French Polynesia’s president and civil society leaders have called on the United Nations to bring France to the negotiating table and set a timetable for the decolonization of the Pacific territory.
More than a decade after the archipelago was re-listed for decolonization by the U.N. General Assembly, France has refused to acknowledge the world’s peak diplomatic organization has a legitimate role.
France’s reputation has taken a battering as an out-of-touch colonial power since deadly violence erupted in New Caledonia in May, sparked by a now abandoned French government attempt to dilute the voting power of indigenous Kanak people.
Pro-independence French Polynesian President Moetai Brotherson told the U.N. Decolonization Committee’s annual meeting in New York on Monday that “after a decade of silence” France must be “guided” to participate in “dialogue.”
“Our government’s full support for a comprehensive, transparent and peaceful decolonization process with France, under the scrutiny of the United Nations, can pave the way for a decolonization process that serves as an example to the world,” Brotherson said.
Brotherson called for France to finally co-operate in creating a roadmap and timeline for the decolonization process, pointing to unrest in New Caledonia that “reminds us of the delicate balance that peace requires.”
The 121 islands of French Polynesia stretch over a vast expanse of the Pacific, with a population of about 280,000, and was first settled more than 2,000 years ago.
Often referred to as Tahiti after the island with the biggest population, France declared the archipelago a protectorate in 1842, followed by full annexation in 1880.
France last year attended the U.N. committee for the first time since the territory’s re-inscription in 2013 as awaiting decolonization, after decades of campaigning by French Polynesian politicians.
French permanent representative to the U.N. Nicolas De Rivière responds to French Polynesia President Moetai Brotherson at the 79th session of the Decolonization Committee, pictured on Oct. 7 2024. (UNTV)
“I would like to clarify once again that this change of method does not imply a change of policy,” French permanent representative to the U.N. Nicolas De Rivière told the committee on Monday.
“There is no process between the state and the Polynesian territory that reserves a role for the United Nations,” he said, and pointed out France contributes almost 2 billion euros (US$2.2 billion) each year, or almost 30 percent of the territory’s GDP.
After the U.N. session Brotherson told the media that France’s position is “off the mark”.
French Polynesia was initially listed for decolonization by the U.N. in 1946 but removed a year later as France fought to hold onto its overseas territories after the Second World War.
Granted limited autonomy in 1984, with control over local government services, France retained administration over justice, security, defense, foreign policy and the currency.
Seventeen pro-independence and four pro-autonomy – who support the status quo – speakers gave impassioned testimony to the committee.
Lawyer and Protestant church spokesman Philippe Neuffer highlighted children in the territory “solely learn French and Western history.”
“They deserve the right to learn our complete history, not the one centered on the French side of the story,” he said.
“Talking about the nuclear tests without even mentioning our veterans’ history and how they fought to get a court to condemn France for poisoning people with nuclear radiation.”
France conducted 193 nuclear tests over three decades until 1996 in French Polynesia.
“Our lands are contaminated, our health compromised and our spirits burned,” president of the Mururoa E Tatou Association Tevaerai Puarai told the U.N. denouncing it as French “nuclear colonialism.”
“We demand justice. We demand freedom,” Puarai said.
He said France needed to take full responsibility for its “nuclear crimes”, referencing a controversial 10-year compensation deal reached in 2009.
Some Māʼohi indigenous people, many French residents and descendants in the territory fear independence and the resulting loss of subsidies would devastate the local economy and public services.
Pro-autonomy local Assembly member Tepuaraurii Teriitahi told the committee, “French Polynesia is neither oppressed nor exploited by France.”
“The idea that we could find 2 billion a year to replace this contribution on our own is an illusion that would lead to the impoverishment and downfall of our hitherto prosperous country,” she said.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Stefan Armbruster for BenarNews.
In 2017, Macron was marketed by the media as a new product. He was elected without a program, solely on the argument that he represented the “new world,” breaking away from the old political class. Seven years later, Macron is resurrecting the worst aspects of the old world, amidst increasing fascization and overt authoritarianism, having shattered the last illusions of representative democracy.
Michel Barnier: A Political Dinosaur
After a prolonged indecision over several candidates for Prime Minister, Macron ultimately chose Michel Barnier, thereby sidelining Bernard Cazeneuve and Xavier Bertrand, other contenders for the role. Michel Barnier epitomizes the political dinosaur: an old-school figure who has been entrenched in the circles of power for 50 years.
Indeed, Michel Barnier has been in politics since the 1970s. At 73, he has been with the UDR, the RPR, the UMP, and finally Les Républicains. These acronyms might not mean much to you: they represent the names of French right-wing parties that have come and gone throughout the Fifth Republic. He has served as Minister for the Environment, European Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Agriculture and Food, and has twice been a European Commissioner. He has served under Pompidou, Chirac, and Sarkozy — times so distant that most of our readers weren’t even born, with the average age of the French being around 41. Michel Barnier was a professional politician before most of the population was born!
What’s even more amusing is that Barnier is a member of an endangered party, which garnered only 4.8% of the vote in the last presidential elections and came fourth in the legislative elections earlier this summer. His legitimacy is questionable at best.
Clarification
At least things are clear: Macron reiterated that Mélenchon’s Left-Wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), with its 193 MPs, did not have an absolute majority and therefore could not form a government. Ultimately, he appointed the representative of an ultra-minority group with only 55 MPs, with the sole aim of continuing to govern with the right and far right, and pursuing his massively rejected policies. It’s a power grab.
A few days ago, the newspaper L’Opinion revealed that Macron “wants to appoint the ministers of Foreign Affairs and the Armed Forces. But he also intends to choose the occupants of the Interior and Bercy.” On August 30, L’Humanité reported that Macron had said: “If I appoint NFP’s Lucie Castets, she will repeal the pension reform and raise the minimum wage to 1,600 euros…” That’s the crux of the issue: the ruling clan will do anything to prevent even the slightest social advancement.
For its part, Le Parisien explained that Macron had been consulting with Sarkozy, the former right-wing president and convicted criminal, over the summer, seeking his advice on the choice of Prime Minister. On September 2, Le Monde reported that “the Élysée had already found a chief of staff for the next Prime Minister.” This is no longer cohabitation; it’s subletting. The real Prime Minister is Macron. The already tenuous separation of powers is officially abolished.
So Much for That
Recall that the President dissolved the Assembly in an emergency, gave it 15 days to vote, preventing a real campaign, only to wait 50 days and appoint a puppet Prime Minister. For over two months, the press has been complicit in the Macronist coup, never questioning the narrative. In mid-July, they announced: “Prime Minister after the Olympic truce.” On August 27, the headlines still read: “Macron will name a Prime Minister at the end of the week.” Today is September 5.
The Far Right in Power
Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) has made it clear that it will not censure this Prime Minister. Its spokesperson, Bardella, is even the first politician to respond to the power grab, soberly stating that he “takes note” of the appointment. Bardella announced that he would “judge by evidence,” meaning the far right will not oppose the new government.
In fact, a coalition ranging from the RN to the Macronists is being officially formed before our very eyes. It’s a union of the right and far right against the left, to disregard electoral results, and above all, to continue favoring the rich while wreaking havoc on the lives of the poorest.
In June, the Rassemblement National was the only party to call for dissolution, and Macron granted its wish. For months, Macronists had been holding secret dinners with the Le Pen clan. The current coup is thus a continuation of a process that began long ago.
Now, the last masks have fallen. This pathetic appointment may be the final breath of an old world coming to an end. It is up to the streets to put an end to this dismal spectacle.
Among the very few things to look forward to on Labor Day is Jack Rasmus’s annual report on the state of US labor. Rasmus, an accomplished political-economist, riffs on the famous Frederick Engels book with Labor Day 2024: The Condition of the American Working Class Today. It may come as a surprise to some, but academically-trained economists are among the most intellectually shallow and ideologically tainted practitioners of the social sciences. Some are so in awe of their own academic specialty that they paint all economic trends through specialist lenses. Still others are so tied to their political biases that they cannot resist slanting their conclusions to reinforce their loyalties to one of the two political parties that we are currently allowed.
Rasmus is the rare university-educated purveyor who knows where to look, looks critically, and clearly synthesizes the data to draw broad and useful conclusions for working people. For a philosophically-trained skeptic and self-styled Historical Materialist, I have grown to trust Rasmus’s digest of the meaning of arcane, jargon-filled, often-misleading government reports.
Of course, we have had earlier times when similar data were available. For over three decades, Labor Research Associates — a group of Communist and left researchers — published a comprehensive Labor Factbook every two years that addressed “labor trends,” the “social and labor conditions” of the period, “people’s health,” the “trade unions,” “civil liberties and rights,” “political affairs,” and “Canadian labor developments.” This comprehensive book armed working people who cared to advance the cause of workers with a cache of ammunition in the class war. We don’t have Labor Factbook, but we are lucky to have Jack Rasmus’s report.
What does his report tell us?
● Despite $10 trillion in stimulus since the pandemic, the US economy has only produced an anemic recovery: GDP of 1.9% (2022), 2.5% (2023), and 2.2% (2024, to date).
● And the US worker fared even worse: “…with regard to wages, the American worker has not benefited at all from the $10 billion-plus fiscal-monetary stimulus. Real Weekly Earnings are flat to contracting. And take-home pay’s even less.”
● The great US job creation machine that US politicians celebrate is not performing so well: “It is important to also note that the vast majority of the net new jobs created have been part-time, temp, gig and contractor jobs. In the past 12 months, full-time jobs in the labor force [have] fallen by 458,000, while part-time jobs have risen by 514,000.”
Typical of an election year, official reports grab headlines, exaggerating job gains, only to be corrected later: “The jobs reports over the past year are revealing as well. They continually reported monthly job gains of around 240,000. But the Labor Department just did its annual revisions and found that for the period March 2023 thru March 2024 it over-estimated no fewer than 818,000 jobs!” [The September 6 employment report downgraded June and July’s job growth by a further 86,000 jobs!]
“The Wall St. Journal further reported that up to a million workers have left the labor force due to disability from Covid and long Covid-related illnesses. Neither of those statistics [is] factored into the government’s unemployment rate figures.”
● For working-class citizens, debt has been a paradoxical life-saver, supplementing slack wage growth. But it continues to grow at a dangerous pace and with increasingly unsustainable interest rates: “The last quarter century of poor-wage increases has been offset to a degree by the availability of cheap credit with which to make consumer purchases in lieu of wage gains and decently paying jobs. Actually, that trend goes back even further to the early 1980s at least.”
“Household US debt is at a record level. Mortgage debt is about $13 trillion. Total household debt is more than $18 trillion, of which credit-card debt is now about $1 trillion, auto debt $1.5 trillion, student debt $1.7 trillion (or more if private loans are counted), medical debt about $.2 trillion, and the rest installment-type debt of various [kinds].
American households carry probably the highest load of any advanced economy, estimated at 54% of median family-household disposable income. And that’s rising.
Debt and interest payments have implications for workers’ actual disposable income and purchasing power. For one thing, interest is not considered in the CPI or PCE inflation indexes and thus their adjustment to real wages. As just one example: median family-mortgage costs since 2020 have risen 114%. However, again, that’s not included in the price indexes. Home prices have risen 47% and rents have followed. But workers pay a mortgage to the bank, not an amortized monthly payment to the house builder.
One should perhaps think of workers’ household debt as business claims on future wages not yet paid. Debt payments continue into the future for purchases made in the present, and thus subtract from future wages paid.”
Since Rasmus penned his report, the Census Bureau released its report on household incomes. While there was an uptick in 2023, median household income adjusted for inflation remains below the levels of 2018, explaining why poll respondents (and voters) are feeling insecure about the economy. In fact, household incomes have only increased around 15% over the last twenty-three years– hardly a reason for a victory lap by the last four administrations… or the capitalist system!
● Rasmus brings a necessary sobriety to the discussion of the state of the organized trade union movement in the US. While there are many exciting developments, the goal of building a formidable force to advance the interests of working people remains far off: “Since 2020 union membership has declined. There were 10.8% of the labor force in unions in 2020. There are 10.0% at end of 2023, which is about half of what it was in the early 1980s. Unions have not participated in the recovery since Covid, in other words, at least in terms of membership. Still only 6% or 7.4 million workers of the private-sector labor force is unionized, even when polls and surveys in the past four years show a rise from 48% to 70% today in the non-organized who want a union.”
“Recently the Teamsters union under new leadership made significant gains in restoring union contract language, especially in terms of limits on temp work and two-tier wage and benefit structures. The Auto workers made some gains as well. But most of the private-sector unionization has languished. And over the past year it has not changed much.
About half of all Union members today are in public-sector unions. It has been difficult for Capital and corporations to offshore jobs, displace workers with technology, destroy traditional defined-benefit pension plans, or otherwise weaken or get rid of workers’ unions. The same might be said for Transport workers, whose employment is also not easily offshored but is subject to displacement by technology nonetheless. But overall, union membership has clearly continued to stagnate over the past year, as it has since 2020.”
Rasmus’s candid conclusion: “The foregoing accumulation of data and statistics on wages, jobs, debt and unionization in America this Labor Day 2024 contradicts much of the hype, happy talk, and selective cherry picking of data by mainstream media and economists. That hype is picked up and peddled by politicians and pollsters alike.”
*****
And speaking of politicians…
A recent Jacobinpiece stands as a sterling example of torturing facts and logic to build the case that Democratic Party politicians got the “stop the genocide” message at the Party’s national convention. Waleed Shahid writes that “the Uncommitted movement didn’t win every immediate demand…” in his article Why the Uncommitted Movement Was a Success at the DNC. The Uncommitted Movement didn’t win any demand — immediate or otherwise — at the DNC!
It takes some skill and determination to recast a near totally effective effort to stifle the voice of pro-peace and pro-justice participants and protesters into “not just a fleeting victory — it is the beginning of a strategic shift in how the Democratic Party grapples with its own contradictions.” Sad to say, it takes a twisted perception to see “victory” and “a strategic shift” while convention-goers derisively and dismissively stroll past demonstrators reciting the names of civilians murdered by the Israeli military.
Shahid attempts the impossible in likening the 2024 Democratic Convention to the 1964 Convention, when brave civil rights activists shamed the Democratic Party before television cameras and journalists into negotiating with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (See this sharp comparative account in Black Agenda Report). There was neither shame nor negotiations in 2024.
Like Democratic operatives before him, Shahid scolds those expecting more from Democrats to– in the future– “out-organize” the Neanderthals controlling the party. In other words, force them to do the right thing!
When one finds a credible political party to support, it should not be one that must be coerced to support justice.
*****
It is a commonplace on the soft left to advocate a broad coalition or united front to address the rise of right-wing populism in Europe and North America. Building on the ineffectiveness of the long-ruling centrist parties, the French RN, Germany’s AfD, the US’s Trump, and a host of other populist movements have mounted significant electoral campaigns. The knee-jerk left reaction is to advocate a broad popular front of all the oppositional parties or movements, a tactic modeled crudely and inappropriately on the Communist International’s anti-fascist tactic.
Most recently, the French left conceded to an electoral “popular front” with the ruling president, Emmanuel Macron’s party and other parties in opposition to Marine Le Pen’s RN. To the surprise of many, the left won the most votes and should have — by tradition — organized a new government. But President Macron “betrayed” popular-front values and appointed a center-right career politician, hostile to the left, as prime minister. To add insult to injury, Macron consulted with Le Pen for approval of his appointment.
Consequently, despite commanding the largest vote, the popular front is in a less favorable position and the right is in a more favorable position than before the electoral “victory” (see, for example, David Broder’s Jacobinarticle for more).
This move by Macron should sober those who glibly call for a popular front as the answer to every alarm, every hyperbole regarding the populist right.
Because of this gross misapplication of the united-front tactic, I can enjoy an I-told-you-so-moment. I wrote in late June: “The interesting question would be whether Macron’s party would return the favor and support this effort in a second round against RN. I doubt they would. Bourgeois ‘solidarity’ only goes so far.” Where the left selflessly threw its support behind Macron’s party where it needed to win, Macron through his deal with Le Pen, threw the left under the bus!
France was the birthplace of modern democracy, and it may well be the start of its end. After the surprise victory of the left New Popular Front in this year’s elections, President Macron has betrayed democracy in a deal with the right to make Michel Barnier Prime Minister. Axel Persson, General Secretary of France’s CGT Railroad Union, joins The Marc Steiner Show for a post-mortem of the election, its aftermath, and how the deterioration of French politics reflects global trends in the rise of the right and the erosion of democracy.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to The Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner, and it’s great to have you all with us. Once again, welcome to another episode of The Rise of the Right, and we go back to France, and we go back to a conversation with Axel Persson, who was a train driver in France, General Secretary of the CGT Railroad Union, in Trappes, and joins us once again. Axel, good to see you. Welcome.
Axel Persson:
Thank you, great to see you again. Thank you for having me.
Marc Steiner:
It’s always great to talk to you. I was really happy when I heard we were going to do this again. I promise, the next time we’ll do it, I’m going to fly into Paris to do it.
Axel Persson:
Yes, with pleasure.
Marc Steiner:
Let me just begin in a broad question here. What is the political dynamic in France at this moment that is allowing for the rise of the right, and to the leader of the country, Macron, to fall in line with them? What is going on, and what is that dynamic?
Axel Persson:
Well, the current dynamic is, unfortunately, one that is being observed in many industrial countries in Europe, and including in the United States, as has been manifested, for example, by the first presidency of Trump, or his attempt to gain another term for the upcoming elections, which is actually a reflection of the rise and strengthening of the far right in the political landscape, but also within the very deep fabrics of French society. This dynamic, of course, it didn’t start with the last elections. It has been a long-going process for the past 20, 30 years perhaps, in France. One could argue exactly when this dynamic really started.
