RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://standpointmag.co.uk/features-december-2018-george-schopflin-george-soros-central-european-university-fidesz-budapest

On October 25, the Rector of the Central European University (CEU), Michael Ignatieff, announced that unless the Hungarian government regularised the status of CEU by December 1, it would move to Vienna.

As so often with such stories — customarily presented in the Western media as a fight between good (the CEU) and evil (Orbán, Fidesz, the Hungarian government) — reality is infinitely more complex. There is indeed a contest between the CEU and the Hungarian government, but it’s far from being the simplified morality tale that is so widely propagated.

Matters began in 2005, when the CEU did a deal with the then left-wing government that it would be given a unique exception from the Hungarian education law and be able to grant both Hungarian and American diplomas. The American dimension of this arrangement was something free-floating, the CEU was registered in the US, but had no university presence there. But the new Hungarian education law of 2011 modernised the system and, inter alia, declared not unreasonably that all the 28 foreign institutions of higher education operating in Hungary would have to have a mother university in their country of origin. The CEU did not.

So when the Hungarian education office began its quinquennial review in 2016, it came upon the CEU’s anomalous status. Legally there were two CEUs. The CEU granted Hungarian diplomas (quite legally) and simultaneously American ones without the CEU having a US mother university. At this stage, the relationship between Hungary and the CEU was an administrative disagreement, which could certainly have been resolved at that level had there been the will to do so. The difficulty of there not being a US-based mother university could certainly have been circumvented. That’s what technocracies are for.

But at that point, the CEU opted to see dispute not as technocratic, but as political. The CEU is a private foundation supported by George Soros, but Soros also finances a range of NGOs and think-tanks that have moved into the political vacuum left behind the collapse of the left-wing opposition to Fidesz. The CEU was and was seen as a part of this left-wing anti-Fidesz constellation. Thereby, with the coming into force of the new law, a political motive has been neatly attributed to the Hungarian government.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/12/08/must-defeat-theresa-mays-wretched-brexit-deal-go-world-hope/

This week’s meaningful vote on the Prime Minister’s Withdrawal Agreement marks a watershed moment in British politics. Parliament will decide on the UK’s future relationship with the European Union for a generation to come. That’s not hype. This is the decisive moment.

We are being asked to shackle ourselves to a deal which hands over £39 Billion without anything guaranteed in return, which allows the European Court of Justice to continue to interfere in British law and our daily lives, and which breaks the Conservative manifesto promise to leave the customs union. As Margaret Thatcher once said “No, No, No.”

There is an alternative. We can stop grappling and start grasping the global opportunities available to the UK. The real Brexit prize is the opportunity to go out into the world and agree free trade deals with old friends and new allies.

The UK’s biggest export market is the United States, worth over £110 billion a year. That is almost double our next biggest trading partner, Germany. Our trade with the United States, China and Australia far exceeds our trade with Germany, France and the Netherlands. When we traded primarily in bulky goods, such as coal or steel, our closest trading partners were often our biggest. This is no longer the case. Distance is dead.

The world is changing rapidly, and the UK must keep up. We have to look beyond Europe and seize the opportunities Brexit presents for us to be a truly Global Britain. Let’s not restrict ourselves to obsessive discussion of EU internal market or tie ourselves in knots as to how future trade will be conducted within the EU.

Aside from a global trade deal, Brexit brings a host of new opportunities. We have the opportunity to scrap the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy, allowing us to better support farmers, fishermen and consumers, and prioritise animal welfare.

We are a world leader in several emerging sectors including artificial intelligence, life sciences and information technology. These are the sectors of the future, and the UK is well poised to take advantage.

But if we remain tied to EU rules and within the EU’s orbit we will not remain a global leader for long. The EU will seek to reign in our competitive advantage with stifling regulations. Imagine being a global power in an emerging industry but having no power to set the rules.

We cannot allow ourselves to be bound by the EU’s stifling bureaucracy. Nobody is calling for a Wild West of deregulation. But we can have smarter, more sensible rules that create a fertile environment for our industries to thrive.

At least 700 were arrested in Paris as 5,000 demonstrators faced off against 8,000 police in another violent demonstration by “yellow vest” protesters.

