At the gates of power: when will the CIA assassinate Marine Le Pen?

[Paul Rigby]

Marine Le Pen will not put up with any nonsense from BBC reporter

Published on Oct 11, 2016

[video=youtube_share;8Sfhc_e5P88]http://youtu.be/8Sfhc_e5P88[/video]

[Paul Rigby]

Marine Le Pen's Russian links under US scrutiny

Henry Samuel
21 DECEMBER 2016 8:46PM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/...-scrutiny/

American intelligence has been asked to look into Marine Le Pen's links to Russia, following her request for a $30 million (£24.3 million) loan to help fund her French presidential campaign from a bank close to Vladimir Putin, according to reports.

Ms Le Pen's Front National party has made no secret of the fact that it has taken foreign loans to help bankroll its presidential campaigns because, it has argued, French banks refuse to stump up the funds.

But in light of allegations of Russian interference in the US election of Donald Trump, scrutiny has now turned to Ms Le Pen, who is polled to reach the final round of France's presidential elections in May

According to Le Canard Enchaîné, the French investigative and satirical weekly, Mike Turner, a Republican on the House of Representatives' permanent select committee on intelligence, urged the US director of national intelligence to look into Ms Le Pen's Russia links.

In an extract of a letter dated November 28 to James Clapper, who heads up 17 American intelligence organisations and agencies, he notes that the Front National "publicly acknowledged that it had received a $9.8 million loan from a Russian bank with links to the Kremlin, allegedly brokered by a sanctioned Russian Duma deputy, according to French press reporting."

The bank in question was First Czech Russian Bank (FCRB) in Moscow. Mr Turner goes on: "In February 2016, the FN asked Russia for a $30 million load to fund the FN leader Marine Le Pen's 2017 campaign.

In May, Le Pen said in an interview that she will recognise Crimea as Russian territory if she wins the French presidency."

According to Le Canard, Mr Turner urged Mr Clapper to obtain "more details" on "this vast campaign" destined to "wage an information war against the United States and other countries whose interests go against those of Russia."

Earlier this month, the CIA concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Mr Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the US electoral system.

The concern over Russia's links with French politics came as Austria's far Right party signed an alliance with President Putin's United Russia party and offered to act as a go-between for Mr Trump and the Kremlin.

Heinz-Christian Strache, the leader of Austria's Freedom Party (FPO) travelled to Moscow on Monday to sign a co-operation agreement with Sergei Zheleznyak, United Russia's deputy leader who has been targeted by travel bans and asset freezes under EU sanctions.

The FPO is leading Austrian opinion polls ahead of national elections, which could be as early as May 2017. The FPO has denied allegations that it receives funding from Moscow.

Ms Le Pen, who is backed by up to a third of the electorate, has previously denied that financing from a Russian-owned bank influenced the party's policy, noting that her admiration for Mr Putin predated any funding.

Cécome Vaissié, a Russia specialist, told Le Canard that it was no surprise that Russia should seek to get involved in French politics. "It's the mentality of KGB practice. You buy people and place your pawns, saying to yourself that they'll be useful at some point."

But she said that Moscow was equally turning its attentions to François Fillon, the mainstream Right-wing Republicans' presidential nominee and favourite to be France's next head of state.

Known to be close to Mr Putin, Mr Fillon has supported strategic ties with the Kremlin, advocating for an alliance with Russia and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to fight the extremist group Islamic State. He received praise from Moscow for his primary victory.

[Richard Coleman]

Marine Le Pen's Russian links under US scrutiny

Henry Samuel
21 DECEMBER 2016 8:46PM

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/...-scrutiny/

American intelligence has been asked to look into Marine Le Pen's links to Russia, following her request for a $30 million (£24.3 million) loan to help fund her French presidential campaign from a bank close to Vladimir Putin, according to reports.

Ms Le Pen's Front National party has made no secret of the fact that it has taken foreign loans to help bankroll its presidential campaigns because, it has argued, French banks refuse to stump up the funds.

But in light of allegations of Russian interference in the US election of Donald Trump, scrutiny has now turned to Ms Le Pen, who is polled to reach the final round of France's presidential elections in May

According to Le Canard Enchaîné, the French investigative and satirical weekly, Mike Turner, a Republican on the House of Representatives' permanent select committee on intelligence, urged the US director of national intelligence to look into Ms Le Pen's Russia links.

In an extract of a letter dated November 28 to James Clapper, who heads up 17 American intelligence organisations and agencies, he notes that the Front National "publicly acknowledged that it had received a $9.8 million loan from a Russian bank with links to the Kremlin, allegedly brokered by a sanctioned Russian Duma deputy, according to French press reporting."

The bank in question was First Czech Russian Bank (FCRB) in Moscow. Mr Turner goes on: "In February 2016, the FN asked Russia for a $30 million load to fund the FN leader Marine Le Pen's 2017 campaign.

In May, Le Pen said in an interview that she will recognise Crimea as Russian territory if she wins the French presidency."

According to Le Canard, Mr Turner urged Mr Clapper to obtain "more details" on "this vast campaign" destined to "wage an information war against the United States and other countries whose interests go against those of Russia."

