I was flying from New York to Silicon Valley on the “Job Creators’ Red Eye”, and I had a chance to catch up on some foreign cultural news from our nation’s paper of record, The New York Times.

There was a very interesting item about the extremely backward practices of Asians regarding romance. This partly-ironic, mostly-pitying article focused on China.

Immediately, my blood ran cold. It had been running hot, as I was just reading the Times’ recap of the misdeeds of Putin towards my millionaire friends running the Democratic party (pages 1-19 of their Section A). But when the page turned to his eastern ally I got as chilly as a crafty Chinese capitalist, which they all are. (How else could we possibly explain that growth rate?)

The reality is that romance is political: I, for example, date identities and not actual people. If you identify with Trump or (American God forbid) Putin, there is no romantic future for us. It’s really quite logical - how can I date someone I refuse to even have a conversation with?

As a romantic, I accept reality. For example: Yes, there are 1 or 2 remnants of communism in China, but capitalism is a culture and not just an economic policy. It’s not enough for us to have McDonald’s all over China; what good is a Big Mac if the Chinese don’t know why they have to incessantly eat them? Where’s the continuous profit growth?

That’s why articles like these are crucial, because we have to get the Chinese to not just eat like Americans, but to view romance like us too.

The best way to produce cultural changes - since there are no targets for our many bullets - is mocking and shame. The New York Times publishes in Chinese, thankfully, and I hope our withering contempt translates well.

Just as we must attack their political leaders, their romance advice columnists must come under an attack no less serious! Both are extremely backwards and ignorant, obviously - just look at one of their leading romantic lights, Yang Bingyang:

“A former model, author of nine books and, she says, one of the first Chinese admitted to Mensa…”

Yes, that is the correct Western order: the fact that she is a model is the most impressive. I was surprised there was not a link to any of her pictures because it has been nearly 11 minutes since I saw a woman nearly naked - what is this, Saudi Arabia?

“Our world has been hijacked by political correctness,” Ms. Yang said. “I’m criticized for telling the truth about the differences between men and women.”

The best journalism hangs them with their own words! PC has only liberated us in every way; there are no differences between men and women. When are we going to start using NSA spy capabilities for apprehending anti-PC terrorists who make such offensive declarations in their own homes? I’m sure Hillary would have implemented this already!

She elaborated: “A man’s M.V. (mate value) is determined by his age, height, looks, wealth, I.Q., emotional quotient, sexual capacity and willingness to make a long-term commitment….The eight elements in a woman’s M.V. are her ‘age, looks, height, bra cup size, weight, academic degrees, personality and family background’.”

Frankly, this is abhorrent - I would imagine this will one day be included in our justifications to the UN for humanitarian intervention.

Not only do I not notice colour, ethnicity or shape, but I am far, far above being concerned about a woman’s age. Surprisingly, this created a problem for me when I tried to take that 13-year old Thai girl out of the country. “I don’t see superficialities like age or looks, you bigoted Trumpers,” I screamed at the Thai border police!

But I guess the Chinese really are White in a way - there’s “bra size” instead of “hip size”. Still, I can’t have anything truly in common with such a sexist society.

And I thought they had a fetish for tiny feet? It seems they don’t talk about that enough, but I hope they bring back that practice soon - just during work hours in my Chinese factories, of course.

“Don’t have sex for the first few months,” Ms. Yang tells women.

I immediately fell out of my first-class seat laughing at this. In fact, I had to go back to the coach section and tell my work “teammate” Fazlollah, even though I can’t stand him. We all call him “Lefty” because no one can pronounce his name.

“How long do men have to wait to have sex in your country,” I asked Lefty.

Fazlollah straightened up, leaned forward in his seat to not bother the woman in the aisle seat next to him and worriedly whispered, “Is this really the place for such a conversation?”

Those uptight Asianers…so repressed. I hope many of our soldiers are liberating their women around our many army bases.

Fazollah tried to change the subject to Putin’s evilness, but there are some things which are even more important, so I loudly insisted he tell me how long I have to wait for sex when I visit his native country.

“Well, boss, I’m certainly not going to tell you about me and my wife, but I’ll say that most of my friends waited one year before having sex with their fiancees or wives.”

I burst out laughing again!

Lefty added: “But I have a younger friend, and he says the newer generation has no patience and can only wait for 6 months.”

My God, Fazlollah’s people really are a bunch of animals. The way they treat their women is just beyond insulting, because we all know women are as desirous of immediate sex as men are. So, really, their women are animals too. But the sheer waste of resources - taking her out, buying her food, spending your time - and then not getting anything out of it?!

I went back to my paper, where the Times interviewed a different romantic columnist, named simply Ayawawa.

“Many of Ayawawa’s fans consider her the personification of the success they crave for themselves: attractive, married to a man she describes as a loving husband, the mother of two children.”

Again, attractiveness is what is important for Chinese women - good, they are learning about Western feminism. Given that odd list of craved-for successes, they clearly still have much to learn.

