At the gates of power: when will the CIA assassinate Marine Le Pen?

[Paul Rigby]

Ruin Is Our Future

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, January 17, 2015
PaulCraigRoberts.org

http://www.globalresearch.ca/ruin-is-our-future/5425131

Neoconservatives arrayed in their Washington offices are congratulating themselves on their success in using the Charlie Hebdo affair to reunite Europe with Washington's foreign policy. No more French votes with the Palestinians against the Washington-Israeli position.

No more growing European sympathy with the Palestinians.

No more growing European opposition to launching new wars in the Middle East.

No more calls from the French president to end the sanctions against Russia.

Do the neoconservatives also understand that they have united Europeans with the right-wing anti-immigration political parties? The wave of support for the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists is the wave of Marine Le Pen's National Front, Nigel Farage's UK Independence Party, and Germany's PEGIDA sweeping over Europe. These parties are empowered by the anti-immigration fervor that was orchestrated in order to reunite Europeans with Washington and Israel.

Once again the arrogant and insolent neoconservatives have blundered. Charlie Hebdo's empowerment of the anti-immigration parties has the potential to revolutionize European politics and destroy Washington's empire. See my weekend interview with King World News for my thoughts on this potential game-changer.

The reports from the UK Daily Mail and from Zero Hedge that Russia has cut off natural gas deliveries to six European countries must be incorrect. These sources are credible and well-informed, but such a cut-off would have instantly produced political and financial turmoil of which there is no sign. Therefore, unless there is a news blackout, Russia's action has been misunderstood.

We know something real has happened. Otherwise, EU energy official Maros Sefcovic would not be expressing such consternation. Although I am without any definite information, I believe I know what the real story is. Russia, tired of Ukraine's theft of the natural gas that passes through the country on its way to delivery to Europe, has made a decision to route the gas to Turkey, thus bypassing Ukraine.

The Russian energy minister has confirmed this decision and added that if European countries wish to avail themselves of this gas supply, they must put in place the infrastructure or pipeline to bring the gas into their countries.

In other words, there is a potential for a cutoff in the future, but no cutoff at the present.

These two eventsCharlie Hebdo and the Russian decision to cease delivering gas to Europe via Ukraineshould remind us that the potential for black swans, and unintended consequences of official decisions that can produce black swans, always exist. Not even the American "superpower" is immune from black swans.

There is as much circumstantial evidence that the CIA and French Intelligence are responsible for the Charlie Hebdo shootings as there is that the shootings were carried out by the two brothers whose ID was conveniently found in the alleged get-away car. As the French made certain that the brothers were killed before they could talk, we will never know what they had to say about the plot.

The only evidence we have that the brothers are guilty is the claim by the security forces. Every time I hear government claims without real evidence, I remember Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," Assad's "use of chemical weapons," and Iran's "nuclear weapons program." If a US National Security Advisor can conjure up out of thin air "mushroom clouds over an American city," Cherif and Said Kouachi can be turned into killers. After all, they are dead and cannot protest.

If this was, and we will never know for certain, a false flag attack, it achieved Washington's goal of reuniting Europe under Washington and Israeli auspices. But this success has an unintended consequence. The unintended consequence is to unify Europe under the anti-immigration policy of the right-wing parties, thus empowering the leaders of those parties.

If this surmise is correct, Marie Le Pen and Nigel Farage will find their lives and/or reputations in danger as Washington will resist the rise of European governments that do not adhere to Washington's line.

The consternation caused by Russia's decision to relocate its gas delivery to Europe is proof that Russia holds many cards that Russia could play that would bring down the political and financial structures of the Western World.

China holds similar cards.

The two countries are not playing their cards, because they do not think that they need them. Instead, the two powers are withdrawing from the Western financial system that serves Western hegemony over the world. They are creating all of the economic institutions that they need in order to be completely independent of the West.

Therefore, the Russian and Chinese governments reason, "Why be provocative and slap down the Western fools. They might resort to their nuclear weapons, and the entire world would be lost. Let's just walk away while they encourage us to depart with their provocations."

We can be thankful that Vladimir Putin and the leaders of the Chinese government are both intelligent and humane, unlike Western leaders.

Imagine, for example, the dire consequences for the West if Putin were to become personally involved as a result of the numerous affronts to both Russia and Putin himself. Putin can destroy NATO and the entire Western financial system whenever he wants. All he has to do is to announce that as NATO has declared economic war against Russia, Russia no longer sells energy to NATO members.

The NATO alliance would dissolve as Europe cannot survive without Russian energy supplies. Washington's empire would end.

Putin realizes that the insolent neoconservatives would have to push the nuclear button in order to save face. Unlike Putin, their egos are on the line. Thus, Putin saves the world from nuclear war by not being provocative.

Now, imagine if the Chinese government were to lose its patience with Washington. To confront the "exceptional, indispensable, unipower" with the reality of its impotence, all China needs to do is to dump its massive dollar-denominated financial assets on the market, all at once, just as the Federal Reserve's bullion bank agents dump massive uncovered gold contracts on the future's market.

