A shocking video of French police beating up a man who wasn’t wearing a mask showed the authorities’ iron-fist approach to enforcing regulations and suppressing protests. Will this be the new norm when the pandemic has passed?
A British shopper recently spotted by police failing to wear a face mask decided to heap abuse on the hapless copper patiently explaining the rules to her before she simply flung her basket to the ground and strolled off without a care in the world. All very British, and no one was hurt – but it illustrated the frustration normal people are feeling over this never-ending pandemic.

Meanwhile, in Paris, a young, black music producer leaving his studio without wearing a face mask was spied by three policemen who set upon him and forced him back into his studio, where they kicked, punched and beat him with a truncheon for five minutes before he managed, with the help of friends, to bundle them out the door.

French police have arrested what is being characterised as a major people-smuggling operation behind many of the small rubber boats that have carried illegal migrants across the English Channel to the UK.

Police arrested six Iraqi and Syrian men during raids in the city of Sin-le-Noble in northern France. The alleged human traffickers are said to have played a “crucial” role in facilitating dozens of illegal boat crossings since at least May.

During the raids, police also seized 14 inflatable boats. Four of the suspects are set to appear in court in Boulogne on Friday.

A source told the British tabloid The Sun: “This was a sophisticated operation and required a painstaking investigation which lasted several weeks.”

France's former leader Nicolas Sarkozy went on trial on corruption charges today, becoming the first French president to stand as an accused in the dock.

Sarkozy, 65, appeared in the Paris courthouse wearing a face mask and surrounded by lawyers and bodyguards today as he prepared to contest the charges of bribery, which he denies.

While Sarkozy's predecessor Jacques Chirac was convicted in a fake-jobs scandal relating to his time as mayor of Paris, he never appeared in court because of ill health - making Sarkozy the first president in the dock.

Police officers were pictured taking off their helmets to cheers from the crowd at an overnight protest in Paris sparked by the so-called Global Security Bill, which makes it illegal to distribute pictures of law enforcement.

The symbolic gesture was met with applause from the demonstrators, footage from the scene shows. Multiple officers removed their helmets, putting on soft service hats instead.

The government of President Emmanuel Macron is defying a landmark judgment from the European Court of Human Rights that protects the right of people to call for a boycott of Israeli products.

This comes amid a mounting human rights crisis in France, where the government is waging a violent crackdown on dissent and protest, and escalating its repression of the country’s Muslim population.

The European court’s unanimous decision in June struck a major blow against Israel’s efforts to silence its critics when it overturned the criminal convictions against 11 Palestinian rights activists in France.

The court found that the convictions against the activists for calling on shoppers to boycott Israeli goods violated the European Convention on Human Rights’ guarantee of freedom of expression.

It ordered the French government to pay each of the activists about $8,000 in damages and awarded them their legal costs.

French police stepped up controls in Paris over the weekend to ensure residents were complying with strict lockdown rules imposed to curb the spread of COVID-19, amid signs that some people were breaching them.

Prime Minister Jean Castex has said people are not abiding by the rules as strictly as during the first lockdown back in the spring.

Police had to break up an illegal party hosting up to 400 people at Joinville-Le-Pont near Paris early on Saturday.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is set to urge the US to continue its fight against Islamist militancy in Afghanistan and Iraq, after a series of deadly terrorist attacks in France.

Le Drian will express hope that the United States reconsiders its plan to bring troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visits Paris on Monday.

France is in the midst of a fight against radical Islam after a series of deadly terrorist attacks in the country.

In October, President Donald Trump announced his plan to withdraw all US soldiers from Afghanistan by Christmas. Although, military experts have raised concerns about whether it is possible to fulfil that mission within the timeframe due to the scale of the US involvement.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy wants authorities to drop an investigation into the illegal financing of his 2007 campaign by the government of late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, after a central accuser backtracked on claims that he had handed Sarkozy’s team suitcases of Libyan cash.

Sarkozy, who denies any wrongdoing, has been given preliminary corruption charges in the case, under investigation since 2013, The AP reported. The probe gained traction when French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told news site Mediapart in 2016 that he had delivered suitcases from Libya containing 5 million euros ($6.2 million) in cash to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff.

France is to increase policing in Paris and other big cities amid a “lack of respect” for Covid restrictions, the prime minister has said, warning that lockdown could be tightened if the situation worsens in the coming days.

Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, PM Jean Castex confirmed that France’s current measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 would remain unchanged for the next fortnight, explaining it would be “irresponsible” to lift them now amid serious pressure on the health system.

Currently, someone is admitted to hospital in France every 30 seconds and to intensive care every three minutes, Castex said, adding that one out of every four deaths is currently attributed to the virus.

EMMANUEL MACRON has come under fire for his handling of France's second wave of coronavirus infections, with one critic branding the continuing imposition of fresh restrictions "medieval".

France went into lockdown again at the end of October and tight restrictions will remain in place until next month. Prime Minister Jean Castex warned it is still too early to ease the COVID-19 rules after 35,879 new cases reported yesterday took the country's total to 1.86 million. The number of French deaths from COVID-19 also rose by 328 to reach a total of 42,535.

Le Pen also remarked that she was "rather astonished" by how the media went on to announce the result of the US election, "when we know that there are appeals currently being studied by the justice system".

Although US presidential candidate for the Democrats, Joe Biden, has already been proclaimed president-elect by major media outlets in the country, Marine Le Pen, head of the French political party The National Rally, stated that she "absolutely does not" recognise Biden's victory at this point, Radio France Internationale reports.