“Chinese schools don’t offer a proper education in love and relationships,” Mr. Lu, a male romantic advice columnist, said in another interview. “People get their ideas mostly from TV dramas.”

I never heard of any American getting their ideas from TV? We’re a free-thinking people, after all. The Asians are just so inscrutable…that’s why we have given up scrutinizing them for any cultural coherence and are just going to turn them into Americans. 

True, I was taught about sex in school when I was 12 - we took that as a sign that our community wanted us all to start having sex. There’s no stigma attached to 13-year old pregnancies anymore - it’s just the sign of a good student who pays proper attention. But we never did get any sort of real education about relationships - those are personal subjects never to be discussed, like God and my tax returns!

“For women, spending more time with a man deepens her love. But for a man, the longer he stays with a woman, the less he loves her,” Mr. Lu posted this month.

That’s funny: I told the same thing to my 3rd wife. She got very upset, and that’s when I remembered the David Bowie song, “China Girl”.

The chorus to “China Girl” goes: “And when I get I excited, my little China girl, says ‘Oh baby, just you shut your mouth.’”

Cheekily, I told that last part to her.

When I woke up in the hospital I asked the doctor if I had been hit in the head with a frying pan. He said I was hit by the phone my wife uses to have our dinner delivered. I really was asking for it: I knew we didn’t need a land line anymore.

During my recuperation and divorce settlement I had time to listen to that whole Bowie album, and I see that I was wrong to quote him in the first place.

The chorus to another song, “Modern Love”, is “Never gonna fall for modern love”. I don’t know why I ever took advice from some impractical romantic musician….

Like I told my 4th wife just before we signed our pre-nup: Love is really all about material benefits. Luckily, the New York Times never, ever takes their eye off that ball.

“Both of them advise women to manipulate men to gain material benefits,” said Ms. Lu, a founder of an online feminist journal in China. Now take it easy - she’s just a feminist and not a communist, because she didn’t dare criticize manipulating people to gain material benefits.

“The question is, Why in China is it women who scheme to get men to commit to marriage? Why, when it comes to marriage, are women the sellers and men the buyers? It’s because women don’t have the space to develop themselves.”

See, this is what modern love is: Romance is a transaction! It should be ruled by the laws of the market, not the laws of nature or even morality. You don’t have to be a feminist to get that! And we’re going to make sure the Chinese understand this.

Let’s give women the chance to be the buyers, finally, eh? That’s equality.

Let’s have men be the ones who scheme to get women to commit to marriage, eh? That’s social and moral progress.

“It’s sad to see, when the economy has produced so many more opportunities, that more and more women believe that getting married is superior to working hard and achieving a successful career,” she said.

I want to hire this person to run one of my factories in Shenzhen! Yes, of course nothing is more important than working hard in one of my factories! Certainly not your family life!

If I had more workers like her I think I could shave nearly 7 cents off the price of my electronics? But we in New York City can’t do anything with Chinese women who cling to outdated desires and notions.

“Liang, for example, is trying to lose weight and improve her makeup skills and is practicing baking.”

Sophisticated reader that I am, I realise that this poor Liang is meant to be portrayed as a sad, pathetic loser…even though at 29 she has a fiancé, office job and is apparently not fat.

But she’s a loser - and all modern women who read The New York Times will agree with me - because by selfishly putting her future family first she’s setting back a woman’s right to devote her body and soul to work for me.

The article concludes with this appallingly out-of-date and unfocused woman’s pathetic view:

“The differences between men and women are inborn. I take these ideas seriously because I want a better life for myself, not because I’m eager to make the world better for women.”

There is a word for this type of woman: a misogynist. This Chinese woman, because she wants romantic love, a family, and a home life which includes the smell of fresh baked fortune cookies, is actually a woman-hating, repressive, backwards misogynist.

And she’s obviously some sort of Putin supporter - or at least Trump - because she doesn’t realize that identity politics requires her to divide the world into women versus men. By not trying to make the world better for only women, she is fighting for the wrong side!

How are we going to divide China if we can’t foist identity politics on them?

And the baking, my God, the baking!!!! For a modern woman she may as well be a Black person asked to pick cotton!

Frankly l don’t know why her fiancé even wants her? She’s clearly going to be a drag on his bottom line: baking can be done cheaper by others; that’s less time spent earning wages; and the emotional ideas she’s taking seriously are so detached from economics that there is no point to even pursue them.

But most appalling, again, is that there are inborn differences between men and women. It’s just not true and you know it!

Both of them work just fine on my factory floor - they are basically interchangeable. I’m proud to report that when a man drops from exhaustion we replace him immediately with a woman with no drop off in my profitability. 

Now that is modern, and I love it. 

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]hat headline is not even a bold statement because Macron has promised austerity and…when has austerity ever worked? It is really that simple. There has been nearly four decades of trickle-down economics and anti-socialist policies, but there has been no promised increase in the standard of living. It has only dropped since the gains of the 1970s, the era of maximum worker power in the West.

