ISTANBUL – Emmanuel Macron is no Talleyrand. Self-promoted as “Jupiterian”, he may have finally got down to earth for a proper realpolitik insight while ruminating one of the former French Minister of Foreign Affairs key bon mots: “A diplomat who says ‘yes’ means ‘maybe’, a diplomat who says ‘maybe’ means ‘no’, and a diplomat who says ‘no’ is no diplomat.”

Mr. Macron went to Moscow to see Mr. Putin with a simple 4-stage plan in mind. 1. Clinch a wide-ranging deal with Putin on Ukraine, thus stopping  “Russian aggression”. 2. Bask in the glow as the West’s Peacemaker. 3. Raise the EU’s tawdry profile, as he’s the current president of the EU Council. 4. Collect all the spoils then bag the April presidential election in France.

Considering he all but begged for an audience in a flurry of phone calls, Macron was received by Putin with no special honors. Comic relief was provided by French mainstream media hysterics, “military strategists” included, evoking the “French castle” sketch in Monty Python’s Holy Grail while reaffirming every stereotype available about  “cowardly frogs”. Their “analysis”: Putin is “isolated” and wants “the military option”. Their top intel source: Bezos-owned CIA rag The Washington Post.

Still, it was fascinating to watch – oh, that loooooong table in the Kremlin: the only EU leader who took the trouble to actually listen to Putin was the one who, months ago, pronounced NATO as “brain-dead”. So the ghosts of Charles de Gaulle and Talleyrand did seem to have engaged in a lively chat, framed by raw economics, finally imprinting on the “Jupiterian” that the imperial obsession on preventing Europe by all means from profiting from wider trade with Eurasia is a losing game.

After a strenuous six hours of discussions Putin, predictably, monopolized the eminently quotable department, starting with one

that will be reverberating all across the Global South for a long time: “Citizens of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia have seen how peaceful is NATO.”

There’s more. The already iconic  Do you want a war between Russia and NATO? – followed by the ominous  “there will be no winners”. Or take this one, on Maidan: “Since February 2014, Russia has considered a coup d’état to be the source of power in Ukraine. This is a bad sandbox, we don’t like this kind of game.”

On the Minsk agreements, the message was blunt: “The President of Ukraine has said that he does not like any of the clauses of the Minsk agreements. Like it, or not – be patient, my beauty. They must be fulfilled.”

The “real issue behind the present crisis”

Macron for his part stressed, “new mechanisms are needed to ensure stability in Europe, but not by revising existing agreements, perhaps new security solutions would be innovative.” So nothing that Moscow had not stressed before. He added, “France and Russia have agreed to work together on security guarantees.” The operative term is “France”. Not the non-agreement capable United States government.

Anglo-American spin insisted that Putin had agreed not to launch new “military initiatives” – while keeping mum on what Macron promised in return. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not confirm any agreement. He only said that the Kremlin will engage with Macron’s dialogue proposals, “provided that the United States also agrees with them.” And for that, as everyone knows, there’s no guarantee.

The Kremlin has been stressing for months that Russia has no interest whatsoever in invading de facto black hole Ukraine. And Russian troops will return to their bases after exercises are over. None of this has anything to do with “concessions” by Putin.

And then came the bombshell: French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire – the inspiration for one of the main characters in Michel Houellebecq’s cracking new book, Anéantir – said that the launch of Nord Stream 2 “is one of the main components of de-escalating tensions on the Russian-Ukrainian border.” Gallic flair formulated out loud what no German had the balls to say.

In Kiev, after his stint in Moscow, it looks like Macron properly told Zelensky which way the wind blows now. Zelensky hastily confirmed Ukraine is ready to implement the Minsk agreements; it never was, for seven long years. He also said he expects to hold a summit in the Normandy format – Kiev, the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, Germany and France – “in the near future”. A meeting of Normandy format political advisers will happen in Berlin on Thursday.

Way back in August 2020, I was already pointing to which way we were heading in the master chessboard. A few sharp minds in the Beltway, emailing their networks, did notice in my column how “the goal of Russian and Chinese policy is to recruit Germany into a triple alliance locking together the Eurasian land mass a la Mackinder into the greatest geopolitical alliance in history, switching world power in favor of these three great powers against Anglo-Saxon sea power.”

Now, a very high-level Deep State intel source, retired, comes down to the nitty gritty, pointing out how “the secret negotiations between Russia and the US center around missiles going into Eastern Europe, as the US frantically drives for completing its development of hypersonic missiles.”

The main point is that if the US places such hypersonic missiles in Romania and Poland, as planned, the time for them to reach Moscow would be 1/10 the time of a Tomahawk. It’s even worse for Russia if they are placed in the Baltics. The source notes, “the US plan is to neutralize the more advanced defensive missile systems that seal Russia’s airspace. This is why the US has offered to allow Russia to inspect these missile sites in the future, to prove that there are no hypersonic nuclear missiles. Yet that’s not a solution, as the Raytheon missile launchers can handle both offensive and defensive missiles, so it’s possible to sneak in the offensive missiles at night. Thus everything requires continuous observation.”

The bottom line is stark: “This is the real issue behind the present crisis. The only solution is no missile sites allowed in Eastern Europe.” That happens to be an essential part of Russia’s demands for security guarantees.

Sailing to Byzantium

Alastair Crooke has demonstrated how “the West slowly is discovering that that it has no pressure point versus Russia (its economy being relatively sanctions-proof), and its military is no match for that of Russia’s.”

In parallel, Michael Hudson has conclusively shown how “the threat to US dominance is that China, Russia and Mackinder’s Eurasian World Island heartland are offering better trade and investment opportunities than are available from the United States with its increasingly desperate demand for sacrifices from its NATO and other allies.”

Quite a few of us, independent analysts from both the Global North and South, have been stressing non-stop for years that the pop Gotterdammerung in progress hinges on the end of American geopolitical control over Eurasia. Occupied Germany and Japan enforcing the strategic submission of Eurasia from the west down to the east; the ever-expanding NATO; the ever de-multiplied Empire of Bases, all the lineaments of the 75-year-plus free lunch are collapsing.

