, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, the reliably pro-European bloc, no longer hold the majority in the 751-member European Parliament. Second, the far right—the Europe bashers and nationalists—scored big, increasing their take to about 170 seats. In Britain, the Brexit Party trounced both Labour and the Tories. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally outpolled President Emmanuel Macron’s party and its allies.

The numbers mirror the shifting tectonics of European politics, which are pushing against the “ever-closer union” enshrined in the European Community’s founding treaties. It was a noble and not wild-eyed dream. Relentlessly expanding from the original six member states to 28, the EU boasted everything that could go into the making of a superpower. Its gross domestic product is only $2 trillion behind America’s and $5 trillion ahead of China’s. The EU fields as many soldiers as the U.S. does, and its population outstrips America’s by nearly 200 million. Yet in global clout, the EU is a waif in a world dominated by Washington, Beijing and Moscow.

Nor will the fates favor the EU anytime soon. For all its splendor, Europe has not been able to transmute its magnificent riches into strategic muscle, and this for three reasons.

First, as the rise of the nationalist right shows, the EU suffers from deepening ideological divisions. In the east, Poland, Hungary and the rest are jealously defending the sovereignty they had lost first to Hitler, then to Stalin. They cherish subsidies from Brussels but will not yield to what they see as diktats of liberal goodness.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14297/iran-deal-negotiations

As Mr Trump has made clear at his press conference in Japan, where he is currently on a state visit, his main objective is to agree a new deal with Tehran, one that, unlike Mr Obama’s flawed arrangement, addresses all aspects of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, as well as its malign activities in the Middle East.

“I really believe that Iran would like to make a deal… I think that’s very smart of them, and I think that’s a possibility to happen. It has a chance to be a great country with the same leadership.” — US President Donald J. Trump, press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, May 27.

Mr Pompeo told me that that Washington was not pushing for regime change in Tehran, but was instead seeking a revised agreement that satisfied all of Washington’s concerns about Iran’s conduct, and not just the narrow issue of uranium enrichment.

To date, the Iranians have responded to the Trump administration’s actions by threatening to intensify their policy of destabilization in the region.

There is one simple way for Iran to defuse the mounting tensions with the US and its allies in the Gulf: return to the negotiating table and agree to a new deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Amid mounting concern that Washington’s recent military build-up in the Gulf region will lead to renewed conflict, many commentators appear to have lost sight of the Trump administration’s key objective when it withdrew from the 2015 deal negotiated, in large part, by former US President Barack Obama.

The aim of US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement was not, as his Democrat critics have alleged, to provoke a military confrontation with Tehran. On the contrary, as Mr Trump has made clear at his press conference in Japan, where he is currently on a state visit, his main objective is to agree a new deal with Tehran, one that, unlike Mr Obama’s flawed arrangement, addresses all aspects of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, as well as its malign activities in the Middle East.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-elections-deepen-divisions-in-national-capitals-11558960543

The outcome of the weekend’s European Union elections threatened a fresh period of instability in the bloc, with some countries set for early elections and coalition governments in Italy and Germany facing deeper strains.

As final results trickled in Monday, there was relief in Brussels that the vote didn’t yield a broad anti-EU nationalist surge. The Greens performed particularly strongly and pro-European lawmakers are set to form a clear majority in the new European Parliament.

Still, the EU faces continued political volatility and the results in many countries—including the departing Britain—suggested voters remain disillusioned and divided.

“The electorate is crying out for change and is therefore volatile—preferring to back new insurgents rather than the status quo parties that have been around for decades,” said Mark Leonard, founding director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

On Sunday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose Syriza party was firmly defeated in the EU vote, called snap elections before summer. Austria was already headed for the polls after Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on May 18 dissolved his coalition. On Monday afternoon, Mr. Kurz was toppled by a no-confidence vote in parliament.

Belgium, which held national elections on Sunday, looks set for another protracted period of coalition building, with ethnic nationalist parties surging in Dutch-speaking Flanders, while the left performed strongly in French-speaking Wallonia.

In Germany, the election was a blistering indictment of the two ruling parties. Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union and her left-leaning coalition partner Social Democratic Party both suffered large drops in votes compared with the last European elections in 2014 and the general election of 2017.