The rise of the far right in France is the result of growing disgust amongst the general population, and particularly within the working class, of the disgust over the two main political blocs, the traditional left, the traditional right, that has been basically taking turns at managing the system and implementing policies that are hostile towards working people, and as far as the left is concerned, regular betrayals of the promises they have been making to their electorate, which has led to the rise of the far right, which is also a consequence of the weakening of the traditional labor movement, which has not disappeared by any means, but that has been weakened by these past experiences of left-wing governments in power that have betrayed its electorate.
This has led to the rise of the far right, and of course, that has been fueled by an ongoing orchestrated political campaign that has been funded by very powerful forces in French society, including some of the richest people, billionaires like Vincent Bolloré, who is one of the major CEOs of the country, who have been methodically funding, for example, media empires in France to promote a racist agenda, and have been using the media part they’ve been basically building for the past decade now to instill racist, xenophobical ideas in the general population in order to convince a large swath of the population that all the issues, and I mean really all the issues, whether it be housing, whether it be unemployment, whether it be even job precarity, insufficient wages, dysfunctional public services or even in some aspects, insecurity in some neighborhoods, all of it is pinned not on the capitalist system, but on immigration. Everything is linked to immigration and foreigners.
If your housing is bad, if your social housing is bad, it’s because an immigrant has taken it. If your wage is insufficient, it’s because there are illegal aliens, as I say, who are doing the job for less, or foreigners in other countries who are competing against you. If there’s insecurity, of course it’s because it’s immigrants. If you just feel bad in general, they’ve managed to all link it to immigration somehow. It’s basically just racism. Of course, this racism is not new in France. France is a historical colonial power, so it doesn’t start 20 years ago, but they have been able to strengthen themselves because also of the weakening of the historical labor movement, which has historically been very strong in France.
It’s still strong by many aspects, if you compare it to other countries, but the counter society, the French labor movement that has historically been able to build in the working-class neighborhoods, in the workplaces, has been weakened, and its capacity to produce a counter society, a counter discourse in order to maintain working-class political ideology alive against that has been weakened, and the far right has managed to take the offensive and drive a wedge into society. That’s the situation right now, and Emmanuel Macron is, of course, being heavily influenced by that, and is leaning more and more towards the right. That is just the general political situation in France.
Marc Steiner:
Let me put some of the things you said together here, and explore them in a little bit more depth. One of the things that I think is a dynamic across the globe is the weakening of working-class movements, and the element of racism that also takes place in countries. It seems to me, the way you described this, that this is a huge dynamic in Paris. This maybe is a completely ridiculous digression, but when I was young, Paris was always this place, France was place that exiles from Africa and Asia could come and feel freer, and be part of a different kind of society. But now, with this immigration from northern Africa and other places around the globe, former colonies, the racism has come bubbling up. Talk a bit about how you see that synergy between the disappointment about how the left has responded to this, and the depth of racism you find in France itself.
Axel Persson:
Well, the immigration, of course, is not new in France, as I said, especially given the fact that France is a historical colonial power. It has built its economical power, like for example, Great Britain did, it was built on a colonial empire. After the colonialism more or less ended, and more or less because neocolonialism, of course, succeeded it, much of the French workforce has been, especially the big industrial cities like Paris or Marseille, or the big major industrial areas in France have been relying heavily on what they call workforce originating from immigration, which is basically just immigrant workers, but that’s just a fancy French term for it. French capitalism has relied heavily on it to build its factories, to build the public transport system, to build the roads. They have always been part of French society, but they were organized at the time, when they arrived massively.
It was also the time where the French labor movement was massively organized within the CGT, my trade union, which it still is to some extent. Most importantly, well, not most importantly, but also as importantly I would say, the influence of the French Communist Party was massive at the times, because it was a mass party with millions of members at the peak of its strength, running and controlling municipalities, more than 10,000 cities in France. It was, at one point actually, the biggest single party in parliament, but not just an electoral force. What is really important to comprehend is that it built a counter society in the areas it controlled. Whether it be in the workplaces, where it controlled the unions, whether it be in the working class neighborhoods where the party controlled even your local soccer club, the collective of people who would help children to do their homework at work were run by communist militants.
If you had a problem in your social housing, there would be a communist cell that would help you take care of the problem, and you would even go to holidays, if you couldn’t afford them, through the means the Communist Party had implemented through the mayors, through the municipalities it controlled, or through the funds the union had secured at the workplace specifically for these aspects, which meant that there was this complete counter society with its own media, its own structures that could implement these ideas of solidarity and anti-racism, basically. It doesn’t mean that everything was perfect, because there were many contradictions in these areas, but it meant that there was this identity and very strong class consciousness that kept the far right not inexistent, but much more marginal than it was today, and quite marginal within the working class especially. It doesn’t mean that the entire working class, of course, were like pure idealists. That doesn’t exist, of course.
The far right, at least politically, was completely marginalized within the working class, and that is what has changed since then. It’s not immigration. Actually, there are less people coming in and immigrating in France nowadays than, for example, 60 or 70 years ago. There’s much less, actually. What has changed now, though, is that given the weakening though of this historical Communist Party, which is, in many aspects, its own fault, the far right has basically managed to drive a wedge into the working class without finding this counter organized society. Many of the areas where the far right makes its highest scores are the former strongholds of the Communist Party, especially in northern France. It’s not the only thing, but that’s one of the most significant manifestations of how these dynamics have changed.
This is basically what the working class is facing now. It’s the weakening of the class consciousness, that is basically the whole gist of it. It’s the weakening of the class consciousness and the organizations that kept it alive. It doesn’t mean it has disappeared. It means that the organizations implementing it in a concrete manner have been weakened severely and it has given the far right, basically, a boulevard which to develop itself.
Marc Steiner:
It’s a very complex situation, and we only have so much time. I think we’re going to have do a whole series here to really bear down into what’s going on. France, in many ways, to me is emblematic of the rise of the right, and the dangers that the entire planet is facing. As you just described, the communist movements, the Communist Party and the left of the Socialist Party in France were the bulwark in the underground that fought the Nazis, organizing workers and standing up to them. There would’ve been no resistance without the communists and the socialists in World War II, of any significance.
Axel Persson:
Yeah.
Marc Steiner:
I’m wondering, what’s your analysis about why it fell apart? As you’ve said before, the left movement in France is not living up to its potential with Mélenchon, the new leader of this united left. The Communist Party has dwindled, and the right has really risen around Le Pen and others. It just skyrocketed. Give us your analysis of why that’s happened. Let me stop here, and I’ll have a closing question, but let me just let you explore that for a moment.
Axel Persson:
This development started in the 80s, actually, quite specifically. The beginning of the decline was in the 80s. Of course, it was a quite-long process, but it started in the 80s, specifically with the Mitterrand governments, with François Mitterrand, who got elected in 1981 and who actually got elected for another term. He was president between 1981 and 1995.
Marc Steiner:
Who was a socialist.
Axel Persson:
Yeah, a socialist, a Social Democrat.
Marc Steiner:
Right, Social Democrat.
Axel Persson:
A Social Democrat, and the first three years of his mandate for his first period actually quite lived up to the promises they had made to the electorate. Starting in 1983, and this is important in the fact that the Communist Party was associated with the government, not only did it participate and give it support in parliament, but its ministers took part in the government, and then were associated with all the decisions, and defended them, even the unpopular ones. In 1983, there was what they called the tournant de la rigueur in French, which we could translate into the austerity update.
They’re saying basically, “What we have been doing has been way too generous towards the workers, and we are not in line with the demands of the financial institutions of the French corporate world, and the public finances of the state are being under attack, basically. We need to re-evaluate our policies in order to satisfy the demands of the European Union institutions, of the international financial institutions, and also and most importantly, the French corporations.” They basically made a U-turn, and all that they had done was basically dismantled, in many aspects by themselves. And then, when the right took turn and won the next elections, they continued it, but when they came back to power, it continued as well. That was the start of the decline of the French labor movement. It hasn’t disappeared, by any means, but that was when it declined.
Marc Steiner:
Let me ask you this piece in the time we have left here. What’s the political reality that has Macron uniting with the right-wing, the far right, to create a government, and probably having have new elections, and not with this massive left-wing presence in the parliament? Why did he unite right instead of left?
Axel Persson:
Well, because what’s interesting, though, that’s why I’m insisting that it’s not dead by any means. The last election, the snap elections that were organized because Macron had decided it, he was the one who dissolved parliament, we could say were won by the Popular Front, the new Popular Front that is a coalition of the working-class historical parties, but also an alliance with trade unions such as myself and many other associations like anti-Zionist Jewish organizations, feminist organizations, associations invested against the police violence, for example, it was a broad Popular Front that won the elections but did not secure an own majority of seats. It secured the most seats in parliament as a coalition, but not its own majority, which gave the possibility to Macron, of course, to see who can build the coalition to have a majority within parliament.
It was quite clear that, given the demands of the Popular Front, which was to abolish the pension reform he had implemented last year, which was to raise significantly the minimum wage, and which was to invest significant amounts in public services, that it was out of the question for Emmanuel Macron, and that he would by any means necessary, to paraphrase Malcolm X but was on our side, to prevent our coalition from even having the possibility of trying to build a coalition in parliament, even if meant compromise on the program. For him, it was unimaginable to even give a chance to that. In that aspect, he united, and he saw that despite the dynamics of the French election, [inaudible 00:14:59], despite the rise of the far right, you could see that there had been a massive reflex of voting against the far right to prevent it from seizing state power. People voted majority for the Popular Front, but some even voted for right-wing candidates against the far right.
The major dynamics, despite our disagreements, was that the majority of the electorate wanted to prevent the far right from getting power. What he chose to see now was to see in parliament, how can we build the coalition that is at least accepted by the far right? That is what happened. Because the Popular Front doesn’t have its own majority, basically, he called on his own troops that have stayed in parliament, even though a small minority now, to seek an alliance with the historical weakened, traditional right, and then sought the far right to see that in order to prevent the Popular Front from happening, and seizing power, can we at least all agree on not overthrowing a government together in order to prevent the Popular Front from even having the slightest chance of exerting state power and abolishing the reforms I’ve made? The far right, despite all their rhetoric of being anti-systems, basically struck a deal with Macron, and said, “We will not join your government, but we will not overthrow him with a no-confidence vote in parliament,” and that is what just happened.
As history has shown on what happened in the twenties, all proportions, of course, I don’t want to make a simple Godwin point, but history shows that once again, the centrist bloc, the right bloc, the traditional right bloc is faced by the threat of a renewed strength in the working class movement, they’re gaining [inaudible 00:16:29] again, allies with the far right, and even is basically paving the way for them to seize power at next elections. Now, he has basically struck a deal with the far right in order to maintain his capacity to control the parliament.
Marc Steiner:
In many ways, you paint this very Orwellian picture. You paint a very Orwellian picture, as in George Orwell, of what’s taking place. Finally, from your perspective as a union leader, as an organizer, as part of the left in France.
Axel Persson:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
How do you see what happens with the resistance and the ability of the left, the people’s movement, to actually take power in the face of this right-centrist, right-wing power? Where do you see it going from here?
Axel Persson:
Where I see going from here is that whatever happens, this government is… well, the government hasn’t been formed yet. He has just nominated a prime minister that is actually a traditional, known figure in France from the traditional right. The government hasn’t been composed yet, and the National Assembly hasn’t been called to session yet. That will be in October, so then, we will see. Whatever happens, this is going to be a very weak government, and it’s going to be a very unstable political situation. What things have shown also, these past weeks and past months, is that contrary to what the dominant media have been saying, which presented, basically, the ascension of the far right to state power in France as something that would inevitably happen, things have shown that when we intervene, have a coherent tactic and strategy, we can prevent them from happening by building the Popular Front, by organizing in the workplaces, because we campaigned actively all across the country, in the workplaces, in the working class neighborhoods all across the country.
We showed that, actually, we’re not just commentators of what’s happening, we actually influenced the course of history. What has been underestimated also is the fact that despite, yes, it’s undeniable, the far right is [inaudible 00:18:20], and it was, for now, the majority of French society clearly rejects the far right. It doesn’t mean that they don’t exist, the far right, but the majority still has these anti-fascist reflexes that still work.
Marc Steiner:
That’s a good thing.
Axel Persson:
We’re going to need to build on that. We’re going to need to build on that in order to transform this anti-fascist reflex into a political movement that is not only built on the rejection of this fascist program, but on the idea that we can have a better society, we can have a better future. We’re going to have to organize, so what we’re going to do very concretely is, on the 1st of October, we’re going to call for mass demonstrations to demand the annulment of the pension reform for all workers, the raising of the minimum wages, the investment in public services. It’s important, because we as trade unions are probably the only force in French society that is actually able to, at some point, unite the entire working class, including those that either vote for the far right or are influenced by their ideas.
The only situation I’ve seen in France the past years where we actually put in movement, the entire working class, despite the political differences, are on issues, for example, such as the pension issues. Then, when we go on strike and society is massively paralyzed, even workers who were influenced by the far right join our movements. These are actually the periods where the far right, in terms of media, are completely silent. They disappear because it’s not their terrain, it’s not their political terrain. They don’t talk in these periods because they feel very uncomfortable about it, because they cannot distance themselves from workers who are struggling. At the same time, they don’t want to appear towards the system as anything else that the guardian of their interests.
It puts them in a very uncomfortable position, and it’s a terrain into which we can advance, also, our political ideas, and our vision of society. Not only on the specific issues of wages, and for example, pensions, but also this idea that we need to fight together against the real enemy, and not the one they are designating, this poison they’re sowing into their ranks. That is why the strategy we’re going to try to build on is mass movements, because it’s in the mass movements that at least our political ideology can actually really gain a foothold in society, and it’s actually the only means. That is what we’re going to do now, but France is full of surprises. We’re going to see what’s going to happen this year, but everybody knows, actually, that this is going to be a very unstable, critical year in France for the coming year.
Marc Steiner:
Well, Axel Persson, first, let me thank you for always joining us, and for your really deep perspective on what’s happening in France. It’s important for the entire world, given that France is one of the largest militaries around, and it’s a usually a powerful country, and the battle against the right is significant.
Axel Persson:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
I’m going to stay in touch, write back and forth, and after the demonstration in October, let’s reconvene, and see where we are.
Axel Persson:
Yes, we’ll see what we start there.
Marc Steiner:
As they say in Cuba, [foreign language 00:21:06].
Axel Persson:
[foreign language 00:21:10].
Marc Steiner:
[foreign language 00:21:13]. Thank you so much, Axel, it’s always good to talk to you.
Axel Persson:
Thank you for having me and see you soon. Bye.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, let me thank Axel Persson for joining us today, and giving the perspective from France of the struggle for a just society that is powerful in pushing, and it’s always enlightening to talk with him. Thanks to Cameron Grandino for running the program, audio editor Alina Nehlich, Rosette Sewali for producing The Marc Steiner Show, and the fabulous Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making the show possible. Please, let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at MSS@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thanks Axel Persson for joining us today, and please stay with us as we cover the rise of the right here and across the globe, and talk to those who are fighting for a just world. For the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
A South African company is reported to be the most probable bidder for shares in New Caledonia’s Prony Resources.
As part of an already advanced takeover of the ailing southern plant of Prony Resources, the most probable bidder is reported to be South African group Sibaneye-Stillwater, local new media report.
Just like the other two major mining plants and smelters in New Caledonia, Prony Resources is facing acute hardships due to the emergence of Indonesia as a major player on the world market, compounded with New Caledonia’s violent unrest that broke out in May.
The Johannesburg-based entity is a significant player on the minerals world market (including nickel, platinum and palladium) and owns, amongst other assets, a hydro-metallurgic processing plant in Sandouville (near Le Havre, western France) with a production capacity of 12,000 tonnes per year of high-grade nickel which it bought in February 2022 from French mining giant Eramet for 85 million euros (NZ$153 million).
Sibanye-Stillwater appears to follow a well-planned scheme, aiming at building an integrated project that would control all of the nickel extraction and production stages.
The ultimate goal would be, for the South African player, to become a leader on the production market for innovative electric vehicles batteries, especially on the European market.
Southern Province President Sonia Backès had already hinted last week that one buyer had now been found and that one bidder had successfully reached advanced stages in the due diligence process.
If the deal eventuated, the new entity would take over the shares held by Swiss trader Trafigura (19 percent) and another block of shares held by the Southern Province to reach a total of 74 percent participation in Prony Resources stock, as part of a major restructuration of the company’s capital.
Prony Resources, in full operation mode, employs about 1300 staff.
Another 1700 are employed indirectly through sub-contractors.
It has paused its production to retain only up to 300 staff, in safety and maintenance mode, partly due to New Caledonia’s current unrest.
New Caledonia’s Koniambo (KNS) mining site aerial view. Image: KNS
The plant’s furnaces were placed in “cold care and maintenance” mode at the end of August, six months after major shareholder Anglo-Swiss Glencore announced it wanted to withdraw and sell the 49 percent shares it has in the project.
This caused close to 1200 job losses and further 600 among sub-contractors.
Other bidders still interested
KNS claimed at least three foreign investors were still interested at this stage, but none of these have so far materialised.
Talks were however reported to continue behind the scenes, with interested parties even ready to travel and visit on-site, KNS Vice-President and spokesman Alexandre Rousseau told Reuters news agency earlier this month.
‘Okelani Group One’ But a so-called “Okelani Group One” (OGO), made up of three local partners, said their offer could revive the project with a different business model.
They say they have made an offer to KNS’s majority shareholder SMSP (Société Minière du Sud Pacifique, New Caledonia’s Northern province financial arm).
OGO president Florent Tavernier told public broadcaster NC la 1ère much depended on what Glencore intended to do with the staggering debt of some US$13.7 billion which KNS had accumulated over the past 10 years.
Another OGO partner, Gilles Hernandez, explained: “We would be targeting a niche market of very high quality nickel used in aeronautics and edge-cutting technologies, especially in Europe, where nickel is now classified as ‘strategic metal’.”
Although KNS was designed to produce 60,000 tonnes of nickel a year, that target was never reached.
OGO said it would only aim for 15,000 tonnes per year and would only re-employ 400 of the 1200 laid-off staff.
