True Anon Truth Feed - Episode 123: The Stupid France of Mr. Macron
Aired: 2020-12-10
Duration: 01:39:47


=== BLM Protests Controversy (02:41) ===

[00:00:00]  And I'm sorry for being epic bacon.
[00:00:05]  Ooh.
[00:00:06]  Wait, who's Destiny?
[00:00:08]  Destiny is a streamer, a la Vausch, but he is the same exact opinions on everything as Valsch, but he calls himself a liberal.
[00:00:17]  He is famous.
[00:00:18]  I've only heard him from one incident where he was like really mad during the BLM protests because he thought the protests were being derailed by like Black Block.
[00:00:29]  And he was saying that he's like, at this point, the rioting needs to stop.
[00:00:33]  The looting needs to stop.
[00:00:34]  I hope some right-wingers come and mow down these fuckers.
[00:00:37]  Like, this needs to stop.
[00:00:38]  This needs to end.
[00:00:39]  Like, getting really angry about it.
[00:00:41]  You know, they're fucking debate.
[00:00:43]  There's like a whole community of debate.
[00:00:45]  Yeah, debaters.
[00:00:46]  There want to be, be a debater.
[00:00:56]  Remember that.
[00:00:57]  Remember the Pixies?
[00:00:59]  No.
[00:01:00]  Who are they?
[00:01:02]  That just reminds me of like being in high school.
[00:01:05]  When I was in high school, I listened to Minor Threat.
[00:01:10]  My friend, who dated your friend when we were in high school, almost got a Pixies tattoo, and I'm really happy she didn't.
[00:01:17]  I knew a girl in high school that got a pixie.
[00:01:19]  I think I dated a girl with a Pixie's tattoo.
[00:01:21]  Really?
[00:01:21]  Yeah, when I was in high school, I had an older girlfriend.
[00:01:27]  Oh, wait, I did know this.
[00:01:28]  Yeah.
[00:01:28]  Yes, who would pick me up in her new car every day after school and drive me?
[00:01:35]  Her parents, she said that her dad was like the muffin king of Sacramento.
[00:01:41]  That's right.
[00:01:43]  And she was like part of some Native American tribe, which I thought was fake because it was like Pacheco.
[00:01:49]  And I thought she just heard the word Pachinko and thought I maybe hadn't heard that and was using that.
[00:01:54]  But it turns out it was real.
[00:01:56]  And she got some like 20K a month from the government.
[00:01:59]  And so little, little Brace Belden was spending his weekends in the four season suite.
[00:02:05]  And I would invite my shithead friends over and they just like, it was nothing I've ever been in before.
[00:02:10]  And yeah, I loved it.
[00:02:12]  Anyways, I think she had a pixie tattoo.
[00:02:37]  We're back.
[00:02:38]  We're back.
[00:02:39]  Here we are again.
[00:02:40]  I have some big news.

=== Studio Without Mask (12:33) ===

[00:02:42]  Uh-oh.
[00:02:43]  Yeah, well, no, it's not for me to tell people.
[00:02:45]  I just have it.
[00:02:46]  Oh.
[00:02:46]  I'm keeping it close to the chest.
[00:02:49]  That's your go-to joke.
[00:02:51]  No, it's Liz.
[00:02:52]  It's true.
[00:02:53]  Here, listen, I'll tell you right now.
[00:02:58]  Delete that part?
[00:03:02]  See?
[00:03:03]  Pretty big, huh?
[00:03:05]  Pretty big.
[00:03:06]  Yeah, I think you're right.
[00:03:07]  You think you're so funny?
[00:03:09]  I mean, you laughed, baby.
[00:03:11]  Here's the thing.
[00:03:12]  Here's the thing.
[00:03:13]  Women always say stuff like, oh, you think you're so funny?
[00:03:16]  You think you're so clever.
[00:03:17]  But then they laugh anyway.
[00:03:18]  So it's like, yes, you're literally reinforcing the thing that's the bit.
[00:03:23]  That's the whole thing.
[00:03:24]  It's like, ha ha, you think you're so funny, but of course, you know, I think you're funny and it's very charming.
[00:03:29]  It's like a cute little back and forth.
[00:03:30]  Wait.
[00:03:31]  Oh, I've just been getting really insulted by that when women say it.
[00:03:35]  They were trying to do like a cute thing.
[00:03:38]  All right.
[00:03:38]  Hello.
[00:03:39]  Welcome, everyone.
[00:03:40]  This is Truanon.
[00:03:41]  Hello.
[00:03:42]  Right?
[00:03:43]  Wait, did I mess?
[00:03:44]  I messed that up.
[00:03:45]  This is.
[00:03:46]  No, no.
[00:03:46]  So, wait, we doing accents, baby.
[00:03:49]  This is.
[00:03:49]  Oh, we are.
[00:03:50]  We.
[00:03:52]  That's the only.
[00:03:53]  That's the, you're going to get a lot of money.
[00:03:54]  That's the only French word.
[00:03:56]  Je mapel Liz.
[00:03:58]  Whoa.
[00:04:00]  Jemmapelle brace le Beldin Irino.
[00:04:06]  And we are joined by Jemmapelle Young Chomsky, who is Jemappelle producing this podcast, which is Je Lapelle Truinon.
[00:04:15]  Yeah, Vorinon.
[00:04:18]  Okay, Voranon.
[00:04:20]  All right.
[00:04:20]  Well, if you haven't figured out already, which you probably haven't because we haven't said anything about it, we are, it's French week here on Truinon.
[00:04:29]  Apparently, that's a thing.
[00:04:30]  Week?
[00:04:31]  Yeah, went on.
[00:04:31]  I don't know.
[00:04:32]  Okay, yeah, fuck it.
[00:04:33]  Yeah, this is actually a week's worth of episodes right here.
[00:04:37]  We're doing another episode this week, but consider that a bonus episode.
[00:04:41]  So even though we're just doing two this week, we're actually technically doing three.
[00:04:46]  That's called a French trio.
[00:04:49]  Wait, no, that's a French, that's a French quad.
[00:04:52]  It's a menage trois.
[00:04:53]  Come on.
[00:04:54]  It was right there.
[00:04:55]  It's never been right there for me, but keep going.
[00:04:59]  Well, Bruce and I have both, we both are wearing berets.
[00:05:02]  I have a baguette in my arm.
[00:05:04]  I'm racist.
[00:05:07]  And I'm anti-Semitic.
[00:05:09]  And together, we are French.
[00:05:14]  So wait, why are we talking about the French?
[00:05:16]  Good question.
[00:05:19]  I've been asking that for the past four days and you haven't been able to tell me.
[00:05:22]  I don't even know what the episode is about.
[00:05:24]  You just sent me a bunch of French words.
[00:05:28]  I don't know if people are aware, but there's like a mass rash, we'll say, rash of protests going on right now in France.
[00:05:36]  And I guess you could, sometimes you could basically say that just any day of the week of the year.
[00:05:41]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:05:43]  That's very true.
[00:05:44]  I mean, that's actually usually when people mention that there are protests in France.
[00:05:48]  I believe you have even said to me before, well, the French are always protesting.
[00:05:51]  And it's true.
[00:05:52]  They like being out in the streets because it's cold and rainy and the boulevards are wide.
[00:05:57]  I mean, they're very good at it.
[00:05:58]  Yeah.
[00:05:58]  No.
[00:05:58]  Oh, yeah.
[00:05:59]  They're fantastic.
[00:06:01]  But they are, there are like, I mean, it's surprising because, you know, there's a confinement policy now in France, right?
[00:06:08]  Which is very strict.
[00:06:09]  It's very, very strict.
[00:06:10]  I think there's like phases that I don't totally understand because all the news is in French and I don't read.
[00:06:18]  Oh, we should say that, by the way, Bryce and I don't speak French.
[00:06:21]  Yeah.
[00:06:22]  And we shall be butchering basically every French word that we say.
[00:06:27]  So I looked up the statistics.
[00:06:28]  You know, I'm a numbers guy.
[00:06:31]  And we have 95% of our listeners are from France.
[00:06:36]  And so I understand that this is going to be a kind of a heavy episode for a lot of people.
[00:06:42]  But I just want you to le bear with us.
[00:06:46]  Because like Liz was saying, there's protests this week because one of sort of the most important French sex criminals in history has finally been caught.
[00:06:58]  And he's been running around.
[00:07:00]  He's just, he's these two white stripes on his back, or excuse me, covered in black paint.
[00:07:06]  You can't see the white stripes on his back.
[00:07:08]  And he is the most prolific rapist in French history.
[00:07:13]  Finally, he's been caught and killed by a trio of tabby cats who were deputized by the French intelligence agency.
[00:07:20]  Also, unfortunately, former Nazis.
[00:07:22]  They're very old cats.
[00:07:24]  And they've killed Pepe Lepier.
[00:07:26]  Hey, we can spend the rest of our lives macking love.
[00:07:32]  Well, that was very cute.
[00:07:33]  But that's not actually why the French have been protesting and breaking confinement.
[00:07:39]  Actually, there was a pretty brutal incident of like just like a, you know, if you know anything about the French police, this shouldn't come as a surprise.
[00:07:50]  But like, even by their standards, a pretty egregious, basically in-home beating of a resident in Paris.
[00:08:00]  Yeah, it's interesting to note because this is a, you know, I love this word that Liz actually invented back in 1998, intersectional sort of incident, because it sort of goes across a bunch of different things.
[00:08:12]  It crosses through French police and societal racism, but also masked stuff and how the police are fucking psycho.
[00:08:21]  So we're getting a lot of different things here.
[00:08:23]  But this black rap producer named Michelle, and again, forgive us, but I won't preface any more names with saying that.
[00:08:32]  Michelle Zeckler was walking towards his studio without a mask on in Paris.
[00:08:36]  Now, I'm sure many of you here in America walk around without a mask all the time, either because land of the free.
[00:08:44]  I just did it right now.
[00:08:45]  Because, you know, you're on the street.
[00:08:46]  Maybe there's nobody around.
[00:08:48]  You know, I'm not coughing on anybody or nothing.
[00:08:50]  Anyways, but in Paris, I mean, that's a big fucking crime.
[00:08:56]  Yeah, Le No No.
[00:08:58]  That's actually, that's the statue is Le No No.
[00:09:02]  And he sees a police car with police in it.
[00:09:05]  He says, oh shit, you know, I don't want to get this big fucking fine.
[00:09:08]  And so he goes into the studio.
[00:09:10]  Three, you mean, you might think, like, okay, you know, these cops are mad at maybe seeing this guy without a mask.
[00:09:16]  They're going to find him.
[00:09:16]  They're like, okay, he goes in the studio.
[00:09:17]  He's not outside without a mask anymore.
[00:09:19]  We can go back to doing police stuff elsewhere.
[00:09:22]  No, they follow him in the studio.
[00:09:25]  They basically break down the door to get into the studio.
[00:09:28]  It's pretty incredible footage.
[00:09:30]  You can look up the video online because it turns out that there was a security camera in his studio that caught all of this, which is another reason why this incident has taken like wildfire through France.
[00:09:42]  I mean, they beat the shit out of him.
[00:09:44]  I mean, Liz, you've seen, I know you don't generally like watching stuff like this, but you have to turn it off, actually.
[00:09:49]  It is insane.
[00:09:51]  It's like you think they're going to stop doing it and then they just keep beating the shit out of him.
[00:09:56]  And according to him, there's no audio, I don't believe, in the video, but they are, and I definitely believe this, just calling him the N-word and beating the shit out of him.
[00:10:06]  Yeah, whatever the French is for that.
[00:10:07]  Yeah.
[00:10:08]  I think it's a universal word.
[00:10:09]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:10:10]  And so there were other people at the studio.
[00:10:12]  I think like nine or ten people, they come out of recording wherever they are, and they're like watching this producer get the shit beat out of them by batons by three giant police officers.
[00:10:22]  They actually get the cops outside.
[00:10:25]  The cops bust tear gas through the windows, guns drawn, threatening to shoot, get these guys outside and arrest all 10 of them.
[00:10:33]  Yeah.
[00:10:34]  I mean, it's like pretty crazy.
[00:10:36]  You could see a bunch of them wouldn't go on camera for interviews, which is very interesting, but also not, I mean, totally understandable at the same time.
[00:10:46]  But the guy, Michel Zeclair, like did go on camera and also like showed foot, like photos of him when he was at the hospital.
[00:10:55]  Like his face is unrecognizable.
[00:10:58]  Yeah.
[00:10:58]  It's just, it's like literally like smashed to it.
[00:11:01]  It's like on the side of his face is on the side of his face.
[00:11:05]  You know what I mean?
[00:11:06]  I mean, it's massive.
[00:11:08]  You know, it's like ballooned outwards.
[00:11:10]  He's got that really, you know, he's got the eyelids that like, you know, when people get bashed in them, they just sort of grow.
[00:11:16]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:11:18]  Yeah.
[00:11:18]  It's really awful.
[00:11:20]  And like this, like I was saying, this whole, because the thing was like the whole beating, which lasted a really uncomfortably long time.
[00:11:27]  Yeah.
[00:11:28]  Like, because it was on video, it gets leaked and it's all over social media.
[00:11:33]  Like everyone is sharing it.
[00:11:36]  It's on all over the French news.
[00:11:38]  Even like Mbappe, the French soccer player who's very famous, he like retweeted it and it just like became this huge national story to the point that like Macron had to comment on it even.
[00:11:51]  Yeah, well, I will say Macron did say one thing.
[00:11:54]  He didn't want to call it police brutality because that's what, in his terms, a politicized pair of words.
[00:12:01]  But yeah, he was forced to comment down.
[00:12:03]  And as we'll illustrate, it's very difficult to get Macron to comment on much.
[00:12:07]  But this and a really, really also brutal attack on a migrant camp in Paris by the police has spurred a sort of series of protests and some pretty big ones.
[00:12:21]  Yeah.
[00:12:22]  And it's the thing that's wild too is that it's coinciding with this incredibly controversial bill, national security bill that's currently, well, not currently, which we'll get to, but it's currently in the French parliament being debated.
[00:12:38]  It's called the, I'm not going to say it in French, so it's the law on global security.
[00:12:42]  And it's basically covering pretty much just domestic policing.
[00:12:49]  And the like one really controversial piece is called Article 24.
[00:12:55]  And I mean, it's pretty nuts.
[00:12:57]  It basically bans like publishing any photo that shows a cop's face anywhere.
[00:13:04]  Yeah, I mean, the actual text of it reads, it bans disseminating by any means or medium whatsoever with the aim of harming their physical or mental integrity, the image or the face or any image of the face or any other identifying element of an officer of the national police or member of the national gendarmerie when acting during a police operation.
[00:13:27]  So this means that, for instance, the video that showed the three cops brutally beating a guy before charging him, by the way, with assault on a police officer would be illegal because it's essentially a law against doxy.
[00:13:43]  Now, you might wonder, how would a cop who sees someone filming him know that that person has the intent to, quote, harm him with that footage?
[00:13:51]  Well, it's up to the officer to decide.
[00:13:55]  Yeah, I mean, and this completely, this also covers journalists.
[00:13:58]  Like, we should be clear, like, it means anything on social media.
[00:14:02]  It means anything in the papers, anything in the media.
[00:14:04]  Like, that you, I mean, and the cops, it's pretty crazy.
[00:14:08]  The French police, we'll get into this, but these guys are insane.
[00:14:12]  Like, and the armor that they're wearing, particularly in Paris, which is, I mean, I don't think that it's controversial to call Paris basically a police station at this point with the presence there.
[00:14:23]  But I mean, they look like Terminator.
[00:14:25]  Yeah.
[00:14:26]  Like, so many of them are always wearing fucking, like, crazy helmets that are tinted so you can't see their faces anyway.
[00:14:34]  They're not supposed to do this, but they've like all ripped off the badges that have their name.
[00:14:38]  Yeah.
[00:14:38]  Like, there's no way of identifying any of them.
[00:14:41]  They're just like faceless fucking mercenaries.
[00:14:44]  Like, it's, it's pretty frightening.
[00:14:47]  There's a couple other parts of the law on global security too that have people pretty upset.
[00:14:52]  One of those is Article 21, which complements the following article that allows police to live stream body cameras to command posts or to anywhere else.
[00:15:00]  And then Article 22, which allows drone surveillance.
[00:15:03]  Now, in America, we might be like, damn, wish we had not allowed that basically since its inception here.
[00:15:11]  They just don't even propose them as laws.
[00:15:13]  They just do them in America.

