A Picture is Worth…

Jonathan Hanks sends this guest essay about the Potemkin march staged by world leaders in Paris several weeks ago.

A picture is worth…
by Jonathan Hanks

Well, on Sunday January 11 we saw an amazing show of support for the slain journalists and cartoonists on the streets of Paris.

Millions of French men and women demonstrated their solidarity by waving ‘Je suis Charlie’ banners as they marched in memory of what was the most awful terrorist attack at the heart of the French Republic witnessed thus far.

In addition to the throngs of ordinary citizens, a goodly number of world leaders were present, ostensibly there to show unity with the French people and mourn for the victims of the savagery.

I had naïvely assumed that at least some of the imagery associated with this event would have actually addressed some of the underlying problems and causes for the brutal murders of these men and women. Three pressing issues that immediately come to mind would include:

1.   Global Jihad. By this I mean the assault of radical, extremist Islamic elements against the Western world and all that we hold dear.
2.   Free Speech. Whatever free speech meant in the past, it is clear that the gold standard for free speech in today’s Western world means the ability to criticize Islam and Mohammed without fear of being penalized and harassed by our own governments, or being shot dead or beheaded by some Muslim fanatic.
3.   Jew hatred. The forces of anti-Semitism that are present not only in France but throughout Europe and which have already led to the targeted assassinations of several French citizens — the latest of which were the four killed in the Jewish market this month in Paris — are undeniably on the rise.
 

I didn’t see any of that imagery, so I think the story-line is best played out by sorting through the tangled web of opposing agendas and mixed messages represented by the front line of the prominenti:

François Hollande. The least popular man in France for several years, whose country now has roughly 750 no-go zones where sharia law is practiced and the gendarmes don’t dare to tread. With roughly 10% of his country practicing Muslims, and an alarming number of those with sympathy or support for extremism, no wonder he looks worried, not only for his own political career, but perhaps for his nation’s very survival as well.

Angela Merkel. Chancellor of Germany — also known as 9-11 terrorist Mohammed Atta’s home base and the land where the only paper to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons had been firebombed the night before; home of the PEGIDA movement, which is predictably being labeled by many cultural elites as neo-Nazism instead of the concern of normal citizens who fear Islamic violence spreading to Germany’s own streets in the near future.

David Cameron, who, taking his clues from Barack Hussein Obama’s handbook, has relied on the power of empty rhetoric to keep him appearing relevant for years now, as the UK is overrun by Muslim grooming gangs preying on young girls, his police are busy arresting folks quoting Churchill’s warnings about Islam, and where mosques have become the home of more radicalizing Imams than Saudi Arabia and Iran put together.

Turkey, the seat of the last caliphate and the most likely candidate for any enduring future one. Our close ally and NATO member, Turkey has been working so hard to support ISIS that they actually share office space in some Turkish cities. Moreover, Turkey routinely jails more journalists than any other country in the world, so no real worries about any Charlie Hebdo startups there.

Netanyahu. Well, the beleaguered Israeli PM looked as though a hundred laser-guided sniper scopes might be focused directly on his heart. He was here against the wishes of the French government to point out that anti-Semitism in France and Europe is hitting the stratosphere like another misfired Qassam rocket. If anything good comes to Israel out of these frightful developments, it will be the wealth and brain trust that continues to flee France for the sunnier, if not necessarily safer shores of Tel Aviv.

Abbas. The only smiling man in the procession, and why not? The richest man in the theoretical state of Palestine with an estimated worth of between 100 million and one billion ill-gotten dollars, this anti-Semite, who wrote his doctoral thesis on how the Holocaust is really just a fanciful concoction, recently obtained the support, albeit symbolic, of the elected French Assembly for his future, judenrein utopia.

There you have it. I suspect that with all the photo ops given to these world leaders not much time was left over for any serious discourse behind the scenes. Still, I think these folks have a lot to talk about. But I bet they never get around to it.

22 thoughts on “A Picture is Worth…

  1. Bibi is the only leader I could in all conscience sit next to without feeling the need to utter words that he and I would feel comfortable with and which in reality, would be completely verboten to the rest of that crowd of dhimmis.

  2. I’ll be briefer still. With the exception of Bibi if I were ever forced into the company of any of these folks I’d soon take a shower due to being in there presence..

  3. Had I been in Obama’s shoes, I would’ve gone; but I would’ve had my tailor stitch a large yellow Magen David on the back and a smaller one in front, with the words, “Je suis Juif” in honor of those murdered at the kosher market.

