RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/trending/paris-police-use-water-cannon-to-battle-growing-yellow-vest-protests/

Another weekend, another massive series of protests across France by demonstrators wearing yellow vests, as Paris police were forced to use tear gas and water cannons to keep demonstrators away from the Arc de Triomphe monument.

The government says the protests were larger than last week’s and hundreds of people were arrested.

Reuters:

Thousands of protesters in Paris marched noisily but mostly peacefully through the Grands Boulevards shopping area in northern Paris, close to where a massive gas explosion in a bakery killed two firefighters and a Spanish tourist and injured nearly 50 people early on Saturday.

But small groups of demonstrators broke away from the designated route and threw bottles and other projectiles at the police.

Around the 19th-century Arc de Triomphe at the top of the Champs Elysees boulevard, riot police fired water cannon and tear gas at militant protesters after being pelted with stones and paint, witnesses said.

Groups of protesters also gathered on and around the Champs Elysees, the scene of disturbances in recent weeks, many of them calling loudly for Macron to resign.

“Macron, we are going to tear down your place!” one banner read.

The Interior Ministry estimated that there were a maximum of about 84,000 demonstrators nationwide on Saturday – more than the 50,000 counted last week but well below the record 282,000 estimated on Nov. 17, the first day of the protests.

In Paris, the ministry counted 8,000 demonstrators, more than in the past two weekends, when authorities tallied just 3,500 people on Jan. 5 and only 800 on Dec. 29.

The government has been toughening its rhetoric against the demonstrators in recent weeks and has deployed 80,00 police to contain them.

Bourges authorities said nearly 5,000 yellow vests stuck to the designated demonstration area. The historical city center was off-limits for demonstrators, but some 500 protesters made their way to the center where they scuffled with police and set garbage bins on fire.

Many businesses in Bourges had boarded themselves up to avoid damage and authorities had removed street furniture and building site materials that could be used for barricades.

In Strasbourg, up to 2,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the European Parliament building and later marched to the center of the city on the Rhine river border with Germany. No serious violence or looting was reported there.

More than 80,000 police were on duty for the protests nationwide, including 5,000 in Paris.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13520/eu-censorship

Sadly, the main victims of many of the abuses that the European Commission seemingly wishes to silence are often Muslims, often women and children, and often too scared to speak out.

One of the foremost tools used by the EU is its “Code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online,” including hate speech against Muslims. By signing up to the Code, the major technology and social media corporations have committed themselves to censoring the internet on behalf of the EU.

Apparently, it is no longer enough, as “each offense to a religion” is now “an offense to all”, that members of one religion are offended. Now, it seems, according to the OSCE, every European is supposed to be offended in solidarity with them, as well.

On December 3, the European Commission hosted a “high-level conference to address intolerance, hate speech and discrimination affecting Muslims in the EU”. According to the EU press release, “By sharing good practices, the aim of the event is to identify key actions at all levels to address intolerance, racism and discrimination against Muslims in the coming years”. The event brought together over 100 “representatives of national authorities, civil society, academia, the religious community, EU agencies and international organisations.”

There is, according to the European Commission, a “need for action”, as “unfavourable views of Muslims appear to have surged in the past few years”. The European Commission does not, of course, offer up the possibility that such unfavorable views might be due to the fact that an overwhelming majority of all terrorist attacks on European soil in recent years have been committed primarily by one group, among several other signs of transformation on the European continent. Examples include preaching jihad against “infidels” in mosques; the rise of rape, as well as rape grooming gangs — not exclusively, but overwhelmingly run by the same group in countries such as the UK, the Netherlands and now also apparently Finland; brutal misogynist practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), honor killings, forced marriages and polygamy — in addition to an exponential rise in anti-Semitism, especially in France. Sadly, the main victims of many of the abuses that the European Commission seemingly wishes to silence are Muslims, often women and children, and often too scared to speak out (here, here and here).

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/11/bolsonaros-election-indicates-brazil-can-anti-socialist-ally/

Brazil might not be perfect, but their recent elections provide a chance at political recalibration in Latin America. Washington shouldn’t miss such an opportunity.

Peter Beinart recently wrote a bizarre article in The Atlantic, which blamed the rise of right-wing populists across the world as a reaction to feminism and women’s rights. The central thesis of the essay is so patently absurd, it barely needs any refutation. It is the type of social science garbage you can find in any sociology or gender studies paper.

For example, Beinart cites Valerie Hudson of Texas A&M University with an insane claim bereft of any evidence stating that the history of humanity is men agreeing to be ruled by other men in return for all men ruling over women. This is, of course, politically, biologically, and historically absurd, as no such global understanding existed at any point of history. Humanity rarely evolved in a similar fashion all over the globe — otherwise there wouldn’t be Valerie Hudson teaching at a university, and Texas would have looked like Islamic State-controlled Raqqa, in Syria.

