France, Under Siege

"I'm from Nice and this is a tragedy once again."

"We're a free country. Let's love freedom -- that's a message to the world. No god should kill."

Frederic Lefevre, 50, Nice, France

 

"Macon is leading Islamophobia."

"The Muslim world will not let this go in vain. We'll rise and stand in solidarity against him."

Akramul Haq, Dhaka Bangladesh demonstrator

 

"We want the truth about how my son carried out this terrorist attack. I want to see what the surveillance cameras showed."

"I will not give up my son's rights outside the country. I want my son, dead or alive."

Mass Murderer Ibrahim Issaoui's mother Gamra  

"We are Muslims, we are against terrorism, we are poor."

"Show me that my brother committed the attack and judge him as a terrorist. If he was the attacker, he will take his responsibility."

Mass Murderer Ibrahim Issaoui's brother Wissem

 

"Obviously, we give precedence to people who are signalled by law enforcement or by Tunisian authorities."

"The number of spots are not infinite, and he could not therefore be placed inside a repatriation centre [in custody, after Issaoui was issued  an Italian expulsion order when he arrived at the island of Lampedusa, the closest European point of entry from Tunisia]."

Italy's interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese

A policeman stands guard in front of the Notre Dame church in Nice, France, Friday, Oct. 30, 2020. A new suspect is in custody in the investigation into a gruesome attack by a Tunisian man who killed three people in a French church. France heightened its security alert amid religious and geopolitical tensions around cartoons mocking the Muslim prophet. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole)

Thousands of soldiers have been deployed by President Emmanuel Macron to protect places of worship and schools in France with the country at its highest level of security alert following the second deadly knife attack in two weeks. A Tunisian extremist group not previously known has claimed responsibility for the knife attack on Notre-Dame Basilica following on the grisly murder and beheading of French schoolteacher Samuel Paty the week before. That the assassin who murdered a 60-year-old woman praying a the Nice church and beheaded her, slaughtered the church sextant and mortally wounded a 44-year old woman, a mother of three, committed an act of Islamist terrorism is clear enough. He had with him a copy of the Koran, and shouted 'Allahu Akbar!' repeatedly.

 

French, Italian and Tunisian investigators are attempting to investigate whether the accused, Ibrahim Issaoui, acted with collaborators and whether the attack was premeditated. Overnight yesterday a 35-year-old man was arrested, while a 47-year-old who had met with the assailant the night prior to the attack was already in custody. More latterly, a third suspect was placed in French custody. The attacker himself is in a French hospital, critically wounded when he was shot by police.

France is host to the largest Muslim population in Europe. It also has the largest Jewish population in Europe, although Jews are increasingly leaving France for Israel, where they feel they will be safer. The influx of Muslims in France has resulted in ever growing anti-Semitic attacks against the country's Jews. Jewish social centres, schools and synagogues have for years lived under protective police presence, the result of deadly Muslim attacks. Interior Minister Gerald Damarnin stated "We are in a war against an enemy that is both inside and outside".

"We have to be vigilant, we have to be attentive", said Nice Police chief Richard Gianotti, pointing out that increasingly any symbol of Christianity or the Republic must be considered now a potential target for Islamist jihadists. In Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Palestinian territories tens of thousands emerged from Friday prayers to stage anti-French riots. Police in Islamabad briefly fired tear gas at protesters breaking through security blockades to reach the French embassy.

Raging marchers in Dhaka chanted "Boycott French products", carrying banners pronouncing Macron "the world's biggest terrorist", while burning effigies of the French present. Protests in India, Lebanon and Somalia saw the Islamic world condemning France for effectively identifying Islamist terrorism as a threat against civil non-Muslim society whose cultures and values are clearly at odds with those of Islam. In its secular embrace of free speech and the European nation with the greatest number of Muslims where constant displays of violent anti-Western rejection take place, France is indeed between a rock and a hard place; challenged both externally and internally.

The French government, well aware of the threat that French Muslims pose to the French Jewish population sent 7,000 troops to be deployed for Yon Kippur at synagogues, schools and social centres after the September stabbing at the former offices of Charlie Hebdo. Now it is clear that the enormous number of churches and cathedrals in France will also require protection. In essence, it is as though France is succumbing to martial law to protect its citizens. It is, in fact, how French Jews feel they have been living for years. 

And for years attacks have taken place on French churches with graffiti and vandalism and arson, with between two and three incidents taking place daily on an annual basis. The second-largest church in Paris, St.Sulpice, was torched last year. President Macron is perfectly right; he said it before and he's saying it again: France is under attack. And he promises to take action. Perhaps at this point it is futile. France may be under attack but an attack of another kind long preceded the violent attacks when France absorbed millions of Muslims.

Islam is a religion that demands full and total surrender to its divine precepts, its sharia law, its expectation that the faithful must commit without question or qualm to Islam's demands of its faithful. As such it was never a good candidate to join the citizens of a Western, democratic, secular nation -- for Islam will never  surrender its authority to those of a non-Muslim government, bringing with it all the traditional founding values of ultimate conquest by any expeditious means.

"So I understand and respect that people could be shocked by these cartoons, but I will never accept that one can justify physical violence over these cartoons, and I will always defend the freedom in my country to write, to think, to draw."

"My role is to calm things down, which is what I’m doing, but at the same time, it’s to protect these rights."

French President Emmanuel Macron

A policeman carries flowers in front of the Notre Dame church in tribute to the victims of a deadly knife attack in Nice, France, October 30, 2020. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

 

 

Down To The Wire -- And May The Best (?) Man Win

"We know the disease. We social distance. We do all of the things that you have to do."

"If you get close, wear a mask. 'Oh, it's controversial.' It's not controversial to me. You get close, you wear a mask."

"Social distance, social distance."

