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  • The Counter-Enlightenment: the origin of conservative politics?

    Caricature of the Third Estate carrying the First Estate (clergy) and the Second Estate (nobility) on its back. “You should hope that this game will be over soon.”

    The Counter-Enlightenment is the name given to the oppositional forces that formed during the Enlightenment that fought against the philosophes‘ writings on democracy, republicanism and toleration. These forces were known as the anti-philosophes and sought to maintain the dominance of the monarchy and the church.

    The philosophes (French for ‘philosophers’) were eighteenth century intellectuals who “applied reason to the study of many areas of learning, including philosophy, history, science, politics, economics and social issues.” Most importantly, they believed in progress and tolerance and in many different ways sought to highlight injustice and seek ways of changing society for the better.

    The anti-philosophes rose up to defend ‘throne and altar’ and over time many of the ideals of the anti-philosophes were taken over by Romanticism in the nineteenth century, and the conservative politics of the twentieth century; for example, in Western culture, “depending on the particular nation, conservatives seek to promote a range of social institutions such as the nuclear family, organized religion, the military, property rights, and monarchy.”

    The origins of right-wing politics in Europe are often attributed to Edmund Burke (1729–1797), the Irish philosopher, who is seen as the philosophical father of modern conservatism. His book, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is a criticism of the French Revolution, which itself was partly fueled by the writings of the philosophes, thus setting up the dividing lines between the supporters of radical republicanism and revolution, in opposition to the supporters of the older monarchy and church of the ancien régime.

    The idea of the Counter-Enlightenment is itself controversial as some academics argue that an organised force against the Enlightenment was non-existent, or at the very least, a complex debate. For example, Jeremy L. Caradonna (There Was No Counter-Enlightenment) and Robert E. Norton (The Myth of the Counter-Enlightenment) both look at contradictory aspects of the individuals called anti-philosophes. As has been noted the thinkers of the Counter-Enlightenment “did not necessarily agree to a set of counter-doctrines but instead each challenged specific elements of Enlightenment thinking, such as the belief in progress, the rationality of all humans, liberal democracy, and the increasing secularisation of society.”

    It was Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997), the Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas who popularised the term in his essay ‘The Counter-Enlightenment’. Berlin was critical of the irrationalism of the early conservative figures from the 1700s such as Joseph de Maistre, Giambattista Vico, and J. G. Hamann. He also examined the German reaction to the French Enlightenment and Revolution as the main source of reaction to the Enlightenment in general and which eventually led to the Romanticist movement. Berlin noted that:

    Such influential writers such as Voltaire, d’Alembert and Condorcet believed that the development of the arts and sciences was the most powerful human weapon in attaining these ends [e.g. satisfaction of basic physical and biological needs, peace, happiness, justice etc] and the sharpest weapon in the fight against ignorance, superstition, fanaticism, oppression and barbarism, which crippled human effort and frustrated man’s search for truth and self-direction. 1

    Writers like Darrin M. McMahon have looked at the early opponents of the Enlightenment in pre-Revolutionary France, while Graeme Garrard has shown in detail the conservative counter-Enlightenment ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a very different perspective on one of the heroes of the French Revolution.

    In this essay I will look at the individuals and groups who took a stand against the philosophes through their movements, books, and journals in support of the church and monarchy.

    Early opposition to the Enlightenment

    Opposition to the philosophes of the Enlightenment did not start with the French Revolution. According to McMahon in his book Enemies of the Enlightenment:

    Only recently have scholars begun to acknowledge that conservative salons existed in the eighteenth century in which the philosophes‘ ideas were regarded with horror… 2

    Many writers in France mocked the progressive ideas of the philosophes in “a host of satirical plays, libels, and novels published in the late 1750s, 1760s and early 1770s”. 3  McMahon comments that: “It stands to reason that the reaction to the Enlightenment should also have occurred first in the place of its birth and been spearheaded by the very institution – the Catholic Church – charged with maintaining the faith and morals of the realm”. 4

    This can be seen, for example, in the Frontispiece to the physician Claude-Marie Giraud’s Epistle from the Devil to M. Voltaire which chronicled Voltaire’s ‘traffic with Satan’, and was republished over thirty times between 1760 and the outbreak of the Revolution.

    “Frontispiece to the physician Claude-Marie Giraud’s Epistle from the Devil to M. Voltaire. This brief work, chronicling Voltaire’s traffic with Satan, was republished over thirty times between 1760 and the outbreak of the Revolution.”  5

    The adverse reaction to the ideas of the philosophes was evident in the hundreds of books, pamphlets, sermons, essays, and poems written against them, as well as becoming the raison d’être of journals such as the Anée littéraire, the Journal historique et littéraire, and the Journal ecclésiastique. 6 McMahon writes about how the enemies of ‘throne and altar’ and their ‘treasonous’ activities were perceived by the anti-philosophes:

    The anti-philosophes saw the philosophes as ‘enemies of the state’, ‘evil citizens’, ‘declared adversaries of throne and altar’, and unpatriotic subjects guilty of human and divine treason. […] Thus, the anti-philosophes frequently accused their opponents of spreading “republican” and “democratic” ideas. The philosophes, they claimed, preached the sovereignty of the people, advocated “perfect equality,” and spoke endlessly of “social contracts.” They lauded the political institutions of the United Kingdom, spreading a contagious “Anglomania” that held up Parliament and the limitations placed on the powers of the English crown as models to be emulated in France. And they talked ad nauseum of “liberty and equality,” natural rights and the “rights of the people” without ever mentioning duties and obligations.” 7

    They even appealed to the new dauphin [The distinctive title (originally Dauphin of Viennois) of the eldest son of the king of France, from 1349 until the revolution of 1830] to be wary of the new anti-religious attitude that was being spread by the philosophes: “From this anarchy of the physical and moral universe results, necessarily, the overthrow of thrones, the extinction of sovereigns, and the dissolution of all societies. Oh Kings! Oh Sovereigns! Will you be strong enough to stay on your thrones if this principle ever prevails?” 8

    The 1757 frontispiece to the first volume of Jean Soret and Jean-Nicolas-Hubert Hayer’s anti-philosophe journal, La Religion vengée, ou Réfutation des auteurs impies. True philosophy, in possession of the keys to the church, presents a copy of the work to the dauphin, Louis Ferdinand, who looks on approvingly as religion and wisdom trample false philosophy under foot. The latter bears a sign which reads in Latin, “He said that there is no God.” 9

    The power of the philosophes‘ ideas could be seen in their influence on the French Revolution of 1789 and in particular on the human civil rights document, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (French: Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen de 1789) which was adopted on the 26 of August 1789 by the National Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution.

    Ultra-Royalist reaction

    However, the Ultra-Royalist reaction, the nobility of high society who strongly supported Roman Catholicism as the state and only legal religion of France, as well as the Bourbon monarchy, initiated what became known as the Second White Terror, a counter-revolution against the French Revolution.

    It provided an opportunity for the counter-Enlightenment conservatives to get their revenge on the revolutionaries, taking the form of militant struggle that resulted in bloody consequences. For example:

    The Ultra-Royalist assembly returned after the upheaval of the Hundred Days, this conservative revolution set out to cleanse France of the men and spirits of 1789. Throughout the country, exceptional courts and special jurisdictions tried and punished revolutionary criminals. In the civil service and royal administration as many as fifty thousand to eighty thousand former officials were stripped of their positions, and in the church, the army, and the universities, similar purges were encouraged, although on a smaller scale. In the provinces, particularly in the Midi, marauding gangs took matters into their own hands, hunting down revolutionary collaborators and settling old scores in a great bloodletting known as the White Terror. 10

    However, the Terror worried even the king himself as in 1816 Louis XVIII dissolved the chambre introuvable, to the great horror of the Catholic Right: “Louis feared its intransigent refusal to compromise with any vestige of the Revolution, its exaggerated religiosity, and its resolute efforts to exact retribution from the “criminals” who had sullied France.” Thus the conservative pro-monarchy forces had become even more royalist than the king himself. 11

    The Chambre introuvable (French for “Unobtainable Chamber”) was the first “Chamber of Deputies elected after the Second Bourbon Restoration in 1815. It was dominated by Ultra-royalists who completely refused to accept the results of the French Revolution.”

    The conservative ideas of the Ultras, for example, “the weight of history, the primacy of the social whole, the centrality of the family, the necessity of religion, and the dangers of tolerance” found their way into many right-wing and conservative ideologies of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.12

    Rousseau’s turn against reason and science

    Similarly, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s conservative turn laid the groundwork for the future irrationalist Romanticist movement. Despite  Rousseau’s popularity as a philosopher of the French Revolution, Rousseau ultimately went against the rationalism and intellectualism of the eighteenth century and moved towards a philosophy based on emotion, imagination and religion.

    “Flee, vile imposters, no longer sully this temple”, the frontispiece to Pierre-Victor-Jean Berthre de Bourniseaux, Le Charlatanisme dans tous les âges dévoilé (Paris, 1807). Angels of the Lord banish the philosophes from the Temple of Truth. In the foreground, Voltaire, Rousseau, La Mettrie, Plato,and other philosophes flee in despair. 13

    According to Graham Garrard in Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment:

    Rousseau’s “unequivocal preference was for the “happy ignorance” of Sparta over Athens, that “fatherland of the Sciences and the Arts” the philosophes so much admired. He regarded virtue as much more important than knowledge or cognitive ability; a good heart is worth inestimable more than the possession of knowledge or a cultivated intellect, he thought” and concludes that “relying on reason – as philosophers do – “far from delivering me from my useless doubts, would only cause those which tormented me to multiply and would resolve none of them. Therefore, I took another guide, and I said to myself, ‘Let us consult the inner light’”. 14

    Rousseau’s inward looking attitude and distrust of reason resulted in a very different kind of politics than the philosophes had imagined, as Garrard writes:

    Unlike the foundation of political society envisaged by Hobbes and Locke, [Rousseau] stresses the need for a legislator who relies principally on religion and myth rather than reason, self interest, or fear to “bind the citizens to the fatherland and to one another.” […] For Rousseau, religion substitutes for reason as the cement of society and the means of inducing respect for the laws. […] Rousseau’s legislator is a prophet and (perhaps) a poet, whose “magic” produces a nation, rather than a philosopher who appeals to reason. 15

    For Rousseau the spread of knowledge was to be controlled and funnelled into localist communities and beliefs, away from modern conceptions of the nation state:

    Rousseau was opposed to the popularization of knowledge, not to knowledge per se. In his final reply to critics of his first Discourse, he clarifies position by stressing this distinction between knowledge and its dissemination. “[I]t is good for there to be Philosophers,”he writes, “provided that the People doesn’t get mixed up in being Philosophers”. 16

    Leo Strauss’s sentiments exactly! Knowledge as a set of myths that would keep the masses happy but not the kind of universalist knowledge that might lead them to revolt:

    The key to Rousseau’s patriotic program is what he referred to as a “truly national education.” Unlike the “party of humanity,” he called for education to be put entirely in the service of particular national communities in order to prevent the corrosive spread of universal ideas and beliefs. He rejected the view put forth by the philosophes that the universal arts and sciences are an adequate basis for political community. 17

    The Despair of the philosophes. Frontispiece to the 1817 edition of the prolific anti-philosophe Élie Harel’s Voltaire: Particularités curieuses de sa vie et de sa mort, new ed. (Paris, 1817). Christ reigns supreme over a fallen medusa, who vomits up the Encyclopédie, Rousseau’s Émile, Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique, and other key Enlightenment texts.” 18

    Moreover, Rousseau advocated the use of catharsis and ‘bread and circuses’ to maintain loyalty to the patriotic fatherland (and thereby stymieing any type of burgeoning class consciousness):

    Rousseau also advised would-be legislators to establish “exclusive and national” religious ceremonies; games which “[keep] the Citizen frequently assembled;” exercises that increase their national “pride and self esteem;” and spectacles which, by reminding citizens of their glorious past, “stirred their hearts, fired them with a lively spirit of emulation, and strongly attached them to the fatherland with which they were being kept constantly occupied. 19

    Rousseau opens one of his most famous books, The Social Contract, with the words ‘Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains’ yet this was a far cry from Marx’s ‘You have nothing to lose but your chains’, as Rousseau refers to rising up against a tyrant, not rising up against one’s own slavery. Especially not the ‘respectable rights’ of ‘masters over their servants’:

    The Protestant, republican Rousseau bristled with indignation at the thought of his hardy, virtuous Genevans watching the cynical comedies of Moliere who, “for the sake of multiplying his jokes, shakes the whole order of society; how scandalously he overturns all the most sacred relations on which it is founded; how ridiculous he makes the respectable rights of fathers over their children, of husbands over their wives, of masters over their servants! 20

    Rousseau’s move away from enlightened humanism to authoritarianism can be seen in his attitude towards the state whereby any “attempt to liberate a prisoner, even if unjustly arrested, amounts to rebellion, which the state has a right to punish.” 21

    If we compare this to Voltaire’s involvement in L’affair Calas we see a very different attitude, as Voltaire fought in defence of a Huguenot merchant who was broken on the wheel for a crime that he had not committed.

