I belong to a privileged generation. Not that I was raised in affluence; far from it. Born in 1958, to a mother who worked all her life as a weaver in the textile industry and a father employed as a maintenance mechanic at the local factory, I lived on a council estate for the first decade of my life. Money was tight, holidays were basic and infrequent, and treats – in the form of confectionary – were rare, usually restricted to a Turkish Delight chocolate bar each Sunday evening. Although I never realised it until I was 62, I was, however, part of a cohort who possessed something sacrosanct, something so very precious and – deplorably – something future generations may never enjoy again: individual freedom.
To be clear, the world I have lived in has been far from perfect. My era has been one incorporating fundamental inequalities and injustices, widespread poverty, discrimination and – particularly in my young-adult years – a recurring risk of physical assault. But despite this context, each of us took for granted a range of basic human rights: to meet with whomever we wished; to leave our homes whenever we chose; to eat whatever we wanted; to express opinions others might not agree with; to take risks, make mistakes and learn sometimes painful lessons; to wear whatever we wanted; to work to improve our career prospects and earn more money to enhance our lives and those of our families; and to decide what drugs and other medical interventions to accept. When cheap flights emerged in the 1970s and 80s, the whole world became wonderfully accessible.
My perception (probably a naïve one) of successive Labour and Conservative Governments was that, although often inept and guilty of policy errors, they broadly sought to improve the lives of their citizens and could at least be relied upon to protect us against external malignant forces. Furthermore, it seemed that the life-spans of our elected politicians were dependent upon keeping us – their constituents – satisfied by acting primarily in the interests of U.K. citizens.
But 30 months ago, this illusion was shattered.
I knew something was awry as early as February 2020. By March the same year my early-warning detector would not rest. While the media, politicians and the science ‘experts’ informed us – incessantly – that a uniquely lethal pathogen was spreading carnage across the world, and unprecedented and draconian restrictions on our day-to-day lives were essential to prevent Armageddon, I wasn’t buying it. I formed the view that a momentous event, unparalleled in my lifetime, was unfolding, but it was not primarily about a virus.
Why, at that point in time, did I recognise that something sinister was underway while almost everyone else I met seemed to be swallowing the dominant narrative? It is a difficult question to answer. Perhaps my time in the early 1980s as a psychiatric charge nurse in an NHS hospital, occasionally interfacing with the ‘infection control’ department, gave me insight into how this professional group operate. Although well-meaning, their advice regarding how to minimise the spread of contagion on a ward often seemed impractical, revealing an apparent inability to see the bigger picture. Or maybe my in-depth knowledge of risk assessment (gleaned in my doctoral thesis during my time as a clinical psychologist) had impressed upon me how woefully inaccurate we are in gauging the relative threat levels posed by various hazards inherent in our environment. What I did know for sure was that Big Pharma – arguably the most corrupt industry in the world – would exploit the emerging ‘crisis’ for its own ends. And how right I was.
The list of state-driven human rights abuses we have endured under the pretence of ‘keeping us safe’ and the (ominous) ‘greater good’ is long: prohibition of travel; confinement in our homes; social isolation; closure of businesses; denial of access to leisure activities; de-humanising mask mandates; directives (scrawled on floors and walls) dictating which way to walk; an arbitrary ‘stay two metres apart’ rule; exclusion from the weddings and funerals of our loved ones; the seclusion and neglect of our elderly; school shutdowns; children’s playgrounds sealed off with yellow and black tape; muzzled children and toddlers; students denied both face-to-face tuition and a ‘rites-of-passage’ social life; and coerced experimental ‘vaccines’ that turned out to be more harmful and less effective than initially claimed. Equally egregious were the strategies deployed to lever compliance with these restrictions, namely psychological manipulation (‘nudging’), pervasive censorship across the media and academic journals and the cancellation and vilification of anyone brave enough to speak out against the dominant Covid narrative. All-in-all, a state-driven assault on the core of our shared humanity.
As the state-orchestrated infringement of our basic human rights continued, I felt compelled to act in ways that were far outside of my comfort zone. The 61-year-old man who had never been on a protest march until summer 2020, and who had innocently assumed that most of society’s leaders were decent people who tried to do what was right, had changed. I found myself walking with tens of thousands of others along Regent Street, London, screaming “Freedom!” I pushed “Back to Normal” leaflets through the letterboxes of hundreds of my neighbours. I stood on the corner of our local shopping street with a placard held aloft stating, “Say No To Vaccine Passports”.
Throughout 2020 and 2021, I struggled to find reasons for the irrational, masochistic Covid restrictions and the ubiquitous infringement of our basic human rights. My explanations evolved. Initially I clung to the ‘panic and incompetence’ rationale, that our governments had been spooked by the images coming out of China – remember the videos of people falling dead in the streets – and the mono-focused, blinkered and catastrophic prophecies of our so-called epidemiological experts. As the atrocities persisted, this explanation was rendered inadequate, and it morphed into an ‘opportunistic agendas’ account where activists – promoting green aspirations, digitalised IDs, social credit systems, a cashless society, universal income, a biosecurity state – had exploited the anxieties associated with the emergence of a novel respiratory virus. By 2021 these conclusions, in turn, seemed insufficient to explain the persistence of the horrors we were enduring and it – belatedly – became clear that globalist and ‘deep state’ powers were at work, striving to realise their inhuman aspirations. My further reading about the activities of World Economic Forum, the United Nations, the European Union, the World Health Organisation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust, Anthony Fauci and Big Pharma, and others, confirmed this emerging conclusion.
As the Covid event fades from media attention (replaced by a focus on similarly dehumanising and totalitarian responses to environmental threats, the war in Ukraine and the imminent cost-of-living crisis) it is intriguing to reflect upon its residual effects.
I continue to mourn what I have lost, a process associated with a complex mix of fluctuating emotions. For two years, our Government, aided and abetted by state-funded scientists, denied us opportunities for fun and human connection, stymied our freedoms and orchestrated a systematic campaign to coerce us to both accept experimental ‘vaccines’ and to slavishly cover our faces with cloth or plastic. Consequently, I feel anger and disgust towards many of our politicians, epidemiological ‘experts’ and behavioural scientists who were complicit with this shameful period in our history. And I now distrust all sources of information, whether it be the media, the ‘scientific’ world or public health experts. Without an anchor for truth, I float – incredulous – in an ocean of mainstream-generated misinformation.
My 60-plus years of naivety have been shattered. I believe only those few who have shown selfless integrity throughout the Covid debacle. Also, I am now sceptical about much of the green agenda: state-funded scientists lied to us about Covid so why wouldn’t they show the same self-serving dishonesty about the climate?
Closer to home, it is clear my life has changed. I feel disappointment and irritation towards many people who I previously respected and liked, such as friends who colluded with the catastrophically damaging Covid restrictions because of fear, ignorance or a desire to avoid hassle and condemnation. Many relationships are now more distant. On the rare occasions we meet there is often an ‘elephant in the room’, and when the Covid issue is touched upon I typically feel frustrated that many do not want to consider the implications of what has been inflicted upon us.
I feel similarly towards mental health colleagues who, for years, I had stood alongside and respected, collectively fighting the tyranny of biological psychiatry (its human rights infringements, coercion, overuse of drugs and vilification of those who questioned them) but who failed to recognise a much bigger tyranny when it emerged in 2020. While a handful of this anti-psychiatry lobby did soon recognise the totalitarian threat inherent to the Covid response, most bought into the dominant narrative. Heated disagreements ensued with a few, followed by ongoing mutual resentment; for most we just avoid each other.
But the residual effects of the Covid debacle are not all negative. New friendships have emerged with people from across the political spectrum. Based on a mutual respect, enduring bonds have formed with fellow sceptics both locally (through the Community Assembly and the Stand in the Park initiatives) and nationally via joint endeavours in HART, Smile Free, and PANDA. And it was uplifting to recently discover – via a chance meeting in the local pub – that the family I had lived across the road from for the last seven years, yet had rarely spoken to, had always been as sceptical as me about the dominant Covid narrative.
Furthermore, I have noticed that my behaviour has changed in subtle ways. I now make more of an effort to smile and gain eye contact with – unmasked – strangers. Similarly, when greeting acquaintances, I’m more inclined to hug or shake hands as compared to pre-2020 levels of bodily contact. (Non of that fist-bump and elbow-touch nonsense for me.) It’s as if I’m striving to compensate for the human connection deficit that we’ve accrued over the last 30 months. Or perhaps I’m making a defiant metaphorical one-finger salute to any onlookers who still adhere to the risk-averse and dehumanising dominant Covid narrative?
While we continue to drown in a sea of propaganda, censorship and coercion, who knows what the future might hold?
