RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/europe-rude-awakening-lars-hedegaard/

Mogens Lykketoft, Denmark’s former Foreign Minister, sometime President of the U.N. General Assembly and a Social Democrat, is a good man to listen to, if one wants to gauge Europe’s reaction to the recent American elections. In the Copenhagen daily, Berlingske, he writes this scathing comment: “For the USA as well as for most of the world it will be an enormous relief to be rid of this shameless narcissistic liar.” He is of course referring to President Trump.

The antipathy against Donald Trump is spread across the political spectrum. Even the foreign policy spokesman of the hard-right Danish People’s Party, Søren Espersen, expressed his hope that Hillary Clinton would win in 2016.

The point about the lying president is widely shared by media all over Western Europe. They seem to have forgotten that for four years they bought into every baseless accusation leveled at the President: the Russia Hoax, claims that he wanted to undermine NATO, his supposed hatred of non-whites and women, his wish to destroy the planet and whatnot.

For over four years, Radio Denmark, the state-owned radio and television outlet, has been pumping out anti-Trump propaganda as has Denmark’s other major TV-channel, TV2. For months on end they peddled the Russia collusion narrative and when that imploded, they quickly dropped the matter and went on to COVID-19, for which they blamed Trump, hardly mentioning that the President has limited possibilities of intervening. And, of course, they had little to say about the mayhem caused by violent Trump haters. Even after the Democrats had been forced to abandon the Russia Hoax, Denmark’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Uffe Ellemann-Jensen from the center-right Liberals, kept talking of murky conspiracies involving the President.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16733/europe-security-islamist-terror

“I expect an end to the misconceived tolerance, and for all the nations of Europe to finally realise how dangerous the ideology of political Islam is for our freedom and the European way of life.” — Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Die Welt, November 3, 2020.

“We see very clearly that terrorist actions can actually be led by some people who use migratory flows to threaten our territory.” — French President Emmanuel Macron, Politico, November 5, 2020.

For once, the sudden upsurge in terror attacks appears to have prompted European leaders to acknowledge the glaring deficiencies in their ability to protect Europe against Islamist-inspired acts of terrorism.

The latest wave of Islamist-inspired terror attacks to strike Europe has yet again exposed lamentable flaws in the ability of European security agencies to provide adequate protection for their citizens.

In all three instances — the attacks in Paris, Nice and Vienna — it has emerged that those held responsible for carrying out the attacks had links to global jihadi networks that went undetected by European security officials.

Moreover, the ease with which some of those involved in the attacks were able to travel freely across the continent has once more raised concerns about Europe’s lax border controls as defined by the European Union’s Schengen Agreement, and the ability of radicalised jihadis to exploit them.

In the most recent attack in the Austrian capital Vienna on November 2, it transpires that the 20-year-old gunman who killed four people and wounded 22 others before he was himself shot dead by police had travelled to neighbouring Slovakia in July to buy ammunition.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/shame-for-the-uk-at-the-united-nations?toke

Once again, the British government has chosen a strange way to demonstrate its purportedly close friendship with the State of Israel.

Last week saw another typical episode of Israel-bashing at the UN. Its General Assembly Special Political and Decolonisation Committee passed no fewer than seven resolutions condemning Israel.

One of these denounced it for “repressive measures” against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, simply because Israel remains in control there. Since the only reason Israel is in the Golan is to repel Syrian aggression, this is clearly absurd.

Three other resolutions addressed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), one of them renewing its mandate.

According to the NGO UN Watch, none of these noted the corruption in the agency that had been exposed by a UN investigation.

Not to mention, of course, the fact that UNRWA’s very existence is designed to perpetuate hostility to Israel, by creating in the classification of Palestinian “refugees’’ a unique category that actually multiplies them over time; nor that most of UNWRA’s staff are under the thumb of Hamas.

As the UN Watch director Hillel Neuer pointed out, the UN stayed silent when the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group recently attacked Israeli civilians with a barrage of rockets from Gaza. Yet two weeks later, the UN bashed Israel instead in this slew of resolutions.

