RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/12/31/brexit-for-real-this-time/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-issue&utm_term=first

The Conservative-party electoral win puts an end to years of attempted sabotage

Here are two quotes about Brexit. I will tell you whom they are from, but try to guess the date.

The first is from the European Union’s Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt: “Brexit will now happen. . . . The EU must now focus on building a new close, fair and lasting partnership with Britain. It is in our common interest.”

The second quotation is from the U.K.’s former Conservative deputy prime minister and fanatical pro-EU campaigner, Lord Michael Heseltine. “We’ve lost. We have to face up to that. We’re going to leave the European Union.”

Neither statement is in itself remarkable. The sole remarkable point is the date of each of these statements. Neither was issued on June 24, 2016, the day after the British people voted in a referendum by a majority to leave the European Union. The first quote — from Verhofstadt — was tweeted out on December 13, 2019. The second — from Heseltine — comes from an interview he gave on December 14 of the same year. That is, both came in the immediate aftermath of Boris Johnson’s huge 80-seat-majority win in the British general election of December 12, 2019.

In most regards the result of that election has caused unalloyed celebration for people on the political right.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/19/friendship-in-the-aftermath-of-reality/

I’ve worn my thumbs down to spiky bone. To be a good sport, over the last week I have given traumatized progressives exactly what they want. I’ve dutifully succumbed to the commands of the mad, the demands of the jilted.

“If you voted for Boris Johnson, delete me as a friend!” Because of X and Y and perhaps Z.

The social impeachment charge sheet extends from the fantastical to the absurd. Those selfish so-and-sos scotched Jeremy Corbyn’s Winter Wonderland, and ushered in fascism.

So, in true Christmas spirit, I have obliged heartily the shouty demands of authoritarian narcissists, and self-deported from their digital encampments so disfigured a reality to the one they deplore.

A queasy insight into the minds of some. Sharpened by the interrobang, such gentle requests litter my social media feeds.

Of course, it is the usual suspects. “Hang your heads in shame!” cried the green of bangs, and steel of nose. Which is ever so charming, not to mention convincing.

Democracy, of course, counts only when they win.

Given last week’s drubbing (which I have taken the liberty to christen “LOL Thursday”) it’ll be a while before they taste anything so syrupy sweet as the first seven seconds when I awake and it breaks across my head that they don’t matter anymore.

Nope. They do not. And It’s not you. It really is them.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15293/antisemitism-france-europe

“Although Jews represent less than one percent of the population, half of the racist acts committed in France are committed against Jews.” — French Member of Parliament Meyer Habib.

Anti-Semitism is advancing throughout the continent and often has a Middle Eastern cast. Yet, the authorities also talk only about right-wing anti-Semitism.

Leftist anti-Semitism is present all over Europe. Its followers, as in France, do their best to hide and protect Middle Eastern anti-Semitism.

The demographic transformation taking place in France is also happening throughout Western Europe, and the growing submission to Islam is being silently accepted by the ruling authorities almost everywhere.

On December 3, the French National Assembly passed a resolution adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism. The resolution stressed that the definition “encompasses manifestations of hatred toward the State of Israel justified solely by the perception of the latter as a Jewish collective.” MP Meyer Habib, who supported the resolution, delivered a passionate and poignant speech, highlighting the extent of the anti-Semitic threat in today’s France, and the close links between hatred of the Jews and hatred toward Israel:

“Since 2006, twelve French people have been murdered in France because they were Jewish. Although Jews represent less than one percent of the population, half of the racist acts committed in France are committed against Jews. Anti-Zionism is an obsessive demonization of Israel and an abuse of anti-racist and anti-colonial rhetoric to deprive the Jews of their identity.”

He added that getting the votes to pass the resolution was extremely difficult because of a general lack of “political courage” — sadly, a quality often absent in France when it comes to anti-Semitism and Israel.

French political leaders often declare that fighting against anti-Semitism is of utmost importance; they say it every time a Jew is murdered in the country. The only anti-Semitism they seem ready to fight, however, is right-wing anti-Semitism. They seemingly refuse to see that all the Jews killed or assaulted in France since 2006 were victims of Muslim anti-Semites — and French political leaders never utter a word about it. They appear to hide Islamic anti-Semitism — embedded in the Qur’an and Hadiths and reinforced in the 1930s by the Nazis’ friendship with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini — under a Muslim hatred of the Jews based on a supposedly “legitimate” Muslim hatred of ‘Zionist crimes'”.

French political leaders also seemingly refuse to see another form of anti-Semitism that is on the rise: leftist anti-Semitism. It is precisely this leftist anti-Semitism that uses the mask of anti-Zionism to spread anti-Jewish hatred.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/war-memorials-do-nazi-or-islamist-soldiers-qualify-howard-rotberg/

In our war memorials and our remembrance holidays, whom do we honor and why?

On November 17th, reporter Jeff Outhit of the Waterloo (Kitchener-Waterloo Ontario Canada) Record, wrote about German Remembrance Day, which takes place in Kitchener, a day or so after Canadian Remembrance Day. The German Remembrance Day takes place in a section of Woodland Cemetery where about 137 Nazi soldiers and about 50 soldiers from the First World War are buried.