According to the media outlet, Le Pen, who was among the first to congratulate Trump upon his electoral victory in 2016, argued that "justice must be allowed to decide" the outcome of the election.

"I'm among those who will not congratulate the future president of the United States, because I don't consider the game to be over until we've gone into overtime," she said.

France and the UK are in the midst of their second month-long lockdowns after rising numbers of COVID-19 cases while headed into the winter months. Both are enforcing tight new restrictions on their populations including closures of pubs, restaurants and other businesses deemed "non-essential".

And now some health officials are even talking "canceling Christmas" as absurd as that sounds. An influential health official in Paris has called for Christmas and New Year's celebrations to be cancelled across the country in statements Tuesday.

Fearing another virus resurgence that will overwhelm medical facilities, Paris hospital director Julien Lenglet told RMC Radio on Tuesday that "without any hesitation, that we ought to cancel Christmas and Saint-Sylvestre" — the latter being a reference to traditional New Year's Eve parties.

It’s usually easy to ignore the turgid blog posts of EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

But the one published Tuesday, with the title “We need to fight Islamist terrorism together,” could not be overlooked.

It comes in the wake of recent deadly attacks by lone young men in France and Austria.

Borrell writes that this “wave of terrorism” has “targeted the foundations of our secular and democratic societies.”

French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo has featured a caricature of three beheaded dancers alongside the words “France will always be France” in response to a series of terrorist attacks in the country.

The new cartoon is a reaction to the acts of Islamic extremism that have struck Europe in recent weeks. On 16th October, after he displayed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad during a free speech lesson, teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded near Paris. Just over a week later, four people were killed in an attack outside a church in Nice. Days after France was rocked by the second terrorist attack, Austria was hit by a mass shooting that killed 4 and injured 23, a gunman also died in the attack.

French police deployed tear gas to remove blockades outside at least 10 high schools in Paris as students staged protests over coronavirus protocols not followed properly as the new academic year got underway in the country.
Hundreds of high school students in the French capital protested against inadequate social distancing and coronavirus transmission mitigation measures on Tuesday, a day after schools reopened for a new term across France - less than one week after the country entered its second lockdown amid a surge in Covid-19 cases.

The students used trash cans to block the entrances to at least ten schools in the capital, with some of the worst tensions seen at The Colbert high school in the city’s 10th arrondissement and the Sophie-Germain school in the 4th arrondissement.

France plans to ban Turkish far-right nationalist group, the Grey Wolves.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin described the organisation as “particularly aggressive” and told legislators on Monday that he would be seeking its dissolution at a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.

On Monday, the French government said it launched airstrikes that killed over 50 Islamic militants in Mali. The operation took place on Friday in an area near the borders of Nigeria and Burkina Faso.

“On October 30 in Mali, the Barkhane force conducted an operation that neutralized more than 50 jihadists and confiscated arms and material,” French Defense Minister Florence Parly.

Operation Barkhane is a French-led counter-insurgency operation in Africa’s Sahel region that has been ongoing since 2014. France, a former colonial power in the region, first intervened in Mali in 2013.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb urged its followers Monday (Nov 2) to kill anyone insulting the Prophet Mohammed and threatened French President Emmanuel Macron over his remarks on Islam.

Last month Macron defended the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed on the grounds of freedom of speech, launching a campaign against Islamic radicalism and sparking fury across the Muslim world.

"Killing anyone who insults the prophet is the right of each and every Muslim," the jihadist group, knowns by its French acronym AQMI, said in a statement.

Macron's remarks came after beheading of French teacher Samuel Paty near Paris by a suspected jihadist, after Paty had shown his students cartoons of the prophet Mohammed during a lesson on freedom of expression.

After the termination of the school holidays, a lyceum situated in the western French city of Nantes faced riots, in which about 30 people participated, throwing various objects, including barriers and traffic cones, at the lyceum’s teachers, France Bleu radio station reported on Monday.

According to the media outlet, the incident, which coincided with the commemoration day of the history teacher occurred at 09.45 a.m. (08:45 GMT). France Bleu said that about 30 people gathered near Gaspard Monge La Chauvinière lyceum in Nantes and started throwing different objects at the teachers, after which they tried to block the entrances to the lyceum. Nobody was injured during the incident.

For years, Jews in France have heavily promoted diversity and the mass immigration of Muslims into France in order to undermine and destroy its White Christian identity, but now that their Muslim ‘golems‘ are beginning to literally behead French people in the streets, the notoriously cowardly Jews are now encouraging the French government to crackdown on their Muslim proxy warriors — yet at the same time continue to give lip service to “diversity” and “equality”:

As the French government rolls out a controversial plan that amounts to its most robust crackdown on religious activity in decades, it is enjoying broad support from at least one of the country’s faith communities: French Jews.

France is to introduce a ban on the sale of all 'non-essential' items in supermarkets from Tuesday, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced in a televised interview Sunday on TF1, under measures already imposed by a nationwide lockdown to stem the coronavirus.

Non-essential items banned from sale in small local shops will now also be banned in supermarkets from Tuesday, the PM said.

In his interview with TFI, Castex said the decision to impose tough restrictions was “heartbreaking” and that he promised to support businesses impacted so "they are not forced to close down".

"We will not go back over the announced measures. It's definitely not the right time. It's way too soon. There will not be reopenings and all business owners and the rest of us have to be extremely vigilant and respect the lockdown.

