RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/viktor-orban-isnt-the-illiberal-revolutionary-you-think-he-is/

A first-time visitor to Hungary could be excused for thinking he’d arrived at an intensely religious country. In Budapest, the spires of several churches are visible from either bank of the Danube, and the Hungarian double cross is proudly emblazoned across the nation’s ubiquitous coat of arms.

Hungarians are rightly proud of their religious heritage. But such sentiment should not be confused with genuine spiritual conviction. Few people regularly attend religious services, the country’s historic Roman Catholic and Calvinist Churches are shedding adherents, and Hungary’s public square is notably secular. Religious holidays have been absorbed into a broader celebration of Hungarian culture that retains the trappings of Christianity without much in the way of substance. Christmas markets, not Midnight Mass, are the order of the day.

Against this increasingly secularized backdrop, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has famously endorsed “illiberal democracy,” a vaguely defined political project that is partly aimed at shoring up Hungary’s Christian identity. Orbán’s ambitious political agenda has at least one thing in common with Hungary’s historic churches: both are impressive edifices that conceal a hollow core.

Orbán’s recent speech in Romania, supposedly the most concrete explanation yet of what “illiberal democracy” might look like, was just a banal restatement of principles that no center-right party in the United States or Western Europe could possibly object to. Orbán will almost certainly continue to be a hero to right-wing populists and immigration skeptics, but his latest address should put to rest the idea that he is fashioning a comprehensive ideological alternative to political liberalism.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12906/multiculturalism-britain-july

Not a single Christian was among the 1,112 Syrian refugees resettled in Britain in the first three months of 2018. The Home Office agreed to resettle only Muslims and rejected the four Christians recommended by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“Why, when so many in authority knew the scale and severity of this crime, did it take until 2014, with the publication of the Jay report, for a large-scale investigation to occur? How many lives could have been protected if swift action had been taken a decade before?” — Sarah Champion, Labour MP for Rotherham.

“I’ve got no respect for any law other than Allah’s, so I don’t care about the law to be honest… I care for the law of Islam. I don’t care for the law of any man.” — Imran Waheed, a 41-year-old psychiatrist working for the National Health Service in Birmingham, and also working as an expert witness to British courts.

July 1. Mubarek Ali, a 35-year-old former ringleader of a Telford child sex abuse gang, was sent back to prison after breaching the terms of his parole. In 2012, Ali was sentenced to 22 years in prison for child prostitution offenses, but he was automatically released in 2017 after serving only five years. Telford MP Lucy Allan said that there are “many questions to be answered” about why Ali was released, and also about how the justice system treats so-called grooming cases:

“Now he is back in jail, justice demands that he must serve the remainder of his sentence in custody; anything less would show a casual disregard for the nature of his crimes and for the victims whose lives he changed forever.”

July 2. Abdul Rauf, a 51-year-old imam from Rochdale, was imprisoned for one year and five months after admitting to assaulting more than 20 children at a mosque. Inspector Phil Key, of Greater Manchester Police, said:

“Abdul Rauf is a nasty, bully of a man who beat the children in his classes until it became normalised. The children were left cowering and holding onto their ears, their arms and their legs after he repeatedly used violence as a punishment. The parents of the children had no idea that they were leaving their children in the care of a man who would leave them writhing in pain and covered in marks and bruises.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271087/then-islamic-europe-ridiculous-now-islamic-europe-bruce-bawer

One week back in 2007, I was paid a not inconsiderable sum of money to fly first class from Oslo to Washington, D.C., on the Tuesday and to fly back on the Thursday, so that I could give a hour-long lunchtime talk on the Wednesday to an audience of American and international diplomats. Given that I had been compensated so well and given, as it was explained to me, that I had been accorded the star spot, the sole solo turn, in the middle of a day-long conference consisting otherwise of panel discussions about Western Europe, I foolishly expected a friendly reception.

My first doubts in this respect began to arise only moments after the event kicked off. Sitting through the morning’s panels, I heard one highly credentialed individual after another – professors, politicians, and retired and active diplomats from various countries – join in predicting a glowing future for Western Europe. Socially and economically, they all agreed, prospects looked a lot brighter for Western Europe than for America. Not a single one of the dozen or so panelists diverged from this consensus.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/08/23/the-bombs-of

On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped a uranium-fueled atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, another U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 repeated the attack on Nagasaki, Japan, with an even more powerful plutonium bomb.

Less than a month after the second bombing, Imperial Japan agreed to formally surrender on Sept. 2. That date marked the official end of World War II—the bloodiest human or natural catastrophe in history, accounting for more than 65 million dead.

Each August, Americans in hindsight ponder the need for, the morality of, and the strategic rationale behind the dropping of the two bombs. Yet President Harry Truman’s decision 73 years ago to use the novel, terrifying weapons was not considered particularly controversial, either right before or right after the attacks. Both cities were simply military targets.

Hiroshima was the headquarters of a Japanese army unit, and a key manufacturing center and port. Nagasaki—a secondary target after clouds and smoke obscured the city of Kokura—was the site of a huge Mitsubishi munitions plant.

Yet the sheer destructive power of the two bombs—the 15-kiloton “Little Boy” Hiroshima bomb, and the 21-kiloton “Fat Man” Nagasaki bomb—ensured catastrophic civilian casualties well beyond soldiers and munitions-plant workers. During the blasts, and long afterward due to radiation showers, perhaps 150,000 Japanese were killed.

http://www.atimes.com/writer/david-p-goldman/

The United States starts a tariff war with China. Japan and Germany jump at the chance to gain market share in China’s booming auto industry and boost their capacity in China, the world’s fastest-growing passenger car market.

