RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quillette.com/2018/12/22/a-tale-of-two-cities

Five weeks on from the #GiletsJaunes, managerial elites in London conspire to chain the United Kingdom to ever closer union with the fate of Europe. There is something profoundly emblematic about the sight of Emmanuel Macron facing down the people of his once great nation.

Condescending, Napoleonic, and completely without self-awareness, he is the living embodiment of the vision of the anointed. As French citizens riot because of increases in their fuel taxes, he has been utterly indifferent in telling them to take their thin gruel because the predictive models of his shaman class say so. It is an almost perfect encapsulation of the Rousseauian top-down state versus the people that it subjugates.

Meanwhile, across the channel in London—where, despite their civic and intellectual history, the ruling class have long sought to mimic their Gallic counterparts— the Bank of England’s Mark Carney has been playing a similar game. He has been issuing regular doomsday forecasts based on predictive models by alleged experts. I wonder how much longer people are going to listen to these modern soothsayers. At this point, they are naked lobbyists for entrenched special interests. When reality fails to meet their expectations for the umpteenth time, how long will it take for the prophets to lose their authority in the eyes of the public and their self-appointed gatekeepers in the chattering class?

It has struck me recently just how much of our current political discourse is based on “forecasts.” In 2002, Daniel Kahneman won a Nobel prize for his work on behavioral economics, partly for his career-long demolition of how “experts” convey statistical information:

The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained. As Nassim Taleb pointed out in The Black Swan, our tendency to construct and believe coherent narratives of the past makes it difficult to accept the limits of our forecasting ability.…The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future. (Thinking Fast and Slow, p. 218).

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272307/darkness-falls-windsor-ontario-lloyd-billingsley

“Sara Anne Widholm, 76, died at Windsor Regional Hospital on Saturday, Dec. 15,” the Windsor Star reports, but this was not a mere obituary. On October 8, 2017, while out for a walk on the Ganatchio Trail in Windsor, Widholm was the victim of a “vicious” and “unprovoked” attack by Habibullah Ahmadi, 21.

He was originally charged with assault, later upgraded to attempted murder and now second-degree murder with the death of his victim. Little has emerged about Habibullah Ahmadi and his motive in the attack, which was “not just another assault,” according to neurosurgeon Dr. Balraj Jhawar.

“The worst skull fractures I’ve seen in my 12 years here in Windsor,” Jhawar told reporters. “This is among the most brutal things I’ve seen in my career.” The victim’s multiple brain hemorrhages and fractured skull and vertebrae required eight hours of surgery. Hospital officials did not indicate whether Widholm emerged from a coma before she finally passed away.

Attacker Habibullah Ahmadi was 21, a full adult, but police never released his booking photo. News reports described him as a “Windsor man,” who goes by the name “Daniel.” Local and national news stories contained no statements from Habibullah Ahmadi, nor any indication that he had declined an interview. Likewise, news reports contained no quotes from Habibullah Ahmadi’s family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, or fellow students in Windsor.

Habibullah Ahmadi, a male of 21, attacked a defenseless woman, 75, but local and national feminists did not cite the attack as an example of violence against women or toxic masculinity. Likewise, no statement against violence emerged after the attack finally claimed Widholm’s life.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/syria-troop-withdrawal-middle-east-policy/
Americans will no longer support Washington’s incoherent Middle East adventurism.

Unlike my colleagues, I’ve been a bemused spectator during this week’s Syria follies. As readers of these columns know (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here), I believe the United States has less interest in Syria than in the persistence of drought in Burkina Faso. That is why I was a steadfast naysayer on American intervention in a conflict among rivals whose common ground consists of hatred for America and affinity for sharia supremacism (and the abetting thereof — I’m looking at you, Vladimir).

The current frenzy was ignited by the president’s abrupt decision to pull U.S. forces (all 2,200 of them) out of Syria. This prompted Defense Secretary James Mattis’s resignation — though General Mattis’s stinging letter indicates that Syria was really just the last straw for him after two years in the Trump grinder.

These latest chapters are already being folded into the Syria Hawk Fantasy Narrative. To recap, we are to believe that President Obama, by extracting forces from Iraq (inconveniently, pursuant to an agreement struck by President Bush) created a “vacuum,” in which ISIS spontaneously generated. It is supposed to be irrelevant to this story that the American people never supported Washington’s farcical sharia-democracy project, and that the Iraqis claimed to want our troops out even more than we did. What matters is that Obama’s decision “created ISIS,” dashing the dreams for a secular, pluralist democracy harbored by the moderate Muslims who predominate Iraq (at least on days when they’re not executing homosexuals and apostates), and making an unspeakable bloodbath of the heroic struggle by the same moderate Muslims to overthrow Syria’s Tehran-backed monster, Bashar al-Assad.