    Furthermore, Rousseau believed that “The taste for letters, philosophy, and the fine arts softens bodies and souls. Work in the study renders men delicate, weakens their temperament, and the soul retains its vigour with difficulty when the body has lost its vigour. Study uses up the machine, consumes spirits, destroys strength, enervates courage. … Study corrupts his morals, impairs his health, destroys his temperament, and often spoils his reason.” 22

    The Enlightenment philosophes thought the opposite: “The less men reason, the more wicked they are,” wrote the Baron d’Holbach. “Savages, princes, nobles and the dregs of the people, are commonly the worst of men, because they reason the least.” 23

    The Counter-Enlightenment and Romanticist ideas today

    The Enlightenment seems to get blamed for everything these days. In an article titled  ‘Enlightenment rationality is not enough: we need a new Romanticism’, the author Jim Kozubek writes:

    From the use of GMO seeds and aquaculture to assert control over the food chain to military strategies for gene-engineering bioweapons, power is asserted through patents and financial control over basic aspects of life. The French philosopher Michel Foucault in The Will to Knowledge (1976) referred to such advancements as ‘techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations’.

    Foucault does at least remark on a basic aspect of the problem: subjugation and control.

    Kozubek comments that “science is exploited into dystopian realities – such fraught areas as neo-eugenics through gene engineering and unequal access to drugs and medical care” but notes that “The biggest tug-of-war is not between science and religious institutional power, but rather between the primal connection to nature and scientific institutional power.”

    Historically, the Enlightenment was a battle between the church and the new scientific approaches to knowledge in the 18th century. The philosophes wrote against the power of the church and the monarchies and developed progressive ideas about democracy and republicanism, torture and the death penalty, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

    In the frontispiece to Voltaire’s book on Newton’s philosophy, Émilie du Châtelet appears as Voltaire’s muse, reflecting Newton’s heavenly insights down to Voltaire.

    However, this universalising philosophy and writing against injustice of the Enlightenment philosophes is missing from modern analyses of Romanticism, that by the 19th century those battles had developed into the Romanticist ‘primal connection to nature’ versus capitalist technocracy. Yet, what the Romanticists and the technocrats did have in common was that neither questioned slavery: whether it be the slavery of feudalism (which the Romanticists liked to hark back to), or the wage slavery of modern capitalism (which the technocrats prefer to ignore).

    In fact, the Romanticists and the technocrats helped each other in a reactionary symbiotic relationship that perpetuated the status quo: the Romanticists had always used technology (to indulge their fantasies, for example, train technology brought them to gaze in awe at the ‘mystical’ Alps), while the technocrats used Romanticism to create diversion and escapism for the masses (thereby avoiding mass uprisings and revolution). This can be seen in the almost wholly Romanticist culture of fantasy, terror, horror, superheroes etc. that dominates global modern culture today in the era of global monopoly capitalism.

    The Enlightenment and its opposing counter-Enlightenment, represented the main ideological battles of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, but as people became less and less religious over the ensuing century, Romanticism took over from the irrationalism of the church as the main counter-progressive force in society.

    This can be seen also in the ‘suspicion of reason’ contained in the definitions of the post-Romanticist ideologies of Modernism and Postmodernism, and the outright return to Romanticism of Metamodernism. Once the bourgeois revolutions of ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité‘  had been carried through, the universalist ideas of the philosophes were quietly dropped and the anti- (wage) slavery torch passed on to the revolutionary socialists.

    It seems that the role of Romanticist movements (including Modernism, Postmodernism, and Metamodernism) is to react to any burgeoning progressive movement, to suck the life blood out of it and while not necessarily killing it, to at least leave it extremely weakened and non-threatening.

    Meanwhile, any obvious lack of consistency in Romanticist movements merely points to, and demonstrates, its reactive nature. For example, Romanticist neo-Gothic is full of decoration, yet Romanticist (Modernist) Minimalism, in the form of Bauhaus, for example, is completely devoid of decoration.

    McMahons description of the anti-philosophes confirms that reactive view:

    If the philosophes assailed religion, then the anti-philosophes must protect it. If the philosophes attacked the king, then his authority must be upheld. If the philosophes vaunted the individual, then the social whole must be defended. If the philosophes corrupted the family, then its importance must be reaffirmed. And if the philosophes advocated change, then the anti-philosophes must prevent it. 24

    While the Right may not be able to get away with arguments for the re-establishment of monarchies these days, their ideology is still rooted in organized religion and the social teachings of the church, (combined with the military, and property rights).

    The philosophes were progressive thinkers who struggled for radical changes against the injustices of their time. Their universalist writings on liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state are just as important in the world today as they have ever been, especially in an era of increasing globalised poverty where one  billion people worldwide live in slums (and yet this figure is projected to grow to 2 billion by 2030) and which is exacerbated by rising inflation and the impacts of war. It is time now for new thinking that is not dominated by the selfish political and war agendas of the billionaire media machine.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • France’s Racism Still on Display as It Denies Its Colonial Past — and Present

    Nahel M., a 17-year-old poor French citizen of Algerian and Moroccan origin, died of a single bullet fired by a French police officer at almost point-blank range on June 27. When I heard the news about the murder of young Nahel in the ghetto-ized suburb of Nanterre, shot at close range because he initially refused to stop his vehicle, my mind went back to the mainly Algerian-populated and…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Heat killed 61,000 in Europe’s record-breaking 2022 summer

    More than 61,000 people died due to the heat during Europe’s record-breaking summer last year. That’s according to a new study which called for more to be done to protect against even deadlier heatwaves expected in the coming years.

    Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, and experienced its hottest summer on record in 2022. Countries were hit by blistering heatwaves, crop-withering droughts, and devastating wildfires.

    Heat data

    The EU‘s statistics agency Eurostat had reported an unusually high number of excess deaths over the summer. However, the amount directly linked to the heat had not been previously quantified.

    Researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health and France’s health research institute INSERM (L’Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale) used models to predict the deaths attributable to temperature for each region in every week of 2022’s summer.

    The team looked at data on temperature and mortality from 2015 to 2022. This covered 823 regions across 35 European countries, for a total of 543 million people.

    They estimated that 61,672 deaths were linked to the heat between May 30 and September 4 last year, according to the study published in the journal Nature Medicine.

    A particularly intense heatwave in the week of 18-24 July caused more than 11,600 deaths alone.

    INSERM researcher and study co-author Hicham Achebak said:

    It is a very high number of deaths.

    We knew the effect of heat on mortality after 2003, but with this analysis, we see that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to protect the population.

    More than 70,000 excess deaths were recorded in 2003 during one of the worst heatwaves in European history.

    Women and over-80s vulnerable

    Last year, France recorded the biggest rise in heat compared to its previous summer average, with a jump of 2.43°c. Switzerland was not far behind with a 2.30°c rise. It was then followed by Italy with 2.28°c and Hungary with 2.13°c.

    Italy had the highest death toll linked to the heat with 18,010, followed by Spain with 11,324, and Germany with 8,173.

    The majority of deaths were of people over the age of 80. Furthermore, around 63% of those who died due to the heat were women. The difference became more stark over the age of 80, when women had a mortality rate 27% higher than men.

    Previous research has shown that Europe is warming at twice the global average.

    While the world has warmed an average of nearly 1.2°c since the mid-1800s, last year Europe was around 2.3°c hotter than pre-industrial times.

    Rising casualties

    Unless something is done to protect people against rising temperatures, by 2030 Europe will face an average of more than 68,000 heat-related deaths every summer, the study estimated.

    By 2040, there would be an average of more than 94,000 heat-linked deaths. Then, by 2050, the number could rise to over 120,000.

    Achebak added that:

    These predictions are based on the current level of vulnerability and future temperatures.

    If we take very effective measures, that vulnerability can be reduced.

    Raquel Nunes, a health and climate expert at the UK’s Warwick University, not involved in the research, said the study:

    highlights the urgent need for action to protect vulnerable populations from the impacts of heatwaves.

    Chloe Brimicombe, a climate scientist at Austria’s University of Graz, said it:

    demonstrates that heat prevention strategies need to be re-evaluated, with gender and age especially in mind.

    Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse

    Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Toreti, A. et al, resized to 1910*1000, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license,

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • An Accident Waiting to Happen: NATO Looks to Asia

    Since the end of the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation has distinctly strayed from its original purpose.  It has become, almost shamelessly, the vessel and handmaiden of US power, while its burgeoning expansion eastwards has done wonders to upend the applecart of stability.

    From that upending, the alliance started bungling.  It engaged, without the authorisation of the UN Security Council, in a 78-day bombing campaign of Yugoslavia – at least what was left of it – ostensibly to protect the lives of Kosovar Albanians.  Far from dampening the tinderbox, the Kosovo affair continues to be an explosion in the making.

    Members of the alliance also expended material, money and personnel in Afghanistan over the course of two decades, propping up a deeply unpopular, corrupt regime in Kabul while failing to stifle the Taliban.  As with previous imperial projects, the venture proved to be a catastrophic failure.

    In 2011, NATO again was found wanting in its attack on the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.   While it was intended to be an exemplar of the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine, the intervention served to eventually topple the doomed Colonel Gaddafi, precipitating the de-facto partitioning of Libya and endangering the very civilians the mission was meant to protect.  A continent was thereby destabilised.  The true beneficiaries proved to be the tapestry of warring rebel groups characterised by sectarian impulses and a voracious appetite for human rights abuses and war crimes.

    The Ukraine War has been another crude lesson in the failings of the NATO project.  The constant teasing and wooing of Kyiv as a potential future member never sat well with Moscow and while much can be made of the Russian invasion, no realistic assessment of the war’s origins can excise NATO from playing a deep, compromised role.

    The alliance is also proving dissonant among its members.  Not all are exactly jumping at the chance of admitting Ukraine.  German diplomats have revealed that they will block any current moves to join the alliance.  Even that old provoking power, the United States, is not entirely sure whether doors should be open to Kyiv.  On CNN, President Joe Biden expressed the view that he did not “think it’s ready for membership of NATO.”  To qualify, Ukraine would have to meet a number of “qualifications” from “democratisation to a whole range of other issues.”  While hardly proving very alert during the interview (at one point, he confused Ukraine with Russia) he did draw the logical conclusion that bringing Kyiv into an alliance of obligatory collective defence during current hostilities would automatically put NATO at war with Moscow.

    With such a spotty, blood speckled record marked by stumbles and bungles, any suggestions of further engagement by the alliance in other areas of the globe should be treated with abundant wariness.  The latest talk of further Asian engagement should also be greeted with a sense of dread.  According to a July 7 statement, “The Indo-Pacific is important for the Alliance, given that developments in that region can directly affect Euro-Atlantic security.  Moreover, NATO and its partners in the region share a common goal of working together to strengthen the rules-based international order.”  With these views, conflict lurks.

    The form of that engagement is being suggested by such ideas as opening a liaison office in Japan, intended as the first outpost in Asia.  It also promises to feature in the NATO summit to take place in Vilnius on July 11 and 12, which will again repeat the attendance format of the Madrid summit held in 2022.  That new format – featuring the presence of Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea, or the AP4, should have induced much head scratching.  But the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Washington’s beady eyes in Canberra, celebrated this “shift to taking a truly global approach to strategic competition”.

    NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg is also much in favour of such competition, warning member states of Beijing’s ambitions.  “We should not make the same mistake with China and other authoritarian regimes,” he suggested, alluding to a dangerous and flawed comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan.  “What is happening in Europe today could happen in Asia tomorrow.”

    One of the prominent headscratchers at this erroneous reasoning is French President Emmanuel Macron.  Taking issue with setting up the Japan liaison office, Macron has expressed opposition to such expansion by an alliance which, at least in terms of treaty obligations, has a strict geographical limit.  In the words of an Elysée Palace official, “As far as the office is concerned, the Japanese authorities themselves have told us that they are not extremely attached to it.”  With a headmaster’s tone, the official went on to give journalists an elementary lesson.  “NATO means North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”  The centrality of Articles 5 and 6 of the alliance were “geographic” in nature.

    In 2021, Macron made it clear that NATO’s increasingly obsessed approach with China as a dangerous belligerent entailed a confusion of goals.  “NATO is a military organisation, the issue of our relationship with China isn’t just a military issue.  NATO is an organisation that concerns the North Atlantic, China has little to do with the North Atlantic.”