U.S. President Donald Trump, Tampa, Florida -- Maskless audience

 

"They talk about the suburban women. And somebody said, ‘I don’t know if the suburban woman likes you.’ I said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘They may not like the way you talk,’ but I’m about law and order. I’m about having you safe. I’m about having your suburban communities. I don’t want to build low-income housing next to your house."

"Suburban women, they should like me more than anybody here tonight because I ended the regulation that destroyed your neighbourhood. I ended the regulation that brought crime to the suburbs, and you’re going to live the American dream. So can I ask you to do me a favour? Suburban women, will you please like me? I saved your damn neighbourhood, OK?"

U.S. President Donald Trump

From the incredulity that was evinced by Democrats and the jubilation mixed with disbelief by the Republicans from the very moment it was clear that Donald J. Trump, businessman, entrepreneur, celebrity, man of wealth and television reality series-famer won the presidential election four years ago, a campaign to disinvite him from the White House was launched by leftists, the Democratic Party, feminists and any crank who gagged on the notion of this crude, crass man administering the executive affairs of the Republic of the United States of America. The campaign to smear and dislodge him gave no quarter and never ended.

An unprecedented campaign to smear him on any index of unsuitability to be president of the U.S. And they had plenty of help from their target who continually tweeted his opinion on anything at all, a man who resisted the pleas of those surrounding him at the White House in the hopes his bumptious rudeness could be tamed. He succeeded in alienating America's traditional Western allies by his negative comments on critical international alliances, leaving other government heads gasping for air and trying to puzzle out what the man's next move might be.

Highly unusual as it is that an incumbent president would not be re-elected for a second term, it certainly appears as though this is the direction this campaign is heading toward, with the Democratic selection for their version of a president with impeccable qualifications challenging the detestable Trump. To an outsider looking in, it appears as though there actually is no contest. Mr. Trump's challenger is not quite there. Oh, he's there, more or less, in his basement, purportedly coordinating things, while forgetting most other things, and he did appear for several televised debates with the president, but it seems he's not quite 'there'.

He is the conventional dummy, an over-the-hill politician who played second string to a hugely popular former president who, despite his popularity at home and abroad failed to distinguish himself and his country with his controversial and often unintelligible decisions. Now electors in America face a choice that is actually not much of a choice; between two faulty candidates. One of whom has done a fairly credible job of the presidency, the other agitating for his opportunity to overturn everything that his hated rival for the position managed to perform; both the good and the not-so-good.

COVID-19 has claimed over 225,000 U.S. lives, an astonishing situation for a premiere country of economic might and influence making it the sole superpower on the globe even under the condition that has led to its alienation from the tight little circle of Western allies. Mr. Trump has not distinguished himself in the manner in which he has personally led the challenge that COVID presented to the U.S. In his focus on restoring the economy, he has appeared to excel, however, even though the division between the wealthy and the poor in America continues to widen.

The political polarization in the country is staggering, however in its depth and vituperative distancing, an unhealthy failing that didn't start with Mr. Trump but certainly seemed to gain strength and ossify beyond the possibility of both political parties working together for the furtherance of the country's future fortunes. Should Joe Biden win the presidency, and that seems increasingly likely, the U.S. will finally secure a female president with the added bonus of a woman of colour. She will be nudged further to the left by the manipulation of other Democrats who have succumbed to the allure of  extreme 'progressive left' sympathies.

President Donald Trump, Iowa campaign rally (AP/Alex Brandon)

And although Mr. Trump's 'America First' campaign was seen as hostility in action with his trading partners, a President Biden, for as long as he will be around, will institute a focus on 'America First' that will make Mr. Trump's focus a watery pretender, revealing the new Democratic protectionist position in U.S. trade and industry. With a mere three days left to go before Americans swamp the polls in legendary numbers that will go down in posterity as a true voting anomaly, it appears as though Mr. Biden is in the ascendancy. 

And then, and then, Americans will live with the consequences of that decision for four years. It's just possible that the Republication reaction will be a mirror image of the Democratic reaction that served to divide their country far more than the Republican president is blamed for having done. But then, time will tell, it always does. That America will remain dangerously polarized, however, appears a given. That law and order that has slipped of late into crisis will continue its downward trajectory is certainly concerning.

The role of the media in the past four years has been resolutely and resoundingly anti-Trump but for rare occasions reflective of what is called 'right-wing' outliers. It is shameful that the media which should confine itself to delivering news in a neutral manner, has taken it upon itself to champion one candidate against another; true interference in the democratic process. All the more so that it has chosen to bypass investigating the connection between Joe Biden and his son's business arrangements in Ukraine and China in a questionable and certainly immoral and likely corrupt influence-peddling scheme.

Getty Images

"France Will Not Surrender Its Core Values"

"Very clearly, it is France which is under attack, [all of France offers its support to Catholics] so that their religion can be exercised freely in our country. So that every religion can be practiced. If we are attacked once again it is for the values which are ours: freedom, for the possibility on our soil to believe freely and not to give in to any spirit of terror."I say it with great clarity once again today: we won't surrender anything." French President Emmanuel Macron

The suspect was detained minutes after the attack at the basilica   EPA

October 2020: French teacher Samuel Paty is beheaded outside a school in a suburb of Paris

September 2020: Two people are stabbed and seriously hurt in Paris near the former offices of Charlie Hebdo, where Islamist militants carried out a deadly attack in 2015

October 2019: Radicalised police computer operator Mickaël Harpon is shot dead after stabbing to death three officers and a civilian worker at Paris police headquarters

July 2016: Two attackers kill a priest, Jacques Hamel, and seriously wound another hostage after storming a church in a suburb of Rouen in northern France

July 2016: A gunman drives a large lorry into a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, killing 86 people in an attack claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group

November 2015: Gunmen and suicide bombers launch multiple co-ordinated attacks on the Bataclan concert hall, a major stadium, restaurants and bars in Paris, leaving 130 people dead and hundreds wounded

January 2015: Two Islamist militant gunmen force their way into Charlie Hebdo's offices and shoot dead 12 people

That these attacks will continue to occur appears predictable and, it would also seem, unavoidable. A country that has long lost its sovereign right to declare what is lawful, seeing justice and legality overturned by the infiltration of extremists faithful to an ideology of fascist religious devotion that will not accept that in the Republic of France, blaspheme is as nothing averse, viewed as nothing less than freedom to express oneself as one will; nothing is sacred, no criticism, no vestige of pointed sarcasm or belittling of a religion is to be avoided in a purely secular society for which freedom of religion is guaranteed but what is not guaranteed is freedom from being mocked.