=== Protesters and Overwhelming Force (15:59) ===

[00:15:15]  Exactly.
[00:15:15]  I mean, that's the thing is like a cop literally will just arrest you here for filming him.
[00:15:19]  Like, they don't need like a law on that.
[00:15:21]  He can just do it and say you were resisting arrest.
[00:15:23]  But yeah, the law itself was proposed in October by MPs from Enmarge and a couple of small right-wing parties, backed by the interior minister, this guy Darminen.
[00:15:35]  I don't know how to pronounce that, but Darminen.
[00:15:38]  He said, I had made a promise that it would no longer be possible to broadcast the image of the police and gendarmes on social media.
[00:15:46]  That promise will be kept.
[00:15:48]  Yeah, we should say the interior minister, like for our American listeners, is basically like the, it's like head cop of the state responsible for like domestic, I don't know, domestic affairs that basically have to do, like national domestic security affairs.
[00:16:05]  It's the kind of thing that if it's 1946 and you're in like Czechoslovakia and you want your guys to be in power, is you negotiate with a social democratic prime minister for the Communist Party minister to be the interior minister and then in a couple of years, all good.
[00:16:25]  Well, they're also like wanting to use like a bunch of facial recognition technology, pushing a bunch of AI.
[00:16:32]  The Macron presidency is famous for its tech-friendly policies and trying to basically, I think he's even said like modernize France, which is just such a gross nation.
[00:16:48]  The new Israel.
[00:16:49]  He really is.
[00:16:50]  He really is.
[00:16:50]  But we'll get to heaven in a little bit.
[00:17:04]  So, I mean, I mentioned that the police in France are really crazy.
[00:17:08]  And I just want to like really hammer this home because, I mean, I mean, France has gotten like UN warnings for the way that the French police respond, particularly to protests.
[00:17:22]  I mean, that's really what a lot of the domestic incidents are focused on.
[00:17:29]  And there was like someone, I have his name written here, David Dufresna.
[00:17:34]  I can't say his name.
[00:17:35]  I'm so sorry.
[00:17:36]  But he has been really, he's like a French journalist and documentary filmmaker.
[00:17:41]  And he's been compiling like unofficial, because you can't trust the French government to report official numbers, but like unofficial like casualty numbers from police violence, you know, over the past year.
[00:17:58]  And basically, I mean, it's pretty nuts.
[00:18:01]  As of like November 30th, 2020, so this is this year, there's four dead, 30 tased, five hands have been blown off, 349 injuries to the head.
[00:18:12]  So that also includes people, there's been a lot of people who've lost eyes.
[00:18:16]  So that's like, that includes that.
[00:18:18]  There's 29 factors.
[00:18:19]  Lots of teeth lost too.
[00:18:21]  Yeah.
[00:18:23]  82 arm and chest injuries, 137 leg injuries, five genital injuries.
[00:18:30]  But like 156 are unidentified, like where the injuries are.
[00:18:36]  204 incidents of police intimidations on journalists covering the protests, total like violation of whatever's left of French freedom of the press.
[00:18:47]  Just like some real, I mean, if you look up some of the footage of the police beating protesters and some of the injuries that people are suffering, it's pretty shocking.
[00:18:57]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:18:58]  I mean, the French police will just absolutely maul people.
[00:19:03]  I mean, you know, they do it in America too, but in France, there is a certain like in America, they kind of use overwhelming force and sort of military style tactics to kind of shock and awe people and push everyone back.
[00:19:15]  In France, they will just fight you.
[00:19:18]  Like they'll just go up to you and just beat the shit out of you.
[00:19:20]  I mean, they'll do, again, they'll do that in America too, but like it's much more of a street battle in France.
[00:19:26]  I will say for their part, the protesters in France also are much more energetic in their engagements with the police too, you know, lighting people on fire, you know, beating the shit out of them, which, you know, understandable.
[00:19:41]  But the way the police in France act, I mean, it's just, it's, I mean, I think a little history maybe of the French police is an order really quick.
[00:19:50]  The French police are basically kind of the cadre that forms the modern French policing came mostly from cops who were policed during the Nazi occupation in Vichy France.
[00:20:04]  And famously, the police in Vichy France helped deport thousands and thousands of French Jews to concentration camps to die.
[00:20:12]  Also deported a lot of French Jews, basically in return for making Paris an open city.
[00:20:18]  A lot of those Nazi cops were kicked out in the immediate aftermath of World War II and then allowed back in in the context of the Cold War.
[00:20:27]  There's one guy in particular who is a really good indication of where a lot of this comes from.
[00:20:34]  He was a guy named Maurice Pepon.
[00:20:37]  And before Andy had served as a collaborationist officer and helped deportation of Jews alongside the SS in France, later as a police prefect, meaning like a suit, you know, like an official in Algeria.
[00:20:49]  And you might remember, we've talked about that on the show before.
[00:20:52]  Police in Algeria, notable for pioneering tactics that would later be used during the CIA's time in Vietnam.
[00:21:04]  And basically oversaw a dirty war in Algeria, torturing people, you know, electrocuting them, all that kind of stuff.
[00:21:10]  I mean, the guy was a sick motherfucker.
[00:21:12]  And so, of course, they put him in charge of the French police, or excuse me, the Paris police in the early 60s.
[00:21:19]  And he's just like, well, all right, let's dirty war here because that's why they did it.
[00:21:22]  I mean, they brought him in there because there was a lot of, you know, Algerian patriots in Paris who were engaging in low-grade, sometimes mid-grade terrorism.
[00:21:32]  And, you know, immediately people start disappearing, drowned in the river, shot in the back of vans and dumped places until this protest.
[00:21:40]  Well, not until, but including this protest in 1961, after our man here declared a curfew only for Algerians in Paris, which again, a little bit of history of racism in the French police.
[00:21:56]  I think 30,000 Algerians hold a protest and the French police descend on it like animals, abduct hundreds of people and throw them out of airplanes, shoot them in the back of the head at police headquarters and throw them in the river.
[00:22:11]  And a lot of people just plain disappeared.
[00:22:12]  I mean, it really reminds people, you know, reminds people of the dirty war in Argentina and all across South America.
[00:22:21]  He was also involved in the massacre of almost a dozen French communists during a demonstration against the OAS, who you might remember from the Spider Network episodes, the next year.
[00:22:32]  And just, I think, shot about a dozen of them.
[00:22:36]  And of course, most famously, involved in the disappearance of Mehdi Ben Barka, which, you know, big part of the Spider Network story.
[00:22:45]  That is where your French police comes from, essentially.
[00:22:49]  The post-war Nazi international, because that is where the cadre of this stuff come from.
[00:22:54]  Yeah, I mean, I think just notoriously sick, sick motherfuckers.
[00:22:59]  Oh, yeah.
[00:23:01]  It's funny.
[00:23:01]  You know, we were just, we were talking about this before we were recording.
[00:23:04]  And I do feel like, I mean, maybe we'll get into this in a second, but after the 95 strike, in which the like, you know, in like less than a month, the French people brought down the government.
[00:23:21]  All this kind of backed up, like the police and the right wing, they kind of backed off a bit.
[00:23:27]  And it's just been like over the past, I don't know what, like decade and a half, just like slowly encroaching more and more and more.
[00:23:37]  And so like all this stuff has been just building up this complete and total like return to this style of policing.
[00:23:46]  Return to tradition.
[00:23:47]  Absolutely.
[00:23:48]  Exactly.
[00:23:49]  I do want to mention too, before we get into some other stuff, is that like the French police also have like insane weapons.
[00:23:56]  Yeah, they are locked and fucking loaded.
[00:24:00]  It is wild.
[00:24:02]  Liz, it was very cute.
[00:24:03]  Liz kept asking me, like, what's a shrapnel grenade?
[00:24:07]  Explain that to her was a delight.
[00:24:09]  It's fucked up.
[00:24:10]  I mean, because you look at this like footage and you're like, wait a second, this kid was in a protest.
[00:24:16]  How does he have like fucking like slash wounds on his legs?
[00:24:20]  Like, how are they losing eyes?
[00:24:22]  And it's because the French police literally are throwing tear grass grenades that explode with rubber bullets that fucking go everywhere.
[00:24:31]  These are like illegal like everywhere else in Europe.
[00:24:35]  They're like not allowed to be used.
[00:24:36]  You know, it's funny.
[00:24:37]  The French actually, my theory on this is the French actually invented this kind of like riot control weapon.
[00:24:45]  And, you know, part of Macron's whole thing is that the French never invent anything anymore.
[00:24:51]  You know, they're low on the list of, you know, Europe in total.
[00:24:54]  You know, not a lot of patents coming from that anymore.
[00:24:56]  So he's like, well, you know, there are a thing.
[00:24:59]  It's a matter of patriotism and national pride.
[00:25:02]  We got to just keep using.
[00:25:03]  I mean, yeah, it's a pretty wild weapon.
[00:25:05]  You know, they have those in grenade launchers and they throw them as well.
[00:25:10]  They also use very judicious use of rubber bullets and tear gas as well.
[00:25:16]  Yeah.
[00:25:16]  Ugh.
[00:25:17]  It's like, yeah, I encourage you guys to look up some of this shit because it's pretty shocking to see.
[00:25:23]  Well, I mean, this was, you know, widely deployed on the yellow vest.
[00:25:26]  I mean, they even called in the army at one point.
[00:25:28]  I mean, that was the scenes.
[00:25:31]  I don't know if people remember now, but the scenes coming from the yellow vest protest of the police sort of clashing with them were just incredibly intense.
[00:25:41]  Yeah.
[00:25:42]  We, you know, the kind of like the pressure has been mounting in France for pretty much the entirety of Macron's presidency.
[00:25:50]  And, you know, the protests that are happening now are basically like in continuation with pretty, I mean, pretty much what the Gilet Jean has kind of just like poured into the, like into the like French energy over the past couple years.
[00:26:06]  Yeah.
[00:26:07]  I don't know how many people were following that when it was happening, but basically the Gilet Jean were, it was kind of like, I would call it a movement, but it was like a direct protest response to Macron instituting a fuel tax.
[00:26:22]  I mean, it was a, it's a gas tax.
[00:26:24]  Okay.
[00:26:24]  Liz, Liz, let's not be regressive here.
[00:26:27]  It is an eco-tax to encourage a transition to a green, just economy.
[00:26:31]  Oh my God.
[00:26:32]  That's, yeah, that's how Macron built it.
[00:26:34]  But it's really just a gas tax.
[00:26:37]  And it was compounding already rising fuel prices.
[00:26:44]  But so it was like September 2018, I think.
[00:26:47]  The French government announces further fuel taxes.
[00:26:51]  And all these guys that live on the periphery of Paris, in rural areas of France, depend on their cars.
[00:26:58]  And a bunch of them are taxi drivers.
[00:27:01]  And they're fucking fed up, right?
[00:27:04]  They've been squeezed for too long.
[00:27:06]  So they basically, I mean, you know, they descend upon the city of Paris.
[00:27:13]  And I have to say, like, I think they really did freak out the French government.
[00:27:16]  Like, I don't think the Paris government was prepared for that.
[00:27:19]  Well, I mean, the first weekend of protests, I saw estimates that there were about 280,000 people out in total.
[00:27:25]  And what the Gilet John did, the Gilly Johns did, is they occupied roundabouts and toll booths and then, you know, later, you know, met up in the, or actually at the beginning too, you know, met up at the, you know, middle of Paris and sort of had these massive riots.
[00:27:41]  And a great philosopher once said, the countryside surrounds the city.
[00:27:46]  And we really saw that playing out then.
[00:27:49]  And, you know, it was, there was a lot of, it was really interesting rather to see the media reaction to the Gilli Johns.
[00:27:58]  Yeah, like even the left media was like, not, didn't know what to do with it.
[00:28:01]  Because I think, too, like, so like the French government's response, they were like, Macron was really savvy in that, like, how you just said they were trying to pass it off as an eco-tax.
[00:28:12]  He basically, like, the French government and the French media was like, oh, these are all climate deniers.
[00:28:18]  Like, they're just like country hooligans, like, you know, total bumbleheads who don't know anything about the reality of climate change.
[00:28:29]  And they're all Trump supporters too, which was like, okay.
[00:28:33]  Yeah, it was really interesting to see.
[00:28:35]  And I think part of it has to do with it was a movement that didn't come from sort of established unions or left-wing parties or anything like that.
[00:28:43]  And NGOs.
[00:28:44]  Or NGOs, yeah.
[00:28:45]  But as a result, like, you know, it could be pretty incoherent at times.
[00:28:49]  I remember that was a big sort of complaint by Macron's regime, is that it didn't have any leaders.
[00:28:57]  There was no one to negotiate with.
[00:28:58]  And, you know, a lot of the organic leaders that came from it that I saw that presented rather in English language media came from a rather disparate beliefs, right?
[00:29:06]  And there were left wings and right wings of it.
[00:29:09]  But overall, I mean, it was a huge movement for a time.
[00:29:12]  I mean, you know, hundreds of thousands later dwindled to tens of thousands.
[00:29:15]  But, you know, they engaged in tactics that would be sort of off the table in the U.S., like taking over toll booths and stuff like that.
[00:29:23]  Yeah, I mean, at one point, they, I mean, I think that one of the first things they did was just like completely and totally deface the Champs Elysee, which is like, I mean, you know, in Paris, that's like, you know, you want to like graffiti all over the Arctic Triumph.
[00:29:37]  Maybe that sounds maybe not like, you know, that insane to some of our younger listeners, but like, that's pretty crazy in Paris.
[00:29:46]  Well, like, they just literally didn't give a fuck, you know?
[00:29:49]  My boy Sean once urinated on the St. Louis Arch.
[00:29:55]  Yeah, okay.
[00:29:56]  I think you told that story like last year.
[00:29:58]  Well, what I'm saying is it's, you know, people are willing to go to desperate times, call for desperate measures, sweetheart.
[00:30:05]  Hey, I encourage our listeners to go back to that episode to listen to that lovely anecdote.
[00:30:11]  So, yeah, I mean, they were going hog wild, and it took Macron quite a while to respond to it, even despite like constant images in the media of French police just absolutely brutalizing these oftentimes confused protesters.
[00:30:28]  The thing, too, that like wasn't, I mean, not surprisingly, but that like wasn't explained in the U.S. media or in like any of the Western media was that the reason why Macron was passing these gas taxes was because he had just cut France's wealth taxes.
[00:30:46]  Yes.
[00:30:46]  And they needed to raise revenue.
[00:30:48]  Yes.
[00:30:48]  So like, to be clear, France was like before Macron was elected, France was, I think it was like the last government in Western Europe to have wealth taxes that hadn't yet been completely demolished by liberal slash right-wing parties in the EU.
[00:31:08]  But Macron came in and said, no, no, the French shall join Europe.
[00:31:12]  Actually, he said, Liz, that's a misquote.

