Posted tagged ‘Marine Le Pen’

« WarSclerotic home page

What Happened in France?

May 8, 2017

What Happened in France? PJ Media, Bruce Bawer, May 7, 2017

(Please see also, France: Emmanuel Macron, Useful Idiot of Islamism and Europe’s Childless Leaders Sleepwalking Us to Disaster.– DM)

But – and this is a fact that some of us are thoroughly incapable of identifying with, and thus almost thoroughly incapable of grasping – some people don’t want to know the truth. And if they do know the truth, they want to un-know it.

Yes, they see Islam taking over. Bit by bit, here and there. Everything in their lives, everything familiar to them, is being transformed, in some cases at a terrifying pace. Perhaps their own lives haven’t been turned upside down – yet. But they know people who have suffered greatly because of these changes.

Yet they’re terrified to speak up about it, let alone do anything about it. Viewed through American eyes, it may seem a European thing (although it’s not as uncommon in America, alas, as it used to be).

********************************

How could Marine Le Pen have lost in a landslide?

Why, after the Brits chose Brexit, and Americans chose Trump, did the Dutch fail Wilders, and the French fail Le Pen?

How could a country that has been hit by several major terrorist attacks in recent years, and that has undergone a more profound social transformation owing to Islamic immigration, vote for business as usual?

Wilders, buoyed by the Brexit and Trump victories, said that 2017 would be a “Year of the Populist.” So far, alas, it’s not turning out that way.

Yes, there are positive signs. The Sweden Democrats are on the upswing. And Wilders did gain seats in the Dutch Parliament.

But if you’ve witnessed the reality of Islamization in cities like Rotterdam and Paris and Stockholm, you may well wonder: what, in heaven’s name, will it take for these people to save their own societies, their own freedoms, for their own children and grandchildren?

I’m not the only one who’s been obsessing for years over this question. I’ve yet to see a totally convincing answer to it.

One way of trying to answer it is to look at countries one by one. For example, the Brits and French feel guilty about their imperial histories, and hence find it difficult to rein in the descendants of subject peoples. The Germans feel guilty about their Nazi past – and the Swedes feel guilty about cozying up to Nazis – and thus feel compelled to lay out the welcome mat for, well, just about anybody. The Dutch, similarly, are intensely aware that during the Nazi occupation they helped ship off a larger percentage of their Jews to the death camps than any other Western European country, and feel a deep need to atone.

Postmodernism, of course, is a factor. According to postmodern thinking, no culture is better than any other – and it’s racist to say otherwise. No, scratch that – other cultures are, in fact, better than Western culture. Whites, by definition, are oppressors, imperialists, and colonialists, while “people of color” are victims.

And Muslims are the biggest victims of all.

Not that that makes any sense. Over the centuries since the religion was founded, Muslim armies have gained control over much of north Africa, the Middle East, and large parts of Europe. Islam itself, by definition, is imperialistic. And whenever Islam has conquered non-Islamic territories, it has proven itself to be profoundly oppressive, offering infidels exactly three options: death, subordination, or conversion. But to say these things has become verboten.

Living in a Muslim neighborhood of Amsterdam in early 1999, I read up on Islam and realized very quickly what Europe was up against. Two and a half years later, when the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occurred, I assumed pretty much everyone else would get it, too.

But it didn’t work that way. Yes, some people did get it almost instantaneously, in both America and Europe. They caught up on a lot of reading, did a great deal of soul-searching, and underwent a major philosophical metamorphosis.

But even after other horrific attacks occurred – in Madrid, London, and elsewhere – a lot of people refused to accept the plain truth. The plainer the truth got, in fact, the more fiercely they resisted it. And as skilled propagandists began to represent Muslims as the mother of all victim groups, many Westerners were quick to buy into it all.

How, again, to make sense of this?

Yes, the mainstream media have played a role, routinely whitewashing Islam, soft-pedaling the Islamic roots of jihadist terror, and staying silent about the dire reality of everyday Islamization. But no one who actually lives in western Europe has any excuse for ignorance about these matters. The truth is all around them. Even in the remotest places, however dishonest the mainstream media, the truth can be found on the Internet.

But – and this is a fact that some of us are thoroughly incapable of identifying with, and thus almost thoroughly incapable of grasping – some people don’t want to know the truth. And if they do know the truth, they want to un-know it.

Orwell understood. He called it doublethink. You can know something and yet can will yourself not to know it. And thereby give free rein to totalitarianism.

For those of us to whom the truth matters, and who wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves if we didn’t face the truth, however difficult, and try to act responsibly on it, it can be hard to conceive that not everything thinks about these things in the same way that we do.

And I’m not talking about people who are just plain obviously rotten through and through. I’m taking about people who, in everyday life, come across as thoroughly good and decent – but who, when push comes to shove, just don’t want to rock the boat. That’s a lot of people. Maybe most. People who are nice so long as it’s easy to be nice. The sort of people who – if they’d been, say, Christians living in the pre-war Netherlands – would’ve been the best of friends to their Jewish neighbors next door; but who, when those neighbors came to them and begged to be hidden from the Gestapo, would’ve refused.

No, come to think of it, you don’t even have to take it to the point where the Gestapo is on your tail. There are kind people who, the minute there’s any hint of trouble – which means, way before the death-camp round-up begins – prefer to lie low. Their highest value isn’t truth or virtue or beauty or even long-term security for them and their families but the ability to buy another day without major trouble.

You’d think they’d be able to look forward at least some distance into the future and dwell on that grim prospect. Able to see their children, their grandchildren, and so forth, living under sharia law. If, indeed, lucky to be living at all.

But I think it needs to be recognized that for some people, seeing that far into the future is just beyond their intellectual grasp. Or beyond what they dare to envision.

Yes, they see Islam taking over. Bit by bit, here and there. Everything in their lives, everything familiar to them, is being transformed, in some cases at a terrifying pace. Perhaps their own lives haven’t been turned upside down – yet. But they know people who have suffered greatly because of these changes.

Yet they’re terrified to speak up about it, let alone do anything about it. Viewed through American eyes, it may seem a European thing (although it’s not as uncommon in America, alas, as it used to be).