Of course, Obama did not create the Islamic State. Sharia supremacism did. What no one in Washington pontificating on Syria and neighboring Iraq cares to acknowledge is that this region is a tinderbox of fundamentalist Islam in which, if there were no intervention by outside forces, Sunnis and Shiites would be slaughtering each other until some strongman imposed order — something that is to be expected in a culture of voluntarism (God as pure will) where submission to authority is the norm. (Voluntarism is brilliantly explained by Robert R. Reilly in The Closing of the Muslim Mind.)

It has been 17 years since 9/11 and 25 years since radical Islam declared war against the United States by bombing the World Trade Center. Yet, head firmly in the sand, we continue to discuss such catastrophes as Syria as if the most critical fact on the ground, the power and prevalence of sharia supremacism, did not exist. Consequently, we subscribe to delusional history (Obama created ISIS) and make policy around the resulting storylines.

If there was a Syria silver lining, at least for us at National Review, it was the scintillating debate between my friends David French and Michael Brendan Dougherty, during this week’s edition of The Editors podcast. Because I am solidly in the MBD camp on the folly of our Syria escapade, much of what follows will read like a rebuttal of David. I am sorry for that, because I believe he made the counter-case as eloquently and persuasively as it can be made, scoring some unassailable points along the way. It will more than repay the time you make to listen to it.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13444/germany-child-marriage-law

The ruling, which effectively opens the door to legalizing Sharia-based child marriages in Germany, is one of a growing number of instances in which German courts are — wittingly or unwittingly — promoting the establishment of a parallel Islamic legal system in the country.

“Germany cannot, on the one hand, be against child marriages internationally, and on the other hand, be for such marriages in our own country. The best interests of the child cannot be compromised in this case. (…) This is about the constitutionally established protection of children and minors!” — Winfried Bausback, Bavarian lawmaker who helped draft the law against child marriage.

“We should consider one more thing: judgments are made ‘in the name of the people.’ This people has clearly expressed through its representatives in the Bundestag that it no longer wants to recognize child marriage.” — Commentator Andreas von Delhaes-Guenther.

The Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH), Germany’s highest court of civil and criminal jurisdiction, has ruled that a new law that bans child marriage is unconstitutional because all marriages, including Sharia-based child marriages, are protected by Germany’s Basic Law (Grundgesetz).

The ruling, which effectively opens the door to legalizing Sharia-based child marriages in Germany, is one of a growing number of instances in which German courts are — wittingly or unwittingly — promoting the establishment of a parallel Islamic legal system in the country.

The case involves a Syrian couple — a 14-year-old Syrian girl married to her 21-year-old cousin — who arrived in Germany at the height of the migrant crisis in August 2015. The Youth Welfare Office (Jugendamt) refused to recognize their marriage and separated the girl from her husband. When the husband filed a lawsuit, a family court in Aschaffenburg ruled in favor of the Youth Welfare Office, which claimed to be the girl’s legal guardian.

In May 2016, an appeals court in Bamberg overturned the decision. The court ruled that the marriage was valid because it was contracted in Syria, where, according to Sharia law, child marriages are allowed. The ruling effectively legalized Sharia child marriages in Germany.

The ruling — described as a “crash course in Syrian Islamic marriage law” — ignited a firestorm of criticism. Some accused the Bamberg court of applying Sharia law over German law to legalize a practice banned in Germany.

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/islamist-militants-operate-in-congo-amidst-second-largest-ebola-outbreak-ever/

The North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo is the hot zone of the second largest Ebola outbreak in history.

It’s also the operating ground of the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Uganda-based militant group that some reports have tied to the Islamic State.

Since the Ebola outbreak was declared in early August, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that ADF activity, including taking aid workers hostage, is imperiling international efforts to contain the outbreak.

According to a report on the current outbreak from Congo’s Health Ministry, there have been 336 deaths so far out of 560 recorded cases.

That means there have been 56 new cases since WHO published this trend graph tracking the outbreak two weeks ago:

WHO estimates that the current outbreak will last another three to four months.

One of the most active areas for the Ebola outbreak has been Oicha, which is in the Beni region. But ADF is killing just as many civilians as Ebola is in the area now known as the “triangle of death.”

At attack by ADF in Oicha two weeks ago killed nine. In the past month, 48 have been killed in the area, and more than 1,000 have been killed in recent years.

As a result of these attacks, UN estimates say that more than one million people in the area have been displaced and are in transit between the Congo and Uganda, Rwanda, and South Sudan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/backlash-in-budapest-11545091778?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=1&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

Hungary has moved in an anti-democratic direction since Viktor Orban returned to power in 2010. But the protests in Budapest in recent days are a reminder that he hasn’t dragged all of his countrymen along with his program.

The demonstrations began Wednesday after the National Assembly, where Mr. Orban’s Fidesz Party has a two-thirds majority, passed labor legislation that critics call the “slave law.” It lets businesses ask employees to work up to 400 overtime hours annually, up from 250. The legislation also gives employers more time to settle overtime payments.