    Such views have also pleased former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, whose waspish ire has also been trained on the NATO Secretary-General.  In his latest statement, Stoltenberg was condemned as “the supreme fool” of “the international stage”. “Stoltenberg by instinct and policy, is simply an accident on its way to happen”. In thinking that “China should be superintended by the West and strategically circumscribed”, the NATO official had overlooked the obvious point that the country “represents twenty percent of humanity and now possesses the largest economy in the world … and has no record for attacking other states, unlike the United States, whose bidding Stoltenberg is happy to do”.

    The record of this ceramic breaking bloc speaks for itself.  In its post-Cold War visage, the alliance has undermined its own mission to foster stability, becoming Washington’s axe, spear and spade.  Where NATO goes, war is most likely.  Countries of the Indo-Pacific, take note.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Anger Over Anti-Immigrant Prejudice Fuels French Uprising After Police Killing

    The shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk, a young man of Algerian descent, during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb, has been characterized as a cold-blooded, point-blank execution and has catalyzed massive street demonstrations in cities across the country. Merzouk is the most recent victim of a 2017 law that loosened restrictions on the use of firearms by police in cases where a driver refuses…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • French riots follow decades-old pattern of rage, with no resolution in sight

    ANALYSIS: By François Dubet, Université de Bordeaux

    Although they never fail to take us aback, French riots have followed the same distinct pattern ever since protests broke out in the eastern suburbs of Lyon in 1981, an episode known as the “summer of Minguettes”: a young person is killed or seriously injured by the police, triggering an outpouring of violence in the affected neighbourhood and nearby.

    Sometimes, as in the case of the 2005 riots and of this past week’s, it is every rough neighbourhood that flares up.

    Throughout the past 40 years in France, urban revolts have been dominated by the rage of young people who attack the symbols of order and the state: town halls, social centres, schools, and shops.

    An institutional and political vacuum
    That rage is the kind that leads one to destroy one’s own neighbourhood, for all to see.

    Residents condemn these acts, but can also understand the motivation. Elected representatives, associations, churches and mosques, social workers and teachers admit their powerlessness, revealing an institutional and political vacuum.

    Of all the revolts, the summer of the Minguettes was the only one to pave the way to a social movement: the March for Equality and Against Racism in December 1983.

    Numbering more than 100,000 people and prominently covered by the media, it was France’s first demonstration of its kind. Left-leaning newspaper Libération nicknamed it “La Marche des Beurs”, a colloquial term that refers to Europeans whose parents or grandparents are from the Maghreb.

    In the demonstrations that followed, no similar movement appears to have emerged from the ashes.

    At each riot, politicians are quick to play well-worn roles: the right denounces the violence and goes on to stigmatise neighbourhoods and police victims; the left denounces injustice and promises social policies in the neighbourhoods.

    In 2005, then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy sided with the police. France’s current President, Emmanuel Macron, has expressed compassion for the teenager killed by the police in Nanterre, but politicians and presidents are hardly heard in the neighbourhoods concerned.

    We then wait for silence to set in until the next time the problems of the banlieues (French suburbs) and its police are rediscovered by society at large.

    Lessons to be learned
    The recurrence of urban riots in France and their scenarios yield some relatively simple lessons.

    First, the country’s urban policies miss their targets. Over the last 40 years, considerable efforts have been made to improve housing and facilities. Apartments are of better quality, there are social centres, schools, colleges and public transportation.

    It would be wrong to say that these neighbourhoods have been abandoned.

    On the other hand, the social and cultural diversity of disadvantaged suburbs has deteriorated. More often than not, the residents are poor or financially insecure, and are either descendants of immigrants or immigrants themselves.

    Above all, when given the opportunity and the resources, those who can leave the banlieues soon do, only to be replaced by even poorer residents from further afield. Thus while the built environment is improving, the social environment is unravelling.

    However reluctant people may be to talk about France’s disadvantaged neighbourhoods, the social process at work here is indeed one of ghettoisation – i.e., a growing divide between neighbourhoods and their environment, a self-containment reinforced from within. You go to the same school, the same social centre, you socialise with the same individuals, and you participate in the same more or less legal economy.

    In spite of the cash and local representatives’ goodwill, people still feel excluded from society because of their origins, culture or religion. In spite of social policies and councillors’ work, the neighbourhoods have no institutional or political resources of their own.

    Whereas the often communist-led “banlieues rouges” (“red suburbs”) benefited from the strong support of left-leaning political parties, trade unions and popular education movements, today’s banlieues hardly have any spokespeople. Social workers and teachers are full of goodwill, but many don’t live in the neighbourhoods where they work.

    This disconnect works both ways, and the past days’ riots revealed that elected representatives and associations don’t have any hold on neighbourhoods where residents feel ignored and abandoned. Appeals for calm are going unheeded. The rift is not just social, it’s also political.

    A constant face-off
    With this in mind, we are increasingly seeing young people face off with the police. The two groups function like “gangs”, complete with their own hatreds and territories.

    In this landscape, the state is reduced to legal violence and young people to their actual or potential delinquency.

    The police are judged to be “mechanically” racist on the grounds that any young person is a priori a suspect. Young people feel hatred for the police, fuelling further police racism and youth violence.

    Older residents would like to see more police officers to uphold order, but also support their own children and the frustrations and anger they feel.

    This “war” is usually played out at a low level. When a young person dies, however, everything explodes and it’s back to the drawing board until the next uprising, which will surprise us just as much as the previous ones.

    But there is something new in this tragic repetition. The first element is the rise of the far right — and not just on that side of the political spectrum. Racist accounts of the uprisings are taking hold, one that speaks of “barbarians” and immigration, and there’s fear that this could lead to success at the ballot box.

    The second is the political and intellectual paralysis of the political left. While it denounces injustice and sometimes supports the riots, it does not appear to have put forward any political solution other than police reform.

    So long as the process of ghettoisation continues, as France’s young people and security forces face off time and time again, it is hard to see how the next police blunder and the riots that follow won’t be just around the corner.The Conversation

    Dr François Dubet, professeur des universités émérite, Université de Bordeaux. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

  • Days of Unrest in France Following Police Killing of Teen


    This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Climate protesters target TotalEnergies’ UK headquarters

    Climate change campaigners targeted the UK headquarters of oil giant TotalEnergies with paint on 27 June. They were protesting the French firm’s alleged human rights violations in the construction of its oil pipeline in Uganda.

    Supporters of Just Stop Oil sprayed black paint in the interior lobby of the company’s headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf district. Others daubed orange paint on its exterior, according to the protest group.

    London’s Metropolitan police said officers had arrested 27 people:

    for a combination of suspicion of criminal damage and aggravated trespass.

    EACOP

    Dozens of students from Students Against EACOP also massed outside the building during the stunt to show support. The pressure group is opposed to the building of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP)

    TotalEnergies is the largest shareholder in the climatologically disastrous East African venture. The project is set to carry crude oil to the Tanzanian coast through several Ugandan protected nature reserves.

    Communities in the region claim the energy firm and other EACOP backers have caused serious harm to their rights to land and food in building the 930-mile pipeline.

    Critics have called the project a “carbon bomb” which would release over 379 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.

    An end to oil and gas exploration

    Related action took place on the same day in mainland Europe. On 27 June, in France, a group of Ugandan citizens and aid groups, joined by French aid organisations, filed a lawsuit in a Paris court against TotalEnergies for damages over the alleged human rights violations.

    Campaign group Oil Change International has calculated that TotalEnergies’ planned expansions would:

    lead to over 1,600 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon-dioxide (CO2) pollution over their lifetimes, if the projects’ oil and gas reserves are fully extracted and burned.

    Just Stop Oil wants the UK and other governments to end all new oil and gas exploration. The campaign has promised not to let up in its high-profile protests until it does so. The action on 27 June is just the latest in Just Stop Oil’s campaign of direct action, which shows absolutely no signs of stopping soon.

    Featured image via Screenshot

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • France knife-attack: Suspect a Syrian Christian; False ‘Jihad Watch’ report calling him a Muslim viral in India

    A few weeks back, a video surfaced on social media, which showed a knife-wielding man stabbing people, including toddlers and an elderly man, in a playground in Annecy, France. The man was identified as Abdelmasih Hanoun (31), a Christian Syrian refugee. In the video, Abdelmasih Hanoun is reportedly heard yelling “In the name of Jesus Christ!” while he carries out the act. BBC reported that the suspect himself mentioned that he is a Syrian Christian. The suspect was later arrested by French police for attempted murder, and the prosecution said that his actions did not seem to be linked to terrorism. But a section of media and social media users have claimed that the man is actually a Muslim whose real name is Selwan Majd.

    Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, an American far-Right anti-Muslim conspiracy blog, tweeted an image of the suspect with the caption, “An Atrocity in Annecy” and added the link to an article of the same title on June 12. The report mostly revolves around the assumption that there is a possibility that the alleged attacker is originally Muslim and the media is deliberately portraying him as a Christian. (Archive)

    On June 13, Jihad Watch published another article titled: “France: ‘Christian’ who stabbed children on playground turns out to be a Muslim named Selwan Majd” which was basically an English translation of a report from a French website called Resistance Républicaine, a far-Right site known for sharing Islamophobic content. Robert Spencer tweeted the link to the article. The tweet has received over 4 million views and has been retweeted over 24,000 times. (Archive)

    The report says, “From the beginning we said that it cannot be a Christian… and that it has the signs of being done by a Muslim…” It also mentions that Abdelmasih Hanoun is actually Selwan Majd and he travelled to Turkey with false papers that would show him as a Christian and got married in Sweden with a false Christian name. The report, however, does not cite any source for the information.

    Click to view slideshow.

    Indian Twitter handles such as @JIX5A, @MeghUpdates, @RituRathaur, @AmitLeliSlayer also shared the link/screenshot to Jihad Watch’s report. Some other prominent international Twitter handles also shared the same including Britain First, a far-right British political party, @AzzatAlsaalem, @EvaVlaar, @ElijahSchaffer.

    Click to view slideshow.

    Elish Yako, the national general secretary of an NGO called Association d’Entraide aux Minorités d’Orient, shared a series of tweets in this regard claiming that the alleged Annecy stabber was indeed a Muslim. — According to its website, the NGO provides aid to eastern minorities, mostly to Christians. (Archive 1, 2, 3)

    To support his claim, Yako mentions that they could not retrieve the man’s baptism or celibacy certificate from Syria and that in his marriage certificate, he had left the boxes for the date and place of birth and identity of his parents empty.

    Click to view slideshow.

    Fact Check

    The Resistance Républicaine report mentioned that Abdelmasih H. met and married his now ex-spouse in Sweden under a false Christian name and that he was not granted Swedish citizenship because the country’s officials doubted him. To check this claim we ran a relevant keyword search that led us to several news reports with details of the matter.

    As per a news report by Le Monde, a French daily afternoon newspaper, according to the information provided by the suspect’s mother, he was born in Syria in 1991 and served in the Syrian army. In 2011, he left the country when the civil war broke out and moved to Turkey where he met his future wife who was also a Syrian. The couple moved to Sweden together in 2013, got married and had a child, who is presently three-year-old. Later, the couple got divorced when Abdelmasih H. couldn’t get Swedish citizenship. He later moved to France and applied for citizenship there for the first time in November 2022.

    In another report, Le Monde mentioned that Abdelmasih’s former wife herself obtained Swedish nationality in June 2021, six years after being granted a permanent residence permit. In November 2013, Abdelmasih H. received a permanent residence permit in Sweden. His first application for nationality was submitted in October 2017 and quickly rejected as one needs to have lived in Sweden for at least five years to be naturalized. He tried again in August 2018 but did not receive any response. He appealed again in 2021. Finally, on February 11, 2022, the Swedish Migration Agency rejected his application.

    Le Monde accessed the ruling by the Swedish Migration Agency where the Swedish authorities justified their refusal on the basis that Abdelmasih mentioned in his application that he had served in the Syrian Military in 2011 and 2012. After a 2004 government decision, any applicant for naturalization “who has been active in, or had a decisive influence on, an organization whose activities are believed to have included systematic, widespread and flagrant abuses such as torture, murder and extrajudicial executions cannot be granted Swedish citizenship unless a specified period of time has elapsed”. This period has been set at 25 years. Several Human Rights organisations find the Syrian army guilty of committing war crimes and of human rights violations.

    Click to view slideshow.

     

    Therefore, the claim that the Swedish authorities doubted that he pretended to be a Christian and hence rejected his citizenship application or that he first met his now ex-spouse in Sweden is false. The couple met in Turkey and moved to Sweden together.

    We further came across a report by a French fact-checking organisation called Liberation which also refuted the claim that the assailant was a Muslim whose real name was Selwan Majd. In their article, Resistance Républicaine also mentions that their claim will soon also be confirmed by relatives of Father Boulad in Alexandria. The fact-check report highlighted that the mentioned priest passed away recently and was known for his Islamophobia.

