RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13360/brexit-no-deal

This Brexit “deal” is anything but good for the nation.

This “deal” will cost the British taxpayer £60 billion; require that the British still comply with EU rules without having any say in what those will be, and worst of all, it permits the British to leave the EU only if the EU agrees. It commits the British effectively to subjugation by the EU in perpetuity, with no recourse should the British change their mind. It is a prison. It is also the first step of the EU toward its dream of global governance: unaccountable, untransparent, unelected by the public, and with no way out.

There is still a way out of this mess; an easy alternative. The solution is No Deal. Without any further action, the UK’s membership of the EU will lapse on March 29, 2019, and unless that majority can unite around a viable alternative, we will leave. Even better, according to a House of Lords report, there would be no legal obligation for the UK to make any payment as part of a financial settlement.

But, we have nearly left the EU haven’t we? After all, we keep hearing about this deal. We must be nearly there by now, surely?

Just because some of us are immersed in this stuff, many of us are not. Back in the real world where people are trying to find their bus passes, generally keep warm, or asking who will do the school pick-up, Brexit is not everyone’s first and overwhelming thought.

In the margins, there are the headlines on the six o’clock news telling you Theresa May has a “deal” agreed to by Brussels — and she is off to sell it to the nation.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13370/anti-semitism-turkey

“King Mohammed VI of Morocco made a breakthrough in the Muslim world and told the world press that ‘education has the power to fight ugly phenomena such as discrimination, racism and anti-Semitism.'” — Mois Gabay, Şalom.

“What about the fact that… an awakening about Israel and Jews is on the rise in many other majority-Muslim countries.” — Mois Gabay, Şalom.

“The government should immediately recognize anti-Semitism as a hate crime and impose penal sanctions on the perpetrators.” — Işıl Demirel, an anthropologist from Turkey; Avlaremoz.

Demirel’s suggestion would make perfect sense in a free and genuinely democratic society. But in a country where the president, his advisers and MPs regularly and proudly spit out hatred not only against Jews, but also against other minorities, how is anti-Semitism to be dealt with when demonizing Jews or Israel seems to serve as a fast track to a career in government?

As the Islamist government of Turkey grows increasingly authoritarian, religious minorities in the country seem to be the most targeted and affected group.

The concerns of Turkey’s Jewish community were addressed recently by Mois Gabay, a columnist for the country’s Jewish weekly, Şalom, in an article entitled, “What Kind of Turkey Are We Living In?”

In it, Gabay discussed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s establishing nine councils, the members of which he appointed, and who are responsible for “offering policy proposals, ideas and strategies to the president” on the economy, foreign policy, education and law.

Among those appointed to official positions within these councils, Gabay wrote, are well-known public figures who have made blatant anti-Semitic statements.

In an interview with the Turkish journal Yörünge in August, for instance, author Alev Alatlı, now a member of Erdogan’s culture and art council, said that the “anti-Erdogan forces of the world” are led by Jews and motivated by millennia-long Jewish teachings. “The real project [of the Jews] is to cleanse the universe of goyim,” she said, referring to “goyim” as those “for whom there is no place in the world unless they serve the Jews.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272105/political-turmoil-grips-sweden-joseph-puder

Political turmoil is gripping Sweden. Since the September 9th, 2018 elections in which the Swedish Democrats (the nationalists), an anti-immigrant party took 17.5% of the vote, gaining 62 seats in the 349 seat Swedish parliament or Riksdag, no new government has been formed. Nevertheless, the Swedish Democrats (SD) have become the king-makers.

The leftist Social-Democrats, although the largest vote getter with 100 seats, do not have enough partners to form a coalition government. On the center-right, Ulf Kristersson, 54, leader of the Moderate party (70 seats), cannot form a government with his opposition partners without having at least the silent support of the Swedish Democrats. The Center (31 seats), and Liberal (20 seats) parties, however, will not accept a situation in which the Swedish Democrats are silently backing the government. That leaves Kristersson with only his 70 seats in addition to the Christian Democrats 22 seats, to form a minority government of 92, and even with the Swedish Democrats backing, it would garner only 154 seats, less than the 175 seat majority. Similarly, the Social Democrats cannot form a coalition government with the Left party (28 seats) and the Greens (16 seats). Their total is even smaller with 144 seats. The third scenario is a coalition of the Moderate Party plus the Center party for a total of 143 seats, not enough to form a functional government.

Jimmie Akesson, 39, the new leader of the right-wing Swedish Democrats party, has reformed the image of the party. He has imposed a zero-tolerance on open expression of racism and xenophobia by its members. He also changed the party symbol, a flaming torch, into a friendly blue and yellow flower (blue and yellow are the colors of the Swedish flag). The Swedish Democrats under Akesson have captured 17.5% of the vote, or 62 seats in the Riksdag, up from 49 seats in 2014. The SD party gained the highest number of seats (13), whereas the Social Democrats lost 13. The SD party has capitalized on the limitless immigration policy that has characterized the Lofven government.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272123/muslim-migrants-terrorize-sleepy-german-college-daniel-greenfield

29.

