Friday 29th of March 2024

help is coming against the revolution...

sarkocron

It looks like the liberal President Macron has turned to his right-wing predecessor for help with the protests raging across France.

French President Emmanuel Macron, who is widely considered to be a left-wing liberal, seems to have turned to his right-wing predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy — who led France from 2007 to 2012 — for assistance, as the so-called "Yellow Vests" protests ravage the country.

On December 7, the current and the former presidents met at the Elysee Palace for a lunch. According to Le Figaro, the two politicians discussed public order as well as Macron's recently announced tax exemption for overtime work.

Roughly one week after the meeting, on December 16, Macron sent Sarkozy to Tbilisi, Georgia, to represent France at the inauguration of Georgia's new president, Salome Zurabishvili — a move that "caused a stir in French political circles," according to Reuters.

The official reason for picking Sarkozy to attend the inauguration was his mediation between Russia and Georgia during the Seven-Day War of 2008.

 

Sources close to the former president say this was Macron's way to send a signal to right-wing voters in France, who have been shocked by images of burning cars in upscale areas of Paris and Macron's attempt to placate the protesters with costly handouts.

"Emmanuel Macron has understood the personal and political benefit he could draw from [Sarkozy]," one source told Reuters.

Francois Patriat, a senator and close ally of Macron, suggested that in sending Sarkozy to Georgia, Macron had an internal political goal in mind.

According to Patriat, Macron seeks to undermine Laurent Wauquiez, the leader of the conservative Republicans, the biggest opposition party, to which Sarkozy also belongs.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201812201070842541-macron-sarkozy-alliance/

 

Macron is a left-wing liberal like a live dinosaur T-rex is a fluffy toy for kids. 

back to the futur...

using make-up like a woman...

 

...

Faced with what appears to be a growing hostility, is Emmanuel Macron trying to save appearances? This is suggested by a member of the presidential party quoted by Le Monde, with this member of parliament saying: "he [Macron] does not go out without [disguising] makeup — so much it is noticeable. He even makes up his hands ".


Booing and rain of insults ...

 

During his recent travels, Emmanuel Macron has regularly faced the antipathy of the citizens he met. While he has often distinguished himself by a desire to be in contact with the crowds, even the most hostile, the President of the Republic today seems to fear or even avoid them. Le Monde does not hesitate to recall the recent emergency escape of the President of the Republic, like the one that took place in Puy-en-Velay.


In the political crisis that opened several weeks ago, Emmanuel Macron seems to be the subject of a particular personal anger, beyond his politics or his function. On December 21, the yellow vests simulated a trial of the President of the Republic, after which they decapitated a puppet representing him. The public prosecutor in Charente announced an investigation "for provocation to commit a crime and for contempt", entrusting the investigation to the police station of Angouleme.

 

Translation by Jules Letambour.

 

Read more:

https://francais.rt.com/france/57184-il-ne-sort-plus-sans-maquiller-tell...

 

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economic vernacular...

BONNIE FAULKNER: How has economic history been rewritten by redefining the meaning of words? What is an example of this? For instance, what does the word ‘reform’ mean now as opposed to what reform used to mean?

MICHAEL HUDSON: Reform used to mean something social democratic. It meant getting rid of special privileges, getting rid of monopolies and protecting labor and consumers. It meant controlling the prices that monopolies could charge, and regulating the economy to prevent fraud or exploitation – and most of all, to prevent unearned income or tax it away.

In today’s neoliberal vocabulary, ‘reform’ means getting rid of socialism. Reform means stripping away protection or labor and even of industry. It means deregulating the economy, getting rid of any kind of price controls, consumer protection or environmental protection. It means creating a lawless economy where the 1% are in control, without public checks and balances. So reform today means getting rid of all of the reforms that were promoted in the 19th and early-20th century. The Nobel Economics Prize reflects this neoliberal (that is, faux-liberal) travesty of ìfree markets.

BONNIE FAULKNER: What were the real reforms of the progressive era?

MICHAEL HUDSON: To begin with, you had unions to protect labor. You had limitations on the workweek and the workday, how much work people had to do to earn a living wage. There were safety protections. There was protection of the quality of food, and of consumer safety to prevent dangerous products. There was anti-trust regulation to prevent price gouging by monopolies. The New Deal took basic monopolies of public service such as roads and communications systems out of the hands of monopolists and make them public. Instead of using a road or the phone system to exploit users by charging whatever the market would bear, basic needs were provided at the lowest possible costs, or even freely in the case of schools, so that the economy would have a low cost of living and hence a low business overhead.

 

Read more:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/12/michael-hudson-the-vocabulary-of-economic-deception.html

 

Beyond this, we have hypocritical Scummo trying to "control" (lower) electricity prices — not to be a socialist reformer, but to help his carbon-burning mates against the impact of the necessary renewables...

