It's been a week that’s seen mass protests hijacked by violent rioters across France. The looting of shops, trashing of public buildings, the burning of Lyon’s Tourist Information and the iconic Limoges City Hall. After the riots, came the curfews, and the contemplation, who did what and why weren’t they stopped. Seditious groups, ultra left anarchists and opportunist criminals said President Macron, with a qualified mea culpa: failures in anticipation and authorities dropped the ball in intelligence gathering. Macron is out of breath, exhausted and disorientated claimed the Presidential Frontrunner Marine Le Pen, the far right leader now polling in an even stronger position for the Presidency. Foreign leaders had a free for all too, President Trump wading in and Israel’s prime minister settled old scores ahead of elections there. But France wasn’t isolated in its protests and unrest, Milan was a mirror image, with demonstrations in Spain, Portugal, Belgium too, An Autumn of Discontent, and more protests to follow this weekend:
It’s been a week of American flattery in the court of Vladimir Putin. St Petersburg’s Constantine Palace was the setting for the toasting of Russia’s President by President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, after the release of 74 year old US teacher Stephen Hubbard who’d been held for four years accused by the Kremlin of serving as a mercenary in Ukraine, but widely seen as a pawn of hostage diplomacy. Freshly released, Steve Witkoff told Mr Hubbard that Putin sent his blessings, and then blessed Putin himself calling him a “humanitarian”, just as Russia was launching another mass aerial attack on Kyiv. The hostage deal appeared to be one result of the US lifting sanctions on Russian diesel, and, there was also an apparent commitment by Moscow to renew trilateral peace talks with Kyiv and Washington. Critics allege that the Trump administration has disregarded a just peace over the lure of business deals dangled by the Kremlin, and that Witkoff’s in Wonderland, accused of falling down a rabbit hole of Russian propaganda.