French police used tear gas to disperse a large gathering of dozens of Turkish ultra-nationalists who were chanting anti-Macron and anti-Armenian slogans in Dijon.

A group of 60 or so members of the group, which appeared to include members of the ultra-nationalist Grey Wolves, marched down the streets of the French city chanting slogans like “Terrorist Armenia”, along with various insults directed at French president Emmanuel Macron and chants of “Allahu Akbar.”

The march took place shortly after 8 p.m. in the centre of Dijon along the Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau and in the theatre district, France Info reports.

An Armenian association in France expressed outrage Sunday after a memorial centre to the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was defaced with pro-Turkish slogans.

The incident in the town of Decines-Charpieu outside Lyon comes against a background of intense communal tensions in France between its Armenian minority and the Turkish community over the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Turkey has strongly backed its ally Azerbaijan in the conflict during the last weeks over Nagorno-Karabakh, part of Azerbaijan but controlled by Armenian separatists since a 1990s war as the Soviet Union broke up.

The National Armenian Memorial Centre was daubed with the giant letters “RTE” in yellow paint in reference to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the words “Grey Wolves”, a prominent Turkish nationalist movement, in French.

A manhunt is underway in the French city of Lyon, where a gunman shot and injured a Greek Orthodox priest at a church and then fled the scene.

UPDATE: Police ‘arrest’ Lyon church shooting suspect as mayor says motive ‘still unknown’

The French Interior Ministry has described in an alert on Twitter an “ongoing situation” in the Place Jean-Macé area in the 7th arrondissement of Lyon. Security forces have been deployed at the scene, it said. The public has been told to avoid the area and follow instructions from the authorities.

French President Emmanuel Macron might have pulled a fast one on Berlin. For years, Germany remained the the most powerful European Union power- the de facto leader of the Brussels-based intergovernmental bloc. Yet, in the changing global realities, Macron has been able to outmanoeuvre a confused German Chancellor Angela Merkel and propel France into becoming the unelected leader of the European Union.

Macron has silently staged an upset within the EU. And he has outdone Germany with three daring gambles- rapprochement with Russia, intent to fight Erdo?an’s Turkey and early recognition of the Chinese threat. On the other hand, the German Chancellor kept pushing for status quo in a fast-changing world to the extent of pushing her own country into irrelevance.

Some 150 people gathered in Berlin for a rally denouncing France’s President Emmanuel Macron’s anti-Islamist crackdown, carrying banners and chanting “Allahu akbar.” It took place in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Nice.

The crowd held a roughly 30-minute demonstration in the city’s Hermannplatz, to protest against the showing of cartoons of Islam’s Prophet Mohammed across France, as well as Macron’s ongoing crackdown on Islamism.

The former head of the Islamist NGO Barakacity, which was dissolved by the French government, has requested political asylum from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The founder and former head of the now-defunct Islamist NGO, Idriss Sihamedi, took to Twitter to speak about the aftermath of the government ban.

“The French state decided to dissolve the humanitarian aid and human rights organisation Barakacity, which operates for two million poor people in 26 countries. This is despite there being no real charges in the files after a three-year investigation,” Sihamedi wrote in Turkish.

He went on to address President Erdogan’s Twitter account directly, asking: “I would like to request political asylum for myself and my team since I am not safe in France on behalf of our NGO.”

Moscow has repeatedly warned Paris of the threat coming from terrorists from the North Caucasus, but France kept accepting them as "fighters for freedom" and even granting citizenship to some of them, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov said in an interview with Sputnik in light of the recent violent attacks.

"Returning to the radicalisation topic, I can tell you that we have repeatedly warned our French partners of the dangers posed by terrorists of North Caucasian origin, while they accepted them as 'fighters for freedom’”, Syromolotov said.\

According to the Russian diplomat, "many of these fake fighters for freedom have found shelter in France, and some of them have even become citizens of this country”.

The Russian diplomat pointed to the important role that anti-terrorism cooperation plays in the relations between Moscow and Paris.

France’s minister of solidarity and health, Olivier Veran, has said he cannot rule out a third wave of the coronavirus, as the country enters a second national lockdown.

As they battle a new spike in Covid-19 cases, French officials are already concerned about the threat of a third wave. Discussing the situation on France Info radio, Veran told listeners that, due to the severity of the virus and the speed at which it’s spreading, it’s not possible to rule out a third wave, even if the second peak is brought under control.

Defending the government’s decision to implement a second national lockdown, which comes into effect at midnight on Thursday, Veran claimed that it’s “nobody’s failure,” but said there are challenges with containing the spread, as they are dealing with an “invisible enemy.”

Russian UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov has savaged French President Emmanuel Macron as the leader continues to come under attack from the Muslim world.

France has raised its terror alert level to 'maximum' after a series of killings amid mounting tensions sparked by a row over religion and freedom of speech.

Russian UFC champion Khabib – a devout Muslim who hails from the Republic of Dagestan – shared his disgust at the French president in a message to his 25 million Instagram followers.

"May the Almighty disfigure the face of this scum and all his followers, who, under the slogan of freedom of speech, offend the feelings of more than one and a half billion Muslim believers. May the Almighty humiliate them in this life, and in the next. Allah is quick in calculation and you will see it," Khabib wrote in Russian, accompanying the text with a mock-up image of the imprint of a boot on Macron's face.

A French-language Instagram account of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was temporarily blocked after posting a critical message to young people about controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, Iran's FARS news agency reported.