Earlier this month, the CIA concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Mr Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the US electoral system.

The concern over Russia's links with French politics came as Austria's far Right party signed an alliance with President Putin's United Russia party and offered to act as a go-between for Mr Trump and the Kremlin.

Heinz-Christian Strache, the leader of Austria's Freedom Party (FPO) travelled to Moscow on Monday to sign a co-operation agreement with Sergei Zheleznyak, United Russia's deputy leader who has been targeted by travel bans and asset freezes under EU sanctions.

The FPO is leading Austrian opinion polls ahead of national elections, which could be as early as May 2017. The FPO has denied allegations that it receives funding from Moscow.

Ms Le Pen, who is backed by up to a third of the electorate, has previously denied that financing from a Russian-owned bank influenced the party's policy, noting that her admiration for Mr Putin predated any funding.

Cécome Vaissié, a Russia specialist, told Le Canard that it was no surprise that Russia should seek to get involved in French politics. "It's the mentality of KGB practice. You buy people and place your pawns, saying to yourself that they'll be useful at some point."

But she said that Moscow was equally turning its attentions to François Fillon, the mainstream Right-wing Republicans' presidential nominee and favourite to be France's next head of state.

Known to be close to Mr Putin, Mr Fillon has supported strategic ties with the Kremlin, advocating for an alliance with Russia and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to fight the extremist group Islamic State. He received praise from Moscow for his primary victory.

Kinda sounds to me like Russian diplomacy is beginning to run rings around Washington. Anybody produced proof that Putin is behind all this, or that the banks are "close" to him? And since when does the US have any business investigating relations between a foreign political party and a foreign bank? Hasn't anybody here heard of Citizens United, which lets foreign interests put money into OUR politics??? And what about the financial relationships (otherwise known as money laundering) between US banks and such upstanding specimens as Pinochet, runaway thieving "businessmen" from Venezuela and Columbia and various crime lords throughout the hemisphere?

[David Guyatt]

It hasn't been hard to run rings around Washington in recent times, given their fairly rigid adherence to the hegemonic policy that's been followed for the last few decades.

It seems the nassy evil ol' Russian bank that lent Le Pen's Front Nationale money has now folded and she has to return the loan. So much for the Putin orchestrated villainous attempt to pervert the course of French politics. So much too for this particular gambit from the US IC dirty tricks department.

[Paul Rigby]

Watch Marine Le Pen Slam CNN False Narrative on Crimea

http://21stcenturywire.com/2017/02/07/wa...on-crimea/

21st Century Wire says…

CNN's Christiane Amapisspoor seems quite rattled and reluctant to allow Marine Le Pen, the French presidential favorite, to speak her mind about the situation in Crimea… and CNN's coverage of it.
Watch the video below and see how Amanpour tries to interrupt Le Pen at every turn to insert the narrative that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in the Ukraine while Le Pen is trying to point out the fact that Crimea was not invaded by Russia and that Crimean citizens are overwhelmingly in agreement they are Russian.

[video=youtube_share;p_XeQs5n5js]http://youtu.be/p_XeQs5n5js[/video]

What a ludicrous tosser Pisspoor is.

[Paul Rigby]

French elite chose their new pawn, Emmanuel Macron, former Director of Banque Rothschild

by Cosimo

February 10, 2017

http://thesaker.is/french-elite-chose-th...othschild/

The Short Version: In a shocker on Jan. 25, the French elite moved to destroy the right-wing candidate, François Fillon with a scandal that may be fake. The elite is clearing the way for their new pawn, Emmanuel Macron, a former Director of Banque Rothschild. Macron's misdeeds are revealed here. The dissidents shine an unwanted light on the Macron-Rothschild connection and in return, the elite seemed to have gotten the police to put unspecified arrest charges against the well-known dissident Alain Soral. The FN will likely lose the second round of the elections. The Socialists, former pals of the elite, are running fourth in a field of four.

France: Scandal-Shock in the presidential race

Recall that in France, the April/May elections are for just the presidency. Legislative elections will follow in early June, but in the Fifth Republic, the President is extraordinarily powerful and the Senate and Chamber of Deputies are not.

On January 25, the French election campaign was thrown into turmoil when the oligarchs made it known that they had switched support to another candidate than the usual right-winger. Their tricks are quite visible no.

The background ins that France's globalist elites are in a panic. As elites elsewhere are also in a panic, really. Across Europe in 2017, voters are ready to kick out the oligarchy's pawns with elections in France, Italy, Germany and perhaps Holland. American just elected an anti-globalist president. That's Huuuge!!

In France, the oligarchy finds itself cornered, which only happens once or twice a century. The National Front is at record strength, as anti-elite as ever. The French elite enjoyed service from the utterly fraudulent "Socialist" Party since the summer of 1914, but in the last 5 years, the "Socialists" set new records for unpopularity and have little chance of winning elections any time soon, if ever.

Why the Elites Turned on Fillon

A casual observer might think the French oligarchs would be happy with François Fillon, a regular politician from the party now known as Les Républicains. That's the old UMP, with a fresh name in 2015 but nothing else changed. Fillon was Prime Minister in the right-wing and very pro-American Sarkozy government, 2007-2012. Fillon was a safe bet if the polls can be believed, they showed him winning the second round of elections, the "knock-out round."