    We also found a tweet from BFM TV, a French news channel, from June 8. When they reached out to Abdelmasih’s ex-wife, she told the interviewer that she had met her ex-husband in Turkey and that he was a Christian. She also said that he was from the city of Al Hasakah in Syria. When asked if Abdelmasih H. was ever such a violent person, she said that he was never like that and that he was a good father to their child.

    As per our findings so far there is no evidence that would suggest that the Annecy stabbing suspect is a Muslim person called Selwan Majd. The suspect who was arrested by the French officials is Abdelmasih Hanoun who is a Syrian Christian.

    In the past as well, Jihad Watch had shared misleading reports targeting the Muslim community. One of Robert Spencer’s tweets, in which he shared a misleading report relating a crime of attempted murder to ‘Jihad’ or terrorism, received a comment from Twitter owner Elon Musk. Musk’s one-character comment (just an exclamation mark) was enough to give the misleading tweet a boost in terms of its reach. The tweet has received 3.2 million views and has been retweeted over 10,000 times. At present, it comes with a ‘community note‘ that contradicts Spencer’s claim. (Archive)

    The post France knife-attack: Suspect a Syrian Christian; False ‘Jihad Watch’ report calling him a Muslim viral in India appeared first on Alt News.

    This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Oishani Bhattacharya.

  • The Damaged Soul of The Mother and the Whore

    Jean Eustache’s famous elegy for a left-wing generation is, at its heart, reactionary.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • ‘A win for all Kanak people’ says first indigenous Harvard graduate

    By Finau Fonua, RNZ Pacific journalist

    New Caledonian Joe Xulue has made history by becoming the first person of Kanak heritage to graduate from Harvard University in the United States.

    During his graduation in Boston on June 6, he proudly wore the Kanak flag as he received a diploma in law — and photos of the moment have since gone viral, celebrated by fellow Kanaks across social media.

    Xulue said his accomplishment is collective because it sets an example to fellow Kanaks.

    “It’s a win for all Kanak people,” said Xulue.

    “I see it as a service — a way of giving back to my community — even by just going to Harvard . . . it can mean a lot to a young Kanak kid who is unsure of the dreams and aspirations that they have about themselves,

    “When I was up there holding the flag, despite alot of the things that my people have gone through because of colonisation, it felt so proud to showcase how much we can achieve.

    “Getting to Harvard wasn’t easy, I’ve had to go through more rejection than acceptance to get to where I am today.”

    Joe Xulue poses with his wife Yasmin at Harvard University
    Joe Xulue with his wife Yasmin at Harvard University . . . “It’s pretty clear that colonisation has dis-enfranchised so many of our people.” Image: Joe Xulue/RNZ Pacific

    An avid New Caledonia pro-independence supporter, Xulue said his and other Kanak successes contributes to the indigenous movement for self-determination.

    “It’s pretty clear that colonisation has dis-enfranchised so many of our people,” said Xulue.

    “Young Kanaks like me are trying to change the narrative — to effectively reverse years and years of colonial rule, and policy guidelines and directions that have left us in a poor state.”

    The French territory has seen recent political turbulence, with pro-independence supporters disputing a referendum in 2021 that rejected independence from France.

    Political dissatisfaction is widespread among the Kanak people who inherit a history marred by war and oppression. The majority of native Kanaks, who make up over 41 percent of New Caledonia’s population, support independence.

    Xulue is one of them, and he said getting a Harvard degree is one way of improving the socio-political condition of Kanaks.

    “This idea of a neocolonial territory to exist in a world where we are supposed to be allowing countries to have independence is disconcerting,” he said.

    “I find it so strange that a country like France will talk about equality and freedom for all, but won’t guarantee it to a nation like New Caledonia where they can clearly see the effects of colonisation on an indigenous group.

    “On one hand, the French government talks about freedom and rights, but they don’t guarantee them to people who inherently deserve those rights.”

    Outside Harvard University in Boston on the day that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern received an honorary doctorate.
    Outside Harvard University in Boston on graduation day when former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern received an honorary doctorate. Image: Harvard Gazette/Kris Snibbe/RNZ Pacific

    Harvard is a vehicle for change
    Before going to Harvard, Xulue completed a law degree at Auckland University — a hub for Pasifika academics.

    He applied to Harvard after being encouraged to do so by others including Samoan Harvard graduate Dylan Asafo.

    A key focus of his study was creating cultural spaces to improve justice systems.

    “My application was based on the idea of using indigenous ideas and practices, to shape the more traditional legal structures that we have in New Zealand,” said Xulue.

    “That was the basis for why I wanted to study and I knew it would give a platform to the Kanak struggle for independence.

    “We see alot of the ways that different tikanga practices are in the New Zealand justice systems . . . we see how changing the settings like allowing for the kaumatua to get involved or allowing for the marae for youth justice processes can occur . . . simple ways we can use indigenous knowledge within the current colonial hegemony.”

    “I look at the law as a tool to effect positive change for our people . . . I think that’s what Harvard saw and why they accepted me into their university.”

    The French president Emmanuel Macron (centre) and overseas minister Annick Girardin (right) meet with Kanak leaders at the customary senate in Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia.
    French President Emmanuel Macron (centre) and overseas minister Annick Girardin (right) meet Kanak leaders at the customary Senate in Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia. Image: Twitter/@EmmanuelMacron/RNZ Pacific

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • UN told France has ‘robbed’ Kanaks of New Caledonian independence

    By David Robie

    New Caledonia’s Kanak national liberation movement has told the UN Decolonisation Committee that France has “robbed” the indigenous people of their independence and has appealed for help.

    Magalie Tingal-Lémé, the permanent representative of the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) at the UN, told a session of the Committee of 24 (C24) — as the special decolonisation body is known — that the French authorities had failed to honour the 1998 Noumea Accord self-determination aspirations, especially by pressing ahead with the third independence referendum in December 2021 in defiance of Kanak opposition.

    More than half the eligible voting population boycotted the third ballot after the previous two referendums in 2018 and 2020 recorded narrowing defeats for independence.

    The pro-independence Kanak groups wanted the referendum delayed due to the devastating impact that the covid-19 pandemic had had on the indigenous population.

    Tingal-Lémé told the UN session that speaking as an indigenous Kanak woman, she represented the FLNKS and “every time we speak before your institution, we carry the voice of the colonised people”.

    “When we speak of colonisation, we are necessarily speaking of the people who have suffered the damage, the stigma and the consequences,” she said in her passionate speech.

    “On September 24, my country will have been under colonial rule for 170 years.”

    Accords brought peace
    Tingal-Lémé said two political accords with France had brought peace to New Caledonia after the turbulent 1980s, “the second of which — the Nouméa Accord — [was taking] the country on the way for full emancipation”.

    “And it is in a spirit of dialogue and consensus that the indépendentistes have kept their word, despite, and in the name, of spilled blood.”

    In 2018, the first of three scheduled votes on sovereignty, 56.4 percent rejected independence with an 81 percent turnout of the 174,995 voters eligible to vote.

    Two years later, independence was again rejected, but this time with an increased support to almost 47 percent. Turnout also slightly grew to 85.69 percent.

    However, in December 2021 the turnout dropped by about half with most Kanaks boycotting the referendum due to the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, this time the “yes” vote dropped to a mere 3.5 percent.

    “Since December 12, 2021, when France maintained the third and final referendum — even though we had requested its postponement due to the human trauma of covid-19 — we have never ceased to contest its holding and its results,” Tingal-Lémé said.

    Nearly 57 percent of voters had not turned out on the day due to the covid boycott.

    ‘We’ll never accept this outcome’
    “We believe that through this illegitimate referendum, the French state has robbed us of our independence. We will never accept this outcome!

    “And so, unable to contest the results under French internal law, we are turning to the international community for an impartial institution to indicate how to resume a process that complies with international rules on decolonisation.

    “Through the Nouméa Accord, France has committed itself and the populations concerned to an original decolonisation process, which should lead to the full emancipation of Kanaky.

    “Today, the FLNKS believes that the administering power has not fulfilled its obligations.”

    Tingal-Lémé said the “latest evidence” of this failure was a New Caledonian decolonisation audit, whose report had just been made public.

    She said this audit report had been requested by the FLNKS for the past five years so that it would be available — along with the assessment of the Nouméa Accord — before the three referendums to “enlighten voters”.

    “The pro-independence movement found itself alone in raising public awareness of the positive stakes of self-determination, and had to campaign against a state that sided with the anti-independence groups.”


    Magalie Tingal-Lémé’s speech to the UN Decolonisation Committee. Video: MTL

    Entrusted to a ‘market’ firm
    Also, the French government had “entrusted” this work to a firm specialising in market analysis strategies, she said.

    “This shows how much consideration the administering power has given to this exercise and to its international obligations regarding the decolonisation.

    “Frankly, who can believe in the objectivity of an audit commissioned by a government to which the leader of New Caledonia’s non-independence movement belongs?” Tingal-Lémé asked.

    “It is already clear that, once again, France does not wish to achieve a decolonisation in the Pacific.

    “This is why the FLNKS is petitioning the C24 to support our initiative to the United Nations, with the aim of getting an advisory opinion to the International Court of Justice.

    “The objectives of this initiative is to request the ICJ to rule on our [indigenous] rights, those of the colonised people of New Caledonia, which we believe were violated on December 12, 2021.”

    Advisory opinion
    The FLNKS wanted the ICJ to make an advisory opinion on the way France “has conducted the decolonisation process, in particular by holding a referendum without the participation of the Kanak people.”

    Tingal-Lémé pleaded: “We sincerely hope that you will heed our call.”

    According to New Caledonia’s 2019 census, the indigenous Kanaks comprise a 41 percent share of the 271,000 multiethnic population. Europeans make up 24 percent, Wallisians and Futunans 8 percent, and a mix of Indonesians, ni-Vanuatu, Tahitians and Vietnamese are among the rest.

    Earlier today, RNZ Pacific reported that a New Caledonian politician had claimed at the UN that the territory was “no longer a colony” and should be withdrawn from the UN decolonisation list.

    The anti-independence member of the Territorial Congress and Vice-President of the Southern Province, Gil Brial, said he was a descendant of French people deported to New Caledonia 160 years ago, who had been “blended with others, including the indigenous Kanaks”.

    He said the only colonisation left today was the “colonisation of the minds of young people by a few separatist leaders who mixed racism, hatred and threats”, reports RNZ Pacific.

    Dr David Robie is editor of Asia Pacific Report.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • France’s Global Warming Predicament

    When one of the world’s most developed culturally elite countries, France, tosses in the towel on the IPCC 2°C barrier, it sends a loud and clear message that the global warming fight is losing the battle.

    Seriously, France expects 4°C. The country is bracing for 4°C according to Environment Minister Christophe Béchu: “We can’t escape the reality of global warming.” (Source: ‘We Can’t Escape the Reality’: France is Preparing for 4°C of Warming by 2100, Euronews.green, May 22, 2023).

    France’s position on global warming is heavily influenced by other countries failing to deliver their targets to keep temperatures within the 1-5°C-2°C range of the Paris Agreement. “Unless countries around the world intensify their efforts to cut emissions further still, we are on track for global warming of between +2.8 and +3.2 degrees on average, which means +4 degrees for France because Europe is warming fast,” Béchu said,” Ibid.

    The question going forward will be how to keep the electrical grid functioning as global warming diminishes water resources crucial for nuclear power, and as the aging fleet corrodes (37 years median age). France leads the world in nuclear power at 70% of total electricity generation. Yet, in a strange twist of fate, nuclear power, falsely advertised as clean green energy, is vulnerable to global warming shutdowns.

    The French Court of Auditors’ Report on the Safety and Operation of France’s Fifty-six (56) Reactors highlights an increasingly unstable supply of water necessary for cooling reactors. (Source: “Climate Change, Water Scarcity Jeopardizing French Nuclear Fleet,” Balkan Green Energy News, March 24, 2023)

    The Loire River is the longest river in France at 625 miles. As of early 2023, global warming clobbered the river, some areas completely dry with flow rate down to 1/20th of normal. Significantly, some of the country’s nuclear power plants depend upon the river for cooling purposes. Global warming is threatening France’s nuclear power system. So far, forced shutdowns have only occurred in the summer, but France’s Court of Auditors warned that such events are likely to become 3-to-4 times more frequent unless global warming somehow subsides, yet France’s environmental chief thinks 4°C is on the horizon.

    Moreover, for the first time since 1980, France has been a net importer of electricity, losing its 40-year net exporter status. Output shrank 23% because of a double whammy: (1) global warming diminished water resources, and (2) corrosive defects in infrastructure as a result of the tension and stress of creating energy via nuclear fission, as a dozen reactors were shutdown. One-half of France’s nuclear fleet was shut down at times during 2022.