The United States imposes sanctions on Turkey. Germany announces that it will offer economic aid to Turkey, Qatar pledges $15 billion in new investment and a $3 billion foreign exchange swap line, and Chinese banks provide billions of dollars in new loans to the cash-strapped Turks. Chinese commentators declare that crisis is a great opportunity to integrate Turkey into China’s “One Belt, One Road” strategy.

US President Donald Trump chides German Chancellor Angela Merkel for buying Russian natural gas through the Nord Stream II pipeline. Merkel summits with Russian President Vladimir Putin and confirms the pipeline arrangement, and also strikes a deal to aid the reconstruction of Syria in cooperation with Russia.

The United States imposes economic sanctions on Iran, and Western insurance companies stop insuring Iranian oil cargoes. China responds by accepting Iranian insurance on oil imports, increasing oil imports from Iran, and shipping the oil in Iranian tankers, Reuters reported August 20. India was offered Iranian insurance on oil shipments as well, but Indian refiners reportedly will reject the offer. Western insurance companies have told them that if they import Iranian oil, they will cancel insurance on refinery operations.

And German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas proposes a new international payments system independent of the dollar sphere, a new interbank transfer system, and a European Monetary Fund, to “protect European businesses from [American] sanctions. He also proposed a digital tax on American Internet firms. Writing in the German daily Handelsblatt on August 21, Maas declared, “We will not let the United States go over our heads.” No representative of a major Western European government has suggested anything remotely like this in public before.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/08/dead-wood-best-burning/

Trump is good because he has good policies, as did Thatcher and Reagan. Big deal if the Liberals get a new leader! Dutton or Hastie, whoever it might be, will inherit a dearth of good policies, bad ones aplenty, shifty colleagues and a party withered in root, branch and wallet. We need a new one.

How times change. Dow plummets as Trump beats Clinton. Dow futures edged down when news just broke that Trump’s ex-lawyer, Michael Cohen, has pleaded guilty to making hush payments to Trump’s putative casual squeeze before the election. Why the change? Well it isn’t because Trump has proved himself to be a sophisticate after all. It is because his policies are working and the market likes that and is nervous about him being undermined.

Trump has good policies. Here are just some of them. Lowering corporate taxes and red-tape regulations to get the private sector investing. Lowering regulatory burdens on the energy sector in order to produce more coal, oil and gas. Tightening immigration to fight terrorism and crime, to protect America’s social services, and to prevent cheap labour from undercutting wages for those at the bottom of the rung. Putting North Korea and Iran on notice of America’s resolve to prevent them ever using nuclear weapons. Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem to show solidarity with the only beacon of hope in the Middle East. Renegotiating trade deals to prevent America being ripped off by unfair tariffs. Putting the hard word on NATO allies to pay a fairer share of their own defence. Ensuring that the Supreme Court is not dominated by left-wing activists by appointing originalists to the court.

These are the policies that had Deplorables coming out to vote. I would have been lining up from the early hours to vote for these policies. And, totally unsurprisingly, they are working.

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2018/08/enough-is-enough-uk-antisemitism.html

As most readers will know, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, adopted in May 2016, includes

Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

Accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, or even for acts committed by non-Jews.

Denying the fact, scope, mechanisms (e.g. gas chambers) or intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany and its supporters and accomplices during World War II (the Holocaust).

Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.

Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/08/sly-smart-going/

Turnbull is now just a few party-room votes away from getting his marching orders. A rash of Cabinet resignations would speed that exit and establish for the record those best qualified to begin repairing the immense damage this Prime Minister has wrought, not least bringing back the base

So it was 48-35 for the Black Hand gang and its various hangers-on in today’s Liberal Party leadership spill. Mr. Turnbull might be just about the most incompetent politician ever when it comes to choosing policies that appeal to his supporters and his party’s base and then defending them in the court of public opinion. But put Malcolm into the Machiavellian world of provoking or fighting off leadership spills and the man comes into his own. He can white-ant and leak and undermine a first-term PM who won a huge majority better than anyone.

Make him the target of others who might want his leader’s mantle and a prodigious rat cunning comes into play. It was a tactical move of immense intelligence to vacate the leadership at the start of today’s party room meeting, and then force a vote of MPs a week or so before the challengers were ready. You can expect the Prime Minister’s office to go into overdrive undermining the naysayers from today forward too, by which I mean even more than usual for those outside his Black Hand inner circle.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/south-african-government-begins-seizing-land-white-farmers/

The South African government has begun seizing land from white farmers as part of a nation-wide redistribution effort that commenced Monday with the appropriation of two large game farms.

The farms, located in the northern province of Limpopo, were unilaterally seized after their owners refused to accept a combined $2.8 million payment from the government, claiming the properties are worth roughly ten times that amount, according to the Johannesburg-based newspaper City Press.

Akkerland Boerdery, the hunting company that operates the farms, was informed of the impending seizure earlier this year and immediately filed an injunction to prevent it, but the Department of Rural Development and Land Affairs blocked their appeal.

“Notice is hereby given that a terrain inspection will be held on the farms on April 5, 2018 at 10am in order to conduct an audit of the assets and a handover of the farm’s keys to the state,” a letter sent to the owners in April said.

“What makes the Akkerland case unique is that they apparently were not given the opportunity to first dispute the claim in court, as the law requires,” Annelie Crosby, a spokeswoman for the agricultural industry association AgriSA, told City Press.