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French government fines TV news for allowing a skeptic to speak without being challenged

We know what secrets they fear the most, by how they overreact

By Jo Nova | July 13, 2024

In France, the second largest news network let an economist go on air and declare he thought global warming was a lie and a scam used to justify State intervention. He even went on to say it is a form of totalitarianism. Shockingly (to the regulators Arcom*), the CNEWS TV* hosts did not contest this, and nor did anyone else in the studio. For this, 11 months later, the TV channel is being fined €20,000.

Too close to the truth then?

A popular French rolling news channel has been fined for broadcasting climate scepticism unchallenged

By Saskia O’Donoghue, EuroNews

During the programme, prominent economist Philippe Herlin shared personal climate scepticism – but was not contradicted by anybody else in the TV studio, including the hosts.

“Anthropogenic global warming is a lie, a scam… Explaining to us that it is because of Man, no, that is a conspiracy, and why does that have so much weight?”, Herlin said. “Because it justifies the intervention of the State in our lives, and it absolves the State from having to reduce its public spending… It is a form of totalitarianism.”

Apparently, the real crime here is not that he said the unthinkable, but that the TV crew didn’t correct him:

After investigation, Arcom found that CNews’ lack of reaction was a “failure” to meet the obligations of the channel …

Perhaps if they’d laughed at him, called him petty names, and treated him like a leper it would have been OK?  (No, seriously, there is a razor point here. There are bound to be past examples where the only response to a skeptic was to call them a climate denier, and Arcom was apparently happy with that, since they’ve never used this fine before.) Does Arcom approve of namecalling or social approbation as a “balanced response”? Oh. Yes. They. Do.

The regulators go on to explain that  the channel:

“… is required to ensure an honest presentation of controversial issues, in particular by ensuring the expression of different points of view”.

Which must be a new requirement since French TV has relentlessly hammered the establishment line in a one sided way for thirty years without needing any balance at all. And Arcom didn’t fine them for shamelessly promoting government propaganda. Perhaps a French skeptic could ask Arcon if controversial government opinions need to be balanced “in an honest presentation” or whether it’s only critics of the government who need to be held to account?

Arcom found that the views shared “contradicted or minimised” the scientific consensus on climate change “through a treatment lacking rigour and without contradiction”.

Since when was it the job of journalists to promote government approved “science”?

The regulator is going out on a limb and sawing off the branch…

Officially, the regulators are trying to pretend they are not punishing the TV channel for putting on a skeptic, which would be a free speech issue, but it’s clearly what they are doing. So they dress this up as a lack of balance, which accidentally exposes that they’ve never cared a jot about balancing opinions before. Immediately, this opens up all kinds of interesting doors: for one, skeptics can start asking where the balance is on controversial government propositions? In most countries about half the population doesn’t agree that mankind is solely responsible for “climate change”. Where is their voice? The government is suggesting that solar panels can stop storms, and EV’s will control floods, why isn’t this a failure of the obligations of a news channel?

Secondly, skeptics can ask when this rule started and why the regulator missed so many past examples. Why aren’t breaches the other way being fined too?

The overreaction IS the news story

Ponder how afraid the believers must be if the mere opinion of an economist is so dangerous. This man is a not a scientist and every person in France has heard the evidence is overwhelming, climate change is real, and 130% of all scientists who ever lived know that CO2 threatens life on Earth. For three decades children have been trained to say that skeptics are funded by Big Oil, and motivated by money, and yet here is one guy who used the word “totalitarian” and they all go off their rocker.

Why, perhaps because it suggests that believers are motivated by a bigger pot of money and power than skeptics ever could be.

* BACKGROUND

Arcon stands for  theRegulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication

CNews is controlled by billionaire business magnate Vincent Bolloré and has been compared to FOX in the US.

July 12, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | | Leave a comment

Why France’s Snap Election Proves EU’s Warmongering Agenda Flopped

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 10.07.2024

Despite surviving the runoff vote, Emmanuel Macron sustained a crushing and unexpected defeat during the snap election, Fabien Chalandon, French political commentator and writer, told Sputnik. What’s more, the parliament’s new composition may put the brakes on Macron’s bellicosity.

The outcome of the snap election in the French National Assembly has left no party with a majority, leading to uncertainty regarding the formation of a coalition. This raises the question of whether the left-wing and centrist parties will be able to collaborate effectively in order to establish a functional parliament.

“This is the key question,” Fabien Chalandon, chevalier of the French Legion d’Honneur, investor, and writer, told Sputnik. “No party has any majority, and any government can be deposed at any time by a combination of the two other groups. The parliament is therefore in a gridlock and ungovernable. In addition, the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) is a coalition of small parties all deeply opposed on any subject, including Ukraine, and which have only one common ground: their hate of the National Rally (RN), which cannot provide a common set of practical objectives for an effective governing alliance.”

The NFP, a broad left-wing coalition which brought together Socialists, Communists, Greens and the hardline leftist France Unbowed Party (La France Insoumise), was hastily founded on June 10 with the sole aim of defeating the right-wing RN in the snap legislative election.

According to the commentator, the likelihood of the NFP coalition passing the test of time is “remote as it may explode on the issue of loss of real income, when finally politicians admit that the bulk of the current impoverishment of French middle and poor class has been stoked by inflation directly derived from the Ukrainian conflict.”

Macron’s Bellicosity Backfired During Elections

Meanwhile, it appears that the new composition of the parliament could disrupt French President Emmanuel Macron’s “tour de force” for European leadership.

Over the past several months, Macron has made a series of controversial statements, ranging from putting NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine to doubling the EU budget and promoting the idea of a “major European loan” to finance the bloc’s rearmament effort.

