RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/paris-riots

On July 14, 1789, in Paris, the price of bread had reached its highest point in a century. Parisians held the king responsible, which was in part justified. The royal administration’s meddlesome regulation had made grain commerce among the provinces difficult, leading to local famines. The result: a riot in the capital, and the taking of the Bastille—a mostly empty prison but a hated symbol of the absolute monarchy.

What then followed was a revolution—the French Revolution—taken over by an elite fired by the mad ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: this generation of twentysomething men would invent the first modern dictatorship and shed much French blood before taking on Europe, all in the name of the Republic and according to a Virtue that it claimed to embody. Robespierre, one of the most wild-eyed of the revolutionaries, designated himself the Republic’s messiah, charged with the “purification” of the old world. This history is well known, but it is generally reconstituted in a positive light, baptized with the ideology of “the common good” or “the general will.”

One can’t help but recall this French taste for rebellion, idealized as progressive and ultimately positive, as rioters are currently setting fire to the Champs-Élysées. Might this symbol of consumer society be the equivalent, for contemporary protesters, of the Bastille two centuries ago?

The origin of the present protest is not the price of bread but an increase in gasoline taxes. Yet, with gasoline now occupying a central place in our way of life as bread once did, there is at least some link between the two eruptions. And Louis XVI was guilty by inattention, just as Emmanuel Macron the First, France’s president, seems strangely indifferent to public sentiment. To enact policies that raise gasoline prices—already the highest in Europe—on the eve of the year-end holidays and without offering a justification, was a major political error.

Macron’s mistake was made worse by the justification given after the uprising: the government explained to skeptical citizens that the new tax was actually an ecological measure, and therefore justified, since the goal was not to add to the state’s coffers but to help fight climate change. Obviously no one believes this excuse, including the government that issued it, or so we must hope.

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2018/12/assisted-suicide-of-europe.html

I devoted too little space in my last column, “The Blob and Fake News,”, to the master plan of the UN for world governance, “The “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration,” which Canada will sign on to. Or, rather, the boy Wonder, JustinTrudeau, will sign on to it.

Trudeau, premier of Canada, opined that national borders are an anachronism and obsolete, and should be abolished. In “The Blob,” I wrote:

According to Gatestone, in 2015, he said,

“There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada. There are shared values –openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what make us the first postnational state.”

Two years later, Salim Mansur at Gatestone reported,

The Canadian government’s recent announcement that it will be providing more than CDN $600 million (USD $455 million) over the next five years to bail out the country’s financially strapped media outlets — as part of the fall fiscal update about the federal budget ahead of the 2019 federal election — is not as innocent as it may seem.

In response to the announcement, the heads of Canada’s media organizations promptly popped open the proverbial champagne and raised their glasses to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Unifor, a national union that represents Canadian journalists, was even more jubilant. It felt vindicated that its slogan of “Resistance” — which it touts as Conservative Party opposition leader Andrew Scheer’s “worst nightmare” — had so swiftly resulted in opening the government’s wallet, and handing out taxpayers’ money, to an industry that should actually be fighting to remain steadfastly independent of any form of government backing.

In effect, Canadian “journalists,” and journalists everywhere, will become the paid shills of the government and its policies of not saying critical things about Islam or Muslims. Furthermore, rolls of duct tape will be readied to silence any such criticism or to quash it before it even thought of:

The Global Compact requires the media outlets of member-states to adhere to the objectives and refrain from any critical discussions of these objectives that would be deemed as not “ethical” and against UN norms or standards consistent with the ideology of globalism.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/iran-tests-ballistic-missile-in-violation-of-un-resolution/

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that Iran had test-fired a medium range ballistic missile capable of carrying several warheads.

The test violated a Security Council resolution that calls on Iran not to pursue “any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

The missile has the ability to hit parts of Europe and any location in the Middle East, the secretary said.

NBC News:

“We condemn these activities,” Pompeo said, “and call upon Iran to cease immediately all activities relating to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.”

On Sunday, a senior Iranian official said the country’s missile program was not in breach of U.N. resolutions.

“Iran’s missile program is defensive in nature… There is no Security Council resolution prohibiting the missile program and missile tests by Iran,” state news agency IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi as saying.

Qasemi did not confirm or deny that Iran had carried out a new missile test.

Iran has repeatedly said its missile program is purely defensive and denied its missiles are capable of being tipped with nuclear warheads.