The page became inaccessible on Friday, two days after Khamenei's missive to “young French people” was posted on social media. In his address, the Ayatollah blasted French President Emmanuel Macron as “stupid” for insisting that caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed were in line with that country’s values of freedom of speech. He also questioned why it was “OK” in France to insult the Prophet Mohammed, but illegal to doubt the Holocaust.

However, a shadow French-language account was quickly created for Khamenei, to repost the message in text and audio formats. The original account appears to be unblocked, but the message to French youths seems to have been removed.

I won’t even bother repeating it all here, those who are interested in my views of this entire Charlie Hebdo canard can read my article “I am NOT Charlie” here: https://thesaker.is/i-am-not-charlie/

No, what I want to do is to ask a simple question: do you think the French leaders are simply stupid, suicidal or naive? I submit that they neither stupid, nor suicidal nor naive. In fact, they are using a well practiced technique which goes with some variation of this:

The Islamist terrorist who shouted 'Allahu Akbar' as he beheaded a woman and killed two others in an attack on a Catholic church in France was pictured last night.

Brahim Aoussaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian who arrived in Europe on a migrant boat just last month, attacked worshippers with a 12-inch blade in the Notre Dame basilica in Nice starting around 9am, slitting the throat of a 60-year-old woman near the church's font in a beheading attempt.

He then hacked 54-year-old sacristan Vincent Loques to death as he prepared for the first Mass of the day.

France has been hit by two terror attacks within hours of each other as three people were killed, two of them beheaded, in an attack inside a cathedral in Nice before a gunman was fatally shot by police in Avignon.

The first attack began around 9am at the Notre Dame cathedral in Nice where a knifeman beheaded an elderly female parishioner and a male churchwarden, fatally killed a second woman, injured several others, and was then shot and arrested by police.

Tens of thousands of Parisians last night caused massive traffic jams in a desperate attempt to flee the French capital ahead of the start of Emmanuel Macron's new national shutdown.

Video posted to Twitter shows huge numbers of Parisians attempting a mass exodus out of the city in a bid to avoid the 9pm curfew and the start of the second lockdown from midnight.

The night air was filled with the sound of blaring car horns while social media users estimated that Parisians had created 'hundreds of miles' of gridlock to escape to their second homes in the country.

Turkish nationalists marched through the outskirts of Lyon, France, following violent clashes with ethnic Armenians who had blocked a roadway to show their support for Yerevan in its war with Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Members of the ‘Gray Wolves’, a Turkish nationalist group, took to the streets of a Lyon suburb and a nearby commune on Wednesday night, after several Turks were reportedly injured earlier in the day by Armenian demonstrators.

France’s Independent Union of Police Commissioners said in a tweet that 150 “overexcited individuals” had participated in a “punitive expedition in search of Armenians” in Vienne, a commune 35 kilometers (22 miles) south of Lyon. Footage posted to social media shows a group of people shouting and waving Turkish flags while moving through Vienne, as a police cruiser retreats.

A WOMAN and a man were beheaded in a suspected terror attack inside a church in France this morning, cops and officials said.

Three people were killed in the bloody rampage which saw the knifeman storm the Basilica of Notre-Dame in Nice, south of France.

On Feb. 6, 2017, WikiLeaks released documents detailing the Central Intelligence Agency’s espionage program in the months leading up to and following France’s presidential election in 2012.

The agency used spies and cyberweapons to infiltrate and hack into the major political parties with competing candidates — the Socialists, the National Front and the Union for a Popular Movement. Their candidates — respectively François Hollande, Marine Le Pen and incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy — were also spied upon individually, as were many other prominent political figures.

An estimated 40,000 people attended a rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on Tuesday calling for a nationwide boycott of France and government policies meant to hurt the European nation in response to President Emmanuel Macron launching a campaign against radical Islamists.

Macron has begun the process of shutting down jihadist groups and arresting radical Islamists in the aftermath of the murder of Samuel Paty, a schoolteacher, for showing his students satirical cartoons of Muhammad by the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Macron has refused to apologize for the cartoons, as many in the Islamic world have demanded, instead announcing France would not yield to violence or intimidation in attempts to curtail free speech. The French government also held a national tribute to Paty, which many in the Islamic world considered an insult given Paty’s status as an infidel.

France’s largest employers’ federation on Monday urged companies to “resist the blackmail” over a product boycott by Arab countries as a backlash widens over Paris’s hardened stance against radical Islam.

French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to take the fight to Islamic radicals after the October 16 beheading of a history teacher who had shown cartoons of the Prophet Mohamed to pupils in a class discussion on free speech.

But his comments triggered protests in Muslim-majority countries at the weekend, with people burning pictures of Macron in Syria and setting fire to French flags in the Libyan capital Tripoli.

Boycotts of French goods are under way in supermarkets in Qatar and Kuwait, with further calls to spurn French products in Jordan and other states.

The response was swift. Following the brutal murder of teacher Samuel Paty on 16 October, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced his intention to shut down the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) as well as BarakaCity, a Muslim humanitarian non-profit organisation.

Former MP Barbara Romagnan reacted on Twitter: “Until proven otherwise, the CCIF has nothing to do with this. Shutting down an organisation that gives a voice to those who feel discriminated against does not fight terrorism…”

Only a handful of political figures have dared point out that the nation’s highly charged emotions could seriously jeopardise civil liberties. Since the beginning of October, Islamic spaces have fallen prey to an increasing number of police searches across France, including the Omar mosque in Paris, on 3 October; shortly thereafter, two schools and a funeral home.