    In the face of its most challenging hottest year on record, France is throwing in the towel on 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial, the upper band as suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Notably, anything above 2°C is considered trouble for life-supporting ecosystems. In fact, the world today at only 1.2°C above pre-industrial is already experiencing trouble in many instances, e.g., losing the water towers of Europe, the Alps, way too fast. The European continent runs hotter than the world at large. According to the World Meteorological Organization, temperatures in Europe have increased at more than twice the global average over the past 30 years. Meanwhile, with global warming walloping Europe last year, it nearly slid off the map.

    With France convinced 4°C is in its future, it should be noted that there are plenty of credible scientists who believe 2°C above pre-industrial is simply intolerable, hmm. For example: A recent study entitled “Assessing Dangerous Climate Change” by James Hansen (Columbia University) Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University) Camille Parmesan (University of Plymouth), et al (18 scientists) claims that governments have set the wrong target to limit climate change at “2°C higher than the average for most of human history… consequences can be described as disastrous.” With a 2°C increase “sea level rise of several meters could be expected,” and several species will be decimated.

    The Hansen study pulls no punches, 2°C above pre-industrial is too high. It should be noted that Dr. Hansen correctly warned the U.S. Senate in 1988 of the dangers of global warming, subsequently front-page news for the New York Times: “The greenhouse effect has been detected and is changing our climate now.” His warnings then as head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies are evident today. If only America’s highest-ranking politicians had listened and reacted, but they didn’t.

    France is taking on the global warming challenge by opening a public consultation process thru the summer months to work at defining a nationwide adaptation plan as global warming is expected to trigger several events: (1) severe heatwaves will last up to two months (2) southern portions of the country can expect up to 90 nights with tropical temperatures per year (3) the west and south will experience longer more extreme droughts (4) water shortages will become severe.

    2022 Hottest Year Since 1900

    National weather agency Météo-France claims 2022 ranks as the hottest year ever recorded in France since data collection began in 1900. It was a year (2022) of multiple extreme disasters as excessive global warming hit hard, e.g., three suffocating heat waves over 33 days, temperature records smashed with many cities exceeding 40°C. (Source: 2022: “The Hottest Year Ever Recorded in France,” Le Monde, Jan. 6, 2023)

    France is gasping from a dire water shortage with hundreds of towns and villages left with no tap water as ‘ogre’ wildfires rip across the country for the second time this summer in a ‘vision of hell’… The entire nation is suffering its worst drought on record with restrictions in place to limit water usage, but for more than 100 parched communes, they don’t even have the option to ration their supply. French environment minister Christophe Béchu said it is a ‘historic’ crisis for so many communities to have no tap water at all, as fleets of vans ferry bottled water to the desperate residents. (Source: “‘Monster’ Wildfire Incinerates French Wine Country: France Desperately Sends in Reinforcement Firefighters as Ten Thousand Flee, While Record Drought Helps Kill Tons of Fish in Germany Amid Summer ‘Extremes Not Seen Before,” Daily Mail, August 11, 2022)

    The ’vision of hell’ experience and trucking water to hundreds of parched communities is/was a wakeup call, and that experience “has prompted concerns over water security across the continent.” (Source: “France Heading Towards Worse Summer Drought Than 2022, Geological Service Says,” Reuters, April 13, 2023)

    If 2022 was a disaster year with Europe’s temps above the global average of 1.2°C pre-industrial, what on earth can the French expect with 4°C looming?

    A 4C World

    The World Wildlife Foundation published a study of various scenarios of temperature ranges: Backgrounder: Comparing climate impacts at 1.5°C, 2°C, 3°C and 4°C.

    4°C looks like this: (1) 3/4ths of the world population will have deadly temperatures for at least 20 days every year, e.g., a heatwave in Karachi, Pakistan killed 1300 people in 2015; at 4°C Karachi would get hit with deadly heat for 40 days straight. (2) major portions of the world will be hit with horrific food shortages (3) all of Europe will experience water shortages (4) hundreds of millions of people at risk of sea level rise with 760 million in high-risk coastal city locations (5) one-half of all plant and animal species at risk of local extinction, and alas (6) adaptation to 4°C may not be possible. In which case the first 5 examples may not matter all that much!

    According to a World Bank analysis: “There is no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible…the projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur,” Ibid.

    Even with worldwide awareness of global warming, it is still important to recognize the fact that climate change is a fickle public issue with plenty of ammunition for deniers and doubters to cast spells: “not to worry, the climate always changes.”

    Studies suggest that people, not wanting to deal with a nearly impossible situation, block out the challenges of climate change. And as such, they are susceptible to any public statement that gives some comfort that it’s not all that bad. For example, “the climate always changes,” implying that it’s done this same thing over and over again, but we are still standing. However, that statement leaves out a crucial fact. It leaves out the rate of change. It’s one thing when it takes a thousand years to naturally increase CO2 at the rate of 0.02 ppm per year, thus impacting temperature levels gradually. It’s an altogether different case when its human-driven 100 times faster at 2.0 ppm, which is today’s rate, thus compressing 1,000 years into 10-to-100 years. From most signals in France today, the compression factor is looking more severe yet, just ask France’s environmental minister about the rate of change.

    Excessive levels of greenhouse gases are the culprit: “In the 1960s, the global growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide was roughly 0.8± 0.1 ppm per year. Over the next half century, the annual growth rate tripled, reaching 2.4 ppm per year during the 2010s. The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago.” (Source: “Climate Change: Atmosphere Carbon Dioxide,” Climate.gov, May 12, 2023)

    Here’s more unsettling paleoclimate history from Climate. gov: “Carbon dioxide levels today are higher than at any point in human history. In fact, the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago, during the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period, when global surface temperature was 4.5–7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5–4 degrees Celsius) warmer than during the pre-industrial era. Sea level was at least 16 feet higher than it was in 1900 and possibly as much as 82 feet higher.”

    To repeat the facts just described in the former paragraph, which are difficult to accept: Three million years ago, atmospheric CO2 was the same as today. It was 2.5-4°C warmer than today’s pre-industrial basis with sea levels at least 16 feet higher.

    Maybe France is right, 4C could be low. Only time will tell. Today’s global heat is a product of CO2 from a decade ago. There’s a lag time that’s roughly 10+ years (source: Institute of Physics) between CO2 emissions and the subsequent temperature impact… buckle up!

    Meanwhile, when nuclear power plants go down and drinking water is delivered via truck to hundreds of cities and towns in G7 countries, like Italy and France, the underlying message is silent and unspoken. There’s nothing more to say.

    A Cool Solution

    James Hansen has issued a draft paper entitled Global Warming in the Pipeline, Cornell University, May 2023 that answers the question of what must be done. An enormous drawdown of CO2 is required to cool the planet: “A new plan is essential. The plan must cool the planet to preserve our coastlines. Even today’s temperature would cause eventual multimeter sea level rise, and a majority of the world’s large and historic cities are on coastlines. Cooling will also address other major problems caused by global warming.”

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • ‘I’m not begging’, Tahiti’s Brotherson tells France in prep for independence

    RNZ Pacific

    French Polynesia’s new President Moetai Brotherson is in Paris for wide-ranging talks with the French government and the organisers of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.

    His visit involves meetings with a range of ministers and officials to continue cooperation arrangements initiated by his predecessor.

    “I’m not here to come begging,” Brotherson said, adding that he wanted to ensure that France was helping to decrease dependence on French financial transfers by developing French Polynesia as a country with its own resources.

    He told the news site Outremers360 that he wants any process of self-determination to be arbitrated by the United Nations.

    Restating a timeframe of up to 15 years until a referendum on independence, Brotherson said that it was not utopian.

    “[French] Polynesia is as big as Europe, and in terms of population, it is [the size of] Montpellier”, he said, referring to the southern French city with its 300,000 inhabitants.

    He said time needed to be taken to prepare, and by seeking independence “we will be able to take decisions with full responsibility”.

    By contrast, he said the preceding pro-autonomy governments had the reflex to say that in the end, if they did not make the right decisions, they would turn to “mother” France.

    Support for seabed mining ban
    Brotherson met the State Secretary for the Sea Herve Berville who reconfirmed the French government’s support for a seabed mining ban.

    Berville also reconfirmed that such a ban would also apply to French Polynesian waters.

    Brotherson again expressed his unwavering support for next year’s Olympic surfing competition to be held in Tahiti.

    After flooding in the area last month, French Polynesian Sports Minister Nahema Temarii cast doubt on Tahiti being able to go ahead with the competition.

    However, the site manager of the Paris Olympics organising committee, as well as Brotherson, said the event would go ahead as planned.

    After becoming President last month, Brotherson will this week officially relinquish his seat in the French National Assembly, to which he was re-elected last year when his pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira for the first time won all three available Paris seats.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    French gendarmes in Paris during Tahiti President Moetai Brotherson's official visit
    French gendarmes in Paris during Tahiti President Moetai Brotherson’s official visit this week. Image: Polynésie 1ère screenshot APR


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • ‘I’m not begging’, Tahiti’s Brotherson tells France in prep for independence

    RNZ Pacific

    French Polynesia’s new President Moetai Brotherson is in Paris for wide-ranging talks with the French government and the organisers of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.

    His visit involves meetings with a range of ministers and officials to continue cooperation arrangements initiated by his predecessor.

    “I’m not here to come begging,” Brotherson said, adding that he wanted to ensure that France was helping to decrease dependence on French financial transfers by developing French Polynesia as a country with its own resources.

    He told the news site Outremers360 that he wants any process of self-determination to be arbitrated by the United Nations.

    Restating a timeframe of up to 15 years until a referendum on independence, Brotherson said that it was not utopian.

    “[French] Polynesia is as big as Europe, and in terms of population, it is [the size of] Montpellier”, he said, referring to the southern French city with its 300,000 inhabitants.

    He said time needed to be taken to prepare, and by seeking independence “we will be able to take decisions with full responsibility”.

    By contrast, he said the preceding pro-autonomy governments had the reflex to say that in the end, if they did not make the right decisions, they would turn to “mother” France.

    Support for seabed mining ban
    Brotherson met the State Secretary for the Sea Herve Berville who reconfirmed the French government’s support for a seabed mining ban.

    Berville also reconfirmed that such a ban would also apply to French Polynesian waters.

    Brotherson again expressed his unwavering support for next year’s Olympic surfing competition to be held in Tahiti.

    After flooding in the area last month, French Polynesian Sports Minister Nahema Temarii cast doubt on Tahiti being able to go ahead with the competition.

    However, the site manager of the Paris Olympics organising committee, as well as Brotherson, said the event would go ahead as planned.

    After becoming President last month, Brotherson will this week officially relinquish his seat in the French National Assembly, to which he was re-elected last year when his pro-independence Tavini Huira’atira for the first time won all three available Paris seats.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    French gendarmes in Paris during Tahiti President Moetai Brotherson's official visit
    French gendarmes in Paris during Tahiti President Moetai Brotherson’s official visit this week. Image: Polynésie 1ère screenshot APR


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • France is still resisting Macron’s pension reform even now it’s become law

    People have been out protesting once again in France over president Macron‘s pension reforms. This is despite him passing the changes into law in April. The demonstrations came as public support for Macron continued to look shaky.

    However, the bigger picture here is that French people are refusing to back down in the face of politicians’ nefarious actions.

    Macron: resistance against the pension plan

    As the Canary previously reported:

    Macron forced through reforms to France’s state pension system in April. Amongst other measures, he raised the pension age from 62 to 64.

    The government printed parts of the pensions overhaul, including the key increase in the retirement age, in France’s official journal on Sunday 4 June. This means they are now law. However, unions have led a revolt against the plans.

    The protests haven’t been without problems. The state has come down hard on some demonstrators. The Canary reported that, during May Day protests:

    Police fired gas at demonstrators in Toulouse in southern France, while four cars were set on fire in Lyon. In Nantes, police also fired tear gas, whilst protesters hurled projectiles. And in Marseille, protesters briefly occupied the luxury InterContinental, smashing flowerpots and damaging furniture.

    Interior minister Gerald Darmanin said police arrested 540 people across the country, including 305 in Paris.

    And, on Tuesday 6 June, people once again turned out to show their anger at Macron and his crony-capitalist reforms.

    Yet more protests in France

    Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on the 14th day of demonstrations against the president’s law changes since January. Macron signed the legislation into law in April, raising the pension age to 64 from 62 after the government used a controversial-but-legal mechanism to avoid a vote in parliament on the bill.

    The General Confederation of Labour (CGT) Union has been central to the fight back against Macron. Its head, Sophie Binet, said of the protests:

    It’s going to be another big day in the history of the trade union movement… After six months the unions are still united and the level of anger, frustration and motivation is high.

    I hear people say sometimes that everything is over, but it’s not true.