This comes as shock a to people, especially outside France, but the oligarchs have rejected Fillon. A list of his "defects" reveal a stubborn French patriot who defends Christians and family values, who wants French-Russian friendship, and who is not a dyed-in-the-wool Europhile. This ordinary right-wing politician didn't support the Maastrich Treaty which is a foundational document of the EU. That was 1992, and since then he rebuilt bridges with the Europhile elite, or so people thought. Fillon wants to end the sanctions and he's also calling for an EU-Russian conference to work out new security arrangements. Fillion is also supportive of Syrian Christians, who have been a main target of the terrorists. In 2015, he spoke at a meeting of 1600 supporters of this endangered minority. (http://www.lepoint.fr/politique/francois...424_20.php)

It's shocking how Christian churches have been so silent on this state-sponsored attack on their coreligionists. That silence means that Fillon has gone out on a limb in opposing the genocide of Christians because the US, France, Saudi Arabia, even Israel are up to their eyeballs in supporting the terrorists.

I could summarize it by quoting Gérard Bardy, current president of the Union de la Presse francophone-France (UPF) and an author of books on Charles De Gaulle. "In my latest book, "De Gaulle was Right, The Vissionary" (Ed. Télémaque), I do not hesitate to say that F rançois is, to this day, the only heir to Gaullisme." ( http://www.facebook.com/groups/161767340689246/ )

The oligarchs schemed quietly fo two years to build a brand-new candidate to oppose Fillon, but the immediate trigger may have been an interview which Fillon gave to both Le Monde and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published January 22, so 3 days before January 25, when The Chained Duck quacked its bombshell allegation. ( http://www.lemonde.fr/international/arti..._3210.html )

January 25 the elite's chosen date to rock France with this scandal. Le Canard Enchaîné claiming that Fillon, as a Senator put his wife and two adult children on his expense account as his aides. There is no doubt they were paid from his parliamentary expense account. This type of nepotism is common practice among French politicians on the left and on the right. The salaries are in the public record and it's legal. This nepotism is only illegal if the relatives didn't work to earn their salaries. At time of this writing, Fillon's supporters claim there is no evidence He did anything illegal, and they say it's all cooked up.

The oligarchs could have uncorked the scandal at any time in the last 20 years. They could have uncorked it before the LR primary of Nov. 20 and 27, which would have caused the victory of Nicholas Sarkozy. Why not December 1, after their favored candidate didn't win ? The oligarchs were clever and disciplined. They waited out December and most of January so their scandal would gain the greatest effect. When Le Canard Enchaîné ran the scandal on Jan. 25, Les Républicains didn't have enough time to replace Fillon with someone else. Alain Juppé, the runner-up in November understand what was afoot, that the oligarchs support Macron, so he ruled himself out of a second chance to be the LR candidate.

Even if the charge were true, it's worth noting how artificial this scandal really is, because that artificiality reveals a deeper truth. This routine scandal has been magnified and allowed to be sat on, probably for many years, which would support a suspicion that the scandal was cooked up. It's also crucial to keep the sense of scale. This scandal, if it's true, cost French taxpayers €800,000 over ten years. By contrast, as w will see below, Macron's scandal cost France at least €9 billion, so 100 times greater. The only way the oligarchs could inflate this relatively small account-padding into a career-destroying mega-story is because the elites own all of the mass media and have the power to turn any story into whatever size they want. This sizing is only partially based on the collective gullibility of their readers. Gullibility can be overcome with more repetition, as Goebbels noted in the 1940's. To rephrase, compare €80,000 a year to the €14 billion a year revenues of Alstom's power division, described below.

Emmanuel Macron, Director at Banque Privee Edmond de Rothschild S.A.

When the oligarchs pushed out Fillon, it became undeniable that Macron is their man, but in fact the process to create Macron the Candidate started two years ago.

Who is Macron ? Until he resigned on August 30, 2016, he was the «Ministère de l'Économie et des Finances» a second-tier post where he is best knows for a labor law which cuts salaries, allows employers to demand work on Sunday, and the usual right-wing stuff, but his greater importance is his contribution to the de-industrialization of France, where the giant, Alston was sold off to its American rival GE for a song). But since Macron also spent years as a Director at Banque Rothschild, he became a puppet of the rich and powerful, and they can work magic and turn Macron into a temporary somebody.

Macron and his Rothschild connection is really bad news for the French. Here is why:

The last time the Rothschilds put a puppet into the presidential office, it was to overthrow the great President Charles De Gaulle, who had become anti-imperialist. At the time, all the American Lügenpresse told us was that he kicked NATO out of France. In reality, De Gaulle's offenses were far greater. Few Americans known that he used the prestige of his office to oppose the US wars in Southeast Asia. His speech in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (Sept. 1, 1966) is breathtaking in its deep and eloquent denunciation of the American Empire. A French transcript of that speech is at http://www.charles-de-gaulle.org/pages/l...e-1966.php The most important offense is that De Gaulle, as a French patriot, was not interested in a European Union where France would lose her sovereignty, and De Gaulle had managed to Make France Great Again with a strong economy based on industrial competitiveness. The cherry on the top was his remark that "Some people even feared that the Jews, until then scattered about, but who were still what they had always been, that is an elite people, sure of themselves and domineering, would, once assembled again on the land of their ancient greatness, turn into a burning and conquering ambition." (press conference, Nov. 27, 1967 in the wake of the 1967 War). The elites decided De Gaulle had to go.