A new poll conducted after the beheading of a teacher in Paris has found that 79% of French people believe Islamism has “declared war” on their country.

The survey was carried out by polling firm Ifop following the jihadist murder of geography teacher Samuel Paty, who was targeted for showing pupils cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad during a lesson about freedom of expression.

The murder prompted numerous mass protest marches across the country in defense of free speech and against the Islamic takeover of France.

It's been a weekend of a ratcheting diplomatic tit-for-tat angry statements between Turkey and France. Relations between the two NATO members were already on edge given France's strong backing of Greece's attempts to keep Turkish oil and gas exploration vessels out of its territorial waters in the eastern Mediterranean.

Paris has now recalled the French ambassador to Turkey in the biggest escalation to date as of late Saturday. It started with President Erdogan taking exception to how Emmanuel Macron characterized the brutal murder of middle school teacher Samuel Paty, beheaded outside Paris on October 16 by a young Chechen refugee angry the teacher had shown cartoon images of Muhammad.

Samuel Paty wanted to teach his students a lesson about free speech. He ended up paying with his life. Paty, 47, a middle-school teacher in a Paris suburb, announced to his civics class in early October that he would show some of the caricatures of the prophet Muhammad that the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo published in 2015 and that students were free to opt out of viewing the images.

The teacher was immediately denounced on social media. In a viral video, the Muslim father of one of Paty’s students related a series of fabrications. He falsely claimed that his daughter attended the class on free speech, that the teacher banned all Muslim students from the room and later showed the class a “photograph of a naked man” as if it were a portrait of “the Prophet of Islam,” and that his daughter had been excluded from the school in retaliation for her objections.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan added his voice Sunday to the growing Muslim chorus condemning France’s President Emmanuel Macron for criticizing Islam and “hurting the feelings” of its “peaceful followers.”

“Hallmark of a leader is he unites human beings, as Mandela did, rather than dividing them. This is a time when President Macron could have put healing touch and denied space to extremists rather than creating further polarisation and marginalisation that inevitably leads to radicalization,” he said, as reported by the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Khan claimed it is unfortunate Macron “encouraged Islamophobia” by attacking Islam for the actions of a few from the religion of peace and co-prosperity.

“Sadly, President Macron has chosen to deliberately provoke Muslims, including his own citizens through encouraging the display of blasphemous cartoons targeting Islam and our Prophet PBUH,” said PM Imran.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan called on Facebook to ban Islamophobic content on its platform, warning of a spike in radicalisation amongst Muslims, hours after he hit out at the French president for “attacking Islam”.

Pakistan summoned the French ambassador in Islamabad as anger spread on Monday over President Emmanuel Macron’s reaction to the murder last week of a French teacher by an Islamist.

Khan, in an open letter posted on Twitter on Sunday, said “growing Islamophobia” was encouraging extremism and violence worldwide, especially through social media platforms such as Facebook.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron of “mistreating” millions of Muslims after officials announced a crackdown on radical mosques and Islamic extremism across France.

“What is Macron's problem with Islam and Muslims? He needs mental health treatment,” Erdogan said at a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development Party on Saturday, Turkish media reported.

What else can be said to a head of state that does not understand the freedom of belief and treats the millions of members of a religious minority in his country this way? First of all, he needs [a] mental check.

A huge blaze has erupted in an abandoned building in France’s northern port city of Le Havre, triggering the evacuation of nearby houses. Footage from the scene shows a large column of fire and thick clouds of smoke in the air.
The fire broke out on Saturday. According to France’s emergency services, the building is an old warehouse that is currently abandoned.

Jeremie Breaud, mayor of Bron, near Lyon, has revealed he’s been threatened, with local graffiti stating, “We will cut your head off,” days after an Islamist extremist beheaded schoolteacher Samuel Paty.

Breaud disclosed that he’d been offered police protection after witnessing the threatening graffiti. “These threats must be taken seriously,” he said, in light of the recent killing, which has sparked deep shock and anger across France.

The mayor took to Twitter to share a photograph of the “violent writing” daubed on walls in his city, which, he says, shows how “like the police and firefighters, we locally elected officials are repeatedly victims of increasing violence.” He described the situation as “intolerable.”

“To see and not to speak would be the great betrayal,” said Enoch Powell. Worse is to see, to know, to speak, and then act destructively anyway. Angela Merkel, White Renegade of the Year 2015, did this when she welcomed a massive migrant flow into Europe years after declaring multiculturalism was a failure. Yet this year’s renegade has less excuse. He clearly warned of the consequences of mass immigration, but still pushes catastrophic policies on his people—even in the face of failure and furious opposition. This year’s White Renegade of the Year is the president of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin will propose the dissolution of several major Islamist associations after the murder of teacher Samuel Paty.

Interior Minister Darmanin said he would defer to the courts, but argued that he would propose the disbanding of several controversial Islamist groups such as the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF).

Darmanin went as far as stating that he believed several factors regarding the groups made them an “enemy of the Republic” and helped contribute to the environment that led to the beheading of Mr Paty last week, Le Figaro reports.

The CCIF was involved in overturning bans on the Islamic swimwear known as the burkini, which the group branded “political Islamophobia”, after several local governments along the French Rivera had forbidden it in 2016.

Pupils in the Paris suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis allegedly cheered footage of Pakistanis burning French flags in response to Charlie Hebdo republishing the Mohammed cartoons.

Teacher Jean-Baptiste Jorda claimed that one of his classes at a high school in the heavily migrant-populated Seine-Saint-Denis district outside Paris reacted with anger after being shown images of Mohammed that were published by Charlie Hebdo.

