RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://standpointmag.co.uk/outsiders-diary-december-2018-douglas-murray-vienna

The Sappho Prize is an award given annually by the Free Press Society of Denmark, and as I remarked on receiving it recently, it has sometimes seemed as though I am the only person I know who hasn’t received it. But it is a terrific honour, awarded by a very brave and stalwart group of Danes who got together to uphold the principles of free expression in their country after these came under attack in 2005. One of the upsides about free-speech wars is that you can never particularly predict where your heroes will break out. And for me a whole collection of them showed up in Scandinavia.

Apart from being friends, the list of previous recipients is also a list of some of my favourite people. Mark Steyn received it some years ago and gave a brilliant speech, the only downside of which was that he used up every available joke that a chap can make on receiving a prize named after history’s most famous lesbian. When Flemming Rose and Roger Scruton received the award they made no lesbian jokes, Melanie Phillips even fewer. But since the award was named after Sappho for her voice as a poet, I was proud to quote her own words during my acceptance speech. As it happened, I had picked up a copy of her works between visiting refugee camps during the migration crisis. Since I had inscribed my copy “Molivos, Lesbos, 2016”, and the award was in part a recognition of the book I wrote as a result of those travels, the ceremony in the Danish Parliament really did feel meant. As there was a cash component to the prize, I quoted Sappho’s fragment 120: “Wealth without virtue is / a harmful companion; / but a mixture of both, / the happiest friendship.”

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This past month also took me back to Vienna — one of my favourite cities, in part because of the mixture of emotions it provokes. The first is obviously the layer of feeling that nowhere is better than this, and that this is as good as any built city can get. Then there are the whiffs of the scene that was once there. A couple of years ago I was going with a friend around an exhibition with some Schiele, Klimt and others. Did she ever wonder, I asked, whether things couldn’t get as good as this again? I remember her almost laughing. Of course they couldn’t. A city which had Mahler, Freud and Zweig around at the same time — just for starters — seemed unlikely to be bettered in any conceivable future.

http://standpointmag.co.uk/manchester-square-december-2018-daniel-johnson-europe-destiny

Emerging from the summit that set the EU seal on Theresa May’s deal, Angela Merkel described Brexit as “tragic”. Normally a tragedy implies some kind of necessity or inevitability. Yet there was nothing unavoidable about the predicament in which the United Kingdom now finds itself. The EU leaders insist that it was the British people, manipulated by lying populists, who chose Brexit and must now face up to the “exorbitant” cost of their decision. But in reality the British were left with little choice, after the EU ignored their concerns and set a course that can only make the “democratic deficit” burgeon into bureaucratic bankruptcy.

The European project was always a perpetual motion machine for the insatiable accumulation of powers, whose engineers jealously watch over the acquis communautaire like dragons guarding their hoard. In the absence of British influence, the stage is set for a display of full-scale Euro-triumphalism in the Valhalla of Brussels — followed in due course by Götterdämmerung, as the euro goes up in flames and they are overwhelmed by a flood of migration.

Lest such Wagnerian metaphors seem extravagant, consider the case of Angela Merkel. Not only are the German Chancellor and her husband votaries of the Master, but she has lately begun making repeated references to Schicksal (“Fate” or “Destiny”) in her speeches about Europe. Most recently, in her address to the European Parliament, she implicitly warned against dependence on the United States in defence and security: “The times when we could rely on others without reservation are over.” She went on, in more mystical vein: “That means we Europeans have to take our destiny in our own hands if we want to survive as a community.”

What exactly “destiny” signifies here is still obscure, but Mrs Merkel has reiterated this sentiment so many times that it clearly means a great deal to her. Europe, for those who love its history and culture, really does have a cosmic importance that goes far beyond politics.

In some profound sense, the cityscapes and landscapes of this continent belong to all of us who adhere to the civilisation of the West. A cultural memory is embodied in the stones of Venice, the ruins of Athens, the boulevards of Paris that is not exclusively the property of those who happen to live here and now, but rather connects past and future generations too. It has become more fashionable to denounce the legacy that we may bequeath than to reflect at what cost our forebears fought to preserve our civilisation. When we ponder the plight of posterity, we ignore at our peril the ordeals of our ancestry.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/a-tax-revolt-in-france/

The democratic peoples of the West have tired of the politics of the sensible center and are demanding change.

Finally, France has a bona fide working-class riot. Rather than the usual, a riot of bourgeois students on behalf of a notional working class.

