RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/french-elections-stormy-weather/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

I have no idea what is going to happen in the next (and final) round of the French parliamentary elections, and I’m not convinced that many do. With all the runoffs ahead, some of which will be three-way runoffs, only so much can be extrapolated from Sunday’s vote.  One key problem for those who wish to opt for a “republican front” of (essentially) all the other parties against Marine Le Pen’s RN is the presence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left LFI (France Unbowed) in the second-place NFP (New Popular Front). If blocking the RN was their goal, the parties of the center Left may have blundered badly by going along with LFI in the NFP, an alliance that is likely to make some, particularly on the center right, pause as they consider how to vote.

After all, as Anne-Elizabeth Moutet writes in the Daily Telegraph:

Only three weeks ago, on June 12, Macron could not find hard enough words for the Jean-Luc Mélenchon-led New Popular Front. “The socialists, greens and communists are allying themselves with an anti-democratic, anti-parliamentarian, anti-Semitic, anti-nuclear power, pro-Russian party”, he thundered, meaning the hard-Left, which had grabbed the lion’s share of winnable NPF constituencies. Yet he now wants his own candidates to support them.

I watched footage of a large left-wing demonstration in Paris last night. Perhaps the camera angles were unfair, but there were quite a few red flags, while the tricolor was hard to find.

If I had to guess (not very bravely: A lot of people seem to think the same), the RN will be the largest party after Sunday’s vote, but will fall short of an overall majority (289 seats). Under those circumstances, the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, has said that he would not want to be prime minister. Moutet thinks that could change if the RN is within five or ten votes of the magic 289. Strategically that could make sense. The RN has repeatedly emphasized that it has come a long way from its disreputable predecessor, Le Pen senior’s National Front, but saying that in opposition and showing it in government are different things. This could be Bardella’s chance.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20737/we-dont-want-churches-we-want-mosques

A raging Muslim mob attacked and savagely beat a 74-year-old Christian man, on what turned out to be a false accusation of “blasphemy”. Nine days later, on June 3, Nazir Masih Gill died from his many injuries, including a smashed skull. — Morning Star News, June 3, 2024, Pakistan.

The Muslim employer of Saima Bibi, a 24-year-old Christian woman, dragged her outside and shoved her toward an electric chaff cutter—which sliced off one of her ears, cut off most of her scalp, and injured an eye. Her husband, Shahzad, who worked on the same farm and was present, said that one of their employers, Muhammad Mustafa, was angry that they were taking a break and ordered them to cut fodder for the cattle. — Morning Star News, May 15, 2024, Pakistan.

Shahid Masih, a 35-year-old Christian dairy worker, was falsely accused of theft and subjected to “merciless torture” at the hands of Muhammad Ijaz. It included forcing him to ingest acid, from which he died in the hospital 11 days later…. Last reported, authorities are refusing to prosecute Muhammad Ijaz and his murderous accomplices. — britishasianchristians.org, May 15, 2024, Pakistan.

“Christian sanitation workers work long shifts even in extreme weather conditions…. these workers are often ridiculed and mistreated because of their Christian faith…. They often face salary delays and no job security. They are discriminated against even by their Muslim colleagues, and now we are witnessing incidents of physical violence against these weak people.” — Sunil Gulzar, Christian socio-political activist, Morning Star News, May 29, 2024, Pakistan.

Many other attacks on churches in France persisted throughout the month of May, including arson attacks, general desecrations, desecrations of cemeteries, defecations in churches and urination in their baptismal fonts, and bomb threats. — France.

“Imagine the uproar if it was Christians throwing rocks at a mosque? MPs and the media would be all over it screaming ‘Islamophobia!'” — Tommy Robinson, British activist, x.com, May 1, 2024, England.

The Church of the Holy Trinity was vandalized with Islamic graffiti, which included “Allah Akbar,” “Remove this church from here,” “Only Muslims are here,” “We don’t want churches, we want mosques,” and “Islam is the only true religion!” — orthodoxtimes.com, May 15, 2024, Kosovo.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20730/iran-moves-into-somalia

After six months of Iran using its Houthi Jihadis to impose a blockade near Yemen while defying Biden to do anything about it, the Islamic global terror state is moving on to a Somali blockade.

Current reports suggest that the Houthis, an Iranian Shiite terror group, is negotiating to provide weapons to Yemen’s Al-Shabaab, a Sunni Jihadist group allied with Al Qaeda, to expand Iran’s control over shipping. While Al-Shabaab has operated using the conventional Al Qaeda playbook of rifles and IEDs, the Houthis can offer upgraded drones and missile technology.

And best of all, the Houthis can claim that the weapons were battle-tested on the US Navy.

When the Houthis began their naval blockade, the Biden administration had the opportunity to shut it down. Instead, a US Navy carrier group has been tied up for months with no results. The AP headlined its recent coverage as “US Navy faces its most intense combat since World War II against Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels”. But as Front Page Magazine already reported, the only reason the war keeps dragging on is that Biden has restricted the US Navy to responding to incoming attacks and only the occasional light bombing raids against the sources of the attacks.

The Houthis, whose motto, like that of their Iranian backers, includes, “Death to America”, have been able to claim that they held off the world’s greatest military for half a year, while imposing control over regional shipping and international trade. And now Iran is moving into Somalia.

