RUTHFULLY YOURS

In an address on Tuesday at the Christian Democrats party conference, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for a burqa ban in her bid to be reelected the country’s chancellor in a fourth term.

“The full-face veil is not acceptable in our country,” Merkel told the crowd, according to the Independent. “It should be banned, wherever it is legally possible.”

Merkel’s pitch for a ban on the Islamic religious garb echoes those of the Christian Democrat party more broadly, members of which have called for similar restrictions in the past. In August, Peter Tauber, the party’s general secretary, said the the full-face veil was “contrary to integration,” the Independentreported. At the time, German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said such a ban would be “constitutionally problematic,” and a possible violation of Germany’s laws on religious freedom.

Germany’s Basic Law maintains the “the undisturbed practice of religion shall be guaranteed,” with no specific mention of religious dress.

However, Merkel’s latest call for a burqa ban runs alongside her focus on the refugee crisis and amid Germany’s fluctuating attitudes toward accepting refugees into the country.

“A situation like the one in the late summer of 2015 cannot, should not and must not be repeated,” Merkel said on Tuesday. “That was and is our, and my, declared political aim.”

The Independent suggested Merkel was referring to September 2015, when she drew criticism for opening Germany’s borders. Later, many blamed Merkel for a string of New Year’s Eve sexual assaults and robberies that many alleged had beenperpetrated by refugees. (According to a February report from the Independent,three of the 58 men arrested for the mass attack were refugees from Syria or Iraq.)

Merkel condemned the attacks, promising to ensure the country’s deportation system was fully functional.

“There are some very serious questions which arise from what has happened which have relevance beyond Cologne,” she said at the time, according toReuters. The outlet reported Merkel had alluded to “establishing whether there are common patterns of behavior by some groups of people who do not respect women” — a rather pointed dig at Muslim refugees.

Following the attacks, the chancellor also emphasized the question of “cultural coexistence,” a notion that seems to underpin Merkel and her allies’ insistence on a burqa ban. The true motivation behind such a policy, though, is usually more insidious, driven by a prejudice toward Islam and its religious principles.

Twitter screenshot of the hearse bearing Fidel Castro’s remains breaking down mid-procession in Cuba.

The late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s funeral took place this weekend, and the hearse carrying his body broke down mid-procession — and soldiers needed to push it the rest of the way. Twitter users called it “an Econ teacher’s dream-come-true for a metaphor.”

While this seems to confirm conservatives’ criticism of Cuba’s economy, it wasn’t just conservatives reporting on the event. In The Huffington Post’s report, Ed Mazza found a way to blame the United States: “Breakdowns are common in Cuba, where the longtime U.S. trade embargo has limited the number of new cars in the country. Many of the vehicles on the road are decades old.”

But also fittingly, the vehicle was reportedly Russian-built (perhaps even Soviet-built).

Here are a few of the pictures from the scene:

The brave work of the artist Mimsy was removed from London’s Mall Galleries after the British police defined it “inflammatory.”

In France, schools teach children that Westerners are Crusaders, colonizers and “bad.” In their efforts to justify the repudiation of France and its Judeo-Christian culture, schools have fertilized the soil in which Islamic extremism develops and flourishes unimpeded.

No one can deny that France is under Islamist siege. Last week, France’s intelligence service discovered another terror plot. But what is the priority of the Socialist government? Restricting freedom of expression for pro-life “militants.”

Under this politically correct dictatorship, Western culture has established two principles. First, freedom of speech can be restricted any time someone claims that an opinion is an “insult.” Second, there is a vicious double standard: minorities, especially Muslims, can freely say whatever they want against Jews and Christians.

There is no better ally of Islamic extremism than this sanctimony of liberal censorship: both, in fact, want to suppress any criticism of Islam, as well as any proud defense of the Western Enlightenment or Judeo-Christian culture.

Twitter, one of the vehicles of this new intolerance, even formed a “Trust and Safety Council.” It brings to mind Saudi Arabia’s “Council for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.”

Under this political correctness, the only “win-win” is for political Islam.

On November 29 Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan raised many eyebrows when he declared that Turkey’s military involvement in Syria, which started in the last week of August, had the objective “to end the rule of the tyrant al-Assad who terrorizes with state terror.” He even added that Turkey did not intervene there “for any other reason.”

Only two days later Erdogan completely reversed his position. Speaking in Ankara on December 1, he said that Turkey’s military operation in Syria was not directed “against any country or person,” but only against terror organizations. “No one should doubt this issue that we have uttered over and over,” he went on, “and no one should comment on it in another fashion, or try to misrepresent its meaning.”