They are wearing the yellow vests that all motorists are required to possess in case their car is disabled. The protest began with outrage against the imposition of new fuel taxes that hit those outside the metropolis particularly hard. The government has already delayed the taxes, but people are still in the streets, and their grievances are multiplying.

French truckers and farmers are calling a strike in support of the Yellow Vests. The Macron government is seeking out “leaders” who can speak for this movement, and with whom it can negotiate. This is French politics as we know, love, and fear it; where faith in the efficacy of democratic institutions is low, and faith in demotic anger somewhat higher.

Finally, a Color Revolution comes to a Western government, one that is definitely not supported by or coordinated from the U.S. State Department.

Oh, I know that is quite a thing to say. But what else to call the Yellow Vest protest? Like the Color Revolutions of Eastern Europe, it is now a catch-all brand for a variety of causes being advanced against a centralized state that is felt to be unresponsive. You can get a sense of the panic from a Guardian editorial that begins, “For Europe’s sake, Emmanuel Macron needs help.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-commonwealth-option/

With the Brexit issue coming to a head next week when Parliament formally considers PM Theresa May’s Draft Withdrawal Agreement, a number of leading British conservatives and allies — including former NR director Robert Agostinelli and acclaimed historian Andrew Roberts — penned a letter, a version of which was published by the Telegraph, calling for MPs to vote against the agreement (“put it out of its misery”) and instead support a “Super Canada” option. The complete and original version of the letter follows:

The Prime Minister’s proposed Brexit deal has been discussed in detail, and to describe it would replicate the excellent work of many journalists. However, we feel that it has broad and historical implications for the UK’s future relationship with the World, especially our traditional allies in the Commonwealth (and Anglosphere)

Britain is facing a stark choice between two paths.

One path leads to stasis, where the expressed will of the people is delayed indefinitely, and the nation lacks the tools of statecraft necessary to forge a renewed partnership with Europe outside the political structures of the European Union, as well as to pursue new partnerships with our traditional and cultural allies and the world beyond.

Another path leads to a mutually respectful accord with Europe, respect for the democratic process as expressed on June 23, 2016, as well as the opportunity to help build the foundation of a new globalisation – one more resilient, equitable and responsive than its predecessor.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/12/justin_trudeaus_canada_embraces_a_world_without_borders.html

The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to sign the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration at an intergovernmental meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, on December 10, 2018.

Few Canadians are aware of what this UN Global Compact represents; even fewer have been consulted, and without any mandate except for a parliamentary majority, Justin Trudeau is committed in signing Canada into an agreement with far-reaching consequences — not only for Canadians. Canada agreeing to abide by the agreement will also have consequences for Americans, as among migrants entering Canada might well be those intending to sneak into the United States across the world’s longest open border.

The UN Global Compact spells out, in 34 pages of fine print, requirements for member-states to adopt as policy accommodating unfettered mass migration from the global South to the North.

Human migration is as old as human history. But in modern times, especially in the period following the end of the Second World War, resulting in massive dislocation of the European population, settlement of migrants was arranged and conducted by national governments with support of their citizens. The Global Compact, instead, is a UN top-down arrangement to deal with the migration problem turned into the most disruptive global crisis in recent years. This time, the crisis is the result of the massive failure of UN-engineered policies of socio-economic development of post-colonial societies in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America.

What we have witnessed since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the end of the Cold War in 1992, is a spike in wars, genocide, failed states, and terrorism. These have cumulatively resulted in mass migration as an escape from the collective failure of people in those countries to build and administer an orderly society, despite trillions of aid dollars provided by countries of the North, directly or through the UN agencies.

And despite this record of the failure of UN-driven development policies, the UN remains insistent on demanding more of the same in its 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Global Compact is a critical part of this agenda, based on the notion that “Migration contributes to positive development outcomes.”

There is little or no evidence of migration from the global South providing for positive development in the developing countries of that global South. Instead, the Global Compact turns migration into a human rights issue and confers “rights” on migrants that are the same as those of the citizens of the host countries, “rights” those governments are obliged to “respect, protect and fulfil.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/isis-finds-a-niche-in-northern-iraq-1544053966

Makhmur District, Iraq

The Qara Chokh mountain range in northern Iraq is remote, parched and inhospitable. That’s what makes it attractive to the core of Islamic State, which has survived the four-year U.S.-led war against its caliphate. ISIS is now regrouping near here and in similar hard-to-reach corners of Iraq and Syria. The terror group isn’t finished.

