RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13500/france-in-free-fall

French officials evidently understand that the terrorists are engaged in a long war and that it will be difficult to stop them; so they seem to have given in. These officials are no doubt aware that young French Muslims are being radicalized in increasing numbers. The response, however, has been to strengthen Muslim institutions in France.

At the time President Macron was speaking, one of his emissaries was in Morocco to sign the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which defines immigration as “beneficial” for the host countries. Under it, signatory states pledge to “strengthen migrant-inclusive service delivery systems.”

A group of retired generals published an open letter, saying that signing the Global Compact was a further step towards “the abandonment of national sovereignty” and noted that “80% of the French population think that immigration must be halted or regulated drastically”.

The author Éric Zemmour described the “yellow vests” revolt as the result of the “despair of people who feel humiliated, forgotten, dispossessed of their own country by the decisions of a contemptuous caste”.

Strasbourg, France. Christmas market. December 11th, 8pm. A man shouting, “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”) shoots at passersby, then wounds several with a knife. He murders three people on the spot and wounds a dozen others, some severely. Two will later die of their wounds. The murderer escapes. Two days later, the police shoot him dead.

He was known to the police. When members of the General Directorate of Internal Security and some gendarmes came to his home a few hours earlier, he had escaped. Although they knew he was an armed and dangerous Islamist ready to act, and that Christmas markets had been, and could be, likely targets, no surveillance was in place.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13499/iran-schizophrenia

The Khomeinist revolution in Iran has failed to “export” its model to a single country, while making Iran poorer and more vulnerable than it had been under the Shah.

The political schizophrenia gives the impression that one is dealing with two Irans: one Iran as a state and another as a revolution. The good news is that, perhaps out of necessity, a new political culture is taking shape inside Iran, one that instinctively links politics to concrete issues of real life rather than abstract notions linked to revolutionary utopias.

What millions of Iranians demand is a restoration of the authority of their state which, in turn, requires, the closure of the revolutionary chapter.

As the leadership in Tehran prepares to mark the 40th anniversary of the Khomeinist revolution, a growing number of Iranians are wondering whether the time has come for their country to close that chapter and resume its historic path as a nation-state.

The need for Iran to move beyond the Khomeinist revolution was the theme of a seminar last month at Westminster University in London where the return of Iran as a nation-state was highlighted as an urgent need for regional peace and stability.

The Khomeinist revolution in Iran has failed to “export” its model to a single country, while making Iran poorer and more vulnerable than it had been under the Shah.

The main reason for this is that the Khomeinist revolution failed to create a new state structure with credible and efficient institutions. Unable to destroy the Iranian state as it had developed over some five centuries, the new Khomeinist rulers tried to duplicate it by creating parallel organs for exercising power.

https://spectator.us/europe-continent-high-vis-jackets/

The ‘yellow vest’ protests against President Emmanuel Macron that swept through Paris and other French cities last month have evoked overwhelming sympathy: 77 percent considered them justified, according to a poll for Le Figaro.

Even after Macron offered a budget-busting package of concessions to appease his critics, it was hard to silence the lacerating self-examination one undergoes after a soured romance: God, what was I thinking? Today, France’s café-goers wonder aloud how they could have voted so overwhelmingly two years ago for a president whom they disliked and disagreed with even at the time.

The simple answer is that Macron was running against Marine Le Pen, whose party, now called the National Rally, is a haven for the global economy’s déclassés. The more complicated answer is ‘Condorcet’s paradox’, named after the 18th-century marquis, philosopher, legislator, abolitionist and theorist of probability. Condorcet demonstrated that in any election that involves at least three people, as French multi-round contests do, the public’s real preference can be impossible to determine. People might like Mr Smith better than Mr Jones, Mr Jones better than Mr Brown, and Mr Brown better than Mr Smith — leaving the majority feeling cheated.

This May’s European elections, set to pit Macron’s Brussels-defending ‘establishment’ against the ‘ferment’ of Le Pen and various men-on-the-street, are a good bet to be the kind of election Condorcet would recognize. A recent poll found 30 percent of the public think well of Le Pen and 69 percent think ill of her. You might consider such numbers unimpressive. But in the present climate they make Le Pen the most popular major politician in the country, with twice the support Macron has.

Le Pen is skeptical of immigration, and European politics is still mostly about immigration. Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister and the most successful politician in Europe right now, is successful because he stopped the trafficking of African migrants in their hundreds of thousands from the Maghreb to the shores of Sicily. The traffickers have since moved their operations west, egged on by the grandstanding mayors of Spain’s coastal cities. Thus was the Spanish socialist party (PSOE) ousted from its impregnable-looking stronghold in Andalusia a few weeks ago. A new anti-immigration party, Vox, took 11 percent of the vote.