The Wholesome Photo of the Month Thu May 09, 2024 11:01 | Anti-Empire
In 3 War Years Russia Will Have Spent $3... Thu May 09, 2024 02:17 | Anti-Empire
UK Sending Missiles to Be Fired Into Rus... Tue May 07, 2024 14:17 | Marko Marjanović
US Gives Weapons to Taiwan for Free, The... Fri May 03, 2024 03:55 | Anti-Empire
Russia Has 17 Percent More Defense Jobs ... Tue Apr 30, 2024 11:56 | Marko Marjanović Anti-Empire >>
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Julian Assange is finally free ! Tue Jun 25, 2024 21:11 | indy
Stand With Palestine: Workplace Day of Action on Naksa Day Thu May 30, 2024 21:55 | indy
It is Chemtrails Month and Time to Visit this Topic Thu May 30, 2024 00:01 | indy
Hamburg 14.05. "Rote" Flora Reoccupied By Internationalists Wed May 15, 2024 15:49 | Internationalist left
Eddie Hobbs Breaks the Silence Exposing the Hidden Agenda Behind the WHO Treaty Sat May 11, 2024 22:41 | indy Human Rights in Ireland >>
Lies, Damned Lies and the Met Office?s Statistics Thu Aug 01, 2024 09:00 | Paul Homewood No, Britain's weather is not become more extreme, says Paul Homewood, and the Met Office's manipulation of statistics to try to prove it is is shameful and dishonest.
The post Lies, Damned Lies and the Met Office?s Statistics appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
In Episode 9 of the Sceptic: Toby Young on Labour?s War on Free Speech, Andrew Montford on the Lunac... Thu Aug 01, 2024 07:00 | Richard Eldred In Episode 9 of the Sceptic: Toby Young on Labour?s war on free speech, Andrew Montford on the lunacy of heat pumps and Euggypius on a mad month in U.S. politics.
The post In Episode 9 of the Sceptic: Toby Young on Labour’s War on Free Speech, Andrew Montford on the Lunacy of Heat Pumps and Euggypius on a Mad Month in U.S. politics appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
News Round-Up Thu Aug 01, 2024 00:47 | Richard Eldred A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
It?s Time For Parents to Step up Their Campaigning Against Labour?s Tax Raid on Independent Schools,... Wed Jul 31, 2024 17:00 | Philip Leith Given that the new Labour Government is planning to introduce […]
The post It?s Time For Parents to Step up Their Campaigning Against Labour?s Tax Raid on Independent Schools, Highlighting the Harmful Impact on Children appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Huw Edwards Admits to Having Sexual Images of Seven Year-Old Boy on Phone Wed Jul 31, 2024 15:14 | Toby Young Huw Edwards, the BBC?s highest-paid newsreader, has pleaded guilty in court to having 41 child porn images on his phone involving youngsters between the ages of seven and 14. He is now facing up to 10 years in jail.
The post Huw Edwards Admits to Having Sexual Images of Seven Year-Old Boy on Phone appeared first on The Daily Sceptic. Lockdown Skeptics >>
Voltaire, international edition
Netanyahu soon to appear before the US Congress? It will be decisive for the suc... Thu Jul 04, 2024 04:44 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N°93 Fri Jun 28, 2024 14:49 | en
Will Israel succeed in attacking Lebanon and pushing the United States to nuke I... Fri Jun 28, 2024 14:40 | en
Will Netanyahu launch tactical nuclear bombs (sic) against Hezbollah, with US su... Thu Jun 27, 2024 12:09 | en
Will Israel provoke a cataclysm?, by Thierry Meyssan Tue Jun 25, 2024 06:59 | en Voltaire Network >>
|
Jean-Luc Mélenchon: Robespierres Ghost?
Jean-Luc Mélenchon of the Front de Gauche is now the third candidate in the French Presidential election, at 16% he is level with La Pen but his trajectory is upward. His standing is sending shivers up the spines of the French Bourgeoisie, fearful of what concessions Edwin will wring from Hollande for support in the second round of voting. Here are two articles regarding his candidacy. Full texts at links.
Momentum builds behind Frances third man
Jean-Michel Edwin calls for critical support for Melenchon in this months presidential election
Campaigning for France’s two-round presidential election is hotting up. The first ballot takes place on April 22, when all but the top two candidates will be eliminated, and the second round will be held on May 6. The monarchical president - either rightwing incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy or one of his opponents - will form a provisional government, and will hope to gain a majority of deputies in the French national assembly when the legislative elections are held on June 10 and 17.
