RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/britains-election-stakes-11575841904?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Britons head to the polls Thursday for their most consequential general election since the 1970s. As with the 1979 vote that brought Margaret Thatcher to power, the outcome will shape Britain for a generation.

First and foremost, this is a Brexit election. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is campaigning to restore democratic legitimacy after Parliament has spent three years trying to thwart voters’ 2016 decision to leave the European Union. He is asking the electorate to give him a majority to pass his divorce deal, which despite its flaws remains the best chance to deliver Brexit and liberate Britain to enter a new era.

Opinion polls suggest voters are giving Mr. Johnson credit for his Brexit leadership. He has won the blessing of Nigel Farage, whose Brexit Party isn’t running against Tories in many seats in order to avoid splitting the Leave vote. Mr. Johnson’s opponents have helped him, too, as Remain politicians struggle to explain why voters should revise their 2016 verdict.

This means that, unlike his hapless predecessor Theresa May, Mr. Johnson is finally giving voters a real choice: a plan that delivers Brexit, or a crop of muddled centrists and wet former Tories who won’t.

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https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/elizabeth-warren-economic-plans-lessons-from-europe/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=top-stories&utm_term=fourth

It’s no model for what leftist schemes would create here.

A nationwide series of protests, some of them violent, is convulsing France. The proximate cause is pension reform, and the French are having a splendid time: In news photos, the protesters are positively beaming, and a recent BBC report described the mood, amid the arson and destruction of property, as “festive.”

I suspect that the American version of that will be less festive, when the time comes.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times, who as a columnist always has had a particularly unkeen sense of timing, in November attacked the “Europhobia” of centrist Democrats. “Going on about how terrible things are in France is a sure sign that you have no idea what you’re talking about,” he wrote. I do not think France is a particularly badly governed country, but the French are mad as hell about it, and surely their opinion must count for something.

If you are wondering where Professor Krugman is seeing all those centrist Democrats who were terrified of France in early autumn, it is helpful to know that the column is one long stage whisper at Steven Rattner, the Obama-administration Treasury official who wrote in the New York Times that Warren is the candidate for those who “want to live in France (economically).” Warren’s policies, Rattner wrote, would impose dirigiste European practices on U.S. firms. Rattner, who is after all an Obama guy, is generally supportive of New Deal–style welfare statism but fears Warren’s

intention to impose vast new regulatory burdens and to revamp the way business functions, which could have an even more negative effect on our economy. Many of America’s global champions, like banks and tech giants, would be dismembered. Private equity, which plays a useful role in driving business efficiency, would be effectively eliminated. Shale fracking would be banned, which would send oil and natural gas prices soaring and cost millions of Americans their jobs. And on and on.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/12/the-secret-labour-files-of-shame.php

The “Secret Labour Files of Shame”

That’s what the London Times calls the explosive Labour Party files on anti-Semitism that, having been leaked, have now been reviewed by the newspaper. The rank instances of anti-Semitism exhibited by Labour members of Parliament, and the party’s weak response thereto, are shocking:

The secret files, seen by this paper, reveal the party is still overwhelmed with complaints about anti-Jewish racism that have been left unresolved for months or years. Most have resulted in lenient punishments or no sanctions, according to the documents, despite Jeremy Corbyn’s election campaign claims of zero tolerance.
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https://www.nysun.com/editorials/boris-johnson-for-prime-minister/90930/

Boris Johnson for Prime Minister

When Britons go to the polls on Thursday to choose the 58th Parliament, The New York Sun will be rooting for Boris Johnson. It might seem preposterous for an American publication to make an endorsement in a British election. Then again, too, one wag noted, if the Sun hadn’t, at the last minute, emerged as the only national paper to endorse Donald Trump, Secretary of State Clinton might be president.

More seriously, it’s hard to think of many political causes in which we’ve been more invested over the years than that of an independent Britain. We formed our view, in the 1980s, by covering the European Union for a great newspaper (in our case, the Wall Street Journal). It’s the same method through which Mr. Johnson reached his conclusions about the EU, by covering it for a great newspaper (in his case the Daily Telegraph).

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3041104/heads-influential-am

Tara Joseph, president of the American Chamber of Commerce, and group’s chairman Robert Grieves held at border for two hours, on their way to an annual ball
Refusal comes after chamber’s opposition to doomed extradition bill, and tension over US legislation on Hong Kong affairs

The heads of an influential American business group in Hong Kong were denied entry to Macau and detained for several hours on Saturday, before being sent back with no reason given.

According to a statement issued on Saturday night by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong (AmCham), its chairman Robert Grieves and president Tara Joseph were separately prevented from entering the former Portuguese colony as they travelled to the annual AmCham Macau Ball.

“Both Robert and Tara were given no reason for why they were delayed,” the statement read. “After several hours, and after having to sign a statement that they voluntarily agreed not to pursue entry into Macau, they both returned to Hong Kong without any difficulty.