=== France's Wealth Tax Reforms (06:52) ===

[00:31:14]  He said, no, no.
[00:31:18]  Sorry.
[00:31:18]  I'm really, I don't, I didn't mean to do that.
[00:31:20]  But like, quite literally, it's the first thing he did when he was elected.
[00:31:25]  And so the gas tax was his way of replacing the revenue lost by the wealth tax.
[00:31:32]  Well, I mean, he had a really interesting quote, which he said, for every three truck drivers we lose in Nice, we'll pick up one Gerard Depret due in Paris.
[00:31:43]  Yeah.
[00:31:45]  Oh my God.
[00:31:46]  So it was about 7 billion tax in Euro, by the way.
[00:31:50]  All these numbers we're throwing out are in Euros.
[00:31:52]  Get that through your head, Americans.
[00:31:54]  7 billion Euro tax cuts.
[00:31:57]  They including, they cut the French wealth tax by 70% and reduced capital gains taxes to a flat rate of 30%.
[00:32:05]  This is like pretty, it's a pretty deep, deep cut.
[00:32:10]  And, you know, when Macron was running, The big like left-wing criticism of him was that he was the president, he was going to be the president of the rich, or he was, he was, you know, the candidate of the bankers.
[00:32:24]  Um, and basically, like, he proved that to be true almost immediately.
[00:32:29]  Yeah, oh, yeah.
[00:32:30]  I mean, he, he, it's funny, is the defense of people in his party, which we'll get into in a second, uh, was always, well, he did everything he set out to do in his program.
[00:32:39]  People are like, yeah, his program is awful.
[00:32:41]  I mean, Jesus Christ.
[00:32:44]  But it wasn't just the like the wealth taxes, which then brought like, which then like spurred the Gilet Jean, because like Macron continued enacting all these policies, and it's just furthered the kind of the like massive civil unrest that his entire presidency has seen.
[00:33:02]  So last year, he announces like big cuts to France's pension program, which we should also mention is one of the last standing in Europe.
[00:33:11]  Yeah, and you know, I think a lot of people will be like, well, Brace, haven't you called for pension reform in France before on a bunch of different episodes?
[00:33:18]  And yeah, I have, you know, I'm, and like, it's, I don't like Macron, but I'm glad he's doing it.
[00:33:26]  Uh, yeah, and actually, those, uh, you know, much to my surprise and disappointment at the fiscal irresponsibility of the French citizens, uh, set off massive strikes.
[00:33:36]  Yeah, they're like the biggest strike in French in like modern French history.
[00:33:41]  Well, I think the longest strike, I think.
[00:33:43]  You know, it's it's funny too.
[00:33:44]  I don't think people, I think people think of France as like this heavily unionized country, but France's unions are actually fairly different than they are in a lot of places.
[00:33:54]  Only about 11% of French workers are actually in unions, but they do sort of kind of like sectoral bargaining there.
[00:34:03]  And so it actually, that probably reduces union membership rates, but the contracts essentially cover everybody because people have these contracts with the whole industry.
[00:34:14]  Unfortunately, that does reduce turnout on strikes because the main people that unions are able to mobilize are the members of those unions.
[00:34:23]  Yeah, but like you mentioned, like these things affect everyone.
[00:34:25]  And it was sort of wild to watch.
[00:34:28]  These started in December of last year.
[00:34:32]  And it really like spread pretty quickly.
[00:34:35]  It like started with 30 unions basically joining to shut down the entire country.
[00:34:42]  I think it was like December 5th.
[00:34:43]  So it's like the light rails and the train, you know, the trains all throughout France.
[00:34:48]  They pretty much are shutting down almost all transportation.
[00:34:52]  I think then suddenly it like, as it went on, the Paris Metro joined.
[00:34:57]  And then, you know, there's other sectors that joined.
[00:35:00]  I think, you know, maybe people saw on social media there was like a really beautiful thing where the like French ballet was joining in Solidarity on Strike.
[00:35:08]  And then they were out in the, you know, in some fucking like beautiful square in Paris, just like performing the ballet for the people.
[00:35:16]  I couldn't watch that because I just, I used to date the lead dancer in the French ballet.
[00:35:22]  Yeah.
[00:35:22]  It's so it's just like it was pretty emotional for me to watch, but it was a beautiful scene besides that.
[00:35:27]  Yeah, okay.
[00:35:28]  Well, the official number, like this is the other thing, is like the French government was like, it was only like, you know, it wasn't that many people, but there were like at least 250,000 people in the streets of Paris like every day.
[00:35:41]  And fucking Macron's government, they send 6,000 police officers to Paris alone to deal with these people in the streets.
[00:35:51]  I mean, and once you actually look at the details of the pension plan or excuse me, the pension reforms, they're pretty insulting because instead of taking, I think it used to be where it would, if you were a private sector worker, it would take your 25 best years and sort of, I think, either average that out or something like that.
[00:36:10]  It would take it, draw it from that.
[00:36:12]  But I think now it just, and I could be wrong about this as I didn't look into it too much, but it just draws from like, I think the past 25 years in general, which, you know, I think for a lot of, no, no, it draws upon your entire career, I believe.
[00:36:27]  And obviously, there are points in your career where you're probably making considerably less money than you would, you know, at your 25 best years.
[00:36:36]  And so, you know, teachers especially saw that I think on average they would lose 500 to 700 euros per month of their pensions from that, which is astounding.
[00:36:47]  Yeah, it was also like going to raise the retirement age two years, which is crazy.
[00:36:52]  To 52.
[00:36:54]  No, to 64, actually.
[00:36:56]  Yeah.
[00:36:56]  But I think, I mean, it was basically seen, I think rightly so, as an obvious move towards privatizing the entire pension program, which is clearly the goal.
[00:37:07]  Yeah, absolutely.
[00:37:09]  Yeah.
[00:37:10]  So these, these, this strike went through, I think through the end of January.
[00:37:16]  And it was, you know, union workers were like cutting the power to Amazon warehouses and then just like robin hooding electricity back into poor people's homes, which was very cool.
[00:37:26]  Just doing shit like that.
[00:37:28]  The police, like we say, they're going insane.
[00:37:30]  They're fucking firing point blank at protesters.
[00:37:33]  More people are getting, you know, blinded.
[00:37:35]  Limbs are flying everywhere.
[00:37:37]  It's like a total disaster.
[00:37:40]  Macron's approval ratings like fucking plummet.
[00:37:43]  Yes.
[00:37:43]  The strike is supported by like 60% of the French people, which is pretty insane.
[00:37:49]  But it like doesn't do anything.
[00:37:51]  This is what's crazy.
[00:37:53]  Macron, I mean, you can't, you can't bone the Macron, man.
[00:37:58]  He just, he's, I tell you, this guy is untouchable.
[00:38:01]  I mean, you know, we talked about the yellow vest a second earlier.
[00:38:04]  I mean, we didn't actually talk about what the yellow vest accomplished.

