RUTHFULLY YOURS

It is the seventh day after Donald Trump’s triumph, an election upset that set off a political earthquake around the world, and time for a visit with those far away from Washington who think like him. Members of France’s Front National (FN) are meeting at the five-star Hotel Napoléon in Paris, not far from the Champs-Élysées.

The topics of discussion this evening include disadvantaged youth in the outer districts of the capital, known as the banlieues, and radical Islamists who are recruiting new members there. The mood is explosive in the banlieues, warns the speaker, a resolute blonde woman, who goes on to say it is a ticking time bomb that could go off at any moment. “I am the only one who can defuse this bomb,” she adds.

Her words are met with cheers and applause. Marine Le Pen has struck the right note, once again. Here, in the stuffy conference room at the Hotel Napoléon, people want to hear what they have long believed: That Islam constitutes a threat and that France’s very future is on the line. Marine, the daughter of Front National co-founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been the head of her party for almost six years.

‘We Want To Destroy this EU’

The Frenchwoman will soon enter the presidential election campaign under the slogan “Marine 2017.” Within a few years, she has managed to garner the support of like-minded individuals, and not just in her native France. Le Pen also chairs the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group in the European Parliament. ENF brings together elected representatives from nine countries, people who share an unmistakable common goal. “We want to destroy this EU,” says Le Pen.

Less than two weeks after the election of the new US president, Europe’s anti-establishment parties are feeling the wind in their sails. “A Trump victory was considered unthinkable,” says Le Pen, who sent the billionaire her euphoric congratulatory message on Twitter on the night of the election. “Our life has changed,” Nigel Farage of Britain’s UK Independence Party (UKIP) says over a gin & tonic in the lounge of European Parliament in Brussels. In Vienna, Heinz-Christian Strache of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) proudly reports that he has already reached out to Trump advisers in Washington. And in Dresden, Frauke Petry of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany party is planning to announce her candidacy in the 2017 Bundestag election, which is likely to see AfD land seats in federal parliament for the first time.

Populist leaders, who see themselves as the only true representatives of the people, have long known and respected each other. But the days of backroom deals are now over. Le Pen is flirting with her fellow European populists on the open stage: here a kiss of the hand for Marine in Vienna, there a chuckle and a joke with Geert Wilders in The Hague and even a little dance with Matteo Salvini, leader of the separatist Lega Nord in Italy.

The consequences of Mutti Merkel’s treasonous madness will be felt for years in Germany:

A German intelligence officer has reportedly been arrested over a suspected Islamist plot to bomb the agency’s headquarters in Cologne.

The 51-year-old official was said to have made a “partial confession” to the plot, according to Der Spiegel.

The suspect attempted to pass on “sensitive information about the BfV (Germany’s domestic security agency), which could lead to a threat to the office”, an official told the newspaper.

Well, this is just great. It’s clear that the occupying forces of Islam mean to make quick work of the Federal Republic of Germany, sucking its welfare coffers dry, molesting its women, taunting its capon males to do anything about it. Germany must die in the name of multiculturalism, diversity and tolerance, which is precisely why the international Left constantly pushes those “ideals.”

When you recall that Merkel grew up in the former DDR, raised to loathe and despise the West from childhood, her political goals become clear. But with resistance beaten out of the former Huns-turned-honies, it’s highly unlikely Germany can recover from this monumental act of treason.

Only Islam offers such high-level scriptural endorsement, prophetic example and legislative justification for the arranged marriages of young girls and much older men. The future of a friend’s fourteen-year-old neighbour in Melbourne demands that this abomination be addressed.
I received a phone call today from a friend in Melbourne asking for advice. A Muslim family lives nearby and their fourteen year old daughter confided in him: “I think my mum is arranging a marriage for me, and I am scared. I don’t want it.” My friend has now contacted the Australian Federal Police, and an investigation has started.

This is not an isolated incident. NSW Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard recently declared that “there is a tsunami of young girls, some as young as nine, who are being taken overseas and being forced to become child brides … The imams in the Muslim community need to speak up more, and indeed any other religious leaders in communities who might pursue this practice.” Muslims Australia president Kaiser Trad claimed to be shocked by the reports, asserting that “one of the conditions for a marriage to be valid under Islamic teachings is consent. For anybody to force a young lady or a young man into a marriage against their will is wrong.” He was not quote as condemning child marriage per se.

