[Originally published at Alex Krainer's Substack]
The government of French President Emmanuel Macron is under attack by the Anglo-American imperial establishment. The civil unrest that erupted across the nation was triggered by the 27 June 2023 Police killing of the 17-year old Nahel Merzouk (NM) in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. NM was driving a car without a driving license, failed to comply with police orders and for that he was shot point blank by two officers in full riot gear. NM was of Algerian origin. The next day, riots broke out in many cities across France: Paris, Marseille, Lille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Grenoble and also Brussels in Belgium. Some areas were left looking like war zones.
In fact, some of the riots did resemble low-intensity warfare. According to some reports, US weapons donated to Ukraine have found their way through black markets to the streets of French cities and into the hands of the protesters who used them in coordinated attacks on police and firefighters. Just on the night of Jun 30/July 1, 41 police stations were attacked, 79 police officers injured, 2560 fires were set in the streets, 1360 cars and 234 buildings were burnt. The government deployed 45,000 police and gendarmes to bring the situation under control, but thus far, the rioting has continued with great intensity for five straight days, threatening to destabilize the nation.
President Emmanuel Macron is under increasing pressure, not only from the rioters and the opposition, but more ominously, also from his own Police forces and the military. Police Unions of France wrote to Macron threatening to revolt: "Today the police are in combat as we are at war. Tomorrow we will be in the resistance and the government should be aware of this." Certain military circles appear ready to turn against Macron. General Pierre Villiers, who is apparently well respected among the French military commanders said that the army should be loyal to the people, not to Emmanuel Macron.
Nothing is what it seems…
So far, the events may seem straightforward to understand at the levels of pawns opposed to one another in the streets of French cities: the abusive government of President Macron and its security apparatus is under attack by the people whose legitimate grievances went past the boiling point. From there, it’s easy to assume that Macron’s government even instigated the riots deliberately in order to crack down and tyrannize the people according to their plan. Heck, Macron is the Rothschilds’ errand boy and a loyal World Economic Forum young leader.
You’re either with us, or you’re against us.
All of that sounds plausible, but there’s a far broader context to this story. The present crisis draws root from the very strained relationship between French ruling elites and the Anglo-American imperial establishment, which spans centuries. A more thorough analysis of this relationship could fill many volumes but for now we’ll focus on just the more recent developments. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks in the US, President George W. Bush announced to the world that, “you are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.” He wasn’t just saying words: the empire was preparing to cement the unipolar global order, eliminate its rivals, establish full-spectrum dominance and launch its Project For The New American Century.
France has never accepted the role of a junior partner or unquestioning ally, let alone a vassal to the Anglo-American Empire. It has continued to be a pain in its side at critical junctures. Here are a few examples of the last two decades’ spats between the two sides:
2003: French opposition to US invasion of Iraq
In late 2002 and early 2003, the Administration of George W. Bush was working feverishly to secure its allies’ support for an invasion of Iraq. In February 2002, US State Secretary Colin Powell waved a vial of white powder at the UN Security Council, accusing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein of possessing biological weapons of mass destruction. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin wasn’t impressed. In a searing speech he poured cold water on US case for war and called out Powell’s performance as dubious and unconvincing. A few weeks later, on 10 March 2003 President Jacques Chirac made it clear that France would vote against any UN Resolution authorizing US attack on Iraq. In this, France would vote on the side of Russia and China (talk about foreshadowing).
2008: France opposes Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO
One of the most important projects of the Anglo-American empire over the past three decades has been to encircle Russia by absorbing all of her neighbors to the west and southwest into the NATO alliance. In several waves of eastward extensions, NATO added 14 new member states, moving more than 1,600 km toward Russia. Ukraine and Georgia were next: at the April 2008 NATO Summit in Bucharest, the alliance proclaimed the Bucharest Memorandum. Referencing Ukraine and Georgia, they explicitly declared that, “We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.” While not yet a full-fledged member of the alliance’s integrated command, France was openly opposed to the resolution on the grounds that it would exacerbate the risk of war with Russia.