=== Macron's Unyielding Authority (03:13) ===

[00:38:07]  And I'll tell you what, not much.
[00:38:10]  They got the gas tax repealed, and I think they got $100 per month, excuse me, 100 Euro per month added to the minimum wage.
[00:38:19]  But beyond that, not a whole lot.
[00:38:21]  Dude, and that's like after two years.
[00:38:24]  Yeah.
[00:38:24]  Like, okay, so just to like, you know, I mentioned the 1995 strikes, right?
[00:38:30]  That was less than a month.
[00:38:32]  Jile Jean went on for two years.
[00:38:34]  These strikes, the largest in French history, these are larger than in 68, right?
[00:38:39]  Two months, or I mean, basically up until March, basically up until COVID, like they didn't, like Macron was just like, disposes of them easily.
[00:38:51]  Like not without a care.
[00:38:53]  And he like basically, he imposes the pension cuts, just like overriding any like formal political process using this like constitutional article 49.3 where he just like basically decrees the law without a vote in parliament.
[00:39:09]  King, pimp.
[00:39:11]  Well, that's what they call him, the sun king, which we'll get into.
[00:39:15]  But it's like a pretty unprecedented, I mean, not totally unprecedented, but it's, you know, a pretty noticeable shift in, let's just say, the political norms of yeah, I mean, in France, the president is more powerful than sort of the head of state of other European countries.
[00:39:38]  And I think it's funny, the biggest thing that Macron has really produced in opposition to him is I'm sure many of you will remember all of the glowing editorials and in fact, the endorsement from Obama about how this sort of sensible centrist was going up against the Nazi Le Pen.
[00:39:55]  And, you know, not only was he, you know, the anti-Le Pen and this sort of urbane, urban intellectual guy who, you know, is going to bring this really fiscal responsibility, but social liberalism to France.
[00:40:07]  Turns out that he's got a lot more in, well, he's got a lot more in common with Obama than people might think, but also a lot in common with Erdogan as well.
[00:40:16]  I mean, he is, he is absolutely, I mean, that's.
[00:40:19]  He's like the fusion of the two, which would be to the horror of the French people.
[00:40:23]  Yeah.
[00:40:24]  Yeah.
[00:40:25]  Well, also double Muslim in that case.
[00:40:27]  Yeah.
[00:40:28]  But he he is, I mean, Liz mentioned that he's the sun king.
[00:40:34]  And yeah, he kind of is.
[00:40:54]  Unfortunately, Obama would be immediately arrested upon setting foot in France now.
[00:40:59]  Because in the wake of a spate of terrorist attacks, including I think a couple beheadings in about a month period, most famously, a French school teacher named Samuel Patty Pate, I don't know how to pronounce it, was beheaded by an 18-year-old Chechen refugee for, I think, either drawing or just showing a picture of the Prophet, a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad.

=== Macron's Jupiterian Vision (14:30) ===

[00:41:20]  There was a mass stabbing in Nice a couple of weeks later.
[00:41:23]  One of the victims was beheaded.
[00:41:24]  And then two weeks before Samuel Patti's murder, there was a mass stabbing outside of the Charlie Hebdo offices after they'd republished the original cover, which spurred the original attack on Charlie Hebdo.
[00:41:35]  Of course, I think people may not be super, I mean, I think everyone knows about these two incidents, but like there are a lot of minor incidents that have happened in France since these.
[00:41:45]  But of course, the 2015 Battaclan massacre and the suicide bombing throughout Paris that happened that night and the 2016 Nice truck ramming combined, which killed hundreds of people.
[00:41:58]  In France, I mean, we saw that with sort of the rise of Le Pen.
[00:42:01]  There has always been, France has a strange relationship with its sort of status as a home of many immigrants.
[00:42:10]  It is a place that you cannot get extradited from a lot of the time, but it's also a place where you might get abducted and killed.
[00:42:18]  And France, sort of in the wake of these recent sort of spate of attacks, there have been a large push from Macron's side, and they're putting forth an anti-separatism bill, which sort of, you know, to clarify the name of that a little bit, they refer to a lot of what we would call jihadists as Islamic separatists.
[00:42:42]  And it's sort of like what you saw, you know, the sort of rhetoric around no-go zones in Britain.
[00:42:47]  And this is sort of the refined version of that.
[00:42:50]  They are now probing 76 mosques suspected of separatism.
[00:42:53]  They are going to make Imams sign a, I think it's like a charter of secularism or like, you know, a declaration of intent to adhere to French values.
[00:43:08]  And they are putting, I think, a stop to, or at least surveillance on imams and preachers that are sent from abroad.
[00:43:18]  Now, I will say, they should probably stop them from coming from Saudi Arabia.
[00:43:24]  But, you know, you got to keep in mind, this comes on the heels of a lot of French measures, for instance, like banning the Burkini and stuff like that.
[00:43:35]  And so this has caused a huge uproar in the Islamic world.
[00:43:41]  And of course, in France among civil rights groups, because if we learn anything from American surveillance of Muslims here, it will probably go a little further than just surveilling a couple of radical mosques.
[00:43:56]  Yeah.
[00:43:56]  Also, Macron just basically did a huge flip-flop on this because when he ran, I mean, you mentioned the social liberalism, but he, I mean, there's so many quotes from him about being like, you know, we believe in multiculturalism, we are Western.
[00:44:08]  You know, I mean, we'll get into this, but he was like Mr. EU universalism.
[00:44:14]  Yeah.
[00:44:15]  Yeah.
[00:44:16]  And so now he's like, I mean, it's pretty remarkable to watch over his presidency, just assuming, I mean, he was always the center right.
[00:44:26]  You know, Almarsh was always the center right in, you know, kind of European formulations.
[00:44:32]  Americans would probably call them more like liberals or centrist liberals.
[00:44:36]  But, I mean, really assuming a right, right-wing stance on almost all domestic matters.
[00:44:44]  It's pretty incredible to watch.
[00:44:46]  I think, like, too, like, he's gained almost all the support of like Sarkozy.
[00:44:50]  Yeah.
[00:44:50]  Well, I mean, that's the thing.
[00:44:52]  And, you know, you see this sort of time and time again in European history.
[00:44:56]  I recently sort of skimmed through that book again, The Beast Reawakens, by I think the guy is Martin Lee.
[00:45:02]  And he describes several instances where, you know, these sort of far-right parties gain some sort of presence in parliament or at least, you know, presence on the streets.
[00:45:13]  And the conservative parties or even the social democratic parties that are in power in various European countries sort of feel threatened by that.
[00:45:20]  And so they steal the most attractive and easiest to steal parts of their platform.
[00:45:24]  And I think that, you know, Macron knows he's got an election coming up in 2022.
[00:45:29]  And Le Pen, of course, is the anti-immigrant candidate.
[00:45:34]  You know, her, what's her fucking party called now?
[00:45:37]  They changed the name from Front National.
[00:45:39]  Rally National or something.
[00:45:42]  Yeah, National Rally, whatever.
[00:45:44]  Something.
[00:45:44]  Yeah, something like that.
[00:45:45]  Yeah, they moved away from the National Front branding, which is very, I mean, much to the chagrin of her grandfather.
[00:45:52]  Yeah, they've renamed themselves as Screwdriver is the title now.
[00:45:57]  It's a sort of working man's reference.
[00:46:00]  Yeah, so, but, but, I mean, she is the Le Pen sort of faction of the right wing has moved away from the social issues that they were sort of focused on for a few years.
[00:46:11]  The main advisor who was advising her to do that, I think he split and started his own party.
[00:46:16]  She's back to being the anti-immigrant candidate.
[00:46:20]  And so he sees that they're basically tied in the polls.
[00:46:22]  And if he can sort of steal some support from her by putting through these harsh measures or even just stealing the rhetoric, I mean, that's a smart move on his part.
[00:46:33]  But I think he's sincere.
[00:46:35]  I think he's sincere, but also like, I mean, I think that, well, we should get into this because I think that Macron, like, you know, he's been accused of like Americanizing the French presidency.
[00:46:47]  And when the left kind of, you know, slings that at him, what they mean is like really expanding executive powers while consolidating and limiting the role of parliament.
[00:46:57]  And I see a lot of the, even at the like secularist speeches that he's been giving, and he just gave like a two-hour fucking interview, which is like pretty unprecedented.
[00:47:08]  He gave interviews to like American press, which is very weird.
[00:47:13]  All as moves to like keep a hold on this like absolute power that it seems like he's very invested in.