G. L.

 

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no holidays for yellow vests...

French president Emmanuel Macron just can’t get away from Yellow Vest protesters. The anti-government demonstrators have even turned up outside his presidential hideaway on the Mediterranean coast.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/447596-macron-vacation-yellow-vest/

 

Meanwhile it appears that Melania has joined the yellow vests:

 

yellow

see: Trump comes clean… from world’s policeman to thug running a global protection racket

 

 

 

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pardon my french...

 

Today, hubris refers to the behavior of Emmanuel Macron, Carlos Ghosn or man in the face of nature 


For Vincent Azoulay, the term "hubris" is used to describe the disproportion of man in politics or environment. The historian sees a semantic drift: among the Greeks, the word qualified violent transgressive acts, such as rape.


A specialist in ancient history, Vincent Azoulay is director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and editorial director of Les Annales. He is the author of Pericles. Athenian Democracy in the Test of the Great Man (Armand Colin, 2010) and the Tyrannicides of Athens. Life and death of two statues (Seuil, 2014). He returns to the use of the notion of hubris in contemporary discourse.

There is an increasingly common use of the term "hubris" in the political commentary, to designate excessive pride. Why this return to the Greek lexicon?

In fact, I do not believe at all that it is a rediscovery of the Greek, but rather an effect of international circulation. Indeed, the term was not used before the 2000s in the French press, if not in articles devoted to antiquity. On the other hand, it is common, for a long time, in the American and British media world. For the New York Times, for example, there are more than 5,000 occurrences. There are only 200 in Le Monde, and still concentrated for the overwhelming majority between 2000 and 2018. This discovery of hubris seems to me rather one of those transfers of ideas that are today a cultural universe to another, more fluid and massive than before.

 

Read more:

https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2018/12/29/aujourd-hui-l-hubris-des...

 

Translation by Jules Letambour.

 

My friend Jules tells me with liguistic authority that the word "hubris" like many old words have changed meaning — often becoming diluted in their strength by being "over-used". But the problem here, tells me Jules, is that Le Monde has lost the french equivalent to "hubris" to an anglophonie of sounds and MacDonald's-zyzytion for food, instead of cuisine. The true French word to use here is "baratin", (sometimes "baraguouinage") meaning "soft bullshit" or "hubris" in the English hegemony (to gibber-jabber)... But should we wish to up the ante, we could say "baratin merdique" in regard to the Macronification of la langue Française...

the year of national cohesion...


Looking back at 2018 and the French president's vows to unite the nation, disappointed twitteratti noted the situation in the country, divided by the Benalla affair and the Yellow Vests riots, is not so rainbow-bright after all.

"In my view, 2018 will be the year of national cohesion," the centrist Macron ambitiously wrote in his New Year's Eve message a year ago. That prediction hasn't aged well, and Twitter noticed.

...

 

"What clairvoyance","#nostradamus", the sarcastic comments went on.

And, if 2018 was thought to be the year of unity, many people got worried about imminent 2019. "And after the cohesion of the nation, what would you call Year 2019?"

Others said that Macron was right, and there was "cohesion" in the country – against his government, that is.

France has never been as fractured as it was in 2018, one more person noted, adding that the president probably divided the nation "to better reign" over it.

Faced with record-low ratings, Macron was criticized for handling the case of his [now former] bodyguard Alexandre Benalla. The scandal, probably the biggest in Macron's presidency, kicked off in summer 2018 when a video emerged showing the 27-year-old Benalla dressed as a police officer and beating two protesters during a May Day rally in Paris. The 'affair' exploded after it was revealed that the Elysee Palace had been informed of Benalla's misconduct but failed to report him to police.

Soon after that matter cooled down a little in the media, another major event hit the headlines: The Yellow Vests movement. Started initially as a rally against fuel price hikes, the protest then swept the whole country, with demonstrators demanding lower taxes and even the resignation of the president himself. Though the government swiftly suspended the tax rise and even increased minimum wages, that wasn't enough to immediately end the protests.

Apart from these major events, Macron was occasionally caught making outlandish public statements. He was criticized for telling retirees to stop moaning about pension cuts, and for claiming that educated women won't choose to have a large family.

"King for the Rich," "King of bling-bling", "President of the Wealthy", "Jupiter" – these are a few nicknames given to Macron both by fellow politicians and by ordinary folk online. Even his New Year's trip to the posh resort of Saint-Tropez on the eve of planned Yellow Vests rallies came in for harsh criticism. "Saint-Tropez is the bling-bling symbol of France, it [embodies] success, the absence of problems," Benjamin Cauchy, one of the Yellow Vests' leaders, said, pointing out that it's not as sunny in the rest of the protest-plagued country as in the French Riviera.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/447861-macron-2018-new-year/

 

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See also: brigitte and brigitte...

fatti gli affari tuoi...