Riots broke out all over France despite the supposed cause of the violence being eliminated earlier in the week by the government of President Emmanuel Macron. The government had been claiming that a fuel tax increase was to blame for the protests, but the government rescinded the increase on Wednesday.

Donald Trump believes it was Macron’s climate change policies:

But the protesters themselves were giving the real reason for the violence — if anyone in Macron’s government was listening.

Fox News:

“We are not here to destroy Paris, we are here to tell Macron we are f–king fed up,” said one protester before the clashes with the police began, adding that the people are protesting ever-increasing taxes on the working class.

[…]

Many protesters slammed the French media for portraying the protests as led by violent agitators and for siding with Macron’s government.

“We are not black bloc [black clad anarchists], we are ordinary people voicing our anger,” said a protester who did not want to be identified.

Meanwhile, the contagion has spread to neighboring Belgium and the Netherlands.

ABCNews:

Belgian police fired tear gas and water cannons at yellow-vested protesters calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Charles Michel after they tried to breach a riot barricade, as the movement that started in France made its mark Saturday in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Protesters in Brussels threw paving stones, road signs, fireworks, flares and other objects at police blocking their entry to an area where Michel’s offices, other government buildings and the parliament are located.

Brussels police spokeswoman Ilse Van de Keere said that around 400 protesters were gathered in the area.

About 100 were detained, many for carrying dangerous objects like fireworks or clothing that could be used as protection in clashes with police.

The reasons for the protests are not entirely clear. Neither Belgium nor the Netherlands has proposed a hike in fuel tax — the catalyst for the massive and destructive demonstrations in France in recent weeks.

Instead, protesters appeared to hail at least in part from a populist movement that is angry at government policy in general and what it sees as the widening gulf between mainstream politicians and the voters who put them in power. Some in Belgium appeared intent only on confronting police.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/12/the-suicidal-folly-of-tolerating-the-intolerant/
https://www.geertwilders.nl/in-de-media-mainmenu-74/nieuws-mainmenu-114/94-english/2135-speech-geert-wilders-restoration-weekend-palm-beach-usa-november-17-2018

‘Islam is dressed up as a religion but is in reality a totalitarian ideology. It wants to dominate and is unwilling to integrate and assimilate. There is not a single country where Islam is dominant that is truly free … We will never apologize for being free men, we will never bow for the combined forces of Mecca and the Left.’

If we want to stop the terror, the violence, the attacks on our women, if we want to protect our freedom and the freedom of generations to come, we have to get rid of the dangerous concept of cultural relativism – the false idea that all cultures are equal. People are equal but cultures are not.

Cultural relativism is weakening the West day by day. Government leaders, lawyers, judges, churches, trade unions, media, academia, charities – the majority of them are still blinded by political correctness and are condoning Islam.

As a result a little bit of the free West dies each day. But the truth is that our culture and identity – based on Christianity, Judaism and humanism – is not equal to but far better than the Islamic culture of submission, intolerance and violence.

Our civilization, based on the legacy of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome, is the best civilization on earth. It gave us democracy, freedom, equality before the law, the separation of church and state, and the notion of sovereign states to protect it all. The remedy to all the misery and terror is clear: we have to reassert what we are. Only then will we be able to ensure a future for our children. In Europe today, the problems we face are existential. Not economics but Islamisation, terrorism and mass-immigration are our main problems.

Existential indeed, because it determines who we are, what we are and if we will exist as free people in the future. We have to support each other. That’s why we all should always support the Jewish State of Israel. Israel is one of us, the only democracy in the Middle East, a beacon of freedom in an unfree region. Israel is forced to defend itself against the dark forces of Sunni and Shia Islam. It is our duty to always support Israel. Israel is a vital outpost of Western civilization, the canary in the coalmine. If Islam conquers Israel, we will be next. The Israeli-Arab conflict is proof that Huntington was wrong: there is no clash of civilizations, but a clash between our civilisation and barbarism.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13362/netherlands-problem

“The number of Dutch victims of grooming gangs has risen sharply in recent years”. It is estimated that rape-groomers force around 1400 under-age girls into sex-slavery every year. — Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.

“Despite stagnating growth, the size of the Dutch jihadist movement is cause for concern.” — Terrorist Threat Assessment for the Netherlands (DTN), published by the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism.