Another atrocity, this time committed by the illegal entry to France of a Tunisian ordered to return from Italy which he illegally accessed, to his country of birth. A Muslim majority country where Muslims can be assured no one would dare or even want to, mock the divine status of the Prophet Mohammad. Brahim Aioussaoi left Tunisia to travel to Lampedusa in September, an Italian island where he was informed he must leave Italy. Instead he made his way to Nice where he murdered three people, repeatedly screaming Allahu Akbar!

On Thursday morning another man brandishing a firearm in Avignon refused to surrender his weapon, ignored a warning shot by police and was shot and killed. In Saudi Arabia a man stabbed a guard standing sentry outside the French consulate in Jidda, wounding the guard before being arrested. This, one attack after another while France is still in mourning over the grisly death of French middle-school teacher Samuel Paty, beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee living in Paris. Who set out to murder the 47-year-old father of a six-year-old child to avenge the Prophet whose image in cartoons was used by Mr. Paty teaching a civics class. 

A French policeman stands guard near the scene of the knife attack at the Notre Dame church in Nice, France, on Oct. 29, 2020. (Daniel Cole / AP)

Mr. Paty often used those cartoons, caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad originally published by the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Where, in 2015 Islamist jihadists stormed the offices of the magazine to slaughter eleven of its staff, claiming it their right to avenge the blasphemous mocking of the Prophet. Others with no connection to the magazine or the caricatures, simply shopping at a kosher market in Paris were also targeted; theirs was the sin of being Jewish, for which the Prophet was also avenged.

Suddenly -- just as happened long after the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published their cartoons a decade earlier, mocking the Prophet Mohammad, a time lag occurred between the event and the build-up of an purposefully incited reaction among Muslims worldwide, resulting in protests by mobs of enraged Muslims looting and destroying and boycotting Danish goods -- allegations began to surface in Paris around the class Mr. Paty taught. 

 

A French police officer stands next to a portrait of slain French teacher Samuel Paty in the city of Montpellier on 21 October 2020 (AFP)

 

Radical Islamists expressed outrage online on Facebook, Instagram and allied social media platforms, inciting to revenge the Prophet from unforgivable offence of lese-majeste. Officials with the education ministry were lobbied, police were called on to investigate the "Islamophobia" that teacher Paty was subjecting his Muslim students to, with insistence on disciplinary action. Mr. Paty responded by filing a libel case against one obnoxious parent of one of his students whose claims against him verged on malicious threats. 

Because of the growing threats he was receiving he began to alter his daily habit of walking through a wooded area from the school to his home which he shared with his six-year-old son, choosing instead to walk a direct course through public areas used by many pedestrians. His alertness failed to protect him from the fanatical violence of a stranger confronting him on a street near the school, beheading him, and mutilating his body. 

After which the murderer took pleasure in taking photographs of his handiwork, broadcasting photographs and videos on Twitter and Instagram, sending them to President Macron, boasting of having "avenged the Prophet". Until he was cornered by police, shot and killed when he threatened them. French police have thwarted 32 attacks by terrorist operators associated with al-Qaeda since 2017. Other atrocities have taken place irrespective of a state of constant vigilance.

Now, President Macron is considering enacting a new law banning home-schooling, in the recognition that evading the public school system and using home-schooling as a shield for radical Koranic schools represents one of the signal problems in France, channeling young Muslims into attitudes of hostility to the country they've been born to and grown up into -- without absorbing its values. Where the accusations levelled by such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan of French Islamophobia resonates.

Where Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan concurred with demands by his national assembly to recall the Pakistani ambassador to France, except that Pakistan currently has no ambassador in France. Instead Khan issued an open letter to the Muslim world leaders that they must "collectively counter the growing Islamophobia in non-Muslim states, especially Western states"; clearly 'Western states' have no business whatever reacting to the murderous violence Islamists foist upon them, for to do so is insulting to jihad.

 

France pays tribute to Samuel Paty (Photo: Pascal GUYOT / AFP via Getty Images)

 

Aversion to Muslim Neighbours? Wonder Why!

"With his reckless actions under the pretense of ‘supporting freedom of expression’, [Macron] is triggering a conflict, [a] rupture whose global repercussions can deeply and negatively impact people of all beliefs."

Turkish Parliament

 

"The Turkish president does not represent Muslims, nor the Muslim world. [Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan] has political disagreements with many countries in the region such as Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt." 

"It's shameful [Erdogan’s attacks on French President Emmanuel Macron and his call for a boycott of French goods]."

"In France, Muslims have as much freedom and enjoy the same rights as all their fellow citizens. There are 2,500 Muslim houses of prayer. The laws of the republic allow for everyone to live their faith freely."

"French citizens of the Muslim faith [should rally behind Macron.] Let’s be strong together."

Imam Hassen Chalghoumi, president, Conference of Imams of France 

A Palestinian burns a picture depicting French President Emmanuel Macron [Suhaib Salem/Reuters]

"[President Emmanuel Macron is contributing to the radicalization of people by insisting that caricatures of Prophet Muhammad falls under free speech.] You are forcing people into terrorism, pushing people towards it, not leaving them any choice, creating the conditions for the growth of extremism in young people’s heads."