[00:47:21]  Right.
[00:47:22]  Like people throw this or he's he's even said it, right?
[00:47:26]  This like Jupiterian vision where he sees himself as this kind of, I mean, it's like basically like a weird neo-Marx monarchism.
[00:47:37]  Yeah.
[00:47:38]  Well, yeah, I mean, you could say also Bonapartism.
[00:47:43]  Well, not in the Marxist sense, but in the but yeah, no, I mean, he really is like, I mean, I think part of Macron's weird appeal to some people is he was bringing the dignity back to the French presidency.
[00:47:58]  French presidents are probably the least dignified presidents in the English-speaking world.
[00:48:03]  Especially the recent spout of them.
[00:48:05]  Oh, God.
[00:48:06]  And by the way, I know people will be like you said English-speaking world.
[00:48:08]  I'm saying English-speaking world because the French would get really mad about that because it's definitely not a French-speaking world.
[00:48:14]  But yeah, I mean, they're always like cheating on their wives with hot chicks, but not in like a cool way, like having buga-buga parties.
[00:48:22]  And like, you know, I think it was, it was Holland or yeah, yeah, who had a 4% approval rating when he was leaving office.
[00:48:29]  Yeah, which basically is like getting the margin of error of 0%.
[00:48:33]  Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:48:34]  And, you know, and Macron, who had served in his cabinet, you know, I think he recognized that basically French presidents were a hated laughing stock.
[00:48:43]  And so he was like, well, I can tackle 50% of that.
[00:48:46]  I can become less of a laughing stock and just hated.
[00:48:50]  Yeah, he like, so he has a weird background that I mean, it's very, I just want to say, like, when you're looking up like where he came from and kind of like this, you know, his like official biography, it's very well edited, we'll say.
[00:49:08]  And everything about Macron is almost like chillingly manicured.
[00:49:13]  Yeah.
[00:49:13]  To the point that it kind of, I mean, if you listen to this show, and I'll say as co-host of this show, it raises me eyebrow and makes me put on my little tinfoil hat, my little tinfoil chapeau.
[00:49:28]  Makes me put on my tinfoil burkini.
[00:49:31]  It's just a little too pat.
[00:49:34]  Um, and so we, I, you know, I've been like looking into some stuff that's maybe a little more unofficial.
[00:49:39]  And this guy's got friends in high places, we'll say.
[00:49:43]  Yeah, um, it's very weird.
[00:49:45]  He actually failed the exam to go to L'École Normale twice, um, which is pretty sad.
[00:49:52]  So, he like where L'École Normale, which is like uh, the a big, you know, the big kind of like fancy university in Paris.
[00:50:01]  They just call it normal.
[00:50:03]  No, no, there's like a bunch of different ones, but you have to take this like very extensive exam to get in, yeah, to get to the normal school.
[00:50:10]  Oh, my God.
[00:50:12]  So, he enrolls in this college called Science Beau, which is the political science college.
[00:50:18]  He had like no interest in political science, by the way.
[00:50:20]  No, my man wanted to major.
[00:50:22]  He loved literature.
[00:50:24]  Yeah, he was like a lit guy.
[00:50:25]  He wanted a philosopher king, like all these fuckers.
[00:50:29]  He was like, I shall uh finally, you know, like all French philosophers, he was dedicated to scientifically and philosophically overturning any age of consent law in France.
[00:50:42]  Oh, yeah, we'll get into that.
[00:50:44]  Um, from there, he goes to the ENA, which is like the I mean, it makes like Harvard look like, I don't know, community college in terms of exclusivity.
[00:50:58]  Like, they're this is where like every single, I think almost every French president has gone there, like, or like the last five French presidents have gone, have been graduates of there.
[00:51:09]  Like, almost all, you know, ton of high-level bureaucrats, diplomats, cabinet members, you name it.
[00:51:16]  It's very exclusive bureaucrat school.
[00:51:19]  Um, and like, funny enough, he like shut it down in 2019.
[00:51:23]  Wow.
[00:51:24]  He said he was going to.
[00:51:26]  Yeah, he's it's been like confirmed that they're going to, but we'll see.
[00:51:30]  We'll see if it ends up happening.
[00:51:32]  No more presidents for France is what that means.
[00:51:34]  Yeah, because Macron will be the final president.
[00:51:37]  He shut down the school to president pipeline.
[00:51:41]  So, he like what's weird is he starts working for Holland, like you mentioned, in 2006, and then he tries to run for a seat in the National Assembly, but his application is denied.
[00:51:53]  Like, Macron kind of has like kind of weird failson energy, he's like, has like revenge of the failson energy to him.
[00:52:01]  Yeah, I mean, very dangerous.
[00:52:02]  Never trust a short man, you know what I mean?
[00:52:04]  Yeah, well, how tall is Macron?
[00:52:06]  I don't know, not tall enough.
[00:52:07]  Wait, hold on.
[00:52:08]  No, this is actually really important.
[00:52:10]  Sorry for the tip-tap and type-in sounds.
[00:52:11]  Macrone height.
[00:52:13]  Uh, I'm not.
[00:52:16]  This is oh, he's five foot eight.
[00:52:19]  He is, how tall is Brigitte?
[00:52:22]  Brigitte, uh, there's not gonna be, I guarantee I can't get numbers on her.
[00:52:26]  She's taller, she's absolutely taller than me.
[00:52:28]  Maybe she's actually wait.
[00:52:29]  I don't know.
[00:52:30]  I don't know.
[00:52:30]  No, she's just got a really big head.
[00:52:33]  Yeah, she has big presence.
[00:52:35]  And we'll get to her in a bit.
[00:52:36]  Listeners will know that I have decreed that you actually aren't as tall as the top of your head.
[00:52:42]  You're as tall as the bottom of your neck, so that people with big ass heads don't get a height advantage over guys who have big brains, but maybe normal-sized heads who are maybe already just 5'10 and aren't quite 6'2 yet.
[00:52:53]  But some big head guys think they're 6'2, even though they just got a fucking superface.
[00:52:58]  I think that makes sense.
[00:52:59]  Yeah.
[00:53:00]  So he, his app, like I said, his application to become a member of parliament denied.
[00:53:09]  He's offered a chance to become a deputy to Philon in 2010, but he declines, which probably was a good move.
[00:53:15]  So instead, and this might remind our listeners of a man that this podcast is quite centered on, but instead he's put up for a job at Rothschilds, which is a- Hold on, can we get a moo, Young Chomsky?
[00:53:31]  Sorry, call on our calling.
[00:53:33]  We've reached a partnership deal with anti-Semitism Cow, and we're getting a moo here.
[00:53:38]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:53:39]  So you might, you guys might know that's a huge fucking bank.
[00:53:42]  And we should say Macron has absolutely no experience in banking.
[00:53:46]  Like zero.
[00:53:47]  Well, he's banking thoughts in philosophy school.
[00:53:51]  Only one.
[00:53:54]  But yeah, he has absolutely no experience in banking, which is weird because he's painted as this like, you know, finance wizard.
[00:54:00]  Yeah, I mean, that's his whole thing.
[00:54:02]  He's like a business guy.
[00:54:03]  He's going to bring his like smarts to the Washington of France, Paris.
[00:54:10]  Yeah, so he's basically placed into this bank by powerful people.
[00:54:14]  And like I said, a lot of stuff around Macron's background is very shadowy.
[00:54:19]  And equally shadowy are his friends in high places.
[00:54:25]  It's really unclear and difficult to figure out like who these people are.
[00:54:29]  Liz, just a real quick question on the notes here.
[00:54:31]  Why do you have a bunch of parentheses?
[00:54:33]  Oh, no, no, never mind.
[00:54:34]  Let's just keep going.
[00:54:36]  It's terrible.
[00:54:37]  That's not true.
[00:54:38]  Don't say that.
[00:54:40]  No, but he was basically placed at the bank in order to quote unquote drum up business.
[00:54:45]  And from what I understand, the reason was that he already had very powerful contacts.
[00:54:53]  And it's unclear exactly where that was coming from or where he had made those contacts, but he did.
[00:55:02]  So again, no experience banking, and yet he leaves four years later as the youngest partner ever at the bank after negotiating like a couple multi-billion dollar deals.
[00:55:12]  This reminds me quite a lot of our friend Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:55:16]  Jeffrey Epstein.
[00:55:17]  That's what I'm saying.
[00:55:18]  It's weird, right?
[00:55:19]  Well, the weird thing is, well, there's also a pedophile in this story, but we'll get to that shortly.
[00:55:25]  Yeah, I mean, it's similar.
[00:55:27]  It's so fucking similar.
[00:55:29]  And I mean, even like it translates even to his like political career.
[00:55:34]  Like, he totally shortcuts the traditional political path where, I mean, maybe because he was denied it, because he couldn't fucking become a member of parliament, but like he just like totally like usually French politicians, you know, they run for office in their hometown.
[00:55:50]  They like build up a constituency.

