Polish PM Offers to Save John Paul II Statue after French Court Orders Removal of Cross

The bronze statue of Pope John Paul II in Ploërmel, France (Getty Images)

She offered to move it to Poland to save it from 'political correctness'

Poland’s prime minister has stepped into a row over a statue of Pope St John Paul II in Ploërmel, a town in Brittany.

France’s top administrative court, the Conseil d’Etat, has ruled that a large cross over the nearly-25-foot high statue of John Paul in prayer must be removed, because it contravenes a 1905 law banning any “religious sign or emblem” in a public space, upholding France’s strict separation of Church and State.

Beata Szydło, prime minister of Poland, has offered to have the statue moved to Poland, to rescue it from “the dictates of political correctness”. She said that religious censorship is undermining the values of Europe.

Read more at Catholic Herald >> 

 

France's Conservatives Make Huge Gains in Local Elections

France's centre-right party and its allies are celebrating a resounding victory in the country's local elections.

Some papers are saying its a major step in the comeback of both the conservative UMP party and France's former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

The new local political map shows the UMP and its allies will take over two-thirds of the 102 local "departments". By far the centre-right's best showing since 1992.

Welcoming the result, Sarkozy said: "We're finally going to accelerate our prep…

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One French Socialist Edges Ahead of Another

From The Telegraph

By Daniel Hannan

There was never any doubt that a socialist would win the first round of the French election. This is because, with one partial exception, all ten candidates favoured socialist policies. Sarkozy fought the election promising to make France 'stronger than the markets'. François Hollande wanted a top rate tax of 75 per cent and a massive expansion of the state payroll. Marine Le Pen ditched her father's anti-scrounger rhetoric and ran on a platform which, on economics, was well to the Left of Sarko's.

Mark Steyn: The Unzippered Princeling and the Serving Wench

Hat Tip to The Monarchist

From the Orange County Register

By Mark Steyn

Back when he was still the officially designated Next President of France and not an accused rapist, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was glimpsed at the annual IMF soccer tournament wearing a T-shirt emblazoned "YES, WE KAHN!" (Monsieur le directeur was not participating in the game: The field he likes to play requires more horizontal exertions, as even the deferential and protective French media have begun belatedly to acknowledge.) In consciously mimicking the slogan of another and very successful presidential candidate, the IMF boss and Socialist Party candidate improved upon it – or, at any rate, made it more accurate. "Yes, We Can"? Er, no, actually, you can't. But yes, he Kahn!

A man is innocent until proven guilty, and it will be for a New York court to determine what happened in M Strauss-Kahn's suite at the Sofitel. It may well be that's he the hapless victim of a black Muslim widowed penniless refugee maid – although, if that's the defense my lawyer were proposing to put before a Manhattan jury, I'd be inclined to suggest he's the one who needs to plead insanity. Whatever the head of the IMF did or didn't do, the reaction of the French elites is most instructive. "We and the Americans do not belong to the same civilization," sniffed Jean Daniel, editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, insisting that the police should have known that Strauss-Kahn was "not like other men" and wondering why "this chambermaid was regarded as worthy and beyond any suspicion." Bernard-Henri Lévy, the open-shirted, hairy-chested Gallic intellectual who talked Sarkozy into talking Obama into launching the Libyan war, is furious at the lèse-majesté of this impertinent serving girl and the jackanapes of America's "absurd" justice system, not to mention this ghastly "American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other."

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French Watchdog Says No to Same-Sex Marriage

France's law prohibiting gay marriage does not violate the constitution, the country's top constitutional watchdog ruled Friday, all but challenging parliament to debate overturning the ban.

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Now the French Must Prove They're French

France and the United States are so different. In France, mere citizenship requires documentation. In America, Kenyans can aspire to the Presidency.

From Time
By Bruce Crumley

Like his father before him, French publisher, author and political commentator Eric Naulleau was born into a military family assigned to a temporary foreign posting. But because his birth happened abroad, where his father - himself born in Lebanon to a French army father - was serving France's national interests, Naulleau has had to wage a long and surreal battle with the government to prove that he's actually a French citizen. Naulleau is just one of a growing number of French people born outside France or in the country to foreign parents who are now being told they must present documents supporting their nationality if they want to keep it.

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What Would de Gaulle Say? Sarkozy to Make France a Full Member of Nato Alliance Once More

I would rather fight alongside a dozen Royal Marines than with whatever France has to offer, but for whatever it's worth...

From The Daily Mail

By Mail Foreign Service

French president Nicolas Sarkozy wants to lead his country back into the core of the Nato alliance.

The announcement comes four decades after his predecessor Charles de Gaulle took the country into self-imposed exile.

France is Nato's fourth largest contributor of troops.

But in an effort to mark its difference with the United States it has long snubbed the organisation's integrated military command, which plans, trains and conducts joint operations.

