If you haven't come across Sean Foo before, you are in for a treat. His economic, politically focused analyses, are usually brilliant. He approaches the world with an open mind and seems able to grasp a big picture. His take on Marine Le Pen's National Rally, and the clips he illustrates her policies with, are extremely well-chosen. It is also worth reading the comments under his video.
Great to see that the French are not backing down. Enjoy Ruptly footage of four and a half hours of Gilets jaunes marching in the street. A few translations: On est là! On est là! (We are here! We are here!) The writing on the cross that the man is carrying says, "Hope", with the O as a peace sign. The man with the loud speaker addressing the crowd at the crossroads repeats, "We are citizens above all!" The message on the banner carried by four men reads, "Grève Générale" - General Strike. (Australians lost the right to a general strike years ago - although that should not stop us.) To wit, one of the signs early in the march reads, "La force de l'injustice vient de l'obéissance." "The strength of injustice comes from obedience." Another sign, with Macron's face, "Qu'ils viennent me chercher!" "Come and get me!" Australians should be marching like this against the overpopulation that is now being forced at the pace of a full invasion by our so-called leaders. But we have been infilled, dispersed and thus disorganised. Time to unite as Australians, as citizens.
Marine Le Pen has called on French President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve the National Assembly after her party took over the bloc led by the French president in European elections.
Results as at 10.45am Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST)
“The President has no other choice but to dissolve the National Assembly and allow for a more democratic voting system in order to better represent this country’s majority political opinion,” Le Pen said, adding that it's now about her party versus Macron’s.
“The fading of the traditional parties and the polarization between the National Rally party and the [Emmanuel Macron’s] Renaissance party confirms that the political scene is now split between nationalists and globalists and that’s what dominates our political life.”
Le Pen's National Rally party may obtain around 24 percent of votes, according to different exit polls, narrowly beating Macron's party, which is expected to score some 22 percent. So far there were no comments from the president himself but Elysee officials were reported calling the results "disappointing" but not punishing, and not a reason for the government to abandon its agenda. [Source https://www.rt.com/news/460325-lepen-macron-dissolve-assembly/]
It looks like the scare tactics of the latest globalist party in France, Macron's Republique en Marche, have reached their use-by date, as the French among other Europeans, realise that Macron is a hollow man or, as the Italian president once said, "a laboratory creation". This is despite the enormous support from the mainstream media received by Anglophile Macron, who has banned RT from press conferences, pursued journalists for exposing shameful French military secrets, and embraces the false-ideology of 'fake news'. The dogged resistance of the Yellow Vests in France has probably paid off, and it will be interesting to see what new forms and definition this popular French movement will take between now and the next French Presidential elections - which are not until 2022.
Interesting also is the third force in France's trending European Parliamentary elections - Europe Green Ecology (Europe Écologie Les Verts ( EELV ou EÉLV). This is a French ecological political party. Some of its policies coincide more or less with those of Rassemblement National in its desire to protect local production and avoid long-distance imports, and to promote permaculture in urban areas.
It also wants to restrict the profits of middlemen. It is anti-GMOs, wants to limit the use of pesticides, and to increase the place of organic agriculture. Its last policies might encounter resistance from agriculturalists among Rassemblement Nationale supporters and even Yellow Vests: Regarding livestock, it rejects industrialised agriculture and wants to limit the amount of meat raised in Europe in order to minimise nitrates impacting on soils. Its desire to reduce meat-consumption is also based on an old dietary model that associates the consumption of red meat with high cholesterol, but does not examine the role of combining meat and animal fats with starches and sugars, which seems to be the real culprit in obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
See inside a videoed discussion on the question of Did the French police use excessive force against the Yellow Vests? Criminologist, Xavier Raufer, one of the guests, describes a situation where the French government allows the same violent saboteurs, known to the police, to continually attend Yellow Vest demonstrations and cause havoc. The police response has caused injuries, maimings and deaths, mostly through the use of rubber bullets. President Macron has been criticised by Human Rights organisations and the United Nations, but he persists in allowing career sociopaths to break shop windows and assault people, using this as an excuse for his own extreme violence. The discussion was on the amazing Frédéric Taddeï's show, Interdit d'interdire [Forbidden to forbid] on RT France.