The resolution makes no distinction between an “offensive” weapon and a “defensive” weapon. The idea that a nuclear-tipped missile would be “defensive” in nature is absurd, but there are Iranian apologists in the U.S. who back Tehran up.

The language of the U.N. Security Council Resolution “calls on” rather than “forbids” Iran from testing its missiles, according to Trita Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council. The very U.N. resolution that Pompeo cited is also the very nuclear deal the Trump administration withdrew from earlier this year, Parsi added.

“We had a functioning deal and you may not have agreed with all the contents of it but it actually contained this conflict,” he said. “Trump came in, ripped it up and now we are seeing more missile tests, we’re seeing escalation and we are seeing a drift towards war.”

Actually, that was one of the biggest deficiencies in the nuclear deal — that it didn’t cover Iran’s ballistic missile program. Parsi, a pro-regime hustler in Washington, is trying to distract from Iran’s violation by shifting the blame to Trump. It doesn’t pass the smell test. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13367/extremist-persecution-christians-august

“The non-implementation of the law has brought us a gang of hardliners who have become above the law.” — Human rights activist, World Watch Monitor, Egypt.

A group of Muslims thrashed Vishal Masih, an 18-year-old Christian, after he repeatedly defeated a Muslim teen at arm-wrestling.” — Persecution, International Christian Concern, Pakistan.

“We cannot watch our children joining infidels’ church,” explained a local sheikh. — Morning Star News, Uganda.

Comoros: Sunni Islam was formally declared “the religion of the state.” “An ultra-conservative group of radical scholars … are pushing the country to a more extreme view of Islamic law (sharia) in the country and are against Christians.” — World Watch Monitor, August 3, 2018.

Christians Burned Alive and Churches Torched

Ethiopia: Approximately 15 Christian priests were killed—at least four burned alive—and 19 churches torched during Muslim uprisings in the east, where most of the nation’s Muslim population, consisting of 33% of the population, is centered. “Similar tensions are bubbling under the surface in other parts of Oromia,” which is approximately 50% Muslim, said a local source. “We have even heard of places where Muslims had asked Christians to vacate the area. And though this call is veiled as ethnic rivalry by some media and observers, it is at its very core a religious matter.”

Nigeria: During one of eight raids on Christian villages on August 28, Muslim Fulani herdsmen burned alive a Christian pastor, his wife, and three young children in their home; two other non-relatives were also killed in the raids. Armed with machetes and AK47 rifles, the Islamic raiders also looted and destroyed 95 houses and three churches. Gyang Adamu, one of the pastor’s surviving children who was away at the University of Jos at the time, “got to know about the attack when I saw a post on Facebook that Abonong village [his home], was under attack,” he said. When he finally got through to someone local, “the report I received was very devastating; I couldn’t believe that all my family members have been engulfed in the pogrom. On reaching home, I saw my daddy and younger ones burnt beyond recognition. The sight of the gory incident broke me down.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13356/turkey-alevis-persecution

The Alevi-owned broadcaster, TV10, for example,was closed down in September 2016, two months after the failed coup attempt against Erdogan, for allegedly “threatening national security and belonging to a terror organization.”

A TV10 cameraman, Kemal Demir, was taken into police custody on November 25, 2017 and arrested on December 2. Veli Büyükşahin, TV10’s chairman of the board, and Veli Haydar Güleç, a TV10 producer, were arrested on January 10. All are still in prison.

“TV10 did not belong to a major business. While it was trying to carry out its activities with its few employees and very limited resources, it was closed down by executive order. Moreover, its properties were seized [by the government] and then sold by the Savings Deposit Insurance Fund (SDIF)… The indictments against them contain no criminal element and judges have turned down the indictments twice. Yet, these people have been detained for 10 months and there is still uncertainty as to when they will be tried in a court and when a result will be obtained from the hearings.” — Kemal Peköz, MP from the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), in a speech before parliament November 1.

In Turkey, several methods are employed to eliminate religious minorities, not only by physical violence. Instead, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tries to erase minority faiths by preventing their ability to function by denying them the freedom to establish and safely operate their own institutions and places of worship. The Alevis, for instance, a historically persecuted religious minority in Turkey, are all-too-familiar with this form of oppression.

The Alevi-owned broadcaster, TV10, for example, was closed down in September 2016, two months after the failed coup attempt against Erdoğan, for allegedly “threatening national security and belonging to a terror organization.”

