instruction:
Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.
question:
A Russian bank and French nationalism. You have to be made of wood not to laugh at this : a private Russian bank has given a loan to France's National Front . This political party, drawn to victory by Marine Le Pen, won the recent French elections by almost three times the number of votes than President Francois Hollande . Although this is news , this wasn't the biggest media reaction of the day . Ever since the news came out that the National Front's campaign budget was allegedly funded by the First Czech-Russian Bank, accusations that "the Kremlin is funding the far-right" and "supporting anti-EU parties" have been making the rounds . This bank has been in operation since 1996 , which by Russian terms, makes it "ancient" as capitalism didn't really kick in until the mid-1990s in Russia . Through this, the sole owner of the bank, Roman Popov, was immediately seen as the "oligarch who is close to the Kremlin" . The funding, which initially started at a sum of $11m, quickly increased to $49m , purely because that is the amount of money the National Front said it needed in order to pay for its campaign leading up to the presidential elections in 2017 . With all the media hype, it seems as though people haven't picked up on the irony . When former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was running for president in 2005, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi also gave him a sum of money for his campaign . But that is not the irony ; the amount of money he gave was $49m . This doesn't appear to have crossed the minds of western hacks just yet . That is because they have their own steadfast views and refuse to deviate from them . In order to find out more, I turned to my Moscow sources for help . But first, I got in touch with the First Czech-Russian Bank . I wanted to find out what they thought about the whole fuss that has erupted around their institution . Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the staff at the bank was reluctant to comment on the loan to the National Front, citing client confidentiality . They did, however, provide me with a direct email address to get in touch with one of the deputy chairmen , who never did respond to my request for comment . Then again , if you should try to find out something somewhat unconventional from any of the private banks in the West , you'd also be met with silence or at best, claims of data protection . My sources in Moscow did a bit of their own research and told me that the First Czech-Russian Bank was actually launched on the initiative of the Czech government . At some point later on, one of the shareholders was the Russian construction company Stroitransgaz ; translated into English , the name means"Gas Pipeline Construction" . The current owner of the bank, Roman Popov, used to work there . While Popov was head of the Finance Department (1992-2002) , Stroitransgaz was a subcontractor for Gazprom, the giant state-owned gas and oil corporation in Russia . It was probably because of that, that western hacks came to the conclusion that Popov is"directly linked to the Kremlin" . The journalists' suspicions are further fuelled by the fact that Popov generally keeps a low profile and does not boast about his football club in England or his basketball team in the US or his real-estate profile , which is worth millions in Western Europe . The bank also has two representative offices; one in Prague and one in Bratislava , which would be logical if the name of your bank included the word "Czech" . My sources in Moscow informed me that the First Czech-Russian bank is quite a good bank and has a very decent track record , which is no mean feat for a financial institution that dates back to 1996 . It has had no substantial bail outs from the Central Bank and survived the banking crash of 2007 with flying colours . As for the owner, the best I could find out is that he has a degree in financial management and has been of late developing business beyond corporate entities and individual customers in Russia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia . No word on why he gave the go-ahead to give the loan to the National Front , but even if he did, why not? If the interest is good and the chances of getting it back are high as well , it sounds like a fair deal . Not to mention that it's a perfectly legitimate political party , which enjoys greater support than the ruling party at present . The most recent opinion poll has shown that Le Pen would win the first round of the presidential elections if they were held tomorrow . The question is, of course, did Popov bargain on all the publicity that his bank would be getting once word gets out that he has been funding an anti-EU and anti-immigration political part in France? Well, it might be that he thought that some publicity for his bank might actually attract more clients and raise his bank's profile . Let's face it , if a party gets 25 percent in the national vote , like the National Front did in the European elections this year , it means that a lot of people see it as a better bet than the other parties , which in turn means that the potential client base is substantial . In Russia itself, the National Front is not seen as"racist" or "fascist", as some sections of the French media portray it . In doing so, they seem to forget that by labelling this party as racists and fascists, they also label 25 percent of the French electorate as racists and fascists . In Russia, the National Front is considered a right-wing political party that has some sensible policies on the EU, on immigration and supports the idea of a strong French identity and closer ties with Russia . The opposition UMP - led once again by Sarkozy - incidentally, shares some of the National Front's views on immigration and the EU . Leading Russian political expert Andrey Fursov says that "to call the National Front [headed by Marine Le Pen] a far-right or fascist party is an exaggeration and a mistake" . "It's a right-wing party, yes," he says . "In our modern times, it's the left- wing socialists who can actually be called fascists." In his opinion, those who are called right-wing these days are "realists" who don't want Europe to be enslaved by the US and the "Euro-bureaucracy" . It remains to be seen whether the First Czech-Russian Bank made the right commercial move . From the point of view of PR, that is .
