Front National – Page 2

Le Pen – France kowtows to US on Mistral

France’s decision to suspend the delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carrier ships to Russia shows Paris’ obedience of American diplomacy, said National Front leader Marine Le Pen. Russia still believes that France will fulfill the contract.

France says it cannot deliver Mistral warship to Russia over Ukraine

“This decision is very serious, firstly because it runs contrary to the interests of the country and shows our obedience of American diplomacy,” Le Pen told France’s RTL radio.

She added that suspension of Mistral warships is also serious “for the reputation of France and the value of its word in trade relations.”

“It will have a huge cost: four months of employment in Saint-Nazaire [where Mistral vessels are under construction], millions of working hours,” Le Pen added, “The delay will cause a fine of 5 to 10 billion euro.”

On Wednesday France suspended delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carrier ships to Russia because of events in eastern Ukraine.

“The situation is serious. Russia’s recent actions in the east of Ukraine contravene the fundamental principles of European security,” said a statement from the office of President Francois Hollande.

The majority of the readers of French Le Figaro newspaper believe that French government is wrong to suspend the delivery of the ships to Russia.

The poll asked: “Is the French government right in suspending Mistral ships to Russia?” Seventy-three percent of respondents answered “No.”

According to Maria Zakharova, deputy spokeswoman of Russia’s Foreign Ministry, “the reputation of France as a reliable partner who complies with the contract obligations, is thrown into a fire of American political ambitions.”

Le Pen a growing threat to mainstream politicians

The growing threat to France’s mainstream political leaders posed by Marine Le Pen, head of France’s National Front, has been underscored by an opinion poll putting her in the lead for the first time in the race for the next presidential election.

The charismatic Ms Le Pen has overtaken former centre-right president Nicolas Sarkozy in voting intentions if the first round of the election were held today, with socialist incumbent François Hollande trailing in third, according to the Ifop poll.

Ms Le Pen scored 26 per cent in the poll, up from 24 per cent in the last sounding taken in April, while Mr Sarkozy, widely expected to announce a political comeback in September, slipped six points to 25 per cent following court accusations of corruption levelled against him in early July.

The FN has been on the rise since Ms Le Pen took over leadership of the party from her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2011. She came third behind Mr Hollande and Mr Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential election with 18 per cent of the vote and the party has since grown as Mr Hollande’s popularity has slumped in the face of recession and rising unemployment.

In May’s European parliamentary elections, the FN won a nationwide vote for the first time, easily defeating both Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party and the socialists with a score of 25 per cent.

The latest poll, for the magazine Marianne, appeared to confirm the damage caused to Mr Sarkozy and the UMP by financial scandals and internal leadership wrangling that have sapped its ability to present a coherent opposition to Mr Hollande’s government, despite the president’s record-low personal approval ratings.

Mr Sarkozy was questioned under arrest and then placed under formal investigation on July 2 on suspicion of corruption, influence peddling and a breach of professional secrecy linked to a separate probe into his election campaign financing in 2007.

The UMP is also under investigation over allegations of covering up millions of euros in spending above legal limits in Mr Sarkozy’s 2012 campaign.

The Ifop poll underlined growing fears on both the mainstream left and right that Ms Le Pen is set to repeat the feat of her father in 2002 when he reached the second round of the presidential election by coming second, knocking out the then socialist candidate Lionel Jospin.

Most analysts continue to believe she would then be defeated in the run-off by whichever candidate she faced, as mainstream voters rallied to defeat her. The Ifop poll did not test second round voting intentions, but earlier polls have shown a narrower margin of defeat than the 82-18 per cent loss suffered by her father against Jacques Chirac in 2002, especially if her opponent were Mr Hollande.

Concerns that Mr Hollande is already heading for defeat have prompted speculation that the Socialist party might opt for another candidate. But the Ifop poll showed neither of the two likeliest alternatives, Manuel Valls, the reformist prime minister, nor Arnaud Montebourg, the leftwing economy minister, doing any better.

Source: FT

French municipal candidate gets prison sentence for ‘monkey’ racism

A former candidate in France’s recent municipal elections who likened the nation’s justice minister, who identifies as black, to a monkey was sentenced to nine months in jail for hate speech.

The National Front, a party that has often come under fire for its leaders’ comments about the nation’s immigrant populations, was fined almost $68,000 and the candidate, Anne-Sophie Leclere, was fined more than $40,000 on top of her prison sentence.