"You can boldly call yourself the leader and inspiration of terrorism in your country."

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyron

 

"[Malaysia is] gravely concerned [over the] growing open hostilities towards Muslims following French teacher Samuel Paty’s brutal killing]."

"As a matter of principle, we strongly condemn any inflammatory rhetoric and provocative acts that seek to defame the religion of Islam."

Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein

More than one in four non-Muslims in Austria do not want Muslims neighbors. This percentage is remarkably high in the UK as well, at 21 percent. In Germany, 19 percent of non-Muslim respondents say that they would not welcome Muslim neighbors. The figure stands at 17 percent in Switzerland and 14 percent in France. Overall, Muslims are among the most rejected social group.

#IStandWithFrance and #WeStandWithFrance is trending in Hindu-majority India, the country hosting the third-largest Muslim population worldwide. Indian Twitter is alive with support for France's position on extremist Islamism where in various Muslim-packed banlieues in France some mosques and their religious leaders along with other Muslim special-interest groups foment Islamist notions of defiance, claiming French laws to be subservient to Islamic Sharia law. It is where the violence of jihad is promoted, and which the French government has now declared itself at 'war' with Islamist 'separatism'. In India, that message resonates, leading thousands to express solidarity with France.

In the Muslim world, however, Turkish President Erdogan unleashed a storm of vengeance against French President Emmanuel Macron when he retorted that he needed to have his head examined and furiously informed Turks that French goods should be shunned. Presumably he also ordered his wife to stop carrying her costly French-designer handbag. In Kuwait, the board of directors of the Al-Naeem Cooperative Society launched a boycott of all French products, ordering their removal from supermarket shelves. 

"Based on the position of French President Emmanuel Macron and his support for the offensive cartoons against our beloved prophet, we decided to remove all French products from the market and branches until further notice", announced the Dahiyat al-Thuhr association as it followed suit. Reminiscent of the 2005 outrage in the Muslim world when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a dozen editorial cartoons, most of them depicting the Prophet Mohammad in undignified poses.  

 

And out of that episode came universal rage in the Islamic world erupting into violent protests, a number of deaths associated with those protests and widespread boycotting of Danish goods. Now France is facing a similar situation, sufficiently so that its government has taken steps to warn French expats to take extra safety precautions wherever they are in Muslim-majority countries to avoid any controversy over the Mohammad cartoons and to stay away from protests where they too could become vengeance targets like French teacher Samuel Paty.

 

The situation of his death is a replay of the 2015 Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine publication of the Mohammad cartoons that resulted in an atrocity that killed a dozen people at the editorial offices of the magazine when Islamist gunmen went on a murder spree, that spread by other jihadists targeting a French kosher supermarket slaughtering three more, plus a female police officer a day previous. These vengeance killings by Islamists as punishment for being Jewish and for sacrilege posing as freedom of speech is what has motivated the French president to launch a steep investigation of the presence of Muslim enemies of the Republic.

In January 2015, millions of people flooded the streets of Paris and other French cities to denounce the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attacks. An angry nation brandished brightly colored pencils and banners, defending free expression and France's staunchly secular ideology.

Typical of Islam, the frothing-at-the-mouth accusations of Western-based attacks against Islamic values and the sacredness of its founder-prophet, blaming the West for the terrorist excesses of pious, faithful jihadists responding to the call of Islam, the religion of peace, to mount terror on the non-Muslim countries of 'war'. And so it is that Islamists run amok in their pernicious, vile attacks against infidel targets, while the clerics espousing the glory of jihad blame the West's self-protective response to Islamist atrocities against the West, is claimed to be nurturing terrorism.

 

To their credit, Saudi Arabia appears to have spurned calls elsewhere in the Muslim world for a boycott of French products, even while the Kingdom condemns the cartoons. But in Bangladesh, thousands of protesters marched through Dhaka, rabidly furious Bangladeshis stamping on posters of President Macron. Iran took the outraged step of diplomacy, summoning the French charge d'affaires in registering their protest against the cartoons; an absurdity of sanctimonious heights from the premiere fomenter of violence in the West, a signal champion of terrorism.

 

And so it is that the French foreign ministry has warned its nationals to take particular personal care to protect themselves in Indonesia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq and Mauritania, to avoid public gatherings and upgrade their level of alertness. Since the murder of French teacher Paty, people in France have themselves been protesting, displaying the cartoons in the street. In one city the cartoons were projected on to a building. At least one Paris mosque has been temporarily closed for its part in urging action against Samuel Paty for showing cartoons of Mohammad in one of his middle school classes in history.

 

Security alerts saw the closure of the areas around the Arc de Triomphe on Tuesday and the Eiffel Tower in central Paris. A bomb alert forced the evacuation of the Arc de Triomphe area and surrounding subway stations. The discovery of a bag filled with ammunition necessitated the brief evacuation of the Paris Champ de Mars park around the Eiffel Tower, in another display of Muslim disenchantment with the French government's taking such paltry matters as the murder of a Frenchman for 'insulting' the Prophet seriously.

 

A woman holds a picture of Samuel Paty, at the Place de la Liberte in Lille on October 18.

 

 

The Poor Get Poorer And The Rich Get Richer

"It [amassed public data on economic indicators] showed us very early on that despite lockdowns and despite some economic sectors being clearly disrupted -- such as airlines -- there was life in other sectors."

"[Our clients] did not panic during the sell-down. Instead they used it to build up positions."

"Compared to 2008, 2009, you had a huge stimulus coming into the system straight away. And there was already plenty of liquidity, with very little places for it to go."

"As a result, asset prices across financial markets have held up very well."

Sergio Ermotti, chief executive, UBS Group AG, Zurich

"If you panicked and sold out in February or early March it would have been very difficult to come back because the market recovered so quickly."