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/11/smith-bentham-wilberforce-liberal-foundations-australia/

As planning for the new colony of New South Wales was under way, Thomas Jefferson was in Paris working with La Fayette on a French Declaration of the Rights of Man. It was an age when the democratic idea had been given such momentum that it would be unstoppable, and nowhere would be more receptive to it than the Australian colonies. The British government might have hoped that the new colony would be well out of the way of dangerous ideas, located as it was on the other side of the world, but it could not but be influenced by the intellectual ferment of the times.

In the domestic debate in Britain about the nature of government, there were three thinkers who were to have deep and direct impact on the colonies through their influence on Britain’s government and the thinking of its rulers and its intellectual classes: William Wilberforce (1759–1833), Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and Adam Smith (1723–1790).

The ideas of these thinkers would constantly resonate in political debate and in the press (when it developed in the 1820s) in Australia, but the one who has claims to be the theorist around whom the greatest debate swirled was Adam Smith, for Smith’s ideas were extraordinary and counter-intuitive. They challenged some of the deepest prejudices and beliefs that had governed policy as far back as anyone could remember. Wilberforce’s ideas appealed to the heart, and through Christianity to a deep faith-based belief in the equal humanity (and divinity) of all people; Bentham’s appealed to the legal reformers and institution builders, to those who liked a systematic and rationally ordered world; but Smith’s ideas required people to confront conflicts between heart and mind in a way no other thinker of the age was to do. In no other thinker was the conflict between the recommendations of reason and those of prejudice to be so dramatic. His ideas were to build a broad social and policy base for liberalism, both in Britain and in its Australian possessions.

Economic liberty and the public interest

Smith was a leading figure of the so-called “Scot­tish Enlightenment”. During the eighteenth century the Scottish universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews were pre-eminent in Britain in their intellectual quality, and a number of thinkers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen developed ideas that were to transform people’s understanding of human society. David Hume (1711–1776), a historian and philosopher, Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), a historian, Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University, James Steuart (1707–1780), the first political economist to use the phrase “supply and demand”, and Adam Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, led the revolution in ideas. Each of these men attempted to add to the then pitifully small amount of knowledge about how human societies actually worked: what caused them to evolve and grow and develop certain characteristics and, above all, what was the basis for peaceful co-operation between people in a world where authority had retreated and coercion was weak.

Like the philosophes in France who influenced them, these Scottish thinkers were highly sceptical of the common understandings and explanations of their day about the functioning of the social and economic order. They did not believe that societies were held together by the force or the authority of absolute monarchs or ruling classes nor even by the efforts of organised religion, nor did they believe that the ceaseless pursuit of treasure was the real road to wealth, nor that a nation was better off by excluding the products of others.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/is-paris-burning-yes-for-the-second-weekend-in-a-row/

Is Paris Burning? is a 1966 film about the Nazi occupation. As the Allies closed in on Paris, the German general in charge was ordered to burn the city before the Allies could seize it. After agonizing over the decision, General Cholitz refuses to level the city and Free French forces march triumphantly down the Champs Elysee.

How ironic it is that the historic street with the Arc de Triumph in the background was the scene of several vehicle fires set by masked demonstrators who, for the second weekend in a row, are violently protesting the government of President Emmanuel Macron.

ABC News:

The violence started early Saturday morning near the famous Avenue des Champs-Elysees. Dozens of angry protesters, many of them wearing gas masks or ski goggles, threw rocks and projectiles toward French police. In turn, police attempted to disperse the crowd by firing tear gas and blasting water cannons.

Later in the day, violent protesters who were pushed away from the Arc de Triumph used plywood and other material to make barricades on various streets throughout central Paris. Demonstrators also set multiple cars and trash containers on fire over the course of the day.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe visited the Paris police command center on Saturday and announced that around 5,500 protesters attended the demonstrations in Paris on Saturday.

Philippe said some protesters attacked police forces “with a rarely seen violence.”

Nearly 200 people were arrested during the protest, Paris police told ABC News. They added that 92 people were injured, including 14 police officers.

What began as protests against a rise in the gas tax has morphed into something far more; a revolt against high taxes, the high cost of living, and the Macron government’s policies.

The nationwide protests started in small urban and rural areas of the country, where demonstrators have been blocking roads over the past three weeks. The movement has no clear leader and has attracted groups of people with a wide variety of demands.