In October 2013, Leclere, the National Front’s candidate for the northern municipality of Rethel in March’s elections, posted a photo of Socialist Justice Minister Christiane Taubira — originally from French Guiana, a French overseas department in northern South America — next to a photo of a monkey. Laws in France bar communication intended to incite hatred, harm or discrimination against anyone because of ethnic, national or sexual identity or handicap.

“I prefer to see her swinging in a tree than to see her in government,” Leclere told TV channel France-2 in an interview, echoed across French media.

In a more recent, similarly explosive remark, the party’s founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of the party’s current leader, Marine Le Pen, said in May the Ebola virus could solve the world’s “demographic explosion” and Europe’s “immigration problem.” Many of France’s immigrants are from its former colonies in Africa, the only continent where Ebola has been reported.

National Front spokeswoman Huguette Fatna, originally from Martinique and the party’s former political consultant on its few remaining colonial-era territories, called the ruling an attack on free expression.

“We have no freedom of speech here. We call ourselves democratic — we should have freedom of speech,” Fatna said.

She added that the National Front will appeal the ruling. The party ousted Leclere immediately after a scandal erupted over her comments, apologizing on her behalf, but Fatna said Leclere’s prison sentence was “excessive.”

The case has in recent months sparked debate over France’s laws against racist speech. Despite Leclere’s comments, in April the National Front received its largest share of municipal votes ever.

Gabe Rottman, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said that when racist views are silenced by law, they sometimes grow in strength.

“There is a concern that unless the speech is legitimately incitement [to violence], when the government shuts them down, it gives them more credence to what they are saying. And it forces that stuff underground, where it can turn violent,” Rottman said.

Houria Bouteldja, spokeswoman for the anti-racist political movement Les Indigenes de la Republique — The Indigenous of the Republic — and a leading voice on the rights of France’s people of color, also said the law does not work to effectively combat racism in a country where, for some, it has become a political platform.

“There are people that are against the expression of the extreme right,” Bouteldja said. “But we also have the racism of the left.”

Charlie Hebdo, a weekly leftist publication, has on numerous occasions printed cartoons that French Muslims like Bouteldja have decried as Islamophobic. No formal legal battle was launched against the publication, though, and the nation’s Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius, although he decried the publication as imprudent for stirring unrest in the Muslim world, qualified the cartoons as being protected by “freedom of speech.”

“I say, allow free speech or censor racism on both sides,” Bouteldja said.

Rottman said the United States does not have laws against racist speech precisely because they are often arbitrarily enforced.

“One of the reasons we don’t have inciting-hatred laws like we see in other countries is these laws leave it up to government as to what constitutes hate speech — they are subject to arbitrary use and potential misuse.”

Although Bouteldja’s organization applauds the ruling that punishes Leclere’s racist remarks, she emphasized that Taubira’s government has upheld laws barring women from wearing Muslim head coverings in schools and women from wearing facial veils in public venues.

“This xenophobia — it’s a production of the French state, not just the extreme right. This Islamophobia — the laws against Islamic dress, they are upheld by the government of Ms. Taubira.”

Bouteldja said that combating racism will take more than laws, that it will take a “mobilization of society against the racism of the state.”

“There needs to be a political consciousness of identifying the victims of racism and forbidding it. In the ’30s, it was the Jews. Now it’s the blacks, the Muslims and the Roma.” – Al Jazeera

Black French singer loses appeal against Marine Le Pen

Black French singer and celebrity Yannick Noah lost his diffamation case against Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National. Noah sued Le Pen because she had called him a “tax fugitive” on television. According to Marine Le Pen, he had “stashed” his money abroad. She made that allegedly defamatory statement on 9 March 2012 during a discussion programme on the pay TV channel Canal+. The talk show was on the contribution made by French immigrants such as Yannick Noah, Zinedine Zidane and Omar Sy.

Answering the question whether immigration was an opportunity for France, Marine Le Pen responded: “Two tax fugitives out of three, that’s not bad,” before referring specifically to Yannick Noah. “That means, instead of paying his taxes in France, well, this gentleman sees fit to give us moral lessons… giving us lessons on charity and sharing while he shares nothing, his money is stashed abroad and does not benefit the unfortunate French,” she declared. At the time she was a French presidential candidate.

As opposed to the argument advanced by the singer, “the statement does not imply any punishable fiscal fraud committed by him”, according to the judges of the 17th chamber of the correctional tribunal of Paris in their judgement delivered on 25 June 2013. Yannick Noah then appealed against the judgement.

