RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/02

Britons voted on a very simple question: Leave the EU or stay? Now, after unsatisfactory negotiations, not to mention deliberate prevarication, there is talk of a second referendum that would see Remain once again on the ballot. If no resolution is found, is the the Queen not obliged to defend the people’s will?

Bill Shorten has promised a plebiscite on the “Australian Republic” in his first term, a pledge that fills this lapsed republican with anxious dismay — lapsed because the debate about the Australian Head of State has been so corrupted that, were a republic to come about, it would be a divisive moment, not a uniting one. With the current head of the Australian Republican Movement a grandstanding social justice warrior and all-round goose on constitutional matters, the only way to avoid the upwelling of poisonous social-media vituperation and the brandishing of identity politics is to spurn the debate altogether.

What prompts this thought about our own situation is the current impasse in Britain with regard to implementing the will of the people as expressed in the Brexiteers’ victory at the ballot box. I wonder, does the Monarch have a role to play? Parliament exists to give effect to the will of the people, whose interests the Queen was crowned with the responsibility to defend. If the Commons acts against the express and unequivocally stated desire of her subjects then it undermines one of Britain’s and, indeed, all the Western democracies’ fundamental tenets: representative government.

Let’s first examine if the British Parliament is acting against the will of the people. In 2016, after the largest voter turnout in UK history, the decision was made to leave the EU. There were no if or buts, no caveats. The referendum question was simplicity itself:

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272731/voice-isis-abu-ridwan-al-kanadi-captured-lloyd-billingsley

On January 13, US-backed Kurdish forces captured an Islamic State jihadi who identified himself as Mohammad Abdullah Mohammad, a Canadian from Toronto and reportedly the English-language narrator of Islamic State propaganda. The ISIS fighter had been sought for some time, but in Canada the focus of the story became the Islamic State’s displeasure over the jihadi’s capture.

“ISIL supporters upset about capture of prominent Canadian jihadi, say it’s demoralizing,” headlined a January 28 National Post story by Adrian Humphries. ISIS-friendly Al-Muhajreen identified the fighter as Abu Ridwan Al-Kanadi and described his capture as “sad news for all mujahideen of the Islamic State.”

When news of Ridwan’s capture began to circulate, Humphries wrote, “the apparent joy from the enemies of ISIL, also known as ISIS, upset jihadi supporters.” They said it all served the interest of the “Crusaders and the enemies of the Islamic State.”

In the penultimate paragraph readers learn that Ridwan is “believed to be the same man as the masked narrator of a notorious ISIL propaganda video that features the mass execution of captured Syrian government soldiers. The narrator appears to take part in the firing squad. The same man is believed to be behind several recorded claims of responsibility by ISIL for deadly terror attacks on the West as well as reading news reports on ISIL radio networks.” So only in the walk-off do readers get key details about Ridwan, now 35 years old.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13660/france-unrest

The third group is extremely large: it is the rest of the population. The upper class treat them as regrettable dead weight and expect nothing from them except silence and submission. Its members often have a hard time making ends meet. They pay taxes but can see that a growing portion is being used to subsidize the very people who drove them out of their suburban homes.

For the moment, Macron does not seem to want to recognize that these people even exist.

When Macron lowered the taxes of the wealthiest but increased the taxes of these “peripherals” by means of a fuel tax, it was seen as the last straw — in addition to his arrogant condescension.

“Today, most of those who protest do not attack the police. But instead of acting to bring down the violence, the police are receiving orders pushing them to be very violent. I do not blame the police. I blame those who give them orders”. — Xavier Lemoine, the mayor of Montfermeil, a city in the Eastern suburbs of Paris where the 2005 riots were extremely destructive.

Saturday, January 26th 2019. “Yellow vests” protests were being organized in the main cities of France. Mobilization was not weakening. Support from the population had decreased slightly but was still huge (60%-70%, according to polls). The main slogan has remained the same since November 17, 2018: “Macron must resign”. In December, another slogan was added: “Citizens’ initiative referendum”.

The government and French President Emmanuel Macron have been doing everything they can to crush the movement. They have tried insults, defamation and have said the demonstrators were both “seditious people” wishing to overthrow the institutions and fascist “brown shirts”. On December 31, Macron described them, as “hateful crowds”. The presence of some anti-Semites led a government spokesman (incorrectly) to describe the entire movement as “anti-Semitic”.

https://www.jewishpolicycenter

Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Congress and the presidents alike have had no sustained policy review to establish militarily achievable objectives, coherent political goals, or even a workable definition of “the enemy” to guide lawmakers and military leaders.

Republicans and Democrats both removed governments with no plan for succession or the societal stresses and open warfare that would ensue. Without an updated Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), we “plinked terrorists” in various countries with drones or airplanes, assassinating at least four American citizens, and killing others as “collateral damage.”

American soldiers have been killed fighting in various countries, including several in Africa. We are spending billions “training” various militaries and militias and hoping they will fight who and how we want them to. Iran’s backing of rebels in Yemen is called the “Saudi war” to avoid dealing with the implications. The “Israel-Palestinian conflict” is to be resolved by creating an extra Arab state while the Palestinians definitively and publicly want to resolve it by eliminating the Jewish one.

President Trump ran against American military involvement in Syria and Afghanistan, and for a hard line on Iran. There is still no complete policy — and sometimes not even a particularly well-articulated policy — but it does appear that America’s focus has changed from retail to wholesale. From executing individual terrorists and recapturing pieces of territory to operating against the malign influence that funds and organizes large-scale Shiite — and Sunni — terror. From terror groups to a terror country.