Macron, who is currently in Argentina for the G20 summit, said earlier this week in a speech that he understood the complaints expressed by protesters but has so far refused to cancel the planned increased in fuel taxes. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13364/france-meltdown-macron-disdain

“The French say, ‘Mr. President, we cannot make ends meet,’ and the President replies, ‘we shall create a High Council [for the climate]’. Can you imagine the disconnect?” — Laurence Saillet, spokesman for the center-right party, The Republicans, November 27, 2018

The “yellow jackets” [protestors] now have the support of 77% of the French population. They are demanding Macron’s resignation and an immediate change of government.

The movement is now a revolt of millions of people who feel asphyxiated by “confiscatory” taxation, and who do not want to “pay indefinitely” for a government that seems “unable to limit spending”. — Jean-Yves Camus, political scientist

European elections are to be held this Spring, 2019. Polls show that the National Gathering will be in the lead, far ahead of La République En Marche! [The Republic on the Move!], the party created by Macron.

On November 11th, French President Emmanuel Macron commemorated the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I by inviting seventy heads of state to organize a costly, useless, grandiloquent “Forum of Peace” that did not lead to anything. He also invited US President Donald Trump, and then chose to insult him. In a pompous speech, Macron — knowing that a few days earlier, Donald Trump had defined himself as a nationalist committed to defending America — invoked “patriotism”; then defined it, strangely, as “the exact opposite of nationalism”; then called it “treason”.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272097/un-israel-bashing-day-joseph-klein

Beginning in 1977, the United Nations has observed the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” every year on November 29th. This is the date in 1947 when the UN General Assembly approved its partition resolution envisaging the establishment of two states – an independent state of Palestine and an independent Jewish state of Israel. The Palestinians and their surrounding Arab neighbors rejected the original two-state solution with their usual response – violence. The creators of the Jewish state, on the other hand, were willing to accept the partition compromise. Israel subsequently offered the Palestinians a succession of opportunities for their own state, which the Palestinian leadership has repeatedly rejected. Nevertheless, the Palestinians, with a lot of help from their friends, have managed to turn the United Nations into their propaganda arm. The highlight every year is the UN’s treatment of the November 29th anniversary of its own original two-state General Assembly partition resolution as, to quote former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, a “day of mourning and a day of grief.” To assuage its grief, the UN General Assembly passes annually a series of blatantly one-sided anti-Israel resolutions, which have deliberately overlooked decades of Palestinian terrorism aimed at killing civilians.

Fiery anti-Israel speeches precede the votes. The UN-sponsored pro-Palestinian forum known as the UN Committee for the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People gets things started at least a day in advance. This year, not content with leaving it to the Palestinians’ friends among the member states to make their case, the committee invited Marc Lamont Hill, a CNN commentator, to the anti-Israel hatefest. CNN called Marc Lamont Hill “one of the leading intellectual voices in the country.” This “intellectual” advocated the use of violence if necessary as a legitimate form of “resistance.” He supported the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel and the so-called “right of return.” He voiced the words that Palestinians have regularly used to call for the end of the Jewish state: “a free Palestine from the river to the sea.” When criticized afterwards for using dog-whistle language appealing to the anti-Semitic destroy Israel crowd, Hill did not apologize. He argued that the “river to sea” expression is “a phrase used by many factions, ideologies, movements, and politicians. My reference to ‘river to the sea’ was not a call to destroy anything or anyone. It was a call for justice, both in Israel and in the West Bank/Gaza.” CNN was not buying Hill’s lame explanation, nor should anyone else who knows anything about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most likely responding to public backlash than acting on principle, CNN announced that “Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN.”

The good news this year is that for the first time the UN member states will not just be asked to vote on the usual anti-Israel resolutions to mark the anniversary of the General Assembly partition resolution. As a result of an initiative promoted by the Trump administration, they will also have to decide whether to approve a separate draft resolution condemning Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets into Israel and for inciting violence that put “civilians at risk.” The draft resolution also demands that “Hamas cease all provocative actions and violent activity.” The administration, led by U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, has reportedly been negotiating the final text of the resolution with other member states, which may require some tinkering while leaving the core condemnation of Hamas intact. There is a particular focus on obtaining European Union support. Hamas is on the 28-member EU bloc’s terrorism blacklist, which the European Court of Justice has upheld.