RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/18/the-view-from-budapest/

I’m writing from Budapest, the beautiful, Danube-bestriding Hungarian capital. Hungary, though a faraway land and modest in both size and population, has played an outsize role in the American conservative conscience for the past half-decade or so. After just a few days, it is not difficult to understand why. Hungary, under Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party, is a real-life experiment in government under a framework of “national conservatism.” Lessons for American conservatives are clear and legion.

Western media typically covers Orban in hysterical fashion, accusing him of autocracy, crypto-fascism, or outright thuggery. It is difficult to believe that any of these left-wing keyboard warriors have ever met Orban, much less spent any time with him. I spent a couple of hours standing directly next to him earlier this week, when he met with a small group of visiting media, think-tankers, and other public figure types. That meeting was illuminating.

From firsthand experience, I can attest that the prime minister is nothing like the caricature the media portrays him as. He is personally quite funny, gregarious, and engaging, and he handled even critical questions with aplomb.

Perhaps most surprising for blue-checked Twitterati types who view him as a power-hungry, barbaric European dictator, he is also a genuine conservative intellectual. Orban spent time at Oxford, and he dedicates one day every week to reading up and immersing himself in substantive political reading material. To borrow a popular online phrase, he has “done the reading.”

At our meeting, Balazs Orban (no relation), the prime minister’s political director, expressly referred to the Hungarian government’s philosophical lodestar as national conservatism, even name-checking one of national conservatism’s chief intellectual architects, Yoram Hazony (full disclosure: my Edmund Burke Foundation colleague). In the past, Orban has also embraced the mantle of “illiberal democracy.” That may sound rhetorically jarring to overly sensitized Western ears, but it amounts to the same criticism of the liberal order as that which is aired by American national conservatives and “postliberals.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-ottawa-convoy/#slide-1

Ottawa – Tensions are running high in Ottawa as hundreds of police officers in riot gear make a coordinated push to dismantle the trucker convoy that arrived in the city in late January. Police arrested at least two leading organizers of the convoy, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, on Thursday night. But today, law-enforcement officers are engaged in a much larger-scale action, surrounding the encampments and methodically moving in to make arrests and disperse protesters, and even positioning armed officers on nearby roofs. It’s by far the most aggressive show of state force against the convoy to date.

This morning, large numbers of police officers — arriving on foot, on horseback, and in armored cars — began amassing around the convoy. By 11 a.m., lines of police officers on multiple sides of the encampments had begun to push inward, cutting off the main entrances and shrinking the reach of the convoy. They were met with loud and angry shouts of indignation from the truckers, who assembled to meet them on the other side of the line. But with some exceptions — at certain junctures, the officers’ advances pushed into a crowd of protesters who refused to move, leading to a sort of pushing match between the convoy crowd and the line of police — there were few physical altercations. Those who did resist police advances were promptly arrested and hauled out.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18236/iran-support-houthi-terrorists

According to Western security officials, the high level meetings between senior members of the Houthi terrorist organisation and Iran illustrate the close coordination that is taking place between Iran and the Houthis over the rebel group’s terrorist operations.

“There has been mounting evidence of deepening cooperation between Iran and the Houthis, especially in terms of Iran supplying the Houthis with sophisticated weapons, such as missiles and drones,” a senior Western security official told the author. “The meetings that took place in January prior to the attacks on the UAE suggest the cooperation between Iran and the Houthis has increased dramatically.”

At the very least, the Biden administration needs to concentrate its energies on both confronting the Houthis’ terrorist network, as well as providing its Gulf allies with the protection they need to defend themselves against further attacks by the Iranian-backed rebels.

Following last month’s attacks, senior UAE officials renewed calls for the Biden administration to reimpose Washington’s terrorist designation against the Houthis, which was lifted soon after US President Joe Biden took office last year as a goodwill gesture to Iran.

Since then there has been a marked increase in Houthi-inspired terrorist activity…..

New evidence revealing how Houthi rebels in Yemen cooperate with their main backers in Iran has shed fresh light on how Tehran is actively directing their terrorist activities.