The main winner from this erosion wasn’t the stridently nationalist Alternative for Germany—whose share of the vote fell almost 2 percentage points below that of 2017—but the centrist Greens.

The SPD’s dire showing poses the biggest risk to the stability of Ms. Merkel’s government. The party’s relentless shrinkage puts chairwoman Andrea Nahles under growing pressure from grass-roots activists who want her to leave Ms. Merkel’s coalition and reposition the party in opposition.

The absence of a leader-in-waiting with sufficiently broad support, however, could postpone a reckoning for Ms. Nahles—and for the coalition—until after regional elections in Germany’s east in September and October.

In Italy, the elections handed a resounding victory to the nationalist League that reversed a balance of power from last year’s national elections with its coalition partner, the antiestablishment 5 Star Movement.

During campaigning, League leader Matteo Salvini, who is Italy’s interior minister, and members of his party clashed frequently with their 5 Star allies.

Mr. Salvini on Monday discounted, for now, speculation that his strong showing could tempt him to trigger a government crisis leading to fresh national elections.

“We won’t use this [electoral] support to settle accounts internally,” he said. “Our government allies are friends with whom from tomorrow we go back to work serenely.”

Observers say the results will likely help Mr. Salvini dominate the government. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/27/austrian-chancellor-sebastian-kurz-ousted-no-confidence-vote/

Sebastian Kurz was voted out of office as Austrian chancellor on Monday, less than 24 hours after his party won a resounding victory in the European elections.

Mr Kurz’s government lost a confidence vote in the Austrian parliament following the collapse of his coalition with the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ).

President Alexander Van der Bellen will now appoint a caretaker government until elections scheduled for September.

Mr Kurz is the first postwar Austrian chancellor to lose a confidence vote, but he is unlikely to be out of power for long.

His Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) will be strong favourites in September, after coming first with a projected 35 per cent in the European elections, more than 10 per cent clear of their closest rivals.

Hailed as the future of European conservatism when he became the world’s youngest leader in 2017 at the age of 31, Mr Kurz was always going to be vulnerable after ending his coalition with the Freedom Party over a corruption scandal just over a week ago.

He attempted to continue at the head of a minority government, but his former coalition partners joined forces with the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPÖ) to vote him out of power.

Mr Kurz accused his opponents of “playing revenge games” ahead of the vote, and warned: “At the end of the day the people will decide”.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/05/sas-marshall-plan-for-gen

“The gender fluidity cult’s foundation is sheer irrationality after all; gender is to be seen, they contend, as a “social construct” and this notwithstanding that they know what we all know: that every cell in every one of our bodies betokens that we are indisputably forever male or forever female from the moment of our conception (save perhaps for the rare, rare, phenomenon of hermaphroditism).  If such people can think themselves out of the basic structure of biological reality perhaps they were able to think their way out of the common sense of propriety involved in staging such an event in the presence of and focussed upon the minds of infant children.”

Steven Marshall is both Premier and Arts Minister of South Australia, so if anyone bears responsibility for the latest manifestation of the Safe Schools attack upon childhood innocence in this Liberal-governed state it is, I am sorry to say, him. We are in the middle of a bi-annual event here in Adelaide called the DreamBIG Children’s Festival, backed the Liberal government. It is jointly funded by the Arts ministry and the Education ministry and used to be called the “Come-Out” festival but that spoke too indiscreetly, I suppose, about the activist purposes of the bureaucrats who organised it.

This year, and specifically marketed to children under the age of eight, the programme included something called Drag Queen Story Time.

Yes, I am telling you the truth. It was staged in the august State Library in the heart of Adelaide. I went along, with intentions I will describe in a moment, and witnessed two of the performances. They involved two middle-aged men dressed as frumpy fairy tale Queens (one with devil’s horns) reading stories — haltingly and without charm or any kind of narrative tension — to pre-school and very young school-age children in the presence of their parents.

At the end of each session an opportunity was provided for the kiddies to meet and pose for photographs with the drag queens. Again, I am sorry to say I am telling you the truth. The photographs I took — one of which is at left — tell you I am. (Apologies, too, for my substandard lensmanship. Below, if you scroll all the way down, you’ll see another example of drag queen story time time, this one from the US. ‘The hips on the queen go swish, swish, swish‘. Why is it we adopt bad ideas and trends so readily from across the Pacific?)