RUTHFULLY YOURS

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.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272250/obamas-christmas-genocide-daniel-greenfield

This Christmas, there will be fewer Christians celebrating in their homes in the Middle East than ever before.

Before Obama, Nineveh Plains hosted 90,000 Christians. Today, it’s under 40,000.

Nineveh is one of the first cities mentioned in the Bible. The Nineveh Plains are the heartland of Syriac Christianity. But now the plains are barren with ruined churches and deserted homes in formerly Christian towns and cities. And that same story repeats itself across Iraq where 81% of Christians have disappeared.

In Mosul alone, over 100,000 Christians were displaced as Jihadists marked their doors with an “N” for Nazarene. From cities to small towns, the end of the year bears witness to a Christian genocide.

In 2008, there were an estimated 700,000 Christians in Iraq, today estimates hover between 250,000 and 300,000. While ISIS is most directly associated with terror against Christians, most Jihadist groups, including those backed by Obama, intimidated, robbed and tortured them.

In January 2014, Obama dismissed ISIS as a “jayvee” team. That summer, the team took Qaraqosh and its surrounding villages, including Bartella. The Christians were given a choice between converting, paying Jizya, the traditional Dhimmi tax that Muslims impose on non-Muslims under Islamic law, and “death by the sword.”

The Shiite government finally took back Bartella, but now its Christians have found themselves under the thumb of the Shabak, a Shiite cult, whose soldiers that are part of the Shiite Jihadist Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) backed by Iran. The Christians of the Nineveh Plains that had been displaced by Sunni Jihadists backed by Turkey and Qatar are now being displaced by a Shiite Jihadist cult backed by Iran.

While the Obama administration backed the Pro-Iranian government in Baghdad and its Shiite militias, it discouraged the Americans who had volunteered to come and help protect Assyrian Christians. Congressional efforts to protect Christians were likewise stymied by the Obama administration and by State Department personnel in the region who refused to act on Congressional mandates.

The situation in the Nineveh Plains highlights the larger dilemma for the Christians in the region. As a middle class minority, instability turns Christians into immediate Jihadist targets. When Shiite and Sunni Muslims fight, they both rob the Christians. And when the fighting dies down, the Muslims go back to some version of the status quo, while the Christians lose what little they were trying to protect.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/canadian-government-is-aware-of-another-citizen-detained-in-china-11545227386

OTTAWA—Canada revealed a third Canadian national in just over a week has been detained in China since the arrest in Vancouver, British Columbia, of Huawei Technologies Co.’s chief financial officer.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday that this new case appears to differ from the detention last week of two Canadians—a former diplomat, Michael Kovrig, and an entrepreneur, Michael Spavor, with ties to North Korea—who are both reportedly being held on national security grounds.

Security experts and China watchers say they believe the arrests are meant to punish Canada for its role in the arrest of Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou, and persuade Ottawa to release her.

“We are looking into the details of this most recent [case] that doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of the previous two,” Mr. Trudeau said at a press conference.

Later, he said the case of the third Canadian detained appeared to deal with what he described as routine issues, without elaborating. In contrast, Mr. Trudeau said, Messrs. Kovrig and Spavor “were accused of serious crimes.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/12/19/did-stupid-man-say-stupid-woman-least-break-brexit/
Did a stupid man say ‘stupid woman’? Well, at least it’s a break from Brexit

Michael Deacon

Please, in your prayers tonight, spare a thought for the disciples of Jeremy Corbyn. They’ve been having the most miserable time, frantically trying to agree on the most plausible excuse.

“No, of course he didn’t call Theresa May a ‘stupid woman’!”

“All right, he did say it – but it’s not sexist, because it’s true!”

“Anyway Tories can’t complain about sexism, because Tories are sexist!”

“And what about austerity! And arms sales! And Israel! And BBC bias! And—”

The funny thing is, I’m not sure anyone actually saw it at the time – in the Commons, at any rate. There was no immediate outcry from MPs. Instead, they saw it minutes later, while idly browsing their phones. There it was, all over Twitter: a video clip of Jeremy Corbyn appearing to mouth “Stupid woman” at the Prime Minister.

Yes, really: Jeremy Corbyn, that paragon of progressive virtue, captured on camera spitting a sexist insult. From up in the gallery, you could see it spread across the chamber: MPs on both sides goggling at their screens, and then showing their neighbours. On the Labour side, little huddles formed and swapped anxious whispers. Perhaps they were brainstorming an explanation for their leader to use. “Actually Mr Speaker, what I said was ‘Stupendous woman.’ Despite our differences politically, I can’t help but admire the Prime Minister for the way that, in deeply trying circumstances, she always—”

The first MP to mention it out loud was Paul Scully (Con, Sutton & Cheam). Did Mrs May, he asked, think it was acceptable for an MP to use the phrase “stupid woman”?