=== French Politicians' Unconventional Paths (16:03) ===

[00:55:51]  They work within the party.
[00:55:52]  Then they become government.
[00:55:53]  Like, you know, it's like pretty standard.
[00:55:56]  I mean, that's how it works basically everywhere.
[00:55:58]  You know, you get a lower, you know, a sort of lower position in government.
[00:56:01]  You get a higher position in government.
[00:56:03]  Then you try to leapfrog to even higher one.
[00:56:05]  Yeah, usually, except for our man, Macron, who just like, you know, he becomes chief of staff for Hollande, convinces Holland to like roll back his, you know, Hollande was going to pass all these taxes, like, you know, wealth taxes, basically, convinces him to roll those back.
[00:56:21]  That's when Dave Fardiu was like, I'm going to leave the country if this happens.
[00:56:24]  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that.
[00:56:28]  And, you know, basically convinces Hollande also to introduce all these corporate tax cuts.
[00:56:36]  And a lot of powerful people noticed because very soon after that, he's ready to go, unveils his brand new party.
[00:56:45]  Well, the thing about the party that's really, I read about this earlier, is that actually he formed the party while he was still working for Hollande.
[00:56:54]  Baller move.
[00:56:55]  And our friend Francis, I'm sure, from the back of a back of a motor scooter on his way to get some poontang, was like, Macron, my friend, are you starting a new political party?
[00:57:06]  Macron's like, no, I'm like, think it's going to be a think tank.
[00:57:10]  Like, no, dude, he said that.
[00:57:11]  Yeah.
[00:57:12]  He absolutely said that in the press.
[00:57:14]  And then, and then, like, and everyone's like, but I think he's like going to run for president.
[00:57:18]  He's like, no.
[00:57:19]  I would never do that.
[00:57:20]  I just am working for the good of France in my think tank.
[00:57:24]  I would never betray you.
[00:57:27]  Yeah.
[00:57:27]  I would never.
[00:57:28]  It's like how I'm always saying to you, I'm not starting a new podcast.
[00:57:32]  No, Liz, I'm not replacing you.
[00:57:34]  I would never replace you with the girl from Call Her Daddy, who I'm also sleeping with.
[00:57:39]  You just took my joke from under me.
[00:57:42]  Okay, well, the funny thing about my joke is, though, I am fucking replacing you with the girl from Call Her Daddy.
[00:57:48]  liz you're fired okay back to mccroan so So I do want to say that, like, he forms this party, Ammarsh, which everyone should notice has the same initials as his fucking name, E-M.
[00:58:15]  Not a coincidence.
[00:58:17]  Absolutely not.
[00:58:18]  Horrible name.
[00:58:19]  Very European political party name.
[00:58:21]  And it's in the like fucking, like, it's in that like signature type face.
[00:58:26]  Yeah.
[00:58:27]  Like where it's supposed to look like a signature, but it's like, no, we know it's not a signature.
[00:58:30]  It's on like every fucking card on Etsy.
[00:58:32]  It's not a signature.
[00:58:33]  It's obviously a typeface.
[00:58:34]  Why is it at every wedding?
[00:58:35]  Well, here's the fucking thing: what is up with these European political parties calling themselves like, yes, we can, or like, together we march.
[00:58:44]  And like, it's such a bad fucking, it's like the Portuguese, I think, Socialist Party star is just like a chalk star.
[00:58:50]  And all of these left-wing parties across Europe just use this horrible, like, type art fucking or type whatever pixart star.
[00:59:00]  It's just, it's just god-awful.
[00:59:02]  European, Europe should be a prison.
[00:59:06]  It's really awful.
[00:59:07]  He, so it's now called, oh, for people that don't know, yeah, en marche in English means on the move.
[00:59:15]  So lame.
[00:59:16]  Now it's called Labor Republique En Marche, which means the Republic on the move.
[00:59:21]  I don't know why they did that.
[00:59:22]  But he basically, like, because he starts the Some party, he has absolutely zero public financing, which is also like pretty unprecedented in French politics.
[00:59:32]  It's all privately funded.
[00:59:35]  And he uses, you know, he uses all his finance contacts to finance like the entire run.
[00:59:42]  And, you know, there's like donors, fundraising dinners.
[00:59:46]  Like this to American listeners, like this sounds like totally, you're like, yeah, that's fucking what Hillary Clinton does.
[00:59:52]  That's what every politician does.
[00:59:54]  Well, you would be right, but not in France.
[00:59:56]  This is like a very big, like, no-no.
[00:59:59]  You know, do you, I don't know if people remember, there was like that famous incident.
[01:00:03]  I can't remember what it was called, but it was like all the like Sarkozy guys like meeting at a dinner at this like really fancy Paris restaurant.
[01:00:11]  Do you remember that?
[01:00:12]  And it was like all over the place.
[01:00:13]  There's like a photo of it, and everyone was like, what the fuck?
[01:00:16]  No, I don't remember that.
[01:00:18]  All right.
[01:00:18]  Well, it was like a thing.
[01:00:19]  Anyway, so all this like private money is pretty a violation of French political norms.
[01:00:29]  Yeah.
[01:00:31]  So he's like, you know, he's running on, you know, staunch support of the EU.
[01:00:37]  A new French defense central command, which is very weird.
[01:00:41]  Well, he also, by the way, since becoming president, has often agitated for a European army, which we'll probably do a whole episode on that one day, but that is not an idea that your friend Brace Belden likes very much, unless it would break up NATO.
[01:00:58]  Yeah, that's the only one.
[01:00:59]  Accelerationist view of French.
[01:01:00]  And then fight NATO.
[01:01:01]  Yeah.
[01:01:03]  So he wants to establish a border police force.
[01:01:07]  He wants to vest all these labor law quote reforms, which I think everyone knows what that means.
[01:01:12]  He just wants to make the labor market more dynamic, Liz.
[01:01:15]  It's sclerotic.
[01:01:16]  It's rotting.
[01:01:17]  It's French.
[01:01:18]  He just, you know, he just wants to make it so that people get more jobs.
[01:01:22]  By the way, a lot of the jobs that he did introduce because unemployment did fall are what they call in Britain zero hour contracts, where it's like you get hired for one day or a month.
[01:01:33]  In fact, 90% of the jobs in most regions, I don't know, most, but in several regions were these sort of so-called like zero-hour contract jobs where it's temp work.
[01:01:43]  I mean, that's all it is.
[01:01:44]  Or it's temp work or you're driving for whatever their equivalent of Ledor dash.
[01:01:49]  Well, that might remind some people of what happened in America under Obama, right?
[01:01:53]  Because that's, it was something crazy.
[01:01:56]  Like, you know, during the, you know, the great recovery or whatever they fucking want to call it, something like 80% of all the new jobs created were like fucking like Uber, basically.
[01:02:10]  I think that's still what's happening.
[01:02:12]  Yeah, no.
[01:02:13]  And it, you know, if that reminds you, you know, Macron is very much like Obama.
[01:02:18]  So much so that actually, you mentioned this, but he endorsed Macron, which was like really, really insane.
[01:02:25]  Yeah.
[01:02:26]  Like, I mean, he literally like endorsed Macron in a video on YouTube.
[01:02:31]  I'm not planning to get involved in many elections now that I don't have to run for office again.
[01:02:35]  But the French election is very important to the future of France and the values that we care so much about.
[01:02:42]  Because the success of France matters to the entire world.
[01:02:46]  I have admired the campaign that Emmanuel Macron has run.
[01:02:50]  Yeah, I watched it the other day.
[01:02:52]  You know, apparently my high-level sources within the Obama Caliphate have alerted me to the fact that he actually was loved Macron's idea of a giant border police force and was like, listen, we'll make the refugees.
[01:03:09]  You guys deny the refugees.
[01:03:10]  It's a great sort of, you know, symbiotic relationship that we can use in place of France's place in NATO.
[01:03:16]  So I mentioned that his background has all this secrecy.
[01:03:18]  Like we don't really know who put him up to be a banker.
[01:03:21]  We don't really know who hooked him up with the billionaires that were financing his campaign.
[01:03:26]  Like all this shit that's very secretive.
[01:03:28]  But it's like even his presidency is very secretive.
[01:03:31]  And again, similar to Obama in that they don't really allow the press much access.
[01:03:38]  But like one of the papers in France, I think it's Media Part, has like done a bunch of investigations, basically trying to figure out who Macron's advisors are and what they do because it's literally that opaque.
[01:03:52]  Like literally there's people in this like org chart that they've mapped out that don't have pictures because they can't find pictures of them.
[01:04:00]  It's like as if these people don't exist except they're real people.
[01:04:03]  There's one that they've even named Mr. X because they can't figure out what his name is, but they know that he has a position and is responsible for like all this shit.
[01:04:13]  Monsieur Alex.
[01:04:15]  Yes, Monsieur X.
[01:04:17]  But it's like, it's very weird.
[01:04:19]  There's like one guy like that's 28 or 29 or something.
[01:04:26]  And he like reports to all these high-level military guys.
[01:04:31]  It's very clear that what they do is like domestic intelligence or surveillance.
[01:04:36]  But again, none of this is like is clear to anyone in France.
[01:04:42]  Like no one really even knows what this kind of like, but it's basically like a shadow cabinet does.
[01:04:49]  Yeah, I mean, that's his whole thing.
[01:04:51]  I mean, recently, well, not super recently, but within the past couple of years, one of his advisors was actually arrested in what became known as the Banala affair.
[01:05:01]  So in May Day 2018, there was, of course, in France and May Day, and in fact, most every single country except for the United States of America on May Day.
[01:05:10]  There are large protests, rallies, occasionally riots.
[01:05:13]  France gets real lit, though.
[01:05:15]  They do.
[01:05:15]  Yes, they love it.
[01:05:17]  Extra lit.
[01:05:18]  Yeah.
[01:05:19]  Well, anyways, there was a short clip of a bunch of riot cops beating the shit out of a protester on the ground and really fucking up a woman.
[01:05:29]  And it's actually a brutal clip to watch.
[01:05:31]  And you can see that the male protester that they beat up is like staggering away.
[01:05:36]  I mean, he looks destroyed after they, I mean, they just descend on it.
[01:05:39]  They don't even arrest him.
[01:05:40]  He's like getting beat up in the head.
[01:05:41]  I mean, he's like, yeah, I don't know if how one of the quote cops beating him is actually not dressed exactly like the other police.
[01:05:50]  I mean, he's wearing the riot helmet.
[01:05:52]  He's got a nightstick and he appears to have like, I think an armband, but he's wearing like a hoodie.
[01:05:57]  And he doesn't exactly, he's not dressed precisely.
[01:05:59]  I mean, he's just kind of like an undercover cop, but you can see his face pretty clearly.
[01:06:03]  He's got like a mustache.
[01:06:04]  You know, he's sort of olive-skinned.
[01:06:07]  And it comes out a few months later, I think in July, that Le Monde, one of the biggest newspapers in France, actually identifies a guy named Alexander Benale as the person in the riot helmet.
[01:06:21]  Now, Alexander Benale is not a police officer, Liz.
[01:06:26]  No, he's actually Macron's personal bodyguard.
[01:06:30]  And not only personal bodyguard, but the so-called deputy chief of staff.
[01:06:35]  Also, really unclear what he actually does.
[01:06:39]  You know, apparently Macron's team actually found out about this because this video went viral and people like, you know, this was everywhere, you know, pretty much after it was shot.
[01:06:48]  So Macron's team actually finds out about this the next day.
[01:06:52]  And what they do is instead of firing this guy because he beat the shit out of a civilian on camera while dressed, impersonating a police officer, they suspend him for two weeks and dock him two weeks vacation.
[01:07:07]  So they actually keep paying him for those two weeks, but like he misses out on some vacation time.
[01:07:12]  Well, you can't fuck your buddy.
[01:07:13]  You know what I mean?
[01:07:14]  Like you gotta, you gotta, you know.
[01:07:16]  Well, Liz, I know.
[01:07:17]  Yeah, exactly.
[01:07:18]  I mean, these people, you know, these left-wingers in France claim to be in favor of strong labor protections.
[01:07:23]  And then, yeah, you know, one guy does his job all the time.
[01:07:26]  Exactly.
[01:07:27]  You know, he's at May Day even.
[01:07:29]  What's so funny, too, is that you mentioned that they learned about it the next day.
[01:07:32]  Like, the guy who shot the video didn't even know that this was Macron's security guard.
[01:07:39]  Like, the thing is, is that like police violence videos in France, they're all over Twitter and like in social media because it's the only way to get out a lot of this, a lot of what happens because the media won't report on it.
[01:07:51]  The government won't acknowledge it, like quite literally won't acknowledge that it's happening.
[01:07:56]  And so this video just like went viral and people were like, wait a second, I think that that is Macron's deputy chief of staff.
[01:08:03]  Like it wasn't like it just like no one knew.
[01:08:05]  Well, he was also with another on-march activist named Vincent Cras, which is a great, I mean, that sounds like something of a detective novel for like a customer.
[01:08:13]  Yeah, totally.
[01:08:15]  Sounds like a weird like James Bond French villain.
[01:08:18]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:08:19]  I'm sure it's pronounced like Vincent Crassi or like it's actually Vincent Crecy.
[01:08:23]  It's a little tribute to Liz there.
[01:08:27]  No, but he, it is, it is, you know, it quickly catches fire in France and people are like, what the fuck?
[01:08:34]  Why is this guy out on the street with the cops beating up people who are, you know, protesting in, you know, in favor of their rights, but also against the government?
[01:08:44]  Why is he out there with police, impersonating police officer?
[01:08:48]  So Benala actually reaches out to a high-level Paris cop and asks for tape of the beating, which he gets.
[01:08:56]  In fact, the high-level Paris cop hands it over along with two other police officials who are also taken into custody afterwards.
[01:09:04]  I mean, it becomes a huge scandal.
[01:09:07]  And it turns out that Benali actually, he has a luxury car provided by the government and he has police equipment on it and like a radio, police radio and a fucking siren.
[01:09:20]  And he is a Glock, which are not exactly super common in France.
[01:09:24]  And he has an apartment paid for by the government.
[01:09:28]  And if you sort of read between the lines here, there was a lot of rumors in France at the time that Benali was actually sort of heading up a secret security that was just at Macron's behest, right?
[01:09:43]  Like he was doing this sort of parallel intelligence operation.
[01:09:47]  And he has a weird career too.
[01:09:48]  I mean, this guy became, he offered his services.
[01:09:51]  This is how it's described.
[01:09:52]  He offered his services to the Socialist Party as a bodyguard, I think, in the early 2000s.
[01:09:59]  And then he, I think he gets shuffled around from different politician and different politician.
[01:10:04]  At one point, he's involved in his first week of working for some minister in a hit and run, which he's the guy who hits and runs and he's fired.
[01:10:12]  And then he goes to Morocco rather mysteriously for a number of years to work in security there, which is, listen, if any Frenchman who works in security, or you know, any just let's do blanket Frenchman tells you that he's been in North Africa doing security work, you should shoot him.
[01:10:29]  And so this guy, I mean, Macron will not comment on any of this at all.
[01:10:34]  Like, he very haughtily refuses to answer any questions about it.
[01:10:38]  And they are, you know, the spokesman for the palace acts like the 15-day suspension was really harsh already.
[01:10:44]  Finally, six days after the story breaks, he says, Alexandro Benali, Alexander Bernale never held the nuclear codes.
[01:10:52]  Alexander Bernali never lived in a 300-square-meter apartment.
[01:10:55]  Alexander Benali was never my lover.
[01:10:57]  Like kind of just fucking around, being like, this guy, you know, you know, we didn't really do anything wrong.
[01:11:02]  But anyways, he was the charge de affair of Macron after that, which it's really mysterious on what this guy actually does.
[01:11:10]  But it brings to mind the relationship between former prime minister Antoine Penay and his spy chief, Jean Violet, who created a little group that Liz and I are part of called Les Cirque.
[01:11:24]  Yeah, there was a couple people in Macron's orbit.
[01:11:27]  I don't even know what to fucking call it.
[01:11:29]  Shadow Cabinet.
[01:11:30]  I mean, I don't know.
[01:11:31]  They all work at the palace, I guess.
[01:11:32]  The secular cabal.
[01:11:34]  Yeah.
[01:11:35]  That resigned.
[01:11:37]  There was like one, this one guy who looks like such a fucking douchebag.
[01:11:41]  Ismael Emeline.
[01:11:43]  I don't know how to say his name.
[01:11:44]  All of these guys look like they're about to give you like a training on sexual harassment at like an HR Zoom meeting.
[01:11:51]  Dude, they look like bloodless.