After participating in a political gathering with François Hollande, the current French president, Yannick Noah was criticised by Valérie Rosso-Debord and Pierre Charon of the UMP party, then by Marine Le Pen, for his tax evasion. From 1992 to 1994 he was a Swiss resident and is still involved in litigation with the French authorities in a case pending before the Constitutional Court of France.

The ex-tennis champion has also sued the UMP senator Pierre Charon for defamation for calling him a “tax criminal”. During the first hearing the politician was fined 1 000 euros, but suspended, as well as a symbolic one euro of damages and interest, including judicial publication. The case on appeal will be heard on 16 October.

Marine Le Pen fails to form conservative group in EU parliament

Marine Le Pen has failed to find support in the minimum of seven European Union countries for her conservative group, the European Alliance for Freedom.

Le Pen and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party did not gain enough allies to qualify as a single caucus in the new European parliament, which now denies them access to funding and extra speaking time. They would also not be able to serve on committees.

Following European parliamentary elections last month, won by Le Pen’s Front National, the various parties had until Monday midnights to form a group comprising at least 25 MEPs from at least seven countries.

The Le Pen-led grouping includes Wilders’ Freedom party, the Austrian Freedom Party, Italy’s Liga Nord and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang. Le Pen and Wilders easily easily exceeded the minimum seats required, the European Alliance for Freedom was two countries short of the required seven.

Wilders and Le Pen said they refused to collaborate with a new party of the extreme right in Poland, viewed as antisemitic but also certain to clash with Wilders’ and Le Pen’s views on immigration to their countries from eastern Europe.

The Polish New Right Congress – which advocates abolishing women’s voting rights – and the Lithuanian Order and Justice parties said they refused to join the Le Pen group.

The Lithuanian party preferred to join British Ukip leader Nigel Farage’s Europe of Freedom and Democracy parliamentary group.

Yesterday, the Front National declared that it failed to muster a full-sized European parliamentary group as it had not wanted to ally itself with parties demonstrating incompatible values.

Florian Philippot, the party’s vice-president, told the French radio station Europe 1: “We were several parties, but we needed to come from seven countries and this time it didn’t work.”

Philippot also said to Reuters: “We have no group, for the time being at least. But our deputies, who are more numerous than any other party in the French delegation, will be there to defend France under any circumstances, with or without a group.”

Ludovic de Danne, Le Pen’s European spokesman, tweeted: “Never mind the betrayals and media agitation. We and our allies will build a solid and coherent political group later.”

The new 751-seat European assembly sits for the first time next week.

Subsidies for political groups in the European parliament are substantial. The European Alliance for Freedom could have received up to €22m for operational expenses.

In its media release yesterday, the Front National stated:

“We regret it in the short term, but we take responsibility for our moral and political choice in the long term.

Convinced that it will be possible for us to form this group shortly, we are committed from the very first session in Strasbourg on 1 July to our struggle as patriots for our sovereignty, our identity and our liberty. We shall continue in parallel and with the greatest determination, our negotiations with several parties in Europe so as to constitute this greater formation in favour of sovereignty in the European parliament.”

Front National lodges largest land claim in SA history

The political party Front National is lodging the single largest land claim in South African history to the Land Commissioner in Pretoria on Thursday, April 24. The claim will test the legitimacy, honesty and objectivity of the ANC-government regarding land claims.

The claim for the land, stretching from Ohrigstad eastwards to include the Kruger National Park, is the first of several claims being prepared. Front National claims that the intention of the Deed of Sale was to put the land under the guardianship of the “Dutch South African nation” as an ethnic group and was NOT intended as a sale to the then, or later, governments but for utilisation by the descendants now known as Afrikaner/Boer.

LAND CLAIM: OHRIGSTAD, MPUMALANGA

CLAIMANTS: I present the land claim on behalf of the natural descendants of the Dutch South African nation, commonly known as the Afrikaner or Boer. The claimants are those descendents identifying themselves as Afrikaners with the distinct characteristics of western/European outlook on life regarding language, culture, history and a sense of nationhood. This will exclude people not identifying themselves with the ethnic group in a political and cultural sense.

DESCRIPTION OF LAND:
The claim pertains to the land described in State Archives R117/1846, namely –
From Ohrigstad to the north till the Olifantsrivier, then downwards to the Delagoa Bay line; to the south till the Crocodile River; to the west to Elandspruit till the 26 degrees line; east till where the Crocodile River joins the Komati River.

