View this email in your browser Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by guest editor Jonah Bader.   December 10, 2018   Jupiter Speaks After weeks of unrest in France, President Emmanuel Macron finally addressed the nation with his plans to end the "yellow vest" crisis. In a televised speech, Macron promised several responses including raising the minimum wage and scuttling new pension taxes, though he refused to bow to calls for higher taxes on the wealthy. He expressed sympathy toward France's struggling working class while decrying the violence committed by protesters. "A new social contract." Benjamin Haddad, a fellow at the Hudson Institute who also worked on Macron's 2017 campaign, tells Global Briefing in an email that Macron's speech was "humble" yet "ambitious." Haddad applauds Macron for "staying firm against the violence but showing he shares the anger of the population… after 40 years of political inertia," as well as for "putting forward concrete measures." Macron "laid the groundwork for a new social contract" that could "give a new breath to his presidency." "Welcome boost" but "humiliating U-turn." Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center, also emailed Global Briefing with his thoughts. The measures laid out in the speech "will be a welcome boost to France's middle classes which have been battered by globalization, increased taxes and declining public services," Gobry writes. "Politically, however, it is hard to see this speech as anything other than a humiliating U-turn. Macron, who was elected on a promise of courage and bold reform, has caved in to protesters – and it is more likely than not that this show of weakness will only embolden them to ask for more." "Handouts, backtracks and tax sweeteners: Macron shows he still doesn't get it." That was the reaction of Pierre Briançon, a senior writer and editor with the Dow Jones Media Group. "The French want him to show understanding, respect, empathy. He opens the fiscal checkbook - another form of patronizing," Briançon writes on Twitter. Meanwhile, "Europe wants him to reform and stick to budget targets - he won't." Briançon warns, "This may not end well." May Cries Mayday Facing almost certain defeat, Prime Minister Theresa May decided to postpone the parliamentary vote on her Brexit plan that had been set for Tuesday. "She has bought herself some time," writes Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. "But it has come at a steep price." "First, she has taken an axe to the already broken credibility of herself and her hapless government," Freedland argues. More importantly, "The vote would have been the first stage in a much-needed process of elimination, whereby MPs would begin to confront the various options and eliminate them one by one." "Now that process is itself delayed. Which means MPs are leaving themselves too little time. Remember, if the clock runs out and no plan has been voted on and agreed to by parliament, then the UK simply crashes out of the EU with no deal on 29 March 2019 – with all the economic and social calamity that that entails." "What we are witnessing," writes Hal Brands for Bloomberg, "is something bigger than Brexit." "Ever since World War II, a relatively declining UK punched above its weight in international affairs by forging special — albeit very different — relationships with the US and Europe," Brands argues. No matter what form Brexit takes, "both partnerships are in severe decay." "The relationship with Europe is coming undone as a matter of British choice," Brands notes. The UK also faces "a high price for any free-trade deal" with the US, which has "demanded that Britain make a variety of controversial concessions." Not to mention, President Donald Trump "has also shown a particular talent for kicking May while she is down." In short, we are watching "the collapse of the grand strategy the Britain has used for generations to exert influence beyond its raw power in global affairs."   Survey: Stay Right Where You Are On Monday, over 160 countries signed the landmark Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. However, a number of countries where migration is a hot-button issue, such as the US, Australia, Hungary, and Israel, declined to join. The pact comes at a time when migration is unpopular worldwide, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center. Pew surveyed people in 27 countries that are home to a majority of the world's immigrants and found that "a median of 45% say fewer or no immigrants should be allowed to move to their country, while 36% say they want about the same number of immigrants. Just 14% say their countries should allow more immigrants." "At the same time, people in many countries worry about people leaving their home for jobs in other countries," according to Pew. Across the same 27 nations, a median of 64% of respondents think emigration is a "big problem" for their country.   How to Rejuvenate Human Rights at 70 Seventy years after the UN's adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Hurst Hannum writes in The Hill urging a new approach in an age when progress on human rights seems to have stalled or even reversed. "If we want to increase the relevance of human rights for the next 70 years, we must return to the principles of consensus and universality that were at the heart of human rights as the movement gained global political significance in the last quarter of the 20th century." "Often strident calls from European and other Western human rights activists for adherence to the contemporary liberal European construct of society are facing a backlash in the rest of the world," Hannum notes. "This tendency is exacerbated by activists who see expanding the concept of 'rights' as the best means to effect domestic social and political change" on issues like poverty and the environment. "Overselling human rights only strengthens authoritarian governments and others who challenge the universal application of human rights by hypocritical appeals to cultural relativism over globally shared values," Hannum contends. "[I]f we ask more of human rights than they can ever accomplish, we risk destroying them along the way." Share Tweet Fwd unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences  Copyright © 2018 Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company., All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you subscribed to CNN newsletters. Our mailing address is: Cable News Network, Inc. A WarnerMedia Company. One CNN Center Atlanta, GA 30303 Add us to your address book What did you like about today's Global Briefing? What did we miss? Let us know what you think: GlobalBriefing@cnn.com Sign up to get updates on your favorite CNN Original Series, special CNN news coverage and other newsletters.​   Sign Up for Fareed's Global Briefing