RUTHFULLY YOURS

“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.

Al-Qaeda mocked Arab rulers for being at the mercy of “the kicks of the high heels” of Ambassador Nikki Haley after her warning that things are going to change at the United Nations.

“I wear heels. It’s not for a fashion statement. It’s because if I see something wrong, we’re going to kick them every single time,” Haley said in a speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference last month in Washington.

“So how are we kicking? We’re kicking by, No. 1, putting everybody on notice, saying that if you have our back, we’re going to have the backs of our friends. But our friends need to have our backs, too,” she continued. “If you challenge us, be prepared for what for what you are challenging us for because we will respond.”

In the most recent issue of al-Qaeda’s al-Nafir Bulletin, published in several language and distributed online by the Global Islamic Media Front, the terror group said “the representative of the bearer of the Cross America” — Haley — “sent a message to the apostate Arab rulers filled with sarcasm and mockery.”

The bulletin added that America was “the Hubal of the era to its worshippers the Arab rulers,” referring to a moon god worshipped at Mecca before Islam.

“You will not go beyond your worth, and you will receive a kick in high heels as punishment for any statement… that criticizes the Zionists,” they summarized Haley’s message to Arab rulers after quoting her directly.

“American and its Crusader allies will never allow anyone to stand before their support of the Zionists and the apostates of the Arabs and foreigners from the Muslim rulers, and they will not accept to end their robbery of the fortunes and resources of the Ummah [Muslim community], and that any Islamic project that seeks to establish the Shariah, and spread justice, and distribute fairly the fortunes of the Ummah, will face bombs and guided rockets, with the supporter of the apostate rulers who are ready to receive the kicks of the high heels from the Zionist Haley in case they go beyond the allowed limit, and gave wrong criticisms of the nation of the sons of Zion,” the bulletin stated.

Al-Qaeda added that the only “salvation” for Muslims “out of this delusion in the sea of weakness” was “targeting the real enemy.”

“O youth of Islam, attack global infidelity headed by America, and show Allah what is required of you,” the terror group told followers. “Shake their thrones, and bring down their interests, and target their great criminals.”

Al-Qaeda has previously used issues of the al-Nafir Bulletin to call for action against the United States. In February, the terror group accused the U.S. of withholding necessary medication from “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel-Rahman, the mastermind of the deadly 1993 World Trade Center bombing who died behind bars that month. CONTINUE AT SITE

Three days ahead of the first round of France’s presidential election, terrorism has intervened. A gunman with an automatic rifle jumped from a car on the Champs-Élysée Thursday evening and poured bullets into a police car, killing one officer. Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

This event puts extraordinary pressure on a French electorate already trying to sort through difficult decisions about its vote on Sunday.

Conventional political wisdom would hold that the assault will benefit far-right candidate Marine Le Pen because last-minute events of this magnitude can influence voter sentiment, and Ms. Le Pen is running hard on the idea that France is under assault from Arab immigrants. In recent debates she has proposed that France suspend all legal immigration into the country.

The shooting may well tip sentiment in Ms. Le Pen’s direction, but at least two of her three opponents—conservative François Fillon and center-left Emmanuel Macron —have run on strong antiterror platforms. They have also run hard on the widespread sense of economic torpor among the French people. As we saw in the U.K.’s Brexit vote and the U.S. election last year, the sense of dimming economic opportunity is a potent political force. Polls indicate that is French voters’ number one concern.

Whatever the immediate effect of Thursday’s shooting in the heart of Paris, there is no avoiding the blunt reality at the heart of France’s momentous election, which is the general sense among the population that the nation’s elites—in politics and the French media—have become disconnected from the realities of the nation’s problems. It will be a pity if one shooting tips Sunday’s results, but it would not be a surprise.