Jérôme Rodrigues, a Yellow Vest, who lost an eye to one of those rubber bullets, also in the discussion, talked about "15,000 rubber bullets. More than in the last five years. It's pretty enormous." He described the unpleasant faces Macron makes when he is criticised for shooting at his own people, whilst he fancies himself encouraging democracy in lesser countries.
Did the [French] police use excessive force [against the Yellow Vests]?
XAVIER RAUFER, Criminologist : [Translation from French]: "You have asked quite a serious question. Everyone knows that there are violent elements. In sum, 300 young men from the extreme left, called the “Black Block”[2] and about 50 extreme right nationalists. Although measures to stop them could easily have been taken – because they are the violent elements – that is, if ever these individuals were withdrawn from the demonstrations, 90% of the violence would disappear. But never, at any moment, in any of these demonstrations, has anything been done to stop them, as the law permits, to arrest them in their homes, before the demonstrations.
You know, once I spoke to some of the upper management police in Paris. They have the entire list of every Black Block. They know who they are. They come from rotten suburbs full of drug addicts and police informers. Furthermore, the police don’t only know who the French ones are. There is a European police network, and when wide boys come from the Holland Black Block or the German Black Block, a list of their vehicules, with the registration numbers, and the road they are travelling on, are communicated. As for the extreme right nationalists, [at the time of] one of the most violent of all the demonstrations in December, those people gathered in front of their meeting place – the conspirators – in front of their meeting place. From there video-cameras followed them, without interruption, right to Place de l’Etoile [Paris square], where they were able to begin their violence. No-one stopped them. They were followed minute by minute via the police’s urban video cameras. Why were they allowed to go ahead?" [1]
People may have wondered why I have had almost nothing to say on candobetter about the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) when I have otherwise often commented on and translated French political material. It is not because I am not interested in what is happening; it is because I am too interested. As some people know, I specialise in comparing French and British land-tenure and inheritance systems and the effect they have on political organisation. I was not surprised that France was able to produce a movement like the Yellow Vests (which has many activities besides public demonstrations), when no other European or Anglosphere country has been able to.
For the last two years I have been working on a book about why the French were able to sustain a democratic republican revolution (1789-1871) but the British could not. I began it in 2007, but it was interrupted by dramatic life events, and I am not sure when I will finish it - but I am working hard on it. To my mind, France is probably the only country where ordinary people are still able to self-organise a response to economic liberalism, mass immigration, and constant overseas warring. That is because their land-tenure and planning system means that they are still viscously organised in families and clans in place - at least outside Paris. President Sarkozy made some of the first changes to inheritance law that would break this organic system down. Macron is using a sledge hammer.
The British (Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English) made many attempts to revolt against the system at the time of the French Revolution, but they were so disorganised and divided by constant population movement, that it was easy for the viscous elites to corrupt them with paid spies. This is the system that Australia, Canada and the United States imported.
NOTES
[1] Original French, transcribed by Sheila Newman: La Police fait-elle un usage excessif de la force? XAVIER RAUFER, Criminologist : Vous posez une question qui est tout de même grave. Tout le monde sait qui sont les éléments violents. En gros, 300 garçons issue de l'extrême gauche, qu’on appelle les 'Black Blocs', et une cinquantaine issue de l'extrême droite identitaire. A aucun moment, les mesures qu'on pouvait aisément prendre - c'est eux les éléments violents - c'est à dire que si jamais ces individus sont retirés de l'ensemble des manifestations, 90% des violences disparaissent. Et jamais, a aucun moment, dans aucune des manifestations, rien n'a été entreprit, comme la loi de permettait, pour les arrêter le matin chez eux, avant les manifestations. Vous savez, une fois j'ai parlé à des grands patrons de la direction de renseignements de la préfecture de police de Paris. Ils ont la liste intégrale de tous les Black Blocs. Ils savent qui c'est. Ce sont des milieux qui sont pourris de toxicomanes, d'indicateurs de police. Et, non seulement, ils connaissent les français, mais l'Europe de la police existe, et quand des gaillards arrivent d'Hollande ou arrivent d'Allemagne Black Blocs, la liste des véhicules, avec les numéros des véhicules, l'autoroute par laquelle ils vont arriver, est communique. Quant à l'extrême droite identitaire, un des manifestations les plus violentes du mois de décembre, ces gens-là se sont réunis devant leur locale, - les conspirateurs - devant leur locale. De là les cameras les ont suivi, sans discontinuer, jusqu'à la place de l’Etoile, ou ils ont pu commencer à casser. Personne ne les a interrompus. Ils étaient suivis de minute en minute par les cameras urbaines a la préfecture de police. Pourquoi laisse-t-on faire?
