Macron Cracks Down on French Liberty

Exclusive: The youthful new French President Macron is getting rave press reviews, with little attention to his clampdown on public liberty under the guise of fighting terrorism, reports Jonathan Marshall.

By Jonathan Marshall

French President Emmanuel Macron — the “great hope” of Europe — told French legislators a few days ago that he plans to extend his nation’s draconian and counterproductive state of emergency for a sixth time later this month — to give his government time to prepare a tough new anti-terrorism law to replace it.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron

In a breathtaking display of doublespeak, Macron claimed that his plan will “re-establish the freedoms of the French people.” But enshrining into law the essence of France’s harsh anti-terrorism decrees will limit the nation’s hard-won liberties while doing nothing to curb police incompetence, which has repeatedly allowed known extremists to carry out their heinous acts.

Civil liberties and human rights groups have denounced Macron’s blueprint for augmenting the central government’s police powers. His draft law would give local representatives of the Interior Ministry the power to declare security zones, define who can enter or leave them, use electronic tags to restrict the movement of people considered a national security threat, close mosques and other centers of worship, and — with only limited judicial oversight — search private property.

“These measures would trample individual and shared liberties and would lead us toward an authoritarian state,” France’s League of Human Rights declared. “Far from relating only to terrorist acts, these measures would be applied to a wide range of offences. Anyone could become a victim of arbitrary decisions.”

Amnesty International recently condemned the government’s abuse of anti-terrorist emergency powers that restrict freedom of movement and rights to peaceful assembly.

“Under the cover of the state of emergency, rights to protest have been stripped away with hundreds of activists, environmentalists, and labor rights campaigners unjustifiably banned from participating in protests,” said Marco Perolini, Amnesty International’s researcher on France.

Repressing Dissent

In the name of preventing “threats to public order,” the government over a period of 18 months issued 155 decrees banning protests, and 574 measures prohibiting specific individuals from taking part in protests against proposed labor law changes.

President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and other heads of state and delegations, observe a minute of silence for the Paris attack victims on Nov. 30, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The latter statistic is particularly notable because Macron plans to issue sweeping decrees to limit the power of unions over working conditions and company firing policies. Such proposals have triggered mass demonstrations and violent clashes with police, in recent months.

The French government imposed its state of emergency — modeled after one instituted in 1955 during the Algerian war — after coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, killed 130 people and injured 368 more. Those attacks followed the January 2015 slaughter of 12 people at the Paris office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, and of four hostages at a kosher supermarket. The attacks were perpetrated by followers of ISIS and of al-Qaeda in Yemen.

French parliamentary investigation last year found little evidence that either the state of emergency or the showy stationing of troops on Parisian streets did much to enhance France’s security. It concluded that the country’s fragmented and competing security agencies had suffered a “global failure” of communication and coordination.

As it happens, police were well aware of all three extremists who carried out the January 2015 massacres and of leaders of the November 2015 attacks, but lacked the manpower to keep them under permanent surveillance. Indeed, they traveled across Europe and to Yemen and North Africa with remarkable ease, despite official knowledge of their dangerous proclivities.

In the Guardian’s words, “Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four people in a siege at a kosher grocery store in January (2015) and shot dead a policewoman, was a known radical and repeat offender. While serving a prison sentence for his part in a plot to free another terrorist from jail, he had been flagged as radicalized. This information was not passed from prison services to intelligence agencies on his release.”

Breakdown of Intelligence

Recent French press revelations suggest an even worse breakdown of intelligence. It turns out that Coulibaly and two fellow Islamist radicals who committed the January 2015 attacks acquired their weapons, through an intermediary, from a right-wing police informant and former mercenary named Claude Hermant. He claims to have worked as an agent under the supervision of intelligence officers in the customs service and gendarmerie, a national military police force under the Ministry of Interior.

Peace for Paris symbol.

