RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/print/french-presidential-campaign-part-4#ixzz4f3wU3fZa Under Creative Commons License: Attribution

Part 1 can be found here – click.

Part 2 can be found here – click.

Part 3 can be found here – click.

How are citizens supposed to detect fake news when the real news is so bizarre? How did Karim Cheurfi, born 31 December 1977 à Livry-Gargan (Seine-St. Denis outskirts of Paris) achieve his lifetime dream of killing a policeman despite the “vigilance” of the courts and law enforcement? How did he manage to do it on the Champs Elysées smack in the middle of the final all- candidate show of a problematical presidential campaign? How could this emblematic attack not influence the results of the first-round vote on April 23rd?

The final 11-candidate show

Because several of the leading candidates refused to participate in a last-minute debate, France 2 organized an 11-piece candidate show on the 21st of April. Expecting a routine replay of all that had gone before, bottom-heavy with the obligatory presence of all 11 candidates, I faced up to my self-imposed obligation to miss nothing, follow everything, dig everywhere, and think uninterruptedly.

In fact, it was more interesting than the “debates” that channel candidates into one-minute statements on contrived questions. In the close up 15-minute segments with each candidate in turn, hosts David Pujadas and Lea Salomé were less intrusive, the candidates were more expansive, and….one hour into the broadcast, Pujadas announced the “terrorist attack” on the Champs Elysées. Yes, from the first flash, authorities labeled the attack with the code word terrorist meaning jihad. From that point on, candidates integrated into their 15-minute slot a spontaneous reaction to the breaking news. I reported details as they emerged in updates to Part 3 of this series.

As the broadcast came to an end, all 11 candidates lined up in the studio and gave 2-minute closing statements. With the exception of Marine Le Pen and François Fillon, they were incapable of integrating the sudden intervention of harsh reality. After a brief expression of condolence for the family of the slain policeman and wishes for the prompt recovery of his wounded colleagues, they each delivered the vote-for- me speech they had prepared in advance. Le Pen, Fillon, and Macron announced cancelation of events scheduled for the following day, Friday, the last day of the campaign.

Special Edition (= Breaking News)

Midnight. Switch to the Champs Elysées, thick with police vans and flashing blue lights, reminding me of the scene on bd. Beaumarchais on the fateful night of November 13, 2015. As if the central nervous system of Paris were emitting an alert of immediate massive danger. Details emerged, some confirmed others corrected the following day. A policeman died instantly, shot in the head as he sat at the wheel of his van. Another critically wounded, a third less seriously hit. The assailant shot dead before he could kill anyone else. Already identified, his ID is in the Audi he drove up to his private little killing field. For the purposes of the investigation, his name would not yet be released. Daesh took claim for the attack but something doesn’t fit, they identify the soldier as Belgian. Is there another one on the way?

Morning after

The previous arrest of two jihad hopefuls ready to strike in Marseille did not get the attention it deserved. This studied avoidance is a familiar practice of French media. We know the reasoning: uh-oh terrorist attack, might be to the advantage of Le Pen and Fillon and disadvantage peace & love Macron, so let’s not talk about it. Karim Cheurfi’s exploit could not be ignored. Especially as details of the determined cop killer’s CV rolled out. He spent 14 of the past 16 years in jail. It started in 2001 when the stolen car he was driving collided with a vehicle driven by a rookie policeman and his brother. Cheurfi broke and ran, the two men chased him down and when they got close, he fired, wounding both of them seriously in the chest. While in detention for this crime he tricked a gendarme into entering his cell, grabbed his gun, and shot at him. All three of these victims survived. In 2008 he was charged with assaulting a prison guard and attacking a cellmate in 2009. Authorities recently received an alert from an acquaintance of Cheurfi: he said he wants to kill policemen because they ruined his life. Because they didn’t let him get away with the stolen car? Drawing him into a vicious circle?