2019: Emmanuel Macron calls NATO a ‘brain-dead’ alliance
In an interview with The Economist in October 2019 titled, “Emmanuel Macron warns Europe: NATO is becoming brain-dead,” French President warned European countries they can no longer rely on US-dominated military alliance (note, by now France was a full-fledged NATO member): “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO,” and declared that Europe needed to “wake up,” as it stood on “the edge of a precipice” and needed to start thinking of itself strategically as a geopolitical power, otherwise as Europeans, we’ll “no longer be in control of our destiny.” Worse, when asked whether he believed in the effectiveness of Article Five which provides that if one NATO member is attacked all would mobilize to defend it, Macron gave a convoluted, cryptic reply: “I don’t know, … what will Article Five mean tomorrow?”
But President Macron and his government would become still more problematic for the Anglo-American cabal with the escalation of conflict in Ukraine. Of all European leaders, Macron has spent the most time visiting with or speaking on the phone with his Russian counterpart; he sought to improve relations between Russia and France and he tried to influence other European nations to chart a more independent policy on the continent.
2022: Macron says Russia has legitimate security concerns
In an interview that aired on Saturday, 3 Dec. 2022 Macron urged the West to take seriously Russia's security concerns regarding NATO expansion near its border. He called for greater willingness to give Moscow the "guarantees" necessary for negotiations to be successful. He called them 'essential' if the West wants to get serious about talks and peaceful settlement. "We need to prepare what we are ready to do, how we protect our allies and member states, and how to give guarantees to Russia the day it returns to the negotiating table." Macron added that, "One of the essential points we must address — as President Putin has always said — is the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia." These comments elicited rage and disbelief among the Anglo-American allies and western media who accused the French President of being a pro-Kremlin stooge.
April 2023: Macron visits China, flirts with BRICS nations
Emmanuel Macron provoked even more rage and disbelief after his three day high-profile, red-carpet visit to China, from 6 through 8 April 2023. Western “national security experts” were so alarmed by this visit, they called the event “one of the greatest blunders by a major European power since the end of the Cold war…” Indeed, it was a slap in the face to the Anglo-American establishment.
On 7 April 2023 President Macron visited the Sun Yat-Sen University in South China's Guangdong Province where he received an enthusiastic welcome. He delivered a speech on China-France ties and took questions from the students. There may have been a subtle message in the very venue chosen by his hosts. Sun Yat-Sen was a vocal critic of the British Imperial system and their foreign policy. In his book, “The Vital Problem of China,” Sun Yat-Sen wrote that,
“When England befriends another country, the purpose is not to maintain a cordial friendship for the sake of friendship but to utilize that country as a tool to fight a third country. When an enemy has been shorn of his power, he is turned into a friend, and the friend who has become strong, into an enemy. England always remains in a commanding position; she makes other countries fight her wars and she herself reaps the fruits of victory. She has been doing so for hundreds of years.”
[h/t Cynthia Chung for highlighting this passage]
We shouldn’t be America’s vassals
Speaking to journalists on the return flight from Beijing, Macron said that, “Europe must resist pressure to become America’s followers…” that the “great risk” Europe faces is getting “caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its own autonomy,” and that, “Europe had increased its dependence on US for weapons and energy and must focus on boosting its defense industries.” In referring to Ukraine, Macron said that it was, “a faraway country of which we know nothing…” But even this wasn’t as unforgivable as his swipe at the “extraterritoriality of the US dollar.”
While in China, Macron signed many deals expanding bilateral trade between France and China, many of which will be denominated in Chinese yuan. Already before Macron’s visit, in March 2023 French companies began to strike such deals, the first of which was the purchase of 65,000 metric tons of liquid natural gas settled in yuan. French leadership's willingness to craft their own bilateral relations with Anglo-American Empire's chief rival and bypassing the US dollar is simply unforgivable. But Macron would soon go farther: according to the newspaper L’Opinion, during last month’s telephone conversation, French President asked his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa to extend him an invitation to participate in the 15th BRICS Summit planned to be held in South Africa in late July/early August.
It’s about the two systems of governance…
It is important to keep in mind the broadest context of the current global conflict. As George Soros laid it out in his annual address to the World Economic Forum in May 2021, it is the conflict between the two systems of governance. Soros mischaracterized them as “open societies” and “closed societies.” In reality, we’re witnessing the conflict between the western imperial colonial system and pretty much the whole rest of humanity.
The imperial system governance is controlled by the western occult oligarchy which, while it gives lip-service to the rule of law, freedom, democracy and human rights, in reality it consistently sows mayhem abroad and misery at home. Truth be told, the French ruling elites have also enjoyed the massive privileges of this system for centuries. However, they never accepted subservience to the Anglo-American establishment and always sought to plunder and exploit its colonies on their own terms.