Information about Hermant’s role was suppressed in 2015 by the Interior Minister, who invoked a state secrets privilege. Hermant’s lawyer has filed a lawsuit to lift the ban on discussion of his client’s connection to the intelligence services. A French newspaper has also published explosive emails from a gendarme giving Hermant the “green light” to move cases of weapons, one of which apparently ended up in Islamist hands due to police incompetence.

History is replete with examples of police and intelligence services that allow agents to run amok, often because of inadequate supervision, occasionally for more sinister reasons. Serious investigators have asked whether the Boston Marathon bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, might have been a federal informant. And there seems to be no question but that the al-Qaeda terrorist who led the 1998 Nairobi Embassy bombing and trained most of the organization’s top leadership — Ali Mohammed — was protected by the FBI and CIA.

Granting more powers to such agencies and shielding them from judicial review compounds the problem by preventing exposure and correction of their bureaucratic failures. Ordinary citizens and their liberties are best protected when law enforcement is subject to public review and criticism, not protected by official secrets acts and emergency decrees that cover up their incompetence, disorganization, or lack of resources. The people of America and France both should learn from their respective national failures that freedom is not won by repression.

Jonathan Marshall is a regular contributor to Consortiumnews.com.

50 comments for “Macron Cracks Down on French Liberty

  1. Paul Schofield
    July 17, 2017 at 03:13

    The French are famous for their courage, Their National anthem says it all. Macron and his billionaire backers will be faced down if history tells us anything.

  2. Anónimo 2
    July 10, 2017 at 15:36

    Macron does not give a shit about security, I am sure that for all he cares ordinary people could go to hell and die.

    No, this is all about creating a terror regime before cracking down on french workers and unions.

    And the saddest part is that the leftists are a bunch of retards that voted him to “stop the far right”. Poor suckers did not realize that macron was further in the right than le pen.

    • Skip Scott
      July 11, 2017 at 10:50

      Kind of reminds you of the poor suckers who voted for Obomber twice. Hope and Change my a**!

  3. exiled off mainstreet
    July 8, 2017 at 09:52

    Now we know who the real fascist in the running for the French presidency was. It was the west’s bizarre empty suit candidate, not the daughter of a man with a negative history, but who had evolved away from this past.

  4. July 8, 2017 at 09:33

    Thanks for the video, backwards evolution, it’s hilarious. Whether directed where to move or not, Macron looks like he’s seeking attention. Putin looks like, “Let’s get this over with”. Erdogan looks disgusted, and Merkel plays the Mama Hen.

  5. Michael Kenny
    July 8, 2017 at 08:44

    Macron’s measures are fairly standard in Europe and are popular in France. How effective they may or may not be is a matter for the French.

    • Antonia
      July 8, 2017 at 12:20

      Really? Your evidence?

      • Skip Scott
        July 8, 2017 at 13:45

        Hi Antonia-

        Michael Kenny is a hit and run troll full of MSM BS. He never responds to a rebuttal,and until recently used to wait a couple days to post at the bottom of the comment stream. I’ve tried shaming him, but to no avail. I suspect he is being paid and has no real interest in discussion.

        • Antonia
          July 8, 2017 at 16:00

          I know Skip. I have come across him before. I presume he has Irish ancestry.Whether he is Catholic or Protestant in origin, I am not certain.

  6. Anon
    July 8, 2017 at 07:23

    Beat it, spammer.

  7. Anon
    July 8, 2017 at 07:23

    Beat it, spammer.

  8. Anon
    July 8, 2017 at 07:22

    Moderator: time to edit Mr. Valentine until he learns to edit himself.

  9. Anon
    July 8, 2017 at 07:21

    Moderator: time to edit Mr. Valentine until he learns to edit himself.

    • Skip Scott
      July 8, 2017 at 08:02

      Anon-

      Best just to ignore the trolls. This one seeks to disrupt the conversation by flooding it with meaningless BS.