The new groove is set to the tune of the New Silk Roads, or BRI; Russia’s unmatched hypersonic power – and now the non-negotiable demands for security guarantees; the advent of RCEP – the largest free trade deal on the planet uniting East Asia; the Empire all but expelled from Central Asia after the Afghan humiliation; and sooner rather than later its expulsion from the first island chain in the Western Pacific, complete with a starring role for the Chinese DF-21D “carrier killer” missiles.

The Ray McGovern-coined MICIMATT (military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex) was not capable to muster the collective IQ to even begin to understand the terms of the Russia-China joint statement issued on an already historic February 4, 2022. Some in Europe actually did – arguably located in the Elysée Palace.

This enlightened unpacking focuses on the interconnection of some key formulations, such as “relations between Russia and China superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era” and “friendship which shows no limits”: the strategic partnership, for all its challenges ahead, is way more complex than a mere “treaty” or “agreement”. Without deeper understanding of Chinese and Russian civilizations, and their way of thinking, Westerners simply are not equipped to get it.

In the end, if we manage to escape so much Western doom and gloom, we might end up navigating a warped remix of Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium. We may always dream of the best and the brightest in Europe finally sailing away from the iron grip of tawdry imperial Exceptionalistan:

“Once out of nature I shall never take / My bodily form from any natural thing, / But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make / Of hammered gold and gold enameling / To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; / Or set upon a golden bough to sing /To lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come.”

Political leaders from around the world are experiencing the lowest approval ratings in recorded history. Emmanuel Macron in France, Boris Johnson in the UK, Justin Trudeau in Canada, and it seems the entirety of the Australian political class are all widely despised by the electorates in their countries. It is also the case in most European countries as huge demonstrations protest the increasingly Draconian and transparent Covid restrictions. Few now doubt that the absurd, incompetent and unscientific response to this Scamdemic is about more than just the Flu. Vaccine mandates are the cause of an immense pushback against what is now seen as a poorly disguised move towards totalitarianism.

Obvious to all but the willfully uninformed is that the political class are advancing the interests of an entirely different constituency that that of the people they purport to represent.

The Pharmaceutical giants and the control they exercise over the political system and all its institutions have been exposed. Public trust in the institutions that govern have eroded to an extent that it may never recover. To be sure, this political class are not the real power, they don’t rule, but they do govern. They have been exposed as little more than frontmen for the real power structure. They are unprincipled and lie with impunity even when they know they are not believed. They continue to act against the wishes and best interests of the public even after their lies have been exposed. They no longer promise a better future, all that they have left to offer is fear. Covid, Russia, China, all evils that they vow to protect us from.

While the political class relentlessly bombards us with fear porn, they reassure us that we are on the side of the righteous. Western values they proclaim are what makes us better than the evil Russians and Chinese. Never explained or elaborated upon, these values are those of a Neo-liberal democracy, we are assured. This apparently should be enough to satisfy and increasingly unsatisfied populace that all is well with the system. However, these values are neither new, liberal or democratic, Neo-liberalism is Corporatocracy. The corporate charter defines only one objective, maximise shareholder value (profit) to the exclusion of any other considerations. No concern for consequences or the human cost are to be figured in the profit calculus. If corporations are as they are legally recognised, “people too”, they then are sociopaths. To speak of corporate values is a contradiction in terms, there are none.

Sociopaths represent about 2-3% of the male population, less in women, about 1 %. It is a spectrum, not all sociopaths are serial killers. Defined by an absence of empathy and consequence for their actions, a sociopath will do or say anything that furthers his ambitions. They lie with impunity even when they know they are not believed. If this sounds like a politician you know, it is probably because they are indeed a sociopath. Corporatocracy requires sociopaths to run their sham political systems. There is a name for it, Kakistocracy, define as rule by the worst, least qualified. Difficult to dispute is that it is exactly what now governs the Western world.

Sociopaths are wildly overrepresented in certain professions. Senior executives at multi-national companies, especially CEOs, Law enforcement, the Medical profession and Politics. Another characteristic among sociopaths is their ability to be able to identify each other. This is a useful tool for those that select and groom these aspiring, flawed human beings for influential roles. Klaus Schwab, the sinister head of the WEF at Davos has been running his school for sociopaths for several years. Innocently titled the “Young global leaders program” he has been turning out some of the worst, least capable political figures in recent memory. Macron (France) Kurtz (Austria) Tony Blair (UK) Angela Merkle (Germany) and Jacinda Ahern (NZ) are all graduates. The European Union is overrun with them, including president Jean-Claude Juncker. America also has many of Schwab’s prodigies exercising power and influence. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Chelsea Clinton and California Governor Gavin Newsome. To name but a few, none of whom could even be charitably described as decent human beings.

The unity which Governments around the world have followed the absurd Covid response has illuminated the power that this sociopathic managerial class wields. Even as the Covid lie and its attendant evils falls apart they continue to “double down” and strip people of their freedoms and grant themselves new powers they were never entitled to. We can be assured that while these particular Sociopaths continue to lose any credibility they had, a pipeline of fresh graduates await their turn to follow their master’s voice. If history teaches us anything, it is that those who want power, and the last people who should ever be trusted with it.

The public bear some responsibility too, the French should know better than to elect a Rothschild banker like Macron. And the British – an Oxford graduate and serial liar such as Boris Johnson. In defence, it should be pointed out that electing leaders from within the existing political establishment will only produce more of the same. The faux left, right paradigm is just political theater, a distraction, the same power structure controls all sides of the political divide. Choice without options is no choice at all.

We may look back on the Covid era has a turning point in history. We are at the point where the masses are seeing through the lies of the ruling class and their political lackies. Progress can only be achieved when the people reject the options presented by the ruling class and chose leaders from outside the control of the parasitic corporate elite. Covid has exposed many villains, but it has also produced genuine heroes who have courageously stood on the truth. Robert Kennedy Jr. for example. It is essential that decent, brave and principled people are pressed into political service. If people continue to settle for the lesser of two evils, no change can be expected and the west will continue to be governed by the worst, least capable among us. 

In Paris on December the 7^th, Parisians were phased by the motorcade and the middle-aged lady appearing from the limo. But Ursula von der Leyen’s arrival in the French capital, although a downbeat and certainly rare event, has significant overtures to both France’s role in international peacekeeping and Macron’s future as a second-term President who will lead the EU into a new dawn.