Part of what I’m saying is that these people don’t have much of a sense of ownership in their own countries, their own communities. They’re used to being ruled over. They’re used to the idea that there are people above them in the hierarchy whose job it is to think about, and take care of, the big things while they – the citizens, the mice – take care of their own little lives.

Over and over again, they’ve been given the message, explicitly or implicitly, that their countries don’t belong to them – the whole thing about democracy to the contrary – and that to assert any sense of ownership in any way would be a manifestation of the worst kind of bigotry.

You might think that, once in the voting booth, these people would be able – and not just able but eager, desperate even – to stand up against the powers above them that have turned their countries upside down and assert their power as citizens. But everything around them has conspired all their lives to render them incapable of feeling that power – or, perhaps, has rendered them incapable of feeling that they have the moral right to exercise that power in the way that their gut is begging them to.

That still, quiet voice in their heads, which I would describe as a voice of plain reason and common sense, is up against the resounding voices of all the higher-ups shouting in unison – the leading voices of politics, business, the academia, the media, and so on – that they’ve been bred from infancy to respect and take seriously. To, indeed, obey.

In America we’re taught (or, at least, used to be taught) that our leaders work for us; we learn (or used to) that it’s not only our right but our duty as individuals to stand up to those leaders when we think they’re wrong – especially when we think they’re exceeding their powers and infringing on our rights. But Europeans aren’t brought up that way. Not really. Yes, there’s lip service to the idea of freedom. But when it comes right down to it, they’re raised to bow down to the state – to prioritize not themselves, not the individual, but the society, the commonweal, that abstract ideal known as “solidarity.”

So it is that even in a secret ballot, it takes European voters a remarkable amount of nerve to resist the thunderous chorus of voices from above urging them to vote against their own interests; it feels like nothing less than an act of treason to heed the meek little voices in their own heads begging them to do the opposite – to do what’s actually best for themselves and their loved ones. They’ve been psychologically manipulated to the point where they truly believe, on some level, at least in some Orwellian doublethink kind of way, that acting in clear defense of their own existence, their own culture, their own values, and their own posterity, is an act of ugly prejudice.

These, for what it’s worth, are the places my mind has wandered since the vote from France came in. At this point I’ve lived in Europe for just short of twenty years, and have spent every day of that time observing Europeans and trying to understand what makes them tick when it comes to such matters. It helps to be an outsider, even after you’ve been an outsider so long that you’re not really an outsider any more. Frankly, Le Pen’s devastating loss doesn’t really surprise me. But I still can’t say that I get it.

Categories: Apathy, Emmanuel Macron, French elections - May 7, Islam - submission, Islamic invasion, Islamisation of France, Islamist "democracy", Marine Le Pen
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: 1 Comment

French Elections: Emmanuel Macron, a Disaster

May 1, 2017

French Elections: Emmanuel Macron, a Disaster, Gatestone Institute, Guy Millière, May 1, 2017

In the next election, in 2022, Catholic France may well see a Muslim candidate run — and win.

******************

Anti-West, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish diatribes were delivered to enthusiastic crowds of bearded men and veiled women. One hundred and fifty thousand people attended.

Emmanuel Macron promised to facilitate the construction of mosques in France. He declared that “French culture does not exist” and that he has “never seen” French art. The risk is high that Macron will disappoint the French even faster than Hollande did.

On the evening of the second round of elections, people will party in the chic neighborhoods of Paris and in ministries. In districts where poor people live, cars will be set on fire. For more than a decade, whenever there is a festive evening in France, cars are set on fire in districts where poor people live. Unassimilated migrants have their own traditions.

Paris, Champs Elysees, April 20, 8:50 pm. An Islamic terrorist shoots at a police van. One policeman is killed, another is seriously wounded.

The terrorist tries to escape and shoots again. The policemen kill him. One hour later, the French Ministry of Interior reveals his name and his past. His name is Karim Cheurfi. He is a French Muslim born in an Islamized suburb of France. In 2003, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison for the attempted murder of two policemen. He was released before the end of his sentence. In 2014, he targeted a policeman and was sentenced again. And released again. In March, the police were informed that he was trying to buy military-grade weapons and that he contacted a member of the Islamic State in Syria. An inspector discovered that he had posted messages on jihadist social media networks expressing his willingness to murder policemen. The police searched his home and found several weapons and a GoPro video camera similar to the one terrorists use to film their crimes. The police and members of the French justice system did not think they had sufficient evidence place him under surveillance.

The Champs Elysées attack clearly shows that the French justice system is lax regarding dangerous people and that the French police pay only limited attention to suspects who are communicate with terrorist organizations and who seem to be hatching terrorist projects.

This terrorist attack summarizes everything that is broken in terms of security in France today.

Men with a profile similar to that of Karim Cheurfi have, in recent years, been responsible for most of the terrorist attacks in France and Belgium: Mohamed Merah, who killed three Jewish children and the father of two of them in Toulouse in 2012; Mehdi Nemmouche, who attacked the Brussels Jewish Museum in 2014 ; the Kouachi brothers, who committed the Charlie Hebdo massacre in 2015; Amedy Coulibaly, who murdered four Jews in the Saint Mandé grocery Kosher store Hypercacher; Samy Amimour and others who maimed and murdered 130 innocent people in the Bataclan theater in November 2015; Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who drove a truck into the crowd in Nice in July 2016, killed 86 people and wounded many others, and, among others, those who beheaded a priest in Normandy a few weeks after the attack in Nice.

The successive French governments under the presidency of François Hollande showed themselves to be appallingly weak and impotent.

A climate of fear has overtaken the country. Attendance at theaters has declined. The particularly targeted Jewish community — two-thirds of the attacks in France in the last five years targeted Jews — feels abandoned. When a Jewish cemetery was vandalized on March 30 in Waldwisse, eastern France, neither the media nor the political leaders reacted. A week later, in Paris, a Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, was tortured and then thrown out of a window by a non-radicalized Muslim, simply because she was Jewish: the French media and political leaders, with the exception of the courageous MP Meyer Habib, also did not react. A silent gathering below the window was organized by some leaders of the Jewish community. Only Jews came; they were greeted by anti-Semitic insults by Arab Muslims in the neighborhood. The implantation of radical Islam in the country is intensifying. The annual meeting of “Muslims of France” (the new name of the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood), took place on April 14-17 in Le Bourget, ten miles north of Paris. Anti-West, anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish diatribes were delivered to enthusiastic crowds of bearded men and veiled women. One hundred and fifty thousand people attended.

