by Peter Koenig for The Saker Blog
What do Argentinian protesters have in common with French protesters? – They both strongly dislike their governments, and their leaders (sic).
The protests in Argentina against the upcoming G20 meeting and around the IMF are just a pretext for an overall malaise – which is an understatement – vis-à-vis President Mauricio Macri and his debt-driven austerity program, that has left hundreds of thousands jobless. People who had decent jobs under the Kirchner governments have now joined the ranks of the unemployed and are begging for survival. Macri has driven the poverty rate from about 14%, where it was in November 2015, a months before the Presidential elections, to more than 35% in September 2018 – and all the while increasing tariffs for transportation and basic services such as electricity, gas, water – health care, education – in fact, privatizing such vital public services to the point where only higher middle class and elite can afford them.
That of course, will leave a vast majority of the people uneducated and without basic health care – precisely what neoliberalism wants. Decimating the number of poor people to a minimum needed for useful slavehood and leaving those who vegetate along, struggling for one meal at the time without education, without a job, so they don’t have the time, energy and political savvy to protest against the ruling class.
Greece is an outstanding example. Within less than ten years the once cheerful, happy and economically relatively well-off country was destroyed into misery by foreign imposed debt and austerity programs. – By now, almost all public assets were sold or privatized to pay for the horrendous debt service. Public health services are on a drip, there is a lack of special medication, like for cancer – schools are closed or privatized – pensions cut to unlivable levels, unemployment rampant – all leading to extreme poverty and skyrocketing suicide rates, about which nobody dares speaking.
That’s the making of the west. In the case of Greece even worse. Their European brother and sister countries went along with the loot. In fact, they pushed Greece into her demise, especially Germany, France, the European Central Bank (ECB), and, of course, the entire European Brussels apparatus, led by the unelected European Commission (EC) and, and eventually with the ‘official’ outside hammer, the IMF. Greece had to go.
Is Argentina going to become under Macri the Latin American Greece? Could well be. By now the country is encircled by neoliberal and fascist neighbors, Brazil, Chile Paraguay, Uruguay. Bolivia is a laudable exception. All the others will do what Washington mandates; whatever it takes to support Macri and his IMF-imposed economic killer policies, that – in the end – will sell out the resource-rich country to foreign oligarchs and corporations, to the US and NATO. Yes NATO, unbelievable, but true. NATO is officially in south America, as Colombia by her own choice has become a NATO country.
From Colombia to Argentina and actually to all of Latin America is like a walk in the park, with all the borders of the partly newly installed neoliberal / neofascist governments wide open – for NATO forces, that is. Macri has already invited the US to establish several US military bases. In July 2018 Sputnik reported that President Macri has given green light to establish “at least three US bases in the provinces of Neuquén, Misiones and Tierra del Fuego. Their creation would be financed by the US Southern Command.”
And now, in the midst of this man-made – Macri-made – socioeconomic calamity, he invites the G20 (30 November to 1 December 2018) to feast on Argentina’s goodies, to see for themselves what can be made of an otherwise prosperous country – so that prosperity is ‘shared’ and outsourced to foreign oligarchs, banks and corporations. Wonderful. For that G20 event, Macri mobilized some 22,000 military forces to guarantee the security of the chiefs of state.
Surely, after the G20 summit, new austerities will be imposed, because everybody sees there is more to be milked from Argentina. They see what they were able to do to Greece. When common sense would dictate – stop, that’s it, that’s all we can take – there is an opening for even more to be squeezed out of the country. In Argentina there is still a lot of milking to be done. It has just started. If nothing else, the newly Washingtonshoed-in president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, will teach Macri how to do even better for the western money sharks.
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In France, the Yellow Vests protests against higher fuel prices and labor reform laws is just a pretext for something much bigger – a growing awakening of the French people, a steadily increasing recognition of how the slippery soft-speaker Emmanuel Macron is stripping France’s populace of most of their civil and social rights, of their labor rights – and ultimately, still to come, of their jobs. A number of ‘false flags’ from Charlie Hebdo to Bataclan to the Nice’s 14th July terror attacks, have helped Macron to put a permanent State of Emergency – basically Martial Law – into the French Constitution. By doing so, he has created a kind of French “Patriot Act”, slice by slice reducing long acquired social rights, transforming them into increased profits for foreign and French corporations and banking giants. Big wonder, Macron is a Rothschild child. He has been put into his position to uphold and expand the Rothschild clan’s banking empire, expanding it way beyond the French borders.
