Month: April 2023

While Bangladesh is secularist country with legal system in conformity with secularism where applying sharia rule is considered as illegal and punishable offense, a radical Islamic cleric along with three village elders were arrested on charges of ordering a woman to be canned and stoned after she was accused of an extra-marital affair.

According to Bangladesh Police, a Muslim female named Hamida Sultana was canned 82 times and stoned 80 times with small brick pieces after an imam of the local mosque issued a fatwa punishing her for an extra-marital affair.

Following this gruesome incident, Hamida Sultana told the media she was a victim of terrible injustice.

“I can’t express in language what they did to me”, the 30-year-old said.

The fatwa triggered an outcry, with feminist gro­ups and rights activists stag­ing protests to demand the perpetrators’ prosecution.

“They acted like mediaeval people”, Fauzia Moslem, the president of the country’s largest women’s group, told the media.

Zakis Hossain told Al Jazeera the cases were filed under Bangladesh’s Prevention of Oppression Against Women and Children Act.

“After the filing of the case, we arrested the local cleric who gave the fatwa. We have also arrested three other village elders who took part in the informal council, known as shalish”, Hossain said.

“The village council ordered the caning and stoning in the name of Sharia law after she was accused of an extramarital affair”, Hossain said.

The village elders “said it will absolve her from her sin and will redeem her honor”, he added.

The police officer said the 30-year-old woman was allegedly having an affair with a local autorickshaw driver. Her husband, he said, works in the Gulf country of Oman and returned home after the incident was reported.

“He also seeks justice for what happened to his wife”, Hossain told AFP news agency.

Bangladesh, a Muslim-majority country with 180 million people has a secular legal system and applying Islamic law in criminal cases is illegal.

The fatwa triggered an outcry, with feminist groups and rights activists staging protests to demand the perpetrators’ prosecution.

“They acted like medieval people”, Fauzia Moslem, the president of the country’s largest women’s group, told AFP.

Decades ago, village councils in rural Bangladesh commonly used Islamic law to punish Muslim women accused of adultery.

In a 2011 ruling, Bangladesh’s Supreme Court allowed fatwas to be issued but prohibited their enforcement.

The decision effectively allowed Islamic law to be followed voluntarily but prohibited any kind of punishment by Muslim scholars or village councils.

Culture of stoning in Islam

According to Bukhari, vol. 8, bk. 82, no. 816,  Umar, one of the four caliphs of Islam said, “I am afraid that after a long time has passed, people may say, “We do not find the Verses of the Rajam (stoning to death) in the Holy Book,” and consequently they may go astray by leaving an obligation that Allah has revealed.

Lo! I confirm that the penalty of Rajam be inflicted on him who commits illegal sexual intercourse, if he is already married and the crime is proved by witnesses or pregnancy or confession”. Sufyan added, “I have memorized this narration in this way”. ‘Umar added, “Surely Allah’s Apostle carried out the penalty of Rajam, and so did we after him”.

According to Hadith, (Bukhari, vol. 4, bk. 56, no. 829), “The Jews came to Allah’s Apostle and told him that a man and a woman from amongst them had committed illegal sexual intercourse. Allah’s Apostle said to them, “What do you find in the Torah (old Testament) about the legal punishment of Ar-Rajm (stoning)?” They replied, (But) we announce their crime and lash them.”

Abdullah bin Salam said, “You are telling a lie; the Torah contains the order of Rajm”. They brought and opened the Torah and one of them solaced his hand on the Verse of Rajm and read the verses preceding and following it. Abdullah bin Salam said to him, “Lift your hand”. When he lifted his hand, the Verse of Rajm was written there.

They said, “Muhammad has told the truth; the Torah has the Verse of Rajm. The Prophet then gave the order that both of them should be stoned to death”. (‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar said, “I saw the man leaning over the woman to shelter her from the stones”. (Bukhari, vol. 4, bk. 56, no. 829).