I say the West because Iran, to give a personal example, did not have maximum worker power in the 1970s, so let’s not paint everyone all with the same brush – that’s inaccurate and only aids rampant depression in the West.

The alternative headline was: “Macron and new party to do what has never been done”.

The case for Macron’s economic proposals are so flimsy, so based on faith instead of facts, that even the IMF has finally admitted their own decades of truly deadly wrongdoing by pushing austerity. With just another 40 years of failure we can hope they will also come around on “free” trade, unregulated foreign investment and the false correlation between privatization and efficiency.

But the EU and Eurozone will not give up the capitalist ghost: the ECB (now holding renminbi for the first time) is continuing with monthly banker bailouts in the scores of billions, they are continuing to “lend” Greece money in order to send it straight back to interest repayment, and Macron’s own new centrist alliance now has a roughly 62% majority in Parliament to continue with trickle-down economics.

This president is being portrayed as having some sort of massive mandate in the press of the French elite and the foreign press, but that is false and everyone here knows the emperor has no clothes:

Abstention absolutely soared by some 20% since 2012 to reach a stunning 58% overall. This is already well-short of the necessary basis of any democracy which deserves to even be classified as “functioning”: a majority. (Of course, France has been in a state of emergency since November 2015, so it is not a democracy. It is a police state dictatorship.)

But Macron’s failure to win a democratic majority is even worse: His centrist alliance won 32% of the total 2nd round vote, and that translates into just 15% of the total electorate.

Wow, win over just 15% of the electorate in the legislative elections, after just 24% of the presidential elections, and the covers read, “Jupiter in Elysée Palace”. That’s one way of looking at it…which is a way Americans politely say, “That’s incredibly stupid.”

What’s more, history shows that Macron’s legislative victory was already guaranteed: Since 2007, when France fully went off the 7-year presidential term system and aligned their legislative and presidential elections, all 3 successive presidents have been handed Parliamentary majorities; Macron’s score in 2017 is nearly identical in terms of seats.

This is basically organized collusion between two of the three branches, and how can that be good? They are supposed to be balancing each other, I thought? I don’t know how many more election cycles it takes to make this a fact to people? Is it 40 years – do all reactionaries think in 40-year cycles? Is this the light at the end of the tunnel, LOL? I look forward to my joyous 79th birthday, Inshallah.

The thing is, Hollande even admitted after his 2012 election victory that this aligned election system was not good for democracy – of course, he did nothing about it. There seems to be zero chance that Macron will change it, as he appears far less the benevolent dictator than “Flanby” Hollande appeared in 2012.

So Macron’s victory is as “sweeping” as Sarkozy’s and Hollande’s…and they both totally failed. Just like Macron will.

Back to the future of failure

The line in France and Europe has been two-fold: “Reforms” (i.e. right-wing economics) are needed. Once that is done, then it becomes: “Time is needed to create success”.

Here in France, the most glaring problem with this is: How will record high unemployment be essentially halved to “normal” by allowing bosses a freer hand to whip, I mean fire, workers? A boss cannot whip physically, so the modern whip is psychological: the threat of being fired (with no social safety set to cushion the fall, capitalists hope).

But here in France the idea or “sacred cow” is a crazy one: one should not live in fear of destitution, and therefore workers have had more rights than in their US and UK counterparts.

One of Macron’s most hated but least-discussed measures will kill the peasants’ idiotic sacred cow – with all of its dung used to provide warmth and to build huts; with all of its milk for long-term productivity; with its ability to allow more land to be cultivated for public benefit, etc. It is this: If you turn down a job twice at the unemployment office, the unemployment office crosses you off their list.

It is no matter if you do not want this job; if you are qualified for the job but it is not in your desired field; if this job does not suit your family’s needs; if this job requires a lengthy commute of 30 kilometers even though you can’t afford a car much less highly-taxed gas.

And this is what the 2^nd or 3^rd “most advanced” socio-cultural country in the world says “modernity” is. And they must be right? Right?

The African-Americans may have actually devised a pithy phrase for this model long ago:  “Massa sez work.”

It’s hard to see how this is a model worthy of emulation, much less exportation.

The reality is that the French model of “mixed socialism” is being done away with: the US/UK model is being exported, forcibly, into France.

France calls this the “Anglo-Saxon” model, and how the English press detests that term, LOL! It even gets quotation marks, just as they do for any official statement by Iran, like “Iran ‘says’ that...(insert anything here, even “the sun came up this morning”).

Of course, they should realize that calling it “Anglo-Saxon” is at least not calling the “Protestant” model, which is a fair statement, and I think any honest, Chosen Calvinist will agree to that. Half-Catholic Germany is only semi-entrenched in the Anglo-Saxon model, after all.

Theology aside: The average French citizen knows the death of their sacred cow will not bring them any juicy cuts of beef or fine leather goods, because they are not any dumber than I am.

