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The French election, from Peter Myers

(1) French Jews 'relieved' Macron won but worried by Le Pen's gains(2) Why The Jews Loathe Le Pen -  Brother Nathanael Kapner(3) Jewish-owned PayPal bans Brother Nathanael(4) Globalization has shattered French unity; "Open Society" benefits only the Elite(5) Le Pen's pro-working class & anti-imperialist commitment branded 'extremist' - James Petras(6) Macron called LePen a misinformed, corrupt, "hate-filled" nationalist liar who "feeds off France’s misery"(7) Marine Le Pen’s nationalism meets the unrepentant globalism of Emmanuel Macron - The Economist(8) Facebook Shut Downs pro Le Pen accounts before Election(9) Facebook disabled iBankCoin’s account after photo of Schumer with Putin(10) 'Fake News' can now be "disputed" on Facebook(11) Marine Le Pen interview with Financial Times(1) French Jews 'relieved' Macron won but worried by Le Pen's gainshttp://forward.com/news/breaking-news/371201/french-jews-relieved-macron-won-but-worried-over-le-pen-s-electoral-gains/French Jews ‘Relieved’ Macron Won But Worried By Le Pen’s GainsJTAMay 7, 2017(JTA) — Leaders of French Jewry expressed both relief over the defeat of the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the presidential elections and concern over her receiving more than a third of the vote.Le Pen, whom the chief rabbi of France and the CRIF umbrella of Jewish communities have decried as dangerous to democracy and minorities, received 34.2 percent of the vote compared to the 65.8 percent who voted for the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron, according to a report by Le Monde based on exit polls from Sunday’s final round of the elections."I am happy with the result of Emmanuel Macron being elected president, which constitutes a veritable relief for all our nation and for the Jewish community of France," Joel Mergui, the president of the Consistoire, wrote Sunday evening in a statement by his group, which is responsible for providing religious services to Jews.Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia, who is employed by the Consistoire, also spoke of his satisfaction from the vote. But in his statement, Korsia also referenced concerns over the support shown to Le Pen – a nationalist who seeks a ban on wearing Jewish and Muslim religious symbols in public, ritual slaughter and the provision of pork-free meals in school cafeterias.The vote was the best electoral result ever obtained by her National Front party, which was established in the 1970s by her father, theHolocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred against Jews. He clinched 18 percent of the vote in the 2002 presidential elections — the first time that National Front made it to the final round."Well aware that many voices have been raised in favor of the candidate of the National Front, the Chief Rabbi calls on all political leaders to take seriously the voters’ cry of despair and anger in order to review their platforms and to regain the enthusiasm and support of the citizens," the statement by Korsia’s office read.Francis Kalifat, president of CRIF, called the victory "uncontestable" and congratulated Macron on it. "Everything starts right now," Kalifat, who has lobbied intensively in favor of Macron in recent days, wrote optimistically on Twitter.The president of European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, said in a statement: "We remain extremely concerned by the still large support for parties of the far right, not only in France but across Europe." He also wrote in a statement that the result was "a victory against hate and extremism" by the French people.Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said in a statement that while Macron’s election is "extremely encouraging," his group is "concerned that a third of the French population voted for a dangerous political leader." This, he said, is part of a "worrying political landscape in Europe and the increase in far-right rhetoric which has swept the continent."Macron’s positions on Israel, its conflict with the Palestinians and the Middle East in general correspond with those of the government of France’s outgoing president, Francois Hollande, Macron told a predominantly Jewish crowd in March during a town hall meeting organized in Paris by CRIF.Hollande is one of France’s least-popular presidents. Citing dismal approval ratings, he had withdrawn from the presidential race to better the chances of his party to remain in power.The economic policies of Macron, a former banker who at 39 will be the youngest president in the history of the Fifth Republic of France, differ significantly from those of the Socialist Party. A believer in free-market economy, he is calling for an economic reform opposed by labor unions and advocates of France’s relatively generous welfare amenities.This has alienated many left-wing voters in what could explain a historically low turnout in Sunday’s vote.According to Le Monde, a quarter of registered voters did not show up to vote, making the turnout of 75 percent the lowest recorded in any final round of the presidential elections since 1969.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not address National >Front’s gains in the vote in a standard statement congratulatingMacron. He said that one of the greatest threats facing Israel and France "is radical Islamic terror which has struck Paris, Jerusalem and so many other cities around the world," adding he was sure the two countries "will continue to deepen our relations."President Donald Trump congratulated the "people of France on their successful presidential election." Trump, who said last month Le Pen was "the strongest candidate on borders," added: "We look forward to working with the new President and continuing our close cooperation with the French government."(2) Why The Jews Loathe Le Pen -  Brother Nathanael Kapnerhttp://www.realjewnews.com/?p=1205April 27, 2017 @ 6:06 pmWhy The Jews Loathe Le PenBy Brother Nathanael KapnerMarine Le Pen stands for everything Jews hate:Economic nationalism; Snubbing holocaust guilt-tripping; halting dual-citizenship; ending mass-migration; vacating the EU; and desiring friendly relations with Russia.She’s rankling the Jewish banksters by wanting to break France’s money’ tie…the "Francafrique"…with its former African colonies, also tied to the Euro.Instead of African countries on a currency leash with their cash reserves in France’s Central Bank, Le Pen says they should coin their own money.This way the Africans grow their own economy, reducing the need for ‘economic migration.’Gaddafi was doing just that and the banksters with a gang of neocon Jews had him killed, and straightaway set up a ‘Rothschild’ central bank in Libya.Le Pen better watch her back.Especially that she’s now saying France was NOT guilty of rounding up Jews in 1942.[Clip: "Was Jacque Chirac wrong in his speech on Vel d’Hiv?" "France is not responsible for the Vel d’Hiv roundup. I think more in general if there is someone responsible it is those who were in power back then, it’s not France, not France!"]