  10. backwardsevolution
    July 7, 2017 at 20:18

    Jessica and others – look at this video showing Macron wanting to get next to Trump when the G20 photographs were taken. It’s pretty interesting to see how he maneuvered through the crowd. It’s about 40 seconds.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9yz7GWNfBQ

    • backwardsevolution
      July 7, 2017 at 23:45

      In the spirit of truth, I should correct the record. Upon watching this video again, it appears that Macron was directed to go next to Trump. Sorry about that.

    • July 8, 2017 at 01:05

      backwardsevolution et al….My wife subscribes to a French channel and we watched the debates before the first round(she has dual citizenship and can vote in their election). Although I speak conversational French, like my hearing, it has diminished over the years. Nevertheless, with my wife’s help I was able to follow the debates. I believe there were 11 candidates but we only watched about half. Jessejean mentioned Trudeau and yes, Macron is cut from the same mold, but he reminds me even more of Gavin Newsom, the consummate neoliberal with a liberal mask who will be running for governor of California in the next election.

  11. Litchfield
    July 7, 2017 at 20:04

    Huh?
    Why all the poesy?
    Just spit it out, man!

  12. Kathryn
    July 7, 2017 at 20:03

    This coincides with this article on what Germany and NATO are doing regarding implementing martial law in the EU, and it mentions Macron http://www.globalresearch.ca/germany-and-nato-towards-martial-law-preparing-for-a-fascist-repression-in-europe/5590292

  13. July 7, 2017 at 19:50

    I wonder, too, if there was fraud in the French election? It just didn’t seem that Macron would have done that well, was it 52%?

    • Chucky LeRoi
      July 8, 2017 at 04:04

      I am no political statistics expert. Please correct my my mistakes, but I think the 52% figure is the percentage of votes cast in the second round only. The French system of weeds out the wide fields of candidates – so many that no one could get anything near a majority- through a first round. The top two candidates (above a certain percentage?) go to the second round.

      If I have my figures correct, there was historically low turnout and unusually high “blanc” votes. In the French voting mechanics you put a piece of paper with the candidates name on it in a box. You have the possibility of a blank white paper. A kind of protest non-vote, as it is not actually counted. The actual percentage of eligible voters that Macron got in the second round is in the 16-18% range I think. Something like that. Hardly a mandate. But as stated in other comments, Macron was/is the darling of the media.

      Like BobH below, my wife is French. I am sitting in France as I write this, though we live in the US for now. I have often used the phrase that I see the Fench as having enlightened themselves into sheer idiocy. My French family usually agrees. People could simply not get over the Le Pen name and the FN party label to actually listen to what she has to say, look at her actual policies – often to the left of the “Socialists” – and plans to implement them. I don’t agree with everything, but at least she had more on the ball than “Think Spring”. With her baggage and the entire media world ignoring anyone but Macron (I can show you pictures of the news stands in France pre-election: literal wall-to-wall Macron). The other candidates had enough political and financial dirt due to their years in French politics that they were easily picked off by the the same press.

      If you spend any time looking into the money, the people, the powers, and the ad campaign, a very clear picture of what this hologram is appears. He is a place holder, a continuation of the Hollande/elitist pro-EU policies. This is a President who said there is no such thing as French culture, and “won”. This does not bode well.

      • exiled off mainstreet
        July 8, 2017 at 09:57

        This fully confirms the view of anybody looking outside the media power structure for their information. Macron won because the propaganda power structure has reached a critical mass, and people couldn’t see through the name “Le Pen” despite the fact that, as indicated again in this commentary, her policies were more left than right and she had the interests of the populace rather than the neoliberal power structure.

        • Chucky LeRoi
          July 8, 2017 at 15:20

          Please excuse the typos and incomplete and confusing sentences. It was an early morning, pre-caffeine, jet lagged attempt at elucidation of the local voting system. And I did get the figures close to correct.

          The 52% is the percentage of VALID votes cast in the second round. Blanc votes,or any paper vote cast that is marked, torn, defaced, or even folded more than once are not counted in the overall total, driving the percentage even higher. But the 16-18% of eligible voters is correct.