[2] Black Block or Black Bloc refers to violent people who wear black and disguise themselves with scarves etc in political demonstrations.
Railway workers, protesting against changes to the French National Railways [Société nationale des chemins de fer - SNCF], forced their way into the Paris offices of Macron's political party, the Republic on the Move (la Republique en Marche (LREM)) on Friday 4th of May in the afternoon. The economic rationalist French government has used the Orwellian term 'reforms' to describe these changes, which roll back hard won twentieth century gains to workers in France, whilst supporting tax reductions for the super rich.
A Republic on the Move employee told franceinfo that about 100 railway workers broke into Emmanuel Macron's political party offices. "They broke the door and stayed half an hour in the courtyard before being removed by the police." They chanted their slogan, 'We are angry railway workers and we won't let you push us around."
A political party spokesperson said that the party valued to the right to demonstrate, but would not support any form of violence and intended to make a formal complaint.
"This is a symbolic act," explained Fabien Villedieur, a delegate of South-Rail (Sud-Rail) to franceinfo . Since the government has "refused to talk with us, refused to negotiate, we have gone to the seat of Emmanuel Macron's party." According to him, there were "400 activists from South and from the General Confederation of Labour." [Confédération Générale du Travail - CGT.] Their banner carried the slogan, "We won't let you break the French National Railway."
The union member admitted that the door of the offices of the Republic on the Move party had been broken. After that lightening action, the railway workers went on foot to the Opera Place in Paris for a brief meeting before dispersing.
The offices of the Republic on the Move opened at 63 re Sainte Anne, in the heart of Paris, in September 2017.
The term, "Republic on the Move" has been compared to the Soros financed American organisation called "moveon.org", which is similar to GetUp in Australia. The Party was remarkable in causing the disintegration of all established French political parties, including the French socialist party, with the exception of the Front National. See https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/02/whos-behind-the-mysterious-rise-of-emmanuel-macron/
Video & translation: "Today your announcements show that your project is not humanitarian, but strictly political, since you no longer even hide the fact that your more or less single intention is to overturn the Syrian government. You are taking us back to dark days, where one of your predecssors, arguing humanitarian reasons, announced that he wanted to overturn Gaddaffi's government. We know where that took us. The nations of the world did not give us a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council in order for us to follow servilely the way and the law of the strongest."
Translation (by Sheila Newman)
Marie Le Pen addresses Emmanuel Macron:
Mr President of the Republic,
If I have decided to address you directly here, this is because, on the pretext of chemical weapons use, (denied by the Syrian Government), the American president, Donald Trump, decided to attack Syria immediately.
This situation is all the more distressing because you yourself seem to want to associate our country with this new warlike adventure, before any independent investigation, without any consideration of international law, of our national interests, of our soldiers' lives, and of France's historic mission.
Yet, as France's attack on Iraq under President Chirac was vigorously condemned in the United Nations by his minister for foreign affairs, our country itself is called upon to make the voice of justice heard for world peace.
Already at that time, in 2003, do you remember, Mr President, some had already tried to get us to believe that there were weapons of mass destruction.
Today we know that unjustifyable gunboat policy of former times was based on a State's lie. A lie promoted in the theatre of mass media and all the way to the security council seats. That intervention, which France was unable to prevent, threw the whole Middle East into chaos and encouraged and armed Islamism.
The attacks we have experienced on our soil are almost the direct consequence, with the development of Daech, [...unintelligible] . The same scenario was repeated with the calamitous destabilisation of Syria and Libya, to which we owe today the immigration submerging Europe and the extension of jihadism in the Sahel and West Africa.