Who are the Yellow Vests – or ‘gilets jaunes’ in French? The name refers to the yellow phosphorescent vests that each and every French driver needs to carry in his vehicle for visibility and protection in case of an incident on the highway. The movement started on 10 October, propagated through facebook against the Macron imposed increase of fuel taxes. It then expanded rapidly into a movement of discontent with the continuous loss of purchasing power of the common people through budget cuts and soft but steadily increasing austerity imposed on the French citizenry. That, plus the decay of public services, especially in urban peripheries, has transformed the Yellow Vests movement into a vivid protest against Macron, an outright call for Macron’s resignation.
Hundreds of thousands – cumulatively several millions – of Yellow Vests have demonstrated and blocked at times most of Paris during the past two weeks, to reverse the fuel tax increase and to basically regain their social rights and financial purchasing power, increase salaries to at least keep pace with inflation. Diesel prices have already increased in 2018 alone by 23% and gasoline prices by 15%. These prices should increase further by 2019 according to a Macron imposed law.
Can protests in the street remove a President? – A President, who came to power with less than 27% of the French eligible voters, a President, who built his power on a movement, called “En Marche” (something like ‘moving on’) which hardly even existed a year before Macron’s ‘election’ in May 2017, an election based on false propaganda, selling heaven to desperate people, who after socialist President François Hollande deceived his country bitterly, leaving his presidency with a popularity rate of less than 10% – these people were ready to accept any ‘populist’ lie in the hope that life would become better.
Well, as usual, the ruling class – almost always the financial elite – took advantage of the desperate situation – and bingo. Macron is legally in office for 5 years, until 2022. Removing him the ‘democratic way’, through a Parliamentary vote of confidence, is a slim chance, as he has an absolute majority in Parliament, also called the French National Assembly.
So far Macron has been able to impose his ‘austerity’ without the open help of the IMF. But, be sure, with Christine Lagarde at the helm of the IMF, a former French Finance Minister, with close ties to Macron, he most certainly get IMF ‘advice’ on how to continue softly squeezing the juices out of the French people, of their, since the end of WWII, accumulated and hard fought-for social benefits. Maybe also Greek style?
Curiously, the European Commission and the ECB are much more generous with France than with Italy, when it comes to adhering to the arbitrary 3% deficit limit. Italy was scolded, called to order and to submit a revised budget, when deputy PM, Matteo Salvini, presented Italy’s 2019 budget with a 2.9% deficit. France, on the other hand, has been running a deficit above 3% for years, but is gently reminded to please look into their finances a bit more carefully. In other words, the EU is treating brothers and sisters with different yard sticks, thus, helping Macron to do whatever he sees fit to push austerity down the French citizens’ throats. And if they protest, well, we see what’s happening now. There is the State of Emergency that allows the most brutal police crack-down, if needed. And Macron may well need it, if he wants his presidency to survive.
The French people, are, however, special. They prompted the French Revolution in 1789, the legacy of which still reverberates in legal systems around the world. French students started 40 years ago, the 1968 student and workers revolt. It began on the premises of “equal rights and liberty” between men and women. It led to strengthening workers unions and eventually to many workers rights and benefits, precisely those that already former President Sarkozy attempted to dismantle and for which Macron was installed to finish the job.
There is a direct relation between what happened in 1968 and what is occurring now. Will the people prevail? – Will France set an example for the rest of Europe? – Mind you – Europe is in the plans to be derailed and robbed similarly and through different means, one of which is a massively increasing influx of so-called refugees or migrants from poor countries bordering Europe. Absorbing millions of homeless souls from western destroyed countries, is a challenge, Europe may not survive. Macron may just be a convenient intermediary.
So, what do the people of Argentina and the people of France have in common? – They both want to get rid of a despotic president, implanted by the western financial elite to steal the socioeconomic coffers of their heritage, and which, if not stopped, may continue a movement throughout the Americas and Europe.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
“Macri has driven the poverty rate from about 14%, where it was in November 2015, a months before the Presidential elections, to more than 35% in September 2018 – and all the while increasing tariffs for transportation and basic services such as electricity, gas, water – health care, education – in fact, privatizing such vital public services to the point where only higher middle class and elite can afford them.”
This is what the right does.
I think you are partially correct. But it is not the whole picture.
In Greece a socialist party – Syriza – pledged passionately to fight austerity and to protect the Greek people.
They were elected on this platform whereupon their leader, Tsipras signed up with the banks for the worst possible austerity programme imaginable resulting in human suffering on a huge scale as Peter Koenig touches upon.
In France Hollande campaigned as a member of the socialists. In Europe neoliberal parties rotate in and out of office alternating with socialist parties and nobody notices any difference.
“This is what the right does” is true but it is also what the left does. They are both arms of the same corporate body.
The problem for people in Europe and the US is that all the political parties represent only the interests of the oligarchs. The normal 99.99% have no representation in the system at all.