Hungary isn’t welcoming to immigrants, many of its most-qualified workers leave for better-paying work elsewhere in Europe, and its roughly 1.5 births per woman is one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. All of this has led to a severe labor shortage, and liberalizing overtime laws is a good economic idea. But the measure is opposed even by nearly two-thirds of Mr. Orban’s supporters.

The Assembly also created new administrative courts to handle government matters like taxes and elections. The government says the courts will be independent, but Mr. Orban’s Justice Minister oversees them.

Freezing temperatures haven’t been enough to deter thousands of Hungarians from marching against these measures. They see a threat to their democracy, especially given Mr. Orban’s bad record on press freedom and the rule of law. Mr. Orban effectively has forced Central European University, an American institution founded by financier George Soros, to leave the country by next year. The ruling party has also dealt harshly with media critics while overseeing free but unfair elections.

Like the Yellow Vest protests in France, the demonstrations in Budapest started over a particular policy. But they’ve unified a disparate opposition and become a broader critique of Mr. Orban’s heavy-handed rule. Some protesters have turned violent and thrown smoke grenades. Security forces retaliated with tear gas, but the government acknowledges lawful demonstrators have a right to assemble.

Mr. Orban isn’t bending on the policies. His bet may be that he can ride out the protesters the way he has objections from the European Union to his limits on press freedom. The protests are a signal that Hungary’s voters don’t want their country to follow the authoritarian path of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cost-of-betraying-syrias-kurds-11545350401

I returned this year from military service in northeastern Syria, where the U.S. has supported local Kurdish, Arab and Syriac Christian militias in a grim campaign to dislodge Islamic State. Now refugees are returning to their homes, and locals are starting to rebuild after five years of fighting and nightmarish ISIS rule. In most places I was greeted by civilians thankful for the U.S. presence. I’ll never forget the little girl who ran up in a recently liberated market town and hugged my leg, refusing to let go.

But this fragile rose blooming in the desert will likely be crushed if the U.S. departs.

With peace finally in sight, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last week threatened to invade northern Syria and “cleanse” the region of our Kurdish partners. After a phone call with Mr. Erdogan, President Trump tweeted that the U.S. may soon pull all 2,000 troops from Syria. The best way for the U.S. to avoid dishonor and calamity is to walk back this policy shift and publicly commit to safeguarding its Kurdish partners until a durable peace agreement can be reached.

The U.S. and the West have quietly relied on the Syrian Kurds to sacrifice their young men and women by the thousands to defeat the Islamic State. Thanks largely to their efforts, ISIS in Syria has gone from a fearsome juggernaut to a ragged band of die-hards trapped in a shrinking patch of wasteland.

The partnership dates to 2014, when the Kurds mounted an inspiring last-ditch defense of Kobani against ISIS’ advance. The Kurds could have halted and focused on consolidating their own territory, but at America’s urging they expanded their effort against ISIS. In a coalition with Arabs and Syriacs of the Euphrates River Valley, they’ve swept south to dislodge ISIS from one-third of Syria.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/12/31/france-afire/

The ‘Yellow Vests’ torch cars as President Macron decrees happiness

Returning to England from France, I happened to find in an antiquarian bookshop a pamphlet titled “The Great Week in Paris.” It began:

The events which have taken place in Paris have been so extraordinary, that it would require the pen of a Gibbon to give them a suitable colour.

The writer described the situation in France as follows:

There are among the first ranks of society men . . . who sentimentally adhere to those rotten branches of a decayed trunk! some from habit, others from gratitude for past favours, and many from a consciousness of their total unfitness to figure in the new order of things.

Plus ça change: The great week in Paris referred to in the pamphlet, by an eyewitness to it, was in 1830, the week in which the unpopular monarch, Charles X, was overthrown by revolution. A man who sometimes works for me in my house in la France profonde calls President Macron “Napoleon the Fourth,” though perhaps “Charles the Eleventh” would be as apt.

General dissatisfaction is in the air, and it is not because of the levels of carbon dioxide in it. Millions of Frenchmen are far more concerned with their pouvoir d’achat (their purchasing power), which has risen very little in the last ten years and may actually be declining, than with allegedly saving the planet by reducing carbon emissions — unlike the Parisian elite.

The elected monarch’s concerns seem to them exactly the opposite of those of most Frenchmen: First he reduced the speed limit on France’s excellent but mainly empty rural roads from 90 to 80 kilometers per hour, to many people’s intense irritation, and then he increased taxes on fuel, particularly diesel. You have to be rich these days in France to be able to live without a car, and it is not long since the government encouraged the population to buy the diesel vehicles that it now wants to eliminate for supposedly ecological reasons. This strikes much of the population, which is struggling to maintain its standard of living, as let-them-eat-cake-ish in spirit.