“French President Emmanuel Macron has said Australia’s PM Scott Morrison lied to him about a scrapped submarine deal.
Asked whether he thinks Mr Morrison was untruthful, the president replied: “I don’t think, I know.”
Mr Macron was furious after Australia cancelled a $37bn (£27bn) deal to build 12 submarines, and instead negotiated a new defence pact with the US and the UK – the so-called Aukus.
Mr Morrison denies that he was dishonest.
The pair met at the G20 summit in Rome for the first time since the row erupted in September.
On the sidelines of the gathering, President Macron was asked by an Australian journalist whether he could trust Mr Morrison again.
“We will see what he will deliver,” Mr Macron answered.
“I have a lot of respect for your country. I have a lot of respect and a lot of friendship for your people. I just say when we have respect, you have to be true and you have to behave in line and consistently with this value.””
Comment? “Clumsy?” Biden said of the deal that screwed the French. One of the world’s greatest recent understatements.
Prime Minister Morrison, the despot down under, is busy conquering his own people. I’m sure that he he doesn’t care about the French and trusts Biden implicitly. His subjects will regret putting him in office for years to come.
Quarantine and Medicine are divided fields in Australia. The Federal Government has control of external quarantine, but the rest are the internal matters of the States. In terms of Medicine the States have control but the Federal Government has the purse strings.
Morrison is a happy-clapper god-botherer and so pro-US that he might as well do a Murdoch and take up US citizenship.
The despots in Australia were the Premiers of Victoria and NSW, interestingly, on the opposite sides of politics. Victoria has always been a Police State, no matter who’s been in Government. NSW is usually just corrupt, no matter who’s been in Government.
I live in QLD and we’ve generally only had minor restrictions, masks and QR codes for shopping, though the Southern border with NSW has entry restrictions.
More lies from these Big Guys at the top of the G 20 – Mask Theater:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/mask-theatrics-g20-global-leaders-remove-masks-posing-cameras/
The most powerful guys in the room tell you masks are absolutely necessary when are cameras around; but totally unnecessary as soon as the camera clicks off.
In the end they showed unmasked before the plebe integrated by guards and other subemployees of the summit…
After they have achieved submitting millions of people in Europe, Oceania and the US, they brag of their privileges unashamely before the masses ,so sure that nobody will rise….
https://twitter.com/i/status/1454899987641405440
https://twitter.com/ThaisConexao/status/1454430473229328385
Another way the laughed at the very face of the population during the Cop26 summit was the way the arrived in their private jets which polute more than hundreds of citizens´cars during a whole year, plus the shameful unending motorcade by Biden…
https://twitter.com/C4Ciaran/status/1455145020139376640
This new Gotha are out of control since they can not even believe they are getting out pissing so much over the people without anything resembling a bloody revolution happening…
On the subject of the submarines, word has been floating around for over 18 months in Naval circles, that the contract would be cancelled. The French had been stuffing around for years and producing nothing. They promised the world and delivered nothing. The only surprise was the announcement of nukes. The RAN has enough trouble to man/woman three boats at the moment, god only knows how they’re going t crew bigger boats.
Colonel – the French are fighting their corner. Why should they not? I could wish our British politicians fought ours with similar verve and force.
The conflict between the very different French and British views on Europe, and a country’s position in it and its relations with countries outside Europe,are set out in a lecture given by Vernon Bogdanor some time ago. The conflict dates back far before Macron and was seen most clearly by a man I regard as the greatest French statesman of the post war era, Charles de Gaulle. A brief clip from Bogdanor’s lecture –
https://youtu.be/o7q3B8mr4-c?t=2338
Allowing for a marked difference in style and circumstance I doubt one could get a cigarette paper between Macron now and De Gaulle all that time ago.