T
“Tsipras signed up with the banks for the worst possible austerity programme imaginable”
“In France Hollande campaigned as a member of the socialists.”
Both dishonesty portrayed themselves as socialists, or on the left, but pursued right wing policy. Fake, disgraced leftists pushing right wing goals. IE: neither is considered genuine and instead looked upon as frauds, by the real left.
You example frauds to smear the left and paint all the left as the same as the right, in order to claim the left represents corporate power (IE: the same right wing establishment as the right). This is as fraudulent as the frauds you championed as representative of the left.
Globalists is the aanswer.
Last moments of archbishop Christodoulos, is suspected to have shared the same fate as Chavez. Died of two unrelated cancers for being an outspoken patriot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZBm-hBKiKs
This is how many people came to his public appearances:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLJ4UOV0JJc
All of us have the same traitor problems, they are either masons or on a globalist payroll (155 Greek parliamentarians)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoSSQ_X0Dws
Freemasonry, our biggest enemy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiL_vxtMI-c
Masons in Greek governments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxKfhnPG7lA
Another thing which Greece, France, and most of Latin America have in common is the ineptitude of their domestic middle classes. Time after time they respond eagerly to the seductions of Big Money and Big Business, and — since the advent of neoliberalism — achieve exactly this as their due reward. It is Nussiminen’s law for all the world to see:
Whenever there are conflicting interests between the Big Bourgeoisie and the Petty Bourgeoisie, the former always wins out, hands down.
The West is collapsing. Its affluent middle classes and labour aristocracies are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Their only hope would be a resounding defeat of Russia and China by the Zionazis. But no, not really. Fascist reaction today only brings the Ukro squalor. Imperialism without endless wars, immigrants, and refugees is not an option anymore.
Argentina fully deserves its current fate.
They had thé opportunity to elect a government in cotinuity of the path the country was walking out of vassality.
They choose instead the Empire candidate.
They desserve it. Just as Ukrainians desserve it. Both had the collective power tout choose a different future.
I looked at Argentina’s recent events as a soft “Maidan” remake, where elected president Christina K. was outsted and Macri was planted, fake elections followed and Macri continues to stay. Similar events happened in Greece (Papadimou) and Italy (I do not remember fellows name) All imposed by IMF and Goldman Sachs. Well, you could include France here. There are growing voices in Greece to support current Anti-EU Italian government, which is getting ready for an all out attack from Brussels. Consensus is that if Italy survives, EU as we know it will be finished.
“There is the State of Emergency that allows the most brutal police crack-down, if needed”
This article gives undue praise to the french conscience.
For one the state of emergency is only enforced in selective areas of Paris’ banlieue, which surprise surprise the poorest, as in the Ostracized arabs and blacks live. the ghettos so to speak.the rest of the french population doesn’t even feel concerned about the state of emergency. Also this isn’t the first time that curfews were set for one ethnicity specifically. Of course today it isn’t said as clearly. There isn’t mention of the ethnicity only the quarantined area. Curfews for arabs were set in the 60. That was back when gunning down 500 peacefull algerian protesters for independence in Paris and throwing their bodies in the seine elevates you to the status of national hero and praising interviews as well as legion d honneur. Equivalent to the purple heart.
Second this movement has absolutely no input from blacks or arabs, as I said the marginalized and the poorest of the poor, since for one if they are seen in a crowd they are the first prey of the police and worse than that they are even getting brutalized by the crowd, as they are seen as the source of all ills.what a very enlightened movement indeed.
In my opinion, this is the result of looting dry a whole continent and coming down from the high of genocides and massacres with no consequence and finding yourself not master of the world but slave to the true masters. Ah yes, the french follow American trends, dress like Americans eat like Americans, are more aware of the americans politics than what is going on in their own country, the americans tell them who to buy from and who not to buy from, force “deals” on them, force them to deal in the us dollars, dictate and extort how much they should spend on the nato protecion racquet.
Hint: that’s what being colonized feels like.
Oh thank God for small mercies.
For the comments posted here about the situation in Argentina is very clear that those who have written about it do not have an idea of how bad things have been over the last 12 years. The years that saw Nestor Kirchner, and later on his wife, in power have been the worst since “democracy” was reinstated in 1983.
The only positive aspect was that small business and industries received good credits that enabled them to prosper, however, they carried on paying the exorbitant interest rates imposed by the IMF (evil usurers), the stole hundreds of millions of dollars through fake companies, bankrupt the Nation through welfare policies and, worse of all, they imposed cultural Marxism as the official programme of education (promotion of homosexuality, LGTB ideology, free abortion, discrimination laws, “hate” speech, etc.)