So why did they vote for Macron?

The only thing I can say in a positive way is: They have decimated the Socialists for their anti-austerity betrayal, but I am chagrined to report they may have 50 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, the main house of Parliament; the mainstream conservatives have their fewest seats in postwar history. This is good and justice, both political and moral.

It’s disgusting on this election night to listen to Socialist Party members talk about fighting neoliberalism and getting back to their progressive roots. Their presidential candidate didn’t survive the first round and the party secretary the second round. A “fired list” of Socialists is impressive, and schadenfreude may compel me to make that a whole article in the future. Some right-wing socialists survived, mostly those even more right-wing than the “camembert Socialists”: they made deals with Macron that he wouldn’t present an opposing candidate, and these horrid fake-leftists will remain in the Parliamentary spotlight.

But France has swept many of the liars, back-stabbers and incompetents. We all know they won’t stay unemployed long enough to run out of benefits…must be nice to have such security.

Will the French Street explode in violence?

France is never portrayed as a country which has serious, violent and authoritarian unrest, but that is certainly the case in 2017 because there has been 2 years of mass arrests of anti-government protesters (more than 2,000) and there is no sign of letting up.

I cannot report that anyone is seriously reporting that Macron is going to end this multi-year trend. Macron, like all modern Western politicians, is adding to, not dismantling, the vast right-wing powers first initiated by Dubya Bush to “fight terrorism”. His plan is to normalize the state of emergency police practices with a formal bill this Wednesday.

And even pro-austerity people (falsely) claim their “reforms need time to take effect”; clearly, unrest won’t stop in the interim because there will be no alleviation of ongoing suffering.

I can report that many believe that social unrest will get worse. It’s a fair prediction: Why should we not presume that more years of repression will not lead to intensification?

But no worries: there is no “French Street”. That’s only for gutter people like Arabs, right?

But French rues will certainly see major unrest in response to Macron and the parliamentarians they just voted in.

Should this voting contradiction be attributed to those ‘confounding French’?

Such stereotypes are obviously absurd, but they do make for interesting heds and subheds. But in the English-language press – so infected with the virus that is English tabloid journalism – this interpretation will be seriously debated.

A more intelligent analysis is: The French couldn’t vote in new ideas, so they settled for voting in new faces.

But this is another problem with the French model: The new faces should also have had different ideas in 2017.

Even though the brand-new party Unsubmissive France (real left, not far-left or hard-left) and their Communist allies won 14% of the popular vote, they are looking at only around 30 seats – just 5.1% of the 577 total seats. That is clearly a problem, and this is another reason why abstention is trending sharply upward this century.

Add in the National Front’s 13% of the popular vote and only around 7 seats (1.3% of the total seats) and this problem becomes exponentially compounded like vile banker interest.

So the French did vote in a serious minority - 27% for these two groups - but French capitalist democracy (bourgeois and not worker, unmodern, anti-socialist) only allotted them 6% worth of representation at the highest legislative level. That…must be aggravating.

But this is normal in the European Social Democratic model – simply ask the Greeks, the Portuguese, the Finnish, the Italians, and others and, until March 2019, the British. After that, the UK is on their own and can only speak from reminiscence.

There will be 2 new key faces: Marine Le Pen finally won a seat on her 3rd try. As her appallingly bad debate against Macron proved, she is now free to clown around in front of the really expensive cameras on a regular basis, which was likely her only goal all this time.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, the head of Unsubmissive France, won on his first try. He’s a good orator, and the left’s only real hope, whatever flaws he is always pasted with, so this is good. The most heavily-immigrant and Muslim area –Seine-Saint-Denis adjacent to Paris - also elected a UF delegate despite the highest abstention of the 102 departments.

Who will lose: Macron the golden child of capitalist fantasies, or the people?

I get paid to crystal ball – actually, this is free – so what I’ll say is:

5:1 odds that France protests and right-wing reforms are still forced through. I.e. the status quo since the Great Recession began.

20:1 odds that France protests on the level of 1995, when a three-week general strike actually forced the withdrawal of right-wing “deforms” (only 3 weeks!). Not many horses win at 20:1, but it’s not impossible. Frankly, I’ve seen a lot of talk and no action in my 8 years in France. Yeah more social action than the US, but c’mon…that’s like being the tallest building in Topeka, Kansas.

30:1 odds that Macron and EU leaders agree on moderate but truly democratic reforms in the next 5 years. Whatever they do will be branded “democratic”, but the “2-speed solution” is already in place, so that’s not really reform, just a changed tactic under the status quo.

1,000:1 odds that Macron and EU leaders agree on reforms which are democratic enough to stop continued unrest and the slide in the standard of living. I would offer 1,000,000:1 odds, but I can’t pay that off.

The needed reforms are not Macron’s – they are anti-capitalist and pro-socialist. The right wing has failed, in France and across the West. The left has lost in the West, but succeeded in places like China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and very few others.