Sarkozy and the Parti Socialiste candidate, François Hollande, are running far ahead of their opponents and look set to qualify for the second round, but the Front de Gauche (FG) candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, in alliance with the Parti Communiste Français, has unexpectedly gained support and now stands at 15% in the polls. He has promised his enthusiastic working class supporters that he will qualify for the second round: “We will do it!”
According to the media, Mélenchon is the “hard-left” candidate who calls for a “citizens’ revolution” (révolution citoyenne). Last week he raised the demand that Sarkozy “account for the misery and ignorance he has spread during his five years in office”. He was speaking at a rally at the Place du Capitole in Toulouse in front of 70,000 red-flag-waving supporters - only the latest in a series of mass rallies, where tens of thousands workers have come to hear him across the country. The climax of his campaign should be a monster rally in Paris three days before the election, where 100,000 are expected to gather from all over France. “This is not an ordinary campaign,” Mélenchon says, “but the first stage of a revolution: you cannot stop us! We can’t lose because it’s not only an election, but the révolution citoyenne on the march!”
Early campaigning
The classic right-left stand-off between the conservative Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, plus liberal allies, and the Parti Socialiste began to take shape when the PS organised primary elections open to every French voter in October 2011. For the first time these primaries were opened up to candidates of other leftwing parties, but only the bourgeois Parti Radical de Gauche availed itself of the opportunity to join in - the FG, PCF and far-left organisations kept their distance.
The PS primaries need to be mentioned, as they attracted more than 2.5 million voters - far more than the PS membership. Amongst the six candidates in the first round, François Hollande finished ahead of Martine Aubry and the former won the second round. But the third candidate was PS leftwinger Arnaud Montebourg, who picked up an unexpected 17%.
In a press release issued on December 9 Mélenchon congratulated Hollande, but put particular emphasis on the Montebourg result: “… I note especially the spectacular breakthrough of Arnaud Montebourg and his ideas of rupture, which he raises in terms often identical to those of the Front de Gauche”.
|
View Comments Titles Only
save preference
Comments (4 of 4)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4Tens of thousands of people marched down Marseille’s Prado Avenue on Saturday to attend the election rally of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Left Front’s presidential candidate. This was the third rally, after events in Paris and Toulouse, for a candidate who is forecast to come in third in the April 22 vote, after incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy and Socialist Party (PS) candidate François Hollande.
Attendance at the Marseille rally reflects widespread demands for a left-wing policy against the banks, and hopes aroused by Mélenchon’s election program—which calls for raising the minimum wage, widening access to health care and limiting social inequality.
One great contradiction underlay the rally, however: these demands are being placed on the Left Front, which is composed of forces incapable of serious opposition to the political establishment, of which they are a part—the Left Party and its leader, Mélenchon, an ex-minister in the PS-led Plural Left government (2000-02), and the Stalinist French Communist Party (PCF). The PS, the PCF and their allies have long records, when they were in government in the 1980s and 1990s, of carrying out austerity policies demanded by the ruling elite. The fact that popular hopes for social and political change rest with such discredited forces indicates the vacuum on the left in France.
Mélenchon began his speech Saturday by referring to the Mediterranean and to last year’s revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, calling for cancelling Tunisia’s debt: “We see the direction taken by the movement of the people. We must lighten the load on these people, particularly our brothers and sisters in Tunisia.” He criticized the US military presence in the Mediterranean, which he said should be a “zone of peace,” and denounced attempts to divide the population along religious lines: “Shut up already about religion, about all religions.”
He continued, “We are writing a page in the history of the left, the left that does not betray.” He pledged to defend “those who are scorned, ignored, insulted. We’ve had enough of hearing that we are moochers. The only people who are moochers in this country are the rich.” He praised the working class as “the class of the common [national] interest, the patriotic class,” and also as an “ecological” class.
Citing the creation on the German stock exchange of financial instruments to speculate against French sovereign debt, he warned: “Finance will attack after April 16 [when Eurex, a subsidiary of the German stock market, will launch a new futures contract on French government bonds], and France will not give in.” He asked his supporters to respond to union calls for protest strikes, calling on them to be “cultivated” and “a disciplined force in struggle.” He closed with, “Long live the Republic, long live France!”
Full text: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/apr2012/mele-a16.shtml
The demonstration in Marseille
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/22/france-electio....html
"But Le Pen's record score of 18-20 percent was the sensation of the night, beating her father's 2002 result and outpolling hard leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon, in fourth place on 11 percent."
Ha ha ha!
Fascists on the rise in Europe in times of austerity?. Big surprise there..
Fascists stir up resentments among the poor and the foreign nationals then make political hay out of it.
I think her RT interview last year was very revealing. It actually sounds a bit to the left of Sarkozy.
Caption: Video Id: w_qYKa1n8Es Type: Youtube Video
Embedded video Youtube Video