You are not ignorant of the fact that such political errors are never without consequence for us. Today your announcements show that your project is not humanitarian, but strictly political, since you no longer even hide the fact that your more or less single intention is to overturn the Syrian government.
You are taking us back to dark days, where one of your predecssors, arguing humanitarian reasons, announced that he wanted to overturn Gaddaffi's government. We know where that took us. The nations of the world did not give us a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council in order for us to follow servilely the way and the law of the strongest.
Who could believe that in these circumstances of exceptional gravity, France, which is an old country, a country that knows better than most the cost of war, should let itself be dragged into such war madness and lightly accept the roles of political pig [unknown metaphore] and military support.
Over and above this business in Syrian, we can only worry about the temptation of the western leaders to rebuild a new Berlin Wall, as if they were unable to see the world as it is today. Since 1989 the world has changed. The threats don't come from a secular state in the Middle East [Le Pen is referring to Syria, which is secular, as was Libya], nor from European powers which are potential allies in the battle against terrorism, but from groups or states that aspire to impose on the world, in the middle east, in Africa, or even in Europe, the theocratic dictatorship of a political Islam.
Our battle does not oppose western nations against Muslims, but Islamic totalitarianism against free countries, whether they are Muslim or not. The free world will come to the end of this criminal ideology and its hegemonic projects. All our efforts must be directed to eradicate Daech and jihadist groups, even when they call themselves 'freedom fighters' in order to spread Islamist ideology.
We are the inheritors of a nation which can only be herself in a state of dignity, to quote De Gaulle. The situation demands that France be herself worthy of her history, her rank, worthy of the role that free nations have conferred on her through her glorious history.
"It all looks like a pretext for the United States and its allies to return to the scene and involve themselves in an armed conflict which, until now, they have lost to the Russians and the current Syrian government. So, there, I'm warning everyone, it's extremely dangerous. " (Jean-Luc Mélenchon)
French politician, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, condemns on warlike response to unverified chemical attack in Syria
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhfPrrz5rO0 (April 10, 2018)
(Jean-Luc Mélenchon is a left-wing veteran French politician who was placed 4th in first round of 2017 French presidential elections .)
"Everyone knows that in war the first casualty is truth. What actually happened on the ground is more or less unknown. And, the 'chemical attack', if there was one, is obviously abominable and should be condemned. But we still don't know who did it. It all looks like a pretext for the United States and its allies to return to the scene and involve themselves in an armed conflict which, until now, they have lost to the Russians and the current Syrian government. So, there, I'm warning everyone, it's extremely dangerous. I don't like at all the reception that Macron gave yesterday to three Baltic presidents who met for I don't know what reason, in Paris, and who came and played wargames to Mr Macron's applause. No, no and no. Russia is not our enemy; it is our partner. [Translated from the French [1] by Sheila Newman.]"
Macron and Gurria's Baltic politics
The Baltic presidents referred to by Mélenchon included Dalia Grybanskaite of Lithuania. There was also someone from Estonia. In a press announcement here https://www.lrp.lt/fr/centre-de-presse/communiqus-de-presse/la-chef-de-ltat-se-rend-en-visite-de-travail-en-france/29752, it says that Emmanel Macron, with OECD Secretary General, Angela Gurria, was looking at including Lithuania in the EU. This sounds like more attempts to disorganise current trading blocs, along the lines of US-NATO interference in Ukraine, in a manner which would negatively affect Russia.
As well as the arms trade and energy resources, other commercial trade and market blocs are motivating the current war rhetoric and threats. These can be seen as a continuation of the European trade wars that began in the 13th century, but carried out on a greater resource and production scale and with devastating weapons in reserve.
The links between Macron and the United States, and Soros funding to influence his election,[1] are an indication to me, along with his pro-US anti-Russia attitude and the variation of the traditional independent French approach to the Middle East, that France is in the grip of a globalist-financed economic ideologue from an elite internationalist class with little conscience or empathy. Macron came from 'nowhere' in political terms but was promoted by the French and international corporate press, which created such an unjustified anxiety about Le Pen, the other major Presidential candidate, as a nationalist threat akin to Hitler, that in an unprecedented move, the main traditional French political parties simply closed up shop, never to reopen. A number of the politicians exiting these defunct parties then joined Macron's staff, such was the mysterious promise of his candidacy.
