RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macron-blunders-on-taiwan-and-ukraine-france-asia-military-china-xi-jinping-military-support-303181c5?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Emmanuel Macron fancies himself a Charles de Gaulle for the 21st century, which includes distancing Europe from the U.S. But the French President picked a terrible moment this weekend for a Gaullist afflatus following his meeting with Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Mr. Macron said in an interview with a reporter from Politico and two French journalists. “The question Europeans need to answer . . . is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”

No one wants a crisis over Taiwan, much less to accelerate one, but preventing one requires a credible deterrent. Mr. Macron seemed to rule out European help with that when he told the journalists that “Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it.”

If Mr. Macron wants to reduce American public support for the war against Russia, he couldn’t have said it better. Without U.S. weapons and intelligence, Russia would long ago have rolled over Ukraine and perhaps one or more NATO border countries. Mr. Macron says he wants to make Europe less dependent on U.S. weapons and energy, which is fine. But then how about spending the money and making the policy changes to do it?

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/369747

Sonia Backès, French secretary of state for citizenship, has just said that “political Islam wants to bring the Republic to its knees”. If only it were the République…
The French National Institute of Statistics has just provided us with numbers that tell of an unprecedented change of civilization in the history of a country that is the cradle of European culture. It is truly historic: there are more practicing Muslims than practicing Catholics between the ages of 18 and 59 in France. Reading the latest report from Insee, the French Statistical Institute, helps us understand the change of civilization we are experiencing in Europe.

One and a half million of Catholics pray and 800,000 go to church. Two million Muslims pray and 726,000 go to the mosque. There has already been an Islamic overtaking of Catholicism. And without considering the under 18s, where Muslims outclass Christians with Bulgarian percentages.

Le Monde reports that secularization is proceeding quickly only for Catholics. Muslim immigrants are not becoming “woke”. The postmodernist virus has not corroded their minds. 91 percent of Muslims educated as Muslims remain so. They remain religious, even after two generations. The use of the veil for women is also increasing: from 18 to 29 percent of all women in France in just ten years.

Three years ago, Muslims in France were 7 percent. Today they are 10 percent. Pierre Brochand, former director of the French internal secret service, has just said that “the critical point will be when Muslim immigrants cross the 50 percent threshold”. France is already teetering on Islam at 10 percent (in most big cities it’s 20 to 30 percent).

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19549/france-field-of-ruins

France, once again, is on the verge of chaos.

The subject of the discontent is the adoption of a law reforming the pension system in a minimal way: the legal retirement age in France has been set at 62 since 2010; the law raises it two years, to 64.

Neither members of the government nor economists on television dare to speak the truth: The French pension system is collapsing. The reform just adopted will not be enough to save it; just allow it to survive a bit longer.

The system has been bankrupt for years, but its bankruptcy is growing more costly.

The French pension system is not the only system collapsing. The country is facing a much larger crisis.

The French health insurance system, also based on mandatory contributions deducted from salaries, also is in terrible shape.

Food prices in 2022, meanwhile, increased 14.5%.

The center-left and center-right parties are dead. Neither the Rebellious France Party nor the National Rally Party would be able gather enough votes to constitute an alternative majority. The political situation is blocked.

France seems deadlocked, the possibilities of unblocking it nowhere in sight.

“A modest reform based on an implacable demographic observation has tipped France into an existential crisis in which everything is wavering… A much deeper malaise is rising to the surface. That of a country haunted by its decline”. — Vincent Trémollet de Villers, Le Figaro, March 23, 2023.

“Have we hit rock bottom?” asked journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert. “No, not yet.”

Paris, France. March 23, 8 p.m. A demonstration took place; as usual now, riots followed the demonstration and swept through the center of the city, then to other cities. Cars were burned, shop windows smashed, garbage dumpsters set on fire. A garbage collectors’ strike began two weeks earlier; nearly ten thousand tons of garbage, still strewn on the sidewalks, almost completely block some streets. The proliferation of rats threatens disease. Oil refineries are shut down; gas stations are running dry. More demonstrations took place March 28 — and more riots.

France, once again, is on the verge of chaos.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19548/french-model-crisis

Macron was reminded of one of the key facts of the French political life, according to which governing means rolling a boulder up the hill only to see it roll down again at double the speed. The best you can do is to dodge the boulder and light a Gitane for consolation.

