FBI arrests Marzieh – who of us at PressTV is next?
Marzieh with her son.
[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ike illegally jailed PressTV anchor Marzieh Hashemi, I am a journalist at Iran’s PressTV and also a dual-citizen of Iran and the US, with family in both countries. So should I cancel my next trip to the United States, then?
Well, I refuse to.
I visit the US at least once a year, and nothing could possibly prevent me from returning whenever I want - full stop.
So I take a special interest in the illegal and immoral 10-day detention of my PressTV colleague by the United States FBI, and not merely because it would certainly start my next vacation on the wrong foot.
Frankly, I was not terribly worried for Marzieh, and you - kind reader - should not worry for me: Marzieh and I have both surely always known that working for Iran would cause us problems in the West eventually. We would be naive to think otherwise, given the West’s brutal, deadly, illegal, inhumane, four-decade war on Iran - we knew what we were getting into (and were proud to do so).
I wish it had been me instead of Marzieh, but the US really took on the harder case: Marzieh is 59 years old, and in journalism that is very rare these days, given the fact that young, cheap labor is prioritised over experienced, difficult, knowledgeable, older journalists who are much more difficult for editors to control. I was certain that Marzieh would remain principled during her detention: in fact, I imagined Marzieh’s attitude towards her captors was akin to Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry movies: “Go ahead - make my day.”
Such is the combative, defiant, principled outlook of a good journalist, and Marzieh certainly is that. Her place is empty at PressTV, but, Insh’Allah, she will return soon.
So who among us is next to be arrested?
Is it me? Is it one of my PressTV colleagues working in the United States? Is it one of our journalists working in a country allied with the US?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
What happens when the Yellow Vests meet European Debt Crisis II?
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here is a lot of talk about which economic bubble will burst first and burst the worst (sounds like a gangsta rap song, no?)
The stock market, real estate, luxury goods, corporate debt and government bond bubbles, and other lesser bubbles, all jockey for the titles. It’s the “Everything Bubble” for good reason.
The “good reason” is: the 1% owns everything of high value, so if Western governments make it their policy to inflate those valuations even higher, then the 1% regains everything they lost in 2008. Welcome to Western Liberal Democracy - if you have a seat in the House of Lords I’m sure you’re not suffering too badly.
Because of that “good reason” I listed all of these bubbles are worse now than in 2008. Nothing was learned and nothing was delivered: I am not a doomsayer, but these kinds of facts make me write that Great Recession II (Great Depression II?) is around the corner.
However, not all bubbles are created equal:
The luxury goods bubble, for example. It’s mildly interesting, from a sensational news aspect, that the most expensive bottle of wine is now worth $558,000…but the luxury goods market is a minuscule part of every nation’s “real” economy, excepting France, Italy and Switzerland. Back in 2008 a half-million dollars set the record for largest lot of wine ever – 27 bottles – so these stories only prove the existence of huge asset inflation (bubbles) - 1/27th in the area of wine sales.
The real estate bubble affects many more people, and not just in the construction market. Just over 50% of Germans are homeowners, rising up to 70% as you get in the former Socialist Bloc nations, with the US around 65%. Amazingly, home prices have surpassed the prices in 2008 in the US. But it’s rarely remembered that houses are only worth what a bank will loan you to pay for them. Banks are getting money from governments cheaply, but instead of “real economy” investments they inflate houses (which they own) with incorrect valuations. When credit is so low that borrowing is near free, why not pay yourself more? So that means more dumb loans have been dangled and signed. When this bubble bursts it will hurt but it won’t bring the entire economy to a total halt.
The bond bubble, however, is the mother of all bubbles. That’s because the most important actor in any economy is the government.
Lie to yourself about how “the West values a free market” all you want – if a government cannot pay bills & wages or provide necessary services, then the real economy will be crippled. Because so many Western governments run on deficits - which is not to say that all debt is unproductive debt - they have to borrow via bonds.
Can’t borrow, like Greece? Then you wind up…like Greece.
It takes a US government shutdown for The “socialism for the losers” New York Times to say what all lower and middle-class people know: government jobs are the best ones. The Times is right: no government jobs/cutbacks, then no more lunches at Rayetta’s Lunch Box but brown-bagging instead; no jobs for Blacks/Muslims, then it’s back to their two low-paying choices in private industry, depending on gender - janitor/security or receptionist; austerity cutbacks or shutdown-cutbacks indeed means “three families that would be getting above-average pay” won’t get it, with huge consequences on the local and national levels - reduced overall economic activity.
So I am not falsely trumpeting the virtue of “big government” when I note that if/when Eurozone governments cannot borrow money via bonds, and thus cannot fund their daily operations, then the economic output of those individual nations will plunge drastically. Government workers will likely work for free for months, as in Greece and elsewhere, mainly because they are patriots who also have nowhere else to go. They can’t become private sector waitresses because Ravetta is actually about to close the Lunch Box down - government workers have no money to lunch there, so it’s now near bankruptcy: If the public sector dies, it will take much of the private sector with it.
If national governments can’t get money, can the European Central Bank - the higher-level-but-not-really level of government in the Eurozone - step in?
No, the ECB is tapped out and on the verge of becoming a joke - they can no longer buy government bonds or help banks replace this role which the ECB has served for years. They failed because they did not attach any strings to bailouts, thus never fundamentally strengthening a weakened economy burdened with a poor governmental structure.
Macron will not do what it takes to gain credibility with the Yellow Vests - admit that all of France’s and the Eurozone’s policies have failed and have also been morally wrong.The post-2009 taxpayer bailouts for failed banks, we were told, were supposed to not just save Ravetta’s Lunch Box but to help open Ravetta’s Lunch Box II, creating jobs and circulating wealth in the real economy. There were no formal promises or strings necessary, we were told - banks would just do the right thing on their own. The reality is that post-2009 banks jealously guarded their taxpayer bailouts, and refused to lend. That money went into the various 1%-benefitting bubbles.
The ECB then lowered their interest rates all the way to zero, giving commercial banks zero risk to borrow money which could be then lended to Ravetta. This means that failed investments were taken off the books of private banks, with the failures assumed by taxpayers, and now the private banks were even being staked with money. Banks, knowing how bad the Eurozone’s situation truly was, didn’t bite - they borrowed but didn’t lend. That borrowed money went into the various 1%-benefitting bubbles.
That caused the ECB to try something else in 2015 - QE. The ECB tapped a keyboard and created 2.5 trillion bitcoins out of thin air - wait, not bitcoins, but 2.5 trillion euros. This money went to buy something banks didn’t want (for obvious reasons) - government bonds - but also some private sector bonds. By taking the problem of unwanted national sovereign bonds out of the picture Eurozone QE, the theory went, would also keep private banking interest rates low. That means they could give loans to corporations and the small- and medium-sized Ravettas, finally creating economic growth.
The Eurozone is a currency area, not a country - QE had plenty of problems and entanglements which the US and Japan did not have. But what it did have was, again, no promises or strings attached. Much of the money went into the various 1%-benefitting bubbles.
However, QE did temporarily solve the problem of sovereign debt in the Eurozone by taking it on its own books and keeping it off the books of the member nations. This has allowed member nations to look attractive to investors - too bad that investors never invested in the real economy! The fake economy - stocks, Van Goghs, real estate, etc. - has been booming for 10 years, after all.
Now that QE is ending, the reality is that the bond issue was not solved because there is no one who can replace the role of the ECB: nobody can or will buy Eurozone bonds at the same level…and thus how will governments be funded? This is the main problem caused by the end of QE.
So despite 10 years of public funding, banks never forwarded any of this money to Ravetta. It should be totally clear that what banker bailouts, zero-interest lending and QE did for the Eurozone was simply to free up high finance to: 1) fund stock market buybacks to prop up the stock market 2) to inflate (non-productive) corporate debt, 3) make risky and overvalued loans to prop up values in the real estate market, 4) create the profits which the 99% never sees but which fuel sales in the luxury goods market.
Government is Mommy and Daddy – where they lead, all the children must follow. It is only the socialist-inspired systems (China, Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, etc.) - which have fundamentally different aims and which fundamentally limit the reach of high finance as well as neoliberal and foreign capitalists – which will be able to buffet the coming storm.
The Eurozone, however, could see total chaos at any moment; France has the Yellow Vests already.
Eurozone: Still the weakest link, but even weaker
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] have written extensively about how the Eurozone is far, far weaker economically now than during their Sovereign Debt Crisis in 2012.
Back then, nobody wanted to loan to Eurozone nations like Greece and Ireland, whose balance sheets rocketed to awful expressly because they were laden with banker bailout debt from 2008. Given that Eurozone nations have relinquished the right to print their own money, those countries were up a creek without a paddle. Get a loan or the national economy stops.
But…why loan to many in the Eurozone in 2012? They suffered the 2008 crash PLUS banker bailout debt PLUS they had embarked on the policy of “strangle your national economy to reduce the social safety net and workers rights”, a.k.a. austerity.
The “solution” was Mario Draghi’s 2012 “Whatever it takes” speech, which translated on a practical level to Quantitative Easing, i.e. no-strings attached, near-free taxpayer money to the 1% and high finance in order to stop them from squeezing the national bond markets of the Eurozone as they had started doing. The US and Japan had embarked on QE sooner and more deeply.
This solution steadfastly refuses to inject money into the real economy, which is why Yellow Vests are suffering instead of content.