That’s how many crimes one single Syrian migrant had allegedly committed since entering Germany four years ago. He had already been wanted for drug trafficking and had been investigated for a rape last year. And then he struck again, this time in a case that has once again torn apart a sleepy college town.

Freiburg is a German city of 226,000 people. Foreigners make up 36,800 or 16% of the population. Of the foreigners in Freiburg, whose name means fortified city of free people, 18,750 or 8.5% are men.

Even though foreigners are only a small percentage of the population, they commit 42% of the crimes.

These days, Freiburg is mainly known as a college town. One site describes it as the “sunniest and warmest city in Germany” with a “progressive mindset” and “a remarkable commitment to the environment”. The University of Freiburg’s 30,000 college students make the area a magnet for parties, clubs and eateries catering to the booming student population. And for those who prey on the students.

The medieval cobblestone streets of Freiburg bulging with bars aimed at college students had come to host a very different population as a mass of Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis and others claiming to be refugees poured into Germany. Facilities catering to refugees quickly popped up all over the sleepy college town.

Unaccompanied minors, migrants, many of them claiming to be underage when their actual ages ranged into the twenties and even the thirties poured into Freiburg. By November 2016, 577 of these ‘minors’ had showed up in Freiburg. And crime, drugs, theft and sexual assaults came traveling along with them.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/vive-le-nationalisme-1543880136

Perhaps French President Emmanuel Macron was busy examining the damage wrought by rioters at the Arc de Triomphe this weekend, but he has not yet responded to a telling suggestion from German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz. Mr. Scholz proposed last week that France turn over its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council to the European Union. Only a French nationalist could disagree, right? And Mr. Macron has made a point of denouncing nationalism as selfish and immoral.

But Mr. Macron’s posturing aside, the French are nationalist to the core. Ask the European parliamentarians and their staffers who must make the expensive, time-consuming, carbon-emitting trip from Brussels to Strasbourg once a month to maintain the absurd fiction that French Strasbourg is the home of the European Parliament. Ask any European negotiator who has tried to prune back the Common Agricultural Policy, a giant boondoggle under which France is the largest recipient of funds. Ask any Italian diplomat about French policies in Libya. Ask any American negotiator about France’s approach to trade. Ask any German diplomat who has had a few drinks.

French diplomacy under President Macron is as nationalist as ever. His core objective is to shift EU economic policy in France’s favor. Mr. Macron hoped introducing market-based reforms in France would persuade Germany to loosen the EU purse strings and give Paris more fiscal running room. Then, perhaps, the resulting boost to the French economy would reconcile public opinion to Mr. Macron’s reforms. But he has not made much progress, in part because the German government is too weak to take large political risks. Now he is facing voters’ wrath.

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

Europe has a neurotic compulsion to repeat the past. This is bad news, because nobody wants to repeat five (count ’em!) East-West wars exploding out of Europe over the last two centuries.

But – the E.U. now has a better idea.

It wants European nations to surrender to the German-French axis without a shot being fired. “Countries must give up their sovereignty and join the one-world government,” German chancellor Angela Merkel remarked generously the other day. The E.U. Times, of all places, remarked that “[n]o, this isn’t something Adolf Hitler said many years ago.”

Everybody in that part of the world knows who runs the E.U.: the Germans, fronted by the French. So when the charming Frau Merkel said that, most of her listeners filled in the rest of the story. But the Brits were not laughing.

Just to keep the historical record straight:

Napoleon beat the German-speaking provinces around 1800, arousing a century of vendetta wars.
Otto von Bismarck used Prussian robo-militarism to invade Paris in 1871.
WWI started as an enormous German-French meat-grinder, finally ended by the United States entering the war.
In the 1920s and ’30s, Hitler arose in revenge for WWI, leading to thirteen years of industrialized massacres of innocent human beings and ending with catastrophic Axis aggression in World War II, including the Japanese Rape of Nanking and all the rest.
But…Europe’s world wars did not end in 1946. They just moved to the Soviet Empire, which included East Germany. Korea and Vietnam were proxies for the U.S.-Soviet struggle.

And now we have Reich Number Six, called the “European Union.” But the only “union” in the E.U. is the unelected ruling caste, which rules with an iron hand, while the left-out voters are getting sick and tired of the scam.

This may be why Emmanuel Macron, the German vassal in Paris, just called for an E.U. army – to use agains

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13369/france-macron-brexit

We are most grateful to French President Emmanuel Macron for revealing that the problem of the “backstop” is far larger than anyone had realized. It was seen as merely a problem of good faith of the EU Commission toward the UK. Now we see that it is also a problem of good faith of all the 27 remaining members of the EU. The problem is 28 times larger than anyone had noticed.

