Hollande Continues to Prove that a Fake Left-Winger Is Worse than Most Right-Wingers

Yup. I feel exactly the same about the present occupant of the White House. Fake left winger indeed.

The Bush II neocons reconfigured the West into a Warsaw Pact-style system of “representative” governance floating around disconnected from the real levers of power. Fratboys drunk on power.

@ Ian: A modern jacquerie?

We’ve had a bit of experience with assertive Germans over the years. It didn’t go well, and the process was unpleasant, and at times somewhat pointed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague

Something about Hapsburgs, Defenestration, and 450 years of effort comes to mind.

Pig fucker, indeed, as are all of the faux-socialists in Europe. Dunno if they’ll ever get inside the buildings given police cordons, tear gas, etc., but #NuitDebout has been rumbling since the edict, and long before.

https://twitter.com/nuitdebout?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

#Global Debout is slated for May 15; here’s hoping it won’t get co-opted…too far.

@ mfi: isn’t the integrated EU military force all about keeping borders secure from those in diaspora seeking help? The same ones who are refugees due to the western Imperium’s wars?

At least the EU seems to be reconsidering passport-free travelers from Turkey as Erdogan commits war atrocities increasingly, as in Cizre.

These guys are just begging for marie le pen. French socialists may soon have their “pasok” moment at the next elections.

Although regarding Trump, I would actually vote for him over Hillary if those were my only two choices.

I’ve considered him a putz since his undermining of Ségolène Royal’s 2007 presidential campaign when she was the leader of the French Socialist Party.

Royal was probably the best chance for a socialist world leader – since the early 2000s – and her loss put put the conservative buffoon Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidency for the remaining two years of the Bush presidency.

Ian, consider writing an article about H Clinton’s CURRENT health insurance policy.

Apparently there would be a Medicare Public Option for those aged 55-64, & an ACA Public Option for those aged 18-54? Am I understanding this correctly?

Why not just have one Medicare Public Option for the aged 18-64 (the premium could be partially actuarially based on age)?

Why should I believe H Clinton? H Clinton & her hacks like Prof K constantly brag about her being “experienced, wonkish, knows the details”, & dismissive of Sanders as a lightweight. Yet AFAICT H Clinton is a Trump Jr in terms of continual flip-flopping, & NOT specifying detailed policies, albeit not as extreme of a flip-floppa or lightweight as Trump.

Thanks in advance to Ian or fellow commentor(s) for any reply!

One of hillary’s first efforts will be resurrecting obama’s grand bargain. To “save” SS, of course. So 1984.

@ mfi: Succinct, would you care to elaborate? My impression was that Merkel’s advocacy for implementing the long-time proposal was about ‘keeping our values’ as the EU was mooting the
Schengen Agreement. But I poked around and found some older articles with headlines like this one at the Telegraph: ‘‘Create an EU army to keep back the Russians; Jean-Claude Juncker suggests European Commission president says pooling Europe’s defence resources could help send a message to Vladimir Putin’

NATO hates the notion as robbing military funding that should ‘obviously’ go to NATO (and the US, of course), op-ed writers maintaining that Cameron is against it because he wants it renegotiated, etc.

But as you likely know, Israel, Bahrain, Qatar, and Kuwait (iirc) are to build nato bases in Brussels. Pretty large Umbrella organization by now.

So is the timing about Ukraine?

The only reason to go to a unified military would be to have an increased (i.e. from zero) say in policy.

That was the thinking twenty years ago, and Washington was dead-set against the idea for that very reason.

If it’s getting the green light now, presumably the calculation is that the Euro leadership is now so completely beholden to Washington that the issue is moot. But in that case, there’s also no longer any obvious reason for Euro citizens to want it in the first place.

I have written for a few years now that the Eurozone has 6 fatal flaws:

1. The lack of a fair and democratic fiscal and debt union
2. A weak, and capricious, central bank interested only in defending an unsustainable status quo
3. An insolvent and predatory banking sector
4. Europe internal mercantilist trading patterns
5. Thoroughly corrupt political classes
6. A ruling kleptocratic class of the rich

All of these would need to be resolved for what has been called the construction of Europe to go forward. To date none have been and only a few have been even tangentially addressed. Hollande is very much an example of point 5. I remember when Hollande was elected and progressives were all impressed, a SOCIALIST was elected in France. I tried to point out that this did not mean what they thought it meant and that he would be a major disappointment. France has a strong, top-down central state and its president is a semi-dictator. All the major parties, whatever their name or supposed orientation, are elitist to the core. These elites have far more in common with each other than they do with the French people, and they act in similar ways. They use the powers of the state to do what they think is good for the French people whether the French people like it or not.

