"The Great Collapse" by Jean-David Benichou

by Jean-David Benichou, President, ElNet France  (Translated from original French)

The decision of the Court of Cassation sinks the foundations of the French Republic.

The decision that concludes that the murderer of Sarah Halimi, a mother of 3 children, an exemplary citizen, in her sixties, murdered in the greatest violence, because she was Jewish, by a black Muslim, thirty years old, a multi-recidivist, idle, inveterate consumer of cannabis since the age of 16, on the grounds of an acute delirious crisis, alters the founding principles of our country , starting with the principle of equality.

Equality?

This promise that ornate the pediment of our institutions, it is that of the equality of all the citizens in face of the law. Why is this first principle threatened in its foundation? Well, because it is enough to consider a reverse scenario. A black mother, Muslim, exemplary, savagely murdered by a white Catholic in his thirties, often condemned, unemployed, drug addicted since his adolescence and who kills with the cry of "Jesus is our savior, I killed the Evil One". This horrible crime, which would have made millions of French people take to the streets in revolt against racial violence, committed in the name of a perverted faith, a crime with an odious colonial flavor, of a blond man on a brunette, of a Catholic on a Muslim woman, this crime, would it have left the choice to the supreme magistrates , to say that in law, well no, this murderer is not criminally responsible because he was a victim of an acute delirious state at the time of committing the act?

Sarah Halimi  and alleged murderer, Kobili Traore

Everyone will make their own opinion, but it is plausible to believe that in such a case, facing the risk of the nation's conflagration, the judges would not have taken the decision to analyze the law restrictively. They would have, rightly, interpreted the law to make it conform to its essential objective of maintaining peace and civil order and would have said, logically, that the deliberate use of drugs cannot be a mitigating circumstance because it deliberately causes an alteration of the discernment, and that of course, this man must be judged for his crime and condemned by a popular jury.

Freedom?

There is only public freedom because there is an implacable justice that is imposed on all.

The right to life is inseparable from the condemnation of homicide. This was not the case for a long time when the law of the strongest prevailed and the weakest were exterminated.

Murder is even the only reason why the law has long given justice the right to condemn to the death penalty. Its abolition has been replaced by a very long period of deprivation of liberty, sometimes until the death of the condemned.

But when the perpetrator of an established anti-Semitic crime escapes judgment for a reason whose basis is hidden in the meanders of the law's unspoken words, when high magistrates lose themselves in the exegesis of the Letter to the detriment of the Spirit, then we witness the collapse of that other republican looter who bears the name of Freedom.

For how can we prohibit when we no longer sanction? How can we guarantee public liberties if we absolve the most despicable criminals of their responsibility? And above all, if drug use is now a mitigating circumstance, how many retrials can we expect?

Is that Fraternity?

Our country is going through its most serious identity crisis. The 55,000 cathedrals, churches and priorities of France are emptying, while the 3000 mosques are overflowing and the 300 synagogues are depopulating.

Instead, we carry in our hands digital temples that level the culture with stories, destroy the critical spirit, abolish the nuance and atrophy the curiosity. When science becomes a conspiracy and a conspiracy a revealed truth, when belief prevails over knowledge, is it any wonder that this Brotherhood explodes, that a man kills his neighbor because he sees at his place symbols contrary to his own faith, that a hysterical man beheads a professor and that a murderer is declared irresponsible because he was stoned during his crime?

What a tragedy to see the resurgence of obscurantism in the land of enlightenment.

President Emmanuel Macron reacted with celerity. Taking note of the judgment and its unbearable consequences, he asked the Minister of Justice to undertake without delaying a text to reform the legal status of criminal irresponsibility. It should be recalled in this look that on January 8, 2020, Senator Nathalie Goulet had already filed a bill in this sense ...

In the absence of bringing the family of the deceased a reparative trial, may this legislative change bear the name of Sarah Halimi so that we never forget that the ultimate objective of the law is to protect the weak and the minorities by depriving the strong and the majorities of any impunity.

For it is the determining condition for society to live in freedom, equality and fraternity and for the foundation of the Republic to remain solid."

 - Jean-David Benichou,  President Elnet France. www.elnetwork.eu
(courtesy of Larry Hochberg)

The Real World Order

Russia rewrites the rules against NATO; US against Iran

Moscow’s blitzkrieg in Georgia is more than a military campaign. It is designed to empower Russia’s diplomatic strategy, which seeks to make the European Union (EU) the West’s chief representative in future negotiations with Russia. Quite naturally the Kremlin wants to escape the logic of U.S. and NATO policy, which is to contain Russia within her national borders. Meanwhile, the European Union is an entirely different animal: toothless, utopian and ready to please.   

In Russia's Concept for Dominating Europe, J.R. Nyquist writes:

The real purpose of this operation, the Russian president hinted, was to highlight the dangerous obsolescence of NATO and Europe’s unrealistic expectations with regard to Russia. The old treaties will not keep the peace, he said, because they are unfair. Russia is a great power and deserves greater influence.

Today the European Union confronts Russia in the same way Neville Chamberlain confronted Hitler in 1938; being outwitted and tricked in the ceasefire negotiations, there is no possible outcome other than appeasement. The Russians insist that their troops be accepted as peacekeepers in Georgia. The French mediators allow this. And so, the stipulated withdrawal of combatants therefore does not apply to the Russian troops. Under this ceasefire agreement Moscow can claim – in a strictly legal sense – that Russian troops can stay in Georgia indefinitely. President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin are laughing at the French while observing international law. Meanwhile, occupied Georgia is looted and burned; Georgian ships are sunk and the Georgian capital is strangled.

NATO has done nothing, even though NATO has promised to make Georgia a member of the alliance. NATO defers to the European Union. Bush also defers and sends his Secretary of State to Paris instead of Moscow. While all of Europe demanded a negotiated solution, only Poland and the Baltic States (along with Sweden and Denmark) denounced Russian military aggression. All of Europe should have denounced Russia with one voice. All of Europe should have eschewed “negotiations.” All of Europe should have demanded an immediate withdrawal of Russian forces from Georgia. All of Europe should have begun to mobilize troops and combat aircraft for the defense of Georgia. In that event, Russia would have retreated.

But the Kremlin knew, in advance, this wouldn’t happen. There is no “military confrontation” in Georgia. As President Medvedev said, “I am convinced that with the end of the Cold war … bloc discipline simply disappeared.”

Think-tank, Stratfor elaborates:  The post-Cold War world, the New World Order, ended with authority on Aug. 8, 2008, when Russia and Georgia went to war. Certainly, this war was not in itself of major significance, and a very good case can be made that the New World Order actually started coming apart on Sept. 11, 2001. But it was on Aug. 8 that a nation-state, Russia, attacked another nation-state, Georgia, out of fear of the intentions of a third nation-state, the United States. This causes us to begin thinking about the Real World Order.

The Russians have now proven two things. First, contrary to the reality of the 1990s, they can execute a competent military operation. Second, contrary to regional perception, the United States cannot intervene. The Russian message was directed against Ukraine most of all, but the Baltics, Central Asia and Belarus are all listening. The Russians will not act precipitously. They expect all of these countries to adjust their foreign policies away from the United States and toward Russia. They are looking to see if the lesson is absorbed. At first, there will be mighty speeches and resistance. But the reality on the ground is the reality on the ground.

Will Americans now consider a Presidential candidate able to win in the hardball game that the big boys play?