  14. Cal
    July 7, 2017 at 19:05

    You have to laugh about all this preventing terriers from entering the US by not giving them visas.
    I have been laughing at it for 16 years—while anyone who wants to get in the US can jump over our southern boarder,
    Its all a con.

  15. Anon
    July 7, 2017 at 18:38

    Please separate marginally-related lyrics from the message; readers do not owe you decryption attempts.
    While some commenters have posted good political poetry and lyrics, you will notice that it is not vague or ambiguous in meaning.

  16. Anon
    July 7, 2017 at 18:38

    Please separate marginally-related lyrics from the message; readers do not owe you decryption attempts.
    While some commenters have posted good political poetry and lyrics, you will notice that it is not vague or ambiguous in meaning.

  17. Anon
    July 7, 2017 at 18:37

    Please separate marginally-related lyrics from the message; readers do not owe you decryption attempts.
    While some commenters have posted good political poetry and lyrics, you will notice that it is not vague or ambiguous in meaning.

  18. Anon
    July 7, 2017 at 18:33

    Please separate marginally-related lyrics from the message; readers do not owe you decryption attempts.
    While some commenters have posted good political poetry and lyrics, you will notice that it is not vague or ambiguous in meaning.

  19. Sam F
    July 7, 2017 at 18:25

    From some distance it appears that a need for investigative efficiency was used by tyrants as an opportunity for repression.
    The assumption that a young leader might be liberal, his appeal to women, the willingness to believe claims of necessity. Did he not emerge rather suddenly with no real history to support his claimed politics? Why would he extend such a long repression of liberties for tens of millions, promising ever more repressive laws, due to incidents amounting to a few percent of the annual auto death rate?

    I expected a great outcry from this cradle of liberty, a nation of educated and politically aware people. One wonders whether manipulation of mass media has gone further there than even the US.

  20. James
    July 7, 2017 at 17:28

    “Amnesty International has compiled a list of 100 ways the Trump administration has tried to threaten human rights” https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2017/04/usa-100-ways-trump-has-threatened-human-rights-in-first-100-days/
    Macron’s more like Trump than MSM thought. Or is Amnesty right about Macron and wrong about Trump?

    • Jack Mihoff
      July 9, 2017 at 18:06

      @James Whoever wrote that list is smoking crack. Having Secure borders, enforcing immigration laws, not paying for 3rd-world abortions, and banning migrants from countries that Obama drone-striked to oblivion before he left office are not human rights violations.

  21. jfl
    July 7, 2017 at 17:24

    1. In the name of preventing “threats to public order,” the government over a period of 18 months issued 155 decrees banning protests, and 574 measures prohibiting specific individuals from taking part in protests against proposed labor law changes.

    The latter statistic is particularly notable because Macron plans to issue sweeping decrees to limit the power of unions over working conditions and company firing policies. Such proposals have triggered mass demonstrations and violent clashes with police, in recent months.

    2. It turns out that Coulibaly and two fellow Islamist radicals who committed the January 2015 attacks acquired their weapons, through an intermediary, from a right-wing police informant and former mercenary named Claude Hermant. He claims to have worked as an agent under the supervision of intelligence officers in the customs service and gendarmerie, a national military police force under the Ministry of Interior.

    3. Information about Hermant’s role was suppressed in 2015 by the Interior Minister, who invoked a state secrets privilege.

    have the french { germans, brits, americans } found yet another ‘good’ use for their ‘islamic’ terrorists … at home?

    it certainly appears that they have, doesn’t it?

  22. backwardsevolution
    July 7, 2017 at 17:18

    How convenient. A ton of refugees are allowed to flood into Europe and then they say, “Whoops, in the chaos a few terrorists slipped through!” It’s a perfect backdrop to now add in some false flags and paid provocateurs, and then voila – a clampdown on liberty, exactly what they wanted.

