Displaying posts categorized under

WORLD NEWS

French Malaise Strikes Again by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19784/french-malaise

These riots did start with the killing of a 17-year boy of Algerian ancestry by the police. But the killing was not racially motivated and, as protesters made clear, what was at issue was police brutality rather than racial hatred… [T]he root cause of the anger that provoked the riots was a deep dissatisfaction with the way the country is governed.

What has happened in France in the past five or six decades is a major change in the balance of power between the state and society. French society today is far better educated, self-confident, better informed and more enterprising than the French state, which has become costlier, less efficient and more arrogant.

The suburbs that burned are precisely the ones that the French state has invested more than 30 billion euros in “improving” over the past 20 years. The result has been the creation of a whole generation of “assisted” people whose ethnic and/or religious backgrounds are treated as heirlooms to justify government handout in various guises.

But just as man can’t live on bread alone, he won’t be grateful and obedient by handouts alone.

Judging by France’s recent history, the month of June should be a quiet moment when people prepare for summer holidays in exotic places. Protest marches, riots and even revolutions usually take place in the spring, with May being the hottest month for political gesticulations. The baccalaureate exams are over, the annual bonuses are paid and the fruit-picking is over. Thus, the riots of the past two weeks that produced mayhem in Parisian suburbs and a dozen other places across France came like bolt out of the blue.

Riots Again in France by Alain Destexhe

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19781/riots-again-in-france

These responses — skirting due process at the highest levels of government — show the fear that the suburbs instill in those in power: the fear of a generalized conflagration, the fear of another death, the fear that control of the situation is slipping away, the fear of the inability to control these uprisings or the root causes that breed them.

Some of these suburbs have long since become lawless zones, or rather zones of “alternative law,” where drug kingpins and Muslim imams now rule the roost, and where the police only move in force from time to time. In some neighborhoods, drug dealers have set up physical obstacles that make it difficult for the police to gain access when they decide to intervene by force, when the authorities can pretend that they still control something.

It is necessary to deal with the cause — excessive and uncontrolled immigration — both legal (through family reunification and the right of asylum) and illegal. When you are faced with a leak in a boat that is on the verge of sinking, as French society is, you not only have to have to bail out the water, but also plug the breach.

There are “two Frances” facing each other. One is violent, ready to riot at the first opportunity, encouraged by political parties who see it as an electoral reservoir. The other, still in the majority, is dignified and peaceful, outraged by the behavior of these young people of immigrant origin — but who remain silent and do nothing.

France seems slowly heading for civil war.

Following the killing of a 17-year-old boy, France is once again the scene of riots that reflect the gulf between traditional France and the suburbs — the result of immigration over the last 40 years.

Nahel Merzouk was killed by police. He was being chased in Nanterre, near Paris, by two policemen on a motorcycle for traffic violations and refusal to stop the car he was driving. After Merzouk was forced to stop the car due to traffic congestion, the policemen approached his car and drew their weapons. Merzouk then drove off, at which point one of the policemen fired his weapon at the car, fatally wounding Merzouk. If Merzouk had followed the orders of the police, he would not have died.

After the French Riots “Laxity and submission.” by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/after-the-french-riots/

So the latest round of rioting in France seems at last to have burned itself out. In the end, it didn’t expand into a Muslim revolution; it didn’t succeed in overthrowing the French Republic; it didn’t lead to the first transformation of a Western republic into a sharia state. But this doesn’t mean that France won’t eventually be brought down in such a way, and sooner rather than later. All it will take is one more minor police action that triggers the nation’s Muslims into a tsunami of fierce and extraordinary violence – a tsunami that, unlike this time, doesn’t end until it makes the Reign of Terror look like a scene from Gigi.

Certainly the cooling-off of Muslim rage owed nothing whatsoever to the efforts of Emmanuel Macron or any other French leader. Nor did it owe anything to the French electorate which – although it’s been offered the opportunity in recent years to install in the Élysée Palace a principled and intrepid agent of change like Marine le Pen, Valérie Pécresse, or Éric Zemmour – has instead voted repeatedly for more of the same. Voted, that is, for hopeless establishment types like Macron, who over the years has spoken out of both sides of his mouth on the immigration issue – celebrating Muslim imports as an economic boon, then formulating a five-point program to defeat “Islamic separatism,” then “clarifying” his plan with a declaration of his deep respect for the Islamic faith.