French Politician, Marine Le Pen, says the conflict is pointless and France should not let the US boss it around.
"I think that currently France is contribution to the creation or the recreation of a certain form of the cold war with Russia. It's pointless, because it doesn't benefit France, or its economy, or international relations, to let the US, seeking to stir up a conflict with Russia, boss us around." (English voice-over, probably April 10, 2018, available at the 11.41 hrs point on the video of RT News at https://www.rt.com/shows/news/423839-rtnews-april-11-17msk/).
Le Pen has consistently called for peace instead of war and for Russia and Syria's sovereignty to be respected, which policy alone makes her unpopular with the globalists.
NOTES
[1][Original French transcribed by Sheila Newman from the video:]"Tout le monde sait que, dans les guerres, la première victime, c'est la vérité. Ce qui se passerait réellement sur le terrain, c'est à peu près inconnu. Et, 'l'attaque chimique' s'il y en a eu, est évidemment abominable, et doit être condamnée. Il reste à savoir qui aussi est livré. Ca ressemble beaucoup à un prétexte pour que les Etats Unis de l'Amérique et leurs alliés reviennent sur la scène et engagent un conflit armé que, jusqu'à présent, ils ont perdu en faveur des Russes et du gouvernement actuel de la Syrie. Bon, voila. Je mets en garde, c'est extrêmement dangereux. Je n'aime pas du tout la réception qu'a été faite hier des trois présidents baltes [?] réunis pour je ne sais pas pour quelle raison, à Paris, et qu'ils sont venus jouer les va-t-en guerre aux applaudissements de M. Macron. Non, non et non. La Russie n'est pas notre ennemi, c'est notre partenaire."
Rumours are flying round that the mainstream press and polls underestimated Marine Le Pen's popularity in the French election the way they did Trump's popularity. That Le Pen would have won were it not for the tearing of 15 million voting ballots in advance so that French law would declare them invalid and fail to count them. The National Front has complained that in several places voters received voting ballots for both candidates sent to their homes, but all the forms for Le Pen were torn. This happened in Ardèche, Allier, Savoie, Loire, Yvelines, Eure-et-Loir, and Hérault. The National Front addressed its complaints to the National Commission on Election Supervision (la Commission nationale de contrôle des élections), which replied that it would ask the Minister for the Interior to take every step to see that these facts, if they were proven, would not alter the validity of the vote count. In particular by asking voters to use the voting papers provided in the voting booths [rather than those sent to their homes]. Source: Reuters "Le FN se plaint de bulletins de Marine Le Pen déchirés," 6 May 2015.
One anonymous source estimates the number of damaged voting ballot forms therefore invalid votes submitted to be 15 million. But this source seems to assume that all torn voting forms delivered to homes were then used in the voting booths. How many were used? This 2017 Presidential election had the highest ever number - 12 per cent - of blank and void votes, i.e. votes that were handed in blank and votes that were disregarded as illegal for one reason or another. With or without formal election fraud, it is obvious that, if the mainstream press and the European Union and the government and all the major political parties had not tried to influence the French not to vote for Le Pen, she would probably have won outright and Macron would never have built up much steam. As it was, ALL the major French political parties disappeared overnight because they received so few votes. It seemed, indeed, as if many of their leaders had crossed over to Macron's party, which is more of a phenomenon than a real political party.
Here's what some people are saying in France about the election:
The numbers:
33 million votes cast (and counted). 16 million votes cast (and nullified due to damaged ballots, and claimed "forfeited protest votes".)
Votes cast to Macron: 22 million. Votes invalidated by damaged ballots (100 percent of these were LePen:) 15 million. Votes for LePen that were not invalidated by damaged ballots: 11 million. Probable actual protest votes, no more than 1 million LePen: 11 million plus 15 million is 26 million.
