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In this mailing:
* Drieu Godefridi: France's New Guillotine: Silent Dictatorship
* Guy Millière: French President Macron Rewards Terrorism, Whips Up Slaughter
* Amir Taheri: Iran's Costly Pyramid


** France's New Guillotine: Silent Dictatorship ([link removed])
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by Drieu Godefridi • August 31, 2025 at 5:00 am
* On March 31, 2025, the Paris Criminal Court sentenced Marine Le Pen to five years of electoral "ineligibility" with immediate effect.... This sentence, described by the defendant as a "witch hunt", bars the frontrunner in the polls from standing in the 2027 French presidential election.
* The aim of this maneuver is clear: to remove the opposition leader from competing for the highest office in the land.
* These court rulings form an impenetrable wall: an elected majority can vote, but the "wise" guardians of the left ensure that nothing passes that offends egalitarianism, environmentalism or the dogma of open borders.
* In France, sadly, democracy, has become nothing more than an illusion: the people vote, but the bureaucracy blocks the will of the voters.
* The new dictatorship appears based on a single ideology and the gradual suppression of freedoms and subverting the constitutional order in favor of a supposedly superior caste, whose contours, methods and appetites are reminiscent of what our American friends call the "deep state" – self-appointed bureaucrats running your life behind the scenes, where there is no transparency, accountability or readily available means to remove them.

On March 31, 2025, the Paris Criminal Court sentenced Marine Le Pen to five years of electoral "ineligibility" with immediate effect. This sentence, described by the defendant as a "witch hunt", bars the frontrunner in the polls from standing in the 2027 French presidential election. Pictured: Marine Le Pen poses prior to an interview on French TV channel TF1, in Boulogne-Billancourt, outside Paris, on March 31, 2025. (Photo by Thomas Samson/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

In a cruel twist of history, France, the self-proclaimed cradle of the Enlightenment and freedom, has turned into a regime where democracy is nothing more than a mask, concealing a dictatorship that is still in its infancy but nonetheless unflinching. It is not a dictatorship of boots and uniforms; it is a hushed tyranny, judicial and institutional, crushing any hint of real change under the weight of its legal trappings.

I. France, a formal dictatorship: the judicial elimination of opponents

In a democracy, elections are the inviolable sanctuary of the popular will. In the France of 2025, justice, like a partisan guillotine, falls on opposition figures with surgical precision, rendering them supposedly too disqualified to compete. Examples reveal a damning pattern: searches (National Rally party), convictions (François Fillon, Marine Le Pen, Nicolas Sarkozy), smear campaigns (Éric Zemmour).

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** French President Macron Rewards Terrorism, Whips Up Slaughter ([link removed])
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by Guy Millière • August 31, 2025 at 5:00 am
* So, Macron actually regards these views -- approving the October 7, 2023 massacre of Jews and continuing terrorism to displace Israel -- as "legitimate aspirations"? Good to know.
* Macron's calls for an immediate ceasefire could save Hamas ([link removed]) from destruction -- exactly what Hamas and Qatar want ([link removed]) .
* France, the UK, Canada and AustraliaXXX that the terrorist state they are about to recognize has no borders, no internationally recognized territory ([link removed]) , and meets no criteria of any kind as required in the Montevideo Convention ([link removed]) on the Rights and Duties of States (1933) for a state to be recognized.
* "Article 80 of the UN Charter...preserves intact all the rights granted to Jews under the Mandate for Palestine, even after the Mandate's expiry on May 14-15, 1948....As a direct result of Article 80, the UN cannot transfer these rights over any part of Palestine... to any non-Jewish entity." -- Howard Grief, Esq., The Algemeiner ([link removed]-) , September 22, 2011
* France, the UK, Canada and Australia Macron also realize that Israel cannot stop the war ([link removed]) without the return of all the hostages. What would they do if their citizens were held hostage? Or are they already?
* If France, the UK, Canada and Australia are so committed to the creation of a Palestinian State, surely they will be happy to donate some of their plentiful land for it.
* [A]pproxiately 1,000 ([link removed]) trucks were blocked for days ([link removed]) because the United Nations refused ([link removed]) to distribute the aid, leaving it to rot ([link removed]) in the sun, even after Israel offered the UN military protection.
* In November 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants ([link removed]) for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The ICC accused them -- not Hamas which stole ([link removed]) most of the food -- of crimes against humanity.
* Hamas is an organization with straightforwardly unhidden genocidal goals:....
* This continual demonization of Israel has sadly led to an increased hatred of Israel ([link removed]) , a tiny country that, ironically, is fighting to protect the very countries defaming it. A thank you would be nice.
* What is at stake now is not only Israel's survival but the need for democracies to understand the central danger ([link removed]) confronting them, and finally to start combatting it.
* During the Second World War, all those grateful for the hard-won freedoms of the democratic world saw that the only way out was not compromise and submission, but the full destruction of the Third Reich -- not giving it a "state."

