RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13381/sweden-parliamentary-crisis

This morning, December 5, we will get more information from speaker Norlén when a third vote on who is going to be prime minister will be held. Once again, Löfven (S) will most likely be running for the position. If C and L betray their Alliance-coalition and supports Löfven, he wins; if negotiations fail, he loses for the second time.

The main reason Sweden will probably not have a re-election is that if we did, the party that has the most to gain from another election is SD – which all the other parties are fervently trying to stop.

Also, if there were a re-election, both the Liberal party and the Green party have a high likelihood of failing to get enough votes even to get into parliament.

In fact, out of the 349 seats in Swedish parliament, it would take only 21 more seats to go to SD, M or KD for these three parties to get a majority in parliament.

Sweden has always been extremely stable when it comes to our governments and the time it takes to form them.

After the election in 2014 (we have elections every four years) the government took office 19 days later. Until this year, in fact, it has never taken more than 25 days after an election to form a government; the average time is just six days.

Today, however, 86 days have passed since Sweden’s last election without a government having formed – a record by a wide margin.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macrons-climate-plan-b-1543965655

‘There is no Plan B because there is no Planet B,” Emmanuel Macron lectured Donald Trump—in English—when the American President withdrew from the Paris climate agreement last year. Well, apparently there is a Plan B after all. Mr. Macron on Tuesday stopped his fuel-tax increase after concluding that marginal carbon reductions aren’t worth kneecapping an economy and sacrificing his political career. Mr. Trump could have warned him.

The French President views stopping climate change as a grand legacy project, and he had hoped to use higher fuel taxes to discourage driving for the sake of slashing carbon emissions. It didn’t matter to him that French emissions already are very low on a per capita basis and further cuts to transport emissions would be extremely difficult to achieve. But this matters a great deal to lower-income rural voters whose use of cars for daily life and business was about to become much more expensive.

Those voters produced the yellow-vest movement—named for the safety gear they wear—that in turn has created a political crisis for Mr. Macron. What began as a few hundred thousand protesters scattered around the country became more than a million last weekend, including inexcusable rioting mobs in Paris.

Mr. Macron’s tax backtrack, which his government says is only for six months, might induce the protesters to return home. But the movement grew so large and garnered so much public sympathy that his entire economic-reform agenda is now in jeopardy. The fuel tax was not part of his election campaign.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/its-full-out-war-between-nigel-farage-and-tommy-robinson/

“It feels like Westminster is tumbling towards a political crisis without modern precedent,” wrote the BBC’s Ben Wright on November 27. On July 23, 2016, British subjects voted to leave the EU; on December 11, the House of Commons will decide whether or not to approve the horrible deal that Prime Minister Theresa May has struck with the EU honchos and that, her claims to the contrary, comes nowhere close to returning full independence to the UK. If, as seems likely at the moment, the MPs turn down May’s deal, it’s not clear what will happen next, even though, one way or the other, Britain’s EU membership is scheduled to expire on March 29 of next year.

The most important thing at stake in all of this is Britain’s ability to control its own borders, formulate its own immigration policies, and expel certain individuals from the country without having to ask permission from some court in Brussels. These things are important, in turn, because the only hope for Britain’s long-term survival as a Western democracy lies in a radical change in its approach to, in a word, Islam.

To be sure, it may be too late to rescue the UK. The Muslim population may already be too large and the demographic trends irreversible. Certainly a divorce from Brussels won’t be enough by itself to save the day. The two main parties refuse to talk honestly about Islam, as do the mainstream media. Authorities would rather ban Islam critics from the country than deport preachers of terror. Even Mr. Brexit himself, Nigel Farage, has consistently taken a see-no-evil approach to the Religion of Peace. In recent months, however, his successor as head of the UK Independence Party (UKIP), Gerard Batten, has started speaking the truth about Islam – and has even taken on Tommy Robinson as a personal advisor – and has thereby made that party even more of a ray of hope for Britain than it was before.

Unsurprisingly, these actions on Batten’s part have outraged Farage, resulting in some very unpleasant conflict in the top ranks of the pro-Brexit crowd. In recent days, Farage has repeatedly called Tommy a racist – an allegation that anyone familiar with Tommy’s record knows to be untrue. By associating with the likes of Robinson, Farage complained on his December 2 radio/TV program on LBC, “UKIP becomes the BNP,” i.e., the British National Party, a genuinely racist group that Robinson joined in his youth and quit shortly thereafter as soon as he realized that it was racist.