In order to avoid US financial collapse, the Federal Reserve would have to print massive amounts of new dollars with which to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings. As the Federal Reserve would protect US financial markets by purchasing the dumped Chinese holdings, the Chinese would lose nothing from the sale. It is the next step that is decisive. The Chinese government then dumps the massive holdings of dollars it has received from its selloff of dollar-dominated financial instruments.

Now what happens? The Fed can print dollars with which to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings, but the Fed cannot print foreign currencies with which to buy up the dumped dollars.

The massive supply of dollars dumped in the exchange market by China would have no takers. The dollar's value would collapse. Washington could no longer pay its bills by printing money. Americans living in an import-dependent country, thanks to jobs offshoring, would be faced with high prices that would seriously erode their living standard. The United States would experience economic, social, and political instability.

Putting aside their brainwashing, their defensiveness and patriotic support of the regime in Washington, Americans need to ask themselves: How is it possible that the government of the United States, an alleged Superpower, is so unaware of its true vulnerabilities that Washington is capable of pushing two real powers until they have had enough and play the cards that they hold?

Americans need to understand that the only thing exceptional about the US is the ignorance of the population and the stupidity of the government.

What other country would let a handful of Wall Street crooks control its economic and foreign policy, run its central bank and Treasury, and subordinate citizens' interests to the interests of the one percent's pocketbook?

A population this insouciant is at the total mercy of Russia and China.

Yesterday there was a black swan event, an event that could yet unleash other black swan events

The Swiss central bank announced an end to its pegging of the Swiss franc to the euro and US dollar.

Three years ago flight from euros and dollars into Swiss francs pushed the exchange value of the franc so high that it threatened the existence of the Swiss export industries. Switzerland announced that any further inflows of foreign currencies into francs would be met by creating new francs to absorb the inflows so as not to drive up the exchange rate further. In other words, the Swiss pegged the franc.

Yesterday the Swiss central bank announced that the peg was off. The franc instantly rose in value. Stocks of Swiss export companies fell, and hedge funds wrongly positioned incurred major hits to their solvency.

Why did the Swiss remove the peg? It was not a costless action. It cost the central bank and Swiss export industries substantially.

The answer is that the EU attorney general ruled that it was permissible for the EU central bank to initiate Quantitative Easingthat is, the printing of new eurosin order to bail out the mistakes of the private bankers. This decision means that Switzerland expects to be confronted with massive flight from the euro and that the Swiss central bank is unwilling to print enough new Swiss francs to maintain the peg. The Swiss central bank believes that it would have to run the printing press so hard that the basis of the Swiss money supply would explode, far exceeding the GDP of Switzerland.

The money printing policy of the US, Japan, and apparently now the EU has forced other countries to inflate their own currencies in order to prevent the rise in the exchange value of their currencies that would curtail their ability to export and earn foreign currencies with which to pay for their imports. Thus Washington has forced the world into printing money.

The Swiss have backed out of this system. Will others follow, or will the rest of the world follow the Russians and Chinese governments into new monetary arrangements and simply turn their backs on the corrupt and irredeemable West?

The level of corruption and manipulation that characterizes US economic and foreign policy today was impossible in earlier times when Washington's ambition was constrained by the Soviet Union. The greed for hegemonic power has made Washington the most corrupt government on earth.

The consequence of this corruption is ruin.

"Leadership passes into empire. Empire begets insolence. Insolence brings ruin."

Ruin is America's future.

[Paul Rigby]

Paris attacks: Jean-Marie Le Pen says French terror attacks were work of Western intelligence

JOHN LICHFIELD PARIS Saturday 17 January 2015

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...85047.html

The Charlie Hebdo massacre may have been the work of an "intelligence agency", working with the connivance of French authorities, according to Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the far right Front National.

In an interview with a virulently anti-Western Russian newspaper, Mr Le Pen, 86, gave credence to conspiracy theories circulating on the internet suggesting that the attack was the work of American or Israeli agents seeking to foment a civil war between Islam and the West.

His comments only partially retracted in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde today provoked outrage amongst French politicians. They will also infuriate Marine Le Pen, his daughter, and successor as leader of the FN, who has been trying to distance the party from her father's extreme and provocative remarks.

Mr Le Pen stood down as FN leader three years ago but remains President-for-life. He made the comments in an interview with Komsomolskaïa Pravda , a newspaper which had already blamed the United States for the terrorist mayhem in France.

"The shooting at Charlie Hebdo resembles a secret service operation but we have no proof of that," the newspaper quoted Mr Le Pen as saying. "I don't think it was organised by the French authorities but they permitted this crime to be committed. That, for the moment, is just a supposition."