Ukraine is some faraway place to you?
We don’t know yet whether France will indeed be invited to the upcoming BRICS Summit, but in the world where not being “with us” equals being “against us,” the Empire simply can’t tolerate the uppity independence of France. You think our military alliance is brain-dead? You don’t want to be our vassal? You dare to strike trade deals with China and trade in yuan? You want to seek peace with Russia? And Ukraine is some faraway place to you? Clearly, this is unacceptable and the Anglo-American establishment has had enough of France’s insubordination. It was time to teach France a lesson and bring her into line with the Anglo-American agenda.
AUKUS alliance: a stab in the back to France
The most recent sign of the Anglo-American cabal’s contempt for the French was the 2021 announcement of the AUKUS alliance between the US, UK and Australia. In 2016, France made a deal with Australia to supply 12 conventional submarines for her navy. The deal was worth $37 billion – a very substantial amount by any measure. French diplomacy celebrated it as the “contract of the century,” important not only for its sheer size and the strengthening of France’s relationship with Australia but also in terms of securing French strategic influence in the Indo-Pacific region.
But then, on Wednesday, 15 Sep. 2021 US President Joe Biden, UK PM Boris Johnson, and "that fellow down under," as Biden addressed Australia's then PM Scott Morrison, announced a "historic" security alliance between the US, Britain and Australia. Part of the deal included US and UK providing Australia with nuclear submarines and a significant transfer of US military technology.
With no prior consultations or warning, Britain, Australia and the US, otherwise well known for the high value they place on sanctity of contract, simply sidelined France, tore up her contract with Australia and threw French interests overboard provoking indignation and anger in France. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian referred to the AUKUS announcement as evidence of duplicity, treachery, and a stab in the back to France from her supposed allies and partners.
France recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia and Le Drian stated that there was now a crisis of trust with the US. EU Council’s President Charles Michel also strongly criticized the AUKUS announcement, accusing the Anglo-American club of leaving Europe “out of the game in the Indo-Pacific region.” This was not the first massive humiliation dished out to France from the same “friendly” Anglo-American circles.
Haiti’s reparations: how the US punished France’s opposition to Iraq invasion
American diplomacy and secret services found it easy to punish France’s opposition to the Iraq invasion and the embarrassment that France’s Foreign Minister Dominic De Villepin inflicted on the US delegation in the UN Security Council in February of 2003.
Jean Bertrand Aristide had first become Haiti’s president in 1991, but was deposed in a military coup after less than eight months in office. He spent years in exile in the US before coming back to power again in 2000 elections, with the help of the US. His US liaison was the diplomat and CIA agent Luis Moreno. On 7 April 2003 Aristide suddenly started calling for colonial-era reparations from France (note, this was 18 days after the start of the US invasion of Iraq). The precise amount that Aristide was demanding was $21,685,135,571.48 – that sum represented the lower-end of the scale of estimated damage inflicted on Haiti by France.
Formerly known as Saint Domingue, Haiti was a French colony, supplying sugar, coffee and tobacco to much of Europe. It was a boon to French merchants, slave owners and financiers. But in 1791 Haiti’s slaves staged a successful rebellion and won their freedom. In 1801, when Napoleon sent a large armada to subjugate them again, they defeated his troops and in 1804 Haiti’s leaders declared independence.
But France wasn’t ready to give up Haiti. King Charles X sent another armada in 1825 offering to recognize Haiti’s independence, provided that Haiti’s government agreed to pay an extortionate tribute in the amount of 150 million gold Francs. How much money was that? In 1803, France agreed to sell the Louisiana territory to the United States for 80 million Francs – an area that was 77 times larger than Haiti. But Haiti's choice was simple: pay up, or it's war!
The French would have been able to impose a naval blockade on Haiti and entirely cut them off from global trade and payment systems. Haitians had no choice but to submit to French ultimatum. To pay the ransom, Haiti was forced to borrow the sums from French bankers and pay back the loans plus interest from the proceeds of their commodity exports. Incidentally, this was the beginning of the new model of colonialism based on financial debts rather than military occupation. That, essentially is the imperial model of governance plaguing humanity to this day.
Haiti’s tragic experience was the only time in history when freed slaves had to pay restitution to their former masters and borrow funds from them to meet the ransom payments. This is why Haiti’s humiliation was called the Double Debt: it took Haitians over 130 years to pay it back and doomed the nation to chronic austerity, underdevelopment and crushing poverty.