REASON/DATE OF LAND CLAIM
The said land is the property of the Dutch South African nation as described above and according to the Deed of Sale, should by administered by the Dutch South African nation ONLY. This right was unilaterally taken from the Dutch South African nation/Afrikaner on 27 April 1994 and is currently administered by the South African Government in contravention of an international deed of sale between two nations’ descendants.

The land was legally obtained for the Dutch South African nation as an ethnic group to be administered by such ethnic group and was only in custodianship of the SA government pre-27 April 1994 because the said government was regarded as descendents of the ethnic group. There was no legal right to hand this land over to a “foreign” government in April 1994 away from the original ethnic group.

We claim the said land as our ancestral land of the Dutch South African nation/Afrikaner; duly bought and paid for on July 25, 1846 as an ethnic group and not as individual landowners.

LEGAL SALE/PURCHASE
The sale of said land on July 25, 1846 were between King Masous (representative of the Zulu) as seller; and Commandant SJZR Burg (representative of the Dutch South African nation) as buyer and a copy of the agreement is filed in the Government Archives under file R117/46.

The original agreement is in Dutch and apart from King Masous, the following witnesses signed for the Zulu nation: Samkoela (chieftain), Makienkaan (chieftain), Mandalea (chieftain). As witnesses for the Dutch South African nation it was signed by WF Joubert, JC Steyn, JM de Beer (field cornets), L de Jager, J Lotter, H Breytenbach and PJ Coetzer.

The sale was conducted at Kjakas Kraal, Umkumaas.

It states: (in Dutch) …ten dienste van de Hollandsche Zuid Afrikaansche Natie die thans binnen dat grond zyn en noch in vervolg door de wettige gezag onder hun ter inwooning zal gepermitteerd worden…

In English it states that the land is sold to those members of the Dutch South African nation and “those who in future will be permitted by their legal guardianship (not Government)…

PAYMENT FOR THE LAND
The receipt for the payment of the said land is filed in the Government Archives in 1846 and the copy was certified by State Secretary NJR Swart.

The receipt for the last payment in cattle was received in January 1856 and also includedin the Deed of Sale of July 21, 1855 to conclude the sale.

The receipt was issued by Maloenke (Zulu representative) at Tabankolea on February 5, 1860 and signed as witnesses by chieftains Sonagla, Jogo, Santlant, Omglagen, Malayde, Kaompeunis and Kampa. Commandant WF Joubert signed for the Dutch South African nation with FJ Joubert and H Joubert as witnesses.

CLAIM:
1. Flowing from the above there an be no doubt that the said land, as stated in the sale agreement, was the property of the Dutch South African nation, nowadays known as Afrikaner or Boer.

2. There is no doubt that the land was not turned over to private ownership, but that it was to be put under the guardianship of the legal governance of said ethnic group, and not under the South African Government.

3. There is no doubt that the sale and purchase were legal and binding and that the purchase was fulfilled.

4. There is no doubt that the descendants of the Dutch South African nation did not by any means turn over the utilisation and control of such land to any government, the South African Government included, but that the land should be utilised and controlled by the descendants of the ethnic group and those they permit to settle there. This right was at no stage turned over to the South African Government on April 27, 1994 by the descendants of the ethnic group.

5. As the only legal, registered political party representing only descendants of the ethnic group known as Afrikaner or Boer, FRONT NATIONAL lay claim to the land to form an ethnic controlling body in terms of our traditions, culture, language, and Western outlook on life as intended by our ancestors.

HANNES ENGELBRECHT
LEADER: FRONT NATIONAL

France’s Front National claims biggest victory in history

Marine Le Pen’s party, the Front National, is on course to secure the best result ever, exit polls show.

France’s anti-immigrant Front National was on track to win at least 14 towns in local elections, beating its previous record amid public dissatisfaction with President Francois Hollande’s Socialists.

But the Socialists retained control of Paris town hall in local elections on Sunday as their candidate Anne Hidalgo comfortably won the mayoralty.

Promising to be the mayor of “all Parisians,” Miss Hidalgo hailed her historic win as the “victory for a Left-wing that remains faithful to its ideal.”

Miss Hidalgo said: “As the first woman mayor of Paris, I am aware of the challenge that this represents.”

The victory is some consolation for Mr Hollande’s ruling party, which according to partial tallies and exit polls was on track to lose its grip on dozens of major towns elsewhere across France.

After winning the northern town of Henin-Beaumont in round one, the FN took at least 13 more towns, including Béziers in the southwest and Fréjus, population 84,000, on the Riviera. Its best ever previous score was three, in 1995.

The Front National scored a major victory by claiming the mayorship of the 7th sector of Marseille, putting it in charge of 150,000 people.

