The voting rate was approximately 75%. The cities appear to have turned out the vote very heavily. Le Pen received just under 35% of the vote which for a party and candidate that wants to withdraw from the EU, severely limit immigration and deport those suspected of terrorism is a rather healthy showing. Le Pen just said on French TV that she received 11 million votes.
Macron is going to be a very conventional politician/president. He doesn't look like a very strong figure and France faces severe problems. Le Pen quipped during the campaign that France would have a woman president no matter who won because the actual president would either be she or Angela Merkel. pl
“Le Pen quipped during the campaign that France would have a woman president no matter”
Lost Putin his manhood? :-))
Le Figaro says only about 75 per cent of the electorate voted, which is a rate lower than at any election for the French presidency since the Pompidou-Poher duel back in 1969.
The rate of blank or invalid votes, which Le Figaro gave as between ten and eleven percent, is an all-time record. The conservative French newspaper says this somewhat diminishes the otherwise clear victory by Macron.
Col. Lang
IMO, Macron will be Hollande II. He seems to be a perfect cutout for the EU establishment. Nothing much will change. Next, we’ll see the same fault lines play in Italy.
We’ll see how the French vote in their parliamentary election and how their political parties fare. I wouldn’t be surprised if Melenchon’s and Le Pen’s parties do much better than expected.
They’re pretty good numbers for what the (((media))) vilify as a ‘far right’ candidate. The inevitable cavalcade of Muslims exploding with increasing frequency as terrorists return from Syria and elsewhere, and an economy at the mercy of a stooge of global capital will surely result in more (actual) French moving to the right in the next election. Or civil war.
Either way, a heartening result for those of on the right who see the long game.
So many commenters seem to want to project the recent U.S. presidential election onto the French one and draw parallels (e.g. ‘Le Pen is the French Trump’, ‘the French are smarter than us and didn’t make the same mistake we did’, etc., etc.) Rather silly; one can make a solid argument that the French will get a Trump-like President – either an “anti-immigrant” version of Trump or an “economic” version of Trump (roll back state intervention in the economy, cut public-sector jobs, introduce employer-friendly labor reforms, reduce taxes on business, etc.)
Well, I like the result. Good Le Pen is out. Good for France, and thank God.
I have to say I am quite delighted that Le Pen lost, and its made all the better by how severely she lost.
If Le Pen was Trump she’d probably utter about the vote result ‘Fake news, so sad!’ by twitter.
LePen is not a bright girl, to the contrary. She’s malevolent and nutty. She has so brilliant ideas as doing a ‘Frexit’ (which likely would lead to France getting bankrupt) and other fantastic things.
http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2017-03/marine-le-pen-president-france-europe-fear
With bright ideas like that her practical policy would have devastated France. France deserves better than that and better than her.
Thank god she didn’t win – which likly won’t prevent Le Pen from being a vocal opposition pest. I don’t believe Macron is a saint, but at least he apparently is not a malevolent nut like Le Pen.
The turnout compares favorably with turnout for the Presidential election in the US in 2016 of 55.5%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections
Le Pen was very much seen as the French Trump, from afar and from within. Neither Le Pen nor Trump won their elections in the popular vote and Le Pen may regret being tied to The Donald in the public mind. His reputation, whatever it may have been, has not worn well. Neither have his campaign promises, which he has repudiated since being elected. A liar and a buffoon.
Colonel,
There are reports by some French that say their election was stolen by the EU, in that LePen was in dead heat or just a hair under, and then all of a sudden she is behind 25%. So many French are going — hmmmm.
There are musings that the French are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
Looks like it’s Frau Merkel, FTW! ;~)
Apparently white and invalid ballots seem to be closer to 12%.
Just to comment on the comments that have already passed – they’re rubbish. Macron has been elected with a significant majority. I don’t particularly like him, but he’s elected. Impugning his manhood seems to me fatuous.
Laguerre
His manhood? I said nothing of his manhood. I said he looks weak. Don’t You know any strong women? We will see. Aren’t you the fellow who told me a year or so ago that the SAA had ceased to exist? pl
I’m not so sure if Macron is going to be a “very conventional” politician (although what that could mean in French context is not very obvious to me.)
While, in policy positions, LePen looked vaguely like Trump and Macron looked vaguely like Clinton, they seemed quite opposite in other aspects.
LePen is, in her own way, an old fashioned politician running at least in part on a famous name that has been around for several decades now, with a somewhat “conventional” base of support that has been more or less the same, even if it has expanded quite dramatically relatively recently.
Macron is coming in out of nowhere, almost literally. He is not bound by any institutions of old politics in France. He is coming in practically as a rescuer of the status quo politicians without owing them anything–in a sense, somewhat like Trump was to the Republicans in U.S. He is as “centrist” as he plays to the fear of the old fashioned conventional politicians and their allies of the old fashioned “extremists” a la LePen. But what exactly he is is unclear, again, given his lack of institutional ties and obligations to the status quo.
In a very strange way, France seems to have become a bit of bizarro universe version of US: the winning “centrist” is brash a young man with an old wife playing to the fear of the internationalists feeling besieged but with little ties and no obligations to advance the latter’s agenda–a bizarro, internationalist version of Trump; the loser is an old fashioned politician playing to the same old fashioned (even if highly nationalist and “extreme,” whatever that really means) audience, helped out by her father’s name–a bizarro nationalist version of Clinton.
Marcon is a brilliant speaker. He is fluently bilingual, although with a strong, very strong, accent. I suspect he will be taking lessons to work on his accent starting now.
Fascinating stats:
French electorate: 47 million
Macron: 20 million
Abstention & blank ballot: 16 million
Le Pen: 11 million
It seems that those not too keen on Macron larger than those who voted for him. Considering that 34% of French electorate were not inspired by their electoral choice says more than who will be next president.
So have the French rolled over to EU/Globalist tyranny? That’s what some French are claiming.