New Caledonia’s third nickel plant, owned by historic Société Le Nickel (SLN, a subsidiary of French mining giant Eramet), which is also facing major hardships for the same reasons, is said to currently operate at minimal capacity.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Thousands of people took to the streets in 30 French cities and Brussels on Saturday to protest rape and sexist violence and to support Gisèle Pélicot, a woman in her early 70s whose husband of 50 years is on trial for drugging her periodically and inviting dozens of men into their home to rape her while she was unconscious. Pélicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in…
We speak to acclaimed historian, activist and filmmaker Tariq Ali about Western governments’ support for Israel’s war on Gaza and popular protest in support of Palestine, which Ali calls the “biggest divide we’ve seen in politics almost since the Vietnam War.” He argues that this division is “challenging the very nature of democracy” and the international rule of law. Ali also shares his analysis…
Cities across France erupted in protest after Emmanuel Macron appointed a right-wing prime minister from the party that came fourth in July’s election, on just 7% of seats, after months of deadlock. That’s despite left-wing alliance, Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front), coming first with 32% of seats.
France, today
160,000 march in Paris and 300,000 in cities around the country against Macron’s coup – his deal with the Far Right to appoint Michel Barnier as PM.
Barnier’s right wing party came 4th in the election.
On top of that, Macron made far right Rassemblement National (National Rally) party and Marine Le Pen kingmakers in the deal. In order to survive a no-confidence vote, prime minister appointee Michel Barnier must keep the support of the far right. In fact, Macron extended Le Pen a veto over who he appointed.
Protestors accuse Macron of “stolen election” in France
Protests took place in France’s capital, as well as cities including Nantes, Nice, Marseille and Strasbourg. Demonstrators in Paris held placards condemning Macron’s “stolen election” and “power grab”. One 23 year old protestor, Leo, pointed out:
We voted for Macron to block Le Pen – but actually we had a choice between Le Pen and Le Pen
Macron’s deal is shocking stuff for the demonstrators and many in France who didn’t just vote for the left-wing alliance, but also voted for Macron’s centrist Ensemble in order to keep the far right out. After National Rally took the first round in the election, New Popular Front stood aside for Macron’s party in seats where it clearly might split the vote in favour of the National Rally candidate. And Macron has long stood on a platform of keeping the far right out.
Now far-right Le Pen holds the power of leverage over Barnier.
Normally the prime minister comes from the majority party. But Macron didn’t give a damn, he just did what he wanted.
New Popular Front won 182 seats, while Barnier’s Les Républicains (The Republicans) won just 39.
The views of protestors appear to reflect the majority of France. One poll found that 74% of French people believe Macron had disregarded the result of the election and that 55% believe he had stolen the election.
When it comes to Palestine, leader from the New Popular Front Jean-Luc Mélenchon does not mince his words:
Mélenchon, leader of the coalition New Popular Front who won the legislative elections in France, drops some truth bombs. This sounds like the real left here, not the fake one like in the US & UK: pic.twitter.com/Z6MgpjGwZ5
In cities and towns across France on Saturday, more than 100,000 people answered the call from the left-wing political party La France Insoumise for mass protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s selection of a right-wing prime minister. The demonstrations came two months after the left coalition won more seats than Macron’s centrist coalition or the far-right Rassemblement National (RN)…
We were outraged to read the report on Phayul (https://www.phayul.com/2024/09/08/50839/) about two highly respected French museums considering complying with the Chinese regime’s obliteration of the name ‘Tibet’.
If those museums go ahead with such a troubling collaboration it would mean they would censor any mention/description of Tibet from their displays, artifacts and presumably online and archive documents. Replacing it with ‘Xizang’ so-called ‘Autonomous Region’. That would be an appalling censorship.
We have today issued an appeal directly to the Presidents of the Musée du quai Branly and Musée Guimet, Ms Yannick Lintz and Mr Emmanuel Kasarhérou. With a copy to Ms Ms Rachida Dati France’s Minister of Culture. That document, in French, maybe seen here: https://tibettruth.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/museumappeal.pdf
If like us you are deeply concerned at this latest effort to eradicate the name of Tibet it would be a real help and positive solidarity for the Tibetan cause to express your concerns to the individuals named above at the following ‘X’ accounts: @LintzYannick @MinistereCC @quaibranly @MuseeGuimet
French President Emmanuel Macron has ignored that the Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front) left-wing alliance won the most seats in France’s snap legislative election in early July – and instead installed infamous Michel Barnier.
Barnier’s party won just 7% of the vote
He has instead appointed a prime minister from the right-wing Les Républicains (The Republicans). This party won just 39 seats (or 7% of the vote). The New Popular Front, meanwhile, won 182 seats (or 32% of the vote).
Barnier, the new appointed prime minister, will have the support of Macron’s centrist Ensemble party. It won 168 seats. But they are still short of the 289 needed for a majority.
So Barnier depends on backing from the far right Rassemblement National (National Rally) of Marine Le Pen. The National Rally came third on 143 seats. Still, Le Pen exercised veto power over who would be the new prime minister in talks with Macron. Macron and her later agreed on the appointment of Barnier.
Former investment banker at Rothschild and Co, Macron’s choice to make the far right kingmakers demonstrates so-called centrists will opt for fascism to keep the left out.
He did so despite left-wing leader Jean-Luc Melenchon offering to support the New Popular Front’s joint candidate, Lucie Castets, with the exclusion of any elected legislator from his party, La France Insoumise (Unsubmissive France), from becoming ministers. Even though Unsubmissive France won the most seats in the New Popular Front alliance.
“Stolen” election
In response to Macron’s anti-democratic approach, Melenchon has accused him of being an “autocrat”. And following the appointment of Barnier, Melenchon said “the election was stolen”. He also said:
The president of the Republic has just officially denied the result of the legislative elections that he himself had called
Macron has delivered policies such as abolishing a wealth tax while at the same time raising the retirement age and slashing benefits. During the election, Macron pledged to keep the far right out of power. Many people voted centrist or left to stop the National Rally winning seats.
The New Popular Front have committed to a no confidence vote in Barnier. Like right-wing centrists in the UK, Barnier converges with the far right in his anti-immigration rhetoric. He previously called for a freeze in immigration for three to five years.
On social media, Barnier was branded “condescending and out-of-touch” for referring to the working class as “people from below” in his first address as prime minister.
Melenchon called for nationwide protests against the appointment of Barnier in the “most powerful mobilisation possible”.
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday named the right-wing politician Michel Barnier as prime minister, prompting outrage from a coalition of left-of-center parties that won the most seats in recent parliamentary elections and argued that the premier should be chosen from its ranks. The decision marks the end of an unprecedented period in which France hasn’t had an active government…
One of the US’s oldest and closest allies is currently undergoing a constitutional crisis. Its government is in disarray, led by a head of state whose party has been rejected by voters, and who refuses to allow parliament to function. Coups and crises of transition may pass by relatively unnoticed in the periphery, but France has gone nearly two months without a legitimate government, and US corporate media don’t seem to care to report on it.
Despite corporate media’s supposed dedication to preserving Western democracy, the Washington Post and the New York Times have mostly stayed silent on French President Emmanuel Macron’s refusal to respect the winners of the recent election. Since the left coalition supplied its pick for prime minister on July 23, the Times has reported on the issue twice, once when Macron declared he wouldn’t name a prime minister until after the Olympics (7/23/24), and again nearly seven weeks after the July 7 election (8/23/24). Neither story appeared on the front page.
When the far-right won the first round of French elections, that was front-page news in the New York Times (7/1/24). When the left won the second round, that was much less newsworthy to the Times.
It’s not that the Times didn’t think the French elections were worth reporting on; the paper ran five news articles (6/30/24, 6/30/24, 7/1/24, 7/1/24, 7/7/24), including two on the front page of its print edition, from June 30–July 7 on “France’s high-stakes election” that “could put the country on a new course” (6/30/24). But as it became clear that Macron was not going to name a prime minister, transforming the snap election into a constitutional crisis, the US paper of record seemingly lost interest.
Since July 23, the Post has published two news items from the AP (8/23/24, 8/27/24), plus an opinion piece by European affairs columnist Lee Hockstader (7/24/24), who suggested that France’s best path forward is “a broad alliance of the center”—conveniently omitting that the leftist coalition in fact beat Macron’s centrists in the July 7 election. In what little reporting there is, journalists have been satisfied to stick to Macron’s framing of “stability,” omitting any critique of an executive exploiting holes in the French constitution.
France is in an unprecedented political situation, in which there is no clear governing coalition in the National Assembly. After the snap elections concluded on July 7, the left coalition New Popular Front (NFP) won a plurality of seats in the National Assembly, beating out both Macron’s centrist Ensemble and the far-right National Rally (RN). (While the sitting president’s coalition won the second-most seats, it actually got fewer votes than either the left coalition or the far right.)
These circumstances expose a blind spot in the French constitution, where the president has sole responsibility to name a prime minister, but is not constitutionally obligated to choose someone from the coalition with the most backing. Indeed, there is no deadline for him to choose anyone. In the absence of a new government, Gabriel Attal of Macron’s Renaissance party continues to be prime minister of a caretaker government, despite the voters’ clear rejection of the party.
Despite Macron’s failure to allow the French government to function, US reporting on the subject has remained subdued. Headlines note less the historic impasse in the National Assembly, and Macron’s failure to respect the outcome of the legislative election, and more the confusing or curious nature of the situation.
‘Institutional stability’
When someone in a headline “fumes” (Washington Post, 7/27/24), that’s a signal that you’re not supposed to sympathize with them.
Where US corporate media do comment on Macron’s denial of the election, their framing is neutral or even defensive of the president’s equivocations. Critiques are couched as attacks from the left; one AP piece published in the Washington Post (8/27/24) reports not that Macron is denying an election, but simply that France’s left is fuming:
France’s main left-wing coalition on Tuesday accused President Emmanuel Macron of denying democracy…. Leftist leaders lashed out at Macron, accusing him of endangering French democracy and denying the election results.
Left unchallenged are Macron’s claims that he is simply trying his best to preserve stability, election results be damned:
On Monday, Macron rejected their nominee for prime minister—little-known civil servant Lucie Castets—saying that his decision to refuse a government led by the New Popular Front is aimed at ensuring “institutional stability.”
AP left out of its story the fact that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of France Unbowed (LFI), the supposedly most objectionable member of the NFP coalition, even offered to accept an NFP government led by Castets, with no LFI members in ministerial roles, to assuage the fears of centrists. This olive branch did not impress AP, which instead relayed Macron’s call for “left-wing leaders to seek cooperation with parties outside their coalition.”
Despite noting that “the left-wing coalition…has insisted that the new prime minister should be from their ranks because it’s the largest group,” the AP piece concluded that “Macron appears more eager to seek a coalition that could include politicians from the center-left to the traditional right,” with no commentary on the right of the electorate to have their voices heard.
‘Scorched-earth politics’
To the New York Times (8/23/24), the idea that a left coalition would try to implement the platform it successfully ran on is a “hard-core stance.”
The New York Times’ reporting (8/23/24) had a similar tone, focusing on the “kafkaesque” situation in which the French government is “intractably stuck.” Times correspondent Catherine Porter chided the NFP, the coalition with the most seats, for its supposed unwillingness to compromise—noting pointedly that “many of the actions the coalition has vowed to champion run counter to Mr. Macron’s philosophy of making France more business-friendly.”
She went on to admit, however, that Castets, the NFP’s choice for prime minister, “has softened her position from its original hard-core stance”—that is, that the coalition would implement the program it ran on—and that “she says she would pursue something more reflective of minority government position.”
However, the Times continued, “the biggest party in her coalition, France Unbowed, has a history of scorched-earth politics that makes the pledge for conciliation feel thin.” In other words, even when the left is willing to make compromises, it is still to blame if such offers aren’t accepted, due to its history of acting in a principled fashion.
The Times seemed to accept an equation between LFI and the RN, which was founded (as the National Front) as an explicitly neo-fascist movement. The paper reported that it was not only a departing minister from Macron’s party, but “many others,” who
consider France Unbowed and its combative leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Trotskyist, to be as dangerous to France’s democracy as the extreme right.
The anti-immigrant agenda of France’s extreme right, as represented by the RN, includes repealing birthright citizenship in favor of requiring a French parent and implementing strict tests of cultural and lingual assimilation. Mélenchon’s LFI, in contrast, favors medical aid for undocumented migrants and social support for asylum seekers.
Despite the Times’ previous reporting (7/9/24) that LFI is a “hostile-to-capitalism” party, the party’s platform only calls for more state intervention in the market economy, with a critique that is more anti–free market dogma than anti-capitalist, per political scientist Rémi Lefebvre.
Whether supporting intervention in the market is as extreme as supporting ethnic determination of “Frenchness” is left as an exercise for the reader. But according to the French government’s official categorization (Le Parisien, 3/11/24), LFI is categorized simply as “left,” while the RN is indeed categorized as “extreme right.”
Despite the sparse and incomplete coverage by the New York Times and the Washington Post, they must be given credit for covering the story at all. A Nexis review of Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS and PBS NewsHour reveals next to no reporting on Macron’s refusal to name a prime minister, with no critical reporting whatsoever.
Since July 23, when Castets emerged as the left’s choice, there have been two brief mentions of Macron’s lack of a decision, on CNN Newsroom (7/24/24) and Fox Special Report (8/23/24). Neither program mentioned Castets, much less the exceptional circumstances faced by the French electorate.
The Nouveau Front Populaire (New Popular Front) left-wing alliance won the most seats in France’s snap legislative election in early July. It took 182 seats, while president Emmanuel Macron’s ‘centrist’ coalition Ensemble took 168 and far right Rassemblement National (National Rally) won 143. The New Popular Front, a coalition of left-wing leader Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France Insoumise (Unsubmissive France), social democrats, Greens, and communists, were short of the 289 seats needed for a majority.
But they still won the most seats, with other coalitions even further off.
Nonetheless, Macron, as president, has refused to appoint a prime minister from the left-wing coalition. He said “no one won”, in an address to the French public. (In France, the presidential election runs separate and is not until 2027. The president traditionally has more power over foreign policy and the prime minister domestic).
Macron ushering a “return to the royal veto” against the public
Melenchon and the left are challenging Macron’s position. The leader pointed out that Macron appointed a prime minister from his coalition following the 2022 legislative elections, where, like the New Popular Front in 2024, the centrist coalition had won the most seats, but still short of a majority.
The New Popular Front further said in a statement:
The New Popular Front is without contest the first force in the new National Assembly. Were the president to persist in refusing to recognize the results of [the] election, this would be a betrayal of the spirit of the constitution.
This result must now be extended by defeating Macron’s power grab. He wants to keep the power that the French voters took away from him. There can be no question of accepting this kind of return to the royal veto against a vote by the electorate. There can be no question of allowing the return of unscrupulous combinations and secret plots to impose themselves through a coalition different to the one chosen by the popular vote! What is unacceptable must not be accepted. And this must be translated into concrete action, until the president respects the decision made through universal suffrage.
Still, Macron has refused to appoint the New Popular Front’s joint candidate, Lucie Castets, as prime minister That’s despite Melenchon offering to support Castets without any Unsubmissive France ministers, even though Unsubmissive France won the most seats in the alliance. This aims to leave Macron’s position looking increasingly authoritarian.
Macron cannot call another snap election until June 2025. He has held talks with the National Rally of Marine Le Pen. The far-right party have said they will vote no confidence against any prime minister from the left-wing coalition.
When it comes to policies, the New Popular Front pledged to scrap Macron’s raising of the retirement age and increase the minimum wage. It also pledged to introduce price caps on essential food and electricity and invest in public services and green energy.
French President Emmanuel Macron officially rejected naming a prime minister from the left-wing coalition that triumphed in the country’s snap election in June, sparking anger from left-wing leaders and advocates who say that Macron is exercising a dangerous power grab. Macron issued a statement on Monday saying that he would not be appointing a prime minister from the Nouveau Front Populaire…
French Polynesia’s president has urged France to change its diplomatic approach towards territories in the Pacific amid growing frustration about the way it has handled months of turmoil in New Caledonia.
Moetai Brotherson on Monday said France has “always had a problem with decolonization” in the South Pacific, where it controls the territories of French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Wallis and Futuna.
After a meeting of the sub-regional Polynesian Leaders Group in Tonga, Brotherson said they had been warning France for three years about the potential for unrest, but “they just wouldn’t listen.”
The president was speaking on the sidelines of the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum, or PIF, where decolonization will feature prominently in discussions between the 18-member bloc. French Polynesia and New Caledonia were given full membership status of the inter-governmental organization in 2016 despite being territories.
“They have to change the way they consider territories in the Pacific,” Brotherson said in the Tongan capital Nuku’alofa.
“They have to trust the voices of the Pacific about those issues more than their own diplomacy, because sometimes the feedback they get from their diplomacy is just biased or incorrect.”
France’s handling of pro-independence riots that engulfed the New Caledonian capital of Noumea in May has reinforced regional perceptions that it is an out-of-touch colonial power.
Control of New Caledonia and its surrounding islands gives the European nation a significant security and diplomatic role in the Pacific at a time when the U.S., Australia and other Western countries are pushing back against expanding Chinese influence in the region. New Caledonia also has valuable nickel deposits that are among the world’s largest.
The unrest was triggered by the French government’s backing of electoral reforms that would have diluted the voting power of New Caledonia’s indigenous Kanak people.
Eleven people were killed, dozens were injured and businesses were torched in weeks of riots that also saw the deployment of thousands of French police and special forces.
Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni said in his opening address to PIF that leaders “must honor the vision of our forefathers regarding self-determination, including in New Caledonia.”
A PIF fact-finding mission to New Caledonia, which was scheduled for last week, was deferred amid reports of disagreement between the territory’s pro-independence government and France.
French Polynesia was relisted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2013 as a territory that should be decolonized, but France has demanded the territory be removed again.
“We know that France has always had problems with decolonization and the road to self-determination, but we’re not necessarily adopting the same strategy as New Caledonia,” Brotherson, who was elected on a pro-independence platform last year, said.