    Clearly, countless people feel the same. On 6 June, people came out for around 250 demos across France. The CGT took direct action in some places, cutting power supplies to companies:

    People also targeted the headquarters for France’s 2024 Olympic Games hosting:

    Marches took place in cities, such as Toulouse:

    In Nantes, cops again fired tear gas at the public:

    AFP reported the state had put 11,000 cops on duty for the day. In contrast to March and April, when rubbish piled up in the streets of Paris and most long-distance trains were cancelled, there was only limited disruption to transport and public services. For example, around a third of flights were cancelled at Paris Orly airport.

    Will anything stop Macron?

    Meanwhile, Macron’s arrogant refusal to back down had been hitting him in the polls. However, his personal ratings are also moving higher again, having plunged to near-record depths in March and April.

    After two months of falls, a poll on 2 June showed that 29% of people had confidence in his ability to manage the country, up four points. However, around two thirds of people (64%) expressed no confidence in him. This underlines the deep animosity felt by many voters towards the former investment banker.

    It remains to be seen whether anything can reverse Macron’s deplorable law changes now. There is a motion by an opposition party in France’s parliament to try and undo the law. However, it is unlikely this will work. So, it is likely people will continue to protest.

    Ultimately, Macron probably doesn’t care – as this is his second and final term in office. The effect of this scandal on his party, though, likely to last.

    Featured image via France24 – YouTube

    By Steve Topple

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • CPJ welcomes overturning of Hong Kong journalist Choy Yuk-ling’s conviction, urges end of media persecution

    New York, June 5, 2023—In response to a ruling by Hong Kong’s highest court on Monday to overturn the conviction of journalist Choy Yuk-ling, also known as Bao Choy, on charges of giving false statements, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following the statement calling on authorities to end their targeting of independent journalism:

    “We welcome the Hong Kong court decision to quash the conviction of journalist Choy Yuk-ling. It’s high time for the Hong Kong government to stop persecuting the media and drop all criminal cases against journalists for their work,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Press freedom is constitutionally guaranteed in Hong Kong. No journalists should be criminally charged, let alone convicted, for their reporting.”

    Choy was convicted in April 2021 on two counts of giving false statements to obtain car ownership records on a public registry while researching a documentary for Hong Kong’s public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong about a mob attack on a group of protesters. The court fined her 6,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$765).

    In unanimously overturning her conviction on Monday, June 5, a panel of five judges at the Court of Final Appeal ruled that when Choy chose “other traffic and transport related matters” to search the public registry, that category should not exclude “bona fide journalism.”

    Separately, on Sunday evening police detained Mak Yin-ting, a correspondent with French broadcaster Radio France Internationale and former chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, while she reported on public attempts to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to the HKJA, a report by the journalist in RFI, and news reports. She was released after a few hours without charge.

    CPJ has documented the dramatic decline of press freedom in Hong Kong, once a beacon of free press in the region, since Beijing introduced a national security law on June 30, 2020, with journalists being arrested, jailed, and threatened.

    Among them include Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, editors of the now-shuttered news website Stand News, who are on trial for conspiracy to publish seditious publications.

    Jimmy Lai, founder of the shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily and CPJ’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Awardee, is facing life imprisonment on national security charges in a trial that is due to start in September. Lai, a British citizen, is serving a sentence of five years and nine months on fraud charges. He has been behind bars since December 2020.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • CPJ welcomes overturning of Hong Kong journalist Choy Yuk-ling’s conviction, urges end of media persecution

    New York, June 5, 2023—In response to a ruling by Hong Kong’s highest court on Monday to overturn the conviction of journalist Choy Yuk-ling, also known as Bao Choy, on charges of giving false statements, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued the following the statement calling on authorities to end their targeting of independent journalism:

    “We welcome the Hong Kong court decision to quash the conviction of journalist Choy Yuk-ling. It’s high time for the Hong Kong government to stop persecuting the media and drop all criminal cases against journalists for their work,” said Beh Lih Yi, CPJ’s Asia program coordinator. “Press freedom is constitutionally guaranteed in Hong Kong. No journalists should be criminally charged, let alone convicted, for their reporting.”

    Choy was convicted in April 2021 on two counts of giving false statements to obtain car ownership records on a public registry while researching a documentary for Hong Kong’s public broadcaster Radio Television Hong Kong about a mob attack on a group of protesters. The court fined her 6,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$765).

    In unanimously overturning her conviction on Monday, June 5, a panel of five judges at the Court of Final Appeal ruled that when Choy chose “other traffic and transport related matters” to search the public registry, that category should not exclude “bona fide journalism.”

    Separately, on Sunday evening police detained Mak Yin-ting, a correspondent with French broadcaster Radio France Internationale and former chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, while she reported on public attempts to commemorate the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, according to the HKJA, a report by the journalist in RFI, and news reports. She was released after a few hours without charge.

    CPJ has documented the dramatic decline of press freedom in Hong Kong, once a beacon of free press in the region, since Beijing introduced a national security law on June 30, 2020, with journalists being arrested, jailed, and threatened.

    Among them include Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, editors of the now-shuttered news website Stand News, who are on trial for conspiracy to publish seditious publications.

    Jimmy Lai, founder of the shuttered pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily and CPJ’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Awardee, is facing life imprisonment on national security charges in a trial that is due to start in September. Lai, a British citizen, is serving a sentence of five years and nine months on fraud charges. He has been behind bars since December 2020.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Case calls on court to force TotalEnergies to suspend new oil and gas projects

    On 31 May a coalition of nonprofits, French cities, and the city of New York presented a demand at a Paris court against French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies. It asked that the Paris judicial court orders the company to suspend all new oil and gas projects worldwide – including liquified natural gas (LNG) ones.

    No new oil and gas

    14 French local authorities and five nonprofits originally initiated a case against TotalEnergies in January 2020.

    The case seeks to compel the fossil fuels company to comply with the Law on the Duty of Vigilance. This obligates companies to make plans with:

    reasonable vigilance measures to allow for risk identification and for the prevention of severe violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms, serious bodily injury or environmental damage or health risks resulting directly or indirectly from the operations of the company and of the companies it controls…

    Specifically, the group is challenging the company’s failure to align its operations with the Paris Agreement. This requires international efforts to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

    The claimants hope the case will follow in the footsteps of a Dutch court ruling against Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell. In 2021, a group of nonprofits successfully challenged Shell over its non-alignment with the Paris Agreement. As a result, the Dutch court ordered the company to accelerate its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    Meanwhile, Oil Change International identified that TotalEnergies is planning to approve new projects. Its expansion plans between 2023 and 2025 would:

    lead to over 1,600 million tonnes (Mt) of carbon-dioxide (CO2) pollution over their lifetimes, if the projects’ oil and gas reserves are fully extracted and burned.

    Moreover, it stated that current 2030 emissions targets would fail to bring down emissions. Instead, it projected company emissions would stay flat between 2022 and 2030. It pointed out, though, that a fall in emissions is vitally needed to stay within the 1.5C limit.

    The latest demand, presented on 31 May, asked the judge to suspend all new oil and gas projects while the full case is reviewed. As it currently stands, the court does not expect to make a final decision on the case before 2024 or 2025. However, the judge is due to announce his decision on the suspension demands on 6 July.

    TotalEnergies doubling down on fossil fuel expansion

    While claimants sought the court order to suspend the company’s oil and gas expansion, TotalEnergies doubled-down on plans for another of its ‘carbon bomb’ projects. Carbon bombs are projects which create vast carbon dioxide emissions – over one billion tonnes – during their lifetime. The company appears, for example, to be taking steps to restart its controversial Mozambique LNG project.

    On May 23, Bloomberg reported that the fossil fuel major had agreed to set up a $200m fund for socio-economic development in the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique. It stated that the announcement signalled:

    that the long-delayed development may soon get under way again.

    Bloomberg also detailed that investment in the LNG project is larger than Mozambique’s entire gross domestic product (GDP). It therefore argued that it would be:

    transformational for the country.

    However, the new fund would represent just 1% of the $20bn that financiers are investing in the gas project.

    A 2022 report by Friends of the Earth Europe and Justiça Ambiental argued that revenues from LNG projects in the region:

    will first and foremost benefit the foreign companies involved and in this process billions are lost for Mozambique through tax evasion structures set up by the companies, a weak fiscal context and low governmental capacity.

    An end to fossil fuels for frontline communities

    The Canary has also previously highlighted that TotalEnergies’ LNG project has had devastating impacts on the region’s communities. A publication by a coalition of environmental nonprofits laid out how the Mozambique LNG and two other foreign multinational LNG projects have harmed communities. The report suggested that the fossil fuel companies’ actions increased the risk of a violent insurgency that occurred in 2017:

    The arrival of rich international companies, hordes of foreign workers and military forces to guard the oil companies’ operations created the perfect breeding ground for an insurgency.

    Additionally, the report also estimated that if the gas reserves there are fully extracted and burned:

    they will generate more than 4.6 billion tons (gigatons) of CO2 – an amount 13 times as big as the annual greenhouse gas emissions of France.

    Projects like the Mozambique LNG clearly illustrate the need to bring TotalEnergies’ reckless plans for expansion to a halt.

    The Paris court could therefore deliver a momentous judgement in July. Elsewhere, however, the judicial and criminal justice system has shielded the company from public dissent.

    A “credible climate strategy”?

    As the Canary recently reported, both police and courts in Uganda have targeted human rights defenders (HRDs) fighting TotalEnergies’ East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). Moreover, authorities criminalised protesters through malicious use of the judicial system.

    TotalEnergies is co-developing the 1443km-long pipeline. It will transport oil and gas from Uganda to Tanzania for export

    The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) identified that TotalEnergies was one of the worst companies for attacks against HRDs in 2022. It recorded 14 attacks against defenders who had protested the EACOP project.

    Meanwhile, police have also violently repressed climate protesters in France. The Canary‘s Glen Black detailed how French police fired teargas at activists. Protesters blockaded the entrance to TotalEnergies’ annual general meeting (AGM) on 26 May. As Black explained:

    Opposition to EACOP is also one of the main drivers of the anti-TotalEnergies protest.

    Private finance campaigner at Friends of the Earth France, Lorette Philippot, attended the protest. She argued that:

    The only credible climate strategy for Total is the immediate end of all new fossil fuel projects. The climate bombs that Total is in the process of setting off in the four corners of the world must not see the light of day because each of them is pushing us towards a more unlivable world. This is the case of EACOP and Tilenga, but also of Mozambique LNG.

    If the judge rules in favour of the coalition, the demands of activists and communities on the frontlines of TotalEnergies’ projects could finally become a reality.

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    Feature image via France 24/Youtube screenshot

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Kanaky New Caledonia’s FLNKS wants ICJ advice on contested vote

    By Walter Zweifel, RNZ Pacific reporter

    New Caledonia’s pro-independence FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front)  says the advice of the International Court of Justice is being sought over the contested 2021 referendum on independence from France.

    The movement — represented by Roch Wamytan, who is President of New Caledonia’s Congress — told a UN Decolonisation Committee meeting in Bali, Indonesia, that it considered holding the vote violated the Kanaks’ right in their quest for self-determination.

    New Caledonia has been on the UN decolonisation list since 1986, and under the terms of the Noumea Accord three referendums on restoring New Caledonia’s full sovereignty were held between 2018 and 2021.

    The date for the last one was set by Paris but because of the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the Kanak population, the pro-independence parties asked for the vote to be postponed.

    The French government refused to agree to the plea and as a consequence, the pro-independence parties boycotted the poll in protest.

    The FLNKS told the Bali meeting that the final referendum went ahead “under pressure from the French state with more than 2000 soldiers deployed and under a hateful and degrading campaign against the Kanaks”.

    A total of 57 percent of registered voters stayed away, almost halving the turnout over the preceding referendum in 2020.

    Among those who voted, more than 96 percent rejected independence, up from 56 percent the year before.

    In view of the low turnout, the FLNKS stated “it is inconceivable that one can consider that a minority determines the future of New Caledonia”.

    ‘Legal and binding’, says France
    However, the French government insists that the vote was legal and binding, being backed by a French court decision which last year threw out a complaint by the customary Kanak Senate, calling for the result to be annulled.

    The court found that neither constitutional provisions nor the organic law made the validity of the vote conditional on a minimum turnout.

    It added that the year-long mourning declared by the Kanak customary Senate in September 2021 was not such as to affect the sincerity of the vote.

    The court also noted that by the time of the referendum on December 12, more than 77 percent of the population was vaccinated.

    The anti-independence parties in New Caledonia also consider the referendum outcome as the legitimate outcome despite only a tiny minority of the indigenous Kanak population having voted.

    The FLNKS has been pleading for international support to uphold the rights of the indigenous people and in its campaign to have the last referendum annulled.