My question now is will the French be mandatory drafted into the coming EU Superstate military machine that Juncker and other EU apparatchik envision?
http://www.dw.com/en/juncker-calls-for-an-eu-army/a-36337676
So with the EU winning the French Election, guess the German Defense Minister will be headed back to Germany, who had been rushed into France just prior to the French elections, and the German Military Special Unit that was poised to go into France and restore order had LePen been elected are now standing down.
http://www.dw.com/en/german-defense-minister-arrives-in-france-to-probe-terrorism-scandal/a-38681796
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Forces_Division
The euro and the EU regime has been a disaster for Southern Europe including France. Sky high youth unemployment, massive debt, low capital investment, stagnant median incomes and rapidly growing social welfare payments.
Frexit will be good for France just as Brexit will be for Britain. With 34% of the French electorate not voting for either candidate in the runoff it shows massive dissatisfaction with the status quo and a resignation that their votes don’t really matter. This is the kind of environment in which civil wars and revolution are born.
Dear Colonel,
Apparently a third of voters refused to choose between Le Pen and Macron! Sounds like Macron won with 65% already disliking him (of those who cared to vote) and of his 65%, a likely large fraction who detest him only slightly less than they detest marine.
The term rudderless leadership for the next five per Nigel Farage seems likely.
Nigel Farage called 2017 for Macron and predicts 2022for Le Pen.
https://tinyurl.com/kkrzpb6
There are things that are unusual about him. Quite a few things. Phew.
From Wikipedia:
“Raised in a non-religious family, he was baptised a Roman Catholic at his own request at age 12.
His parents sent him off to the élite Lycée Henri-IV in Paris, where he completed the high school curriculum due to their alarm at the bond he had formed with Brigitte Auzière, a married teacher with three children at Jésuites de la Providence, who later became his wife.
They first met when he was a 15-year-old student in her class, and she was 39, but were officially a couple only after he turned 17. They married in 2007. Macron has three step-children, Sébastien (born 1975), Laurence (born 1977), and Tiphaine (born 1984).
His best man was Henry Hermand (1924–2016), a businessman who loaned €550,000 to Macron for the purchase of his first apartment in Paris as he was Inspector of Finances. Hermand also let Macron use some of his offices on the Avenue des Champs Élysées in Paris for his movement En Marche!.”
I will only say that if it were to come out that Trump had seduced a 15 year old girl when he was 39 he would be gone. Clinton was impeached for Lewinsky who, to say the least, went out in the rain to get wet.
Actually, I think a Frexit would have ultimately been good for France. It would have led Germany down the path of a severe recession if the Euro were to implode and they would go back to DM. Meanwhile, the investment into Spain, Italy, and France would have been significant.
That aside, I don’t think she was the right candidate, but a central currency shared among disparate economies, who don’t have the individual means to create or restrict money, is a futile experience doomed to fail. Better sooner than later in my opinion.
The only way the Euro would work is to go back to a gold-backed currency. You can’t do what they’re trying to do with a fiat currency.
Very disappointing result…
The French were given a chance to vote against the bankers..
vote against austerity, vote against the corporate superstate that is run by a G-Sax banker at the ECB, vote for their own anti-globalist liberation and they balked.
What were they thinking?
If Hollande was bad, Macron will be worse. No experience, no backbone, no bona fides except for his years of indoctrination as a Rothschild bankster. What kind of pedigree is that?
No one even knows who the man is or what he represents, he’s a complete mystery, a blank chalkboard like Obama that people scribble their own values on, and are later crestfallen when they realize he’s a fraud. Another two-faced, Hopey-changey chameleon who’ll do whatever his paymasters say without a whimper of protest.
This is big triumph for the bad guys who managed to pull the wool over the sheeple’s eyes once again.
But it’s another black day for democracy
FYI,
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/france-macron-election-le-pen/525564/
Quote:
The founder of modern France “designed the Fifth Republic as a hybrid regime, combining the institutions of a parliamentary system with a powerful presidential office so that a crisis in the party system might not necessarily provoke a crisis of government,” Manent notes.
Macron’s presidency will “be a true test of the Fifth Republic as De Gaulle envisioned it,” she added. “So far, this has never really been tested, because the system developed into a de facto two party system.”
“It may have taken 60 years,” Manent writes, “but De Gaulle’s vision of the Fifth Republic could well be coming to a point of crisis.”
KHC,
Macron held more than one cabinet post in the past five years, including finance minister in 2014. How is that “out of nowhere” other than in revisionist history terms?
Col.,
So FN under Marie La Pen has a 100% increase in votes from 2012. A few questions come to mind. How firm will those voters be in the next election? How many seats in the legislature will her party have and how important will that be given the structure of the French government?
Le roi est mort, vive le roi !
( the king is dead, long live the king!)
Marine LePen Never had a chance to win and will Never have. I am puzzled by some expressing their disapointment here as on Russian media, and in France.
The ”young Prince that has became King” means the continuation of more of the same submission (Kollaboration is the proper word) to the dangerously and very destructive triumphant Germany.
More euro, more Bruxelles ukaz and more Nato is in the book, and financial market are euphoristic, a sure sign of continuity.
The party of Sarkozy and Fillon will oppose vocally but support on a case by case a very liberal, anti-social policy.Main objective is to keep some legislative power and such leverage.
The Parti Socialist (Hollande) is the big looser… or not, if one considers the Macron Show as a clever masquerade.
The very unknown quantity is the results of the two extreme Left(JL Melenchon) and Rigth (LePen), both souverainist and largely anti-euro, at the next legislative election of more than 570 deputies.
“I will only say that if it were to come out that Trump had seduced a 15 year old girl when he was 39 he would be gone.”
Probably so,but the relevant question is what the response would be if it were to come out that Trump had seduced a 39 year old woman when he was 15.
My guess : ” That’s m’boy ! ”
One feels for Malcolm Turnbull, humoring the lunatic.