It also made Aristide’s demand for restitution legitimate and an absolute bombshell for France. His campaign grew bolder over time with banners, bumper-stickers, government adds and graffiti spread all around the country. Not only was Aristide demanding a very substantial amount of money from France in reparations, he also encouraged other former colonies to join his fight and demand their own reparations from France.
French government was stumped with this development which their Ambassador to Haiti Mr. Yves Gaudeul called explosive. He urged his government to open discussions with Haiti to diffuse the situation, but he was firmly rejected. Instead, France recalled Gaudeul and sent a less sympathetic Ambassador to Haiti, Mr. Thierry Burkard, who explained the situation in stark terms: “Algeria can perfectly make claims, as well as most of our colonies… There’s no end to it. It would have set a precedent that we would have been greatly blamed for.”
Thankfully for France, the problem disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. Before dawn on 29 February 2004 Luis Moreno, that same US “diplomat” who helped bring Aristide to power in 2000, came to his residence flanked with security officials and demanded Aristide’s resignation. Mr. and Mrs. Aristide were simply abducted and flown out of the country on a US-chartered plane back into exile. Haiti’s new, western-backed leader, Gerard Latortue dropped the restitution demands and the whole messy affair was closed.
Even though Jean Bertrand Aristide had been in power since the beginning of 2001, his calls for reparations came more than two years later, seemingly out of nowhere, but soon after France’s snub to the US over the Iraq invasion. Aristide demanded reparations from France, but never from the United States which had occupied it, or held it in debt bondage since 1915, subjecting it to equally rapacious exploitation.
Even before military occupation, in December 1914, US Marines landed in Haiti’s capital, Port-Au-Prince, broke into Haiti’s National Bank and simply took some $500,000 worth of gold belonging to Haiti’s government. Within days, Haiti’s gold was in the vaults of New York banks. Still, Aristide apparently made no precise calculation of damages inflicted on Haiti by the United States.
Furthermore, in an email exchange between Aristide’s government legal counsel Ira Kurzban, and their international law advisor Gunther Handl, the latter advised Kurzban that “Haiti must convey to France,” that there are suitable opportunities “for washing France’s dirty laundry in public.” It’s almost as though the affair was about pressuring and embarrassing France rather than securing justice for Haiti.
That notion is confirmed by the simple fact that France’s problem disappeared only after US agents removed Aristide from power, rather than after earnest negotiations with Haiti’s representatives and France’s acceptance of some obligation to Haiti. This fact alone suggests that France yielded to the United States in some backroom deal, not to Haiti. Perhaps France dropped its challenge to the New American Century and its full-spectrum dominance, and pledged her allegiance to the hegemon.
In 1966 under President Charles de Gaulle, France removed all her troops from NATO’s integrated military command and asked all non-French NATO troops to leave France. In 2009, only a few years after the Haiti affair (plus the destabilizing 2005 riots for a good measure), France once more became a full-fledged member of the North Atlantic alliance. But everyone did not live happily ever after and the relations with France remained difficult.
The Damocles’ sword of France’s colonial past
The Damocles’ sword of France’s ugly colonial past (though no more ugly than that of Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Great Britain or Germany), was brought up again in November 2022 when Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni appeared on Italian channel 7 airing some of France's particularly ugly-looking colonial dirty laundry. She showed the Italian public two exhibits: a CFA Franc banknote and a photo of a child working in a gold mine in Burkina Faso: "This is called the CFA franc. It is the colonial currency that France prints for 14 African nations, to which it applies seigniorage and by virtue of which it exploits the resources of these nations..."
Meloni claimed that thanks to the CFA Franc, 50% of everything that Burkina Faso exports ends up in the French treasury. In addition to being the Prime Minister of Italy, Meloni is also a member of the powerful Aspen Institute. Headquartered in Washington, D. C., the institute is funded by some of the most powerful exponents of the Anglo-American establishment including the Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Carnegie Corporation and Lumina Foundation and Meloni might be doing their bidding in antagonizing France.
In another jab at embarrassing France, in May 2022, the New York Times published a 19,000-words long special report about the French colonial abuse of Haiti. Titled, “The Ransom: How a French Bank Captured Haiti,” the report reads almost as though it was the French who invented slavery and colonialism.
