Two children detained by the Border Patrol in a holding cell in Nogales, Ariz. This image has been widely shared on social media in recent days, offered as an example of the Trump administration’s cruel policies toward immigrants, but in fact the picture was taken in 2014.
Personne ne dit que ce n’est pas raisonnable de partir de Turquie avec deux enfants en bas âge sur une mer agitée dans un frêle esquife. Arno Klarselfd
Une famille irakienne qui, dit-elle, faisait partie de la traversée où se trouvait la famille du petit Aylan Kurdi, livre son récit de ce funeste voyage. Le naufrage, qui a coûté la vie du garçonnet de 3 ans – dont la photo du petit corps sans vie a indigné la planète – de son frère et de sa mère, a fait onze autres victimes. Parmi elles figurent les deux enfants de Zainab Abbas – Zainab Hadi, 11 ans, et Haidar Hadi, 10 ans – affirme leur mère. Le père, Ahmad Hadi, et leur fille aînée ont survécu. Le couple, qui a enterré ses enfants à Bagdad mercredi, raconte à Sky News qu’Abdullah Kurdi, père d’Aylan Kurdi, a manœuvré le bateau tout au long de la traversée. Zainab Abbas souligne qu’Abdullah Kurdi lui avait d’ailleurs été présenté comme étant le capitaine du bateau. Elle ajoute que (…) ajoute que les passagers ne portaient pas tous des gilets de sauvetage. Elle affirme, en outre, qu’Abdullah Kurdi «était un passeur», rapporte le Daily Telegraph. (…) De son côté, Abdullah Kurdi a confirmé au Wall Street Journal que la famille Hadi se trouvait bien avec lui sur le bateau mais il conteste leur récit du voyage. Il affirme au quotidien américain que c’est un passeur turc qui manœuvrait le bateau. Il précise que ce dernier a été pris de panique lorsque le moteur a calé. Le passeur aurait alors sauté à l’eau et abandonné le bateau. Selon lui, «nous avions des gilets de sauvetage mais le bateau a subitement chaviré parce que des gens se sont levés». (…) Pourtant, généralement, les passeurs ne participent pas à la traversée. Selon un rapport de l’UNODC, «aucune personne liée aux passeurs n’est présente à bord durant la traversée. Au lieu de cela, un “chauffeur” est désigné parmi les migrants et bénéficie en contrepartie d’un passage sans frais». Sur le terrain, un reporter du Petit Journal , qui a suivi une famille avant qu’elle n’embarque à Bodrum, en Turquie, vers Kos, en Grèce, a fait le même constat: «Les passeurs ne font pas la traversée, c’est un des migrants qui va conduire le bateau, eux ne prennent jamais le risque de se faire attraper par les autorités» (extrait à 3’50), précise le journaliste. Le Figaro
Ne croyez pas que je sois venu apporter la paix sur la terre; je ne suis pas venu apporter la paix, mais l’épée. Car je suis venu mettre la division entre l’homme et son père, entre la fille et sa mère, entre la belle-fille et sa belle-mère; et l’homme aura pour ennemis les gens de sa maison. Jésus (Matthieu 10 : 34-36)
Il n’y a plus ni Juif ni Grec, il n’y a plus ni esclave ni libre, il n’y a plus ni homme ni femme; car tous vous êtes un en Jésus Christ. Paul (Galates 3: 28)
Depuis que l’ordre religieux est ébranlé – comme le christianisme le fut sous la Réforme – les vices ne sont pas seuls à se trouver libérés. Certes les vices sont libérés et ils errent à l’aventure et ils font des ravages. Mais les vertus aussi sont libérées et elles errent, plus farouches encore, et elles font des ravages plus terribles encore. Le monde moderne est envahi des veilles vertus chrétiennes devenues folles. Les vertus sont devenues folles pour avoir été isolées les unes des autres, contraintes à errer chacune en sa solitude. Chesterton
L’inauguration majestueuse de l’ère « post-chrétienne » est une plaisanterie. Nous sommes dans un ultra-christianisme caricatural qui essaie d’échapper à l’orbite judéo-chrétienne en « radicalisant » le souci des victimes dans un sens antichrétien. René Girard
Nous sommes encore proches de cette période des grandes expositions internationales qui regardait de façon utopique la mondialisation comme l’Exposition de Londres – la « Fameuse » dont parle Dostoievski, les expositions de Paris… Plus on s’approche de la vraie mondialisation plus on s’aperçoit que la non-différence ce n’est pas du tout la paix parmi les hommes mais ce peut être la rivalité mimétique la plus extravagante. On était encore dans cette idée selon laquelle on vivait dans le même monde: on n’est plus séparé par rien de ce qui séparait les hommes auparavant donc c’est forcément le paradis. Ce que voulait la Révolution française. Après la nuit du 4 août, plus de problème ! René Girard
An advertent and sustained foreign policy uses a different part of the brain from the one engaged by horrifying images. If Americans had seen the battles of the Wilderness and Cold Harbor on TV screens in 1864, if they had witnessed the meat-grinding carnage of Ulysses Grant’s warmaking, then public opinion would have demanded an end to the Civil War, and the Union might well have split into two countries, one of them farmed by black slaves. (…) The Americans have ventured into Somalia in a sort of surreal confusion, first impersonating Mother Teresa and now John Wayne. it would help to clarify that self-image, for to do so would clarify the mission, and then to recast the rhetoric of the enterprise. Lance Morrow (1993)
The gospel revelation gradually destroys the ability to sacralize and valorize violence of any kind, even for Americans in pursuit of the good. (…) At the heart of the cultural world in which we live, and into whose orbit the whole world is being gradually drawn, is a surreal confusion. The impossible Mother Teresa-John Wayne antinomy Times correspondent (Lance) Morrow discerned in America’s humanitarian 1992 Somali operation is simply a contemporary manifestation of the tension that for centuries has hounded those cultures under biblical influence. Gil Bailie
Our message absolutely is don’t send your children unaccompanied, on trains or through a bunch of smugglers. We don’t even know how many of these kids don’t make it, and may have been waylaid into sex trafficking or killed because they fell off a train. Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it. Obama (2014)
I also think that we have to understand the difficulty that President Obama finds himself in because there are laws that impose certain obligations on him. And it was my understanding that the numbers have been moderating in part as the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement officials understood that separating children from families — I mean, the horror of a father or a mother going to work and being picked up and immediately whisked away and children coming home from school to an empty house and nobody can say where their mother or father is, that is just not who we are as Americans. And so, I do think that while we continue to make the case which you know is very controversial in some corridors, that we have to reform our immigration system and we needed to do it yesterday. That’s why I approved of the bill that was passed in the Senate. We need to show humanity with respect to people to people who are working, contributing right now. And deporting them, leaving their children alone or deporting an adolescent, doing anything that is so contrary to our core values, just makes no sense. So I would be very open to trying to figure out ways to change the law, even if we don’t get to comprehensive immigration reform to provide more leeway and more discretion for the executive branch. (…) the numbers are increasing dramatically. And the main reason I believe why that’s happening is that the violence in certain of those Central American countries is increasing dramatically. And there is not sufficient law enforcement or will on the part of the governments of those countries to try to deal with this exponential increase in violence, drug trafficking, the drug cartels, and many children are fleeing from that violence. (…) first of all, we have to provide the best emergency care we can provide. We have children 5 and 6 years old who have come up from Central America. We need to do more to provide border security in southern Mexico. (…) they should be sent back as soon as it can be determined who responsible adults in their families are, because there are concerns whether all of them should be sent back. But I think all of them who can be should be reunited with their families. (…) But we have so to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey. Hillary Clinton (2014)
Je crois fermement qu’un individu sans papiers, condamné pour de multiples délits graves et sujet à une demande de détention des autorités fédérales n’aurait pas dû être remis en liberté. Dianne Feinstein (sénatrice démocrate de Californie et ancienne maire de San Francisco)
C’est l’hôtel-Dieu donc c’est la charité. Et c’est visiblement une invention du Moyen-Age. Tout ce qu’il y a de bon dans notre société peut faire l’objet d’abus. René Girard
The State Department has suspended a humanitarian program to reunite thousands of African refugees with relatives in the U.S. after unprecedented DNA testing by the government revealed widespread fraud. The freeze affects refugees in Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Guinea and Ghana, many of whom have been waiting years to emigrate. The State Department says it began DNA testing with a pilot program launched in February to verify blood ties among African refugees. Tests found some applicants lied about belonging to the same family to gain a better chance at legal entry. (…) Typically, a refugee already living in the U.S., a so-called anchor, is entitled to apply for permission to bring a spouse, minor children, parents and siblings. The process requires interviews, medical examinations and security screening. But suspicion has grown in recent years that unrelated Africans were posing as family members to gain entry. « This program is designed for people to reunify with family members » already in the U.S., says Barbara Strack, director of the refugee division at U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services. « We wanted to have empirical data » to confirm suspected fraud, she says. (…) As word spread, some applicants began missing appointments, and others refused to cooperate. Laboratory analysis of the samples indicated a large portion of applicants weren’t blood relations, as they claimed. « The results were dismaying, » says Ms. Strack. « This told us we had a problem with the program. » The results prompted expansion of the testing to other countries. « We had high rates of fraud everywhere, except the Ivory Coast, » says a State Department official. (…) Refugee advocates say the definition of family among Africans extends beyond blood relatives, especially when families fleeing persecution are scattered. « Some families are raising children who aren’t their own but whom they call son or daughter, » says Ms. Fox of Catholic Charities. Refugee slots are precious. The world’s uprooted people are estimated to number 37 million; only about 1% are resettled. As the largest recipient, the U.S. absorbs about half of all refugees who are resettled. Such demand « creates an incentive to get past the system, » says Ralston H. Deffenbaugh Jr., president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. « Desperation makes people more susceptible to abuse or bribery. » WSJ
Protecting children at the border is complicated because there have, indeed, been instances of fraud. Tens of thousands of migrants arrive there every year, and those with children in tow are often released into the United States more quickly than adults who come alone, because of restrictions on the amount of time that minors can be held in custody. Some migrants have admitted they brought their children not only to remove them from danger in such places as Central America and Africa, but because they believed it would cause the authorities to release them from custody sooner. Others have admitted to posing falsely with children who are not their own, and Border Patrol officials say that such instances of fraud are increasing. (…) [Jessica M. Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies] said that some migrants were using children as “human shields” in order to get out of immigration custody faster. “It makes no sense at all for the government to just accept these attempts at fraud,” Ms. Vaughan said. “If it appears that the child is being used in this way, it is in the best interest of the child to be kept separately from the parent, for the parent to be prosecuted, because it’s a crime and it’s one that has to be deterred and prosecuted.” NYT
Over the weekend, you may have seen a horrifying story: Almost 1,500 migrant children were missing, and feared to be in the hands of human traffickers. The Trump administration lost track of the children, the story went, after separating them from their parents at the border. The news spread across liberal social media — with the hashtag #Wherearethechildren trending on Twitter — as people demanded immediate action. But it wasn’t true, or at least not the way that many thought. The narrative had combined parts of two real events and wound up with a horror story that was at least partly a myth. The fact that so many Americans readily believed this myth offers a lesson in how partisan polarization colors people’s views on a gut emotional level without many even realizing it. As other articles have explained, the missing children and the Trump administration’s separation of families who are apprehended at the border are two different matters. (…) These “missing” children had actually come to the United States without their parents, been picked up by the Border Patrol and then released to the custody of a parent or guardian. Many probably are not really missing. The figure represents the number of children whose households didn’t answer the phone when the Department of Health and Human Services called to check on them. The unanswered phone calls may warrant further welfare checks, but are not themselves a sign that something nefarious has happened. The Obama administration also detained immigrant families and children, as did other recent administrations. This past weekend, some social media users circulated a photo they said showed children detained as a result of President Trump’s policies, but the image was actually from 2014. (…) Long-running social science surveys have found that since the 1980s, Republicans’ opinions of Democrats and Democrats’ opinions of Republicans have been increasingly negative. At the same time, as Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, writes in a new book, partisan identity has become an umbrella for other important identities, including those involving race, religion, geography and even educational background. It has become a tribal identity itself, not merely a matter of policy preferences. So it’s not that liberals didn’t care about immigrant children until Mr. Trump became president, or that they’re only pretending to care now so as to score political points. Rather, with the Trump administration’s making opposition to immigrants a signature issue, the topic has become salient to partisan conflict in a way it wasn’t before. Mr. Trump’s treatment of immigrant families and children, when refracted through the lens of partisan bias, affirms liberals’ perception of being engaged in a broader moral struggle with the right, making it feel like an urgent threat. Mr. Obama’s detaining of immigrant children, by contrast, felt like a matter of abstract moral concern. Identity polarization means “you want to show that you’re a good member of your tribe,” Sean Westwood, a political scientist at Dartmouth College who studies partisan polarization, said in an interview early last year. “You want to show others that Republicans are bad or Democrats are bad, and your tribe is good.” Sharing stories on social media “provides a unique opportunity to publicly declare to the world what your beliefs are and how willing you are to denigrate the opposition and reinforce your own political candidates,” he said. Accurate news can serve that purpose. But fake news has an advantage. It can perfectly capture one side’s villainous archetypes of the other, without regard for pesky facts that might not fit the story line. The narrative that President Trump’s team lost hundreds of children after tearing them away from their parents combines some of the main liberal critiques of the administration: that it is racist, that it is authoritarian and that it is incompetent. The administration’s very real policy of separating families already plays to the first two archetypes. By adding in the missing children, the story manages to incorporate an incompetence angle as well. NYT
Pendant trop longtemps, le CDH a protégé les auteurs de violations des droits de l’homme et il a été un cloaque de partis pris politiques. (…) Cinq résolutions ont été votées contre Israël. C’est plus que toutes les résolutions confondues contre la Corée du Nord, l’Iran et la Syrie. Nikki Haley (ambassadrice américaine à l’ONU)