Macron’s sudden transformation into a “Ukraine hawk” – given that France has been ranked 15th in terms of military aid to Kiev – raised questions in the European mainstream press. According to the Spectator, one of the causes of Macron’s bellicosity was his desire to “embarrass” the National Rally in the European elections, “not to mention their predicted victory in the 2027 presidential race.”

The French president’s scheme appeared to have boomeranged. His Renaissance party secured just 15.2 percent of the vote during the EU parliamentary elections last month, while the National Rally got a whopping 31.5 percent.

In the snap election, announced by Macron after the humiliating defeat, the centrist-liberal Ensemble (Together) party survived by pure luck and due to its unholy formal alliance with Les Republicains (LR) and the NFP to obstruct “at all costs” the National Rally in the second round, according to Chalandon.

“Compared to the 2022 elections, the Macron presidential party ‘Together’ lost 100 seats to 168,” the political commentator noted.

“This [snap] election is therefore a second crushing defeat for M. Macron,” the pundit said. “Macron did not expect such a damning result after the first round. In fact, this snap election is overwhelmingly portrayed in the French press and social media as a ‘childish’ decision following the RN tsunami during the previous European elections.”

The election outcome would continue to undermine Macron’s warmongering posture, including his push for rearmament and increased military support to Ukraine, according to the commentator.

“On Ukraine, the NFP is clearly against the EU and EU support of Ukraine. But so is the Unbowed France Party… Any proposal for additional funding to Ukraine may not be approved if these two coalesce to block it, even if they do not coordinate,” Chalandon said.

While the EU’s bureaucracy could circumvent the legislative gridlock in its member states by stealthily boosting its funding to Ukraine within its general budget, the crux of the matter is that Europeans and especially young people across the continent have increasingly started to realize the collective West’s hypocrisy with regard to Ukraine, according to the pundit.

Chalandon notes that Europeans are steadily recognizing the West’s 20-year provocations against Russia, as well as the sabotage of the Istanbul agreement in April 2022 led by the US and UK.

“Moreover, the cause of the recent sharp decline of Europe’s purchasing power is starting to be attributed to the Ukrainian conflict, so far, a taboo subject among politicians. Ukraine’s war and open-ended funding will not continue unabated and may progressively appear for what it is: the main cause of Europe’s recent economic downfall,” the commentator emphasized.

How Could US Political Debacle Affect Europe’s Ukraine Policy

Nonetheless, the EU elites are unwilling to change their stance on the Ukraine conflict, especially given their political dependency on their peers in Washington.

However, US neocons have recently found themselves on the horns of a dilemma given that their major “pro-war” presidential candidate Joe Biden appears to be “unsellable” to American voters, as Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel noted in an earlier interview with Sputnik.

“The key factor which could affect French and Europe’s attitude in the Ukrainian conflict is if M. Trump wins the US election and decides to force Ukraine to negotiate by interrupting its military aid,” Chalandon said, referring to the Republican frontrunner’s plan to stop the fighting and look into peace negotiations.

The political commentator noted, however, that despite Trump’s high-powered numbers across US nationwide polls, his victory is not a done deal given the lawsuits brought forward by his political opponents.

Likewise, the Biden camp is also teetering in the balance as the Democratic Party is waging a behind the scenes battle over a possible replacement for the aging Biden. This potential change could allegedly shift Washington’s attitude on the Ukraine conflict.

“Since European efforts towards Ukraine cannot survive a withdrawal by the US, Europe and France will be left with no other option than to cave in,” the French political commentator remarked.

Chalandon concluded that if a new US context were to arise, Europe’s determination to carry on with the ongoing military “solution” to the Ukrainian conflict would amount to nothing more than empty posturing.

In parallel to his investment banking career, Chalandon co-founded and ran a French political think tank, Fondation Concorde, and was awarded the French Legion d’Honneur in 2000 and wrote for leading French newspapers on political issues. His father, Albin Chalandon, served as minister of various governments under President Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou and then minister of justice between 1986 and 1988 in a Jacques Chirac-led government under then President Francois Mitterrand.

July 10, 2024 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Leave a comment

Le Pen slams witch-hunt after investigation launched into 2022 presidential campaign funding

BY DÉNES ALBERT | REMIX NEWS | JULY 10, 2024

An investigation has been launched in France into the suspected illegal financing of Marine Le Pen’s 2022 presidential election campaign, the Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed on Tuesday.

According to BFMTV, preliminary proceedings were opened on July 2 into investigating a loan from a legal entity, the prosecution said. However, no further details related to the investigation were provided.

Since 1990, the financing of French election campaigns has been managed and controlled by an independent body, the National Commission for Campaign Accounts (CNCCFP), which approves the reimbursement of part of campaign expenses to candidates by the state.

It is this authority that reported the suspicion of irregularities in the financing of the campaign of the presidential candidate of the National Constituency to the Paris prosecutor’s office in 2023.

The investigation is being conducted by the financial department of the Paris criminal police under the direction of an independent investigating judge, the prosecutor’s office said.

“My client has never been heard in any capacity on any of the facts of this general accusation,” Marine Le Pen’s lawyer Rodolphe Bosselut said in a statement. “She is now facing a media campaign to which she cannot yet respond or defend herself, as she is not aware of any specific complaints that could be the subject of a detailed response,” the lawyer added, indicating that it was “in vain” that he had asked the prosecutor’s office for further details.

“The proceedings are a vague accusation that cannot be challenged or questioned, and so to pillory my client in the media is dishonest,” Marine Le Pen’s legal representative stressed.

The AFP news agency quoted an unnamed source within the National Rally (RN) who recalled that Marine Le Pen’s presidential campaign account was approved by the competent authority in December 2022 and the state reimbursed part of the costs in February 2023.