These are quite simple facts, and 40 years is no longer a small sample size.

No comfort can be given, due to France’s new reality

There is no opposition party.

The mainstream conservatives are technically it, and they are more pro-austerity and pro-security than Macron’s centrist alliance. They won’t stop the death of the French model.

These two groups account for about 480 of 577 seats – a stunning 83% of Parliament (with only 54% of the total vote).

Macron – as his neo-fascist bill this week proves – is both far-right on security and economics. It’s crucial to accept that the far-right wave in Europe is actually continuing – do not overrate Marine Le Pen’s loss, as the 1% wants you to do.

When it comes to real power in France there is no opposition in 2017. There is no left. There is no far-left. There is no far-right. There are only voices without power.

Sounds about right….

Our Paris correspondent has received the following dispatch from Dublin-based investigative journalists Jon A. T. Swift.The seriousness of the material obligates us to run it as quickly as possible.

(Note: This leaked email has not yet been verified by WikiLeaks:)

Date: 2017-06-14

Source: Pentagon

Classification: SECRET/NOFORN/BLTPBJ

S E C R E T

SECTION 03 OF 1,242 WASHINGTON  - 314159265

SUBJECT: Major General protests decision to continue the Russophobia campaign

CLASSIFICATION APPROVED BY: CLASSIFIED

REASON: 1.4 (b), (d)

I strongly urge those reading this email to finally acknowledge that the conditioning phase of the Russophobia campaign has been completed.

The situation is exactly as planned to begin troop movements into Ukraine.

Further delays are unnecessary and could jeopardize the long-range planning of Operation Reverse Mongol.

President Trump has renounced his appeasement rhetoric concerning The Menace Putin. Trump has been rendered sufficiently pliable to formally announce conflict engagement.

Media saturation has been total for some time, as is well-documented.

Battalions – infantry, airborne and tank – have been placed on medium-high alert.

However, Americans have a short attention span. Therefore, I strenuously object to the recent decision to continue the Russophobia campaign.

How much longer is this going to go on? Now is time for Trump to declare hostilities in Ukraine!

Follow normal procedures: This requires a formal letter to the UN on White House (not Trump) letterhead. Send copy to Kremlin. Make sure they sign for it.

Let this email confirm that Lieutenant General Kleinphoffer was the first to request Trump’s signing pen as a souvenir. He says he is redecorating his den.

I remind readers that the Russophobia conditioning campaign was neither meant to go on forever, nor was it done without a clear goal in mind. The US Army does not waste time, money, resources or manpower – that’s what we have the Navy for. (Don’t worry, they are not copied on this email.)

The conditioning campaign must now be converted into a war propaganda campaign for multiple reasons, both theoretical and practical.

Hillary is getting cabin fever, and Bill said that he never signed up to spend so much time with her. We know she needs the spotlight and, frankly, she deserves it:  It wasn’t easy to get her on board, but she understood her fall was necessary in order to provide enough of a pretext to invade Ukraine.

In fact, Hillary has acted like a champ for the Pentagon time and again, repeatedly postponing her ascendancy to the White House. First for 8 years of Obama, and now for 4 years of Trump.

Hillary is indeed a true patriot of the Bilderberg Group, and this email serves to inform that I am recommending her for our highest honor: Ensign of the Cross of the Griffin of the 3^rd Phase of the Moon. This also gives her a preferential parking space at future meetings.

Frankly, I’ll be retiring when she does finally take office – she’s just going to keep us way too busy for my age. I have total confidence that she’ll be a great wartime president, just as she was a great wartime first lady, wartime New York senator and wartime Secretary of State.

Note: We must increase funding to her “Resistance” Political Action Committee. Hats off to the people across the hall in PentPropInform  who came up with that title. Excellent further conditioning – really makes one think that they are the good ones fighting pure evil. 

Personal statement:

Gee whiz, I’m just so darn happy!!!  I’ve been waiting so gosh darn long! Now we can finally start stopping the Red Menace!

Yes, I know that Major General Feffernetter is adamant that Russia is not red anymore because they aren’t communist – he insists they should be brown: as in bears and birch trees. But I say birch is more of a gray! Get your eyes checked Feffernetter!

Anyway, we cannot confuse our citizens, so stop bringing that up to CNN – Wolf Blitzer spent 22 minutes on this yesterday!

But I’m just over the moon that we can finally land in Ukraine and start moving eastward to Russia: We almost let decades of planning go to waste! But I never had any doubt that Trump wouldn’t know which buttons to press – “small hands”, LOL.

Obama’s “pivot to China” diversionary tactic has worked – they’ll close the back door as we sweep eastward!

Exciting times, exciting times indeed! But we still have loose ends to tie up. To wit:

Cultural Angles:

Rachel Maddow is asking for more money – I guess #1 ratings aren’t enough. Give that braying giraffe whatever she wants. We can’t lose her now, and she knows it.