“They exploded,” he said, according to French magazine Marianne, and added: “They immediately insulted the newspaper. Some even said they wanted blasphemy to be banned by law.”

On 16 October, France was shaken by the gruesome beheading of 47-year-old Paris teacher Samuel Paty, who is thought to have been killed for showing a caricature of the prophet Muhammad to his students. An 18-year-old immigrant of Chechen origin who was the principal suspect in the murder was shot and killed by police during an arrest attempt.

A graphic "cutout photo" of decapitated French teacher was published in the latest issue of an online magazine allegedly run by Daesh* supporters in India, with terrorists threatening to attack everyone engaged in blasphemy against Prophet Mohammed, according to Homeland Security Today.

The outlet in question reportedly accompanied the pic of the victim's severed head, which is said to have been originally shared by the teacher’s murderer on his social media, with an image of sword and the following message:

A French mosque has expressed regret for sharing a video that is believed to have provoked the gruesome murder of a history and geography teacher. The country’s interior minister has demanded that it be closed down.

The teacher, Samuel Paty, was beheaded last week after he showed his class a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed as part of a lesson on freedom of expression. Police shot and killed the suspect, an 18-year-old Chechen refugee, in a standoff following the grisly attack. The murder, which occurred in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, shook France, triggering demonstrations and a government crackdown against Islamic extremism in the country.

Paty was targeted after the father of one of his students published several videos on social media in which he denounced the instructor as a “thug” and said that he had issued a complaint against him. The videos reportedly spread among the region’s Muslim community and one of them was even shared by a local mosque, the Grand Mosque of Pantin.

After Teacher’s Decapitation, France Unleashes a Broad Crackdown on ‘the Enemy Within’

Police in France have arrested an 11th suspected terrorist following a brutal attack in a Paris suburb that left a teacher decapitated. The assailant, an 18-year-old immigrant from Chechnya, was shot and killed by police, but the gruesome nature of the attack has rattled French citizens, who are inured to violence tied to Islamic terror.

French police arrested 4 close relatives of the attacker shortly after the attack unfolded on Friday afternoon. Five other individuals were detained later, including the father of a pupil at Paty’s school and an acquaintance of the pupil’s father known to the intelligence services, according to anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said on Saturday. It's unclear if the acquaintance is suspected of somehow playing a role in the attack. A 10th person was placed in custody later on Saturday, then the 11th suspect was arrested early Sunday. No information about the latest arrest has been released, Reuters reports.

The decapitating in Paris of a French teacher who showed his pupils a caricature of the prophet Muhammad — from the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo — during a moral and civic education class discussion about freedom of speech, deserves to be unreservedly condemned by everyone. Extrajudicial executions are barbaric acts of extreme cruelty that violate international standards on human rights irrespective of where, or by whom, such heinous atrocities are committed.

The French prime minister joined thousands of demonstrators on Sunday rallying in tribute to a history teacher who was brutally beheaded at a school near Paris for showing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed to his class.

Samuel Paty, 47, was stabbed to death and beheaded by Aboulakh Anzorov, 18, in a northern suburb of the French capital on Friday afternoon.

In Paris, thousands including prime minister Jean Castex gathered to pay tribute to the slain teacher yesterday in a defiant show of solidarity at the Place de la Republique.

Over a hundred protesters took to the streets of Paris to decry the new curfew introduced by President Macron to stop the spread of Covid-19. Restaurant staff complained about the restrictions as customers supported the rally.

People carrying flares and chanting “Freedom!” marched through Paris’ streets on Saturday, denouncing the recent restrictions imposed by the government to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

“I work in the food business, do you want me to stop working?” a man supporting the protest told the Ruptly video agency. “I hope that the government stops these ridiculous measures that put people in the streets.”

Thousands of pro-migration protesters took to the streets of Paris, demanding that the French government give amnesty to the “undocumented” migrant population just one day after a Chechen migrant is believed to have beheaded a teacher in Paris.

On Saturday, several thousand protesters were seen marching in the French capital — defying the country’s China virus lockdown measures — as a part of the ‘March of Solidarity’ for migrants “without papers” — a left-wing euphemism for illegal aliens.

The organisers of the protest, which included the Federation of Associations of Solidarity with All Immigrants (FASTI), also called on the government to close migrant detention centres and provide “housing for all”, according to Le Figaro.

Police in France have arrested an 11th suspected terrorist following a brutal attack in a Paris suburb that left a teacher decapitated. The assailant, an 18-year-old immigrant from Chechnya, was shot and killed by police, but the gruesome nature of the attack has rattled French citizens, who are inured to violence tied to Islamic terror.

French police arrested 4 close relatives of the attacker shortly after the attack unfolded on Friday afternoon. Five other individuals were detained later, including the father of a pupil at Paty’s school and an acquaintance of the pupil’s father known to the intelligence services, according to anti-terrorism prosecutor Jean-Francois Ricard said on Saturday. It's unclear if the acquaintance is suspected of somehow playing a role in the attack. A 10th person was placed in custody later on Saturday, then the 11th suspect was arrested early Sunday. No information about the latest arrest has been released, Reuters reports.

According to AFP, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was indicted for "criminal association" in the ongoing investigation into suspicions of receiving Libyan money for his presidential campaign in 2007.

After four days of hearings, the National Financial Prosecutor's Office (PNF) indicted Sarkozy, on Monday (Oct. 12), with "criminal association" in the Libyan case. The release of PNF's indictment was only made public on Friday (Oct. 16).