"It's been hard emotionally, but the key to performance this year was to remain invested."

Nicole Curti, head, Stanhope Capital wealth adviser Swiss arm

"We were very consistent on that since February. Don't get out. Build hedges."

"Longer term many investors are realizing that [soaring equity prices represent the 'short-term' trade of the crisis] -- even more than in 2007 and 2008, when we started playing with these experimental fiscal economics."

"It is triggering a lot of questions now about what lies in the future -- how inflation might make a comeback."

Frederic Rochat, managing partner, Lombard Odier Group

Joe Cavaretta, South Florida Sun-Sentinel/AP Photos

 Even as the world pivots sideways on its economic axis with country after country making an effort to alleviate the unbearable stress of the financial cost of dealing with COVID-19 lockdowns leading to mass unemployment where administrations borrow money to establish emergency support programs for their hard-hit populations, their national industry base, the countless small-business operations that make the economy run, there are those whose wealth massively increases despite the global pandemic.

Private banks in Switzerland and elsewhere which act as depositories for investors, the truly wealthy of the world, have witnessed assets owned by their clients surge this year of 2020 which has been a financial disaster for everyone else. Zurich-based UBS Group AG reported its best quarterly earnings in a decade, and rival Credit Suisse Group AG is on the cusp of announcing a similar bonanza.

 

Even as the global economy, according to the International Monetary Fund, is expected to contract by 4.4 percent this year, throwing millions more people worldwide into poverty, the world's billionaires have become wealthier in comparison with 2019. This is a trend observed across regions from Brazil and China to the U.S. and Germany, as further indication that the pandemic has become a vehicle to deepen inequalities across the globe.

 

Following the great financial crunch of 2008, was the last time the super-wealthy had such a windfall. These crises have resulted in a windfall of investment opportunities for the wealthy, while posing as a threat to all others and this time the scale of the bonus is infinitely greater given governments' and central banks' swifter reaction to cushion the financial blow to their business sectors and the wider population at large.

 

As examples, the net worth of Amazon.com Inc. chief executive Jeff Bezos rose by $73 billion from mid-March to mid-September, given his holdings in the company according to a report by the Institute for Policy Studies, an American think tank The same period saw Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive at Facebook, and Elon Musk, chief executive at Tesla Inc. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. each amassing a net worth increase of over $45 billion each.

 

In China, acknowledged as the globe's swiftest-growing nursery for super-wealth, 257 individuals became billionaires this year, reflecting the rising fortunes of China's already-established tycoons. Such as Jack Ma, founder of commerce platform Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. who increased his net worth by 45 percent in the past ten months making him worth $58.8 billion. What inspired many of the wealthy to weather the COVID storm was advice from their bankers immediately the crisis struck: don't sell.

 

Lombard Odier which cares for $316 billion of millionaire and billionaire money from across the globe began informing its clients as early as February they should be looking to putting capital to work in panicked markets. All of its quantitative analysts were tasked in January with a project to collect as much public data on economic indicators as possible: from traffic data in Asian cities to hospital figures in U.S. states.

 

Gold, in particular was recommended by many Swiss bankers and wealth advisers to their clients. In August the precious metal hit a record high of $2,073 an ounce and buying it was the corollary to the huge government stimuli buoying equity markets. The rich benefited from public spending that ensured stock markets valuations were kept stable and they benefited as well from the fear generated by huge government borrowing viewed as necessary to handle the threat of COVID-induced financial collapse. 

 

 

Ardent Victimization in the Somali/Muslim Community

"We need to feel safe in our city. Change needs to happen, not empty gestures."

"Enough is enough. The time is now. Justice may have been denied in the trial of the killer of Abdirahman Abdi, but we can still choose justice as a city and make community safer for us."

"We need to stop sending untrained people with guns when our neighbours and loved ones are in crisis."

IfrahYusuf, chair, Justice For Abdirahman Coalition

 

"I don't mind screaming because we need to scream our voices very loud of [sic] what's been going on to our people."

"We must come together. I'm going to say it as loud as I can: Their fists may beat us, their guns may kill us, but they will never, ever silence our voices. Our voices are the most powerful of tools and the most powerful of weapons ..."

"The killings of Indigenous peoples and Black people, it must stop."

Claudette Commanda, Algonquin Anishinaabe, Kitigan Zibi First Nation

Ifrah Yusuf, incoming chair of the Justice for Abdirahman Coalition, leads the march from its starting point at McNabb Park on Saturday. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

Black, Muslim and Indigenous communities in Canada have forged a bond of victimization. They hold the greater white community at fault for their colonialist past and their current attitudes, citing them as being racist and prejudiced against people of colour, against Islam, against First Nations. These are groups within the larger society that see themselves as vulnerable minorities whose rights and entitlements are given short shrift, and who are constantly victims of an unjust legal system. 

What they also have in common is that they frequently live at or below the poverty line. As well, they tend to sequester themselves in deliberately separated blocs, choosing not to integrate with the greater society. A feeling of alienation, of victimhood and vulnerability to unfair treatment and public condemnation is also shared between them. Needless to say that in the greater society there are people living in poverty who are not of colour, not representing any religion, and downtrodden primarily because life has been unkind to them in the circumstances of their lives. Including mental illness and substance dependency.

 

Another issue both communities have in common is that of criminal activity disproportionate to their share of numbers in the community. Gangs, violence, weapons, smuggling, drug dealing, gang rivalry, and intimidation of members of their own communities who fear reporting their illegal and often violent behaviour for fear of retribution. Minor details which keep police busy, involved in their duty to uphold the law and ensure community safety.

