ANTI-NEOLIBERALISM

RAMIN MAZAHERI—It seems amusing and hypocritical that a book about socialism is only being sold on Amazon, which is perhaps the most cutthroat capitalist corporation today. All I can say is: we tried. Amazon has bought up so many parts of the modern publishing industry, like CreateSpace, that there simply are no real options for us. We are looking, though.Bottom line: the most common phrase heard among leftist authors is, “just get the ideas out there”, because leftist ideas are so harshly repressed in the West, both formally and informally. And it’s not like we’re in this for the money.

TOM LUONGO—Macron is under the orders of his paymasters in The Davos Crowd to get control over France. He will not be removed from office as long as he acts in accordance with their wishes. By now they would have replaced him with someone more acceptable to defuse the situation.There is only one problem with that. There is no one else.Macron’s approval rating is abysmal. He’s polling behind Marine Le Pen’s National Rally who will send more members to the European Parliament than his En Marche will in May.

ALEX LANTIER—The result of the last intervention of the army against workers on what is currently French soil, in the insurrectionary strikes of 1947-8 against the bourgeois Republic established by the Gaullists after World War II and the fall of European fascism, was a massacre. As 350,000 miners went on strike, the army occupied the mines with an authorization to fire on the strikers. The resulting clashes led to six dead, thousands of wounded, and the firing of 3,000 miners, a decision legally recognized as discriminatory in 2011.

RAMIN MAZAHERI—Paris-based, Ramin Mazaheri has been given a front-row seat—or say, standing room—to watch the rise and rise of the Gilets Jaunes, and the tactics being developed by the French police to quell the movement. This not only includes a battery of increasingly dirty pool tactics on the streets, where the Gilets are beginning to respond in kind, but also a judicial noose that is quickly disosing of many civil rights French people thought they had. Here’s a report from Ramin.

CHRIS MARSDEN—“Jeremy Corbyn did the same as soon as he was elected Labour leader and maintains his silence to this day. He has done nothing to challenge the plot against Assange or any assault on democratic freedoms by the state apparatus. And he would not do so, even if he formed a government.”