Hadith claims, even monkeys practice stoning. According to Bukhari, vol. 5, bk. 58, no. 188, “during the pre-lslamic period of ignorance I saw a female monkey surrounded by a number of monkeys. They were all stoning it, because it had committed illegal sexual intercourse. I too, stoned it along with them”. (Bukhari, vol. 5, bk. 58, no. 188).

https://hindupost.in/world/bangladesh/bangladesh-cleric-arrested-for-enforcing-sharia-compliant-caning-and-stoning-of-woman/

Officials in the German capital of Berlin have brought about the cancellation of this year’s celebration of Al-Quds Day, an annual rally organized by Iranian proxies during which protesters demonize Israel and call for its destruction. Officials shut down the planned hate-fest scheduled to take place on April 15 by convincing rally organizers to withdraw their registration for the event, which traditionally takes place toward the end of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. To avoid public outbursts or media criticism, European authorities asked the organizers to cancel controversial events rather than ban them outright.

Iranian regime supporters who organize these rallies, meanwhile, are facing growing pushback from diaspora Iranians opposed to the Islamist regime in Teheran.

The voluntary cancellation elicited muted celebration from Joseph Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. “The cancellation of the Al-Quds demonstration by the organizers is a good thing,” he said. “But we must not delude ourselves by believing that the thought and the hatred that underlies it will disappear just like that.”

One factor that may have contributed to the willingness of organizers to cancel the rally is simple lack of interest. The rally may not be the draw it used to be in the early 2000s when thousands of protesters would show up to defame Israel. In 2019, the last year before the COVID outbreak, around 1,200 people participated in Berlin on June 1, down from 1,600 in 2018.

Al-Quds Day rallies — which take place in cities throughout the world with significant Shia populations — were initiated in 1979 by Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. These rallies give Hezbollah a pretext to raise its profile in Western democracies like Germany, with the organization’s yellow and green flags brazenly waived by protesters. In response to overt expressions of support for Hezbollah, the administrative authority in Berlin banned such flag-waving in 2016. Hezbollah was banned by the German government in 2020.

By the 2010s, Al-Quds rallies had become more than just a gathering point for Muslim supporters of Hezbollah. They had begun to attract also fellow travelers intent on demonizing Israel and its allies in the West. For example, Karin Brothers, a so-called peace activist from the United Church of Canada, regularly participated in Al-Quds rallies in Toronto during the previous decade. In 2015, she accused Israel of “slaughtering” Palestinians in Gaza. At another Al-Quds rally held two years later, she accused Israel of “apartheid” and declared that “Israelis have never been embarrassed by their terrorism.” Similar leftist participation in the Iranian-supported event was seen in Boston in 2014 with a radical leader from a local school bus drivers’ union denouncing American support for Israel and accusing Israel of perpetrating a “holocaust” against Palestinians.

Nevertheless, the enthusiasm for these rallies seemed to be in decline in the year prior to the COVID lockdowns. Al-Quds Day events were held in eight U.S. cities on Friday, May 31 and Saturday, June 1 in 2019, with only a few dozen people attending these events. There has been no news regarding Al-Quds Day rallies in previous sites for these events in South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya in 2023.

In 2023, the only Al-Quds Day event declared in the U.S. so far is by the Al-Quds Committee in Dearborn, Michigan. At a previous rally organized by this committee, one activist expressed his support for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and referred in adulatory terms to Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, calling him “our beloved leader.”

An Al-Quds Day march will be held in London on April 16, organized by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC). This organization is affiliated to an office in the judiciary branch of the Islamist regime in Iran (with the same name) and has a line in Iran’s state budget. Saeed Reza Ameli, ex-president of this commission, was the secretary of IRI’s Supreme Cultural Council. According to a 2019 report published by the Times of London, the organization’s chairman, Massoud Shadjareh, described Ayatollah Khomeini, as “a torch of light for the whole of mankind.”

There are signs that Iranian proxies who organize the rallies are now facing real opposition, not from pro-Israel activists in the West, but from dissidents in the Iranian diaspora who oppose the regime. These dissidents, who have been energized by the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in Iran, have been very active against the Islamist regime in Iran and its proxies in the West. Anti-regime demonstrations and sit-ins have been held in front of Islamic centers run by the regime in Europe and Canada. For example, dissidents challenged Iranian diplomats celebrating Ramadan in a park outside of London, highlighting the abuse of women at the hands of the regime.