Iran’s links with the Yemeni-based terrorist group have been under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks after the Houthis launched a series of unprovoked attacks against the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last month, killing three civilians and injuring six more.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/boris-johnsons-foreign-policy-magical-thinking-bruce-thornton/

Last week British Prime Minister Boris Johnson published an op-ed about the brewing conflict between Ukraine and Russia. And, no surprise, it comprised a catalogue of “new world order” idealism of the sort we’ve watched crash and burn for the last three decades. Vladimir Putin would not be impressed were he to read it, any more than he’s worried about the modest increases in NATO forces near his borders, since the U.S. Commander-in-Chief already announced that we will not go to war over Ukraine. Plus the NATO countries are still disunited over how to respond should Putin go kinetic.

Once again, the hard questions of what threatens our interests and how to meet those threats are ignored in favor of bankrupt idealism and magical thinking.

Amidst all the virtue-signaling and braggadocios rhetoric, Johnson offers this strange sentence that epitomizes that idealism: “If I may adapt some famous words: All nations are created equal, they are endowed by international law with certain inalienable rights, and first among these is the right not to have their territory seized, or their foreign policy dictated at gunpoint, by a powerful neighbor.”

Talk about a false analogy. No, nations are not all “created equal” and  do not have “unalienable rights,” but only such rights as are created by treaties with other nations, not by shared universal “norms” or “values.” Nor, as Johnson implies, is “international law” like “nature and nature’s God” that the Founder believed make certain human rights unalienable, a feature of our inherent humanity, not a gift of earthly power. International law, in contrast, is the contingent product of treaties negotiated by sovereign nations that enter into such agreements in order to further their national interests. They do not reflect universal morality or values, and so are regularly violated, or simply abandoned, as those interests shift.

Historical milestones

Historical milestones shape the ethos, vision and policy-making of ethnic, religious and national entities.

For example, the ethos, vision and policy-making of the Jewish State has been largely shaped by the centrality of the Land of Israel since Abraham the Patriarch (2150 BCE), through Moses and the Biblical Exodus (1300 BCE), the kingdom of David (1000 BCE), the destruction of Jerusalem (586 BCE and 70 CE) and the ensuing exiles, the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid (167-160 BCE) and Roman (66-73 CE and 132-136 CE) Empires, modern day Zionism, the Holocaust and the 1948/49 War of Independence.  There is a 4,000-year-old attachment to the land of Israel, physically, spiritually, historically, religiously, culturally, linguistically and nationally.

Muslim entities consider the 7th century emergence of Islam as a pivotal component of their contemporary school curriculum, culture, worldview, vision and policy-making.

Historical milestones shaping the Ayatollahs’ vision and policy-making

*The ferocious 14-century-old rivalry between the Sunni majority and Shiite minority over the succession of the Prophet Muhammad;

*The 680 CE killing of Hussein ibn-Ali, the Shiite grandson of Muhammad in the Battle of Karbala by a much stronger army of the Caliph Yazid. The Battle of Karbala was the “big bang” of the Sunni-Shiite schism;

*The annual commemoration of Hussein’s martyrdom and betrayal through public processions on the Day of Ashura, which includes beating one’s chest and bloody self-flagellating;

*The dominance of Shiite dynasties during the 10th-11th centuries in parts of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Arabia, Yemen, Tunisia, Sicily, and the Caspian area.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18231/xi-jinping-china-war

Xi Jinping, China’s mighty-looking leader, has an “enormous array of domestic enemies.” — Gregory Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association and editor-in-chief of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, to Gatestone Institute, February 2022.

Xi created that opposition. After becoming China’s ruler at the end of 2012, he grabbed power from everyone else and then jailed tens of thousands of opponents in purges, which he styled as “anti-corruption” campaigns.

Beijing is panicking, adding nearly a trillion dollars in total new credit last month, a record increase…. When the so-called “hidden debt” is included, total debt in the country amounts to somewhere in the vicinity of 350% of gross domestic product.

Not surprisingly, Chinese companies are now defaulting. The debt crisis is so serious it can bring down China’s economy—and the country’s financial and political systems with it.

In the most recent hint of distress, “Fang Zhou and China”… wrote a 42,000-character essay titled “An Objective Evaluation of Xi Jinping.” The anti-Xi screed, posted on January 19 on the China-sponsored 6park site, appears to be the work of several members of the Communist Party’s Shanghai Gang faction, headed by former leader Jiang Zemin. Jiang’s faction has been continually sniping at Xi and now is leading the charge against him.

