THIERRY MEYSSAN—While still in Caracas, I was invited to a dinner together with my companion. When our plates arrived, my friend didn’t feel very hungry, so we switched them discreetly since, for some obscure reason, I had received a conspicuously smaller helping than most people. Back in our hotel, he was suddenly overcome by trembling, loss of consciousness and was rolling on the floor while foaming at the mouth. When the doctors arrived, they immediately exclaimed: this man has been poisoned. They saved him in the nick of time. Two days later, a dozen uniformed officers of the Bolivarian Intelligence Service came to apologize and to let us know they had identified the foreign agent behind the operation. Now in a wheelchair, it took my friend six months to recover.
FRENCH CRYPTOFASCISM
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France Joins America’s South China Sea Adventurism
12 minutes readJOSEPH THOMAS—The US, Australia, France and the UK have contributed to the most destructive conflicts of the 21st century including the 2001 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, the 2011-onward wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen, and numerous regime change campaigns around the globe. France in particular also has its military deployed across the continent of Africa, including in several of its former colonies. The notion that France, alongside its other partners in carrying out military aggression worldwide, is becoming involved in the Indo-Pacific to confront aggression and expansionism rather than to participate in it itself, is dubious at best.
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French move to outlaw images of police at work is a clumsy attempt to hide the everyday brutality that passes as law enforcement
16 minutes readDAMIAN WILSON—Post-pandemic, the return of the gilets jaunes protests is a certainty – there have already been signs of an encore – and, having spent most of 2020 living under draconian restrictions, when the protesters do re-emerge in force, they will be re-invigorated and more determined than ever to show l’Empereur Macron how damned furious they are with him, his government, the handling of the pandemic, and the direction the Republic is heading. But if the president thinks the best way to deal with that pent-up fury is to have police operating in the shadows, locking up anyone who dares to try to film or photograph them, then no one should be surprised when it turns into an uncontrollable volcano of social media videos and citizen journalism that portrays the excesses of the law in a particularly unflattering light.
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Now, the belligerent rhetoric has also put on the defensive Macron’s main political opponent in the presidential election, the socialist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of the France Insoumise (Unbowed France) party, against whom a smear campaign has begun for voicing disquiet over the stigmatisation of Muslims in the French society. In an attempt to undermine the Left by associating it with “Islamism”, which has a very negative connotation in the minds of the French majority, Mélenchon has been branded as an “Islamo-leftist”. This character assassination campaign may work to Macron’s advantage.
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‘This Yellow Vest carnage’ more ‘French exceptionalism’
13 minutes readRAMIN MAZAHERI—France claims to especially honor human rights… and yet how do we explain the the Yellow Vest repression? This was after we were told to believe that their bombs in Libya, their guns in the short-lived Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and their rapes in the Central African Republic are “humanitarian interventions”. We also were disgusted by the deification of the dangerous magazine Charlie Hebdo, which made millions by publishing Islamophobic pictures but never publish an anti-Jewish one.