Posts
France
ceases to be a democracy: Now what?-
by
Karen Szymczyk
15
December, 2015
December
13 was important for the Middle East in at least two ways. In a
move of increasing brinkmanship, a Turkish fishing boat
(“seine” vessel) tried playing naval
“chicken” with the Russian guard ship Smetlivy in
the Aegean Sea, only backing off when the Russian ship fired on
it, using small arms, when it got too close.
According to the Russians, at no time did the Turks respond
to any Russian communications, before, during or after
the confrontation.
December
13 also hosted the crucial second round of French elections.
Western papers couldn’t help but predict a win by Marine Le
Pen’s far-right National Front party, which topped the
results in six of France’s thirteen regions in the first round.
Le Pen’s appeals to the French were popular: withdrawing
from the European Union, establishing the franc as the
country’s currency, strengthening Fortress France in the face
of overwhelming MENA (Middle East & North Africa)
Muslim immigrants, and forging better links with Putin’s
Russia.
Facing
the limp Socialists, headed by a Francois Hollande who only saw
a spike in popularity to 50% in the wake of the
recent Paris attacks, and a Nicolas Sarkozy who’s still
considered malodorous by members of his own Republican party, Le
Pen’s drawing card was that her rising popularity crossed many
traditional socioeconomic voter boundaries. As the LA
Times put it, Le Pen had support that “included
blue-collar workers and bourgeois surbanites, recent university
graduates and retirees.”
To
write off Le Pen as nothing more than a lunatic anti-Semite is to
miss much of the economic malaise that has plagued France in recent
years, compounded by Hollande’s complete fumbling of the
Mistral affair and the subsequent cancellation of a lucrative deal
with India involving US$20 billion’s worth of Rafale
jets. But it’s a convenient label to hang on an increasingly
inclusive party leader whose words resonate with ordinary French
voters. “It’s been like this for years.. All the big
contracts go to the friends of the president. Little businesses
like ours don’t get anything,” says a blue-collar worker,
again quoted in the LA Times.
Le
Pen was campaigning as much against the dominant two parties
(“two clans from the same political mafia”) on economic
grounds, as well as social, and it was this mix of
messages—a clarion call to recreate the greatness of France—that
appealed, as it has done throughout the centuries, to the
French.
When
Le Pen won so many regions in the first round of elections, it
seemed certain that she would consolidate and build on it in the
second. Then something happened.
There
is a tactic pervasive in French politics, where politicians of
Party A will withdraw from a region in order to push support to Party
B. The whole idea behind this arrangement is to make sure that
Party C doesn’t win. This tactic has been used against the
National Front in the past. This time around, with six
victories under the NF belt, the Socialists decided to play
that card again in two regions but, interestingly,
Sarkozy’s Republicans didn’t. The New York Times
mentioned that “Mr. Sarkozy announced after his party’s
second-place showing that its candidates would not join with other
parties or withdraw from the race.”
One
would think that that would throw the second round race open
entirely. On the contrary, the results after the
December 13th second round of voting, were stunning.
Sputnik News put it most succinctly: “National Front Fails
to Gain Support of Any Region in French Elections.”
Something
stinks.
How
could a party that was polling so strongly, that had so much
voter support, lose in every region, including the
unemployment-heavy northern ones?
One
doesn’t have to think very hard to see what a National Front
victory would have meant to NATO and the EU, not to mention its
actions in Syria. Add to that a possible rapprochement with
devil Russia, and the only surprise is that Le Pen was allowed
to crow victory after the first round. Someone’s getting
sloppy.
What
happens now is up to the French people themselves. Are they
going to let themselves be cowed, or will they rise up?
France has always been a country of glorious rebellion and
resistance, against enemies ranging from the monarchy to
McDonald’s, but are the French up to it in these modern
times? Or is the tsunami of propaganda too overwhelming,
the barrage of immigrants too unstoppable, the cohesion of
each community too weak, to fight against what must be seen,
at the very least, as a very peculiar election outcome.
Only
time will tell.
EUROPEAN EMPIRE: EU’s New Border Force Will Override National Sovereignty
21st
Century Wire says…
The
European Empire is getting ready to establish its military forces.
Watch a video of this report here:
In
a move that some would call astonishing and others would call
inevitable, the EU has announced plans to create a border and
coastguard force to guard against the growing number of security
threats against Europe.
The
force would operate throughout the EU and have powers to intervene
even when the host country does not consent.
The
European Commission will propose that the new agency has the
“right to intervene”, which is incredibly frightening in a world
covered in the scars of interventionist policies.
A
draft of the proposal obtained by AFP makes this nightmare
a reality:
“In
urgent situations, the agency must be able to step in to ensure that
action is taken on the ground even where there is no request for
assistance from the member state concerned or where that member state
considers that there is no need for additional intervention,”
Absolutely
incredible.
Amnesty
International says the new force “must
not be at the expense of migrant and refugee rights“,
as that crisis itself was caused by many EU members themselves.
21WIRE’s
Patrick Henningsen has reported
extensively on the development of this ‘EU Army’.
The
project has previously been sold as being necessary to protect the
EU’s values, whatever they may be, and Henningsen identified the
crises of the Eurozone, EU members threatening to leave, migration,
terrorism and NATO’s irrelevance as growing causes for a push
towards an EU Army.
What
this force will essentially do is turn the EU into a
federalised United
States of Europe.
How
exactly this army might be constituted is entirely unknown.
How
could the EU Commission draft soldiers from members countries?
What
can the Commission offer those soldiers that their own nation state
cannot?
In
a climate of rising
nationalistic tendencies, how does the Commission plan to create
a force that will remain loyal?
How
do we hold a supra-national force accountable?
Does
the Commission really believe that sending troops of a foreign
nationality into another country without its consent is going to
strengthen the EU’s reputation, unless it plans to impose
acceptance by force?
With
so many important questions entirely unanswered, this plan could turn
sour very quickly.
SUNDAY
WIRE: ‘From Paris to Palmrya’ with host Patrick Henningsen, guest
Gearóid Ó Colmáin
This
week’s very special edition of THE SUNDAY WIRE is broadcasting
LIVE, as host
Patrick Henningsen returns
to cover the world’s most audacious news and current affairs
internationally. In the first hour we review this week’s latest
Islamaphobic hysteria in the United States, we’ll follow
the money
with ISI$
Oil,
and breakdown the US-led “Anti-ISIL (pro-ISIL) Coalition”
currently running their western taxpayer-funded international
racketeering operation in Syria and Iraq. Also in the first hour,
we’re joined by European-based writer and political affairs
analyst, Gearóid Ó Colmáin,
to break down the French political fall-out from the Paris
Attacks,
new proposals for concentration camps and terrorist attacks within a
GLADIO
context, and also how all this relates to the wider geopolitical
tensions in Syria, Turkey and the Middle East. In the third and final
hour we’ll return to the US to look at the new Trump-Obama
Dialectic
and also San
Bernardino Puzzle
and mass brainwashing of the west through media manipulation.
Strap
yourselves in and lower the blast shield –
this is your brave new world…
To hear the podcast GO HERE
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