    Yes, I say “allowed” because they could have and would have stopped the refugees if they had wanted to. I mean, they bomb whole villages, towns and cities, yet we’re supposed to believe that just because these people are coming in boats, that somehow they’re not to be touched? Yeah, right. They just provided an excuse to clamp down.

    I believe in Syria, if you are a young man, you are required to join the military. So these young male refugees who flooded into Europe were doing so to escape joining the army (I can’t blame them; they don’t want to die). Saudi Arabia provided a ton of money for mosques to be built throughout Europe, insisted on training and installing hand-picked imams to these mosques, and these imams turned around and incited the European-born terrorists to go off and fight in Syria because the young Syrian males were not going to join in.

    So you have the young Syrian-born males fleeing Syria, and the young European-born male terrorists going to Syria. Nice little circle of chaos.

    • Realist
      July 8, 2017 at 04:26

      Very perceptive analysis, BackwardsE, and I like your description of the “circle of chaos.” Moreover, the hardened veteran terrorists returning to Europe from their tours of duty in the Middle East are not being hassled or detained by their enabling governments. They just move back to Sweden or Germany with their war brides and pockets full of blood money to live the American-molded Dream of bucks, babes, and no restraints even as they try to infuse European culture with Sharia law. Only the folks in the four so-called Visegrad countries (Poland, Hungary, Czech Rep. and Slovakia) seem to have caught on to the self-destructive tendencies in the rest of Europe. Of course, for resisting demands on their sovereignty by the EU they are called racist. To be fair, maybe America should take in all the refugees from the Middle East, since we started the fire. Silly me, I forgot what hypocrites we are. In the next election, some presidential candidate will campaign on putting up a dome around the entire country. But stopping the wars would be unthinkable. Cause and effect analysis is not in our intellectual tool kit.

      Apparently, Europe operates exactly like the United States now, in that foreign policy, once implemented, can never be changed no matter who or what party is elected to the highest office. Kinda makes you think that the pervasive neocon, neoliberal, NWO agenda is being imposed by someone or some group on a higher plain than the elected national leaders. And, either the voters are just compliant sheep or the polls are fabrications, just like in America, because the sources of so much discontent, like Merkel, seem as resilient as Dracula. Even if they must step aside, like Holland, to give the appearance of change, their policies will remain and eventually become more hardened. The flies in the ointment were Brexit and Trump. When things like that don’t go to plan, blame Putin and drum up as much chaos and conflict as possible. Undermine the power base of national leaders, like May and Trump, until they comply with exactly what the world shadow government wants.

      • Skip Scott
        July 8, 2017 at 08:00

        The goal of the globalizing corporate warmongers is to make all governments subservient to them, and to destroy any notion of national sovereignty, or service to the public. “Country” or “Nation” will become obsolete concepts.

        From the Greg Brown tune “Where is Maria”

        “There’ll be one corporation, selling one little box,
        and it’ll do what you want, and tell you what you want,
        and cost whatever you got.”

      • Joe Average
        July 9, 2017 at 11:49

        Realist,

        with regard to the hardened terrorists I’m wondering if they haven’t been supported by Western intelligence agencies. Maybe two years ago I had read an article on counterpunch pointing out that the crazies were able to set up a central bank – linked to the Western banking system – in Libya only three months after Gaddafi had been toppled.

        As a Western European who inevitably has contact with Muslims (cashiers in super markets, craftsman, …) on a daily basis I’ve never encountered anyone promoting Sharia Law. Many are decent people who want the same as everyone else (independent of faith): having a family, getting a proper education for their kids, etc.

        The folks of the Visegrad countries are a separate topic. German construction companies, industrial slaughterhouses and farmers exploit the workers from those countries, thereby undercutting the minimum wage of Germany. Also many of the Visegrad countries get prepped up by tax payers money of Western European countries. If they want to get handouts, they should allow refugees into their countries. Poland for example joined the coalition of the willing and assisted in the invasion of Iraq. They helped damaging their “neighbors” home and now bitch about the neighbor asking for shelter.