Economically, France is in terrible shape. The unemployment rate remains above 10%. Nine million people are living below the poverty line –14% of the population. Economic growth is stagnant. Government spending accounts for 57% of GDP — 13% more than in Germany, France’s main economic competitor in Europe.

Month after month, polls shows that the French population is anxious, angry, immensely disappointed with current French policies. François Hollande ends his term with a popularity rating close to zero. He was so rejected and discredited that he decided not to run again for the presidency.

The first round of the French presidential election took place in this context, and one could expect that the French population would reject everything that looks like François Hollande’s policies and choose a new direction for the country.

That is not what happened; quite the opposite.

Benoit Hamon, the Socialist Party’s candidate, suffered a disastrous blow and received a mere 6% of the vote. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a far-left candidate who left the Socialist Party a few years ago and who supported Hollande in 2012, received a much higher score: 19% of the vote. He is an admirer of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Immediately after the anti-Semitic Islamic attack in Saint Mandé, he claimed that “Jewish extremism is more dangerous than Islamic extremism”. That statement did not hurt him.

Above all, Emmanuel Macron, a candidate close to Hollande won the race and will be elected President on May 7. He was Hollande’s senior economic advisor for more than two years, and the main architect of Hollande’s failed economic policies. He then became Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs, and held that post until he entered the presidential race.

Emmanuel Macron, then Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs of France, at the Annual Meeting 2016 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2016. (image source: World Economic Forum/Michele Limina)

Most of Macron’s speeches are copies of the speeches Hollande made during his 2012 presidential campaign. What is known of Macron’s positions on most subjects show that they are the same position Hollande had during the last months of his mandate.

Throughout the campaign, Macron virtually never spoke about the danger of Islamic terror; when he did, he used words even weaker than those used by Hollande. After the Champs Elysees attack on April 20, he said: “imponderable” events had occured, and they “will be part of the daily life of the French in the years to come”. The next day, when asked what he would do to prevent other killings, he said that he could not “devise a plan to fight terrorism overnight”.

When he speaks about the economy, he sounds like Hollande: he uses vague terms, such as the need for more “social mobility” and “success for all”. He insists that he will maintain all the sclerosis dear to so many, such as the compulsory 35-hour workweek or the legal age for retirement: 62. He said that he would leave the almost-bankrupt retirement system the way it is. He promised additional regulations aimed at “saving the planet” and, in a classically socialist way, tens of billions of euros of government “investments” supposed to finance “ecological transition” and “public services”.

Sometimes, he makes remarks so dismaying that even Hollande would not have said them. In Algeria, in the presence of the National Liberation Front representatives, an organization that came to power by terrorism and massacring hundreds of thousands of “harkis” (Algerians who had chosen France), he said that the French presence in Algeria was a “crime against humanity“, and later promised to facilitate immigration from the Arab world and from Africa to France by preserving an “open and welcoming” France. He promised to facilitate the construction of mosques in France. He declared that “French culture does not exist ” and that he has “never seen” French art.

He quite often has shown that he is a political novice and that it is his first election campaign. He stumbled upon the words of his speeches and admitted to those listening to him that he did not understand the meaning of the sentences he had just read, which showed that he had not read what was written for him before reading it to the public.

How to explain his success in these conditions?

The first explanation lies in the moderate right candidate’s elimination. François Fillon had a credible and coherent program for the country’s recovery, but he could hardly speak about it. His campaign was quickly engulfed in a fake jobs scandal. He presented himself as an impeccable candidate: he appeared not so impeccable. A book recently published revealed that the scandal was meticulously orchestrated from a “shadow Cabinet” in the Elysee Palace. Fillon was never able to recover from it. His excuses were weak and contradictory. He confirmed his weakness by announcing his unconditional support for Macron immediately after the first round results were published. For the first time in more than fifty years, the moderate right will not have a candidate in the second round of a French presidential election. Showing their own weakness, most of the moderate right leaders followed Fillon example and decided to support Macron.

The second explanation for Emmanuel Macron success lies in a very elaborate communication strategy.

Emmanuel Macron continuously benefited from François Hollande support and most of the last five years socialist ministers, but an allegedly neutral and apolitical political structure was created for him. It was called En marche! (“On the Move!”). The socialist ministers who joined him rallied On the Move!, and remained silent. Francois Hollande only announced his full support very late in the race. The communication strategy could work because Emmanuel Macron received the support of left-wing billionaires whom he helped when he was Minister of Economy, and who have close relations with the powers that be: Pierre Bergé, Xavier Niel and Patrick Drahi. These people also own most France’s mainstream media and were able to carry out strong media campaigns in support of Macron. No candidate in the French presidential election history has been on the cover of so many magazines and newspapers. Emmanuel Macron also enjoys main French investment banks support: he is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, which trains all senior civil servants and almost all French politicians since it was established in 1945 and, before joining Francois Hollande, he had a career in a financial institution.

The third explanation for Emmanuel Macron’s success is that the communication campaign in his favor has been largely devoid of any political content, just like On the Move. He was presented as a young man, embodying the “future”, a “renewal”, a “hope”, a “change”. For most of the campaign, Emmanuel Macron had no program. His program was only published on the internet six weeks before the election. The text is often meaningless. Fear is defined as a “daily anguish”. It says that France must offer “opportunities” and Europe must be a “chance”. Emmanuel Macron told socialists he is a socialist, then said that he is not a socialist at all when he addressed other audiences. Opinion polls have shown that many of those who voted for him in the first round were unaware of his proposals on any topic.

Those who designed Emmanuel Macron’s campaign took a lot of inspiration from Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and the result shows that they were right.