One thing is for sure: We must never forget what the political leaders and public health specialists inflicted upon us. Whether the reason was weakness, groupthink, conflict of interest or unadulterated corruption, the miscreants must all be held to account and pay a price for terrorising the people they are meant to serve. This assertion is not fuelled by a primitive desire for retribution – well, not primarily – but by an expectation that, if the guilty are not named and shamed, the same totalitarian impositions will be repeated again and again.
The conviction sheet is a long one. It includes political leaders at home (Boris Johnson, Keir Starmer, Nicola Sturgeon, Mark Drayford) and abroad (including Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, Joe Biden and Jacinda Ardern); Bill Gates and his various funding agencies; SAGE scientists who danced to the tune of their academic and political paymasters; the behavioural science ‘nudgers’ at the helm of the worldwide psychological manipulation strategy; the professional organisations that have manifestly colluded with the state-driven tyranny (including the British Medical Association and the British Psychological Society); the conflicted drug regulators (such as the MHRA); the powerful, profit-driven pharmaceutical companies, deploying their financial clout to influence health policy decisions; and the mainstream media, who have slavishly peddled the dominant Covid narrative while dismissing alternative viewpoints.
To successfully expose the wrongdoings of such powerful individuals and institutions is a big ask. Realistically, only bottom-up resistance and protests from millions of ordinary people could achieve this aim, and in this regard there are reasons for optimism. Truth will – eventually – reveal itself. Despite the ongoing censorship and manipulation, public dissent to the attempted imposition of a biosecurity state is becoming increasingly visible. Masking in the community is – at the time of writing – practised only by an eccentric minority. The net harms of Covid restrictions are more widely recognised. Ordinary citizens increasingly claim they will not be locked down and separated from their loved ones ever again. And – perhaps more importantly – the ‘safe and effective’ vaccine narrative is crumbling, as indicated by more and more people rejecting the jabs.
If we do not wish to live in a ‘transhuman’ society devoid of personal freedoms, where our day-to-day decisions – where we go, what we say, what we eat, how we spend our money, what drugs we ingest – are determined by the state’s version of the ‘greater good’, we must all continue to show visible dissent to the globalists’ new world order.
Together, I believe we can defeat the biggest threat to Western values witnessed in my lifetime. And even if we don’t succeed, history will show that at least we tried.
Dr. Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign. He blogs at Coronababble
November 2, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism | Bill Gates, Covid-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Emmanuel Macron, Human rights, Jacinda Ardern, Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, UK |
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Samizdat | April 3, 2022
The Russian military has firmly denied accusations of mass killings of civilians in Bucha, a Ukrainian town northwest of Kiev. The claims have been raised by Ukraine itself, some Western media outlets and human rights groups, after Moscow had withdrawn its troops from the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital.
“All photographs and video materials published by the Kiev regime, allegedly showing some kind of “crimes” by Russian military personnel in the town of Bucha, Kiev region, are yet another provocation,” the Russian Ministry of Defense said Sunday.
Russian troops had been pulled out from the area on March 30, the military said, pointing out that “the so-called ‘evidence of crimes’ in Bucha appeared only on the fourth day” after the withdrawal, when Ukrainian intelligence and “representatives of Ukrainian television arrived in the town.”
“Moreover, on March 31 the mayor of Bucha, Anatoly Fedoruk, confirmed in his video address that there was no Russian military in the town, but did not even mention any local residents laying shot in the streets with their hands tied,” the Russian military also pointed out.
“It’s particularity concerning that all the bodies of people whose images were published by the Kiev regime, after at least four days, have not stiffened, do not have characteristic cadaveric spots, and have fresh blood in their wounds,” the military noted, adding that all these inconsistencies show that the whole Bucha affair “has been staged by the Kiev regime for Western media, as was the case with the [fake news from the] Mariupol maternity clinic.”
Graphic footage from Bucha shows multiple bodies in civilian clothing lying in the middle of a street. Some of the dead apparently had their hands tied, while others were white armbands, commonly used by Russian forces and civilians in areas under Russian control.
Kiev has blamed the Bucha killings on Moscow, with Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba claiming it was a “deliberate massacre” by Russian troops.
“The Bucha massacre was deliberate. Russians aim to eliminate as many Ukrainians as they can. We must stop them and kick them out. I demand new, devastating G7 sanctions NOW,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter.
Top Western politicians have backed Kiev’s assessment of Bucha, with some explicitly pinning the blame for the killings on Moscow as well. “Russian authorities will have to answer for these crimes,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.
A similar stance was voiced by the UK, with Foreign Secretary Liz Truss stating that such “indiscriminate attacks” on civilians should be probed as war crimes. “We will not allow Russia to cover up their involvement in these atrocities through cynical disinformation,” she said.
Moscow launched a large-scale offensive against its neighbor in late February, following Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements signed in 2014, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics in Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols had been designed to regularize the status of those regions within the Ukrainian state.
Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military alliance. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two rebel regions by force.
April 3, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | Emmanuel Macron, France, Russia, UK, Ukraine |
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As protests grow in EU countries and worldwide against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and so-called “vaccine passports,” some countries appear to be backtracking or at least harboring second thoughts about enforcing such measures.
Some policymakers point to evidence COVID is here to stay and we need to live with it, since Omicron is similar to the common cold or seasonal flu. Others appear more willing to accept natural immunity in lieu of vaccination.
Still, other governments are digging in their heels and moving forward with punitive restrictions on the unvaccinated.
Here’s a look at the latest shifting policies outside the U.S.
Austria, citing ‘technical complications,’ won’t enforce mandates until at least April
Austria garnered much attention in November 2021 when it became the first country in the world to impose an all-encompassing vaccine mandate for its entire adult population and minors 14 years old and up.
This mandate, set to take effect in February, would be accompanied by fines of up to 3,600 euros per quarter. To that end, Austria recently reportedly began hiring “headhunters” to track down those who continue to remain unvaccinated.
The mandate has resulted in frequent large-scale protests against the mandate, as well as a political movement opposing this policy.
An open letter recently sent to Austria’s Interior Minister, Gerhard Karner, signed by 600 police officers, also expressed opposition to mandatory vaccination.
This opposition may be having an impact. Recently, the firm responsible for the technical implementation of the mandate announced that due to “technical complications,” the mandatory vaccination law cannot be enforced until at least April.
This news came amidst calls in Austria that the mandate should be reevaluated in light of the spread of the Omicron variant.
Germany struggling with mandate implementation; support not unanimous
Similar concerns over the feasibility of rapid implementation of a vaccine mandate have been raised in Germany, which has also mulled the implementation of compulsory vaccinations and has already approved such a mandate for healthcare workers.
In December 2021, Germany’s Ethics Council also gave its stamp of approval for vaccine mandates.
Nevertheless, concerns have been raised in Germany that parliamentary debate and subsequent technical implementation of a vaccination database cannot be completed before June at the earliest, calling into question the feasibility of the mandate in light of rapidly changing conditions.
Such hesitation comes despite renewed calls from German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier for an immediate full parliamentary debate on a potential vaccine mandate, and from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for COVID vaccines to be mandated.
Similarly, German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach recently suggested vaccine mandates, not natural herd immunity stemming from the rapid spread of the Omicron variant — which he described as “dirty vaccination” — represent the only way “out” of the crisis.
In November 2021, Lauterbach’s predecessor, Jens Spahn, publicly predicted that by the end of the coming winter, everyone would be “vaccinated, recovered, or dead” — due to the Delta variant.
Soon thereafter, in December 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden made a similar warning, predicting a winter of “severe illness and death” for the non-vaccinated.
Despite these public proclamations from German politicians though, recent reports suggest support for a vaccine mandate in Germany’s three-party governing coalition is far from unanimous.
Nevertheless, some localities in Germany are moving ahead with their own innovative means of confirming individuals’ vaccination status.
The city of Saarbrücken will soon launch a system where individuals who received a COVID vaccine or who have recovered from infection can voluntarily wear a colored wristband to indicate their status.
Greece pushes ahead with age 60+ mandate policy, threatens fines for unvaxxed
Greece was one of the first countries in Europe to implement a vaccine mandate for a portion of its general population when, in December 2021, it imposed such a policy for everyone age 60 and over.
The policy is set to take effect Jan. 16, with fines of 100 euros per month levied against anyone who doesn’t comply.
Despite this policy, which has received broad and highly sensational media attention in Greece, and despite the burden the policy would place on pensioners in a country where the average pension is just over 700 euros per month, a significant number of individuals 60 and older appear to have opted to remain unvaccinated.
In late December 2021, it was reported that 400,000 people in this age group had not received the COVID vaccine.