Both Macron and the EU chief spoke about the need for “dialogue” with Russia and the need for a new defence initiative which should be worrying NATO chiefs who are already grappling with the realities of being practically a defunct organisation entirely impotent in the face of the showdown with Russia over Ukraine.

EU chiefs don’t normally make visits to EU member state leaders. There is a time and place for that, which is Brussels itself and EU summits where photographers capture them making small talk in the EU Council of Ministers building. Von der Leyen’s visit to Paris and her joint podium scripted speech signal that, to some extent at least, Brussels is backing Macron with his initiative to lead some sort of defence pact, made up of a handful of EU member states in peacekeeping and at least talking tough on Russia and Ukraine. Of course, the idea that such a pact would actually do anything against Russia and its troops is entirely ludicrous and far-fetched and Macron talking (unscripted) about the need to “talk to Russia” is a lucid indication where he is going with his own EU army initiative. Clearly, the most realistic option of all the “EU army” ideas – which will cost the least and give the EU its own so-called “defence policy” – is the watered down idea, which simply involves an informal coalition of EU governments agreeing to be one, on defence policy on behalf of the EU. Given how the subject is so divisive, this group will not be run by Brussels, but led by one EU member state while its soldiers sport the EU armband. France is emerging as that country which will break the stalemate which has plagued EU federalists in Brussels as to how to move forward with the plan, which many in the Belgian capital have convinced themselves is the silver bullet to restore credibility to the EU project as it scrambles to survive from the ashes of failed Covid initiatives, twenty years of the single currency and an immigration policy which is failing on every level.

For Macron, it’s what will anoint him in his second term, putting France on the world stage as a leading nation of some kind as the “EU pillar” within NATO. The idea is pulled out of the windowless bunkers of the Elysee, dusted down and given a new lease of light. And it is Biden’s breathtaking impotence as a U.S. president who runs away from confrontation on the world stage, whether it be Ukraine and Russia or Afghanistan, the Middle East or elsewhere, which is driving the Macron EU army idea. The origins of this blueprint can be traced back to a buffoonish French General who found himself held hostage by Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1993 who decided that his endearing promise to protect them from the Serbs wasn’t worth the price of a cigarette. Morillon’s word that his UN soldiers would protect them amounted to nothing and the Srebrenica Massacre followed in 1995 where 8000 mainly Muslim men were slaughtered.

Morillon later became and MEP and in the European parliament in 2008 lobbied hard within the EU institutions for an “EU pillar” within NATO so that EU governments could work “alongside but not under NATO” forces [read American].

And so, the idea is hardly new and if France 24 journalists are being briefed by Macron’s team to use this term “EU pillar” then we can be sure this is where Macron and von der Leyen are heading. They are both banking on the outfit, if it were ever to get off the ground, it will largely be a talk shop and provide the gilt edge to any threatening narrative which they feel Russia would take seriously, given the vacuum at present and reports of Biden pulling troops out of Eastern Europe in a deal with Putin. It’s unclear how, if the mighty U.S. hasn’t got the guts to face Putin in Eastern Europe, a weasel French President and his fancy plan on paper will fill the gap. Much of the thinking is delusional and about promoting Macron himself as a world leader and he is following tradition. Mitterrand, Chirac and Sarkozy all went down the rout of self-promotion on the international stage when the French economy was imploding and so Macron follows the trend. But the interesting takeaway is how this plan has no endorsement whatsoever by the EU as an autonomous body. In great tradition, when the EU can’t get any support itself democratically for a bold plan, it turns to member states to do its bidding for it. And there is no shortage of servile French leaders who are happy to capitalise on the situation. Talk is, after all, cheap on the EU circuit. But whether Putin himself will want to talk to Macron, is another matter altogether.

Time after time, in recent weeks, we have seen the threats and rhetoric ramped up by “weasel” French President against Boris Johnson and his government. Whether it is the rights of British fisherman to be in their own waters or more recently the migrant crisis which captured the headlines when 27 asylum seekers attempting to cross the Channel perished when their boat was unable to sustain what is believed to be a wake left by an oil tanker.

But how much longer can Boris Johnson stay at the helm when faced with the outright threatening manner of Macron? The French president doesn’t seem to stop with the machine gun narrative which is always aimed at harming the British economy, its post-Brexit freedoms and its inevitable future as a vibrant independent economy. The latest insult by Macron calling Johnson a “clown” surely went over a line. Isn’t it time that Boris put on the gloves and faced this cowardly French president head to head? In the words of John Major, surely now is the time for Boris to deliver the ultimatum to France and its two-faced President to “put up or shut up”

Two-faced because, in reality, Macron is no friend of the British, but sees them as an adversary both to France and his own Presidency. A thriving UK is a threat to the status quo of Macron and France’s role within the EU itself. But Macron can’t help himself with the threats, games and skulduggery which comes with a hefty price for the British.

We should not be taken in by the theatre of what is being put on for our benefit to fool us into thinking that Macron really cares about the Calais Jungle and the record numbers of migrants now arriving on our shores. The recent calls by him that he needs more cooperation from Boris Johnson’s government is folly. In reality, he simply wants more money. Blackmail is always a game which never ends. It only has a beginning and the victim never stops paying. And this is precisely what Macron wants from the UK.

If Macron genuinely wanted to help resolve the crisis he could easily propose new, tougher laws aimed at the smugglers themselves, break up the camps completely and properly use France’s navy to stop them boarding boats in the first place. He could also initiate a new policy whereby French police would no longer watch migrants get into their boats, while they merely watch and gloat and even take photos on their phone. And perhaps more importantly, he would allow British police officers to act as watchers, to work hand in hand with the French, to stop the smugglers. How is it that the UK accepts armed French police in their London Terminal of the Eurostar – to help the French intercept criminals before they even leave the UK – but are not allowed to have their own police simply work as spotters on French soil?

Macron’s concerns are entirely disingenuous and it’s high time that Boris manned up and accepted the French president’s stunts for that they are: fake and politically motivated aimed at creating a political hullabaloo to bring down a Brexit government and to make an “example” of the UK for the rest of the EU.

But Macron is not the only one who is faking it.