But somebody simply HAS TO tell her that it’s too damned risky to keep letting her use an army barber!  I don’t care how much they “understand her type of hair” - someone could see her and ask questions!

I know I promised everyone an advance listening of the new Pussy Riot single, but they’re saying they need time to rehearse. When did they start doing that?!

We all remember what happened when The Monkees tried to play their own instruments, right? For sure, whatever they come up with will be unlistenable, so let’s increase our funding to boost their single sales at the Apple Store.

And what is going on with our Chinese version of Pussy Riot - “Sideways Sino Sucky Sucky”?

I thought all the kids like that punky music nowadays? Somebody hook up one of those angular banjos they play to a distortion pedal and get it on MTV ASAP! Do I have to call Viacom myself? Like I did to get that Kardashian’s phone number for General Stupotski?

(And what did he do with it? Nothing! Don’t believe his bragging – I’ve seen the surveillance tapes! Wasn’t even one of the good Kardashians….)

I don’t want to say “I told you so”, but I remind people that we have gotten virtually nowhere with our program to promote Ai Weiwei. As I’ve said all along: the only people who care about modern art and Ai Weiwei are 2% of the New York Times readership, and 99% of them are bluffing.

Human Rights Angles:

Continue with the Chechnya homosexuals media campaign  – DNA testing came back and Chechens do classify racially as White, and we cannot tolerate any sort of abuse of human rights for White people. Hey, I had them pegged as some sort of Turkic tribe, but you can’t argue with racial science.

Anyway, we need some sort for pretext or the Russian invasion, right? We can’t use Communism anymore; there’s no American expatriate community to defend; I checked around, and it seems that Russians actually do have a somewhat solid claim to pretend they are Christians.

Look at just the most recent example of French soldier pedophilia in Burkina Faso– nobody cares about kids. And don’t tell me it’s because they’re Black kids, because I just don’t buy it.

So it’s the gays or back to the drawing board.

Terrorism angles:

You know, we need to stop breaking our arms from patting ourselves on the back for how good we’ve done with this angle in Muslim nations.

Yes, this is our bread and butter…and yet we’ve done nothing as regards Russia.

And yes, the neo-Nazi terrorists have done great in Ukraine – no one is denying that – but you know we can’t trumpet that success in the media.

But I’m tired of hearing: “People simply won’t believe there are Russian bombers in Manchester or Paris.” I’d believe it! Maddow would too!

Anyway, aren’t there Muslims in Siberia? Mongolian Muslims or something? If so, increase their funding immediately.

Human Resource Issues:

We do have a problem with our #3 agent in Operation Journalist Putemania: Agent Maxwell Klinger’s gender issues are causing major morale problems, so can we please clarify which bathroom the agent should use?

Yesterday I caught him or her standing in front of a latrine door and crying – he or she said he or she didn’t know whether to use the his or hers!

There was even a new secret EU Army delegation passing by, even! They’re already trying to bypass our munitions producers – we don’t need this negative press!

Frankly, Klinger is rather chubby and I always thought she was man, but others said he was a woman, and now we all know that he or she has no idea. Us too. Can we please get this issue and Agent Klinger sorted out post-haste?

I don’t even know why Klinger is hesitating? The men’s bathroom stinks like a rabbit hutch! We really need to get some young blood in the Pentagon…all the aiming equipment of us old farts has gone to pot without any action. This good long war will revivify us!

But, yes, I take responsibility for that: I’m the one who insisted that my neighbor get the custodial contract.

I’m telling you his kids were ruining my lawn! And you should see Mildred’s hydrangeas now that baseballs aren’t constantly rolling through there!

I’ll talk to him about not being so cost-cutting with the disinfectant and also about getting some sort of gender-neutral signs. Maybe that’ll put the Klinger issue to bed.

But frankly, someone needs stop Klinger from getting distracted from the larger issues. Operation Reverse Mongol is not fun and games. 

Yours sincerely and Bilderberg Forever,

Maj. Gen. Lawrence Pepperbottom 

The last couple of decades, times of crisis for European capitalism, has seen developments in both Britain and France—countries that claim to boast robust and exemplary democracies—pointing to the deep-seated anti-democratic character of the ruling class in all capitalist societies. France is now under a de facto police regime, and in Britain the Corbyn ascendancy has detonated an ugly demonization campaign and widespread rumors of even coups d'etat and army uprisings. 

[dropcap]E[/dropcap]mmanuel Macron very quickly made it official: He will introduce a bill which will transform extraordinary state of emergency powers into regular police practice.  According to Le Monde, which saw a leaked copy of the bill: “…almost all the measures of the state of emergency will be found in common law.”

What this means is that the post-Charlie Hebdo war hysteria has not only never stopped, but will have become the new, permanent normal: Anyone can be arrested, searched and detained with just a simple accusation. Judges simply need to be “informed”; police have carte blanche.

So…when can I start referring to France as an “authoritarian state” without getting edited?