    Frankly, while I’m all for free speech and am deeply suspicious that our next POTUS Shrillary Shrooooo and the maladministration she formerly served consider such rights dangerous in the hands of the hoi polloi, my mourning for the Charlie Hebdo staff who were murdered is simply because people died. The little I know about Charlie Hebdo is that is went after the usual “safe” targets for Leftist satire–Christians, conservative politicians, petit bourgeois French people, etc. Hence, it is a rag for which I would not spend even a cracked wooden sou.

    While I am a “fundamentalist”, old-fashioned Calvinist Christian of a “supercessionist” (we prefer to say “additionist”) bent, I live in a neighborhood where we can see people going to and from synagogues in kippeh and tzitzit on Shabbos –and, for any lurkers here, perfectly honorable and decent neighbors, thank you. Hence, my neighborhood could be a target.

    • Charb while a communist was actually aware of Islam and just what it was, so I will mourn him personally, also he was in the process of doing an attack on Islamophobia, this was detailed by his girlfriend in a TV interview on BFMTV. Because of what she said his family told the media that she was not his girlfriend, she being a very classy individual stayed away from the funeral and marches and let her friends post pictures of her and Charb together.

      She was in the Sarkozy government in a minor position and is an Arab who is anti-Islam, I do not expect her to be in the public eye after this as she will be excommunicated by the political class for that interview.

      In terms of Cameron, I have heard that the Tory party is being funded by Islamic oil money, that says a lot about Cameron…

  4. Islam has been around for 1400 years, and for 1300 of those years it has been ‘crusading’ northwards and westwards as well as South and East. It has been teaching the rest of the world Islamophobia by exhibiting a relentlessly innovative cruelty (about the only thing that is innovative about the religion). In the past, European leaders have reacted appropriately and we find Jan Sobietski a Pole lifting the seige of Vienna in Austria because he realized the common threat.

    So why in the last 50 years has the western leadership turned into blancmange?

    Has society changed? or has the leadership changed? is it that leaders must now be actors in the bizzare public circus maximus that is television? Does Cameron rule the BBC, or does the BBC rule Cameron? or is it the revolving doors of Middle Eastern oil wealth combined with creeping marxism which rules both?

    • Well for one, (or two), every single vital interest has been up for sale and sold to or out to democracy hating, Christian hating, Jew hating, all non muslim humanty hating jehadis in waiting. Way back there was a whimper of protest about King George about to let the Port of Long Beach go to his friends for eternity down in the Gulf. How did Obama get within a thousand miles of the White House? It can’t get bigger than 9/11 – can it?

  5. What a grand confederation of scoundrels and fools represented in that photo.

    To expect that pathetic lot to do anything but obfuscate and simply lie out their collective pie holes is expecting too much.

    Why? Because these people are the architects of disaster that has befallen the West. They have blood of their people on their collective hands and more will follow because of their unbridled arrogance and ignorance.

    • The men and women who have to and will deal Islamic Frankenstein Monster and its dark koranics will be remembered while this lot will easily be forgotten.

  6. Then there was next to deliriously happy Mahmoud Abbas, the new “president of Europe” Donald Tusk, whose in his former role as Prime Minister of Poland presided over continuing mass migration away from Poland, ridiculously over-priced motorways (courtesy of Brussels), an overcomplicated tax system for small businesses (which doesn’t seem to concern any of the culturally enriched kebab shops springing up all over Polish cities), a dwindling birth rate, hysteria over GLBT “rights”, increasing political correctness, harassment of anti-government bloggers, cover-up of the Smolensk air disaster and great wealth for a chosen few… including his own good self, as was pointed out in the European Parliament by none other than Nigel Farage. In fact, being paid more than president Obama, he probably has as good a cause to be laughing as the Palestinian standing next to him- however as he comes from a still free speech-loving, anti-communist and anti-religion of Peace Poland (he having himself been jailed for his anti-Communist activities), I can understand why on this occasion he was sombre.

  7. So, where was this “amazing show of support” when Charlie Hebdo’s staff was alive and well and publishing pictures of a contemptible “prophet”? Nowhere to be seen. This march may as well have been sponsored by CAIR, because it meant nothing and was just for show. Genuine “support” for Charlie Hebdo would have entailed offending Muslims, and that won’t do. Otherwise there would have been another 1,000 cars burned, more attacks on Jewish businesses, more women raped by Muslims gangs, more Jews attacked, more “car jihad” or Muslim road rage. It would have required the skills of the French Foreign Legion — not of the fearful police or the Army — to go into all those no-go zones and eradicating their Sharia governments. But, that isn’t going to happen any time soon. Before it can, it would require Muslim terrorists toppling the Eiffel Tower to drive the point into French political heads.

