New Caledonia remains part of France under “historic” agreement

John Braddock

New Caledonia’s pro-and-anti-independence parties have committed to a so-called “historic” deal regarding the future political status of the French Pacific territory, which is now set to become a “state” within the French Constitution.

President Emmanuel Macron, centre, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou, left, and Minister for Overseas Territories Manuel Valls attend a meeting with New Caledonia's elected officials and state representatives at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, July 12, 2025. [AP Photo/Tom Nicholson]

The 13-page agreement, officially entitled “Agreement Project of the Future of New Caledonia,” was signed on July 12 after 10 days of negotiations in Bougival on the outskirts of Paris. The talks, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron, were aimed at creating a new document to replace the 1998 “power sharing” Nouméa Accord.

The delegations included all New Caledonia’s political factions; four anti-independence groups (the Loyalists; Rassemblement-Les Républicains; Eveil océanien and Calédonie ensemble), and two pro-independence groups: UC-FLNKS (Union Calédonienne with the main Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front coalition), and Union Nationale pour l’Independance (UNI), which includes the Parti de Libération Kanak (Palika) and Union Progréssiste en Mélanésie (UPM).

The deal creates a “State of New Caledonia” within France, and a New Caledonian nationality. Macron declared it a “bet on trust” leading to a “peaceful relationship with France.” It commits all the signatories, who must now sell it to their own deeply suspicious political bases.

A joint sitting of the French National Assembly and French Senate will be held this year to codify the Bougival Accord into the Constitution. It will then be taken to a referendum in New Caledonia in early 2026, followed by ratification in the French National Assembly.

The Bougival gathering was dubbed the “summit of last chance” after a series of talks between February and May this year, chaired by French Overseas Territories Minister Manuel Valls, failed to reach agreement. The last meeting in Nouméa collapsed after Valls tabled a proposal that contained a form of “sovereignty with France,” including transfer of key powers—defence, law and order, currency, foreign affairs, justice—from Paris to New Caledonia and dual Kanaky-France citizenship.

The negotiations originally were called in the wake of last year’s seven-month uprising by indigenous Kanak youth against French colonial rule. There was widespread rioting and 14 people killed, mostly by French gendarmes, with damage estimated at €2.2 billion. Fueled by social inequality, unemployment and economic desperation, the rebellion brought alienated youth into conflict, not only with colonial oppression, but with the territory’s political establishment, including the official Kanak pro-independence parties.

The pro-independence movement split in December, with the majority FLNKS demanding full sovereignty and the “moderate” factions seeking a shared arrangement with Paris. The pro-France “Loyalist” parties flatly opposed any settlement which failed to take into account the three referendums between 2018 and 2021, including in the controversial final vote boycotted by pro-independence Kanaks, that had rejected independence.

France’s ruling elite was never going to relinquish its grip on its strategically important colonial possession. From the beginning Macron made it clear that “Republican order” would be imposed in the most brutal fashion. Over 7,000 military and police personnel were dispatched to put down the “insurrection” and leading Kanak independence activists sent to prisons in France. Macron pressured the pro-independence parties to bring the young rioters to heel—a task they obediently carried out.

Under the deal, calls at the heart of the uprising for full and sovereign political independence have been betrayed. The agreement does not grant France’s 172 years-old colony independence, either immediately or in the future.

The agreement is broader than proposals previously tabled by Valls. The new “state of Caledonia” will be established through a “basic law” enshrined in France’s constitution. It can be recognised by other nations and establish a “Caledonian nationality,” while letting residents also have French nationality. It could also eventually allow New Caledonians to change the territory’s name and flag.

The French State retains control of policing, courts, currency and defence, but with new structures to enlist a wider layer of the New Caledonian political establishment in an extended “partnership.” The Southern Province, which includes Nouméa and is a centre of anti-independence forces, will receive new fiscal and administrative powers, plus extra seats in an expanded 56-member Congress.

Authority over foreign affairs will be transferred to the New Caledonia government. The colony already has enhanced its “regional integration” since gaining full membership of the Pacific Islands Forum in 2016. However, it must conduct diplomatic relations “in accordance with the international commitments and the interests of France,” and uphold Paris’s major strategic interests, which includes France’s military base on the main island and its commitment to the US-led buildup to war against China.

While France retains control of the courts and police, the deal provides for the creation of provincial and “community” policing. This local police “face” is to offset the deployment of the unpopular French gendarmes which were responsible for brutal and deadly attacks on Kanak protestors and rioters.