‘Ruvi’ Rivlin, Israel’s president, accused Le Pen of a ‘new form’ of ‘holocaust denial’…another Jewish ploy to silence the disobedient.Unyielding, Le Pen insists that France was led by De Gaulle from London in ‘42, whereas the Vichy regime was an interruption of sovereign France.That’s not ‘holocaust denial,’ that’s ‘French guilt denial.’Mitterrand and De Gaulle said the same.Why should later generations be guilty of Vel d’Hiv long after the ‘responsible’ are dead?Le Pen makes a good point. Merkel should do the same.But the Jews accuse to keep France under their guilt-tripping boot just like they do with Germany.Their game?Only by France embracing mass-immigration and anti-nationalism can it ever ‘atone’ for its ’sin.’ Le Pen ain’t buying it.Raising Jewish ire even higher, Le Pen railed against dual-citizenship.Like in America, Jews in France want it both ways.[Clip: "We have to put an end to double nationality. We must choose, you are Algerian or you are French. You are Moroccan or you are French… any Nationality or you are French, but you cannot be both at the same time."]Jews are offended. What else is new?[Clip: "We sense that we’re being targeted. When she talks about wanting to ban dual-nationality we can see that it’s targeting the Jewish community." "How might you react if she actually won?" "We’ve been planning to make aliyah for a while now anyway. That is, we’re preparing to move to Israel. So, if she wins, that will speed the process up."]So go already. They won’t. Jews like their lox and bagels as far away from ‘zion’ as possible.Then there’s Le Pen’s push for friendly relations with Russia.But BBC’s Emily Maitlis—a Jew—contradicts.[Clip: "You borrowed money from a Czech-Russian bank." "Several years ago we borrowed money from a Czech-Russian bank. But that’s because that’s the bank that agreed to lend us money. If it had been a British bank we would have borrowed from a British bank. What do you want?" "But it was a Russian bank." "Yes, and so what? I don’t owe the bank anything other than to pay it back. I have no obligations towards it. I’m not reliant on anyone." "You don’t regret it?" "So I’m prevented from borrowing from a French bank and then I’m reproached for borrowing from a foreign bank. What would people have said if it had been an American bank?"]Right, if an ‘American’ bank, it’s kosher approved.But a ‘Russian’ bank—with no conditions other than to pay it back—that’s a sin for which there is no redemption.Le Pen’s about a different redemption.She wants a France for the French, not a France for the Jews.(3) Jewish-owned PayPal bans Brother Nathanaelhttp://www.realjewnews.com/?p=1197#comment-1928238Truth-Hating PayPal Bans Brother NathanaelInitial PayPal LetterMarch 28, 2017"We have recently reviewed your usage of PayPal’s services, as reflected in our records and on your website http://brothernathanaelfoundation.org . Due to the nature of your activities, we have chosen to discontinue service to you in accordance with PayPal’s User Agreement. As a result, we have placed a permanent limitation on your account.Please remove all references to PayPal from your website. This includes removing PayPal as a payment option, as well as the PayPal logo.Tanya,PayPal Brand Risk Management ——COMMENTARY by +Brother NathanaelPayPal is owned by the Jew, Daniel Shulman. This is what the world has come to. Jews own EVERYTHING now and if the Jewish script is opposed then you are "hateful" and "intolerant."Not only this, but because JEWS are so FILTHY RICH and OWN EVERYTHING, they can afford to lose money (yes they made money off of donations to me these past seven years) if they see their wicked agenda is EXPOSED.AND, not only this, it is "Tanya" who notified me and denied my appeal. What does that tell you? That a GOY does the dirty work of the Jew masters. THIS is what the world has come to. The GOYS do the dirty work of the wicked, truth-hating, free speech-denying JEWS.(4) Globalization has shattered French unity; "Open Society" benefits only the EliteFrom: chris lancenet <chrislancenet@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2017 17:29:28 +0900https://www.city-journal.org/html/french-coming-apart-15125.htmlThe French, Coming Apartby Christopher CaldwellThe Weekly StandardThe real-estate market in any sophisticated city reflects deep aspirations and fears. If you had a feel for its ups and downs—if you understood, say, why young parents were picking this neighborhood and drunks wound up relegated to that one—you could make a killing in property, but you also might be able to pronounce on how society was evolving more generally. In 2016, a real-estate developer even sought—and won—the presidency of the United States.In France, a real-estate expert has done something almost as improbable. Christophe Guilluy calls himself a geographer. But he has spent decades as a housing consultant in various rapidly changing neighborhoods north of Paris, studying gentrification, among other things. And he has crafted a convincing narrative tying together France’s various social problems—immigration tensions, inequality, deindustrialization, economic decline, ethnic conflict, and the rise of populist parties. Such an analysis had previously eluded the Parisian caste of philosophers, political scientists, literary journalists, government-funded researchers, and party ideologues.Guilluy is none of these. Yet in a French political system that is as polarized as the American, both the outgoing Socialist president François Hollande and his Gaullist predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy sought his counsel. Marine Le Pen, whose National Front dismisses both major parties as part of a corrupt establishment, is equally enthusiastic about his work. Guilluy has published three books, as yet untranslated, since 2010, with the newest, Le crépuscule de la France d’en haut (roughly: "The Twilight of the French Elite"), arriving in bookstores last fall. The volumes focus closely on French circumstances, institutions, and laws, so they might not be translated anytime soon. But they give the best ground-level look available at the economic, residential, and democratic consequences of globalization in France. They also give an explanation for the rise of the National Front that goes beyond the usual imputation of stupidity or bigotry to its voters. Guilluy’s work thus tells us something important about British voters’ decision to withdraw from the European Union and the astonishing rise of Donald Trump—two phenomena that have drawn on similar grievances.At the heart of Guilluy’s inquiry is globalization. Internationalizing the division of labor has brought significant economic efficiencies. But it has also brought inequalities unseen for a century, demographic upheaval, and cultural disruption. Now we face the question of what—if anything—we should do about it.A process that Guilluy calls métropolisation has cut French society in two. In 16 dynamic urban areas (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Nice, Nantes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rennes, Rouen, Toulon, Douai-Lens, and Montpellier), the world’s resources have proved a profitable complement to those found in France. These urban areas are home to all the country’s educational and financial institutions, as well as almost all its corporations and the many well-paying jobs that go with them. Here, too, are the individuals—the entrepreneurs and engineers and CEOs, the fashion designers and models, the film directors and chefs and other "symbolic analysts," as Robert Reich once called them—who shape the country’s tastes, form its opinions, and renew its prestige. Cheap labor, tariff-free consumer goods, and new markets of billions of