“We have, I would say, a common colonizer, but we have different countries with different contexts. So we have to find our own way to self-determination.”
French Ambassador to the Pacific Veronique Roger-Lacan (centre) turns to speak with a fellow delegate during the PIF opening ceremony in Tonga on Aug. 26, 2024. (Stefan Armbruster/BenarNews)
France’s Ambassador to the Pacific Veronique Roger-Lacan has aggressively prosecuted the European power’s case for its territorial rights over New Caledonia, causing consternation among regional leaders.
In July she publicly rebuked New Zealand foreign minister Winston Peters for suggesting the 2021 referendum on New Caledonia’s independence – boycotted by indigenous Kanaks – was “within the letter of the law … but it was not within the spirit of it.”
When asked about the French diplomat’s efforts, Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka on Saturday said Paris had to make an effort to “understand the Pacific.”
Roger-Lacan, who is attending the meeting in Tonga, told RFA affiliate BenarNews “the only diplomatic question there is the PIF mission.”
“French diplomacy is here at the PIFLM53 [53rd Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting] to reiterate, on behalf of President Macron, France’s total and absolute availability for an information mission in New Caledonia in the context of the current crisis, whenever there is a consensus in the PIF on this perspective.
“Otherwise the voices that have to be heard by the Pacific leaders are all the voices mentioned in the Nouméa agreement of 1998, not only the independentists. There is no biased or incorrect feedback in those mere facts.”
Senior Solomon Islands diplomat Collin Beck said leaders would be looking to work out the next steps for a New Caledonia mission this week.
“We’ll hear more from the New Caledonia government and certainly I think we’ll hear more from what the secretariat has received from the French government as well,” said Beck, the country’s Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and External Trade.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Harry Pearl and Stefan Armbruster for BenarNews.
While the CGT proudly participated in the ‘Games of Shame,’ a personal triumph for Macron and his repressive, regressive policies, with the participation of the Israeli delegation and even the Israeli President, who was honored amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza, this letter from Jean-Pierre Page, former head of the CGT’s International Department, condemns the betrayals of France’s leading trade union.
Jean-Pierre Page sent this message (see original in French here) to an elected CGT representative who, on January 29, wrote against an open letter calling for genuine support for the Palestinian cause. He claimed the signatories were merely opponents of the current CGT leadership seeking reasons to criticize them, arguing that the CGT’s international meetings had never focused more on the Palestinian issue and that the union had been active in mobilizations. He dismissed the open letter as lacking concrete proposals and accused its authors of internal manoeuvring rather than genuine advocacy.
Both Jean-Pierre Page, a prominent signatory of the open letter, and I, the initiative’s originator, reacted the same day with the messages below, both of which went unanswered. Subsequently, I faced defamation, threats, and exclusion from the CGT local Teacher’s Union of Puy-de-Dôme (central France) on April 12th, with national CGT authorities confirming this exclusion on June 25th. These repressive measures also aimed to discredit and intimidate all signatories challenging the CGT’s stance on Palestine (see this petition detailing the facts and demanding my reinstatement).
I have read your comments on the Appeal and your refusal to support it. I concur with Alain/Salah’s response and arguments [see below], so I won’t reiterate them. I have frequently expressed my views on the situation in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem, and on the broader geopolitical stakes. More generally, I have written about the historical dispossession of Palestine, which has been colonized and dissected for a century, and whose people have endured martyrdom. The Palestinian people is currently subjected to a policy of extermination and genocide by Israel, a criminal state whose impunity is guaranteed by Western governments.
Do you share this view? If not, I find it damning for a CGT activist, considering that this is the only union in France whose proclaimed internationalist commitment is part of its foundations and values. Certainly, not just any kind of internationalism! Not the rhetoric from Congresses that the CGT leadership feeds us, but a consistent class-based internationalism, one that is anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist. Not just in words, but in deeds.
I was a member of the Confederal Executive Commission for 20 years and head of the CGT’s International Department for 10 years. This doesn’t give me more authority than others, but since the refocusing of our Confederation, I have observed that the CGT leadership has not only abandoned our internationalist principles but, worse, has aligned itself with the official narrative shared uncritically with the ETUC [European Trade Union Confederation] and the ITUC [International Trade Union Confederation, formerly the ICFTU, which broke with the WFTU — World Federation of Trade Unions dominated by Communists] whose complicities and compromises are well-documented. Let’s be clear: the CGT now follows a different international ‘policy’, aligned not with today’s world but with yesterday’s. Internationally, the CGT is on the wrong side of the barricade. Since the 53rd Congress [in 2023], the situation hasn’t improved but deteriorated.
This is particularly the case with positions in line with current trends and declarations condemning the October 7 action, which aim to stigmatize the armed and political struggle of an entire nation through the Palestinian resistance organizations that the people have established for themselves, without exception. I regard October 7 as a historic act, for which the Palestinians are paying a high price with extraordinary courage. This was also true in other anti-colonial struggles, such as in Algeria, Vietnam, China, and Africa. What’s different now? In practice, solidarity is no longer the position of the CGT’s International Department. I regret this deeply.
In my open letter to Sophie Binet [CGT Secretary General], I outlined several arguments about the historical causes of this liberation struggle, which can only be resolved through the self-determination of the Palestinian people. I made similar points in the Appeal I initiated, which gathered 300 French and international figures in support of the “Palestinian people on their feet, who do not want to live on their knees”. Yet, for obvious reasons, the CGT has chosen not to clarify “how it came to this”. In the latest issue of Ensemble — La Vie Ouvrière [the CGT’s monthly magazine], I encountered astonishing comments legitimizing Israel’s actions. This is not merely due to the weaknesses and gross ignorance of the CGT’s International Department but is a deliberate choice, reflecting a broader orientation. It stands in stark contradiction to the CGT’s historical international commitments, such as those made by the CGTU with Abdel Krim during the Rif War in 1925.
In the 1970s, I lived and worked in this region, alongside the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance. The CGT once enjoyed great prestige there, as I can personally attest. Today, that prestige has been lost. How did this happen? In 1996, I accompanied Louis Viannet [former CGT Secretary General] to Beirut, where we met with all progressive organizations, including Hezbollah, and to Gaza, where we had an extensive discussion with Yasser Arafat. I recall his warm praise for the CGT’s efforts and its capacity to maintain fraternal relationships with all the trade unions and political organizations of the Palestinian resistance. This is no longer the case, and the reason is quite clear. Contrary to the decisions of the Confederal Congress, the CGT leadership has chosen to make selective alliances. For instance, it ostracizes the oldest Palestinian trade union confederation [the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions], due to its affiliation with the WFTU. Do you support this stance? Conversely, the CGT refuses to sever ties with the Histadrut, a historic pillar of Israeli Zionism known for its corruption and unwavering support for Netanyahu. Do you agree with this? Additionally, the CGT no longer has relations with Syria, Iraq, or Jordan, and its ties with FENASOL in Lebanon, also affiliated with the WFTU, have become merely formal. Do you consider this acceptable?
These are just a few examples to help you reconsider and refine your arguments, which frankly fall short of what should be expected from a CGT militant who claims to be in solidarity. In reality, solidarity with what and how? Do you or do you not support the right to armed struggle, a legitimate right recognized by the United Nations Charter?
Shouldn’t we address this question and have the courage to answer it clearly? Why do we support armed struggle in Ukraine but not in Palestine?
You see, to me this choice belongs to the Palestinian people, and it is certainly not up to their class adversary — imperialism — to decide for them, especially in this area. This is why our internationalism must be substantive. Clarity is essential — indeed, indispensable. That’s why I signed this Appeal, as it contributes to this. All that’s left for you to do is sign it!
Fraternally yours,
Jean-Pierre Page
Message from Alain Marshal
Dear Comrades,
I’d like to take the liberty of responding to the comrade’s comment. I don’t see this as a ‘personal opinion on the document,’ as our 5 pages of detailed and referenced arguments are entirely ignored, with no mention of potential flaws. What stands out instead is a sweeping ad hominem attack on dozens of signatories from diverse backgrounds, accusing them, without a shred of evidence, of insidious motives. This baseless accusation, claiming comrades are exploiting the genocide in Gaza to settle personal scores, is unworthy. Misrepresenting the substance of a comment to launch personal attacks is usually a tactic when there are no compelling counterarguments or may even tacitly admit that the CGT’s problematic statements we are highlighting are indeed indefensible. Pitting quantity against quality is unacceptable; calling for a ceasefire while endorsing key (and widely discredited) elements of Israeli propaganda is neither healthy nor constructive.
If you want to argue against signing a document, it would be more appropriate to justify your opposition based on the document’s content or a principled disagreement with the open letter’s approach, rather than casually dismissing the majority of its signatories. Several comrades have declined to sign the letter for valid reasons — whether because a particular point in the petition concerned them, or because they preferred to maintain a different relationship with the CGT Confederation — without resorting to denigrating its initiators and supporters.
The appeal’s fundamental proposals are clear and concrete: we urge the Confederation to stop using pro-Israeli rhetoric and base its declarations on international law, justice, and morality, rather than succumbing to emotional, political and media pressures from our capitals subservient to Washington and its unconditional support for Israel. We could have made even more proposals had the Conf’ not responded so disappointingly — and even contemptuously — to our request, or had it been willing to engage in a genuine internal debate on this issue.
When the dust settles, the propaganda fades, and the truth about the events of October 7 and their aftermath becomes clear, the CGT will be credited for having leaders, members, and sympathizers who recognized what was happening and did their utmost to urge the Confederation to reconsider its stance. At a time when efforts to annihilate the Palestinian cause are in full force — including the egregious act of cutting off funding to UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, effectively condemning millions to starvation — it is our moral duty to distance ourselves from anything that could be seen as endorsing what is happening in Gaza. Many revelations since October 7 should have prompted the Conf’ to correct its position, yet it persists in its unacceptable statements. The dire situation in Gaza, the existential stakes for over 2 million Palestinians, the very future of Palestine, and the defense of the CGT’s values and history, which demand a firm stance against colonial oppression and the rejection of war propaganda, compel us to take this stand.
Fraternally yours,
Salah L. (Alain Marshal is a pseudonym used on this blog to uphold my ‘duty of neutrality’ as a public servant)
The Paris Olympics might be over, but in a stunning turn of events on the last weekend Australian breakdancing champion Rachael Gunn, known as B-girl Raygun, scored a zero in her debut.
The 36-year-old university lecturer with a PhD in cultural studies failed to earn a single point across her three bouts when breaking made its Olympic debut, sparking widespread criticism both online and in some mainstream media outlets.
Amid the backlash, MGbility, a breaking judge, offered an explanation for Gunn’s poor performance.
MGbility expressed empathy for the Australian performer, attributing her lack of points to the high level of competition rather than a lack of effort.
“I feel personally very sorry,” MGbility told News Corp.
“The breaking and hip hop community definitely stands behind her. She was just trying to bring something new, something original, something that represents her country.”
MGbility further elaborated on the judging process, explaining that Gunn’s performance, while creative, fell short when compared to her rivals.
“We have five criteria in the comparative judging system. Just her level was maybe not as high as the other competitors.
“Her competitors were just better, but it doesn’t mean that she did really bad. She did her best.”
Primarily, breaking is judged on creativity, personality, technique, variety, musicality and vocabulary, which is the variation and quantity of moves. In her routine, Raygun incorporated elements she felt were uniquely Australian, including hopping like a kangaroo, yawning at an opponent, and performing the sprinkler.
Australia break dance athlete Raygun (Rachel Gunn) absolute best moments at Paris 2024 Olympics pic.twitter.com/VY7FbxnuCy
“I love Rachael, and I think what has occurred on social media with trolls and keyboard warriors has been really disappointing,” Meares stated.
She highlighted Gunn’s perseverance, recalling her struggles in 2008 as the only woman in a male-dominated sport, which led to her qualifying for the Olympics in Paris.
“She is the best female breakdancer we have for Australia,” Meares asserted.
“Raygun is an absolutely loved member of this Olympic team. She has represented the Olympic spirit with great enthusiasm, and I absolutely love her courage and character.
“I feel very disappointed for her that she has come under attack.”
Following her exit from the competition, Raygun criticised the decision to drop breaking from the Los Angeles 2028 programme, calling it “disappointing.”
She also responded to critiques of her choice to wear the Australian Olympic tracksuit during her performance, a point of pride for the athlete.
Reflecting on the experience, Gunn said, “I know how rare this opportunity is, and I wanted to take the chance to wear the green and gold. It was a real moment of pride for me to wear the Australian uniform, especially with the Indigenous print on the arms.”
No matter what the judges say or what the trolls write, it’s undeniable that 36-year-old B-girl Raygun unintentionally stole the spotlight and is now poised to become an Australian cult icon.
Republished with permission from The Australia Today.
Swimming, or dipping, in faecal polluted waters is not unusual. The spirit longs for purity in the staining aqua, and the body keeps pace with it. The Ganges, for instance, features sacred rites and ceremonies defiant of science. In an aqueous body of lingering corpses, thickening pollutants and full flowing faeces, foolhardy believers can find spirituality.
Such foolhardiness has also found itself in Paris 2024, the occasion of the XXXIII Summer Olympiad. Since 1923, the River Seine’s toxicity had become the stuff of legend. Over five decades, the famous river received untreated sewage.
With the award of the Olympics came the intention to feature the Seine in various sporting events. No less than €1.4 billion was spent on cleaning the river, a project underway since 2015. There was much exaggerated nonsense coming from Paris deputy mayor Emmanuel Gregoire, who toldTime that, “Swimming at the root of the Eiffel Tower will be very romantic.”
In May, the city’s officials, including the president of the Paris 2024 organising committee, Tony Estanguet, opened an underground water storage facility intended to collect residual and access rainwater and halt untreated wastewater from entering the Seine. The structure, known as the Bassin d’Austerlitz, took 42 months to build at the cost of €90 million, with a storage capacity of 50,000 cubic metres.
There has been a procession of volunteers wishing to take to the Seine’s waters, if only to prove the point that it is sanitary. President Emmanuel Macron promised that he would “do it, but I won’t give you the date.”
French Sports Minister Amélie Oudéa-Castéra, rarely resisting a chance for gratuitous publicity, was less cautious, clumsily taking the plunge. Then came the city’s mayor, Anne Hidalgo, who similarly made good her promise. (The occasion had been delayed by the sudden call for parliamentary elections.) “The Seine is exquisite,” she felt programmed to say. On emerging from the river, she professed to finding the water “very, very good. A little cool, but not so bad.”
Whatever exquisiteness Hidalgo might have detected, the data from Paris examined by POLITICO between June 3 and July 23 revealed concentrations of E. coli bacteria in excess of European safety standards for more than half the days surveyed.
The European branch of the Surfrider Foundation had also busied itself with testing water quality over the course of six months, paying special attention to the presence of E. coli and enterococci. In April, it issued a grave warning: “Of the 14 samples taken, whether after heavy rain or on a sunny day, only 1 enabled our team to conclude that the quality of the water in the Seine at this particular point was even satisfactory.” Participating athletes would “be swimming in polluted water and taking significant risks to their health.”
The sceptics have certainly been out in force. Many found themselves agitatedly grouped in a movement that came to be called, “Je Chie Dans La Seine Le 23 Juin”, the original date of Hidalgo’s Seine venture. The meaning had the true freshness of resistant ordure: “I shit in the Seine on 23rd June.” Some duly obliged.
Whatever the safety issues of this curving body of water banked by cultural monuments, the Seine featured as a vital prop to the event’s opening, marked by its murky and brooding flow, barges, discordant performances and enthusiastic athletes braying, cheering and crowing. But the organisers had not anticipated the extent of the downpour. Therein began the headaches.
On July 30, three hours before the Olympic triathlon’s first leg, intended to feature 1,500 metres of swimming, the World Triathlon announced that the men’s trial had been postponed till July 31. The decision to do so was made following a meeting “on water quality” held at 3.30am. “The tests carried out in the Seine today revealed water quality levels that did not provide sufficient guarantees to allow the event to be held.”
Two previous training sessions had also been cancelled for the same reasons. Despite those cancellations, the Organising Committee CEO Étienne Thobois was unjustifiably optimistic in claiming that events could be held on Tuesday. “The required flow of the river of one cubic metre per second has been met and we don’t have an issue.”
Belgium’s Marten Van Riel, ranked fourth in the men’s triathlon at the Tokyo Olympics, was less impressed. “Changing the day like that in the middle of the night is disrespectful to the years of preparation of the athletes and to all (y)our fans that were going to watch live or on TV,” he vented on Instagram.
His fellow athletes are also taking few chances with the promises of officialdom, ingesting an increased amount of probiotics and refusing to wash hands after toilet sessions in an effort to improve immunity. But as Bill Sullivan of the Indiana University School of Medicine observes with sagacious relevance, “in the Olympics between humans and germs, the germs usually win.”
The 2024 Olympic Games have provided the perfect excuse for French authorities to turn Paris into a hyper-securitized police state. Recently, two journalists on a critical tour of the Olympics hosted by the anti-Olympics activist group Saccage 2024 (“Destruction 2024”) were arrested and interrogated by police—despite not engaging in any form of disruptive or illegal activity. Reporting from the streets of Paris, TRNN’s Dave Zirin speaks with Noah Farjon of Saccage 2024 about his arrest and what it says about the state of democracy in France under the spotlight of the Olympics.
Studio Production: Jules Boykoff Post-Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. An updated version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Hey, this is Dave Zirin here from Edge of Sports TV, only on The Real News Network. I’m here with Noah from Saccage 2024. Saccage 2024 is a counter-Olympic organizing collective, here in Paris. Noah, thank you so much for joining us.
Noah Farjon:
Thank you for inviting me here.
Dave Zirin:
You were in a very difficult situation involving the police in an arrest the other day. Can you tell our audience what happens?