One of the side-effects of Biden’s refusal to go on the offensive against the Houthis was that the Somali pirates, who had been lying low during the Trump administration, decided to make a comeback. With Western naval operations diverted to the Yemeni blockade, it has fallen to the Indian Navy to protect shipping against the Somali pirates. But if the Yemen-Somali deal goes through, Al-Shabaab may displace the pirate gangs and impose its own naval blockade.

And with hundreds of US troops deployed in Somalia, the Al Qaeda affiliate armed by Iran would also have the opportunity to directly attack Americans with their new firepower. Previous local reports had already described a flow of weapons from Yemen to Somalia and pirates deploying anti-aircraft weapons aboard a hijacked vessel. So the arrangement may already be here.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/arresting-tommy-again/

In the last few years, my friend Douglas Murray has become internationally famous – as much so, anyway, as a serious writer of non-fiction can be. His splendid books The Strange Death of Europe (2017), The Madness of Crowds (2019), and The War on the West (2021) were deserved bestsellers. And since October 7, Murray – born in 1979, a graduate of Eton and of Magdalen College, Oxford – has been rightly hailed around the world for his heroic reportage from Israel during the current war on Hamas. When he hasn’t been in Israel, he’s been traveling all over much of the Western world, giving endless talks and interviews and participating in debates, in which he inevitably triumphs. His writings, his speeches, and his comments have been focused largely on Islam, a topic on which, unlike many other commentators, he admirably refuses to euphemize. Because he recognizes that the brutal Hamas attack on Israel, and the immigrant crisis currently facing Europe, are based in the founding tenets of Islam – period – he refuses to use such phony terms as “Islamism” or “radical Islam” or “Muslim extremism.” It has been heartening to see him applauded by huge audiences – and winning important awards – on both sides of the Atlantic.

Meanwhile the careers of two other Englishmen have been advancing as well. Nigel Farage is also a British hero. For twenty years, the sixty-year-old former businessman led the ultimately successful movement to separate the United Kingdom from the European Union. His principal argument for separation was that the U.K. needed to take back its right to control immigration into its territory. Yet he consistently avoided the reason why it was important to restrict the massive influx of foreigners into Britain. The problem wasn’t with the Hindus or Buddhists or black Caribbeans or sub-Saharan Africans who’d moved to the U.K. These groups did a terrific job of integrating into British society and tended to earn more money than most native Englishmen. No, the problem was Islam. Douglas Murray has no trouble saying so. Nigel Farage, while projecting an image of utter fearlessness, always dodged the issue. In recent times he seems to have begun to tiptoe into these dangerous waters, but he’s still a long way from spelling things out as clearly as Douglas Murray does.

He’s hardly alone. Pretty much the entire British political establishment refuses to breathe a critical word about Islam. And even though the main reason for Brexit was that Brits wanted to retake control of their borders, both main parties, Labour and the Tories, have done little to prevent the large-scale influx of immigrants, mostly illegal, mostly adult men, and mostly Muslim. The Westminster establishment’s attitude toward this issue is perfectly in line with the views of privileged North London – Britain’s equivalent of Northwest Washington, the Upper West Side of New York, and the tonier parts of San Francisco and L.A. – but it’s totally at odds with the wishes of the British (or at least the English) public at large. On July 4, Britain will hold a general election in which the now-reigning Tories, who rode to victory on big promises of tighter border security, are expected to go down to ignominious – and well-deserved – defeat. Labour is expected to do well, although it hasn’t exactly covered itself in glory either. Then there’s the third major party, the Liberal Democrats. But the wild card is Farage’s party, Reform UK, founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party, whose strident calls for immigration reform and tax cuts have gained it a significant following. How significant? We’ll see on July 4.

Douglas Murray. Nigel Farage. And then there’s a third name. Tommy Robinson.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20724/france-election-uncertainty

The election [French President Emmanuel Macron] unnecessarily provoked could produce a hung parliament in which no party has a majority.

That could make France ungovernable for at least a year, as the president cannot dissolve the parliament within a year of a previous dissolution.

It is still too early to decide how French President Emmanuel Macron might be remembered by history. But one distinction he is unlikely to win is that of “master of timing.” Yet his entourage claims that his decision to call an early general election was a master stroke in good timing.

This is how the argument goes:

With the ultra-right National Rally topping the polls in the European Parliament election earlier this month, Macron saw the danger that it would also win the next presidential election in 2027. So he decided to bring the parliamentary election forward so that the ultra-right’s youthful standard-bearer Jordan Bardella would get the premiership and more than two years in which to be exposed as a disagreeable and incompetent figure, thus allowing Macronists to keep the presidency with a new candidate of their own.

But what if things don’t happen the way Macron the super-strategist fantasized?

In the European election, Bardella’s list won what many see as a “stunning victory” with over 31 percent of the votes and 30 of the 81 French seats in the European Parliament.

Macron’s coalition received only 14.6 percent of the vote, translated into 13 seats. A normal reaction would have come in the form of “too bad, but so what?”

European Parliament elections have never been part of the mainstream of the French political process. These elections are held on a single-round proportional representation basis, which magnifies the rewards.

Held under a different electoral system, parliamentary elections in France do not mirror Euro-elections.

Here, a two-round voting system means 577 separate constituency elections affected by a variety of factors beyond a straight ideological duel.

To win a majority and thus get to name a prime minister, a party or coalition of parties must win at least 289 seats.

No party or coalition of parties has won that many seats in the first round of any parliamentary election in France.

That means you need coalition partners to secure a majority in the second round. Without that, the votes you get in the first round are simply wasted ballots.