Beinart takes his argument to its logical extreme, cherry-picking quotes and tying it up with populist movements across the world, hinting that all populism is inherently misogynist. Beinart never seeks to explain why Germany’s right-wing AFD is currently ruled by Alice Weidel––a lesbian former Goldman Sachs banker––who has a Sinhalese partner and has rallied her country against mass Islamic immigration, or that the significant majority of supporters of Swedish, Danish, and Finnish right-wing parties are female, increasingly afraid of rising sexual assaults and street crimes. I could carry on, but for a terrific takedown, please read my colleague here.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/01/28/snowplow-politics/

Trump, Brexit, and the divides deepening between us

We have now had more than two clear years since the votes for Brexit and Trump. And although most Brexit voters dislike the tendency to link the events, the two are unavoidably intertwined.

A neutral way to interpret both surprise results was to describe them as “disruptions.” But very swiftly a range of carefully pejorative terms (“populist,” “reactive,” etc.) came to be deployed to suggest that these disruptions were not morally neutral. Soon a counter-narrative was adopted that went much further.

It was the identical nature of the pushback in both countries that was immediately striking. Shortly after the Brexit vote, the British public was inundated with media claims of “spikes” in racist incidents, “hate crimes,” and more. Whatever way people had voted, this was genuinely alarming. Had such beasts lain dormant that they had now been unleashed simply because more people ticked the box marked “Leave” than did “Remain”? Two months after the Brexit vote, a 40-year-old Polish man was murdered in Essex. The press and pro–European Union politicians pounced on it. The Guardian claimed that the killing “exposes the reality of post-referendum racism.” Even the conservative Telegraph asserted that the killing raised fears that “migrants are being targeted in post-Brexit hate-crimes.” The head of the EU Commission blamed the murder on “galloping populism.”

By the time that the man’s 16-year-old killer was convicted of his murder one year later, the story had fallen out of the news. Before the trial it had become clear that the killing was the result of nothing more than a pointless, late-night street row, awful, terrible, and with lessons of its own to impart. But the victim’s race had nothing to do with it. Neither did the British public’s decision to vote Leave.

Still, the narrative continued. The enthusiasm for the “outbreak of racism” line was such that whatever facts or counter-arguments emerged to the contrary, the “spike” in hate crimes was clung to as an article of faith. It vindicated the worst suspicions of Remainers and cowed many Leavers. That the police had been urging people to report “hate crimes” during this period (the police generally find it more restful to investigate online offense-taking than, say, deal with the upsurge in knife crime) was ignored. The narrative of “racist vote leads to upsurge in racism” was too useful to be dispensed with.

Precisely the same claim was pumped into the American system after the election of Donald Trump. A collection of offhand, occasionally off-color quotations were characterized as flagrant “dog whistles.” One joke about Mexicans — unwise though it was for a candidate — was declared to be a racist assault on all Mexicans. And once that link was made, it was the smallest of steps to pronounce the vote for Trump “racist” and some sort of green light for real racists. Politicians and pundits tied a spate of bomb threats made against Jewish community centers in the U.S. and abroad in January 2017 to the inauguration of President Trump.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/health-officials-fear-setbacks-in-effort-to-contain-ebola-outbreak/

The World Health Organization warned in its most recent Ebola update this month that containment of the second-largest outbreak of the virus in history could suffer disastrous setbacks if the security situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to deteriorate.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its travel advisory for the region on Wednesday, covering the North Kivu and Ituri provinces that are under a travel warning from the State Department because of militant activity and dangers to civilians.

“The armed conflict and violence in the outbreak area is hampering response activities including early identification of cases, and monitoring of ‘contacts’ (people who may have been exposed to Ebola),” the CDC said. “The North Kivu and Ituri provinces are among the most populated in DRC. These provinces share borders with other countries (Rwanda and Uganda) with frequent cross-border movement for trade activities. The provinces have been experiencing a prolonged humanitarian crisis and deteriorating security situation, which is limiting public health efforts to respond to this outbreak.”

The outbreak began on Aug. 1, days after the conclusion of another Ebola outbreak on the other side of the country in Équateur province.

https://www.ft.com/content/401e52a0-1405-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9

When Nicolás Maduro was sworn in by Venezuela’s Supreme Court for a second six-year term as president on Thursday, a notable judge was missing. Christian Zerpa, a one-time Maduro ally, recently fled the country. Interviewed this week in Florida, the former Supreme Court justice called Mr Maduro’s government “disastrous” and, more importantly, “illegitimate”. It was a crucial legal point. By the end of this week, the US, Canada, and most European and Latin American countries will not recognise Mr Maduro’s presidency as legitimate either.