The result is also very distressing, because it shows that a massive communication campaign can be effective, even if it is full of empty words and seems to considers voters as idiots. Emmanuel Macron’s campaign effectiveness is also due to the fact that in France, virtually no media is likely to contradict what is said in the mainstream media: the French economy is a very state-based economy in which creating and sustaining media independence from the government and from government subsidies is almost impossible.

The second round of the French presidential election will take place on May 7. Emmanuel Macron will face the only remaining candidate, populist Marine Le Pen.

During the entire campaign, she was almost the only one to speak clearly about the Islamic terrorist threat (François Fillon did, too, but more discreetly) and to offer credible solutions to fight it. She was the only one to speak of the rise of radical Islam in France and to denounce the Muslim Brotherhood gathering at Le Bourget. She was the only one to stress the increasing perils resulting from uncontrolled immigration, and the risk of French culture disappearing. She was also the only one to mention the demographic change that occurs in France and in Europe because of the new migrants. She was the only one to denounce the Islamic anti-Semitism that relentlessly kills Jews in France. Unfortunately, she has a nearly Marxist economic program, close to that of Jean Luc Melenchon. She is the leader of the National Front, a party founded by her father, an anti-Semite, Jean-Marie Le Pen; although she has excluded her father and virtually all her father’s anti-Semitic friends from the National Front, she is nonetheless the party leader and is regarded as her father’s daughter.

Marine Le Pen and the National Front will be used as scarecrows to urge voters to rally massively behind Macron, in the name of a “Republican front” against “fascism.” The strategy was developed thirty years ago by the French left, under President Francois Mitterrand. It has always worked, and in a few days, it will work again.

Macron now has the support of the entire Socialist party, and the support of virtually all other politicians. He also has the support of all French Muslim organizations. The rector of the Great Mosque of Paris said that Muslims must “massively vote” for him. The Jewish community leaders also rallied on behalf of Macron. On May 7, he will likely get more than 60% of the vote.

Most will not be based on the support for a project; the risk is high that Macron will disappoint the French even faster than Hollande did. The French may quickly discover that he is just a man chosen by the French left to preserve an unsustainable status quo a little longer, and a member of the self-appointed élites who do not care about ordinary people’s problems, who consider that terrorist acts are “imponderable events”, and who believe that national identities can melt in a no-border globalized world. When the French discover who Macron is, there will be nothing they can do to change what they voted in.

The risk to France in the next five years will probably be painful for the French. According to the Police, more than 12,000 radicalized Muslims live in the country and most of them are not under surveillance. The Police do not have the means to do more than they currently are doing, and Macron does not seem to care. The justice system is in the hands of judges who appear lenient to terrorists, and Macron seems to accept it. The flow of migrants will not stop, and Macron apparently does not intend to do anything about that. More and more, Muslims segregate themselves from French society in expanding Islamist mini-states.

Nothing Macron proposes can reverse the decline of the French economy and French society. Terror attacks will undoubtedly occur. Jews and others will undoubtedly be killed. Riots and discontent will undoubtedly take place.

On the evening of the first round of the election, there were riots in Paris and Nantes. On the evening of the second round of elections, people will party in the chic neighborhoods of Paris and in ministries. In districts where poor people live, cars will be set on fire. For more than a decade, whenever there is a festive evening in France, cars are set on fire in districts where poor people live. Unassimilated migrants have their own traditions.

In the next election, in 2022, Catholic France may well see a Muslim candidate run — and win.

Categories: Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, Emmanuel Macron, European Union, French elections - May 7, Islamic invasion, Islamisation, Islamist terror attacks, Marine Le Pen
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

The status quo survives in France, but in ruins

April 25, 2017

The status quo survives in France, but in ruins, The Washington Times, Wesley Pruden, April 24, 2017

Marine Le Pen (Associated Press)

Madame Le Pen will make a lot of these people very uncomfortable over the next fortnight, if in the end she cannot shake her father’s rough reputation written in a presidential campaign before hers. But the deplorables of France, like the deplorables in America, are not going away. Other seasons will produce other candidates. Things must change to stay the same.

***********************************

The French easily embrace contradiction and chaos. It’s what makes their politics work: “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose,” and they said it first: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” The Sunday national election in France proved it again.

The two established political parties finished far out of the money, and Immanuel Macron, the new front-runner, is a banker who is the preferred candidate of the current Socialist president, Francois Hollande, who is so unpopular that he was the first president not to stand for re-election since World War II. He was so unpopular, in fact, that he didn’t publicly endorse M. Macron lest it be the kiss of death.

M. Macron polled 24 percent of the vote in the first round, barely 2 percent more than Marine Le Pen, the most charismatic candidate but who is counted out in the May 7 run-off because she is thought to be too far to the right of everybody else. The only left-wing candidate thought to have a chance to make the run-off was Jean-Luc Melenchon, who wanted to lead France out of the European Union and NATO and join Cuba and Venezuela and Cuba in something called the “Bolivarian Alliance.” In addition to chaotic, French politics can be ideologically nuts.

Everybody counts Marine Le Pen out, and conventional wisdom is often but not always wrong. The public-opinion polls were wrong in predicting the outcome of the referendum of the British vote to leave the European Union, and of course spectacularly, dramatically, comically, farcically, tragically (pick your adjective) and famously wrong in crowning Hillary Clinton the first woman as president of the United States.

The closest thing to a “normal,” i.e., conventional, candidate was Francois Fillon, a former prime minister who posed as a disciple of Maggie Thatcher and who was nevertheless regarded by many of the elites as respectable enough. But there were skeletons in his closet and he couldn’t keep the closet door shut. Scandal followed scandal. There’s a current investigation now in the juiciest of these, his paying of more than $1 million in government money to his wife and others in his family who were hired as “parliamentary assistants.” He didn’t even have to teach them to type.

In the end, he emerged as the status-quo candidate of an electorate yearning for someone to upset the status quo. He’s young, energetic and attractive, and naturally compared to the icon of charisma, John F. Kennedy. JFK was a long time ago, but political writers on both sides of the Atlantic are fond of cliches.

