RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-netanyahu-go-to-riyadh-11546804745

Don’t be surprised if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu soon visits Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

The Trump administration has worked for nearly two years to get Riyadh and Jerusalem openly working together. Crown Prince Mohammed loves risk and is eager to turn the page from the Jamal Khashoggi murder. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Mideast trip this week seems choreographed for a dramatic finale starring the crown prince.

The U.S. stage managers are in place: National security adviser John Bolton landed in Israel Saturday, and Mr. Pompeo arrives Wednesday in Amman, Jordan, the first of eight Arab capitals he’ll visit in as many days. He plans to deliver a major speech in Cairo and to visit Riyadh early next week.

Mr. Pompeo’s trip is intended to underscore that far from fading out of the Middle East, the U.S. is leading a broad coalition against Iran. The linchpins of the effort are Israel and Saudi Arabia, which share a fear of Iranian expansionism and are the closest U.S. allies in the region. They have maintained informal but not-so-secret contacts, sharing intelligence on their common nemesis. Why not make it official?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13501/eu-brexit-self-harm

Irish PM Varadkar has made an Irish joke out of Ireland by his own opposition to changing the “backstop.” To claim that an easily removable obstacle that will gravely harm Ireland provides essential protection to Ireland may not be the funniest joke in Irish history, but it is a good candidate for becoming the most expensive one.

As the resumption of the Brexit debate looms in the House of Commons, it is reported that the European Commission is haughtily retaining its refusal to consider any revision to the Withdrawal Agreement (WA); this attitude is also backed by the numerous leaders of European Union countries whom UK PM Theresa May has contacted. Those leaders assume that, like most of them themselves, the UK will eventually grovel before the Commission and accept its dictate.

The European leaders are too young, perhaps, to remember that most of their countries would have become German dominions and satellites if the UK had not refused to grovel to Hitler in July 1940 after the Fall of France, fighting on alone in Europe and North Africa. As Germany discovered later that its misjudgment of the UK would end with the devastation of Germany, today the UK is preparing resolutely for a no-deal Brexit that will cost it dearly, but the EU more dearly.

For one thing, the European Commissioner for Budget and Human Resources, Günther Oettinger, warned on December 27 in an interview with the Westfälische Rundschau that EU members will have to pay up if the UK saves itself the estimated €42 billion that it would owe the EU according to the provisions of the WA. Merely in 2019, Germany itself would have to pay about half a billion euros extra (“ein mittlerer dreistelliger Millionenbetrag”). As for himself, he is planning to leave the European Commission for the private sector in the spring, that is, about the time when the UK is scheduled to leave the EU (March 29).

The source of the trouble (if anyone still does not know) lies in one part of the WA, the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, the so-called “backstop.” It provides for a “temporary” customs union between the UK and the EU in the case that negotiations between the two parties on the Future Relationship have not finished by the end of 2020 (the date specified in the WA). The purpose of the “backstop” is allegedly to guarantee a fundamental interest of the Irish Republic: that there should not be a “hard border” between it and Northern Ireland, when the latter leaves the EU along with the rest of the UK.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13500/france-in-free-fall

French officials evidently understand that the terrorists are engaged in a long war and that it will be difficult to stop them; so they seem to have given in. These officials are no doubt aware that young French Muslims are being radicalized in increasing numbers. The response, however, has been to strengthen Muslim institutions in France.

At the time President Macron was speaking, one of his emissaries was in Morocco to sign the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which defines immigration as “beneficial” for the host countries. Under it, signatory states pledge to “strengthen migrant-inclusive service delivery systems.”

A group of retired generals published an open letter, saying that signing the Global Compact was a further step towards “the abandonment of national sovereignty” and noted that “80% of the French population think that immigration must be halted or regulated drastically”.

The author Éric Zemmour described the “yellow vests” revolt as the result of the “despair of people who feel humiliated, forgotten, dispossessed of their own country by the decisions of a contemptuous caste”.

Strasbourg, France. Christmas market. December 11th, 8pm. A man shouting, “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”) shoots at passersby, then wounds several with a knife. He murders three people on the spot and wounds a dozen others, some severely. Two will later die of their wounds. The murderer escapes. Two days later, the police shoot him dead.

He was known to the police. When members of the General Directorate of Internal Security and some gendarmes came to his home a few hours earlier, he had escaped. Although they knew he was an armed and dangerous Islamist ready to act, and that Christmas markets had been, and could be, likely targets, no surveillance was in place.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13499/iran-schizophrenia

The Khomeinist revolution in Iran has failed to “export” its model to a single country, while making Iran poorer and more vulnerable than it had been under the Shah.

The political schizophrenia gives the impression that one is dealing with two Irans: one Iran as a state and another as a revolution. The good news is that, perhaps out of necessity, a new political culture is taking shape inside Iran, one that instinctively links politics to concrete issues of real life rather than abstract notions linked to revolutionary utopias.