The chosen tool was Georges Pompidou. Like Macron, Pompidou was a relative nobody, but he was a former Director-General of Banque Rothschild. Behind-the-scenes support was vital for Pompidou to stage an insider revolt against Charles De Gaulle. Once Pompidou became president, he gave La Banque de France over to private bankers in early 1973. Dissidents scathingly call the legislation «la Loi Pompidou, Giscard, Rothschild». Destroying the Bank Of France was a huge treason. From 1936-1973, the sovereign French government ran its Bank of France to serve the public. The government borrowed money for public works at little or no interest. Bank policies were designed to grow the economy. Public Banking. It was the key to creating "The Glorious Thirty", the 30 years of postwar economic growth and prosperity (1945-1975). Stripping France of its national bank killed off that prosperity in a few short years.

So Pompideou stands as a great warning. When a Rothschild pawn is running for high office, the people should be very concerned about what comes next. Unfortunately, the French Lügenpresse swept all that under the rug and turned De Gaulle into first a bogeyman, and later a remote icon of history. The only people who bring to light how this is relevant today, and how France needs another De Gaulle are the French dissidents which I discuss below.

The French business press has mentioned that Macron was a Director of Banque Rothschild, but this is not much discussed. Only the dissidents give it the prominence it deserves.

The French public know two big bad things about Macron. Alstom and the Macron Law which attacks labor. The third, the Rothschild connection lies hidden in plain view.

Because the Macron Law it affects all working people in France, the polemics around it have attracted widespread attention. It allows top-down changes to labor contracts with the consent of whichever trade union represents 50% of the workers. It abolished the restrictions on Sunday work, an important item and a serious blow to family life a strategic goal of anti-humanist liberals, since strong families are a basic protection against predatory capitalism. It ends the 35 hour work week and allow companies to demand 46 hours work for up to 12 weeks a year. This law is another attack on the working class, with the propaganda that it will increase employment.

Macron wrote this law, but in an endless string of frauds, the French media call it la Loi El Khomri even though El Khomri, the Labor Minister, didn't help write it and seems to have opposed it. (fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myriam_El_Khomri) Macron says long and loud that he would have gone much further in this law, if political realities hadn't restrained him.

The Alstom matter is more serious, really.

Macron's role in the sell-off of Alstom is very strategic damage. It de-industrializes France.

With his portfolio in the "Socialist" government, Macron should have worked to prevent the sell-off of Alstom to GE. This stands as a second clear warning that Rothschild puppets can inflict serious damage.

Alstom was one of France's few remaining high-tech dynamos, a key to French prosperity in the 21st Century. Nuclear reactors, high speed trains, electricity transmission, etc. GE has a similar set of industries, so the American giant offered to buy the nuclear power and electrical transmission part of Alstom for €12.35 billion, but not the train business. That was a paltry sum for businesses with an annual turnover of over €14 billion. Any businessman would understand GE's initial offer as a fire sale price but Alstom was not in distress. Even worse, after all the flim-flam such as a US Department Of "Justice" fine ($970 million) for bribing Indonesian officials, French share-holders ended up with less than €3.7 billion. French people made a public outcry and an effort to prevent losing this jewel, but to no avail. Macron should have prevented this catastrophe, and he did nothing because he's a neoliberal with masters to please and amazing at is seems his French masters serve American masters. The American website, Counterpunch, ran a detailed story on Alstom two months ago, although it failed to highlight the role of Macron as the most responsible "Socialist" minster. Link:

Behind GE's Takeover of Alstom Energy: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/02/b...om-energy/

Emmanuel Macron, the Candidate

In the last two years, the oligarchic press, the French Lügenpresse, has been trying to turn the nobody Macron into a major candidate, creating a big PR campaign. The French website Le Vent Se Leve (The Wind Rises) has a good short exposé at http://lvsl.fr/medias-ont-fabrique-candidat-macron "How The Medias Fabricated Macron The Candidate". The exposé note that more articles were published about Macron than all three of the other "Socialist" candidates combined, a peer group that included Hamonthe "Socialist" presidential candidate. Polling data from before this campaign started, in late 2014, shows only 6% of the public considered Macron as a serious candidate. The way the glossy press portrayed him, you'd think the 1970's pop star, Johnny Halliday, was being created all over again. Minus the good mood music and the Ford Mustang driving-on-the-beach commercial, however.

In April 2016, Macron started a political movement,"En Marche", and it was clear he was preparing for a presidential run and he was soliciting campaign money. When he resigned on Aug. 30, President Hollande called him "a methodical traitor" so the bridge to the "Socialist" Party was truly burned. What's curious, so odd and artificial, is that Macron waited until November 16 to announce his run for the presidency. That delay indicates Macron has run a stealth campaign.