Both statements were made with emphatic clarity. They were remarkably contradictory even for a politician well known for unpredictable moves. One possible explanation for Erdogan’s volte-face is the pressure from Moscow, which has been supporting Bashar with air operations since September 2015. The issue was reportedly raised in Erdogan’s telephone conversation with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin on November 30, and at the meeting of the two countries’ foreign ministers in the Turkish coastal resort town of Alanya on the same day.

In view of his strained relations with Washington and Brussels in the aftermath of last July’s coup attempt, and the ensuing radical purge of real, potential, or imagined enemies, Erdogan is keen to maintain his rapprochement with Russia. He initiated it last July, after an eight-month freeze that followed the shooting down of a Russian bomber by Turkish F-16s over northern Syria just over a year ago. In addition to the political imperative of broadening his diplomatic options, Erdogan is keen to avoid further losses to the Turkish economy—amounting to tens of billions of dollars—which had resulted from the cancellation of Russian trade, construction, and package tour contracts.

As it happens, neither stated reason for Turkey’s intervention in Syria is true. Erdogan’s real motive in launching “Operation Euphrates Shield” was to prevent the establishment of a Kurdish de facto statelet along Syria’s border with Turkey, and specifically to push back its strategically significant foothold west of the Euphrates River. This zone included the city of Manbij, which the Kurds had taken after heavy fighting against the Islamic State earlier last summer. The Obama administration went out of its way to prevent any further clashes between the Turkish army and the YPG (People’s Protection Units, the Syrian Kurdish militia), earning neither side’s gratitude but initially managing to keep them apart. An uneasy truce had prevailed between them until recently, allowing the Kurds to focus on battling the IS while the Turks were sitting tight in their limited, 2000 square mile occupation zone. Tensions have resurfaced recently, however, with Turkey and its local allies (a few hundred members of the misnamed “Free Syrian Army”) seeking to establish control over the disputed city of al-Bab.

Fidel’s popularity, I suspect, was due largely to the cinematic good looks of a testosterone-dripping alpha male, rather than his accomplishments. So, whatt were his achievements? What did Fidel Castro bring to the world to prompt such eulogies and admiration? What did he leave behind? Nothing but tides of blood and tears.
The ancient Romans had a saying – De mortuis nihil nisi bonum – about the dead, say either nothing or good. Hard as I tried, I was not able to do either. Progressives the world over, when describing the achievements of Fidel Castro, Hero of the Soviet Union, who died at the ripe old age of 90, have been dripping tears of loss, admiration and grief. The words used in such eulogies range from fiery to passionate, and include “charisma”, “ideals”, “belief” and many superlatives in between.

Let me give you my perspective, that of a former USSR citizen. Picture the port of Odessa in the early Sixties. The Caribbean missile crisis has just ended. The Odessa port workers, the very same proletarians, purportedly bound by class solidarity with the oppressed of the world, refuse to load grain onto a cargo ship bound for Cuba. Quite possibly, because of the chronic food shortage in the motherland of the world proletariat, this grain had been bought in capitalist Canada of the US, shipped to the USSR and then consigned to be shipped once again, this time back across the Atlantic to feed the revolution in Cuba. The wharfies sing a ditty, very poplar in Odessa at the time. It is a parody of a revolutionary Cuban song much beloved by disseminators of official Soviet propaganda:

Cuba, return our bread,
Cuba, take back your sugar,
Cuba, why don’t you go away and get f…ed,
Cuba, you’re such a loser

It was such a politically incorrect, counter-revolutionary ditty that the port area was immediately surrounded by the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ uniformed enforcers and the ‘ringleaders’ summararily arrested. There are no prizes for guessing what happened to them. I suspect that there were no ringleaders as such. Those dragged away were simple stevedores, struggling to feed their families in the semi-starving Soviet Union of Khrushchev times, and outraged that, instead of nourishing their own children, the food they were loading was destined for ‘the bearded maniac’.

Oh, Fidel Castro was popular with some, alright, but his popularity, I suspect, was largely due to the cinematically exotic good looks of a testosterone-dripping alpha-male, rather than his politics and accomplishments. So, what were his accomplishments and goals? What did Fidel Castro bring to the world? What, in short, did he leave behind?

I will not recount Castro’s bio – anyone remotely interested can find plenty of information. I’d like to start from January 1, 1959, when the rebels of his rag-tag army rolled into Havana and declared Cuba free – Cuba Libre! Freedom and cigars for everyone! Yippee! Hurray!

