Tel-Chai Nation

It's time to deal now with something that's been bugging me about The Brussels Journal's Paul Belien. In this entry, he talks about how, following faux-president Jacques Chirac's withdrawal of the employment bill, his prime minister de Villepin announced that he wouldn't be running for president in the next election. He then goes on, without providing any truly authentic data, to accuse Nicholas Sarkozy of being "a worthy dauphin of Chirac." So now, some points:

-- Considering that de Villepin is a jelly-spine who downplayed the Muslim riots by telling the public that it was all caused by "social unrest", this is exactly why his defeat is richly deserved. And while I do support free-market trade, the problems with that are NOTHING compared to the crime and terror situation now grasping at France.

-- If you ask me, Chirac and de Villepin brought this upon themselves because they allowed the riots of November to go on for at least a month before clamping down on the Muslim thugs properly. Because of their wimpy attitude towards Islam, they pretty much gave the impression to the student rioters that they could get away with rioting too (and enabling the Muslim thugs to take advantage of their actions to commit more violence as well). Lack of convincing law and order is one of the things that encourages crime even among local youth as well.

-- In fact, it wouldn't have done much good for Chirac and de Villepin to take serious steps against the student protestors either, because then, they could've been accused of discrimination due to the fact that they had gone soft on the Muslim rioters in November. Simply put, they stuck themselves both ways.

And where's Belien get the idea that Sarkozy is really against free trade and markets? How does he know that Sarkozy doesn't know how to talk to the students and help reach an understanding with them?

Whatever, one of the reasons why I find Belien's whole argument unconvincing is because, guess what? He apparently supports Jean-Marie Le Pen! The following is enough to vomit:

I met Le Pen twenty years ago at an international press conference that the Front National leader was giving in Brussels. He made quite an impression. The mainstream media were very hostile to Le Pen (they still are), which made me instinctively sympathise with him. I was about the only conservative journalist in Belgium and because of this I was not very popular with my overwhelmingly liberal colleagues. During the press conference they tried to roast Le Pen, but he roasted them instead.

When at a certain moment an arrogant Brit from The Guardian asked Le Pen a denunciatory question, the latter bluntly replied: “I do not answer that question. Next question!” The journalist retorted: “I have a right to ask this question,” whereupon Le Pen: “And I have a right not to answer it.”

Although I disagree with some of his opinions – his anti-Semitism, his anti-Americanism, his economic protectionism – and though his style is often needlessly provocative and offensive, Le Pen is by far the most authentic of all the French politicians. In last week’s Spectator Taki wrote that it would have been better for France if Le Pen had become president in 2002. It would have been better for the whole of Europe.

Okay, that does it, Belien. The gloves are off.

"It would have been better for the whole of Europe"?!?!? NO. IT. WOULDN'T.

And the mainstream media are hostile to Le Pen? Suuuurrre they are. They've actually given him quite a platform on which to babble in the past few months, stating his phony nationalist arguments, namely because they're doubtless hoping he can win against Sarkozy or anyone else who's good. Belien sympathises with him? End of story.

Belien also does not specify just what that question was that a Guardian reporter asked Le Pen. Maybe it was "denunciatory", but without explaining clearly what he said, there's no genuine way to tell.

And if there's something Belien forgot to mention, it's Le Pen's visit to Iraq four years ago. From this CNN report from 2002:

Le Pen rejects U.S. pre-eminence and visited Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in part to make a point -- that France should pursue its own political and economic interests.

Le Pen toned down some of his rhetoric in this campaign. He previously called for immigrants to be expelled but dropped that message this time.

Aha! No doubt to appease his good friend Saddam, who, were he still in power today, would've been quite satisfied that Muslims under Le Pen could remain in France and cause destruction galore. And given that Le Pen paid the visit to Saddam just shortly before the US raid, don't be fooled by the claim that Le Pen argued that France should pursue its own political and economic interests. Because if he could be against the raid, he could be against free trade even within his own country too. His recent partnership deal with the Muslims in France (who don't exactly seem interested in free trade economy any more than they do in jihad conquest) can certainly help give a clue that even on the trade issue, he doesn't really mean it. The man's just a clever talker, and nothing else.

To make matters worse, Le Pen, in his continuing spiral to insanity, has even been making up excuses for Iran's nuclear weapons building. Here's an entry from View From the Right that talks about that dreadful development, and also one from The Anti-Jihad Pundit.

In more optimistic news, Angus Reid finds that Marianne published a poll that shows that few in France coincide with Le Pen's bigoted, double-faced standings. That's good to know, and it helps show that there are plenty of people in France who aren't fooled by that monster.

Labels: belgium, France, Iraq, islam, political corruption, racism