Abdi Abdirahman was a 37-year-old Somali refugee, living with his family in Ottawa as a member of the extended Somali community. He had a mental illness for which he received medical treatment as an out-patient and was prescribed anti-psychotic medication to control his outbursts of mental illness. It appears his family failed to agree with the medical professionals who diagnosed, treated and prescribed medication for this man, and they were successful in having that medication dropped as a therapy to keep h8is mental instability in check.

The Justice for Abdirahman Coalition protest started in McNabb Park before turning into a march, blocking traffic on several nearby streets. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

One day in July of 2016 Mr. Abdirahman went to a neighbourhood cafe as apparently he often did. A busy place, there were many others at the cafe and they were witness to his violently forcing himself on a few women, one after another, at the cafe. One woman was so viciously gripped by him that others present came to her rescue and with difficulty detached him, escorting him out to the street. And there, on the street was a young mother with an infant in a bicycle carrier who had just stopped outside the cafe. His attention turned to her, in turn.

Police had been called about the altercation, and one police officer arrived in a police car and attempted to take Abdirahman into custody, struggling to place him in handcuffs. Abdirahman picked up a 30-pound road construction standard swinging it about wildly. Pepper spray failed to stop him. He then sprinted toward the apartment where he lived nearby with his family, the police officer in chase, having radioed for help. When the first officer finally caught up with Abdirahman, again struggling to place him in handcuffs, he was unable to overcome Abdirahman's physical resistance.

A second police officer soon arrived, appraised the situation, and added his physical presence to the struggle where both officers together appeared unable to overcome the resistance of the man in full psychotic fervour. The second officer, Const.Daniel Montsion, hit Abdirahman several times with his gloved hand in the face and on his thigh. Mr. Abdirahman's nose was broken, and suddenly he became still and stopped breathing. The two officers applied CPR attempting to restore him to consciousness. When soon afterward responding paramedics arrived they pronounced Mr. Abdirahman dead.

A coroner's report pointed out that Mr.Abdirahman had died of a heart attack. Brought on by the episode of psychotic attack, and that he had a previously undiagnosed serious heart condition. Const.Montsion was charged with manslaughter, aggravated assault and assault with a weapon (the police-force-issued reinforced gloves). At his trial witnesses for the prosecution were found to have given testimony that was contradicted by surveillance videos. Ontario Court Justice Robert Kelly found Const.Montsion innocent of all charges after taking all evidence and testimony into account.

 

The Justice for Abdirahman protest started in McNabb Park on Saturday. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

But some raucous members of the Ottawa-Somali community will not be convinced that Const.Montsion is not a murderer and was simply discharging his professional duty to the security and safety of the public in extremely difficult circumstances. An ongoing saga of victimization and blame has been released anew by the Justice for Abdirahman Coalition which launched another protest through downtown streets shouting "No justice, no peace", carrying placards and shouting "Black lives, they matter here" and "They say get back, we say fight back".

Traffic was brought to a standstill by the march of several hundred people while organizers unfurled yellow caution tape about the intersection. And five demands were delivered through a megaphone announcement with the coalition calling on the Ottawa Police Services board to freeze the budget for police and city council to oppose any budget increase for police so funding should instead be targeted for public health and social services for the city's Black and indigenous communities.

They also called for "demonstrably racist, misogynist and/or violent officers" to be fired, starting with Const.Montsion, including the Ottawa Police Association president, along with other instructions to be fulfilled to their satisfaction by the City of Ottawa. An alternative to a police response to interventions with people in mental health crisis to be immediately substituted. "No more deaths, fire OPS" was chanted by people in the crowd. "Defund the police", protesters shouted holding Black Lives Matter and Justice for Abdirahman banners.

 

A Justice for Abdirahman protest started in McNabb Park and then turned into a march, stopping traffic on nearby streets, Saturday October 24, 2020. Before the protest began a group of the supporters took a moment to pray. Photo by Ashley Fraser /Postmedia

Growing Pandemic-Caused Food Insecurity

Photo: WFP/Mathias Roed

"We used to eat meat. Now, there's no meat. We used to eat chicken. Now, there's no chicken."

"We used to drink milk. Now there's no milk. [There's not even bread]."

"[Planting corn and beans on a small loaned plot of land, borrowing seeds and fertilizer to feed his four children] It's what I've been doing all pandemic long -- improvising as best I can."

Matilde Alonso, 34, laid-off construction worker, Guatemala

 

"The difference between being poor and going poor is brutal."

"When you're middle class and you have food, access to education and are accustomed to a certain quality of life and all of a sudden it's taken away from you through no fault of your own, that hits families really hard."

Jose Aguilar, founder, Reactivemos La Esperanza

 

"This economic and health crisis is just starting, and it'll result in the largest number of people living in food scarcity in recent times."

"This crisis is going to leave a mark for a long, long time."

Maria Teresa Garcia, head, Bancos de Alimentos de Mexico, food charity 

Photo credit: Jharkhand State Livelihoods Promotion Society

 

Matilde Alonso says no matter whether it's breakfast, lunch or dinner they're all about the same in his El Jocotillo house in Guatemala; a tortilla with salt; a tortilla with beans; a bowl of rice and beans. The pandemic has exposed for tens of millions of people how fragile the worldwide economic status is and it is more evident in Latin America with a resurgence of poverty heralding a wave of hunger in a region that had felt it had for the most part eradicated decades ago the dread visage of malnutrition.

Families from Buenos Aires to Mexico City are now finding themselves short on meals, exchanging fresh produce for sugary, starchy processed foods, cheaper, more accessible, and nutrition-deficient. Latin America's governments lack the financial capacity to provide huge amounts of aid seen to help population security in the United States and Europe. Millions of workers in Latin America who work in the informal economy, selling fruit and vegetables from street carts, or cleaning homes for cash, are locked out of national assistance programs.