To justify his comments, Mr Le Pen pointed to the fact that one of the Kouachi brothers, who carried out the Charlie Hebdo massacre, left his identity card in a crashed getaway car. He compared this to the "miraculous fact" beloved by conspiracy theorists that one of the passports of the 9/11 hijackers was found on the ground in New York after two planes collided with the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in 2001.

Mr Le Pen made two other provocative remarks in the interview. He said that the 1,500,000 who marched "against hatred" in Paris last Sunday were not "Charlies" but "Charlie Chaplins" (ie clowns). He also said that there were 15,000,00 to 20,000,000 Muslims in France three or four times the generally accepted figures of 5,000,000 people who are practising Muslims or have Muslim backgrounds.

In an interview with Le Monde today, Mr Le Pen repeated his suspicions about the identity card but said he "could not recall" talking about "secret services" to the Russian newspaper.

Mr Le Pen's original quoted remarks run directly counter to the official line of his daughter and his party. They have suggested that the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket are the final proof that France faces an "enemy within", which has been created by immigration and open EU borders.

Conspiracy theories of the kind espoused by the elder Le Pen sprang up on the internet within hours of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. They have been repeated in recent days by some not all - young Muslims in France, torn between identifying with the Kouachi brothers and insisting that they were stooges of the French authorities, Washington and Israel.

The French "pope of conspiracy theories", Thierry Meyssan, now based in Damascus, insisted that the Charlie Hebdo massacres were "ordered by US neo-cons and liberal hawks". An American conspiracy site, McLatchy, has claimed that the Kouachi brothers were working for French intelligence

.

[Paul Rigby]

Who Stands to Benefit From Terrorist Attacks in France?

by Mikail Khazin

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.uk/2015...orist.html

translation by: Mikhael (thanks a lot Mikhael!! The Saker)

The scale of the events in France and the intensity of the ensuing panic turned out to be so massive that even the most politically unprepared people realized that the stability of EU is facing an enormous threat. And it doesn't even matter if the French authorities are successful in neutralizing the current situation it may repeat on a much larger scale. It is impossible to stop this process within the framework of the modern "tolerant democracy" placing well armed professional security units in front of every building in every city is simply not an option and everything else would be ineffective. An honest assessment of risks associated with similar events, even just in terms of insurance claims, will show that the entire economy is at risk of going down the drain. And I am talking about world-wide economy. Since I have written here a forecast that, among other things, contains some information about year 2015, I am obliged to add some commentary. The first question that begs an answer is: who stands to profit?

Here I will simply list possible beneficiaries. First choice the US. The authorities in that country realized that the influence of opposition elites (the ones I wrote about in my forecast) is increasing so much that it is not only jeopardizing the agreements around the Trans Atlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA), but also becoming a threat to the pro-American elites' hold on power in Europe. Orban in Hungary, Zeman in Czech Republic, Marin Le Pen in France… All of these represent very negative processes for the US. Therefore, the situation must be blown up, "democracy" must be tucked away and a strict dictatorship must be established. A pro-American dictatorship that is, which will thoughtlessly follow orders from Washington without the need to engage in any kind of "democratic" procedures. In other words, install "pinochets" in every EU country complete with all the "bells and whistles" that always accompany these types of regimes: "death squadrons", rollback of all social security standards, removal of state regulations that is total liberalization. And, of course, along with these developments a free trade area with the US will be established. By the way, the refusal by French authorities to allow "Front populaire" to participate in the "unity march" fits the above scenario very neatly what kind of "democracy" and "unity" is this when a quarter of the native French (!) population is being rudely shoved aside.

I also would like to note that within the US elite there are several groups each of them having their own channels which could be used to stimulate and organize terrorist attacks that will fit their agenda. Each group has their own partners (British Windsors, world financial elites, China and many others), as well as their own interests, and all of this requires a very detailed and thorough analysis.

Second possibility Britain (or, to be more specific, the House of Windsor). They might be worried about a scenario where Merkel will completely give in to US pressure and push Brussels to sign the TAFTA agreement, which will put an end to the idea of creating alternative non-dollar currency zones and will force the British financial system ("rothschilds") to lose control over interzonal transactions. Which basically means that a more or less independent British financial system will cease to exist, just as London will lose its status as a world financial center.

Third possibility continental European elites ("black internationale", or the Vatican - in conspirological terms). For them, TAFTA is a catastrophe, and they have already gained enough influence to try and bring nationally oriented opposition elites to power. Once the number of EU countries where this handover of power happens passes a critical threshold, pro-American elites in Brussels would be forced out and the EU as we know it will be finished. It is possible that the ideas of Franco-German-Russian domination in Europe play a certain role in this scenario. Within imperial, and not liberal-democratic framework, of course.

Fourth possibility Germany. They could have gotten anxious that Hollande will back out (of plans previously coordinated with Merkel) under the threat of losing power and they created a situation that allows to "tighten the screws" and substantially limit the influence and capabilities of the anti-American group led by Le Pen.

