written by gilbert mercier

France is at a crossroad. A fairly benign bread-and-butter protest has turned into a major popular dissent putting in question France’s political system. It is new, unheard of, and because we live in the digital age, with immediate communication, the world is not only watching, but there is a contagious factor to it, which in the Anglo-Saxon world is called “Yellow Vests Movement”. In what could be a healthy contagion of a social yellow fever of dissent, this polymorphic movement has already spread to 25 countries and counting.

The illusion of democracy

“Pour le peuple, il y a toujours la misère!” Anonymous Gilet Jaune

It is everywhere. In a few years, it has metastasized like a cancer, on all continents. Its fervent proponents and ill-informed supporters call it populism or nationalism. In the Italy, Germany, or Spain of the 1930s, however, this ideology of exclusion and fear, defined by a hatred of the other, together with a tyrannical executive power, was called by its proper name: fascism. Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany and Franco in Spain were the bloodthirsty tenors of capitalism’s symphony orchestra, singing the deadly opera quietly conducted by the military-industrial complex.

Time is up! All humans, men and women, are guilty as charged! Guilty of abusing other species and the natural world we depend on; guilty, either by greed or ignorance, of abusing other species that sustain our own and driving them to expedient extinction. Wild life, big and small, is briskly moving towards a vanishing point. From the seas to the land and the skies, the global species disappearing act has reached a catastrophic and probably unstoppable momentum.

We are reaching the seventh-year anniversary of the tragic conflict in Syria, which seems to evolve and get more complex as time goes on. If nothing else, with the recent downing of an Israeli F16 by the Syrian army of Bashar al-Assad, which was the first time an Israeli jet was shot down for breaching Syrian air space, the conflict could even grow, with sustained intrusions from Israeli military forces in Syria and tit-for-tat retaliations against Israel by Hezbollah opening a front between Israel and Lebanon.

Crown Prince Mohamed bin-Salman is such a darling of the global mainstream media that many call him, affectionately, by his initials MBS. The new strongman of the Kingdom has often mentioned the need for reforms and modernization of Saudi Arabia, both socially and economically. Can MBS walk the talk of his enticing narrative? The Crown Prince’s charm offensive is, at least partially, a way to cover up his failed attempt to bully Qatar into submission back in June 2017.

Unless one lives in the alternate reality of religious beliefs, it has become impossible to deny and ignore a simple fact: very soon, perhaps within only two decades, humans will join the crowded groups of endangered species. While polar bears, lions, and elephants are solely the victims of men’s cruel and reckless stupidity, humans are collectively both the perpetrators and the ultimate victims of a self-inflicted mass genocide.

Anti-capitalist and anti-globalist protesters, by the thousands, have greeted world leaders and their entourage in Hamburg, Germany, for the G20 summit. About 15,000 demonstrated on Thursday, July 6, 2017, and the riot police cracked down on them with water cannons set on armored vehicles.

There is trouble in oil paradise. It seems that all the elements of an already explosive geopolitical concoction are getting vigorously stirred.