France’s minister for European affairs hit back at Italian populist duo Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, telling them to mind their own business after the pair bashed French President Emmanuel Macron for his unpopularity.

Interior Minister and Northern League leader Matteo Salvini threw his support behind France’s anti-government Yellow Vest demonstrators on Monday, saying that he supports “honest citizens who protest against a governing president [who is] against his people.”

Vice-President of the Council of Ministers of Italy Luigi Di Maio, who is the leader of the Five-Star Movement (M5S), urged the demonstrators on his party’s blog “not to weaken,” and said that establishment politics in Europe “has become deaf to the needs of citizens who have been kept out of the most important decisions affecting the people.”

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/448315-france-salvini-yellow-vests/

 

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a french king with less than 20 per cent approval does venezuela


Emmanuel Macron has praised the “courage” of Venezuelan protesters but fell short of recognizing self-declared “acting president” Juan Guaido. His desire to exert influence on Latin America could back him into a corner in Paris.

“After the illegal election of Nicolas Maduro in 2018, Europe supports the restoration of democracy. I salute the courage of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans marching for their freedom,” Emmanuel Macron tweeted in French on his official account.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/449622-france-venezuela-coup-support/

 

Yep, Venezuela has its yellow vests without the yellow vests... 

 

Meanwhile Putin is the only sane leader on the planet:

Russia’s president pledged his support for the elected government of Venezuela during a phone call with President Nicolas Maduro. He also criticized the “destructive external meddling” to which the country has been exposed.

The Russian president has expressed his support to the legitimate authorities of Venezuela in this time of political crisis which he said was caused by a “destructive external interference that grossly violates the most basic norms of the international law.”

Putin and Maduro also agreed to continue cooperation between the countries “in various fields.” 

While Venezuela's political crisis has been ongoing for months, it has deepened this year following the US’ decision not to recognize the results of the last elections which led to Maduro entering his second six-year term.

On Wednesday US-backed, Juan Guaido, the opposition leader who is currently the President of the National Assembly, swore an oath and declared himself interim president as thousands took to the streets calling for Maduro to leave office.

US President Donald Trump announced his decision to recognize Guaido as the “interim president,” minutes after the latter swore himself in. While US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged Maduro to step down and called on the country’s military to support efforts to restore “democracy”.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/449630-putin-foreign-interference-in-venezuela/

 

 

 

 

Read from top. See also:

the big stick...

and

horsheshit — as told by the MSM (mass shit media)... in this is a conspiracy...

 

a crowded field of very rich hypocrites...

The ‘Yellow Vest’ anti-government protests in France have received limited coverage in Western media and what coverage there has been has been quite hostile to the protestors.

In Venezuela though it’s a very  different story. Here the street demonstrations are a major news event, despite the country being thousands of miles away. Furthermore, the coverage is very sympathetic to the protestors and extremely hostile to the government.

Why are angry street protestors in France bad, but in Venezuela very good?

The answer has to do with the stances and international alliances of the respective governments. It’s inaccurate to call President Emmanuel Macron of France the President of the rich. He is, as his predecessor Francois Hollande admitted on French television, the President of the very rich.

Macron is an unashamed globalist, committed to carrying out neoliberal reforms at home, and following a ‘liberal interventionist’ ie imperalist foreign policy abroad, which means keeping French forces —illegally- in Syria.  No wonder the elites are mad about the boy.  The toppling of Macron, in a French Revolution 2.0, would be a huge blow to the most powerful people in the world. It cannot be allowed to happen.

The French authorities have responded to the street protests with force; one activist was even sentenced to prison for six months — but this has largely been ignored by Western 'liberals' who would be so quick to denounce similar actions in other countries, whose government they don’t approve of. Instead, the message is 'law and order must be maintained'.

The Yellow Vests protestors have been relentlessly traduced. We were told they were 'far-right' and 'racists' and even 'anti-semites'. The conspiracy theory that they were part of a sinister Russian plot to sow division in Europe was also promulgated, by those who routinely attack others for being conspiracy theorists.

By contrast, the anti-government protestors in Venezuela can do no wrong, even when they commit terrible acts of violence. Those who falsely accuse their Gilets Jaunes of being motivated by 'racism' were silent when a black man, the 21-year-old Orlando Jose Figuera was burnt alive by anti-government protestors in Caracas in 2017

Imagine the outcry if the Yellow Vests had set fire to a black man in Paris. But it’s anti-Chavistas doing it in Venezuela, so let‘s close our eyes and pretend it didn’t happen.