The first proof of this is that the Eurozone has achieved a Lost Decade of economic growth (average annual growth rate from 2008 to 2017 was just 0.6%.) - which the media never admits but which I detailed - despite nearly four years of QE worth 2.5 trillion euros. Money was only injected into the 1%er economy, and the second proof of this is that we now have Real Estate Bubble II, Stock Market Bubble II, Luxury Goods Bubble II, etc. Only Eurozone Government Bond Bubble II has not appeared…because when it does, by definition, all hell will break loose. The government, socialists understand, is the ONLY backstop from disaster - capitalists falsely believe it is the SOURCE of disaster.
Beyond the poor day-to-day policy of QE, there have been no structural policy changes as result of the poor, capitalist-led rules which allowed Sovereign Debt Crisis I to happen in the first place: no mutualization of Eurozone debt, no increased transparency of the EuroGroup, no changes at all. So…of course there will be Sovereign Debt Crisis II!
All this explains, to a time-traveller in 2008, that the 1% has continued to win despite the Great Recession caused by their bad decisions!
The Yellow Vests are there precisely as a result of the guaranteed failure of non-socialist inspired economic policies.
When the Eurozone bond market gets turbulent, it’s a Yellow Vest rampage - I say, ‘Good’
On top of all this practical, governmental failure, the logic, philosophy and history of capitalism dictates Sovereign Debt Crisis II will happen: punk, unpatriotic, heartless high financiers will go back to doing what they do before the European Central Bank began buying them off - squeezing the national bond markets for profit.
“Oh, ECB interest rates are no longer 0%? Then why would we risk our own money to buy your ever-worsening country’s bond? Oh, the ECB won’t go below 0%? You mean you won’t pay us to buy your bonds? Oh, the ECB can’t buy national bonds either, because QE has bought so much (2.5 trillion euros) that its credibility is strained and its legal limits reached? And your nation can’t print money either? Well, too bad for your nation, I guess. Germany and the Dutch should be relatively ok, thankfully.”
Furthermore, we also have a generation of young capitalists who have never, ever seen a bear market. Wrap your heads around this perpetual reality of capitalism; they will get their tails handed to them on a platter, and our tails along with them.
To say that I am wrong about why the European Debt Crisis will not start soon - given the withdrawal of high finance-pampering - is to say that capitalism is not “capitalism” but that it is a centrally-planned, regulated, protective, riches-limiting socialism instead; is to say that high-finance has found morality and wants to make money honestly; is to say that international neoliberal capitalists have rediscovered fraternal patriotism.
The Eurozone’s QE, after postponements, is now done. It was supposed to be finished in September of 2017, which is why I wrote this 7-part series about it back then, but it was postponed and prolonged with a QE2 until December 2018. The US and Japan have also had multiple rounds of QE.
The Eurozone - the largest macroeconomy in the world and yet also the weakest link the global economy, and which has been significantly weakened by the policies pursued since 2012 and since 2008) - is about to re-enter crisis mode.
Maybe at the first sign of Eurozone Sovereign Debt Bubble II they will announce QE 3, but that would require a changing of their rules - the ECB is not as independent as the US Fed or the Bank of Japan, after all. It is very likely – given the horrifically slow nature of the EU’s 18th-century Liberal Democratic system – that the rules will not be changed in time, given the fact that QE 3 would come amid such a very worse economic and bubble situation than QE 1 or QE 2.
And now France has the Yellow Vests: angered, rendered desperate and emboldened by eight years of austerity.
Just imagine the effect any major economic shock and subsequent slowdown will have on the Yellow Vests – what if unemployment goes from 9% to 11%? The Yellow Vests are marching every Saturday because they want immediate improvement, not a dramatic worsening.
How would they respond to the 1%’s faux-solutions to an economic shock?
Are they going to sit back and hold their tongue in order to placate the “confidence fairy”? Are they going to put their faith in the campaign promises of a patsy like Francois Hollande? Are they going to “give a chance” to a candidate who is even more last-minute and even more falsely fabricated than Emmanuel Macron? Are they going to take a chance on Marine Le Pen, even though they firmly rejected her in 2017?
The answer is no. The answer is: we don’t know what the Yellow Vests will do on any given Saturday.
All we know is that recession is around the corner, outright economic crisis appears extremely possible, and that every possible outcome strengthens the Yellow Vests:
Macron will not do what it takes to gain credibility with the Yellow Vests - admit that all of France’s and the Eurozone’s policies have failed and have also been morally wrong.
Even if Macron does break down and end austerity completely, that will require more borrowing. That means the 1% and their supporters – like Reuters – will cry foul over the same old absurd all-deficits-are-bad fears, and raise borrowing rates (bond rates) as well.
If Macron continues on his path, that means more poor economic performance, which means more Yellow Vest supporters. That is certainly what he will do: in the first cabinet meeting of the year he instructed cabinet minsters to be “more radical in their attempt to reform the country” - i.e. continue with real economy-crushing reforms to the unemployment and social security systems in 2019. This might keep France’s bond rates low, but France is in the Eurozone - French success is tied to keeping Italy’s, Spain’s and everyone else’s bond rates low as well. As the 2nd-largest motor in the Eurozone France’s economic stagnation heightens the risk of all their Eurozone partners.
The Eurozone is not the US or Japan, and certainly not China: It only takes one nation - in the context of multiple bubbles caused by 10 years of terrible economic policies, which are in place to paper over 30 years of terrible economic policies - to bring the Eurozone back into crisis with higher bond rates.
So higher bond rates are inevitable, it’s just a matter of when. High finance already knows all this: This week saw Latin American bank bonds become less risky than Eurozone bank bonds, which hasn’t happened since 2012. How long until they move to Eurozone nations?
Where the French are at now is: zero tolerance. That’s a very intelligent place for the masses to be, given the recent history I’ve recounted.
The Yellow Vests are calling January 19th “Act 10”, which has reached the point of absurdity. I realize that the French have a culture which overwhelmingly stresses the visual, aesthetically-concerned aspects of culture - painting, fashion, acting - but revolution is not theater.
Are the Yellow Vests going to have “Act 324” one day?! Leftist revolutionary political change is not a pose, nor a role, nor a shirt to put on, but a permanent and committed determination.
Regardless for how long France wants to persist with these theater-inspired slogans, Sovereign Debt Crisis II will make permanent believers out of the Yellow Vest. Don’t look at the Yellow Vests in an isolated vacuum - the only thing “new” about the Yellow Vests is purely sartorial (how very French): It’s just 1 protest…which has lasted 8 years.
Times have changed: The Yellow Vests were not on the ground in 2008. Nor will the response to economic recession/crisis be like in 2012, when France continued to put their faith in a mainstream politician - Francois Hollande.
Indeed, with the Yellow Vests mobilised so well I say this: let the bubbles burst and the crisis hit as soon as possible – it would be far better in the long run.
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Is this a Yellow Vest Spring, a Eurozone Spring, or just holiday-related stress relief?
[dropcap]L[/dropcap]et’s predict the likely trajectory of France’s Yellow Vest movement:
What seems certain is that the only-on-Saturday protests will soon change into massive, permanent encampments in Paris, along the Champs-Elysées and Eiffel Tower. Other camps will be set up around the country, also at symbols of state power: the local city halls and tourist/historic attractions. This will make international news, because they will make for pretty pictures, but it’s the camps at road roundabouts and highway tollbooths which will make the necessary impact – an economic impact.
The primary call will be for the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron and new elections, because there is no other apparent socio-political solution to France’s problems:
- A general strike has repeatedly failed to materialise despite years of hopes, and this has revealed the inability of French unions to reflect the will of the people. Unions have lost influence due to the four-decade official and legal assault on their overall numbers and militancy, but the Yellow Vests refusal to march alongside unions shows that they have grasped the seeming illogical premise underpinning Europe’s model of “independent” trade unions - that they would put the needs of the country over the needs of their dues-paying members. This social-labor-management blockage is also combined with total political blockage - i.e., the failure of France’s three mainstream parties (Socialists, conservatives, Macron’s new party) to provide a dependable political pathway for the political will to be expressed (much less implemented). Macron must go, not because he is so terrible (but he is), but because he is not “different”, which is what he implicitly promised by sweeping out the two mainstream parties.
- A host of other demands will be officially adopted by the Yellow Vests; few of them will have ever been implemented in any major Western country. Macron will refuse, Brussels will make threats and defend Macron, and the battle lines will be drawn.
The strain of repeated clashes already has France’s detested police force “at the breaking point”, so they will use a shock-and-awe violence to disperse the camps quickly. Cops on horseback will ride roughshod over the protesters as though they were Black & Muslim refugees in France and not actual people. However, this won’t last long - the French People, habituated to constant police brutality at political protests, will continue to endure and fight back. This will encourage the international press to book long-term rooms in France, and the crucial moment will come when the cops breaks ranks and go over to the People.
Macron will then be faced with calling in the army, which in France is - as the French are - an extremely cliquish and walled-off group. Even though they are drawn from the People, their military’s extreme re-socialisation makes their commitment to the French People - as opposed to non-human French institutions - tough to gauge. I predict they will remain aloof - i.e., the French fall-back pose of social superiority - and will not save Macron, whom they never liked. Abruptly, Macron will be forced to step down, surprising everybody.
"...all five of France’s major political pathways - Socialists, Les Républicains of Sarkozy, Macron’s new Party, National Front (now Rassemblement Nationale) and France Insoumise (Melenchon’s party) - are unacceptable to and unwanted by the Yellow Vests."