    The Melanesian Spearhead Group said in 2021 that the referendum should not be recognised but the chair of the Pacific Islands Forum Mark Brown, of Cook Islands, did not back the move when asked about it this month, saying the Forum would not “intrude into the domestic matters of countries”.

    ‘French law has failed the Kanaks’
    The statement by the FLNKS to the Bali meeting said that “international bodies are our last resort to safeguard our rights as a colonised people”, adding that French domestic law has failed to give the Kanaks such protection.

    It pleaded for the UN Decolonisation Committee to support the FLNKS in its case at the International Court of Justice.

    The FLNKS said the ICJ was established with one of the principal purposes of the United Nations, which is to maintain, by peaceful means and in accordance with international law, peace and security.

    It also said he would like to get support for an official request so that the FLNKS can get observer status at the United Nations.

    A Kanak leader, Julien Boanemoi, told the gathering the decolonisation process in New Caledonia was at risk of “backtracking”, alleging that France was engaged in a modern version of colonisation.

    He said with the French proclamation of the “Indo-Pacific axis”, the Kanak people felt a repeat of the French behaviour of 1946 and 1963 when Paris withdrew the territory from the decolonisation list and stifled the pro-independence Caledonian Union.

    Boanemoi said with the lack of neutrality of the administering power France, he wanted to warn the Decolonisation Committee of “the risks of jeopardising stability and peace in New Caledonia”.

    Darmanin back in Noumea
    On Wednesday, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin is due in New Caledonia for talks on a new statute for the territory.

    Central to his talks with the FLNKS on Friday will be discussions about the roll used for provincial elections.

    Darmanin signalled in March that the restricted roll would be opened to more voters, which the FLNKS regards as unacceptable.

    Last month, the president of the Caledonian Union, which is the main party within the FLNKS, said there was a risk of there being no more provincial elections if the rolls changed.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • This Fight Is Global: Abolitionists From the US and France Join in Conversation

    In the summer of 2020, at the onset of a deadly pandemic, George Floyd’s murder propelled unprecedented numbers of people across the globe to take to the streets. From Australia to India, from Johannesburg to Saskatoon, demands reverberated to defund police and invest in safer communities. While people flooded the streets in anger and grief, these crowds also represented the success of decades of…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • French court’s approval of Olympics AI surveillance plan fuels privacy concerns

    Rights groups including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch call proposals ‘a dangerous precedent’ in open letter

    France’s top constitutional court has sanctioned the controversial use of surveillance powered by artificial intelligence at next year’s Olympics in a blow to privacy campaigners.

    The French court’s decision came two months after the national assembly approved laws allowing for the experimental use of hi-tech surveillance in an attempt to head off any trouble at the Games next summer, when 600,000 people are expected to attend.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Macron faces resistance abroad as well as at home as his visit to the Netherlands is marred by protest

    Protests noisily disrupted French president Emmanuel Macron during a state visit to the Netherlands on 11 April. Banner-waving demonstrators shouted “Where is French democracy?” as Macron gave a speech at the Hague in Amsterdam. These referred to the uprising in France over the government’s enforced pension reforms.

    The demonstrators stood in an upper tier of the theatre, shouting: “You have millions of protesters in the streets”. They also held up a banner that read “President of Violence and Hypocrisy”:

    After security guards removed them, Macron said people who try to undermine laws passed by elected governments “put democracy at risk”. He then cited the 2021 US Capitol riots and a 2023 attack on the Brazilian Congress, both of which were perpetrated by right-wing nationalists and white supremacists.

    The opposition didn’t end there, however. Protesters confronted Macron elsewhere on his visit, too:

    Opposition followed Macron into day two

    Macron’s Dutch visit continued on 12 April. He visited a sold-out exhibition of painter Johannes Vermeer’s works at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Then, he engaged in talks with the Netherlands’ prime minister Mark Rutte on a canal boat. He also viewed a science park and signed a “pact for innovation” focusing on cooperation in semiconductors, quantum physics, and energy.

    However, protesters were also present on Macron’s second day:

    The visit was also clouded by a row over controversial comments that Macron made about Taiwan, the US, and China. Macron said in an interview with media – including Politico and French business daily Les Echos – that Europe should not be “followers” of the US or China when it came to Taiwan. However, the Élysée Palace insisted that the president had never called for Europe to keep an “equidistance” from the US and China.

    French protests continue

    People throughout France are still striking and protesting following Macron’s forcing-through of the pension reform. Sky News reported on 11 April that people had blocked power stations across the country, leading to a loss of 8.2 gigawatts of France’s power supply. That is equivalent to 16% of the country’s total. Meanwhile, on 12 April, the city of Nantes faced blockades across its motorway system in an actions that French autonomous media platform Contre Attaque called “Operation Dead City”.

    Unions are planning for a twelfth day of national strikes on 13 April.

    Featured image via AFP/YouTube

    Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse

    By Glen Black

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Belabored: Child Labor, Child Strikes, with Jack Hodgson

    Recent news reports have revealed that child labor is not just a historical relic in the United States—and some politicians want to undermine existing regulations, claiming that less oversight is good for business.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • US Corporate Media Celebrate France’s Attack on Pensions



    “The Party Is Ending for French Retirees.” That’s the headline the Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) went with just days before French President Emmanuel Macron invoked a special article of the constitution to bypass the National Assembly and enshrine an increase in the retirement age in national law. The Journal proclaimed:

    The golden age of French pensions is coming to an end, one way or another, in an extreme example of the demographic stress afflicting the retirement systems of advanced economies throughout the world.

    The possibility that this “golden age” could be extended is not even entertained. Due to previous “reforms” (CounterSpin, 9/17/10), the pension of the average French person is already facing cuts over the coming decades. So preserving the current level of benefits would require strengthening the system. For the Journal, this is out of the question. Stingier pensions, on the other hand, are portrayed as the inevitable result of “demographic stress,” not policy choices.

    The French people, by contrast, recognize that a less generous pension system is far from an inevitability. Protesters quickly took to the streets this January after the government unveiled plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64; one poll from that month found 80% of the country opposed to such a change. And as the government pushed the reform through in March, protests grew especially rowdy, with monuments of refuse lining the city’s streets and fires illuminating the Parisian landscape.

    But that’s just how the French are, you know? They’re a peculiar people, much different from us Americans.

    The French are built different


    As the New York Times’ Paris bureau chief Roger Cohen put it in a recent episode of the Daily (3/16/23), protesters have been “talking about how life begins when work ends, which is a deeply held French conviction, very different from the American view that life is enriched and enhanced by work.”

    Left unmentioned is the fact that, for decades, Americans have consistently opposed increases to the Social Security retirement age, usually by a large margin (CounterSpin, 10/26/18). Moreover, two-thirds of the American public support a four-day workweek, and half say Americans work too much. How French of them.

    US media (Extra!, 3–4/96) have taken to covering the uprising against pension “reform” in the same way the narrator of a nature documentary might describe the wilderness:

    Now, we come to a Frenchman in his natural habitat. His behavior may give the impression of idleness, but don’t let that fool you. If prodded enough with the prospect of labor, he will not hesitate before lighting the local pastry shop ablaze.

    The New York Times (2/24/23), for instance, ran an article in the midst of the protests headlined “The French Like Protesting, but This Frenchman May Like It the Most,” about a man who has “become a personal embodiment of France’s enduring passion for demonstration.” It followed that up with a piece (3/7/23) presenting French opposition to an increase in the retirement age as some exotic reflection of the French’s French-ness. A source attested to the country’s uniqueness: “In France, we believe that there is a time for work and then a time for personal development.”

    Meanwhile, while the Washington Post has mostly been content to outsource coverage of the protests to Associated Press wires, it did run a piece (3/15/23) by one of its own reporters titled: “City of … Garbage? Paris, Amid Strikes, Is Drowning in Trash.”

    The burden of old people

    This fairly unserious reporting on the protests contrasts sharply with the grave rhetoric deployed by the editorial boards of major newspapers in opposing the protesters’ demands. The Wall Street Journal (3/16/23), which has implored the French to face “the cold reality” of spending cuts, is not alone in its crusade against French workers. The boards of the Washington Post, Bloomberg and the Financial Times have all run similarly dour editorials promoting pension reform over the past few months.

    Among these, only the Financial Times (3/19/23) opposed the French government’s remarkably anti-democratic decision to raise the retirement age without a vote in the National Assembly, opining that Macron’s tactics have both “weakened” him and left “France with a democratic deficit.”

    The Washington Post (3/17/23), by contrast, suggested democratic means would have been preferable, but gave no indication of opposition to Macron’s move. (As FAIR has pointed out—3/9/23—the Post’s supposed concern for democracy doesn’t extend far beyond its slogan.) And the Wall Street Journal (3/16/23) actually saluted the move, remarking, “Give Mr. Macron credit for persistence—and political brass.”

    The editorial boards’ case for pension reform is based on a simple conviction—French pensions are unsustainable—for which there are three main pieces of evidence.

    First, the ratio of workers to retirees. The Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) included a graphic projecting the worker-to-retiree ratio through 2070:

    As the graphic shows, this ratio has declined substantially since 2002, and is set to decline even more over the next several decades. This trend is referenced more or less directly in editorials by the Journal (3/16/23, 1/31/23, 1/13/23), the Washington Post (3/17/23) and the Financial Times (3/19/23).

    The declining worker-to-retiree ratio is meant to inspire fear, but in and of itself, it’s not necessarily a problem. After all, the increased costs associated with a rising number of retirees could very well be offset by other factors. It is therefore much more useful to look directly at how much of a nation’s wealth is used to support retirees.

    Which brings us to the second commonly cited piece of evidence: pensions as a percentage of GDP. This is mentioned in editorials by the Journal (3/16/23, 1/31/23, 1/13/23), Post (3/17/23) and Bloomberg (1/16/23).

    As it turns out, there’s no problem to be found here. In its 2021 Aging Report, the European Commission estimates that, even without a rise in the minimum retirement age to 64, public pension spending in France would actually decline over the next several decades, dropping to 12.6% of GDP in 2070, down from 14.8% in 2019. Cost-saving factors, primarily the deterioration in benefit levels, would more than cancel out the increase in the number of retirees. In other words, there is no affordability crisis. It doesn’t exist.

    Which side are you on?

    The only actual evidence for the unsustainability of France’s pension system is the system’s deficit, which is projected to reach around €14 billion by 2030. This piece of evidence is cited in editorials by the Journal (1/31/23, 1/13/23) and the Financial Times (3/19/23, 1/10/23).

    One solution to the deficit is raising the retirement age. Another is raising taxes. Oddly enough, the editorials cited above almost universally fail to mention the second option.

    The only editorial board to bring up the possibility of raising taxes is the Financial Times’ (1/10/23), which comments, “Macron has rightly ruled out raising taxes or rescinding tax breaks since France’s tax share of GDP is already 45%, the second-highest in the OECD after Denmark.”

    This statement says much more about the Times than it does about the reasonableness of raising taxes. Oxfam France (1/18/23) has estimated that a mere 2% tax on the wealth of French billionaires could eliminate the projected pension deficit. Rescinding three tax cuts that Macron’s government passed and that largely benefit the wealthy could free up €16 billion each year. That would plug the pension system’s projected deficit with money left over.

    Which option you pick—increasing taxes on the wealthy or raising the retirement age—depends entirely on who you want to bear the costs of shoring up the pension system. Do you want the wealthy to sacrifice a little? Or do you want to ratchet up the suffering of lower-income folks a bit? Are you on the side of the rich, or the poor and working class? The editorial boards of these major newspapers have made their allegiance clear.

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • The French left and the ongoing workers’ revolt

    A historic social explosion is always a test for any left organisation, writes John Mullen, as he looks behind the latest wave of revolt in France, which is entering its 12th week.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • ‘Either Trade Unions Win This, or It Will Be the Far Right’: Labor Sees High Stakes in French Pension Fight



    As French workers intensify their fight against President Emmanuel Macron’s deeply unpopular plan to raise the nation’s retirement age from 62 to 64, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

    A poll released Wednesday shows that reactionary lawmaker Marine Le Pen—leader of the far-right National Rally party, the largest opposition force in Parliament—would beat Macron by a margin of 55% to 45% in a head-to-head rematch. The neoliberal incumbent defeated Le Pen in a runoff election last April, but the openly xenophobic and Islamophobic challenger has gained significant ground since their first matchup in 2017.

    The new survey was conducted after Macron advanced his planned retirement age hike through executive order on March 16. The president bypassed the National Assembly once it became clear that his legislative proposal did not have enough support to pass France’s lower house.

    “We’re in the middle of a social crisis, a democratic crisis.”

    Macron’s blatantly anti-democratic move provoked an uproar. The labor movement had already been staging weekly nationwide strikes and peaceful marches since mid-January. But the president’s decision to circumvent a vote last month has brought more people to the streets, with heightened participation from high school and university students, some of whom have set up barricades on campus.

