RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12850/emmanuel-macron-rise-fall

France’s Justice Department is not independent of the government; no judge will seek to know more about Macron’s scandal. No thorough and deep investigation will take place. The French media are largely subsidized by the government and no more independent of the government than the Justice Department is.

Even the French media that are not funded by the state self-censor what they report, because they are supported by businesses that depend on government contracts. No French journalist will try to discover a thing.

The economist Charles Gave recently used statistical data to demonstrate that if nothing changes, the non-Muslim population of France could be a minority in 40 years. He added: “What happened to Spain or Asia Minor in the 10th and 11th centuries will happen to Europe in the 21st century, that is a certainty.”

When Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France in May 2017, he was portrayed as a reformer who was going to change everything in France and beyond.

Fourteen months later, illusions are gone. The reforms carried out have been essentially cosmetic and failed to slow France’s sclerotic decline. Economic growth is close to zero: 0.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2018. Unemployment, at around 8.9%, remains high. French public spending as a percent of GDP is, at 56.4%, still the highest in Europe. The country is still frequently paralyzed by public transportation strikes. No-go zones continue to spread, and Macron himself recently admitted his helplessness by asking for a “general mobilization” of the population. Riots are frequent; large-scale public events lead to looting and arson. The night after the French team’s victory at the soccer World Cup, hundreds of thugs mingling with the crowds broke windows, vandalized banks and ATMs, destroyed street signs and torched cars.

As most economic activity in France stops in July and August, Macron might have thought he could enjoy a summer break. He could not.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271042/self-loathing-and-appeasement-bruce-thornton

In the Thirties many in England blamed their own country for the First World War. Whether for causing the war in the first place, or imposing a “Carthaginian Peace” with “punitive reparations,” considerable numbers of British politicians and intellectuals made excuses for Germany. One Labour M.P. mourned that England had not acted “wisely,” “generously,” or “justly” towards the Germans, and bore “a heavy responsibility for the tensions and menaces of the present international situation.”

What Churchill called “unwarrantable self-abasement” contributed to the wide-spread failure of nerve that led England down the road to appeasement at Munich. But despite that gruesome historical warning against projecting weakness in the face of a brutal enemy, in our fight against Islamic jihad and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, we are repeating that same error.

After 9/11, the bodies were still entombed in the rubble when the blame was being cast on the United States and the West in general. A whole issue of The Nation confirmed the preposterous pretexts for the slaughter publicized by Osama bin Laden. Our premier leftist journal identified “the sources of the hatred” of the U.S. and its “decade of neglect and, worse, neglect of international affairs,” and “the failure of our own leadership and the role our government has chosen to play in the world.” There were fears expressed about “an enraged blind superpower” and what horrors it might perpetrate in response. Then there were other crimes like “U.S. missiles smashing into Palestinian homes” and other “historical wrongs and injustices” that had caused “the firestorms.” There was a hope, tinged with schadenfreude, that “our nation’s suffering could open our eyes to the rest of the world’s pain.”