M. Macron goes into the run-off with Marine Le Pen all but staggering under great expectations and good wishes of “respectable” institutions and individuals who are terrified of Madame Le Pen and what would be the “deplorables” of Hillaryworld. Nice people don’t let nice people vote for candidates who aren’t very nice, neither here nor there. Lightning of a rare and serious kind would have to strike and lightning in France is not like the lightning of what the French, with a sneer, call “the Anglo-Saxons.” In the French vernacular, everyone else, like it or not, are “Anglo-Saxons.”

But the French world, like the world of everyone else, has been turned upside down, and making sense of elections is difficult. The usual beliefs and values of ordinary Frenchmen — the certainty that French culture, the verities of the permanently true, the very ideal of French citizenship — have been called into question. One inquirer into the nooks and shadows of the French election campaign, Charlie Cook of City Journal, writes that ordinary Frenchmen he encountered were reluctant to talk about politics lest they fall into the “many trapdoors of political conversation,” especially voters of the National Front.

That would be the party of Marine Le Pen, who has made talking about the forbidden in polite parlors possible for the brave and daring. She campaigns boldly in defense of borders and national identity, opposes the mass migration that is strangling French identity, and national sovereignty and the transfer the authority of national governments to international bodies.

These are the values and considerations that the elites, in France as in Britain and the United States, don’t want to talk about and don’t want anyone else to talk about. Silence won’t make them go away, but the wealthy and the well-connected can still live lives oblivious to things unpleasant.

Madame Le Pen will make a lot of these people very uncomfortable over the next fortnight, if in the end she cannot shake her father’s rough reputation written in a presidential campaign before hers. But the deplorables of France, like the deplorables in America, are not going away. Other seasons will produce other candidates. Things must change to stay the same.

Categories: Deplorables, French elections, Immanuel Macron, Marine Le Pen
Tags: , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

French Elections: Populist Revolution or Status Quo?

March 22, 2017

“If the Macron bubble doesn’t pop, this may portend the realignment, not just of French politics, but Western politics in general, away from the left-right division that has defined Western politics since the French Revolution, towards a division between

by Soeren Kern
March 21, 2017 at 5:00 am

Source: French Elections: Populist Revolution or Status Quo?

  • “If the Macron bubble doesn’t pop, this may portend the realignment, not just of French politics, but Western politics in general, away from the left-right division that has defined Western politics since the French Revolution, towards a division between the people and the elites.” — Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, French political analyst.
  • “This divide is no longer between the left and the right, but between patriots and globalists.” — Marine Le Pen, French presidential candidate.

The presidential election in France officially got underway on March 18, when the Constitutional Council announced that a total of eleven candidates will be facing off for the country’s top political job.

The election is being closely followed in France and elsewhere as an indicator of popular discontent with traditional parties and the European Union, as well as with multiculturalism and continued mass migration from the Muslim world.

The first round of voting will be held on April 23. If no single candidate wins an absolute majority, the top two winners in the first round will compete in a run-off on May 7.

If the election were held today, independent “progressive” candidate Emmanuel Macron, who has never held elected office, would become the next president of France, according to several opinion polls.

A BVA market research poll for Orange released on March 18 showed that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the anti-establishment National Front party, would win the first round with 26% of the votes, followed by Macron with 25%. Conservative François Fillon is third (19.5%), followed by radical Socialist Benoît Hamon (12.5%) and Leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon (12%).

For the first time, the two established parties, the Socialist Party and the center-right Republicans, would be eliminated in the first round.

In the second round, Macron, a 39-year-old pro-EU, pro-Islam globalist (platform here), would defeat Le Pen, a 48-year-old anti-EU, anti-Islam French nationalist (platform here), by a wide margin (62% to 38%), according to the poll.

Macron, a former investment banker, was an adviser to incumbent Socialist President François Hollande, one of the most unpopular presidents in modern French history. A long-time member of the Socialist Party, Macron served in Hollande’s cabinet for two years as economy minister until August 2016, when he resigned to launch his rival presidential bid to “transform France.”

Macron, whose core base of support consists of young, urban progressives, has tried to position himself in the political center, between the Socialists and the conservatives. His meteoric rise has been propelled by a scandal involving Fillon — who is the subject of a criminal investigation over allegations that he used government money to pay his wife and children more than €1 million ($1.1 million) for jobs they never did — and because the Socialists fielded Hamon, a nonviable candidate who has promised 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).

Macron’s ascendancy comes amid heightened worries over security. More than 230 people have been killed in attacks in France by Islamic radicals during the past two years. The latest attack, on March 18, involved a 39-year-old French-Tunisian jihadist who proclaimed that he wanted to “die for Allah,” and was shot dead after he tried to seize a soldier’s weapon at Orly Airport in Paris.

Shortly after the attack, Le Pen accused Macron and the rest of France’s political establishment of “cowardice in the face of Islamic fundamentalism.”

In an apparent effort to bolster his national security credentials, Macron on March 18 announced a surprise proposal to restore compulsory military service. He said he would require men and women between the ages of 18 and 21 to serve one month in the armed forces.

“I want each young French person to be able to experience military life, however brief,” Macron said. “This is a major project of society, a real republican project, which should allow our democracy to be more united and the resilience of our society to be increased.” Macron, if elected, would become the first president in modern French history not to have performed military service.

Observers say that Macron’s national service proposal — which copies Le Pen’s proposal to reintroduce compulsory military service for a period of at least three months — is an attempt to siphon votes away from Le Pen and Fillon, both of whose campaign platforms call for a strong national defense.

Macron’s proposal, which will require an estimated €15 billion ($16 billion) upfront, and another €3 billion ($3.2 billion) each year to maintain, has been met with derision because of its exorbitant cost and dubious contribution to national security. Le Monde reminded its readers that France spends a similar amount (€3 billion annually) on nuclear deterrence.

Fillon’s spokesman, Luc Chantel, said the proposal was “absurd and unrealistic” and added:

“Either it is a measure designed to discourage students from quitting school, and this is not the mission of the army, or it is training for the defense of France, and one month is a joke, it is a discovery camp.”