Well, there’s one positive thing to be said about last week’s riots: they brought Western Europe’s alarming predicament into focus in a manner that few events in recent years have succeeded in doing, and, one can only hope, have opened the eyes of a considerable number of people who’d previously managed to avoid facing up to reality. How many people? Who knows?

Even before the rioting, to be sure, most Frenchmen understood very well what they were up against. Although heroic truth-tellers like Zemmour have been condemned in the French media for promoting the so-called “replacement theory” – i.e., the belief that native Europeans are being gradually supplanted by foreign peoples whose mass immigration over recent decades is the consequence of policies instituted by political elites without the consent of the populace. In fact, surveys have shown that most Frenchmen subscribe to the “replacement theory.”

Here’s What You Need To Know About France’s ‘Summer Of Love’ Riots By: Shawn Fleetwood

https://thefederalist.com/2023/07/06/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-frances-summer-of-love-riots/

The ongoing situation in France bears a striking resemblance to the Black Lives Matter and Antifa violence that engulfed American cities following the May 2020 death of George Floyd.

French authorities have estimated that rioters have burned or looted more than 1,100 public and private buildings over the past week in their violent response to a police shooting involving a 17-year-old French citizen of Algerian descent.

On Wednesday, a French news outlet reported that, according to the country’s Ministry of the Interior, roughly 1,105 buildings including police stations, town halls, and schools have been assaulted since riots began on June 27. French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire told a CNN affiliate that more than 1,000 businesses have been “vandalised, attacked or set on fire.” The damages are estimated to cost over $1 billion.

The impetus for the nationwide violence occurred on June 27, when a French police officer shot and killed 17-year-old “Nahel M.” during a traffic stop. While exact details of the situation remain unclear, early reports indicate the situation unfolded after police pulled the young man over in a Paris suburb for allegedly breaking traffic rules. According to Fox News, police have reportedly claimed Nahel “drove his car at one of the officers, while the video [of the incident] shows one of the officers pointing a weapon at him and saying, ‘You are going to get a bullet in the head.’”

“The officer then appears to shoot Nahel as the car suddenly pulls away, traveling only a short distance before crashing, with Nahel dying at the scene. Police took the offending officer into custody and opened an investigation into charges of voluntary manslaughter, with charges brought against him on Friday,” the Fox report reads. The officer’s lawyers have since claimed their client meant to shoot Nahel in the leg but was bumped into when the car took off and did not intend to kill him.

One Man Versus China By John Stossel

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/07/05/one-man-versus-china-n1708480

This week, while we celebrate the work of America’s founders, I honor a living freedom fighter: billionaire businessman Jimmy Lai.

When Communist China crushed freedom in Hong Kong, Lai could have gone anywhere in the world and lived a life of luxury. But he chose to stay in Hong Kong and go to jail.

A new documentary, “The Hong Konger,” tells his story.

Lai grew up in poverty in China.

“My mother was (imprisoned) in a labor camp,” he recalls. “We were just 5 or 6 and managing ourselves without an adult in the household. When I was 8 and 9, I worked in the railway station carrying people’s baggage.”

There he learned about a little British-controlled island near China called Hong Kong, where people were less poor. So he went there “in the bottom of a fishing junk, together with maybe 100, maybe 80, people, and everybody vomiting.”

Once in Hong Kong, he was amazed at how plentiful food was. “I never saw so many things for breakfast. I was so moved. I was crying.”

