by John Ward
There is no such thing as a seamless global élite. When two greedy élites stumble over each other’s knickers in a bid to pauperise the populace further, citizen action will occur. This is the real truth behind the success of les Gilets Jaunes.
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For those of you unaware of the Gilets Jaunes, they are a group representing the French haulage business, lorry drivers fearful for their jobs, and a whole phalanx of other citizens who, for one reason or another, have caught on to the fact that President Emannuel Macron is a fraud, and more Antichrist than Centrist. The price of auto fuels in France rose 14% last year, and is set to rise 18% this year. For this reason alone, je suis un gilet jaune.
But there’s more to it than that.
Quite rapidly, they have become the national face of resistance to the growing power of the Alt State here. The banks having ensured that their man Macron got elected, it didn’t take long for the privatisations to start, and Macron to fall into line with EU migrancy “policy” – an acceptance of extra-EU immigration causing havoc across the continent. There are now some 30,000 illegal refugees occupying temporary camps in Paris’s St Denis alone, while the latest entry point – eastern and southern Spain – has seen a 40% rise in burglary and knife crime in Andalucia.
But Macronisation has ploughed ahead, with next year seeing the start of State powers to remove bank account deposits electronically “in order to improve the Trésor Public’s cash flow”. And while Macron has abolished the Taxe D’Habitation, this was done to increase the control of Paris over local policies. The Mairie’s additional local tax on land (the foncière) has, in just three years on my property, gone from €418 to €1468. The sum disappeared from my bank account without warning two weeks ago….since when I have received a bill through the post asking for it again. The Macron régime is clearly learning from the UK’s crooked (and unaccountable) HMRC: this latter JCB for gold-digging now has a staggering £22 billion in dispute at Law where citizens claim fraud against the Treasury for demanding money with false support.
Meanwhile, what the Emperor MacroNapoleon giveth with the one hand, verily has He the divine right to take even more with the other. The slow boiling of the locustam marinam populi has been accelerated ever so carefully by a hidden hand on the gas. What one might call mobsters boiling lobsters. And in that context, the Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) are a movement that has become the Resistance of the Hour.
We should therefore not be surprised that those around Macron have wasted no time, following a violent protest in Paris a week ago, trying to smear the Gilets with the political ordure of ‘Far Right’. This was news to the Republicans, who insisted they were Far Left. But now that the eternal opportunist Marine LePen has endorsed them, the smear is all the more effective.
I’ve experienced Gilets Jaunes actions four times now, and on no occasion have they struck me as political at all. The first time was when I exited the motorway north of Toulouse, and discovered my journey was (thanks to them) free of tolls. I signed their petition and spent ten minutes in good-humoured conversation with the group. They couldn’t have been nicer – and their point was clear: rising motorway tolls are just another hidden tax on the already struggling motorist.
Kate Hoey stated with clinical accuracy in 2016 that the fight for Brexit was “a battle between the People and the Establishment”. The Gilets Jaunes represent exactly the same trend towards what Brussels snearingly calls ‘populism’, and thinking critics call Citizen Democracy: right across Europe and the US, those subjected to disguised dictatorship are demanding the return of their civil right to say No. Here in France, a survey by the polling agency Elabe found that almost three-quarters of French voters approved of the protests, and that more than half of those who voted for Mr Macron support them. The scales, it seems, are falling from the eyes. And for the unelected everywhere, the signs are disturbing: the Gilet movement has spread to Italy and – would you believe? – Belgium.
We have a new round of EU elections coming up quite soon. Every last poll shows a massive swing towards this “populism” so disdainfully dismissed by Le Figaro, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and all the rest of the blind media donkeys. Meanwhile, those in the élites who wish to listen in on every conversation and column they regard as seditious are, as always, hearing without listening.
Last month, a large EU-sponsored study among 8,000 EU citizens showed that over 60% of those interviewed wanted more democracy in relation to strategic policy decisions. Like so many sulking infants, the Commission refuses to even discuss it – and the European Parliament shows zero interest in debating it.