There is a piece going round, signed by 'Anon', which lists well-known facts about a Deep State organisation which is supposed to be funding Macron. It says, for instance, that Macron joined the Fondation Jean Jaures in 2006 and that this association is a puppet of the National Endowment for Democracy. Indeed, if you look at their political partners' website, you can see that The Center for American Progress is listed as one of their 'Political partners'. The Board of Directors of the Center for American Progress is redolent of the pre-Trump administration and the Clinton/Soros aligned. See some details of these links below the "Quick Rundown" inside. It does make sense, because Macron is backing the European Union which is really aligned with the United States and Macron has stated that he approves of Trump's recent foreign policy flip on the Middle East and North Korea. Macron has uncritically repeated the US CIA line of Putin being a dictator and a hacker.
Quick Rundown
-National Endowment for Democracy (NED) established to intervene in foreign politics in 1983.
-It is officially a non-governmental organization.
-It receives $50 million annually from the US government.
-Proceeds to intervene in foreign politics.
-1985 gets caught intervening in France against Mitterand.
-Helped depose Pinochet
-Finances candidates surreptitiously.
-Sets up “think tanks” to launder the money.
-Has shells for right, left, labor, and management.
-Macron is a fluent English speaker and ex-Rothschild & Co banker.
-Macron linked up with the NED in 2006.
-Joined Fondation Jean Jaurès, a French NED puppet in 2006.
-Spoke at Fondation Robert Schuman, another French NED puppet, events.
-François Hollande utilizes the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI another NED puppet) for the 2012 Socialist Party primaries.
-Tom McMahon, a DNC operative, helped the NDI organize the Socialist primaries in 2012.
-President Hollande appoints Macron as the Minister of Economy and Finance.
-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton notices him in 2012 in private correspondence.
-Tomicah Tillemann, her advisor, coordinated NED efforts though the State Department.
-Wikileaks confirmed the CIA interfered in the 2012 election.
-Tom McMahon returned to France again in 2016.
-Macron emerges as a well-funded dark horse candidate.
-Moves to the second round of the elections against Marine Le Pen.
-Macron endorsed by NED puppets Fillon, Sarkozy, Hollande, and Hamon.
Coincidence detected.
No-one else could beat Le Pen and neither could Macron without the deep state behind him. He seems to be a hollow man.
Fondation Jean Jaurès
(Macron has worked with the Fondation Jean Jaurès since 2006.) The Center for American Progress is listed as one of the Fondation Jean Jaurès's 'Political partners'. The Board of Directors of the Center for American Progress is studded with pre-Trump administration and the Clinton/Soros aligned pro-EU and NATO warmongers. "CAP receives money from multibillionaire hedge fund manager George Soros through two of his nonprofit groups, the Foundation to Support Open Society and the Open Society Institute. From 2005 through 2010, the two organizations gave CAP over $5.4 million. CAP receives money from other liberal-leaning foundations, including the Tides Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the foundation of Progressive Insurance chairman Peter B. Lewis." (https://www.activistfacts.com/organizations/528-center-for-american-progress/)
Board of Directors of the Center for American Progress
Sen. Tom Daschle, Chair
Neera Tanden, President
Secretary Madeleine Albright
Carol Browner
Glenn Hutchins
Jonathan Lavine
John Podesta
Susan Sandler
Tom Steyer
Donald Sussman
Jose Villarreal
Hansjörg Wyss
Hacked Macron emails
By the way, if anyone wants to download them all and do a search, the hacked Macron emails are at https://pastebin.com/bUJKFpH1, https://pastebin.com/bfaKJCZe and https://pastebin.com/LrFAayFz. I downloaded some of the smaller zip files and they opened okay without viruses etc. Their contents were plausible but not particularly revealing. You would have to go through about 9GB to tease out whatever is there of interest.
Conspiracy theory and fake news
It is a bit rich for various mainstream news outlets to sheet this all home to fake-news alternative blogs, though. If there are some fake news alternatives, they have nothing on the professionals, like the Center for American Progress and the New Democracy Foundation, which are bankrolled with millions of dollars and seed-fund revolutions to dissolve nations and turn them into consumers, in the name of 'freedom'. Open Societies Foundations and their offspring have greatly degraded Australia's home-grown political parties and NGOs. This is a tragedy. See /node/4992.
The only way people can escape the tyranny of funded organisations is not to support them. We need to communicate with each other, not through formal NGOs.