Preannouncing the attack on France
The most bizarre element that suggests that the current uprising in France is a planned destabilization attack by the Anglo American imperial cabal is the fact that it may have been preannounced in what appears to be their habitual modus operandi. Last month I had the privilege of participating in the Better Way Conference in Bath, organized by the World Council for Health. One of the speakers on my panel was Mr. Mark Devlin (@DJMarkDevlin) a DJ who made it his challenge to study how the ruling establishment use popular culture and entertainment to disseminate propaganda and manipulate the masses.
One thing he picked up on is that they invariably preannounce their plans to the public through popular films and TV series. Mr. Devlin claimed there are literally hundreds of examples of this, and he shared one with us: a short clip from the American TV show, The Dead Zone which aired in 2005. The plot involved a Coronavirus contagion. The virus originated from China and caused high fever and respiratory infections, necessitated lockdowns, quarantines, wearing of masks, tracking and tracing of contacts, etc.
The clip was profoundly disturbing to see, but it suggested that Devlin was onto something important. As it happens, the case of riots in France also corroborates his hypothesis. Namely, in 2022 Netflix launched a film titled “Athena” about a future ethnic civil war in France, which would erupt after the police killing of an Algerian youth. On 27 Jun 2023, French police killed an Algerian youth.
Seeking justice for Nahel by attacking Chinese tourists?
Another detail about the riots could have symbolic relevance: namely, Reuters reported that Chinese tourists were injured when rioters attacked a bus carrying a Chinese tour group in Marseille. The attack, which took place on Thursday, 29 June 2023 again reveals the cabal's modus operandi. Recall, when the US and NATO bombed Belgrade in 1999, five U.S. Joint Direct Attack Munition guided bombs hit the Chinese embassy, killing three Chinese state media journalists. One bomb might have gone astray and hit the embassy by accident, but five bombs were a message, as was (probably) last Thursday's attack on Chinese tourists. It would be difficult to explain why rioters who had grievances against the French government and demanded Justice for the young Nahel Merzouk, thought they'd obtain that justice in attacking the Chinese.
What now?
Should we regard Emmanuel Macron and his government as the good guys in this saga? Will they be able to pacify the situation, or will it escalate? For my part, I’ve never been even slightly fond of Emmanuel Macron, but I believe that today France’s sovereignty is at stake, and it was Macron who invited Anglo-American cabal’s wrath. If France fights back, things will get ugly. Yes, they’ll have to crack down and yes, western media will accuse them of all the standard faults of tyranny, repression, intolerance and censorship.
If France capitulates, things will get uglier still and uglier for longer. But to defend France, the government of Emmanuel Macron will have to try to bring together all of France and this could prove their toughest challenge. Macron represents the French elites which do have much to answer to – not only to their colonial subjects but also to the French people whose country has been stolen from under them (though Macron is not the only one to blame for this).
In 1996, when I moved to Monaco, I recall that for several years in a row, France was winning the top spot as the country with the highest quality of life (I believe the quality of life surveys were conducted by Conde Nast or some such publication). Over the last 25 years however, quality of life in France has deteriorated precipitously. If France is to survive and lead Europe once more, the elites backing Macron will have to reconcile and make nice with the people.
With regards to her colonial past, France will at the very least need to set up a truth and reconciliation commission and offer an earnest apology and a helping hand to its former colonies to rise and develop as equal trading partners rather than simply territories to strip mine of their resources and subjugate in a cold and inhumane fashion.
The world should consider offering a helping hand to France, because with the present struggle, a very large opportunity has presented itself to humanity: to defeat the imperialistic system of governance that’s caused the unspeakable tragedies of our colonial past and its most powerful beneficiaries, the Anglo-American imperial establishment. If they succeed at taming France and making her their vassal, they will grow stronger.
If France prevails and joins humanity, the multipolar integrations and the other model of governance, the imperial cabal will suffer a crushing blow. I know where 99.9% of us stand and for my part, I would love to see Emmanuel Macron in South Africa at the end of this month, for once listening and earnestly seeking partnership and reconciliation with the world and securing France’s place as an equal in a new community of nations.
Alex Krainer – @NakedHedgie is the creator of I-System Trend Following and publisher of daily TrendCompass investor reports which cover over 200 financial and commodities markets. One-month test drive is always free of charge, no jumping through hoops to cancel. To start your trial subscription, drop us an email at
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