In a televised appearance on Jan. 11, Greek government spokesperson Giannis Oikonomou stated that 200,000 people aged 60 and over had gotten vaccinated as a result of this mandate, touting this as a “big success.”
However, this would suggest approximately half of the relevant population in question had chosen to remain unvaccinated, despite the looming threat of a financial penalty.
It is perhaps, for this reason, the Greek government reportedly “froze” any further discussion of expanding the mandatory vaccination policy to those aged 50 and over, while it has been suggested the measure is unconstitutional and may eventually be struck down judicially.
However, despite rumors that the enforcement of fines against individuals 60 and older who have not been vaccinated would be postponed, Greece’s far-right Interior Minister Makis Voridis announced the policy would be enforced as originally planned.
Nevertheless, the Greek government will now extend existing measures, which include a midnight curfew and ban on music for dining and entertainment venues, and a 1,000-spectator capacity limit at sporting events, for at least an additional week past the original sunset date of Jan. 16.
In Balkans, protests lead to standstill on mandates
Major protests against the so-called “Green Pass,” or vaccine passport, took place recently in both Bulgaria and Romania.
In Bulgaria, protesters on Jan. 12 stormed the parliament building in opposition to the “Green Pass” and other restrictions. Attempts to enter parliament resulted in clashes with police and multiple arrests.
Similar events transpired recently in Romania, where on Dec. 21, 2021, protesters attempted to enter Romania’s parliament as part of a protest against proposed legislation making the “Green Pass” mandatory for workers.
Disagreements that have since followed between the parties which comprise Romania’s governing coalition have resulted in talks on this proposed policy coming to a standstill.
Notably, Bulgaria and Romania have the lowest and second-lowest COVID vaccination rate in the EU as of this writing.
Herd immunity as official policy?
As attempted moves toward wide-ranging vaccine mandates and broader implementation of vaccine passports appear to be floundering in Europe, such hesitation has increasingly been accompanied by ever more vocal suggestions that a form of herd immunity, via natural infection stemming from the rapid spread of the milder Omicron variant, should be considered at the policymaking level.
In Israel, for instance, a country that was among the first to move forward with a mass vaccination and booster campaign against COVID, health officials are mulling a “mass infection model.”
On Jan. 11, EU regulators, who had previously supported the administration of COVID booster shots every three months, had a sudden about-face, warning about the dangers the continued administration of boosters could pose for the human immune system.
That same day, the World Health Organization issued a remarkably similar warning, stating that “a vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable.”
Just one day prior, on Jan. 10, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez suggested European officials should move towards treating COVID as an endemic illness, calling for a debate on the issue and for a move away from the detailed pandemic case tracking system in place since early 2020.
Dr. Clive Dix, former chairman of the UK’s vaccine task force, Nick Moakes, chief investment officer of the Wellcome Trust (Britain’s largest independent funder of medical research) made similar remarks. Moakes suggested coronavirus be treated like the common cold.
Meanwhile, certain European countries appear to be shifting away from considering a mandatory vaccination policy for their populations. Irish Prime Minister Michael Martin said his country will maintain a system of voluntary vaccination, while Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said his intention to give people a “free choice” on the matter.
This shift is occurring despite remarks made on Dec. 1, 2021, by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, who said it is time to “potentially think about mandatory vaccination within the European Union” and to have a “discussion” about this possibility.
Punitive measures continue elsewhere
The gradual shift away from vaccine mandate policies in Europe and elsewhere is far from uniform, with punitive restrictions and policies continuing to be implemented in several countries.
In Italy, for instance, mandatory vaccination was expanded on Jan. 5 to everyone age 50 and older. The unvaxxed will face a potential fine ranging from 600 to 1,500 euros.
French President Emmanuel Macron made waves in an interview with the Le Parisien newspaper on Jan. 4, justifying the implementation of his country’s “Green Pass” by stating “I really want to piss them off, and we’ll carry on doing this — to the end” and that “irresponsible people [the unvaccinated] are no longer citizens.”
Despite uproar and protests that his comments generated, Macron later doubled down on these remarks.
On Jan. 11, the premier of the Canadian province of Quebec, Francois Legault, stated adults who refuse the COVID vaccine will face a “significant” financial penalty.
This statement came on the heels of remarks made on Jan. 7 by Canadian Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos. When asked whether mandatory vaccination was on the horizon in Canada, Duclos stated, “I personally think we will get there at some point.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau previously stated, in May 2021, that “[w]e’re not a country that makes vaccination mandatory.”
Other countries have resorted to more extreme, albeit “temporary,” measures.
Non-vaccinated individuals in one Australian state, the Northern Territory, were recently required to stay home for a four-day period, with limited exceptions. The conclusion of this four-day ban coincided with the launch of vaccine passports in the territory.
And in the Philippines, the country’s president, Rodrigo Duterte, called for the arrest of non-vaccinated citizens who venture outside their homes, in light of what he described as the “galloping” spread of the coronavirus.
This nevertheless may represent a milder stance on the part of Duterte, who in April 2020, empowered the police and military with shoot-to-kill orders against lockdown violators.
Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
January 15, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, War Crimes | Australia, Canada, COVID-19 Vaccine, Emmanuel Macron, France, Human rights, Italy, Quebec |
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A LOT has been said about the psychological effects of Covid on the public. Worryingly, the management of an unpredictably mutating virus which is always one step ahead is fraying the composure of our leaders too.
In the last couple of weeks, Presidents Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron have lashed out at fellow citizens who defy government orders to be vaccinated because they doubt ‘the science’ is truly settled in favour of a jab which has not been subjected to the full range of tests for side-effects later in life.
Exasperated by resistance to their Covid dictates, the American and French leaders appear to be losing their minds and their manners in the battle between the risks of vaccination and the risk of becoming serious ill with the virus.
Biden, alarmed by the refusal of one third of Americans to be vaccinated while Omicron is on the loose – though it causes mainly flu-like symptoms – warned them at Christmas that they faced a ‘winter of death’. Not one person in the US is yet known to have died from the latest Covid variant.
‘We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death for the unvaccinated, for themselves and their families and the hospitals they’ll soon overwhelm,’ quoth the ancient prophet of doom at a White House briefing whose message was that the unjabbed are not just selfish, they endanger the lives of everyone else.
Biden fingered them officially as ‘bad persons’, an unwelcome term in America where being a good person is vital to many. Not unnaturally, his presentation was badly received, reinforcing as it did the political polarisation between Democrats and Republicans, whom the former accuse of being the main vaccination hold-outs.
People, including essential workers, are being fired across America for defying Biden’s vaccination mandates.
Macron went further this week in a newspaper interview, threatening to ‘emmerder les non-vaccinés jusqu’au bout’. A polite translation of this is that he intends to go after them hard until they give in.
Emmerder – literally, to smear with sh*t – is a commonly used expression and is offensive or not according to context. Macron deliberately used it at its rudest and got the reaction he hoped for.
A session of parliament to discuss the government’s introduction of an updated vaccination passport restricting the freedom of movement of the unvaccinated was suspended in uproar when members heard the explosion of Macron’s little bomb.
He changed the focus of the argument from the virus to his brutal language. It’s likely to be a talking point for his opponents during his campaign for re-election this spring.
The fashion for politicians insulting the people they rely on to elect them was set by President Obama referring to ‘bitter clingers’ and Hillary Clinton describing some Midwestern voters as ‘deplorables’. (Those bad persons again.)
Biden and Macron forgot that these remarks were never forgiven by their targets and in Clinton’s case helped her to lose the race for the presidency.
Boris Johnson has at least grasped that, after two years of unprecedented exposure to the arbitrary powers of government, it is politically counter-productive to strain people’s patience with constant loosening and re-tightening of a Covid regime unknown in free countries outside wartime.
What is shocking about Biden, Macron, Obama and Clinton is the openness of their contempt for the people they govern as if being in public office conferred on them a wisdom that separated them from the common voters rather than the duty to lead with their consent.
There is nothing in our democratic system, adversarial as it is, that entitles politicians to treat us angrily. How many people, hearing the Biden and Macron anathemas, rushed out with arms bared to the needle?
I was vaccinated promptly myself because the odds pushed me that way. But I understand the motives of those who see obligatory vaccination – along with a sustained media campaign to vilify them – as a step too far by an overbearing state.
The certitudes of government’s own scientific advisers are offset by the determination of so many health professionals – including my own GP – to refuse the vaccines. What right do political leaders, themselves scientifically uneducated, have to threaten doctors and nurses who have daily experience of how medical treatments work and which can be trusted?
‘My body my choice’, the battle cry that worked so well for supporters of abortion, is suddenly off the table when the principle doesn’t suit politicians.