Just a reminder…..

http://www.timesofisrael.com/france-without-jews-is-not-france-french-pm-says-at-hyper-cacher/

‘France without Jews is not France,’ French PM says at Hyper Cacher

At a ceremony Saturday evening commemorating the four victims of a jihadist attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said the thought of Jews leaving France because they no longer feel it is their home was “an unbearable idea.”

Valls, speaking outside the Hyper Cacher supermarket, said France without its Jewish community was “not France” and vowed to fight anti-Semitism in all its forms.

Nothing, he said, could explain an attack by a Frenchmen on fellow citizens. “Nothing can explain the killing at outdoor cafes. Nothing can explain the killing in a concert hall. Nothing can explain the killing of journalists and police. And nothing can explain the killing of the Jews! Nothing can ever explain it,” he called, to cheers from the crowd.

PARIS—Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared his candidacy for the French presidency, seeking to bolster the left’s electoral chances amid record-low approval ratings for the Socialist government he helped lead for the last 2½ years.

Surrounded by supporters on Monday, Mr. Valls cast himself as an experienced hand ready to stand against authoritarian and populist political forces that have risen around France.

“I want an independent France,” Mr. Valls said, “inflexible in its values faced with the China of Xi Jinping, the Russia of Vladimir Putin, the America of Donald Trump, the Turkey of Recep Erdogan. We need strong experience in this world.”

Mr. Valls is running as a centrist in the Socialist party amid a crowded field of candidates on the left. Yet his low approval ratings show his candidacy faces an uphill climb; opinion polls suggest he would lose easily in the first round of the general election to François Fillon, the top center-right candidate, and Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front.

Still, Mr. Valls is more popular than his boss, President François Hollande, whose decision last week not to stand for re-election cleared the way for Mr. Valls to run.

Mr. Valls said his candidacy would act as a bulwark against the possibility of Ms. Le Pen winning the presidency.

The extreme right “is today on the verge of power,” he said. “It would remove us from Europe, and from history.”

Mr. Valls also took aim at Mr. Fillon, whose sweeping program of economic liberalization helped push him to victory in last month’s center-right primary. Mr. Fillon has proposed to slash government spending, eliminate up to 500,000 civil-servant posts, raise the retirement age and cut taxes for the wealthy.

“I don’t want civil servants to work more to earn less,” Mr. Valls said, defending one of the Socialist party’s key constituencies. “I don’t want our children to have fewer teachers, that our cities and countryside have fewer police and gendarmes.”

Mr. Valls may have trouble emerging from the Socialists’ primary. He remains an unpopular figure within the left wing of the party, which he angered by championing a law to strip the citizenship of some French nationals who are convicted of terrorist crimes. Mr. Hollande backed away from that proposal amid stiff opposition from his own party and some on the right.

Leo Tolstoy wrote that all happy families are alike, while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Among the lessons of 2016 is that, politically speaking, Tolstoy was wrong.

This was the year in which everything that couldn’t, shouldn’t and wouldn’t happen, happened. In May, Filipinos elected a man who said he’d be happy to slaughter millions of drug addicts the way Hitler slaughtered millions of Jews. In June, the British tossed out the European Union, along with the toffs who had told them to stay in it. In October, Colombians rejected a deal with the FARC for which their president was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. A month later: President-elect Donald Trump.

Now Italians have overwhelmingly rejected proposed constitutional changes that were supposed to make their political system functional and economic reform possible. Beppe Grillo, the populist politician who led the charge against the changes, crowed on his blog Sunday that “times have changed.” Yes, they have.
The Philippines, Britain, Colombia, America and Italy are big unhappy families. So is France, where the incumbent president doesn’t dare stand for re-election; and Brazil, which impeached its president in August; and South Korea, which is expected to impeach its president later this week. Nobody should think that Angela Merkel is a shoo-in for re-election next year, or that Marine Le Pen won’t be the next president of the Fifth Republic. One thing unhappy families often have in common is that their members aren’t averse to smashing the plates.

What happened? In 2014, Daniel Drezner, a professor at Tufts, published a book extolling the International Monetary Fund and other institutions of “economic global governance” for putting out the fires of the 2008 financial crisis. The global economy had been teetering on the brink of another Great Depression, but it didn’t fall in. Ergo, success.

The book was called “The System Worked.” Except it didn’t. The system did more to mask problems than it did to solve them. CONTINUE AT SITE