Another factor contributing to the apparent decline in the Al-Quds movement is the shrinking financial and human resources of the Islamist regime in Iran. The regime simply lacks the resources it needs to finance and organize these events. The government is not even able to pay the teachers on time and it needs all its oppression machine manpower to be inside the country and ready to fight Iranian youth on the streets. According to a document obtained by critics of the regime, the Iranian government used its Iraqi proxies to oppress the protesters in Khuzestan province (south-west of the country) in 2022.

A third factor is the decline of the Islamist movement in the globe in recent years after the demise of ISIS. The organizers may not want to be viewed as part of a declining movement, and as a result may prefer to keep a low profile.

A final reason for the decline is the fact that European governments show more security awareness after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, an invasion actively and materially supported by Iran. The European Parliament recently passed a resolution calling on the bloc to consider a “terrorist” designation for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The European Council has not yet followed this resolution with a proscription of the IRGC. But any organization that has ties to Tehran is now more vigilant and does not want to be in the news.

Whatever the cause, the declining popularity of Al-Quds rallies is good news for the West and Iranian dissidents.

https://islamism.news/2023/04/13/al-quds-rally-in-berlin-cancelled-iran-regime-supporters-face-growing-pushback/

Five Muslim individuals who had previously been convicted of engaging in a grooming gang in Huddersfield have now been found guilty of additional crimes. Following a trial at Leeds Crown Court, Abdul Rehman, Mohammed Kammer, Nahman Mohammed, Wiqas Mahmud, and Mohammed Imran Ibrar were all convicted guilty.

At Bradford Crown Court on Thursday, the males who sexually assaulted a girl between 2005 and 2010 received their sentences. The men were convicted of crimes including rape and drug distribution.

Abdul Rehman, 36, of Sheffield was given a three-year and 11-month sentence. He was convicted of two charges, including selling drugs and participating in or aiding child sex crime.

Mohammed Kammer, age 38, from Huddersfield, was given a seven-year and six-month term. He was convicted of three counts of rape and one count of trafficking children for sexual exploitation.

Nahman Mohammed, 37, a resident of Huddersfield, was given a seven-year term. He was convicted of trafficking for sexual exploitation and two counts of rape.

Wiqas Mahmud, 42, of Huddersfield, was given a six-year and three-month sentence. He was convicted of a single rape offence.

38-year-old Huddersfield resident Mohammed Imran Ibrar received a five-year sentence. He was convicted of one rape offence and one sexual assault. He will serve three years and six months after time is subtracted from his present sentence.

They were jailed for a combined 28 years after they were convicted a second time after being imprisoned earlier, in the recent trial which came to an end on February 9. Their trial had been delayed since 2020.

A West Yorkshire Police investigation known as ‘Operation Tendersea’ has been a long-running West Yorkshire Police investigation focussed on the sexual exploitation and abuse of young girls in the Huddersfield area between 1995 and 2013.

42 men were found guilty in Operation Tendersea trials that started in 2018, several of whom had already faced multiple prosecutions. In addition to the convictions from this month, people found guilty in court have now received a total of 505 years and six months in prison.

“Operation Tendersea has been a major investigation into what has been truly evil sexual abuse committed against young females in the Huddersfield area,” statedDCI Ian Thornes of Kirklees Police.

“The fact that the courts have now given more than a combined 500 years in prison to the men who committed these offences speaks volumes about their sheer depravity. In case after case we have heard how those involved regarded their victims as objects to be used and then trivially discarded with no regard whatsoever for their welfare,” he unveiled.

He remarked, “These were vulnerable young teenage girls who endured utterly sickening offences committed by persons who demonstrated standards of behaviour which means they are not fit to walk the streets.”

“Police and partners have worked hard to deliver justice for these women over several years, but this long journey could never have begun without them having the courage to come forwards and report these offences,” he continued.

“Their determination has resulted in sex offenders who considered themselves above the law now finding themselves judged by it, and spending many years behind bars,” he mentioned and added, “I want to thank them for their determination in supporting these prosecutions and empowering the police, CPS and partners to act. Officers who have worked on this complex investigation have deep admiration for the bravery they have shown.”