“We are puzzled as to why this happened, given this was simply a social occasion to celebrate AmCham Macau’s annual gathering.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15047/fate-of-christians

• Why should it be anti-Muslim or “Islamophobic” to write about the effects of jihad or the conservative Muslim treatment of unbelievers? The facts are well established within international bodies, NGOs, national commissions, and verifiable journalistic reports. Reformist Muslims themselves are highly critical of the discriminatory laws and behaviours in countries from which they or their forebearers originated.
• Indeed, it is precisely Muslims of a reformist and liberal bent who are most vocal about radical restrictions on the values that other Muslims claim are universal.
• Let us be clear. No doubt, there will probably always be people, call them the real “Islamophobes”, who will use problems within Muslim states or communities to try to tar Islam or Muslims as a whole. But these and other issues still need to be faced as authentic human rights concerns.
• A particularly widespread problem for Christians in Muslim countries is the ban on Christian proselytization…. While Christian and secular countries rightly permit Muslims to preach, convert, and instruct non-Muslims, 25 Muslim states forbid proselytization and have laws saying that Muslims who convert to another faith may be put to death as apostates.
• Liberalized versions of Islam have in the past few decades been suppressed by fundamentalist takeovers of entire societies. It is therefore hard to believe that countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey will return quickly to the moderation they had developed in the previous century. If there is hope for good relations between non-Muslims and Muslims, it must rest, as has already begun, with the Muslims in liberal democracies…. The British organization Muslims Against Antisemitism, is a shining example; in America, the American Islamic Forum for Democracy is another. They should be treasured and helped.
A recognition of the religious freedoms offered by secular non-coercive states should be of particular importance to Muslims worldwide. It is a serious criticism of Islamic practice both historically and in the modern era that many Muslim countries seem to remain deeply intolerant towards the followers of other religions or the followers of differing branches of their own religion; toward people they regard as having left Islam, or even whom they perceive as having “offended” its followers, whether inadvertently or not. Persecution of religious minorities, and other Muslims seems common in many Muslim countries — from the highly restrictive Saudi Arabia to the more liberal Indonesia, and especially in countries where the religion is closely allied to the state.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15255/egypt-churches-fires

Preliminary reports from Egyptian authorities said that all three fires appeared to be accidents related to electrical or circuit failures, not arson…. General opinion among Christians, however, is that the fires were “not a coincidence.”

“The fire started from the wooden ceiling of the adjacent hall.” Video footage, he added, indicated that something from the market behind the church was hurled onto its roof. — Fr. Samuel, St. George Church in Mansoura, World Watch Monitor, November 11, 2019.

“Terrorists change their operations, from bombings to burning.” — Fr. Ephraim Youssef, a priest at St. George Church in Mansoura, World Watch Monitor, November 11, 2019.

Recently, over the course of two weeks, three Christian churches were torched in Egypt.

First, on Sunday, October 13, “a massive fire swept through a major Coptic church in a Cairo suburb causing heavy damage, but no casualties.” Online images and video of the St. George Church in Helwan — considered “one of the greatest and oldest churches belonging to the Coptic Orthodox Church” — confirm that , to quote Bishop Bishara, it “had been completely destroyed.”

“I immediately rushed to the church and found it on fire with heavy smoke filling the place,” said Fr. Andrew, who personally served at the church for three decades.

“The old wooden building burned down very fast and the fire destroyed everything inside, even before the firefighters arrived…. Our loss is great. We have lost a great historical building and we can’t rebuild anything like it.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15254/iran-mullahs-losing

After initial hesitations the elite regained its unity by responding in the best way it knows, not to say the only way it knows: a brutal crackdown that claimed hundreds of lives and over 10,000 arrests.

Translated into simple terms, Khamenei is calling on the “prosperous 30 percent” not to take their current well-being for granted and to help the regime crush the mass of the poor who wish to upset the apple cart.

The danger to [the Shah’s] regime came from urban middle classes that in any society do not remain content with economic prosperity and social freedoms for long; they always end up demanding political rights commensurate with their economic and social status.

[I]f he [Khamenei] manages to crush the 70 percent, thus removing their threat, he would face the 30 percent’s increasing demands for social and political freedoms no clerical regime can grant. And, if he fails, the 30 percent in question will look for someone else who can do for them what the Khomeinist regime cannot. In either case, the “Supreme Guide” is playing a losing game.When popular protests erupted in Iran’s top 100 cities, including the capital Tehran, last month, it soon became clear that the ruling elites were at pains to decide what was really going on.

The faction led by “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei started by dismissing the uprising as a déjà vu version of the protests that have punctuated Iran’s history since the 1979 revolution. The daily Kayhan, reputed to reflect Khamenei’s views, dismissed the uprising as “sporadic disturbances fomented by a handful of hooligans.” Khamenei himself saw it as “a bump on the road” to the “Great New Islamic Civilization” he says he is building.

The official media dismissed what it claimed was “a blind riot with no leadership.”

https://www.jns.org/opinion/macrons-unsettling-words-until-our-dead-can-sleep-in-peace/

Barely a year can pass, it seems, without some episode or incident in France that compels its ancient Jewish community to wonder whether they have a future there at all.

One of the criticisms leveled at the numerous Holocaust memorials dotted around Europe is their alleged tendency to, as an American Jewish leader memorably put it to me, “encourage Europeans to commemorate dead Jews, and ignore what’s happening to the living Jews.”

But even that goal appears beyond reach these days. French President Emmanuel Macron inadvertently said as much last week when he pledged, in the wake of the desecration of 107 graves in a Jewish cemetery in the eastern Alsace region, that France would fight anti-Semitism “until our dead can sleep in peace.”

There was, of course, little doubt as to Macron’s essential point: Anti-Semitism in his own country and in the rest of Europe is becoming so intolerable that even the dead are impacted. Still, his choice of words will have reminded many listeners that Europe’s history means its lands are full of dead Jews, most of them in unmarked graves. They may also have been unsettled by the sense of despair lurking within Macron’s comment: We can’t even protect dead Jews anymore, he seemed to be saying.

In fact, the desecration of Jewish cemeteries by far-right elements in France is hardly unknown. During the 1980s, nearly a dozen Jewish cemeteries were vandalized in different parts of the country. Famously, in May 1990, 200,000 people attended a protest demonstration after gravestones at the cemetery in Carpentras, a historic Jewish center in France, were daubed with swastikas by a group of violent neo-Nazis. Most gruesomely, the desecrators exhumed a body from one of the graves and left it on display with a Star of David rammed through the chest.