=== Ismael Emeline's Shadow Cabinet (11:22) ===

[01:11:55]  It's like if someone made an army out of Casper marketeers, like there's something really militant about them, but they're all in like Warby Parker glasses.
[01:12:06]  You know what I mean?
[01:12:07]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:12:07]  It's very weird.
[01:12:08]  They make the Obama, like, they're like the Obama boys, but like militant.
[01:12:14]  They're like militants.
[01:12:15]  Yeah.
[01:12:16]  Yeah.
[01:12:16]  That's real freaky.
[01:12:17]  Anyway, he was, he was implicated.
[01:12:21]  I can't remember exactly why, but he was pretty like obviously implicated in the entire Banala affair.
[01:12:28]  And so he, and he resigned during it, although he maintains that he had, he didn't resign because of it.
[01:12:36]  He just like, he had other reasons.
[01:12:37]  Mental health break.
[01:12:39]  Yeah, he's like, oh, I'm going to go publish a book.
[01:12:42]  And he like published some new book on like the new wave of progressive grassroots parties that are going to, you know, push back the populace or some bullshit.
[01:12:51]  This guy fucking sucks.
[01:13:06]  So I mentioned, you know, we said he was like Epstein.
[01:13:09]  Macron was like Epstein, and that it's like really difficult to get an accurate read or like accurate account on, you know, the people that not just like work for him, but like the people that basically, I mean, I don't know how else to say it, that he works for.
[01:13:24]  Like, it seems that his entire political career has basically been totally orchestrated, produced, and financed by some of the wealthiest motherfuckers in France.
[01:13:37]  Some of the wealthiest people in the world in some cases.
[01:13:40]  Yeah, absolutely.
[01:13:41]  I think it's very, there's something that the French, like the French left-wing press refer to them as the bosses, which I think is like very cool.
[01:13:50]  And I think that we should absolutely adopt.
[01:13:52]  Like, it's so, it's totally true, too.
[01:13:54]  It illustrates the relationship.
[01:13:55]  Like, Jeff Bezos is your boss.
[01:13:57]  He's the boss of America.
[01:13:58]  Absolutely.
[01:14:00]  One of these guys, I think Liz and I got a little too into researching and then possibly derailed ourselves a little much from the rest of the episode.
[01:14:07]  But it was, there's a lot to get into with this guy.
[01:14:10]  It's a guy named Xavier Neil, which again, bond type, not necessarily head villain, but like a henchman type name.
[01:14:20]  This guy is a very French story, I would say.
[01:14:24]  Yeah, he is like one of the biggest bosses in France.
[01:14:30]  Like he is definitely one of the most powerful and wealthiest people in the country.
[01:14:35]  And apparently him and Macron have been friends for years, but you wouldn't, it's very difficult to find information on all of that.
[01:14:45]  Just as it's very difficult to find any real information on Neil's background, he has scrubbed that shit.
[01:14:52]  And like every article is an incredible hagiography.
[01:14:55]  They like they, in every single press piece about him, they say, oh, they call him the French Steve Jobs.
[01:15:02]  And it's like, no one calls him that.
[01:15:04]  I don't think anyone calls him that.
[01:15:05]  Yeah.
[01:15:06]  I mean, well, they're calling him that.
[01:15:08]  He's more like the mix between the French Harvey Weinstein and the French Harvey Weinstein's brother, whose name I can't remember.
[01:15:14]  Yeah, and it's like so fucking annoying because he adopts this posture of being like anti-establishment.
[01:15:20]  Like I'm not like, I'm not like the other billionaires.
[01:15:23]  I'm a cool billionaire.
[01:15:24]  And it's like, no, he fucking sucks.
[01:15:26]  He's crazy.
[01:15:27]  Well, I will say he is a little bit of a bad boy.
[01:15:31]  This guy is actually on the board of, I was shocked to read this, on the board of the Voltaire Network, which is anybody who's researched 9-11 at all would recognize that name.
[01:15:45]  They are a big sort of force in research of the parapolitical and investigations into 9-11 and into the French government.
[01:15:55]  Yeah.
[01:15:55]  I mean, he is like, just to be clear about what he actually does, though, is that he is like the head of and on the board of like the biggest telecom companies in France.
[01:16:05]  And, you know, now he's also like co-owner recently of the influential paper Le Monde, which I've mentioned a couple of times.
[01:16:13]  But really his money is all tied up in these telecom companies.
[01:16:17]  And he's just like an oligarch.
[01:16:19]  So he actually got his start in the same way that I did, which was enticing lonely men into chat rooms for fun and money.
[01:16:28]  That's not true.
[01:16:29]  You're right.
[01:16:30]  Well, it wasn't for fun.
[01:16:32]  He enticed them into it for money.
[01:16:34]  So France had this thing called the Minotel Network, which was, as best I can describe it, a closed internet, like a French-only internet, where it was in an effort to appease.
[01:16:45]  It was developed by, I think, the French government.
[01:16:47]  And in an effort to appease newspapers, only newspapers could create websites and only like a certain amount of, I mean, they're not websites.
[01:16:54]  It's not the internet, but it's sort of like a closed internet.
[01:16:57]  But only media companies and newspapers could create pages that people could go to.
[01:17:02]  So smart guys, like our friend Neil here, would just start a fake newspaper and then be able to make a website.
[01:17:08]  And some of the most popular websites were sex websites.
[01:17:14]  Yeah, he, I mean, these were called like minotal rose pages, which I found the pink pages.
[01:17:22]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:17:23]  Like the pink pages of actual newspapers.
[01:17:25]  I think it's actually, Liz, I think it's actually sort of a reference to the color of vaginas.
[01:17:29]  Oh my God, stop it.
[01:17:31]  I don't like that.
[01:17:33]  Yeah, the most popular.
[01:17:34]  Right out with the most popular one.
[01:17:36]  Yes.
[01:17:37]  3615 comb.
[01:17:40]  Now, comb actually is a French word for semen.
[01:17:45]  Oh my God.
[01:17:47]  But no, there was a ton of innovations that were actually basically because of Pink Minotels.
[01:17:52]  They had these call center type operations with a bunch of guys sitting behind computers or between Minotel consoles and pretending to be women.
[01:18:02]  And the crazy thing about this, when I was reading, is that some guys would get so addicted to Pink Minotel that they would actually work their debt off as one of the sex typers, pretending to be a woman.
[01:18:16]  So these guys knew that.
[01:18:18]  They knew that it was all pretend, but then they were still, dude, that's so fucking.
[01:18:22]  It's so insane.
[01:18:23]  I mean, it was the most by far profitable industry on Minotel.
[01:18:28]  I mean, and he pioneered the use of bots.
[01:18:31]  That's a real pyramid scheme.
[01:18:33]  Oh, yeah.
[01:18:34]  I mean, so his, his, Neil's innovation was, was basically creating these, these like programs that would automated, you know, try to entice guys into other chat rooms.
[01:18:44]  I mean, it really, I think, comes from like telemarketing stuff.
[01:18:47]  But yeah, I mean, he made a fortune and sort of just, I think, sold his first company when he was like 19.
[01:18:53]  And he really sort of built himself up from there.
[01:18:56]  Yeah.
[01:18:56]  Unfortunately, he also got arrested for prostitution or for pimping.
[01:19:02]  Because basically what he did is he also like invested heavily in all these sex shops in Paris that he used the sex shops as a way to market.
[01:19:10]  I mean, it was kind of, you know, smart, I guess, to market to new customers the sex bot chat rooms.
[01:19:16]  Because he was like, oh, these guys are coming into the sex shops.
[01:19:19]  We'll get them hooked on the chats.
[01:19:21]  You know, a little one-two punch.
[01:19:24]  But then it turns out, oh, oops, a lot of prostitution happening in the sex shops.
[01:19:30]  Well, it's funny because Minotel went off the air.
[01:19:33]  They finally shut down Minotel in 2012.
[01:19:35]  And I'm just wondering if there was like an old French pensioner who had been carrying on like a Minotel romance with a bot for like the past, like a like an abandoned bot for 25 years.
[01:19:44]  And yeah.
[01:19:46]  And he finally is like, let me just jerk off one more time while being told how hot I sound.
[01:19:52]  Well, he just ruined it.
[01:19:54]  Yeah, well, he shouldn't have done that in the first place.
[01:19:55]  He's getting scammed.
[01:19:56]  I got to say, Neil looks like a classic French pigman.
[01:20:01]  Big nose, big face, just disgusting man.
[01:20:05]  Apparently he's also, I just want to mention this briefly, he's a co-owner to the rights of the Frank Sinatra song, My Way.
[01:20:11]  And I encourage our listeners to look up the My Way murders and open your third eye with that.
[01:20:16]  I'm serious.
[01:20:17]  It's a difficult karaoke song and many people have been killed because of it.
[01:20:21]  The thing about him that's so crazy, though, I mean, I mentioned, you know, he's one of the most powerful guys in France.
[01:20:25]  And it's not just that he owns a newspaper.
[01:20:27]  It's not just that he's the head of telecoms.
[01:20:29]  You know, for any other country, that would be enough.
[01:20:33]  But in France, no, he's also married to Delphine Arnaud, who is the daughter and the heiress of Bernard Arnaud, who is, of course, the patriarch of the Arnault family, which is the most powerful family in Europe.
[01:20:47]  For people that don't know, Bernard Arnault is the head of LVMH, Louis Vuitton Moehanesy.
[01:20:53]  And he is like always in constant battle with Jeff Bezos, a man you might know, for the title of wealthiest man in the world.
[01:21:01]  So it's that level of wealth we're talking about.
[01:21:04]  I will say those brands are way cooler than Amazon.
[01:21:07]  Yeah, that's very true.
[01:21:10]  But, you know, Bernard Arnaud is, I mean, that's some serious fucking wealth.
[01:21:17]  I think it's like, it's valued at like 206 billion euros.
[01:21:22]  It just like recently acquired Tiffany in like a very controversial move.
[01:21:27]  And with that, you know, the Arnaud family owns like 47% of LVMH, which means that their wealth in total is about 97 billion euros.
[01:21:38]  Jesus.
[01:21:38]  Which is just like fucking crazy.
[01:21:41]  I think it's some, there's something nuts to you where it's like, if you compare like Arnaud's wealth to that of a country, he has the same wealth as the country of Ecuador.
[01:21:52]  Just him.
[01:21:54]  and also bill gates so he's on that level for like you got the beam on you let him marino Yeah.
[01:22:00]  So Neil is like married into this family.
[01:22:03]  And these are just like two of the most powerful bosses in France.
[01:22:09]  Arnaud also is like the biggest, LVMH is also the biggest advertiser in France.
[01:22:15]  And so he has a lot of sway with the papers because he can just constantly threat to pull advertising if he doesn't like any stories.
[01:22:23]  And so negative stories about the Arnault family or anything having to do with LVMH are very hard to come by in French media because of that.
[01:22:31]  Well, I mean, everyone loves Moay, champagne, Louis Vuitton clothing, and Hennessy drink.
[01:22:40]  That's not a problem.
[01:22:41]  What can you say bad about them?
[01:22:43]  I know.
[01:22:44]  That's like the pimp brands right there.
[01:22:46]  That's like, that's like, that's the, that's where you get you go at the club and you have all three of those on you.
[01:22:51]  Well, Macron has been good to his bosses because after he passed those wealth tax reforms, both these guys, their wealth exploded.
[01:23:02]  Actually, Arnault's wealth increased in the last year by 12 billion.
[01:23:07]  Very cool.
[01:23:08]  In one year.
[01:23:09]  Yeah.
[01:23:10]  So, I mean, it's like pretty this like tight circle, which is very, like I keep saying, it's very opaque.