Nobody will know what to do next, and the economy will tank. The European Union, slowed additionally by Brexit, will grind to a halt. The Eurozone, the world’s largest macro-economy and still the global economy’s weakest major link, will enter a crisis even worse than in 2012…but France will be focused on themselves (another popular fall-back pose).
Several years of Cultural Revolution will ensue, creating entirely new institutions on both a national and pan-European level. I will be elected to a very high post despite not being a citizen of France, which will prove how “comrade-friendly” and socialist-inspired the Yellow Vest Revolution truly is. Since we are dreaming, I will also win the lottery, despite never buying a ticket. I will finally marry a nice, brown-eyed girl – she is also a supermodel who holds multiple doctorates in diverse fields, was a recent winner of the TV show “Top Chef”, hails from a family without problems of any sort to annoy me, and she will also never make me do housework or change a diaper.
Ok, the last paragraph is obviously absurd, but everything up to “Cultural Revolution” is very possible. After all, I pretty much described the situation in Egypt in 2011 – human history repeats itself, whether in Muslim or Christian/atheist lands.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]’ve been reporting in France for 10 years come February, and I was also at Tahrir Square when Mubarak fell, so I know how it happened. I arrived just after the cop-mounted camels (not horses) charged, and I was there the night when news of Mubarak’s departure provoked firstly a short wave of an unexplained cry, and then an ocean of celebration.
Thirty years of Mubarak versus 10 years of high Brussels and high-finance-imposed austerity - lotta difficult times for the average person. I certainly have grounds for such comparisons.
In my blueprint for a Yellow Vest Revolution the only real difference with Egypt is when I imagined that French cops would switch sides: In Egypt it was the army which stepped in to save the People, revoking the power of the hated, black-vested police forces.
I have heard and read from top rightish-but-leftish French sources, like Alain Soral, that the French police will save the Gilet Jaunes…which is nonsense. The West’s hysterical post 9/11 love affair with “First Responders” (excepting journalists, of course) is all a media concoction to hide this fact: the police are drawn from the most reactionary elements of society - they never go over to the crowd. In fact, they took their job in order to fight and manipulate the crowd. Admirers of French riot police fail to realize that cops are always selected from among the most class-illiterate, most intellectual brutal members of a society. The Egyptian army, by contrast, was broadly drawn from the mass of the People, and that is why the protesters at Tahrir repeatedly told me that they would never open fire.
Of course the Egyptian Army - in collusion with the sabotaging Egyptian 1% and foreign powers in Tel Aviv, Washington and the West – would later turn against the Egyptian People. The reason? The Egyptian People installed Mohamed Morsi and a Muslim democratic party via long-withheld Muslim democracy, and that will always threaten the Zionist project, the Egyptian 1% and regional Muslim monarchies. But in 2011 hopes were high, and rightly so.
Reactionary hopes that the Yellow Vests are done shows ignorance of modern French history
[dropcap]S[/dropcap]o is this the start of a French Spring? Will it spread to the Eurozone? To turn a 2011 cliche on its ear: Is the European World finally “ready for democracy”?
In my humble opinion: France is not there yet.
What preceded victory in Egypt was not anger, testosterone or the desire for fighting: the endlessly repeated word at citizen checkpoints was “ehsan” - which colloquially means “easy” or “calm”, but which is actually an Islamic concept meaning “act as correctly as if God were seeing you and you were also seeing God”. Indeed: who is going to commit a crime when they see God right in front of them? Makes it hard to get away with anything….
The Yellow Vesters do not act with such faith and peace, but that is not a condemnation of their spraying graffiti on the Arc de Triomphe - that was awesome, and incredibly effective in grabbing attention. But until we see even one permanent camp, let’s scrap my Egypt model for France.
But if France is not “ready for democracy”, I think that they are indeed ready to try.
This is what many pundits likely can’t tell you, because they don’t actually cover protests (unless they are about gay marriage, or against the Catholic Church, or other fake-leftist nonsense): we should be very, very stunned that the always-undercounting Interior Ministry said 34,000 French protested as late as December 15 and that 50,000 people protested on January 5 - that is totally unprecedented in the Age of Austerity. I’ve never seen anything close to that over the Christmas holidays, and the same goes for August – both are traditional times of vacation.
In a more-extensive article I wrote last month which explained the Yellow Vest movement in the correct context - as part of a “continuum” (8 years of (cumulative) state austerity) instead of the Mainstream Media’s isolated “vacuum” (“It’s just the diesel gas tax hike, we swear!”) - I predicted the movement would take Christmas off…and they did, but only relatively speaking – the first few Yellow Vest protests had 2-300,000 people.
But if we are looking at this like social scientists or experienced journalists, then we have to realize that our needle has actually jacked into the red because such political turnout from December 15 – January 5 is totally unprecedented over this time period. France has had 8 years of huge, constant anti-government protests (galvanizing 10 times more people than the biggest Yellow Vest protest), but we have never, ever seen such political activity during Christmas (or August) in the last decade. France has always traded vacations for political momentum…but not the Yellow Vests.
A lot of people in the media and in France are asking: Has the Yellow Vest movement died out? If you accept the logic of the above paragraph, the answer is: not at all, and we should get ready for something big.
However, the Mainstream Media wants to fool us because they over-emphasize the (obviously capitalist-influenced) statistics of overall turnout and “protest growth rate”. Their foolishness is ignorant and lacks context, but they do (sadly) set the tone of discussion. Ignore their foolishness – expect hundreds of thousands of Yellow Vesters back in the streets by the end of the month.
The Yellow Vests can’t die, because they have nowhere else to go
[dropcap]A[/dropcap] lot of people have indeed put politics aside for Christmas, if only to get along with their family, but everyone in France will soon remember three crucial things: nobody has listened to the will of the French People in years; the French People have smashed/are smashing the mainstream political parties (Socialists, conservatives, Macron’s party); and, consequently, a new party simply must be formed due to this very real, very undeniable vacuum of undemocracy which is French politics in January 2019 (and which hit high gear in 2012 with Hollande’s backtracking on ending austerity).
(Macron, par DonkeyHotey, 2018)
Here is the crux of the biscuit, politically: Macron’s party was created and elected to destroy the two mainstream parties. It did. But Macron’s party is still an undeniable failure in the eyes of the French people - this is mainly because it was always a fabrication of the 1% and not a genuine “populist” movement. Y’all were crazy to vote for a neoliberal, EU-loving Rothschild banker who married his statutory rapist (because I’m a classy guy I did not detail Macron’s obvious similarities with rock-and-roll co-founder Ike Turner until after the 2017 election), but Macron was fabricated because Marine Le Pen imperiled the fortunes and Quantitative Easing of France’s pro-globalisation 1%.
But when the destroyer of the destroying is destroyed, what is left? Answer: not much.
As I wrote in last month’s article, a Red-Brown alliance (the true left of the Communist-inspired, meaning people like Jean-Luc Melenchon and his party; the often-fascist National Front of the Le Pens) is not at all likely in France. After all, they foolishly elected a Rothschild banker expressly because they could not make this temporary partnership of necessity. Not even a shotgun could get this wedding consummated. As I wrote last month: Melenchon and Le Pen are simply too polarizing and have too much negative history to ever unite the two groups.
So, all five of France’s major political pathways - Socialists, Les Républicains of Sarkozy, Macron’s new Party, National Front (now Rassemblement Nationale) and France Insoumise (Melenchon’s party) - are unacceptable to and unwanted by the Yellow Vests.
That’s why I think the future of the Yellow Vests is to become a French version of Italy’s Five Star movement, but that’s a whole ‘nother article.
2019 prediction: A Yellow Vest standoff with Macron is certain
[dropcap]M[/dropcap]acron’s first cabinet meeting of 2019 revealed that, sadly, he was not visited by ghosts on Christmas Eve like Ebenezer Scrooge telling “ministers they should be more radical in their attempt to reform the country and law and order must be restored” is proof of that. Translation: Macron is not going to slow down his pace of radical social “reforms” (unemployment insurance and social security are next on the docket) no matter how unpopular he gets, or how many protesters get in his way.
And why should he? I can’t stress this enough: yeah, over 1,000 protester arrests on December 8 was a record in my time, but I have seen countless days of hundreds of protester arrests over the past 10 years in France. Macron has truly grown up with this being considered “normal” governance, so why would he deviate from it and call off the police dogs?
(We can blame this “normalized” state brutality on the UN, Amnesty International and other top NGOs, as they must have used up all their condemnatory breaths for when an anti-government protester was overcharged for coffee in Venezuela, Iran and China.)
And why should he part 2? Macron has an absolute majority in Parliament, and this is a bourgeois/West European democracy, so he doesn’t have to. France’s liberal democratic system sucks and is based on the 19th century model, and they have to eat what they sow, which is bourgeois self-interest & contempt for public opinion instead of some tasty socialist-democracy cake.
The best France can hope for in 2019 is that Macron’s job title has changed:
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]t first, he was the 1%’s Golden Boy charged with implementing as many neoliberal reforms as fast as possible in order to roll back decades of advancements for workers - he succeeded. Now, given that his popularity is half that of Trump’s, he has a new charge: prevent total revolution/instability by giving back as few morsels as possible, which he has already done.