What millions of Iranians demand is a restoration of the authority of their state which, in turn, requires, the closure of the revolutionary chapter.

As the leadership in Tehran prepares to mark the 40th anniversary of the Khomeinist revolution, a growing number of Iranians are wondering whether the time has come for their country to close that chapter and resume its historic path as a nation-state.

The need for Iran to move beyond the Khomeinist revolution was the theme of a seminar last month at Westminster University in London where the return of Iran as a nation-state was highlighted as an urgent need for regional peace and stability.

The Khomeinist revolution in Iran has failed to “export” its model to a single country, while making Iran poorer and more vulnerable than it had been under the Shah.

The main reason for this is that the Khomeinist revolution failed to create a new state structure with credible and efficient institutions. Unable to destroy the Iranian state as it had developed over some five centuries, the new Khomeinist rulers tried to duplicate it by creating parallel organs for exercising power.

https://spectator.us/europe-continent-high-vis-jackets/

The ‘yellow vest’ protests against President Emmanuel Macron that swept through Paris and other French cities last month have evoked overwhelming sympathy: 77 percent considered them justified, according to a poll for Le Figaro.

Even after Macron offered a budget-busting package of concessions to appease his critics, it was hard to silence the lacerating self-examination one undergoes after a soured romance: God, what was I thinking? Today, France’s café-goers wonder aloud how they could have voted so overwhelmingly two years ago for a president whom they disliked and disagreed with even at the time.

The simple answer is that Macron was running against Marine Le Pen, whose party, now called the National Rally, is a haven for the global economy’s déclassés. The more complicated answer is ‘Condorcet’s paradox’, named after the 18th-century marquis, philosopher, legislator, abolitionist and theorist of probability. Condorcet demonstrated that in any election that involves at least three people, as French multi-round contests do, the public’s real preference can be impossible to determine. People might like Mr Smith better than Mr Jones, Mr Jones better than Mr Brown, and Mr Brown better than Mr Smith — leaving the majority feeling cheated.

This May’s European elections, set to pit Macron’s Brussels-defending ‘establishment’ against the ‘ferment’ of Le Pen and various men-on-the-street, are a good bet to be the kind of election Condorcet would recognize. A recent poll found 30 percent of the public think well of Le Pen and 69 percent think ill of her. You might consider such numbers unimpressive. But in the present climate they make Le Pen the most popular major politician in the country, with twice the support Macron has.

Le Pen is skeptical of immigration, and European politics is still mostly about immigration. Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister and the most successful politician in Europe right now, is successful because he stopped the trafficking of African migrants in their hundreds of thousands from the Maghreb to the shores of Sicily. The traffickers have since moved their operations west, egged on by the grandstanding mayors of Spain’s coastal cities. Thus was the Spanish socialist party (PSOE) ousted from its impregnable-looking stronghold in Andalusia a few weeks ago. A new anti-immigration party, Vox, took 11 percent of the vote.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13376/european-court-human-wrongs

One might also wonder where, in the European Convention on Human Rights, “feelings” are mentioned. Following the court’s logic, would it be appropriate to cover the windows of steakhouses not to hurt the feelings of animal activists? Or only if they threatened to riot? Is the new ruling just a capitulation to extortionistic threats of violence?

The supposition seems to be, “If you had just kept quiet, these bad things (fill in the blank) would not be happening.” It is both a false premise — the “bad things” might have happened anyway, as they did, for example, when the Bataclan Theater in Paris or the Brussels airport were attacked — and it is a demand for enforced self-censorship. Moreover, who gets to decide who is accountable? Who watches the watchers?

How soon will the public be asked to stop other activities — drinking alcohol, men and women dancing together, ringing church bells, art that depicts the human image, separation of religion and state, and equal justice under the law for women, to name just a few — that also might hurt “religious feelings?”

Will the ECHR’s Grand Chamber — the only authority that could reverse the decision — correct this treacherous path?

October 26 marked a historic day for Ireland, where citizens, in a national referendum, overwhelmingly voted to repeal the country’s blasphemy law.

Blasphemy remains a serious offence in many parts of the world, in some Muslim countries even requiring the death penalty.

More astonishing is that even some European countries are criminalizing “defamation of religion”.

Recently, an actor was detained in Spain for failing to appear in court where he would face the accusation of “having insulted God and the Virgin Mary”.

The outcome of the Irish referendum will entail a modification of the Irish Constitution, which states in Article 40.6.1:

“The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.”

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2019/01/britains-islamic-demise-part-two.html

Here is the second part of Soeren Kern’s “Multiculturalism and the Transformation of Britain in 2018” for The Gatestone Institutefrom January 1st.