answer:
a private Russian bank has given a loan to France's National Front


question:
What freedom of speech? The photos of 40 of the world's government leaders marching arm-in-arm along a Paris boulevard on Sunday with the president of the United States not among them was a provocative image that has fomented much debate . The march was, of course, in direct response to the murderous attacks on workers at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by a pair of brothers named Kouachi, and on shoppers at a Paris kosher supermarket by one of the brothers' comrades . The debate has been about whether President Obama should have been at the march . The march was billed as a defense of freedom of speech in the West ; yet it hardly could have been held in a less free speech-friendly Western environment , and the debate over Obama's absence misses the point . In the post-World War II era, French governments have adopted a policy advanced upon them nearly 100 years ago by Woodrow Wilson . He pioneered the modern idea that countries' constitutions don't limit governments; they unleash them . Thus , even though the French Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, French governments treat speech as a gift from the government, not as a natural right of all persons , as our Constitution does . The French government has prohibited speech it considers to be hateful and even made it criminal . When the predecessor magazine to Charlie Hebdo once mocked the death of Charles de Gaulle, the French government shut it down -- permanently . The theory of anti-hate speech laws is that hate speech often leads to violence, and violence demands police and thus the expenditure of public resources, and so the government can make it illegal to spout hatred in order to conserve its resources . This attitude presumes, as Wilson did when he prosecuted folks for publicly singing German songs during World War I, that the government is the origin of free speech and can lawfully limit the speech it hates and fears . It also presumes that all ideas are equal, and none is worthy of hatred . When the massacres occurred last week in Paris, all three of the murderers knew that the police would be unarmed and so would be their victims . It was as if they were shooting fish in a barrel . Why is that? The answer lies in the same mentality that believes it can eradicate hate by regulating speech . That mentality demands that government have a monopoly on violence, even violence against evil . So, to those who embrace this dreadful theory, the great loss in Paris last week was not human life, which is a gift from God ; it was free speech, which is a gift from the state . Hence the French government, which seems not to care about innocent life, instead of addressing these massacres as crimes against innocent people, proclaimed the massacres crimes against the freedom of speech . Would the French government have reacted similarly if the murderers had killed workers at an ammunition factory, instead of at a satirical magazine? And how hypocritical was it of the French government to claim it defends free speech! In France, you can go to jail if you publicly express hatred for a group whose members may be defined generally by characteristics of birth, such as gender, age, race, place of origin or religion . You can also go to jail for using speech to defy the government . This past weekend, millions of folks in France wore buttons and headbands that proclaimed in French:"I am Charlie Hebdo." Those whose buttons proclaimed"I am not Charlie Hebdo" were asked by the police to remove them . Those who wore buttons that proclaimed, either satirically or hatefully,"I am Kouachi" were arrested . Arrested for speech at a march in support of free speech? Yes . What's going on here? What's going on in France, and what might be the future in America, is the government defending the speech with which it agrees and punishing the speech with which it disagrees . What's going on is the assault by some in radical Islam not on speech, but on vulnerable innocents in their everyday lives in order to intimidate their governments . What's going on is the deployment of 90,000 French troops to catch and kill three murderers because the government does not trust the local police to use guns to keep the streets safe or private persons to use guns to defend their own lives . Why do some in radical Islam kill innocents in the West in order to affect the policies of Western governments? Might it be because the fruitless Western invasion of Iraq killed 650,000 persons, most of whom were innocent civilians? Might it be because that invasion brought al-Qaida to the region and spawned ISIS? Might it be because Obama has killed more innocent civilians in the Middle East with his drones than were killed by the planes in the U.S  on 9/11? Might it be because our spies are listening to us, rather than to those who pose real dangers? What does all this have to do with freedom of speech? Nothing -- unless you believe the French government .