It’s a similar story with the EU’s announcement that it will send a plane to monitor the boats crossing from France to the UK. Don’t believe a word of it. The plane will no doubt seem to do its job but it’s all part of a ruse which in reality punishes the UK for Brexit. If the EU was serious about helping with the migrant crisis, it would create a multimedia PR campaign and pay for advertising space on TV, radio and mainstream media in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and other countries like Somalia showing the darker side of the route to the UK – and use the tragic deaths of those who recently perished. Most people in the UK never even knew that most of what they saw on their TVs when Britain was in the EU, from mainstream media was financially subsidised by the EU itself to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros each year. If the EU has that kind of cash for fake news, why can’t it use some of it to inform people on the edge of Europe that the path to the UK is fraught with danger? Given that the migrant crisis is a direct result of the EU’s own failed immigration/asylum policies, one would have thought this would be a natural path for Brussels to follow.

But Brussels doesn’t do ‘Mea Culpa’.

Boris needs to stop allowing Macron to continue with these games and show him that Britain can get tough on the migrants and the French. He needs to work much more closely with the Royal Navy and give it the greenlight to tow the boats back to France and do the job of the French navy. If the legal boffins argue that the British are not allowed to “dump” refugees in French waters, surely the counter argument is that this is precisely what the French are doing.

Boris should also play hardball on defence and security cooperation and threaten France that it will remove British troops from Mali where they are risking their lives specifically so that French nationals can work there and French companies can make money, under the hilarious auspices of a UN peacekeeping mandate of fighting terrorism. Macron wants a bigger defence and security cooperation deal with Boris as France’s defence budget is smaller than the UK’s but if Boris can’t get any cooperation on immigrants in the Channel whose numbers alone are posing a threat to the UK’s own stability, why should Boris keep British soldiers in Mali? The last time in history the French navy posed a threat to Britain by doing nothing was in the early months of WWII where Churchill could see that with the Germans advancing rapidly towards Paris, they would inevitably take full control of the French navy and use it to attack the British. The French refused then to cede to Churchill’s demands that the ships were destroyed, rather than fall into the enemy’s hands. In the event, it was the British who destroyed them. Will Boris have to reinvent this historical moment and similarly take bold decisions which once again affect France’s battleships which are unable to stop literally thousands of immigrants from crossing the channel?

Beaten and baffled by how the bluff of threatening the UK with kangaroo court blockades against British goods was only a frivolous play for media attention at the end of October, France’s Emmanuel Macron has taken a humiliating knock from his own country, the EU and many European governments after the climbdown. Indeed, with just six months leading up to the French presidential elections themselves, to learn that he didn’t have quite the support he thought he had from the EU’s powerful executive — the European Commission — must have been hard, given how Macron sees himself now as the leader of the entire project itself now that Merkel is out of the picture.

But in fact, there was much more to the stunt than merely a media ruse to win a few votes. Macron ticked the box ‘French fisherman’ which he badly needed to do, given that he didn’t really stand up for them during the apex of the Brexit negotiations which essentially sold both French and British fisherman out. Yet the climbdown itself, which on the surface, makes him look weak and panicky, actually was tactical, given that France had the sense to at least go through the motions and mull over the idea of British consumers boycotting French goods in supermarkets and for UK firms to bypass French ports altogether to get their goods into the EU market. The whole escapade was a lesson for him and the EU, which sent the message that there were enough big hitters in the EU who didn’t agree at all with the sanctions threat to the UK and believe in a much soberer, if not sanguine approach to trading with Britain and keeping on good terms with its government.

But there are other reasons why France and Macron need to stop throwing the toys out of the pram when it comes to Brexit Britain and think about how to capitalise on Britain being unshackled from the EU. Aside from the two-faced games which Macron plays with UK and Boris Johnson, his officials keep good relations with Johnson’s team and it is this cabal which has convinced him to back down in the fishing row, for something much bigger and more important to play for, with the UK: defence and security cooperation.

The much talked about subject for almost 30 years in Brussels of an ‘EU army’ had new air breathed into it recently when U.S. President Joe Biden pulled out of Afghanistan in such a self-serving way, without consulting France and the UK, that it prompted once again talk in the Belgian capital of the need for Old Europe to have more power over its own decisions within the bosom of a failing NATO. The subject itself is complicated and fraught with problems as to how to go about creating it, running it and, of course, funding it.

But one idea which might be more realistic is that larger EU member states themselves take a bigger role outside of NATO around the world in the troubled hotspots, as they team up together and fight terrorism or step in and help with humanitarian catastrophes.

And this is Macron’s vision. An EU army without any link to the EU itself, which France, he believes, would take a leading role in, if not run outright. Other members could include the UK, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Italy. But it is Britain which is seen as the big fish to catch and land in this post-NATO wet dream. To some extent, one could argue that on a smaller scale, Macron’s vision is already happening in Mali, which Boris Johnson just recently sent a contingent of soldiers to help the current French-led UN mission to hit terrorists.

If Macron would have gone ahead with the blockade threat to UK trucks at French ports, not only would British shoppers abandon French goods, but Boris Johnson would have to review his decision to support the Mali initiative. Such a petulant move would have hurt Macron, who is suffering from a considerable amount of backlash from France’s palatable decline in Africa and, in particular North Africa where countries like Morocco and Algeria who both have strong historical links to Paris, have more or less broken their relations with the Elysee altogether. In the Sahel also, like in Mali, Macron is desperate to muster more support though the dubious pretext of fighting terrorism whereas my own investigations unearthed considerable evidence to show that the Elysee has, in reality, a naked lust to give French companies a boost there, while protecting, of course, French citizens working for them. Not so much peacemaking. More money making and it doesn’t take too much sleuthing to look up the French companies, find the CEOs and see if they are linked to freemason lodges in Paris which traditionally have so much influence over the incumbent president’s office. Corruption is really at the heart of it.

And blurring the lines between fighting terrorism and pushing a national postcolonial agenda would be quite an achievement for Macron if he were to use a so-called EU army to muster some of Europe’s old guns to help him in, supposedly, his second term in office after April’s poll next year. If Macron is going to soldier ahead with the EU army idea, then he has to bag the UK first and then clean up when others follow. The UK has a bigger defence budget than France and is looking to expand that and to use its might around the world to do exactly the same thing. Win votes.