“We are absolutely committed to preventing these heinous crimes and ensuring those that commit them are brought to justice. Every child in West Yorkshire deserves to grow up free from harm and protecting our most vulnerable is a key priority,” asserted Tracy Brabin, the Mayor of West Yorkshire.

Suella Braverman, the United Kingdom’s Home Secretary, recently took a fierce stance against British Pakistani men, who she observed, were abusing white English girls in Britain. She emphasised that some British Pakistanis were running networks of child abuse in the UK and that the authorities and civil society were turning a blind eye out of political correctness. 

A new Grooming Gangs Taskforce has been established, according to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, to support police agencies to look into the major issue of Muslim grooming gangs in the country. The task force will have specialised police to help in the investigation to ensure that the criminals responsible for grooming gangs will be brought to justice, according to the official statement from his office.

https://www.opindia.com/2023/04/huddersfield-grooming-gang-case-in-uk-5-men-convicted-in-additional-child-rape-case/

By Warren Beatty

NBC News recently touted a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that says, “The chance to secure a livable future for everyone on Earth is slipping away.”  It further reported, “There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” This was echoed by Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council: “This is the stone cold truth laid out in unassailable science by the world’s top climate experts.  We’re hurtling down the road to ruin and running out of time to change course.”

That’s the same U.N. that was wrong 34 years ago when Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, said that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”

Fiona Harvey, Environment Editor at the Guardian, says, “Scientists have delivered a ‘final warning’ on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert.”  She cited a report from the IPCC, comprised of the world’s leading climate scientists.

The U.N. again.

CBS News cited a study by Atmospheric scientist Dr. Walker Ashley at Northern Illinois University who predicts storms like the ones that tore through Mississippi, killing several dozen people, could become more common due to climate change.

Now let’s shift attention to hypocritical politicians who make predictions with their mouths and actions, beginning with Barack Obama.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts the sea level to rise by as much as 12″ in the next 30 years.  NOAA predicts the sea level rise, “…will create a profound shift in coastal flooding over the next 30 years by causing tide and storm surge heights to increase and reach further inland.  By 2050, ‘moderate’ (typically damaging) flooding is expected to occur, on average, more than 10 times as often as it does today.”

But that information didn’t deter Obama from purchasing an oceanside mansion on Martha’s Vineyard.  The 7,000 square foot house is zero feet above sea level and about a quarter mile from the sea.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said in 2019, “…there is an urgency needed in addressing man-made climate change, warning that it will ‘destroy the planet’ in a dozen years if humans do not address the issue, no matter the cost.” 

After the AP debunked her prediction, she tried to walk it back, tweeting, “This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and ‘fact check’ it. Like the ‘world ending in 12 years’ thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal. But the GOP is basically Dwight from The Office so who knows.”

Her headquarters was a minute’s walk from the subway.  Yet AOC’s initial campaign booked cars 1,049 times, including 26 in one day.  Despite high-speed rail being a cornerstone of her Green New Deal (GND) policy, she utilized Amtrak 18 times, compared to flying 66 times.  Her response: “The GND is about systemic change — not about personal gas-guzzling practices.”

I now focus upon the doddering old fool who occupies ‘The Bully Pulpit.’  While Biden has made no verbal predictions, his actions demonstrate what he believes will occur if the climate crisis is not soon abated.  Biden said, “[Global warming] is the single most existential threat to humanity we have ever faced, including nuclear weapons.”

Biden created a National Climate Change Task Force with its jobs (among others) to:

• Reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 50-52% below 2005 levels in 2030
• Produce 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035
• Achieve a net-zero emissions economy by 2050
• Deliver 40% of the benefits from federal investments in climate and clean energy to disadvantaged communities

Biden’s 2021 goal sought to have 50% of new vehicle sales by 2030 be electric vehicles (EVs) or plug-in hybrids.  Where does he think electricity comes from?  Currently, 0.2% is produced by photovoltaic panels, while wind accounts for 4%.  Most methods used to generate electricity produce carbon.  More electric cars will require more electricity as well as greater charging infrastructure and electric-grid capacity.  Utilities and power generator companies will have to invest billions creating additional capacity.