Fifth possibility is the one that is currently being "fed" to the masses, which is what makes it the least probable. This version implies that islamists are behind the attack - ISIS, "Al Qaeda", etc. It has its own intricacies because wherever we see a mention of "Al Qaeda", we must also look for traces of CIA and British intelligence involvement. "Al Qaeda" does not have enough power and resources to carry out such an attack independently, without outside help.

Sixth possibility Saudi Arabia. Today it is taking a serious hit and it must find a way to survive. A number of scenarios which are being developed by US imply liquidation of the Saudi state with the ultimate goal of creating a Sunni caliphate, which would subsequently be used in an attack on Israel and Iran. These scenarios must be prevented. The easiest way is to tie up US resources on as many fronts as possible, forcing them to abandon the plans to remove Saudis from power. Israel is helping Saudis in this situation, but keeping a low profile.

Seventh possibility us (Russia). Having failed to persuade Merkel to drop sanctions and realizing that she is firmly under US control, we decided to "blow up" EU. And started with France as it appears to be the first major European country ready to leave the US confrontation scheme against Russia. This gives Hollande an alibi and support for his anti-American actions ("What can we do, - he will tell Obama, - you didn't help, while Russia is supporting us"), and so on. It is also possible that we already have agreements with some of the parties mentioned above.

And the eights possibility, as we are moving further East is China. This would mean that the attack was a "blowback" for Ukraine and other actions directed against the new Silk Road. In other words, it would imply China's entry into the big political "game" on a world-wide scale.

Theoretically all of the above mentioned possibilities are still not out of the question. As time goes by, more and more information will become available and the picture will become clearer, but we need to pay close attention. Many of the mentioned parties have their own ideological agendas, which were symbolically presented to the public during the last two days. The symbols included candles (for some reason no one in EU lighted candles to commemorate victims in Donbass, Odessa or Mariupol even though all of these places are also located in Europe and there are more people dying there every day, than in France), flowers, staged "unity marches" that reeked of fakeness so badly that one must wonder why it was impossible to prepare better!

Here is Russia things are starting to move as well just look at the bickering between Venediktov and Kadyrov! However, I still don't see any constructive course of action being undertaken, but it is possible that it will never happen because there is no one to implement such a course of action. By the way, I found Khodorkovsky's statement very indicative of what is happening here right now. He was clearly used to provoke the public and this distinctly showed that he is not an independent political figure. Furthermore, those who are using him are obviously no longer considering him a valuable asset.

POSTED BY VINEYARDSAKER: AT 02:50

[Magda Hassan]

Not enough information and not Marine but the old man but interesting... Sorry googlish Franglais

ALERT INFO - Jean-Marie Le Pen was wounded in the face in the fire of his apartment in Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris.

[Updated Monday, January 26, 2015 at 2:26 p.m.] This is the LCI journalist Bénédicte Le Chatelier who reported the information on his Twitter account shortly after 13:30. A fire broke out in Rueil-Malmaison , Hauts-de-Seine, near Paris. The Housing Jean-Marie Le Pen was hit by fire. Police and firefighters have confirmed information of the fire in the housing of Jean-Marie Le Pen to the continuous news channel BFM TV.

The former leader of the FN, 86, was wounded in the face by the Twitter account of LCI, but we still know very little for the moment on his health. BFM chain also indicates that the dean of the European Parliament has been supported by firefighters and his condition "does not inspire concern" to his entourage. The old FN leader would be no more "shot" after this event. Le Figaro says on its website that Jean-Marie Le Pen was "evacuated".

Jean-Marie Le Pen wounded in the face in a tweet of a journalist LCI. Twitter © Capture.

Jean-Marie Le Pen: already a fire in 1976

The fire of Jean-Marie Le Pen apartment could raise many questions, starting with those concerning the origin of the claim. Another apartment creator National Front had already been hit by fire in Paris in November 1976. The Housing Villa Poirier, in the fifteenth arrondissement, had then been the target of an attack with twenty pounds explosives. At the time, the explosion hits the spirits, but fortunately no casualties. Jean-Marie Le Pen did not have the media exposure it enjoys today.

[Paul Rigby]

National Front leader says France should have strategic relations with Russia

World January 27, 8:57

Marine Le Pen said France had lost sovereignty in the spheres of finance, budget and legislation and it did not have the power to decide on its destiny independently

TOKYO, January 27. /TASS/. France should have strategic relations with Russia instead of keeping them in the current state, which is close to a Cold War, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front right-wing party has said in an interview published by the Osaka-based newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

http://tass.ru/en/world/773503

She said she was bowing her head to Russia, which lived through a period of harsh trials after the collapse of the Soviet Union and attained restoration of the national economy.

Le Pen called Russia a great country that had build a model of a state differing from the US and this made it a worthy partner to build strategic relations with.