Biden and Macron weren’t showing leadership. What they expressed was frustration that, with all their power, they cannot force obedience on free-thinking citizens and anger that they will be blamed for the consequences. Macron especially forgot that the way we speak to each other in public matters. If you abuse people, they remember.
January 6, 2022
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | COVID-19 Vaccine, Emmanuel Macron, Hillary Clinton, Human rights, Joe Biden, Obama |
2 Comments
If Emmanuel Macron believes heads of state must resign over street protests, he should have left office himself when Yellow Vest demonstrators took to the streets in France, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has said.
Lukashenko, who has faced weeks of large-scale protests following the August 9 presidential election which the opposition insists was rigged, has labeled Macron an “immature politician.” His words were reported to the BelTA news agency by his press secretary.
As a “mature politician,” the Belarusian president advised his French counterpart “not to get distracted, but instead focus on the internal affairs of France. At least, begin solving the many problems that accumulated in the country,” Lukashenko added.
The statement came after Macron said in an interview with Le Journal du Dimanche that “it is clear that Lukashenko must go” because his “authoritarian administration” is unable to accept democracy.
“Judging by his own logic, the French president should’ve himself resigned two years ago when the Yellow Vests started going out to the streets in Paris,” Lukashenko pointed out.
The Belarusian president went on to note that, as well as the Yellow Vests, France also needs to deal with the BLM movement as well as “Muslim protests” – apparently referring to the 2019 anti-Islamophobia demonstrations.
Responding to Macron, Lukashenko quipped that Minsk is ready to provide a venue for negotiations on “a peaceful transition of power [from the French president] to any of the above-mentioned groups.”
The Yellow Vest demonstrations were provoked by fuel tax hikes in France in November 2018, but they quickly transitioned into a wider protest against Macron’s policies and economic injustice. Weekly rallies in Paris and other cities often turned violent, with French police facing accusations of using excessive force against the protesters.
On Sunday, thousands of people again marched in Minsk and other Belarusian cities, demanding Lukashenko’s immediate resignation and a new, fair election. The police said that around 200 people were arrested across the country.
September 27, 2020
Posted by aletho |
Progressive Hypocrite | Emmanuel Macron, France |
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Washington’s attempt to “isolate Putin’s Russia” has failed and had the opposite effect.
On the fifth anniversary of the onset of the Ukrainian crisis, in November 2013, and of Washington “punishing” Russia by attempting to “isolate” it in world affairs — a policy first declared by President Barack Obama in 2014 and continued ever since, primarily through economic sanctions — Cohen discusses the following points:
1. During the preceding Cold War with the Soviet Union, no attempt was made to “isolate” Russia abroad; instead, the goal was to “contain” it within its “bloc” of Eastern European nations and compete with it in what was called the “Third World.”
2. The notion of “isolating” a country of Russia’s size, Eurasian location, resources, and long history as a great power is vainglorious folly. It reflects the paucity and poverty of foreign thinking in Washington in recent decades, not the least in the US Congress and mainstream media.
3. Consider the actual results. Russia is hardly isolated. Since 2014, Moscow has arguably been the most active diplomatic capital of all great powers today. It has forged expanding military, political, or economic partnerships with, for example, China, Iran, Turkey, Syria, Saudi Arabia, India, and several other East Asian nations, even, despite EU sanctions, with several European governments. Still more, Moscow is the architect and prime convener of three important peace negotiations under way today: those involving Syria, Serbia-Kosovo, and even Afghanistan. Put differently, can any other national leaders in the 21st century match the diplomatic records of Russian President Vladimir Putin or of his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov? Certainly not former US Presidents George W. Bush or Obama or soon-to-depart German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Nor any British or French leader.
4. Much is made of Putin’s purportedly malign “nationalism” in this regard. But this is an uninformed or hypocritical explanation. Consider French President Emmanuel Macron, who recently reproached Trump for his declared nationalism. The same Macron who has sought to suggest (rather implausibly) that he is a second coming of Charles de Gaulle, who himself was a great and professed nationalist leader of the 20th century, from his resistance to the Nazi occupation and founding of the Fifth Republic to his refusal to put the French military under NATO command. Nationalism, that is, by whatever name, has long been a major political force in most countries, whether in liberal enlightened or reactionary right-wing forms. Russia and the United States are not exceptions.
5. Putin’s success in restoring Russia’s role in world affairs is usually ascribed to his “aggressive” policies, but it is better understood as a realization of what is characterized in Moscow as the “philosophy of Russian foreign policy” since Putin became leader in 2000. It has three professed tenets. The first goal of foreign policy is to protect Russia’s “sovereignty,” which is said to have been lost in the disastrous post-Soviet 1990s. The second is a kind of Russia-first nationalism or patriotism: to enhance the well-being of the citizens of the Russian Federation. The third is ecumenical: to partner with any government that wants to partner with Russia. This “philosophy” is, of course, non- or un-Soviet, which was heavily ideological, at least in its professed ideology and goals.
6. Considering Washington’s inability to “isolate Russia,” considering Russia’s diplomatic successes in recent years, and considering the bitter fruits of US militarized and regime-change foreign policies (which long pre-date President Trump), perhaps it’s time for Washington to learn from Moscow rather than demand that Moscow conform to Washington’s thinking about—and behavior in—world affairs. If not, Washington is more likely to continue to isolate itself.
John Bachelor Show
Stephen F. Cohen is a professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at New York University and Princeton University and a contributing editor of The Nation.
November 22, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | China, Emmanuel Macron, India, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United States |
2 Comments
A military airport in Homs province has been targeted in a “missile attack,” SANA reports. Although Syrian air defense systems allegedly intercepted at least eight projectiles, several people were reportedly injured and killed.
Several missiles were launched at Syria’s T-4 air base in the east of Homs province, SANA reports, citing a military source. According to the agency, the attack has “probably” been carried out by the United States.
There are several “martyrs and wounded” as a result of the strike, SANA added, without specifying the number of casualties.
While the US Defense Department is “aware” of reports of an alleged missile strike, it has dismissed reports of any US involvement.
“At this time, the Department of Defense is not conducting air strikes in Syria,” the Pentagon told Reuters in a statement. “However, we continue to closely watch the situation and support the ongoing diplomatic efforts to hold those who use chemical weapons, in Syria and otherwise, accountable.”
According to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen broadcaster, the missiles were coming from the Mediterranean Sea, through Lebanese airspace. Meanwhile, Al Masdar News is reporting that “unknown jets” have entered Syrian airspace from Lebanon, and is speculating that the jets could be Israeli. In response, the Syrian Air Defense system at Mezzeh Air Base was activated, the report added.
Almost precisely a year ago, on April 7, 2017, the US carried out a strike against Syria’s Shayrat Airbase, launching a volley of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the Mediterranean Sea. Back then, Washington justified the attack as a necessary response in the wake of reports of a deadly chemical attack in Idlib province, without waiting any on any investigation into the incident.
The latest news comes as Damascus faces fresh accusations of allegedly targeting civilians in a chlorine attack, which were put forward by the controversial White Helmets group, which is always to the fore in Western media coverage of the Syrian conflict.
Damascus, meanwhile, has denied the accusations, while the Russian Foreign Ministry denounced the latest reports as another example of a “continuous series of fake news about the use of chlorine and other chemical agents by the government forces.”
Amid escalating tensions, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US Central Command (CENTCOM), have allegedly been compiling lists of potential targets and attack options to present to Trump and his national security team, senior US military officials told Israel’s i24NEWS.
Israeli officials had, throughout Sunday, advocated striking targets in Syria, calling on Washington to retaliate against Damascus in response to the alleged Douma chemical attack. The charge was led by the Israeli Strategic Affairs and Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who told the Army Radio on Sunday that he personally hopes that the US would take military action against the Syrian government. Among an array of politicians, Israeli opposition leader Isaac Herzog also called on the US to take “decisive military action” against Syria. The idea of Israel’s intervention in Syria was also supported by the Israeli Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who urged his followers “to try and stop this massacre.”
Donald Trump’s fury, meanwhile, focused on Damascus and the Syrian president Bashar Assad, whom the US president called an “animal.” The US leader also lashed out against Iran and Russia for supporting Assad, saying there is a “big price” to pay for the latest chemical attack.
Trump has already held talks with his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, after which both leaders decided to form a united front against Russia at the upcoming United Nations Security Council meetings, planned for Monday. Macron previously indicated that France might consider unilateral actions, including a military strike if chemical weapons were ever used in Syria again.
April 8, 2018
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, France, Gilad Erdan, Isaac Herzog, Israel, Russia, Syria, United States, Yitzhak Yosef, Zionism |
4 Comments
Western media is heaping scorn on Syria for using ‘excessive force’ in its effort to liberate Ghouta from militant control. But where was that same concern when Mosul was being pulverized by US-led forces?