The flaw in Article 20 of the “backstop” is that it permits the customs union dictated by the Protocol to continue forever unless both parties agreed to end it. What is needed is the reverse: a date on which the application of the Protocol ends unless both parties agree to continue it. Indeed, the length of the transition period starting on March 29, 2019 is defined in the reverse manner in the Withdrawal Agreement. So why did the UK’s negotiators fail to demand something of the kind for Article 20?

Although UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative critics do have the power to create a majority against her deal by voting with the opposition, there is a much greater majority in the Commons for preventing a no-deal exit. That is, there are other Conservatives who will themselves join the opposition in feverishly averting no-deal, and with good reason. Apart from May’s Conservative critics, no-deal is unthinkable.

On November 25, 2018, a summit meeting of the 27 remaining countries of the European Union approved the Brexit deal agreed with the UK’s Theresa May. At the end of the summit, President Macron gave a press conference in which he announced how he would abuse the deal to blackmail the UK, thereby making approval of the deal in the UK Parliament unthinkable. This deal must be the shortest-lived treaty in history.

From the moment that Theresa May first presented the proposed Brexit deal to her cabinet on November 14 and to the House of Commons the next day, opposition to it has steadily risen among the MPs of her own Conservative Party. Also the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland (DUP), the coalition partner that gives her a small majority in the Commons, is unanimously opposed. May has earned respect for the resolution with which she promotes the deal amid a cacophony of opposed voices that offer no coherent alternative, but also amazement at the stubbornness with which she rejects any change to the deal, thereby ensuring its failure.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/12/02/spain-reels-far-right-vox-party-storms-andalucian-parliament/

The ultra-conservative and anti-immigration Vox has stormed into the Andalucian assembly in Sunday’s regional election, marking the first time a far-Right party has achieved parliamentary representation on any level in Spain’s recent history as a democracy.

The party that favours the end of autonomy in Catalonia and the expulsion of all immigrants who entered Spain illegally won 12 out of 109 seats in Andalucia’s parliament with 11 per cent of the vote.

“Vox was the party that led the political debate,” said the party’s secretary general, Javier Ortega.

“We put on the table the need to control our borders and end illegal immigration, end abusive levels of taxation and the need to put an end to ideological laws relating to gender.”

Despite running out narrow winner in the region it has ruled continuously for 36 years, the PSOE Socialist party of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez suffered a hugely disappointing result in Andalucia. The party’s all-time low of 28 per cent and 33 seats mean it will not be able to govern with a majority, even with the support of the Left-wing coalition Adelante Andalucia, which includes Podemos.

Spain’s main conservative opposition force, the Popular Party (PP), also lost ground, sliding six percentage points to just under 21 per cent, while the liberal Ciudadanos was the night’s only winner among the established parties, doubling its share to 18 per cent.

Ahead of European and possibly a general election in 2019, Spain’s political scene appears more fractured than ever after the dramatic emergence of Vox on the extreme right of the spectrum.

Despite having seen its number of seats in the Andalucian parliament shorn from 33 to 26, the PP appeared to welcome the arrival of Vox on the political scene.

For the PP’s candidate for the presidency of the region, Juan Manuel Moreno, it was a “historic day” on which “Andalucia had chosen change”, saying he wants to lead a right-of-centre coalition including Vox and Ciudadanos.

https://www.city-journal.org/paris-riots

On July 14, 1789, in Paris, the price of bread had reached its highest point in a century. Parisians held the king responsible, which was in part justified. The royal administration’s meddlesome regulation had made grain commerce among the provinces difficult, leading to local famines. The result: a riot in the capital, and the taking of the Bastille—a mostly empty prison but a hated symbol of the absolute monarchy.

What then followed was a revolution—the French Revolution—taken over by an elite fired by the mad ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: this generation of twentysomething men would invent the first modern dictatorship and shed much French blood before taking on Europe, all in the name of the Republic and according to a Virtue that it claimed to embody. Robespierre, one of the most wild-eyed of the revolutionaries, designated himself the Republic’s messiah, charged with the “purification” of the old world. This history is well known, but it is generally reconstituted in a positive light, baptized with the ideology of “the common good” or “the general will.”

One can’t help but recall this French taste for rebellion, idealized as progressive and ultimately positive, as rioters are currently setting fire to the Champs-Élysées. Might this symbol of consumer society be the equivalent, for contemporary protesters, of the Bastille two centuries ago?

The origin of the present protest is not the price of bread but an increase in gasoline taxes. Yet, with gasoline now occupying a central place in our way of life as bread once did, there is at least some link between the two eruptions. And Louis XVI was guilty by inattention, just as Emmanuel Macron the First, France’s president, seems strangely indifferent to public sentiment. To enact policies that raise gasoline prices—already the highest in Europe—on the eve of the year-end holidays and without offering a justification, was a major political error.

Macron’s mistake was made worse by the justification given after the uprising: the government explained to skeptical citizens that the new tax was actually an ecological measure, and therefore justified, since the goal was not to add to the state’s coffers but to help fight climate change. Obviously no one believes this excuse, including the government that issued it, or so we must hope.