people have made globalization a windfall for such prosperous places. But globalization has had no such galvanizing effect on the rest of France. Cities that were lively for hundreds of years—Tarbes, Agen, Albi, Béziers—are now, to use Guilluy’s word, "desertified," haunted by the empty storefronts and blighted downtowns that Rust Belt Americans know well.Guilluy doubts that anyplace exists in France’s new economy for working people as we’ve traditionally understood them. Paris offers the most striking case. As it has prospered, the City of Light has stratified, resembling, in this regard, London or American cities such as New York and San Francisco. It’s a place for millionaires, immigrants, tourists, and the young, with no room for the median Frenchman. Paris now drives out the people once thought of as synonymous with the city.Yet economic opportunities for those unable to prosper in Paris are lacking elsewhere in France. Journalists and politicians assume that the stratification of France’s flourishing metropoles results from a glitch in the workings of globalization. Somehow, the rich parts of France have failed to impart their magical formula to the poor ones. Fixing the problem, at least for certain politicians and policy experts, involves coming up with a clever shortcut: perhaps, say, if Romorantin had free wireless, its citizens would soon find themselves wealthy, too. Guilluy disagrees. For him, there’s no reason to expect that Paris (and France’s other dynamic spots) will generate a new middle class or to assume that broad-based prosperity will develop elsewhere in the country (which happens to be where the majority of the population live). If he is right, we can understand why every major Western country has seen the rise of political movements taking aim at the present system.In our day, the urban real-estate market is a pitiless sorting machine. Rich people and up-and-comers buy the private housing stock in desirable cities and thereby bid up its cost. Guilluy notes that one real-estate agent on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris now sells "lofts" of three square meters, or about 30 square feet, for €50,000. The situation resembles that in London, where, according to Le Monde, the average monthly rent (£2,580) now exceeds the average monthly salary (£2,300).The laid-off, the less educated, the mistrained—all must rebuild their lives in what Guilluy calls (in the title of his second book) La France périphérique. This is the key term in Guilluy’s sociological vocabulary, and much misunderstood in France, so it is worth clarifying: it is neither a synonym for the boondocks nor a measure of distance from the city center. (Most of France’s small cities, in fact, are in la France périphérique.) Rather, the term measures distance from the functioning parts of the global economy. France’s best-performing urban nodes have arguably never been richer or better-stocked with cultural and retail amenities. But too few such places exist to carry a national economy. When France’s was a national economy, its median workers were well compensated and well protected from illness, age, and other vicissitudes. In a knowledge economy, these workers have largely been exiled from the places where the economy still functions. They have been replaced by immigrants.After the mid-twentieth century, the French state built a vast stock—about 5 million units—of public housing, which now accounts for a sixth of the country’s households. Much of it is hideous-looking, but it’s all more or less affordable. Its purpose has changed, however. It is now used primarily for billeting not native French workers, as once was the case, but immigrants and their descendants, millions of whom arrived from North Africa starting in the 1960s, with yet another wave of newcomers from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East arriving today. In the rough northern suburb of Aubervilliers, for instance, three-quarters of the young people are of immigrant background. Again, Paris’s future seems visible in contemporary London. Between 2001 and 2011, the population of white Londoners fell by 600,000, even as the city grew by 1 million people: from 58 percent white British at the turn of the century, London is currently 45 percent white.While rich Parisians may not miss the presence of the middle class, they do need people to bus tables, trim shrubbery, watch babies, and change bedpans. Immigrants—not native French workers—do most of these jobs. Why this should be so is an economic controversy. Perhaps migrants will do certain tasks that French people will not—at least not at the prevailing wage. Perhaps employers don’t relish paying €10 an hour to a native Frenchman who, ten years earlier, was making €20 in his old position and has resentments to match. Perhaps the current situation is an example of the economic law named after the eighteenth-century French economist Jean-Baptiste Say: a huge supply of menial labor from the developing world has created its own demand."The young men living in the northern Paris suburbs feel a burning solidarity with their Muslim brethren in the Middle East." [...]Guilluy has written much about how little contact the abstract doctrines of "diversity" and "multiculturalism" make with this morally complex world. In the neighborhoods, well-meaning people of all backgrounds "need to manage, day in, day out, a thousand and one ethno-cultural questions while trying not to get caught up in hatred and violence." Last winter, he told the magazine Causeur:Unlike our parents in the 1960s, we live in a multicultural society, a society in which "the other" doesn’t become "somebody like yourself." And when "the other" doesn’t become "somebody like yourself," you constantly need to ask yourself how many of the other there are—whether in your neighborhood or your apartment building. Because nobody wants to be a minority.Thus, when 70 percent of Frenchmen tell pollsters, as they have for years now, that "too many foreigners" live in France, they’re not necessarily being racist; but they’re not necessarily not being racist, either. It’s a complicated sentiment, and identifying "good" and "bad" strands of it—the better to draw them apart—is getting harder to do. [...]Guilluy came to the attention of many French readers at the turn of the millennium, in the pages of the leftist Paris daily Libération, where he promoted the American journalist David Brooks’s book Bobos in Paradise. Guilluy was fascinated by the figure of the "Bobo," an acronym combining "bourgeois" and "Bohemian," which described the new sort of upper-middle-class person who had emerged in the late-nineties tech-bubble economy. The word may have faded from the memory of English-language readers, but it stuck in France. You can find Bobo in any good French dictionary, alongside bébé, Dada, and tutu.For Brooks, "Bobo" was a term of endearment. Our nouveaux riches differed from those of yesteryear in being more sensitive and cultured, the kind of folks who shopped at Restoration Hardware for the vintage 1950s Christmas lights that reminded them of their childhoods. For Guilluy, as for most French intellectuals, "Bobo" is a slur. These nouveaux riches differed from their predecessors in being more predatory and less troubled by conscience. They chased the working-class population from neighborhoods it had spent years building up—and then expected the country to thank