The Syrian government’s liberation efforts in the Damascus suburb of Eastern Ghouta have deteriorated into a media circus where truth has taken a back seat in the clown car. As was the case in the liberation of Aleppo, the government of President Bashar Assad – as opposed to the militant groups wreaking havoc in his country – has borne the main brunt of criticism from the Western world.
Due to the conditions on the ground in Ghouta, it is virtually impossible to get a clear picture of the situation there. What we do know, however, is that Damascus is being hit by approximately 70 missiles daily from militant positions inside Ghouta. The Western media would rather ignore that fact, speculating instead that “more than 500 people” have been killed by the Assad “regime” since efforts to retake the city began last month.
So where does the Western media get its information? In the majority of cases, from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a one-man operation based out of a humble abode in Coventry, UK. Western reporters also rely on the so-called White Helmets, the very same ‘humanitarian’ group that is suspected of working in tandem with terrorist groups that are carrying out attacks on civilians. Based on these extremely dubious sources, and others, one of the UK’s most respectable newspapers, the Guardian, was bold enough to assert that “Eastern Ghouta is turning into Syria’s Srebrenica.”
“Like the Bosnian Muslim enclave in 1995, eastern Ghouta … has been besieged by regime forces since the early stages of the Syrian war,” Simon Tisdall wrote. “As in Bosnia, nobody attempted to protect the civilian population when a regime offensive began there in December after negotiations failed. The airstrikes and bombardments… are carried out with impunity by Syrian forces and their Russian backers.”
I read that article twice in the hope of finding any mention of the militant forces that have been occupying Eastern Ghouta off and on since late 2012, subjecting the local population to untold horrors, including the threat of chemical attack. Regrettably, I failed; not a single mention of the terrorists. Indeed, to read Tisdall’s article one gets the impression that the citizens of Ghouta are perfectly content with the occupation of their city by fanatical militants.
Examples of such biased attitudes towards the Syrian government have, at the same time, overtaken the social media jungle like the invasive kudzu vine, blocking out the light of truth.
This week, for example, a US-based user who goes by the name of Sami Sharbek posted two photos on his Twitter account – one showing a building consumed by an explosion; the other depicting a man carrying a crying child.
“This is not a movie. This is Syria,” he wrote in the caption.
Sharbek was only 50 percent right.
Although the photos were not taken from a Hollywood blockbuster film, they did feature horrific images from Gaza and Mosul, respectively. In other words, very far from the action in Ghouta. Although Sharbek later admitted to his error, the damage was already done. As of February 28, the Tweet had made a huge impression, generating over 125,000 shares and 154,000 likes (the account is now blocked, open only to “approved followers”), possibly reaching millions of users. It is probably safe to say that very few of those same people will hear that Sharbek’s tweet was for all intents and purposes fake news.
Smoke rises from the Tuffah neighborhood after an Israeli airstrike in eastern Gaza City, July 29, 2014 © Sameh Rahmi / Global Look Press
On February 25, Danny Gold, a writer and correspondent, compared the situation in Ghouta to one of history’s worst human atrocities when he tweeted: “I know how Jews who lived through the holocaust felt 70 years later about the world turning a blind eye, can’t imagine how Syrians in Ghouta will feel about their suffering being so well-documented as it’s happening yet doubted by so many.”
Dan Cohen, a correspondent with RT America, responded to Gold: “Ghouta is like the Holocaust but Mosul was ‘a huge journalism event’ in which US-led forces took ‘much care’ in burying at least 3,200 civilians in the rubble.”
Cohen’s comment was a jibe at a tweet Gold had sent on February 1, 2017 in which he embellished the historical record of the US-led Iraqi campaign, remarking: “Mosul was a huge journalism event. Everyone who covers the Middle East was there.”
But if Mosul really was one big happy media confab, then how was it possible for the fatality figures to have been so skewed? As AP rather belatedly reported in December 2017, long after the nine-month conflict had ended, “The price Mosul’s residents paid in blood to see their city freed was between 9,000 and 11,000 dead … a civilian casualty rate nearly 10 times higher than what has been previously reported.”
Perhaps if Western reporters had not spent so much of their time reporting on the same type of military operation in Aleppo, which was then the focus of a Russian-backed liberation campaign, they may have more accurately described the situation in Iraq’s second-largest city.
Michael Raddie, co-editor of BSNews, provided a convincing explanation for the discrepancy in the way the Western media reports on war zones, which he said can be reduced to a matter of “worthy victims” and “unworthy victims.”
“The victims of US bombs and British airstrikes are not worthy because we don’t do that kind of thing,” Raddie told RT. “Our killing of civilians is a mistake, collateral damage. The Syrian air force killing of civilians … that is atrocities. And that is the ideology that Western media portray all the time.”
However, there is another side to this wave of Western cynicism with regards to Syria that could spark a real catastrophe. That involves the threat of a chemical strike, which the West seems to believe is something only the “Assad regime” is capable of committing. After all, who would ever suspect bona-fide terrorists deprived of modern weapons of resorting to such barbaric means of warfare?
Much like Barack Obama’s utterly reckless “red line” warning regarding the use of chemical weapons, which he said would warrant US military action, French President Emmanuel Macron issued the very same foolish warning on February 14.
“On chemical weapons, I set a red line and I reaffirm that red line,” Macron told reporters. “If we have proven evidence that chemical weapons proscribed in treaties are used, we will strike the place where they are made.”
Did it surprise anyone that less than two weeks after Macron’s warning a chemical attack – conveniently supported by photos provided by, yes, the White Helmets – was reported to have occurred in Ghouta? Western media and politicians have actually suggested a Russian connection to the event.
“Whoever conducted the attacks, Russia ultimately bears responsibility for the victims in Eastern Ghouta and countless other Syrians targeted with chemical weapons since Russia became involved in Syria,” US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.
Presently, a 30-day ceasefire endorsed by the UN Security Council is in effect across Syria, as well as a daily five-hour “humanitarian pause” in Eastern Ghouta enforced by Russia.
Yet thus far the plan is not producing the desired effect. Militants are preventing civilians from fleeing besieged Eastern Ghouta and are sabotaging the humanitarian operation there, Major General Vladimir Zolotukhin, a spokesman for the Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria, told journalists on Thursday.
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is author of the book, ‘Midnight in the American Empire,’ released in 2013. robertvbridge@yahoo.com
@Robert_Bridge
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March 3, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Emmanuel Macron, France, Iraq, Syria, The Guardian, United States |
2 Comments
France’s invitation to beleaguered Lebanese premier Saad Hariri for him and his family to spend “a few days in Paris” has been viewed as French President Emmanuel Macron stepping in with deft soft power to resolve tensions between Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
Less charitably, what Macron is really doing is giving cynical cover to the Saudi rulers for their extraordinary acts of aggression towards Lebanon and their violation of that country’s sovereignty.
Two of Hariri’s children were left in Saudi capital Riyadh while he visited France over the weekend. Were they being used as hostages by the Saudis to ensure that Hariri maintains the Saudi spin on events? Certainly, the arrangement raises suspicions, but the French president sought instead to affect a “normal” nothing-is-unusual appearance.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun last week publicly accused Saudi Arabia of holding Hariri in Riyadh against his will. Aoun said the Saudi rulers were violating international law by detaining Hariri and forcing his resignation as prime minister of Lebanon. Such acts were tantamount to aggression, said President Aoun.
Yet Macron has said nothing about Saudi interference. He has instead turned reality on its head by censuring Iran for regional “aggression” and thereby backing Saudi claims that Iran is supplying ballistic missiles to Yemen. Iran swiftly condemned Macron for “stoking regional tensions”.
Credit goes to President Aoun for speaking out plainly, telling it like it is and expressing what many Lebanese citizens and many other observers around the world have concluded. The whole debacle is an outrageous affront to Lebanon and international law by the Saudi rulers, when it is taken into consideration Hariri’s hasty summoning to Saudi capital Riyadh earlier this month, his subsequent televised resignation speech on Saudi TV, and his long-delayed sojourn in that country. What is even more despicable is that the Saudi interference in the sovereign affairs of Lebanon is threatening to re-ignite a civil war within the small Mediterranean country, and, possibly worse, a war across the region with Iran.
Hariri has claimed in a later media interview, held in Saudi Arabia, and in reported communications with family and friends who are back in Lebanon that he was not under duress while staying in Saudi Arabia. That claim beggars belief given the bizarre circumstances of Hariri’s sudden departure and his protracted nearly two-week stay in Saudi Arabia.
In any case, the president of Lebanon, Michel Aoun, has concluded that something is badly amiss in the saga, and he has explicitly accused Saudi rulers of violating his country’s sovereignty.