The number of EVs on U.S. roads is projected to reach 26.4 million in 2030, comprising 10% of the 259 million light-duty vehicles (cars and light trucks) expected.  That’s a prediction, so we must use current data to evaluate it.  California has made lots of noise lately about EVs; let’s see how it’s doing.

California’s new EV sales has reached 19%, yielding about 563,000 EVs total.  State officials claim that the 12.5 million EVs expected by 2035 will not strain the electricity grid.  But their confidence the state can avoid brownouts relies upon a best-case scenario:

• Build solar and wind at an unprecedented pace: shifting to all renewables will require at least six gigawatts of new resources each year for the next 25 years, a pace that’s never been met before
• Convince people to charge their EVs during off-peak hours
• Build 15 times more public chargers: about 1.2 million chargers will be needed for the eight million EVs expected by 2030. Currently, about 80,000 chargers operate statewide
• Increase electricity production by 42% in 2035 and by as much as 85% in 2045.  Generation capacity to meet that demand throughout a given year will need to triple by 2045.

Only six days after the California Air Resources Board mandated that 35% of new 2026 cars sold in California (100% by 2035) must be zero-emissions, heat waves taxed California’s power grid causing a 10-day emergency alert that warned residents to cut electricity usage or face outages.

Is this what we can expect in the predicted Biden-world in 2030?

But actions speak louder than words.  Despite his warning of the consequences of global warming, Biden regularly takes fuel-guzzling helicopters to weekend at his Delaware homes where he’s spent nearly a quarter of his presidency. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/thirty_years_of_global_warming_prophecies.html

Cruel irony looms as “woke extremist” accused of racial statements and of campaigning against culture and history has been appointed to an important cultural position, prompting concern.

Tom Vandendriessche, an MEP for the Flemish Vlaams Belang party, has derided the appointment of Dalilla Hermans to a leadership position in the city of Bruges, describing the progressive activist and writer as a “woke extremist” who deals in “blatant anti-white racism”.

Originally from Rwanda, Hermans has made a number of extremely provocative statements in the past, once claiming that “whites have always been on the wrong side” of history.

Despite such a controversial background, Hermans has now been appointed to serve as the programme coordinator for Bruges’ attempt to become the cultural capital of Europe in 2030.

Such a move has provoked outrage from multiple political parties in the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium, who have expressed shock that an activist who has previously shown contempt for various elements of Flemish culture would be put in charge of marketing it to those abroad.

“She is known as a woke activist who wants to “decolonise” our society, topple statues, disdain our unique culture and transform our identity into so-called super-diversity,” Vandendriessche explained to Breitbart Europe regarding the situation.

The MEP particularly emphasised one of the woke author’s previous statements about white people, which he described as being “blatantly racist”.

Speaking to the Belgian newspaper De Standaard  in 2017, Hermans derided white people as always being on the “wrong side” of history, while Africans have managed to “transcend”.

“Throughout history, the whites have always been on the wrong side,” she said. “In almost every story the whites brought death, destruction and misery… While the blacks always transcended their fate.”

Statements like these, in Vandendriessche’s eyes, make it unacceptable for Hermans to be put in charge of marketing Bruges’ culture.

“Racism works in all directions,” he said. “Therefore, by definition, she cannot be the person responsible for making Bruges the cultural capital of Europe.”

“Woke does not represent us,” he went on to say. “Woke does not belong in Bruges or anywhere else.”

Vandendriessche has now formally penned a letter to the Bruges City Council asking for the appointment to be revoked, with the document calling for Hermans’ dismissal also being signed by elected MEPs from France, Germany, Italy and a number of other European nations.

The view that the activist is unfit for the role also appears to be held by a number of other senior politicians in Belgium, with New Flemish Alliance party leader, Bart De Wever, also describing the appointment as unacceptable considering Hermans’ views on white people.

“If someone said something like that in this studio, that blacks were always on the wrong side of history, and so on, that person might not qualify for anything,” he said during an interview on Tuesday. “Anyone who says something like that about white people is not suitable as a culture [officer].”