Les pays (membres) se sont entendus pour saper la méthode actuelle de sélection des membres. Et le biais continu et bien documenté du Conseil contre Israël est inadmissible. Depuis sa création, le Conseil a adopté plus de résolutions condamnant Israël que contre le reste du monde. Mike Pompeo
For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias. Regrettably, it is now clear that our call for reform was not heeded. Human rights abusers continue to serve on and be elected to the council. The world’s most inhumane regimes continue to escape scrutiny, and the council continues politicizing and scapegoating of countries with positive human rights records in an attempt to distract from the abusers in their ranks. Therefore, as we said we would do a year ago if we did not see any progress, the United States is officially withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council. In doing so, I want to make it crystal clear that this step is not a retreat from human rights commitments; on the contrary, we take this step because our commitment does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organization that makes a mockery of human rights. (…) Almost every country we met with agrees with us in principle and behind closed doors that the Human Rights Council needs major, dramatic, systemic changes, yet no other country has had the courage to join our fight.(…) When a so-called Human Rights Council cannot bring itself to address the massive abuses in Venezuela and Iran, and it welcomes the Democratic Republic of Congo as a new member, the council ceases to be worthy of its name. Such a council, in fact, damages the cause of human rights. And then, of course, there is the matter of the chronic bias against Israel. Last year, the United States made it clear that we would not accept the continued existence of agenda item seven, which singles out Israel in a way that no other country is singled out. Earlier this year, as it has in previous years, the Human Rights Council passed five resolutions against Israel – more than the number passed against North Korea, Iran, and Syria combined. This disproportionate focus and unending hostility towards Israel is clear proof that the council is motivated by political bias, not by human rights. (…) America has a proud legacy as a champion of human rights, a proud legacy as the world’s largest provider of humanitarian aid, and a proud legacy of liberating oppressed people and defeating tyranny throughout the world. While we do not seek to impose the American system on anyone else, we do support the rights of all people to have freedoms bestowed on them by their creator. That is why we are withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council, an organization that is not worthy of its name. Nikki Haley
We have no doubt that there was once a noble vision for this council. But today, we need to be honest – the Human Rights Council is a poor defender of human rights. Worse than that, the Human Rights Council has become an exercise in shameless hypocrisy – with many of the world’s worst human rights abuses going ignored, and some of the world’s most serious offenders sitting on the council itself. The only thing worse than a council that does almost nothing to protect human rights is a council that covers for human rights abuses and is therefore an obstacle to progress and an impediment to change. The Human Rights Council enables abuses by absolving wrongdoers through silence and falsely condemning those who have committed no offense. A mere look around the world today demonstrates that the council has failed in its stated objectives. Its membership includes authoritarian governments with unambiguous and abhorrent human rights records, such as China, Cuba, and Venezuela. (…) And the council’s continued and well-documented bias against Israel is unconscionable. Since its creation, the council has adopted more resolutions condemning Israel than against the rest of the world combined. Mike Pompeo
Le problème, c’est que quand vous aidez, dans un premier temps, vous créez un horizon qui est plus large: les gens commencent à penser qu’ils peuvent bouger puisqu’ils ont aussi les moyens – il faut plusieurs milliers d’euros pour entreprendre ce voyage – et donc ce ne sont pas les plus pauvres, les plus désespérés qui partent mais ceux qui commencent à sortir la tête de l’eau. Et c’est donc cet effet de seuil qui fait que dans un premier temps l’aide aide les gens à partir. Stephen Smith
Les pays du Nord subventionnent les pays du Sud, moyennant l’aide au développement, afin que les démunis puissent mieux vivre et – ce n’est pas toujours dit aussi franchement – rester chez eux. Or, ce faisant, les pays riches se tirent une balle dans le pied. En effet, du moins dans un premier temps, ils versent une prime à la migration en aidant des pays pauvres à atteindre le seuil de prospérité à partir duquel leurs habitants disposent des moyens pour partir et s’installer ailleurs. C’est l’aporie du « codéveloppement », qui vise à retenir les pauvres chez eux alors qu’il finance leur déracinement. Il n’y a pas de solution. Car il faut bien aider les plus pauvres, ceux qui en ont le plus besoin ; le codéveloppement avec la prospère île Maurice, sans grand risque d’inciter au départ, est moins urgent… Les cyniques se consoleront à l’idée que l’aide a rarement fait advenir le développement mais, plus souvent, servi de « rente géopolitique » à des alliés dans l’arrière-cour mondiale. Dans un reportage au long cours titré The Uninvited, « les hôtes indésirables », Jeremy Harding, l’un des rédacteurs en chef de la London Review of Books, a pointé avec ironie le dilemme du codéveloppement : « des pays nantis – par exemple, les pays membres de l’UE – qui espèrent décourager la migration depuis des régions très pauvres du monde par un transfert prudent de ressources (grâce à des accords bilatéraux, des annulations de dettes et ainsi de suite) ne devraient pas être trop déçus en découvrant au bout d’un certain temps que leurs initiatives ont échoué à améliorer les conditions de vie dans les pays ciblés. Car un pays qui réussirait effectivement à augmenter son PIB, le taux d’alphabétisation de ses adultes et l’espérance de vie – soit un mieux à tout point de vue – produirait encore plus de candidats au départ qu’un pays qui se contente de son enterrement en bas du tableau de l’économie mondiale. » Les premiers rayons de prospérité pourraient bien motiver un plus grand nombre d’Africains à venir en Europe. Pourquoi ? Les plus pauvres parmi les pauvres n’ont pas les moyens d’émigrer. Ils n’y pensent même pas. Ils sont occupés à joindre les deux bouts, ce qui ne leur laisse guère le loisir de se familiariser avec la marche du monde et, encore moins, d’y participer. À l’autre extrême, qui coïncide souvent avec l’autre bout du monde, les plus aisés voyagent beaucoup, au point de croire que l’espace ne compte plus et que les frontières auraient tendance à disparaître ; leur liberté de circuler – un privilège – émousse leur désir de s’établir ailleurs. Ce n’est pas le cas des « rescapés de la subsistance », qui peuvent et veulent s’installer sur une terre d’opportunités. L’Afrique émergente est sur le point de subir cet effet d’échelle : hier dépourvues des moyens pour émigrer, ses masses sur le seuil de la prospérité se mettent aujourd’hui en route vers le « paradis » européen. Stephen Smith
Les migrants aussi font un peu de benchmarking pour regarder les législations à travers l’Europe qui sont, on va dire, les plus fragiles. Gérard Collomb
Donald Trump aurait (…) menti en affirmant que la criminalité augmentait en Allemagne, en raison de l’entrée dans le pays de 1,1 million de clandestins en 2015. (…) Les articles se sont immédiatement multipliés pour dénoncer « le mensonge » du président américain. Pourquoi ? Parce que les autorités allemandes se sont félicitées d’une baisse des agressions violentes en 2017. C’est vrai, elles ont chuté de 5,1% par rapport à 2016. Est-il possible, cependant, de feindre à ce point l’incompréhension ? Car les détracteurs zélés du président omettent de préciser que la criminalité a bien augmenté en Allemagne à la suite de cette vague migratoire exceptionnelle : 10% de crimes violents en plus, sur les années 2015 et 2016. L’étude réalisée par le gouvernement allemand et publiée en janvier dernier concluait même que 90% de cette augmentation était due aux jeunes hommes clandestins fraîchement accueillis, âgés de 14 à 30 ans. L’augmentation de la criminalité fut donc indiscutablement liée à l’accueil de 1,1 millions de clandestins pendant l’année 2015. C’est évidement ce qu’entend démontrer Donald Trump. Et ce n’est pas tout. Les chiffres du ministère allemand de l’Intérieur pour 2016 révèlent également une implication des étrangers et des clandestins supérieure à celle des Allemands dans le domaine de la criminalité. Et en hausse. La proportion d’étrangers parmi les personnes suspectées d’actes criminels était de 28,7% en 2014, elle est passée à 40,4% en 2016, avant de chuter à 35% en 2017 (ce qui reste plus important qu’en 2014). En 2016, les étrangers étaient 3,5 fois plus impliqués dans des crimes que les Allemands, les clandestins 7 fois plus. Des chiffres encore plus élevés dans le domaine des crimes violents (5 fois plus élevés chez les étrangers, 15 fois chez les clandestins) ou dans celui des viols en réunion (10 fois plus chez les étrangers, 42 fois chez les clandestins !). Factuellement, la criminalité n’augmente pas aujourd’hui en Allemagne. Mais l’exceptionnelle vague migratoire voulue par Angela Merkel en 2015 a bien eu pour conséquence l’augmentation de la criminalité en Allemagne. Les Allemands, eux, semblent l’avoir très bien compris. Valeurs actuelles
L’arme de Trump est facile à comprendre, et beaucoup plus difficile à parer. C’est la négociation, déclenchée ici par la menace de droits de douane très élevés. Le raisonnement du président est simple : « Je suis le premier acheteur du monde. Comme je suis un gros client, je vais renégocier avec chacun de mes fournisseurs. » L’objectif ici n’est pas d’obtenir un rabais et encore moins de déclencher une guerre commerciale. La seule chose qui intéresse Trump, ce sont des implantations d’usines aux Etats-Unis ou de nouvelles exportations, qu’il pourra brandir comme autant de trophées devant ses électeurs. Face à cette arme, les gouvernants des grands pays sont démunis. Aucun n’a appris l’art brutal de la négociation d’affaires. A l’université, Angela Merkel et Xi Jinping ont étudié la chimie, Emmanuel Macron la philosophie et la science administrative, Theresa May la géographie, Giuseppe Conte le droit. Donald Trump, lui, s’est spécialisé dans l’immobilier et a passé ensuite près d’un demi-siècle à se battre sur le prix du mètre carré ou le taux de l’impôt local. A ce jeu, il est redoutable. Il va donc arracher de vrais résultats. Le bras de fer inédit risque bien sûr de créer des tensions commerciales sans précédent depuis près d’un siècle, de dégénérer en tempête financière mondiale, d’engendrer des chocs géopolitiques. Mais Donald Trump s’en moque. Il veut être, aux yeux de ses électeurs, le président qui tient ses promesses. Qui pourrait lui en vouloir ? Jean-Marc Vittori
Donald Trump (…) a su parler à l’Amérique traditionnelle, excédée par cette montée des progressismes. (…) Les États-Unis ont vécu dans une relative prospérité depuis la fin de la guerre, et 2008 sonne comme le glas de ce système, faisant ressurgir une conscience américaine sortie d’outre-tombe et très critique à l’égard de ce modèle de société. D’autant que l’Amérique blanche et rurale est aujourd’hui la première exposée, sur le plan économique: le bassin industriel du nord du pays, les grands bassins des Rocheuses ou les campagnes reculées subissent la crise de plein fouet ; tandis que dans les villes, la mutation économique et le passage à une société des services permet d’éviter en partie les conséquences du rétrécissement économique. (…) (…) Je ne crois pas que l’Amérique soit en guerre avec son histoire, mais qu’elle est en train d’atteindre une maturité en réfléchissant à son histoire. À mon sens, la remise en cause de l’histoire serait un problème, car avant 1860, tout le personnel politique américain a cautionné l’esclavage. On ne peut tout de même pas envoyer tous ces hommes aux oubliettes! Donc sans vouloir réécrire toute l’histoire, on peut cependant observer que de nombreux mouvements américains ont cherché à remettre en cause certaines injustices de l’histoire: c’est le cas bien sûr du mouvement pour les droits civiques par exemple. À Washington, on trouve un musée de l’Holocauste qui consacre une partie de ses expositions aux camps d’internement réservés aux Japonais pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Les Américains savent prendre du recul avec leur histoire, pour en critiquer les parties dont ils ne sont pas fiers, et ne pas retomber dans les erreurs du passé. (…) Donald Trump a permis aux conservateurs de reprendre confiance en eux. Il n’est pas lui-même conservateur, mais il a épousé leur programme, ou plus exactement, comme il n’est pas un homme politique, il a laissé le camp conservateur remplir l’espace laissé vide en distillant leurs idées et leurs revendications, une fois l’élection gagnée. D’autant que Mike Pence est, lui, très conservateur. Les juges nommés par Trump à la Cour suprême poursuivront ainsi son action pendant encore quinze à vingt ans, et les premières décisions fortes en témoignent: récemment, la Cour a reconnu la possibilité d’une liberté de conscience face au mariage homosexuel, en donnant raison au pâtissier qui avait refusé de confectionner une pièce montée. Jean-Éric Branaa
Most people can agree that international affairs should not be conducted by tweet — especially when the tweeter in question is Donald Trump. Among other reasons, it’s easy to dismiss the president’s mercurial rage and flagrant insults as little more than temper tantrums. But that’s a mistake. Mr. Trump’s anger at America’s allies embodies, however unpleasantly, a not unreasonable point of view, and one that the rest of the world ignores at its peril: The global world order is unbalanced and inequitable. And unless something is done to correct it soon, it will collapse, with or without the president’s tweets. While the West happily built the liberal order over the past 70 years, with Europe at its center, the Americans had the continent’s back. In turn, as it unravels, America feels this loss of balance the hardest — it has always spent the most money and manpower to keep the system working. The Europeans have basically been free riders on the voyage, spending almost nothing on defense, and instead building vast social welfare systems at home and robust, well-protected export industries abroad. Rather than lash back at Mr. Trump, they would do better to ask how we got to this place, and how to get out. The European Union, as an institution, is one of the prime drivers of this inequity. At the Group of 7, for example, the constituent countries are described as all equals. But in reality, the union puts a thumb on the scales in its members’ favor: It is a highly integrated, well-protected free-trade area that gives a huge leg up to, say, German car manufacturers while essentially punishing American companies who want to trade in the region. The eurozone offers a similar unfair advantage. If it were not for the euro, Germany would long ago have had to appreciate its currency in line with its enormous export surplus. (…) how can the very same politicians and journalists who defended the euro bailout payments during the financial crisis, arguing that Germany profited disproportionately from the common currency, now go berserk when Mr. Trump makes exactly this point? German manufacturers also have the advantage of operating in a common market with huge wage gaps. Bulgaria, one of the poorest member states, has a per capita gross domestic product roughly equal to that of Gabon, while even in Slovakia, Poland and Hungary — three relative success stories among the recent entrants to the union — that same measure is still roughly a third of what it is in Germany. Under the European Union, German manufacturers can assemble their cars in low-wage countries and export them without worrying about tariffs or other trade barriers. If your plant sits in Detroit, you might find the president’s anger over this fact persuasive. Mr. Trump is not the first president to complain about the unfair burden sharing within NATO. He’s merely the first president not just to talk tough, but to get tough. (…) All those German politicians who oppose raising military spending from a meager 1.3 percent of gross domestic product should try to explain to American students why their European peers enjoy free universities and health care, while they leave it up to others to cover for the West’s military infrastructure (…) When the door was opened, in 2001, many in the West believed that a growing Chinese middle class, enriched by and engaged with the world economy, would eventually claim voice and suffrage, thereby democratizing China. The opposite has happened. China, which has grown wealthy in part by stealing intellectual property from the West, is turning into an online-era dictatorship, while still denying reciprocity in investment and trade relations. (…) China’s unchecked abuse of the global free-trade regime makes a mockery of the very idea that the world can operate according to a rules-based order. Again, while many in the West have talked the talk about taking on China, only Mr. Trump has actually done something about it. Jochen Bittner (Die Zeit)