Latin American and Caribbean nations, according to estimates by the World Food Program, will have a surge of approximately 270 percent in people facing severe food insecurity, an increase to 15 million from 4.3 million prior to the onset of the pandemic, on tap to represent the highest in the world, more than twice the estimated global growth rate. A boom in commodity prices from 2000 to 2014 enabled a diminished poverty rate from 27 percent to 12 percent. Then, as demand for raw materials receded, a reversal took place.

 

Action Against Hunger volunteers and field workers in Colombia. Photo: Dennis Zevallos for Action Against Hunger, Peru.

 

A deep recession hit Argentina and in Venezuela, plagued by a dysfunctional, illegal government the economic situation descended into despair and millions of Venezuelans fled poverty and hunger, to find haven in neighbouring countries, themselves struggling. Economic inequality, racial tensions and police brutality were all simmering below the surface when mass protests took place last year, as hundreds of thousands of people protested in the streets of Colombia, Chile and Ecuador.

The pandemic has destabilized economies even further, making food security more precarious, millions of people teetering on the brink of relative comfort, falling to the panic of not knowing where their next meals will come from as the region tracks toward its worst recession in a century, half the work force living outside of formal economics, job numbers barely reflecting the full story of unemployment, poverty and hunger. In June the World Bank warned the pandemic was on the verge of reversing years of progress in underdeveloped nations like India and Nigeria.

Up to 100 million more people are expected to join the ranks of the extremely poor with up to 132 million more than projected going hungry in 2020. This year's increase may triple any seen this century, according to UN estimates, with Latin America in front, leading that surge. Hunger grips Latin America, but its cause is unconnected to insufficient supply in a region that is an agricultural powerhouse, with fertile plains and valleys producing grains, fruits and proteins that are shipped elsewhere to feed the world.

People who have no employment and no living wages haven't the wherewithal to purchase food that is in plentiful supply, simply put. Government assistance is a relative pittance in the campaign to fill the need. Brazil started an emergency cash stipend program that temporarily brought down extreme poverty readings to national historical lows, but the program is in jeopardy, soon to expire, a fiscal expense too difficult to sustain. Payments are limited and people tend to use cash they get from government sources to pay first for housing and utility costs, with little left for food.

 

 

People suffer, the country suffers since undernourished people ultimately end up in visits to doctors and hospitals, where a less productive workforce ensues and greater school absenteeism becomes the norm. Developing young children are placed at risk with food insecurity as insufficient nutrition leads to malnutrition, impacting both mind and body. Food insecurity represents an ultimate formula leading to unrest and protests. Poorer countries like Haiti and parts of Central America relying on remittances from abroad become particularly vulnerable.

Millions of Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru who rely on informal work, lacking access to social programs are particularly vulnerable. Tens of thousands returned to Venezuela, already on the brink of famine. In the Santiago, Chile region of Lo Hermida -- known for its social struggle participation, "common pots", community cook-ups are being organized. "For us in Lo Hermida, the common pots represent a sad memory of the '80s", 53-year-old Erika Martinez, organizer of the community cook-ups, said. "I never thought we would have to go back to that."

Social workers prepare and serve food during a cook-up in the Lo Hermida neighborhood of Santiago, Chile. Some communities have revived the dictatorship-era “olla comun” communal kitchens to provide aid during the pandemic-driven crisis.

Photographer: Tamara Merino/Bloomberg

Respect and Dignity in Academia

Babacar Faye uOttawa student union. T. Caldwell/Postmedia

"When you're using the N-word or presenting the N-word -- you have a responsibility to know the weight of the word."

"People should realize it's not a word that should be lightly used, especially if you are not yourself racialized."

"There was no academic value to using the word. It was created for the express purpose to demean and reduce human beings. It has no other use in the English language."
"I think there is a wider opportunity for more conversation and more dialogue instead of drowning in the issue of academic freedom."

"The thing is to bring this back to the conversation of race on campus and ... how they can work to ease the minds of students, especially Black students on campus."

"The academic world is one that's been developed in a very Western, a very white world and it has yet to confront its own institutional and historic racism. That' a conversation we need to have."

Babacar Faye, student union president, University of Ottawa

"For at least a year and a half now, uOttawa has experienced racist and racially motivated incidents [and that there have been ongoing] aggressions and microaggressions [against the school's Black and racialized communities."

"The professor could have chosen not to use the full N-word. Yet she did and is now facing the consequences."

University president Jacques Fremont

"My personal position is the professor had the right to use the word but was unwise to do so. There's a difference between what rights one has and what rights are wise to exercise. This clearly went too far for our students."

"The idea espoused by some of my colleagues [peer professors at University of Ottawa] that academic freedom is absolute and that students have to take whatever it is the professor dishes out is, to me, self-centred and wrong."

"Ultimately, students have to want their education and if a particular professor's exercise of academic freedom offends those students, then the students should have the choice to walk."

Amir Attaran, professor of law, University of Ottawa

Recently an associate professor at University of Ottawa saw fit to use a derogatory term more familiarly used in the deep south of the United States for generations to ensure that Blacks knew their place as beings inferior to whites in a culture that had condoned and relished slavery of black Africans. That word and its meaning is degrading, as much to the target as it is to the user. That someone with a shred of intelligence, a modicum of empathy and a sense of right and wrong would casually use that word or others similar to it when speaking of blacks is pathetic. That this took place within a university when an academic chose the word for whatever reasons are known to her is appalling.

Little wonder students are upset and call for an institutional change. When the student union first began its campaign to have the professor censored and perhaps removed from her part-time post as a sociology professor, a group of 34 professors at the university raised a counter argument in favour of Verushka Lieutenant-Duval's "critical thinking and academic freedom" [who was suspended on September 23], raising the freedom of speech banner and particularly that academic-speak should never be placed under a magnifying glass of censure. She had, in fact, abandoned 'critical thinking'.