Noah Farjon:
Yeah. Me and two journalists got arrested yesterday when we were trying to do what we call a Saccage Toxic Tour, which is just a little tour of the Olympic area around the Stade de France, just to show some of the buildings that got destroyed or impacted by this Olympics. It was a very calm event that was supposed to involve 10 journalists and a few of our members, just to show those-
Dave Zirin:
The effects?
Noah Farjon:
Yes, the effect of the Olympics on the city of Saint-Denis. But I found two other journalists, [inaudible 00:01:35] Toxic Tour and was trying to guide them to the beginning of the Toxic Tour. When we arrived, when we were just out of the metro, there was a lot of plainclothes police that was just watching us and pointing. It was clear that we were watched. Which is something that happen in all of our Toxic Tours, there is always some police following us to see what we’re doing.
But what was [inaudible 00:02:01] is that as soon as we started moving, four police car arrived immediately to block the way and 30 cops got out to do an identity check. And when they found leaflets and some stickers… Some leaflets were for a past protest that was accepted by the police, that happened without an issue, but they still took two hour, were doing a lot of phone call, taking picture of us, and trying to put pressure on us, being very rude.
And eventually say, “You are now under arrest for trying to gather and do degradation.” Which was entirely false, because once again, it was just a journalistic event, just to show the city. They took us to the police station and we stayed there for 10 hour.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. Before you go on, I just want to make this really clear for the audience. You were attempting just show journalists the effects of the Olympics on Saint-Denis, and because of that you were arrested and held for 10 hours?
Noah Farjon:
Yeah. Yeah, both me and the journalists were very surprised because… The journalists clearly were… They had what is called [French 00:03:19].
Dave Zirin:
[French 00:03:19], yes.
Noah Farjon:
Which is an official document saying, “We are from the press and we are going to go there.” One even had an Olympic accreditation. But the police told them, “Yeah, but we can’t know if it’s not a fake one, so you are still going to be taken with us.” This person had specifically a press pass from the Olympic, which should give her access to a lot of backstage area. She shouldn’t at all have been arrested. Everybody was very surprised by that arrest.
They took us to the police station. We stayed for a long time. It took me six hour before I got interrogated. During the interrogation, the question was very surprising because it was not… They could only [inaudible 00:04:12] about what we’re doing here. It was mostly about, “Are you on the left? Are you against [inaudible 00:04:20]? Are you part of Saccage 2024? Are you against the Olympic?”
It was a lot of political question about my political view and my political view about the Olympics.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. They asked if you were on the left?
Noah Farjon:
Yeah.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. We hear much about France being one of the great old democracies. What does this tell us about democracy in France?
Noah Farjon:
Democracy in France is having huge issue right now. What Macron is doing by refusing to name a prime minister from the majority that got chosen, and he’s using the Olympic to make that last longer. He said, “I am doing an Olympic ceasefire on politics and therefore will not nominate a prime minister until at least the Olympics are over, but perhaps before the Paralympics.” He’s using the current events to block everything.
This Toxic Tour or events that we did a lot of time before the Olympics and never had issue with that. Because these are always short events. The biggest we did was 35 people on bikes.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. I want to lay this out for the audience. The left coalition received the most votes in the last election. They are waiting to have one of their members named as a prime minister, by all rights, but President Macron is saying, “We’re going to wait off on that because we’re having an Olympic ceasefire on politics.” Basically, that’s what’s happening?
Noah Farjon:
Yeah. It’s what’s happening.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. That doesn’t sound very democratic.
Noah Farjon:
Oh, it is not. It is not. Macron, this is the first mandate, but especially his second term, he has less and less of a majority, and used all of the political and legal way he has to ignore the fact that he is extremely unpopular and have less and less elected official. What he did, for example, also for these elections that happened just before the Olympics, was that he said that all the people that are still minister were going to vote to choose the leader of the Assembly.
Which is highly illegal, because for the separation of power, if you’re in the cabinet of Macron, you are not supposed to vote on that and to vote in general as a deputy. So, he tell them to vote, and gave them [inaudible 00:06:54] vote to have the leader of the Assembly being someone of Macron, despite him being the only second-biggest.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. You’re talking about what Macron has meant to democracy in Paris and in France. What have the Olympics meant to democracy in Paris?
Noah Farjon:
For me, a lot of things, because many laws that were passed for the Olympics or laws that will be kept after. In France have been huge protests that we fight hardly, against drones and against algorithmic camera. But there was an Olympic law to test this technology, so right now there are drones and cameras that use AI all around Paris for the Olympics, because those laws were passed, thanks to the Olympics. And there was no protest this time, because the Olympics make everything more okay, basically. People will not protest as much if it’s something that’s done for the Olympics.
But to me, one of the worst things that happened is, Paris is under basically occupation. It’s the biggest police and army presence in the city since the occupation during the Second World War. We’re not even free to circulate anymore because we need what’s called a QR code, which is a flash code to say, okay, I have the right to take my car in all of this area of Paris. The lockdown around the Seine, just here, for the opening ceremony was so big that there was less people there during the week of lockdown before the ceremony, that there was less people there than during the COVID lockdown.
Dave Zirin:
Wow.
Noah Farjon:
Because nobody had access to the Seine for a week.
Dave Zirin:
Wow. And-
Noah Farjon:
And a lot of people-
Dave Zirin:
Please continue, sorry.
Noah Farjon:
And also, a lot of people got what’s called in France, [foreign language 00:08:56], which is like house arrest, not just in Paris, but in many other cities. Which basically said, you have not the right to leave your home during Olympic event or not to go in Paris because we think you are an issue for security. There was people that were on the left. A lot of leftists got arrested.
Basically, anybody that was a bit under surveillance of the police and had any kind of legal issue before, got arrested. A lot of people that had no legal issue but were having mental issue also were forbidden to go out on their own. And mental hospital, that were supposed to be some hospital where they could leave and go back in, said, “Okay, you cannot let your patient leave for those days.”
It’s a huge threat on our freedom to move. It’s not becoming a freedom, but a right that we have to ask and that has to be given by the prefecture of police.
Dave Zirin:
The left came together to beat back the National Rally and the fascists in the last election. But, there’s a socialist mayor of Paris, Hidalgo.
Noah Farjon:
Yeah.
Dave Zirin:
Are there now splits on the left in terms of how to deal with the Olympics and the policing and Macron’s attacks on democracy between those who are cheerleading the Olympics and those who are protesting?
Noah Farjon:
Yeah. Sadly, at least the more mainstream [inaudible 00:10:34] left. I’ve never been too much against the Olympic. We can see the way it is talked about, the opening ceremony. Most of elected official are talking about this ceremony as a big success for the left. Because they said, “Oh, look, there was some marginalized communities that were represented.”
But in fact, it was still a very elitist event because there was still the army everywhere, there was still police everywhere. Yes, there was Aya Nakamura singing, but she was singing with the [French 00:11:04], which is the army. So, it was just the elites saying, “Look how cool we are and how much we like France.” But for the media and Parisian, they still couldn’t go there. Only the spots that were on big incline could see what was happening in the Seine. Many people that took ticket and that got there were like, “Oh, I just cannot see.”
All they were talking about was like, “Oh. Look, how cool we are.” An example I have is Gojira, which is a metal band that work with Sea Shepherd at some point, got a castle to do a war song about Ah! Ca Ira, which is a French revolutionary song. But they were protected by the police for more than a week with the castle being closed off. Meanwhile, Watson is getting arrested by the police in Greenland. It’s completely disconnected from what’s happening.
Dave Zirin:
I think we call that irony.
Noah Farjon:
Yes.
Dave Zirin:
Which the French are very good at.
Noah Farjon:
Oh, yeah.
Dave Zirin:
The Olympics are coming to Los Angeles in the United States in 2028. Do you have any advice or words for the people of Los Angeles about what it means to have the Olympics come to your town, and how the left in Los Angeles should be responding?
Noah Farjon:
Yeah. For Los Angeles, there is many things to say, but what’s important for you is to organize and try to show that whatever they promise to you for this Olympics, it’s not worth the humane cost. It’s not worth any of the costs that they will try to impose on you. For sports and for entertainment, you cannot justify to evict people. You cannot justify to just clean up the city and make it a tourist attraction.
You need to protest and you need to do everything you can to make it as hard for this Olympics to happen, not just for those ’28 Olympics, but also for the next ones they will try to put on you. I know Salt Lake City got a bid-
Dave Zirin:
Yes.
Noah Farjon:
… that is recurring very often. For example, Salt Lake City, all of the cities should keep fighting against this Olympic, just to show that it is an event that shouldn’t happen anymore-
Dave Zirin:
Wow.
Noah Farjon:
… because the cost is too great.
Dave Zirin:
The cost is just too great.
This is Noah from Saccage 2024. Noah, thank you so much for joining us here on The Real News Network.
Noah Farjon:
Thank you for [inaudible 00:13:42].
Dave Zirin:
Of course. Absolutely. We’ll be back with more news from The Real News Network from Olympic Paris before you know it.
Maximillian Alvarez:
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It is a point verging on the trite: an arms corporation suspected of engaging in corrupt practices, spoiling dignitaries and officials and undermining the body politic. But one such corporation is France’s Thales defence group, which saw raids on their offices in France, the Netherlands and Spain on June 26 and June 28. The prosecutors are keen to pursue charges ranging from standard corruption and attempts to influence foreign officials to instances of criminal association and money laundering.
It is clear in this that even the French republic, despite having a narcotics grade addiction to the international arms industry, thought that Thales might have gone just that bit far. Some 65 investigators from the Nanterre-based office responsible for battling corruption, financial and fiscal offences have been thrown into the operation. A further twelve magistrates from the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), with the assistance of the European agency Eurojust, aided by Dutch and Spanish officials, have all been involved in this sprawling enterprise.
The police raids arise from two separate investigations. The first, starting at the end of 2016, involved suspicions of corruption pertaining to a foreign official, criminal association and money laundering. The topics of interest: the sale of submarines to Brazil, along with the construction of a naval base.
The second commenced in June 2023, with claims of suspected corruption and influence peddling, criminal conspiracy and money laundering connected with the supply of military and civilian equipment to overseas clients.
Giving little by way of details, a spokesperson for Thales insisted that the corporation “strictly complies with national and international regulations.” It had “developed and implemented a global compliance program that meets with the highest industry standards.” That, it may well turn out, is precisely the problem.
The company propaganda on such compliance with national and international regulations is plentiful and fabulously cynical. After a time perusing such material, one forgets that this is a defence outfit much dedicated to sowing the seeds of death, a far from benign purpose. Group Secretary and General Counsel Isabelle Simon, for instance, is quoted as saying that the company, over the course of two decades “has developed a robust policy on ethics, integrity and compliance, which are the foundations of our social responsibility and the key to building a world we can all trust.”
The anti-corruption policy, so it is claimed, is also “regularly reviewed and updated to reflect increasingly strict international rules and requirements on corruption and influence peddling,” a point “further strengthened by Thales’s progress towards ISO 37001 certification.”
Typical of the guff surrounding modern organisational behaviour, the company wonks assume that workshops and training sessions are the way to go when inspiring a spirit of compliance. There more sessions you run, and the more do you do, the more enlightened you become. In boasting about its “zero tolerance on corruption,” we are told that 11,270 “training sessions on corruption and influence peddling were delivered in 2019-2020.”
Other features are also mentioned to ward off any suspicions, among them a code of conduct intended to stomp on any corrupt practices, a “corruption and influence peddling risk map,” a disciplinary system, an anti-bribery management system and an internal whistleblowing program.
The presence of such measures tends to be cosmetic. Even defence contractors need to show an iota of principle and “social responsibility”. But an iota is what it remains. As Bernard Keane of the Australian publication Crikeyobserves, “bribery might be a tool in Thales’ arsenal for dealing with defence officials around the world, along with stringing out negotiations for its own ends and refusing to comply with request [sic] for tender requirements”.
The last point Keane makes is of particular interest to Australian lawmakers, given the referral by the country’s defence department of a lucrative 10-year contract inked with Thales in 2020 to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). The contract covers the management of two Commonwealth-owned munitions facilities at Mulwala in New South Wales and Benalla in Victoria.
The referral was prompted by a report by the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO), which found the extent Thales had wooed Australian officials in a skewed tender process. A bottle of champagne, for instance, had been solicited by a defence official in the course of discussions, one that also involved providing Thales with confidential information. This all worked swimmingly for the official in question, given that he later joined the company.
Thales also got what it wanted, effectively bypassing, with the blessing of the defence department, a competitive tender process. This took place despite a 2017 offer from the global munitions company, NIOA, and the ANAO’s own recommendation to pursue an appropriate tender option. All in all, the audit found that “Defence’s management of probity was not effective and there was evidence of unethical conduct.”
This is putting it mildly, given that Thales had not only been involved in drafting the criteria for the request for tender (RTF) documents (some 28 workshops were held for that purpose between October 2018 and August 2019), but did so deficiently. In October 2019, this very point was made by the Defence Department, which noted no fewer than 199 “non-compliances” by the company against the RTF.
Apart from giving officialdom their time in the sun of oversight and regulation, chastening investigations into corruption do little to alter the spoliation that arises from the defence industry. Defence contractors are regularly feted by government authorities, often with the connivance of the revolving door. Yesterday’s officials are today’s arms sales consultants. The defence sector, notably for such countries as France, is simply too lucrative and important to be cleansed of its unscrupulousness. Even as these investigations are taking place to ruffle Thales, the Brazilian military establishment, by way of example, has happily continued doing business with the French weapons giant.
In February last year, the defence group trumpeted securing a contract with the Brazilian Airspace Control Department (DECEA) for the supply and installation of ADS-B ground surveillance stations to improve the safety of commercial civil aviation. The effort is not negligible: 66 stations to be installed in over 20 Brazilian states.
On June 17, the company announced the acquisition by the Brazilian Air Force of the Ground Master 200 Multi-mission All-in-one (GM 200 MM/A) tactical air surveillance radars. With much bluster, the announcement goes on to describe such radars as giving the user “superior situational awareness for air surveillance, as well as ground-based air defence (GBAD) operations up to Mid-Range Air-Defence (MRAD).” Some gloating follows: “The contract signed with the FAB consolidates Thales’ position as a leader in the radar market in Brazil.” One can only wonder how many palms were greased, and local regulations breached, for that to happen.
Another entertainingly corrupt sporting event has just started in Paris, opening with a barge packed ceremony on the Seine. Thousands of simpering commentators, paid-up media gawkers and bored influencers have been ready with their computers, phones and confected dreams. As always, the Olympics throws up the question about how far the host city has managed to come through on the issue of facilities, infrastructure and organisation. Few would have doubted that Paris has the facilities, but there was always going to be grumbling about the choice of opening, mode of execution and, most importantly, the cost both financial and social.
For the budget-minded types, the Olympics, and analogous monumental sporting events, continue to lose their appeal – along with the finances. The extortionate strain on the public wallet, the bleeding of funds from budgets, has made them most unattractive propositions for the hosts. To this can be added the disruptions to commerce, the occupation of valuable real estate along with environmental harm, the forceful displacement of residents, instances of gentrification and the redirecting of labour from vital infrastructure projects.
Even for the sports-crazed Australians, such events as the 2026 Commonwealth Games proved unappetising, with the state Victorian government cancelling the event in July 2023. The whole matter had been grossly irresponsible on the part of the Andrews government, given its initial praise of the games leading up to their re-election. The Victorian Auditor General was deeply unimpressed by the episode, subsequently finding that the cancellation had cost A$589 million, comprising A$150 million in terms of employee and operating costs and the A$380 million settlement.
In March this year, there were media rumblings that Brisbane, the planned host city for the 2032 Olympics, was considering a similar response. The Queensland state government had sought advice about how much it would cost cancelling the entire effort and received an estimate lying anywhere between A$500 million and A$1 billion. A further $3 billion in federal funding would have also been compromised. The fractious venture was set to continue.
With six months to go, Paris was awash with the logistical disruptions that come with such an event. Transit fares had increased. The bouquinistes with their book stalls along the Seine, a feature made permanent by Napoleon III in 1859, were threatened by the city’s police with closure for the duration of the Games, a threat that President Emmanuel Macron eventually scotched. Public sector employees demanded pay increases and unions got busy planning strikes.
The night before the opening of the Games saw thousands of activists gather at the Place de la République, coordinated by the activist collective La Revers de la Médaille (the Other Side of the Medal). The event, featuring some 80 grassroot organisations, had been billed the “Counter-Opening Ceremony of the Olympics” and inspired by the statement “des Jeux, mai pour qui?” (“Games, but for whom?”)
Representing a broader coalition of groups, La Revers de la Médaille had released a statement in Libération prior to the gathering mocking official claims that Paris 2024 would leave a society more inclusive in its wake. This could hardly be reconciled with the eviction of some 12,500 vulnerable individuals as part of an effort described as “social cleansing”.
In their “Oxford Olympics Study 2024”, co-authors Alexander Budzier and Bent Flyvbjerg conclude that the Olympics “remain costly and continue to have large cost overruns, to a degree that threatens their viability.” All Games, “without exception”, run over budget. “For no other type of megaproject is this the case, not even the construction of nuclear power plants or the storage of nuclear waste.” For organisers of the event, the budget is an airy notion, “a fictitious minimum that was never sufficient” typical of the “Blank Check Syndrome”.
The authors acknowledge the efforts made by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to reform the games through such efforts as Agenda 2020 and Agenda 2020+5 but find their overall efforts patchy and unsuccessful. Despite these programs, the cost of the Games were “statistically significantly increasing.” Admittedly, the instances of cost overruns had significantly decreased until 2008, after which the trend was reversed. The costs for Paris 2024, based on estimates available at the study’s publication, came to $US8.7 billion, a cost overrun of 115% in real terms. “Cost overruns are the norm for the Games, past, present and future. The Iron Law applies: ‘Over budget, over and over again.’”
Such events are, however, always attractive to the political classes willing to find some placing in posterity’s shiny ranks. As the money they play with is almost never their own, expense is less significant than the pyrotechnics, the noisy show, the effort, the collective will that figures such as Albert Speer understood so well when planning the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Give the public, and the sporting fraternity, flags, standards, pageantry. Let them perform in large stadia, on pitches, and in water. The world will soon forget the killjoys worried about money or weepy about the displaced.