Last weekend a horrifying tale about the Trump administration “losing” 1,500 children was all over the Internet. The hashtag #Wherearethechildren went viral on Twitter. Adding fuel to the fire was a photo depicting children being kept in cages. The only problem was that the children weren’t lost and the photo was taken during the Obama administration. The Left’s eagerness to embrace this “fake news” stemmed, according to the Times’s Amanda Taub, from “partisan polarization,” and as a result the tale “spread across liberal social media.” Yet the problem goes a lot deeper than that. Anti-Trump readers and viewers may have fallen victim to confirmation bias, but prestige media outlets also deserve a lot of the blame. Even when such stories are later debunked, as this one was, these outlets habitually feed viral myths to the public and create a climate in which any anti-Trump claim seems believable. Instead of asking readers to engage in some introspection about their credulousness, liberal journalists should look at their own behavior. For starters, it wasn’t just social media that spread the “missing children” myth. Some media outlets ran headlines asserting that the government had “lost track” of immigrant children, a claim easily conflated with Trump’s decision to separate parents and children at the border. Most egregiously, an Arizona Republic story (republished at USA Today and corrected about a week later) reported as fact that the government had lost children in its own custody. But as the Times explained, these children were not separated from their parents but rather had arrived illegally at the border on their own, seeking asylum. Most said they had fled their homes in Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala to escape drug-cartel and gang violence. They were then placed in the homes of adults who had agreed to sponsor them, often relatives. But, as has happened for years, including during the Obama administration, many of these children ran away or left the United States, or the adult sponsors (who might have their own troubles with the law) refused to pick up the phone when the government checked up on them. Hence, the figure of 1,475 children “missing.” The policy of separating parents from children is not entirely new, either. Indeed, it is standard when adults who have committed a crime are arrested. The only alternatives are to create a detention system for families, a policy to which the ACLU objected under Obama (the policy is barred under a 1997 consent decree), or simply not to detain illegal entrants at all before their court hearings, allowing them to disappear into the country. Arrests are up, of course, thanks to the Trump administration’s attempts to deter illegal immigration. This was a necessary departure from the previous administration’s soft approach to this serious problem. The knee-jerk anger of the Left against Trump’s policies doesn’t really stem from the debate over the issue, though of course Americans are divided about how to deal with illegal immigrants. More fundamentally, it stems from the polarization Taub discusses — and more specifically, from the divisions the media constantly reinforce. Americans read, listen to, and watch different media and have largely forgotten how to deal with disagreement except through demonization. To consume what was once called “mainstream media” is to enter into a world not only where Trump is never given the benefit of the doubt but where everything he does or says is not reported so much as presented as evidence against him in a daily trial. There is much to criticize about Trump’s tweets, utterances, and behavior. But anger at his presence in the White House has caused many journalists to discard their professional principles and any sense of restraint. At places like CNN, and even at the Times to some extent, the church–state divide between news and opinion has completely broken down. Panel discussions have become competitions in Trump-bashing. News reports are slanted to take Trump’s guilt or incompetence as a given. Even when myths are exposed, there’s no letup in the drumbeat of incitement against Trump. As an example, the day the Times published the column about liberals’ being led astray by the “missing children” meme, columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an anti-Trump screed on immigration in which he described the president’s policies as veering from “abhorrent to evil.” At this point, confirmation bias on the part of the readership is not the core issue. After the last 16 months of media coverage, why would anyone who identifies as liberal or a Democrat not believe the most outlandish or false tales about the president? If media analysts such as Taub want to understand why the loss of trust between liberals and conservatives is so extreme and how stories like this spread, they should start by looking in the mirror. It is the rabid partisanship of the media that is causing so many Americans to buy whatever myth the Internet is serving up against Trump on any given day. Jonathan S. Tobin
We’ve heard that the Trump administration has heartlessly sought to rip toddlers from the arms of their weeping mothers in order to punish illegal-immigrant parents who are merely seeking asylum. But the truth is more complex: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that even accompanied immigrant minors must be released from custody within 20 days. That means that if their parents do not arrive at a point of entry to claim asylum, and instead violate the law by crossing the border illegally, they will be arrested — and their children must then be separated from them by the working of the law. The only possible solution, without a change to the law itself, would involve releasing illegal-immigrant parents along with their children into the general population. We’ve also heard about the terrible living conditions in the holding centers for these children. Likely, some of that is true — although the stories from various sources conflict. But those facilities were overburdened for years before Trump took office; in fact, the media covered these same facilities and pointed out the problems therein during the Obama administration. In other words, this isn’t a Trumpian attempt to dump kids in hellholes. It’s a longtime problem that has yet to be solved. In reality, all of this could be solved with simple legislation. The House of Representatives is actually set to take up the issue of family separation in both versions of the immigration bill being presented in the House. But Democrats probably won’t sign on to either bill — and it’s unlikely they’d even sign onto an independent piece of legislation designed to allow children to stay with their illegal-immigrant parents until their cases can be adjudicated. That’s because thanks to biased media coverage — and, in some cases, outright falsehoods — Democrats are winning the public-relations war. The longer the Democrats prevent a solution from arising, the more they gain in the public-opinion polls. So they have little incentive to come to the table around an immigration solution — their better political option remains to wait Trump out and let the press inflict damage on him. There’s a reason every Republican attempt at immigration reform has stalled out over the past two decades — and there’s a reason Democrats have celebrated every time they have. There’s also a reason that Democrats with unified control of the presidency and Congress attempted no serious immigration reform. Better to let the problem fester for political gain than to attempt to solve it. If the media truly wished to contribute to a solution, all they’d have to do is cover the issue honestly. Yes, Trump is enforcing the laws against crossing the border illegally more harshly than the Obama administration did. But he didn’t create the separation policy. Yes, Trump has spoken with great passion in favor of stronger border controls. But he’s also offered a bigger amnesty for so-called DREAMers than even Barack Obama did. Instead of using truth as a guide, however, the press continue to suggest that base animus animates conservative feelings on immigration. This leads to a political prisoner’s dilemma in which everyone’s best option is stasis: Republicans are best off doing nothing, since they’ll earn nothing but scorn for any action they take from the press anyway, as well as the undying enmity of many in their base; Democrats are best off doing nothing, since they can count on the press to clock Republicans for any immigration failures. The only ones who lose out are the American people. Ben Shapiro
Much has been written — some of it either inaccurate or designed to obfuscate the issue ahead of the midterms for political purposes — about the border fiasco and the unfortunate separation of children from parents. (…) The media outrage usually does not include examination of why the Trump administration is enforcing existing laws that it inherited from the Bush and Obama administrations that at any time could have been changed by both Democratic and Republican majorities in Congress; of the use of often dubious asylum claims as a way of obtaining entry otherwise denied to those without legal authorization — a gambit that injures or at least hampers thousands with legitimate claims of political persecution; of the seeming unconcern for the safety of children by some would-be asylum seekers who illegally cross the border, rather than first applying legally at a U.S. consulate abroad; of the fact that many children are deliberately sent ahead, unescorted on such dangerous treks to help facilitate their own parents’ later entrance; of the cynicism of the cartels that urge and facilitate such mass rushes to the border to overwhelm general enforcement; and of the selective outrage of the media in 2018 in a fashion not known under similar policies and detentions of the past. In 2014, during a similar rush, both Barack Obama (“Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back.”) and Hillary Clinton (“We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”) warned — again to current media silence — would-be asylum seekers not to use children as levers to enter the U.S. A few other random thoughts. Mexico is the recipient of about $30 billion in annual remittances (aside from perhaps more than $20 billion annually sent to Central America) from mostly illegal aliens within the U.S. It is the beneficiary of an annual $71 billion trade surplus with the U.S. And it is mostly culpable for once again using illegal immigration and the lives of its own citizens — and allowing Central Americans unfettered transit through its country — as cynical tools of domestic and foreign policy. Illegal immigration, increasingly of mostly indigenous peoples, ensures an often racist Mexico City a steady stream of remittances (now its greatest source of foreign exchange), without much worry about how its indigent abroad can scrimp to send such massive sums back to Mexico. Facilitating illegal immigration also establishes and fosters a favorable expatriate demographic inside the U.S. that helps to recalibrate U.S. policy favorably toward Mexico. And Mexico City also uses immigration as a policy irritant to the U.S. that can be magnified or lessened, depending on Mexico’s own particular foreign-policy goals and moods at any given time. All of the above call into question whether Mexico is a NAFTA ally, a neutral, or a belligerent, a status that may become perhaps clearer during its upcoming presidential elections. So far, it assumes that the optics of this human tragedy facilitate its own political agendas, but it may be just as likely that its cynicism could fuel renewed calls for a wall and reexamination of the entire Mexican–U.S. relationship and, indeed, NAFTA. Finally, it is unfortunate that former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden and former first lady Laura Bush have both demagogued the issue by respective grotesque and ignorant comparisons of current border shelters to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and the forced Japanese internment during World War II. At its horrendous peak in August 1944, the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex on some days exterminated 10,000 human beings and may have cumulatively murdered well over 1 million Jews, as well as Eastern Europeans and Russians. To suggest that a detainee center is anything similar to that industrial killing monstrosity is unhinged, abhorrent — and shameful. It is an insult to current U.S. border-enforcement personnel who do a heroic job at great risk to protect the border in a humane fashion under unimaginable conditions and political pressures. And it is a greater injury to the lost 6 million of the Holocaust when their fate is so cavalierly and ignorantly used for political advantage. Hayden also should remember that during his own tenure at the NSA and as CIA director, he was constantly and in exaggerated style besmirched on issues such as “enhanced interrogation,” drones, and intrusive surveillance. He too often became the object of frequent and unfair comparisons to various Nazi allusions of the sort that he is now promulgating against the Trump administration. Equally ironic is that during the Abu Ghraib controversies, the Iraq War furor, and the post-9/11 renditions, George W. Bush — a constant target of brown shirt/fascist/Nazi slurs — was on occasion loosely compared to instigators of fascistic round-ups, including but not limited to the Japanese internment. One can disagree with a current policy without stooping to distort history to smear an administration, especially when such tactics in the past have been used against those now employing them. Victor Davis Hanson
La polémique autour de l’Aquarius est aussi déprimante que révélatrice de l’état d’esprit qui imprègne les grandes capitales d’Europe occidentale. L’Espagnol Sanchez fait preuve de noblesse d’âme et vole au secours des migrants sans penser deux fois aux conséquences de son geste sur sa propre frontière avec l’Afrique. Quant à Macron, il saute sur l’occasion pour taper sur les populistes fraîchement arrivés au pouvoir en Italie quitte à égratigner la qualité de la collaboration avec un membre du G7. Et tous oublient l’essentiel qui est de « réparer » la Libye, un pays qui saigne depuis 2011, date de la funeste intervention internationale dont les Libyens et les migrants paient encore les pots cassés. (…) Décidément, plus le temps passe, plus l’Europe ressemble à une énorme bijouterie sans portes ni fenêtres. Et tel est précisément le projet de Pedro Sanchez : scier les barreaux qui hérissent l’immense frontière méridionale de l’Espagne qui est aussi celle de l’Europe. Arrivé au pouvoir par effraction, grâce à une motion de censure (il n’a pas été élu et son parti ne détient la majorité des sièges au parlement), Pedro Sanchez est pressé de démanteler les protections soigneusement mises en place par ses prédécesseurs. Son ministre de l’Intérieur vient d’annoncer qu’il fera arracher les barbelés qui couvrent la frontière terrestre séparant le Maroc de Ceuta et Melilla, enclaves espagnoles en territoire africain. Un clin d’œil sans équivoque à destination des milliers d’Ivoiriens, de Maliens et de Guinéens, coincés au Maroc, et qui attendent le moment propice pour partir à l’assaut de la frontière. Il s’agit d’un ensemble de deux murs de six mètres de haut chacun, séparés par un chemin de patrouille et surveillés en permanence par des dispositifs électroniques. Le seul moyen de passer est de faire partie d’une marée humaine (à 200 ou 300) à même de déborder les capacités de réaction des policiers espagnols. Les plus chanceux s’équipent de gants et de couvertures pour ne pas se déchirer les doigts au contact des barbelés tranchants. Le jeu en vaut la chandelle car il suffit de poser le pied côté espagnol pour être couvert par le droit européen qui interdit les expulsions « à chaud ». En prenant la décision d’enlever les barbelés, donc d’entrouvrir de facto la frontière, Pedro Sanchez met les Marocains dans l’embarras. En effet, les policiers marocains font barrage aux migrants avec la plus grande difficulté au monde. Comment convaincre des jeunes qui ont traversé le désert à pied de ne pas tenter la chance de leur vie, si près de l’objectif ? L’exercice est difficile car la zone frontalière est un maquis idéal constitué de ravins profonds et de pinèdes denses. Le sujet épineux aussi sur le plan politique car le Maroc n’a jamais reconnu la souveraineté espagnole sur Ceuta et Melilla. Il se retrouve donc à dépenser chaque année des millions d’euros pour surveiller une frontière qu’il ne reconnaît même pas officiellement. Rien ne dit que le Maroc va continuer à jouer le bon élève si l’Espagne s’amuse à attiser artificiellement la tension aux alentours de Ceuta et Melilla. Ce vendredi 15 juin, ils ont été 686 à tenter leur chance entre le Maroc et l’Andalousie : un record. Quatre ont été repêchés sans vie. Et ce n’est qu’une entrée en matière car les côtes espagnoles ne sont séparées des plages africaines que par quelques heures de navigation. Du Sahara marocain jusqu’aux Canaries, il faut compter une vingtaine d’heures en chaloupe ; depuis Saint-Louis au Sénégal deux ou trois jours. Durant les mois d’été lorsque la mer est calme, la tentation est grande de prendre le large surtout quand on laisse derrière soi la misère et la violence. Driss Ghali
