- In the last 30 years, more mosques and Muslim prayer centers have been built in France than all the Catholic churches built in the last century.
- The Church of Santa Rita used to stand in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris. A few weeks after Father Hamel was murdered by Islamic terrorists, the French police cleared the church. It is now a parking lot. Police dragged the priests out by their legs as a Mass was being celebrated.
- In France there are laws protecting old trees. But the state is free to flatten old Christian churches. The vacuums created in the French landscape are already being filled by the booming mosques. Cowardly French authorities would never treat Islam as they are now treating Christianity.
"France is not a random space... fifteen centuries of history and geography determined its personality. Inscribed in the depths of our landscape, the churches, the cathedrals and other places of pilgrimage give meaning and form to our patriotism. Let us demand our civil authorities to respect it". Two years ago, the French journalist Denis Tillinac promoted this appeal, signed by dozens of French personalities, after some French imams requested the conversion of abandoned churches into mosques.
A year later, terrorists who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State assaulted the Catholic parishioners in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, murdering an elderly priest, Father Jacques Hamel, at the foot of the altar. An outpouring of great emotion followed the most serious attack on a Christian symbol in Europe since the Second World War.
Last month, around the time of the first anniversary of the murder of Father Hamel, a wrecking crew demolished the famed Chapel of Saint Martin in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, built in 1880-1886 and deconsecrated in 2015. A parking lot will replace the old Christian building. Photographs and videos posted on social networks, in scenes reminiscent of ISIS' vandalism of churches in Mosul, show the cross being ripped from the church and the church destroyed. A few days earlier, in Rouen, not far from where Father Hamel had been killed, the local authorities ordered the destruction of the Saint-Nicaise Church's presbytery, for "safety reasons".
In 1907, the French state appropriated all church property, and now an increasing numbers of local authorities are deciding they cannot or will not renovate their churches. French mayors call this process "deconstruction".
The year of Father Hamel's martyrdom, France was very busy demolishing churches. The Patrimoine-en-blog website, a platform providing a regular inventory of demolished churches, reports seven demolished churches in France in 2016 alone, and two in the first half of 2017. Along with these destroyed Christian buildings, 26 churches were put up for sale in 2016, and 12 churches were listed for sale in 2015. In 2017, many churches were converted to offices, apartments, "entertainment centers", gyms and art galleries.
"Over the past two years, Christian associations have sold nearly 40 churches throughout the country, at prices ranging from 100,000 to 400,000 euros. Twenty-seven other churches have been demolished. According to the Catholic Church, more than 1,000 churches are to be sold or demolished throughout France".
According to a report from the Observatory of Religious Heritage, presented at the French Senate, France could lose "5,000 to 10,000 religious buildings by 2030". Every year, 20 churches are sold and converted in France. The art historian Didier Rykner, who runs La Tribune de l'Art, said that "not since the Second World War have we seen churches reduced to rubble".
These authorities and mayors, so lenient when it comes to presenting economic reasons for destroying churches, are always generous when it comes to mosques. "Nearly 2,400 mosques today, compared to 1,500 in 2003, is the most visible sign of the rapid growth of Islam in France, a consequence of a population of immigrant origin and the process of strong re-Islamization", noted an report by the magazine Valeurs Actuelles.
When it comes to Islam, neutrality is abandoned. For example, "the municipality of Évreux voted for the provision of 5000 square-meters of land, for one symbolic euro, for the project of the Union of the Muslim Faith". The author and journalist Élisabeth Schemla detailed how French mayors have become "builders of mosques". This is how, in the last 30 years, more mosques and Muslim prayer centers have been built in France than all the Catholic churches built in the last century.
The Church of Santa Rita used to stand in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris. A few weeks after Father Hamel was assassinated by the Islamic terrorists, the French police cleared the church. It is now a parking lot. Police dragged out the priests by their legs as a Mass was being celebrated. "When France is moved by the martyrdom of Jacques Hamel and [then Prime Minister] Manuel Valls speaks of financing mosques and training imams, we do not understand that churches are abandoned to their sad fate and demolished", Eloise Lenesley wrote at the time in Le Figaro.