On that same show, Farage also labeled Robinson a “thug,” citing his prison record without acknowledging that British authorities have been going after Robinson for years in much the same way that Robert Mueller is going after Trump, desperately looking for crimes to pin on him. Robinson’s most recent incarceration, of course, was the result of a shamefully irregular courtroom exercise that was later condemned in the sternest terms by the nation’s highest judge, but Farage made no mention whatsoever of that farcical miscarriage of justice. Farage further maintained that participants in the pro-Tommy rallies that took place across Britain this summer had committed acts of violence on a large scale. This, too, was untrue.

“I am disgusted,” Farage said about Robinson’s newfound ties to UKIP, charging that thanks to this connection, and thanks to Batten’s public comments about Islam, UKIP now looks like a party that is “fighting a religious crusade against Islam.” Noting that Robinson is scheduled to speak at a pro-Brexit rally on December 9, Farage fretted that his presence would draw the wrong sort of people and result in widespread acts of public disorder: “I don’t want Gerard Batten and Tommy Robinson to be seen to lead something that is violent, nasty, and unpleasant and that will be used…to say ‘this is what Brexit represents.’”

On his show, Farage takes phone calls from listeners and also answers questions apparently sent in by text message. Some of his listeners on December 2 shared his concern about the changes in UKIP. Others did not. They pushed back at his characterization of Tommy’s followers and his claims of violence at Tommy’s rallies. “You are insulting a lot of decent people,” one listener told Farage. “You are demonizing Tommy Robinson.” Another listener pointed out that Farage, too, had long been smeared as a racist and Islamophobe. “Yes,” Farage replied, “but in my case it was unfair.”

Several listeners felt, as I did, that Farage’s remarks about Tommy and Tommy’s “background” (as Farage put it) and Tommy’s followers (whom Farage actually dismissed as “convicts and thugs”) reeked of class condescension. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://spectator.us/emmanuel-macron-united-france/

I would say we’ll always have Paris. But maybe not. It was only a few weeks ago that French president Emmanuel Macron promised a red carpet for bankers fleeing Brexit Britain. As matters have unfolded, the carpet has become one of broken glass.

On the Avenue Kléber, one of the toniest streets in Paris and heart of the district where Macron will have been expecting to resettle his beloved bankers, fleeing London like the sans culottes, every bank has been attacked, every shop window broken, upscale apartments have been attacked and every Porsche and Mercedes within blocks set on fire. Invest in France?

Emmanuel Macron is undoubtedly brilliant. He won all the glittering academic prizes. He had a supersonic ascent into the stratosphere of the French civil service. He even did a spell as a courtier with David de Rothschild’s investment bank, before ascending to minister of the economy under François Hollande, and then winning the most glittering prize of all, the presidency of the republic, aged 39 ¾.

But his hubris, arrogance and almost autistic detachment from the French in the street is in a class with Marie Antoinette. Except that this time around, the courtier whispers, ‘Mr President, the people cannot afford diesel.’ To which the cloth-eared Macron has, in effect replied: ‘Let them buy Teslas.’

http://q4j-middle-east.com

Given that leopards don’t change their spots, and Hamas and Co. will never recognize the rights of Jews to a resurrected state in Israel, regardless of size, we’re now ready to proceed…

Ever since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza more than a decade ago, tens of thousands of rockets, mortars, incendiary kites, and other forms of Arab terror have been the response it has received. Israel has maintained a naval blockade to try to prevent large quantities of heavy armaments from arriving from abroad. Indeed, Iranian ships have been intercepted with such cargo aboard. And too many weapons and materials used to kill Jews are still coming in via sophisticated tunnels built with the millions of dollars coming in that were supposed to be spent on improving the lives of Gaza’s people instead.

For Israel, it’s withdrawal from previously Egyptian-occupied Gaza—taken in the June ‘67 War, started by a succession of serious Egyptian and other Arab aggressive actions and existential threats which finally led to an Israeli preemptive strike—Gaza was a test, one the Arabs flunked badly.

Had Gaza responded with efforts at state-building, investments in infrastructure, education, and the overall welfare of its people instead of simply viewing Israel’s withdrawal as a sign of weakness which brought Arab rockets closer to Israeli civilian targets, life would be very different for all by now in very positive ways.

Whatever…Gaza is what it is.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13360/brexit-no-deal

This Brexit “deal” is anything but good for the nation.

This “deal” will cost the British taxpayer £60 billion; require that the British still comply with EU rules without having any say in what those will be, and worst of all, it permits the British to leave the EU only if the EU agrees. It commits the British effectively to subjugation by the EU in perpetuity, with no recourse should the British change their mind. It is a prison. It is also the first step of the EU toward its dream of global governance: unaccountable, untransparent, unelected by the public, and with no way out.

