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https://www.wsj.com/articles/frances-emmanuel-macron-targets-islamic-separatism-with-proposed-law-11601654320?mod=world_major_1_pos5

PARIS—French President Emmanuel Macron took aim at radical Islam Friday, announcing plans to outlaw what he called “Islamic separatism” in communities where he said religious laws are taking precedence over civil ones.

Mr. Macron said the law, if passed, would empower authorities to shut down associations and schools that he said indoctrinate children, and monitor foreign investment in religious organizations in France. It would also improve public services in poor suburbs, he said.

The bill, which will go before Parliament early next year, risks escalating tensions between Muslim groups in France and authorities who enforce the country’s strict secularism.

France began introducing bans on wearing Islamic dress such as face coverings in public areas years ago. Since then, the social and economic alienation of French Muslims has only deepened.

Groups that practice radical forms of Islam, Mr. Macron said, were trying to create a parallel society governed by different rules and values than those espoused by the Republic.

“What we need to take on is Islamic separatism,” Mr. Macron said, during a visit to Les Mureaux, a suburb northwest of Paris.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pope-francis-calls-for-brotherhood-amid-covid-19-pandemic-11601806766

“Pope Francis’ major targets include what he calls the dogma of neoliberal economics and its promises of trickle-down prosperity. “The fragility of world systems in the face of the pandemic has demonstrated that not everything can be resolved by market freedom,” he writes. He calls for strengthening the United Nations and other multilateral structures to rein in a globalized economy beyond the power of nation states to regulate.”

ROME—Pope Francis offered his prescription for a host of ills plaguing societies around the world, including poverty, terrorism and racism, in a major document written in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Fratelli tutti” (“Brothers, all”), released by the Vatican on Sunday, is only the third time Pope Francis has written an encyclical, one of the most authoritative genres of papal writing. The 43,000-word text echoes some of the major themes of his social teaching, including the rights of migrants and the poor, with a special urgency inspired by Covid-19.

“Once this health crisis passes, our worst response would be to plunge even more deeply into feverish consumerism and new forms of egoistic self-preservation,” the pope writes. “If only we might keep in mind all those elderly persons who died for lack of respirators, partly as result of the dismantling, year after year, of health-care systems.”

But he writes that the experience of the pandemic also offered hope in the examples of ordinary people—cleaners and supermarket workers as well as doctors, nurses and priests—who risked their lives to keep society going: “They understood that no one is saved alone.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/china-seeks-greater-control-over-united-nations-international-organizations/

As the U.N. approaches a century of existence, its chief challenge will be to grapple with authoritarian attempts to remake it from within.

D uring the U.N. General Assembly opening debate last month, the Chinese Communist Party’s effort to assume greater control over international organizations was on full display.

This year, “UNGA Week,” as the high-profile general debate of the assembly is called, took place primarily over video conference, and the in-person gatherings that make up the bread and butter of U.N. diplomacy prevented many important interactions. No matter for the Chinese delegation: In addition to general secretary Xi Jinping’s address to the Assembly, he participated in a side event on the U.N.’s 75th anniversary, and other Chinese foreign-affairs officials participated in other meetings throughout the week.Xi set the tone of the Chinese delegation’s message. Sadly, it’s been accepted by too much of the U.N. system, and by some smaller states that have yet to awaken to the brutality of the Chinese regime. As the U.N. turns 75 this year, the CCP made its case for why the country it rules over is a leading defender of the multilateral order. “When in competition, countries should not breach the moral standard and should comply with international norms,” Xi said, during his UNGA speech. “In particular, major countries should act like major countries.”

The CCP, of course, is gaslighting the world, and the authoritarian regime’s grip on international organizations is perhaps the biggest threat facing the principles laid out in the U.N. Charter. “How China Is Taking Over International Organizations, One Vote at a Time” was the title of a Wall Street Journal front page article this past Thursday morning. The piece described precisely what the headline suggests it would: the Chinese government’s co-optation of U.N. organizations, often by coercion, over the past several years.