But of course Macron’s 13-minute address on December 10 was unlucky - his main offer, 100 euros more to the monthly minimum wage, implicitly showed that he incorrectly views the Yellow Vests as merely the poorest of the poor - he doesn’t get it that 75% of France supports the movement because the Yellow Vests are middle class too. Austerity has accumulated to the point where a middle-class person in France has zero stability (what is this, the United States?!) I detailed last month how austerity has made what was once a comfortable salary in solid social safety net France - 2,000 euros - now quite precarious.
His other three offers also failed to even come close to appeasing the class-based anger against the 1%: no taxes on overtime (gee, thanks massa!); encouraging bosses to give Christmas bonuses out of the kindness of their hearts (so far I’ve counted a whopping total of two French media stories of bosses who have acquiesced, but the law gives them until March 31 to give a bonus or not); the cancellation of a tax on grandma and grandpa’s (already repeatedly frozen) pension (designed to win back the approval of France’s 16 million pensioners). All of that was doomed from the start, if the goal was to placate the movement; undoing 8 years of accumulated austerity measures will truly require something like a Cultural Revolution.
Given that Macron will not learn and desist, and given that trickle-down/austerity economics & social policies can only continue to their 40-year record of failing and creating misery - more intense confrontations are certain in 2019. That’s bad news for the former Golden Boy.
From a human standpoint, Macron can only fail if his task is not to inspire but to intimidate: Small, notably balding, waifish Macron can never look like a tough leader you wouldn’t dare defy, such as a father figure, a general, a tribal leader, or the grandfather of the nation (although Macron is a grandfather at 41).
Macron’s appeal was based on his claim to be a bold technocrat, and one who would sweep away the old order. Nineteen months later France’s economy is in the same stagnant shambles, and his “new order” is the old order at least 3/4ths of the country didn’t want and also on steroids.
Can Macron really push his public opinion-defying agenda for three more years and get away with it? Just getting through 2019 looks difficult.
But “Impeach!”, as the US proves with their similar calls, is simply scapegoating, media sensationalism, and not any remedy whatsoever to a Western nation’s deep structural problems caused by a rejection of socialist democracy.
So what is coming in France in 2019?
I am not a journalist who makes doomsday predictions to sell papers, but my answer is: major, major unrest. A protest during France’s vacation period: c’est pas possible! But it happened for the first time this century - it’s a little thing but it’s a big thing.
Bigger things appear certain when all the Yellow Vesters come back from vacation, and they will be joining a hardcore group of protesters for whom we have no recent parallel.
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France’s Yellow Vests: It’s just 1 protest…which has lasted 8 years
People think France is “socialist” because they have a great social safety net, but it remains a capitalist country because they tax labor and not the 1% / management to pay for this safety net.
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he most important thing to understand about France’s Yellow Vest movement is that the Mainstream Media wants you to view it as an isolated incident which exists in a vacuum, when we are much better served to look at it in a continuum.
When the Yellow Vests started I was not foolish to say: “So what?”
After all, the Yellow Vest movement is dwarfed by France’s first major anti-austerity protests in the fall of 2010. When Nicolas Sarkozy backtracked on a promise to raise the retirement age France saw 7 marches in 8 weeks with (conservatively) 1.5 million marchers each time. Over just one week there were three different marches with perhaps 3 million people! The three Yellow Vest marches - and all are on Saturdays, to make it easier for people to attend - only reached 300,000 demonstrators one time. So we’re talking 10 times smaller than in 2010 per protest, and something like 30 times smaller if we compare the two movements overall.
Unsurprisingly, I have yet to read of this “ancient history” in any of the Anglophone Mainstream Media coverage of the Yellow Vests. It’s “vacuum versus continuum” in terms of journalistic approach.
I summarise the “continuum” approach in an original saying about journalism (at least I think it’s original): “A journalist without experience is just somebody with a notepad and a pen.”
Some Mainstream journalist who doesn’t know about 2010 - do they really grasp what the Yellow Vests are about? Because the Yellow Vests were definitely there back in 2010…but they remained in the car (Reflective yellow vests in your car are required by French law: in case you get a flat tire or something, you have the vest to put on for safety from oncoming traffic.).
Protests against Sarkozy in 2010—massive, and, as usual, poorly reported in the USA.
So, if we believe the living-in-a-vacuum Mainstream Media then the Yellow Vest protests are finished: President Emmanuel Macron just canceled the diesel tax hikes. The protests are no longer necessary, right?
Wrong.
There is no reason why AFP, AP, Reuters and everybody else spent all that time saying “diesel tax, diesel tax, diesel tax” other than: they are either purposely misleading people by viewing the diesel tax in total isolation from previous policies, or they are a bunch of inexperienced newbies, or they just want to be proven right for repeatedly making this absurd diesel tax claim. My point: it’s all bad journalism.
Second-most important thing to realize about austerity: it has accumulated
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] hear and read stories about the French in 2018 similar to what I used to read about Greece in 2012 - because austerity is cumulative.
It is not just one tax / measure / policy / reform: it is all of them combined. And we are talking about 8 years’ worth.
“Ramin, you are usually awfully long-winded. Do you get paid by the word? Even in your funny columns, you could use an editor. Just explain what you mean about this in real-world terms!”
Fine – hear ya go:
French inflation, according to my calculations, has increased by 14% since 2008: therefore, people have effectively taken a 14% wage cut in 10 years. This helps explain why “decreased purchasing power” has been the number one concern of the French year after year after year.
Salaries in France are already low to start with: 1,700 euros is the median net salary, which is far lower than Anglo-US-Germanic countries.
Ok, so you have a lousy salary to start with, which has lost 14% of its value in the last decade. But inflation is not caused by the policy of neoliberal / trickle-down / austerity economics, of course.
But France does have austerity, so 14% is not the only reduction: we must account for the impact on salaries of 8 years of cuts to social services, because a key plank of austerity is reducing the size of the government. This means YOU foot the bill for many services the government used to totally provide or subsidise.
So let’s say, conservatively, because it really depends on the size of your family and what their needs are, that this has effectively lowered your yearly salary 5% overall during the Age of Austerity. Your salary is now actually worth about 20% less than in 2008.
Demonstration in Orleans, 12 October 2010
Now let’s add in the new taxes imposed by austerity, because austerity means that the French state taxes workers and not capital, and more than ever. Did you expect that high finance would pay for their failed bets? Ha ha, you are funny - you probably say things like “France is socialist”, too. For example: two years ago they increased my council tax (the annual tax I pay for renting an apartment, so that I avoid things like getting rained on and assault-while-sleeping) by 60%. I don’t know how that’s legal or morally defensible, and I was enraged, but how could I stop them? It went from to €1,285 in 2016 to €2,134 in 2017.
So let’s say, conservatively, that the increased taxes imposed by austerity have taken just 5% of your salary over the last 10 years: your salary is now down 25% from 2008.
Of course, losing 25% of your wages in 10 years is no problem IF your wages have increased 25%.
In 2008 the government claimed the median salary was €1,580 per month for a full-time worker. In 2015, which is this year’s data from the government (why are they so behind schedule, probably because austerity means firing/not replacing government workers), the median salary was €1,692. This means that the median salary has only increased 7%.
So we can conservatively estimate that the median citizen has lost 18% of their salary in real terms since 2008, all thanks to following austerity economics.
For people making €1,700 per month in 2018…losing €306 per month is a huge, huge problem. For childless, former Rothschild bankers who married elderly chocolate heiresses/statutory rapists…€306 only means skimping on the wine tonight.
But wait, it’s worse!
Not only has austerity taken this huge cut out of your already-meagre salary, they have made it significantly more likely that you will lose your poorly-paying job due to long-standing, near-record unemployment levels in France.
And, the coup de grace, austerity means reduced safety conditions, making firing easier and loosening oversight rules - as a way to encourage hiring - so your poor-paying job is even more disagreeable.
And who has arrived on the scene immune to these pressures, and thus just oozing life, but “old Mackie” Emmanuel Macron. Well, when the shark bites with his teeth, babe, and the scarlet billows start to spread - Mackie’s got them fancy gloves, so there’s never a trace of red. Never a trace of policy-sweat, either: he controls his brand-new political party, which has an absolute majority in Parliament. France is Macron’s little austerity laboratory, and he doesn’t care about public opinion nor does he have to.
So the “real-world terms” in France are: major cuts in take home pay, combined with job insecurity, combined with a mad neoliberal scientist who doesn’t believe he was elected to reflect the popular will but to rule as he technocratically thinks best.
Can you hear the Mainstream Media shouting to drown me out: “The problem is just the diesel tax, just the diesel tax I tell ya!”
Let’s be real journalists and do the math, and give the context, and recount the history
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]ant me to quickly debunk Macron’s rationale for the diesel tax, which is dutifully placed at the top of every Mainstream Media report?
France’s auto industry made a failed bet on diesel in the 1980s. Result: a whopping 80% of French passenger cars now run on diesel. Pretty clear why the diesel tax is so widely unpopular, no?
Diesel is dirtier than regular gas, but has always been cheaper – until old Mackie came along. But Macron’s “this tax is needed to pay for a necessary ecological transition” is pure bull: Instead of taxing stockholders, corporations and car dealership owners for this failed bet (i.e., the ones who profited) Macron is capitalistically taxing labor (workers, households). There are myriad other ways to make the necessary auto-ecological transition than taxing the average person…but not in capitalism.