Friday morning, Marine Le Pen and François Fillon made statements from their respective headquarters. Le Pen was as usual emotional, bombastic, long-winded and all over the place. She solemnly enjoined the government to take immediate measures to seal the frontiers, stop all immigration, deport bi-national terror risks, close radical mosques, a whole program of things it never did and can’t do now, two weeks before vacating the premises. She accused the government of doing nothing and claimed she could have done everything. Last night’s shooting, the Mohamed Merah massacre, and everything in between would never have happened if she were president. After spending most of her campaign touting ridiculous retrograde isolationist protectionism, she splattered her fire at Islam.

The real-estate market in any sophisticated city reflects deep aspirations and fears. If you had a feel for its ups and downs—if you understood, say, why young parents were picking this neighborhood and drunks wound up relegated to that one—you could make a killing in property, but you also might be able to pronounce on how society was evolving more generally. In 2016, a real-estate developer even sought—and won—the presidency of the United States.

In France, a real-estate expert has done something almost as improbable. Christophe Guilluy calls himself a geographer. But he has spent decades as a housing consultant in various rapidly changing neighborhoods north of Paris, studying gentrification, among other things. And he has crafted a convincing narrative tying together France’s various social problems—immigration tensions, inequality, deindustrialization, economic decline, ethnic conflict, and the rise of populist parties. Such an analysis had previously eluded the Parisian caste of philosophers, political scientists, literary journalists, government-funded researchers, and party ideologues.

Guilluy is none of these. Yet in a French political system that is as polarized as the American, both the outgoing Socialist president François Hollande and his Gaullist predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy sought his counsel. Marine Le Pen, whose National Front dismisses both major parties as part of a corrupt establishment, is equally enthusiastic about his work. Guilluy has published three books, as yet untranslated, since 2010, with the newest, Le crépuscule de la France d’en haut (roughly: “The Twilight of the French Elite”), arriving in bookstores last fall. The volumes focus closely on French circumstances, institutions, and laws, so they might not be translated anytime soon. But they give the best ground-level look available at the economic, residential, and democratic consequences of globalization in France. They also give an explanation for the rise of the National Front that goes beyond the usual imputation of stupidity or bigotry to its voters. Guilluy’s work thus tells us something important about British voters’ decision to withdraw from the European Union and the astonishing rise of Donald Trump—two phenomena that have drawn on similar grievances.

At the heart of Guilluy’s inquiry is globalization. Internationalizing the division of labor has brought significant economic efficiencies. But it has also brought inequalities unseen for a century, demographic upheaval, and cultural disruption. Now we face the question of what—if anything—we should do about it.

A process that Guilluy calls métropolisation has cut French society in two. In 16 dynamic urban areas (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Nice, Nantes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rennes, Rouen, Toulon, Douai-Lens, and Montpellier), the world’s resources have proved a profitable complement to those found in France. These urban areas are home to all the country’s educational and financial institutions, as well as almost all its corporations and the many well-paying jobs that go with them. Here, too, are the individuals—the entrepreneurs and engineers and CEOs, the fashion designers and models, the film directors and chefs and other “symbolic analysts,” as Robert Reich once called them—who shape the country’s tastes, form its opinions, and renew its prestige. Cheap labor, tariff-free consumer goods, and new markets of billions of people have made globalization a windfall for such prosperous places. But globalization has had no such galvanizing effect on the rest of France. Cities that were lively for hundreds of years—Tarbes, Agen, Albi, Béziers—are now, to use Guilluy’s word, “desertified,” haunted by the empty storefronts and blighted downtowns that Rust Belt Americans know well.

Guilluy doubts that anyplace exists in France’s new economy for working people as we’ve traditionally understood them. Paris offers the most striking case. As it has prospered, the City of Light has stratified, resembling, in this regard, London or American cities such as New York and San Francisco. It’s a place for millionaires, immigrants, tourists, and the young, with no room for the median Frenchman. Paris now drives out the people once thought of as synonymous with the city.