July 24,2025: French President Emmanuel Macron announces that he will officially recognize a "Palestinian State." He publicizes a letter he sent to Mahmoud Abbas, and praises his "courageous commitments". In it, Macron emphasizes his desire to "fulfill the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people" and that "We must immediately implement a ceasefire, release all hostages and provide massive humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza,"⁠ Macron reportedly announced., He did not, however make recognizing a fictitious Palestinian state conditioned on any of that.

"Peace is possible," he added, along with the notion that "Building a Palestinian state and ensuring its viability would 'contribute to the security of all in the Middle East."'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu replied that the decision "rewards terror" and would create " a launch pad to annihilate Israel ."

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** Iran's Costly Pyramid ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • August 31, 2025 at 4:00 am
* At the time, [US President Barack Obama's JCPOA agreement] seemed a good deal for Iran and was hailed by then President Hassan Rouhani as "a great diplomatic victory," because all it demanded was that Iran not do what it has always said it wasn't doing and would never do: build nuclear weapons.
* The problem isn't enriching uranium at any level; today, 18 nations do it without causing problems. The problem is who does the enriching and to what end.
* Why should a nation that doesn't want to make the bomb invest astronomical sums enriching piles of uranium that it doesn't need, cannot use for any peaceful purpose, and cannot sell?
* Its [nuclear project] budget is treated as a top priority, even compared to crucial defense needs.
* According to President Massoud Pezeshkian, Iran needs over $1 trillion to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure of dams, roads, railways, seaports and airports, hospitals and schools.
* In a speech this month, "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested as much by saying he would never curtail the project, as demanded by US President Donald Trump. "This is the greatest achievement of our people," he asserted.
* The pyramids that Pharaohs in Egypt and Aztecs in Mexico built were of no practical use, but generated awe in admiration of the power that erected them. The pyramids drained resources and made Egypt vulnerable to attacks from Nubians in the south and the Hittites in the north, pushing pharaohs into the fog of history. The Aztecs suffered a similar fate.
* Enriching uranium or not, the Islamic Republic is a danger not only to the Iranian people but to peace and stability in the Middle East and beyond. US President Donald Trump's insistence on an accord to stop enrichment would be nothing but a distraction from that core issue.

August 28 marked a new, dramatic phase in the Iranian uranium enrichment saga, when the European trio of Britain, France and Germany triggered what is known as the snap-back sanctions mechanism under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) accord that US President Barack Obama reached with Iran in 2015. Pictured: Germany's Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (C), flanked by Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy (L), France's Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot (2nd R) and EU High Representative and Vice-President for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas (R), makes a statement following their meeting with Iran's Foreign Minister on Tehran's nuclear program, in Geneva, on June 20, 2025. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

August 28 marked a new, dramatic phase in the Iranian uranium enrichment saga, when the European trio of Britain, France and Germany triggered what is known as the snap-back sanctions mechanism under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) accord that US President Barack Obama reached with Iran in 2015.

The accord was guaranteed by a group of nations known as the P5+1, that is to say, the five permanent members of the United Nations' Security Council -- China, Britain, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany.

Obama created the group to bypass both the UN and the US Congress, which at the time seemed unlikely to ratify any deal with Iran. But to give the informal deal a pseudo-legal cachet, he also engineered a UN Security Council resolution to suspend sanctions imposed on Iran in seven previous UNSC resolutions.

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