In France, Muslim Mayhem and (Attempted) Murder Muslim migrants repay the French for their tolerance and inclusion. by Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/in-france-muslim-mayhem-and-attempted-murder/

To hear his friends tell it, and of course his mother, Nahel Merzouk, the 17-year-old Algerian-French young man who was shot by the police, was a splendid fellow, never in any trouble, so why did the police have to go and do what they did? But it turns out that, having nearly run over a bicyclist and a pedestrian, Nahel was finally forced to stop by two police officers. As one of them leaned over to talk to him, his pistol aimed downward into the car, Nahel suddenly accelerated the car with that policeman still leaning into, but not in it. As the car’s sudden movement forward knocked the officer off-kilter, in a split-second attempt to halt the driver, the policeman shot at what he thought was Nahel’s leg, which was where his gun had been pointed. But it no longer was, and the bullet instead hit Nahel’s chest.

The maghrébins all over France went on the rampage. Frenzied mobs in Paris, Marseille, and Bordeaux and hundreds of other cities and towns, pillaged and destroyed stores, choosing judiciously to hit the luxury-goods emporia on the rue de Rivoli, as well as Apple stores, the famed department store La Samaritaine, and high-end sneakers stores, making off everywhere with armfuls of loot. In one southern city, the Swarovski store was emptied, with everything smashed or stolen. So, too, was the optician’s store on the same block, where thousands of pairs of glasses were taken or destroyed, and next to it, a computer-and-phone store emptied of everything. And so on, store after store, destroyed and its merchandise stolen or smashed, all to express “the rage” of young Muslims over the death of the “angelic” Nahel Merzouk. By Sunday, Muslim mobs have torched many thousands of cars, and hundreds of buses all over the country. They tried to burn down the largest library in Marseille, the Alcazar, and as they did in so many other places, those mobs shouted “Allahu akbar.”

Are the French police too aggressive with drivers during traffic stops? Hardly. In the three years since 2020, there have been 21 fatalities among drivers. That comes to seven drivers a year who are shot. In the U.S., in the five years between 2017 and the beginning of 2022, there were a total of 600 fatalities, or 120 a year. 120 a year in the U.S., 7 a year in France.

UN and Arabs Whitewash Atrocities of Bashar Assad, Instead Blame – Guess Who? by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19777/un-arabs-syria-atrocities

The League of Arab States (LAS), which represents 22 member countries, has spent several decades issuing statements of condemnation against Israel. Each time Israel launches a counterterrorism operation in response to Palestinian terrorism, including rockets fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel and shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks, it is denounced.

The same League of Arab States, however, has no problem embracing an Arab president whose regime has killed hundreds of thousands of Arabs, including Palestinians and Syrians, since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011.

The LAS… has effectively whitewashed Syrian President Bashar Assad’s atrocities against his own people and Palestinians.

Assad, in his speech before the Arab heads of state, ironically expressed hope that the summit would mark “the beginning of a new phase of Arab action for solidarity among us, for peace in our region, development and prosperity instead of war and destruction.”

Here is an Arab leader, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Arabs and the displacement of millions more, preaching about “peace, development and prosperity.”

Saudi Arabia played a significant role in welcoming the Assad regime back to the League of Arab States. The Saudis have shown that they prefer to make peace with Assad than normalize their relations with Israel. Drastically cooling years of diplomatic efforts, the Saudis insist that until a Palestinian state has been established, the kingdom will not normalize ties with Israel. If the Saudis are so concerned about the Palestinians, why are they rushing to embrace an Arab dictator whose regime has killed thousands of Palestinians?

With no apparent preconditions for Assad, the League of Arab States is turning its back on more than 500,000 dead Syrians, nearly seven million Syrian refugees, and 13 million displaced Syrians.

London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan and Woke Ideology By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/06/londons_mayor_sadiq_khan_and_woke_ideology.html

Our cousins across the pond apparently have jumped on the woke bandwagon and the Muslim Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is leading the charge.

In fact, Sadiq Khan’s staff have been banned from calling people ‘men and women’ as part of a new inclusivity drive.

Pictured is an example of some of the banned phrases issued to staff working for the London Mayor’s office. 

In the guide’s section on gender, staff was told: ‘Avoid using “men and women” – say “people” or “Londoners”.

‘Similarly, instead of ‘ladies and gentlemen’ say something that doesn’t exclude non-binary people.’

The memo reportedly goes on to say the terms male and female are ‘dated and medicalised’ and that ‘female humans are called ‘girls and/or women’, male humans are called ‘boys and/or men’.