A study of Muslim texts reveals that it was practised in the early Islamic period, even by the prophet Muhammad himself. His third wife, Aisha, was daughter of his best friend Abu Bakr. The marriage took place when she was six years old and was consummated when Aisha turned nine. Multiple texts in authentic hadiths (authoritative traditions) attest to these ages. Informants include Aisha herself,[1] Hisham’s father,[2] and Ursa.[3] Aisha reported: “He had intercourse with me when I was nine years old.”[4] She also noted: “The Messenger of Allah married me when I was six, and consummated the marriage with me when I was nine, and I used to play with dolls.”[5]

Apparently Aisha had not yet reached puberty. Al-Asqalani’s celebrated commentary on al-Bukhari’s hadith makes this comment about Aisha’s childhood amusement: “The playing with the dolls and similar images is forbidden, but it was allowed for `Aisha at that time, as she was a little girl, not yet reached the age of puberty. (Fath-ul-Bari page 143, Vol.13) Another Hadith describes her sitting in the mosque with Muhammad as “a little girl (who has not reached the age of puberty).” (Sahih al-Bukhari 7:163)

“The newspaper is no longer the same, Charlie is now under artistic and editorial suffocation.” — Zineb el Rhazoui, French-Tunisian intellectual and journalist, author of Destroying Islamic Fascism.

“We must continue to portray Muhammad and Charlie; not to do that means there is no more Charlie.” — Patrick Pelloux, another cartoonist who left the magazine.

“If our colleagues in the public debate do not share part of the risk, then the barbarians have won.” — Elisabeth Badinter, philosopher, who testified in court for the cartoonists in the documentary, “Je suis Charlie.”

After the Kouachi brothers slaughtered Charlie Hebdo’s journalists, they ran out into the street and cried: “We have avenged Muhammad. We killed Charlie Hebdo.” Two years later, it appears that they won. They succeeded in silencing the last European magazine still ready to defend freedom of expression from Islamism.

Over twenty years, fear has already devoured important pieces of Western culture and journalism. They all disappeared in a ghastly act of self-censorship: the cartoons of a Danish newspaper, a “South Park” episode, paintings in London’s Tate Gallery, a book published by the Yale University Press; Mozart’s Idomeneo, the Dutch film “Submission”, the name and face of the US cartoonist Molly Norris, a book cover by Art Spiegelman and Sherry Jones’s novel, “Jewel of Medina”, to name just a few. Most of them have become ghosts living in hiding, hidden in some country house, or retired to private life, victims of an understandable but tragic self-censorship.

Only the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was missing from this sad, long list. Until now.

Political pollsters and pundits who were confounded by Brexit and by Trump’s win must now face yet another challenge to conventional wisdom: the stunning victory of François Fillon in France’s conservative primaries for the 2017 presidential election. Fillon embodies all that France’s socialist, secular, and moralist elite reviles: He is a Thatcherite, a devout Catholic, and a political realist. The fact that he won the primaries by a two-third majority is but another confirmation of the gap between elitist narratives and popular feelings.

A partially secularized Catholic country with mercantilist traditions and a reverence for the state (État is always spelled with a capital “e”), France has a cultural hostility toward Anglo-Saxon capitalism. As Margaret Thatcher was rescuing the British economy in the 1980s, France elected in 1981 the socialist François Mitterrand who increased taxes, government spending, and state ownership. As Germany’s (socialist) chancellor Gerhard Schröder cut taxes and slashed unemployment benefits in 2003, France made it illegal (in 2002) to work for more than 35 hours a week. When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president in 2007, he promised to catch-up with Germany and with Britain. Sarkozy did increase the retirement age from 62 to 65, but he turned out to be erratic and inconsistent, and the 2008 financial crisis deflated his reformist zeal.

The consequences are for all to see. Unemployment rates are 10.5% in France, 4.8% in Britain, and 4.2% in Germany. France’s GDP growth of 1.3% lies behind Britain and Germany’s 1.9%. While Germany has a budget surplus of 0.6% of GDP, France has a budget deficit of 3.3% of GDP. The French government overtaxes and overspends: government spending is 57.3% of GDP in France, 44.1% in Germany, and 43.8% in Britain.

François Fillon has been warning that France will be bankrupt and doomed if it does not get its acts together. His says he will curb public spending (he has committed to cut 500,000 government/civil service jobs), repeal the 35-hour limit on the working week, and trim a 3,000-page long labor code that discourages employment and repels foreign investors. The French left is up-in-arms against what it calls “ultra-liberalism” (whatever that means), but French voters seem to finally be willing to take their medicine and reverse their country’s decline.