them.In France, as in America, the Bobos were both cause and effect of a huge cultural shift. The nation’s cultural institutions—from its universities to its television studios to its comedy clubs to (this being France) its government—remain where they were. But the sociology of the community that surrounds them has been transformed. The culture industry now sits in territory that is 100 percent occupied by the beneficiaries of globalization. No equivalent exists any more of Madame Vauquer’s boardinghouse in Balzac’s Père Goriot, where the upwardly mobile Rastignac had to rub shoulders with those who had few prospects of advancement. In most parts of Paris, working-class Frenchmen are just gone, priced out of even the soccer stadiums that were a bastion of French proledom until the country’s World Cup victory in 1998. The national culture has changed.So has French politics. Since the age of social democracy, we have assumed that contentious political issues inevitably pit "the rich" against "the poor" and that the fortunes of one group must be wrested from the other. But the metropolitan bourgeoisie no longer lives cheek-by-jowl with native French people of lesser means and different values. In Paris and other cities of Guilluy’s fortunate France, one often encounters an appearance of civility, even consensus, where once there was class conflict. But this is an illusion: one side has been driven from the field.The old bourgeoisie hasn’t been supplanted; it has been supplemented by a second bourgeoisie that occupies the previously non-bourgeois housing stock. For every old-economy banker in an inherited high-ceilinged Second Empire apartment off the Champs-Élysées, there is a new-economy television anchor or high-tech patent attorney living in some exorbitantly remodeled mews house in the Marais. A New Yorker might see these two bourgeoisies as analogous to residents of the Upper East and Upper West Sides. They have arrived through different routes, and they might once have held different political opinions, but they don’t now. Guilluy notes that the conservative presidential candidate Alain Juppé, mayor of Bordeaux, and Gérard Collomb, the Socialist running Lyon, pursue identical policies. As Paris has become not just the richest city in France but the richest city in the history of France, its residents have come to describe their politics as "on the left"—a judgment that tomorrow’s historians might dispute. Most often, Parisians mean what Guilluy calls la gauche hashtag, or what we might call the "glass-ceiling Left," preoccupied with redistribution among, not from, elites: we may have done nothing for the poor, but we did appoint the first disabled lesbian parking commissioner.Upwardly mobile urbanites, observes Guilluy, call Paris "the land of possibilities," the "ideapolis." One is reminded of Richard Florida and other extollers of the "Creative Class." The good fortune of Creative Class members appears (to them) to have nothing to do with any kind of capitalist struggle. Never have conditions been more favorable for deluding a class of fortunate people into thinking that they owe their privilege to being nicer, or smarter, or more honest, than everyone else. Why would they think otherwise? They never meet anyone who disagrees with them. The immigrants with whom the creatives share the city are dazzlingly different, exotic, even frightening, but on the central question of our time—whether the global economic system is working or failing—they see eye to eye. "Our Immigrants, Our Strength," was the title of a New York Times op-ed signed by London mayor Sadiq Khan, New York mayor Bill de Blasio, and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo after September’s terrorist bomb blasts in New York. This estrangement is why electoral results around the world last year—from Brexit to the election of Donald Trump—proved so difficult to anticipate. Those outside the city gates in la France périphérique are invisible, their wishes incomprehensible. It’s as if they don’t exist. But they do.People used to think of the economy as congruent with society—it was the earning-and-spending aspect of the nation just living its life. All citizens inhabited the same economic system (which isn’t to say that all took an equal share from it). As Guilluy describes it, the new economy is more like a private utility: it provides money and goods the way, say, the power company provides electricity. If you’ve always had electricity in your house, what’s the worry? But it’s quite possible to get cut off.For those cut off from France’s new-economy citadels, the misfortunes are serious. They’re stuck economically. Three years after finishing their studies, three-quarters of French university graduates are living on their own; by contrast, three-quarters of their contemporaries without university degrees still live with their parents. And they’re dying early. In January 2016, the national statistical institute Insée announced that life expectancy had fallen for both sexes in France for the first time since World War II, and it’s the native French working class that is likely driving the decline. In fact, the French outsiders are looking a lot like the poor Americans Charles Murray described in Coming Apart, failing not just in income and longevity but also in family formation, mental health, and education. Their political alienation is striking. Fewer than 2 percent of legislators in France’s National Assembly today come from the working class, as opposed to 20 percent just after World War II.Unlike their parents in Cold War France, the excluded have lost faith in efforts to distribute society’s goods more equitably. Political plans still abound to fight the "system," ranging from the 2017 Socialist presidential candidate Benoît Hamon’s proposals for a guaranteed minimum income to those of his rival, former economics minister Emmanuel Macron, to make labor markets more flexible. But these programs are seen by their intended beneficiaries as further proof of a rigged system. The welfare state is now distrusted by those whom it is meant to help. France’s expenditure on the heavily immigrant banlieues is already vast, on this view; to provide yet more public housing would be to widen the invitation to unwanted immigrants. To build any large public-works project is to do the same. To invest in education, in turn, is to offer more advantages to the rich, who’re best positioned to benefit from it. In a society divided as Guilluy describes, traditional politics can find no purchase.The two traditional French parties—the Republicans, who once followed a conservative program elaborated by Charles de Gaulle; and the Socialists, who once followed socialism—still compete for votes, but along an ever-narrowing spectrum of issues. The real divide is no longer between the "Right" and the "Left" but between the metropoles and the peripheries. The traditional parties thrive in the former. The National Front (FN) is the party of the outside.Indeed, with its opposition to free trade, open immigration, and the European Union, the FN has established itself as the main voice of the anti-globalizers. At regional elections in 2015, it took 55 percent of workers’ votes. The Socialists, Republicans, Greens, and the hard Left took 18 percent among them. In an effort to ward off the FN, the traditional parties now collude as often as they compete. In the second round of those