Vernon Bogdanor is remembered now as Cameron’s tutor at Brasenose but more significant is that he’s Henry Jackson Society. Wiki –
“The Henry Jackson Society is a non-profit organisation that seeks to promote the following principles: that liberal democracy should be spread across the world; that as the world’s most powerful democracies, the United States and the European Union – under British leadership – must shape the world more actively by intervention and example; that such leadership requires political will, a commitment to universal human rights and the maintenance of a strong military with global expeditionary reach; and that too few of our leaders in Britain and the rest of Europe today are ready to play a role in the world that matches our strength and responsibilities. [6]”
That places Bogdanor at once among the British neocons and neoliberals who have infested UK politics for decades; and it’s useful that it does so place him.
For the terms he thinks in are the terms most of our politicians think in even if they might reach different conclusions. Theirs is a world littered with concepts of “Great Power politics”, “Geostrategic Imperatives”, “Securing “Britain’s place and influence”, “Keeping a seat at the top table”, “Punching above our weight”. A world in which it is imperative that we seek out for ourselves Dean Acheson’s “Role” or Brzezinski’s “Destiny”. As if international relations were a grandiose football match.
Tawdry stuff, and strange concepts to many who see politics more as a means of ensuring a common prosperity and a genuine security for their country, but the concepts Bogdanor works in are concepts that informed the thinking of most politicians in those days and still do. So that examination of the conflict between French aims and British aims is instructive if not to many of us appealing.
The transcript is given here –
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-decision-to-seek-entry-into-the-european-community
– and supports my view stated above. Whatever concepts they’re working to, and whether they are “nationalist”, “supranationalist” or “intergovernmental” (probably any of the three as occasion demands) the French fight their corner pretty effectively. There are several passages such as this in the lecture –
” It is worth stressing that de Gaulle’s veto, whatever you think of it, was a straightforward exercise not in Community solidarity but in national power politics, a decision made almost entirely out of concern for French national interests, and in particular her agricultural interests.
Bismarck once said the word “Europe” was usually heard from those politicians who demanded from other powers what they in their own name dare not request.
But one British delegate to the negotiations said: “People talk about perfidious Albion, but the way the French promote their national interests under a humanitarian garb makes us look like babies!”
And babies our politicians have remained ever since. While we in the UK lament the use of the “Poitiers gambit”, or of UK dependence on French interconnectors, we should remember that it is scarcely the fault of the French themselves, that they are dealing with UK politicians who would be puzzled to fight their way out of a paper bag.
@ English Outsider
De Gaulle is dead. Macron has nothing in common with him. Nothing.
One should never forget the enormous resentment that de Gaulle had towards the “Anglo-Saxons” (his words, I prefer the term Anglo-American). I believe that this resentment dates from just after the First World War. At that time, English actors of that war published testimonies glorifying the British Army. The leitmotif was: “The British Army won the war. Too bad the French were the weak link in the Allies.” Liddel-Hart was incisive in justified criticism. This resentment was then fueled by Churchill’s reaction: “Whenever we have to choose between France and the United States, we will choose the open sea”. And of course, unquenchable resentment fueled by Roosevelt’s hostility. These are not the only causes, each event has added to them, Suez-1956 for example.
So some of his decisions can be explained by this antagonism. And if he kills two birds with one stone, all the better. It’s good politics. Politics, an important word for the political beast that was de Gaulle.
Macron is, with respect to the United States, and particularly with respect to Biden, a sleeping dog. He defends nothing. His “crises” have everything to do with the spectacle but nothing with the substance. In my opinion, his give-ups are close to the betrayal of his office. In his defense, I recognize without difficulty that the Australians have the right to choose, especially since Naval Group has not been very clear, or has misjudged its commitments and responsibilities.
Regarding the current politicians involved in this controversy, it is good to keep in mind that we are talking about losers without a compass.
Well, one gets the impression that the French are not as kneejerk anti-Russian as many other European countries so perhaps something useful will emerge from the current mess. Hope so. Can’t see many other pluses.
Not sure what to make of this. However, in the business world all is fair. Losing a sure sales is a bitter pill that I have never liked and sometimes sours my mood all day like today. But there is always another customer to win over. And I am selling floorcovering and not nuclear submarines, lol.
HE
I understand bidness. I did it for ten year after leaving guvmint. You are missing the point that this was the the US and Australian guvmints screwing their French ally.