The turnout was low by French standards. Low turnout was supposed to help Le Pen, but it didn’t. Macron outperformed the polls by a significant margin. Whatever Le Pen is saying, I’m sure she expected and hoped for more.
https://off-guardian.org/2016/08/13/debt-and-austerity-greece-continues-to-be-sucked-dry/
https://off-guardian.org/2016/06/27/life-in-a-modern-day-debt-colony-the-truth-about-greece/
‘Nuff said.
Imagine if one of Obama’s younger advisors, John X Doe, were suddenly propelled as a main presidential candidate, with the same inner circle and sponsors as Obama, and put at the head of a new Republican Social Democrat Party, made up of very high-profile GOP and Dem defectors, and a slew of second-tier old-timers.
Then the DNC and RNC put out their weakest possible candidates, one of whom gets indicted for corruption two months ahead to the election, and the other is considered inept and abhorrent by most people. John X Doe wins. Dem and GOP crumble.
This is a fairly unlikely scenario in the US, but that’s pretty much what’s happening in France.
The high number of abstentions and blank ballots do reflect that there was no left wing candidate. The choice was center-right or far-right.
If anything this election should force the French left to reinvent themselves if they want to have a role in the future.
As for the National Assembly it looks likely to be a round of “cohabitation” for President Macron. I doubt Le Pen would have been better off.
Kao_hsien_chih
Macron is not “coming in out of nowhere”, he has been selected by our Deep state.Four years after graduating from ENA (national school of administration ) he joined Rothschild Bank. It’s just unusal.Then after negociating one big deal (Nestle) he was promote to managing partner ! Do you knoww how long it take normally to become managing partner in such kind of bank ? 10 year minimum.
And then he become Deputy Secretary of the French Presidency as soon as Hollande was elected !
He owes a lot.
I am surprised about the Trump “syndrom”,maybe it was common abroad, but I have seen from nothing to little here in ours Main Stream Merdias.
I think you know absolutely nothing about the Bundeswehr. It isn´t fit for anything. No leadership, no equipment, no spirit. Compared to the Bundeswehr the French Army is the Wehrmacht of 1939. There are a few special forces units (a few hundred at most) that you could actually use in a war. The rest just forget it. They´d be overtasked putting down a riot.
Macron seems to be a major upgrade after Hollande and Sarkozy. Stable on the home front unlike Hollande. Not aiming to cash in from Ghaddhafi or shady business deals like Sarkozy. Very articulate, and has a programme to change the French labor and social security system. As this involves diminishing privileges, it clearly is not a popular proposal. I would have thought his margin to be slimmer.
He also had the guts to attack the French party system with a completely new outfit, refusing to cannibalise existing parties or make deals the caciques du coin. I’d say this makes him stronger in character than previous Presidents who all had to compromise their way up the party ladders.
Macron’s performance at the TV duell was outclassing LePen’s by far. This might have contributed to a lot of potential LePen supporters not voting for her. She came across as boorish and uninspired, and had no answer to the first big question on reforming the labor market except to cricise Macron over not implementing them when he was in Hollande’s cabinet. After “Un président ne devrait pas dire ça…” (Davet & Lhomme 2016) everyone knows they clashed and the “traitor” Macron was sent into the wilderness.
One problem: Macron will be tempted try to solve a lot of issues through the EU, so he can bypass the national parliament where En Marche is unlikely to get a majority that will allow for his reforms in the upcoming elections in June. This in turn can fuel an anti-EU movement. French challenges need to be addressed in the national institutions.
The French also have better food.
Bill Herschel – I accept that the private lives of politicians are sometimes relevant when considering their policies but is that the case with the new French President? I’m unable to see a connection between Macron’s private life and what is happening to France.
Colonel, may I go off topic and enquire of your committee why Tulsi Gabbard is supporting H.R. 1644?
Jack is this not just a reflection of the fact that the French electorate, like the UK & US’s, are not overly enamored by the choices they are being offered by their national political parties. When is the last time any of us voted for someone who we believed in rather than lesser of two evils?
It’s interesting how you misuse the most recent scandal in the German military to your own ‘straight heart’s delight’, J.
Fact is, that the French officer in charge of the French-German unit, founded in 1989 by the way, recommended the guy should be fired three years ago. An interesting little detail among other matters.
You do not have troubles with a German officer posing as a non-existent Syrian refugee at the same time? However he accomplished it. What was his intention to lead a faked double life? Was his intention to leave his fingerprints on a crime scene?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-German_Brigade
Jack,
“Frexit will be good for France just as Brexit will be for Britain”
Well, it seems BREXIT isn’t all that good for Britain. In light of that I wonder how ‘Frexit’ can or would be good for France.
“Britain benefits enormously from its participation in the 28-member economic and political union, and the consequences of withdrawal could be catastrophic for the British economy — particularly for London’s role as an international financial center.
…
A recent study by the International Monetary Fund warned that the UK’s withdrawal from the EU could shrink the British economy by 5% by the year 2019. Nor would withdrawal affect only affluent Britons, as some Leave proponents have suggested. Researchers at the London School of Economics estimated that middle-class families in the UK would face the loss of at least 4% of their income if the UK left the EU and had to trade under the rules of the World Trade Organization.
Brexit also would complicate the UK’s economic relationship with the United States. U.S. companies would think twice about investing in the UK if it no longer enjoyed the trading advantages of being part of the EU. On a visit to the UK earlier this year, President Obama warned that if Britain were to leave the union, it would find itself at the “back of the queue” in trade negotiations with the United States.
…
Brexit would also make it harder for millions of Britons to travel freely and work on the Continent. Although supporters of withdrawal complain about an influx of workers from other European countries, the traffic is not only in one direction.