Venezuela is in social, economic and political freefall. Its institutions have been suborned by Mr Maduro and his inner circle. The legal basis of his second presidential term is the elections in May last year, which most of the world, although not Russia, China or Turkey, declared to be fraudulent. As a result, so too is his presidency. To put the situation baldly: if Mr Maduro were removed from power next week, many international powers would not treat it as a coup as they never recognised the presidency in the first place. Mr Maduro’s swearing-in for a second term therefore marks a tipping point for the country. Greater international isolation is a given. Although military intervention has been all but ruled out, South American attitudes are hardening, especially in neighbouring Brazil under its rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro.

An escalation of sanctions on Venezuelan officials deemed guilty of corruption and human rights abuses is likely. Also possible, if more extreme, is a ban by the Trump administration on US companies selling the dilutants and other chemicals that Venezuela needs to blend with its otherwise unmarketable heavy crude. If that happened, and the country could not find substitutes elsewhere, around 300,000 barrels a day, or one-quarter of current production, would be affected.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13512/english-channel-migrant-crossings

“A question has to be asked: if you are a genuine asylum seeker, why have you not sought asylum in the first safe country that you arrived in? Because France is not a country where anyone would argue it is not safe in any way whatsoever, and if you are genuine then why not seek asylum in your first safe country?” – British Home Secretary Savid Javid.

Migrants are entitled to free accommodation, cash support at £37.75 per person per week, free healthcare, free dental care, free eyesight tests, free glasses, maternity grants and free schooling — much to the chagrin of many British nationals and former service personnel who do not have access to many of these benefits.

Another tragedy of Aylun Kurdi proportions is only a matter of time… The media are poised and salivating at the prospect of capturing this impending disaster for their front pages; the hackles of a hundred migrant and refugee charities are raised in anticipation of the PR opportunities ahead of them.

Sajid Javid is a rising star in the British Conservative party…. If [he] can stop the boats across the Channel, he will be perfectly positioned to take control of the British Conservative Party as well as the rising migrant crisis.

The British Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, has called in the Royal Navy to help deal with the migrant crisis in the Channel.

Since November, 239 migrants successfully made the crossing from Calais, France to Dover, England in small inflatable boats. A total of 539 migrants tried to make the crossing in 2018.

According to the Daily Mail, “Most of those held by police crossing the world’s busiest shipping lane from France since November have claimed to be Iranian.” Whether this is factually correct, or a line given to them by the people smugglers they pay for their journey, is a reasonable question.

According to UK immigration lawyer Colin Yeo, “The latest asylum statistics show that around three-quarters of Iranian asylum claims succeed,” — a fact the people-smugglers presumably know well and capitalise on for profit.

The legitimacy of these migrant stories is a concern to the Home Secretary, who has been speculating as to what extent these migrants in the Channel are ‘genuine’ asylum seekers. During a visit to Dover he said:

“A question has to be asked: if you are a genuine asylum seeker, why have you not sought asylum in the first safe country that you arrived in?… Because France is not a country where anyone would argue it is not safe in any way whatsoever, and if you are genuine then why not seek asylum in your first safe country?”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272487/french-prisons-incubators-terror-stephen-brown

“Yes, radical Islam is rampant in prison. No one is ignoring it, but the situation continues even though, slowly but surely, [the situation] is rotting.”
–Guillame Jeanson, Parisian lawyer and spokesman for the Institute for Justice (#16).

Leave it to radical Islam to disfigure the beautiful French language with the ugly term “gangster-jihadiste.” Its murderous connotations concern former Muslims convicts who have committed terrorist attacks after being radicalized in French prisons.

And Cherif Chekatt is the latest former, French Muslim prisoner to earn this lovely title. Chekatt, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a video, carried out a terrorist attack on the Christmas market in the eastern French city of Strasbourg last December 11, leaving five people dead.

“[H]e was the subject of a search the morning of his terrorist attack for an attempted homicide in the course of an armed robbery that went bad,” stated the newspaper Figaro.

Before his murderous rampage, Chekatt already had 27 convictions in three different countries – France, Germany and Switzerland – for crimes including armed robbery. But while in prison in France in 2015, French intelligence believes he was radicalized.

“During a stay in prison, he was noticed as much for his violence as for his religious proselytism,” noted one report. As a result, he was carded “Fiche S” by French intelligence concerning potential dangerousness.

But after the December terrorist attack, France’s future concerning “gangster-jihadistes” continues to appear bleak.