By Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely crossposted
ISTANBUL – Emmanuel Macron is no Talleyrand. Self-promoted as “Jupiterian”, he may have finally got down to earth for a proper realpolitik insight while ruminating one of the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs key bon mots: “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe’, a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no’, and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.”
27 June 2021 — Indian Punchline
European Union summit in Brussels, Belgium, June 25, 2021A thoughtful, far-sighted proposal by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron calling for resumption of the European Union-Russia summit met sudden death at the EU’s summit in Brussels on Friday.
27 October 2020 — Voltaire Network
by Thierry Meyssan
The French were stunned to learn that their government considers a public order measure, a curfew, to be effective in preventing an epidemic. Everyone, having understood that no virus breaks according to schedules set by decree, and given the many previous mistakes, asks the angry question: A curfew for what?
President Emmanuel Macron had chosen the star journalists of France2 and TF1, Anne-Sophie Lapix and Gilles Bouleau, to interview him on the Covid-19 epidemic. He announced a curfew to them as a health measure.
The second round of the French local elections, at the end of June, was bad news for president Emmanuel Macron, whose candidates did very poorly. In response, Macron switched prime ministers, replacing high-profile operator Edouard Philippe with an unknown right winger, Jean Castex, whose previous experience consisted mostly of being mayor of a town with 6,000 inhabitants. “I’m not looking for the limelight”, confirmed Castex on the day of his appointment. Meanwhile, mobilisations for Black lives and working-class anger at austerity and job losses have marked the month since the raising of the lockdown. What are the prospects for the year to come?24 January 2020 — The Bullet
The nationwide general strike in France, now entering its record seventh week, seems to be approaching its crisis point. Despite savage police repression, about a million people are in the streets protesting President Emmanuel Macron’s proposed neoliberal “reform” of France’s retirement system, established at the end of World War II and considered one of the best in the world. At bottom, what is at stake is a whole vision of what kind of society people want to live in – one based on cold market calculation or one based on human solidarity – and neither side shows any sign of willingness to compromise.
17 January 2020 — Consortium News
This conflict is essentially over policies that put the avaricious demands of financial markets ahead of the needs of the people, writes Diana Johnstone.
Striking ballet dancers perform at the entrance to the Opera Garnier in Paris, Dec. 24, 2019. (YouTube screenshot)
By Diana Johnstone
in Paris
Special to Consortium News
The people are angry with their government. Where? Just about everywhere. So what makes ongoing strikes in France so special? Nothing, perhaps, except a certain expectation based on history that French uprisings can produce important changes – or if not, can at least help clarify the issues in contemporary social conflicts.
17 October 2019 — Jack Rasmus
I was recently asked by a media source to answer the followning questions for an interview about the future of capitalism in general, and about recent comments on that theme by economist, Joseph Stiglitz, and France’s president, Macron. Here are my responses to the questions asked by the reporter:
27 March 2019 — Strategic Culture Foundation
There are few people in this world more odious than French President Emmanuel Macron after his behavior this week. I’m sure there are child molesters who are worse. But as a man who is pivotal in the future of hundreds of millions of people, his decision to order the French military to quell the Yellow Vests protests with live ammunition is simply vile.
23 March 2019 — Novara Media
In response to the explosive yellow vests (gilets jaunes) movement, French president Emmanuel Macron announced the “Great Debate” – a vast, unprecedented nationwide exercise in consulting citizens on how to fix France’s problems – starting in December 2018 and ending this March. Attempting to shore up his legitimacy and dampen contestation, Macron travelled the country engaging in lengthy debates with locally elected mayors. With his tour ending on 15 March, the yellow vests flocked to Paris, ransacking the Champs-Élysées and joining in two other large, simultaneous protests: one for climate justice, the other against state racism and police violence.
7 February 2019 — WSWS
The French National Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Monday to approve President Emmanuel Macron’s “anti-riot” law, undermining the right to protest and further expanding police powers.
11 December 2018 — Greanville Post – Consent Factory
So it appears the privatization of France isn’t going quite as smoothly as planned. As I assume you are aware, for over a month now, the gilets jaunes (or “yellow vests”), a multiplicitous, leaderless, extremely pissed off, confederation of working class persons, have been conducting a series of lively protests in cities and towns throughout the country to express their displeasure with Emmanuel Macron and his efforts to transform their society into an American-style neo-feudal dystopia. Highways have been blocked, toll booths commandeered, luxury automobiles set on fire, and shopping on the Champs-Élysées disrupted. What began as a suburban tax revolt has morphed into a bona fide working class uprising.
11 December 2018 — Voltaire Net
President Macron is often presented as a Rothschild Boy. This is true, but secondary. Thierry Meyssan demonstrates that he owes his electoral campaign mostly to Henry Kravis, the boss of one of the world’s largest financial companies, and to NATO – a considerable debt which weighs heavily today on the solution to the Yellow Vests crisis.
9 December 2018 — WSWS
For the fourth consecutive Saturday, “yellow vest” ( gilet jaunes ) protestors demonstrated yesterday across France against the rightwing government of Emmanuel Macron. They did so in defiance of ominous threats of state violence and a massive mobilization of security forces.
9 December 2018 — London GreenLeft – Europe Solidaires Sans Frontieres
Capitalist climate governance has always relied on pseudo-reforms that leave the richest free to accumulate capital, while dumping taxes on working people to nudge them in the ’right direction’. But as the protests of the gilets jaunes show, many working people no longer accept the moralising terms of capitalist approaches to climate change. In this article, Andreas Malm argues that if we really want to save this Planet, we must pursue a different kind of climate politics, one that could learn a great deal from the methods and tactics of the gilets jaunes.
5 December 2018 — WSWS
Over the past three weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have participated in “yellow vest” demonstrations in France against social inequality and austerity, demanding the fall of the hated government of the banker-president Emmanuel Macron.
4 December 2018 — Global Research
Every automobile in France is supposed to be equipped with a yellow vest. This is so that in case of accident or breakdown on a highway, the driver can put it on to ensure visibility and avoid getting run over.
So the idea of wearing your yellow vest to demonstrate against unpopular government measures caught on quickly. The costume was at hand and didn’t have to be provided by Soros for some more or less manufactured “color revolution”. The symbolism was fitting: in case of socio-economic emergency, show that you don’t want to be run over.
4 December 2018 — Global Research
After less than two years, France’s youngest President, Emanuel Macron, has become the de facto leader of Europe but the object of violence at home.
4 December 2018 — PM Press
Self-organized Yellow Vest Protest Movement Exposes Inequality and Hollowness of French Regime
Ignored by Macron, distorted by the media, courted by the Right, snubbed by the Left, the self-organized mass movement known as the Yellow Vests is seriously challenging the political and economic order in France.
4 December 2018 — Voltaire Net
For Thierry Meyssan, by taking to the streets, the French have become the first Western population to take personal risks to oppose financial globalisation. Although they do not realise it, and still imagine that their problems are exclusively national, their enemy is the same force that crushed the region of the African Great Lakes and a part of the Greater Middle East. In order to understand the project which inextricably unites these apparently disparate events, we have to take a step back.
3 December 2018 — Voltaire Net
The French Movement, the “Yellow Gilets” has been tirelessly demonstrating throughout France without a break since 17 November 2018. On 1 December, it organized its second national demonstration in Paris.
The New Dark Age 