As the moderators summed up, Le Pen and Macron hold irreconcilably different points of view. This was a battle between a nationalist representing the French as a people and an ex-banker representing the global elite with all the support of banks, the mainstream media, the EU and the US-NATO bloc. Marine Le Pen is a highly skilled barrister, versed in criminal law, who was raised in anti-establishment politics, but one cannot help think of Joan of Arc trying to fight off the English here.
Marine Le Pen used the third presidential debate to lay out to the public the political misdeeds of Emmanuel Macron that the French and international mainstream press have preferred not to highlight on their favorite candidate. She began the debate on the offensive and hardly moved from that position the whole way through. Le Pen's barrister training was well in evidence as she used cross examination techniques on Macron, who initially stared back hostilely at her, expostulating feebly.
"A 'present' Monsieur Macron?" she echoed back at him, when he accused her proposed cost-savings from EU costs as being a 'present' to the French, "Did you call giving back to the French their own money as a 'present' ?"
You could see that Macron, for all his training, was becoming overheated.
"Your getting very angry M. Macron."
"I'm not."
"I can see you're getting very angry, M. Macron."
"I am not!"
Macron's principle technique was to accuse Le Pen of silliness and ignorance on matters of recent history, economics and tax policies, but Le Pen often seemed better versed in the details of these matters than her opponent, convincingly citing a multitude of documents and instances whilst Macron had none to hand.
She accused him of accepting finance from fundamentalist Muslim leaders in France who had championed the death penalty for homosexuals. Although he ducked and weaved, the shocking and documented accusations diminished him. The implication is that Macron is part of an EU policy for mass immigration to France which will have the effect of islamicizing France.
Economic policies
Macron began by attempting to defend his globalist policies as forward thinking, in line with comparable countries, and as inevitable.
For Australians who can understand French, we have heard it all before, the hollow promises of enterprise bargaining as a solution for unemployment. We have seen our industrial protections destroyed. Macron's program is the anglophone economic program of the early 1980s.
Mme Le Pen called him out for what it was: " Pitting one company against another [in the global economy] so that they give away all their workers' rights and so that the big ones win because the little ones cannot survive."
"You are very good at defending the strong by attacking the weak, M. Macron."
Macron: If we drop out of the EU and lose the Euro, peoples' savings will suffer.
Mme Le Pen: Like the Greeks? [1] To the contrary we need our independence so that I can stand up for the French and fight against the banks if they try to take French peoples' money to fix their own debts.
"I am the candidate for purchasing power. You are the candidate for buying up things, for, in your society, everything is for sale, men and wombs. You only see human relations according to the money they can bring. That is not my vision at all."
On foreign policy:
MACRON: "I refuse to take orders from Putin! That's the difference between me and Madame Le Pen.
LE PEN: [Putin] has asked nothing of me! The greatest danger today is taking orders from the European Union. Implying that Macron takes orders from the German chancellor, Mrs Merkel, Le Pen concludes: Whatever happens, France will be led by a woman on Tuesday: either by me or by Mrs Merkel.
LE PEN: "There is a lack of balance between German and French relations . When relations are balanced, we are not submissive or enfieffed to Germany. War came from the kind of submission you are recreating. You are causing an economic submission to Germany and that is very serious. At stake are our sovereignty and our independence and the defense of the French peoples' interests."
LE PEN: The world needs France to go back to her role of independent relations with other countries. There is no reason for us to not have good relations with Russia, nor for the US. We need to be heard in the world, the voice of independence, sovereignty, the voice of the people, or we will continue to be looked down on in the way Mrs Merkel has regarded us for years.
Le Pen said that Macron has arguments twice as old as he is. He recycles Reganism that everyone else was over years ago.
MACRON: "The big companies will save jobs ... enterprise bargaining. Competition. More flexibility for enterprises. Reform of unemployment benefits..."
LE PEN: "Minister of Economics, or should I call you Mr Holland's advisor? You were his advisor and the Minister of Economics for two years. If you knew how to solve France's unemployment problem, why didn't you avail President Hollande of your ideas in this? And if you didn't have any answers - because your results were extremely poor as regards unemployment - then why are you running for President of the Republic? It's the only real question that we should put to you, M. Macron. Because you were free to practice those policies and they were catastrophic because you did the only thing you know, M. Macron, you helped big business, as usual. You have no economic patriotism. We have to submit. Yours is a policy of submission.