answer:
The French government has prohibited speech it considers to be hateful and even made it criminal


question:
Islamic terror and Obama White House: Josh Earnest summons ghost of Ron Ziegler. French Muslims trained by Al Qaeda and inspired by the Islamic Caliphate murder seventeen people in Paris . Their announced reason is revenge for the defamation of the Prophet Muhammad . Their battle cry is the Arabic declaration that 'Allah hu Akbar'(Allah is the greatest!) . In the aftermath, White House spokesman Josh Earnest briefs the media on how his boss, President Obama, sees the slaughter in Paris . His diagnosis: A deplorable case of "terrorism." Reporters notice a missing adjective . Has Earnest forgotten to mention something about the identity of the killers? No, not at all, Earnest says . He is simply trying to be accurate . He explains(and I paraphrase) that the Paris assassins were just folks who happened to commit mass murder against some journalists(every spokesman's fantasy-- I speak from personal experience) and then ,  stuck for an explanation, invoked Islam . The proof that this had nothing to do with the Religion of Peace is that it was "roundly condemned by (unnamed) Muslim spiritual leaders . Not since the hapless Ron Ziegler assured the press that his boss, Richard Nixon, was not a crook, has a White House spokesman been reduced to invoking the,"who-are-you-going- to- believe, me-or-your-lying-eyes," defense in quite such a pitiful way . The name "Josh Earnest" may not go down in history , but it is destined to become a "Jeopardy" answer : What presidential spokesman denied the existence of Islamic terrorism? Of course Earnest did this in a good cause-- keeping his job . And to be charitable, his boss probably has virtuous reasons for his see-no-evil approach , For one thing, he doesn't want to insult American Muslims , who are his supporters . For another, he may imagine that he is protecting them from Tea Party pogroms, an abiding, if entirely imaginary, liberal concern . It is likely that Obama also thinks that his discreet silence about who did what to whom in Paris is a boon the American fight for hearts and minds in the Middle East . If so , he is mistaken . Muslims from Nigeria to Chechnya know perfectly well that he is dissembling . Islam is the world's leading exporter of political and religious violence . Some Muslims regret it ; others see it as the fulfillment of a Koranic duty . Either way, they don't expect the victims to pretend that the infidel bodies lying dead at their desks in Paris just happened to drop dead . Alibiing for Islam makes Obama come off like Freddo ("Moe didn't mean nothin' by slapping me around, Mikey, he's a good guy. He's sorry, right Moe?"). Corleone . Like Freddo, Obama can be bullied into silence and appeased by insincere apologies . Just how insincere was evident a few days after the Paris massacre when the editors of Charlie Hebdo, in an act of startling courage, put another "offensive" cartoon of Mohammed on the cover of their magazine . Suddenly, it was back to yesterday in the House of Islam . Churches were torched by the faithful in Mali . Wild anti-Western rallies took place from Chechnya to Nigeria . The free-speech loving Imams and Ayatollahs of Josh Earnest's imagination incited worshippers with cries of blasphemy and holy war . The New York Times, house organ of the Obama administration, responded by not publishing the caricature because "some readers" (unspecified) might be offended . Such weakness is entirely transparent to the Muslim world--not only to the jihadis themselves, whose ranks are swelling with every attack but to their countless millions of admirers, apologists and silent supporters . It is also completely clear to Israel . For two years, Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have relentlessly and futilely tried to convince Jerusalem to withdraw from the West Bank and agree to the creation of a Palestinian state . The plan has been on life support for months ; it died--at least for the duration of the Obama administration-- in the kosher supermarket where four Jews were shot dead by a gunman inspired by the (non-denominational!) Islamic Caliphate of Iraq and Syria . The killer dedicated the job to the Palestinian people . The victims were buried in Jerusalem partly because their families feared their graves would be desecrated in France . The funerals coincided with the start of the election season in Israel . Prime Minister Netanyahu, running for a fourth term, is implacably opposed to making concessions to the Palestinian Authority , one of whose components, Hamas, is a branch of the M-word Brotherhood . Obama has made it clear that he would like Netanyahu to lose . This is a good thing for the Prime Minister . Even the left understands that there can be no deal backed by an American Godfather who is who is scared of Moe Greene .
answer:

French Muslims trained by Al Qaeda and inspired by the Islamic Caliphate murder seventeen people in Paris Their battle cry is the Arabic declaration that 'Allah hu Akbar'(Allah is the greatest!)