“If a white person would have said about blacks what Dalilla Hermans said about whites, he would have to go to court,” he went on to say, referencing hate speech legislation in place in Belgium.

So far, Hermans has seemingly dismissed criticism of her appointments as “hate comments“, adding that she will not be “intimidated” by those describing her appointment to the position as unacceptable.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/04/15/exclusive-mep-denounces-appointment-of-woke-extremist-to-leadership-role/

New Netflix Docuseries ‘Queen Cleopatra’ Color Corrects History “I Don’t Care What They Tell You in School, Cleopatra was Black”https://t.co/YD73CzIGcP

— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) April 15, 2023

The transperson is no longer a “chairperson”. Lubna Morad from the red student association had only been in office at the head of the Austrian Students’ Union for a few days. Until she called the ÖVP-affiliated candidate Durmaz a “‘wop'” and incidentally compared Muslims to Neanderthals. At least the word “wop” was meant positively, Morad was quoted as saying in the newspaper “Standard”. After all, she herself was a ” Mediterranean person”. “In my community we use the term among ourselves as an empowering self-designation and not as an insult,” it continues.

The Muslim thing is a bit more complex. Morad herself is Muslim. In a group chat with other Muslim students, however, she then felt that as a transperson she was being “attacked in a trans-hostile way”. In a message that was later leaked to the public, the comparison with Neanderthals was made. Among the young Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) students, Morad’s resignation as “chairperson” – a term she herself introduced – is meanwhile celebrated as a success. After all, they had been committed to anti-racist university activities for years.

https://exxpress.at/transgender-gegen-migranten-rassismus-eklat-an-wiener-fachhochschule/

Despite mass protests back home, scenes of extreme police violence, and a slew of critics pointing out France’s slide towards authoritarian rule, French President Emmanuel Macron was welcomed in the Netherlands with open arms this week — in fact, he was the toast of the town.

Macron, dressed in a fine tuxedo, unabashedly clinked champagne glasses with Dutch royalty and the country’s liberal political class in opulent palaces. The video of Macron offers quite the contrast to the proletariat “riff-raff” protesting in the streets and being clobbered by police. He seems to have fully embraced the “let them eat cake” attitude that has long defined his presidency.

Recently, a video featuring Macron sliding off a luxury watch in the middle of an interview went viral, which he followed up with high-profile visits to China and the Netherlands. Macron wearing luxury watches, drinking champagne, and saying recently he is “comfortable” being hated may lead some to think these are all gaffes. In fact, much of it seems orchestrated. It has echoes of the “Dark Brandon” meme that the White House reportedly embraced. Certainly, Macron’s foreign visits are a pivot away from domestic trouble — a common move for politicians across the world.

🤡Oh! What is it?#Macron was too shy to talk about the need for pension reform while wearing a watch worth 80 thousand euros, but he realized this during an interview on French TV, and took the watch off under the table. pic.twitter.com/KIinWrsDSx

— Matreshka 🌺🇷🇺🇧🇾🇰🇿🇷🇸🇨🇦 (@MatreshkaRF) March 24, 2023

Macron is trying to present himself as the strong leader who gets stuff done — with or without democracy. He flexes in luxury watches because he’s the boss cleaning up the mess, and if a few heads get cracked in, well, another glass of champagne is in order. Who is going to stop him? Certainly not his technocrats across the EU. He knows that as long as he embraces the “right” position on immigration and LGBT rights, he will remain firmly in the camp of Brussels and the media establishment, which gives him the cover he needs.

Despite all their constant talk about rule of law and “democracy,” the ruling EU political class appears entirely unconcerned with nearly weekly footage of dozens of protesters being beaten to a pulp. The likes of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who greeted Macron warmly in the Netherlands, are not put off one bit that millions of French are protesting Macron’s move to effectively “cancel” democracy and institute a much-hated increase in the pension age from 62 to 64 without a single vote in parliament. Rutte is, by the way, the same leader who called for Hungary to be expelled from the European Union for “rule of law” violations and its stance on LGBT.

Is Macron right?