March 24. Seven men — Assad Hussain, 37, of Oxford; Kameer Iqbal, 39, of Oxford; Khalid Hussain, 38, of Oxford; Kamran Khan, 36, of Bolton; Moinul Islam, 41, of Oxford; Raheem Ahmed, 40 of Oxford; and Alladitta Yousaf, 48, of Oxford — were found guilty by Oxford Crown Court of grooming and sexually abusing teenage girls, aged between 13 and 15, “on a massive scale.” The gang was convicted of more than 20 offenses including rape and indecent assault.

March 27. Umar Ahmed Haque, a 25-year-old religion teacher from London, was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 25 years for preparing terrorist acts. He had planned to use guns and a car bomb to hit 30 targets including Big Ben in London. Haque also showed Islamic State beheading videos to 16 children at the Ripple Road Mosque in Barking, London. Mr. Justice Haddon-Cave said Haque groomed children to join a “mini militia,” unbeknownst to their parents who had paid for after-school classes at the mosque.

March 28. The supermarket chain Sainsbury’s apologized after a customer service officer, responding to a question about whether it sold non-halal Easter eggs, repliedthat all of its eggs were halal. That statement quickly generated anger on social media, with one Twitter user posting a picture of Easter eggs accompanied with the text: “Remember, boycott halal eggs. Don’t give in. Use Thornton’s.” Sainsbury’s later wrote: “Apologies my colleague gave out the incorrect information. None of our own brand chocolate eggs are halal certified. Really sorry for any confusion caused.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/yellow-vest-leader-arrested-signaling-crackdown-on-protests-11546523102

French authorities arrested a key “yellow vest” protester for organizing an unauthorized demonstration, signaling a crackdown on a movement that has upended the agenda of President Emmanuel Macron.

Police held Eric Drouet on Wednesday evening near the Champs-Élysées, the glitzy avenue that has become a magnet for protests by the yellow vests—or gilets jaunes—over the past two months. He was leading a commemoration of yellow vests who have died since the movement began, mainly hit by cars inadvertently as they protested at roundabouts around the country.

A truck driver from the Parisian suburbs, Mr. Drouet had created a Facebook page that sparked the antigovernment protests in November.

“The arrest and detention of Mr. Drouet is completely unjustified and arbitrary,” Mr. Drouet’s lawyer said in a statement Thursday.
The ‘yellow vest’ protests have become a national movement against President Emmanuel Macron and his government.

The coming weeks will test whether Mr. Macron’s government can stop the protests, which have slowed the French economy and are undermining his plans for a free-market overhaul of the country. Participation waned during the holiday season, but yellow vests are organizing new demonstrations this Saturday in Paris and elsewhere that appear set to attract thousands of people.

Hundreds of protesters continue to camp out at roundabouts across the countryside.

The first protest on Nov. 17 drew more than 250,000 people. While participation has fallen steadily since—dipping below 100,000 on recent weekends—the intensity of the demonstrations escalated sharply in early December. Rioting and clashes with police left some of the most upscale neighborhoods of Paris dotted with burning cars and shattered storefronts. Police have arrested thousands of protesters, straining the French justice system.

The government has struggled to contain the grass-roots movement, which has no organized leadership and has refused to declare demonstrations to the authorities as required by French law.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/01/03/iranians-willing-risk-lives-fleeing-france-britain/

Given the reaction in some quarters, over the past few weeks it’s at times felt as if no democracy has faced such a Persian threat since ancient Athens fought the battle of Marathon. Obviously the situation on the Channel is serious and we shouldn’t be complacent about border security. But the number of illegal migrants, purportedly Iranians, attempting to sail across to the UK has been small – and far lower than the huge numbers of legal migrants that arrive from the EU each year over which we have no control.

There has been another reaction, however: incredulity. To a certain type of Remainer, it is unimaginable that anyone would seek to cross the Channel to make their way to Britain. And yet here they are, hundreds of people trying to escape from France.

Migration was such a big issue in the referendum because our society’s flexibility and our economy’s strength have made us a magnet. Macron talks about getting France “on the move”, but its brutal level of youth unemployment is a reflection of the bureaucratic blocks to enterprise and job creation that have long hindered growth.

An entrepreneurial Iranian – or Frenchman – has a better chance of making it here than in any other European country. Our language is an attraction, too. Migrants, if they don’t speak it already, regard learning English as more useful than picking up Italian or Greek.

It’s a separate question whether we want them to come, but it is interesting that so many of these migrants claim to be Iranian. Accounts of what is wrong in Iran tend to focus on the intolerance of the Islamic Republic towards Christians and other minorities, its restrictive policies towards women, and its authoritarian clerical regime.

However, what really threatens the Ayatollahs is their failure to kickstart an economy stifled by cronyism. President Rouhani was presented as a fresh face who would reinvigorate the economy. Now he looks more like an Iranian Macron, responsible for a makeover without substance.