  8. Only a moral people can enjoy a democracy or republic. Can’t remember who said that, but it is true. Immorality is raging around the western world and we seem helpless to stop it. I think the sickness is deeper in Europe than in America, but it’s coming here, too.

    England simply enrages me these days. I used to admire England but no more. France is in deep doo-doo and some of them know it. Not sure about Germany. But if they do not rise up against all of this Muslim crap, they will end up as toast and western civilization will die, too.

    So depressing.

    • The average Brit IMO was poisoned by the welfare/police state instituted by the political elites and the monied class. These people understood in order to control a people you need to break or corrupt them. You first take away meaningful and useful work – by closing down and off-shoring entire industries and importing foreign workers for the remaining jobs; you corrode the church to the point of making it irrelevant; you fill the public schools with all manner of Post-Modern PC/MC nonsense so as to produce a product that really can’t think and doesn’t know right from wrong. Then give the masses bread and circuses, that means organized sports, free housing and food, etc.

      Oh yeah then make it illegal to speak truth to power and to take almost all means of defending oneself away and make the very act of defending oneself a crime.

      The U.S. isn’t very far from this situation. Get Hillary or Bush in office for 8 years and we’ll be there as well.

      • I wish you were wrong. But the U.S. is on the fast track to the situation you describe. There are several advantages we have, however: no state church to corrupt allows for some accountability – we have the fissioning and fracturing of Christian sects into ever smaller groups, but that does provide accountability to those in the pew by those in the pulpit. The Methodist church, at least in the way it serves rural areas, seems to understand that.

        We also have the escape valve of home-schooling, and many people choose to sacrifice the luxuries available to two-income families by having one stay home. How soon that will become illegal remains to be seen since home-schoolers are vigilant about their rights.

        In addition, we have a number of non-union states where the labor market is freer. There seems to be a net loss of population in the unionized states as people exit to places where it is cheaper to live: lower costs, lower regulation, smaller government (lessening the corruption to some extent). Those non-union states guard freedom of expression and the right to bear arms also.

        What may interrupt the slide to big government corruption is the eventual inability to raise enough taxes to enforce the regulations.
        ———

        BTW, Texas – the red state at its most vibrant – leads the country in jobs growth:

        http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2014/11/12/texas-leads-best-states-for-future-job-growth/

        That essay in Forbes says notes that the governor of Texas will be retiring on a string of successes:

        Perry made job creation one of his principal mantras, and he has overseen remarkable employment gains under his watch with 2.1 million jobs added during his tenure. The total represents 30% of the jobs added in the U.S. since 2000 and more than twice as many as any other state.

        The so-called “Texas miracle” does not show any signs of slowing either with 413,000 jobs added over the last 12 months. Texas is expected to have the nation’s fastest annual job growth rate at 2.7% over the next five years, according to data from Moody’s Analytics.

        The socialists will say it’s all about low-level wages but as Forbes notes, large companies are moving out of the high-tax states into the less regulated ones.

        Texas’ prosperity and pro-business environment have led companies outside of the energy sector to flock to the state in recent years. Toyota announced plans to move its North American headquarters from California to a new campus in Plano that will create 4,000 jobs. The Texas Enterprise Fund granted Toyota $40 million to sweeten the pot. San Francisco brokerage firm Charles Schwab SCHW -1.29% is moving hundreds of jobs out of California with Austin and El Paso targeted for company expansion. Apple AAPL -1.42% is undergoing an expansion that will roughly double its Austin workforce by hiring 3,600 new employees.

        Texas ranks first for both its current economic climate and growth prospects in our annual study on the Best States for Business. There are 118 of the largest companies in the U.S. based in Texas, including heavyweights like AT&T T -0.12%, Exxon Mobil XOM -0.18% and Dell . The $1.5 trillion Texas economy is expected to expand 4.1% annually over the next five years…

        It would be even better if Texans were better-educated, but education in the U.S. is already so over-regulated by the federal government that unless it comes up with some alternative to state-run schools, that will continue to be a problem, give its high immigrant population.

        As to Hillary or Bush, the latter is marginally less statist than Miz Hillary. But neither is anything a conservative would want.