There is, in the end, some truth to Macron’s claims about pension reform and the way he has handled them up until now. The French public voted him into office knowing he would move forward with the reforms, and they also voted him in with full knowledge of how his police forces handled the Yellow Vest protesters. His rival, Marine Le Pen, made it clear she would keep the pension age set at 62 — she has since said she will reverse Macron’s pension reform as well if elected.

What kept the French public from voting for Le Pen? The main issue is supposedly that Le Pen is xenophobic, which is mostly ridiculous. The reality is that at the end of the day, the French are “xenophobic.” They do not want to become a minority, and they are not at all happy about mass immigration. Recent polling has shown that even the left in France are almost entirely fed up with immigration. In fact, surveys indicate that French society wants a referendum on the issue, which Le Pen had promised during her campaign. To take it a step further, the majority of French even believe the Great Replacement is taking place and the French routinely rate immigration as one of the most pressing issues facing the nation.

But it goes further than immigration and pension reform. Le Pen also vowed to keep much of the social programs in place that a majority of the French apparently value. On a range of issues, she embraced the populist position, even when it conflicted with conservative orthodoxy, such as the topic of abortion. In theory, her populist positions should translate into the most votes.

Yet, the French people chose the very man who promised more immigration, pension reform, and a technocratic regime. Why? The most basic answer is that the French press labeled her far-right, racist and fascist. The seeds that allowed those words to have such power were planted long ago — in novels, academia, television, and film — allowing these words to have such power when journalists and activists spout them now. That is really all it took, and that is really all it takes across the West time and again.

The problem, for the most part, is the media is more powerful than any politician and has the ability to take a candidate like Le Pen and overwrite people’s own interests and desires. After they are done, France once again ends up with a candidate like Macron as president and the masses are left wondering why they are not getting what they want.

Of course, the media cannot be blamed for every vote that failed to materialize for Le Pen. She made her mistakes, while Macron has also appealed to the interests of certain segments of French society — particularly foreigners, business owners, and an assortment of elites. For some people, it simply comes down to money. Take Michel Houllbecq for instance. The man is France’s most famous author and seen as a literary God in France. Recently, he said that the Great Replacement is taking place across the West, along with a host of other explosive comments. Yet, as he said in 2017, “I am part of a France that votes Macron because I am too rich to vote Le Pen or Mélenchon.”

He may have amended his position in 2019, when he stated, “I am ready to vote for anyone as long as they propose to exit the European Union and NATO,” but his first sentiment of putting money before nation has been the status quo across the West for decades.

Do voters get what they deserve?

It is easy enough to blame the voters, and there is plenty of blame to go around. The liberal-left establishment — both politicians and journalists — closed ranks behind Macron after the first round of voting in 2022, urged their voters to reject Le Pen, and many of those voters did exactly that. Now, hundreds of thousands of them are likely marching in the streets decrying Macron’s pension reform. There is a certain absurdity to it, and Macron seems to have embraced the adage: “You idiots voted for this!”

Now, polling says Le Pen would beat Macron if a repeat election were to occur. These polls are always a bit interesting, but the reality is that the next election is in 2027 — four long years from now. These voters can attempt to assuage their anger at Macron by telling themselves they defeated the “Nazi” by rejecting Le Pen in 2022, the same “Nazi” who would have given them mostly what they tell pollsters they want in regard to immigration, economics and even culture.

The sad reality is that as bad as the situation in France is, it is still much better than in many Western countries. It should not be forgotten that 42 percent of the population chose Le Pen in the end. Some conservatives bit their tongue and voted for her, even if she did not live up to their ideals.

As for the present crisis, Macron will most likely survive this round of pension protests, and he has no plans to run again. However, in all reality, a new Macron will arise to take Macron’s place. In four years, will the French repeat the same mistake again when it comes time to pull the lever? Pension reform will be a long distant memory at that point, and whether it is Le Pen or some other candidate representing her ideals, the media chorus of “far-right” and “racist” will threaten to cast its spell once again.

https://rmx.news/commentary/the-left-voted-for-this-macron-sips-champagne-with-dutch-liberal-leader-and-royalty-as-france-burns/