Fillon’s economic platform was decried as too harsh (“ultra-liberal,” bien sûr) by his run-off contender in the conservative primaries, Alain Juppé. As for Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National, her economic ideology is hardly distinguishable from that of the far left: she reviles globalization and free-trade, wants to pull-out from the Euro, and would enroll the French state to subdue the market. François Fillon’s Thatcherite economics, therefore, makes him an outsider in France’s political landscape.

The Korean peninsula is always dangerous, but the next few months are especially so. An erratic, nuclear-armed North still covets prosperous South Korea, which is enduring a presidential impeachment crisis even as the U.S. is in a political transition. This is a moment for some supportive bipartisan U.S. diplomacy.

Prosecutors have accused a personal confidant of South Korean President Park Geun-hye of shaking down Korea’s giant chaebol conglomerates for $70 million with the help of government officials. The case could lead to much-needed reforms to curb the power of firms that behave more like feudal fiefdoms than modern corporations—an act of democratic hygiene.

But the scandal means that Ms. Park, who has taken a hard line against the North, will be preoccupied with political survival for the 15 months remaining in her term. Her approval rating is down to 4%, and hundreds of thousands are rallying each weekend in Seoul to demand her resignation. Impeachment votes may come soon, and members of her own party have said they’ll support her ouster.

The danger is that this could be a moment when the North’s regime thinks it can take advantage. Dictator Kim Jong Un is unpredictable at the best of times. But he and his military could misinterpret the noise of democratic debate and accountability in the South as a sign of weakness. Perhaps he might use the next round of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises scheduled for February as an excuse for an attack or land grab.

The isolated North may also mistake the U.S. political transition as an opening. In glib campaign moments this year, Donald Trump suggested that South Korea and Japan ought to be able to defend themselves and U.S. forces might come home. The President-elect has since walked that back, and in a postelection phone call with Ms. Park he confirmed that the U.S. will fulfill its treaty obligations to defend the South.

A public statement from the presidential transition, perhaps in league with the Obama Administration, is in order. The U.S. also needs to convey to China that any attempt to exploit the current moment would mean the end of the regime in the North and unification to the Chinese border. Beijing needs to convey that message to its clients in Pyongyang.

Not known for mincing words, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump responded to the news of Fidel Castro’s death on Saturday by calling Cuba’s former leader “a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades,” whose legacy is one of “firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.”

He then extended a hand to the monster’s victims.

“Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty,” he said.

It was a perfect statement, both in content and in tone, sharply contrasting the public expressions of mourning — even adulation — voiced by prominent left-wing and Islamist figures around the world, including in North America.

Take Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s “deeply sorrowful” reaction, for instance. Calling Castro “a larger-than-life leader” and a “legendary revolutionary and orator,” Trudeau lauded him for making “significant improvements to the education and health care of his island nation,” and said Castro’s supporters and detractors alike “recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people.”

Though the Cuban people are being forced by governmental decree to mourn their oppressor for nine days, it is doubtful that they remember “El Comandante” fondly. After all, their high literacy rates cannot make up for their abject poverty or lack of freedom to read what they choose. If anything, they envy those of their countrymen who escaped to the U.S., where they are flourishing financially and allowed to live their lives as they please.

Fidel Castro shed blood on a scale unimaginable in American terms. His butchers executed perhaps 15,000 prisoners, according to academic estimates cited by Wikipedia:

British historian Hugh Thomas, in his study Cuba or the pursuit of freedom[22] stated that “perhaps” 5,000 executions had taken place by 1970,[21] while The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators ascertained that there had been 2,113 political executions between the years of 1958–67.

Professor of political science at the University of Hawaii, Rudolph J. Rummel estimated the number of political executions at between 4,000 and 33,000 from 1958–87, with a mid range of 15,000.

That was in a country of 7 million. In per capita terms, that’s the equivalent of about 680,000 executions in the United States of America with our population of 318 million. What’s 680,000? The entire population of Denver or Seattle. Imagine taking every man, woman, and child of a major American city and murdering them. That’s the scale of Fidel Castro’s crimes.

680,000 is a bit less than the standard estimate for total military deaths in the American Civil War. Imagine standing 680,000 soldiers against a wall — all the dead of Antietam, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor Chickamauga and every other battle of the Civil War — and shooting them dead in cold blood. That’s the equivalent of Fidel Castro’s mass murder.

Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Pol Pot killed more people in relative terms. After that, it’s hard to find a tyrant with a bigger body count than Fidel. To speak of him with anything but a curse is an insult to the memory of his victims.