Macri es another piece of crap, but with a different label, he represents the worst of capitalism, the ruthless exploitation of the people in the name of the big corporations and banks, he is also totally subservient to the j criminal state of Israel.
To finish, I want to point out that some writers here (like Peter Koenig) have used the word “fascism” or “neo-fascism” which demonstrates A) A total ignorance of political science and history B) He is a Marxist. Because that is the word coined by the Marxists of the School of Frankfurt to slander their opponents. Fascism, with its defects, defeated the bloody and criminal utopia known as Marxism and gave to the Italian people prosperity never known before. Fascism, in spite of its limitations, was the true alternative to Marxism and Capitalism. General Peron understood this very well and adopted some of their policies in Argentina (1946-56) given to workers full rights and a standard of living unheard of. He also created a national industry, a merchant navy and put the banking under State control. With Peron, the National Debt was zero.
I am back with a short video (4:26 in all), where Νότης Μαριά (Νotis Maria) at EU-Parliament dumps the misdeeds of current Greek Government on Tsipras who is present. Among other things he talks about 288Bln Euros given to the thieving bankers to prop them up and the Euro presented as Greek Debt at the cost of Greek citizens, as well as tens of other billions to other people as bribes. He also talks about hundreds of Billions Germany owes Greece for WWII. He makes a comment about Mr. Ponzi making silent notions to Tsipras to shut the speaker up.
While al of the speech is important, it’s at 1:17 where the speaker brings the big money up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuPS34AD52Q
The media did something much more powerful than promise a bright future with Macron. They released right before the 2nd round a bogus scandal they had held in store against the logical election winner, François Fillon, a rumour about his wife being given fictitious employment. This came out of the blue with perfect coordination.
Re 68, beware of the “popular” agitation tag. May ’68 required mastery of many agitation relays, especially in universities; and it came on the heel of (1) Degaulle’s statement that peace in the middle East requires Israel releasing occupied territories, this in turn requiring the US disengaging from the Vietnam fiasco and yielding pressure on Israel and (2) his refusal to go along with a supranational economic organization, possibly the IMF if my memory serves me right. And, of course, he was the man who had France withdraw from NATO’s high command and advocated constructive relations with the USSR and Arab countries.
Much the same goes for 1789, the rabble was enlisted to slaughter and plunder, but the whole affair was planned in posh clubs, such as the Jacobins’. And, there, the target was no less than Western Christian civilization itself. Social protest was a mere pretext. You don’t have to slaughter opponents and implement the planned genocide of a whole province, as did the French revolutionaries, in order to rationalize stale social structures. On youtube, the satirical song group Les Brigandes have a clip about “la loge des Jacobins”, thus suggesting the impulsion came from freemasons, which may be partially true, though there was highly likely interference from the English Whigs, who had a vested interest in weakening French catholicism.
Excellent comment from Jean Marie!
I too thought that the timing of the Fillon scandal was very suspect..Early enough to kneecap Fillon but too late for his party to field another viable candidate.
Absolutely agree about 1789 and the Jacobins. The revolution gave rise to the Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic wars!
Regarding “Mai 68” apparently this was a color revolution against de Gaulle? I think Saker himself wrote this?
Jean-Marie, This was a classic dirty trick to force people to withdraw from elections, because by the time the lies are confirmed as such it’s to late already. The elections are over.
Greece is awash today of all kinds of accusations of bribery, as the electorate is being “worked on” by the media before the possible elections in March, 2019.
G. Trangas, who is not a politician, but very influential media person, I think, was forced out of his job and is badmouthed for alleged “misbehavior” said the other day: “Where is the proof. Well, there is none.”
He expresses very strong opinions against Soros and Tsipras’s bunch, this explains why he would be dumped after 53 years of work as jurnalist. He also, very loud about Tsipras actually splitting Greek Orthodoxy (just like the one between Russian and Ukrainian Churches). It seems that Soros, is all out to destroy Orthodoxy. Accordingly to Trangas, Soros’ people are arriving in Athens daily with suitcases full of money.
“French students started 40 years ago, the 1968 student and workers revolt.”
That would’ve been 50 years ago.
Given the regime change in Argentina, I thought this development interesting:
Argentina wants Russian-built nuclear power plants
https://www.rt.com/business/445062-russia-argentina-nuclear-power/
“An agreement on strategic partnership in the nuclear power generation sphere is to be signed by Moscow and Buenos Aires during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the South American country.
It will envisage “the possible construction of a major NPP (nuclear power plant), designed by Russia,” according to Russia’s ambassador to Buenos Aires Dmitry Feoktistov.
“Russia is ready to bring a ready-made project and its own financing to Argentina,” he said, adding that “we can build such a power plant, operate it and sell electricity to Argentine partners at a certain fixed price.”