Apparently the bodies of the Nazi soldiers and others who died during their detention in Canada during World War 2 were moved from cemeteries near the facilities where they were kept to all be re-buried in Kitchener, known for its large number of German immigrants, especially in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Mr. Outhit writes that “It’s no small thing to see former enemies mourned.” He states that a crowd came to remember their sacrifice, to honor all who are victims of war, and to reflect on how to stop it from happening again.”

The reporter talked to three young people, of German heritage, who attended the ceremony.

“It’s very moving to have all of us be able to get together, and pay our respects,” said one. Another was struck by how the ceremony aims to remember not just the fighters but also the civilians who perished.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15310/boris-johnson-us-uk-relations

The US president said a future US-UK trade agreement has “the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative” than any deal that could have been made with the EU.

Compared with the calamitous impact a victory for Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose politics is defined by his visceral anti-Americanism, would have had on transatlantic relations, Mr Johnson’s return to Downing Street will have been greeted with enormous relief in the White House, as it means Washington now has a firm ally in London, someone who is committed to breathing new life into the vital and long-standing partnership between Britain and America.

Boris Johnson has only been back in Downing Street a few days following his stunning victory in Britain’s general election, but there are already early signs that his premiership will preside over a dramatic revival in transatlantic relations not seen since the heyday of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

First and foremost, the British prime minister has made it abundantly clear that his first priority will be to break the Brexit deadlock that has effectively paralysed British politics, and the country’s ability to make its voice heard on the international stage, at the earliest possible opportunity, thus opening the way for a trade deal with Washington.

As a start, Mr Johnson has committed his new government to fulfil its election pledge to complete Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union by the end of January. Furthermore, he will enshrine in law his promise that the complicated trade negotiations that are due to take place next year to finalise Britain’s future trading relationship with the EU bloc will be completed by the end of 2020.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15233/turkey-east-west

In addition, Turkey is in talks with Russia to purchase a second batch of the S-400 system, including coproduction and technology transfer options. If the S-400 system is operated in Turkey, Moscow could find a built-in cyber backdoor to spy on NATO assets.

Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said in September that it was unacceptable for Turkey not to have its own nuclear weapons – although Turkey is a signatory to both the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty.

In 2016, Erdoğan said that Turkey did not need to join the European Union “at all costs” and could instead become part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a security bloc dominated by China, Russia and Central Asian nations

Erdoğan thinks that he can forever benefit from the East-West divide by officially belonging to West but more-than-courting the East. He seems to love playing the Russia card to Americans and the America card to Russians. He should be led to understand that he cannot play this carpet trading game forever.

While NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, celebrated its 70th anniversary on December 4, these days it is sitting on a different paradigm than it did since its birth in Washington DC in 1949. Three years later, in 1952, Turkey, along with its Aegean rival Greece, became a member.

In the 67 years since its membership, Turkey has moved from being a staunch ally defending Europe’s southeast flank in the Cold War to being NATO’s unresolved burden.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/corbyn-crushed

British citizens went to the polls this past Thursday and handed opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn a humiliation that will permanently stain his already tarnished reputation. His Labor Party sustained a stunning rout at the hands of the conservatives and suffered its worst showing since before World War II.

True to form, Corbyn and his die-hard acolytes refused to take any responsibility for the calamity befalling their party and instead, blamed Brexit and the media for their defeat. Corbyn’s vapid explanations and denials are steeped in a combination of hubris, venality and fantasy. Britain’s citizens plainly recognized Corbyn for what he was, a vile, hard-core socialist and anti-Semite who could not be trusted to lead the nation.

As noted by Katie Hopkins at FrontPage, Corbyn ran on a platform that would have fostered an atmosphere inimical to the free market system. He called for the nationalization of utility companies. Wanted illegal aliens to have access to Britain’s already heavily burdened healthcare system and wanted to restructure the inheritance tax in a manner that would have further punished those who managed to accumulate some measure of wealth during their lifetime. 

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight

The United Nations General Assembly (GA) doesn’t take itself seriously. Unlike U.N. Security Council resolutions, GA pronouncements have no enforcement mechanism and often serve only to permit countries to vent — mostly at Israel. But this travesty helps determine the allocation of general U.N. funds — American tax dollars among them, albeit fewer under the Trump administration. So, it is worth parsing the activity of the GA last week.

Thirty-five resolutions were proposed in the GA by the U.N. Special Political and Decolonization Committee. The Committee, which includes Syria, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Bolivia, and Venezuela, has no North American, Western European, or Scandinavian members. Twenty-seven resolutions used general language and named no specific country; eight targeted Israel.

If you thought this would be a good time for the U.N. to recognize the desperate efforts of the people of Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran to throw off repressive and kleptocratic governments — and specifically, to rid themselves of the destructive machinations of the mullahs of Iran — the GA didn’t agree with you.

If you were waiting for the U.N. to condemn horrific violations against the people of Syria by its own government and aided by Russia and Iran, or to stand up for the Rohingya who have been forced out of Myanmar, or to consider the plight of the Muslim Uighurs of China herded into camps, you’re still waiting.

Slave labor in Qatar; Venezuelans reduced to eating garbage; North Koreans with no discernible human rights; Palestinian-Arab children taught that the highest form of life is death — their own and that of as many Jews as possible; civil war in Libya; increasing repression of the press and of dissent in Russia — all ignored. Turkey, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia — ignored.