By Alex Lo

Leaders of France, Brazil and Mexico slammed for stating the obvious that is usually ignored by the Anglo-US media industrial complex.

As sure as night follows day, the editorial knives are out for democratic leaders who have gone off script from the narratives of empire. The Anglo-American press has exploded in a paroxysm of rage over recent remarks made by Emmanuel Macron, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. The leaders of France, Mexico and Brazil ordinarily have little in common. But recently they have said out loud what is usually understood but unspoken in polite democratic society.

Macron said Europe must preserve its “strategic autonomy” and that it would be dangerous to follow Washington’s belligerent lead over Taiwan; otherwise, European states would all become no more than US “vassals”.

Lopez Obrador, who goes by his acronym AMLO, said his country was not responsible for the fentanyl drug crisis in the US and that it “has more democracy” than America. He made the remarks as a growing number of US Republicans are advocating military actions from the application of terrorist labels to the deployment of special forces and even an outright invasion in order to target drug cartels in Mexico.

Meanwhile, for Lula, actions speak louder than words. He has not only questioned why international trade should be conducted mostly in the US dollar but he has committed Brazil, the largest country in South America, to be the latest partner to boost bilateral ties with China by settling trade in each other’s currencies.

The dollar’s global dominance is the linchpin of the US empire. That’s why Washington is furious as an increasing number of countries, not just autocratic but democratic ones as well, are using their own currencies in bilateral or trilateral trade, such as the latest trade concluded between France’s TotalEnergies and state-owned CNOOC that involved the sale of 65,000 tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United Arab Emirates and was settled in the yuan.

The perfectly predictable editorial responses from the “independent” press in the Anglo-American sphere follow.

The Financial Times headlined: “The week Macron’s grand diplomatic project floundered: A furore over the French president’s remarks on Taiwan has left him isolated on the world stage as well as at home.” The conservative Telegraph declares: “But if Macron is indeed kowtowing to President Xi [Jinping], there is likely a dirty secret behind it. To an even greater extent than Germany, France’s economy is increasingly dependent on Chinese money.”

The Telegraph writer obviously didn’t look up the numbers, which are not even in the same ballpark, and instead argued Macron was kowtowing to Beijing just to sell high fashion from Paris; seriously? France’s total trade with China amounted to a mere US$87.3 billion, compared with Germany’s US$248.3 billion.

“Over the last two decades, France has essentially been turned into a fashion house with a country attached,” he wrote, thus concluding, “Macron pretends he is a statesman. But he’s becoming a well-dressed salesman for the French fashion industry.” To prove Macron is “isolated on the world stage”, the FT quoted Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, two of the most extreme hawks in the West’s proxy war against Russia.

In “Look at Latin America. This Is How Democracies Fail”, The New York Times laments the rise of leaders such as AMLO and Lula. It said: “ … the spread of a virulent strain of populism over the past three decades … largely rooted in the citizens’ legitimate exasperation with corruption, has wreaked havoc with party systems and weakened the very institutions necessary to fight corruption and channel social demands in peaceful ways.

“The crippling of political parties and the embrace of messianic leaders to avenge corruption have nothing to show for themselves. They have spawned deeper mistrust of all institutions, particularly those that check power and peacefully process social conflicts. As a result, the region is experiencing democratic backsliding, political instability and, yes, more corruption.”

I don’t know about you but that sounds a lot like the US today.

First published in The South China Morning Post April 16, 2023

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https://johnmenadue.com/mainstream-press-pounces-when-vassals-speak-truth-to-power/

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