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Europe Is Obama's First 'Global Test'

From American Thinker
By Soeren Kern

President-elect Barack Obama is already facing his first global test. And it's not coming from the usual suspects like Iran or North Korea, but from America's "allies" in Europe.

European leaders have congratulated Obama on his election victory by sending him a six-page letter in which they benevolently "offer" the United States a "partnership of equals" in order to address global problems in the post-Bush era.

That's right: Europeans are calling on Obama to "accept" Europe as America's equal on the global stage. The idea behind this new man-to-man relationship with Washington was hatched by (surprise, surprise) France, which currently holds the EU's six-month rotating presidency.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner says the reason for establishing an equal transatlantic partnership is that "the world has changed." Europe has suddenly realized that the United States "is not the only one concerned by the world's problems. The European Union has become more resolute.... We don't want to play a secondary role any more," says Kouchner.

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Sarkozy and Religion: For the Sake of Islam

From Brussels Journal
By Tiberge

A new book by Martin Peltier, published by Renaissance Catholique, is briefly summarized at the publisher's website. The very short précis is hardly sufficient to make a judgment, but what struck me was the remark about Nicolas Sarkozy's ulterior motives in his so-called campaign for "positive laïcité", i.e., placing all religions on an equal footing and encouraging equal respect for all of them:

By raising the issue of the "Christian roots" of France and of "positive laïcité" in Rome last December 20, 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy made waves. The outrage of the old guard of defenders of laïcité reached the boiling point, and they declared the republican pact to be in danger.

The republican pact referred to is the strict separation of Church and State as decreed by the law of 1905. Since being elected, Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a veritable campaign to bring religion back into the public debate and to persuade the population of its importance. But, of course, he had his reasons...

However, if we take the time to read the book he wrote in 2004 – The Republic, Religions and Hope – and if we compare it to other statements, we soon perceive that the primary concern of Nicolas Sarkozy is Islam. His only reason for modifying the law of 1905 is to integrate Islam. The State will pay for mosques and the training of imams. The ghettoes will thus be pacified.

Beyond this policing effort, the President, indifferent to any revelation, hopes that the three religions of the Book come together to spread their common values on behalf of a humanistic globalization. His God is modernity, his God is the Republic.

I have lost track of the number of times I have said here that Sarkozy's only purpose in opening the debate on religion was to prepare the French population for the institutionalization of Islam. Because without the issue of Islam, there was absolutely no reason to talk about, let alone modify, the 1905 law. For better or worse, the French people had long ago adjusted to the law. But he had to force them to re-adjust to a modified law that allowed State funding for mosques. And in order to do this he created a phony debate on the need for all men to recognize the importance of religion (i.e. Islam).

Many Christians did not see this and welcomed the new debate, thinking it applied to them. On the other hand, the defenders of laïcité, most of whom are socialists and pro-immigration, became alarmed at the thought that he was shoving religion down their throats, when in fact he was merely justifying the State funding of Islam.

France Dies, The Dauphin Speaks

Prince Jean d'Orleans, Duc de Vendome

From The Brussells Journal

Jean d'Orléans, Duke of Vendôme, is the son of Henri, Count of Paris, one of the two major pretenders to the French throne, the other being Louis de Bourbon. Jean d'Orléans is therefore the Dauphin, the heir apparent from the House of Orléans.

While some insist Louis is the true King of France, and others take the side of Henri, I think most will agree on the validity of this message from Jean d'Orléans, subsequent to the recent vote in Versailles:

Does the Europe they offer us correspond to the wishes of the French and European peoples? Does it respond, in its projected form, to the aspirations of young people in search of meaning? I have traveled a great deal, these past ten years, in France and in Europe. Not as a politician seeking a term of office, but as a citizen attentive to the everyday life of his compatriots, and concerned about the destiny of France and of this continent. I have taken the time to listen and I know - because we have discussed it together - that many Frenchmen do not understand where they are being led. This incomprehension creates anxiety throughout the land and confusion in the young. France is not bored, she is worried.

The French people tried to express it, when they were permitted to. In 2005, they rejected, through a referendum, the constitutional treaty that was submitted to them. This time, they will not be allowed to voice their opinion on a document that repeats the essential points that they had rejected. The Treaty of Lisbon provides for a president of the European Union and a vice-president in charge of foreign affairs. It extends the powers of the Union in numerous areas, to the detriment of the States. It assures the preeminence of European law over the laws of the nations. [...]

I am 42. I was 13 when John-Paul II became Pope. I belong to the generation of young persons who lived in step with this Pope of modern times. We saw him accelerate the fall of the Soviet Union, through the strength of his words and his actions. That empire, that was thought to be unshakable, was built on a Utopia. The bureaucracy that governed it disdained the human and spiritual exigencies. It promised men a material happiness that would never replace their profound aspirations. It forced them to worship idols, that they demolished as soon as they could. The Soviet Union was founded on a lie, at least by the omission of the cultural roots of the people whom they wanted to subjugate to their laws.