Finally, Brexit would increase political tensions within the UK. It was only two years ago that nearly 45% of voters in Scotland expressed a preference for seceding from the UK. Political leaders in Scotland, where support for the EU is strong, have warned that a withdrawal of the UK from the EU might increase the pressure for another independence referendum. In Northern Ireland, Brexit could undermine the Protestant-Catholic peace process by depriving Catholics in the North of a political connection they now enjoy with their co-religionists in the Irish Republic, an EU member that is not part of the UK. Cameron also has warned that a victory for the Leave campaign would lead to the return of border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
…
Given these negative consequences, why is there so much support for Brexit? Some of the opposition is rooted in an island nation’s suspicion of the Continent that has been part of British political life for centuries and which helps to explain why, even as as a member of the EU, the UK has maintained its own currency rather than adopt the euro. A variation of that concern is the (highly exaggerated) fear that “Eurocrats” in Brussels, in their zeal to form an ever-closer union, are usurping decisions that properly belong to the British Parliament. That attitude is especially prevalent in Cameron’s Conservative Party, and some members of the prime minister’s government have broken openly with him to support Brexit. ”
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-brexit-vote-20160622-snap-story.html
Point I make: Since Brexit has its number of points where it hurts alredy and/or will hurt Britain sooner rather than later, I wonder why and how ‘Frexit’ would be much different, or any better.
Another brilliant politico with an ‘lets exit Euro’ ideas is the dutch genius Wilders, who wants ‘NLexit’ (Wilders calls it “Nexit” to prevent the “Islamization” of the Netherlands), clearly every bit a bright idea just as Brexit.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/dutch-populist-geert-wilders-wants-to-leave-the-eu-a-1100931.html
eakens,
I responed with my view to ‘Brexit’, ‘Frexit’ and … ‘NLxit’ in my reponse to Jack above. IMO all these policies are IMO silly and self destructive.
“Aren’t you the fellow who told me a year or so ago that the SAA had ceased to exist?”
No.
Shameless idiotic propaganda!
Macron is an “empty suit on steroids” with only technical skills, all words, no substance, he has been known to contradict himself within the same speech and many noticed that you couldn’t “resume” his ideas because there were none, though this did not detract from his appeal, “the medium is the message”.
As for his clash with Hollande, news for you: Hollande à propos de Macron : «Je serai toujours à côté de lui».
He is THE “synthetic candidate” of Hollande and the French subsidiary of The Borg!
with a somewhat “conventional” base of support that has been more or less the same
I agree with others challenging you, for me it starts here. Hardly the ‘somewhat conventional’ basis, it feels. Consider both France and the larger global scene, events happening during the last centuries. Anyway, no harm meant, but it sounds a bit like a perspective from some type of ivory tower.
More randomly. For whatever reason, En March reminds me of a publication by a rather old French writer, whose name I forget. But for me he seemed to come pretty much out of nowhere too. His publication in the aftermath of 9/11 anyway, was widely circulated in activist circles over here too. It was a rather slim volume, thus I would have a hard time finding it, now that it mentally surfaces.
Maybe I am wrong to not simply accept the general position that it simply mirrors Macron’s initials. But can’t help it pops up on my mind.
But yes, 9/11 or more it’s political and military aftermath led a lot of people to ask questions about the state of our own democracies. This interest had to surface, considering the West went out to model the world according to its then dominating designs. And don’t forget it happened after the 1990’s. I have no idea about France at that point in time, but Germany found itself in the position as the “sick man of Europe” at the turn of the century.
Please
@ Fred
How firm will those voters be in the next election? How many seats in the legislature will her party have and how important will that be given the structure of the French government?
Those are key questions whose answers we will find out on June 18th.
With no real political base , will Macron be able to get enough candidates to join his “En Marche” party and have a majority at the Assemblé Nationale? or are we going to have yet another cohabitation like the Mitterand-Chirac era?
Currently FN has only 2 MPs and the French people will vote for candidates who will have power and influence to make things happen in their riding and thus I don’t see many wins for FN.
Also with the new law that went into effect wrt the cumuls, some FN members would rather stay at the regional levels down to the Mairie level, of even a small hamlet, where they can have more power than in Paris.
BTW: I stopped watching MorningJoe this morning, when the talking heads were spewing silly opinions and comments. The best one was from BBC Katy Kay who resides in DC but said something to the effect ” French have long lunches and most of HER FRIENDS retire at 55!)
Yep, long lunches – may be in some small villages in the country but not where productivity = profits and revenues and hence the reason for on-site cafeterias or fast-food/ sandwicheries.
I wonder if a US-based BBC news reader has friends in France who started working at the age of 17/18 or are cheminots to be able to retire at age 55, according to French labour law.
I doubt her NAP Girlfriends/beau-quartier acquaintances do even have to work 🙁 but , hey when you have an audience, why not !
A lot of arm waving and conjecture. When has the IMF ever been correct in any of their macro-economic forecasts? They can’t even get next quarters GDP growth right! The actual data shows that the UK runs an annual trade deficit with the EU of around 24 billion pounds. Brexit will be worse for the EU if they choose to not trade with Britain. And if you think the EU can squeeze Britain during Brexit negotiations you’ll be wrong. May is going to win a thumping majority in Parliament and can tell Juncker and Merkel to stuff it where the sun don’t shine.
The fact however is that being in the EU and using the EUR has already proven to be a disaster for Southern Europe.
Voting is in the US much more difficult than in France and your vote doesn’t count if you life in for example California or Texas so you can’t really compare those numbers.
YT,
‘Nuff said’
Ah yes. And your point is?
What does Greece and their debt and lack of a rule of law problem have to do with Brexit, Frexit, France, Macron, Le Pen and the like? Anything?
Greece in terms of corruption and lack of money is playing in an entirely different magnitude than France or the UK.
The economic problems of Greece have a lot to do with greek bad habits (fraud, corruption, tax evasion, welfare cheats etc. pp.) that at some point had to be paid for.