While there is absolutely no evidence of any foreign involvement in the Yellow Vest protests, the US and its allies have been openly backing the anti-government protests in Venezuela.

Trump has even recognised Venezuela’s opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as the leader of the country. Again, imagine the headlines if Vladimir Putin recognised Marine Le Pen or Jean-Luc Melenchon as the leader of France — or said, as Trump has said about Venezuela, that Russia could invade France if the government didn’t stand down!

The US move has already been endorsed by EU  bigwigs, like Guy Verhofstadt, reminding us that for all their criticism of Trump, these virtue-signalling politically-correct European ‘liberals’ are on the same page as the US when it comes to imperialistic regime-change operations. It's not just Venezuela, it was the same in Yugoslavia in 2000 and Ukraine in 2014.

It’s a crowded field, but the prize for the biggest hypocrite of all goes to Emmanuel Macron.

The man who has been clamping down on legitimate street protests at home, and whose approval rating slumped to just 21% earlier this month, published a tweet in which he praised ‘ the courage of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who are marching for their liberty".

For the Yellow Vests protestors, and indeed for anyone else who genuinely supports liberty, that really is one sick joke.


The views and opinions expressed by the contributor do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66 and @MightyMagyar

 

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/columnists/201901241071782413-france-venezuela-p...

 

 

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using the police to do the dirty work of dirty politicians...

The French authorities are outright exploiting the police by forcing them to work overtime amid unending Yellow Vest protests, while making them scapegoats to cover up their superiors’ mistakes, a police union chief told RT.

Police are literally “exhausted” as France continues to witness what has been described as the worst civil unrest in decades – the unending wave of Yellow Vest protests held for the 14th weekend in a row. The government has forced the police to work overtime in an attempt to curb the unrest while apparently glancing over the consequences of such a decision, Alexandre Langlois, the secretary-general of the VIGI police union, said in an interview with RT France.

‘Squeezing police dry’

“The entire police mechanism is exhausted, it breaks down,” Langlois said, adding that the conditions the officers are forced to work in are “inhumane.” “I cannot understand how my colleagues can endure it,” he said. The top-ranking police officials have only made the situation worse as they introduced new rules which literally forbid the officers to leave their posts.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/451688-french-government-exploit-police-protests/

 

 

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buds in a pod...

The Head of State [Macron] and the former President of the Republic [Sarkozy] visited this symbolic site of the French Resistance to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the "Battle of the Glières".

Emmanuel Macron, accompanied by his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy, arrived Sunday morning on the plateau Glières, Haute-Savoie, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the fighting during which a hundred resistant were killed in 1944. Francois Hollande [recent former President of the Republic] was not invited.

After traveling together from Paris, [Macron] and [Sarkozy] were welcomed by local elected representatives, including Laurent Wauquiez, the president of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region and patron of the Republicans, at the national necropolis of Morette, Thônes (Haute-Savoie), where are buried 105 resistant dead in action.

 

Read more:

https://www.sudouest.fr/2019/03/31/macron-et-sarkozy-cotes-a-cotes-au-pl...

 

Translation by Jules Letambour.

 

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lost in the sea of yellow tide...

Unable to stem the crisis of yellow vests, Emmanuel Macron could be in a state of extreme physical and psychological fatigue. Abandoned by his most loyal lieutenants, he finds himself more and more alone.


The exercise of power is not easy. Even less when it is necessary to manage a social crisis of unprecedented magnitude by its duration and cannot be channeled. In search of the keys to calm the wrath of the Yellow Vests, who beat indefatigably the pavement since 20 weeks, Emmanuel Macron would be on the brink of cracking.

In the columns of Le Parisien, March 31, under cover of anonymity, many relatives have expressed their concern about the physical and psychological condition of the tenant of the Elysee. "He is in a state ... He is under water," says one of them, which confirms others, who see it "rinsed off" or "wringed out". "We are not far from his burn-out", alarmed one of his relatives who communicates with him by text message.


As had already been revealed by his entourage last December, to maintain appearances, [Macron] masks his fatigue under a layer of makeup. "Fortunately it is made up, otherwise we would see how he's gone pale," says an "aid", to Le Parisien.


"Everyone he trusted has left"

While the government boat pitched in the face of the yellow tide, the president, faced with many departures within his team — Benjamin Griveaux and Ismael Emelien being among the latest in date — finds himself more and more alone in the storm. "Macron is at the top, with [Alexis] Kohler having two bullets in the stomach, figuratively. Everyone he trusted left," said an exasperated minister.

 

Read more:

 

 

Translation by Jules Letambour

 

But Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron might perk up... when he becomes an adult...

 

https://francais.rt.com/france/60588-sous-eau-rince-essore-emmanuel-macr...