Marine Le Pen: "American foreign policy is absolutely condemnable..."

Marine Le Pen speaks on three topics in this 7'33" video, in which she appears rested, tanned, and ready to confront the major issues now before her country: Muslim violence, the European treaty that aims to deal with the financial crisis, and the politics of Interior Minister Manuel Valls compared with that of Nicolas Sarkozy. She ends with a brief word on the election of Harlem Désir, former head of SOS-Racism, as first secretary of the French Socialist Party.

First she comments on the movie that presumably triggered the violence:

- This is a movie from the Z series, that no one has seen, I think therefore that this film is a pretext. I'm against anything that shocks believers, I don't think it's useful, but I am even more attached, as you can imagine, to freedom of expression. Consequently I believe that we have the right to say anything, whatever the circumstances. Again, I do not believe in the usefulness of provoking someone because of his religion, but I repeat, it's a pretext. No one has seen it, it was a tool, I'm told it's a bad movie… No, this demonstrates something we alone have been saying for many months, namely that the Americans have an absolutely condemnable foreign policy. They have put fundamentalists and salafists at the head of a certain number of countries and today they see that these self-same salafists who used the West to take power are now demanding that the West get out fast from their territory. We've seen this in the past, but we never learn our lessons from the past.

- Was it better under colonel Qadhafi?

- Oh, I was never close to Qadhafi, unlike all French governments of both Right and Left, but we have to look at the results. The results are that, apart from the personalities involved, those countries were unquestionably secular ("laïques"), they no longer are, today they are under the yoke of sharia imposed by the fundamentalists, thanks to us. The civilian populations are suffering, human rights are diminishing, not to mention the rights of women who find themselves under considerable pressure. Christians who lived peacefully in these countries are now the target of systematic persecutions. Yes, I believe that the results are, objectively, on the whole, negative.

The topic now passes to the European treaty that was approved by the German constitutional court. The host asks her how she will fight the treaty:

- Yes, the court validated the treaty, but on certain strict conditions… The problem with Germany is that it has divergent interests. On the one hand, it doesn't want to pay for all the countries that are falling down one after the other. And this is understandable, the French don't want to pay for these countries either because it would lead nowhere, and we know it would only aggravate the situation. At the same time, Germany is the only one who needs and has an interest in preserving the euro, because it is thanks to this very strong currency that Germany has taken leadership in Europe. Germany does not want to see the countries of Europe return to their national currencies which would permit a spectacular increase in competition. I don't want to wait for Germany's opinion to decide what is good for my country. I think the government is committing a veritable rape of democracy in refusing to submit the European treaty to a referendum. This is an enormous lie of François Hollande. He had said he would renegotiate the treaty. Instead, he submitted totally to the desires of the European Commission and he is dragging the French against their will into permanent austerity. If there is no referendum it is for a very good reason, our leaders know perfectly well that the French would vote against the treaty. The ruling class is for it, the UMP is for it, the PS is for it. And so we are right back where we were when the French voted against the European constitution and it was imposed on them anyway.

On the topic of open borders, she says that the policies of Interior Minister Manuel Valls and those of Nicolas Sarkozy are identical. And that the French are well aware that so long as there are no borders they will not be able to regulate the waves of migrants.

- If, in addition, Mme Taubira (Minister of Justice) continues with her lax policies, well, France will continue to be what it is today, a playing field for all the mafias, European and international, all the traffickers of drugs, muggings, prostitution, because French laxness is legendary, because our country's chaotic judicial response to crime is well-known to all these criminal networks, and consequently it is probably the one place in the world where they run little risk. And this is the consequence of the policies of the UMP for five years and now the PS since May.

When asked what she thought of Harlem Désir, former head of SOS-Racism, as first secretary of the PS, and if she thought he had become so famous thanks to his well-publicized confrontations with the Front National she responded:

- No, sir, his appointment is very revealing. It demonstrates that the Socialist Party has definitively abandoned the working classes. Their electoral targets today are French persons of immigrant origin, and consequently they have designated Harlem Désir of SOS-Racism for this reason only.

She concludes by saying that a glance at the qualifications of Harlem Désir clearly indicates that we cannot expect any moralizing on the part of the Socialist Party.

Note: This is a reference to his criminal record. He was convicted in 1998 of abuse of public funds and received an 18-month suspended sentence and a fine of 30,000 francs. François Hollande had said he would not hire anyone with a police record. Harlem Désir is the third or fourth exception to Hollande's resolution.

Harlem Désir (below with his fellow Socialists Prime Minister Ayrault and Martine Aubry whom he replaced as first secretary) was born to a father from Martinique and an Alsatian Jewish mother. His real first name is not in Wikipedia, but I have heard he adopted "Harlem" as a way of appearing to be a poor boy from the streets. Educated at the University of Paris, he became the highly publicized head of SOS-Racism that frequently entered into legal combat with the Front National. He is the father of two children born to journalist Anna Angeli. (Apparently they are not married.)