Some of Macron’s other policy positions include:

  • European Federalism: Macron has repeatedly called for a stronger European Union. At a January 14 political rally in Lille, he said: “We are Europe, we are Brussels, we wanted it and we need it. We need Europe because Europe makes us bigger, because Europe makes us stronger.”
  • Single European Currency: In a January 10 speech at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Macron, speaking impeccable English, said: “The truth is that we must collectively recognize that the euro is incomplete and cannot last without major reforms. It has not provided Europe with full international sovereignty against the dollar on its rules. It has not provided Europe with a natural convergence between the different member states. The euro is a weak Deutsche mark, the status quo is synonymous, in 10 years’ time, with the dismantling of the euro.”
  • Migration Crisis: Macron has repeatedly praised German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door migration policy, which has allowed more than two million mostly Muslim migrants into Germany since January 2015.

    In a January 1, 2017 interview with Süddeutsche Zeitung, Macron accused critics of Merkel’s open-door migration policy of “disgraceful oversimplification.” He said: “Merkel and German society as a whole exemplified our common European values. They saved our collective dignity by accepting, accommodating and educating distressed refugees.”

    In a February 4 rally in Lyon, Macron mocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s pledge to build a wall with Mexico: “I do not want to build a wall. I can assure you there is no wall in my program. Can you remember the Maginot Line?” he said, referring to a failed row of fortifications that France built in the 1930s to deter an invasion by Germany.

  • Islamic Terrorism: Macron has said he believes the solution to jihadist terrorism is more European federalism: “Terrorism wants to destroy Europe. We must quickly create a sovereign Europe that is capable of protecting us against external dangers in order to better ensure internal security. We also need to overcome national unwillingness and create a common European intelligence system that will allow the effective hunting of criminals and terrorists.”
  • Islam: Macron has said he believes that French security policy has unfairly targeted Muslims and that “secularism should not be brandished to as a weapon to fight Islam.” At an October 2016 rally in Montpellier, he rejected President Hollande’s assertion that “France has a problem with Islam.” Instead, Macron said: “No religion is a problem in France today. If the state should be neutral, which is at the heart of secularism, we have a duty to let everybody practice their religion with dignity.” He also insisted that the Islamic State is not Islamic: “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.”
  • National Defense: Macron supports NATO, and has pledged to increase French defense spending to reach 2% of GDP by 2025 — a level to which all NATO members agreed in 2006. At the same time, Macron believes in the need to create an “autonomous” European defense capability, also known as a European Army, which would duplicate military capabilities which already exist within NATO.

An Ifop poll for the Journal du Dimanche published on March 18 found that French voters are divided into “two quasi-equal blocks” about Macron’s honesty and his ability to govern. According to the survey, only 46% of French people believe he will be “able to guarantee the safety of the French people.” More than half (52%) of respondents said they were “worried” about Macron, while 52% said they doubted his honesty.

In an interview with BMFTV, Laurence Haïm, a Canal+ reporter who was accredited to the White House and who recently joined Macron’s team, described Macron as the “French Obama.” She added: “I think that in today’s world we need renewal, from someone young, who is not a politician. He wants to make the democratic revolution.”

So what is driving Macron’s political ascendancy? French analyst Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry explains:

“The best way to look at Macron is as a kind of anti-Le Pen, or, to stretch the bounds of logic even further, a ‘populist from the top.’ If Le Pen is anti-establishment, Macron is the incarnation of the French establishment, a graduate of ENA, the top civil service school that trains the country’s elites, and a member of the Inspection des Finances, the most elite civil service track. His only experience in the private sector is through the revolving door as an investment banker. And yet, Macron sounds off populist rhetoric: His candidacy, he says, is about sweeping out a corrupt system (even as he is supported by the vast majority of the French establishment).

“It would be only slightly churlish to say that the parts of the system Macron wants to do away with are the democratic ones; witness his full-throated support for the EU in a country that has rejected it at the polls. Macron supports various liberalizing reforms, and Angela Merkel’s welcoming policy towards migrants. He is, of course, a social liberal. In a country that takes culture very seriously, he has argued that there is ‘no such thing’ as French culture; rather, there are many cultures with which the French perform a kind of synthesis. His biggest donors seem to be French tax exiles residing in London and Brussels.

“In other words, he is the mirror image of the political realignment that is transforming Western politics. If the familiar motley crew of populists — Trump, Le Pen — are the candidates for those who lost out from globalization, then Macron is the candidate of the winners. In both cases, they seem to make old left-right divisions obsolete. If the Macron bubble doesn’t pop, this may portend the realignment, not just of French politics, but Western politics in general, away from the left-right division that has defined Western politics since the French Revolution, towards a division between the people and the elites.

Le Pen agrees. At a rally in Lyon on February 5, she said:

“The old left-right debates have outlived their usefulness. Primaries have shown that debates about secularism or immigration, as well as globalization or generalized deregulation, constitute a fundamental and transversal divide. This divide is no longer between the left and the right, but between patriots and globalists.

“The collapse of traditional parties and the systematic disappearance of almost all of their leaders shows that a great political re-composition has begun.”

At that same rally, Le Pen launched a two-pronged attack on globalization and radical Islam. She also promised French voters a referendum on remaining in the European Union in order “to allow us to recover our four sovereignties: monetary, economic, legislative and territorial.”

She went on to articulate exactly what is at stake for France in this election:

In all respects, this presidential election is unlike previous ones. Its outcome will determine the future of France as a free nation and our existence as a people.

After decades of errors and cowardice, we are at a crossroads. I say it with gravity: the choice we will have to make in this election is a choice of civilization.

The question is simple and cruel: will our children live in a free, independent, democratic country? Will they still be able to refer to our system of values? Will they have the same way of life as we did and our parents before us?

Will our children, and the children of our children, still have a job, a decent wage, the possibility of building up a patrimony, becoming an owner, starting a family in a safe environment, being properly cared for, to grow old with dignity?

Will our children have the same rights as us?

Will they live according to our cultural references, our values ​​of civilization, our style of living, and will they even speak our French language, which is disintegrating under the blows of political leaders who squander this national treasure — for example, by choosing a slogan in English to promote the candidacy of Paris to host the 2024 Olympic Games?

Will they have the right to claim French culture when certain candidates for the presidential election, puffed up by their own empty-headedness, explain that it does not exist?

