4 April 2017

The French system just pulled off a remarkable 11 candidate debate. Lasting nearly four hours, it was riveting viewing. Six less-knowns challenged the five established candidates, intellectually even if their presidential chances remain far behind. Most made valid and sometimes impressive points. As now nearly all the major contenders have adapted aspects of her policies, Marine Le Pen, ex-criminal trial-lawyer, who makes mincemeat of most interviewers, hardly stood out in the crowd of copycats.

In contrast to this impressive effort by the French Press, the Australian mass media, including the ABC, continues to block most candidates from significant publicity and the electors from knowing their options, maintaining the two party system with a wink and a nod to the Greens. The United States corporate-sponsored Republican/Democrat owned US Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) refused to allow more than two presidential candidates to debate. The US first-past-the-post system makes it difficult for any third party ever to win, but the Australian system is preferential so this excuse should not be made. Incidentally, in 2008 we made the same point when we reported on James Sinnamon's run for Brisbane mayor, and compared Brisbane's lack of democratic coverage with that of the mayoral elections in Paris. [1]

You can also view the debate on France2 here: http://www.francetvinfo.fr/elections/presidentielle/direct-presidentielle-regardez-le-grand-debat-entre-les-11-candidats-sur-bfmtv-et-cnews_2129533.html#xtor=EPR-51-[presidentielle-regardez-en-direct-sur-franceinfo-fr-le-grand-debat-entre-les-11-candidats_2129533]-20170404-[bouton]

Other contrasts between the US, Australian and the French debates are their length. Clinton and Trump debated in one and a half hour trysts. The Turnbull-Shorten debate of 2016 lasted just under one hour with less than rigorous questions from the audience.

This long inclusive presidential debate was a first for France and probably for anywhere. It lasted nearly four hours.

The most well-known candidates - Marine Le Pen, Emmanuel Macron, François Fillon, Jean-Luc Mélenchon et Benoît Hamon – had already debated on TFI on the 20th of March 2017. At the time several of those candidates had said that it was a pity that the other six had not been invited to debate. At the time it seemed that the risk of an 11 person debate was about zero. The 11 person debate, with each candidate's responses individually timed, was a triumph of modern media and of BFMTV in particular, as a French audience of 6 million heard the views of Philippe Poutou (NPA), Nathalie Arthaud (LO), Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (DLF), François Asselineau (UPR), Jean Lassalle et Jacques Cheminade.

The candidates were questioned on three themes: How to create jobs; how to protect the French people; and how each candidate would put their policies into practice. It was hard for them to get away with cliches because these would be challenged by the other candidates and the challenges were less predictable than they would have been in a smaller and more traditional field.

NOTES

"Why the Brisbane Mayoral elections should not have been 'boring'"
"Courier Mail provides 'boring', yet unbalanced, coverage of Brisbane City Council elections"

It is weird that the mainstream press and the US-NATO war machine continue to put out the same stories as if they were spam-bots. You would think that real human beings could come up with something more convincing. It is known, however, that people tend to believe a message they often hear repeated, to the detriment of their own eyes and reason, so perhaps this is the intentional modus-operandi of the US-NATO-military industrial media complex. The only way to combat the oft-repeated lie is to repeatedly question it, which we are doing here. Once again the US-NATO deep state war-machine has tried to use the UN like Lucy's football for Charlie Brown, to give authority to accusations against the Syrian government which it actually has no reliable basis for. The consequences could be truly awful - but what do spambots care about World War 3?

Do spambots invent US policy in Syria? Has the White House been automated for destruction?

Without credible evidence, without witnesses, without indications, the American president, Donald Trump, and the mainstream news media again have the US trying to convict President al-Assad of 'war-crimes against his own people'. They will try to use this as a pretext for another bloody 'regime change' in the mould of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Ukraine, either to keep an enlarge their military footprint in the Middle East or to obtain concessions from peace-keeping Russia.

It is alarming that President Trump is now marching along obediently to the same evil old tune as Hillary Clinton did, since a primary difference between their platforms was that he would not pursue baseless interventions in the Middle East.

His new stance is suspicious of a sudden loss of power to the neocons who surround him, given that his new US State Secretary said, only last week, that the US would leave the Syrian people to decide who would lead them, and not seek regime change. The chemical weapons story is an old one and not a very good one. Four years ago the news was almost identical, when it was resoundingly repudiated, for example by the Swiss UN investigator, Carla del Ponte. See http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-22424188. Since then we have heard it many times, picked up then dropped, picked up then dropped again. We republish here a superb 5 April debate and argument from PressTV on this vital subject. In an exercise of logic unfamiliar in the western media, the moderator here asks for a list of for and against points regarding benefits to the Syrian Government or the 'Rebels' in engaging in the purported chemical attacks.

The Debate - Chemical attack in Syria's Idlib

In this episode of The Debate, Press TV has conducted an interview with Marwa Osman, a journalist and political commentator from Beirut, and Michael Lane, the founder of the American Institute for Foreign Policy in Washington, to discuss a recent suspected chemical attack in the Syrian province of Idlib.