All residents will also be allowed to vote after living 10 years in the territory. Currently, only people born in the colony or residing there before 1998 can vote. The proposed change, which strengthens the influence of recently arrived migrants from France and diminishes the Kanak proportion of the voting population, was one of the primary issues that ignited the territory’s civil unrest. Previously deferred provincial elections, due to be held later this year under the old restrictive rules, will be postponed until mid-2026.

The deal also calls for an economic and financial “recovery pact” that would include support for the territory’s vital nickel processing capabilities which are currently under extreme pressure from suppliers in Indonesia and China. There are likely to be limits on the destination of the nickel, which has strategic and military uses and which France wants to remain within the European Union as a designated “strategic mineral.”

Both sides have swiftly moved to promote the deal which has already met with a backlash. In a joint release, the two main pro-France parties, Les Loyalistes and Rassemblement-LR, said the agreement was “historic” and “perennial,” offering New Caledonia “a future of peace, stability and prosperity” while at the same time considering France’s Indo-Pacific strategy.

Anti-independence politician Nicolas Metzdorf, however, called it a compromise born of “demanding dialogue” and described the Caledonian nationality as a “real concession.” Philippe Blaise, vice-president of Southern Province administration, said the agreement “crossed a red line” by recognising a “Caledonian state” and a “distinct nationality,” which he said was incompatible with French unity.

For the pro-independence parties Emmanuel Tjibaou, New Caledonia’s member of the French National Assembly, said the accord would help “us get out of the spiral of violence.” He described a “difficult path” ahead but one that would allow Kanaks and other Caledonians to “move forward together” while “mending divisions.”

In an official statement the FLNKS claimed that the agreement included “major advances towards the objective of bringing together, over time, all the elements of sovereignty. At a difficult time for our country, marked by a deep political, economic and social crisis, we, the group mandated by FLNKS have assumed responsibility.”

Many pro-independence activists have taken to social media to condemn the deal. Local journalist Brigitte Whaap told Radio NZ that while some of the public were “relieved” there had been progress and an agreement was proposed, many are “feeling betrayed, really upset about this situation.”

Brenda Wanabo-Ipeze, a leader of the Coordination Cell for Field Actions (CCAT), currently incarcerated in France, said: “This text was signed without us. It does not bind us.” CCAT has been declared by the authorities as the main organising group behind the protests with a dozen of its leaders still facing serious criminal charges.

Joel Kasarerhou, president of civil society group Construire Autrement (Build Differently), called the agreement “stillborn” and “lacking ambition and vision.” Kasarerhou said the youth at the heart of the May 2024 uprising had been “forgotten or barely mentioned,” and he feared another “May 13”—the date the riots began.

What the deal has not addressed, let alone resolved, is the deep economic and social crisis hitting the colony, and in particular the impoverished working class and youth. Whatever the official outcome of the high-level political maneuvering now under way, the issues behind the unrest—ingrained poverty, social inequality, unemployment and social desperation—remain.

Crypto market capitalisation hits $4 trillion

Nick Beams

After the price of Bitcoin passed $120,000 last week, the crypto market reached a new milestone. With legislation going through the US Congress opening new avenues for cryptocurrencies and trading, the market capitalization of crypto reached $4 trillion as investors prepare to pour billions of dollars into the market.

In less than three years, the market value of crypto has expanded five-fold. In December 2022, in the wake of the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX, the price of Bitcoin fell to $16,000 and the market capitalization was $800 billion.

An advertisement of Bitcoin, one of the cryptocurrencies, is displayed on a building in Hong Kong, on Nov. 18, 2021. [AP Photo/Kin Cheung]

Since then, crypto has been on a steady rise, accelerating rapidly after the coming to power of Trump and his pledge to the crypto speculators, of which he is one, raking in billions of dollars, to make the US the crypto capital of the world.

Three pieces of legislation have been presented. The so-called GENIUS Act, which has passed both the House and the Senate, facilitates the establishment of stablecoins that aid the entry of major finance houses, as well as non-financial corporations, into the crypto world.

The Clarity Act, which has passed the House and now awaits approval in the Senate, is possibly even more significant because it removes regulation of the crypto market from the Securities and Exchange Commission and gives it to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is regarded as being more “crypto friendly.”

In comments to the New York Times, Kara Calvert, a top official at the major crypto exchange Coinbase, said it “has been absolutely the most important thing we have been pushing for.”

The third piece of legislation is the ban on the Federal Reserve creating a digital currency, regarded as less significant because the Fed has not announced any plan to do so.