For France, it’s not just about getting Boris on board to “buddy up” on jaunts around the world. It’s also about realising that if a closer defence procurement and security partnership were to blossom, perhaps Paris would no longer be given the short straw over big defence deals, such as AUKUS which made Macron and France’s defence industry look ineffective and out of touch. According to some reports from Brussels, this is what Macron wants from Boris. Yet managing to find and hold one UK fishing boat, which France claims had no right to fish in its waters, when France manages to not find hundreds of dingies crammed with refugees crossing the English Channel, has made London more sangfroid, given now that Macron wants to kiss and make up with Boris. Perhaps Macron could start there to show some good faith before making unreasonable requests which have unclear advantages for London. It’s not far-fetched to imagine London and Paris teaming up on security and even defence procurement as big projects in the past like Concord or the Channel tunnel. But Macron’s capricious style leaves a lot to be desired.

Europe’s complacency on a vital matter of its own security is damnable. The situation over Ukraine is becoming increasingly combustible, and yet the European Union is doing nothing to avert the danger. Indeed, it can be said the bloc is compounding the danger of confrontation and war.

Geopolitical tensions on the continent are being heightened by a border crisis with Belarus and Poland, which the European Union has exacerbated for cynical political reasons. These tensions are adding to instability over Ukraine and the Black Sea region.

Russia’s foreign and defense ministers are meeting their French counterparts in Paris on Friday for “2 plus 2” talks under the auspices of the Russian-French Cooperation Council. Topping the agenda will be the challenges to regional security stemming from the Ukraine conflict.

Ahead of the meeting, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov rebuked both France and Germany for “undermining” the prospects for peace in Ukraine.

Russia, France and Germany are guarantors of the 2015 Minsk Agreements which set out a roadmap for a peaceful settlement of the civil war in Ukraine. That war erupted in 2014 when the United States and the EU backed a coup d’état in Kiev the same year. The then newly installed Kiev regime launched a war against the Donbas region in Southeast Ukraine because the ethnic Russian population there did not recognize the new government.

Under the Minsk accords, the Kiev regime is mandated to observe a ceasefire and to accede to political autonomy for the Donbas provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. This has not been implemented despite the election of Vladimir Zelensky as Ukrainian president in 2019 and his vow to prioritize the pursuit of a peaceful, political settlement. The former TV comedian’s election vows have turned out to be a cruel joke.

Not only has the Minsk mandate been ignored, but the Zelensky regime has also done everything to belittle the accord. The Ukrainian Armed Forces under his command have continually violated supposed ceasefire commitments on the contact line with the Donbas region. According to the monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the Kiev regime’s military has breached the purported ceasefire on a daily basis with thousands of incidents over recent weeks. Also, the Kiev forces have reportedly reintroduced heavy-caliber weapons near the contact line in blatant repudiation of ceasefire terms.

The stark truth is that France and Germany have turned a blind eye to these multiple and systematic violations of the Minsk accords by the Kiev regime. Furthermore, this complacency and abdication of commitments as guarantors of the peace deal have served to embolden the Kiev regime to harbor ambitions of pursuing a military solution to the eight-year-old civil war. In short, the European powers are fueling more conflict on their own continent.

Let’s be clear, the prospect of a wider war is daunting. The Kiev regime is being heavily armed with lethal weaponry by the United States. The U.S. and its NATO allies are also building up military forces in the Black Sea with warships, fighter jets and reconnaissance aircraft. This week, American and British recon planes of the type used in coordinating offensive operations were buzzing Russian borders at an unprecedented level. Moscow is warning that its national security is coming under increasing threat and that any miscalculation is only a slip away.

The absurdity of the American government is also part of the offensive. This week, the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a warning in which he claimed that Russian military forces were amassing (on their own territory, mind you!) and they were planning to “invade Ukraine”. Blinken said: “We don’t have clarity into Moscow’s intentions, but we do know its playbook.” The discombobulated contradiction is laughable, if not reckless provocation.

President Vladimir Putin told German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a phone call this week that the United States and NATO are stoking instability and dangerous tensions over Ukraine and the adjacent Black Sea. It is glaringly obvious who is escalating the risk of war. But where are the European voices calling for sanity and for an urgent de-escalation?

The prevailing incendiary dynamic from the inordinate buildup of U.S. and NATO forces on Russia’s doorstep is only incentivizing the Kiev regime to further ignore the path for peace in Ukraine. There is a very real danger that the conflict in the country will explode into a full war. In that case, the United States and Russia will be dragged into the morass. And once again, Europe will be a battlefield with disastrous consequences.

The last century has seen two world wars erupting in Europe. A major factor in those conflagrations was criminal complacency among European leaders to prevent catastrophe.

Today, there is a disturbing echo of similar complacency among German and French authorities with regard to their obligations for upholding peace in Ukraine. Instead, they are indulging a reactionary regime in Kiev and ludicrous provocations by the United States.

European leaders are not merely sleepwalking towards the abyss. They have eyes wide open but simply are too cowardly to see and act. Shame on them!

Was it a joke? Does French President Emmanuel Macron need to do irony to show the world that the French have a sense of humour? Macron’s claim in a new year broadcast that Brexit was a product of “lies and false promises” has got to be the biggest lie yet itself, from a leader so desperate to cling on to power and clinch a second term in office that he had to resort to playing dirty over Brexit negotiations to save French fishermen’s jobs.

The lies from the French leader, in fact, stack up quite considerably, leaving many wondering whether he is tone deaf when it comes to such ludicrous political statements. Just look at the doomsday scenario which he was responsible for creating as a scare tactic to intimidate the British team of negotiators. Hundreds of British lorries stranded on the UK side due to measures by the French to block them due to a new strain of Covid – which just so happened to arrive at the eleventh hour of Brexit talks, literally hours before the shutters were to be pulled down and Britain would have adopted WTO rules from January 1^st. If that stunt wasn’t enough to show the British people how desperate the French and the EU as a whole is, then we only need to look at another pack of lies to confirm our worst suspicions. The chaos and calamity of a post-Brexit relationship with the EU, apparently, was only a figment of imagination originally created by Macron and his EU cronies when the whole Brexit debate kicked off when President Macron took office in May 2017. Just as a “no deal” scenario, which in reality, we know now from Brussels insiders was never a real option for the French negotiator Michel Barnier.