Deux questions un peu vulgaires sinon populistes: lorsque l’on admire en France le sauvetage d’un enfant par un migrant malien sans-papiers et que l’on insiste et sur son origine et sur son statut, s’agit-il d’une récupération, le cas échéant admissible? Lorsqu’un membre de la droite dure allemande veut rendre publiquement hommage à une enfant juive violée et assassinée, certes par un migrant musulman et non par un germain au crâne rasé, faut-il commencer par s’en indigner? Gilles William Goldnadel
Pour quelle raison, si seul le sauvetage dans l’urgence des migrants venus de la Libye incertaine leur importe, les gens de l’Aquarius ne les ont-ils pas acheminés vers les côtes assurées algériennes et tunisiennes, plus proches que l’Italie? Un peu embarrassée, leur représentante, Sophie Beau, a déclaré que le droit de ces pays était plus impérieux que le droit européen. Voilà qui en dit long pour ne pas dire tout: c’est parce que l’Europe est plus laxiste qu’on dédouane sans question des pays intransigeants mais pourtant plus proches des migrants, ne serait-ce que par la géographie et la religion. Dans la profondeur de ce déni se niche, comme je l’observe souvent, l’anti-occidentalisme culpabilisateur le plus sournois. Seule l’Europe devrait être comptable du sort des migrants, dès lors que c’est elle qui est coupable. C’est ainsi par exemple que l’ONU le lui a fait souvent grief sans un mot par exemple pour l’Arabie Saoudite et le Qatar, richissimes et déserts, qui expliquent ingénument la fermeture de leurs frontières, y compris à des frères en culture et en langue, au nom d’une exigence de sécurité qui ne se pose évidemment pas pour les peuples d’Europe… C’est ainsi par exemple que les responsables de l’Aquarius expliquaient avec insistance que les passagers étaient en surnombre et que la faim les menaçait. Mais pourquoi, dans ce cas hautement prévisible, accepter la présence à bord d’une journaliste d’Euronews et ne pas limiter strictement les passagers au personnel indispensable de bord aux fins de réserver une place supplémentaire à un naufragé? Enfin et surtout, dès lors que le sauveteur autoproclamé est avant tout un idéologue mondialiste, une question vous hante – et qui a hanté des juges italiens- sur les rapports entretenus avec des passeurs qui n’hésitent pas à saborder les embarcations pour placer les autorités européennes devant le forfait accompli. En réalité, on peut se poser toutes les questions du monde, on ne trouvera la réponse la plus satisfaisante à une question douloureuse désormais existentielle que lorsqu’on se débarrassera des deux obstacles qui empêchent toute appréhension rationnelle. Le premier obstacle est d’ordre juridique autant que politique. Tant que les déboutés du droit d’asile ne seront pas reconduits hors des frontières européennes, il n’y a aucune chance et même aucune raison que les peuples d’Europe, soucieux de la sécurité et du bien-être de leurs enfants comme de l’identité (le mot dit maudit) de leur pays, acceptent la situation actuelle. Et au-delà de la question de l’asile, et notamment en France, il est normal que le fait que des centaines de milliers de sans-papiers se maintiennent illégalement autant qu’ouvertement inspire aux citoyens chaque jour plus exaspérés un sentiment de révolte légitime. Ainsi, c’est le bafouement flagrant des lois républicaines sur la régulation des flux migratoires qui est le premier ennemi du réfugié éligible au droit d’asile qui mérite notre protection. Que penser, par ailleurs, de ce slogan qui attendait les migrants de l’Aquarius à leur arrivée à bon port espagnol: «Bienvenus chez vous»? Bienvenus chez nous, pourquoi pas, mais… «chez vous»! Pourquoi des migrants illégaux seraient-ils chez eux? Et même les réfugiés éligibles au droit d’asile, n’ont-ils pas vocation un jour de rentrer chez eux? Mais derrière cette question, on sent bien qu’il n’y a plus en Europe de «chez nous» pour personne sinon le monde entier, dans la tête des idéologues sans frontières, et que le mot «hôte» justifie plus que jamais son double sens absurde. Le second obstacle découle du premier. Mais il est de l’ordre de la psychologie et de la morale collective. Ainsi, il existe en Europe, et notamment en France, des gens, peu nombreux mais puissants médiatiquement et socialement qui refusent sans le dire ouvertement le respect des lois migratoires précisément dans le même cadre métapolitique que l’Open Society mondialiste de George Soros et de bien d’autres ONG. Il leur arrive parfois de l’avouer par mégarde puis de le regretter. C’est ainsi par exemple que j’ai réussi à faire dire à Iann Brossat, future tête de liste du Parti Communiste aux élections européennes et surtout adjoint au logement de Madame Hidalgo, qu’il ne saurait être question de reconduire les personnes déboutées de leur revendication au droit d’asile (RMC). Dès lors, que penser de la politique de la mairie de Paris qui, le lundi matin, joue à guichets ouverts l’accueil bruyant et entraînant de tous les migrants et, le mardi soir, se lamente de l’indignité de leur situation et incrimine la carence d’état? Dans ce cadre rien moins que sincère et rationnel, les ennemis déclarés de l’Europe des frontières continuent d’user de leur arme favorite: l’antinazisme fantasmé. C’est ainsi par exemple que l’ineffable mais combien populaire à Cannes et dans les médias, Cédric Herrou a twitté ainsi cette obscénité: «Quand Éric Ciotti dit en 2018 «mettons les migrants en Libye» il dirait en 1940 mettons-les dans des chambres à gaz». Bref l’utilisation nauséabonde d’un gaz incapacitant par voie de gazouillis écoeurant. Mais ces petits maîtres-chanteurs de Nuremberg et de l’antinazisme devenu fou ont, pour cause d’avoir trop crié au retour du loup, une voix enrouée qui porte désormais moins loin. Tout cela marche moins bien et les peuples ne marchent plus du tout. De l’Italie jusqu’en Autriche en passant par l’Allemagne. Et même en Israël. La semaine dernière, un tabou jusque-là entretenu avec une vigilance obsessionnelle autant que névrotique a été levé. Le chancelier autrichien Sébastien Kurz, pourtant allié à la droite dure, s’est rendu en Israël. Accompagné d’un ministre israélien, il s’est rendu au mémorial de Yad va Shem pour s’incliner devant les victimes de la Shoah. Il venait de décider d’expulser des imams islamistes radicaux inféodés à Erdogan. Il va être très difficile, malgré tous les efforts, de le faire passer pour un nazi antisémite, quand bien même il se montrera attaché au sort de ses compatriotes germaniques. Vous verrez que bientôt les populistes passeront pour plus intelligents et même plus généreux que les fausses élites aux cœurs artificiels. Gilles-William Goldnadel
Why would she put our little daughter through that ? (…) I do think it was irresponsible of her to take the baby with her in her arms because we don’t know what could happen. Denis Hernandez
Attention: une barbarie peut en cacher une autre !
A l’heure où de la frontière américano-mexicaine à l’Italie ou à l’Espagne …
Et à l’instar des boucliers humains du Hamas …
C’est désormais sans compter la traditionnelle fraude documentaire …
Derrière leurs enfants que les clandestins sont invités à faire leur « marche du retour » « chez eux » …
Et qu’une mesure prévue pour protéger les enfants dans un pays où contrairement à la Corée du nord on n’emprisonne pas les enfants avec leurs parents …
Se voit qualifier de criminelle par ceux-là mêmes qui pour « vivre leur rêve américain » sont prêts à sacrifier à la Abdullah Kurdi la vie de leurs propres enfants …
Pendant qu’entre une Kate ou une Susanna une population osant regretter son « chez nous » se voit immédiatement excommuniée pour populisme …
Et que tout en ayant profité depuis 70 ans du parapluie nucléaire américain, c’est aux pires dictatures de la planète que l’on confie la surveillance des droits de l’homme …
Devinez qui entre « fake news » et « fake history » y compris dans les têtes de nos enfants, on accuse à présent de cruauté et de barbarie nazie ?
Border Politics and the Use and Abuse of History
Victor Davis Hanson
National Review
June 19, 2018
Much has been written — some of it either inaccurate or designed to obfuscate the issue ahead of the midterms for political purposes — about the border fiasco and the unfortunate separation of children from parents. Rich Lowry’s brief analysis is the most insightful.
The media outrage usually does not include examination of why the Trump administration is enforcing existing laws that it inherited from the Bush and Obama administrations that at any time could have been changed by both Democratic and Republican majorities in Congress; of the use of often dubious asylum claims as a way of obtaining entry otherwise denied to those without legal authorization — a gambit that injures or at least hampers thousands with legitimate claims of political persecution; of the seeming unconcern for the safety of children by some would-be asylum seekers who illegally cross the border, rather than first applying legally at a U.S. consulate abroad; of the fact that many children are deliberately sent ahead, unescorted on such dangerous treks to help facilitate their own parents’ later entrance; of the cynicism of the cartels that urge and facilitate such mass rushes to the border to overwhelm general enforcement; and of the selective outrage of the media in 2018 in a fashion not known under similar policies and detentions of the past.
In 2014, during a similar rush, both Barack Obama (“Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back.”) and Hillary Clinton (“We have to send a clear message, just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. So, we don’t want to send a message that is contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”) warned — again to current media silence — would-be asylum seekers not to use children as levers to enter the U.S.
A few other random thoughts. Mexico is the recipient of about $30 billion in annual remittances (aside from perhaps more than $20 billion annually sent to Central America) from mostly illegal aliens within the U.S. It is the beneficiary of an annual $71 billion trade surplus with the U.S. And it is mostly culpable for once again using illegal immigration and the lives of its own citizens — and allowing Central Americans unfettered transit through its country — as cynical tools of domestic and foreign policy.
Mexico’s policies of deliberately exporting its own citizens are decades-old and hinge on providing it a social safety valve in lieu of domestic economic and human-rights reforms.
Illegal immigration, increasingly of mostly indigenous peoples, ensures an often racist Mexico City a steady stream of remittances (now its greatest source of foreign exchange), without much worry about how its indigent abroad can scrimp to send such massive sums back to Mexico. Facilitating illegal immigration also establishes and fosters a favorable expatriate demographic inside the U.S. that helps to recalibrate U.S. policy favorably toward Mexico. And Mexico City also uses immigration as a policy irritant to the U.S. that can be magnified or lessened, depending on Mexico’s own particular foreign-policy goals and moods at any given time.
All of the above call into question whether Mexico is a NAFTA ally, a neutral, or a belligerent, a status that may become perhaps clearer during its upcoming presidential elections. So far, it assumes that the optics of this human tragedy facilitate its own political agendas, but it may be just as likely that its cynicism could fuel renewed calls for a wall and reexamination of the entire Mexican–U.S. relationship and, indeed, NAFTA.
Finally, it is unfortunate that former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden and former first lady Laura Bush have both demagogued the issue by respective grotesque and ignorant comparisons of current border shelters to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp and the forced Japanese internment during World War II. At its horrendous peak in August 1944, the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex on some days exterminated 10,000 human beings and may have cumulatively murdered well over 1 million Jews, as well as Eastern Europeans and Russians.
To suggest that a detainee center is anything similar to that industrial killing monstrosity is unhinged, abhorrent — and shameful. It is an insult to current U.S. border-enforcement personnel who do a heroic job at great risk to protect the border in a humane fashion under unimaginable conditions and political pressures. And it is a greater injury to the lost 6 million of the Holocaust when their fate is so cavalierly and ignorantly used for political advantage. Hayden also should remember that during his own tenure at the NSA and as CIA director, he was constantly and in exaggerated style besmirched on issues such as “enhanced interrogation,” drones, and intrusive surveillance. He too often became the object of frequent and unfair comparisons to various Nazi allusions of the sort that he is now promulgating against the Trump administration.
Equally ironic is that during the Abu Ghraib controversies, the Iraq War furor, and the post-9/11 renditions, George W. Bush — a constant target of brown shirt/fascist/Nazi slurs — was on occasion loosely compared to instigators of fascistic round-ups, including but not limited to the Japanese internment.
Moreover, we often forget that the forced relocation and internment was an unconstitutional and amoral act aimed at mostly Japanese-Americans citizens (among them the parents and grandparents of my current neighboring farmers), along with some Japanese residents.
It was whipped up by the feverish progressive McClatchy Bee papers, facilitated by California attorney general Earl Warren (“The Japanese situation as it exists in this state today may well be the Achilles heel of the entire civilian defense effort.”), who found the hysterical atmosphere that he helped create quite useful in getting elected governor in 1942, and, of course, green-lighted by a progressive FDR and his wartime advisers, especially Harvard Law grad John J. McCloy, a blue-chip Wall Street lawyer, FDR intimate, and later World Bank president, Ford Foundation head, and chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations. Unlike Warren, McCloy never regretted his instrumental role in the Japanese-American internment.
One can disagree with a current policy without stooping to distort history to smear an administration, especially when such tactics in the past have been used against those now employing them.
Voir de plus:
The Truth about Separating Kids
Rich Lowry
National Review
May 28, 2018
Some economic migrants are using children as chits, but the problem is fixable — if Congress acts.The latest furor over Trump immigration policy involves the separation of children from parents at the border.
As usual, the outrage obscures more than it illuminates, so it’s worth walking through what’s happening here.
For the longest time, illegal immigration was driven by single males from Mexico. Over the last decade, the flow has shifted to women, children, and family units from Central America. This poses challenges we haven’t confronted before and has made what once were relatively minor wrinkles in the law loom very large.
The Trump administration isn’t changing the rules that pertain to separating an adult from the child. Those remain the same. Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child’s parent, or is a threat to the child, or is put into criminal proceedings.
