Chinese President Xi Jinping displayed his expansionist ambitions within a year of taking over as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) when he launched the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that traverses through Asia, Europe and Africa, connecting dozens of countries. The first country that partnered with China on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was Pakistan, when the US$ 62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), comprising of a wide range of infrastructure projects, was signed with much fanfare in 2015. Due to its expanse, the CPEC, often referred in Pakistan as the flagship project of the BRI, provides the observer with a ringside view of the actual objectives and expectations of Xi Jinping from his dream initiative.
67 swastikas, discovered on December 28, desecrating the graves of a municipal cemetery in Fontainebleau; a torrent of anti-Semitic insults lashing out against Miss Provence 2020, April Benayoum, for claiming her Israeli ancestry on December 19, when she was elected as Miss France 2021’s first runner-up; anti-Semitic death threats against TV columnist Valérie Benaim on December 29; a delivery man from a big name in the new digital economy, boasting that he does not agree to deliver to Jews, on January 7 in Strasbourg; and to top it all off, an odious letter of anti-Semitic (and homophobic) insults, addressed to the government spokesperson, Gabriel Attal, on January 8… The phenomenon is not new, but in the space of a few weeks, it is a veritable surge of anti-Semitic acts which have descended on France, often in general indifference. And more worrying still, to the old anti-Semitic evil, that of hatred and (in)human stupidity, is added a new anti-Semitism, which tries to cover itself with political justifications, like that of the icon of the Indigènes de la République movement, Houria Bouteldja, justifying the anti-Semitic insults against April Benayoum with a mind-blowing argument according to which “one cannot be innocently Israeli”!
Increasingly strong, increasingly insane. Recep Tayyip Erdogan enthroned himself as the “second conqueror” of Hagia Sophia after Mehmet II in 1453. He proclaimed it in his “message to the nation” broadcast on television on that funeral day – July 10, 2020 – when Ataturk’s 1934 decree transforming the building into a museum was rescinded. Mustapha Kemal had given back to humanity the basilica, jewel of Christianity for 916 years, then flagship mosque of the Ottoman Empire for five centuries. He wanted to put an end to the Islam-Western divide and ease conflicts. Erdogan, on the other hand, is turning them back on.
To paraphrase the Michel Audiard of Les Tontons flingueurs, we can say that collaborators dare to do anything. While the jihadist cutthroats are still shedding blood on France, a black flight of peremptory crows is descending on the plateaus and squatting in the newspaper columns. The poisonous honeyed platforms charged with rewriting reality follow one another as if nothing had happened. In any case not what had upset us to the core of our souls: this aftershock of previous earthquakes, five years after the massacre of Charlie Hebdo’s journalists, the attacks on the Bataclan and the Hypercacher.
The Ministry of the Economy, Finance, and Industry has launched vast investigations into the sources of financing of associations and mosques which advocate a “separatist Islam”, notably within the Islamist movement linked to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Turkish weapons program for the development of a main battle tank called Altay faces multiple obstacles, due to the blocking by Paris and Berlin of the delivery of components essential for its manufacture.
In an open letter addressed to President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Jean Castex and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, 22 French personalities, including elected officials, intellectuals, researchers and a lieutenant general, called for the dissolution of the organisation “French Muslims” (formerly UOIF), the French branch of the Muslim Brotherhood described as a “secret brotherhood that advocates a political and totalitarian Islam” whose “thinkers have inspired worldwide jihadism”.
Georges Dallemagne, former director of Humanity & Inclusion, now Belgian federal deputy, has just returned from Nagorno-Karabakh where he carried out an observation mission in the heart of the conflict between the Armenian minority and Azerbaijan.
In this interview with Global Watch Analysis, he claims to have observed “war crimes” and confirms the presence of “jihadist mercenaries” dispatched to the scene by Turkey.
Five years have passed since the terrorist attacks in Paris, on November 13, 2015. At the time when France commemorates the event and round tribute to the victims of these attacks, President François Hollande, who was in office during these tragic events, granted an exclusive interview to Global Watch Analysis.