Was there an exodus of international companies which fled to EU capitals from the UK, as was reported? The thousands of “stranded” British citizens in Europe? Even with a trade deal done, where are the tale backs of British lorries on either side of the channel, coping with new regulations? Where is the run on the British pound? The eclectic range of lies was pretty amazing, none of which have even faintly rung true.

But the real lies are on Macron’s side as he is the herald of disinformation and empty threats by an EU he pretends to love, which, in reality, will give him a top job when his second term expires. The lie of EU unity and the farcical sanctity of the democratic process was evident when France took the decision alone in December to block UK lorries for several days entering French ports – similarly to the validity of the Schengen Agreement which most countries abandoned earlier in the year when Covid broke out.

But there is a bigger lie which Macron and others keep alive, which is of course the one which was presented to many new EU member states who joined the bloc in 2004, who were told that their membership was crucial in rebalancing the bloc away from the so-called ‘Franco-German’ axis. In reality, France and Germany grew even stronger and, barely days after Britain left the bloc, we are seeing smaller EU member states complain about German bullying over rushing through a new EU-China trade deal. The fact that Macron was allowed to get away with threatening to scupper a trade deal with Britain at the eleventh hour over a fishing dispute is plain to see how Macron is capable of holding Brussels hostage for his own political gain. To talk about Brexit lies is preposterous when a big part of why Britain left the EU was really about lies and trickery which Brussels punted to the UK public for decades, which, under scrutiny didn’t stand up. The baloney about the strength of the single market and how much power it yields those who are members, as just one example, blown to pieces by a Brexit deal which Boris Johnson negotiated which gave the UK tariff free access to it.

The real lie though, from Macron, is in fact the one to the French people. They should be taking stock of how he behaved during the Brexit process and how low he stooped to protect his own neck. The lie which he upholds every day is how invaluable EU membership is to the French, when it is EU regulations which are strangling French companies unable to compete with non-EU firms who enjoy unfettered access to France, supposedly respecting EU directives in the manufacturing process. France, a once powerful colonial power and a founding member of the EU has practically become a financial disaster zone and Macron knows only too well that when the UK economy grows post corona at a rate which some economists have predicted could be as high as 8 percent, that he will have to carry on inventing more lies to explain to French people why they can’t heat their own homes or put fuel in their tiny French hatchbacks.

The lies and false promises that Macron talks about surely must be about what he has been telling his own people about the British demise. The EU believes that it has an escape plan for itself to save face in front of a number of sceptical countries which might follow the UK – The Netherlands and Denmark certainly – but in reality this is also just another pack of lies dressed up to fool a gullible public who don’t realise that most of what comes from Brussels via the media is a diatribe of manufactured consent from French hacks in the Belgian capital doing their duty and helping the EU press machine with its fake news agenda. “Lies and false promises” of Brexit? Is Macron having a laugh?

In practical terms, it is clear to see that the EU as a viable project is not only in a panic mode currently, but actually going backwards in its desire to model itself on a United States of Europe federal model. And there can be no better examples than Brexit negotiations, Covid and France’s current malaise.

At the eleventh hour we have seen how, despite Britain remaining steadfast to its demands at the negotiations for a departure from the European Union, the EU itself shoots itself in both feet and looks even to its own supporters to be a loser of the highest order. Last minute demands are thrown into the negotiations by France’s Macron who is fearful of his own presidency hopes being scuppered if he has to deal with the wrath of thousands of French fishermen who will be out of a living by January 1^st – if Britain is to get back full control of her own waters. To counter this with new demands about how the UK, as a non-member of the EU, goes about its business internally is both hilarious and desperate. Of course as a non-member of the bloc the UK will have its own ideas about how government interacts with business and state aid rules. How did a desperate French president threw this into the negotiations at really the eleventh hour demonstrates how weak the EU is and when it is presented with important matters, how it plays the role of a cheap girlfriend to its real masters. The fact that France could be allowed to do this is shocking. But the truth is that Macron is not playing for a deal. He prefers a no deal which he can use as political capital for his own fishermen. And the EU almost fell for it. Clearly there are divisions within the EU as to how to go about getting a Brexit. Many member states, like Germany, for example, are happy to give back fishing rights to the UK in exchange for a Brexit deal. Doesn’t the EU have billions of euros at its disposal to compensate and retrain out of work citizens? Of course it does. Structural funds run into billions and there is no viable reason why the existing EU rules would not favour out of work French fisherman.

But this cheap shot by the EU, to be hijacked by France, makes it look weak and ineffective, which will cost it dearly at the polls, when it has its own elections in 2024.

But it’s not only Brexit which is dividing this bloc which has ambitions about being a superpower with its own army. You don’t need to look very far to see that there is a distinct lack of unity in the organisation which is causing it to haemorrhage. In mid-November, it couldn’t sign off an agreement to put aside almost 2 trillion dollars for a rescue plan for member states which were hit hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic, namely Italy and to some extent Spain. The six-year budget, which is supposed to be approved now, will not include this package, which will be seen as a major blow to Italy and will almost certainly lead to a growth there of an anti-EU sentiment, marking out Italy as ripe for a massive swing of far right votes in the European parliament, if not a campaign for Italy to leave the EU all together. Poland and Hungary blocked the proposal as a way of showing France and Germany – the real owners of the entire EU project – that it wouldn’t be bullied on other contentious areas like immigration.

This is the real worry for eastern European countries. Their elites could not face an influx of immigrants from troubled hotspots in Africa – which coincidently are also the same recipients of hundreds of millions of euros of aid. There is a link between the cataclysmic human rights abuses from these regimes and the outflow of middle class citizens who borrow money to pay snake heads to transport them to Libya and then onto Europe.