It’s the last that is operative here. The past practice had been to give a free pass to an adult who is part of a family unit. The new Trump policy is to prosecute all adults. The idea is to send a signal that we are serious about our laws and to create a deterrent against re-entry. (Illegal entry is a misdemeanor, illegal re-entry a felony.)
When a migrant is prosecuted for illegal entry, he or she is taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals. In no circumstance anywhere in the U.S. do the marshals care for the children of people they take into custody. The child is taken into the custody of HHS, who cares for them at temporary shelters.
The criminal proceedings are exceptionally short, assuming there is no aggravating factor such as a prior illegal entity or another crime. The migrants generally plead guilty, and they are then sentenced to time served, typically all in the same day, although practices vary along the border. After this, they are returned to the custody of ICE.
If the adult then wants to go home, in keeping with the expedited order of removal that is issued as a matter of course, it’s relatively simple. The adult should be reunited quickly with his or her child, and the family returned home as a unit. In this scenario, there’s only a very brief separation.
Where it becomes much more of an issue is if the adult files an asylum claim. In that scenario, the adults are almost certainly going to be detained longer than the government is allowed to hold their children.
That’s because of something called the Flores Consent Decree from 1997. It says that unaccompanied children can be held only 20 days. A ruling by the Ninth Circuit extended this 20-day limit to children who come as part of family units. So even if we want to hold a family unit together, we are forbidden from doing so.
The clock ticking on the time the government can hold a child will almost always run out before an asylum claim is settled. The migrant is allowed ten days to seek an attorney, and there may be continuances or other complications.
This creates the choice of either releasing the adults and children together into the country pending the ajudication of the asylum claim, or holding the adults and releasing the children. If the adult is held, HHS places the child with a responsible party in the U.S., ideally a relative (migrants are likely to have family and friends here).
Even if Flores didn’t exist, the government would be very constrained in how many family units it can accommodate. ICE has only about 3,000 family spaces in shelters. It is also limited in its overall space at the border, which is overwhelmed by the ongoing influx. This means that — whatever the Trump administration would prefer to do — many adults are still swiftly released.
Why try to hold adults at all? First of all, if an asylum-seeker is detained, it means that the claim goes through the process much more quickly, a couple of months or less rather than years. Second, if an adult is released while the claim is pending, the chances of ever finding that person again once he or she is in the country are dicey, to say the least. It is tantamount to allowing the migrant to live here, no matter what the merits of the case.
A few points about all this:
1) Family units can go home quickly. The option that both honors our laws and keeps family units together is a swift return home after prosecution. But immigrant advocates hate it because they want the migrants to stay in the United States. How you view this question will depend a lot on how you view the motivation of the migrants (and how seriously you take our laws and our border).
2) There’s a better way to claim asylum. Every indication is that the migrant flow to the United States is discretionary. It nearly dried up at the beginning of the Trump administration when migrants believed that they had no chance of getting into the United States. Now, it is going in earnest again because the message got out that, despite the rhetoric, the policy at the border hasn’t changed. This strongly suggests that the flow overwhelmingly consists of economic migrants who would prefer to live in the United States, rather than victims of persecution in their home country who have no option but to get out.
Even if a migrant does have a credible fear of persecution, there is a legitimate way to pursue that claim, and it does not involve entering the United States illegally. First, such people should make their asylum claim in the first country where they feel safe, i.e., Mexico or some other country they are traversing to get here. Second, if for some reason they are threatened everywhere but the United States, they should show up at a port of entry and make their claim there rather than crossing the border illegally.
3) There is a significant moral cost to not enforcing the border. There is obviously a moral cost to separating a parent from a child and almost everyone would prefer not to do it. But, under current policy and with the current resources, the only practical alternative is letting family units who show up at the border live in the country for the duration. Not only does this make a mockery of our laws, it creates an incentive for people to keep bringing children with them.
Needless to say, children should not be making this journey that is fraught with peril. But there is now a premium on bringing children because of how we have handled these cases. They are considered chits.
In April, the New York Times reported:
Some migrants have admitted they brought their children not only to remove them from danger in such places as Central America and Africa, but because they believed it would cause the authorities to release them from custody sooner.
Others have admitted to posing falsely with children who are not their own, and Border Patrol officials say that such instances of fraud are increasing.
According to azcentral.com, it is “common to have parents entrust their children to a smuggler as a favor or for profit.”
If someone is determined to come here illegally, the decent and safest thing would be to leave the child at home with a relative and send money back home. Because we favor family units over single adults, we are creating an incentive to do the opposite and use children to cut deals with smugglers.
4) Congress can fix this. Congress can change the rules so the Flores consent decree will no longer apply, and it can appropriate more money for family shelters at the border. This is an obvious thing to do that would eliminate the tension between enforcing our laws and keeping family units together. The Trump administration is throwing as many resources as it can at the border to expedite the process, and it desperately wants the Flores consent decree reversed. Despite some mixed messages, if the administration had its druthers, family units would be kept together and their cases settled quickly.
The missing piece here is Congress, but little outrage will be directed at it, and probably nothing will be done. And so our perverse system will remain in place and the crisis at the border will rumble on.
Voir de même:
Media Dishonesty on Immigration Contributes to Gridlock
Ben Shapiro
National Review
June 19, 2018
The hysteria over border-enforcement problems benefits Democrats — and gives them no incentive to fix the problem. The illegal-immigration issue has always been one fraught with politicking. We always hear the same refrain from both sides: that people are suffering and living in the shadows; that we must find a solution for them as well as a way to solidify our border security. And yet nothing ever gets done.
The impression of some in the press seems to be that nothing gets done because of a lack of public pressure. If only they could somehow jar American sensibilities into solving this problem once and for all!
Certainly, that’s the motivation that lies behind the sudden media enthusiasm for covering the phenomenon of Immigration and Customs Enforcement separating children from their illegal-immigrant parents at the border. For the last week, the attention has been nearly wall-to-wall — and the moral preening has hit an all-time apex. MSNBC is now analyzing Biblical verses while asking, “What Would Jesus Do?” (Does this mean Trump has finally won the War on Christmas?) Chuck Todd of NBC News is accusing Republicans of holding kids “hostage.” Media members are breaking land-speed records to rush down to the border in order to shout their outrage over the holding pens in which the authorities are holding small children.
Presumably, all of this is designed to effectuate change.
Instead, it achieves precisely the opposite.
That’s because the media coverage of the illegal-immigration issue has always been shot through with emotionally manipulative falsehoods. In this case, that manipulation has been particularly extreme.
We’ve heard that the Trump administration has heartlessly sought to rip toddlers from the arms of their weeping mothers in order to punish illegal-immigrant parents who are merely seeking asylum. But the truth is more complex: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that even accompanied immigrant minors must be released from custody within 20 days. That means that if their parents do not arrive at a point of entry to claim asylum, and instead violate the law by crossing the border illegally, they will be arrested — and their children must then be separated from them by the working of the law. The only possible solution, without a change to the law itself, would involve releasing illegal-immigrant parents along with their children into the general population.
We’ve also heard about the terrible living conditions in the holding centers for these children. Likely, some of that is true — although the stories from various sources conflict. But those facilities were overburdened for years before Trump took office; in fact, the media covered these same facilities and pointed out the problems therein during the Obama administration. In other words, this isn’t a Trumpian attempt to dump kids in hellholes. It’s a longtime problem that has yet to be solved.
In reality, all of this could be solved with simple legislation. The House of Representatives is actually set to take up the issue of family separation in both versions of the immigration bill being presented in the House. But Democrats probably won’t sign on to either bill — and it’s unlikely they’d even sign onto an independent piece of legislation designed to allow children to stay with their illegal-immigrant parents until their cases can be adjudicated. That’s because thanks to biased media coverage — and, in some cases, outright falsehoods — Democrats are winning the public-relations war. The longer the Democrats prevent a solution from arising, the more they gain in the public-opinion polls. So they have little incentive to come to the table around an immigration solution — their better political option remains to wait Trump out and let the press inflict damage on him. There’s a reason every Republican attempt at immigration reform has stalled out over the past two decades — and there’s a reason Democrats have celebrated every time they have. There’s also a reason that Democrats with unified control of the presidency and Congress attempted no serious immigration reform. Better to let the problem fester for political gain than to attempt to solve it.
If the media truly wished to contribute to a solution, all they’d have to do is cover the issue honestly. Yes, Trump is enforcing the laws against crossing the border illegally more harshly than the Obama administration did. But he didn’t create the separation policy. Yes, Trump has spoken with great passion in favor of stronger border controls. But he’s also offered a bigger amnesty for so-called DREAMers than even Barack Obama did.
Instead of using truth as a guide, however, the press continue to suggest that base animus animates conservative feelings on immigration. This leads to a political prisoner’s dilemma in which everyone’s best option is stasis: Republicans are best off doing nothing, since they’ll earn nothing but scorn for any action they take from the press anyway, as well as the undying enmity of many in their base; Democrats are best off doing nothing, since they can count on the press to clock Republicans for any immigration failures. The only ones who lose out are the American people.
Voir encore:
The Anti-Trump Media’s ‘Missing Kids’ Myth
The viral story not a mistake but the product of unchecked bias.
Jonathan S. Tobin
National Review
June 1, 2018
It was a mistake so egregious and so widespread that even the New York Times, the flagship of liberal journalism — and not the source of the original story — felt it had to devote an article to explaining how it happened.
Last weekend a horrifying tale about the Trump administration “losing” 1,500 children was all over the Internet. The hashtag #Wherearethechildren went viral on Twitter. Adding fuel to the fire was a photo depicting children being kept in cages.
The only problem was that the children weren’t lost and the photo was taken during the Obama administration. The Left’s eagerness to embrace this “fake news” stemmed, according to the Times’s Amanda Taub, from “partisan polarization,” and as a result the tale “spread across liberal social media.”
Yet the problem goes a lot deeper than that. Anti-Trump readers and viewers may have fallen victim to confirmation bias, but prestige media outlets also deserve a lot of the blame. Even when such stories are later debunked, as this one was, these outlets habitually feed viral myths to the public and create a climate in which any anti-Trump claim seems believable. Instead of asking readers to engage in some introspection about their credulousness, liberal journalists should look at their own behavior.
For starters, it wasn’t just social media that spread the “missing children” myth. Some media outlets ran headlines asserting that the government had “lost track” of immigrant children, a claim easily conflated with Trump’s decision to separate parents and children at the border. Most egregiously, an Arizona Republic story (republished at USA Today and corrected about a week later) reported as fact that the government had lost children in its own custody.
But as the Times explained, these children were not separated from their parents but rather had arrived illegally at the border on their own, seeking asylum. Most said they had fled their homes in Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala to escape drug-cartel and gang violence. They were then placed in the homes of adults who had agreed to sponsor them, often relatives. But, as has happened for years, including during the Obama administration, many of these children ran away or left the United States, or the adult sponsors (who might have their own troubles with the law) refused to pick up the phone when the government checked up on them. Hence, the figure of 1,475 children “missing.”
The policy of separating parents from children is not entirely new, either. Indeed, it is standard when adults who have committed a crime are arrested. The only alternatives are to create a detention system for families, a policy to which the ACLU objected under Obama (the policy is barred under a 1997 consent decree), or simply not to detain illegal entrants at all before their court hearings, allowing them to disappear into the country.
Arrests are up, of course, thanks to the Trump administration’s attempts to deter illegal immigration. This was a necessary departure from the previous administration’s soft approach to this serious problem.
The knee-jerk anger of the Left against Trump’s policies doesn’t really stem from the debate over the issue, though of course Americans are divided about how to deal with illegal immigrants. More fundamentally, it stems from the polarization Taub discusses — and more specifically, from the divisions the media constantly reinforce. Americans read, listen to, and watch different media and have largely forgotten how to deal with disagreement except through demonization. To consume what was once called “mainstream media” is to enter into a world not only where Trump is never given the benefit of the doubt but where everything he does or says is not reported so much as presented as evidence against him in a daily trial.
There is much to criticize about Trump’s tweets, utterances, and behavior. But anger at his presence in the White House has caused many journalists to discard their professional principles and any sense of restraint. At places like CNN, and even at the Times to some extent, the church–state divide between news and opinion has completely broken down. Panel discussions have become competitions in Trump-bashing. News reports are slanted to take Trump’s guilt or incompetence as a given.
Fact Free
The Real Story About Fake News Is Partisanship
Amanda Taub
NYT
In his farewell address as president Tuesday, Barack Obama warned of the dangers of uncontrolled partisanship. American democracy, he said, is weakened “when we allow our political dialogue to become so corrosive that people of good character are turned off from public service, so coarse with rancor that Americans with whom we disagree are not just misguided, but somehow malevolent.”
That seems a well-founded worry. Partisan bias now operates more like racism than mere political disagreement, academic research on the subject shows. And this widespread prejudice could have serious consequences for American democracy.
The partisan divide is easy to detect if you know where to look. Consider the thinly disguised sneer in most articles and editorials about so-called fake news. The very phrase implies that the people who read and spread the kind of false political stories that swirled online during the election campaign must either be too dumb to realize they’re being duped or too dishonest to care that they’re spreading lies.
But the fake-news phenomenon is not the result of personal failings. And it is not limited to one end of the political spectrum. Rather, Americans’ deep bias against the political party they oppose is so strong that it acts as a kind of partisan prism for facts, refracting a different reality to Republicans than to Democrats.
Partisan refraction has fueled the rise of fake news, according to researchers who study the phenomenon. But the repercussions go far beyond stories shared on Facebook and Reddit, affecting Americans’ faith in government — and the government’s ability to function.
The power of partisan bias
In 2009, Sean Westwood, then a Stanford Ph.D. student, discovered that partisanship was one of the most powerful forces in American life. He got annoyed with persistent squabbles among his friends, and he noticed that they seemed to be breaking along partisan lines, even when they concerned issues that ostensibly had nothing to do with politics.
“I didn’t expect political conflict to spill over from political aspects of our lives to nonpolitical aspects of our lives, and I saw that happening in my social group,” said Mr. Westwood, now a professor at Dartmouth.