LOL, I don’t know what it would actually require to finally start calling that spade a “spade”…. I am reminded that Confucius’ “rectification of names” doctrine shows that the failure to call things by their proper names can only lead to social disorder.

I hate to say I told you so, but after less than one month in power Macron has proven to be what many feared: All the fascism  of Marine Le Pen, slightly less (perhaps) of the xenophobia, 100 times the austerity. What a lousy formula that is!

Macron with Jacques Attali, a behind-the-scenes godfather for the ruling bourgeoisie. Every system has its "mechanics", fixing and running things for the establishment, the ultimate "pragmatists". Attali's turf is France.

And despite all the warning signs, Macron won pretty handily. And again, despite all the warning signs, Macron’s party is set to win an absolute majority in Parliament when the final round votes are tallied on June 18. 

The bill transforming civil liberties in France will be immediately introduced three days later, on June 21. Macron is not wasting any time in showing his true colors, and the bill was obviously whistle-blown in order to warn voters.

I understand if the average person isn’t paying attention, but for journalists – it’s our job to do so.

Some journalists are wasting space by acting completely surprised at the legalization of what is properly termed a “police state dictatorship”, but Macron showed his authoritarian inclination by repeatedly promising to extend the state of emergency upon entering office and he said so again this week (until November 1).

Instead of focusing on the campaign – when he spoke to voters directly – many journalists are foolishly claiming to have been misled by a comment in his book that the state of emergency could not be “permanent”.

Well, of course….absolutely nobody, anywhere is saying that France needs to be living under a permanent state of emergency until the end of time.

But France is currently a country so badly burned by Hollande’s 180-degree about-face on election promises that they are perhaps hyper-sensitive to yet another faithless elected. But they are being willfully blind, again, and they would do better to examine the fact that his proposed changes to the labor code this week are even more right-wing than what he warned of while campaigning.

I remind readers that a “French Patriot Act”, which gave cops all the powers they allegedly needed to fight terrorism, was rushed through in the 2015 post-Charlie Hebdo war hysteria.  France’s executive branch was already perhaps the most powerful in the West, so at the time many said it wasn’t even necessary.

But they grabbed more power, anyway, because that seems to be the only true talent of Western politicians in the 21^st century.

The backroom deal that cemented Macron becomes much clearer

Macron’s campaign was not plunging but certainly fading when he made a key political deal with the leading centrist politician in France, Francois Bayrou. Bayrou finished 5^th in the 2012 presidential election, to give you an idea of his significant domestic standing.

It was late February and Macron had fallen below conservative Francois Fillon and Marine Le Pen in the polls. But then the centrist party leader announced he would ally with Macron, and Macron never left the top two again.

I assumed that the backroom deal was Bayrou’s support in exchange for the prime minister spot, but he surprisingly settled for Justice Minister, the nation’s top prosecutor.

Well, nobody predicted that the two would seek to drastically expand the role of the Justice Minster: The proposed bill effectively makes the nation’s top lawyer into the nation’s top judge! That’s obviously a huge, alarming conflict of interest.

The new bill will mean that the judicial branch no longer decides on anything with the word “terrorism” attached – no longer acts as a check and balance – they simply must be informed of decisions taken by the executive branch: i.e., the president, the Interior and Justice Ministers, and Officer Jean-Michel Everycop.

The mind reels at what Buñuel would have done with present-day France. His mordant take on the ruling orders, crystalised in several of his films, notably the Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie (1972), not only presented their total lack of ethics and operating sociopathy, but envisaged the inevitable decomposition of the social order under their regime.

When police don’t need warrants for searches, raids and arrests, then judges are just rubber-stampers, except for cases like those found on reality court TV.

The leak became public literally minutes from when the “Sages”, or “Wise Ones”, of France’s Constitutional Council strongly condemned the government’s practice of banning people from attending demonstrations and abusing house arrests.

Amnesty reported last week that some 650 specific individuals were banned from attending peaceful anti-government protests in the past 18 months. The overwhelming majority were during the anti-labor code rollback protests, with a couple dozen environmentalists banned during the UN COP 21 climate summit in Paris, which Trump recently rejected.

This condemnation by the Guardian Council – I’m sorry, the Wise Ones - was leavened by the fact that they waited one and half years to make a ruling on such a fundamental issue of democratic rights…in fact, there’s so much leavening the bread has lost all nutritional value: they were obviously in the pocket of the Hollande administration.

The Wise Ones did not dare touch the question of banning entire demonstrations: Amnesty said 155 demonstrations have been banned, but they didn’t point out that an undoubted “chilling effect” surely led to the premature strangulation of many in the cradle. I guess let’s look for the Wise Ones’ decision in December 2019?

‘Je suis Algerien!’

Now there’s a slogan which has roughly zero chance of going viral, LOL!

But it’s basically true, because the last time there was a state of emergency in France it was to prevent Algerian independence. We have all been Algerians since November 2015, and now Macron wants us all to be Algerians permanently (hey, better than being Libyans – then we’d get bombed by NATO!).

