RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271349/playing-hardball-hungary-bruce-bawer

Criticize the government of Viktor Orban, prime minister of Hungary since 2010, all you like. But the European Union’s despotic and disgraceful attempt to bring him to heel, which came to a head with a vote in the European Parliament on September 12, has nothing whatsoever to do with the purported “erosion of democracy” in his country.

First, let it be said that the vote itself was a result of a report by Judith Sargentini, a Dutch MEP who belongs to her country’s GreenLeft Party. In the report, Sargentini accused Hungary of “a serious breach…of the values on which the Union is founded,” namely “the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights.” She proceeded to reel off dozens of complaints about the way things work in Hungary.

For example: “Patriarchal stereotyped attitudes still prevail in Hungary with respect to the position of women in society.” (Well, yes, compared to the Netherlands.) She accused Hungarian authorities of prejudice against Roma, or gypsies, because an inordinate percentage of gypsy children are placed in special-education classes. (She gave no indication of entertaining the possibility that the children in question might actually require such classes.) Another grievance was the domination of Hungary’s media by pro-government voices. (As if you couldn’t say the same thing about the media in much of Western Europe.)

Sargentini also cited Orban’s supposed interference with academic freedom. In fact, when Orban took power, many of Hungary’s universities were so insular and ill-managed that the government had to step in and appoint competent rectors; meanwhile some of the new colleges that sprung up in post-Communist Hungary were shady, unaccredited foreign rackets that required oversight and regulation. Last month, the Hungarian government proposed a ban on gender studies, arguing that they were valueless on the job market. You may regard this either as an inappropriate violation of ivory-tower autonomy or as a sane and practical response to inane developments in higher education.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/haley-russian-corruption-is-like-a-virus-could-sicken-un-security-council/

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley tore into Russia at the UN Security Council today for blocking a report showing that the Kremlin and Beijing are “actively working” to undermine the sanctions regime against North Korea.

Haley said the U.S. sought the briefing for “the chance to examine the difference between words and deeds” and to see whether the Security Council’s “efforts to eliminate North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs are being honored and enforced and, if not, why.”

Russia voted for sanctions, she noted, and now wants to ease sanctions on the Kim regime as it wants to pursue economic projects in North Korea. “The question one should ask is why? Why, after voting for sanctions eleven different times, is Russia now backing away from them? We know the answer. It is because Russia has been cheating. And now they’ve been caught,” Haley declared.

“Despite its repeated support for UN sanctions, Russia is actively working to undermine the enforcement of the Security Council’s sanctions on North Korea. Its violations are not one-offs. They are systematic,” she added. “Russia has not simply looked the other way as its nationals and entities engage in activities explicitly prohibited by UN sanctions. Russia has engaged in a concerted campaign in the Security Council to cover up violations of sanctions, whether they’re committed by Russia or citizens of other states.”

Haley said the U.S. “has evidence of consistent and wide-ranging Russian violations” that “should offend every current and former member of the Security Council who knows how difficult it was to gain passage of these sanctions.”

“And it should offend every country that has felt the looming threat of North Korean nuclear weapons,” she added.

One example, she said, was a Russian vessel filmed in April conducting a ship-to-ship transfer of oil with a North Korean tanker.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/south_africa_weve_seen_this_sort_of_chaos_before.html

Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Zaire/Congo, Bangladesh, Angola, Mozambique, Somalia. All victims to the bloody rise of communism in Africa.

To paraphrase Agent Smith of The Matrix: “You hear that, South Africa? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death. Goodbye, South Africa.”

There appears to be no stopping the descent. And as S.A. goes, so goes the continent.

Dave Blount posts an eye-opening piece on the current status of S.A. in his blog, Moonbattery.

The tragedy unfolding in South Africa is relevant to all of us because it indicates the fate of the West in general if political and demographic trends continue. However, few people in the USA have any understanding of South Africa and its history other than the narrative the liberal media hammered through people’s heads during its campaign to bring down Apartheid.

He cites horrific details of brutal torture, rape, and murder of white citizens (primarily farmers in the north regions) at the hands of black mobs that are rarely brought to justice by the socialist ANC government. The S.A. constitution is in the process of being revised to allow the government to seize any lands owned by white farmers without compensation, which will inevitably lead to greater bloodshed. Dave further reports:

Seventy-one percent of children live in households where no one is employed. Fewer work than receive welfare. Democracy under these circumstances is a dysfunctional form of slavery. The state is failing. The straightforward communism that Apartheid defended against is only a step away.

You can’t bring this topic up in public, as you will be branded a racist and a liar for lying about the black-on-white violence in S.A. Everyone is getting along fine there, you see. None of the leftist news outlets report any of this, so lefties don’t believe that it is happening. The media won’t touch the forbidden topics of failing socialism, rising communism, and black racism.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brexit-dilemmas-top-agenda-at-eus-salzburg-summit-1537144448

European Union leaders will hold their first serious discussions on Brexit since March at a summit in Austria on Thursday as both the U.K. and the rest of the bloc step up preparations to reduce major economic disruptions if a deal isn’t reached.

On the face of it, negotiators are advancing toward an agreement that must be settled, drafted and ratified before Britain leaves the bloc next March 29. In reality, progress toward a deal has been minimal since April.

The informal gathering of EU leaders in Salzburg—the first of three likely summits over as many months at which Brexit will be discussed—has been preceded by warm words from the EU side, and British Prime Minister Theresa May could hear more of them once she gets there.

EU leaders are aware that Mrs. May is under pressure from anti-EU lawmakers in her Conservative Party. That has intensified after a proposal for future relations with the EU was agreed by her cabinet in July at the prime minister’s country retreat at Chequers, prompting the resignation of two prominent ministers. European leaders want to help Mrs. May ahead of a Conservative party annual conference starting Sept. 30, hoping to ward off more British political chaos that could further set back negotiations.