Macron's ties to Rothschild are in the French media if you know to search it out, but the ties don't get the prominence and the analysis that it should. The Lügenpresse describes Macron as an "independent centrist." He is "independent" of everything except the oligarchs. "Centrist"? Really ? No, this label is as meaningless in France as anywhere. There's only one polite label for Macron; he is a neoliberal. That means fundamentalist capitalism where, without exaggeration, nothing matters except the accumulation of capital.

Alain Soral, the Dissident Who Must Be Silenced

The critical importance of the French dissidents is that they make the connection between Macron and Rothschild, as well as Pompidou to Rothschild. The dissidents are the only people in France who describe 1968 as a Color Revolution created by hidden networks, and the dissidents also lead the way in describing De Gaulle as a great patriot, when the mass media tries to paint him as an authoritarian nut, just some obscure old general. A lot hinges on how people evaluate "1968". It was sold, then and now, as being spontaneous, anti-authoritarian, romantic, etc. It was a great sales job and only the dissidents unravel the marketing of "May, 1968".

The dissidents are a major force in France. Their main power is word of mouth. They are sprinkled throughout France, at most income levels and ethnicities, so they can bend the ear of non-political French citizens. I estimate there are about 250,000 dissidents, and obviously Alain Soral one of the most prominent. The main dissident web site is egaliteetreconciliation.fr/ and it averages 144,000 unique visitors a day. Almost none of this is in English. This is French nationalism at work and one of their goals is preservation of French culture and French language.

If ever the French oligarchs needed to suppress the dissidents, it's now. The arguments of the dissidents are strong, but their biggest obstacle has been the passivity of the French people. Passivity is ending in France as it is elsewhere. So the elite decided it was time to call in the police.

The French police have been trying to arrest Alain Soral since Thursday, Feb. 2. The police haven't stated why they want to arrest him, but the leaders of the "Socialist" government have said in just so many words, that they want to permanently silence Soral and Dieudonné. To quote Valls, the recently departed prime minister, "Death! … Uh, I mean social death!" So yeah, the oligarchs want the dissidents silenced for the duration of the elections.

Soral and fellow dissidents have been on the receiving end of a concerted campaign of intimidation with arrests and trumped-up civil suits. This has been going on for a decade and it's a case of attempted murder social death by a thousand cuts. It drains the dissidents of money and energy.

Unlike the US, France does not have free speech. Some topics can't be discussed openly without fear of arrest. Comments which can be interpreted as racist, as "hate speech", or as "supporting terrorism", or merely as revisions of details from the official history of the Holocaust, or simply annoying a few well-connected Jews, are all prosecutable under French law. In the US, back in the old days when free speech was not all that free, we had gray zones for artistic license, for humor, and for speaking when reporters were not present. France never developed these gray zones because they had free speech from 1881 until the new laws of 1972 and 1990 slowly crept up on them.

One example can give you an idea how this works. Dieudonné, an Afro-French humorist fills large halls at all his performances, at 50 Euro a ticket. He's extremely talented, insightful, and his humor is gentle and fierce. This is all too dangerous and subversive. For a Facebook posting, he was sentenced to 200 days in jail or 30,000 Euros fine, reduced on appeal to 2 months or 10,000 Euros. After the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, he posted, «Je me sens Charlie Coulibaly.» "I feel like Charlie Coulibaly." It was a hybrid name. Charlie for Charlie-Hebdo, the humor magazine where the victims had worked. Like Dieudonné , they had been humorists, and Dieudonné understood that not everyone likes funny men. Coulibaly, supposedly one of the terrorists, was AfroFrench. Well, Dieudonné is Afro-French, too. Dieudonné said he was trying to do the Christian thing and to lovingly reconcile these two opposites which he said he also finds within himself. He told the court that he "condemned the terrorist attack, holding back nothing, and without any ambiguity." The upshot is that in France, the government decides what's funny.

Soral's Views On The Election

In an interview on Saturday, Alain Soral had some interesting comments. https://youtu.be/Yl2TBBy3HII

Soral says the globalists are very concerned after Trump's election and "the loss of America". They believe they have no choice but to hold on to France «à tout prix», "at any cost." He says the Empire is in panic mode because Hamon, Fillon, and the FN are all against the globalists.

Soral says the "globalist oligarchy" expected and wanted Juppé to win the LR primary. For them, Fillon is "too French, too Catholic, and not submissive towards the Empire." He notes that the attacks on Fillon are coming from the globalist right-wing, not as you'd expect from the left. The globalists see Fillon, even with his Bilderberger membership, as a member of the "grande bourgeoisie" and too close to Putin. So the oligarchs need Macron and they are doing everything to puff up Macron "who incarnates the candidate of the Empire." Soral says Macron is a nobody, an of course the Empire magnifies Macron's small accomplishments into the serious doings of a serious candidate, the same as they did with Manuel Valls before they had to dump him Easily made, easily broken, like a pie in the Mary Poppins musical.

French Polls

Let me end this essay by asking what the polls do or do not reveal. First what do the polls say, and then the question of their credibility.