Xi’s problems, unfortunately, can become our problems. He has, for various internal political reasons, a low threshold of risk and many reasons to pick on some other country to deflect elite criticism and popular discontent.

The Communist Party of China has always believed its struggle with the United States is existential—in May 2019 the official People’s Daily declared a “people’s war” on America—but the hostility has become far more evident in the past year.

Virulent anti-Americanism suggests Xi Jinping is establishing a justification to strike America. The Chinese regime often uses its media to first warn and then signal its actions.

America has now been warned.

When truckers took over Canada’s capital, Ottawa, and shut down border entry points to America, some called it a “nationwide insurrection.” Mass demonstrations have occurred across the democratic world. People have had enough of two years of mandates and other disease-control measures.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/unmasking-trudeaus-lies-and-trucker-truths/

According to an old Israeli quip, the way to remove 500 Canadians from a swimming pool at closing time is to whisper, “Everybody out of the water, please.”

The implication is both clear and amusing to each group. Israelis are famous for and proud of being disobedient and unruly; Canadians are considered and view themselves as well-mannered and orderly.

But the joke, apparently, is on all concerned, now that the latter’s truckers have entered the picture. These guys aren’t exiting the proverbial premises with a subservient bow. On the contrary, they’re not only conducting a serious protest but leading others in the world to follow suit.

Their shouts to be heard by the government in Ottawa started as a reaction to draconian measures aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus pandemic—or, at least, it’s the excuse used by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his very illiberal Liberal Party to exercise power over the public.

Trudeau is by no means alone in this endeavor. Leaders around the globe, initially flummoxed by COVID-19, have spent the past two years caving to the dire predictions of and warnings by health “authorities,” despite equally gloomy economic and psychological forecasts.

Nor are Canadians the only people who’ve been putting up with restrictions imposed on them by politicians. Indeed, even normally cheeky and rebellious Israelis meekly accepted lockdowns and the like from the outset.
It’s almost funny that a microbe came along and instilled a level of fear that no Hamas or Hezbollah missile had been able to do until that point. And that’s not a joke.
Israelis I know personally who used to pooh-pooh calls to take shelter during rocket attacks—some going so far as to head outside to film Iron Dome interceptions—suddenly were terrified not to wear the best surgical masks on the market and wouldn’t leave home without bottles of hand sanitizer at the ready.
Much of the hysteria waned when vaccines became available. But then a second and third wave arrived, followed by a fourth and a fifth. This had an interesting effect.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/canada_and_the_tyranny_of_emergencies.html

Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared a “state of emergency” against his own citizens in what has become the latest fashionable trend to crush dissent and demand obedience to the state. The BBC reports:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken the unprecedented step of invoking the Emergencies Act to crack down on anti-vaccine mandate protests.

Mr Trudeau said the scope of the measures would be “time-limited”, “reasonable and proportionate” and would not see the military deployed. (snip)

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said at Monday’s news conference that banks would be able freeze personal accounts of anyone linked with the protests without any need for a court order.

Vehicle insurance of anyone involved with the demonstrations can also be suspended, she added.

Ms Freeland said they were broadening Canada’s “Terrorist Financing” rules to cover cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding platforms, as part of the effort.

https://dianebederman.com/there-is-a-stench-in-the-air-over-ottawa-and-it-isnt-coming-from-diesel-fuel/

There is a stench in the air over Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, and it isn’t coming from diesel fuel. No, it is coming from the odious fumes of main stream media at the behest of our Dear Leader, Justin Trudeau.

The Globe and Mail, one of Canada’s major media outlets has just informed us that the Freedom Trucker Convoy is a right wing phenomenon with a sharp America feel. According to the author, Ian Brown, it is an “.. . unapologetic Trumpy aggressiveness.” It seems the Convoy seconded the flag for nefarious reasons. Who knew? Too many flags apparently are the problem. Once again, I have to ask, like prunes, are three enough are six too many?  Professor Peter Astor  is concerned about “the convoy organizers’ promiscuous flinging of the word freedom. “I realize you’re not dealing with PhD students but there is no such thing in democracy as absolute freedom.’” And saying something like “FUCK TRUDEAU” is a stoop too low for Canada. This was too much for Professor Astor. He was shocked. SHOCKED. He’s positively distressed! No one said that about Mulroney or Pearson.  Hmm, I wonder why.

What about this?