Said Neuer: “While France, Germany, Sweden and other EU states are expected to support most of the estimated 20 resolutions to be adopted against Israel by December, the same European nations have failed to introduce a single UNGA resolution on the human rights situation in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Turkey, Pakistan, Vietnam, Algeria, or on 175 other countries. Where’s their supposed concern for international law and human rights?”

The only one of these seven resolutions on which the UK abstained rather than voted in support renewed the mandate of a UN special committee to investigate “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people”. But worse still was one of the seven that the UK did support.

This expressed concern over “the tensions and violence in the recent period throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and including with regard to the holy places of Jerusalem”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16763/western-sahara-showdown

Presently, the Polisario Front appears to be trying to create “facts on the ground” outside of any legal framework, presumably in the hope that the international community will view them as irreversible.

International help would be greatly appreciated to prevent this showdown in the Sahara from escalating further.

While much of the world was looking the other way, distracted by China’s coronavirus and its economic aftermath, a separatist militia group backed by Algeria, the Polisario Front, have been militarily exploiting the crisis.

For weeks, the Polisario Front have blocked the only road leading southward from Morocco to Mauritania in the buffer zone of Guerguerat. Currently, around 200 trucks find themselves stranded there, while UN peacekeepers (MINURSO), on whom Morocco relies to enforce the tense 30-year ceasefire, apparently feel overwhelmed.

Ever since Spain withdrew from its former colony in the Western Sahara in 1975, the Polisario Front have been trying to claim the territory, rich with phosphates and fishing rights, as an independent state for themselves. Since that time, however, Morocco has served as the sole sovereign, offering the Western Sahara autonomy but not independence.

Last week, on Thursday night, Morocco finally responded to the Polisario Front’s roadblock at Guerguerat by creating a security cordon and promising to “restore free circulation of civilian and commercial traffic” between Morocco and Mauritania — an act that the Polisario Front called a “provocation.”

The Polisario Front had announced the Monday before that any movement of troops by Morocco to the buffer zone area “will be considered as a flagrant aggression to which the Sahrawi [Polisario] side will respond vigorously in self-defence and to defend its national sovereignty. This will also mean the end of the ceasefire and the beginning of a new war across the region.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/11/austrias-kurz-and-germanys-merkel-collision-course-robert-spencer/

The German-language Austrian publication Kronen Zeitung reported Tuesday that Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz flew to Paris in order to “coordinate ‘on a European level’ with French President Emmanuel Macron on the ‘fight against political Islam.’” This coordination involved a video conference that included German Chancellor Angela Merkel, European Union Council President Charles Michel, European Commission President Angela von der Leyen, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. They all “announced that they would join forces and reform the Schengen rules.” But like so many things, it all sounded great until one started to examine the details.

“More far-reaching measures must be taken so that we can live safely in Europe and defend our way of life,” said Kurz, and who could argue with that? “We are in constant danger,” Kurz added, and pointed out that the European Union was full of “ticking time bombs” that is, thousands of “foreign fighters.” No argument there, either. But what did he and his colleagues propose to do about it?

Initially it looked as if the Euro honchos were on the right track: Macron “suggested implementing measures that have already been planned and decided in the fight against political Islam, or accelerating their implementation.”

These would include not only “against hate propaganda on the Internet and a reform of the Schengen rules,” but also “the linking of common databases so that the security services of the individual states can work better together.” Macron declared: “It takes reforms to enjoy our freedom and security.”

Why yes, Mr. Macron, yes it does. But does Europe have the courage to implement the reforms that would genuinely protect Europeans from further jihad massacres, such as immigration restrictions from jihadi hotspots and strict enforcement of the principle of one law for all, which would be a direct challenge to Sharia enclaves? None of that appeared to be even on the table at this video conference.

All of us at Gatestone Institute mourn the untimely passing of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. He was an intellectual and spiritual giant of our generation and beyond. His reach was global and his message was for all faiths. He believed passionately in the Dignity of Difference and was the moral voice of our time.