July 10, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | 1 Comment

Two Infants Died Within Hours of Receiving RSV Shots, CDC Internal Emails Show

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | July 8, 2024

At least two infant deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) as occurring after the babies mistakenly received Pfizer’s adult respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine were likely caused instead by nirsevimab, the monoclonal antibody shot approved for infants and meant to prevent RSV.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that both babies died on the day they received the shots.

According to the reports in VAERS, a 27-day-old boy died immediately upon receiving the shot in the doctor’s office and an infant girl was found not breathing by her father seven hours after receiving the shot. The infant was pronounced dead soon after.

The deaths were reported in VAERS as resulting from mistaken administration of Pfizer’s adult RSV vaccine, but the CDC internal emails obtained by CHD indicate the babies had been administered Beyfortus, the brand name for nirsevimab, manufactured by AstraZeneca and Sanofi.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug in July 2023 and the CDC recommended it in August 2023 for infants under 8 months or high-risk infants up to 24 months of age.

In clinical trials for the drug, 12 infants died, but an FDA spokesperson told CNBC when the drug was approved that “none of the deaths appeared to be related to nirsevimab.”

After the CDC recommended the drug, it expanded the 2024 childhood vaccine schedule and included nirsevimab for infants whose mothers did not receive the RSV vaccine — also recently approved — during pregnancy.

The CDC’s childhood immunization schedule lists the CDC-recommended shots for children from birth through age 18. Pediatricians and other clinicians typically use the schedule to make recommendations to parents, and schools use it to set vaccine requirements.

Monoclonal antibodies are not technically vaccines. Vaccines stimulate the individual’s immune system to trigger an immune response. Monoclonal antibodies are proteins cloned in a lab that act like antibodies, seeking out antigens in the body to destroy them just like people’s own antibodies do, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

When the CDC expanded the 2024 vaccine schedule, it changed the description of the schedule to be for “vaccines and other immunizing agents,” before adding the RSV monoclonal antibodies to the list.

Even professionals confused about how to report injuries related to infant RSV shots

When people experience vaccine injuries, they can report them to the CDC using VAERS, a passive surveillance system available to anyone — including doctors, other vaccine administrators and the public — for reporting adverse events.

The CDC also has other systems for monitoring vaccine safety. It monitors COVID-19 and adult RSV vaccines through the V-safe system, a different voluntary reporting system, and most vaccines through the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), which analyzes healthcare data, often investigating concerns initially raised in VAERS.

However, according to the internal emails obtained by CHD, and reported by the CDC to its advisory committee, the CDC doesn’t monitor injuries from medications that are not vaccines. The FDA recommends those injuries be reported to MedWatch, the FDA’s adverse event reporting system.

That means adverse events from all medical treatments on the immunization schedule are not monitored through the same system. This can generate confusion, even among medical professionals, who treat monoclonal antibodies as vaccines.

For example, even people at the CDC in internal emails referred to the monoclonal antibodies as the “RSV (Sanofi Pasteur) Vaccine.”

Data analyst and VAERS expert Albert Benavides told The Defender this also presents a challenge to people who want to report nirsevimab injuries, because VAERS does not have a category for the drug, so people have submitted their claims as “unknown vax type” or selected one of the existing RSV vaccines, which are different drugs.

In analysis, they may fall through the cracks or be underreported, rather than forwarded to the FDA’s MedWatch system.

The emails obtained by CHD support Benavides’ claims that there is confusion between RSV vaccines approved for adults and RSV monoclonal antibodies approved for infants.

For example, Carol Ennulat, VAERS project coordinator, on March 21 emailed Pedro Moro, M.D., M.P.H, who headed up the accidental infant RSV vaccination study, informing him that one of the infants — a 1-month-old girl in Texas — died after receiving the “RSV (Sanofi Pasteur) Vaccine,” which is actually Beyfortus, the monoclonal antibody.

She told Moro the baby had been misclassified and therefore mistakenly assigned to the adult RSV project.

Moro forwarded the email to others and said the FDA was following up on nirsevimab reports, so they should take no action on the report.

In a second email the following day, Ennulat informed Moro that a second infant death — a 27-day-old New York boy — was misclassified as having received the Pfizer Abrysvo vaccine according to documents that had become available.

“The case was misclassified,” Ennulat wrote. Although the sentence indicating what drug he received was redacted, she added, “I assume FDA follows this,” which would indicate the drug administered to the infant and then reported to VAERS was likely also nirsevimab.

500 pages of FOIA documents largely redacted

CDC researchers in May published an article in Pediatrics reporting that at least 34 babies were mistakenly given the RSV vaccine — made by either Pfizer or GSK and authorized for adults — and one of those babies was hospitalized.

Thirty-one of the children under age 2 identified in the study who were mistakenly vaccinated between Aug. 21, 2023, and March 18, 2024, were less than 8 months old. Seven reports described adverse health events including fevers, vomiting, coughing and injection site swelling.

One baby was hospitalized for cardiorespiratory arrest within 24 hours of receiving the GSK RSV vaccine. The baby had a history of congenital heart disease and was hospitalized at the time of the VAERS report.

When the paper was published, The Defender worked with Benavides and identified at least two other babies in the VAERS system reported to have received the RSV vaccine and died within hours of vaccination.

The Defender reached out to the CDC in a series of emails inquiring about why the babies were not included in the study, but the CDC declined to provide details about its knowledge of the reports.

The agency said only that the VAERS reports were mistaken — neither infant had received the shot.

In response, CHD filed FOIA requests with the CDC for communications related to the two reports.

The CDC recently responded to the request, sending 556 pages of largely redacted response materials. Redactions included portions of emails sent by The Defender to the CDC and the agency’s responses — which CHD clearly already had in its possession.