However, the EU could have only the Cold War-like type of relationship with Russia because it was strictly following US instructions, she said.
Le Pen aired highly critical notes on the EU, saying France was not getting any dividends from membership of the union, only debts, unemployment, the watering down of ethnic identity.

France had lost sovereignty in the spheres of finance, budget and legislation and it did not have the power to decide on its destiny independently, she said, adding that all the decisions were being made by a handful of bureaucrats contrary to people's will and this was bringing poverty and despair to ordinary people.

At present, the National Front is one of the three leading political parties in France. It scored a notable success in the municipal elections in 2014 when it got a majority of seats in the mayors' offices of twelve different cities.

In May 2014, the National Front achieved one more breakthrough and got the first place at elections to the European Parliament upon the results of nationwide voting.

[Paul Rigby]

[video=youtube_share;S-d81lrLN7w]http://youtu.be/S-d81lrLN7w[/video]

[Paul Rigby]

[video=youtube_share;mWtMEIRI4RU]http://youtu.be/mWtMEIRI4RU[/video]

[Paul Rigby]

French Curtains:

Eric Zemmour's raw attack on France's elites is the talk of Paris

Christopher Caldwell

December 8, 2014, Vol. 20, No. 13

http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/arti...20204.html

French readers follow the herd. They believe in prizes. When a French author wins the Goncourt or the Nobel, people rush to bookstores and send his books rocketing to the top of the bestseller lists. But today the French have other things on their minds. President François Hollande is France's least popular leader since World War II. His poll ratings are even lower than Barack Obama's. A gay marriage law he rushed through the National Assembly in 2013 has continued to bring enraged (and previously apolitical) protesters into the streets in 2014. Hollande's Socialist party lost 150 cities in last spring's municipal elections. In elections for the European parliament, which took place at about the same time, the National Front became France's largest party. The working-class group, long tarred as fascist, took twice as many seats as the Socialists, who fell to third.

Although the French novelist Patrick Modiano won the Nobel in October, he has lately been bumped off the charts by Eric Zemmour, a talk-show pundit who is persona non grata among the country's intellectual establishment. Zemmour's Le suicide français (Paris: Albin Michel, 534 pages, 22.90 euros) is made for the moment. It argues that, since the French student uprising of May 1968, women's libbers, Muslim migrants, crooked bankers, and overzealous judges have brought France to ruin. To judge from the reaction to Zemmour's bookwhich sold a quarter-million copies in the fortnight after publication despite furious condemnations in all of the daily paperslarge parts of the French public think he is right.

It is tempting to look at Zemmour as a television hothead in the Bill O'Reilly mold. He is that, at times. But his book has a great ambition, too. As Paul Johnson did in his magisterial Modern Times (1983), Zemmour takes a half-century of events that have been shrouded in progressive clichés and places them in a more logical relationship. His method is the one that historian Richard Reeves uses in his biographies of U.S. presidents. Zemmour will take an episode in France's political or cultural life, describe the long train of events that made it possible, and extrapolate to its consequences. These are generally episodes that show the French choosing to do away with something they had formerly cherished: the release of director Bertrand Blier's sexual picaresque Les valseuses in 1974; the 1993 law abandoning the list of approved (usually saints') names that had been in force for two centuries; President Jacques Chirac's abolition of military conscription in 1996; the introduction of affirmative action in one of France's elite universities that same year; the booing of the "Marseillaise," the French national anthem, by North African immigrant spectators during a game against Algeria in October 2001, weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center; the lack of any commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Austerlitz (1805), perhaps the greatest victory of Napoleon, who until that point had been revered almost as a demigod in French popular culture; and so on.

Zemmour's idea of France is built around its great nation-builders: Richelieu, Napoleon, and above all General (later president) Charles de Gaulle. It was de Gaulle who rescued French honor after the country's surrender and occupation in World War II and unified the postwar nation around a narrative of its fight against the Naziseven if that narrative was mythological, the fight having been in large part confined to Communists, various Christians, and the general himself. De Gaulle's conservatism was different from conservatism elsewhere. He was attached more to the grandeur of the French nation, less to liberty and small government, and he neither admired nor trusted the United States. After his death in 1970, French politicians made their peace with the free market and a less ambitious view of their country's destiny. Its intellectuals came to treat their fathers as a bunch of collaborators. Zemmour now sees the post-de Gaulle consensus as an unpatriotic sellout. "We were taught to love what we used to hate," he writes, "and to hate what we used to love."

The means by which France's institutions were pulled off their hinges will be familiar to Americans. Utopian court decrees had a lot to do with it, but even commonsensical laws could be interpreted in radical ways, leaving French people asking: When did I vote for that? Mass immigration, especially from France's hastily abandoned colonies in North Africa and West Africa, looms over this book as the great unintended consequence. It was already transforming France by the time de Gaulle left power. But a seemingly straightforward antidiscrimination law of 1972, by introducing "the principle of nondiscrimination between French and foreigners," made it impossible to stop. The law was interpreted in a spirit that led not just to equality but to an outright preference for foreigners. The North African traditional family was treated as essential to the flourishing of its members, so that "family reunification" became grounds for bringing in vast numbers of new residents, once a single family member was working on French soil.

