Headline: Beirut explosion: France’s Macron warns Lebanon on need for reform

Sub-headline: International donors pledge aid in wake of explosion that devastated Beirut

There is nothing like the craven ambition of Macron! He covets the Leadership of the EU , even in the early stages of its slow-motion collapse. While his En Marche still faces persistent popular resistance.
The Neo-Liberal Project is being eviscerated by Covid, and its economic wake. That Project faces the rise of the New Intellectual/Political/Economic Triad of Keynes/Piketty/Marx!
Macron, ever in search for a ‘politically sexy’ Photo Op, this heart-wrenching catastrophe offers the perfect opportunity for his Neo-Liberalism, with an unsavory Colonial Accent. 

The above just introductory! But Macron speaks/riffs on Colonial themes, like he lectures the gilets jaunes, and then expresses his political contempt for them , via police violence.  

“The priority is unconditional aid and support for the population,” … “We will be there for you and won’t give up on you.”…  “If reforms are not carried out, Lebanon will continue to sink,” 

https://www.ft.com/content/8c7e38c5-7b56-4e95-a752-50c6652c12c9

It isn’t that Chloe Cornish in Beirut, Victor Mallet in Paris and Andrew England in London haven’t produced informative reporting. Its that this Newspaper’s Macron advocacy/apologetics is handled, indeed confected by the editors, although these reporters know the Party Line!

More of the same from Macron: 

“I will talk to all political forces to ask them for a new pact. I am here today to propose a new political pact to them,” …

The comments of ‘Lina Khatib, head of the Middle East programme at Chatham House.’ adds a bourgeois respectability to this ‘report’ except that Chatham Hose is Corporately funded: ExxonMobil Corporation, Chevron Ltd, AIG , etc:

https://www.chathamhouse.org/membership/corporate-membership/corporate-list

The IMF. the EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen , nor Think Tank  Lina Khatib, whose comment…: 

‘ “without economic and political reform any aid given to Lebanon is only going to end up in the wrong hands”. ‘

Its ‘as if’ the Colonial Mentality is the parent of The New and Old Cold War. NGO’s , Think Tanks are the realization of politics by another means, via the ‘expertise’ of a class of well paid Technocrats. 

Old Socialist