The latest legislation has been characterized by crypto advocates as “one of the most significant moves” towards the mainstream adoption of crypto. The GENIUS Act opens the way for Wall Street banks, money managers and major corporations to create their own stablecoins as a pathway for entry into the crypto world.

Stablecoins are different from the thousands of coins that have been created, of which Bitcoin is the most prominent.

They are touted as providing stability because they are supposedly backed one-for-one by underlying assets, chiefly US dollars or Treasury bonds. The heads of Bank of America, Citigroup, and JPMorgan Chase have said they intend to create their own stablecoins, and other non-financial firms, such as Walmart and Amazon, are expected to follow.

The expanded development of stablecoins, which the latest legislation facilitates, means that the regular financial system, including the US Treasury market, is more intimately connected to the Ponzi scheme that constitutes the crypto market. None of the crypto coins, including Bitcoin, has any intrinsic value—there is no underlying real asset. Its market value only rises insofar as more money flows in, and this is the aim of the new legislation.

By forming what has been described as the “connective tissue” between the banking and financial system and the Ponzi crypto market, stablecoins add a new source of financial instability, despite their supposed one-for-one backing with the dollar. Commercial paper has been similarly supported but played a part in the 2008 crisis, and there are fears stablecoins could be a source of instability if they “break the buck.”

As Financial Times (FT) columnist Katie Martin noted in an article published in June: “Up to now, what happened in crypto stayed in crypto.”

But the situation has changed, and “we are now rapidly reaching the point where the crypto ecosystem poses risks to mainstream markets.”

If for any reason a stablecoin were forced to sell its assets to meet redemptions or because it had to fold, this would have ramifications for the whole financial system, particularly the short-term US Treasury market. It is now estimated that stablecoin operators hold more short-term US debt securities than big foreign investors, such as China.

This is not a matter of conjecture. In May 2022, the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin, promoted by fears about the quality of its backing, resulted in $40 billion in market value being wiped out.

It did not have great flow-on effects at that time. But the crypto market has expanded by several orders of magnitude since then and has become much more connected to the broader financial system.

No one really knows the extent of that connection because of the lack of data. But a survey conducted by EY Parthenon concluded that 73 percent of institutional investors had exposure to crypto, and that 85 percent of these had increased their holdings in 2024.

The Bank for International Settlements, the umbrella organization for the world’s central banks, commented extensively on the issue of stablecoins and the crypto markets in its annual report issued at the end of last month, pointing to potential sources of instability.

One of the major issues it raised was what it referred to as the “singleness of money” in a world where financial firms and corporations are issuing their own stablecoins. In the present system, money issued by central banks is “accepted by all without hesitation,” the BIS said.

But questions are raised where there are multiple stablecoins. The “singleness of money” cannot be guaranteed, the BIS noted, because depending on how the strength of its asset backing is assessed, one stablecoin may be traded at a discount or a premium for another.

On the issue of crypto coins, it said that despite the claims of their proponents that they redefine money “they do not resemble a stable monetary instrument, but rather a speculative asset.”

Stablecoins have been designed as a “gateway to the crypto ecosystem” and if they continue to grow “they could pose financial stability risks, including the tail risk of fire sales of safe assets.”

The proponents of the crypto system endlessly claim that it represents a “democratisation” of finance and provides the opportunity for ordinary people to partake of the benefits to be derived from the world of finance, ignoring the fact that, according to the FBI, Americans lost $9 billion to crypto fraud last year, a 66 percent increase from the year before.

As Hilary J. Allen a professor of law at American University Washington College of Law stated in a submission to the House Committee on Financial Services on June 24: “When roughly half of all Americans (some surveys say more) are living paycheck-to-paycheck, the problem is not lack of investment opportunities but a lack of money to invest in the first place.”

Crypto assets were “Ponzi-like” because their value was not based on real-world assets but depended “entirely on whether another buyer can be found for them.”

She said that if tokenised assets (of which stablecoins are one) take off then “it is undeniable that it will result in the creation of more financial assets that can be traded speculatively, and that can serve as collateral for leveraged transactions. … The bigger the supply of available financial assets, the greater the opportunities for asset bubbles to grow, and then for assets to be dumped during fire sales.”

But the creation of such bubbles is the aim of the crypto legislation, promoted by the Trump administration but which is being waved through Congress by the Democrats. The strongest criticism, if it can be called that, came from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

In her statement to a Senate committee, she expressed concern that “what my Republican colleagues are aiming for is another industry handout that gives the crypto lobby exactly its wish list” as she declared she was “looking forward to working with my colleagues to get this done—the right way.”