Two largely unredacted emails included in the documents, however, did pertain to the babies’ deaths.

No mention of infant deaths in CDC advisory committee meeting

In the last research presentation session of the June 26-28 meeting of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee, the RSV work group presented data on nirsevimab, touting its effectiveness — how well it prevents disease under real-world conditions — with limited discussion of safety issues.

The CDC reported in the presentation that 41% of eligible infants received the nirsevimab shot as of March 2024, 24% of parents indicated they would definitely get the shot for their children and 23% indicated they would probably get it or were unsure. Twelve percent indicated they would never give their children the shot.

The agency also said it was meeting with manufacturers to ensure they would ramp up production for the coming year after shortages of the drug were reported last year.

The committee presented a range of different effectiveness numbers from different observational studies. Overall, real-world data found the shot was “well above 50%” effective against RSV infection. Committee members said this corresponded to the European published literature that found effectiveness against hospitalization of 70-89% and against emergency room visits of 55-88%.

They said observational data showed the duration of protection was unknown.

In the presentation on nirsevimab safety, the CDC’s Dr. Jefferson Jones informed the committee that VAERS is not the primary system for monitoring the drug’s safety, because it is not a vaccine, so the data had not been previously presented. Instead, he said, adverse events should be reported to MedWatch.

Same-day events are reported to VAERS, he said, and then reviewed by the FDA.

He did, however, review the adverse events reported to VAERS.

Jones said the most frequently reported adverse events were RSV breakthrough infections. He also said, “Cases of serious hypersensitivity reactions with nirsevimab were identified and the product labeling was updated in February 2024” to indicate that.

The reactions include hives, shortness of breath, low blood oxygen levels causing blue skin, lips and nailbeds and muscle weakness. “And no additional safety signals have been identified at this time,” he said.

Jones did not mention the two infant deaths that the FOIA documents obtained by CHD reveal happened immediately following the shots.

The committee did emphasize several times that newborn deaths reported to VAERS “is of course devastating for that family, but reporting to VAERS does not necessarily mean that vaccine caused that.”

However, in that case, they were discussing neonatal death associated with the maternal RSV vaccine.

Jones concluded that the RSV work group was “very happy and pleased with the evidence that shows nirsevimab to be highly effective.”

Known safety Issues with nirsevimab/Beyfortus

RSV is a common respiratory virus that usually causes mild cold-like symptoms but can lead to hospitalization and, in rare cases, death in infants and the elderly.

By age 2, 97% of all babies have been infected with the RSV virus, which confers partial immunity, making any subsequent episodes less severe.

Yet last year as the media hyped a dangerous “tripledemic” of COVID-19, flu and RSV, new RSV vaccines were approved and recommended for pregnant women and older adults, and nirsevimab was approved for infants.

The Biden administration rushed to work with Sanofi and AstraZeneca to make hundreds of thousands of doses of the antibodies available.

According to the CDC, approximately 58,000 to 80,000 children younger than age 5 are hospitalized due to RSV infection annually and 100 to 300 deaths occur annually in that group.

Those numbers are also disputed within the CDC’s own data.

In an Aug. 4, 2023, Substack post, Dr. Meryl Nass, an internist and biological warfare epidemiologist, cited 2021 CDC data showing that over 12 years, on average 25 babies up to age 1 die annually in the U.S. from RSV.

Although RSV can be a serious event for infants, with so few deaths among that age group, both researchers and practitioners have raised questions about administering vaccines to pregnant mothers and monoclonal antibodies to babies, especially given the serious risks evident in clinical trials, and now, in post-trial follow-up.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, reactions to monoclonal antibody treatments are common and occur during or shortly after they are administered. There are also “more serious but less common risks linked to unwanted immune system reactions, such as acute anaphylaxis, cytokine release syndrome (CRS) and serum sickness.”

Nass noted that no monoclonal antibody product has ever been given on a mass scale to children. She also said that the Beyfortus label doesn’t provide information about side effects and don’t address the infant deaths in the clinical trials.

Of the 12 infants that died in the nirsevimab trials, “four died from cardiac disease, two died from gastroenteritis, two died from unknown causes but were likely cases of sudden infant death syndrome, one died from a tumor, one died from Covid, one died from a skull fracture and one died of pneumonia,” CNBC reported.

“Most deaths were due to an underlying disease,” the FDA’s Dr. Melissa Baylor said.

According to the drug’s label, no drug interaction studies — that, for example, might identify safety risks if the antibodies are given with other vaccines — have been done for Beyfortus.

Researchers have been trying and failing to develop an RSV vaccine for children for 60 years, but have encountered serious safety issues. One version developed in the 1960s worsened symptoms for children. In that case, when two infants died, the vaccine distribution was stopped.

Beyfortus is being promoted for babies by governments globally, particularly in Europe, where it was first approved in November 2022.

French independent scientist and author Hélène Banoun, Ph.D., and French statistician Christine Mackoi found that data from France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies indicates an improbably high rate of deaths of babies between 2 and 6 days old in France during September and October 2023.

Those dates correspond with the introduction of Beyfortus in French hospitals, which began on Sept. 15, 2023, The Defender reported.

Beyfortus costs $519.75 per dose for 50-milligram (mg) and 100-mg doses and $1,039.50 for a 200-mg dose. That doesn’t include administration costs.

This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

A tale of two cities: have we seen a ‘surge to the Left’ in British and French elections?

By Gilbert Doctorow | July 9, 2024

In the past five days, parliamentary elections were carried out in Britain and in France. The results were dramatic, attracting a great deal of media attention.