Because I am attached to Europe, like the majority of those of my generation, I want it to be spared from this dangerous presumption. The Union is too often ignorant of the culture and riches of the countries it wants to enfold. Even though it is responsible to no one, the Court of Justice imposes on the States its own jurisprudence. European law consecrates the power of a technocracy that desires to regulate people's lives in the smallest detail. Now the current Pope, Benedict XVI, sent a forceful reminder last year: "You cannot hope to construct a real common house if you neglect the very identity of the peoples of our continent." And this identity "consists of values that Christianity helped to forge."

This obvious fact did not convince the writers of the charter of fundamental rights, annexed to the Treaty. No reference, in the text, to the Christian roots of our Europe. Even though the Union says it is "conscious of its spiritual and moral heritage", the wording is vague enough to allow many interpretations. Anyway, it is enough to read it to understand: the inspiration of this charter is basically individualistic. It dissolves the natural solidarities and communities, just as the Treaty submitted to the French Parliament dissolves European nations. Can we really believe that this is what young Europeans want? If we want it to resist the storms, we must found Europe on something more solid. Not on a Utopia, but on Truth.

France’s “Politics of Civilization:” A Culture of Denunciation

From The Brussells Journal

By Tiberge

Gérard Pince, economist and partner of Claude Reichman in the Révolution Bleue movement, has posted a long critique of HALDE (High Authority in the Fight Against Discrimination and For Equality), a government sponsored "civil rights" organization that came into being in December 2004. Its function is to track down all cases of homophobia, discrimination in the workplace, discrimination in hiring, gender discrimination, etc...

Headed by Louis Schweitzer, former CEO of Renault, HALDE is a tool of the thought police, the extremist Left, the immigrants and immigrationists, and it seeks total control through threats of law suits. HALDE at one time sought judicial powers but was defeated in its efforts by the French legislators. Notwithstanding that defeat it continues to act as if it were a high court, and not merely a high consultative "authority":

As the result of a denunciation, HALDE has just reprimanded a person who placed an ad offering housing to functionaries. Now under our current laws, only French citizens can be public servants. HALDE's conclusion: the person is guilty of indirect discrimination! Well and good, but our High Authority ought to examine all the consequences of its decision. For example, […] the possession of a French national ID represents a discrimination towards those who don't have such a card. It would be fitting therefore either to abolish our nationality or to give it to all residents.

HALDE's position is founded on the law of February 25, 2003 stipulating that "there is discrimination whenever a different treatment, that lacks an objective and reasonable justification, is directly based on sex, a presumed race, color, ancestry, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, civil status, birth, fortune, age. philosophical or religious conviction, the current or future state of health, a handicap or a physical characteristic." […]

Note: The French anti-discrimination law, like those of other countries (e.g. Belgium’s) does not speak of race but of “presumed” or “so-called race” (“prétendue race”). According to the politically-correct politicians and ideologues who wrote these bills, human races do not exist because all people are equal. If races do not exist, however, racists cannot exist either. Hence, racism has been redefined. Racists are people who discriminate on the basis of “presumed” or “so-called” race. Non-PC people realize, of course, that consequently the people prosecuted on the basis of these laws are presumed or so-called racists. As Mr. Pince writes:

[T]he vague notion of "objective and reasonable justification" is subject to the free interpretation of the High Authority, leading to all manner of arbitrariness, and creating a permanent dilemma for administrations, enterprises, and private individuals such a landlords. In truth, this absurd law was passed at the instigation of malfeasant associations which, on the pretext of fighting racism, devote their time to persecuting ethnic Frenchmen. In the USSR, the "Minister of Security" was the incarnation of total insecurity, sending people to the gulag for a yes or a no. Likewise, the fight against discriminations covers up the institutionalization of anti-white racism in France.

Furthermore a veritable culture of denunciation has taken hold. Large publicity billboards inciting to denunciation have not been seen here since Vichy. […]

Disguised as the politics of civilization, these criminal laws pervert public morality and empty the nation of all content. […] Confronted with such a situation, we must recall the first principle of the Blue Revolution: As a free individual, I rent, I buy and I sell to whomever I want. I recruit whomever I want. I think, I write, I speak, privately or publicly, as I please.

The Blue Revolution is a citizens' movement. Two years ago a group of French businessmen, writers, historians, etc... headed by businessman Claude Reichman decided that something had to be done about the decline of France. They launched a movement called the Blue Revolution using mainly the Internet and probably the radio as ways of sending their message. They began holding monthly rallies. At first, just a handful of people came; then, it began to grow and the media took notice. Reichman is the most well-known member. Their agenda is the opposite of everything Sarkozy stands for. They are against immigration, aware of the lethal effects of Islamization, against the welfare state, pro-business, and very much attached to traditions.

The "Blues" are not a political party. They want to spread the message and exhorts the French to wake up before it's too late.