He wondered if this was a sign that the role of partisanship in American life was changing. Previously, partisan conflict mostly applied to political issues like taxes or abortion. Now it seemed, among his acquaintances at least, to be operating more like racism or sexism, fueling negative or positive judgments on people themselves, based on nothing more than their party identification.
Curious, Mr. Westwood looked at the National Election Study, a long-running survey that tracks Americans’ political opinions and behavior. He found that until a few decades ago, people’s feelings about their party and the opposing party were not too different. But starting in the 1980s, Americans began to report increasingly negative opinions of their opposing party.
Since then, that polarization has grown even stronger. The reasons for that are unclear. “I suspect that part of it has to do with the rise of constant 24-hour news,” Mr. Westwood said, “and also the shift that we’ve unfortunately gone through in which elections are more or less now a permanent state of affairs.”
To find out more about the consequences of that polarization, Mr. Westwood, along with Shanto Iyengar, a Stanford professor who studies political communication, embarked on a series of experiments. They found something quite shocking: Not only did party identity turn out to affect people’s behavior and decision making broadly, even on apolitical subjects, but according to their data it also had more influence on the way Americans behaved than race did.
That is a sea change in the role of partisanship in public life, Mr. Westwood said.
“Partisanship, for a long period of time, wasn’t viewed as part of who we are,” he said. “It wasn’t core to our identity. It was just an ancillary trait. But in the modern era we view party identity as something akin to gender, ethnicity or race — the core traits that we use to describe ourselves to others.”
That has made the personal political. “Politics has become so important that people select relationships on that basis,” Mr. Iyengar said. For instance, it has become quite rare for Democrats to marry Republicans, according to the same Westwood/Iyengar paper, which cited a finding in a 2009 survey of married couples that only 9 percent consisted of Democrat-Republican pairs. And it has become more rare for children to have a different party affiliation from their parents.
But it has also made the political personal. Today, political parties are no longer just the people who are supposed to govern the way you want. They are a team to support, and a tribe to feel a part of. And the public’s view of politics is becoming more and more zero-sum: It’s about helping their team win, and making sure the other team loses.
How partisan bias fuels fake news
Partisan tribalism makes people more inclined to seek out and believe stories that justify their pre-existing partisan biases, whether or not they are true.
“If I’m a rabid Trump voter and I don’t know much about public affairs, and I see something about some scandal about Hillary Clinton’s aides being involved in an assassination attempt, or that story about the pope endorsing Trump, then I’d be inclined to believe it,” Mr. Iyengar said. “This is reinforcing my beliefs about the value of a Trump candidacy.”
And Clinton voters, he said, would be similarly drawn to stories that deride Mr. Trump as a demagogue or a sexual predator.
Sharing those stories on social media is a way to show public support for one’s partisan team — roughly the equivalent of painting your face with team colors on game day.
“You want to show that you’re a good member of your tribe,” Mr. Westwood said. “You want to show others that Republicans are bad or Democrats are bad, and your tribe is good. Social media provides a unique opportunity to publicly declare to the world what your beliefs are and how willing you are to denigrate the opposition and reinforce your own political candidates.”
Partisan bias fuels fake news because people of all partisan stripes are generally quite bad at figuring out what news stories to believe. Instead, they use trust as a shortcut. Rather than evaluate a story directly, people look to see if someone credible believes it, and rely on that person’s judgment to fill in the gaps in their knowledge.
“There are many, many decades of research on communication on the importance of source credibility,” said John Sides, a professor at George Washington University who studies political communication.
Partisan bias strongly influences whom people perceive as trustworthy. One of the experiments that Mr. Westwood and Mr. Iyengar conducted demonstrated that people are much more likely to trust members of their party. In that experiment, they gave study participants $10 and asked how much they wanted to give to another player. Whatever that second player received would be multiplied, and he or she would then have a chance to return some of the cash to the original player.
How much confidence would the participant have that the other player would give some of the money back? They found that participants gave more money if they were told the other player supported the same political party as they did.
Partisanship’s influence on trust means that when there is a partisan divide among experts, Mr. Sides said, “you get people believing wildly different sets of facts.”
Beyond fake news: how the partisan divide affects politics
The fake news that flourished during the election is a noticeable manifestation of that dynamic, but it’s not what experts like Mr. Iyengar and Mr. Westwood find most worrying. To them, the bigger concern is that the natural consequence of this growing national divide will be a feedback loop in which the public’s bias encourages extremism among politicians, undermining public faith in government institutions and their ability to function.
Politicians “have an incentive to attack, to go after their opponents, to reveal to their own side that they are good members of the tribe, that they are saying all the right things,” Mr. Iyengar said. “This is an incentive for Republicans and Democrats in Congress to behave in a hyperpartisan manner in order to excite their base.”
That feeds partisan bias among the public by reinforcing the idea that the opposition is made up of bad or dangerous people, which then creates more demand for political extremism.
The result is an environment in which compromise and collaboration with the opposing party are seen as signs of weakness, and of being a bad member of the tribe.
“It’s a vicious cycle,” Mr. Iyengar said. “All of this is going to make policy-making and fact-finding more problematic.”
He already sees it affecting politicians’ partisan response to Russia’s election interference, for instance: “The Republicans are going to resist the notion that there was an intervention by the Russians that may have benefited Trump, because it is an inconvenient act. Whereas the Democrats are obviously motivated to seize upon that as a plausible account of what occurred.”
Mr. Westwood agreed. When Russia intervened in the American election, “for a lot of voters it was to help defeat Hillary Clinton, so it’s not surprising that many Republicans see that as righteous.”
“To be cliché, the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” he said.
Already, partisan bias is undermining confidence in the last election. “We saw some symptoms of that in this last campaign,” Mr. Iyengar said. “You begin to have doubts about the legitimacy of the election. And you begin to view the outcome as somehow contaminated or tainted. And you had all of Trump’s comments about how he would not concede if the election went to Clinton, and then you had all the people demonstrating.”
Now, “you have quite a few people who are willing to call into question an institution for centuries that has been sacrosanct,” Mr. Iyengar said.
Mr. Westwood was even more pessimistic. “The consequences of that are insane,” he said, “and potentially devastating to the norms of democratic governance.”
“I don’t think things are going to get better in the short term; I don’t think they’re going to get better in the long term. I think this is the new normal.”
Lost in the debate is any acknowledgment that President Obama’s administration also used detention facilities.
Current U.S. immigration laws, when enforced, have the consequence of temporarily separating adults who arrive with children into separate detention facilities in order to prosecute the adults.
The policy of prosecuting immigrants for crossing the border illegally has been in place for multiple administrations. The Obama administration prosecuted half a million illegal immigrants and similarly separated families in the process. So did the Bush administration.
Personal accounts from immigration lawyers tell a tale of Obama being equally concerned about unaccompanied minors traveling to the border and wanting to create a deterrent.
Photos of border detention facilities from the Obama-era, taken during 2014, look nearly identical to the ones taken during the Trump era.
You never see them, however. Here they are, taken in 2014 during a media tour of Obama-era detention facilities in Brownsville, Texas, and Nogales, Arizona.
As the Daily Caller previously reported, “Obama administration prosecuted nearly 500,000 illegal immigrants between FY 2010-FY2016. They referred 1/5 of illegals for prosecution, which often resulted in family separations.”
Editor’s Note: Two of the 32 photos originally included in this post were found to be from a CPB press handout June 17, 2018. They have since been removed.
What Trump Gets Right About Europe
Jochen Bittner
Mr. Bittner is a political editor for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a contributing opinion writer.
NYT
HAMBURG, Germany — Most people can agree that international affairs should not be conducted by tweet — especially when the tweeter in question is Donald Trump. Among other reasons, it’s easy to dismiss the president’s mercurial rage and flagrant insults as little more than temper tantrums.
But that’s a mistake. Mr. Trump’s anger at America’s allies embodies, however unpleasantly, a not unreasonable point of view, and one that the rest of the world ignores at its peril: The global world order is unbalanced and inequitable. And unless something is done to correct it soon, it will collapse, with or without the president’s tweets.
While the West happily built the liberal order over the past 70 years, with Europe at its center, the Americans had the continent’s back. In turn, as it unravels, America feels this loss of balance the hardest — it has always spent the most money and manpower to keep the system working.
The Europeans have basically been free riders on the voyage, spending almost nothing on defense, and instead building vast social welfare systems at home and robust, well-protected export industries abroad. Rather than lash back at Mr. Trump, they would do better to ask how we got to this place, and how to get out.
The European Union, as an institution, is one of the prime drivers of this inequity. At the Group of 7, for example, the constituent countries are described as all equals. But in reality, the union puts a thumb on the scales in its members’ favor: It is a highly integrated, well-protected free-trade area that gives a huge leg up to, say, German car manufacturers while essentially punishing American companies who want to trade in the region.
The eurozone offers a similar unfair advantage. If it were not for the euro, Germany would long ago have had to appreciate its currency in line with its enormous export surplus.
Sure, eurozone membership makes imports to Germany more expensive than they would be under the deutschemark; wage restraint has also helped maintain the competitiveness of German machinery. But how can the very same politicians and journalists who defended the euro bailout payments during the financial crisis, arguing that Germany profited disproportionately from the common currency, now go berserk when Mr. Trump makes exactly this point?
German manufacturers also have the advantage of operating in a common market with huge wage gaps. Bulgaria, one of the poorest member states, has a per capita gross domestic product roughly equal to that of Gabon, while even in Slovakia, Poland and Hungary — three relative success stories among the recent entrants to the union — that same measure is still roughly a third of what it is in Germany. Under the European Union, German manufacturers can assemble their cars in low-wage countries and export them without worrying about tariffs or other trade barriers. If your plant sits in Detroit, you might find the president’s anger over this fact persuasive.
Mr. Trump is not the first president to complain about the unfair burden sharing within NATO. He’s merely the first president not just to talk tough, but to get tough.
Indeed, while his actions are shocking, the Europeans cannot say they are surprised. The warnings from the Obama administration that America’s indulgence might eventually cease had been plenty. Yet Europeans didn’t care much. All those German politicians who oppose raising military spending from a meager 1.3 percent of gross domestic product should try to explain to American students why their European peers enjoy free universities and health care, while they leave it up to others to cover for the West’s military infrastructure.
Europe’s unfair trade advantage is not the only challenge to the liberal world order. In retrospect, allowing China into the World Trade Organization — one of that order’s crowning achievements — was a huge mistake.
When the door was opened, in 2001, many in the West believed that a growing Chinese middle class, enriched by and engaged with the world economy, would eventually claim voice and suffrage, thereby democratizing China. The opposite has happened. China, which has grown wealthy in part by stealing intellectual property from the West, is turning into an online-era dictatorship, while still denying reciprocity in investment and trade relations.
Is this how you behave as a privileged member of the world’s business club? China’s unchecked abuse of the global free-trade regime makes a mockery of the very idea that the world can operate according to a rules-based order. Again, while many in the West have talked the talk about taking on China, only Mr. Trump has actually done something about it.
Mr. Trump’s tariffs against Europe are patently illegal, and Europe should retaliate. But simply punishing the makers of motorcycles, blue jeans and bourbon whiskey doesn’t solve any of the problems festering beneath the skin of the liberal world order. Europe needs to understand what is driving Mr. Trump’s anger and cooperate with Washington to fix the imbalances in the system.
That’s easy to say in theory, but can Europe work with Mr. Trump in practice? Maybe not. But there’s no real choice. And there’s a good chance for success if Europe engages Mr. Trump by his New York tycoon soul — he needs to be convinced that he’s getting a good deal. And right now, it’s easy to see why he thinks otherwise.
Jochen Bittner is a political editor for the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a contributing opinion writer.
Voir par ailleurs:
Goldnadel : «Quelles motivations poursuivent vraiment les ONG de sauvetage des migrants
FIGAROVOX/CHRONIQUE – Gilles-William Goldnadel s’interroge sur les motivations réelles de l’association SOS Méditerranée, qui a porté secours à des centaines de migrants avant de les acheminer en Espagne à bord de l’Aquarius.
Gilles-William Goldnadel est avocat et essayiste. Il est président de l’association France-Israël. Toutes les semaines, il décrypte l’actualité pour FigaroVox.
Toutes les questions que vous vous êtes posées sur la crise migratoire à travers l’odyssée de l’Aquarius, sans avoir osé le demander.
Et pour cause, dans le climat actuel d’hystérie, le fait de demander risque de vous exposer à être soumis à la question par la grande inquisition.
Vous pourriez, tout d’abord, vous interroger sur la question du droit maritime international dont on a dit un peu vite que l’Italie l’avait foulé aux pieds.
Et vous n’auriez pas tort. Les spécialistes les plus pointus, dans ce domaine mouvant, estiment que l’Aquarius n’était pas dans une situation de détresse qui commandait juridiquement son entrée au port.
Vous pourriez également vous étonner du manque de précisions sur l’origine des passagers du bateau. Un esprit chagrin pourrait être porté à penser que, précisément, cette absence de précision par ceux qui les transportent signifierait qu’il s’agissait de migrants économiques et non de réfugiés de guerre éligibles au droit d’asile, au moins dans sa conception extensive actuelle.
Vous pourriez également vous interroger légitimement sur le propriétaire de l’Aquarius.
L’auteur du présent article l’a fait à voix haute au micro de RMC en suggérant que, peut-être, George Soros, spéculateur international autant que philanthrope internationaliste se cachait, via sa fondation Open Society, derrière SOS Méditerranée qui est l’affréteur de l’Aquarius. Le site Checknews de Libération a passé au crible mes prudentes mais hérétiques déclarations. Évoquant un «raccourci» de ma part tout en empruntant un long tunnel, les décodeurs libérés ont admis, en gentlemen, que l’Open Society était indirectement en lien avec les affréteurs. Cela autorise amplement à se poser la question des arrière-pensées d’une fondation qui milite, et c’est son droit, pour l’immigration sans limites et pour la fin des frontières. Mais ces arrière-pensées métapolitiques sont très loin du discours officiel d’une association SOS Méditerranée qui déclare ne penser qu’au sauvetage des migrants.