It is estimated that 140 mosques in the Netherlands are affiliated with the Religious Affairs Directorate of the Republic of Turkey (Diyanet). One sermon, given in the city of Hoorn, was about jihad and martyrdom: “The one who dies in the way of Allah, never call him dead, but call him alive”.

“Right-wing extremists are growing more confident. They continue to focus on protesting against the perceived Islamisation of the Netherlands, the arrival of asylum seekers and the perceived loss of Dutch identity…” [emphasis added] wrote Dutch authorities in a September threat assessment.

Islamization in the Netherlands, however, is not merely a “perception” of “right-wing extremists” but an increasingly established trend. The threat assessment by the country’s National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, for example, shows that Islamic terrorism has been growing for several years. “Despite stagnating growth, the size of the Dutch jihadist movement is cause for concern,” it wrote.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/academic-stabbed-to-death-for-insulting-mohammed-during-lecture/

An Irish lecturer was stabbed to death by a student outside the Paris university where he taught on Wednesday for allegedly insulting the prophet Mohammed by displaying a drawing of him during class.

John Dowling, 66, was speaking with a student, identified by authorities only as Ali R., following a lecture when the 37-year old student fatally stabbed him 13 times in the throat and chest.

The suspect, who is set to be indicted for murder on Friday, told the authorities that, while he killed Dowling to defend his faith against a perceived slight, he has also long maintained a personal grudge against the lecturer, the Daily Mail reported Friday.

Government prosecutor Catherine Denis said that Ali has nurtured an ‘obsessive resentment’ against the university since it expelled him in September 2017.

“He came to France two years ago to join the management school, but did not pass his first year,” she said. “Since then he had been returning to the college, and had become unwanted to the point that he was not allowed in any more.”

Ali’s explanation for carrying out the murder, however, cited Dowling’s display of a drawing of the prophet Mohammed during class.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macrons-warning-to-americas-ascendant-left-1544139254

The most common explanation for France’s gilets jaunes protests against fuel-tax hikes is that they arise from too little democracy. Lower-income and rural citizens feel left behind by President Emmanuel Macron’s aggressive economic reform agenda, which ignores their interests and benefits an urban elite. The opposite is true. The protests are happening because France has too much democracy. What it’s lacking is politics.

Mr. Macron’s political movement was born of the notion that France needed to become more democratic. As a young technocrat-in-training and junior government minister, he became convinced that special interests within the traditional parties obstructed national progress.

As Economist correspondent Sophie Pedder notes in her illuminating biography of the president, the premise is that as a numerical matter there are enough actual or potential winners from economic reform and globalization that a leader could cull those voters from the old parties and unite them under a new banner. It would then be possible to steamroll minority opposition.

Which is precisely what Mr. Macron did. It helped that his rise came in an era when French politics was becoming steadily more democratic overall.

A 2000 constitutional amendment shortened the presidential term to five years from seven—explicitly to align the presidential and legislative election calendars. This amplifies a president’s mandate (already bolstered by a runoff voting system meant to exaggerate electoral support for the eventual winner) by reducing the risk that he might have to “cohabit” with a National Assembly controlled by the opposing party. Mainstream parties have adopted the U.S. style of intraparty primary campaigning, allowing party members to pick who leads them into general elections. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2018/12/no-platform-for-dissenters.html

“Angela Merkle has not only fouled up Germany, but has stated that nations with borders must do away with them to allow the free invasion of their countries by “migrants.” Their sovereignty must be declared “obsolete.” And be seen as “patriotic.”

No internet platform for anyone or any organization that dissents from the mainstream verdict on anything. The Global Compact and the tech giants will naturally agree on that point.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple said,

“And as we showed this year, we won’t give a platform to violent conspiracy theorists on the App Store. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. We only have one message for those who seek to push hate, division, and violence: You have no place on our platforms. You have no home here.” [Applause. Brackets mine]

The Clarion Project reported:

On December 3rd, 2018, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that tech needs to take a moral stand against hate speech, in a move that sounded very much like a nouveau form of fundamentalism. Speaking to individuals and groups believed to push hate, division and violence, Cook said, “You have no place on our platforms. You have no home here.”