regional elections, the Socialists withdrew in favor of their Republican rivals, seeking to create a barrage républicain against the FN. The banding together of establishment parties to defend the system against anti-system parties is happening all over the world. Germany has a "grand coalition" of its two largest parties, and Spain may have one soon. In the U.S., the Trump and the Sanders candidacies both gained much of their support from voters worried that the two major parties were offering essentially the same package.Guilluy has tried to clarify French politics with an original theory of political correctness. The dominance of metropolitan elites has made it hard even to describe the most important conflicts in France, except in terms that conform to their way of viewing the world. In the last decade of the twentieth century, Western statesmen sang the praises of the free market. In our own time, they defend the "open society"—a wider concept that embraces not just the free market but also the welcoming and promotion of people of different races, religions, and sexualities. The result, in terms of policy, is a number of what Guilluy calls "top-down social movements." He doesn’t specify them, but they would surely include the Hollande government’s legalization of gay marriage, which in 2013 and 2014 brought millions of protesters opposing the measure onto the streets of Paris—the largest demonstrations in the country since World War II.French elites have convinced themselves that their social supremacy rests not on their economic might but on their common decency. Doing so allows them to "present the losers of globalization as embittered people who have problems with diversity," says Guilluy. It’s not our privilege that the French deplorables resent, the elites claim; it’s the color of some of our employees’ skin. French elites have a thesaurus full of colorful vocabulary for those who resist the open society: repli("reaction"), crispation identitaire ("ethnic tension"), and populisme (an accusation equivalent to fascism, which somehow does not require an equivalent level of proof). One need not say anything racist or hateful to be denounced as a member of "white, xenophobic France," or even as a "fascist." To express mere discontent with the political system is dangerous enough. It is to faire le jeu de ("play the game of") the National Front.No American will read Guilluy’s survey of contemporary France without seeing parallels to the United States. In one respect, France’s difficulties are, for now, more serious. When Guilluy writes of the "criminalization of criticism of the dominant model," he is not speaking metaphorically. France’s antiracist Pleven law, which can punish speech, passed in 1972. In 1990, the Gayssot law criminalized denial or "minimization" of the Holocaust and repealed parts of France’s Law of July 29, 1881, on Freedom of the Press. Both laws are landmarks in Europe’s retreat from defending free speech. Suits against novelists, philosophers, and historians have proliferated.In France, political correctness is more than a ridiculous set of opinions; it’s also—and primarily—a tool of government coercion. Not only does it tilt any political discussion in favor of one set of arguments; it also gives the ruling class a doubt-expelling myth that provides a constant boost to morale and esprit de corps, much as class systems did in the days before democracy. People tend to snicker when the question of political correctness is raised: its practitioners because no one wants to be thought politically correct; and its targets because no one wants to admit to being coerced. But it determines the current polarity in French politics. Where you stand depends largely on whether you believe that antiracism is a sincere response to a genuine upsurge of public hatred or an opportunistic posture for elites seeking to justify their rule.Guilluy is ambivalent on the question. He sees deep historical and economic processes at work behind the evolution of France’s residential spaces. "There has been no plan to ‘expel the poor,’ no conspiracy," he writes. "Just a strict application of market principles." But he is moving toward a more politically engaged view that the rhetoric of an "open society" is "a smokescreen meant to hide the emergence of a closed society, walled off for the benefit of the upper classes." [...]Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standardand the author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West.(5) Le Pen's pro-working class & anti-imperialist commitment branded 'extremist' - James PetrasFrom: "Diogenesquest diogenesquest@gmail.com [shamireaders]" Date: Mon, 01 May 2017 23:56:47 -0500 From: James Petras <jpetras@binghamton.edu> Date: 5/1/17 8:06 AM (GMT-06:00)http://petras.lahaine.org/?p=2139http://themillenniumreport.com/2017/05/twenty-truths-about-marine-le-pen/Twenty Truths about Marine Le PenJames PetrasIntroductionEvery day in unimaginable ways, prominent leaders from the left and the right, from bankers to Parisian intellectuals, are fabricating stories and pushing slogans that denigrate presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. They obfuscate her program, substituting the label ‘extremist’ for her pro-working class and anti-imperialist commitment. Fear and envy over the fact that a new leader heads a popular movement has seeped into Emmanuel "Manny" Macron’s champagne-soaked dinner parties.  He has good reason to be afraid:  Le Pen addresses the fundamental interests of the vast- majority of French workers, farmers, public employees, unemployed and underemployed youth and older workers approaching retirement.The mass media, political class and judicial as well as street provocateurs savagely assault Le Pen, distorting her domestic and foreign policies.  They are incensed that Le Pen pledges to remove France from NATO’s integrated command - effectively ending its commitment to US directed global wars.  Le Pen rejects the oligarch-dominated European Union and its austerity programs, which have enriched bankers and multi-national corporations.  Le Pen promises to convoke a national referendum over the EU – to decide French submission.   Le Pen promises to end sanctions against Russia and, instead, increase trade.  She will end France’s intervention in Syria and establish ties with Iran and Palestine.Le Pen is committed to Keynesian demand-driven industrial revitalization as opposed to Emmanuel Macron’s ultra-neoliberal supply-side agenda.Le Pen’s program will raise taxes on banks and financial transactions while fining capital flight in order to continue funding France’s retirement age of 62 for women and 65 for men, keeping the 35 hour work-week, and providing tax free overtime pay. She promises direct state intervention to prevent factories from relocating to low wage EU economies and firing French workers.Le Pen is committed to increasing public spending for childcare and for the poor and disabled.  She has pledged to protect French farmers against subsidized, cheap imports.Marine Le Pen supports abortion rights and gay rights.  She opposes the death penalty. She promises to cut taxes by 10% for low-wage workers. Marine is committed to fighting against sexism and for equal pay for women.Marine Le Pen will reduce migration to ten thousand people and crack down on immigrants with links to terrorists.Emmanuel Macron:  Macro Billionaire and Micro Worker ProgramsMacron has been an investment banker serving the Rothschild and Cie Banque oligarchy, which profited from speculation and the pillage of the public treasury.  