Dès lors, vos soupçons commanderaient cette question de bon sens de l’orientation: pour quelle raison, si seul le sauvetage dans l’urgence des migrants venus de la Libye incertaine leur importe, les gens de l’Aquarius ne les ont-ils pas acheminés vers les côtes assurées algériennes et tunisiennes, plus proches que l’Italie? Un peu embarrassée, leur représentante, Sophie Beau, a déclaré que le droit de ces pays était plus impérieux que le droit européen. Voilà qui en dit long pour ne pas dire tout: c’est parce que l’Europe est plus laxiste qu’on dédouane sans question des pays intransigeants mais pourtant plus proches des migrants, ne serait-ce que par la géographie et la religion.
Dans la profondeur de ce déni se niche, comme je l’observe souvent, l’anti-occidentalisme culpabilisateur le plus sournois. Seule l’Europe devrait être comptable du sort des migrants, dès lors que c’est elle qui est coupable. C’est ainsi par exemple que l’ONU le lui a fait souvent grief sans un mot par exemple pour l’Arabie Saoudite et le Qatar, richissimes et déserts, qui expliquent ingénument la fermeture de leurs frontières, y compris à des frères en culture et en langue, au nom d’une exigence de sécurité qui ne se pose évidemment pas pour les peuples d’Europe…
Dès lors que le soupçon vous habite, des questions saugrenues d’intendance vous taraudent.
C’est ainsi par exemple que les responsables de l’Aquarius expliquaient avec insistance que les passagers étaient en surnombre et que la faim les menaçait. Mais pourquoi, dans ce cas hautement prévisible, accepter la présence à bord d’une journaliste d’Euronews et ne pas limiter strictement les passagers au personnel indispensable de bord aux fins de réserver une place supplémentaire à un naufragé?
Enfin et surtout, dès lors que le sauveteur autoproclamé est avant tout un idéologue mondialiste, une question vous hante – et qui a hanté des juges italiens- sur les rapports entretenus avec des passeurs qui n’hésitent pas à saborder les embarcations pour placer les autorités européennes devant le forfait accompli.
En réalité, on peut se poser toutes les questions du monde, on ne trouvera la réponse la plus satisfaisante à une question douloureuse désormais existentielle que lorsqu’on se débarrassera des deux obstacles qui empêchent toute appréhension rationnelle.
Le premier obstacle est d’ordre juridique autant que politique. Tant que les déboutés du droit d’asile ne seront pas reconduits hors des frontières européennes, il n’y a aucune chance et même aucune raison que les peuples d’Europe, soucieux de la sécurité et du bien-être de leurs enfants comme de l’identité (le mot dit maudit) de leur pays, acceptent la situation actuelle. Et au-delà de la question de l’asile, et notamment en France, il est normal que le fait que des centaines de milliers de sans-papiers se maintiennent illégalement autant qu’ouvertement inspire aux citoyens chaque jour plus exaspérés un sentiment de révolte légitime. Ainsi, c’est le bafouement flagrant des lois républicaines sur la régulation des flux migratoires qui est le premier ennemi du réfugié éligible au droit d’asile qui mérite notre protection.
Que penser, par ailleurs, de ce slogan qui attendait les migrants de l’Aquarius à leur arrivée à bon port espagnol: «Bienvenus chez vous»? Bienvenus chez nous, pourquoi pas, mais… «chez vous»!
Le diable se cache derrière une lettre à la place d’une autre. C’est lui qui tyrannise et déboussole les peuples. Pourquoi des migrants illégaux seraient-ils chez eux? Et même les réfugiés éligibles au droit d’asile, n’ont-ils pas vocation un jour de rentrer chez eux? Mais derrière cette question, on sent bien qu’il n’y a plus en Europe de «chez nous» pour personne sinon le monde entier, dans la tête des idéologues sans frontières, et que le mot «hôte» justifie plus que jamais son double sens absurde.
Le second obstacle découle du premier. Mais il est de l’ordre de la psychologie et de la morale collective. Ainsi, il existe en Europe, et notamment en France, des gens, peu nombreux mais puissants médiatiquement et socialement qui refusent sans le dire ouvertement le respect des lois migratoires précisément dans le même cadre métapolitique que l’Open Society mondialiste de George Soros et de bien d’autres ONG.
Il leur arrive parfois de l’avouer par mégarde puis de le regretter. C’est ainsi par exemple que j’ai réussi à faire dire à Iann Brossat, future tête de liste du Parti Communiste aux élections européennes et surtout adjoint au logement de Madame Hidalgo, qu’il ne saurait être question de reconduire les personnes déboutées de leur revendication au droit d’asile (RMC).
Dès lors, que penser de la politique de la mairie de Paris qui, le lundi matin, joue à guichets ouverts l’accueil bruyant et entraînant de tous les migrants et, le mardi soir, se lamente de l’indignité de leur situation et incrimine la carence d’état?
Dans ce cadre rien moins que sincère et rationnel, les ennemis déclarés de l’Europe des frontières continuent d’user de leur arme favorite: l’antinazisme fantasmé.
C’est ainsi par exemple que l’ineffable mais combien populaire à Cannes et dans les médias, Cédric Herrou a twitté ainsi cette obscénité: «Quand Éric Ciotti dit en 2018 «mettons les migrants en Libye» il dirait en 1940 mettons-les dans des chambres à gaz». Bref l’utilisation nauséabonde d’un gaz incapacitant par voie de gazouillis écoeurant.
Mais ces petits maîtres-chanteurs de Nuremberg et de l’antinazisme devenu fou ont, pour cause d’avoir trop crié au retour du loup, une voix enrouée qui porte désormais moins loin.
Tout cela marche moins bien et les peuples ne marchent plus du tout. De l’Italie jusqu’en Autriche en passant par l’Allemagne. Et même en Israël. La semaine dernière, un tabou jusque-là entretenu avec une vigilance obsessionnelle autant que névrotique a été levé. Le chancelier autrichien Sébastien Kurz, pourtant allié à la droite dure, s’est rendu en Israël. Accompagné d’un ministre israélien, il s’est rendu au mémorial de Yad va Shem pour s’incliner devant les victimes de la Shoah. Il venait de décider d’expulser des imams islamistes radicaux inféodés à Erdogan. Il va être très difficile, malgré tous les efforts, de le faire passer pour un nazi antisémite, quand bien même il se montrera attaché au sort de ses compatriotes germaniques.
Vous verrez que bientôt les populistes passeront pour plus intelligents et même plus généreux que les fausses élites aux cœurs artificiels.
Voir aussi:
Goldnadel : «Le mot populiste est-il vraiment une insulte ?»
FIGAROVOX/CHRONIQUE – Pour l’avocat, il est significatif que le nouveau chef du gouvernement italien ait retourné la connotation du mot «populiste», qu’il ne reçoit plus comme une insulte mais dont il fait une revendication. Gilles-William Goldnadel y voit une défaite du «clergé médiatique».
Gilles-William Goldnadel est avocat et essayiste. Il est président de l’association France-Israël. Toutes les semaines, il décrypte l’actualité pour FigaroVox.
Lors de son discours d’intronisation devant la Chambre des députés, le nouveau premier ministre italien – sans étiquette – Giuseppe Conte a accepté d’être appelé désormais «populiste»:«Si être populiste, c’est avoir la capacité d’écouter les besoins du peuple, alors je m’en revendique» s’est-il exclamé.
Certes, le vocable à présent adoubé n’avait pas été choisi initialement par la coalition hétéroclite qui vient de le porter au Palazzo Montecitorio mais au contraire par le parti médiatique pour disqualifier une politique de protection des frontières nationales contre l’immigration illégale et la concurrence déloyale, jugée, par un consensus idéologique aussi réflexe qu’unanime, comme pour le moins vulgaire.
Plusieurs raisons, qui transcendent largement les frontières alpines, peuvent expliquer pour quelles raisons souterraines un responsable politique décide à présent de ramasser une injure du ruisseau pour la porter en drapeau.
D’abord, en raison du discrédit grandissant qu’inspire à l’opinion le journaliste-clerc sermonneur et prêchi-prêcha. L’excommunié par lui ne saurait être tout à fait impie.
Ensuite, l’exaspération devant son pouvoir d’étiquetage unilatéral que s’est arrogé ce qu’on est bien contraint de nommer le clergé médiatique et qui lui permet, contre l’avis de l’intéressé, de lui faire porter le sceau de l’infamie. Aujourd’hui, certaines épithètes utilisées par la communauté médiatique non seulement dans un cadre polémique subjectif mais encore de l’information théoriquement objective ont pour but et avaient pour effet d’obtenir immédiatement de la collectivité un sentiment réflexe d’animosité. En tout état de cause, c’est ce vocabulaire et non un autre qui était de nature à obtenir immédiatement une réaction affective de rejet et de malédiction de grande intensité: «fasciste», «raciste», «xénophobe», «islamophobe»… ou encore «populiste».
Dans de nombreux articles critiques, j’ai eu l’occasion d’observer que dans le cadre de l’information politique prétendument objective, le terme «extrême droite» était utilisé plus souvent et plus facilement que l’épithète «extrême-gauche». Les clercs préférant utiliser pour qualifier des partis et personnalités extrêmement à gauche, en ce compris le Parti Communiste et les Insoumis, les termes moins disqualifiant de «gauche radicale» ou «gauche de la gauche».
Il est difficile de ne pas y déceler un parti pris idéologique au moins inconscient.
Il n’est pas douteux non plus que l’expression «extrême droite» était immédiatement associée dans l’inconscient imaginaire collectif fantasmé au racisme et à l’antisémitisme de la période brune.
Il affuble pourtant le plus souvent des personnalités qui ne sauraient y être associées, ne serait-ce que compte tenu du temps passé depuis cette période largement révolue. Le fait que ce soit celle qu’il m’arrive de nommer l’église cathodique qui s’arroge ce droit sans contrôle d’étiquetage pose un problème démocratique qui ne semble pas la gêner.
Toujours dans le même esprit d’étiquette, on remarquera que l’épithète politique péjorative de «droitier» ne connaît pas de symétrie, le personnel politique français ne comptant apparemment pas de gauchers…
Également on pourra noter que s’il existe nommément sur les réseaux sociaux «une fachosphère» dont l’appellation ne se veut certainement pas flatteuse, les «bolchosphère» et «islamosphère» ne sont pas médiatiquement référencées.
Tout ce qui était excessif a donc fini sans doute par excéder.
Enfin, et peut-être surtout, on constate une réaction de révolte, que j’ai nommée «cambronnisme» et qui incite désormais certains élus du peuple ou des intellectuels transgressifs à défier par les idées, les paroles ou les écrits une idéologie dominante mais défaite qu’ils considèrent désormais comme autant dictatoriale que mortifère.
Il faut dire que les exemples ne manquent pas, ne serait-ce que cette semaine, pour expliquer et la révolte et la colère.
Révolte et colère élémentaires contre une politique d’asile européenne devenue irresponsable.
C’est ainsi qu’on apprenait que la France avait accordé l’asile à l’un des plus hauts cadres de l’État Islamique, Ahmad H. Celui-ci avait obtenu en 2017 le statut de réfugié politique en France alors même qu’il aurait participé au massacre de 1 700 jeunes recrues irakiennes en juin 2014 à Tikrit. On apprenait dans le même temps que 18 personnes en 2016 et 15 en 2017 ont été déchues de leur statut pour «menaces graves» à la sécurité nationale.
Pourtant, lors du récent débat sur le projet de loi immigration, Éric Ciotti, député LR des Alpes-Maritimes, avait déposé un amendement pour que l’OPFRA puisse retirer son statut si un réfugié était soupçonné de radicalisation. Amendement rejeté. Il faut croire que la gauche morale est plus attachée au principe de précaution lorsqu’il s’agit des OGM dont la dangerosité mortelle pour l’homme est pourtant moins scientifiquement établie que celle des islamistes radicaux.
Autre sujet d’exaspération: à en croire Le Monde, il n’y aurait que le parti d’extrême-droite Alternative pour l’Allemagne qui mettrait en cause les autorités de ce pays, accusées d’avoir laissé un suspect réfugié irakien quitter le pays après avoir violé et assassiné une enfant.
En réalité, et comme le reconnaît pourtant le quotidien vespéral, ce drame fait les unes de l’actualité en Allemagne, y compris sur les sites d’information ordinairement peu friands de faits divers. Depuis jeudi soir, tous les journaux du pays consacrent une large place à la mort de Susanna Feldmann, une jeune juive de 14 ans violée et assassinée par un migrant délinquant, Ali Bashar, depuis interpellé au Kurdistan irakien et qui est passé aux aveux et a été extradé.
L’émotion est d’autant plus considérable outre-Rhin qu’ainsi que l’indique Le Monde : «elle fait écho à une autre affaire au centre de l’actualité allemande depuis dix jours: la délivrance de plus d’un millier de titres de séjour indus à des demandeurs d’asile qui n’auraient pas dû les recevoir. Une enquête pour corruption a été ouverte.»
Mais l’idéologie n’est jamais très loin. Selon Thomas Wieder, le journaliste du Monde: «le temps de l’émotion a vite laissé la place à celui de la récupération». Il est ainsi reproché à un député du parti AFD d’avoir profité de la parole qui lui était donné pour entamer une minute de silence «en hommage à Susanna, retrouvée morte à Wiesbaden».
«Le Bundestag est un lieu de débat, pas un lieu d’instrumentalisation politique des victimes» s’est emporté l’un des dirigeants du groupe social-démocrate.
Deux questions un peu vulgaires sinon populistes: lorsque l’on admire en France le sauvetage d’un enfant par un migrant malien sans-papiers et que l’on insiste et sur son origine et sur son statut, s’agit-il d’une récupération, le cas échéant admissible? Lorsqu’un membre de la droite dure allemande veut rendre publiquement hommage à une enfant juive violée et assassinée, certes par un migrant musulman et non par un germain au crâne rasé, faut-il commencer par s’en indigner?
Un dernier exemple de cette suffisance morale alliée à une stupidité insupportable qui a apporté au peuple sa ration de souffrance et lui inspire désormais les raisons de sa colère?