Cowardly French authorities would never treat Islam as they are now treating Christianity. Marine Le Penpointedly asked: "What if we built parking lots on top of Salafist mosques, instead of our churches?"
So what next in the wake of the weapons raid on the Venezuelan military base in Valencia? We know from the aggregated reports here that the government is probably lying about all being well in the wake of the attack. There are signs that the raiders did get away with a large cache of weapons, taken from the Chavistas.
My source emails:
Here is a new twist. Yesterday's operation was called "Operation David." There is now a new video out announcing a new plan of action from the same group called "Operation Ninja." Their plan is to act under cover of darkness as commandos to capture members of the leadership of the corrupt Narco-State that is Venezuela and turn them over to "international justice."
This is reminiscent of how the Israeli Mossad captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and took him to Israel to be tried. And he was tried, convicted and hanged.
Here is the link to the video on YouTube.
So what we are seeing now from these raiders, at a minimum, is a willingness to take the lead and run with it, not lie back on their laurels à la McClellan.
That they announced their plans suggests there's an element of psychological warfare as well. What Chavista won't go to bed at night with a twinge of worry that someone may raid their place, stuff them in the trunk of a car, and then haul them off to some tribunal? Wouldn't an exile in Miami seem a better way to go than hanging around Caracas and waiting to be snatched by the "Ninjas" – that is, if President Trump's sanctions aren't keeping them out? Obviously, they are trying to scare the Chavistas in a bid to weaken them.
...that is, if this really is what their next move is. Being clever military men, they might just do something else instead to maintain the element of surprise.
This sounds like a group whose moves are worth watching.
If America traded liberty for security, it chucked privacy for convenience — to our steep detriment and the State’s undoubted joy. Voice and typed internet searches on any device, putatively private chat conversations on social media, and the ever-popular, dual-facing camera — to most consumers, these and more are mere modern amenities — vast leaps forward in speed and quality and luxury and so on,ad infinitum.
Privacy and constitutional rights law can’t keep pace with invention in this digital age, leaving advancements open to abuse by both the surveillance and police states — as well as a predictable tangle of precedent-setting court cases, each breaking as much ground as the technologies they debate.
One technological wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing slipped unobtrusively into Europe as an apparent answer to accessibility in the workplace: RFID chips — grain-of-rice-sized, injectable, memory-packed, protean implants — designed to identify the bearer for use of equipment, purchases, logins, and other operations generally requiring more than the wave of one’s implant.
Then, just this week, reports a Wisconsin business held a party for workers volunteering for a chip set social media into paroxysms over privacy worries, the role and acceptable extent of nascent technology literally in our lives, and only somewhat far-flung fears the tiny gadget will ultimately fall to malevolent, coercive control to some unknown, but obviously untenable, end.
Such a scenario isn’t unfathomable in context — governments the world over maintain power efficaciously when control looks most like convenience to the populace. Think, enhanced ‘security’ at major airports following the attacks of 9/11 — and increased surveillance, tracking, monitoring, the introduction of artificial intelligence, use of biometrics databases, extremist countering programs, and all the rest occupying a salacious list of State machinations in the perpetual War on Terror.
Both sides of the RFID debate, however, have thus far addressed microchipping as a voluntary action, lending a sense the forceful implantation concerns have been delegated only to the most suspicious among us — away from the fraught theater of theoretical future purposes the invasive item might portend.
Casual human microchipping might or might not be pervasive down the road — though, in conjunction with the monumental shift from hard currency to digital, the former seems probable — so, familiarizing oneself with the technology now is prudent.
While jumping to volunteer as your company’s microchipping guinea pig is indeed an option, consider history’s cautionary tales of governments fatally drunk on the power robbed from the masses — who never again reclaim it until decimation of a system — and know indisputably we’ve peered over similar precipices before.
Neither wholesale condemnation nor blithe approval should characterize positions on microchipping until further study can be performed — but a healthy dose of skepticism in matters of the State must always be advised.
RFID chips are probably here to stay — whether that’s acceptable must be decided soon. This is a test — and it appears to be going swimmingly.
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