By contrast, with the women's movement in full swing, the French traditional family was treated as an oppressive vestige from which wives and children must be liberated. Zemmour sees feminism as one of the central tragedies of postwar France (even if, to the outsider, there appears to have been less of it there than elsewhere). Feminists had called for "liberated" relations between the sexes. Their ideal was the happy-go-lucky cuckold of Michel Delpech's 1973 song "Les Divorcés":

At first it broke me up inside,

It was a challenge to my pride

And I refused to understand.

But now it doesn't seem so bad

And in the end I'm really glad

That you should find another man.

But women turned out not to like that kind of man very much, once they had him. Zemmour notes that the ruthless Don Juans of the old macho sexual order had feared two things above all: pregnancy and marriage. "The paradox of feminism," he writes, "was that it fulfilled the dreams of generations of male predators." The result for milder, moderate, and more tradition-minded men was summed up by a comedian of the time, Guy Bedos: "We separated by mutual agreement," Bedos said. "Especially hers."

The son of North African Jewish immigrant parents, Zemmour is sensitive about immigration in both senses of the word "sensitive." That is, he is highly nuanced and easily angered. Even if it was retreating from a large colonial empire, France had no recent legacy of slavery and segregation to atone for, as America did. But it was not lost on the Socialist president François Mitterrand, who came to power in 1981, what a powerful rallying cry and organizing tool the rejection of racism had proven to be in the United States. In 1984 his government helped establish the NGO SOS Racisme to agitate and propagandize. It was a solution in search of a problem, but it was mightily effective in intimidating French journalists and politicians. Thereafter the press covered immigration, Zemmour writes, through anecdotage, discussing "the individual fates of immigrants, their wives, their children, their emotions, their resentments .  .  . willfully obscuring their collective, historical side, as members of a people that had its own roots, its culture, its religion, its heroes, and its dreams of postcolonial vengeance." Much as feminism was a windfall for macho men, the sort of antiracism that protects the foreign-born from hard questions proved good news for a certain kind of racist. According to the filmmaker Alexandre Arcady, in the public schools of the vast suburban département of Seine-St-Denis, once heavily Jewish and now heavily Arab, there is "not a single student of Jewish faith."

Zemmour has addressed the taboo subject of France's relationship to its Jews without the slightest circumspection or hedging. In so doing he has cost himself the good feeling of many readers who might otherwise have backed him. In 1995, French president Jacques Chirac, a Gaullist himself, apologized on behalf of the French nation for a notorious 1942 roundup. Thirteen thousand Paris-area Jews were corralled into a sports arena near the Eiffel Tower and then shipped to Auschwitz. The apology was much applauded by the press two decades ago. Zemmour finds it appalling. He sees it as a renunciation of the central tenet of Gaullism: that the Vichy government that surrendered and collaborated with the Nazis was not France. The real France, la France éternelle, was the one led by de Gaulle in London that carried on resisting. Chirac broke with the founding principle of the political movement he had been entrusted with leading. It is consistent with Zemmour's heartfelt Gaullism to deplore this.

Less consistent is Zemmour's reconsideration of Vichy's role in delivering to their deaths tens of thousands of Jews who lived in France. In Zemmour's view, shaped by the work of the rabbi Alain Michel, an argument can be made that the Vichy government saved the lives of its own Jewish citizens by first offering up some of the large number of Jewish refugees who had fled to France from the Nazis. There may be a measure of truth to thisthree-quarters of France's Jews survived, whereas almost none did in the Netherlands. But his story is incompleteVichy revoked the French citizenship of its most recently naturalized Jewish citizens, exposing them to deportation. Zemmour is never maleficent in writing about such things. But he is sometimes maladroit, especially when he attacks former Socialist prime minister Lionel Jospin for his misgivings about Mitterrand's friendship with one of the organizers of the 1942 roundup, René Bousquet. Jospin's complaints were perfectly reasonable and even courageous, given Mitterrand's mythical status in the Socialist movement at the time. It is de Gaulle's account of World War II, not Vichy's, that Zemmour wants to defend. And he is right that a counterproductive "competition of victims" started as soon as that account was called into question. Louis Malle's movie Au revoir, les enfants (1987) was, he thinks, a key event in the popularization of a national self-hatred that had once been confined to intellectuals.

