FRANCE

SAKER FRANCOPHONE—Not only does he sell the Nation’s family jewellery to the French oligarchs, he also allows them to benefit from “tax optimization” – a euphemism for “legal tax evasion, only for the rich”. Here is a video explaining, in figures, the extent of tax evasion in France and Europe. Fraud confirmed by this interview with a member of the opposition. These videos explain that the recovery of this fraud would be more than enough for France to continue to have a social policy. But Macron’s ultra-liberal government prefers to let the rich defraud so as not to share rather than using it for the sake of the people. It will therefore continue to close hospitals, crèches, schools and retirement homes in the name of budgetary discipline, but actually to allow the private ones to make more money. A l’américaine. But the GJ, and those who back them, do not want to live in such a system.

JULIEN ROGUE—A film created in the heart of act 18 of the Yellow Vests in Paris on March 16th 2019. I bring you with me on this totally incredible day, where chaos mixes with hope, witnessing extraordinary violence, immersion in the heart of Paris, but also, through the spectrum of my lens, to relive this day, which will go down in the history as one of the most violent of the Yellow Vests movement. I wanted to make a summary of what I experienced during act 18 in Paris, but then… I didn’t have the words.So, in the face of so many things to say and so much to describe, I preferred to leave room for images, showing all that I could film through this film.

RAMIN MAZAHERI—I have seen Black Bloc and Antifa many times, and they are quite often genuinely disliked, unwelcome, wayward souls… mainly because so many of those souls act so very incorrectly, detrimentally and bewilderingly that the masked figures cannot possibly be honest leftists, but instead police who have infiltrated the movement.So, instead of arresting Black Bloc, I was told the cops did what they usually do: let them go, pick on the weak and arrest the inexperienced. I’m reporting what I was told and know….Bottom line: cops knew they were going to be provoked on the biggest protest day in months, and their response was not to quell disorder – which is what the Yellow Vests want – but to let it fester.

ALEX LANTIER—EU support for the coup in Venezuela marks a new exposure of the EU’s pretensions to be the gentler, more democratic alternative to US imperialism. It is ultimately no less ruthless and willing to resort to war than Washington in pursuit of its predatory interests. As Washington escalates its confrontation with Russia and China, EU countries are stepping up social austerity and moving to pour hundreds of billions of euros into their own armies to join in the imperialist scramble to plunder profits and markets around the world. In this scramble, Washington and the European powers are ultimately rivals—a rivalry that in the previous century twice plunged humanity into world war.