{"id":119580,"date":"2021-04-13T15:02:22","date_gmt":"2021-04-13T15:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=185778"},"modified":"2021-04-13T15:02:22","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T15:02:22","slug":"macrons-collusion-with-covid-has-not-destroyed-frances-spirit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/13\/macrons-collusion-with-covid-has-not-destroyed-frances-spirit-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Macron\u2019s collusion with COVID has not destroyed France\u2019s spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Yet hadn\u2019t he told us on the first day of March that we should \u201chold on\u201d as \u201cin four to six weeks\u201d the country would be opening up? That had been the tenth time since the start of the epidemic that he, or one of his ministers, had offered the lie that the end of the tunnel was just a few weeks away. His 31 March lockdown announcement contained the 11th<\/sup>: France would have to \u201clive with the virus, it\u2019s like that\u201d but the controls he was applying to the whole of the country would be relaxed as from mid-May, a mere six weeks away.<\/p>\n

He rubbed salt into the public\u2019s wounds by talking of \u201ccollective choices we have made\u201d when in fact they are taken by him in the enclave of a \u2018Health Security Council\u2019 whose deliberations are covered by military defence secrecy rules. No wonder opposition deputies and senators of Left and Right walked out when his prime minister Jean Castex turned up to get a parliamentary rubber stamp on decisions Macron had already taken.<\/p>\n

Collusion with the virus<\/b><\/p>\n

If one knows that a danger is looming but one does nothing about it, at what point does knowledge and involvement make the move from complacency to connivance and, ultimately, to collusion with the forces ensuring that a threat becomes a dominating, fatal reality? That question has been posed twice before the French public this past month.<\/p>\n

The French drug company Servier was finally convicted after a two-year long trial for selling its diabetes drug Mediator despite accumulating evidence of its potentially fatal side effects. At least 500 died, some suggest 2,000. In the words of the judgement, \u201cDespite knowing of the risks, they never took the necessary measures and so were guilty of deceit\u201d.<\/p>\n

In that instance, direct responsibility cannot be laid at a French president\u2019s door. In the case of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, it can, that of socialist president Fran\u00e7ois Mitterrand. A commission of historians established two years ago by Macron reported that it could find no document in the archives it was able to see, that proved a \u201cwillingness to be associated in the genocidal enterprise\u201d of the regime Mitterrand had been financing, arming, training, all but cuddling, amid escalating racist violence (\u201ctribal conflict\u201d in the vocabulary of Mitterrand, \u201cethnic purification\u201d for his generals).<\/p>\n

On page 455 of the report<\/a> you can read an extract from a note by the French intelligence service, the DGSE, dated 22 June 1994, as the killing frenzy was at its worst: \u201cThere is a great danger that France will see itself accused, at the best, of not having fulfilled the mission it was entrusted with and, at worst, of being seen as complicit with the present Rwandan government\u201d \u2013 that is, with those responsible for the slaughter.<\/p>\n

What is the point of intelligence services if their on-the-spot analysis is ignored? Or of epidemiologists if their scientific understanding is cast into the coffin along with the bodies of those whose lives a president\u2019s arrogance complicity with the virus has allowed the epidemic to consume? The sentiment of that 1994 note is present today in the hospitals Macron has systematically underfunded.<\/p>\n

By chance, his new measures \u201cto slow the virus\u201d came into full force on 6 April, the exact fifth anniversary of the day he launched his movement En Marche!<\/i> while still a minister under President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande. It was when he told us that having a stab at being president was \u201cnot a priority\u201d for him. But then, for Macron, life is always play in which others are the actors as he gets to rewrite the script according to his needs of the moment.<\/p>\n

No wonder HK\u2019s anthem has been heard in town after town with its refrain: \u201cWhen, on the evening screen, The grand king is seen, There to pronounce our sentence, We will reply with irreverence, Though always with elegance.\u201d Aux arts mes citoyen-ne-s!<\/i><\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yet hadn\u2019t he told us on the first day of March that we should \u201chold on\u201d as \u201cin four to six weeks\u201d the country would be opening up?\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119581,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119580\/revisions\/119581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}