In view of two noteworthy events which occurred in early September this year, it may be interesting to take another look at France’s plans to joining the power games being played out in the Indian and Pacific Ocean region, which is becoming a key arena in the current phase of the global political contest.

It is “another look”, as NEO briefly dealt with this subject back in 2016 in connection with a speech given by the French Minister of the Armed Forces, Jean-Yves Le Drian (now Foreign Minister) in the Shangri-La Dialogue forum, which is held every year in Singapore by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

With a second wave of coronavirus hitting many countries and new lockdowns achieving little, might we finally see ministers and health officials being held accountable for their dreadful decisions?

As French police investigate the government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and launch a series of raids on the homes of leading politicians and senior health officials, elsewhere around the globe Prime Ministers and Presidents should be starting to sweat. Because the people want payback.

Payback for the months of sacrifice they have made of their children’s education, their jobs, their personal freedoms and their mental health. Payback for their losses, of loved ones, of their futures, of hope.

And if that means the police kicking down a few doors and hauling shame-faced politicians and bureaucrats from their beds so that they might be pressed for answers, then so be it.

French police searched the homes of Health Minister Olivier Véran, former prime minister Edouard Philippe and other officials on Thursday as part of an inquiry into the government's handling of the coronavirus crisis, the ministry said.

Véran is one of several current or former ministers under investigation over their response to the coronavirus pandemic following complaints by victims of Covid-19 that they were too slow to act.

Véran's office was also searched as part of the probe, as was the home of the director of the national health agency, Jérôme Salomon.

Critics accuse the government of being too slow to roll out large-scale Covid-19 testing and playing down the importance of wearing masks at the start of the pandemic, when face coverings were in short supply and being reserved for health workers.

The geopolitics of the cyber world is again influencing the global political and economic order. Now, a new international tension arises around a digital tax, known as the ‘Google tax’. Such tension could trigger a trade war, this time between the United States and France, which would reduce world GDP, warned the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), after confirming that there will be no agreement between both countries in 2020.

France will enforce a month-long night-time curfew in Paris and eight other major cities and towns aimed at fighting the Coronavirus second wave, it was announced last night.

The capital will now shut down for nine hours from 9pm until 6am, in a bid to stop the disease circulating, President Emmanuel Macron revealed.

This strict State of Emergency measure was also applied to Lille, Rouen, Saint-Etienne, Toulouse, Lyon, Grenoble, Aix-en-Provence and Montpellier.

For the third day in a row, France reported a record number of new cases - 26,896 new coronavirus cases, by far the biggest one-day increase on record, and well above the 20k cases reported on Friday.

In addition, France added 133 hospitalizations, bringing the total to 7,977, while another 17 ICU patients brought the total to 1,456.

Health officials counted 54 new deaths, bringing the total to 32,655.

Just yesterday NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on Turkey to use its "considerable influence to calm tensions" between Armenia and Azerbaijan as fierce fighting continues in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh breakaway region.

The appeal was widely mocked by commentators in the West as well as in Armenian media, given it's been well documented since the start of the conflict that Turkey has been a party to the conflict in backing its declared "brother country" Azerbaijan. And of course there's the historic Armenian Genocide which caused many to laugh at the strange NATO appeal, as if Turkey is somehow 'neutral'.

France has joined in the controversy over alleged Turkish intervention, as according to the AFP French government sources are now formally charging there's evidence of Turkish 'military involvement' in Karabakh.

The Paris city government has announced it will be transforming the historic former town hall in the city’s 1st arrondissement into a reception centre for asylum seekers and migrants.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced the move on Sunday, saying that the humanitarian mission that was previously located in the notorious Porte de la Chapelle area would be moved to the very centre of Paris in the vicinity of the world-famous Louvre museum.

“In the former town hall of the 1st arrondissement, we will install the humanitarian stop that has been open for several years at the Porte de la Chapelle. Paris will continue to play its role as a safe haven,” Hidalgo said.

The French president is showing signs that he’s willing to follow the path first forged by General De Gaulle, who kicked US forces out of France and pulled the country out of NATO to preserve sovereignty and independence.

It was a remarkable statement from a modern European leader. During a visit to Lithuania this week, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “We, some countries more than others, gave up on our strategic independence by depending too much on American weapons systems. We cannot accept to live in a bipolar world made up of the US and China.”

Paris restaurant owners and staff staged a noisy protest on Friday following the government’s warning that the French capital is likely to go on ‘maximum alert’ next week amid a second Covid wave, forcing premises to shut.

Standing in front of their businesses at 11:45am local time, wearing black armbands and making a furore using pots and pans, the proprietors and staff of restaurants, bars, and cafes urged Emmanuel Macron’s government not to tighten Covid-19 restrictions further.

They believe that restaurants are not to blame for the spike in coronavirus cases and fear the impact of further restrictions on the hospitality industry. Some establishments expressed their disapproval via Twitter, declaring “we must stay open,” and pleading, “let us work.”

Children as young as twelve years old attacked a butcher in the French city of Lyon, allegedly over the shop selling pork products.

The attacks took place on September 19th at the butcher shop located in the 8th arrondissement of Lyon with the first incident at around 4 pm just seeing the children hurl insults at the employees. “They were blaming us for selling pork,” one of the butchers said.

Around fifteen minutes several of the workers at the shop went outside and told the children to go elsewhere, the three returned to the shop with a tear gas canister and emptied it in the shop with customers inside, local newspaper Le Progrès reports.