Zemmour is interested in France's antiracism because he considers it an instrument of class warfare, a sign that the progressive "creative classes" who once idealized the poor now hold them to be contemptible thugs. Zemmour cites Yves Boisset's 1975 film Dupont Lajoie, in which a murderer frames a group of saintly Algerians for his own misdeed. One of Zemmour's best sketches is of the French celebrities, led by the lovely actress Emmanuelle Béart, who joined a protest on behalf of the Malian and Mauritanian sans-papiers (undocumented immigrants) in the summer of 1996. The migrants were using the church of St-Bernard, in the 18th arrondissement, as a place to orate, eat, sleep, and go to the bathroom. "Not since the days of the Jansenist Convulsionaries," Zemmour writes, "had so many young beauties and high-born men been in a church." He notes, too, that the protesters at the Église St-Bernard, although they did not realize it, were defending their own class's interests against those of the French-born poor. They, the movie stars, use low-wage labor to trim their gardens and fix their gourmet mealsunlike the working classes, who compete against it.

To Zemmour, virtually everything the French government has done since 1983when the Socialist Mitterrand reversed course and opened up France to more free enterprise and international competitionhas wound up selling off some part of the working-class patrimony to benefit the rich. Zemmour sees this as not just an injustice but a mistake. He admires central planning, which he almost always calls colbertisme, after the financial adviser of Louis XIV, to mark its deep roots in French culture. Nonetheless, he argues that planning in the 1950s and 1960s worked particularly wellin space, high-speed trains, nuclear power, telecommunications (including Minitel, a proto-Internet), and aeronautics (including the high-speed Concorde, an engineering marvel that was, he says, "assassinated" by U.S. protectionism). He also argues, plausibly, that in our own age of global finance, France's corporations are simply not well enough capitalized to wheel and deal on an equal footing with the private and public pension funds of the United States or the sovereign wealth funds of the resource-exporting nations.

Global competition was a slap in the face to France's pretensions. But those who urged the policy on the country did well out of it. Zemmour's symbol of the age is Louis Schweitzer, who left his job as the chief of staff to Socialist prime minister Laurent Fabius to run Renault. The revolving doorpantouflage, as it is calledis an old tradition in France. It mattered less when the head of Renault was paid little more than a top political functionary. But as the years passed, Schweitzer's income rose into the millions, and Renault kept shedding jobs and moving plants overseas.

For two centuries, France has funded the grandes écoles, where brilliant youths like Schweitzer were trained at public expense for prestigious government jobs. Suddenly France could no longer keep these people on the payroll. Zemmour writes that France now has 400 elite inspecteurs de finances, and all but 60 of them have left to make a killing in the private sector. Worse, time spent as a "public servant" makes such yuppies more valuable to their future employers because it gives them knowledge of the state's regulatory vulnerabilities and loopholesmuch as an ex-congressman can be a better lobbyist for his knowledge of the ways in which Congress is corruptible.

Zemmour, a conservative in most things, was won over by the protests in the 1990s of José Bové, the politically savvy maker of Roquefort cheese who led a group that vandalized a McDonald's franchise under construction in Millau, arguing that McDonald's had violated French laws against hormone-treated beef. Most French people sympathized with Bové, seeing him as a commonsensical defender of tradition (Roquefort) against poison (Big Macs). Zemmour faults him only for having retreated from his initial stridency into a comfortable seat in the European parliament.

In the monthly magazine Causeur, an outlet for the best intellectuals of the French center-left who have not made their peace with political correctness, editor Élisabeth Lévy told Zemmour during an interview that he seemed to be getting more left-wing. "Obviously," he replied. With historical distance, he now takes a somewhat positive view of postwar French communism. The "Gaullist" system, in which the general appeared, to Western eyes, to have triumphed over the Soviet-backed claimants to rule France, was actually a "Gaullo-Communist" system of checks and balances. Each side had won too much legitimacy holding up its end of the French Resistance for the other side to dislodge it.

Under the Fifth Republic, which de Gaulle started in 1958, there was a modus vivendi, almost a separation of powers. Gaullists held the higher posts of state. Communists held the working-class neighborhoods. The housing developments that immigrants now occupy were built as strongholds for Communist political machines. On the bad side, the Communists kept these neighborhoods under close surveillance. On the good side, they sincerely cared about the interests of the French working class.

Immigration flushed the Communist party out of these areasand eventually drove its voters towards the National Front. The Communist leader Georges Marchais was the first and last politician to insist that mass immigration of Muslims was damaging not just working-class economic prospects but the very fabric of French life. For this he was pilloried on left and right as a racist. Zemmour's reverence for Marchais makes his own anti-anti-racism easier to define. It is not racism. It is a belief that France's ruling class uses accusations of racism as a way of discrediting its class enemies, the better to impose on them a capitalism they have no familiarity with and no reason to want.

In 1979 there were riots in the Lyon suburb of Vaulx-en-Velin. Two years later violence erupted in the Minguettes housing development in nearby Vénissieux. "Contrary to popular belief," Zemmour writes, "the riots at Minguettes were not a beginning but an end. An end of the battle fought by the Communists to hold their territory. Vénissieux was the Diên Biên Phu of the Red Belt." In France at least, communism "wound up being a transitional culture between Christianity and Islam."