Le Pen talked about 'intelligent protectionism'.
Terrorism
Macron said that terrorism is a problem for all developed countries, but you think we have to put the borders back the way they were to deal with it.
The establishment candidate
In this debate, Macron was faced with the task of finding new words and enthusiasm to defend the economic globalisation program that has been going on for decades now and which most people hate. He also had to defend himself against his lack of French patriotism. Le Pen had the superficially easier task of throwing up examples of why we should get rid of this program, such as EU austerity programs and Merkel's mass immigration. The only thing - but this is huge - that Macron had on his side was that the mass media have promoted the globalisation program so repetitively over the years that they have normalised its flimsy ideological tenets. People who watch mainstream media and take their opinions from those it deems authorities will find it hard to resist Macron's economic banalities, especially the wealthier ones and the would-be-rich who feel they may be gaining from globalism. The media also give comfort to the idea that nationalism is really a kind of right-wing extremism. And they are pushing Macron for all they are worth.
Le Pen pointed to how the establishment have carried Macron all the way. That the Socialist Party machine has been doing Macron's marketing strategy for him. Current President Francois Hollande (who is France's most unpopular president ever) has been spruiking for Macron, urging him to continue to carry on 'their' work. That Macron is the cherished child of the system and of the elites. That he uses cynical and shameful campaign arguments revealing behind them the coldness of the banker which he has probably never ceased to be.
Perhaps anxious to make people forget his reported statement that France has no culture, Macron attempted to couch his economic policies in patriotic tones: "I carry the French spirit of conquest, because France has always succeeded in the world. Her language is spoken on every continent, her history, her civilisation shines everywhere. We are strong on the world stage, the 5th economic power. Many changes are going to be necessary and that is what I am going to do. Governments have been incapable of doing this for years, for 30 years, but I am going to do the maximum to remedy this." [...] "Do the French want the spirit of defeat that you are carrying? You explain to the French that globalism is too hard for us and too hard for Europe, so we are going to close the borders and get out of the EU and the Euro. Other people manage, but not us."
Macron signals to the zionist lobby and Le Pen accuses him of diminishing Vichy responsibility for persecution of Jews
After Macron won the first round of the Presidentials, nationalist Marine Le Pen achieved wide and positive publicity by talking to workers about to lose their jobs at Whirlpool (relocating to Poland) while Macron fraternised with their bosses behind closed doors. One wondered what Macron could possibly do to compete with Le Pen's success in gaining the limelight in this. The next day Macron very ostentatiously attended a ceremony to commemorate Jews who had been burned to death in a church during the Second World War. He was filmed talking to a man who escaped this fate and who said he was afraid that right-wing extremists might take over France again. Macron swore to protect him from this as if Le Pen posed an actual threat.
In this third debate, Macron tried to identify Le Pen as anti-Jewish, but he was drawing a very long bow. Taking up a journalist's polemic talking point, he spoke of how French policemen had rounded up Jews during the Rafle du Vélodrome d’Hiver under the Vichy Regime and said that France needs to acknowledge this reality, as had Jacques Chirac and Hollande. Le Pen agreed that these events were 'shockingly horrible' but reminded Macron that there are two legal points of view as to whether these policemen were actually acting under a French government. She cited Presidents General De Gaulle, Mitterand and Chevenement who found that the Vichy Regime was illegitimate and that the real government of France was located in Britain with the Resistance and De Gaulle.
"Leave De Gaulle out of it! Jacques Chirac recognised it," Macron snarled.
Le Pen said that there are two points of view and no-one is bound by Chirac anymore than by another political leader's opinion. Furthermore, she said that anything that aims to diminish the responsibility of the Vichy Regime is a bad thing.
She also implied that Macron had sunk to a new low in using Jewish persecution to try and get ahead politically.
France does not have the same kind of wealthy zionist lobby that America has and Macron's apparent appeal to such a lobby seems symbolic of his allegiance to the US-NATO world politic.
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