In this brief essay, we will look behind the bald facts of vote counts and strive to make sense of where the UK and France are headed. What does the latest news tell us about the ‘managed democracies’ in Europe? I will direct particular attention to the different electoral and governance systems operating in Britain and France, given that these respective systems were so influential in delivering the results we are seeing?

*****

The sitting governments in both France and the United Kingdom were overturned in the past week. Looking at the winners, one might conclude a new or updated Left has won in both elections. If so, this runs directly counter to the media bugbear of resurgent populism that supposedly endangers democracy. Should the winners break out the champagne?

In Britain, Labour won a landslide victory, taking absolute control of Parliament and ending 14 years of Tory chaos and misrule. In the American vernacular, British voters were given the opportunity to ‘throw the bums out’ and they availed themselves of it. Tory leader and incoming Prime Minister Keir Starmer achieved this success by having expelled from the party the genuinely Leftist former leader Jeremy Corbyn and taken up the winning ‘New Labour’ centrist position first defined by former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Some of the more odious former or present Tory ministers, such as the holder of the record for shortest time serving in 10 Downing Street, Liz Truss, lost their seats in Parliament.

In France, Macron’s party, or ‘movement,’ yesterday lost its tenuous hold on parliament, coming in second to the New Popular Front, as the united Left parties call themselves, in a three-way race. Macron and his supporters could savor a victory of sorts by having risen from the ashes of the European Parliament voting on 6 June and of the first round of balloting for their national parliament a week ago, when they appeared to enjoy no more than 15 – 20% of voter support. Now they hold nearly a third of parliamentary seats and can hope to forge a coalition with the united Left parties to keep their sworn enemies, the so-called ‘Extreme Right’ National Rally of Marine Le Pen, away from the levers of power. The outcome is what political commentators call a ‘hung parliament’ in which two of the three rival blocs of deputies will try to form a ruling coalition while the President tries to stand above the bickering and back-stabbing while exercising near-dictatorial powers of legislating by decree.

That there will be a lot of bickering is beyond doubt: the single most prominent voice in the New Popular Front is that of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the France Unbowed party. He is the embodiment of anti-capitalist spirits within the country, and though he claims that the Left is ready to govern, and though he or one of his allies may well be tapped by Macron to form a cabinet, it is hard to see how parliament and president can cooperate on anything whatsoever in the days and months ahead. It is nearly certain that France will continue its descent from relevance within the EU and within the world at large that the dimwitted and cowardly François Hollande oversaw from his CIA-stage managed electoral victory back in 2012 onwards. In his years in office, Macron has tried repeatedly to rescue the country from its descent by one failed initiative after another.

*****

The opposing principles of the electoral and governance systems in Britain and France are ‘first past the post’ in the former, where victory is handed in each district to the candidate with the greatest number of votes, and inclusive, proportional representation in government of the latter wherein seats are reserved for representatives of minorities in the voting public. I say this in the full knowledge that the coalition governments which are the almost inevitable consequence of power sharing schemes and are widely practiced across the Continent, are the rare exception, not the rule in France. In France, it has been customary for one party to hold an absolute majority in parliament and to form a cabinet of ministers that shares the same policy priorities and is chosen from among those prepared to assume power at any time in what the British call a ‘shadow cabinet.’

The strength of the British system is that it makes possible sharp changes in direction of government policy when the public is persuaded that the powers that be are not functioning in their interests. The weak point is that given the often low levels of voter turn-out and the share of votes cast held by the winning party relative to all votes, the incoming government may actually be said to represent a very small percentage of all eligible voters. Margaret Thatcher, for example, dramatically changed the direction of the British government while having enjoyed no more than 25% of the popular vote.

In the given case of the British elections on 4 July, something similar occurred. It has been widely commented by political analysts, and stated most succinctly and pointedly by the leader of the Reform UK party Nigel Farage, that the vote for Labour was not so much attributable to support for Labour as it was a rejection of the Tories. By Farage’s estimate, perhaps half of the Labour vote falls into this category, so that the actual support level of Labour and its policies may have been no more than 18% of the electorate. Of course, this detail is swept under the carpet in the headlines and opening paragraphs of the reports we read in the press and see on mainstream television.

The strength of the Continent-wide system of power sharing and coalitions is its ‘progressive’ appearance, its very inclusiveness. Inclusiveness, let us remember, is the new divide between Conservatives and Liberals, whether it goes by the name ‘identity politics’ or not. It long ago replaced policies for how you divide up the economic pie among contending strata of the population. On the Continent, many different parties get to share in the responsibilities and spoils of power.

I put the accent on ‘spoils,’ because I maintain that coalitions are a formula for institutionalized corruption. Governments are formed by back-room deals among the various parties in the agreed coalition. Ministerial portfolios are allocated with scant attention to the competence of the appointees for the given post, looking instead to the need to reward top party personalities for their adherence to the coalition.  And the policies set out may well be in sharp contradiction with one another, meaning implementation can well be inconsistent and ineffective. There can be no better illustration of the pitiful results of coalition building than the current federal government of Germany, where ill-educated and wholly incompetent ministers such as Annalena Baerbock at Foreign Affair and Economy Minister Robert Habeck are a disgrace to the good name of European statesmen and women from generations past.

Let me emphasize here that a hung parliament was precisely the wish of Macron and his immediate entourage when they understood that there was no chance of their own list of candidates holding onto power alone and there was every risk of Le Pen getting an absolute majority. The pro-Macron forces of French politics are strongly pro-market, as one would expect from a leader who entered politics after making his career in the counting rooms of the Rothschild bankers and brokers. Yet, out of purely opportunistic calculations, in the week between the first and second rounds of balloting, they reached agreement with the New Popular Front on which of the two would withdraw their candidate from the race in given electoral districts so as to better ensure victory over Le Pen’s party there.  It worked, but will the resulting parliament work?  That seems not to interest M. Macron at this moment.