“It’s more than 15 years that there is al Qaeda here,” says Lt. Col. Surood Barzanji, an officer of the Kurdish Peshmerga’s 14th Brigade, currently tasked by the Kurdish Regional Government with maintaining security in the mountain area. “They changed their name to Daesh”—the Arabic acronym for ISIS—“and now there is another one coming. A new one.” We look across the Hussein al-Ghazi Pass toward an imposing warren of caves where, he says, ISIS fighters are living. Two miles away, the first checkpoints of the Iraqi Security Forces are visible. In the no man’s land between Kurdish and Iraqi forces, Islamic State finds its niche.

Later, in a Peshmerga briefing room on the mountain, Col. Barzanji traces the route ISIS men use to reach their haven in the caves. It begins on the western side of the Tigris River, south of Mosul around the town of Hamam Alil. This region of Iraq is known to local residents, Peshmerga and Arab fighters alike as “Kandahar”—like the famously violent province of Afghanistan—because of the strength of support there for the Sunni jihadist cause.

“They cross the Tigris and they head southeast,” says Col. Barzanji, “passing through the villages here” via the Great Zab river and finally to the sanctuary of the Qara Chokh caves. “The villages along the way were Daesh supporters. One place, Tel al-Reem, there’s nine emirs”—commanders—“from Daesh that came from there. So the fighters pass through those areas and the villagers leave food for them. They come through on foot or on motorcycles.”

Once in the caves on the steep mountain, the fighters are relatively safe. Finding water is their main challenge. Iraqi forces have poisoned the one natural well, limiting the number of men able to live there.

Efforts to flush the jihadists out continue. Coalition aircraft strafed the mountain a day before our arrival, firing 12 rockets. Four ISIS members were killed and a pickup truck destroyed in another coalition airstrike here on Nov. 14. On Oct. 31, according to the coalition media office, some 20 ISIS fighters were killed on the mountain following airstrikes and a ground assault by Iraqi special-operations forces. But the jihadists remain, moving back and forth from the caves through the friendly villages and the countryside. In early November they set off an improvised explosive device near the mountain, killing four Iraqi federal policemen.

Qara Chokh is only one district in what some observers call ISIS’ “mountain state.” A recent report from the Institute for the Study of War found ISIS maintains similar networks of support and de facto control in the Hamrin Mountains in Diyala Province, the Hawija District, eastern Salah al-Din Province, Daquq and south of Mosul city—all in Iraq’s central Sunni heartland.

The report, entitled “ISIS’ Second Resurgence,” puts the number of fighters available to Islamic State in Iraq and Syria at 30,000. It also estimates that ISIS has smuggled as much as $400 million out of Iraq and invested it across the region. The terror group’s traditional revenue generators, including kidnapping, extortion and drug smuggling, still continue within Syria and Iraq. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/sweden-liberalism-jews/

For anyone curious to see just how ugly ultraliberalism can get, Sweden is the ideal case study. The deep presence of anti-Semitism in Sweden reveals that the country’s image as a near perfect liberal democracy is false. So serious is the problem that the country is in dire need of a national anti-Semitism commissioner who can point out the threats coming from neo-Nazis and Muslims, the flaws of the police and the justice system, and other failures of the authorities to deal with anti-Semitism. But Sweden’s purported love of free speech is unlikely to extend so far as to give a mouthpiece to such a person.

In this century, only one Jewish community in all of western Europe has decided to dissolve itself because of nonstop threats from neo-Nazis: the community in the town of Umea, in northeastern Sweden. Jews in Sweden account for less than 0.2% of the population, but they are the targets of profound hatred. This does not comport very well with Sweden’s image as a near-perfect liberal democracy.

Major anti-Semitic threats to Swedish Jews have come out of parts of the Muslim community. In 2017, a movie was shown on Bavarian television about the visit to Malmö, Sweden’s third-largest city, by the German Jewish author Henryk Broder and the Egyptian writer Hamad Abdel Samad. They met several local Jews, including the town’s American rabbi. He told them the shrinking community had installed bullet-proof windows at the synagogue, but even that precaution didn’t keep them safe. A bomb went off in front of the synagogue and another was thrown into the chapel of the Jewish cemetery, which was totally destroyed. The rabbi himself is regularly harassed when walking on the street. Objects thrown at him have included an apple, a lighter, a glass, and a bottle. In an indication of the lack of police control, when Broder and Samad came to Malmö, they were told by police not to open the windows of their car when they were driving through a Muslim neighborhood.

The number of complaints about hate crimes in Malmö reached a record in 2010 and 2011. It did not lead to any convictions.