RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/frances-right-wins-big-in-first-round-of-parliamentary-vote/

France’s far-right topped the country’s first round of legislative elections on Sunday for the first time, with the National Rally, the party of Marine Le Pen, winning about one-third of the vote.

Finishing second was the left-wing coalition, New Popular Front (NFP), with 27.99% of the vote. Third was French President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling Ensemble, or “Together,” coalition with 20.76%.

The vote was a rebuke to Macron, who called the snap General Assembly elections after his party suffered a heavy defeat to National Rally in European Parliament elections on June 6-9.

The vote solidified the fact that National Rally, once considered a fringe party, has moved to the mainstream. Voters, when queried by press, frequently expressed the view that while they once found the party scary, they now no longer do.

A pre-election study by the Ipsos polling institute of a representative sample of 10,000 registered voters found that National Rally voters had “grown and diversified,” The New York Times reported.

While still strongest among the blue-collar working-class, the study found National Rally’s electoral base had “considerably widened,” improving its vote by 15 to 20 percentage points among retirees, women, the under-35 age group, high earners and big-city residents.

It signifies how far National Rally has come from when it was known as National Front and headed by Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was convicted of Holocaust denial. His daughter expelled him from the party in 2015.

She then raised her protégé, Jordan Bardella, 28, charismatic and telegenic, to president of the party.

“Marine Le Pen’s smartest move was to appoint Bardella as number two if not as co-leader,” Michel Gurfinkiel, a French author, journalist and public intellectual, told JNS.

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.