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote about the hypocrisy of such “dominant and privileged groups” and “the unconscious and conscious identification of their special interests with general interests and universal values”. That is, in their minds, if it is good for them and their class, it is by definition good for the French people. So they should just shut up and take their medicine. What strikes me is how similar the French Socialists are to classic Wilsonian liberalism: elitist, paternalistic, rabidly anti-populist, pro-corporatist, and interventionist.

Europe also had another significant problem: how to square the free flow of peoples with maintaining and protecting the cultures and languages, especially of smaller groups. It never made any sense, but in good economic times, these contradictions could be massaged. But those good times are long gone.

The death knell came when Angela Merkel destroyed Greece in part as an example of German power but mostly, and even more hypocritically, as a backdoor bailout of German (and French and Dutch) banks. A report came out recently that stated that only about 5% of the bailout money stayed in Greece the other 95% went to the bank bailout. This was considered a great, if quickly forgotten, discovery, even though it was a point that some of us had been making for 5 years.

Compare this treatment of an EZ and EU member to Germany’s acceptance of a million Syrian refugees. The Germans and Merkel are, if anything, are as incoherent as anyone. I have often wondered why she didn’t simply invite a million Greeks to settle there. They would be much easier to assimilate than the Syrians. I sometimes wonder too how Germany’s declining population (and workforce) figured into Merkel’s decisions. But then I tell myself Merkel was probably thinking something like this. Millions of migrants/refugees are headed not so much to Europe as specifically to Germany. If Germany takes the lead in accepting a large number of these, it will gain the moral high ground to dump even larger numbers of refugees on its neighbors. This plan rather spectacularly failed with many states refusing to accept refugees. Hence Merkel’s shady deal with the corrupt and completely untrustworthy Erdogan. At the same time the European Commission is threatening to fine states that do not accept refugees/migrants 250,000 euros per refugee. The EU is already falling apart, but it is actions like this one, I think, that will do it in as member states rebel against or simply ignore EU central authority.

@ Wendy Davis

Erdogan isn’t committing atrocities. PKK is doing that. It was PKK that broke the ceasefire and PKK whose continued terrorism against Kurds who make up the majority of AKP support base, brought the fighting to its current state.

Erdogan is a man committed to democracy and secularism and always was. Hence why he isn’t banning HDP and only prosecuting those who used their personal vehicles to supply weapons to the PKK. Erdogan has always believed in representing the will of the people and protecting minorities which is also why confiscated properties of Armenians were returned and the 1916 genocide acknowledged.

PKK on the other hand is committed to dictatorship and rule by fear. It never respected the ceasefire and did not enter the political process. Indeed, it continued to wage war till Erdogan finally said enough and let the TSK begin operations to clear the PKK from its borders.

PKK are not freedom fighters and the vast majority of Kurds side with the AKP which unlike the PKK, has protected their rights while PKK beats them up and extorts them as well as kidnap their children.

@ Hugh

This is the same Tom who pops up with breathless “analysis” and a rooted aversion to providing links. His most recent piece of shamelessness was trying to pretend that Turkey feeds clothes and houses its refugees in purpose built heated camps with power and water and most importantly sanitation.

Turkey does have some show camps which house around 200,000 Syrian refugees many if not most of whom are of Turkic origin. The remaining 2.3 million that’s two million three hundred thousand are left to starve on the streets and survive by begging or sending their children out to work in sweat shops or worse.

If you want to see what the reality is the UK independent ran an article with a series of photos showing what life is really like for refugees in Turkey:

Pictures of life for Turkey’s 2.5 million Syrian refugees

Distressing though they are those photos are mild.

“Shameless asshole” doesn’t even begin to describe this shill. I suggest you treat him with the contempt he’s earned time and time again and ignore him.

Weren’t there published reports his adviser, in Canada I believe, could have been elsewhere, was assuring the oligarchs that his opposition to free trade was a pretense? Of course Clinton was no different, nor Dean, you would have had to go as far left as Kucinich to assure fair deals for the workers.