But the EU itself can’t join up the dots and see this. Just as journalists aren’t making the link between Macron’s problems in France – an economy struggling to cope with cheaper imports which are supposed to respect EU directives (but invariably don’t) – and immigration, which is leading to the far right taking more of his votes. France, a founding member of the EU, can’t find a single journalist in the entire republic to make these links, and yet citizens themselves see it clearly. The appalling video footage of the black music producer being beaten up shocked the entire world. But Macron’s thinking behind new laws which he is pushing for – to make it illegal to film police officers – comes straight out of any Middle Eastern dictator’s handbook on how to profit from creating a police state. Macron needs to deal with immigration and the police, to save himself at the polls. And no one is kidding themselves about the new law and its purposes. The EU has always been a dictatorship which uses the auspices of a democracy to cover its real intentions. Its creation was really about being a greater power to supersede democracies which couldn’t get things done. But now, what we are experiencing is a full circle where individual member states are reacting with such vitriol towards the project, that they are indulging themselves at the same font. Macron is becoming a third world dictator who will happily strip France of its democratic credentials, if it means he can stay in power. Clinging on to power, in fact, is the shared theme of both his presidency and the EU itself. Inevitably, it will be the EU which will give him a top paid job, when he fails at the polls as the EU loves tradition above everything else.

Is there no end to Emmanual Macron’s gaffes in the Muslim world? It almost feels as though they roll in on a weekly basis and have given journalists a new Trump-like subject to busy them, distracted away of course from the more serious subjects of the day.

But attacking Islam is no joke. And one has to wonder whether the sanity of Macron is all there, a point made by the Turkish President recently when he suggested the French President was losing his mind. Macron’s response, if anything, was both a strong indication that there may be a grain of truth in the accusation plus an inglorious display of Macron’s sensational loathing of the free press. He immediately recalled the French ambassador from Ankara. The tantrums also seem to be like a never-ending stream which hardly do anything for Macron’s credibility in the region. Oh là là.

And credibility is key.

Whilst the author Tarek Cherkaoui is bang on to point out how this Islamophobia subterfuge by Macron is doomed from the off – reminding us of what happened with Nicolas Sarkozy back in the day when he tried the same stratagem with disastrous consequences – he misses the point about Macron and the Arabs.

Macron sees himself as some kind of T E Laurence figure, revered by the unruly Arabs who can lead them to build their own destiny and restore their dignity. But Lawrence, lived with these people, learnt their languages and was so adored by them, that they anointed him as one of their own ultimately making him a subject of hate and ridicule by the British themselves.

Macron by contrast is woefully ignorant of the peoples, the history and the region and comes across as a political tourist lost in the smoke and ashes of the Beirut bomb explosion. Who can forget his reaction to a lady heckler who chastised him? He moved quickly to smother her with his Gallic hug, squeezing the air out of her lungs to silent here therein. Genius. Deft. Desperate.

The real problem with Macron and the Arab world is that he hasn’t done his homework and can’t be bothered to learn about Arabia and Islam. And the Arabs feel it and see it. They know when they’re presented with fake goods. This is the heart of the malaise now which he is facing with some countries boycotting French goods. Speaking so unfavourably towards Islam and tarnishing so many with the same spoiled brush without even being able to recite one line of the Koran or knowing anything about the history of the Islamic world, is a gross insult which will be remembered for a long time and surely won’t get him the vote from millions of Muslims in France, but might get him some votes from the hard right. If he really understood Islam, or even the terrorism ideology which attaches itself to it, he might have guessed that his comments about the religion might have sparked an Al Qaeda call for a jihadist attack on France, following both Macron’s comments about Islam and a teacher’s caricature of the prophet.

Of course, shoring up the hard-right vote might have been his intention right from the start. Beleaguered by polls which show that he’s in real trouble in securing a second term, he has opted for the nationalistic vote.

Political shenanigans are really all that Macron is all about. And spin. We don’t expect much, certainly not in the Middle East anyway, from the French leader who proves time and time again he only has the requisite soundbite to contribute to the troubles of the region and not the meat-and-gravy of any solid strategy.

Of course, his recent spat with President Erdogan of Turkey runs deeper each day that passes with Turkish exploration in the Mediterranean remaining unchallenged, pushes deeper the thorn in the side of the French president.

And yet Macron’s failures in the Arab world, including this recent tone-deaf anti-Islam rant, are remarkable in that they are compounded by his failure to seize opportunities. Isn’t that, after all, the feral, singular purpose of all politicians? To grasp opportunities when they are presented. Like a fat trout, facing the current, motionless, who seizes the fly which drifts past his nose? Strike!

Oh Lebanon! What now?

But not Macron. Lebanon could have been an opportunity for him to rise above the stench of rank impotence and achieve something. All the ingredients were there. The world’s media for a few days was camped there and was ready for the Macron walkabout. The Macron sound bites. And the Macron bold statements.

But even the Christians of Lebanon find Macron’s intervention repugnant. The Lebanese are deeply complexed and complicated people who really do borrow money they can’t afford to pay back, to buy modern day trappings to impress their neighbours who they despise. Yes, this is the Lebanese. Frail, sensitive, vulnerable and probably the most self-conscious people of the entire region who think first about their profile and public image before anything else. The Lebanese who go to the tanning spa before they go to the beach clad in make-up; the Lebanese who buy an expensive car to park at the front of the apartment block to impress the neighbours, but can’t afford to drive it so ride to work on a moped each day; the Lebanese who are so insecure, that they cannot cope with any kind of professional criticism without practically having an ugly breakdown of some sort while attacking those who offer the advice. The Lebanese who have invented a non-confrontational society where friends and colleagues enter a sort of ‘Truman show’ zone each day of faking everything in front of one’s contemporaries; the same Lebanese who have surely the largest inferiority complex in the entire Arab world in the proximity of westerners who they are attracted to, like a moth to a flame, but also hate so virulently.

How did Macron imagine he could just rock up and tell Aoun, Hariri, Berri et al to stop stealing the money and get better at hiding corruption?

The problem Macron has is not only with the corrupt elite, but those who support them. Many Lebanese just reject Macron’s offer of helping, simply because of these complexes which are just one of the many insecurity pangs which make them so unique. An anti-colonialist mentality has been wheeled out (yawn), perhaps even encouraged by political leaders who can’t see the brown envelope of cash for them in the Macron offer, so reject it, naturally. The word ‘connerie’ (which translates to English, literally, as arsehole-ery) has been modified to Macronerie by these same feeble people who presumably would stand tall and defiant and chant their colonial clap trap when all of their children have died before them, when the hospitals close and antibiotics are so expensive that are only for the elite to purchase. Are these the same people who supported the protest movement (in the early days when it was more of a street party) and demanded change, but weren’t really able to articulate what type of change they wanted?

Macron is a buffoon, yes, but this racist, desperate rejection by many Lebanese, trumps him on gargantuan stupidity. The inferiority/superiority complex (as both are one of the same thing) is partly what has created the crisis in Lebanon in the first place. The unique frail condition of the Lebanese made it possible for the elite to run the country into the ground and then organise at the eleventh hour to ship wholesale their stained wealth out of the country – and get even richer into the bargain. It’s this same complex which supported the militia-political system whereby people were comforted by their respective leaders helping themselves to the billions of dollars (which could have been spent on building the country), while they drew solace from the system which supposedly “protected” them from their neighbours.

And it’s that same complex which fuelled the protest movement whose followers were convinced that the West – or even the Gulf Arab countries – wouldn’t let Lebanon fall into the abyss.

The Lebanese know now that the world won’t bail them out and that the biggest lie of the last twenty years has been the ‘protection racket’ narrative from militia leaders but it is the same complex which is now preventing them from forgetting their sectarian lineage and forming a cross-party opposition party with a shadow cabinet of ministers and a leader to represent their interests in Washington, Brussels, Strasbourg, Berlin and Paris. The chilling photograph of Hariri, Berri and Aoun must have made many want to weep when it was circulated in mid-October immediately after Hariri was sworn in as PM. It used to be said, ‘pity the Lebanese, as all they have is money’. But this has been replaced, it seems, by ‘all they have are these three stooges’.

Macron’s anti-Muslim rant was ill-timed and stupid. But if it can humour the complexed Lebanese to put aside their moronic ‘colonial’ chanting, it might have achieved something in the Arab world. His intervention in Lebanon, if it comes with genuine reform of the political system, might be the only strand of hope the Lebanese can cling to as, surely, the answer to the country’s problems are not to be found with these three men who practically wrote the manual on How To Make Money Out of A Failed State.

Remarkably, as the EU stands and watches, Macron, a man tortured and cursed by defeat wherever he goes around the world, is about to throw the lever on the French economy as he prepares to go into battle against Boris Johnson over UK’s rights to claim back its waters, deal or no deal in Brussels.

The French leader has made it quite clear that he is not prepared to scale back French fishermen’s catches, post Brexit, when the UK would ideally expect to take back all of its waters which it agreed to give up, when it joined the European Union in 1973.

This, experts worry, is a coded message to French fishermen to block British ferries from entering French ports from New Year’s day when Britain will be entirely out of the European Union and operating on WTO trade rules with its goods and services within the EU 27.

But is he serious? Or is it a bluff which he has forced himself to resort to, given the reality of Brexit for France? Against strong opposition from Germany, which fears that the fishing dispute will derail a UK trade deal with the EU, which both sides say is more or less ‘oven ready’, Macron is the problem.

A no deal Brexit for the UK will present some logistical problems for Boris Johnson and hundreds of UK firms who need to export their goods into the EU without a hiccup on January 1st.

But for France, a no deal Brexit would be a total disaster which would not only make it an enemy of Britain, but would almost certainly plunge the country into both an economic and political Armageddon.

If French fishermen go ahead with blockades, the obvious respite from Boris will be to totally block all trade with France. Given that, according to Macron, two thirds of all the produce in UK supermarkets comes from France, this would be a devastating blow to France’s economy and would certainly mean job losses in this sector. And it isn’t just food, which the UK could easily import from other countries. It’s also wine. The French President seems to forget that Brits love French wine and, in fact, the highest consumer, per head, of Champagne are the British.

And presumably, if French fishermen are busy with their antics at French ports, they are not out fishing anyway, so France is the big loser. This will certainly be the case when Boris is not only forced to boycott French goods, but when the UK develops better relations with EU countries who will help British truckers get into the European Union, like Denmark and Belgium who are unlikely to follow the French blockades.

All this skulduggery from Macron points to one thing: a new set of trade talks, with a new chief in Brussels and Britain in a stronger position to negotiate on better terms in the early months of next year. This is actually what Boris and some hardcore Brexiteers believe is a better strategy anyway.

In reality, it is France and Macron’s threats, which are the real cause of friction between the UK and the EU and threaten to stop a trade deal getting the green light. While many EU apaches argue that Britain can’t have zero tariff trade with the block AND have its own waters back which gives preference to British fisherman, Boris believes that it can. The barb is simply Macron’s political future. And so the threats start to become less veiled and clearer to see.

The last statement from Macron about French fisherman is both revealing and preposterous.

“The fishermen will not in any situation be those sacrificed to Brexit. We didn’t choose Brexit. Preserving access for our fishermen to British waters is an important point for us.”

Is he hinting that he wants compensation from the EU to fisherman who will lose their livelihoods? Or is it, more likely, that he will pretend to be unable to stop the inevitable blockades at the ports once it starts?

This game of cheap threats and blackmail though, Boris should be getting used to by now. It is, after all, the French Navy which seems to be completely unable to control the flow of asylum seekers from Calais to the shores of Britain, where our own government ministers are unable to do anything but give them shelter and hospitality. Given that there are thousands of Brits around the world who have lost their livelihoods through corona and who are heading back to the UK penniless – and probably won’t receive benefits after being abroad for too long – Boris needs to stop this game the French President is playing, for his own political reasons. It’s time now to stand up to Emmanuel Macron and show the French who the English Channel belongs to and to give back jobs to thousands of British fishing families. He also needs to put the French Navy in order which is actually assisting refugees enter the UK. At the beginning of WWII, when France looked like it was days away from being occupied by Germany, Churchill, we should remember, offered an ultimatum to the French, worried that its Navy’s ships would fall into German hands: blow up your own ships, or we will.

Boris may well be mulling a similar idea as France continues to humiliate us and profit from us. Are British battleships in the Channel going to square off against France’s as these threats mount? It’s time now for Boris’s Churchillian moment against the French and Macron who continues to look like a battleship sunk in its own port.