FRENCH

RAMIN MAZAHERI—There is no reason why AFP, AP, Reuters and everybody else spent all that time saying “diesel tax, diesel tax, diesel tax” other than: they are either purposely misleading people by viewing the diesel tax in total isolation from previous policies, or they are a bunch of inexperienced newbies, or they just want to be proven right for repeatedly making this absurd diesel tax claim. My point: it’s all bad journalism.

ALEX LANTIER—It is clear that the main task Mélenchon sets himself in this crisis is to rescue and defend the Macron government amid a deep, potentially fatal crisis. He warns the reader of the potential “refusal of the security forces to obey orders” to crack down on the protests, adding: “Of course such fragility does not come from nowhere. That is the case now. Thousands of hours of unpaid overtime, over 100 suicides in the police, just as many in the other security agencies, tense trade union elections in a few days, everywhere the situation is explosive.”

RAMIN MAZAHERI—France is behind Germany in US-UK-Anglo-Saxon aping, of course. What does the neoliberal playbook instruct when you have already had labor “reforms”, like in Germany? You let in 1 million highly-educated Syrians in order to create even more capitalist competition among workers and thus lower standards for accepting a job. This has the added side effect of fuelling that sentiment which creates plenty of headlines that can divert from your Lost Decade but which only makes its practitioners feel badly and angry – nationalism (as opposed to “patriotism”, which is not racist or Islamophobic).

PETER KOENIG—Just look at France. After a number of false flag attacks in which hundreds of people lost their lives – Macron was able to put the “State of Emergency” – akin to Martial Law – into the French Constitution. France today looks like a police and military state, in larger cities you find armed police and machine-gun touting military at every street corner. The sight has become the new normal. Are the French safer for it? Nope. Because the danger comes from within, not from outside. The danger comes from the very protectors which are complicit with those ‘hidden’ forces that want to maintain a police state that oppresses the public, so that this small all-controlling elite, can do what it wants.

RAMIN MAZAHERI—It is amazing what a one-sided story is presented by leftists such as the WSWS: that cuts to social programs are “neoliberal austerity”, instead of being forced by sanctions – as if Iran is cutting programs for the same reason Hollande and Macron are in France?! It’s really shocking ignorance of, or insensitivity towards, Iran’s overall economic situation….It is as if Iran was operating freely.