Mrs May had been busy answering questions, so she couldn’t have seen the video, but a colleague must have passed her a note about it, because she seemed to know what Mr Scully was alluding to. All MPs, she said darkly, with just the briefest glance in the direction of Mr Corbyn, “should use appropriate language when referring to female members”.

To which Mr Corbyn, believe it or not, nodded earnestly, and mouthed: “Quite right.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/19/islamist-terrorists-suspected-murder-scandinavian-tourists-morocco/

Two Scandinavian tourists killed in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains were the victims of a terrorist attack, prosecutors believe.

One man has been arrested following the discovery on Monday of the bodies of 24-year-old Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, from Denmark, and Maren Ueland, 28, from Norway.

One of the women had been beheaded, a source told AFP.

A suspect in the murder was arrested in Marrakech on Tuesday, and was known to have ties to radical Islamist terror networks.

Police are hunting for three other suspects.
Louisa Vesterager Jespersen
Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, who was found dead on Monday in Morocco

Boubker Sabik, a police spokesman, said terrorism was suspected and that the three suspects on the run had been “identified and a search for them is under way by all the security services”.

One of the three had “a court record linked to terrorist acts”, he said, while the prosecutor general’s office said the man in custody also belonged to an extremist group.

“Radical Islam is not ruled out, due to the profile of the suspect arrested and of the three men wanted,” a source close to the investigation told AFP.

The women’s bodies were found in an isolated area near Imlil, on the way to Toubkal, North Africa’s highest peak and a popular hiking destination.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/wheres-tutu/

Once upon a time, a large framed photograph of Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu hung on the wall of my living room in Manhattan. I wasn’t the one who put it there, but I never felt a moment’s inclination to take it down, either. As it happens, the person with whom I lived at the time worked for the Episcopal Church (ECUSA), which is a part of the Anglican Communion, and which is headquartered in New York City. At the time — and I assume this is still going on today — the ECUSA was pouring plenty of cash into the Anglican churches in Africa, and Tutu, who back then was a frequent visitor to New York and very chummy with the ECUSA honchos and with Episcopal clergy in the city, was an especially favored object of the ECUSA’s largesse.

In any event, my cohabitant idolized Tutu as a champion of peace, reconciliation, brotherhood, and human rights in the aftermath of apartheid. He even met Tutu once or twice, and after those encounters he was walking on air. He quite simply adored the man.

Of course, Tutu wasn’t the only big name associated with the end of apartheid. There was Nelson Mandela, who headed up the African National Congress, spent years in prison, and ended up President of South Africa. And there was Mandela’s predecessor as president, F.W. DeKlerk, who worked with Mandela to dismantle apartheid and eventually shared the Nobel Peace Prize with him in 1993. But before they won their Nobels, Tutu won his, in 1984, with the Norwegian Nobel Prize Committee hailing his leading role in “the non-violent struggle for liberation” in his country, “a struggle in which black and white South Africans unite to bring their country out of conflict and crisis.” Tutu deserved the honor: this was a man who, respected by both black and white, was able to persuade South Africans of both races, through sheer nobility of spirit, to resist uncivilized impulses and take the high road.

In his Nobel Prize lecture, Tutu sounded a noble note:

Unless we work assiduously so that all of God’s children, our brothers and sisters, members of our one human family, all will enjoy basic human rights, the right to a fulfilled life, the right of movement, of work, the freedom to be fully human, with a humanity measured by nothing less than the humanity of Jesus Christ Himself, then we are on the road inexorably to self-destruction, we are not far from global suicide; and yet it could be so different.

When will we learn that human beings are of infinite value because they have been created in the image of God, and that it is a blasphemy to treat them as if they were less than this and to do so ultimately recoils on those who do this? In dehumanizing others, they are themselves dehumanized. Perhaps oppression dehumanizes the oppressor as much as, if not more than, the oppressed. They need each other to become truly free, to become human. We can be human only in fellowship, in community, in koinonia, in peace.

I hadn’t thought about Tutu for a long time, but he’s been on my mind lately because of the horrors that are currently underway in the Republic of South Africa. In March, that nation’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to confiscate farmland from whites without compensation. Mass appropriation of white-owned land by black marauders is already taking place on a wide scale. Families that helped build South Africa and that have tilled their acres for generations have now either had their property stolen already or are huddling in their boarded-up, fenced-in homes waiting for an armed mob to come take it from them. And the assailants aren’t stopping at mere thievery. They have committed acts of physical cruelty motivated purely by greed and race hatred.