It pays remembering those words of lamentation from US foreign correspondent William Shirer in his diary, penned on August 16, 1936: “I’m afraid the Nazis have succeeded with their propaganda. First, the Nazis have run the Games on a lavish scale never before experienced, and this has appealed to the athletes. Second, the Nazis have put up a very good front for the general visitors, especially the big businessmen.”
Such a formula has, for the most part, worked for decades, despite the odd hiccup of dissent and forensic critiques of the Blank Check Syndrome. Be they despotic, authoritarian or democratically elected, if corrupt representatives, this is a show that is bound to go on with profligate persistence.
France has claimed their first Olympic Games sevens rugby gold medal with a 28-7 win over Fiji at the Stade de France
Star French player Antoine Dupont scored two late second half tries to help the side create history in front of a partisan 69,000 crowd.
Fiji, who were chasing a three-peat attempt at the Paris Olympics, paid the price for giving away critical penalties in the second spell as France took control.
Fiji’s Josaia Raisuqe said it was a good final, but Fiji made some mistakes.
“Maybe because [France] were playing on their home soil, it was a special motivation for them. But we must just keep on going.
“We gave our best in this final. But when it comes to the end, one is going to win and one is going to lose, so we accept that.”
He said Fiji’s medal is silver but “still it is important to me”.
‘Silver on my neck’
“Maybe we are going to come back in the next Olympics and we will give everything.
“I have silver on my neck.
“My family and country is happy now. My mum and dad brought me into this sport and I am thankful for that.”
The Fijians, who claimed the gold at the both the 2016 and 2020 Games, started the game with a Josefa Talacolo try.
But France responded through Jefferson-Lee Joseph and the two teams were tied 7-all at halftime.
Fijian captain Jerry Tuwai had to be content with winning his first silver medal, having won two previous gold medals in Brazil and Japan.
But he had not been in the team earlier in the sevens season.
‘Hard when left out’
“It was very hard when I was left out but I always had hope that I could play another Olympic Games and it happened,” he said.
“I was coming for the gold but it wasn’t to be. What can you say?
“My first Olympics (Rio 2016) was a real surprise to me because it was the first time for rugby at the Olympics.
“The second was better and this one was better still, even though I didn’t win gold with my teammates and for my country. I am grateful I could come this far.”
Head coach Osea Kolinisau was also hoping to become the first sevens rugby coach to have won an Olympic gold medal as a player and coach, having been captain when Fiji first kissed gold in Brazil in 2016.
France, with former Test captain Dupont leading their charge in the second half, had their fans cheering early when play resumed for the second spell, running down the flank to set up Aaron Grandidier for their first try.
Fiji is the silver medal winner on day three of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at Stade de France in Paris yesterday. Image: World Rugby/Mike Lee – KLC/RNZ
Then it was Dupont who came to the front for his country, claiming his double and shutting Fiji out.
Fiji did not have much possession in the second half as France applied pressure and played rushed defence to disrupt the defending champions.
Fiji sailed through semifinal
Fiji sailed through to their third final with an outstanding display of flair and skills, beating Australia 31-7. The two teams were 7-all at halftime.
The Aussies managed to score first following a Fiji mistake.
Joji Nasova replied with a length of the field try when he raced away from close to his tryline.
France came from behind to beat South Africa 19-5.
It was a tight affair with both teams failing to score any points in the first half.
The South Africans were the first to score after the break before the hosts answered with three successive tries.
South Africa defeated Australia in the bronze medal final to claim their second Olympic Games bronze, with a 26-19 win.
In the other play-offs, New Zealand finished fifth, defeating Ireland 17-7.
Argentina hammered USA 19-0 to claim seventh spot, Kenya finished ninth beating Samoa 10-5 and Uruguay ended up 11th with a 21-10 win over Japan.
The women’s competition kicks-off on Monday morning (NZ time), with medal finals scheduled for Wednesday.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
France win Olympic rugby sevens gold in Paris. Image: X/SVNZSeries/RNZ
A revelation — in order to liberate Palestinians from a century of oppression and prevent their genocide, Jews must liberate themselves from centuries of conditioning that trained them to pose as perpetual victims while victimizing others. This is happening and too slowly; progressive Jews are wrestling with reacting to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people without crippling the Jewish community. Almost entirely anti-Zionist in the 19th century, Zionist advances have enticed the Jewish community to split between Zionists and anti-Zionists. The former have gained control of a community that never had a higher hierarchy. Jew is preceded by an adjective ─ Zionist or non-Zionist. Those with the former adjective have witnessed pockets of hatred against their deliberate deceptions and corrosive actions. Concurrent with Jewish genocide of the Palestinians, hatred of Jews has swelled universally, appearing in Africa and Asia, where relatively few Jewish communities now exist.
The Jews during Zionism’s formation did not believe in or trust Zionism.
Reform Judaism’s Declaration of Principles: 1885 Pittsburgh Conference stated,
We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.
Between 1881 and 1914, 2.5 million Jews migrated from Russia ─ 1.7 million to America, 500,000 to Western Europe, almost 300,000 to other nations, and only 30,000 – 50,000 to Palestine. Of the latter, 15,000 returned to Russia. Jews rejected Zionism from its outset.
Despite rejection, Zionist supporters managed to skew Western governments’ policies to favor their mission. A worldwide propaganda machine obscures Identification of Israel as a criminal state that willfully murders Palestinians, steals their lands, has ethnically cleansed them, buried their villages under rubble, and destroyed their history and heritage. Quick to use the expression ‘Holocaust denial” on anyone who questions aspects of the Holocaust, the Zionists impressed upon the Jews the use of “denial” for anything that smacks of Jewish malfeasance, and includes the greatest malfeasance, the act of genocide. Charges of malfeasance by Jews are converted into anti-Semitism, truth becomes denied, anger of Jews against a manufactured hostile world is internalized, and bitterness against hostile Jews is intensified. The Zionists have used debts as collateral, turning valid charges against them into sympathy for their cause.
Start with the beginning of Zionism.
Although antipathy toward Jews and Judaism remained strong in Christian Europe, physical attacks on western European Jews, after a brief episode of the 1819-1826 Hep-Hep riots in Germany, were relatively few.
Often mentioned is the Dreyfus case, where a Jewish military officer in the 1896 French army was twice sentenced and later pardoned for giving military secrets to the Germans. Highlighted as an example of anti-Semitism in a French military, “rife with anti-Semitism,” and psychologically extended to the French populace, the Dreyfus case circulated for a century in American media, whose audience had no relation to the French incident (why?), giving the Dreyfus case a life of its own, and making it seem that there was not one Dreyfus but thousands. The Zionists needed a Dreyfus to substantiate their mission for all time, refusing to recognize that the Dreyfus case contradicted the Zionist mission; being an isolated case, it proved Jews could integrate into European institutions and receive equal justice.
Was the French military rife with anti-Semitism? According to Piers Paul, The Dreyfus Affair. p. 83, “The French army of the period was relatively open to entry and advancement by talent, with an estimated 300 Jewish officers, of whom ten were generals.” Only five African-American officers in the much larger US army in WWII. Why not emphasize the opposite of what the Zionists proffered; French Jews received equal and eventual justice. After the French Revolution, physical attacks on Jews rarely occurred in France.
Imperial Russia was another European community that the Zionists accused of serious anti-Semitism, exaggerating the damage done to Jewish communities in a multi-ethnic nation ravaged with ethnic disturbances. They used a special term, “pogroms,” to characterize attacks on Jews. Note that prejudice to other ethnicities does not qualify for a special term, such as “anti-Semitism,” nor does violence against any of them.
A lack of communications in Russia during the 19th century, a tendency to create sensational news, and a willingness to accept rumors make it difficult to ascertain the extent of attacks on Russia’s Jewish community. The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, a reference work on the history and culture of Eastern Europe Jewry, prepared by the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and published by Yale University Press in 2008, is a more objective and authoritative source. Excerpts from their work can be found here.
Anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire before 1881 was a rare event, confined largely to the rapidly expanding Black Sea entrepot of Odessa. In Odessa, Greeks and Jews, two rival ethnic and economic communities, lived side by side. The first Odessa pogrom, in 1821, was linked to the outbreak of the Greek War for Independence, during which the Jews were accused of sympathizing with the Ottoman authorities. Although the pogrom of 1871 was occasioned in part by a rumor that Jews had vandalized the Greek community’s church, many non-Greeks participated, as they had done during earlier disorders in 1859.
After Alexander II became Tsar in 1855, he lessened anti-Jewish edicts, rescinded forced conscription, allowed Jews to attend universities, and permitted Jewish emigration from the Pale. His assassination in 1881 prompted Tsar Alexander III to reverse his father’s actions. Because some Jews were involved in Russia’s revolutionary party, Narodnaya Volya (“People’s Will”), which organized the assassination, the assassination acted as a catalyst for a wave of attacks on Jews during 1881-83.
Typically, the pogroms of this period originated in large cities, and then spread to surrounding villages, traveling along means of communication such as rivers and railroads. Violence was largely directed against the property of Jews rather than their persons. In the course of more than 250 individual events, millions of rubles worth of Jewish property was destroyed. The total number of fatalities is disputed but may have been as few as 50, half of them pogromshchiki who were killed when troops opened fire on rioting mobs.
Unwaveringly secularist in its beliefs, the Russian Bund discarded the idea of a Holy Land and a sacred tongue. Its language was Yiddish, spoken by millions of Jews throughout the Pale. This was also the source of the organization’s four principles: socialism, secularism, Yiddish, and doyikayt or localness. The latter concept was encapsulated in the Bund slogan: “There, where we live, that is our country.” The Bund disapproved greatly of Zionism and considered the idea of emigrating to Palestine to be political escapism.
Imperial Russia contained several minorities that economically contested and attacked one another. Economic rivalry was the leading cause of attacks on Jews. From Middleman Minorities and Ethnic Violence: Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Russian Empire, The Review of Economic Studies, Volume 87, Issue 1, January 2020.
Using detailed panel data from the Pale of Settlement area between 1800 and 1927, we document that anti-Jewish pogroms—mob violence against the Jewish minority—broke out when economic shocks coincided with political turmoil. When this happened, pogroms primarily occurred in places where Jews dominated middleman occupations, i.e., moneylending and grain trading. This evidence is inconsistent with the scapegoating hypothesis, according to which Jews were blamed for all misfortunes of the majority. Instead, the evidence is consistent with the politico-economic mechanism, in which Jewish middlemen served as providers of insurance against economic shocks to peasants and urban grain buyers in a relationship based on repeated interactions.
Violation of any human life can not be underestimated or ignored; Jews suffered in the 19th century Russian Empire, and so did almost everyone else, including native Russians. Placed in context — location, time, comparison of the fate and life of Jews to other minorities, and internal and external factors that favored the Jews — the reasons for Zionists to behave as the rescuer of their co-religionists is dubious.
For others, also not of the Russian Orthodox faith, persecution was magnitudes worse. From Balfour Project:
The Moscow Patriarchate presided over the state religion and other believers were generally disadvantaged, often persecuted, or sometimes driven from Russian lands. The non-Orthodox were despised as unbelievers and thousands of Catholics were deported to Siberia in the mid-19th century. At the same time, around half a million Muslims were driven from the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire, Iran or further afield. At the south-eastern border of the Pale of Settlement began the lands of the Circassians, a mostly Muslim group who had lived since the 14th century along the northern Black Sea coast from Sochi and eastwards into the Caucasus mountains. A long war of attrition ended in the genocide of 1865. According to official Russian statistics, the population was reduced by 97 per cent. At least 200,000, and possibly several hundred thousand people died through ethnic cleansing, hunger, epidemics and bitterly cold weather.
Compared to other ethnicities ─ Native American, slaved Africans, Chinese, Irish, and Catholic in the U.S., and Chinese, Indian, and African during the age of Imperialism, the persecution and distress of European Jews was insignificant. Yet, the Zionists made it appear that Jews were the most suffering people in the world and the world believed it.
Despite the overwhelming verbal and physical rejection of Zionism by worldwide Jewry, a small group of conspirators managed to convince the British government to issue the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which is not an official or legal instrument. It is not even a Declaration. It is a letter from Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild, which has a phrase, “declaration of sympathy,” from which it was given the more lofty description of declaration. Who are these two guys?
Arthur James Balfour, known as Lord Balfour, served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1902 to 1905 and as foreign secretary from 1916 to 1919,
Lionel Walter Rothschild was a British zoologist from the wealthy Rothschild banking family, who served as a Conservative member of Parliament from 1899 to 1910. He was sympathetic to the Zionist cause and had an eminent position in the Anglo-Jewish community.
The letter:
Why was the letter issued, what did it exactly mean, and why did it have impact? Acceptable answers have not been supplied. One clue is from Minutes of British War Cabinet Meetings
Meeting No. 245, Minute No. 18, 4 October 1917: 4 October 1917: “… [Balfour] stated that the German Government were making great efforts to capture the sympathy of the Zionist Movement.”
Meeting No. 261, Minute No. 12, 31 October 1917
With reference to War Cabinet 245, Minute 18, the War Cabinet had before them a note by the Secretary, and also a memorandum by Lord Curzon on the subject of the Zionist movement. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs stated that he gathered that everyone was now agreed that, from a purely diplomatic and political point of view, it was desirable that some declaration favourable to the aspirations of the Jewish nationalists should now be made.
World leaders failed to recognize the ominous outcomes of their San Remo Peace Conference and the newly formed League of Nations, which created a new international order that sliced the Middle East for the major European powers. Both approved establishment of a Jewish presence in the British Mandate in accord with the Balfour Letter. Despite these achievements, progress for obtaining a central headquarters for Zionism went slowly until US immigration laws and persecution of German Jews renewed Zionist life.
The year 1924 was fortuitous for the Zionists. The US Immigration Act closed the doors to mass Jewish immigration from East European nations and the Act steered Jews to migrate to Palestine. By 1931, Palestine housed 175,000 Jews. The economic depression slowed the migration. The rise of Nazi Germany reinvigorated it.
After the Nazis began their rule, they slowly froze Jewish assets. Although not proven, a principal reason for Germany slowly freezing Jewish assets and engaging in its own boycott of Jewish enterprises was the boycott of German goods, which was organized by Jewish groups in the United States as a response to the confined and sporadic violence and harassment by Nazi Party members against Jews in early 1933. Zionists saw the frozen assets as a means to bring Jews to the British Mandate.
By the Ha’avara Transfer Agreement with Nazi Germany, the Zionists used German Jewish assets, including bank deposits to purchase German products that were exported to the Jewish-owned Ha’avara Company in Tel-Aviv. A portion of the money from the sales of the goods went to the emigrants, who could leave Germany and regain assets after arrival in Palestine and in an amount corresponding to their deposits in German banks. The Zionists enabled the Nazi regime to circumvent the international boycott campaign that its policies had provoked. The Zionist movement, which had become the only authorized Jewish organization in Nazi Germany, was able to transfer about 53,000 Jews to Palestine. Again, the Zionists turned catastrophe to the Jews into an opportunity for themselves.
Zionist luck, if that is the proper word for gaining from calamities to others, continued. Revelations of the Holocaust and the plight of Jewish refugees after World War II gained worldwide sympathy for the Zionist cause. About 136,000 displaced Jews came to Palestine, mostly out of desperation and without intention to remain. The Cold War provided the most decisive benefit for Zionism ─ Soviet Union support for an Israeli state drove the United States to compete for Zionist attention. Votes from both nations, bribes, and arm twisting provided a narrow victory for United Nations Declaration 181 and the Zionists established their state.
Because neither state had official names at that time, designations as Arab and Jewish states were used to map out contours of land where the major portions of the ethnicities would live. President Truman recognized the Jewish state, which became Israel just before he approved recognition. The U.S. president failed to observe that, although the state was bi-national, a small Zionist group took control of all apparatus of the new state and did that without consulting Palestinian leadership.
The UN did not create two states; it divided one Palestinian state into two states ─ a Palestinian state composed of almost 100 percent Palestinians, and another mostly Palestinian state composed of about 70 percent who were native to the area (400,000 Palestinians), a small contingent of foreign Jews that had come as Zionists to live permanently in Palestine (200,000), and another larger contingent of foreign Jews (300,000) that arrived for expediency and not with original intentions of remaining in the British Mandate. The Mandate was only a way station for Jews caught in the tragedies during the 1930s and World War II. If neither cataclysm occurred, would these Jews have gone to the Mandate? Without them, how many Jews would have been there in 1947?
David Ben-Gurion and a small clique of opportunists took advantage of an ill-advised UN, an ill-led and ill- equipped Palestinian community, and a confused world to declare their state, and, with seasoned militia forces — Haganah, Irgun, Lehi, and Palmach — cleansed the area of Palestinians and established Israel.
The Zionists turned lying, cheating, and deceiving into an accepted ethnic cleansing. During the next years, they continued the lies, cheats, and deceptions to steal more land and oppress Palestinians. Taking advantage of the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, the Zionist Jews have embarked on a genocide of the Palestinian people, masking it as a defense of their land against a force that has no offensive power to conquer anything.
The Zionists made the struggle (which they engineered) a zero-sum game of “us” or “them.” The “us” is those who steal the land and the patrimony and the lives of “them.” They forced the Jews into a choice, reasoning that the powers in control will favor “us.” This poses a difficulty for Jews who will not support genocide and, therefore, cannot support “us,” and fear that for the Palestinians to survive the Jews in Israel will not survive. A different look — if the Jews liberate themselves from the conditioned grip that Zionism has on them and differentiate between a liberated Jew and a Zionist Jew, the liberated Jews will lose their paranoid fear and the Zionist Jews will lose their power, which is based upon creating paranoia and fear in fellow Jews.