Yet economic opportunities for those unable to prosper in Paris are lacking elsewhere in France. Journalists and politicians assume that the stratification of France’s flourishing metropoles results from a glitch in the workings of globalization. Somehow, the rich parts of France have failed to impart their magical formula to the poor ones. Fixing the problem, at least for certain politicians and policy experts, involves coming up with a clever shortcut: perhaps, say, if Romorantin had free wireless, its citizens would soon find themselves wealthy, too. Guilluy disagrees. For him, there’s no reason to expect that Paris (and France’s other dynamic spots) will generate a new middle class or to assume that broad-based prosperity will develop elsewhere in the country (which happens to be where the majority of the population live). If he is right, we can understand why every major Western country has seen the rise of political movements taking aim at the present system.

In our day, the urban real-estate market is a pitiless sorting machine. Rich people and up-and-comers buy the private housing stock in desirable cities and thereby bid up its cost. Guilluy notes that one real-estate agent on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris now sells “lofts” of three square meters, or about 30 square feet, for €50,000. The situation resembles that in London, where, according to Le Monde, the average monthly rent (£2,580) now exceeds the average monthly salary (£2,300).

“What poses a problem is not Islam, but certain behaviors that are said to be religious and then imposed on persons who practice that religion.” — Emmanuel Macron

“Those who come to France are to accept France, not to transform it to the image of their country of origin. If they want to live at home, they should have stayed at home.” — Marine Le Pen

“It [France] is one nation that has a right to choose who can join it and a right that foreigners accept its rules and customs. — François Fillon

Jean-Luc Mélenchon has called for a massive increase in public spending, a 90% tax on anyone earning more than €400,000 ($425,000) a year, and an across-the-board increase in the minimum wage by 16% to €1,326 ($1,400) net a month, based on a 35-hour work week.

Benoît Hamon has promised to establish a universal basic income: he wants to pay every French citizen over 18, regardless of whether or not they are employed, a government-guaranteed monthly income of €750 ($800). The annual cost to taxpayers would be €400 billion ($430 billion). By comparison, France’s 2017 defense budget is €32.7 billion ($40 billion).

Voters in France will go to the polls on April 23 to choose the country’s next president in a two-step process. The top two winners in the first round will compete in a run-off on May 7.

The election is being closely followed in France and elsewhere as an indicator of popular discontent with mainstream parties and the European Union, as well as with multiculturalism and continued mass migration from the Muslim world.

If the election were held today, independent centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron, who has never held elected office, would become the next president of France, according to most opinion polls.

An Ifop-Fiducial poll released on April 21 showed that Macron would win the first round with 24.5% of the votes, followed by Marine Le Pen, the leader of the anti-establishment National Front party, with 22.5%. Conservative François Fillon is third (19.5%), followed by Leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon (18.5%) and radical Socialist Benoît Hamon (7%).

If the poll numbers are accurate, the two established parties, the Socialist Party and the center-right Republicans, would, for the first time, be eliminated in the first round.

In the second round, Macron, a pro-EU, pro-Islam globalist, would defeat Le Pen, an anti-EU, anti-Islam French nationalist, by a wide margin (61% to 39%), according to the poll.

Nevertheless, most polls show that the race is tightening, and that two candidates who up until recently were considered also-rans — Fillon, who has been mired in a corruption scandal, and Mélenchon, who has performed well in recent presidential debates — are narrowing the lead that Macron and Le Pen have over them.

An Elabe poll for BMFTV and L’Express released on April 21 showed Macron at 24%, Le Pen at 21.5%, Fillon at 20% and Mélenchon at 19.5%.

The numbers indicate that neither Macron nor Le Pen can be absolutely certain they will proceed to the May 7 runoff. It remains to be seen if the April 20 jihadist attack on three policemen in Paris will bolster support for either Fillon or Le Pen, both of whom have pledged to crack down on radical Islam, and both of whom are competing for many of the same voters. Adding to the uncertainty: Some 40% of French voters remain undecided.

Following are the main policy positions of the top five candidates:

What drivel and blather from Mattis….rsk

Defense Secretary James Mattis said in Israel today that Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day marked beginning at sunset Sunday, is a reminder “that if good people don’t band together and work together across all religious and all ethnic lines, then bad people can dominate.”

Mattis, the first Trump cabinet member to visit Israel, had meetings in Jerusalem with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Avigdor Lieberman.