People think France is “socialist” because they have a great social safety net, but it remains a capitalist country because they tax labor and not the 1% / management to pay for this safety net. That is the reason the median salary is so low compared with other Western nations. The diesel tax is not the only example of this - ALL French taxes are: It’s so bad that in 2018 all the wages of the average French worker from January 1 until July 27 went to the taxman, to give some real-world context. (In Iran, being so heavily socialist-inspired, 50% of the population pays zero taxes, including every farmer - the money comes from oil revenue (socialistically state-owned) and businesses.)
That’s some context for the latest austerity measure - the diesel tax -which is no different from a banker bailout because Macron wanted to capitalistically make the average person pay for the failures of high finance / alleged technocrats / the rich bosses once again. (Billionaires have increased their net worth far faster in France than in any other developed nation, including the US.—Eds)
But what about the many austerity measures which preceded this one? That laundry list is long and stinking, but I’ll make it brief because I think it matters:
The first austerity cuts were rushed through in 2011, with 2012 serving as France’s first official austerity budget. The reason: the “confidence fairy” and France’s AAA bond rating. Did the People want them? Sarkozy became the first French president not to be re-elected in 30 years.
François Hollande remains one of the worst examples of vassalage to Washington in the history of Modern Europe, not to mention betrayals of socialism.
[dropcap]I[/dropcap] remember when Francois “The Ultimate Patsy” Hollande came along in 2012. He was a formerly-fat, witty, jovial, (alleged) Everyman from rural France. Surely HE would understand the popular will and do what he promised: break with the Austerity Party line enforced by Brussels, as his campaign was built around a promise to renegotiate the Orwellian-named EU Stability and Growth Pact. I really can’t express how high optimism was in May 2012 - evil Sarkozyites were traitors, and France was truly going to lead a Latin Bloc La Résistance against the arrogant Germans, Dutch and usurious Northern bankers.
Instead, Hollande broke the Socialist Party.
He backtracked on ending austerity on November 6, 2012, by announcing another round of it, which contained basically all the neoliberal, economically-regressive measures proposed by Sarkozy during the presidential campaign. It was Obama turning into Dubya Bush à la française. The very next day Hollande announced the approval of a draft law to legalise gay marriage and adoption. Funny how I never read about this connection in the Mainstream Media, ever, even though it was a simply atrocious act of societal and political manipulation of the media agenda. That alone was enough to turn many French off of politics for years. (Hollande was simply practicing la politique identitaire so successfuly used by the Anglos—Ed).
Yellow Vests were thus diverted to enormous anti-gay rights marches, instead of being at anti-austerity marches, but the vests still remained in the car.
How much time do you have to discuss incredibly repressive anti-government protests during the Hollande era? How about after the State of Emergency was imposed? How about the “France has free speech except for pro-Palestinians, whose marches we ban”? What about the 2014 months of protests, led by the rail workers - I dutifully filled up my car with gas (it’s such a fancy car that I was able to buy it entirely with €1 and €2 coins, LOL) in order to help provoke fuel shortages, which have only just barely begun in the current, far-weaker iteration of fuel depot blockades. What about the 2016 Labor Code reforms, when it was all-out war on Hollande?
I never did discover a Western presidential incumbent who was so unpopular that he couldn’t even run for re-election. Feel free to finally provide me with an answer to that trivia question, because for now Hollande is that punchline to that joke.
But Hollande sure did punch - protesters, that is. I don’t know what NGOs are doing but it’s not compiling this data, so off the top of my head - and after asking other journalists - I would estimate that at least 15-20,000 citizens were arrested at anti-government protests during the Hollande era, with 20-30,000 hurt (and truly countless tear-gassed and harassed by cops). Hey, you had 4,000 protesters taken to court by the government during the 2016 protests alone - how many got arrested but were not given court cases? And how many more would have been arrested had not over 600 demonstrations been banned by “liberté-loving" France during the 2-year State of Emergency, with countless others strangled in the cradle? The anal rape of a young Black man by cops with their truncheon in 2017 isn’t necessarily economic austerity-related, but it is evidence of emboldened state repression: my headline sums up the Hollande era when it comes to “France’s love for freedom of assembly”: Cop violence at Paris demo against cop violence.
And how much time do you have to discuss incredibly repressive anti-government protests during 18 months of Macron? The labor code part 2 reform, the rail reform, the education reform, hospital reform, normalization of the state of emergency reform – all have been met with majority-opposition from the People and the same state violence.
So when 400 people got arrested and over 130 anti-government protesters were hurt at the Arc de Triomphe protests last week - this is not seriously different from many other violent protests over the past 8 years!
I admit, I have never seen the Arc de Triomphe tagged with graffiti, but that’s the only real novelty - the violence is totally de rigeur in French political life and anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or a liar.
Or they are hypocrites, because violence against anti-government protesters is apparently ok…in Western countries. Since 2011 I have been saying on PressTV: “If this was Iran, Cuba, China or Venezuela the West would be calling for a humanitarian intervention to save the people from such anti-democratic aggression.”
I eventually stopped saying it - I just got tired of it, you know? Rather, the West’s hypocrisy just got acceptable. Terrible journalism on my part.
I guess I also stopped being upset over people getting hurt at demonstrations for the same reason - it became mundane, normal. More bad journalism - and bad humanity, and bad citizenship - on my part.
However, I didn’t do what the Anglophone media simply loves to do: I never blamed French protesters for the violence. My God, the Anglophones and their “Keep calm and carry on” worship of law and order at all costs…what a bunch of sheep, eh? They wouldn’t revolt under any circumstances, I’d say.
Of course, unlike those idiot commentators I have been at innumerable violent protests and choked down litres of tear gas. Fact one: if the cops fail to stop violence it is the fault of the cops, as that is their primary job. Fact two: if the government provokes violent protests, it is the fault of the government, as it is their job to promote policies which do not inspire citizen rebellion. Fact three: France’s armed-to-the-teeth riot police are inherently provoking to the increasingly-poor and increasingly-repressed Frenchmen who come to protest the government and not to get intimidated by it, so their whole plan is designed to fail…and purposely – we talk about the violence and not the reasons nor the past. More “politics in a vacuum and not a continuum”.
Future of Yellow Vests – going on vacation, I’m betting
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]f course the Yellow Vesters are going on vacation shortly – it’s December 6. The past 10 years of French history ALWAYS shows that the protesters - no matter how hot, blue and righteous - prefer taking a vacation to sustaining their political momentum. Nothing must stand in the way of several weeks off in December-January and August! This is, of course, why they keep losing.
So here’s a real easy test for you to see if the Yellow Vests are different: If the French are seriously protesting on the couple days on either side of Christmas or New Year’s Eve - that would be a revolution in political norms.
But I’ve seen it year after year, so I predict the protests will stop after December 16, and then re-start in January but necessarily weakened. The French sure do make it easy for the politicians they truly despise.
But maybe not so weakened upon restarting….
Beyond the Arc de Triomphe graffiti, I am seeing things I’ve never seen before – like a motorcyclist in rush hour wearing a Yellow Vest with “General Strike – Let’s Stop It All”. Anybody who knows anything knows that a general strike – the only demonstration which actually hurts the pockets of the 1% - is the only way to get any true political change anywhere in the world and at any time (barring outright revolution and rebellion).
Maybe this is the year Santa Claus is not the priority?
People outside of France ask me: will there be a revolution? Here is my stock answer:
No: a huge percentage of French are just as insanely committed and prideful about their outdated, 19th-century based system as the Americans. This is the true legacy of imperialism – unmerited arrogance about your system. Iranians use “arrogance” and “imperialism” interchangeably for very logical and obvious reasons.
But, once again, maybe not so arrogant after 8 years of austerity….
The far-left (true left) and far-right are making unprecedented calls for new elections, for referendums, for things which are rather radical. Let’s not forget that in the 2017 presidential first round vote 19.5% of the electorate voted for Jean-Luc Melenchon (just 2 points less than Marine Le Pen), whose platform included abolishing the 5th Republic. So in France you have an inordinate amount of arrogant jingoists whose parents grew up in French Algeria, but there definitely is a sizeable part of the population which knows things are fundamentally wrong about France’s Liberal-and-not-Socialist Democracy-influenced structure.
And the problem is definitely structural – it is not just the price of diesel.
Any true “Yellow Vest Revolution” would have to include a drastic rewriting of the rules of the European Union and especially the Eurozone, or else a Frexit. Both of those institutions were constructed in the heyday of the fall of the USSR , and thus at a time when socialism was at its absolute nadir. Their birth chart is significant because the two are designed with 1%-safety hatches to escape anything close to true popular democracy. The structure of these two institutions are truly the triumph of “Americanism”, and their neoliberal, self-cannibalizing socio-political thought. Indeed, the US runs on a system inspired by the English, French and Europe, but Continental Europe runs on a system inspired by the US…ironic. And unfortunate.
If the Yellow Vest movement proves to be different it will be largely because of this: they have, and they allow, no leaders or spokespeople. The Prime Minister admitted that he cannot meet with any Yellow Vests, because the ones he arranges to meet with keep getting death threats from fellow Yellow Vesters.
The reason this is so important is: the government cannot co-opt or buy off the movement.
Take French unions for example - there are nine big ones. There was a span lasting from 2010 to 2018 when they didn’t march together once, even though their members all hate austerity. Obviously, they are not united at all. What I have seen year after year in France is: there are anti-austerity strikes and hopes are high…but then the government buys off one or two of the unions with targeted concessions. Those unions say, “We’ve satisfied our members, as is our duty,” and they pull out. Thus, the strikes are now less impactful on the pockets of the 1%, and they are emboldened. Those still striking feel betrayed and see the lack of solidarity, and the strike soon collapses because too many people went back to work. It’s all as easy as pie for the ruling technocrats and 1%, whereas all an increasingly-poor average worker can say each year is: “This time it will be different.” It likely won’t be - French unions have signed off on every major austerity measure, after all.