Classical revolutions such as the first big one in 18th century France were led by the semi-privileged in the name of the underprivileged and against the highly privileged. Today’s pseudo-revolutions in France are supported by the semi-privileged who represent the majority of the population while the underprivileged suffer in silence and the highly privileged watch things with a mixture of amusement and disapproval.

Both [French President Emanuel Macron and former President Giscard d’Estaing] would have done well to study British Prime Minister James Callaghan’s description of democracy as “a system that functions on the edge of un-governability.”

It was almost a year ago when France’s President Emmanuel Macron won re-election for a second and final term. In doing so, he broke a curse that had kicked his two immediate predecessors out of the Élysée Palace, providing an occasion for celebration. La Marseillaise was played and the champagne bottle smashed, but the ship didn’t launch.

Macron had mused about lofty goals: reforming the ailing European Union, providing leadership for Western democracies, defeating Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, creating a European army and, last but not least, reforming the state pension laws that threaten to bankrupt the republic within the next decade or two.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-suffering-of-irans-ethnic-groups/

As we speak, Iranians are protesting against the ayatollah’s regime with renewed intensity, after it was discovered that up to 7,000 girls across the Islamic Republic were poisoned between November 2022 and March 2023. According to the United States Institute of Peace, hundreds were hospitalized with symptoms that included respiratory distress, numbness in limbs, heart palpitations, headaches, nausea and vomiting. Although the poisonings originated in the Shia Holy City of Qom and then spread throughout the rest of the country, South Azerbaijanis, Baloch, Kurds and Ahwaz are among the groups to suffer the most from these poisonings, as these regions have less developed medical services than the central regions of Iran.

This is merely one of many examples highlighting how South Azerbaijanis and other ethnic minorities in Iran are discriminated against. Other examples include prohibiting parents from giving Azerbaijani names to their babies; draining Lake Uria, the main water source in South Azerbaijan; limiting the use of the Azerbaijani language in the media, literature, art and in the educational system; and imprisoning Alireza Farshi, a prominent South Azerbaijani activist, for 10 years for encouraging the use of the Azerbaijani language on International Mother Language Day and distributing books in the Azerbaijani language to children.

However, not just the South Azerbaijanis got these grievances. All of Iran’s ethnic minorities including but not limited to Ahwaz, Baloch, Lors, Turkmen, Kurds, etc. got similar grievances. For this reason, Iran’s ethnic groups are presently up in arms. Over the weekend, 500 South Azerbaijanis and their supporters protested in front of the European Parliament in an attempt to raise awareness about this issue. The demonstration, known as the Freedom and Justice Gathering for Iran, was organized by Salah Kamerani, who serves as the demonstration’s spokesman, together with Mrs. Charifa Jafari alongside members of the non-Persian nations living in Iran, the Ukrainian diaspora, European journalists and the European Association for the Defense of Minorities.

According to a recent press release, “It was a peaceful demonstration organized by South Azerbaijanis to expose the policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran who excludes non-Persian nations from all spheres of decision-making and spreads misinformation and disinformation about them.” The press release added: “The voice of each non-Persian nation has been suppressed in different ways and their basic human rights have been denied. South Azerbaijanis for 40 years have been struggling non-violently against racism. The source of the recent protests were women, youth and minority nations. South Azerbaijanis are determined to implement change, expose the racism in Iran and to bring their untold story to the attention of the world.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19535/turkey-farewell-erdogan

Polls suggest that although the presidential race will be tight, the gap against Erdoğan is widening…. [T]he CHP-led opposition bloc, with the participation of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, would win a combined 55.4% of the nationwide vote.

Reuters reported that new polls show the opposition’s presidential candidate, CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leading against Erdoğan by more than 10 percentage points ahead of elections seen by many as the most consequential in Turkey’s history.

Polling in Turkey can be a murky business. But with or without polls, realities spell existential danger for one of the world’s most anti-Semitic and disruptive leaders.

Nearly a month and a half before the most critical presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey’s modern history, it is still too early to make a guess as to who will win: all indicators show that May 14 will be an extremely tight race. The results may even be inconclusive: there may be chaos, vote rigging, allegations and objections from both sides, the electoral board having to struggle with which side it should politically favor, potential re-runs in disputed districts, further disputes and even potential street violence.

An overall re-vote is also one of the possibilities. Another is that the country’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, battling for his survival after 21 corrupt and autocratic years in power, wins the presidential race but that his party loses its parliamentary majority. This result will mean governmental and administrative chaos.