Unfortunately, the liberation of the Jews is not foreseen and the decimation of innocents will occur — a replay of the story of Purim, “when having obtained royal permission to strike their enemies, including women and children, the Jews kill over seventy-five thousand people! Esther then further seeks permission for another day of massacre.”
Unleashed from subjugation and drowned with power, they seek another day of massacre. Is Joshua, who slew the inhabitants of Jericho, eradicated the Canaanites, and is a hero in Jewish mythology, a clue to the mentality of leaders of the Jewish people? Do the horrors visited upon the Gazans, purposeful and wanton killings and massacres beyond credulity, carry Joshua to modern times and tell a cautious story of the Zionist Jews?
The Pacific Islands Forum hopes to send a high-level delegation to Kanaky New Caledonia to investigate the current political crisis in the French territory before the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting in Tonga in August.
According to Pacnews, Forum Chair and Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown confirmed this during an interview with journalists in Tokyo after the conclusion of the PALM10 meeting.
He said while it was a work in progress, there had been a request from the territorial government of New Caledonia for a high-level Pacific delegation.
Brown said the next step was to write a letter which would then need support from France.
“We will now go through the process of how we will put this into practice. Of course, it will require the support of the Government of France for the mission to proceed,” Brown said.
“We do have similar concerns. The third referendum was boycotted by the Kanak population because of the impacts of covid-19 and the respect for the mourning period. Therefore, the outcome of that referendum is not valuable,” he said.
The adviser to New Caledonia’s President Charles Wea, who is in Japan for talks on the sidelines of the PALM10 meeting, told RNZ Pacific the high level group would be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands.
New Caledonia government adviser Charles Wea . . . mission to New Caledonia would be made up of the leaders of Fiji, Cook Islands, Tonga and Solomon Islands. Image: RNZ Pacific/Kelvin Anthony
Fiji’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sitiveni Rabuka announced he would lead the Forum’s fact-finding mission in New Caledonia.
“I have also been asked by many Pacific leaders to lead a group to conduct a fact-finding mission in Nouméa to understand the problems they are facing,” he said during a talanoa session with the Fijian diaspora in Tokyo.
Fiji Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sitiveni Rabuka . . . leading a “fact-finding mission in Nouméa to understand the problems they are facing”. Image: RNZ/Giles Dexter
“Additionally, I will accompany Prime Minister James Marape to visit the President of Indonesia to discuss further actions regarding the people of West Papua.”
Mahiriki Tangaroa (Kūki ’Airani), Blessed Again by the Gods (Spring), 2015.
Since May, a powerful struggle has rocked Kanaky (New Caledonia), an archipelago located in the Pacific, roughly 1,500 kilometres east of Australia. The island, one of five overseas territories in the Asia-Pacific ruled by France, has been under French colonial rule since 1853. The indigenous Kanak people initiated this cycle of protests after the French government of Emmanuel Macron extended voting rights in provincial elections to thousands of French settlers in the islands. The unrest led Macron to suspend the new rules while subjecting islanders to severe repression. In recent months, the French government has imposed a state of emergency and curfew on the islands and deployed thousands of French troops, which Macron says will remain in New Caledonia for ‘as long as necessary’. Over a thousand protesters have been arrested by French authorities, including Kanak independence activists such as Christian Tein, the leader of the Coordination Cell for Field Actions (Cellule de coordination des actions de terrain, or CCAT), some of them sent to France to face trial. The charges against Tein and others, such as for organised crime, would be laughable if the consequences were not so serious.
The reason France has cracked down so severely on the protests in New Caledonia is that the old imperial country uses its colonies not only to exploit its resources (New Caledonia holds the world’s fifth largest nickel reserves), but also to extend its political reach across the world – in this case, to have a military footprint in China’s vicinity. This story is far from new: between 1966 and 1996, for instance, France used islands in the southern Pacific for nuclear tests. One of these tests, Operation Centaure (July 1974), impacted all 110,000 residents on the Mururoa atoll of French Polynesia. The struggle of the indigenous Kanak peoples of New Caledonia is not only about freedom from colonialism, but also about the terrible military violence inflicted upon these lands and waters by the Global North. The violence that ran from 1966 to 1996 mirrors the disregard that the French still feel for the islanders, treating them as nothing more than detritus, as if they had been shipwrecked on these lands.
In the backdrop of the current unrest in New Caledonia is the Global North’s growing militarisation of the Pacific, led by the United States. Currently, 25,000 military personnel from 29 countries are conducting Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), a military exercise that runs from Hawai’i to the edge of the Asian mainland. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research worked with an array of organisations – a number of them from the Pacific and Indian Oceans – to draft red alert no. 18 on this dangerous development. Their names are listed below.
They Are Making the Waters of the Pacific Dangerous
What is RIMPAC?
The US and its allies have held Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises since 1971. The initial partners of this military project were Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which are also the original members of the Five Eyes (now Fourteen Eyes) intelligence network built to share information and conduct joint surveillance exercises. They are also the major Anglophone countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO, set up in 1949) and are the members of the Australia-New Zealand-US strategy treaty ANZUS, signed in 1951. RIMPAC has grown to be a major biennial military exercise that has drawn in a number of countries with various forms of allegiance to the Global North (Belgium, Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Tonga).
RIMPAC 2024 began on 28 June and runs through 2 August. It is being held in Hawai’i, which is an illegally occupied territory of the United States. The Hawai’ian independence movement has a history of resisting RIMPAC, which is understood to be part of the US occupation of sovereign Hawai’ian land. The exercise includes over 150 aircraft, 40 surface ships, three submarines, 14 national land forces, and other military equipment from 29 countries, though the bulk of the fleet is from the United States. The goal of the exercise is ‘interoperability’, which effectively means integrating the military (largely naval) forces of other countries with that of the United States. The main command and control for the exercise is managed by the US, which is the heart and soul of RIMPAC.
Fatu Feu’u (Samoa), Mata Sogia, 2009.
Why is RIMPAC so dangerous?
RIMPAC-related documents and official statements indicate that the exercises allow these navies to train ‘for a wide range of potential operations across the globe’. However, it is clear from both US strategic documents and the behaviour of the US officials who run RIMPAC that the centre of focus is China. Strategic documents also make it clear that the US sees China as a major threat, even as the main threat, to US domination and believes that it must be contained.
This containment has come through the trade war against China, but more pointedly through a web of military manoeuvres by the United States. This includes establishing more US military bases in territories and countries surrounding China; using US and allied military vessels to provoke China through freedom of navigation exercises; threatening to position US short-range nuclear missiles in countries and territories allied with the US, including Taiwan; extending the airfield in Darwin, Australia, to position US aircraft with nuclear missiles; enhancing military cooperation with US allies in East Asia with language that shows precisely that the target is to intimidate China; and holding RIMPAC exercises, particularly over the past few years. Though China was invited to participate in RIMPAC 2014 and RIMPAC 2016, when the tension levels were not so high, it has been disinvited since RIMPAC 2018.
Though RIMPAC documents suggest that the military exercise is being conducted for humanitarian purposes, this is a Trojan Horse. This was exemplified, for instance, at RIMPAC 2000, when the militaries conducted the Strong Angel international humanitarian response training exercise. In 2013, the United States and the Philippines cooperated in providing humanitarian assistance after the devastating Typhoon Haiyan. Shortly after that cooperation, the US and the Philippines signed the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement (2014), which allows the US to access bases of the Philippine military to maintain its weapons depots and troops. In other words, the humanitarian operations opened the door to deeper military cooperation.
RIMPAC is a live-fire military exercise. The most spectacular part of the exercise is called Sinking Exercise (SINKEX), a drill that sinks decommissioned warships off the coast of Hawai’i. RIMPAC 2024’s target ship will be the decommissioned USS Tarawa, a 40,000-tonne amphibious assault vessel that was one of the largest during its service period. There is no environmental impact survey of the regular sinking of these ships into waters close to island nations, nor is there any understanding of the environmental impact of hosting these vast military exercises not only in the Pacific but elsewhere in the world.
RIMPAC is part of the New Cold War against China that the US imposes on the region. It is designed to provoke conflict. This makes RIMPAC a very dangerous exercise.
Kelcy Taratoa (Aotearoa), Episode 0010 from the series Who Am I? Episodes, 2004.
What is Israel’s role in RIMPAC?
Israel, which is not a country with a shoreline on the Pacific Ocean, first participated in RIMPAC 2018, and then again in RIMPAC 2022 and RIMPAC 2024. Although Israel does not have aircraft or ships in the military exercise, it is nonetheless participating in its ‘interoperability’ component, which includes establishing integrated command and control as well as collaborating in the intelligence and logistical part of the exercise. Israel is participating in RIMPAC 2024 at the same time that it is waging a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Though several of the observer states in RIMPAC 2024 (such as Chile and Colombia) have been forthright in their condemnation of the genocide, they continue to participate alongside Israel’s military in RIMPAC 2024. There has been no public indication of their hesitation about Israel’s involvement in these dangerous joint military exercises.
Israel is a settler-colonial country that continues its murderous apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people. Across the Pacific, indigenous communities from Aotearoa (New Zealand) to Hawai’i have led the protests against RIMPAC over the course of the past 50 years, saying that these exercises are held on stolen ground and waters, that they disregard the negative impact on native communities upon whose land and waters live-fire exercises are held (including areas where atmospheric nuclear testing was previously conducted), and that they contribute to the climate disaster that lifts the waters and threatens the existence of the island communities. Though Israel’s participation is unsurprising, the problem is not merely its involvement in RIMPAC, but the existence of RIMPAC itself. Israel is an apartheid state that is conducting a genocide, and RIMPAC is a colonial project that threatens an annihilationist war against the peoples of the Pacific and China.
Ralph Ako (Solomon Islands), Toto Isu, 2015.
Te Kuaka (Aotearoa)
Red Ant (Australia)
Workers Party of Bangladesh (Bangladesh)
Coordinadora por Palestina (Chile)
Judíxs Antisionistas contra la Ocupación y el Apartheid (Chile)
Partido Comunes (Colombia)
Congreso de los Pueblos (Colombia)
Coordinación Política y Social, Marcha Patriótica (Colombia)
Partido Socialista de Timor (Timor Leste)
Hui Aloha ʻĀina (Hawai’i)
Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) Liberation (India)
Federasi Serikat Buruh Demokratik Kerakyatan (Indonesia)
Federasi Serikat Buruh Militan (Indonesia)
Federasi Serikat Buruh Perkebunan Patriotik (Indonesia)
Pusat Perjuangan Mahasiswa untuk Pembebasan Nasional (Indonesia)
Solidaritas.net (Indonesia)
Gegar Amerika (Malaysia)
Parti Sosialis Malaysia (Malaysia)
No Cold War
Awami Workers Party (Pakistan)
Haqooq-e-Khalq Party (Pakistan)
Mazdoor Kissan Party (Pakistan)
Partido Manggagawa (Philippines)
Partido Sosyalista ng Pilipinas (Philippines)
The International Strategy Center (Republic of Korea)
Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (Sri Lanka)
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialist)
CODEPINK: Women for Peace (United States)
Nodutdol (United States)
Party for Socialism and Liberation (United States)
When the political protests began in New Caledonia in May, I hastened to find a book of poems by Kanak independence leader Déwé Gorodé (1949–2022) called Under the Ashes of the Conch Shells (Sous les cendres des conques, 1974). In this book, written the same year that Gorodé joined the Marxist political group Red Scarves (Foulards rouges), she wrote the poem ‘Forbidden Zone’ (Zone interdite), which concludes:
Reao Vahitahi Nukutavake
Pinaki Tematangi Vanavana
Tureia Maria Marutea
Mangareva MORUROA FANGATAUFA
Forbidden zone
somewhere in
so-called ‘French’ Polynesia.
These are the names of islands that had already been impacted by the French nuclear bomb tests. There are no punctuation marks between the names, which indicates two things: first, that the end of an island or a country does not mark the end of nuclear contamination, and second, that the waters that lap against the islands do not divide the people who live across vast stretches of ocean, but unite them against imperialism. This impulse drove Gorodé to found Group 1878 (named for the Kanak rebellion of that year) and then the Kanak Liberation Party (Parti de libération kanak, or PALIKA) in 1976, which evolved out of Group 1878. The authorities imprisoned Gorodé repeatedly from 1974 to 1977 for her leadership in PALIKA’s struggle for independence from France.
During her time in prison, Gorodé built the Group of Exploited Kanak Women in Struggle (Groupe de femmes Kanak exploitées en lutte) with Susanna Ounei. When these two women left prison, they helped found the Kanak National Liberation and Socialist Front (Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste) in 1984. Through concerted struggle, Gorodé was elected the vice president of New Caledonia in 2001.
Stéphane Foucaud (New Caledonia), MAOW! (2023).
In 1985, thirteen countries of the south Pacific signed the Treaty of Rarotonga, which established a nuclear-free zone from the east coast of Australia to the west coast of South America. As French colonies, neither New Caledonia nor French Polynesia signed it, but others did, including the Solomon Islands and Kūki ‘Airani (Cook Islands). Gorodé is now dead, and US nuclear weapons are poised to enter northern Australia in violation of the treaty. But the struggle does not die away.
The twists and turns of France’s recent election have ended with a surprise majority for the New Popular Front, a hastily cobbled together left coalition running the gamut from the Communists to the Greens. The NFP’s unexpected triumph turned the early success of the far-right National Rally in the first round of the election on its head. But the right in France is far from defeated, and whether the NFP can hold its ground, or expand its influence from here, remains to be seen. Axel Persson, general secretary of the CGT Railway Workers Union in Trappes, joins The Marc Steiner Show for a postmortem of the election, the challenges that remain ahead for the French left, and what lessons can be learned by observers from around the world.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on the Real News. It’s great to have you all with us again. As we all know, France just went to the polls, but first let me tell you, I’m home a bit under the weather. We have to get this program out given what just happened in France. Bear with me if the sound quality is not as great as we always have it. But it’s an important conversation and nobody thought this was going to happen. Everybody thought Le Pen and the right would win this election.
The right would take over France, but the people had a different idea. And this election in France, the left coalition made up the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, the Ecologists or the Greens, created something like a 1930s Popular Front that they did then to combat Nazism and the right, demand worker rights in during the depression. Now a new Popular Front has taken over and taken up that mantle and all the disparate groups in the left in France and together to stop the right wing from taking power. And this left wing coalition is there. We’ll see what happens in the future. And we are joined now by Axel Persson who is a train driver in France, General Secretary of the CGT Railroad Workers Union in Montreuil, in a suburb of Paris. And Axel, excuse me, good to have you with us.
Axel Persson:
Thank you. Happy to be with you.
Marc Steiner:
And you’re joining us from Sweden.
Axel Persson:
I’m actually joining from Sweden because I’m actually on holidays for 11 coming days. I left this morning for Sweden.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome. Glad you could join us.
Axel Persson:
Thank you.
Marc Steiner:
This really was in many ways, absolutely unprecedented. People did not think this was going to happen. Talk a bit about what you think happened and how and why the left went beyond what people expected to happen.
Axel Persson:
The very name Popular Front that was used to define this broad alliance between the Social Democrats, the Communist Party, the Green Party, and also one of the biggest parties on the left nowadays that is called [foreign language 00:02:03] in French, which would translate into the Unbounded Rebellious France, came together of course using this very politically charged name of Popular Front because it refers to a very specific period in French history in the 1930s and of course different situations but similar dynamics where the far right was on the rise and also on the verge of taking power. They decided to come together, unite in order to prevent them from seizing state power at least through the means of election. It was a direct reference to that period of history in order to mark as heavily as possible in the collective conscience that this is what was at stake here right now.
And of course it worked to some extent. And I must add also that this is not only a coalition of political parties, it’s also a coalition that includes, for example, trade unions such as mine, the CGT, the General Confederation Labor, which is the oldest trade union in France. And also groups like anti-fascist groups which joined the front of feminist organizations, anti-racist organizations and different movements such as, for example, Jewish, anti-Zionist organizations that joined the Popular Front in order to unite on a platform that of course made many compromises on various issues. But that defined a minimal frame into which one could form an agreement in order to prevent and go to the polls and prevent the far right from seizing power, which worked, at least for now. And I’m saying this at least for now, because even though the Popular Front managed to prevent the far right from gaining the most seats in parliament and the Popular Front is the coalition that has the most seats in parliament, it neither has its own majority.
And it cannot hide the fact that despite this, the far right has grown in French society and this election, even though they didn’t gain as much seats as they hoped for, does confirm that they’re on an upwards trend and that their ideas have been deeply rooted in French society, which means that unless we manage to switch the tide and turn it backwards, it’s just a matter of time because they managed to seize power. This is an alert, it worked this time. The Popular Front tactic worked this time, but it also gives us high responsibilities in order to seize this opportunity where we managed to prevent them from seizing power to transform it into hope. Because in the end, just preventing them from seizing power is not a political program in itself that could satisfy the large swath of the working class and the population in general.
What we need to do now is take the offensive back, gain the ground we’ve lost, gain back the ground we’ve lost and go on the offensive. And us as a trade union, what we are saying now is that the only issue at hand for us is to organize massively and use the weapons of our collective class, which are strikes, insurrections, demonstrations, because those are the only way into which we’ll be able to transform the society, not institutional politics, even though we do not underestimate importance of elections. But in the end, that is not what is going to change radically the lives of the people who are demanding this desperate change in order to live in a better world to put things simply. That is our task at hand, which is actually the most difficult part. It’s not the elections that were the most difficult, it’s actually what’s coming now.
Marc Steiner:
Let me just say, Axel you said so much here. Let me see if I can get some of it out and I can see why you’re one of the leaders of the movement. But let’s first of all talk about, one of the things you said was how the right has grown and how they have a powerful base in France, talk about for all of our people listening about the political struggle in France and why the right is so strong and why the surge as it has in the United States, as it has in India, as it has in lots of places, but what’s the French story? Why is there such a surge on the right?