Macron served in President Hollande’s Economy Ministry, in charge of ‘Industry and Digital Affairs’ from 2014 through 2016.  This was when the ‘Socialist’ Hollande imposed a pro-business agenda, which included a 40 billion-euro tax cut for the rich.Macron is tied to the Republican Party and its allied banking and business Confederations, whose demands include: raising the retirement age, reducing social spending, firing tens of thousands of public employees and facilitating the outflow of capital and the inflow of cheap imports.Macron is an unconditional supporter of  NATO and the Pentagon.  He fully supports the European Union.  For their part, the EU oligarchs are thrilled with Macron’s embrace of greater austerity for French workers, while the generals can expect total material support for the ongoing and future US-NATO wars on three continents.Propaganda, Labels and LiesMacron’s pro-war, anti-working class and ‘supply-side’ economic policies leave us with only one conclusion:  Marine Le Pen is the only candidate of the left.  Her program and commitments are pro-labor, not ‘hard’ or ‘far’ right – and certainly not ‘fascist’.Macron, on the other hand is a committed rightwing extremist, certainly no ‘centrist’, as the media and the political elite claim!  One has only to look at his background in banking, his current supporters among the oligarchs and his ministerial policies when he served Francois Holland.The ‘Macronistas’ have accused Marine Le Pen of extreme ‘nationalism’, ‘fascism’, ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘anti-immigrant racism’. ‘The French Left’, or what remains of it, has blindly swallowed the oligarchs’ campaign against Le Pen despite the malodorous source of these libels.Le Pen is above all a ‘sovereigntist’: ‘France First’. Her fight is against the Brussels oligarchs and for the restoration of sovereignty to the French people.  There is an infinite irony in labeling the fight against imperial political power as ‘hard right’.  It is insulting to debase popular demands for domestic democratic power over basic economic policies, fiscal spending, incomes and prices policies, budgets and deficits as ‘extremist and far right’.Marine Le Pen has systematically transformed the leadership, social, economic program and direction of the National Front Party.She expelled its anti-Semites, including her own father!  She transformed its policy on women’s rights, abortion, gays and race.  She won the support of young unemployed and employed factory workers, public employees and farmers.  Young workers are three times more likely to support her national industrial revitalization program over Macron’s ‘free market dogma’.  Le Pen has drawn support from French farmers as well as the downwardly mobile provincial middle-class, shopkeepers, clerks and tourism-based workers and business owners.Despite the trends among the French masses against the oligarchs, academics, intellectuals and political journalists have aped the elite’s slander against Le Pen because they will not antagonize the prestigious media and their administrators in the universities. They will not acknowledge the profound changes that have occurred within the National Front under Marine Le Pen.  They are masters of the ‘double discourse’ - speaking from the left while working with the right. They confuse the lesser evil with the greater evil.If Macron wins this election (and nothing is guaranteed!), he will certainly implement his ‘hard’ and ‘extreme’ neo-liberal agenda. When the French workers go on strike and demonstrators erect barricades in the streets in response to Macron’s austerity, the fake-left will bleat out their inconsequential ‘critique’ of ‘impure reason’.  They will claim that they were right all along.If Le Pen loses this election, Macron will impose his program and ignite popular fury.  Marine will make an even stronger candidate in the next election... if the French oligarchs’ judiciary does not imprison her for the crime of defending sovereignty and social justice.(6) Macron called LePen a misinformed, corrupt, "hate-filled" nationalist liar who "feeds off France’s misery"http://www.atimes.com/article/emmanuel-clinton-revolt-elites/Emmanuel Clinton and the revolt of the elitesBy Pepe EscobarMay 8, 2017 9:31 PM (UTC+8)So in the end the West was saved by the election of Emmanuel Macron as President of France: relief in Brussels, a buoyant eurozone, rallies in Asian markets.That was always a no-brainer. After all, Macron was endorsed by the EU, Goddess of the Market, and Barack Obama. And he was fully backed by the French ruling class.This was a referendum on the EU – and the EU, in its current set-up, won.Cyberwar had to be part of the picture. No one knows where the MacronLeaks came from – a last minute, massive online dump of Macron campaign hacked emails. WikiLeaks certified the documents it had time to review as legitimate.That did not stop the Macron galaxy from immediately blaming it on Russia. Le Monde, a once-great paper now owned by three influential Macron backers, faithfully mirrored his campaign’s denunciation of RT and Sputnik, information technology attacks and, in general, the interference of Russia in the elections.The Macron Russophobia in the French media-sphere also happens to include Liberation, once the paper of Jean-Paul Sartre. Edouard de Rothschild, the previous head of Rothschild & Cie Banque, bought a 37% controlling stake in the paper in 2005. Three years later, an unknown Emmanuel Macron started to rise in the mergers and acquisitions department, soon acquiring a reputation as "the Mozart of finance."After a brief stint at the Ministry of Finance, a movement, En Marche! was set up for him by a network of powerful players and think tanks. Now, the presidency. Welcome to the revolving door, Moet & Chandon-style.See you on the barricades, babeIn the last TV face-off with Marine Le Pen, Macron did not shy from displaying condescending/rude streaks and even raked some extra percentage points by hammering "Marine" as a misinformed, corrupt, "hate-filled" nationalist liar who "feeds off France’s misery" and would precipitate "civil war."That may in fact come back to haunt him. Macron is bound to be a carrier of France’s internal devaluation; a champion of wage "rigor," whose counterpoint will be a boom of under-employment; and a champion of increasing precariousness on the road to boost competitiveness.Big Business lauds his idea of cutting corporate tax from 33% to 25% (the European average). But overall, what Macron has sold is a recipe for a "see you on the barricades" scenario: severe cuts in health spending, unemployment benefits and local government budgets; at least 120,000 layoffs from the public sector; and abrogation of some key workers’ rights. He wants to advance the "reform" of the French work code – opposed by 67% of French voters – ruling by decree.On Europe, the only thing "Marine" said during the campaign that was closer to the truth was that "France will be led by a woman, either me or Mrs Merkel."Macron is more likely to be the new Tony Blair or, in a more disastrous vein, the new [former Italian PM Matteo] Renzi.The real game starts now. Only 4 in 10 voters backed him. Abstention reached 25% – about one-third if spoilt ballots are