Therefore, if there were any principle or adherence to international law, the actions of Saudi Arabia should be condemned categorically by the international community, the UN, the European Union and France in particular owing to its historic relations with Lebanon as the former colonial power before independence in 1943.
But no. What we have instead are either shameful silence from Washington, or mealy-mouthed statements from the EU. The EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini issued a vague statement warning against “foreign interference” in the affairs of Lebanon. What kind of cowardly circumlocution is that?
Lebanon’s prime minister Saad Hariri was, in effect, detained by Saudi Arabia and forced to tender his resignation from public office as a matter of ultimatum. It has been reliably reported that the Wahhabi Saudi rulers were exasperated with the Shia group Hezbollah being part of the coalition government in Beirut. Hariri is a Saudi-sponsored Sunni politician who is antagonistic to Hezbollah and by extension, Iran. But apparently, he was not sufficiently hostile, in the view of his Saudi backers. Hence, Hariri was summoned to Riyadh and ordered to resign on November 4. (The defeat of the Saudi-sponsored covert terror war in Syria no doubt was a factor too in the timing.)
France’s President Macron is playing a particularly slippery game of pandering and expedience towards the Saudi despots.
As the Washington Post’s WorldView briefing reported last week: “French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that it was important to dispel the implication that Hariri was a Saudi prisoner.”
The newspaper goes on to quote Macron saying rather vacuously: “We need to have leaders who are free to express themselves. It’s important that [Hariri] is able to advance the political process in his country in the coming days and weeks.”
The question should be asked: why is it important for Macron to “dispel the implication that Hariri was a Saudi prisoner”?
From virtually all accounts, including that of Lebanese President Michel Aoun whose view should surely be paramount here, that is exactly what Hariri was made by the Saudis – a prisoner.
Three days before his summoning to Riyadh and his scripted resignation speech on November 4 – in which Hariri claimed with incredible drama that he was in danger of an assassination plot by Hezbollah and its ally Iran – it was reported that Hariri was having dinner with the French culture minister in Beirut. During their meal, he received a phone call. His demeanor darkened, and he immediately departed from the table for a flight to Riyadh. Without the company of aides, Hariri was met on his arrival by Saudi officials who took his mobile phone from him. He was not greeted by senior Saudi rulers like Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which would have been customary diplomatic protocol.
Everything about the next two weeks of Hariri’s stay in Saudi Arabia signals a de facto detention against his will. Admittedly, he made a brief flight to the United Arab Emirates during the time period, which was claimed by the Saudis to be proof of his free movement. The UAE rulers are closely aligned with the House of Saud, and besides Hariri was soon back in his Riyadh residence, from where he continued to tweet to friends that he was “fine”.
This is nothing but a sham. The stark facts are that Saudi Arabia has brazenly interfered in the internal affairs of Lebanon, trying to force its prime minister to step down. Furthermore, the Saudi rulers have accused Lebanon of “acts of war” by allegedly supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen; the Saudis have also ordered their nationals to leave Lebanon; and there are reports emerging of the Saudis now pushing to suspend Beirut from the Arab League. This is reckless incendiary behavior by the Saudi rulers.
Should we be surprised though? Saudi Arabia has shown absolute criminal disregard for international law over its bombing and genocidal blockade of Yemen, where humanitarian aid groups have warned that 50,000 children may die this year due to enforced deprivation from the nearly three-year American and British-backed Saudi war on Yemen.
The absolute Saudi monarchy has also gone on an internal rampage of arresting its own government ministers and other businessmen in an audacious power-grab under the guise of “an anti-corruption drive”. Moreover, Saudi rulers have been instrumental in organizing a legally dubious trade and diplomatic blockade of Qatar over trumped claims that the latter is a stooge for Iran and singularly supporting terrorists (this from the Saudis who have bankrolled terrorist proxies to overthrow the government in Syria.)
The criminality and rogue conduct of Saudi Arabia is legion and brazenly in your face.
That is why the so-called “international community”, the UN, Washington, the European Union, and France in particular are deserving of withering censure. Their mealy-mouthed muted statements on Saudi misconduct towards Lebanon are a disgrace. They are complicit in wanton lawlessness by their pandering to Saudi despots.
But France’s Emmanuel Macron has emerged as the prime disgrace. His invitation to Saad Hariri and his family to come to France is a cynical move to give cover to the Saudi despots. Tellingly, on the announcement of the invitation, Macron said that “it was not an offer of exile”. That’s Macron making it all sugary nice as pie.
On Friday, the day before Hariri arrived in Paris, Macron actually accused Iran of “aggression” and has called for sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missile defense program. So, Macron, sneakily, is giving the Saudi narrative succor, and blaming Iran, instead of condemning Riyadh for its flagrant interference and aggression.
Again, by inviting Hariri to Paris, Macron is indulging the Saudi-Hariri charade that all is “normal” – when in reality the sordid shenanigans over the past two weeks amount to an outrageous and very grave violation of international law and of a neighboring country’s sovereignty by the Saudis.
With this kind of cynical “diplomacy”, Macron is showing that France is far from capable of having any leadership role or moral authority in the Middle East or the world.
Of course, France’s vested economic interests with the Saudi despots, from arms sales to energy and infrastructure projects, are central to Macron’s expedient calculations.
Macron’s ambitions of engendering some kind of renaissance of France as a global power are futile and nothing but sheer vanity. The cowardice of the French president in the face of Saudi aggression towards Lebanon shows that Macron and his pretensions of “global power” are a puff of cheap cosmetic powder.
November 20, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Emmanuel Macron, European Union, France, Lebanon, Middle East, Saudi Arabia |
1 Comment
French legislative elections follow hard on the heels of the Presidential election. The momentum virtually ensures a presidential majority. So it was taken for granted that voters would give President Emmanuel Macron a docile parliament for his five-year mandate.
But these elections were exceptional. The victory of Macron’s personal party, la République En Marche (REM), is novel in several ways. Not only has REM won an absolute majority of 350 out of 577 seats in the National Assembly. REM’s victory has also bled the two traditional governing parties, the Republicans and the Socialists, perhaps fatally.
With over 130 seats, the Republican Party of former President Nicolas Sarkozy and its allies came in second, and thus ranks as leading opposition party. But since Macron successfully lured two Republican politicians into prominent positions in his government – Edouard Philippe as Prime Minister and Bruno LeMaire as Economics Minister – it is hard even for the Republicans’ current leader, François Baroin, to explain just what they will oppose. How can they be a “right-wing opposition” to a government that intends to tear down the Labor Code, leaving workers at the mercy of employers, to deregulate the economy, to privatize, and to promote European militarization?
The plight of the Socialists is even more dire. Despite their strong historic implantation throughout the country, they won only 29 seats (which with small party allies gives them a group of 45 deputies). Most of the prominent members of Hollande’s government who dared to run were defeated. Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls’ close victory in the town where he used to be mayor is being vehemently contested, by angry crowds, with accusations of cheating.
As an opposition party, the Socialists’ predicament is even worse than that of the Republicans. Macron was a pet advisor to Socialist President François Hollande, a minister of economics in his government, and was sponsored by leading Socialists as a way to perpetuate their own surrender to high finance. Since many of leading Socialist Party personalities have joined or endorsed Macron, the survivors are not sure whether to support him – or how not to. The confusion is total.
The result is that by cannibalizing the two discredited government parties, and adding a large contingent of political amateurs (described as representatives of “civil society”), Macron and his team have succeeded in creating a new form of single party state. The new majority of deputies in the National Assembly are not there to represent ideas, or a program, or local constituencies, but simply to represent… Emmanuel Macron. From the looks of it, he can do whatever he wants, and the parliament will approve.
Macron’s victory was both overwhelming and underwhelming. All records of abstention were broken; for the first time in over a century, a majority of eligible voters stayed away from the polls in the first round of the parliamentary elections, and abstention rose to 57% in the second round. He owes his landslide to less than 20% of registered voters.
There is no doubt that the election results reveal a rejection of traditional parties, of politicians, and to some extent even a rejection of electoral politics. This is a foreseeable result of the so-called “power of the markets” – which disempower the voters. Political elites have surrendered to the dictates of financial capital, primarily through the intermediary of the European Union, where economic policy is designed and imposed on Member States. Presented as “new”, Macron is simply more intent than his predecessors on pushing through EU economic policies, on behalf of the big banks and at the expense of everyone else. But many of those who voted for him did so fatalistically: “let’s give him a chance”, like playing the lottery.