        The whole situation is far more complex than written above. (If the West hadn’t destroyed Eastern European industry, those Europeans would stay in their own countries and Western corporations couldn’t use this situation to threaten to move their production facilities eastward) Nevertheless the whole situation can’t be explained in a black and white way. There are many nuances of gray.

        • Stephen
          July 11, 2017 at 07:26

          Actually, Joe, in my recollection that bank was set up by the Libyan “rebels” BEFORE Gaddafi was toppled, as the rebellion was just getting started, and was an immense help in the coup d’etat. At any rate it’s become clear now, from the WikiLeaks hack of Killary’s emails, that the real reason for toppling Gaddafi was the fact that he wanted to set up a gold-based African bank, something the alternative press has said all along.

    • Joe Average
      July 9, 2017 at 12:16

      backwardsevolution,

      excellent comment. You also see through this whole charade of “divide et impera”.

      I would like to add some information regarding false flags and agent provocateurs.

      A while ago I had read an article that was promoted on the web site of PCR. Sadly I can’t find the link anymore (searching would take too long and I’m somewhat impatient right now. I’ll try to sum it up in my own words. As far as I remember the article had been written by John W. Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute. He explained very detailed the way US agencies trick mentally handicapped people into “planning” terrorist activities, just in order to bust them right before anything happens. In my opinion these procedures serve several objectives:

      – highlighting the importance of the involved agencies
      – justification of even more restrictive laws (in the name of National Security)
      – dividing the citizens along religious lines (in addition to the existing division of Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, …)
      – providing the private prison complex with “human supply”

      Probably the list is even longer. The above mentioned points are those that came to my mind instantly whilst typing this comment.

      Another group that can be radicalized is the losers of the system. You can radicalize young Muslims as well as young Western European Whites with similar results: the gullible majority of the citizens will turn to the state and ask for protection. Of course the state (politicians, bureaucrats, …) will be glad to provide that security, thereby clamping down more and more.

  23. Cal
    July 7, 2017 at 17:16

    They are now moving to the end game of the chaos they helped create.

    Chaos strategy has been a silent partner to neoliberalism and most ‘isms’ forever . The pattern is wait for a crisis or help foment one, declare some “extraordinary policies”, suspend some or all democratic norms – and then ram the special interest through as quickly as possible.
    Once those interest have control its very profitable for them. Think of the looting that occurs in some protest riots—–magnified by a trillion.

    Connoisseur of Chaos
    The dystopian vision of George Soros, billionaire funder of the Left
    Stefan Kanfer

    When the dust was cleared and the debris swept away, he stood revealed as Hillary Clinton’s most generous billionaire donor. Yet his name rarely surfaced during the presidential campaign—and that’s generally the way he likes it. Dark Money, Jane Mayer’s book about covert political funding, refers to the Koch brothers more than 300 times in its excoriation of the “radical right” but mentions progressive icon George Soros just six times; three are footnotes.
    One of the planet’s richest men, his past marred with crimes and misdemeanors, the 86-year-old billionaire skates on. More than a decade ago, he moved his financial headquarters to Curaçao, a tax-free haven in the Caribbean designed for monied hypocrites who talk one game and play another. The place is not bulletproof; on occasion, Soros has been accused—and even convicted—of insider trading. A French court found him guilty of that crime and levied a fine of $2.3 million. In the parlance of the billionaires’ club, that was small change. Investigative journalists, a dwindling cadre, show little interest in him. They prefer to scrutinize safer, softer targets. If they took even a cursory look, though, they would see that Soros’s global reach and influence far outstrip those of the Koch brothers or other liberal bogeymen—and that underlying it all is a vision both dystopian and opportunistic.

    “The main obstacle to a stable and just world order,” Soros has declared, “is the United States.”
    Ergo, that constitutional republic must be weakened and its allies degraded. The Sorosian world order—one of open borders and global governance, antithetical to the ideals and experience of the West—could then assume command.”