Alas – they can’t be paid for. Today the debt is so large that payment is beyond Greece.
To get the idea:
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2012/0430/Greek-island-of-the-blind-More-like-island-of-welfare-cheats
A blind was “a bird hunter.”? How do you hunt birds as a blind man? How does he see the birds? With nothing? You find them by smell? Or with telekinesis? Or does he use his eyes? But, when his eyes work enough for that, then he can hardly be blind …
http://nypost.com/2015/07/05/decades-of-fraud-have-swindled-greeks-out-of-billions/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion_and_corruption_in_Greece
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/greece/8714615/Greece-Its-the-corruption-stupid.html
In light of that, even if the Greeks went out of Euro, do a ‘Grexit’, the corruption and dysfunction would remain a problem.
So they’d get the drachma back – what would happen to the debt? Would it disappear? Would folks suddenly start to pay taxes, stop playing disablement (like blindness) to get more pensions, stop bribing with fakelaki etc. pp.?
Hardly. Greek’s poverty problem has little to do with Euro, but with brazen crime.
It’s just that by now the bill is in Euro, no longer in drachma. Greece is as a result one of Europe’s problem, but Greeces problems are not caused by the EU.
If you pay non-blind folks blind pensions without having doctors checking the folks, then you’re, well, pissing away your money. That money is gone. If you don’t earn enough in taxes, you can take a credit, and have debt. Greece did that, and they’re broke now.
Greece did go like that long time, well before the Euro came to them. The Euro being sent away won’t change the greek culture and habits.
Macron came out of “nowhere” in the sense that he is, at least, formally, not part of the traditional political establishment in France. Indeed, he ran explicitly on the basis of repudiating them–thus the nature of his campaign. In this sense, he came out of “nowhere” much the way Churchill, DeGaulle, Goldwater, or Reagan did: they were all established names in politics, but they all took power on the promise, honestly or falsely, depending on one’s perspective, of distancing themselves from the status quo.
Where Macron is different from most others who came before him is that those to whom he offered to “rescue” are unusual: the internationalist elite. DeGaulle came out of “nowhere” (even if he has been a universally known name for decades) offering to rescue the besieged France from the internationals, to exaggerate somewhat. Macron is coming out of “nowhere” (even if he has been a part of the government for years) to rescue the besieged internationals from the French. Much the way DeGaulle, at the beginning of the 5th Republic, was expected to do away with the institutional vestiges of the 4th, in delivering on his (alleged) promise (which, I suppose, he did not really pull off), it strikes me that there are expectations that Macron will behave quite differently from the traditional French political establishment to secure the internationals’ interests.
Not exactly a “revolution” or a “continuation.” Perhaps a “reacionary coup” of sorts, means to keep up the status quo in policy terms by means that are unconventional. Macron is a part of the old order as much as Metternich was part of the 18th century, I suspect. They may look like ducks, but they are not even birds, and they come with a poison stinger in their hind legs. (I am echoing Tocqueville’s observation: that, even if the post-Restoration Bourbons espoused policy like that of their 18th century predecessors, they employed the means of the Revolutionaries. Thus the bizarro connotation: Macron is a continuation of the “old” internationalist elite who is expected to employ Trumpian means.) There is something to Aleksandar’s observation below, although I don’t know I want to go so far as to subscribe to a conspiratorial story to account for his rise.
Jack: “The euro and the EU regime has been a disaster for Southern Europe including France.”
For France? Let’s have a compare and contrast of France’s own work rules, corporate policies, and currency regulation before and after joining the EU. The youth unemployment problem is, in part, the result of France’s own work regulations, hiring, firing, etc. It was always a top down economy. Is the EU really all that different?
Glad Le Pen lost… sounds like Vichy2. Vichy1, let’s remember, kowtowed to Germany in every respect.
I’m hoping that some Le Pen voters will resign themselves to never succeeding in a presidential contest and swing to the left. We likely won’t see shifts in the upcoming parliamentary election, however.
Right. He was behind the labor regulation revisions that had tens of thousands of people in the streets two years ago. He’s as fresh as last week’s fish head.
cp,
That LA Times editorial is almost a year old and the IMF study quoted therein more than a year old.
Apparently there are 2 entirely different bills referred to as H.R. 1644. Support of which one of these are you referring to?
Based on Tulsi’s stand supporting the pipeline protestors in South Dakota, she would have supported this one:
H.R.1644 (2015-2016) Supporting Transparent Regulatory and Environmental Actions in Mining Act or the STREAM Act — 114th Congress https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1644/
This bill was passed on 1/20/16, however “Appropriations for the study are authorized for FY2016-FY2017.”
I do not understand why a completely different bill was given the same numeric designation considering studies are still being done on the above bill.
Here is the newer bill with the same number…
H.R.1644 (2017-2018) Korean Interdiction and Modernization of Sanctions Act- 115th Congress https://congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1644/
I am assuming this second bill is the one you are concerned about.
Although that specific bill is not mentioned in the article I’m about to share, it does show her concern for Hawaii given that it’s a lot closer to North Korea than the continental US. So it wouldn’t surprise me based on that, that she would support sanctioning North Korea. Given her controversial support for Assad and against the US indirectly supporting Jihadis, she may see support for the anti North Korea bill as maintaining her FP credibility.
PACOM Commander Confirms North Korea’s Threat to Hawai‘i http://mauinow.com/2017/04/26/pacom-commander-confirms-north-koreas-threat-to-hawaii/
Many things will be said about the new French president and much will be just speculation. It appears, however, that he speaks better English than the current POTUS.
i think he was the one who said his Syrian students told him SAA couldnt find enough men to recruit and hence was finished.
A much higher percentage of French voted than Americans did in our election.
