September 10, 2024 Categories: Articles & Columns Tags: 
Print This Article
What Happened to Europe
Paul Craig Roberts
A European friend sent me this article which provides some understanding of the present political situation in France. The American media produces close to zero information about the political situation in European countries. What Americans hear of Europe is generally limited to whatever the current EU narrative is.
The European Union is a puzzle. After suffering under EU absurdity, the British had enough sense to get out, but British pundits still see Brexit as a mistake. What accounts for the unshakable indoctrination of Brexit-worshipping pundits?
Indeed, what explains the stupidity of European governments to add another level of taxation and to sacrifice their own authority and sovereignty to a “commission” that no one elects? I have always viewed the European Union as Europe’s movement from democracy and accountable government to tyranny. The European Union is the resurrection of Nazism in Europe. Nothing less. It is rule by the unaccountable and was intended that way.
I cannot identify a single gain to any country from EU membership. All EU membership brought to Greece and Portugal was the looting of their public sectors by northern European banks. Without their own currency with which to finance their debt, Greece and Portugal were easy pickings.
Germany, which had the powerful Deutsche mark, also lost its currency and control over the country’s monetary policy. Without its own currency, France, too, is no longer a sovereign country. The fate of European countries is subject to a central banking system that they do not control.
One gets the impression that the beneficiary of the EU is Washington, which only needs to control one entity instead of each of the two dozen or so European countries. It also serves Washington that the EU is being gradually merged into NATO.
Perhaps the confidence of Europeans was destroyed by WW I and WW II. Europeans realize that every European country lost and that the victor is Washington, and for awhile the Soviet Union. Britain was completely destroyed by the wars, losing its empire, reserve currency role, and control over international trade. Germany lost a German existence with its educational system turned by the Americans into anti-German indoctrination.
European political leaders are of such minor importance that Americans do not even recognize their names. The only names recognized in the US are those of the NATO secretary general and the EU commissioner, both put in office by Washington, and not even these names are widely known.
The more I consider it, the more I am convinced that the only explanation for the EU is Europe’s loss of confidence.
Today Europe is nothing but a museum of what remains after two devastating wars of the art and architecture of Western civilization. Today these remains are threatened by Europe’s complicity in Washington’s aggressive hostility toward Russia. Not only has the sun set on the British Empire, the sun is setting on Britain herself and on the Western world. The power that European countries once had is gone forever. Washington is marching its puppets to nuclear Armageddon.
RT EN 8.9.2024
Macron’s gamble: Can France find stability with a centrist prime minister?
The text sheds light on the complex political situation in France, marked by the appointment of Michel Barnier as prime minister and the challenges posed by the divided parliament and the population’s growing distrust of the political elite.
By Pierre Levy
Should France be governed from the right of the left, from the left of the right or from the center of the center? For weeks, leading politicians and analysts have been grappling with this dizzying question, begging the President ever more impatiently to make a decision as soon as possible.
On September 5, he finally appointed Michel Barnier to form and lead the next government. Mr. Barnier comes from the party Les Républicains (LR, classical right). The new Prime Minister’s CV almost sounds like a program.
Mr. Barnier was, among other things, French Minister for European Affairs (1995-1997), European Commissioner for Regional Policy (1999-2004), Minister of Foreign Affairs (with responsibility for EU affairs, 2004-2005) and again European Commissioner (and Vice-President of the Commission) for the Internal Market (2010-2014). Finally, he served Brussels again, leading the European Commission’s negotiations with London from 2016 (an experience he described in a book – read by no one – in which he expressed everything negative he thought about Brexit).
While the politicians and media were abuzz with excitement before this announcement, most ordinary people were not. At the coffee machines in factories and offices, colleagues’ conversations tended to revolve around the cost of starting school, dwindling spending power, the number of years until retirement or the deterioration of public services – this summer, particularly the hospital sector.
The back and forth surrounding the selection of the new host for Matignon (seat of the head of government) did not captivate the masses. Especially as Emmanuel Macron’s second five-year term in office, which began two years ago, revealed a crisis of political representation. The ruler of the Élysée Palace, who was re-elected in May 2022 against Marine Le Pen, had little doubt about his ability to have an absolute parliamentary majority confirmed in his favor a month later.
This did not happen: in June 2022, he only received a relative majority of MPs. Two arduous years followed, during which most bills could only be passed through endless palaver and compromise, or through a constitutional provision that allows a bill to be passed without a vote (unless a majority of MPs agree to a motion of no confidence).
This brutal procedure was used to pass budgets (although this is the most important act of a parliament) and to push through the unpopular pension reform, among other things. Two areas that are closely monitored by the European Commission.
According to commentators, this uncomfortable situation meant that sooner or later the National Assembly would have to be dissolved. The President finally decided to accelerate this deadline by announcing his decision on June 8, the evening of the European elections. These had gone like a tidal wave in France in favor of the Rassemblement National (RN, often classified as far-right, which Marine Le Pen denies).
The president’s calculation was simple: by describing an RN that was dangerously close to power and thus evoking the spectre of the “dark hours of our history”, Emmanuel Macron hoped to benefit from a “republican” reflex and thus find a majority of MPs who supported his work.
It turned out differently. The first round of voting on June 30 was characterized by an additional strengthening of the RN: The latter received 10.6 million votes, three million more than in the European elections. In the second round, however, the mutual resignations of the left, the center and the right prevented the RN from gaining a majority of MPs (although it has the strongest group in parliament).
However, this tactic had its price: a parliament that is more fragmented than ever and has even fewer potential majorities than the previous one moved into the Palais Bourbon (where the Chamber of Deputies meets). Hence the headaches and delays that preceded the appointment of Michel Barnier.
The latter, although he dares to refer to a distant Gaullist heritage, is considered a centrist, which fits the profile of the person who has been sought for two months. With this democratic paradox: the more voters come out in favor of the “extremes”, the more often declarations are made proclaiming the need to “govern France in the center”.
However, the term “extremes” should be put in quotation marks. It is used by the mainstream media to refer to the RN on the one hand and La France Insoumise (LFI) on the other. The latter party, whose inspirer remains former socialist minister Jean-Luc Mélenchon (who plans to run again in the next presidential elections), is the largest movement of the four left-wing parties that have joined forces in the coalition formed in June called the New Popular Front.
The RN and the LFI are of course opposed in many areas. However, they have one thing in common: both (more precisely, the parties from which they emerged, the Front National and the Left Party respectively) had vaguely flirted with the plan to leave France out of the EU, which could have represented an interesting radicalism; however, both then turned their backs on this. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s friends did so several years ago, Marine Le Pen’s only recently. Both now advocate “reshaping Europe from within” – an illusory and misleading perspective, as all previous attempts have shown.
Now, relations with the EU will always be a fundamental problem area for the next government: Will France be able to free itself from the decisions made by the 27 member states, or will it continue to operate within an insurmountable framework of political, economic, social and international constraints, regardless of the future decisions of the electorate?
In this respect, the appointment of former EU Commissioner Michel Barnier is a confirmation and a symbol. And not a good one for the future. Recently, the daily newspaper Le Monde (31.08.2024) published a comprehensive study highlighting the general rise in distrust and discredit suffered by the political class and institutions.
Coincidentally, on the same day, a British academic was quoted in a report by the same newspaper on the recent riots in the UK: “Anger, hostility and cynicism have become part of the culture of the underclass. Large numbers of people feel profoundly ignored. The ruling political parties refuse to address the reasons for this anger and frustration. While so many people demand change, they only offer them continuity”.
A diagnosis that could easily cross the English Channel.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten