Skip to main content

L'Empereur Emmanuel

“Jovian” French President Emmanuel Macron spelt out this week, for anyone with lingering doubts, that membership of the European Union is incompatible with national sovereignty and independence – and that the bloc should assume an imperial role.
In deference to the new Sun King, newspapers in all of the 28 current member states dutifully printed his proclamation on Monday, including Britain's liberal sneer-sheet The Guardian.
Macron began by repeating the common but false claim that the EU, established in 1993 as a successor to the European Economic Community (which only contained NATO members), had kept the peace in Europe since the end of WWII.
Then he turned on those, like Britain, daring to reassert national self-determination. “What country can act on its own in the face of aggressive strategies by the major powers?” Macron asked, seemingly ignoring the fact that three of the great military and economic powers are currently EU members.
“Who can claim to be sovereign, on their own, in the face of the digital giants?” he asked. “How would we resist the crises of financial capitalism without the euro, which is a force for the entire EU?”
Certainly the euro has benefited rich north-western EU members like France and Germany, but it has crippled the economies of southern and eastern states who could previously make their exports and tourism more competitive by allowing their currencies to devalue.
“Nationalists are misguided when they claim to defend our identity by withdrawing from the EU,” Macron declared, warning of the prospect of “populists” – in contrast to the unpopular French leader's 'Republic on the March!' party – gaining ground in this summer's European Parliament elections.
Rather “it is European civilisation that unites, frees and protects us,” – from what, the barbarians from the east and south? 'Western' civilisation grew up around the Mediterranean, where Africa and Asia meet Europe.
Macron wants the walls of Fortress Europe to be buttressed even further. “The boundary is freedom in security,” he wrote, demanding “stringent border controls” along with “a single asylum policy with common acceptance and refusal rules” – moves towards which have already caused a rift between Brussels and the newer member states in the east.
Rather than step back from the undemocratic superstate tendencies that prompted Brexit, the young pretender urged the EU to become a monolithic military superpower with a “treaty on defence and security.”
That would tie members into increased defence spending, a “mutual defence clause” to drag them into wars started by other nations and a continental security council – doubtless dominated by the big military powers France and Germany – “to prepare our collective decisions.” The last two European military “collective decisions” were the destruction of Libya and the attempted re-run of that scenario in Syria.
Echoing US President Donald Trump's bid to tear up the very World Trade Organisation rules that the US created, Macron also urged an iron barrier to competition from imports from outside the bloc.
“What country in the world would continue to trade with those who respect none of their rules?” he complained. “We cannot suffer in silence” – as developing nations have suffered from the EU's steep tariffs on finished goods but not raw materials?
“We need to reform our competition policy and reshape our trade policy, penalising or banning businesses that compromise our strategic interests and fundamental values.”The neoliberal 'Four Freedoms' must reign within the EU, but without they must be mercilessly crushed.
In an apparent reply to the Italian government's criticism of French neo-colonialism in Africa as the cause of the Mediterranean refugee crisis, Macron called for even more European meddling in their southern neighbours' affairs.
"A world-oriented Europe needs to look to Africa, with which we should enter into a covenant for the future, ambitiously and non-defensively supporting African development with investment, academic partnerships and education for girls."

“Europe is not a second-tier power,” the would-be emperor declared. “Europe in its entirety is a vanguard: it has always defined the standards of progress.” If that's what you call progress, then please take us back to before 1993.

Most popular

The mystery of the Guanches

The origins and language of the indigenous people of the Canary Islands remain a mystery, writes Dr Sabina Goralski Filonov Translation by James Tweedie The guanches, the aboriginals of the Canary Islands whose origin, lost in the mists of time, still arouses intense and passionate debate and great controversy about their origins and the how the seven Canary Islands were populated – which according to some studies occurred between 10,000 and 8,000 years BC. Literally, the word ‘Guan’ means man or person and ‘Chenech’ or ‘Chinet’ is applied to the island of Tenerife, thus meaning a man or inhabitant of Tenerife – although according to Núñez de la Peña, the Spanish named them the Guanchos during the conquest of the islands. But with the passage of time, experts in the subject are questioning whether the word Guanche was used to designate the primitive inhabitants of all the islands in the pre-Hispanic period.  The term ‘Guanche’ has also ceased to be applied to the di...
Read more

Homeless dogs’ home fights for compensation

Dingo Dogs owner Phil Nelson at his since-demolished home. DOGS’ home owner Phil Nelson has vowed to take legal action following his eviction from his Dingo Dogs animal sanctuary in August. by James Tweedie Indian-born Mr Nelson, along with former girlfriend and Dingo Dogs treasurer Leigh Crouch were left homeless by the court-ordered eviction and have been sharing a small hut in the mountains near Las Chafiras with ten dogs and three cats ever since. Mr Nelson’s dispute with his former landlord began in September 2004, after he officially registered his rented hillside finca as an animal sanctuary.  It was a requirement of his registration that he keep proper financial records, including receipts for payment of rent. Mr Nelson says that despite having a rental contract and paying his rent “as regular as clockwork” for years, his landlord never gave him a receipt even after he began asking for one every month in 2004.  In May 2005, after his landlord ha...
Read more

Venezuela condemns MUD silence over terror attack

Venezuela’s foreign minister condemned the opposition and their foreign backers for their silence over Tuesday’s helicopter attack on the capital. At a press conference on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Samuel Moncada said Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition leader Henry Ramos’ only comment on social media was that the attack was “useless.” “Firstly that does not condemn it,” Mr Moncada said. “Secondly it appears he was condemning it because it didn’t have the desired effect, that is to say, that it would blow up the building.” And he asked why fellow Mud leader Henrique Capriles lacked the “moral courage to... repudiate a terrorist act.” The newly-appointed minster and former ambassador to Britain accused fellow members of the Washington-based Organisation of American States of “feigning ignorance” and so protecting the culprits. And he accused sections of the media of portraying the culprit — Police investigator and one-time action film star Oscar Perez — as a “Rambo ...
Read more

No 'day in court' for Zuma as supporters take Durban

The trial of South Africa's ex-president Jacob Zuma was postponed for two months on Friday pending his legal challenge to the resurrection of decade-old corruption charges. Outside the Durban High Court, thousands of Mr Zuma's supporters from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and other organisations brought the Indian Ocean port city to a standstill. Zuma supporters rally around a stage set up outside the Durban High Court The ANC Women's League, Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe Veterans' Association were present, along with the Black land First Campaign, National Interfaith Council of South Africa, the Commission for Religious Affairs. Revellers wore ANC t-shirts and other merchandise in defiance of warnings by Police Minister Bheki Cele Former minister Des van Rooyen and Eastern Cape ANC leader Andile Lungisa accompanied Mr Zuma to the doors of the court. Inside he sat smiling a few feet apart from Christine Guerrier, a representative of Fre...
Read more

The Labour-Snatchers

WHAT do you call an event that would see a country lose a third of its population? A catastrophe? An apocalypse? In Europe they call it “Union.” According to the Vienna-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the “free movement of labour” between European Union member states will see that fraction of some countries' populations emigrate in the next 40 years. A recent IIASA study, reported on Friday by the EU Observer website, says Romania and Croatia's populations will fall by 30 percent by 2060, and Lithuania's by 38 percent. By contrast, eight years of the West's proxy war on Syria, when much of the country was overrun by terrorists who behead followers of other religious sects, has seen between 12 and 23 percent of the population flee the country. The 1983-85 Ethiopian famine killed about 1.2 million people and drove another 400,000 out of the country, about five per cent of the population at the time. Another 41 years of EU...
Read more