*****

In his victory speech, following official release of the vote results, Keir Starmer twice made the remark that in power he will place ‘country above party.’  Emmanuel Macron and his allies have pursued the opposite, party above country, and France will be the worse for it.

But then again, we in the pro-Sovereignty, anti-globalist, anti-supranational bureaucracy Opposition can only say ‘the worse, the better.’

One thing is certain in France: the country will be rent with internal discord at the highest levels of government. The Fifth Republic has survived periods of ‘cohabitation’ between a President of one party and set of policy priorities and a parliamentary majority held by another party with different policy priorities. It has not experienced the cohabitation with a hung parliament that we see now.

As regards foreign policy, our newspapers today speak of the blow to Israeli interests that the approach to power by Mélenchon with his pro-Palestinian bias signifies. We hear less about what the electoral outcome in France signifies for the war in and about Ukraine.  A victory by Le Pen would certainly have put a check on any further French military commitments to Kiev, and possibly would have led to French withdrawal from NATO.  For the moment, that very possibility has been eliminated. Nonetheless, a weak and divided France, such as we shall see in the months ahead, is good news for those of us who wish to see an end to the spineless conformism at the top of European Institutions leading us all towards Armageddon.

Regrettably, in Britain there will be no change from the pandering to Washington’s worst instincts and unlimited support for the dictator in Kiev. The only voice in British politics who stands for reason on relations with Russia is Nigel Farage. It is some small consolation that Farage has won a seat in Parliament, even though the 15% of the popular vote that his party achieved has not been rewarded by more than a handful of seats.

Postscript: One reader has brought to my attention the fact that France in fact has a first past the post as opposed to the proportional representation system so common elsewhere on the Continent. Accordingly I shift my emphasis elsewhere in the French situation and say that the outcome is uniquely due to Macron’s opportunism and tactical thinking at the expense of strategic thinking and patriotism; he has engineered a three way split in the lower chamber to keep Le Pen from power while knowingly making Franch ungovernable and returning the country to the instability it suffered during the Fourth Republic.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

July 9, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

French Left-wing Coalition Emerges Victorious in Parliamentary Elections

Al-Manar – July 8, 2024

The left-wing coalition, New Popular Front, emerged victorious in the French parliamentary elections, securing 182 seats in parliament.

The French Ministry of the Interior announced the final results on Monday, revealing that President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition, Ensemble, came in second place with 168 seats, while Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party trailed behind with 143 seats. The Republican Party followed with 45 seats, leaving the rest of the participating parties with 39 seats collectively.

With no party achieving an absolute majority, attention turned to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the La France Insoumise party, who demanded recognition of the State of Palestine following the coalition’s victory.

Mélenchon now faces criticism for his stance on the Gaza conflict, with accusations of antisemitism hurled at him. Despite this, he remains firm in his calls for change and has demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal.

Internationally, leaders such as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, and former Bolivian President Evo Morales have all expressed their support and congratulations for the left’s victory in France, viewing it as a step towards global progress and unity among progressive forces.

The outcome of the French parliamentary elections has sent shockwaves throughout the political landscape, with the left-wing coalition’s win marking a significant shift in power and setting the stage for a new era in French politics.

July 8, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali sign treaty to become confederation

Al Mayadeen | July 7, 2024

“This summit marks a decisive step for the future of our common space,” Capt. Ibrahim Traore, the leader of Burkina Faso, wrote on X.

The military-led governments of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger convened their first joint summit on Saturday in Niamey, the capital of Niger. During this historic meeting, they announced the formation of a confederation of the three Sahel states.

In their inaugural summit since coming to power, the leaders adopted a joint statement outlining a treaty to establish the confederation.

“This summit marks a decisive step for the future of our common space. Together, we will consolidate the foundations of our true independence, a guarantee of true peace and sustainable development through the creation of the ‘Alliance of Sahel States’ Confederation,’” Capt. Ibrahim Traore, the leader of Burkina Faso, wrote on X.

Tensions with ECOWAS persist

The summit appears to signal a departure from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Tensions between the Sahel nations and ECOWAS escalated after Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani seized power from the elected President Mohamed Bazoum in a coup in Niger last July. In response, ECOWAS imposed sanctions on Niger and threatened intervention, further straining relations.

“The AES (Alliance of Sahel States) is full of enormous natural potential which, if properly exploited, will guarantee a better future for the people of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso,” said Traore.

“Our people have irrevocably turned their backs on ECOWAS,” stated Tiani to his fellow Sahel leaders.

The three AES countries accuse ECOWAS of being manipulated by former colonial ruler France, with Tiani calling for the new bloc to become a “community far removed from the stranglehold of foreign powers.”

Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso’s military leaders have all rejected French influence, expelling French troops from their countries and turning instead toward what they call their “sincere partners” – Russia, Turkey, and Iran. They emphasize sovereignty as a guiding principle of their governance and aim to establish a common currency.

July 7, 2024 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Germany to Close Airbase in Niger After Negotiations on Soldiers Immunity Fail – Reports

Sputnik – 07.07.2024

The German armed forces will give up its airbase in Niger, which was used as a military transport hub, by August 31, as the sides failed to extend the agreement concerning the base, German media reported on Saturday, citing the German Defense Ministry.

The talks broke down after the new Nigerien authorities had refused to grant German soldiers with immunity from prosecution, the NTV news outlet reported, citing a document the ministry had presented before the parliament.

Germany expects to withdraw its troops from the country by the end of August as well.

The German military has used the base in Niger’s capital, Niamey since 2013 as a supply center for its armed forces in neighboring Mali, which were stationed there as part of a UN peacekeeping mission.