In their joint remarks, Rivlin hailed Mattis as “a real soldier — “every one of our former generals are respecting you so much,” he added — and noted Israel is “surrounded by more than five armies; every one of them is fighting the other one, no one of them is really feeling a lot of sympathy to the state of Israel.”

“You know that we are facing a lot of challenges. And the need to understand that in the Middle East, there are no shortcuts. No shortcuts,” the president stressed. “Everything — every challenge is an opportunity. Never the less, some of the challenges should be handled.”

Mattis said “military to military relationship… has always been good” between Israel and United States, “but I will just tell you that we intend to make it the strongest ever and work with all our friends in the region and elsewhere in terms of security.”

“We have two fundamental threats here: one is from terrorism, the other is from Iran,” he added. “And we cannot allow those threats to break apart the human connections between those of us who are committed to peace and prosperity and tolerance for each other.”

In remarks before sitting down with Mattis, Netanyahu praised the Defense secretary for being “clear and forthright” on the threat posed by Iran.

“We have common values and also common dangers. The common dangers are based on the twin threats of militant Islam, the Shiite extremists led by Iran, the Sunni extremists led by Daesh,” Netanyahu added. CONTINUE AT SITE

The surge in support for ultra-leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon to 19% in the French presidential polls — from just 11.4% on March 13 — shows how dangerous the French political situation has become.

Most of Mélenchon’s gain came at the expense of the candidate of the governing Socialist Party, Benoit Hamon, who shows less than 8% support in the latest polls. When the ruling party’s candidate polls in single digits, something nasty is at work.

With 25% undecided before Sunday’s first round elections, the jump in support for a candidate who calls for a 100% tax rate on the rich indicates a nasty polarization in French society. There are two risks. One is that National Front leader Marine Le Pen and Mélenchon win the first round, giving France a choice between an extreme right and extreme left who agree about leaving the European Union. Both also are friendly with Moscow. The other is that Le Pen will face either the traditional conservative Francois Fillon or the synthetic centrist Emmanuel Macron, with the likelihood that the left will support Le Pen rather than — as in the past — obediently align itself with the center in order to defeat the National Front. A Le Pen victory would mean the end of Europe’s institutions as we know them.

The “centrist” candidate, former economics minister Emmanuel Macron, is a 39-year-old technocrat whose principle attraction is the fact that he hasn’t ever run for office and is not tainted by association with the existing parties. The default scenario has Le Pen and Macron winning the first round, and the body politic uniting behind Macron to stop Le Pen in the second round. That could go pear-shaped.

Macron is pure bubble; if the bubble pops, right and left could unite with some elements of the Establishment to put Le Pen in power. She is the only candidate to warn about the danger to French society posed by Muslim migrants. But she also wants to take France out of the European Union, which would mean the end of the EU. The main winner in that case would be Putin. If I were French I would at least consider voting for Le Pen; as an American, I hope she loses as a matter of pure American strategic interest. The best outcome from an American standpoint would be the victory of the conservative Catholic free-marketeer Francois Fillon.

There are two sources of French rage against the country’s complacent and corrupt Establishment. The first is security. As Soeren Kern noted at the Gatestone Institute April 18:

An Ifop poll found that 71% of French people believe the security situation in France has deteriorated during the past five years; 93% believe the terrorist threat remains high; 60% said they do not feel safe anywhere in the country; and 69% believe there are not enough police and gendarmes. The poll also found that 88% support deporting foreigners convicted of serious crimes, and 81% support terminating social assistance to parents of repeat offenders.

A quarter of French teenagers are Muslims, and one-third of them hold fundamentalist views.

The second is economic. Youth unemployment in France stands at 22.4%. Globalization has not been kind to French industry (unlike German industry, which dominates key niches in manufacturing).

WASHINGTON—Russia flew long-range combat aircraft near American airspace for the fourth consecutive day, the Pentagon said Friday, marking the first such string of incursions since 2014, but prompting little concern from the White House.