  24. July 7, 2017 at 17:09

    Right, Macron is the French Obama. And Obama endorsed him three days before the French election. Meddling in another nation’s politics?

    • backwardsevolution
      July 7, 2017 at 18:55

      And Macron’s top campaign people had come from Obama’s campaign; same people.

    • Litchfield
      July 7, 2017 at 19:59

      Yep, pretty boys with uberppowerful spouses.
      Weird.
      Ya know what would make my day?
      To hear one of these boy utter the p-word in public.
      Ha ha ha. That would be so funny.

  25. Jessejean
    July 7, 2017 at 16:57

    Excellent article. The Span was practically wetting itself over this pretty boy’s speech yesterday. Like Trudeau, the neo libs have crowned Macron another new Obama. I’ll say. The only good thing about these guys is that now we’ll be able to see with greater clarity how Obusha fucked over the US, because they will carry on his corporate policies. But only as long as we have good, clear articles like this. Personally, I believe that 99.9% of all the hotspots in the world have been created by the CIA doing corporate bidding, using agents provacators (sp?) or just plain agents to carry out the anti-democratic crap we see around the world. I wouldn’t doubt that CIA funds found their way to Le Pens coffers. And plan on some scary shit for someplace in the US, some bastion of liberal thought–Seattle, Portland, SF. Even Minneapolis. But closer to the mid-terms. So keep writin’ Jonathan, we need the early warning.

  26. Tom
    July 7, 2017 at 16:49

    Rt is propaganda? The same argument could be made for US corporate media.

    • Jessejean
      July 7, 2017 at 17:02

      Tom–yes. And Rachel is their queen. I sort have a broke-back thing about her: I just can’t quit her. But the more I watch, the more I see how she does it, how she twists what sound like neutral observations into near slander. She did it with the Intercept yesterday. It was the most shameful display of wasted talent since Elvis got fat and went to Las Vegas.

      • backwardsevolution
        July 7, 2017 at 18:52

        Rachel is a very sick person.

  27. mike k
    July 7, 2017 at 16:36

    The rich and powerful make the rules.

  28. Abe
    July 7, 2017 at 16:31

    “Only the terminally naïve would deny that Macron was the candidate of globalized Atlanticist elites in thrall to the diktats of the financial system. As a bonus, he also dutifully follows the standard Russophobia – as in his charges against Moscow of pursuing a ‘hybrid strategy, combining military intimidation and an information war.’

    “Macron was skillfully sold as an ‘outsider’ – yet he is backed by the ultimate French insider A-list. Its members include the Rothschilds; the Montaigne Institute; the Saint-Simon Foundation; the Terra Nova think tank; insurance giant AXA; Jacques Attali; Alain Minc; LVMH boss Bernard Arnault (also a media tycoon); and telecom and media billionaire Patrick Drahi.

    “He is, according to an elite insider cited by Le Monde, a fantasy come true for members of Le Siècle – the premier elite club in Paris: ‘A left-winger implementing a pro-business policy.’”

    Putrin, Trump and ‘my guy’ Macron
    By Pepe Escobar
    http://www.atimes.com/article/putin-trump-guy-macron/

    • rosemerry
      July 7, 2017 at 17:33

      All correct. Macron ‘s sneaky tricks, helped by his control of the media, his banking support, his anti-labor laws under the “socialist” Hollande, plus the terror of the French people that supporting Marine Le Pen’s policies might lead to fascism, helped him win a huge majority although fewer than half the people like his policies. The “blanc” vote and abstention were the largest ever seen in France- people trying to protest.

    • July 9, 2017 at 22:52

      Macron is the architect of the labor law which the French protested so much, the police themselves staged a protest on so much protesting.
      It boggles the mind how the French were convinced to vote for him simply because he left the then current government as minister of labor, to found a new party. The whole thing just seems too easy.

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