Il suffit pour cela de lire le Journal du Dimanche de cette semaine et notamment l’excellent article circonstancié de Guillaume Dasquier consacré à Oussama Attar, le cerveau des attaques du Bataclan et du Stade de France ainsi que des attentats-suicides de Bruxelles avec l’assistance de migrants envoyés par l’État Islamique. On y apprend qu’Attar a été arrêté en Irak en 2005 par des soldats de la coalition. Il était alors suspecté d’avoir rallié Al Qaïda et avait été condamné pour être entré illégalement dans le pays. Amnesty International – cette organisation vénérée – ainsi que des députés belges et des avocats de progrès se sont mobilisés aux côtés de la famille pour obtenir avec succès sa libération. Les familles des 162 morts et 753 blessés français et belges apprécieront.
Ces mêmes squatteurs si intelligents du camp du Bien s’activent à présent pour obtenir le retour en France des djihadistes détenus en Syrie. Combien de nouveaux enterrements précédés de marches blanches à organiser?
Bien entendu, la semaine écoulée aura apporté au peuple impuissant d’autres éléments d’amères ruminations.
La sortie de Françoise Nyssen approuvant le désir de la patronne de France 2 de déplorer moins de mâles blancs à la télévision à la suite de la saillie présidentielle lors de son discours vaporeux sur les banlieues montre que la dilection de Macron pour le post-nationalisme, la souveraineté européenne et l’ouverture à la mondialisation n’est pas qu’une posture politique mais aussi métaphysique.
L’incongruité, pour le coup bien vulgaire, de Mme Nyssen et dont nul humaniste antiraciste diplômé n’a songé à questionner son aversion anti-blanche comme son sexisme anti-masculin, était accompagnée d’une exhortation au progressisme du service public audiovisuel aux fins de s’opposer «à la France réactionnaire».
La charge était tellement furieuse que même le syndicat Force Ouvrière des médias s’est trouvé dans l’obligation de la fustiger par voie de communiqué. Qu’on en juge par sa conclusion encolérée:
«Les délires de Françoise Nyssen ne font pas rire. Ils nous inquiètent au contraire au plus haut point! Comment un membre du gouvernement peut-il bafouer de manière aussi flagrante le principe de neutralité qui est l’un des fondements les plus essentiels du service public de l’audiovisuel?… Qui sont les réactionnaires que la ministre entend dénoncer? Selon quels critères seront-ils identifiés dans le futur cahier des charges et selon quelles modalités Mme Nyssen entend les mettre hors d’état de nuire à son projet prométhéen de média global à vocation universelle?»
Sans doute, l’idéologie dominante autant que déclinante ne voit-elle plus que l’exclusion ou la contrainte pour faire taire ce peuple qui ne demeurera pas encore bien longtemps ruminant.
Il n’accepte plus qu’un individu qui scande: «crucifions les laïcards comme à Golgotha» se produise sur les lieux du calvaire de jeunes martyrs français sacrifiés sur l’autel de l’islamisme radical.
Et il souhaite très majoritairement que la France reste la France.
À se demander si le peuple ne deviendrait pas populiste.
Voir également:
Accueil de l’Aquarius: les portes sont ouvertes
Le navire européen navigue les yeux fermés
Voir de plus:
jcdurbant 
A reblogué ceci sur Maritza S. Rivera.
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WHY WOULD SHE WANT TO PUT OUR LITTLE DAUGHTER THROUGH THAT ? (The father of the Honduran girl who became the face of the family separation crisis and who now has to take care alone of their three other children reveals he didn’t know about his wife’s plan and that his wife and daughter were never separated)
« Why would she put our little daughter through that ? (…) I do think it was irresponsible of her to take the baby with her in her arms beacuse we don’t know what could happen. »
Denis Hernandez
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/exclusive-theyre-together-and-theyre-safe-father-of-honduran-two-year-old-who-became-the-face-of-the-family-separation-crisis-when-she-was-photographed-in-tears-as-her-mother-was-searched-by-us-border-control-speaks-out/
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CHERCHEZ L’ERREUR ! (Vous avez dit irresponsable ?)
La petite fille choisie par nos valeureux médias comme photo du drame de la séparation …
n’a jamais à aucun moment été séparée de sa mère !
La mère qui a payé 6 000 dollars à un passeur pour vivre son « rêve américain » et a risqué la vie de son bébé (on se demande bien pourquoi ? ) …
est partie sans prévenir le père qui a la chance d’avoir un bon boulot et était contre et se retrouve à présent seul à s’occuper de leurs trois autres enfants !
Et après, on accuse… Trump ?
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WHAT FAKE NEWS ? (Human shield: Crying Girl’s mother who endangered her baby girl’s life had previously been deported to Honduras in July 2013)
There’s only one thing wrong with this take — the little girl was never separated from her family at all. As CBS reports this morning, the little girl was crying because her mother got caught at eleven o’clock at night crossing illegally into the US, and — shocker of shockers — was “tired and thirsty”:
The picture of a Honduran girl crying as she and her mother are detained in Texas has grabbed worldwide attention and come to symbolize the intense debate about separating children from their parents. Time magazine put the young girl on this week’s cover, but the Border Patrol agent involved in the dramatic scene says the photo might be a little misleading. That agent said the mother and daughter were never separated and are still together.
“We were patrolling the border. It was after 10 o’clock at night,” Border Patrol agent Carlos Ruiz told CBS News’ David Begnaud. He was the first to encounter Sandra Sanchez and her daughter after they allegedly crossed the Rio Grande River into Texas illegally.
“We asked her to set the kid down in front of her, not away from her, she was right in front of her…So we can properly search the mother,” Ruiz said. “So the kid immediately started crying as she set her down. I personally went up to the mother and asked her ‘Are you doing OK? Is the kid OK?’ and she said, ‘Yes. She’s tired and thirsty. It’s 11 o’clock at night.’”
In fact, the Daily Mail caught up with the girl’s father, who’s none too happy with the mother for endangering the little girl in the first place:
Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, 32, said that he had not heard from his wife Sandra, 32, who was with his two-year-old daughter Yanela Denise, for nearly three weeks until he saw the image of them being apprehended in Texas.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Hernandez, who lives in Puerto Cortes, Honduras, says that he was told yesterday that his wife and child are being detained at a family residential center in Texas but are together and are doing ‘fine.’ …
He revealed that his wife had previously mentioned her wish to go to the United States for a ‘better future’ but did not tell him nor any of their family members that she was planning to make the trek.
‘I didn’t support it. I asked her, why? Why would she want to put our little girl through that? But it was her decision at the end of the day.’
As it turns out, the woman left three other children back in Honduras:
‘I don’t have any resentment for my wife, but I do think it was irresponsible of her to take the baby with her in her arms because we don’t know what could happen.’
The couple has three other children, son Wesly, 14, and daughters Cindy, 11, and Brianna, six.
Her husband told the Daily Mail that his wife was seeking asylum. So why didn’t she make the application at a port of entry, where there was no risk of arrest? Maybe her previous deportation had something to do with it:
Honduran deputy foreign minister Nelly Jerez confirmed Varela’s account to Reuters. A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection also confirmed to the Daily Beast that the mother and daughter were not separated. Honduran and federal officials could not immediately be reached for comment by The Post.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement released a statement to BuzzFeed on Thursday confirming that Sanchez was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol near Hidalgo, Tex., on June 12 while traveling with a family member. She was transferred to ICE custody on June 17, and is being housed at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Tex., the statement read.
And it gets worse. Varela Hernandez told the Daily Mail that his wife paid a coyote — a human trafficker — around $6,000 to smuggle them into the US. This is precisely the kind of trafficking that leaves people not just tired and thirsty, but often dead or enslaved. It’s one very good reason why we need tougher border enforcement, and trafficking is the original reason why Congress passed a law mandating that children be kept separate from adults being prosecuted for illegal border crossings.
In other words, like so much of the media coverage of this issue, Crying Girl actually represents the opposite of the assumptions blasted around by outlets like Time. We’ve experienced a deluge of misinformation and a complete lack of context over the past week or so from media outlets that are clearly more interested in an agenda than an informed debate. Yanela Varela Hernandez is the poster girl for media’s appetite for activism over truth. And they wonder why people continue to accuse them of peddling “fake news”?
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/06/22/time-magazine-crying-girl-photo/
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WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS, BLAME TRUMP !
When families are arrested and separated after attempting to enter the United States illegally, 54% of Likely U.S. Voters say the parents are more to blame for breaking the law. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that only 35% believe the federal government. To help understand the current political debate over the children issue, a closer look shows that 82% of Republicans and 56% of voters not affiliated with either major political party feel the parents are more to blame for breaking the law. But 60% of Democrats say the government is more to blame for enforcing the law…
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2018/06/22/poll-majority-of-americans-blame-illegal-aliens-for-bringing-kids-not-trump-n2493089
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F FOR FAKE (It’s fake news but we stand by it)
“The original version of this story misstated what happened to the girl in the photo after she [was] taken from the scene. The girl was not carried away screaming by U.S. Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together.”
Time
http://time.com/longform/john-moore-getty-photo-separation/?xid=tcoshare
Time has not responded to a request for comment from The Post, but in a statement sent to media outlets, the magazine said it’s standing by its cover…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/06/22/the-crying-honduran-girl-on-the-cover-of-time-was-not-separated-from-her-mother-father-says/
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WHAT FAKE NEWS ? (Warning: don’t try this at home)
As it turned out, the photograph was taken on 10 June 2018, but it did not show a child confined by immigration authorities to a cage. Rather, it was snapped during a protest staged in front of Dallas City Hall to call attention to the Trump administration’s practice of separating families and confining undocumented children. Different photographs of the event document that the same child was standing a mocked-up “cage” open at the top, and several commenters noted that the boy was crying not because he was confined, but because he saw his mother outside the pen and could not immediately figure out how to get to her…
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/toddler-cage-photo/
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HAVE BATTERY ACID, WILL TRAVEL
Traffickers charge African migrants £16 each to be protected by gangs who decide the time and place to launch attempts to charge through razor wire fences surrounding the Spanish territory of Ceuta, which borders Morocco. According to a confidential police report, those who do not pay the fee are barred from taking part in the mass charges. To enforce discipline, the gangs have a “president”, who works with a “prime minister” and “officials”. Before each charge, gangs send out scouts to “inspect the area and collect updated information on the security measures implemented by the Spanish and Moroccan security forces”, according to the report seen by El País.
Migrants are taught to intimidate police by shouting and throwing items such as rocks, faeces, battery acid and quicklime. If they fail to get through the razor wire and more than a month passes, they are charged another £16 before they are allowed to try again.
More than 100 African migrants forced their way into Ceuta on Wednesday by throwing battery acid and quicklime, injuring seven police officers. They used wire-cutters to get through a weak point in the fence where there are no cameras.
The 115-strong group were later filmed with bloodied arms and legs, apparently caused by the razor wire, cheering as they walked towards a temporary reception centre. Some were draped in EU and Spanish flags as they paraded past police. Last month 602 migrants broke through the border fence at the same point.
Sub-Saharan Africans living illegally in Morocco often try to enter Europe by scaling fences surrounding Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s other north African territory. Many head for temporary migrant accommodation centres and are eventually repatriated or released. More than 3,800 migrants have crossed the border into the Spanish cities so far this year, according to the UN.
The route accounted for 14 per cent of the 27,600 who arrived in Spain, mainly by sea, between January and July, a 130 per cent increase on the previous year. The number of migrants arriving in Spain by sea this year has outstripped Italy and Greece after Italy rejected migrants picked up by rescue boats.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/gangs-train-african-migrants-to-storm-ceuta-border-for-16-fee
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SPOT THE ERROR ! (Give a dog a bad name and then drown him)
TRUMP, on the number of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally: “I used to hear 11 million all the time. It would always stay right at 11. I said, ‘Does it ever increase or go down?’ ‘No, it’s 11.’ Nobody knows. It’s probably 30, 35 million people. They would flow in, mostly from the southern border, they’d come in and nobody would talk about it, nobody would do anything about it.” — Cabinet meeting.
THE FACTS: It’s nowhere close to 30 million to 35 million, according to his own Homeland Security secretary as well as independent estimates. The nonpartisan Pew Research Center estimates there were 10.7 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally in 2016, the most recent data available. Advocacy groups on both sides of the immigration issue have similar estimates. At a House hearing last month, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen acknowledged the number was “somewhere” between 11 million and 22 million, significantly lower than Trump’s claim of 35 million.
TRUMP: “The coyotes are using children to gain access into this country. They’re using these children. They’re not with families. They’re using the children. They’re taking the children. And then they dispose of the children after they’re done. This has been going on for years. This isn’t unique to us. But we want to stop it.” — Cabinet meeting.
THE FACTS: This does happen, though it’s not as common as Trump suggests by talking about it so often.
He is referring to adults who come with children they falsely claim to be theirs, so that they won’t be detained under a no-child-separation policy.
But such cases of fraud are rare. According to the Homeland Security Department, about 500 immigrants were found to be not a “legitimate family unit” and thus separated upon detention from April 19 to Sept. 30 of last year. That’s a small fraction of the 107,000 families apprehended in the last budget year, which ended Sept. 30.
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/12/27/us-mexico-border-deaths-guatemalan-boy-girl-deaths-rare-occurrence/2420568002/
TRUMP: “I think you’re going to see a tremendous reduction in drug prices.” — Cabinet meeting.
THE FACTS: Prices continue to rise. Administration policies announced last year and currently being completed don’t seem to have shifted that trend.
TRUMP, on Jim Mattis: “as you know, President Obama fired him and essentially so did I. I want results.” — Cabinet meeting.
THE FACTS: Actually, Mattis resigned as defense secretary in protest over Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/daniel-halper/obama-fires-top-general-without-even-a-phone-call
TRUMP: “Mexico is paying for the Wall through the new USMCA Trade Deal. Much of the Wall has already been fully renovated or built. We have done a lot of work. $5.6 Billion Dollars that House has approved is very little in comparison to the benefits of National Security. Quick payback!” — tweet.
Trump’s point that the national security benefits would outweigh the economic cost is a legitimate one to debate. But the notion that U.S. taxpayers would not be covering the cost is baseless…
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ap-fact-check-trumps-claims-on-border-wall-drug-prices-mattis
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https://jcdurbant.wordpress.com/2018/06/20/immigration-cachez-ce-chez-nous-que-je-ne-saurai-voir-migrants-use-children-as-human-shields-and-critics-distort-reality-and-history-and-guess-who-gets-blamed/
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