“We have moved onto a new level,” Marine Le Pen, FN leader, claimed. “There is now a third major political force in our country.”

But the FN failed to take Avignon, where the Socialists won, or Perpignan and Forbach.

Some 80 per cent of the French want President Hollande to dismiss Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, according to a Harris Interactive poll this week, and Manuel Valls, the ambitious and tough-talking interior minister, is their favourite to replace him.

Despite the strong showing for the FN, the centre-Right opposition UMP party, also regained control from the Left of the majority of towns and cities of more than 9,000 inhabitants.

These included Reims, Saint-Etienne, Roubaix and Quimper.

Source: The Telegraph

Marine Le Pen to face prosecution for comparing Muslims to Nazis

Marine Le Pen faces prosecution for comparing Muslim immigration to the Nazi occupation of France after the European Parliament’s legal committee recommended that the nationalist leader be stripped of her immunity.

The full parliament is now expected to formally lift her protection from prosecution as an MEP after a vote on the recommendation on July 3, clearing the way for her to face race hate charges in a French court.

Sajjad Karim, a British Tory MEP on the parliament’s legal affairs committee, voted in favour Ms Le Pen losing her parliamentary immunity.

“There is a red line between freedom of speech and inciting racial hatred,” he said. “I, along with many other MEPs, today voted to drop Ms Le Pen’s immunity and I am confident that the majority of the European Parliament will follow our lead in July.”

French prosecutors asked the EU assembly last November to lift the French National Front leader’s immunity as a lawmaker so she could be prosecuted for remarks likening Islamic prayers to the Nazi occupation.

Ms Le Pen faces charges for comments she made in a speech to National Front supporters in December 2010 when she denounced the holding of Muslim prayers in the streets of France in areas where there are no mosques.

“For those who like to talk about World War II, to talk about occupation, we could talk about, for once, the occupation of our territory. There are no armoured vehicles, no soldiers, but it is an occupation all the same and it weighs on people,” she said.

She follows in the footsteps of her father Jean Marie, founder of the French National Front, who was stripped of his legal protection as an MEP to face German Holocaust denials charges in 1998, he had previously been convicted of similar charge in France. – Daily Telegraph

French intellectual commits suicide in Notre Dame cathedral – ‘a political gesture’?

Dominique Venner committed suicide on Tuesday in front of the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The death of the 78-year-old essayist and historian sparked numerous reactions from French nationalists.

Several executives and members of the country’s National Front party took to Twitter to praise Venner. Directly referencing Venner’s last blog post, National Front party leader Marine Le Pen called the writer’s act an “eminently political” gesture destined to “awaken the people of France.”

“All our respect to Dominique Venner whose last gesture, an eminently political one, attempted to awaken the people of France. MLP”

In a blog post published on the same day as his suicide, Venner talked about “new gestures, spectacular and symbolic ones, to rattle lethargies, to shake anaesthetised consciences and awaken the memory of our origins.”

Louis Aliot, vice-president of the National Front and Marine Le Pen’s partner, also paid his respects, calling Venner an “intransigent and courageous defender of our civilisation’s values.”

“My emotional thoughts go out to the tragic disappearance of D.Venner, intransigent and courageous defender of our civilisation’s values.”

Bruno Gollnisch, another figure of the National Front, saw Venner’s suicide as a “protest against the decadence of our society.” Gollnisch argued that Venner “experienced” the approval of the law on gay marriage “as it should have been experienced, as a promotion of decadence and a defacement of marriage.”

Gollnisch added that “it wasn’t his only fight, he also protested against the programmed disappearance of the French people, the progressive substitution with other populations.”

Julien Rochedy, the president of the National Front youth group tweeted:

“It’s with immense sadness that I hear about Dominique Venner’s suicide. He will be reunited with the heroes from the Iliad he loved so much.”

According to some members of the National Front, Venner was considered as a potential candidate to head the party when it was founded in 1972.

Honorary president Jean-Marie Le Pen commented on the suicide to the AFP by comparing it to the death of Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, a writer who collaborated with the Nazis during WWII and who committed suicide in 1945. “An intellectual suicide, which testifies with death,” declared the founder of the National Front.

On Tuesday night, thousands of militants gathered in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, carrying torches and national flags. According to Le HuffPost, an unidentified speaker said: “We ignored the deep causes of his gesture. We are here to pay tribute to his last fight (…) He always defended France, beautiful, strong and proud of itself.”

This piece has been translated from French and originally appeared on HuffPost France.