Broadly, the polls claim that Marine Le Pen will be the victor in the first round, with 29% or so of the vote. But in the second and decisive round, she will be defeated, either by Macron with 66% of the vote, or by Fillon with 58%. These are approximate numbers from an assortment of polls. So all the polls say the NF will not gain the presidency.

However, it's a serious question to ask if these polls are credible. The American pollsters lied outrageously during the 2016 campaign. I hindsight, we can see this was a cross-organizational attempt to create an electoral reality with the use of well-coordinated lying. This stunt was also international and crossed channels. Three weeks before the elections, Paddy Power, an Irish betting firm, "called the election" for Clinton and paid off all the bets on her, saying there was no point in waiting. They paid out a few million needlessly. One can only speculate how Paddy Power was reimbursed, in cash or in more favorable treatment of internet betting,; it's trivial, really. So the manipulation of perceptions is not just a theory, it's a fact.

A history of honesty isn't worth a lot in a very high stakes situation, which is what we have here.

French polls must raise and then answer three questions. First, were citizens really candid with pollsters who represent the establishment ? Second, which people will actually go to the voting urns, and third, how can the pollsters estimate the stay-at-homes ?

At the March, 2014 municipal elections, French voters stayed home in record numbers, causing a tidal wave of losses for the "Socialists". They lost towns they had held for 100 years. The polls were wrong because voters boycotted the "Socialist" Party that ignored the working people. In 2014, the FN only gained 2 or 3 towns and a modest number of seats. But in the last 3 years, as the economic crisis grinds on, the FN has gained voters and more legitimacy. So it's harder to rule out an FN victory.

There's no need to mention Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of the Left Party. Fringe leftists get more coverage than they have electoral prospects.

[Paul Rigby]

If the major American objective is now the destruction of the Euro, as such as William F. Engdahl argue (see below), is Le Pen the ultimate weapon to smash the Franco-German alliance at the heart of the European Union?

Will Trump Destroy the Euro?

F. William Engdahl,

Friday, February 10, 2017

http://www.4thmedia.org/2017/02/will-tru...-the-euro/

In his first few days in office as President, The Donald' has fired off so many Executive Orders and aggressive tweets that much of the world is dizzy. One policy that's clearly emerging from the smoke of immigrant ban attempts, XL Keystone pipeline approvals and bellicose threats against Iran, is the Trump team economic agenda, called by Assistant to the President and Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, "national economics."

The key targets so far are China and Germany, two nations with the largest trade surplus with the United States. A closer look, however, suggests Washington is preparing to launch what James Rickards, sometimes advisor on capital markets to the US intelligence community, refers to as "currency wars."

Aside from the obvious China target, the second and perhaps more important target is to destroy the Euro and its European Monetary System. Here Germany is at the heart, one reason, perhaps, why Chancellor Merkel seems to have severe gas pains whenever the name Trump is uttered.

On January 31, new US Trade Czar Peter Navarro accused Germany of using a "grossly undervalued euro to exploit" the US and Germany's EU partners. Navarro went on to call Germany, the core of the Eurozone economies, a de facto "currency manipulator." Get used to the term because well see it often in coming weeks.

The manipulation Navarro speaks of, however, is the very creation in 1999-2002 of the Euro single currency. The Euro, with Germany as its largest member, acts like an "implicit Deutsche Mark" Navarro charged, whose low valuation against the US dollar gives Germany a huge advantage against its principal trading partners.

Not surprisingly, Germany has protested vigorously. Angela Merkel immediately declared that monetary policy of the European Central Bank by treaty is mandated to control inflation in the Euro-zone as a whole, claiming further that Germany could not manipulate the euro even if it wanted to because the ECB is, by treaty, "independent."

That's only a half-truth, as of the 19 of the 28 member states of the European Union today in the Euro-zone, Germany, the Euro-zone economic giant, wields disproportionate influence, not day-to-day, but rather in shaping the very misbegotten construction of the Euro in the 1990's. Some little-known history is in order.

Securing Germany's Place for the Next Century'

While this all might sound like dry academic economics about currency manipulations, trade advantage and such, it conceals a Washington agenda that de facto calls for destruction of the Euro-zone as its ultimate mid-term goal.

The irony is that that Eurozone was bitterly opposed by then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl when the French, Italian and British heads of state popped it on a startled Kohl at the December, 1991 heads of state summit of European Economic Commission member countries at Maastricht, Holland where they signed a Treaty on European Union that promised full monetary union by end of 1999. There, Kohl was confronted with their proposal for a treaty establishing a single European currency, today's Euro, absent a single democratically-chosen European political state, elegantly referred to in Brussels as the "democratic deficit."

A skeptical France, Britain and Italy, fearing the new weight of an economic powerhouse called unified Germany, demanded surrender of the mighty Deutschemark and the power of her Bundesbank central bank, then the most respected in the world, to a new independent supranational structure to become known as the European Central Bank.

Germany agreed, ultimately, following months of hard horse-trading, on condition the new Euro-zone country members submit to the strict so-called Maastricht criteria for limits on public debt-to-GDP of 60% and annual public deficit limits of 3% of GDP, strict arbitrary conditions as drawn up by Hans Tietmeyer's Bundesbank.