All of that should go a long way in explaining why socialist countries like Iran, Cuba and China ban independent trade unions - for them the state IS the union.
You can be sure the Yellow Vests are certainly aware of the failure of the philosophy underpinning Western unionism, and thus they are trying to prevent being similarly co-opted or sold out. The death threats and opposition to any leadership are now given context: radicalization and the demand for new methods has accumulated, due to the accumulation of austerity; it is not merely the presence of (politically over-idealistic and step-skipping) French anarchism.
The Yellow Vest Movement also doesn’t even have a program or a list of clear demands which could be satisfied…and I say “right on”.
Their list of demands should be SO long and SO varied that it would take months just to compile it…because their demands are the combined demands of 8 years of anti-austerity protests.
A man wears a mask with the likeness of French president Emmanuel Macron as people take part in the nationwide yellow vests demonstrations.
Who are the Yellow Vests, after all? They are all those workers, students, pensioners, teachers, hospital staff, etc. who have been protesting and gotten only tear gas and failure for their efforts. They all have ignored demands which must be addressed, no?
So they don’t need a short & clear program which creates a quick fix because France’s problem is – just like the EU and the Eurozone – structural, cultural and endemic.
Is this a Yellow Vest Cultural Revolution, or just another failed anti-austerity protest?
People will mock me, but something like a Chinese or Iranian Cultural Revolution is clearly needed: several years of shutting down institutions and having major public political discussions in order to have both a huge rethink on societal structures and to get “Rebel Red Guards/Yellow Vests” into local positions of power.
Disagree? Ok, then answer this: How long can this go on?
I don’t mean the Yellow Vest protests - I mean citizen acceptance of anti-democratic austerity. Anything is possible, after all – give me a real figure, please: The Eurozone has had a Lost Decade (which the Mainstream Media never openly admits): will Eurozone citizens tolerate a Lost Score, like the Japanese did?
I say no: Japan is an island, ethnically and culturally homogenous, and they own their debt and cannot be foreclosed on. The Eurozone has none of these advantages.
Here’s another issue I’d like an actual answer on: How long can France have a president and a government which believes public opinion only matters once every five years? One more presidential election? Maybe you believe three more? I admit, anything is possible.
Again, I say no. The Socialist Party is smashed, the mainstream conservative party was routed almost as badly, and Macron’s party – at this rate – will be just a blip in France’s political history books, because they are even less popular than Hollande was at the same point in his term. So who is the party which will be running in 2027? We have no idea in France, much less in 2022.
So when I say that new people in local positions in power are not just needed, that is an understatement: they appear absolutely inevitable.
Another question requiring an actual answer: Where is the political party or grassroots movement which can tangibly implement the Yellow Vests’ will, once that will is known? I am not being obtuse - what is the political pathway for them?
The only alternatives which are not smashed (or soon to be discredited) and still within the realm of possibility are Le Pen and the far-left (real left).
But I don’t think such a Red-Brown alliance can happen in France, however: hatred for the National Front cannot be overestimated, and Le Pen permanently lost many by clowning against Macron in their 2017 debate instead of realising she had a chance to win. Uber-intense anti-Le Pen / Rassemblement National sentiment is the only explanation that France chose a 40-year old Rothschild banker 6 years into austerity. And we can’t overestimate the anti-leftist feeling in France: France neo-imperialist, France capitalist, France Islamophobic, etc. Melenchon came so very close in 2017, but he has the entire media landscape against him, and for many his past as a Socialist Party member until as late as 2008.
Therefore, a real political option – but only by default – is that the Yellow Vests turn into Italy’s Five-Star movement, because they lack any other route to translating their political will, when declared (or if declared, given French anarchism).
But Five-Star took 8 years to coalesce and win power - the Yellow Vests are still in month #1.
However, as my headline notes, this has essentially been the same protest for 8 years, going on 9, so maybe France as a whole is “there”? Maybe the timeline is speeded up in the digital age, too? That’s a significant psychological consideration, but Italy does not give us much hope for 4G political speed in France.
Given the 90,000 cops to be deployed on December 8, it appears that the Yellow Vests are still in “smash” mode, as they should be. Austerity has accumulated after the Great Recession, so there is much to demolish: namely, received wisdoms such as France is democratic, functioning well, rather-socialist, sovereign, etc; there’s also the pan-European ideas (beloved by the French elite) that these new institutions have been beneficial, successful, are the only thing preventing European War III, etc. Lotta nonsense to bring down to earth.
They say we can never predict a revolution, but we do know what precedes successful revolutions: years (if not decades) of nationwide, constant, family-splitting political discussion and involvement combined with drastic measures of self-sacrifice. That was the case in Russia in 1917 and in Iran in 1979 - thus their Revolutions were more aptly-termed bloodless “Celebrations”.
France is a long way from celebrating anything but Christmas, but I can report that all anybody is talking about is the Gilet Jaunes. However, we are truly only on the 6th day of this nationwide ferment, though, so…some perspective.
But, as far as my 2 centimes, I predict they will take Christmas and New Year’s off. And when they come back the same problems will be there. This is a very cynical and depressing point of view - maybe after 10 years here I have become French? - but those are the facts and the historical pattern.
What is also a fact is that the Yellow Vests may or may not change things, but that things in France and the Eurozone simply must change. And they will - someday. See, I’m not that French – I’m optimistic!
And for damn sure I am a Yellow Vest. So is everyone else I’ve talked to, and that means something big…at least for now.
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Khashoggi Part 4: fake-leftism identical in Saudi Arabian or Western form
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This bunch of fake leftists may feel superior to Khashoggi and his ilk, but they are really not much different in politics or morality.
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]ile it under “things we’d like to be true…so we never examine it”: The West’s unstated belief that their politics are exponentially morally superior to those of Saudi Arabia. “We only work with them – we are not at all like them,” is what it boils down to.
This article aims to show just how similar “Oriental despotism” is to “Occidental domination” in 2018 by revealing the similarity of Jamal Khashoggi’s socio-political vision to that of Westerners.
This is the final part in a 4-part series which aims to pull the sheet off Khashoggi, who is as much as a “reformer” as Hillary Clinton was a “leftist” or Emmanuel Macron was “centrist”. I think it’s necessary because there has been so much talk about Khashoggi, but very little examination of “Khashoggi-Thought” – what he espoused and stood for.
Part 1 showed what true “dissidents” in the Muslim World look like and why the elite-defending Khashoggi does not qualify; Part 2 showed how his rabid anti-Iran warmongering and his hysterical anti-Shia sectarianism precluded any possibility of his being even merely a “reformer”; Part 3 demystified and stripped the Islamophobia from “Salafism” to show that many in the West want to “return to a golden era” – like 1776 in America – just as Khashoggi and other Salafists want to return to 676; and also reminded readers that the West and the Muslim World are the only two regions of the world where we still find supporters of monarchy, which is an inherently reactionary and inegalitarian concept in 2018.
Khashoggi, just like Western conservatives and centrists, denied any sort of modern leftist political movement – socialism, Islamic socialism, etc. – which could undermine the social powers as apportioned up until the 19th century.
Pushing technocratic & elitist bourgeois democracy, anti-socialist economics, window-dressing cultural liberality, and rationalising warmongering is what modern fake-leftism is; because this definition fits Khashoggi, the Clintons, Macron, Blair and others, we now see how similar they are. Therefore, the death, and alleged martyrdom, of Khashoggi allows us to show what Western democracy truly wants to defend: we will see it stands 100% in favor of modern despotism – either/or monarchical or bourgeois – both in the Orient and the Occident.
Non-jingoistic Westerners should not be dismayed at such a thesis: it allows us to increase global unity by showing the similarity of the 1%.
Rationalising China’s success is a must across the West, but how do they do it in Saudi Arabia?
[dropcap]A[/dropcap] good test to see if someone is a fake-leftist is to get their views on China. Everybody loves Cuba – music, dancing, beaches, cigars – so supporting them is too easy; it takes a real leftist to squint hard at China and see their leftist commitment and beauty.
If someone claims to be a leftist but only talks about the only-crimes-and-never-successes of the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution, instead of their 266% GDP increase since 2008…this person is a centrist at best – i.e. a fake-leftist. (I write from the Lost Decade-denying Eurozone, which is at -12% since 2008) Such persons get seriously annoyed at being properly pegged on the global political spectrum like this…but I did not invent the spectrum.
Absolutely everybody is starting to notice China’s huge leaps amid the West’s austerity-imposed suicide. But how do they explain it?
Is it the result of their rock-solid socialist constitution, written in 1982? Or is it by accusing the Chinese of having a totalitarian system? Or is it by accusing them of being “radishes” – only red on the outside. Due to their undeniable success, we journalists simply must make some explanation – what did Khashoggi choose?
Khashoggi provided the answer in this article run by Saudi media giant Al-Arabiya, Saudi Arabia, the Chinese model and Vision 2030.
It’s an interesting article because he basically tries to equate the Saudi monarchical governing class with the Chinese Communist Party. LOL, unexpected, no? The Long March, the Cultural Revolution, the Century of Humiliation – all that produced something…just like the blood-red commie “House of Saud Party”, if you believe Khashoggi!