 

Among those who appear to semi-defend Professor Lieutenant-Duval is a black uOttawa professor, Philippe Frowd, an assistant professor with the School of Political Studies..."I don't think it is never appropriate, but I do think the contexts in which it is are extremely limited. We have to be very, very careful before we go in that direction. Certainly for me as a Black person, I would find it extremely difficult to raise that in my classroom, especially spoken. I think it might be different if we were reading a text that contained the word that was particularly important. I find it difficult to say never. But I think that we have a certain freedom and latitude in an academic setting to make those choices. I just think those choices should involve a great degree of care."

 

The N-word was used by Professor Lieutenant-Duval in a Zoom discussion on language and the reappropriation of offensive words by people of colour, the disabled and the LGBTQ communities. Whatever the context and the purported purpose, the word, ill-disguised as a legitimate descriptive is, as the student union representative pointed out, "offensive, hurtful and reprehensible", and one needn't be black to feel that way. That the 34 professors and retired professors who saw fit to defend the sociology professor acknowledging "that certain lectures, certain concepts, certain words will hurt some suceptibilities" speaks to their own inadequacies as human beings.

 

That they insist the university setting is the correct place where topics such as those being discussed require free discussion overlooks the fact that it is not mere delicacy of feeling that assaults the sensibilities of anyone hearing or seeing the word used, but repulsion at what it represents. "They've found their voice in defending the use of a racial slur while discounting the vast majority of uOttawa's Black community's disagreement", responded the union on its social media post.

On the other hand, uOttawa president Fremont's response was carefully modulated and fairly reasonable, acknowledging that academic freedom of speech is vital to the exchange of opinion and information, but that the choice in this particular instance of a damningly offensive word was beyond unfortunate. That anyone with an ounce of sense would feel comfortable using it is a problem in and of itself. Even the Premier of Quebec joined the discussion, explaining that the word's use was forgivable since it emanated from the mind of a French-speaker, and in French the word means something 'different'.

Medical student Ibrahim Mohammad, left, and law student Hannan Mohamud, right, are among those calling for the University of Ottawa to institute a zero-tolerance policy regarding the use of the N-word on campus. (CBC)

 

 

French Values, Islamofascist Response

Candles are lit at a makeshift memorial as people gather to pay homage to Samuel Paty, the French teacher who was beheaded on the streets of the Paris suburb of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, as part of a national tribute, in Nice, France, October 21, 2020. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard/File Photo

"It’s as if the students are the mouthpiece for thinking that does not come from them ... but from people who want to impose a religious identity that keeps getting a little stronger."

Delphone Girard, French teacher since 2004 

"I self-censored a lot on issues around laicite. I felt a real hatred for French values."

"[After the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack] We held a minute's silence[in her class] and I moved on. I was cowardly."

Anonymous High School teacher

Secularism has a long history in Quebec dating from 1905, following anticlerical differences with the Catholic Church. It was then enshrined in French law, and the nation's national curriculum was created to provide the framework for the new education system. In its guidance to teachers, they are directed to websites recommending appropriate teaching materials and lesson plans. 

Samuel Paty, threatened with a fatwa  EPA

For lessons for 13-year-olds in Middle School on freedom of expression, such as the one taught by history teacher Samuel Paty, one common suggestion is the Charlie Hebdo satirical cartoons, to give context to the lesson of free speech. And it was just those very cartoons that set off a maelstrom of heated demands from some of the parents of his pupils in the middle class area of Paris where Mr. Paty's school was located.

After that class concluded, where he had beforehand suggested to his Muslim students that they were free to absent themselves from the class if they felt they would be upset over the use of the cartoons, parents of the students were informed of what had transpired, and one in particular began a campaign of lobbying the school administration for the teacher's immediate dismissal. The parent also produced a video condemning and identifying the teacher.

Mr. Paty was also the recipient of violent threats. All of which culminated in a young refugee of 18 of ethnic Chechen heritage, born in Moscow, deciding to avenge the Prophet Mohammad for the unforgivable act of insulting the divine nature of the prophet by parodying his message of sacred divinity. By beheading the teacher, his assailant satisfied himself that he had dispatched his duty to Islam.

Boasting of his success by sending a grisly, macabre photograph of the slain man with a message of triumphant satisfaction to French President Emmanuel Macron, the supreme infidel of France, the country that had granted the Russian-Chechen family haven. Some teachers in France admit to their level of intimidation leading them to censor what they say and do in their classes in a country where the given name 'Mohammad' is common among Muslim families.

 

The scene of the killing has been sealed off and investigation is under way   Getty Images

 

From primary school teachers to high school teachers, a wary mindset has prevailed for decades, and some profess to not having been entirely surprised that one of their own had been violently butchered by an enraged Muslim Islamofascist. Primary school teachers, fearful of giving offence to Muslim children refrain from reading the classic tale of the Three Little Pigs, lest a backlash ensue. Religious satire in particular gets a wide pass from history teachers.

But not, it was seen in a vicious Muslim community reaction, from the mosques and societies and groups enshrining Muslim values above those of the country they are citizens in, when one French history teacher chose to use the Prophet-mocking cartoons as a prop to help get his message across that in France, nothing is particularly sacred, and certainly not extreme religious values in a country that cultivates its secular character. 

 

History teacher Maxime Reppert, resorted to reason when expressing his opinion, a quality of intelligent perspective utterly absent from the emotions that belief in the almighty instills in the  faithful, when he declared: "Caricatures are not Mein Kampf. They are not a call to incite hate." But under Sharia law and in the minds of the fundamentalist Muslim population they are just that, and more.

“Should I bring this up with my students when they return, with a caricature of the Prophet to hand? [Silence, she continued, might be worse]."

"Today I am afraid. But even more so of what could become of such horrors if we let this fear interfere in the debate."

French art teacher, name withheld

That terrifying fear of consequences is called terrorism.

 

Flowers have been left at the school where the murdered man taught   Getty Images