We are almost at the end of Zemmour's argument. France, he believes, has made two big, and closely related, mistakes over the past generation: It has embraced American-style capitalism, to which its economy and culture are not adapted, and it has accepted more immigration than its institutions can handle. Why does it show no sign of doing anything to reverse these choices? Zemmour's answer is that France is no long-er a free and sovereign country. It is trapped in the multinational European Union, with its ever-more-grandiose plans and ever-tightening rules. France has traded away its right to self-rule in the name of economic advantages that are failing to materialize. In one positively giddy chapter Zemmour simply quotes, one after another, the extravagant promises made by prominent (mostly Socialist) politicians on the eve of the 1992 referendum on the Maastricht treaty, under which France agreed to exchange its age-old currency, the franc, for the rickety euro. His list begins with then-minister of health Bernard Kouchner"Under Maastricht, we'll laugh a lot more"and ends with then-president of the European Commission Jacques Delors"The euro will bring peace, prosperity, competitiveness, and a million new jobs for France alone." French unemployment has been in double digits for much of the time since, and September's figures from the Ministry of Labor put the number of jobless at 3.44 million, an all-time high.

But this only pushes the same question back one step: Why doesn't France reclaim its ability to solve its problems by getting out of Europe? In the run-up to the 1979 European elections, Jacques Chirac, under the influence of the indomitable Gaullist foreign policy hawk Marie-France Garaud, issued a blistering "Cochin declaration" (which Zemmour reproduces). Chirac described the eclipse of French greatness that would result if France went any further into Europe. He didn't believe it, though. He won only 16 percent of the vote. Eventually Garaud would tell Chirac: "I used to think you were made of the marble they use for statuesbut you were made of the porcelain they use for bidets." Over the decades the French have been unable to resist what the political philosopher Marcel Gauchet has come to call Mitterrand's Lie: "the promise that what we could no longer do in France thanks to socialism, we could do in Europe thanks to Europe."

The reaction to Zemmour's book confirms certain of its theses. Luc Bronner, an editorialist at Le Monde, acknowledges that Zemmour has identified real problems, but thinks they are all matters of stagnation éducative that can be solved by throwing enough government money at schools. Zemmour has been accused by Figaro editor Franz-Olivier Giesbert of "being in total harmony of thought with [National Front leader] Marine Le Pen." Remarks such as Giesbert's used to be a warning of pariah status, but they are losing their bite. In certain recent polls, and now the European elections, the National Front has proved to be France's most popular partyfor much the same reason that Le suicide français spent several weeks as France's most popular book. The French, having decided they need their sovereignty back, are increasingly willing to ignore their misgivings about the only party that can credibly promise to fight for it. Long-term, France is as good a bet to pull out of the European Union as Britain. That does not mean it is moving to the "right" or embracing "hatred." If the Socialists or the UMP ever made a credible promise to allow their members to vote their conscience on the matter of staying in Europe, they would be able to stop Le Pen in her tracks. But they won't. For some reason they can't.

France's predicament was inherent in its postwar position. De Gaulle himself could not have staved it off forever. Hollande, the hapless president, is just the guy who was left holding the bag. As long as Germany was divided and discredited, unable to use its power unilaterally, it required France as a chaperone. France assumed the diplomatic weight of two midsized countries. That is why it never seemed too small, for instance, for its seat on the U.N. Security Council. But France could behave as a world power only until Germany recovered its unity, got its diplomatic act together, and restored its good name. French power could not survive the dissipation of German war guilt.

Here is the deeper reason why the national self-hatred that Zemmour deplores, the painful revisiting of the crimes of World War II, the creeping feminization of a once-virile political elite, gained such a strong hold on France in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. Directed outward towards Germany, this revisiting was in France's interests. In fact it was the very wellspring of French power. The expansion of the European Union, mass immigration, and unbridled capitalism did not begin as an attempt to bamboozle the French people. They began with the false assumption that the moral order Europe built in the wake of World War II would last foreve

r.

Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and the author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.

[Paul Rigby]

Marine Le Pen Urges France to Come Out of America's Shadow

15:33 04.03.2015 (updated 16:13 04.03.2015)

http://sputniknews.com/news/20150304/1019043843.html

Leader of French National Front wants France to escape US influence and join forces with Russia to combat Islamic fundamentalism.

Marine Le Pen, currently one of the most popular politicians in France, has called for a drastic change in French foreign policy.

"We have to bring radical change to the foreign policy of France, now dictated by United States," she posted on her Twitter on Tuesday.

One of the main aims of Marine Le Pen's National Front party is to combat the Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism that is posing an ever increasing threat to the world lately. In making her call, Le Pen is seeking Russia as an ally to join the fight against terrorism.

She also expressed the necessity to resume political relations with Syria, which were ended in 2012 when the government of Nicolas Sarkozy recognized the opposition as "the only legitimate representative of Syrian people" and withdrew the French embassy from Damascus at the start of civil conflict.

[David Guyatt]

And so they should.