“In fact, the Chinese economy has always been and continues to be a fair economy compared to similar totalitarian regimes. Moreover, the Chinese economy is suitable for all classes of the society and displays a firm determination to fight corruption to the point that leaders, who get involved in corruption, including receiving briberies or committing frauds, are executed.
I think Saudi Arabia can achieve the same because of its cultural background. It is an Islamic country….”
Seemingly no Muslim outside of Saudi Arabia would say that Saudi Arabia is an “Islamic country”; it is the “Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” and not even the “Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia”. As I related in Part 3, a common line in the Muslim world is “Saudi Arabians are not Muslims, they are Wahhabis.”
Beyond the Islamic objections…it is rather hilarious that a total monarchist – a system based purely on class elitism, anti-democratic disempowerment, intimidation, and blood instead of brains – thinks that the House of Saud can all of a sudden produce something which “is suitable for all classes of the society”.
Such a misguided idea, since we must classify it in order to fully understand it, is an 18th century idea known as benevolent despotism…and it is totally reactionary. It’s unofficial motto of “Everything for the people, nothing by the people” is not remotely similar in essence or practice to the People’s Democratic Dictatorship in China; it is, however, extremely similar to the ideal in Western Liberal Democracies in the 21st century, as they expound a (allegedly) merit-based, “benevolent technocratism”.
Benevolent technocratism – which was essentially the campaign platform of Hillary Clinton, and which provides the justification for (still-failing) economic policy domination by the Eurozone’s “best” economists – is 100% fake-leftism.
Benevolent technocratism is the same old despotism of the bourgeois, and thus fake-leftism
[dropcap]K[/dropcap]hashoggi’s view of ideal governance is perfectly described for us in this same article:
“I like to simplify things for a better understanding before I try to make others understand them. That’s why I try to imagine the National Center as an operating room where in the middle is the Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman as the chairman of the Council of Economic and Development Affairs surrounded by ministers, members of the Council, and other experts.
Right in front of them, I imagine personal computers linked to the room’s database and a few meters far many screens showing numbers and graphics with goals set for each ministry and government institution. I also imagine the chairman of the Council zooming in on one screen to see the reasons behind flaws and the concerned minister explaining why they occurred and suggesting solutions to tackle them. This system, as I imagine it, is able to make every minister work hard and held accountable.
From this scope, can the plan be monitored and its executors held accountable with complete transparency without an elected Council and without the basis of democracy to achieve the success of both the transformation plan and the Vision? Personally, I think this is possible but it can only happen in Saudi Arabia considering its social and cultural background, which is based on Islamic ethos and considering the fact that others have done it as well.”
Does anyone not envision Eurozone/EU leadership operating in the same “too smart to be touched by commoners” style? Khashoggi’s vision is basically to be a West European-aping technocracy where the “talented tenth” rules with assumed but unproven moral aims.
Khashoggi admits – and without shame – that this fantasy lacks democracy, but this fantasy is also robotic, technocratic, clinical and nearly inhuman. There is no way any of these so-called experts have spent a day sweating in the Saudi sun, yet they sit in total removal from Saudi society and decide policy for 33 millions. (Oh, and they’re all related, LOL; or, like in France, they all went to the same school.)
Crucially, because they have the data and computers then of course they will have the same success as China! Too bad political science is not a “science”, and that moral motivations matter. What Khashoggi fails to realize is that China’s “technocrats” get to the top by having a PhD in something not offered in any Western university: socialism (with Chinese characteristics).
The US, being not Western Europe, also aspires to ape this aristocracy, but for various reasons they only recently became even less class-mobile than Europe. This is why the loss of Hillary was so significant – it was a blow against this aristocratic technocratism which long-ago swept the West’s intellectual centre, Europe.
Contrarily, China’s President Xi spent seven years in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution (LOL, or according to The New York Times where he “fled” to), where he taught farmers how to read by firelight. In Cuba an admired and beloved small-town cobbler who just got elected to help keep Cuban parliament real – an unthinkable development in Western Liberal Democracies. In Iran there are plenty of representatives of the lower class all throughout the government, and this policy has been cemented by the totally-misunderstood Basij, which I tried to explain here.
Never uttered in the West: they believe that technocratism is more important than democracy
“The second frame of reference is China’s huge economic success, comes alongside arguments related to democracy being a precondition for progress. Therefore, we are witness to a new ‘Chinese model’ different from the commonly spread model of Western democracy.”
Khashoggi is obviously implying that China has had success despite not having democracy, therefore anti-democratic Saudi Arabia can do the same.
Too bad that Khashoggi’s frame of reference – the alleged anti-democracy of China – is not at all accurate. The Chinese frame of reference is “socialist democracy”, which is qualitatively different from “Western bourgeois / liberal democracy”. Calling socialists “anti-democratic” is as false as socialists who say the liberal democratic West is “anti-democratic”: the two are structurally different, making both sides right about each other, but only partially. Liberal Democracy, I must admit, does have certain freedoms socialist democracies do not…these freedoms are not universally-guaranteed, but are reserved for those with money, but that is technically a “freedom”.
Again, Khashoggi is failing to see socialism’s motivations, concerns, demands and goals anywhere – he sees Chinese success solely as resulting from technocratism.
But in socialist democracy, where non-elite-born hold at least SOME top posts, then we will inevitably find that all technocrats do not interpret all social data the same: this is the exact point of conflict where Western Liberal Democracy totally collapses and reveals its essential, unmodern elitism.
Khashoggi, like Macron or Hillary, does not want this socialist-style of representation in their governance, nor do they want socialist-style policies, because such policies are not 100%-focused on maintaining the elitist lifestyle of the bourgeois/monarchical/1% class which they are a part of.
But any objective reading of postwar China – a country under blockade, refusing foreign investment, long-banned from top international organisations (like modern Iran), pulling itself out of swamps caused by a “century of humiliation” solely via their own policies, efforts and domestic investments – shows that China’s success is due solely to socialism. The same goes for Iranian Islamic Socialism, which has had similarly spectacular redistributive success amid similar global Cold War. Not so to Khashoggi who, like all journalists and commentators, must find an explanation for China’s astounding success in the past decade:
“The reason might be principles of Confucianism”, which is more utter nonsense.
China had Confucianism all through their Century of Humiliation…and also totally undemocratic inequality. They had it in the Ming and Ching eras and long, long before…and totally undemocratic inequality. I adore Confucianism, but as a social-moral model – as a political model it is totally outdated. Pushing pure Confucianism is “Chinese Salafism”, and this is what China’s Cultural Revolution explicitly overturned: the political disempowerment of the rural Chinese peasant caused by politically-outdated Confucianism.
But a Salafist’s only tool is an old calendar – they want to wax nostalgic and turn the pages backwards, never forwards.
Khashoggi is an anti-socialist, monarchy-loving Salafist – he will always only hunt around China’s past for its success, and never objectively examine its present.
Trump’s entire “Make America Great Again” hinges 100% on mining an allegedly-perfect late 18th century past.
Macron, in combination with EU-technocratism, is a Petainist Salafist – a few days after a far-right assassination plot was uncovered, Macron praised the Nazi collaborator Petain as an inspiration for today.
In a time when France’s president enforces detested policies by decree, when democratic votes are ignored across Europe, we should see that there is very little difference between modern Muslim un-democracy and Western un-democracy.
The only people who don’t admit this are ethnocentric Europeans, who can apparently subsist on the pride produced by flattering themselves with feelings of superiority, and also by those Christians who refuse to have fraternal feelings towards Muslims as Muslims have towards their fellow Abrahamic believers (those who are also not imperialists, of course). Such flattery is indeed the manna of their far-right, but also the Western fake-left, and this is the point of this article.
Fake-leftism means never admitting the small circle democracy is limited to
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hen we start calling things by their proper names, “fake-leftism” becomes more and more obvious in journalists like Khashoggi.
Fake-leftism leads to absurdly unreflective statements such as this, which have no basis in modern facts: “Western countries are adept at finding the reasons behind low voter turnout in elections or to determine why people are unhappy with the parliament’s performance.”
I suppose Western countries are adept…compared to Arab monarchies. Turnout is quite low and in 2016, when this article was written, any citizen-observer of the Eurozone (as well as the European Union) could see that disapproving performance registered no “democratic” impact on economic policy whatsoever. Both Khashoggi or a self-aggrandising Westerner could have written that sentence – both are fake-leftists.
Fake-leftism means someone who is out of touch with what Leftism means on the global scale, as they assume “left” and “right” only matter domestically; but it also means someone who pretentiously believes they are in tune with the average person despite spending their entire lives pointedly avoiding the average person. Khashoggi revealed this in an article titled The Saudi labor ‘shop’ must close, undergo reforms:
“I listened to the new Education Minister Ahmed al-Issa talk of his plan to transform education and enable it to produce competitive youth by launching “independent” public schools. He said children in private schools do not exceed 15 percent of the kingdom’s students, while 85 percent attend public schools. This surprised me as I used to think the rate of those in private schooling was higher, since that is the preference of all of my relatives and acquaintances.
I discovered then that those of us at the GCF (the annual Saudi Global Competitiveness Forum) are a small minority in a much bigger community that was totally absent, despite being the target of the forum. This community is supposed to be the working class to whom ministers keep promising hundreds of thousands of jobs year after year. Although the organizers want the whole Saudi economy to be more competitive, most citizens who graduate or fall out of public schools and universities are unable to compete.