From the same site – Verhofstadt on the necessity for a European Defence Force –
http://www.dw.com/en/guy-verhofstadt-on-syria-we-need-a-european-army/a-36091333
And some indication (at 3mins 25secs) of what he might have wished to see done with it in the Ukraine. Verhofstadt speaking at the Maidan, early 2014:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQnXo2HMriQ
Federika Mogherini has for some time been stressing the need for the EU to pursue a foreign policy independent of the US:-
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2017/05/06/520746/US-losing-leadership-in-world-EU-top-diplomat
Mogherini speaks of the countries within the EU as equivalent to the States within the US – as if the UK bore the same relation to Brussels as Ohio does to Washington. I do not think this comparison is mere rhetorical flourish. This is the imperial vision of the EU as sometimes articulated by Sarkozy in the past.
It makes sense therefore for an imperial army to be created. A unified army for a unified country, as the USA has.
I do not think that would be good news. Democratic control of EU foreign policy, given that the constituent countries have no common political culture and are wide open to divide et impera, would be non existent.
It was a theme of the recent US Presidential election that the US government was out of control – that because of the way the party system operates it’s difficult for the citizen to have much say in what his government does. But I wouldn’t push that argument too far. The voter in California might be at daggers drawn with the voter in flyover country, but at least those two sub-groups of voters know more or less what the other is about. It is possible to arrive at at least some degree of national consensus that the politicians must take some account of. Even in foreign policy, that area of government that the citizen normally takes the least interest in and can know least about, there is some sort of check on the US politician.
Is this the case in Europe? It’s true that a similar common political culture does exist to an extent in Europe. The middle class progressive in Germany has the same outlook as the middle class progressive in England. The mantras are much the same, as is the rejection of nationality or ethnicity being a desirable component of one’s political thinking. But apart from a few dissidents the middle class or the progressives – the two terms are more or less interchangeable – don’t take an informed interest in foreign policy. There’s no check there when it comes to examining or controlling what their governments or the EU decides to do abroad.
Nor need the European politicians take much account of what the broad mass of the European population wants. There is no broad mass of the European population. Apart from the middle class it’s all enclaves, divided by ethnicity, nationality, language and the lack of a common political outlook. The EU politician need fear no check there either.
Power unchecked by even the minimum degree of accountability is a nightmare. If there’s to be a common European foreign policy it will therefore be even more at the mercy of special interests or ideologues than is the case in the US. If there’s a common EU army to give teeth to that EU foreign policy, it’ll be even more of a nightmare for those regions where it is deployed than the nightmare many of those regions – the Ukraine, the ME and elsewhere – are living through at present. Imagine an out of control EU superpower acting on such imperatives as are set out in the Blumenthal/Libya email, and with the clout to enforce those imperatives. Seems unlikely now, but we’d be looking back with some regret to the era when the US neocons ran the West and had the unchallenged say.
Macron came out of “nowhere” in the sense that he is, at least, formally, not part of the traditional political establishment in France.
Macron was, years before he joined Valls’ government, a member of a “commission to unleash growth” presided by long-time consummate insider Jacques Attali. In fact, Attali picked Macron to be his right hand man and introduced him to the Rotschild bank afterwards. Before that, Macron had become a favourite of Jean-Pierre Jouyet when working at the finance inspectorate — himself uninterruptedly a grey eminence of French governments left and right for decades (and right hand man of Jacques Delors at the EU Commission). Even before that, in the early 2000s, Macron had made an internship under Georges Sarre, a heavyweight of the Socialist Party in Paris.
After Rotschild, but before joining Valls government, Macron worked under Hollande (introduced to him by Jouyet); before that, he had been asked twice by right-wing governments to join them, but declined. Apart from the Attali commission, Macron took part in the works of various important French think-tanks.
And there is even more. Macron worked for, met and was groomed by many long-standing heavyweights of French politics.
If you read French, peruse the wikipedia page on Macron. You will see how wrong your assessment of him as a kind of “outsider” is.
Sorry, but it has nothing to do with center-right and Far-right.
It’s FN against all others, from far left to center right.
In the US FN will be seen left of the republican party.
The struggle for now, and in more and more European states is globalist vs nationalists.
See the 5 stars party in Italy for example.
The fact that, more or less, 25% decide to vote for leaving euro and EU ( remenbering that France is a founding country of EU )is just amazing.
http://elections.interieur.gouv.fr/presidentielle-2017/FE.html
Blancs 6.35%, Nuls 2.21% of the 47,568,588 Inscrits.
Macron got 43.63% of the Inscrits.
Le Pen got 22.38% of the Inscrits.
Vichy 2 ?
OMG, you’re a media victim probably.
This election has nothing to do with Vichy, whatever number you give to it.
Vichy is a 70 years moment , after a military defeat.
Things today are quite different.
One joke here is :
“Marine will implement fascism in France !”
” Fascism ? But yours cell phone are already monitored, as all ours emails and communications, as things we buy and where we go, civils liberties have been reduce to nothing, freedom of speech already limited and so.
How is it possible for her to implement fascism in France ?”
confusedponderer,
The EUROpean authorities knew all about this when they let Greece into the EUROzone. The private interest-seeking banks ( mainly German I believe) knew all about this when they lent Greece the credit. So-called “bailing out Greece” is strictly and exactly using Greece as a conduit through which to pass the money to the private banks which lent Greece the credit even while knowing ( or should-have-been-knowing) all about Greece’s bad habits. It is those private profit banks which should have been forced to eat the entire loss. Instead, it is the EUROzone taxpayer and the Greek citizen forced to eat the loss as the Greek economy is degraded and attrited in a project to force Greece to privatize every public thing of profit-taking value and the EUROzone taxpayer who will be forced to eat the loss so that the private banks get to eat all the money.
Or am I wrong? As Bill O’Reilly likes to say.
Margaret,
I don’t think the comparison is very good. “Vichy1” came about after a military defeat with a couple hundred thousand casualties not a national election.
Margaret
I agree that French economic policies and labor regulations are very statist. However, if France had a sovereign currency and monetary policy they could ameliorate to some extent the straight-jacket they are under with the euro.