Behind the scenes, however, many in the EU say Mrs. May’s proposal—which aims to give British firms frictionless access to the EU market in goods—is unacceptable.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/the_european_union_would_love_to_control_your_internet_use.html

Imagine an internet in which users can’t freely blog, parody, share material, or remix content – an online experience in which linking, code-sharing, and the unfettered use of art and images would be nearly impossible due to legal limitations. Unfortunately, this scenario – a restrictive internet culture – may soon be a reality in the European Union with the recent passage of the European Unions Copyright Directive. This new E.U. decree, which includes provisions for filtering and surveillance, could have a chilling effect on internet creativity and innovation, potentially increase censorship, and impose new market barriers for businesses worldwide.

The new regulations were originally proposed two years ago as part of the E.U.’s Digital Single Market policy that applies to 28 E.U. member-states and the four non-E.U. states of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland. Essentially, it could have a global impact on non-E.U. countries across the world similar to the effect of the E.U.’s 2016 E.U.-wide data protection rules created under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR took effect in May this year and standardized data protection laws and set guidelines on controlling personally identifiable data. The Copyright Directive imposes requirements that will change the way netizens interface with online content by imposing mandatory upload filtering, a link tax, and certain prohibitions on user-generated content in public spaces. It requires online platforms to implement privacy-killing filtering systems that will ban content usage under the justification of copyright protections. Platforms will be held liable for copyright infringement and fines that could threaten their economic viability. To add to the confusion, the directive is just that, a suggestion, so each E.U. and non-E.U. party must create its own interpretation of the laws. The result could be that all 28 E.U. member-states have their own separate definition of what part of a link can be used and copyrighted.

As part of the proposed Copyright Directive, bots, applications that run automated tasks, will act as censors and arbitrarily decide what content can be accessed and shared or even deleted without the consent of the intended user. No technology will exist to distinguish between the outright copying of material and various forms of commentary. Under the E.U. directive, revenue streams could be claimed by publishers for small amounts of information, even tables, headlines, or images. Uploading of research articles from online repositories will be forbidden, and non-profit education services and universities will have to obtain copyright licenses and install filters. All data, research papers, and articles will exist behind a virtual paywall. Articles for submission will need to be scanned for potential copyright violations. Exemptions are proposed for research carried out “in the public interest,” but how that will be defined and who will be making those decisions are uncertain. Exemptions could easily be decided along political lines, amounting to a form of point-of-view censorship.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/trump_pulls_back_the_shroud_on_south_africa.html

Loathe or admire the apprentice who became the president, all owe a debt to Donald Trump. Upon telling his secretary of state to home in on fears that Mandela’s legatees had declared open season on white farmers and farmland, the habituated tweeter provoked his opposite number to defend what, to many, seems gutter politics.

If a road to Hell is paved with good intentions, another road going to the same venue is paved with bad intentions. It’s the road South Africa is on. Manipulators of a penniless mass may drum into them having been dealt a derisory thin edge of the wedge. Do the poor want to go on being pushed around and exploited? Are they content with being homeless and landless? Do they want the white Boers to harvest their lavish gift, the farmlands God meant indigenous people to have and to hold? Do they like being knocked over with a sneeze, or do they want to command respect? Victims may take back what is theirs by right.

The rabble-rousers are half-correct, which is a problem. Under colonial Britain and then Apartheid, South African blacks were displaced; whites did fill the gap. Agriculture thrived, and the Boer farmer lived off the lap of the land. The constitution of 1996 allowed for restitution. Land taken, unjustly by the whites, would be returned. There’d be a more equitable distribution of it in the future. Promises failed to happen, or nowhere near fast enough for a foot-stomping black majority. The Boer villain took the blame; so did black leaders (e.g., the godly Mandela on his plinth) for wanting to reconcile with the privileged whites. Again the instigators of violence make half a case. Land reform was sold to blacks as reward for voting the ANC and allies into the seats of power. Politics what it is, the lining of pockets came first, keeping promises a distant third or fourth or fifth.

But the instigators of trouble and strife are also half-wrong, and that makes another problem. A poll by the South African Institute of Race Relations found that a snippet, a mere 1% of black people see “speeding up land reform” as a top priority. The other 99% don’t want to be farmers. Even the rural poor prefer to live and work and own some real estate in the cities.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12960/greece-people-smuggling

Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI) describes itself as a “Greek nonprofit organization that provides emergency response and humanitarian aid in times of crisis….” It has reportedly abetted the illegal entry into Greece of 70,000 immigrants since 2015, providing the “nonprofit” with half a billion euros per year.
ECRI evidently received 2,000 euros from each illegal immigrant it helped to enter Greece. In addition, its members created a business for “integrating refugees” into Greek society, granting it 5,000 euros per immigrant per year from various government programs (in education, housing and nutrition).
With the government of Greece seemingly at a loss as to how to handle its refugee crisis and safeguard the security of its citizens, it is particularly dismaying to discover that the major NGO whose mandate is to provide humanitarian aid to immigrants is instead profiting from smuggling them.

On August 28, thirty members of the Greek NGO Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI) were arrested for their involvement in a people-smuggling network that has been operating on the island of Lesbos since 2015. According to a statement released by Greek police, as a result of the investigation that led to the arrests, “The activities of an organised criminal network that systematically facilitated the illegal entry of foreigners were fully exposed.”

Among the activities uncovered were forgery, espionage and the illegal monitoring of both the Greek coastguard and the EU border agency, Frontex, for the purpose of gleaning confidential information about Turkish refugee flows. The investigation also led to the discovery of an additional six Greeks and 24 foreign nationals implicated in the case.