Hungarian PM denounces Soros-backed college, US urges restraint

The French election is a bit tighter than originally anticipated

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-04-19/french-election-shocker-pollsters-baffled-by-four-way-contest

 

It's probably that many French voters know there must be a change from their current spiral into oblivion. They probably understand that their standard sweet talkers will do no more than rearrange some furniture and call that change. So it may be time to send in the Marine, so to speak.

 

If France's relationship with the EU was the only issue in the French election, which it's not. And if Melenchon really means what he says -- and hasn't just seen which way the wind is currently blowing in France and is trying to recover some of the working-class support that has been going to Marine Le Pen.

A huge difference between Le Pen and Melenchon in my opinion is that Melenchon is still basically a closet Marxist, said to still be a philosophical believer in 'historical materialism'. (Which would make him perhaps the last actual believer in Marxist theory on the planet, apart from some university faculties I guess.)

It will be interesting to see what Merkel and Juncker's (to say nothing of Soros' and the CEU's) response will be if Le Pen and Melenchon finish as the top two in the first round of the French election. (While everyone has been obsessing about Hungary, France is the real threat to their project.) The EU's leadership just shrugged off Brexit as a peripheral matter, while talking darkly of 'punishing' Britain with stiff trade barriers to deter any other EU members from even thinking of leaving. But the spectre of France voting to leave the EU will be something that they can't ignore and can't just bluster their way through. France and Germany are the heart of the EU, its engine. If France leaves, the EU falls. So I would expect to see a far more conciliatory response and some new proposals for a looser EU relationship floated from Berlin, Brussels and the think-tanks.

(Which would no doubt be greatly to Britain's benefit in the coming Brexit negotiations.)

 

........no

 

What else is Soros doing these days?

George Soros battles $10B lawsuit, familiar charges of wielding political influence | Fox News

 

more stuff about Soros and Hungary

Hungary vilifies financier Soros with crude poster campaign - BBC News