counted. It will be virtually impossible for Macron to come up with a parliamentary majority in the upcoming elections.France is now viciously divided into five blocks – with very little uniting them: Macron’s En Marche! movement; Marine Le Pen’s National Front, which will be recomposed and expanded; Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Disobedient France, which is bound to lead a New Left; the shattered Republicans, or the traditional French Right, which badly needs a new leader after the François Fillon debacle; and the virtually destroyed Socialists post-Hollande. An Orwellian shock of the newContrary to global perceptions, the biggest issue in this election was not immigration, it was actually deep resentment towards the French deep state (police, justice, administration) – perceived as oppressive, corrupt and even violent. [...](7) Marine Le Pen’s nationalism meets the unrepentant globalism of Emmanuel Macron - The Economisthttp://www.economist.com/news/europe/21719806-marine-le-pens-nationalism-meets-unrepentant-globalism-emmanuel-macron-frances-presidentialFrance’s presidential race is a clash of worldviewsMarine Le Pen’s nationalism meets the unrepentant globalism of Emmanuel Macron From the print edition | EuropeMar 30th 2017PARISWHAT did Marine Le Pen, the head of France’s National Front, expect to gain by visiting Moscow on March 24th? Her core supporters relished seeing her with Vladimir Putin, a strong woman standing next to a strongman. Ms Le Pen came away claiming that the world now belongs to nationalist populists such as Mr Putin, Donald Trump, India’s Narendra Modi and, implicitly, herself. Interestingly, the visit did not seem aimed at the usual goal of candidates who go abroad: reassuring voters that they can safely be trusted with foreign policy. [...]Most French voters are not fond of Russia. In a Pew survey in 2015, 70% said they viewed Russia unfavourably and 85% did not trust Mr Putin. So Mr Macron is in the mainstream in calling Ms Le Pen’s fascination with him "toxic". Her bet, however, is that by celebrating Brexit and hobnobbing with the Russian autocrat, she can present herself as part of a glorious worldwide march of nationalists, who are destined to defeat pusillanimous globalisers such as Mr Macron. She told industrialists in Paris this week that as a "big country", France does not need others to prosper. She wants to limit foreign trade and migration, reinvigorate ties with France’s former African colonies and withdraw from the EU. She depicts Mr Macron, a former Rothschild banker, as a privileged child of finance in thrall to a crumbling EU "empire".François Heisbourg, a foreign-policy expert who has advised Mr Macron, worries that such a strategy could prove effective, especially in the second-round run-off. Public opinion is "hardly enamoured with globalisation", he notes. Matthew Goodwin of the University of Kent sees Ms Le Pen’s outreach to other populist leaders as an attempt to associate herself with "an alternative world order".Maybe so, but it is a scary one. A strategist for Ms Le Pen’s team recently travelled to London to tell investors that her plan to quit the euro and hold a referendum on EU withdrawal need be no more disruptive than Brexit. That would hardly be reassuring even if it were true, which it is not.Ms Le Pen says that what matters is not whether you are left or right, but whether you are a nationalist or a globalist. Mr Macron agrees. This week he told businessfolk in Paris that Brexit will prove a lamentable and costly error. He also flew 9,400km (5,840 miles) to the island of Réunion, a French territory in the Indian Ocean. Globalisation is a fact, he said; the answer is limited, "intelligent regulation". Plenty of French bigwigs agree, too. A Socialist former prime minister, Manuel Valls, endorsed Mr Macron this week, as did several centre-right senators.Yet some 40% of voters remain undecided. If, as polls currently suggest, the contest comes down to Mr Macron and Ms Le Pen in the second-round run-off, they will not be able to complain that they were not offered a clear choice.This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "Beyond the Hexagon"(8) Facebook Shut Downs pro Le Pen accounts before Electionhttp://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-14/facebook-scrambles-shut-down-pro-le-pen-accounts-electionFacebook Scrambles to Shut Down Pro Le Pen Accounts Before Electionby The_Real_FlyApr 14, 2017 4:50 PMThe first round of French elections will be held on April 23rd, prompting Facebook to shut down pro Le Pen accounts, which they deem to be 'fake.'In an effort to fight 'fake news' or misinformation, Facebook has targeted 30,000 'fake accounts' in order to control the information that its users consume.In a statement to AFP, the company said they were trying to "reduce the spread of material generated through inauthentic activity, including spam, misinformation, or other deceptive content that is often shared by creators of fake accounts."They are targeting accounts with the highest amount of traffic -- since they pose a grave threat to the croissant eating frog lovers in France.In addition to outright bans, the company, in conjunction with French media, are running 'fact checking' programs -- designed to fight 'fake news', heightening their efforts around the elections -- which spans from 4/23-5/7.All of this hysteria happened after Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump's twitter account this past November -- prompting officials to pressure Facebook and Twitter to do something about the brazen belittling and subversion of the main stream media. Last week, the company launched a tool to help its users identify 'fake news' in 14 countries -- including the U.S., France and Germany.About a month ago, Facebook disabled our Facebook account, after we posted a picture of Chuck Schumer with Vlad Putin. This was a widely circulated news story at the time, which involved zero deception or any of the hallmarks that could be construed as being 'fake news.' Nevertheless, we lost access to the account and have ceased using the platform since then.For those who publish independently and rely upon the 'socials' for traffic, heed the warnings given by Matt Drudge, founder of the Drudge Report, who compared them to ghettos -- corporate controlled denizens of propaganda.