Indeed, Macron ran as himself, “young, vigorous, optimistic” in a time of pessimism, and not as a program. And the election season showed that personalities counted more than parties or programs. The two most charismatic personalities in French politics, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, after their strong scores in the presidential elections, were both comfortably elected to the National Assembly from friendly districts (he in Marseilles and she in the depressed industrial north), but their followers did not rush to the polls to support their respective parties. Mélenchon’s party, La France Insoumise, won only 17 seats, which together with ten communists could make a group of 27 deputies.
As for Marine Le Pen, her National Front won only eight seats, four from the traditionally socialist north (including Marine), and four from the right-leaning south (including Marine’s life partner, Louis Aliot). That reflects the ideological division in the party. In the Calais region, the winning National Front leader was a former regional Communist Party leader, José Evrard, who comes from a family of coal miners and anti-Nazi resistants. The intellectual leader of the left tendency, Florian Philippot, was not elected, but plans to work to create a broader “sovereignist” movement opposing Macron’s drive to integrate France irreparably into Western globalizing economic and military structures.
In short, President Emmanuel Macron is intent on using his unprecedented single party powers to reduce the power of France by intensifying its commitment to globalization. But how much power does he really have, or is he an instrument of other powers?
Chief power guru, Jacques Attali, tends to glorify himself shamelessly, but when he says that he is “very proud” of having launched Macron’s brilliant career, he is telling the unchallenged truth. As for the next President after Macron, Attali claims to know “who she is”, as well.
But whoever he or she may be, Attali’s point is that genuine power is not exercised by politicians any more, but by financial institutions. The President of the Republic has much less power than people think, he told a recent television panel. One reason is the euro, he said, which “means that a large part of economic policy has fortunately become European.
Decentralization, major investments and major infrastructures are no longer up to the State. Globalization and the market have won hands down. There are a large number of things that were thought to be up to the government and no longer are.”
Presidents “no longer have real power over society.”
As for getting out of the clutches of European dictates, Attali boasts that those who, like himself, took part in writing the first versions of the EU treaties “made sure that getting out is no longer possible.”
“The market is going to spread to sectors to which it hasn’t had access until now such as health, education, the courts, the police, foreign affairs…” The outcome will be a dominant market which causes more and more concentration of wealth, growing inequality, absolute priority to the short term and to the tyranny of the present instant and of money, Attali concedes cynically.
A fairly realistic sense of powerlessness underlies the high abstention rate and the search for a providential leader. Since the Socialists and the Republicans have been contaminated with Macronism, the serious parliamentary opposition is reduced to the small party of Mélenchon and the still smaller party of Marine Le Pen. Mélenchon has the oratorical skill to be the leading opposition voice within and even outside the new Parliament. Marine still commands strong personal loyalty. But as long as they fail to find common ground, the Macron machine will play on their differences to marginalize them as the “extreme right” and the “extreme left”. And French democracy will continue to be disempowered by global governance. The single party state is at least an accurate expression of that reality.
October 1, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Timeless or most popular | Emmanuel Macron, European Union, France, José Evrard |
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Any establishment-anointed political candidate wants to say they are under attack by the Russians because it gives them credibility, former MI5 intelligence officer Annie Machon told RT. Political analyst Adam Garrie joins the discussion.
Guillaume Poupard, the head of the National Cybersecurity Agency of France (ANSSI), said on Thursday there’s no trace of a Russian hacking group being behind the attack on Emmanuel Macron’s presidential election campaign.
According to him, the hack was “so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone.”
RT: Where does this statement by France’s cybersecurity chief leave the claims of Macron’s team on Russian hacking?
Annie Machon: It leaves rather a lot of egg on their faces. It appears that this attack was of such of low technical level it could have been done by a script kiddie from their mom’s basement. So rather than this hysteria about: ‘The Russians must have done it, the Russians must have done it,’ which reminds me to a certain extent of the Monty Python script that ‘you must always expect a Spanish Inquisition.’ It is beyond parody. We have a situation now where he was trying to make political hay. It seems to me that any establishment-anointed political candidate now wants to immediately say they are under attack by the Russians because it gives them credibility. It is just crazy.
Now, the one thing we do know from this is that the one country that actually has hacked the French election was the USA, and that was back in the presidential election of 2012 where they were not only intercepting the electronic communications, they were actually running human agents in the political parties. We know this because of disclosures through the Vault 7 cache that WikiLeaks put out a month or two ago. For everyone to go around blaming the Russians, when in fact the Americans have been doing this for years, is rather rich?
RT: Why were members of Macron’s team so sure about Russia’s involvement? Do they know something France’s cybersecurity chief doesn’t?
AM: Obviously not. I think they were just jumping on the bandwagon because it was the sort of cool thing to do. After the fake buildup of the ‘Russians hacked the American elections,’ which started by the way with a leak from the DNC [Democratic National Committee] that was given to WikiLeaks, and somehow it moved into ‘Russians hacked the American election.’
Suddenly it has become established fact in the mainstream media in the West that the Russians are going to hack every Western democratic election. That is patently not the case in France, and it is also patently not the case in Germany, where there has also been a similar panic about Russia trying to hack the forthcoming chancellor’s elections in the autumn this year. In fact, the BND [Federal Intelligence Service] and BfV [Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution,] the two major intelligence agencies in Germany, put out a report in February saying there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever the Russians were trying to do this. Merkel didn’t like that result. She told her intelligence agencies to go away and to find more evidence and to find a case to say that they were indeed trying to interfere in the German elections. It is collective hysteria.
‘Low-level hack’
Adam Garrie, political analyst
RT: Why were members of the Macron team so sure about Russia’s involvement in hacking the campaign? Do they know something France’s cybersecurity chief doesn’t?
AG: I strongly doubt that. They barely seem to know how to beat Marine Le Pen. But with a little help from their friends in the mainstream media, France and elsewhere they managed to just about accomplish that. It is simply the restating of a tired, old narrative; they have very little else to say. Macron as a man, if you can even really call him that in terms of his personality, is more of a viceroy, more of a governor general than he is a president. Putin, at the press conference he had at Versailles with Macron, questioned whether France is able to even independently conduct its foreign policy in Syria, independent of NATO and the US-led coalition. So these people that really don’t have much to offer their own country, let alone their political masters, are just churning out the narrative again and again. You’ve seen it with Hillary Clinton in America, and her supporters, and you see something similar in France. And likewise, the allegations are based – Donald Trump, probably accurately, said it could have been a 400-pound man in his bedroom somewhere. As the French authorities said today, it was probably the work of a lone hacker, and the hack itself wasn’t at the level of sophistication that would have even required state operators to be behind it.
RT: Do you think all these Russian hacking allegations during the presidential race had much impact on the final choice of the new president?
AG: I agree with President Putin on this. All of these hacks and allegations of hacks have very little impact on the actual electoral results. People are going to look first and foremost in all countries at domestic issues. Unless you’re in the war-zone that’s what the priorities are going to be for voters. They are going to look at tax; they are going to look at healthcare. They are going to look at living standards, wages, employment, etc. – these sorts of things. This idea that somehow magically Russia is pulling the political strings of various candidates in different Western countries is simply absurd. And I personally give the average voter – whether in France or America – more credit than the mainstream media is willing to give him.
June 2, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Emmanuel Macron, France, United States |
1 Comment
Introduction
Whatever has been written about President Emmanuel Macron by the yellow or the respectable press has been mere trivia or total falsehood. Media lies have a purpose that goes beyond Macron’s election. Throughout Europe and North America, bankers and manufacturers, NATO, militarists and EU oligarchs, media moguls and verbal assassins, academics and journalists, all characterized the election victory of Macron as a ‘defeat of fascism’ and the ‘triumph of the French people’.
Macron and ‘What People’?
First of all, Macron received only 46% of the actual vote. Over 54% of eligible French voters either abstained, spoiled their ballots or voted for Marine Le Pen, the nationalist populist. In other words, 26 million voters rejected or ignored Macron’s candidacy versus 20.6 million voters who endorsed him. This was despite an unremitting push for Macron from the entire French and European mass media, all of the major political parties and the vast majority of academics, journalists, publishers, undertakers and doormen.
In a word: Emmanuel Macron is a minority President, unpopular to most of the French electorate.
There are some very sound political and socio-economic reasons why Macron’s candidacy would be rejected by most of the French people, while receiving full support from the ruling class.
Secondly, there was a phony image of Macron as the ‘novice, untainted by old-line corrupt politics’. The financial and business press busily painted an image of the virgin Manny Macron bravely prepared to introduce ’sweeping reforms’ and rescue France – a sort of banker-Joan of Arc against the veteran ‘fascist’ Marine Le Pen and her ‘deplorable’ supporters.
The reality is that Macron has always been a highly experienced member of the most elite financial-political networks in France. He served as a senior executive in the notorious Rothschild banking conglomerate. In a few short years ‘Saint Manny’ had accumulated millions of euros in commissions from fixing corporate deals.