Nigerien authorities, which took power in a military takeover in July 2023, have since then also terminated military agreements with France and the United States, which led to the French and US forces’ withdrawal from the country.

July 7, 2024 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iranian filmmaker Bashir Biazar released from French detention

Al Mayadeen | July 3, 2024

Iranian filmmaker and musician Bashir Biazar has been released from detention in France and is en route back to Iran, as confirmed by an official from Iran’s Presidential Office.

Bashir Biazar’s detention, which lasted over a month, sparked an international outcry and accusations of political motivations by French authorities.

He was arrested on charges that included “Iranian propaganda,” “anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism,” and alleged social media activities deemed detrimental to public order in France, according to documents obtained by Press TV.

The charges against Biazar were vehemently rejected by human rights activists, officials, and his supporters, who argued they were unfounded and driven by political agendas targeting Iran.

Rachid Lemoudaa, a French lawyer representing Biazar, told AFP that “There is nothing, in terms of law, that justifies this measure. Bashir Biazar expressed himself on his Instagram account, as anyone could do freely in a state governed by the rule of law,” adding that he believes the issue is “political, and politics has no place in law.”

July 3, 2024 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

National Rally Leads 1st Round of French Parliamentary Elections

Sputnik – 30.06.2024

Marine Le Pen’s’s right-wing National Rally is preliminary winning the first round of snap parliamentary elections in France with 34.2%.

The French Interior Ministry announced preliminary results for the first round of the parliamentary elections:

  • the National Rally (RN) party leads with 34.2% of the votes;
  • the New Popular Front leftist coalition is in second place with 29.1%;
  • and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition is third with 21.5%.

Based on these initial results, the National Rally is expected to secure between 240 to 270 seats in Parliament, achieving a relative majority, according to national TV calculations. Macron’s coalition is projected to lose over 160 seats, potentially receiving only between 60 to 90 of the 577 total seats.

Marine Le Pen declared victory over Macron’s supporters and called for vigorous support for her party in the second round of France’s parliamentary elections.

The French Interior Ministry noted a record high turnout of 59.39% an hour before the polling stations’ closure.

France is holding the first round of snap parliamentary elections on Sunday. The second round will take place on July 7.

June 30, 2024 Posted by | Aletho News | | Leave a comment

‘The Franco-British Plot to dismember Russia’

By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | June 25, 2024

June marks a number of anniversaries, almost completely unknown in the West today, of significant events in the Allied invasion of the Soviet Union. Namely, when the entire wretched project began to spectacularly unravel. The loss of the Allied Powers’ Tsarist ally to the November 1917 revolution, and the embattled Bolsheviks subsequently granting Germany political and economic hegemony over Central and Eastern Europe via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, led to wide-ranging imperial intervention in the Russian civil war, starting from May 1918.

The effort was led by Britain and France. Soldiers drawn from the pair’s respective empires, and Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and the US, were deployed in vast numbers, fighting alongside local “White” anti-Communist forces. Initially prosecuted largely in secret, by June 1919, things were going so badly for the invaders that London formally dispatched a 3,500-strong “North Russian Relief Force” to the Soviet Union. Their ostensible mission was to defend threatened British positions in the country.

Almost immediately though, the “defensive” unit was deployed on offensive missions, to seize key Soviet territory, repel the Red Army, and link up with White Russian forces. This thrust was comprehensively beaten back, however. From that point on, Allied fortunes rapidly worsened. White Russian soldiers violently mutinied against their “allies” and defected to the Bolsheviks, while invading foreign troops simply refused to fight due to horrendous battlefield conditions. All-out Western withdrawal commenced before the month was over.

In failing to crush the Russian revolution, Britain and France lost a historic opportunity to “strangle Bolshevism in its cradle,”, in Winston Churchill’s pestilential phrase. The pair had agreed to carve up the Soviet Union’s vast resources while neutralising any prospect of Moscow emerging as a major international anti-capitalist agitator. The failure of invading powers to learn lessons from the debacle, and Russia’s visceral memories of the mass invasion, in no small part account for where we are today.

‘Prolonged Enslavement’

In March 1931, Western-dwelling Russian-born academic Leonid I. Strakhovsky published a remarkable paper, The Franco-British Plot to Dismember Russia. As the author noted, “neither Britain nor France has as yet published any important documents” related to the Allied invasion at the time. This remains the case over a century later. Yet, Strakhovsky was still able to piece together “the startling designs” of Paris and London’s conspiracy “to bring about the complete dismemberment of the Russian realm for their own political and commercial advantage.”

This agreement was cemented in L’Accord Franco-Anglais du 23 Décembre 1917, définissant les zones d’action Française et Anglaise (The Anglo-French Agreement of December 23rd,1917 defining the French and British zones of direct control and extended influence). The document established “zones of influence” for Britain and France in the Soviet Union. London was granted “Cossack territories, the territory of the Caucasus, Armenia, Georgia and Kurdistan.” Paris received “Bessarabia, Ukraine and Crimea.” White Russian military chief General Anton Denikin is quoted as saying “the line dividing the zones” stretched from the Bosporus to the mouth of the Don River:

“This strange line had no reason whatsoever from the strategic point of view, taking in no consideration of the Southern operation directions to Moscow nor the idea of unity of command. Also, in dividing into halves the land of the Don Cossacks, it did not correspond to the possibilities of a rational supplying of the Southern armies, and satisfied rather the interests of occupation and exploitation than those of a strategic covering and help.”

Strakhovsky observes, “a survey of the economic resources in the two zones of influence” lends credence to Denikin’s analysis. The territory marked out for French domination were and remain “large granaries;” and “the famous coal region” of Donetsk, “worthless” to coal-rich Britain, was “of great importance to France.” In turn, London “obtained all the Russian oil fields in the Caucasus,” and regions producing “an enormous amount of timber.” Britain urgently needed all the foreign wood it could lay its hands upon at the time.