American and Canadian jet fighters intercepted a pair of Russian “Bear” long-range bombers in international airspace near Alaska on Thursday, said John Cornelio, a spokesman for North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad. The interception was the latest incident between American and Russian aircraft, coming amid tension between the two powers over Syria and other issues.

At a press briefing Friday, White House Spokesman Sean Spicer said the administration is aware of the situation but said it isn’t unusual.

“As long as those are conducted in accordance with international protocols and rules, then that’s obviously — but we monitor everything,” Mr. Spicer said. “Any further comment on that I would refer to the Department of Defense.”

U.S. military officials declined to speculate about Russia’s motives for the flights, which came amid an increase in tension between the two countries following U.S. cruise missile strikes earlier this month targeting Syria’s military aircraft. Syria and Russia are allies.

Asked to comment on the flights, Russia’s U.S. embassy pointed to a Defense Ministry statement carried earlier this week in government-controlled media.

“All flights of the Aerospace Force were carried out and are carried out in strict accordance with the international rules of using the airspace over the neutral waters without violation of borders of other states,” the statement said.

In the latest incident, two U.S. F-22 jets along with two Canadian CF-18 Hornets, scrambled Thursday to meet a pair of Russian Tu-95 bombers which were in international airspace near the coasts of Alaska and Canada, Mr. Cornelio said.

“Those aircraft identified and intercepted two Russian bombers and stayed with them until they departed the identification zones,” he said. “It’s the fourth day in a row that we’ve seen Russian activity in our air defense identification zone.” CONTINUED AT SITE

Taliban “fighters”….and “militants” ????? They are terrorists….and barbarians and savages…..rsk
KABUL—Taliban fighters entered the Afghan army’s regional headquarters for the north hidden in military vehicles on Friday and went on a shooting spree that killed more than 100 people, Afghan and U.S. officials said Saturday, in the latest sign of an emboldened insurgency that threatens the central government.

The attack involved at least eight Taliban militants who caught the soldiers off-guard during Friday prayers, when many were unarmed in a mosque on the base or having lunch at a nearby dining facility.

“Attackers blew up a military vehicle full of explosives at first security check post of the compound,” an Afghan military official said. “After that, they got into the compound in a second military vehicle.”

The operation to clear the attackers from the army’s northern headquarters in Balkh province, one of the more peaceful parts of the country, took several hours, as Afghan special forces drove out attackers holed up in buildings on the base.

“The Afghan commandos came and saved the day,” a coalition official said on condition of anonymity, adding that 130 soldiers had been killed in the attack. “Truth has to always be told out of respect to those lost.”

The Afghan army denied figures provided by the coalition, saying fewer than a dozen had been killed, while provincial officials accused the army of trying to coverup the scale of the incident.

Afghan and foreign officials similarly suspect the Afghan army underreported the number of casualties in last month’s deadly military hospital attack, in which at least 50 people were killed when militants stormed the facility disguised as doctors. CONTINUE AT SITE

PARIS—Two months before Karim Cheurfi stepped onto the Champs-Élysées with an automatic rifle French investigators questioned him on suspicion he was plotting an attack on police officers, according to law-enforcement officials.

The revelation Friday that authorities missed this opportunity to stop the 39-year-old Frenchman before he fired on police the previous day amplified the impact of the shooting. In killing a police officer, Cheurfi sent shock waves through France’s closely fought presidential election.

“Fundamentally, the target is our democracy, our cohesion,” said Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year-old former investment banker who is in the running as a staunch defender of Europe.

With no clear front-runners in place, candidates scrapped their scheduled public appearances and took to the airwaves Friday, seizing on the Champs-Élysées attack as a moment that could tip the scales of an election with the future of Europe hanging in the balance.

The French will elect a president in two rounds of voting on April 23 and May 7; the result could reshape the European Union. WSJ’s Niki Blasina discusses the top candidates. Photo: Getty Images.

Conservative François Fillon vowed to fight terror with an “iron fist” by hiring more police and prison officers and stripping French terrorists of their citizenship. Marine Le Pen —the far-right National Front candidate who wants to withdraw France from the European Union, its common currency and NATO—called for an immediate lockdown of France’s borders and pledged, if elected, to detain or deport people on the country’s terror watch lists.