There is still a way out of this mess; an easy alternative. The solution is No Deal. Without any further action, the UK’s membership of the EU will lapse on March 29, 2019, and unless that majority can unite around a viable alternative, we will leave. Even better, according to a House of Lords report, there would be no legal obligation for the UK to make any payment as part of a financial settlement.

But, we have nearly left the EU haven’t we? After all, we keep hearing about this deal. We must be nearly there by now, surely?

Just because some of us are immersed in this stuff, many of us are not. Back in the real world where people are trying to find their bus passes, generally keep warm, or asking who will do the school pick-up, Brexit is not everyone’s first and overwhelming thought.

In the margins, there are the headlines on the six o’clock news telling you Theresa May has a “deal” agreed to by Brussels — and she is off to sell it to the nation.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13370/anti-semitism-turkey

“King Mohammed VI of Morocco made a breakthrough in the Muslim world and told the world press that ‘education has the power to fight ugly phenomena such as discrimination, racism and anti-Semitism.'” — Mois Gabay, Şalom.

“What about the fact that… an awakening about Israel and Jews is on the rise in many other majority-Muslim countries.” — Mois Gabay, Şalom.

“The government should immediately recognize anti-Semitism as a hate crime and impose penal sanctions on the perpetrators.” — Işıl Demirel, an anthropologist from Turkey; Avlaremoz.

Demirel’s suggestion would make perfect sense in a free and genuinely democratic society. But in a country where the president, his advisers and MPs regularly and proudly spit out hatred not only against Jews, but also against other minorities, how is anti-Semitism to be dealt with when demonizing Jews or Israel seems to serve as a fast track to a career in government?

As the Islamist government of Turkey grows increasingly authoritarian, religious minorities in the country seem to be the most targeted and affected group.

The concerns of Turkey’s Jewish community were addressed recently by Mois Gabay, a columnist for the country’s Jewish weekly, Şalom, in an article entitled, “What Kind of Turkey Are We Living In?”

In it, Gabay discussed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s establishing nine councils, the members of which he appointed, and who are responsible for “offering policy proposals, ideas and strategies to the president” on the economy, foreign policy, education and law.

Among those appointed to official positions within these councils, Gabay wrote, are well-known public figures who have made blatant anti-Semitic statements.

In an interview with the Turkish journal Yörünge in August, for instance, author Alev Alatlı, now a member of Erdogan’s culture and art council, said that the “anti-Erdogan forces of the world” are led by Jews and motivated by millennia-long Jewish teachings. “The real project [of the Jews] is to cleanse the universe of goyim,” she said, referring to “goyim” as those “for whom there is no place in the world unless they serve the Jews.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272105/political-turmoil-grips-sweden-joseph-puder

Political turmoil is gripping Sweden. Since the September 9th, 2018 elections in which the Swedish Democrats (the nationalists), an anti-immigrant party took 17.5% of the vote, gaining 62 seats in the 349 seat Swedish parliament or Riksdag, no new government has been formed. Nevertheless, the Swedish Democrats (SD) have become the king-makers.

The leftist Social-Democrats, although the largest vote getter with 100 seats, do not have enough partners to form a coalition government. On the center-right, Ulf Kristersson, 54, leader of the Moderate party (70 seats), cannot form a government with his opposition partners without having at least the silent support of the Swedish Democrats. The Center (31 seats), and Liberal (20 seats) parties, however, will not accept a situation in which the Swedish Democrats are silently backing the government. That leaves Kristersson with only his 70 seats in addition to the Christian Democrats 22 seats, to form a minority government of 92, and even with the Swedish Democrats backing, it would garner only 154 seats, less than the 175 seat majority. Similarly, the Social Democrats cannot form a coalition government with the Left party (28 seats) and the Greens (16 seats). Their total is even smaller with 144 seats. The third scenario is a coalition of the Moderate Party plus the Center party for a total of 143 seats, not enough to form a functional government.

Jimmie Akesson, 39, the new leader of the right-wing Swedish Democrats party, has reformed the image of the party. He has imposed a zero-tolerance on open expression of racism and xenophobia by its members. He also changed the party symbol, a flaming torch, into a friendly blue and yellow flower (blue and yellow are the colors of the Swedish flag). The Swedish Democrats under Akesson have captured 17.5% of the vote, or 62 seats in the Riksdag, up from 49 seats in 2014. The SD party gained the highest number of seats (13), whereas the Social Democrats lost 13. The SD party has capitalized on the limitless immigration policy that has characterized the Lofven government.