=== Brigitte Macron: The Younger Bride (14:40) ===

[01:23:17]  It's difficult to get a read on.
[01:23:19]  But these guys were handsomely rewarded by the politician they put up.
[01:23:24]  You know, absolutely.
[01:23:25]  Like they got what they wanted.
[01:23:26]  They put this guy up.
[01:23:27]  They financed it.
[01:23:29]  And now, because of these reforms that Macron passed, like, and this like astronomical rise in wealth that Arnaud and the rest of these fucking bosses have seen, like, this is where these protests are coming from in France.
[01:23:44]  It's like, this is the long story, I guess, we're trying to wrap up and tell here.
[01:23:49]  That like over the course of Macron's entire presidency, from you know, the Gilet Jean through the pension strikes, you know, all the guys getting blinded.
[01:24:01]  You know, you see these like kids in high school protests, like getting fucking dragged by their neck and like humiliated by the police.
[01:24:08]  It's just really, I mean, fucking people are dying, you know, it's awful.
[01:24:12]  But it's like all comes back to these guys and this money that proffed up this fucking, I mean, he's basically like a, it's like what we were talking about earlier, and it's like a shell company of a political movement.
[01:24:25]  Yeah, I don't think we said this during the podcast, but yeah, like Republic on March is like, it's like a fake political party in a way.
[01:24:32]  I mean, it has eight, I mean, if you look at the numbers, you know, that they have in, you know, both of the French houses, it is, I mean, they are in the vast, vast majority.
[01:24:41]  I mean, they have the most MPs elected, but it's like really, I mean, the party is ruled by this sort of small group of unofficial, you might say, advisors to Macron.
[01:24:54]  And, you know, it exactly is.
[01:24:55]  I mean, they've got this, the party is absolutely nothing without Macron.
[01:24:59]  It wouldn't exist.
[01:25:01]  Yeah.
[01:25:02]  Which is why, I mean, he's doing everything he can to hang on, maintain, and expand his power.
[01:25:07]  Absolutely.
[01:25:07]  And it's just for these assholes.
[01:25:09]  It's all for them.
[01:25:10]  And these bosses.
[01:25:11]  He's pretty unpopular right now.
[01:25:13]  I think Le Pen is also pretty unpopular right now.
[01:25:15]  And so we'll see what happens in 2022.
[01:25:36]  I didn't mention this, but one thing I do want to mention really quickly is that Xavier Neal, or however you say his name, he actually made Brigitte and Macron like a thing in the papers.
[01:25:49]  And this is really funny.
[01:25:50]  So this woman named Mimi Marchand, fucking fantastic name.
[01:25:56]  She was introduced to Brigitte by Neil and basically contracted to craft the entire image of the couple.
[01:26:07]  So the, like, you know, for those not in France, Brigitte Macron and Emmanuel Macron are like a fucking, they're like the darling of the gossip pages and the society pages and little and the tabloids.
[01:26:21]  And they have been for a long time.
[01:26:23]  And this was all like an extensive propaganda effort by this woman, Mimi Marchand, hired by Xavier Neal.
[01:26:31]  Well, I think a lot of people thought that Macron being married to a significantly insanely very much by many decades older woman would be a problem for him.
[01:26:45]  But and then, you know, all these sort of pundits were like, well, wow, it actually turned out to be okay.
[01:26:50]  People like Brigitte.
[01:26:51]  I'm like, yeah, they do.
[01:26:52]  There's a reason for that.
[01:26:53]  It's because they were, there was a campaign to make them like Brigitte.
[01:26:58]  Yeah.
[01:26:58]  I mean, this fucking started in like, I mean, from all that, you know, people can figure out, like, as far back as 2014, which is much earlier than, we'll say, Macron's political career started.
[01:27:12]  This woman, by the way, is like responsible for the celebrification of French politics.
[01:27:18]  And there's like she bought the like one of the biggest French paparazzi agencies and totally just like broke this like long-standing rule that politicians would be covered like as they are in, I mean, basically like the British tabloids covers the royal family.
[01:27:35]  And so she starts publishing like all these photos of like, you know, Sarkozy out on dates and having affairs and like politicians sunbathing, topless and all this shit.
[01:27:46]  So she's like responsible for all of that.
[01:27:48]  And so she gets hired and she just starts like spamming every society page with like pictures of Brigitte Macron.
[01:27:56]  And so it's like very like, who's this woman?
[01:27:58]  Where's she coming from?
[01:27:59]  Who's this hot couple?
[01:28:00]  Oh, he's in finance.
[01:28:01]  Oh, he's a banker.
[01:28:03]  Oh, look, she's all in Louis Vuitton.
[01:28:05]  Now, how is she all in Louis Vuitton?
[01:28:07]  Oh, get this.
[01:28:08]  Brigitte was actually the French teacher for two of Bernard Arnaud's sons.
[01:28:15]  Yeah, I mean, she is not just the French teacher for Arnaud's sons, but she was the drama teacher of one Emmanuel Macron.
[01:28:27]  I have been doing extensive research on this woman for the past week.
[01:28:33]  In fact, for the past several years.
[01:28:35]  Brigitte Macron, well, let's just do a comparison real quick of birthdays.
[01:28:41]  Emmanuel Macron was born in the year 1977.
[01:28:46]  His wife, Brigitte Macron, was born during the Fourth Republic, by the way, in the year 1953.
[01:28:58]  So there is a large age gap there because, well, let's just go back to the sands of time, back to high school.
[01:29:06]  You know, everyone had such a great time in high school.
[01:29:09]  And I think, you know, one of the big things about high school is you're like, man, man, I'm really hot for a teacher, which is where that Van Halen song came from.
[01:29:17]  Hot for teacher.
[01:29:18]  I'm hot for teacher.
[01:29:20]  I really want to have sex with my elderly teacher.
[01:29:23]  Well, Emmanuel Macron, unlike the rest of you losers, actually followed through with it.
[01:29:28]  He was a student at a Catholic high school, which don't read into that at all.
[01:29:34]  I mean, there's absolutely, this high school being Catholic has absolutely nothing to do with what happened next.
[01:29:40]  And, you know, this woman, Brigitte Trogneau at the time, I have no idea how to pronounce this.
[01:29:45]  It's T-R-O-G-N-E-U-X.
[01:29:48]  So I'm just going to say Trogneau.
[01:29:51]  She's teaching at this high school and her daughter comes home from school one day and says, man, I just met this really cool guy named Emmanuel Macron.
[01:30:00]  And he's so smart.
[01:30:01]  He knows about everything.
[01:30:02]  And Brigitte is like, I will talk that away in the back portion of my mind reserved for pedophilia.
[01:30:08]  And, you know, she goes on and about a year later, she's teaching a drama class.
[01:30:13]  And this brilliant young actor, Emmanuel, comes to her and he's playing the lead in the play Jacques and His Master by Milan Cundera, which I'll pretend I've read and I'll pretend is about a young schoolboy having sex with a very much extremely older woman.
[01:30:30]  I have read some places that he met her at 15, but a recent book came out that has the age at 14, which, by the way, would make their relationship violate articles 227 through 225 of the French penal code, which reads, the fact by an adult to exercise without violence, constraint, threat, or surprise a sexual attack on the person of a minor of 15 years is punishable with five years of imprisonment and a 75,000 euro fine.
[01:30:57]  I've read other places, a hundred thousand euro fine.
[01:30:59]  Anyways, she could possibly be prosecuted under this.
[01:31:02]  I'm not sure what the statute, you know, the statute of limitations is there in France.
[01:31:07]  But if she can be punished for this, please email me and let me know.
[01:31:11]  Anyways, they start meeting after school every day to rewrite another play to expand it further to make it have more roles so other people in the drama class can join in.
[01:31:21]  And of course, one thing leads to another.
[01:31:23]  I'm sure they were both gripping the quill at the same time and their heads touch and they start kissing.
[01:31:28]  And they began having a love affair.
[01:31:30]  Now, of course, Brigitte is married with three children, including one, as I mentioned, in Emmanuel's class.
[01:31:37]  In fact, she is married to a successful banker.
[01:31:40]  Like, she has a great life.
[01:31:42]  She is, by the way, 25 years older than Macrone.
[01:31:47]  And again, I remind you that Macrone was 15 years old.
[01:31:50]  Liz, I'm not a numbers guy.
[01:31:52]  What's 25 plus 15?
[01:31:53]  So she's 40.
[01:31:55]  Correct Amundo, baby.
[01:31:57]  She is 40 fucking years old while she's having sex with a 15-year-old.
[01:32:02]  Dude, that's crazy.
[01:32:04]  That's crazy.
[01:32:05]  I'm, I mean, you know, I don't, I'm way younger than that.
[01:32:10]  And imagine like looking at a 15-year-old and being like, into it?
[01:32:13]  That's disgusting.
[01:32:14]  Dude, no, imagine looking at someone 25 years younger than a human being into it.
[01:32:19]  That is, yeah, not happening.
[01:32:22]  But anyways, I mean, Brigitte Macrone is a pedophile.
[01:32:27]  In fact, she is the highest-ranking known pedophile on the world stage right now.
[01:32:33]  You know, so their love affair starts, and Emmanuel immediately announces it to the world.
[01:32:39]  He's like, I am fucking and sucking and loving this 40-year-old woman who is also my teacher.
[01:32:46]  Her husband is like, Are you having sex with a fucking 15-year-old who's in our daughter's class at the Catholic high school?
[01:32:55]  And Brigitte's like, We, I am.
[01:32:58]  And so the husband's like, What the fuck is wrong with you?
[01:33:01]  And leaves town and never comes back, not even for his own mother's funeral.
[01:33:07]  No way, really.
[01:33:07]  Yes, yes.
[01:33:09]  It's a small town, too, and everybody knows about it.
[01:33:11]  I mean, well, the entire world knows about it now, too.
[01:33:14]  True, true.
[01:33:15]  And by the way, before you get your fucking knickers in a twist, young, or no, excuse me, your what do French people wear?
[01:33:22]  Your stripey shirt in a twist and yell at me.
[01:33:26]  Brigitte Macrone has, I read one place described as like a young Brigitte Bardot.
[01:33:32]  She does not look like young Brigitte Bardot when she was younger.
[01:33:36]  Oh.
[01:33:37]  She does look like.
[01:33:37]  She looks like an old Brigitte Bardot.
[01:33:40]  I was about to say, she does look like an older Brigitte Bardot.
[01:33:44]  No, actually, no, she looks like an old British actress playing old Brigitte Bardot.
[01:33:50]  Perfect, yes.
[01:33:51]  In a TV minister.
[01:33:52]  She is one of the most simian people I have ever seen in my life.
[01:33:56]  I mean, she looks like the mother of the hot girl ape in Planet of the Apes, like the doctor ape.
[01:34:02]  I mean, can you, I mean, Carla Bruni to that.
[01:34:06]  You know what I'm saying?
[01:34:07]  Imagine.
[01:34:08]  Like, do they?
[01:34:09]  I mean, so here's the thing.
[01:34:10]  So his parents meet with her and they're like, please stop fucking our son until he's 18, which is like, they don't press charges.
[01:34:16]  They don't call the police.
[01:34:17]  They're like, please stop having Jeffrey Epstein style pedophile sex with our son.
[01:34:21]  Well, not even, not actually, because Emmanuel is very much into it.
[01:34:27]  But she's like, no, I can't make any promises.
[01:34:29]  Like, that's literally.
[01:34:30]  Send him to a different school.
[01:34:31]  Yeah.
[01:34:32]  They're like, you got to get the fuck out of here to stop fucking this insanely old lady in relative to you.
[01:34:40]  And over the summer, they'd meet at the pool because he would go back to town and he would be hiding in the bushes and she'd come and meet him.
[01:34:50]  Insane.
[01:34:52]  I mean, it is pretty remarkable that they've managed to spin any of this as romantic.
[01:34:57]  It is just incredible.
[01:34:58]  Well, here's the thing.
[01:34:59]  I don't think Macrone fucked any other girls besides.
[01:35:02]  Okay, so, okay, I want to talk about this because what happens is he, they end up getting married, right?
[01:35:09]  Oh, yeah.
[01:35:09]  At the ages, by the way, he was 29 and she was 54 years old when they got married.
[01:35:17]  Like a little over 10 years later.
[01:35:21]  So I have some questions here.
[01:35:24]  Ask me one.
[01:35:26]  Okay, so 29.
[01:35:29]  He is figuring out his career, figuring out moves to his career.
[01:35:35]  Do you think that in those 10 years, he's just hoped that he's just like hopelessly obsessed with this woman in love?
[01:35:42]  Oh my God.
[01:35:44]  Or do you believe this was a career move?
[01:35:47]  Well, so there are a lot of rumors, which have been said to hurt Brigitte greatly, that Emmanuel Macron is le gay and having legay sex with the head of Radio France.
[01:36:02]  It's actually like a big rumor.
[01:36:04]  I looked him up.
[01:36:05]  I thought it was a woman when I first read the article because it didn't mention he was a guy.
[01:36:09]  And then I looked him up.
[01:36:10]  I'm like, oh, it's a guy.
[01:36:11]  And then I uncovered there's a lot of gay rumors.
[01:36:13]  Oh, yeah.
[01:36:13]  There's all photos of him.
[01:36:15]  It's all side-by-side photos of him and Macron.
[01:36:19]  He's very handsome.
[01:36:21]  Yeah.
[01:36:22]  I personally don't think Macron is having sex very often.
[01:36:29]  I mean, with his very Gilf wife or with anybody else.
[01:36:35]  But it is an interesting thing to consider.
[01:36:38]  One thing that I found was really weird is she married Macron in 2009 at a church in a small town.
[01:36:45]  It is the same church where she'd married her previous husband in 1974.
[01:36:52]  Insane.
[01:36:54]  And like, I want to be clear here.
[01:36:55]  I think it's really wrong to do that at the same church.
[01:36:59]  It's not, you know what I think is wrong?
[01:37:01]  To have sex with a child.
[01:37:05]  And I agree with that too, but I'm just saying, you know, when you're an adult woman and dude, like that's just like twisting the knife.
[01:37:12]  There's something wrong.
[01:37:13]  I mean, to both parties, to the ex-sisman, but also denying Emmanuel, like, you know, a wedding that's his own that he owns.
[01:37:21]  It's like, why are you doing this in the site of the first wedding?
[01:37:24]  Well, it's not right.
[01:37:26]  I mean, I can imagine dating a woman 25 years older than you.
[01:37:29]  She is probably making quite a lot of those decisions.
[01:37:33]  The other thing is, if you've ever seen pictures of Emmanuel Macron and his family, including his daughter, which is the same age as him, it literally looks like he's just married to his daughter in this because they are the same age and kind of like the same amount of attractiveness.
[01:37:50]  And, you know, it's instead he's actually just married to this insane looking pedophile.

=== Insane Pedophile Marriage (01:49) ===

[01:37:58]  This ape-like ephebophile.
[01:38:01]  And yeah, it's insane.
[01:38:04]  But I will say, in regards to the age of consent, there is a famous quote from one Karl Marx who says, the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways.
[01:38:16]  The point is to change it.
[01:38:18]  And I think that really rings true with Macron because Macron went to school for philosophy.
[01:38:24]  And he understands that he comes from a long tradition of French philosophers who are really concerned with the question of the age of consent.
[01:38:31]  And he says, well, all these guys, they've talked about it.
[01:38:34]  Maybe they've signed a few petitions.
[01:38:35]  I will single-handedly marry a very older woman in violation of all of those societal norms and I will make France les pedophile society.
[01:38:48]  In fact, you should reverse those words because French people always do that, like society, les pedophile.
[01:38:53]  a phoebophilia on march all right Well, we went way long.
[01:39:14]  That's what I'm saying.
[01:39:15]  You get two episodes.
[01:39:17]  I know, but it's fun.
[01:39:19]  Yeah.
[01:39:20]  Are people still listening, do you think?
[01:39:23]  No, people are definitely not listening anymore.
[01:39:25]  Are you kidding me?
[01:39:26]  They tuned out like hour one.
[01:39:28]  We're in like hour four.
[01:39:29]  Oh man.
[01:39:30]  All right.
[01:39:31]  Well, let's.
[01:39:32]  If you are still listening, I'm Liz.
[01:39:35]  My name is the Rothschild that gave Emmanuel Macron a job at my bank.
[01:39:41]  And we are joined by producer Young Chomsky.
[01:39:45]  And we will see you next time.
[01:39:47]  Bye-bye.