Macron’s financial colleagues encouraged him to accept the post of Economic Minister under the decrepit regime of President Francois Hollande. Banker Macron helped the ‘Socialist’ President Hollande shed any of his party’s pro-labor pretensions and embrace a radical anti-worker agenda. As Economic Minister Macron implemented a 40 billion euro tax cut for businesses and proposed far-right legislation designed to weaken workers collective bargaining rights.
The Hollande-Macron proposals faced massive opposition in the streets and parliament. With the government’s popular support falling to the single digits, the anti-labor legislation was withdrawn or diluted … temporarily. This experience inspired Macron to re-invent (or re-virginize) himself: From hard-assed rightwing hack, he emerged the novice politico claiming to be ‘neither right nor left’.
The totally discredited ‘Socialist’ Hollande, following the example of France’s financial elite, supported presidential candidate Macron. Of course, whenever Macron spoke of representing ‘all France’, he meant ‘all’ bankers, manufacturers and rentier oligarchs – the entire capitalist sector.
In the first round of presidential voting, Macron’s candidacy divided the elites: Bankers were split between Macron and Fillon, while many social democrats, trade union officials and ‘identitarian’-single issue sectarians would end up voting Macron.
Macron won by default: Fillon, his far right bourgeois rival was snared in a political- swindle involving ‘family’ and his finicky supporters switched to Macron. The Socialists defected from their discredited Hollande to the ‘reconstructed choirboy’ Macron. Meanwhile, the ‘left’ had rediscovered ‘anti-fascism’: They opposed the national-populist Le Pen and slithered under the bankers’ backdoor to vote for Macron.
Almost one-third of the French electorate abstained or showed their contempt by spoiling their ballots.
Throughout the election theatrics, the media breathlessly reported every frivolous ‘news’ item to polish the halo of their ‘novice’ Macron. They swooned over the ‘novelty’ of Macron’s teen age ‘love affair’ and subsequent marriage to his former schoolteacher. The media played-up the charmingly ‘amateurish’ nature of his campaign staff, which included upwardly mobile professionals, downwardly mobile social democrat politicos and ‘off the street’ volunteers. The mass media downplayed one critical aspect: Macro’s historic ties to the big bankers!
Behind the carefully crafted image of a ‘political outsider’, the steely eyed Macron was never influenced by the swooning media propaganda: He remained deeply committed to reversing fifty years of working class advances in France in favor of the financial class.
Macron’s Power Grab : En Marche to Defeat the Working Class
Immediately upon his election, Macron presented his first major piece of legislation: The ‘liberalization’ (reversal) of France’s progressive and socially protective labor laws.
President Macron promised to eliminate industry-wide labor-capital negotiations, in favor of factory-by-factory negotiations. Undermining industry-wide collective power means that each monopoly or conglomerate can dominate and isolate workers in their work place. Macron envisions a complete shift of power into the hands of capital in order to slash wages, increase work hours and reduce regulations on workplace safety and worker health. The proposed anti-labor laws represent a return of capitalist power to the golden age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries – precisely why the financial elite anointed Macron as ‘President of all France’.
Even more important, by destroying a unified, labor movement and the power of workers’ solidarity, Macron will be free to radically restructure the entire socio-economic system in favor of capital!
Concentrating all power and profits in the hands of the capitalist class, Macron’s legislative agenda will free him to fire over 150,000 public employees, drastically reduce public spending and investment and privatize critical public financial, energy and industrial sectors.
Macron will shift the balance of power further away from labor in order to increase profits, reduce middle and working class social, health and educational services and to decrease corporate taxes from 33.3% to 25%.
Macron’s plan will strengthen the role of the French financial elite within the European Union’s oligarchical structure and allow the bankers to impose harsh ‘austerity’ policies throughout Europe.
In the sphere of foreign and military affairs, Macron fervently supports NATO. His regime will back the aggressive US military policies toward Russia and the Middle East – especially the violent breakup of Syria.
President Macron’s reactionary, ‘liberalizing’ agenda will require his party and allies to gain a majority in next month’s parliamentary elections (June 2017). His strategy will consist of ‘diversity in appearance and hard, single-minded reactionary policies in content’.
The ‘diverse’ groups and individuals, allied with Macron, are largely composed of fragmented collections of opportunists and discredited politicos mainly in search of office. Under Macron, the parliament will include everything from old-line rightwing social democrats, as well as single-issue environment and gender opportunists, allied with conservatives looking for a chance to finally savage France’s labor laws.
If successful in the coming elections, Macron’s parliament will legitimize the policies of his far right Prime Minister and Cabinet. If Macron fails to secure an outright majority, he is sure to patch together a coalition with veteran right-wing politicos, which, of course, will be ‘balanced’ with 50% women. Macron’s coalition of dinosaurs and ‘women’ will eagerly smash the rights and living standards of all workers – regardless of gender!
Macron hopes to win sufficient parliamentary votes to negotiate alliances with the traditional conservative parties and the rump of the Socialist Party to consolidate the rule of the Troika: the bankers, the EU and NATO.
President Macron: By the Ballot or the Bullet
There is no doubt that the French working class, the salaried public and private employees, the unemployed youth, students and public health workers will take to the streets, with the backing of 60% or more of the public, including the 33% who voted for Marine Le Pen.
Strikes, general and partial, of long and short duration, will confront the Macron regime and its far right, self-styled ‘transformative’ agenda.
Rothschild’s errand boy, Manny Macron cannot mobilize supporters in the streets and will have to rely on the police. Many parliamentary backers are fearful of both the problem (strikes) and the solution (police repression).
The Corporate Elite: President Macron Adopts Napoleonic Decrees
In 2016 when Macron was the Economic Minister in the President Francois Hollande’s regime, he introduced a new regressive labor policy dubbed the ‘El Khomri’ law (named after the reactionary Labor Minister Myriam El Khormi). This led to massive street demonstrations forcing Hollande to withdraw the legislation. Now as President, Macron proposes a far more rigid and destructive labor law, which his corporate colleagues insist he implement by the ‘ballot’ if possible or the ‘billy club’ if necessary. In other words, if he cannot win the support of the National Assembly, he will implement the labor law by presidential decree.
The President of MEDEF (Mouvement des Entreprises de France), the employers’ federation, Pierre Gattaz, has demanded immediate implementation of policies to crush labor. Macron will outlaw labor protests via presidential decree and cut parliamentary debate in order to transform the elite’s ‘El Dorado’ of all (labor) reforms (sic) into reality.
The entire leadership of the capitalist class and financial press backs Macron’s bid to govern by decree as a ‘good idea in the circumstances’, (Financial Times, 5/10/17, pg. 2). Macron’s ‘Napoleonic’ pretentions will inevitably deepen class polarization and strengthen ties between the militant trade unions and Le Pen’s industrial working class supporters.
We face an approaching time of open and declared class war in France.
Conclusion
Reality has quickly cut through the lies about the origin of Emmanuel Macron’s electoral victory. Brutal police truncheons, wielded in defense of Macron’s election triumph, will further reveal the real faces of French ‘fascism’ better than any editorial by the French ‘left’. The fascists are not to be found among Le Pen’s working class voters!
The fools within the French academia, who backed the Rothschild candidate in the name of ‘fighting fascism at all cost’, will soon find themselves wandering among the workers’ street barricade, dodging the clouds of teargas, on the way to their cafes and computers.
The ruling class chose Macron because they know he will not back down in the face of street demonstrations or even a general strike!
The intellectuals who backed Macron as ‘the lesser evil’ are now discovering that he is the greater evil. They are not too late to be . . . irrelevant.
Macron’s grandiose vision is to introduce his hyper-capitalist ideology throughout Europe and beyond. He proposes to transform the EU into a ‘competitive capitalist paradise under French leadership’.
Given the historic role of the French worker, it is more likely that Macron will not succeed in implementing his ‘labor reforms’. His decrees will surely provoke powerful resistance from the streets and the public institutions. When he falters, his parliamentary supporters will fracture into little warring clans. Factory owners will bemoan the workers who occupy their plants and bankers will complain that the farmers’ tractors are blocking the roads to their country villas.
The Germans and British elite will urge their ‘little Napoleon’ to hold firm, for fear the ‘French contagion’ might spread to their somnolent workers.
On the one hand, Macron’s successful decree can open the way for a transformation of capital-labor relations into a modern 21st century corporate state.
On the other, a successful general strike can open the door to a Europe-wide revolt. Macron’s enigmatic (and meaningless) slogan ‘neither right nor left’ is now exposed: He is the “Bonaparte of the Bourse”!
May 21, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Economics | Emmanuel Macron, European Union, France, NATO |
1 Comment
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