Gatestone was immensely privileged to have hosted Rabbi Lord Sacks recently at its Zoom event on September 17th of this year. We did not know then that this would be his final speaking event anywhere. In tribute to his memory we invite you to listen here to his inspiring and meaningful last interview on his recently published book “Morality”.

His passing is an immeasurable loss. We will all miss his knowledge, his insight, and his deeply held belief that together we could all strive, in his words “to heal a fractured world”.

May his memory be a blessing.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16762/britain-totalitarianism

It has become an almost daily occurrence to find news stories of parents being ‘called out’ by their newly politicised children for expressing on social media ‘wrong’, ‘unwoke’ views, or of people being fired for something they may or may not have said years ago.

This sense of entitlement has come to characterise a group whose younger demographic seem to have no comprehension of the horrors of a war — or indeed, of many authentic hardships — in their own relatively comfortable lives.

This lack of respect for, or understanding of, history, along with an apparent need to invent, import, or re-animate grievances from the past, then lead these protestors to advocate inflicting what they decide is the appropriate revenge for a grievance on people who have had no part in causing it.

Tolerance is to be expected only from others…. One man’s freedom, it seems, has become another man’s cause for resentment.

The protestors’ dismissal of British heritage, a bid to ‘cancel’ history, appears a threat to the nation. We supposedly have nothing to be proud of. Our achievements have presumably been little more than the spoils of an evil, bigoted patriarchal system. These malcontents, by pledging allegiance to the Marxist architects of that narrative, not only insult the memory of those who have fought and died for the freedoms we now take for granted; they are also two-stepping towards totalitarianism.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16739/austria-hate-speech-law

Austria’s proposed law is modelled on Germany’s much criticized NetzDG law, also known as the censorship law, which came into effect in January 2018 and requires social media companies to delete or block any online unlawful content within 24 hours or 7 days at the most, or face fines of up to 50 million euros.

If the proposed law is passed, the freedom of speech of Austrians online will be subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities, such as Twitter, Goggle and Facebook.

With Austria’s draft online hate speech law, yet another European country is taking another step towards making online censorship an institutionalized feature of European hate speech laws.

“We too often make bad laws with good intentions. Online platforms should not censor the freedom of expression,” said Chairman of the Senate Law Commission Philippe Bas after the decision of France’s Constitutional Council. It can only be hoped that European lawmakers eager to censor free speech online will heed the ruling of the French constitutional court.

The Austrian government has presented a draft online hate speech law, the Communication Platforms Act, which, if passed, will limit free speech in the country. The Austrian government writes in the introduction to its proposed law:

“The main reason for the development of this draft Act is the worrying development that the Internet and social media, in addition to the advantages that these new technologies and communication channels provide, have also established a new form of violence, and hate on the Internet is increasing in the form of insults, humiliation, false information and even threats of violence and death. The attacks are predominantly based on racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic motives. A comprehensive strategy and a set of measures are required that range from prevention to sanctions. This strategy is based on the two pillars of platform responsibility and victim protection, with the present draft Act relating to ensuring platform responsibility”.

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/and-now-brino-brexit-in-alas-name-only/91336/

News from Downing Street tonight — that prime ministerial chief adviser Dominic Cummings has left Downing Street — alarms friends of British liberty.

Mr. Cummings was the dynamo behind the “Vote Leave” campaign that saw Brexit triumph at the 2016 referendum. His indispensability is right up there with that of Nigel Farage of the United Kingdom Independence Party.

When he joined Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s team at No 10, Brexiteers took heart that not only was a friend of independence advising the premier, but an avowed enemy of the bureaucratic “deep state.” Expectations were high.

Then coronavirus struck Britain. Mr. Cummings, far from being a courageous voice of common sense, was instead credited with Mr. Johnson’s credulous concessions to a scientific community only too willing to assume responsibility for shuttering Britain’s economy.

Reports are that with Mr. Cummings’s departure go the “Vote Leave” coterie he brought with him into Downing Street. Their duties are to be assumed by allies of the prime minister’s left-liberal fiancée, Carrie Symonds, who has had tense relations with the tattered remnant of right-leaning policy wonks.