Police arrived on the scene and chased off the six children but they arrived back on the scene once again shortly after 6 pm with another three young people. According to one employee, a member of the group took out a fake gun to threaten the shop.

The French identitarian writer and critic of Jewish power Hervé Ryssen was jailed on 18 September after having been found guilty of hate speech on three occasions. He has exhausted his right to appeal. He faces 17 months in jail and potentially more as he has other trials awaiting him.

Ryssen was found guilty of “insult, provocation, and public defamation due to origin, ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion.” In 2016, he was sentenced to 5 months in jail for passages in his books Understanding Judaism, Understanding Anti-Semitism. In 2017, he was sentenced to 6 months in jail for “anti-Semitic messages” on Twitter and Facebook.

Ankara previously stated that it would support Baku both in negotiations and in combat, also warning that any attack against Azerbaijani territories is an attack against Turkey itself.

French President Emmanuel Macron has slammed the Turkish statements on the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh as dangerous, "warlike" rhetoric.

"I have noted Turkey's political declarations [in favour of Azerbaijan], which I think are inconsiderate and dangerous", he stressed.

Fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia entered a fourth day on Wednesday in the biggest eruption of the decades-old conflict since a 1994 ceasefire.

At least 2,300 Armenian soldiers have been killed or wounded by Azerbaijani troops since the conflict began on Sunday, Azerbaijan’s defence ministry has said, according to Turkish media outlet Anadolu Agency.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Turkey’s “warlike” rhetoric was encouraging Azerbaijan to reconquer Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a disputed region inside Azerbaijan and controlled by ethnic Armenians. It broke away from Azerbaijan in a war in the 1990s but is not recognised by any country as an independent republic.

EMMANUEL MACRON is desperately fighting off a furious backlash in Marseille over the Government's order to shut down bars and restaurants as part of a toughening of rules to curb rising coronavirus infections.

France has demanded that every EU country be forced to take in a share of illegal immigrants arriving on European soil.

Speaking to France Inter on Wednesday, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin asserted that “the migration question can only be settled at the European level” and that every EU nation must share the burden of resettling third world migrants.

“We still want a European solidarity. There is no reason why only Italy, France, and Germany, broadly speaking, with Greece share this solidarity,” Darmanin said.

The French minister made his remarks shortly before Brussels revealed that a “compulsory solidarity mechanism” would be part of plans to force a Europe-wide asylum and migration system on every country in the bloc.

Exactly one week ago the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was severely damaged by fire. It seems that the official explanation at this point appears to be that the fire was accidental. Of course, this hasn’t stopped the alt-right talking heads from implying that it was probably the work of Muslims as part of a campaign against the Christian West and suspecting a cover-up by officials.

It is not the point of this post to argue for or against the theory of Muslim involvement in the fire. There does seem to be reasons to suspect that the event could be arson. It appears that there has been a string of attacks of one sort or another on Christian churches in France of late and a former chief architect and engineer for Notre Dame Cathedral expressed doubts that the fire could have been accidental, stating:

At the behest of powerful Jewish supremacist groups, a French court has sent another “unrepentant” goy to prison on Friday for daring to alert the public of historical facts that implicitly contradict the state-sanctioned Jewish version of what actually transpired in World War II:

Pierre Person, Deputy general delegate of La République En Marche! (LREM) has confirmed he will step down from his executive role and insisted “nothing has changed” since the party gained power in 2017. Mr Person, who helped to mastermind Mr Macon’s presidential victory three years ago, insisted LREM is "no longer dynamic enough" and hoped his decision would serve as an "electric shock" to "give new life" to the party.

French rap artist Freeze Corleone released his debut studio album LMF last week, with a music video for one of his songs posted on YouTube amassing more than a million views.

French rapper Freeze Corleone is under investigation over his allegedly anti-semitic song lyrics after several officials and organisations raised an outcry, writes Daily Mail.

The Senegal-based 28-year old artist's debut studio album “La Menace Fantome” (“The Phantom Menace”), released on 11 September, soared to number three in the country’s charts, selling more than 15,000 copies and attracting 5.2 million listeners on the Spotify digital music platform in just three days.

However, the rapper’s lyrics include the line “F**k the Shoah (Holocaust)!” along with lines such as “I arrive determined like Adolf in the 1930s,” and, “Every day I f**k Israel like I live in Gaza.”

Trump Administration officials have been saying this for weeks, but on Friday reiterated their intentions to try to enforce a UN Security Council resolution that includes broad sanctions against Iran. Officials say they expect every nation to comply.

The glaring problem with this is that the resolution doesn’t exist, at least not as an active resolution the US wants. The P5+1 nuclear deal gave the US the authority to reimpose sanctions on Iran, but the US had withdrawn from that pact years ago. Though the Trump Administration argued that didn’t matter, the UN has virtually unanimously rejected their interpretation, and rejected the UN Security Council resolution. The US believes the resolution becomes active Sunday, but the reality is it just doesn’t exist legally.

French public support for the reintroduction of the death penalty has surged in 2020, according to a poll that stated 55 per cent of French residents want to see capital punishment make a return.

The figures come from the annual Ipsos/Sopra Steria survey for the Jean Jaurès Foundation and the Institut Montaigne, entitled “French Fractures” and shows a massive surge in support for capital punishment across the political spectrum in 2020.

The highest rate of support for the death penalty comes from supporters of the populist National Rally (RN), led by former presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, with 85 per cent of members in support, compared to 82 per cent in 2019.