Workers are also told that ‘not all women have periods’ and to use the phrase ‘people affected by period poverty’ as some trans men and non-binary people may have periods too.

Staff working for Mr. Khan must no longer call someone a ‘non-English speaker’ because it portrays them as flawed and defective’. 

Instead, Greater London Authority employees must refer to them as ’Londoners with English Language needs’.

The hijack of language The duty of conservatives is to reclaim the words that are driving the culture off the cliff Melanie Phillips

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/the-hijack-of-language?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The Conservative Party in Britain is in trouble. Many natural conservatives have written it off as rudderless, leaderless and useless. Tory MPs are forming silos of attitudes that they believe define conservatism but which cancel each other out in a welter of recrimination, panic and closed minds. 

As they miserably thrash around, we hear over and over again the irritated complaint: “Don’t go on about the culture wars. Ordinary people have no time for all that nonsense. What they want to hear from us is how to improve their standard of living. Oh, and stopping immigration, of course. Oh, and dealing with crime. All that culture war stuff is irrelevant to them. It’s a distraction from the real challenge: saving the Conservative Party”.

This is myopia on stilts. Culture — the attitudes that shape the zeitgeist and the national conversation — is not irrelevant to politics. It drives politics. Ordinary people may regard the battles of the culture war as taking place in a weird and distant galaxy called Intelligentsia.  But the issues involved have a direct bearing on their lives, their families, their communities and their nation.

If the nation and its culture finally slide off the edge of the cliff, the Tories will slide with it. The Conservative Party will only stand a chance of being saved if the nation and its culture are saved.

But how is the culture to be saved from falling off the edge of the cliff towards which it has been sliding for decades?

To have a chance of saving it, we must understand why it’s been pushed to the edge. Why conservatives, whose role in life is to defend what is valuable, didn’t recognise what was happening and fight to stop it.  

Partly, this is because conservatives tend not to think in theoretical terms. Busy with realities, they have no time for ivory-tower fantasies. So they don’t recognise ideology until it bites them in the face. 

Pakistan’s Genocide by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19755/pakistan-genocide

“The conflict resulted in the massacre of an estimated three million East Pakistani citizens, the ethnic cleansing of 10 million ethnic Bengalis who fled to India, and the rape of at least 200,000 women (some estimates put the number of rape victims at closer to 400,000).” — hinduamerican.org

“Hindus were the special targets of this violence, as documented by official government correspondence and documents from the United States, Pakistan, and India…. The Pakistan military’s conflation of Hindu, Bengali, and Indian identities meant that all Bengalis (the majority of people in Bangladesh) were suspect…. In the eyes of the Pakistani military, Hindu, Bengali, and Indian identities were one and the same.” — hinduamerican.org

“Bengali Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, and other religious groups were also significantly affected. By the end of the first month in March 1971, 1.5 million Bengalis were displaced. By November 1971, 10 million Bengalis, the majority of whom were Hindu, had fled to India.” — hinduamerican.org

“II]in the eyes of Western Pakistanis and their fundamentalist Muslim collaborators ‘the Hindus among the Bengalis were as Jews to the Nazis: scum and vermin that should best be exterminated.'” — Rudolph Joseph Rummel (1932–2014), leading American scholar of genocides, quoted by sociologist Massimo Introvigne, bitterwinter.org, November 2, 2021.

The genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Pakistani military against millions of people due to their ethnicity, religion, language and political views urgently need to be called out and the perpetrators held accountable.

The genocide committed by Pakistan needs immediate recognition.

“According to Bangladesh Government estimates 3 million people were killed, over two-hundred thousand women were sexually and physically violated, and 10 million people were forced to cross the border into India, leaving behind their ancestral homes and worldly possessions just to save their lives and dignity of their women,” wrote Stichting BASUG (Bangladesh Support Group), a non-governmental organization, together with other Bangladeshi diaspora organizations to the United Nations Secretary General on May 29.

“Over 20 million citizens were internally displaced in search of safety. Newspapers, magazines and publications which are available in libraries and archives all around the world bear testimony to the fact.”