Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label macron

Mehdi Ben Barka

Speaking over the radio from Cairo, Ben Barka issued a rousing declaration, denouncing the Moroccan government’s ‘grave treason, not only to the dynamic Algerian Revolution, but, in general, to all Arab revolutions in favor of liberty, socialism, and unity, and to the world national liberation movement in its entirety.’ He  called instead  for Moroccans to paralyze ‘the criminal hands that have appropriated power and that are armed, financed, and led by the imperialists.’ His murder by agents of the Moroccan king with help from France and Israel was a major blow to socialist forces throughout the Arab world . Successive French presidents from De Gaulle to Emmanuel Macron have persistently obstructed justice in the name of  secret défense , a perfectly legal and very effective means of covering up state crimes. By the end of the following decade [1970s], Che Guevara, Henri Curiel, and Amílcar Cabral, key figures in the development of the tricontinental movement, had all been assassinate

The EU and Gaza

The EU as a vassal of a hegemon. A hegemony that wants to satisfy both Israel’s desires and objectives and the ‘normalisers’ – the reactionary regimes in the region.  The argument ‘ the US’s standing in the Arab world’ is permanently damaged is misplaced. With whom has that decades-long standing taken place? Has it been with the people struggling against authoritarian regimes and the plunder of the resources of the region? Conjuring trick      

Old and New Partners in Ethnic Cleansing, Settler Colonialism and Apartheid

We must never forget. We must never forgive. “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”  —American historian Howard Zinn Ethnic Cleansing , Settler Colonialism and Apartheid My interview with Ilan Pappe  (audio) The book is available in English    and in   Arabic 

Darning the Planet

D’Eramo is good as usual.  As far as I remember the constant emphasis on your role as an individual in mitigating the environmental crisis has been on for at least 15 years. I was bombarded by the likes of the BBC and the areas where I have worked and lived of messages urging us to take individual actions. Here is the latest example, but it is a French one. Climate crisis and the ‘political class’

French in Algeria and Morocco

Algeria: Primary schools to teach English in 'overdue' move away from 'colonial' French French is on the verge of disappearing in Morocco “Algerian children will be left unable to academically master a single language due to the lack of provisions for this transition into English in schools.”  Moving from French to English won't resolve the country's problems

Friends in Arms

      Abdel Fattah el-Sisi  and Emmanuel Macron Egypt sentences former presidential candidate to 15 years . The former presidential candidate is one of at least 60,000 political prisoners estimated to have been jailed since Sisi took power in a  coup in 2013.

Macron, Putin and ‘Age of Empires’

Macron says Putin wants to 'take us back to the age of empires'. The logic behind French military interventions in Africa France and its former colonies A neo-colonialist French foreign policy in Africa The French Military in Africa: Past and Present Mapping the Sahel

France: The Honest Imperialist

“Like others before me, I am honest about it: Yes, I oppress French citizens, but for ‘France’s interests’ – French capital and geopolitics interests – I also engage in crimes with others.” The same soft hand smile that destroys migrant camps and drive the vulnerable into the sea.  French voters: “It is Russian; it is Belarus; it is the smugglers. We will vote for you to stop Le Pen.” There are bad authoritarian regimes, e.g. Alexander Lukashenko’s, and there are good ones. Are there any principled positions? No. As a French woman I knew told me once in 2000: “seulement les ânes ne changent pas ses principes [only donkeys do no change their principles]. The actions and positions of French imperialism partly dictated by  its dependence on oil . Today France get around 20% of its oil from Saudi Arabia thus its special relationship with the Middle Eastern monarchy and it gets about 12% of oil from Nigeria thus its interest in ‘stabilising’ the Sahel. In fact, around a third of oil import

Fortress Europe

Published in June 2018. It is against amnesia and absolving this or that government. How we all colluded in Fortress Europe Related In reality, “there is a  striking discrepancy between the lack  of feeling aroused  by the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings—in their majority anonymous, unrecorded by the authorities and denied the dignity of a proper burial—with that excited by, say, the 1,000 lives lost in the crossing from East to West Germany during the Cold War. There is one obvious explanation: an African, an Arab or an Afghani who drowns in the Mediterranean, in flight from war, oppression or extreme poverty, is not seen as a human being in the same way as the Germans who were trying to flee ‘communism’ and were hailed as martyrs for liberty. In that sense, the border regime is an extension of the history of colonialism and domination that Europe and the West have exercised over the rest of the world, and to which ‘the construction  of Europe’ now adds a further chapter i

France’s Regional Elections

The ‘astronomical level of abstention’ is good news! Let’s hope it continues. Marine Le Pen described the record-low voter turnout - a projected 66% abstention - as a "civic disaster". She blamed the results on the government's inability to inspire faith in political institutions. "Let's face it, the results were marked by a torrential and also historic abstention of nearly 70% due to the mistrust of an electoral system, which leaves voters with the feeling that nothing can change, that everything has been confiscated," she said .

France-Saudi Arabia

 

France: Le Pen in the Polls

“ Marine Le Pen, champion of the French far right, has come within reach for the first time of beating President Macron in next year’s election, according to a poll. The Harris survey, premised on a replay of the run-off in the 2017 election, has alarmed the president’s supporters and the political establishment because it suggests that   Ms Le Pen   is close to breaching the “glass ceiling” of French politics. The barrier was based on the longstanding assumption that an absolute majority of voters would never back a far-right candidate. If the May 2022 run-off were staged now, Ms Le Pen would have 48 per cent of the vote, with Mr Macron on 52 per cent, according to a poll carried out online on January 19...” Source: The Times UK

Whose Crisis?

 ‘Islam’ is not in crisis, liberalism is Related "The most urgent priority is not for Europe to understand its  alters  better, but rather itself and its own history —for it is within Europe's own longstanding structures of self-definition that pluralism in general, and the Islamic presence in particular, have been rendered into nightmares. If so, it is Europe itself which stands in urgent need of therapy. But as yet the patient is still in denial, and as any spychotherapist would confirm, those who refuse to acknowledge the seriousness of their self-generated plight find it far easier to engage in a process of transference. Rather than confronting the illusory character of their own mental construction, they prefer to ascribe the very behavior which they refuse to acknowledge in themselves to those whom they believe are harassing them." —  Roger Ballard , quoted by Jospeh Massad in  Islam in Liberalism , 2015, p. 311 "If, according to Zwemer, the truth that Islam fa