I ask this important question because, unlike our adversaries, I am interested not only in the material heritage of the French, but I also want to defend our immaterial capital. This immaterial capital is priceless because this heritage is irreplaceable. In fact, I am defending the load-bearing walls of our society.

The choice for French voters is clear: Le Pen is the anti-establishment change candidate and Macron is the pro-establishment status quo candidate.

In the current French presidential election campaign, Marin Le Pen (right) is the anti-establishment change candidate and Emmanuel Macron (left) is the pro-establishment status quo candidate. (Image source: LCI video screenshot)

Le Pen is offering voters an historic opportunity to reassess relations with the European Union, reassert national sovereignty and stanch the flow of mass migration from the Muslim world. By contrast, Macron is offering voters increased European federalism, the transference of yet more national sovereignty to the European Union, and the further multiculturalization of French society.

If polls are any indication, French voters appear to be more comfortable with the status quo. The populist revolution that began in June 2016 when British voters decided to leave the European Union, and cross the Atlantic in November when Americans elected U.S. President Donald J. Trump, will not be spreading to France in 2017.

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter.

 

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

AMAZING! Marine Le Pen Enjoys Spectacular Trump-Like Crowd in France (Video)

March 11, 2017

Mar 10th, 2017 9:53 am

Source: AMAZING! Marine Le Pen Enjoys Spectacular Trump-Like Crowd in France (Video)

FREXIT Is Coming—
Marine Le Pen is enjoying spectacular and excited Trump-like crowds in France.

Here is Marine Le Pen at a recent rally.

Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

EU seeks to help prosecute Marine Le Pen for… Tweeting

March 3, 2017

EU seeks to help prosecute Marine Le Pen for… Tweeting, Hot Air, Jazz Shaw, March 3, 2017

The horrible, dangerous activity which Le Pen engaged in was the tweeting of an “image of violence” last year. The picture in question was one of James Foley, the journalist who was beheaded by ISIS. 

The law in question is one which forbids the publication of violent images but this is where the true irony comes in. Le Pen was considered in violation of a rule which was designed to stop people from distributing such images as a way to recruit terrorists. She was doing precisely the opposite, drawing attention to the barbaric nature of the enemy, but now may run afoul of the law.

***********************************

Clearly French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is making all the right enemies in high places. The established political class in France clearly despises her but the European Union is now getting in on the act, no doubt because of her less than favorable opinions of the continental organization. In one of the stranger stories to come out of the French election cycle, the EU has moved to suspend Le Pen’s standard immunity from prosecution over images which she posted on her Twitter account. If that sounds to you like something out of a George Orwell novel, fasten your seat belts because it gets even more strange. (Washington Post)

On Thursday, the European Parliament voted to lift Marine Le Pen’s immunity from prosecution for tweeting violent images, a crime that in France can carry up to three years in prison.

As Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front party, rises in the polls ahead of France’s presidential election next month, authorities will now be able to pursue a case against her. Speaking on French television Thursday morning, she was quick to condemn her European colleagues for what she called “a political inquiry.”

Apparently in France the phrase “political inquiry” is the European equivalent to what we in the United States would call “an obvious witch hunt.”

This question of immunity is the first one to sort out because the entire concept will no doubt sound like something from an alien planet to most Americans. The European Union Parliament provides immunity to its members in matters of free speech so that they will be free to express their opinions in public debate. That sentence alone is a chilling reminder of precisely how different things are across the pond if you grew up taking American rights to freedom of speech for granted. Yes, in Europe you can frequently be prosecuted for thought crimes.

The horrible, dangerous activity which Le Pen engaged in was the tweeting of an “image of violence” last year. The picture in question was one of James Foley, the journalist who was beheaded by ISIS. Such images are no doubt disturbing to some people, in this case the Foley family in particular. After a complaint was raised by relatives, Le Pen apologized and deleted the tweet but the damage had already been done.

Keep in mind that one of Marine Le Pen’s main selling points in the election is her outrage over attacks by violent Islamic extremists and her insistence that the nation do more to protect its citizens. The law in question is one which forbids the publication of violent images but this is where the true irony comes in. Le Pen was considered in violation of a rule which was designed to stop people from distributing such images as a way to recruit terrorists. She was doing precisely the opposite, drawing attention to the barbaric nature of the enemy, but now may run afoul of the law.

It’s simply impossible to deny that this is a political hit job. By lifting Le Pen’s immunity, the European Union is paving the way for France to prosecute her over a tweet. This prosecution is taking place (assuming it happens) just as the final stages of the presidential election are kicking into high gear. You don’t need the world’s best detective to figure that one out. Of course, it would be nice to pretend that this is somehow a unique situation, but it’s obviously not. You’ll recall that Dutch candidate Geert Wilders was actually taken to trial and convicted for chanting a slogan at a political rally. Wilders did not wind up serving any time for his “crime” and the trial lead to a surge in sympathetic support for him in the polls. But it still underscores the fact that freedom of speech in Europe is largely a joke.

The thing to watch for now and over the next few weeks is whether or not Marine Le Pen receives the same sort of boost in her popularity which Wilders experienced previously. Are the French truly such a nation of sheep that they want to stand by idly and watch a presidential candidate be dragged into court over a tweet expressing a political position? If not, and if they are truly disgusted by this effort to stifle Le Pen’s opinions, there may be another upset brewing in the European electoral races.

marinelepen-300x159

Categories: Europe, European Union Parliament, France, Freedom of speech, Marine Le Pen, Politics
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Farage on Trump: The EU Is ‘Absolutely Terrified of Him – Good’

February 24, 2017

Farage on Trump: The EU Is ‘Absolutely Terrified of Him – Good’, PJ Media, Nicholas Ballasy, February 24, 2017

farageatcpacNigel Farage at the UKIP spring conference Feb. 17, 2017, in Bolton, UK. (Rex Features via AP Images)

“You know, with 34 days in I think that he clearly has the intention of a man who intends to put into place the ticket on which he was elected, and how refreshing is that in a democracy? We are not used to it,” he said. “My guess is he’ll be feeling a bit frustrated with the judges and other people; I would just like to see him to stock to what he’s doing. I mean, maybe he is going to have to box clever to get some of his stuff through, but basically don’t change.”

**********************************

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Nigel Farage, former leader of the UK Independence Party, told PJM that there is “nothing to be lost” with President Trump meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that Trump has to show he’s “not going to be a pushover.”

“Well, he has to show he wants to have a better relationship with Russia. He believes we have shared common interests in dealing with Islamic terrorism and issues like that but he’s not going to be a pushover — that’s what you’ve got to show,” Farage said during an interview Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington.

“He’s going to say, ‘Look, you’ve behaved badly but we want to form a grown-up relationship with you.’ One thing is for certain, there’s nothing to be lost with him meeting Putin. Nothing at all,” he added.

Farage rejected the notion that the U.S. cannot make a good deal with Russia.

“They are small-minded, very silly people who don’t understand there is a thing in life called human chemistry. Trump himself said ‘I may not get along with him,’ but the very fact he is prepared to meet is grown-up policy. The great Winston Churchill said jaw-jaw is better than war-war and I’m with that,” he said.

Farage told PJM that Trump should “stick” to what he has been doing in office and not change anything.

“You know, with 34 days in I think that he clearly has the intention of a man who intends to put into place the ticket on which he was elected, and how refreshing is that in a democracy? We are not used to it,” he said. “My guess is he’ll be feeling a bit frustrated with the judges and other people; I would just like to see him to stick to what he’s doing. I mean, maybe he is going to have to box clever to get some of his stuff through, but basically don’t change.”

British lawmakers recently debated whether they should withdraw a state visit invitation to Trump. Some European leaders have voiced opposition to Trump’s travel ban that covers seven Muslim-majority countries. Farage was asked if Trump should tweak any of his policy positions given the criticism he has faced from some world leaders.

“Obviously, the world is watching on the Russian stuff to see exactly where this goes. On issues like that people will be looking for a bit more clarity because he wants to have better relations – what exactly does that mean?” he said. “And the world will be looking for that and the European Union are terrified of him, absolutely terrified of him. Good.”

During the interview, Farage shared his reaction to far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen recently refusing to wear a headscarf in Lebanon in order to meet with the Grand Mufti.

“Listen, good for her. You know, she’s a strong woman. It remains to be seen what the runoff is going to be, it’s going to be fascinating. France is where the action is going to be. The global revolution of ’16 could keep rolling,” said the leader of the 2016 Brexit movement.

Categories: CPAC, European Union, Marine Le Pen, Nigel Farage, President Trump, Trump and Europe, Trump and Putin, Trump's America
Tags: , , , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment

Marine Le Pen, ‘far right’ anti-globalist, takes commanding lead in polls for president of France

November 21, 2016

Marine Le Pen, ‘far right’ anti-globalist, takes commanding lead in polls for president of France, American Thinker, Thomas Lifson, November 21, 2016

(Please see also, Donald Trump and the Return of European Anti-Americanism. — DM)

A specter haunts Europe, and its name is Trump.  A nightmare looms for the globalist elites, as France looks as though it will follow votes for Brexit in the U.K. and Trump in the United States, rejecting the unlimited flow of foreign nationals and the doctrine of multiculturalism that surrenders national culture.  The U.K. Independent reports that Marine Le Pen, habitually dismissed as “far right,” could become the president of France next spring, if current levels of support continue.

Front National leader Marine Le Pen has taken a sizeable lead over Nicolas Sarkozy in a new French presidential election poll.

The far-right leader had 29 per cent of the vote when pitted against Les Républicains’ former president, who was eight points behind, and held a 15-point lead over the Parti de Gauche’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the poll released by Ipsos.

It was one of five scenarios for the first round of France’s 2017 presidential elections on 23 April, although one that did not include Les Républicains’ Alain Juppé – who remains strong favourite to succeed Francois Hollande as leader.

While Mr Juppé holds leads of between 4 and 7 per cent in three other scenarios including him, the results are likely to add to growing fears that the rise of global populism could see Ms Le Pen secure a surprise victory in the wake of the UK’s Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s US election win.

Under the French election system, barring the unlikely possibility one candidate gains an overall majority in the first round vote, the two candidates with the most votes will contest a second and decisive round on 7 May.

As Michael Walsh of PJ Media points out, Sarkozy has just about been ruled out as an opponent:

It’s offical — Nicholas Sarkozy is out of the running to regain the office he once held:

Fance’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy conceded defeat Sunday in the race to choose the conservative nominee for next year’s presidential election. With more than 3.2 million votes counted from about 80 percent of polling stations, former prime minister Francois Fillon had 44 percent, former prime minister Alain Juppe had 28.1 and Sarkozy had 21.1 percent.

The two candidates confirmed as winning the most votes advance to the Nov. 27 runoff.

In a speech from his campaign headquarters in Paris on Sunday, Sarkozy called on his supporters to vote for Fillon in the second round. “I did not succeed in convincing a majority of voters. I do respect and understand the will of those (voters) who have chosen for the future other political leaders than me,” Sarkozy said.

The rest of Europe’s leaders (this means you, Frau Merkel) had better wake up.  They have screwed up badly, and their voters don’t.like being held hostage in their own homes by gangs of “youth” who terrify them.

Rick Moran comments:

It’s impossible to overstate the trepidation being felt by Euro-leftists at this point.  A new poll on the presidential race shows National Front’s Marine Le Pen leading in a three-way race, and only 3 points behind in the expected four-way battle for the presidency next spring.

Here’s the reaction of prominent leftist philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy:

“If Trump is possible, then everything is possible. Nothing, from now on, is unimaginable,” Mr Lévy told The Telegraph. 

“As for Le Pen it is unlikely that she wins but it is possible, and that is partly because the people have lost interest in policy, instead focusing on personality.

“The people listen less and less to policy and they even seem less concerned about whether the candidates are telling the truth or not.

“They are more interested in the performance, in the theatrical quality of what is said than whether it is true. And as we know, a fascist can put on a very successful performance.”

Gee…the people have lost interest in what the establishment has to say.  Where have we heard that before?

Categories: Europe, European establishment, France, Globalism, Marine Le Pen, Trump factor
Tags: , , , , ,

Comments: Be the first to comment