Thank you. Here’s the section I noticed:-
“(b) Specific Findings.—Each report required under subsection (a) shall include specific findings with respect to the following ports and airports:
“(1) The ports of Dandong, Dalian, and any other port in the People’s Republic of China that the President deems appropriate.
“(2) The ports of Abadan, Bandar-e-Abbas, Chabahar, Bandar-e-Khomeini, Bushehr Port, Asaluyeh Port, Kish, Kharg Island, Bandar-e-Lenge, and Khorramshahr, and Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport, in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“(3) The ports of Nakhodka, Vanino, and Vladivostok, in the Russian Federation.
“(4) The ports of Latakia, Banias, and Tartous, and Damascus International Airport, in the Syrian Arab Republic.
”
There seems to be a lot of scope in this bill for penalising countries other than North Korea, citing as justification a finding that those other countries were assisting North Korea.
One of the countries mentioned that could be subject to such a finding is the SAR. Does H.R.1644 therefore open the door to another means of acting against Syria?
In theory perhaps, Jack, but given that France is currently “very statist” they’d have to have another revolution to change that. And France seems quite content with it’s system overall. Yes, there are grumblings from some subgroups but nothing serious enough to challenge the very established status quo from what I can tell. The French elite are firmly in charge of their country, as in Germany. Those countries ARE the core of the EU. Their establishments are well established and successful enough to resist significant change and outsider challenges.
France has a different political culture than the US, so comparisons to US elections always seem “off” to me. I have never agreed with the narrative that Le Pen was similar to Trump, though I can see the appeal. Other than campaigning as anti-EU and attempting to claim the populist mantle there is little else they share.
Le Pen was never going to win the election, her party has too much historical baggage.
So you are saying that Macron is as much of an insider as Louis XVIII was a Bourbon. I think that paradox was implicit in where I was going (not terribly well-formed thought, I admit.) I fully expect that superficially, at least, Macron will be acting like continuation of the present status quo, but wherever he “really” came from, he seems clearly aware that the “traditional” practice of politics in France is dead. He may pursue the same “broad” goals as the present “mainstream,” but he will not be using the same methods. I expect Macron to be as Trumpian as Louis XVIII was “Revolutionary.” Macron is, I think, not a continuation of status quo, but a “reactionary revolutionary” who will use the fears of the present day elites (exactly the people whom you listed) to do some unprecedented things of which we do not have good sense yet. If I were a member of present French establishment, I’d be deeply fearful of the kind of things that Macron will try to pull off.
I hadn’t looked that closely at the bill. Looks like major ports from all the current geopolitical enemies – China, Iran, Russia, Syria – are included.
From the bill overview:
“The Department of Homeland Security may implement enhanced screening of cargo bound for or landed in the United States that: (1) has been transported through a sea port or airport that has repeatedly failed to comply with applicable Security Council resolutions; (2) is aboard a vessel, aircraft, or conveyance that has entered North Korean territory, waters, or airspace, or landed in any of its seaports or airports, within the last 365 days; or (3) is registered by a country whose inspection compliance is deficient.”
Since all those countries are dealing with various levels of US hostility toward them I expect that increases their trade with each other. No surprise that sanctions will be attempted to mitigate that. After all, financial or economic warfare is the name of the game these days.
Whether this bill opens the door to another means of acting against Syria… seems likely. All I know is that if the Borg decides to go against a country, congressional bills are just one of many tools for doing so.
Apologies for an error above. The UK/Brussels Ohio/Washington comparison was Junker’s, not Mogherini’s. Junker has an inexhaustible supply of gaffes but this comparison, I think, he meant. They all do. “Ever Closer Union” in the EU dreamworld means just that.
Agree wholeheartedly. The French didn’t have time to get their act together. We did. Blitzkrieg doesn’t work as well if there’s twenty miles of water in the way.
I’m sticking my neck out, on a site for experts in such matters, but my impression is that the French fought with considerably more spirit than the history books allow, and that it was closer than those books say. Maybe if there’d been better co-ordination and a more accurate assessment of how stretched the invaders were…
Vichy is what happens when it all goes horribly wrong. “Divine surprise” notwithstanding, I doubt even the most right-wing Frenchman would have gone with it for choice.
KHC,
I don’t think that string of words ‘ “out of nowhere” – means what you wish them to mean. You sound like Karl Rove with his “we create our own reality”. Reality reality kind of bit his reality in the rear end.
Why should a French socialist vote for Macron if the economic policies of a Le Pen is more to his/hers liking?
Being sceptical of globalist economic policies is a core socialist/social-democratic issue in Europe. Only the past of FN scares potential voters from the left to make the jump to FN.
Marine Le Pen has done a lot to clear out the extreme elements of FN. But as we saw with three-day chairman of FN, Jean-François Jalkh, there more to be done.
WWII deja vu. Brexit is the war declaration against Germany. The French election of Macron is like the Vichy government. The Ukrainian coup is the first salvo of the Iii Reich’s Eastern Front dash. The Minsk agreement is like the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to facilitate construction of Nord Stream II. The build up of NATO forces on the Eastern border and the THAAD installations in Romania and Poland is the prelude to the battle of Leningrad. History repeats itself. Let’s see if the partisans rise up against Germany in Greece, the Balkans and if Separatists in the Basque country and Cataluña rebel against the neo Franquists.
Yes, banks are only minimally less evil then the Germans collectively. Closely followed by the ‘Clintocrites’ and ‘Obamacrats’, maybe?
But considering this:
Instead, it is the EUROzone taxpayer and the Greek citizen forced to eat the loss …
What’s your guess to what amount this concerns German taxpayer or French ones for that matter collectively?