I was actively engaged in following closely those developments at the time as a financial journalist. In the early 1990s I had the fortuitous opportunity to learn the private thoughts of the Danish EU Commissioner, Henning Christophersen. At the time of the Maastricht Treaty negotiations, Christophersen, who recently passed away, was responsible under EU Commission President Jacques Delors for economics and currency relations in the EEC (predecessor to the EU). He, in effect, was the Commissioner primarily responsible for bringing the several sides together into what became the Euro, one person we might say, quite informed of the closed-door debates and fights among member countries at the birth of the Euro.

In 1994 Christophersen told a fellow Danish economist whom I knew quite well, in the sidelines of a London finance conference, that the attitude of Germany and of especially Chancellor Kohl towards the introduction of the single currency, Euro, had "changed 180 degrees since 1991." He explained that in the intervening three years, the big banks of France and Italy had suffered deep crises and were gasping to survive (interestingly, they still are, even more sow.e.), while British banks were deep into a real estate debt crisis and no challenge to the robust German banks for domination of Europe credit and capital markets. "Deutsche Bank and the other top German banks convinced Kohl that, if done right, the Euro could secure Germany role at the head of Europe for the next Century or more."

I personally witnessed the changed view of Chancellor Kohl at a banking conference in Frankfurt shortly after. The once-foot-dragging Euro-skeptic Kohl told the assembled bankers that the Euro was the "key to bind Europe so no future wars would be possible." He got a standing ovation. He was a skilled orator when he chose to be. In short, the Euro-zone today is a German creation.

The Navarro Euro Agenda

As President, Donald Trump has recently attacked German car imports into the USA, threatening a punitive 35% import tariff on German BMWs made outside the USA. The German response was rather stupid in such a high-stakes diplomacy game, attacking the relative quality of "Made in USA" cars. German Economics Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, when asked what the US could do to get Germans to buy more American cars such as Chevrolets, snapped, "Build better cars." Not a smart chess play, Sigmar…

The real aim of the Navarro strategy vis-a-vis Germany, however, is not to boost sales of qualitatively inferior US made Chevys in Germany, and they are inferior I can personally attest. It's ultimately to wreck the highly-flawed and highly vulnerable Euro system, a potential rival to the role of the US dollar as world currency reserve.

Since 1944 and Bretton Woods, the global hegemony of America has rested on two main pillars: That the USA have a military unchallenged by any rival and that the US dollar remain the unchallenged world reserve currency, meaning, in essence, foreign nations finance Washington deficits ad infinitum.

Navarro-Ross Strategy Paper

As part of the Trump Presidential campaign backgrounders, then-campaign economic advisers Peter Navarro, economics professor at the University of California, and Wilbur Ross, private equity adviser and billionaire investor, teamed up to release an economic strategy paper for candidate Trump. That paper is what is behind Trump's cancelling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and his call for renegotiation of NAFTA. It is also behind President Trump's attacks on Germany as a "currency manipulator."

Today, of course, Peter Navarro is Trade Czar, head of a newly-created National Trade Council office in the White House. Ross is the new Commerce Secretary. Both are singing from the same sheet of music, and it implicitly calls for the destruction of the Euro-zone, using the argument that Germany disproportionately gains from the fixed Euro, while the United States and even periphery Euro-zone states like Italy, Portugal, Greece, even France, lose big-time.

Four days before Donald Trump took the oath as President, he gave a long interview to the London Times. In it he declared, "…you look at the European Union and it's Germany. Basically a vehicle for Germany."

Then on the issue of Germany and other EU countries taking in more than one million unscreened war refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and other predominately Muslim countries, Trump declared, "If they hadn't been forced to take in all of the refugees, so many, with all the problems that it, you know, entails, I think that you wouldn't have a Brexit. It probably could have worked out. But this was the final straw, this was the final straw that broke the camel's back. I think people want, people want their own identity, so if you ask me, others, I believe others will leave. (emphasis added-w.e.)

Trump's words were not taken out of the fumes he smells from his morning coffee. They came from Peter Navarro's September 29, 2016 White Paper. After Navarro blasts China for keeping its Yuan stable against its major export partner, USA, by buying US Treasury debt, he turns to Germany and the Euro:

"A similar problem exists because of the European Monetary Union. While the euro freely floats in international currency markets, this system deflates the German currency from where it would be if the German Deutschmark were still in existence."

Navarro continues:

"In effect, the weakness of the southern European economies in the European Monetary Union holds the euro at a lower exchange rate than the Deutschmark would have as a free-standing currency. This is a major reason why the US has a large trade-in-goods deficit with Germany-$75 billion in 2015-even though German wages are relatively high…The broader structural problem is an international monetary system plagued by widespread currency manipulation."

Navarro concludes with a note of defiance:

"Donald Trump has promised to use his Treasury Department to brand any country that manipulates its currency a "currency manipulator." This will allow the US to impose defensive and countervailing tariffs if the currency manipulation does not cease."