“Wars are won only with consistency and coherency. The ruthless war we must wage against Islamism doesn’t escape this principle,” Ms. Le Pen said.

Before the attack, the election was already on a knife’s edge with a crowded field of mainstream and antiestablishment candidates jockeying for position as voters prepared to cast ballots on Sunday. The top two finishers will head to a runoff on May 7, unless any candidate garners more than 50% of Sunday’s vote.

Of all the candidates jostling to become the next president of France, The National Front leader is the only one who does not belong to the established political class which has wrought so much damage. She is not perfect, that’s true, but she does offer the hope of much-needed change.

The exceptional candidate in the French presidential election is clearly Marine Le Pen. The many French residents who have had to leave France to find work in countries, some as far away as Australia, may well come to the conclusion that she will be more likely to offer solutions for France’s malaise than the usual run of politician. This could influence not only the way many will vote but also the opinions they give to those who remain at home. Many of them must have surely lost confidence in the French political class who have delivered massive youth unemployment, record and increasing debt and government spending almost twice as much of the GDP, 60%, as even Australia’s governments.

Worse, through the European Union, they have completely mishandled immigration, importing into France an unassimilable, even dangerous, minority. This, of course, is not to describe all, or even most Muslims as unassimilable or dangerous. It is to lament the fact that in France and elsewhere it is next to impossible for moderate Muslims to attempt to achieve a reformation without risking their safety, even their lives and certainly their fortunes, as well as their families. Only Marine Le Pen makes an issue of this and offers a serious, if harsh, solution. This has forced lesser politicians to make noises unconvincingly suggesting that they, too, will take some vague and unknown action to deal with the problem.

Of all the candidates, she is the one most likely to restore France as a sovereign state with sound and secure borders, as free of the tutelage of the Brussels Eurocrats as the United Kingdom will be with Brexit. Australians will recall that the central feature of national sovereignty was famously and succinctly described by their great statesman, John Howard, as the power to decide who comes into the country and the circumstances in which they come. Without that, a country is not sovereign. It is no more than a mere province, a protectorate or a satrapy.

There is one important aspect of Marine Le Pen’s leadership of the National Front which must be mentioned. From the time she succeeded her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, she has softened the awful anti-Semitic image he gave to the party. This is not opportunistic, it is from the heart — and unlike many such expressions from politicians, it is practical. Those of us from Anglophone countries will usually not appreciate how ingrained this virus has been in France and how brutal its practice was, even without Nazi pressure, during the Second World War. Marine Le Pen has finally reversed the way this had tainted her party by presenting the National Front not just as reformed but as the most effective protector, rather than the persecutor, of the Jews. In an interview in 2014 she said that in comparison with other political parties, the National Front “is without a doubt the best shield to protect you against the one true enemy, Islamic fundamentalism.”

The Australian‘s economics correspondent Adam Creighton recently revealed, courageously for a journalist, that if he were French he would vote for Le Pen. I agree. Although we both studied law at the Sorbonne Law School in Paris (Université Panthéon-Assas at, obviously, different times) I have never met Marine Le Pen, but she is impressive. Not to vote for her, Adam Creighton writes, would be to endorse the French political and economic elites that have sapped the life out of industry, put the Fifth Republic on track for bankruptcy, forced taxpayers to bail out parasitic banks, and left the country exposed to Islamist terrorism. I agree entirely with this reasoning.

France is ready, indeed over-ready, for a Le Pen administration. If this does not come, the French are unlikely to accept for long the absence of at least a serious attempt at the top to solve the problems imposed on them by the elites. France does not have a peaceful and calm history in matters political. In the time that Australia evolved, in relative tranquillity, from a penal colony into a collection of self-governing communities which peacefully united into a nation, France has lived through a violent revolution and a reign of terror, followed by a bewildering range of constitutional models. These have included not one but five republics, not one but two constitutional monarchies, not one but two empires and, fortunately, only one fascist regime, but with the serious threat of at least two others.