Axel Persson:
There’s many explanations of course. The first one being of course, that the far right is being financed and fueled by very powerful forces in French society. For example, there is a very, very famous, one of the most powerful billionaires in French society who is called Vincent Bollore, who is a CEO of an industrial empire who has for the past decade now methodically bought up massive amount of medias within the written press, television, radios, and is now actually pushing and lobbying for the privatization of the public media in order to be able to privatize them and has managed to push through this campaign and a massive amount of media campaigning, pushing basically far right theories, shifting the blame that working people can lay on the issues that facing, such as housing crisis, low wages, layoffs in factories, even in security. Everything, everything, everything, literally, there’s no exception to it, is being linked to issues such as immigration, ethnicity or sometimes even religion.
And that is a massively coordinated campaign that is being fund and financed by very powerful forces in French society who have a right wing agenda. But the fact also that it has succeeded because that is not the only factor is also because of the weakness actually of the organized left, even though it’s stronger than in other countries, the fact that for example, the Social Democratic Party, even the Communist Party have been in power most notably in the eighties and nineties and even actually in 2012, have repeatedly failed and disappointed vast sections of the working class when they were in power implementing policies that were against the working classes or even sometimes pushing racist policies.
I’m thinking particularly about the Social Democratic Party, which has led to a massive disillusion in politics, which has given way to this far right that much like in the US actually where we have this quite absurd situation where billionaires, because it’s literally billionaires like Trump for example, as you have in the US who are billionaires from the system, the establishment, and who managed to portray themselves as the anti-system candidates, which is quite absurd when you see where they’re coming from and how they’re being funded.
But that is basically the dynamics into which… And they’re managing to tap into the sentiment a large portion of the society here through that. And one of the things also another pillar by that is that we used to have in France the biggest, the strongest communist party in the entire industrial world, which meant that it was not only strong electorally, it was also strong in society, in the grassroots, it controlled large neighborhoods, it controlled cities. And within these cities they had organized a complete counter society by controlling unions, controlling sport clubs, controlling all these associations that would help people with housing issues, even homework, everyday problems.
And as this Communist Party participated in governments that disappointed large section of the class, this party progressively started its downhill phase and not disappeared, but got very, very weakened. And this whole counter society that managed to basically fight this narrative in the working class neighborhoods has been weakened a lot, which has given a leeway to the far right that has managed to tap in into those communities that used to be organized by the communist movement and are now having a much easier time to basically dive into the collective psyche of the workers than that we had before.
Marc Steiner:
Just from your responses to the questions I ask, I can see we could spend days here, we don’t have days to spend, but I would like to probe that a little bit more deeply because one of the things I thought about in watching what was happening in France in this election is that it is emblematic of the struggle across the globe.
Axel Persson:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
I’d like to hear your analysis as someone who’s been a union activist, who’s been fighting in the political struggles in France, why you think, what your analysis is about why the left seems to have come apart, has lost power in its way? Even though in France itself, you built this coalition that won the election, or at least you had more votes than anybody else in the election, that’s almost unprecedented since the thirties to be able to put that broad liberal left and left coalition together to stop the right. Tell me, I just want to hear your answer why you think the left is having so much problem and B, what do you think that holds for the future?
Axel Persson:
What it holds for the future is that of course what made basically the left in this particular situation, and not only the political left, even the trade unions and all these associations that took part, that are part of the Popular Front is the weight of history and the conscious and this very strong historical conscience of what happened last time when fascists were in power. That is something that is shared amongst the broad left, despite all our differences because the lessons from the thirties basically were drawn that, we might have a very, very vocal and very severe disagreements, very passionate disagreements amongst us on issues that are very important, such as, for example, Palestine is an issue that are currently going now, the war in Ukraine, even the pension reform on matters of internal French politics on all issues. But in the end of the day, we know that the fascists, they don’t care about our difference.
They will basically smash all of us. They will put us in prison, they will attack us all. They didn’t actually, the groups, they don’t discriminate in between us, they attack us all widely. We don’t have a chance, we don’t have any other choice but to unite in order to fight for survival. And that is something that is very ingrained in the political conscious. But the reason why also we are in a weaker position that when we were before though, is the fact that this collective counter society, this collective political ideal, that another society is actually within reach, that we can build it, that we can transform through collective radical struggles, has been abandoned by many of the political leadership of the historical left who has traded it for institutional politics, which has left many disappointed. And that is not only the case in France, it has been the case in the UK, it has been the case in the US, it has been the case in many, many parts of the world.
And this whole ideal that we can change the world to make it a better place by overthrowing the current system is something that is not being taught or nothing being vaculated in our structures and our unions and our political parties anymore. It is nowadays being done again, which is giving more hope. But it is something that is vital because the far right prospers on the despair of the working people. And that is something we need to do is be able to give a perspective and a hope that we can actually change this world.
Marc Steiner:
As a union man helping to run the union and as a political activist, how do you see that happening? Right now we don’t know what’s going to happen inside the parliament. It could be just an archic madness happening inside of the parliament in France because nobody has a majority.
Axel Persson:
Exactly.
Marc Steiner:
That’s A. Let me stop here, let me hit that. What do you think is going to happen? Then I’ll come back to the question about organizing for the future. What do you think is going to happen in the coming weeks and months given the absolute divide and split in France as shown by this election?
Axel Persson:
The first maneuvers the establishment is going to make is going to try to divide the Popular Front amongst its more reformist elements and it’s more radical elements. They’re going to try, for example, what they call the central block, which is basically the critical block formed around President Emmanuel Macron’s block basically are going to try, for example, to convince parts of the Popular Front, such as the Social Democrats or the Greens, to join their block in a coalition that would basically implement liberal policies with him. And in exchange of course for things like ministries or different positions within the state and machine, I’m not sure that’s going to work because the pressure is so high on the Popular Front within the working class and within the popular neighborhoods within our communities that anybody who leaves the Popular Front in exchange for this are going to get basically a very violent backlash from it.
And what we are saying as union members is that there is no hope to gain from institutional politics, what has always worked in France, but all across the countries in the world, in general world, there’s a working class is only, and there’s only one thing that works, it’s when we go on strike, it’s when we go on general strikes. It’s when we organize a corrective upheaval of our forces. And we’ve proved it in the past, we proved it. And I’m not talking about the past that happened like 150 years ago. I’m talking about something that happened a few months ago. For example, in very concrete example in my industry last year we won a general strike with all other workers to defend our pension issues. We refused to go back to work. We continued it even this year and we won an agreement just a few months ago that basically secured my right solving, my right, to retire at 53 years old at full pension.
And that is possible, that was made possible, not because we voted right, it wasn’t made possible because we fought, organized, and made them cave in and made them bite the dust and not the other way around. What we are saying is that as workers, the only issue forward is not to trust in what’s going to happen in the institution, it’s what we’re going to do as workers organizing the workplace and using the most important weapon we have is to strike because that’s how you paralyze the economy. That’s how you force them to cave into your demands.
And it also demonstrates that without our labor, they can’t do anything. They can’t produce the profits they’re living on, they can produce their dividends and it just comes to prove that they’re the one needing us. We’re not the one needing them. And this is a very, very important political point that we need to make and that we’re basically hammering through now and even within the institutions, in order to force institutions to bow down to our demands, we have to force them through our collective struggles. This is the only line we’re pulling in all the workplaces now is that prepare for a strike, prepare for the general struggles now.
Marc Steiner:
How do you see then that playing out in the coming months? You said this, you have this broad coalition and there are some differences obviously inside these liberal left coalition that was built to stop the neo-fascist from taking power. How do you see all that, given what you just described as well, how do you see that playing out? What do you think will happen over the next few months?
Axel Persson:
There’s two options. If there is no massive mobilization within the popular neighborhoods, within the workplaces, within the unions, it’ll end up, unfortunately, as it will always end up, when we don’t force them to go into our demands, it’ll end up in tactical alliances within different parties into the institutions, which will just lead to further disillusionment and disappointment. That is what will happen. But on the other hand, what may happen is that if this gives only a regained, a renewed sense of hope and people take to the streets, take to the fight basically in all the places in society, whether it be the universities, the workplaces, the neighborhoods, everywhere basically, even the high schools, if people start mobilizing mastery through demonstrations, occupations, and strikes, which we have proved we can do in a very recent future, then things might change for real.
And this is also why the name Popular Front is important because of course in the history in France, the name Popular Front refers to the government that was formed in 1936 and is associated in French social and political history with major social advances such as paid holidays, collective agreements, reduced working hours, the eight-hour working day, et cetera, et cetera.
And also trade union rights. But what one must not forget is that most of the things that were gained in 1936 were not even on the political platform on which the Popular Front parties on 1936 went to elections with. What happened was that there was a general strike in June 1936 that lasted for months in which major, all the factories in France occupied by the workers. And after one month’s long strike, the employers and the government were then forced to sign an agreement which gave all these advances and social rights, which we benefit still from today. And that’s what we are saying, we are saying, “Yeah, we revived the Popular Front, we revived the coalition, basically the electric coalition, what we need to arrive now is what made it really interesting.” It was a general strike that followed, and this may sound a bit very simplistic, but there is no other way actually, people are saying something else are just lying.
Marc Steiner:
When you have a country like France and like the United States that are so deeply divided among the people, we have an election coming up and people on the left they go, “We despise Biden, we can’t vote for Biden.” But then again, you don’t want the neo-fascist to take over the United States. That would be a disaster for our country and the planet. In France, how do you maintain this coalition and really seize power so it can’t be pushed out?
Axel Persson:
The fact is that we know that for the next year, the president does not dispose of the faculty to dissolve the parliament. We know that for the coming year, basically the parliament is going to stay at least for a year. But the thing is that-
Marc Steiner:
What does that mean? We just had this election in France and you’re saying the president has the power to not allow it to take power, to take their seats, to change. [inaudible 00:19:18].
Axel Persson:
It’s a very peculiar power the French president has is that the French president has the faculty to what they call to dissolve the parliament if for example, is what he just did, for whatever reason, he can decide that the parliament is no longer session and new elections are being held. But he can only do that once a year maximum. He can’t do it like every day either. And what I’m saying also is that in the absence of a majority in parliament, because neither block has a majority, the constitution wasn’t really tailored for such a situation. We don’t know what’s going to happen because it wasn’t tailored for that. And we’re going to find out in the coming weeks what strategy Macron and the other parties are going to have. I can’t really speculate on that because this is quite new basically in French political society.
But what we do know though is that they’re quite intent on not letting the program of the Popular Front being implemented. They’ve been very clear on that. What we’re going to have to do, and I’m always coming back to these fundamentals, is that this coalition was good in the sense that it prevented the far right from getting a majority of the seats in parliament. But it doesn’t mean we have ceased power as workers. When I’m going back to work after my 11 days of holidays, my bosses will still be there. They will still be holding the power over me in the workplaces. The banks will still be owned by the same owners who will still dispose of the same power. And what we are saying to the people and the workers listening to us is that is where the real power lies and that is the power we need to seize.
It’s that power we need to target. I’m not trying to avoid your question. I’m just saying that what we are saying as union now is that the only way to direct our strength and level our collective strength at those who hold the real power is to paralyze and shut down the economy. And I will say this because you mentioned a very divided country. It’s true that it is divided. But what we have shown in the past, for example, last year when we were on the pension strike Macron, and this is part of the reason he actually lost these elections, tried to implement pension reform that will raise the general retirement age to 64 for the general public. And when we went on strike and the society was massively paralyzed by our strikes, and this was a strike that was very massively supported by the working class and the population in general, even their own polls showed that more than nine out of 10 working people supported our strikes, which means that even those who voted for the far right supported it, which means that there is common ground because we have common interests.
And it is only in these periods when we managed to mobilize on our interests, on our objectives, with our methods, that actually the far right disappears from the political scene for a while because that is the only time in society where we actually managed to unite. And actually everybody unites behind our banner, including people who vote for the far right and who are confused. This is why we’re saying this is a path forward. It’s not necessarily only electoral politics. It is to manage to build mobilizations that unite us around common interests. And that is our role as a trade union and that is what we can do. That is why our responsibility is so important because we’re the only force that can actually and manage to do that.
Marc Steiner:
That to me, before we have to go on, I know we have lots to do today. That to me is very fascinating because what you’re saying is you have to organize and keep pushing. You’ve got this huge number of people in the parliament, but the issue is organizing the people which also can bring in the right. And it makes me think about decades back when I was probably closer to your age and organizing, we organized a right wing racist neighborhood in coalition with a black neighborhood to fight for their rights both on the docks and also in terms of housing rights.
Axel Persson:
Exactly.
Marc Steiner:
And you’re saying that that’s the same approach seems you’re taking in your strategic thinking about how you build on this and not allow the right to come back.
Axel Persson:
Exactly. That’s the key to it. Because at the end of the day, even if it’s very difficult to admit because what some of these people are saying when we’re talking about society is very difficult to hear sometimes when we’re discussing it’s very racist series, it’s extremely violent. But at the end of the day, even if they ignore it, and it’s not about being paternalistic or anything or condescending, even if they ignore it, they as workers have the same interest as the other workers, regardless of their skin color, regardless of their gender, regardless of their religion, even if they ignore it, they do have the same interest. And they actually do realize it only in periods where we as unions managed to mobilize the entire French society around our common objectives. And we proven that this is not like an abstract theory. When we go on massive strikes for pension issues, they support us.
And that is actually the moment where they actually join people they theoretically hate when they vote. That’s the only time of the year basically where they actually join and fight with them. And that is in these moments where we can build beyond abstract discussions, we can build concrete common mobilizations and make their consciousness evolve into something more progressive basically. And for example, right now many workers are facing issues such as insufficient wages to meet their needs, their daily needs or housing problems. Some of them will say for example, that the housing problems are due to immigrants taking better housing or that lower wages are due to immigrants doing it for lower wages and whatever. But at the end of the day, when we manage to organize mobilizations for decent housing in the neighborhoods or high wages through strikes, that is a moment where we actually manage to unite them where they can meet or what can discuss.
And that is where I’ve seen personally political consciousness evolve. And that is why we’re insisting and joins what you said yourself about when you organize these type of neighborhoods back in the days, it’s the only moment where actually political consciousness involved when they can actually become allies. But it’s actually the most important task we have at hand is to manage how to unite our class around its class objectives and make the clash consciousness rise again. Basically that is the task at hand because that is what is lacking the most in order to rebuild not only the Popular Front, but rebuild basically a capable organization that are capable to overthrow the society because divided we fall.
Marc Steiner:
That’s wonderful. I almost want to end it there, but one really last quick question, let you go back to the family is that I’m curious in all the work you’ve done as a union leader, organizer, leading strikes, organizing people and helping to build this Popular Front that really stopped the right wing onslaught for now, for this moment, where do you think it goes from here? Where do you think the next couple of months, which will be very critical, will take it?
Axel Persson:
It’s going to be very critical because if we fail, basically what happened now needs to be translated into tangible results for working people in the coming period. I’m not saying the coming day or the coming weeks, but it needs to be translated into tangible results for the working class. Because if it doesn’t, this will just mean that the far right will be able to, even if there was a bit delayed, but will only delay the ascension to power because they will be able to tap into that sentiment that, “All of these politicians, all of these forces are rotten and in the end of the day they betray us and they don’t provide and they don’t live up to the promises they made.”
And basically people will resort to forces that actually promise to crush us because that is what they’re doing. The far right, the promise is not only to crushes, of course the most known part is crushing immigrants or just discriminating against blacks or LGBTs, you name it, they do it, but they also, and it’s something they less publicize, is also about how they promise to cross the trade unions in France, which is one of the pillars of fascism.
And what we need to go from here is to make sure that our mobilization, that we manage to force the Popular Front to stay true to its program and also that our mobilization manages to prevent all the other parties from stopping the program from being implemented. That’s why I’m always coming back to the basics. Back to the basics. The only social force that can save the working class is the working class itself. There is no supreme savior, it is only us, through our mobilization that can force this to happen because we are the one who make all the cogs of societies, all the wheels of societies turn. Without us, nothing works. There will be no train, there will be no fuel, there will be no electricity if we decide to withdraw labor. We hold the power, we just need to gain the conscious that we have it and that we need to use this in order to crush them, in order to prevent them from crushing us.
This will need a broad alliance from anti-racist organizations, trade unions, feminist organization, anti-colonialist organizations such as those that are involved in the struggle for the liberation of Palestine because we all share the same and common enemy, which is the capitalist state. And if we managed to unite in all our fights in order to deal a common blow at our common enemies, that is how we will rebuild the class consciousness and build a potent force that is capable of bringing down the society and not only bringing it down, but heralding a new hope for millions of people who are just craving for something to hope for.
Marc Steiner:
Axel Persson, I want to thank you so much for taking the time today on your break on holiday in Sweden. This has been a really interesting conversation. I look forward to having more conversations as we cover what’s happening in France because I think it’s emblematic and a story for all the people struggling for equitable society across us the globe need to hear, especially here in the United States where I live. Again, Axel, thank you for your work, thanks for your time and we’ll be staying in touch.
Axel Persson:
Thank you very much.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, thank you to Axel Persson for joining us today. And thanks to Cameron Granadino for running the program and our audio editor, Alina Nelah and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you thought about you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com and I’ll get right back to you. Once again, thank you to the Axel Persson for joining us today, and we’ll be bringing you more about France and the struggle against the right and the fight for the future and bring more people, bring Axel back and other folks who are in the midst of that struggle that have a lot to say to us about the future. For the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved and keep listening.
A leftist coalition pulled off a surprise victory in the second round of parliamentary elections in France on Sunday, becoming the largest bloc in Parliament and successfully keeping the far-right National Rally party of Marine Le Pen out of government. The New Popular Front, which won 182 seats in the National Assembly, still fell short of the 289 seats required for an absolute majority. President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition came second with 163 seats, while the National Rally and its allies won 143 seats after having led the first round of voting a week earlier. We go to Paris to speak with author and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi and journalist Rokhaya Diallo about the historic election result.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Mélenchon, leader of the coalition New Popular Front who won the legislative elections in France, drops some truth bombs. This sounds like the real left here, not the fake one like in the US & UK: 