      • I think when you wrote about public schools, you meant state schools. In England a public school is a private, fee paying secondary school; there are many, from those in the Great Nine -which both Cameron (Eton) and Clegg (Westminster) attended- down to lesser, minor ones. They are not “public” in the way public schools are in the U.S. – though you are quite correct in what you say about the deterioration of many state schools here in the U.K. and the children they “educate”.

        • I’m well aware of the difference, as I think our readers are too. Sadly, Britain’s – particularly England’s – more rigid class structures has wasted untold human potential. We have it here, but not as deeply nor as interminably. When my mother escaped the Irish caste system, which simply aped that of England, she said that the weight lifted off her soul when she got to America stayed with her to her dying day.

          India apes the English class burden also, only they add it to their ingrained caste system so that it’s really deadly.

          For some reason, Canada largely escaped, and Australia got off with a lighter dose. I presume the experience of being on the frontier where what you could DO far outweighed who you WERE when it came to survival made the difference.

          I often feel sorry for England. What it has done to Tommy Robinson is largely due to class. And this is England’s loss and tragedy.

          • That post was meant for anon not you Dymphna. I knew that you would understand the difference, with the Baron having schooled over here. Apologies if you thought it was directed at you.

          • Well, my point still stands. Most Americans know what a “public” school is in England. Or they used to. What a cruel system it is, too. Sending small children away from home to face heavens-knows-what at those places. Churchill’s letters home to his mother are heart-rending.

          • “I often feel sorry for England. What it has done to Tommy Robinson ”
            Western countries interfered in Yugoslavia and massacred its Christian people for the sake of muslims. They interfered in Iraq, Libya, Syria to “stop the rulers from killing their own people.” Such crappy talk is excellent for superficial lazy voters.

            Where are Saddams and Qaddafis to stop western countries from persecuting their Tommys, firing their own people, laying them off for wearing a cross, closing schools for not inviting imams and jihadis. ?

            All these persecutions come Rt dishonorables Traitor Cowardly Class, who never dare say that HAMAS always starts wars with Israel. And HAMAS stores up weapons between wars.

          • Dear Dymphna,

            Sorry to disappoint you but Australia did not “get off with a lighter dose”, it’s just more subtle than in Britain and not talked about:

            1) It has a cluster of expensive private secondary schools in each major city known as the “Greater Public Schools” or “GPS”; in characteristic mimicry of “Mother England”. Mere graduation from any one of them guarantees a degree of career success, no matter how dumb one might be. The alumni of such dominate Australian public life.*

            2) Unlike the UK, Australia doesn’t have the academically selective, but class blind, grammar school system which during the C20th took tens (hundreds?) of thousands of bright working class and lower middle class children and created real social mobility. There are too many famous names to cite. As you are aware the grammar school route out of poverty and career limitation for the brightest kids has been in the process of being phased out over many decades for being “elitist”. That is, it “damages the self-esteem” of kids who don’t do so well in their 11plus exams and are thus doomed to attend educationally abysmal “comprehensive” schools.

            The British also used to have a wide array of scholarships to good “public” schools for poor bright kids. My grandfather won one to “The Coopers’ School” (an ancient guild school originally for the sons of barrel-makers) and from there into medicine at St Bartholemew’s Hospital. His son, my father, followed him to St Barts, but due to an upper-middle class upbringing, through Highgate and the University College School. My step-father was a grammar school boy from a modest background and it dramatically changed his life’s prospects.

            The real “chokepoint” in the British education system is Oxbridge and Australia doesn’t have a comparable tertiary chokepoint. However, where you went to secondary school thus becomes hugely important in Oz for the traditional professions, the public sector and corporate sector especially. Again this is never discussed in order to maintain the Oz myth of a classless society.

            *I was once invited into a judge’s chambers for morning tea as one member of five teams of two barristers in a case (ie 5 QCs, 5 Juniors) before him. Solicitors don’t get invited in for tea by judges. It transpired that of the 11 (judge included): five had gone to one GPS (academically selective and the top-ranked school), three had gone to another GPS, two had gone to Sydney’s elite Jesuit secondary school. Only one had graduated from the public/state school system and it didn’t help my career to put it mildly.

    • When you brainwash your population with the “all that matters in life is money” then money becomes the only game in town. At the current rate of retreat into moral bankruptcy I may yet live to see the day when camels will be a common sight in London and elsewhere :).

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