(9) Facebook disabled iBankCoin’s account after photo of Schumer with Putinhttp://ibankcoin.com/flyblog/2017/03/05/posting-picture-schumer-putin-facebook-diabled-ibankcoins-account-without-warning/After Posting This Picture of Schumer with Putin, Facebook Disabled iBankCoin’s Account, Without WarningDr. Fly Sun Mar 5, 2017 6:43pm EST 38 Comments views5284I’ve been blogging about stocks here since 2007 and never paid any attention to Facebook, until 2014. We’ve never had a lot of traffic coming from Facebook, with the majority of it coming directly from user bookmarks and Twitter. Our organic growth in traffic has been impressive, especially over the past 6 months — at a time when other finance sites have been struggling — because we’ve delved into politics and news events.According to Google Analytics, Facebook was our #2 social network last year, in terms of traffic referrals, and was, by far, our fastest growing (+455%). I was very excited to see some progress on the platform, especially since it was new to us and distributed our brand of content to brand new audiences. During the election season, several of our posts went viral on the platform and was driving impressive traffic stats for us — a small site headquartered in the liberal bastion of Princeton, NJ.Today I tried to log into our Facebook page and was met with this rebuttal: ‘Account Disabled’.We emailed the company and are awaiting their response. Our last post, which might’ve pissed off a Schumer fan at $FB, was this.Ironically, even though I lean to the right of center in politics, my family is democratic and has been friends with Schumer since the 70’s. We both hail from the same parts of Brooklyn, NY.Is this a case of censorship because iBankCoin has been discussing politics over the past 6 months and has been very critical of establishment shills in the media and in government? I don’t see how we can assume anything but that. The platform never gave me an issue when I provided fellow money managers, or pundits in the financial media, with EMERGENCY ASSHAT AWARDS — cussing and screaming away at my black heart’s delight. But the second I post a picture with Chucky Schumer and Vlad Putin, I get the fucking banhammer.Sad! Not nice!Is it a coincidence that we’ve been driven off the platform at the same time when the company proposed new rules to combat ‘Fake News’?     Facebook started testing related features and promised updates similar to what debuted this week in December. The solution to the spread of misinformation put the onus on Facebook users, not Facebook, to identify false stories. Third-party fact-checkers must agree to a fact-checking code of ethics.     Now it seems the tool’s been made available to more users. Facebook added a section on "disputed" news to its help tools. Users can see why stories were marked as disputed.     Facebook is flagging links to fake sites now, looks like: pic.twitter.com/N7xaWDkdYA     — Anna Merlan (@annamerlan) March 3, 2017Highly unlikely.Signing off, Fake News Operator, Former Wall Streeter, Le Fly(10) 'Fake News' can now be "disputed" on Facebookhttp://mashable.com/2017/03/04/facebook-fake-news-rollout/Facebook has quietly rolled out its long-awaited solution to fake newsNews can now be "disputed" on FacebookBy Emma HinchliffeMar 05, 2017Since people first started complaining about "fake news" on Facebook, the phrase has evolved—from a useful way to identify false-information-masquerading-as-traditional-news, to a term that means basically nothing, now wielded by President Donald Trump against stories he doesn't like, and also, drunk people in bars screaming about things and/or sports results they disagree with.But the original problem still genuinely exists. And Facebook finally came out with its long-awaited response to beginning to cut away at the issue.Spotted on Twitter on Friday night, the tool identifies links to sites known to produce misinformation. The tool cites third-party fact-checking organizations like Snopes and Politifact—the kind of sites that Trump supporters also like to dispute.     Facebook is flagging links to fake sites now, looks like: pic.twitter.com/N7xaWDkdYA     — Anna Merlan (@annamerlan) March 3, 2017Facebook started testing related features and promised updates similar to what debuted this week in December. The solution to the spread of misinformation put the onus on Facebook users, not Facebook, to identify false stories. Third-party fact-checkers must agree to a fact-checking code of ethics.Now it seems the tool's been made available to more users. Facebook added a section on "disputed" news to its help tools. Users can see why stories were marked as disputed.Image: screenshot/facebookFacebook also added information about how to flag a story as fake:Image: screenshot/facebookAs Facebook said, the tool isn't available to every user yet, but once it is, get ready to see some "disputed news" on your newsfeed. And then, be ready for the disputes over that.(11) Marine Le Pen interview with Financial Timeshttps://www.ft.com/content/21c43558-c32e-11e4-ac3d-00144feab7deMarine Le Pen lays out radical vision to govern FranceFinancial Timesby: Anne-Sylvaine Chassany and Roula Khalaf in ParisMarch 6, 2015She calls for the collapse of the EU and talks about nationalising banks. She sees the US as a purveyor of dangerous policies and Russia as a more suitable friend. She wants to bring an end to immigration and believes the republic is under Islamist assault.Radical as Marine Le Pen’s vision for France may be, the prospect of her National Front (FN) policies becoming reality is no longer pure fantasy."It’s the Front’s moment," Ms Le Pen declares in an interview with the Financial Times.Two months after the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine and a Jewish supermarket in Paris, the far-right party has cemented its standing as the most dynamic political force in a frightened and frustrated country; its 46-year-old leader now regarded as a possible winner of the presidency in 2017. Polls place the FN ahead of the centre-right UMP and ruling Socialist parties in the first round of this month’s local elections, with one giving it about 33 per cent of the vote.The soaring popularity of a party that for decades seemed consigned to the fringes has raised alarm bells across the political spectrum. President François Hollande spoke this week of the need to "snatch" voters back from the FN, calling its rise, in an interview with Le Parisien, "a collective failure".Much of the credit for the FN’s political momentum goes to Ms Le Pen’s deliberate efforts to enlarge her base since taking over the party in 2011, but also to the malaise afflicting a France in which the economy has stagnated for the past three years while unemployment has risen above 10 per cent.Ultimately, quitting the euro is the only solution, she says. "We are told it’s going to be catastrophic, that it will rain frogs, that the Seine will turn into a river of blood," she says. "There aren’t that many practical problems."To detoxify the FN’s brand, she has distanced herself from anti-semitic comments made by her father and party founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has described the gas chambers as "a detail" of the second world war. There are times, she says, when she and her father disagree. "But I am the president of the National Front and he’s the honorary president. I determine the . . . line."In a small office in a nondescript modern building in the Paris suburb of Nanterre, the fast-talking Ms Le Pen comes across as a single-minded politician, at ease with every subject while glossing over challenges or contradictions in her policies. "I’m not here to run a boutique. I’m here to reach power and to return it to the French people," she says. "That’s my role." Constantly in motion, and seemingly in a rush, she tends to sit on the edge of her seat, fiddles with her pen, combs her fingers through her blond hair or inhales on her electronic cigarette.Much of the political class still considers the FN a xenophobic party that spreads the politics of fear and has sanitised its façade but not its substance. A new book, Marine Le Pen Prise Aux Mots (Marine Le Pen taken at her word), questions whether the updating of her vocabulary amounts to real change at the FN.What is clear is that Ms Le Pen’s promise of simple solutions to seemingly intractable social and economic problems is striking a chord with a disenchanted public. [...]-- Peter Myerswebsite: http://mailstar.net/index.html