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But nothing today is ever as simple as it seems at first sight. What we have in this mass objection to the price of auto fuel is a prime example of two élites being greedy at the same time: in their rush to exploit for minority advantage, they have trampled on and thus removed the veil drawn over their nefarious activities.
It is a myth that the price of motoring is rising purely because of State tax increases risibly rationalised as being eco-friendly. For sure, EU prices are rising (Brussels has to pay for Brexit somehow) and Paris is closing the gap between the price of leadfree petrol and diesel – despite insisting for years that diesel was worth subsidising as “more eco-friendly”. But in truth, Macron is under pressure from the EU federalists to balance the French budget; and like a good banker boy, he will do as he’s told.
However, there is more to auto fuel prices than taxation. What makes the cost of driving so inflationary is the gross cost of refinery upon which the taxes are levied in the first place. And this is being manipulated upwards for multivariate reasons….none of which are to the citizen’s advantage.
The Saudis want to keep their income from oil as engorged as possible – after all, they spend a lot of money on arms, attacking neighbours, and funding jihadists. So they are restricting supply to keep the price of crude as high as possible.
Texas in turn wants the price to be high for several reasons. First, they want the price to keep on rising so they can rationalise fracking as a viable exploration tool….regardless of the environmental damage (especially in terms of water supply) that idiotic extraction form involves. Second, Texas is through-and-through Alt State, whereas Trump isn’t: so they want a high price at the pumps during the Donald’s re-election campaign – the better to give their gal Hillary another shot at the White House.
All producers except the US – Russia included – want the price high because of (a) their high dependence on it as an export (b) the power it gives them at the top geopolitical tables and (c) the need to have money in future to make ever more expensive exploration worthwhile in terms of eventual profit margin.
The bourses too like nothing better than a bull-run on commodities, as they’re under pressure to provide returns for clients hit by Zirp, and the gradual winding down of the Great Shareprice Inflator, QE. For them – and the more omnivorously greedy banking firms of Wall Street, The City and La Défense – anything that keeps market indices (and thus confidence) sky-high is good news. It goes like this: “The oil price is high, so there’s growing demand for energy, which must mean global recovery, so everything is tickerty-boo”.
The fact is, taxes keep having to rise – and access to citizen monies made easier – because the global recovery is a myth. High stock prices owe far more to QE than underlying economic health….and to complete the use of élite brass neck, the money invested in QE with taxpayers’ money is treated as economic growth by the central bank statisticians. Is that a lulu or is that a lulu?
Take the QE element out of economic activity, and global “growth” virtually disappears. Take inbred financial services out of the equation, and the real global economy beyond agriculture is in steep decline.
The price is rigged in several ways, but most obviously by disguised (often algorithmic) buying by sovereign powers, central banks and mega-producers. As much as 60% of today’s crude oil price is pure speculation driven by large trader banks and hedge funds. Further, the role of the international oil exchanges in London and New York is crucial. Nymex in New York and the ICE Futures in London control global benchmark oil prices which in turn set most of the freely traded oil cargo. They do so via oil futures contracts on two grades of crude oil—West Texas Intermediate and North Sea Brent.
The process is so opaque, no more than a few major oil trading banks such as Goldman Sachs have any idea who is buying and who is selling oil futures or derivative contracts that set physical oil prices.
The oil price today stands lower than it’s been because of backlash rigging by those élites who want a lower oil price. But it is still over $50 a barrel, because Russian producers signalled last Wednesday that they would cut production….to keep the price up. So much for the global economic recovery.
Very little changed for the better economically since the start of 2016, when oil stood at $36.76, earlier this year when it stood at $76.41 – and today when it rocks in at $50.98. The entire thing is an artifice bearing no relation to the “free markets” so beloved of hypocritical neoliberals.
More and more and more and more money is being siphoned into the 3% via electronic wizardry, stealth taxes, pointless welfare austerity and market ‘directionalisation’. This time around, two élites have been caught buck-naked in the act.
The Gilets Jaunes are (even if unconsciously) a popular reaction to that. They should be applauded, not smeared.