Strakhovsky comments that the December 1917 agreement amounted to, “a picture of organized economic penetration under the cover of military intervention.” Elsewhere, he quotes dissident US journalist Louis Fischer, “a parallel agreement disposed in similar fashion of other parts of Russia.” Despite this, France was “not satisfied” with its resource windfall. Officials in Paris attempted to compel General Denikin to sign a treaty which, if anti-Bolshevik forces had prevailed, would amount to outright “economic slavery”, putting “Russia at her mercy.”

Denikin was not persuaded. His successor Pyotr Wrangel was. He accepted extraordinary conditions, which included granting France “the right of exploitation of all railways in European Russia during a certain period,” Parisian monopoly on Moscow’s grain surpluses and oil output for an indeterminate stretch, and a quarter of all Donetsk’s coal output “during a certain period of years.” As a Soviet writer quoted in Strakhovsky’s paper observed:

“France was striving to obtain a prolonged and if possible an all-sided domination over Russia… a means of a prolonged enslavement of Russia.”

‘Half Measures’

Britain’s motivation for invading the Soviet Union went beyond visceral aversion to Bolshevism, and a desire to take the fallen Russian empire’s resource-rich lands into receivership: Namely, London’s “fear of the rising power of Russia” throughout the 19th century, which had produced the “Great Game”. This confrontation in Central Asia was concerned with preventing India – “the jewel in the crown” of the British empire – falling into Moscow’s sphere of economic and political influence.

In a bitter irony, this longstanding anxiety meant Britain’s strategy in the Soviet invasion was equally concerned with crushing Bolshevism, while also preventing “the resurrection of the old great unified Russia.” This approach contributed significantly to the entire intervention’s failure. Strakhovsky notes, “Britain carried out her part of the intervention in Russia by half-measures, which certainly did not help the anti-Bolshevik forces in their struggle for a national government. He cites a Soviet writer:

“In the North as well as in the South and in Siberia, the tactics of the English were clearly denoted by their desire to support the Russian counter-revolution, only as much as it was necessary to prevent a unification of Russia on the one hand under the Bolsheviks, and on the other hand under the [White] supporters of the great one indivisible Russia.”

There was another ironic boomerang to Britain’s simultaneous belligerence and treachery in the Soviet Union. The paper concludes by noting that a contemporary parliamentary “special report of the committee to collect information on Russia,” produced at King George V’s express command, appraised that “the abundant and almost unanimous testimony of our witnesses shows that the military intervention of the Allies in Russia assisted to give strength and cohesion to the Soviet Government”:

“Up to the time of military intervention the majority of the Russian intellectuals were well-disposed toward the Allies, and more especially to Great Britain, but that later the attitude of the Russian people toward the Allies became characterized by indifference, distrust and antipathy.”

Per Strakhovsky, this “was the reward that Great Britain and France received” for attempting to dismember Russia. A similar dynamic is afoot today, as the Ukraine proxy war grinds on. The more genocidal, Russophobic rhetoric issues from EU and US officials, and the more Western-encouraged attacks on Moscow occur, the more united Russians become in opposition to their adversaries, and with each other.

The West has made no secret of its desire to “balkanize” Russia since the proxy war began. In July 2022, a Congressional body hosted a dedicated event on the “moral and strategic imperative” of breaking up the country into easily exploitable chunks. It proposed sponsoring local separatist movements for the purpose. A year later, Italian journalist Marzio G. Mian toured Russia, and was overwhelmed by how the population was unified like never before. A typically mild-mannered academic acquaintance of his had “become a warrior”. They said:

“[Stalingrad] is our reference point now more than ever, an unparalleled symbol of resistance, our enemies’ worst nightmare. Whosoever tries it will meet the end of all the others—Swedes, Napoleon, the Germans and their allies. Russians are like the Scythians: they wait, they suffer, they die, and then they kill.”

June 27, 2024 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

‘France provided Israel with weapons used to bomb civilians in Gaza’

MEMO | June 19, 2024

France has approved the sale of weapons equipment used by Israel to bomb civilian targets in the Gaza Strip, including a hospital, an investigation by the French non-profit media outlet Disclose revealed on Monday.

Dozens of classified documents obtained by the outlet revealed that French IT company the Thales Group has recently delivered electronic components used to construct Israel’s Hermes 900 armed drones. France owns a 26 per cent stake in the company.

The investigation showed that “the French company delivered to Israel the communication equipment during 2024,” despite repeated confirmations by the French defence ministry that “French arms exports to [Israel] were limited to defensive military equipment used in the Iron Dome to confront Palestinian resistance rockets.”

The outlet quoted the head of Israel’s Squadron 166, which flies Hermes 900 assault drones, as admitting to targeting a hospital in Khan Yunis in February following France’s delivery of the surveillance and targeting equipment.

“At least eight of these transponders were supposed to be flown to Israel between December 2023 and the end of May 2024,” said Disclose. “That’s several months after the first aerial bombings. Two transponders were delivered in 2024… The other six are reported to have been stopped by French customs.”

According to the outlet, the French armed forces ministry’s Directorate General for International Relations stated that the eight TSC 4000 IFF transponders are not allowed to be “sold, gifted, leased nor transformed without the prior agreement of the French government.”

Since 7 October, the Israeli occupation forces have continued to bombard the besieged Gaza Strip, killing 37,343 Palestinians and wounding 85,372 others. Around 1.7 million people have been displaced, according to the UN, amid massive destruction of civilian infrastructure.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. The occupation state denies the allegation.

June 19, 2024 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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