Competition
[dropcap]I[/dropcap]f we want King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) to be more appealing than Dubai or the free-trade zone in Ethiopia, for example, we must make our environment more competitive for business investments.”
The first paragraph reveals what Khashoggi is: A journalist who was totally out of touch with the 99% of Saudi Arabia…or at least the 85% (“99%” is, of course, not statically accurate, but it has become a useful byword and tool of understanding). He’s also a bad journalist for not knowing such a basic fact of life about his own country – it is reminiscent of a parliamentarian from Macron’s party who recently provoked outrage from a “Yellow Vest” protester on TV because she did not know the minimum wage.
I included the 2nd and 3rd paragraph because it’s important to show how abruptly his line of thought ends: Khashoggi does have a class epiphany, and he even relates it honestly…but he blames his fellow citizens for being “unable to compete”. He then drops the idea altogether and moves on to “Competition” and free trade.
Furthermore, he clearly believes that in this article he has established a plausible link between societal-domestic-interpersonal competition between citizens and competition between businesses, corporations, trade zones and nations. That is so wrong and so false that I do not have the time to disprove it; if you have to ask, you’ll never know, as Louie Armstrong said about jazz.
“Arab citizens are losing faith in democracy even though it has been at the forefront of their demands.”
Reading Khashoggi finds that he specialises in this type of nonsense typified by Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times, truly one of the world’s greatest fake-leftists. (Indeed, it is amazing that such a warmonger and elitist votes for the “left party” – only in the West…) For the average Muslim or Saudi Arabians it is just as shocking to see Khashoggi described as a “reformer”. Again, there is no difference in 2018 between the Oriental or the Occidental despot.
Anyway, the truth is that Arab citizens are losing faith in one type of democracy – Western Liberal…and so are Westerners themselves. This realisation is great because it increases global unity, so why resist it? Socialist Democracy, however, is in bull form in any country which can withstand the decades of capitalist-imperialist blows, and the failure to recognise these trends and to abandon socialism makes someone a fake-leftist, as we all know.
I could go on and on dissecting Khashoggi’s writing for “fake Muslim leftism”, but the point has been established. I doubt anyone with an income under $100,000 / not working at a major Western NGO thought for a single moment that Khashoggi was a “reformer”, but hopefully this article showed how he is truly no different from Western rightists, centrists and fake-leftists.
Conclusion: Why care for Khashoggi? Why anything in the Muslim world? Answer: more imperialism
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]estern shareholder control of Aramco would give them the most powerful economic weapon in the world today. Talk about Google and Apple and smartphones all you want, but the global economy rises and falls according to the price of oil; because of this fact, Western capitalist logic dictates that they must control oil-producing nations.
The introduction of Western Liberal Democracy & their constitutional monarchy in Saudi Arabia would inevitably result in the control of Arabia’s oil by the international 1%. What that nefarious group has now is merely secondary control, with primary control held by the House of Saud.
Say what you want about Saudi Arabia – their leaders control their oil, at least. Say what you want about Iran – their People control their oil (which is why the West wants to ban Iranian oil, as if it contained the contaminating ideas of Muslim democracy, Islamic socialism, etc.). Saudi Arabia is also one of the world’s relatively untapped markets for international capitalists, much like Iran. Both nations have economies which are hugely state-controlled – and this cannot be tolerated in neoliberal capitalism, and thus it inexorably moves to change them & to Westernise them. Even if the Pentagon and Tel Aviv want no changes to the status quo in the region, we must see that the forces of capitalism are stronger than the forces of nationalism (or Zionism), and we all see this painfully plainly in Europe today.
Crucially, many in the House of Saud are anti-neoliberal (but not anti-capitalist) because they correctly understand that the monarchy cannot stand in 2018 without explicitly anti-neoliberal economic measures: two-thirds of all Saudi workers are employed by the government, major welfare programs, etc. Few leftists will objectively remark on this fact, but that is leftist economics in a very significant, real-world sense: Just as all capitalism is not “neoliberal”, not all socialism is “perfect socialism”, and the House of Saud is undoubtedly using socialist-related economics to buy their People’s support.
Double-crucially, while the old guard of the House of Saud realises this reality, many of the younger princes do not. Like the younger generation of Westerners, their young princes have been inculcated in anti-socialist neoliberal capitalism, and this inherently imperils the monarchy’s ability to buy off the Arabian People.
This line of thinking was rendered excellently by the prolific Whitney Webb for MintPress (whose leftist analyses were not ruined by her study of religion in university, I note) in her article The Real Reason the Knives are Out for MBS, so I only need to make a brief summation here:
What is of primary importance to the Western ruling factions are the Aramco Initial Public Offering and the $6 trillion in potential privatisation schemes of Vision 2030. However, as Webb notes: where does Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman really stand on the economic spectrum? Foreign investment into Saudi Arabia has plummeted, the IPO for Aramco (the world’s most profitable company) still has not taken place, and maybe MBS is not such a neoliberal traitor after all? He thus incarnates this shifting conflict between the neoliberal, younger generation of princes (and their Western puppeteers) and the older generation which grasps that neoliberalism – foreign control of a nation’s economy – can only lead to the loss of the monarchy’s absolute control and thus their pampered existence.
Let’s not forget why the West needs traitors in charge: Saudi Arabia’s collusion with Washington is what allows the “exorbitant privilege” of the US (petro)dollar, which makes the US financially impregnable; Saudi oil money is truly the liquidity which fuels the many risky investments of Wall Street; the Saudis make enormous US arms purchases not just for themselves but for the entire region.
We must look at the defense of Khashoggi by the West via the economic lens (which, of course, is verboten in Western mainstream discourse): how can international high finance finally get full control over Saudi oil, especially if MBS is not so neoliberal anymore yet remains in power?
Answer: Reduce the power of the Saudi absolute monarchy to a Western Liberal Constitutional monarchy (like the UK, Canada, Denmark, Netherlands, etc.), which would create bourgeois “rule of law” and thus allow Saudi assets to be sold to Western capitalists.
I have demonstrated that there are myriad capitalist pressures pushing the West to make Saudi Arabia conform and to not be independent: and, after all, conformity merely means “Western Salafism”, i.e. Western Liberal Democracy in the form of constitutional monarchy. Khashoggi was playing the leading propaganda role in this effort calling for a constitutional monarchy, which amounts to a soft coup against the absolute monarchy of the House of Saud.
And that is ultimately why MBS had Khashoggi killed.
By killing the West’s head propagandist MBS is saying: there will be no bourgeois, Western constitutional monarchy. The West is so up in arms over Khashoggi because it is a red flag that they are perhaps dealing with a Crown Prince who will not play neoliberal ball, as he had falsely promised to Western puppeteers in order to get their approval to ascend to Crown Prince.
Because the Western 1%, and the Mainstream Media they own, wants to obscure this lens – how the defense of Khashoggi fits in with the inevitable capitalist pressure from international high finance to get control over Saudi oil – they thus want us to believe that Khashoggi was a “reformer”. But the West doesn’t care at all about democratically empowering the 99% in Saudi Arabia, of course; and the mere step up from absolute to constitutional monarchy is no “reform” in the 21st century – modern political thought declares that this is a bogus reform.
Webb did not stress enough the existence of an alternative – socialist democratic control of Saudi oil. Nor did she stress that Khashoggi was actually facilitating this neoliberal takeover, not hindering it.
Khashoggi was no journalist but a pro-Western, pro-neoliberal propagandist – he had no importance to MBS otherwise.
Capitalism-imperialism always plays multiple destabilising games at once – in order to ensure their interests prevail: thus, there is no conflict between their supporting MBS but also supporting Khashoggi at WaPo as a back-up plan. However they get control of Saudi resources is fine – whether it’s via a puppet or a soft coup, they don’t care.
Khashoggi was no “dissident” against the monarchy, but I’ve reminded readers that this was no problem for the monarchy- and bourgeois-loving West; he was tapped to be the Western 1%’s “Head Saudi Propagandist” because his writings clearly show that he wanted a Western-style bourgeois technocracy & constitutional monarchy in order to rule Saudi Arabia more “efficiently”…which means becoming Westernised as much as possible, economically unequal as much as possible, and Socialist Democratic not at all.
Time will tell: Mehdi Ben Barka, PressTV’s Serena Shim and others will be remembered as true martyrs for the Muslim world and for all of humanity; Jamal Khashoggi will soon be forgotten, except for the gruesome details, and that is because he was no friend nor supporter of the People but of the elite of which he was a part and which he unquestioningly and immorally supported. I hope this series shed light on that.
But I also hope that this series showed how Khashoggi is no different from the fake-leftists in the Western world. Muslims and Saudi Arabians are not any different from those in any other global region, and emphasising, clarifying and promoting our common humanity – and the common struggles of the 99% worldwide – is the goal of leftism.
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This is the final article in a 4-part series which examines Jamal Khashoggi’s ideology and how it relates to the Islamic World, Westernization and Socialism. Here is the list of articles slated to be published, and I hope you will find them useful in your leftist struggle!
’s Serena Shim: A 4-part series
Khashoggi Part 2: A ‘reformer’…who was also a hysterical anti-Iran/Shia warmonger?
Khashoggi Part 3: ‘Liberal Democratic Salafism’ is a sham, ‘Islamic Socialism’ isn’t
Khashoggi Part 4: fake-leftism identical in Saudi Arabian or Western form
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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