Maybe this is where the European project becomes useful: If passed, the bill will surely go before the European Court of Human Rights.

A fundamental question which never gets posed by the mainstream media is: Why do politicians keep doing this? As I dared to write hours after an ISIL terror attack in Iran (and my faith has been justified), Iranian politicians did not manipulate terrorism to attempt the anti-democratic executive branch power grab which has become the de rigueur official response across the West.

The answers to such a question cannot be good, but it seems France’s politicians want more power, more money, more fame, more everything else that…does not benefit the entire commonweal: more equality, more social justice, more happiness, more peace, etc.

But the precipitous fall of Hollande’s prime minister and primary enforcer, Manuel Valls, should be a cautionary tale that such power grabs backfire with voters. Heck, the entire French Socialist Party may not even win enough seats to form a parliamentary group, which calls into question their very existence. Voters are not as dumb as they think!

And because there are no good answers to such questions, you don’t rise very high on the journalism ladder by posing such questions.

I remind readers that Macron has said that he will not remain in politics after his presidency – he’ll go back to private service and make enough money to buy an NBA franchise, like Obama plans to. For a public servant that is a rather mercenary plan. Half of Macron’s nearly 400 party candidates are totally new to politics, so it appears certain they will be easily malleable to Macron’s will; it seems less certain that they are committed to the public good instead of reaping the benefits of quickly-acquired power.

Are we judging Macron too soon?

I keep asking Macron voters, but not in a needling way, if they are happy with their vote – I’m still waiting for an enthusiastic “yes”.

I don’t want to come off as too negative too early in Macron’s presidency: I think many have done that with Trump. It seems clear that Trump had no idea how much Deep State blowback there would be to what he proposed to implement, and we shouldn’t be surprised that he was totally unprepared for that. However, he could find his feet and start punching back – it ain’t over, and it’s more accurate to say it’s only just begun.

Macron, however, was the number 2 man in Elysée Palace (France’s White House) and worked closely with Hollande. Macron was a top cabinet minister. He clearly knows the political ropes and what he is doing. Trump probably just watched “House of Cards” as preparation (plenty of Russophobia there).

Ultimately what Macron is doing is implementing the will of the bosses - that’s the simplest way to put it. Macron can’t imagine going against them, and he sees himself as one of them. Macron, the former Rothschild banker, is also one of high finance and the bond-buyers, and they are obviously delighted at his ascension.

We journalists like to have our fun, and we’re actually not that creative, so we like to come up with funny names for the physical and mental midgets we have to follow daily. I dubbed France’s boy wonder “Emmanuel Macr-Obama” because both politicians were just a shiny repackaging of the same capitalist/imperialist brand.

But maybe Macron and Marine Le Pen were one-and-the-same all along?

But maybe Macron is even worse: Who can say that Le Pen couldn’t have waited at least one full month before proposing this authoritarian route?

Of course, if Le Pen had done something like this I think French Twitter might have exploded in outrage.

It’s certainly hard to not predict that by pushing Macron France’s mainstream media will lose major credibility with every Macron step to the far-right. Of course, on the economic spectrum, he was already firmly planted there.

When allegedly left-wing Libération writes of the proposed bill: “…the sentiment of being duped is starting to be seen among social networks, traditional citizen rights’ watchdogs, NGOs, lawyers’ unions and political progressives,” one wants to say, “Go take a long walk off a short pier, Libé….” After all, the day before the 2^nd round presidential vote they broke the law on impartiality with a cover that read, “Do what you want but vote Macron”.

What’s certain is that the mainstream media is never going to really condemn Macron…or Clinton, Obama, Cameron, etc. That means it’s really down to the average citizen. Many predict this 2^nd labor code rollback will inspire Hollande-era levels of strikes and protests – will this normalization of the emergency state add to that?

But all of those groups listed by Libération should have known better; should have warned the public of who is the real Macron; are culpable in scaring the electorate into voting for him.

Of course, being no fool, I vote communist, but when we are told that Le Pen was the fascist and then we see that Macron is immediately preparing to institutionalize fascism – well, you get that wrong and anyone with ethics must admit their responsibility. And then they should change their point of view.

I feel I would have been writing the same things had Bernie Sanders won in the United States….

There is no Third Way, there is no reconciliation with capitalism, there is no end to xenophobia without socialist unity, there is no way a Rothschild banker could have been what you foolishly pretended he was.

And yet, as I write this, tomorrow is the first round in France’s Parliamentary elections: Voters are set to give Macron an absolute majority in Parliament and, combined with the conservative Républicain Party, to elect 90% pro-austerity politicians. They will likely vote in favor of Macron’s bill to institutionalize police state dictatorship as well. C’est dingue…it’s crazy!

I didn’t have to be this way, but this is what compromise with capitalism looks like – the result is always anti-democratic.