    Progressive lawmakers and union leaders have urged the working class to keep up the pressure, portraying the left’s struggle against Macron’s pension attack as a struggle for democracy in France.

    “Either trade unions win this, or it will be the far right,” Fabien Villedieu, a representative of a railway trade union, told France Info radio on Thursday. “If you sicken people—and that is what’s happening—the danger is the arrival of the far right.”

    Laurent Berger, head of the French Democratic Confederation of Labor, told RTL radio that “we’re still asking for the reform to be revoked.”

    “We’re in the middle of a social crisis, a democratic crisis,” he added.

    Macron has so far refused to withdraw his proposed pension overhaul, which includes raising the minimum eligible retirement age and increasing the number of years one must work to qualify for full benefits. France’s constitutional council is evaluating the legality of the government’s plans and is set to issue a decision next Friday.

    According to The Guardian:

    The constitutional council, which has the power to strike out some or even all of the legislation, will assess the pension changes based on a strict interpretation of the law. Constitutional experts say the council is unlikely to strike the legislation down fully.

    The government is playing for time, hoping protests and strikes will fizzle out. Unions want to show that the protest movement still has momentum, whatever the council’s decision.

    Hundreds of thousands of people have continued to rally across France in recent weeks. The government has responded with an increasingly repressive crackdown.

    An 11th round of strikes on Thursday caused further disruption to schools, public transit, and energy production. In addition, clashes broke out “between demonstrators and police on the edges of protests in cities including Lyon, Nantes, and Paris,” The Guardian reported.

    Workers’ anger is palpable and mounting.

    “In the capital, protesters briefly set fire to the awning of the Left Bank brasserie La Rotonde, well known for hosting Macron’s controversial evening of celebrations when he led the first-round vote in the 2017 presidential election,” The Guardian noted.

    Meanwhile, rat catchers threw dead vermin at city hall.

    Also on Thursday, striking workers “forced their way into the building that houses BlackRock’s office in Paris Thursday, taking their protest against the government’s pension reforms to the world’s biggest money manager,” CNN reported. “About 100 people, including representatives of several labor unions, were on the ground floor of the building for about 10 minutes, chanting anti-reform slogans. BlackRock’s office is located on the third floor.”

    Jerome Schmitt, a spokesperson for the French labor confederation SUD, told reporters: “The meaning of this action is quite simple. We went to the headquarters of BlackRock to tell them: the money of workers, for our pensions, they are taking it.”

    BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with a nearly $9 trillion portfolio, has not been involved in Macron’s assault on France’s public pension system. But workers targeted the financial institution due to its role in overseeing the private pension funds that they may be forced to rely on.

    “The government wants to throw away pensions, it wants to force people to fund their own retirement with private pension funds,” one teacher told Reuters. “But what we know is that only the rich will be able to benefit from such a setup.”

    Le Pen, for her part, “has kept a low profile, hoping to increase her support among low-income workers, many of whom began their careers earlier and will be more greatly affected by the pension changes,” The Guardian reported.

    Earlier this week, left-wing luminaries alarmed by France’s escalating repression of pension defenders as well as environmentalists campaigning against water privatization signed a Progressive International petition.

    “We stand with the French people in the face of violent crackdowns on popular protest and the criminalization of dissent by Emmanuel Macron’s government,” it states. “The extreme violence of the police and the criminalization by the interior minister are clearly aimed at suppressing the movement against the pension cuts. This is an unacceptable attack on the democratic freedoms and human rights of French citizens.”

    This post was originally published on Common Dreams.

  • US Media Cheer as France Forces Old People to Work

     

    WSJ: The Party Is Ending for French Retirees

    The Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) reports with evident alarm that “France has one of the lowest rates of retirees at risk of poverty in Europe.”

    “The Party Is Ending for French Retirees.” That’s the headline the Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) went with just days before French President Emmanuel Macron invoked a special article of the constitution to bypass the National Assembly and enshrine an increase in the retirement age in national law. The Journal proclaimed:

    The golden age of French pensions is coming to an end, one way or another, in an extreme example of the demographic stress afflicting the retirement systems of advanced economies throughout the world.

    The possibility that this “golden age” could be extended is not even entertained. Due to previous “reforms” (CounterSpin, 9/17/10), the pension of the average French person is already facing cuts over the coming decades. So preserving the current level of benefits would require strengthening the system. For the Journal, this is out of the question. Stingier pensions, on the other hand, are portrayed as the inevitable result of “demographic stress,” not policy choices.

    The French people, by contrast, recognize that a less generous pension system is far from an inevitability. Protesters quickly took to the streets this January after the government unveiled plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64; one poll from that month found 80% of the country opposed to such a change. And as the government pushed the reform through in March, protests grew especially rowdy, with monuments of refuse lining the city’s streets and fires illuminating the Parisian landscape.

    But that’s just how the French are, you know? They’re a peculiar people, much different from us Americans.

    The French are built different

    NYT: The French Like Protesting, but This Frenchman May Like It the Most

    A New York Times profile (2/24/23) depicted Jean-Baptiste Reddé as “a kind of ‘Where’s Waldo?’ who invariably appears alongside unionists blowing foghorns and battalions of armor-clad riot police.”

    As the New York Times’ Paris bureau chief Roger Cohen put it in a recent episode of the Daily (3/16/23), protesters have been “talking about how life begins when work ends, which is a deeply held French conviction, very different from the American view that life is enriched and enhanced by work.”

    Left unmentioned is the fact that, for decades, Americans have consistently opposed increases to the Social Security retirement age, usually by a large margin (CounterSpin, 10/26/18). Moreover, two-thirds of the American public support a four-day workweek, and half say Americans work too much. How French of them.

    US media (Extra!, 3–4/96) have taken to covering the uprising against pension “reform” in the same way the narrator of a nature documentary might describe the wilderness:

    Now, we come to a Frenchman in his natural habitat. His behavior may give the impression of idleness, but don’t let that fool you. If prodded enough with the prospect of labor, he will not hesitate before lighting the local pastry shop ablaze.

    The New York Times (2/24/23), for instance, ran an article in the midst of the protests headlined “The French Like Protesting, but This Frenchman May Like It the Most,” about a man who has “become a personal embodiment of France’s enduring passion for demonstration.” It followed that up with a piece (3/7/23) presenting French opposition to an increase in the retirement age as some exotic reflection of the French’s French-ness. A source attested to the country’s uniqueness: “In France, we believe that there is a time for work and then a time for personal development.”

    Meanwhile, while the Washington Post has mostly been content to outsource coverage of the protests to Associated Press wires, it did run a piece (3/15/23) by one of its own reporters titled: “City of … Garbage? Paris, Amid Strikes, Is Drowning in Trash.”

    The burden of old people

    WaPo: Despite protests, Macron-style reforms are needed — and not only in France

    The Washington Post (3/17/23) urged the United States to join France in “forcing needed reforms to old-age benefit programs.”

    This fairly unserious reporting on the protests contrasts sharply with the grave rhetoric deployed by the editorial boards of major newspapers in opposing the protesters’ demands. The Wall Street Journal (3/16/23), which has implored the French to face “the cold reality” of spending cuts, is not alone in its crusade against French workers. The boards of the Washington Post, Bloomberg and the Financial Times have all run similarly dour editorials promoting pension reform over the past few months.

    Among these, only the Financial Times (3/19/23) opposed the French government’s remarkably anti-democratic decision to raise the retirement age without a vote in the National Assembly, opining that Macron’s tactics have both “weakened” him and left “France with a democratic deficit.”

    The Washington Post (3/17/23), by contrast, suggested democratic means would have been preferable, but gave no indication of opposition to Macron’s move. (As FAIR has pointed out—3/9/23—the Post’s supposed concern for democracy doesn’t extend far beyond its slogan.) And the Wall Street Journal (3/16/23) actually saluted the move, remarking, “Give Mr. Macron credit for persistence—and political brass.”

    The editorial boards’ case for pension reform is based on a simple conviction—French pensions are unsustainable—for which there are three main pieces of evidence.

    First, the ratio of workers to retirees. The Wall Street Journal (3/14/23) included a graphic projecting the worker-to-retiree ratio through 2070:

     

    Wall Street Journal: Ration of Workers to Retirees

    The Wall Street Journal graphic (3/14/23) does not note that over this same time period, from 2019 to 2070, the percentage of French GDP spent on pensions is projected to decline from 14.8% to 12.6%.

     

    As the graphic shows, this ratio has declined substantially since 2002, and is set to decline even more over the next several decades. This trend is referenced more or less directly in editorials by the Journal (3/16/23, 1/31/23, 1/13/23), the Washington Post (3/17/23) and the Financial Times (3/19/23).

    The declining worker-to-retiree ratio is meant to inspire fear, but in and of itself, it’s not necessarily a problem. After all, the increased costs associated with a rising number of retirees could very well be offset by other factors. It is therefore much more useful to look directly at how much of a nation’s wealth is used to support retirees.

    Which brings us to the second commonly cited piece of evidence: pensions as a percentage of GDP. This is mentioned in editorials by the Journal (3/16/23, 1/31/23, 1/13/23), Post (3/17/23) and Bloomberg (1/16/23).

    As it turns out, there’s no problem to be found here. In its 2021 Aging Report, the European Commission estimates that, even without a rise in the minimum retirement age to 64, public pension spending in France would actually decline over the next several decades, dropping to 12.6% of GDP in 2070, down from 14.8% in 2019. Cost-saving factors, primarily the deterioration in benefit levels, would more than cancel out the increase in the number of retirees. In other words, there is no affordability crisis. It doesn’t exist.

    Which side are you on?

    FT: Emmanuel Macron’s indispensable pensions overhaul

    For the Financial Times (1/10/23), cutting pensions is “indispensable” because “plugging a hole in the pension system is a gauge of credibility for Brussels and for financial markets which are again penalizing ill-discipline.”

    The only actual evidence for the unsustainability of France’s pension system is the system’s deficit, which is projected to reach around €14 billion by 2030. This piece of evidence is cited in editorials by the Journal (1/31/23, 1/13/23) and the Financial Times (3/19/23, 1/10/23).

    One solution to the deficit is raising the retirement age. Another is raising taxes. Oddly enough, the editorials cited above almost universally fail to mention the second option.

    The only editorial board to bring up the possibility of raising taxes is the Financial Times’ (1/10/23), which comments, “Macron has rightly ruled out raising taxes or rescinding tax breaks since France’s tax share of GDP is already 45%, the second-highest in the OECD after Denmark.”

    This statement says much more about the Times than it does about the reasonableness of raising taxes. Oxfam France (1/18/23) has estimated that a mere 2% tax on the wealth of French billionaires could eliminate the projected pension deficit. Rescinding three tax cuts that Macron’s government passed and that largely benefit the wealthy could free up €16 billion each year. That would plug the pension system’s projected deficit with money left over.

    Which option you pick—increasing taxes on the wealthy or raising the retirement age—depends entirely on who you want to bear the costs of shoring up the pension system. Do you want the wealthy to sacrifice a little? Or do you want to ratchet up the suffering of lower-income folks a bit? Are you on the side of the rich, or the poor and working class? The editorial boards of these major newspapers have made their allegiance clear.

    The post US Media Cheer as France Forces Old People to Work appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Macron arrives in China hoping to talk Xi into changing stance on Ukraine

    French leader sees Beijing as possible ‘gamechanger’ and will also discuss European trade on three-day visit

    Emmanuel Macron has arrived in China for a three-day state visit during which he hopes to dissuade Xi Jinping from supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while also developing European trade ties with Beijing.

    Shortly after arriving in the Chinese capital, Macron said he wanted to push back against the idea that there was an “inescapable spiral of mounting tensions” between China and the west.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Ex-PM Ardern named Christchurch Call envoy against online violence

    RNZ News

    Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been appointed as Special Envoy for the Christchurch Call.

    Ardern established the initiative to eliminate violent extremist content online in the wake of the March 15 mosque attacks.

    Her successor as Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, appointed Ardern to the newly created position.

    He had previously hinted she could continue her work on the initiative.

    Hipkins said Ardern would be New Zealand’s senior representative on Christchurch Call-related matters and would work closely with France.

    “This allows me to remain focused on the cyclone recovery and addressing the cost of living pressures affecting New Zealanders,” Hipkins said.

    Ardern will report directly to Hipkins and has declined to be paid for the job.

    “Jacinda Ardern’s commitment to stopping violent extremist content like we saw that day is key to why she should carry on this work,” Hipkins said.

    “Her relationships with leaders and technology companies and her drive for change will help increase the pace and ambition of the work we are doing through the Christchurch Call.”

    Ardern’s role will be reviewed at the end of the year.

    She is due to deliver her final speech at Parliament tomorrow and will formally leave politics next week.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.