The EUROpean authorities knew all about this when they let Greece into the EUROzone. …
Yes, vultures led by the Germans who wanted to bleed Greece to death from the very, very start. They were pulled into the Eurozone struggling and kicking, absolutely no doubt about that, to no avail.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession#Housing_bubbles
But you shouldn’t give up hope, there is still hope the Eurozone will break up. US economists expect that for a long time after all, and they cannot be that wrong. And maybe the larger European post WWII Utopia.
“This election has nothing to do with Vichy, whatever number you give to it.”
One of Le Pen’s campaign points was deporting immigrants; I’m thinking she didn’t mean Germans, Dutch, Polish immigrants, but the survivors of France’s colonial policies in Africa, Asia, and possibly the ME. Who did the French deport in 1942? Jewish immigrants. The French police not the Germans carried out rounding them up and getting them to German death camps.
Maybe she didn’t really mean it. Maybe she wouldn’t do it. In the meantime, the example of Vichy stands as a warning. Let’s call it Vichy 1.25.
Heard very many similar things in Italy and in Spain.
I remember reading 30 years ago that many Spaniards were falsely reporting being unemployed, collecting unemployment while holding jobs (perhaps in the informal sector).
The unemployment insurance itself was a legacy of Francisco Franco’s government; that bad bad bad guy.
You have to have the Will-to-Power; Greeks had lost it, likely their mojo too.
Koreans were the same way, eventually selling themselves to the highest bidder, the Empire of Japan around 1900.
The lines on the flag of Greece stands for “Eleftria” – freedom. Likely they need a new flag.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8iYwi_hXoU
Yes, a lot of the people here bagging on France’s economic dirigisme seem to forget that it was precisely those policies that gave the country thirty years of solid economic growth and widely shared prosperity–the so-called treinte glorieuse (1945-75). No, France’s current troubles are definitely caused by the EU and the euro, not by traditional French dirigisme.
You’re exactly right. I’m assuming that ‘confusedponderer’ is German, since he/she is regurgitating German MSM talking points almost verbatim. I have lived in the country for 10 years, is this how the overwhelming majority of Germans feel about the subject. Their utter devotion to concept of the EU is almost like a religious faith; to question it is heresy. Other Europeans cynically suggest that this is because the EU works to Germany’s advantage, but that’s really only true of the 1%. For ordinary Germans, life is getting harder, not easier. I see a lot of pensioners these days going around, digging through the trash to find recyclable bottles and cans. Really sad …
The Beaver,
That will teach poor Katy Kay to start life as an aid worker in Africa. Of course with the right connections it pays well, at least for her husband who is with the Carnegie Endowmentl unlike people of that other social class back home who have to do work work.
Perhaps so, I certainly did not use the term that you think I did. But the point remains exactly as stated: Macron is about as part of the status quo as Louis XVIII was a Bourbon (and came out of as nowhere as the latter did.) The French Revolution made Louis XVIII king unexpectedly, with the backing of frightened anti-Reovlutionists, much the way the current trends in politics in France Macron the president, with the backing of frightened globalists. I think it would be absurd to think that Macron would be just like the old politicians. There will be some dark days ahead that we are not expecting. Macron will be a reactionary despot–except of the globalist variety–unrestrained by the political conventions of the old, a modern day Naopleon III.
LeaNder,
If you can find something in my comment where I said the Germans are collectively evil, please point out those exact words. If you can show where in this particular comment of mine where I mentioned something about ” the ‘Clintonites’ and ‘Obamacrats’ “, please feel free to quote those words for all to see.
If you can show where I made any guesses at all about the ethnic/national composition and percentages of EUropean taxpayers who bailed out the Perpetrator Lending Banks using Greece as a conduit, please point out where I made such guesses as to such composition.
If you can show where I said they “dragged Greece kicking and screaming” into the EU, please show me those exact words. Show me why I should not believe this is a half-clever rhetorical device on your part to try diverting attention from the fact that the EU authorities and the banks knew exactly how Greece conducted its economic/financial/social affairs and knew exactly what they were lending credit to.
Show me exactly where I wrote that I hope the EUROzone will break up. Be specific. Show the quotes.
In other words, nice try. Better luck next time.
The period you note was treinte glorieuse not only in France but globally in the Western bloc. Here in the US it was a period when the bottom 80% of households garnered their best share of national wealth relative to recent decades. The policies in the US to Germany to France and Japan were different but revolved around the fulcrum of free enterprise and a legal framework of transparency based on property rights. Fiscal conservatism was taken seriously by governments.
The one data set that shows an inflection point in the mid-70s is debt. Both government debt as a ratio of GDP and total credit market debt as a ratio to gdp. These series have truly run away. France has taken its government debt/gdp from the low 20% to nearly 100% now. So have all countries globally taken financial leverage to unprecedented levels.
Now, MRW and Babak believe this gargantuan expansion of credit relative to economic growth is what is glorious.
the ‘Clintonites’ and ‘Obamacrats’
I gave you the benefit of doubt, before I stumbled across the usage of these labels in context, my dear. Put another way, I mostly let your comments float by. Maybe your “different clue” label should have raised earlier suspicion. …
Please notice, as Seamus Padraig notes below, I am not a particular fan of confusedponderer’s challenging selections, beyond the fact I can understand.
Vaguely similar to Pat’s sensibility to what he feels might be Anti-American? Maybe? In a nutshell: I can understand the emotions that fed into his response. And yes, I felt I should help him a little my way. Or in my own ways.
LeaNder,
Once again, nice try. Better luck next time.
That’s very well put.
I remember Hollande campaigned on reforming the growth and stability pact, and Eurobonds. Then he rolled over and died.
Macron won’t likely even go through the formality of being seen as trying to change Europe.
I expect his popularity to plummet rather quickly, straight to Hollande’s levels.
Interesting that the party picks the candidates for the legislature?
https://www.thelocal.fr/20170512/several-hiccups-as-macron-reveals-new-candidates
Even more interesting from Marcy Wheeler on the Macron hack:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/05/11/macrons-false-documents/