Ignoring for the time the fact that China, according to US Treasury criteria, today is no currency manipulator, and in fact has vigorously intervened in the past year or more to strengthen its Yuan against the dollar, the US Treasury rules require a period of one year good faith negotiation to declare Germany an official "currency manipulator" and impose various sanctions. So the stage is being set.

United Anti-Euro Front

The new US Ambassador-designate to the EU, Ted Malloch, gave an interview with Bloomberg on February 5 where he said that he would bet on the euro collapsing and that he wants to "short the euro." In the same interview he declared there was a "strong reason" for GrexitGreece's exit from the Eurozone. Earlier Malloch compared the EU to the defunct Soviet Union, saying the Union needs "taming."

In another interview, Malloch declared that the Euro could collapse in the next 18 months. He told BBC, "I think it is a currency that is not only in demise but has a real problem and could in fact collapse in the coming year, year and a half…The one thing I would do in 2017 is short the euro."

Malloch, it should be noted, is no stranger to EU politics. He currently teaches as Professor in the business school of the University of Reading, England. Malloch has also served on the executive board of the pro-globalization Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland and was a Senior Fellow of the Aspen Institute think tank. His remarks about the future of the Euro and of the EU itself are well-calculated.

Furthermore, with 17-year veteran Goldman Sachs partner, Steven Mnuchin, as Treasury Secretary, a person who has stated he has no problem labelling China a currency manipulator, the stage seems set for an all-out US Currency War aimed at destroying the Euro.

Make no mistake. I am on record since it became clear that the Euro as a supranational currency above nation states of the EU would become reality back in the mid-1990s, that the Euro idea as conceived then was a disaster in the making for Europeans and for the world. It was a construct by a cabal of European patriarchs around Jacques Delors, Giscard d'Estaing and others, to try to create a giant EU rival to the dollar as world reserve currency.

Notably, it was Mnuchin's Goldman Sachs, beginning 2002, who engineered the dodgy derivatives currency swaps operations that allowed the Greek government to hide the fact its deficits were running 12% or more and not the mandated Eurozone 3%. Conveniently, the Greek debt crisis was made public in 2010 just as US budget deficits were exploding in the annual trillion plus levels and China among others threatened a US Treasury boycott. There was well-grounded suspicion at the time that Goldman and the US Treasury deliberately exploded the Greek crisis to put the Euro down versus the dollar.

Now it well could be that the financial wizards of Goldman Sachs in the new Trump Administration and the Trump economic team have decided to go for the kill and get rid of the potential Euro threat once and for all, now that Brexit has made the Eurozone and EU vulnerable as never before.

Make no mistake. Such a disruption will bring the EU into major chaos and disruption, banking crises even worse than those of the 1930's. For Trump, Navarro and Wilbur Ross these social and human factors are pure "externalities" to their mad designs. The Euro is a horrible construct that needs urgent reform, as is the EU.

Why destroy the Euro? British economic historian Harold James suggests the reason: "But what would be the consequences of a euro breakup? It would weaken Europe as a competitor but also make it more unstable as old national rivalries are unleashed again." No wonder the German Chancellor and others in Berlin are hyper-nervous about what Trump will bring them.

[David Guyatt]

A very interesting article from Engdahl. If he is correct in what he says, will we be seeing Germany turn to Russia - as outlined by Stratfor's George Friedman? Imagine a German, Russia, China, Iran nexus in the coming years. It would be immense and easily able to compete with anything the US arrayed against it economically.

The cynic in me wonders if Perfidious Albion, via Brexit, has read the tea-leaves and positioned itself to play both sides until there is a winner, especially if London does become the global clearing centre for the Chinese yuan.

[Paul Rigby]

A very interesting article from Engdahl. If he is correct in what he says, will we be seeing Germany turn to Russia - as outlined by Stratfor's George Friedman? Imagine a German, Russia, China, Iran nexus in the coming years. It would be immense and easily able to compete with anything the US arrayed against it economically.

The cynic in me wonders if Perfidious Albion, via Brexit, has read the tea-leaves and positioned itself to play both sides until there is a winner, especially if London does become the global clearing centre for the Chinese yuan.

Well put. I agree. And am increasingly tempted by the notion that the globalists are taking the long & least suspected route to their goal - with America left until last.

[Lauren Johnson]

A very interesting article from Engdahl. If he is correct in what he says, will we be seeing Germany turn to Russia - as outlined by Stratfor's George Friedman? Imagine a German, Russia, China, Iran nexus in the coming years. It would be immense and easily able to compete with anything the US arrayed against it economically.

The cynic in me wonders if Perfidious Albion, via Brexit, has read the tea-leaves and positioned itself to play both sides until there is a winner, especially if London does become the global clearing centre for the Chinese yuan.

Well put. I agree. And am increasingly tempted by the notion that the globalists are taking the long & least suspected route to their goal - with America left until last.

Seems to me that I have suspected and suggested something akin to this soon after the election. My presuppositions were simple: 1) TPTB pick, corrupt, or coopt the world leaders especially the POTUS, 2) they use the Hegelian dialectic to guide history, 3) the dialectics require spectacle to both mold and distract, 4) and the dialectics are guided through some form of central planning.

Yes, Trump was chosen and has his part to play.