There is no right way—the bringing of crypto into the financial mainstream emanates from the rot and decay at the heart of the US capitalist system—the accumulation of wealth by ever more parasitic and criminal means.

Warren, who has described herself as “capitalist to the bone,” was carrying out her assigned function within this system by seeking to create a smokescreen for its operations with the claim that it can be somehow regulated.

But as she knows full well there is no prospect of this. As she herself explained, the Clarity Act will allow companies to tokenise their assets to evade regulations.

“Under the House bill, a publicly traded company like Meta or Tesla could simply decide to put its stock on the blockchain and POOF! It would escape all SEC regulation.”

Meanwhile Trump is looking for more ways to meet the insatiable demands of finance, while feathering his own nest.

According to a report in the FT last week, Trump is preparing to open the US $9 trillion retirement system to crypto investments. It said that Trump was looking to issuing an executive order “that would open up 401k plans to alternative investments beyond traditional stocks and bonds.”

These investments would “run a broad spectrum of asset classes, from digital assets to metal and funds focused on corporate takeovers, private loans and infrastructure deals,” according to three people the newspaper said had been briefed on the plan.

The White House said nothing had yet been decided and no decision was official unless it came from Trump himself.

Whether this plan or another is adopted, the essential logic is clear.

The crypto market is a Ponzi scheme which requires the injection of ever greater amounts of money to push market value ever higher, enabling those at the apex of the financial system to expropriate ever greater amounts of wealth before the house of cards collapses with the consequences borne by the mass of the population—on a far greater a scale even than the crisis of 2008.

Just as the growing Epstein scandal is exposing the lifestyles and mores of the ultra wealthy, revealing the ruling classes to be a corrupt cancer on the body politic which must be removed, so their promotion of crypto is revealing the necessity to end the profit system and its ever steeper descent into parasitism, fraud and criminality, which is their economic foundation.

Zelensky appoints new prime minister in major government shakeup

Jason Melanovski

Volodymyr Zelensky [AP Photo/Ukrainian Presidential Press Office]

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky undertook the largest shakeup of top government officials since the NATO-backed proxy war between Ukraine and Russia began in February 2022. Zelensky has officially appointed a new prime minister along with reshuffling several other top cabinet positions. The primary aim of the government shakeup is to solidify Kiev’s ties with the US administration of Donald Trump. US imperialism is still Ukraine’s most important military backer.

Yulia Svyrydenko, 39, was confirmed as the country’s new prime minister on Thursday and will replace former Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, who has served as prime minister since 2020. Shmyhal will remain part of the Zelensky government as the newly appointed defense minister.

Svyrydenko previously served as first deputy prime minister and minister of economic development and trade. She played the leading role in negotiating the “critical minerals deal” this past spring between Ukraine and the Trump administration that saw Ukraine hand over vast sections of its economy to US imperialism in exchange for continued military aid in the war against Russia.

“She was the key and the only person leading these negotiations. She managed to prevent them from unraveling,” said Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former economy minister who previously worked with Svyrydenko.

The eventual signing of the agreement came at a critical time for the Zelensky administration, less than two months after a disastrous public White House meeting between Zelensky and Trump. While initially intended for the signing of an earlier version of the minerals deal agreement, the meeting ended in a shouting match between the Ukrainian and US presidents.

Plans to sign the deal were scrapped, and Zelensky was ejected from the White House following a public dressing down by both Trump and US Vice President JD Vance for failing to be sufficiently indebted to his US backers.

Apart from her experience with the Trump administration, Svyrydenko is reported to be a Zelensky loyalist and friendly with Zelensky’s closest aide Andriy Yermak. She has also earned praise from the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine for her management of the Ukrainian economy.

In addition to a new prime minister and switching Shmyhal to defense minister, Zelensky removed Oksana Markarova as Ukraine’s ambassador to the US. She had been criticized by Republican leaders due to her ties to the Biden administration and in particular Victoria Nuland, Biden’s undersecretary of state for political affairs.

Underlining the commanding role of the US over the Zelensky regime, Zelensky had previously announced his intentions to appoint outgoing Defense Minister Rustem Umerov as the US ambassador, but that move was reportedly nixed by Washington, according to opposition MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak.

Instead, Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s former deputy prime minister for European integration, will become the country’s ambassador to the US, Zelensky announced last Thursday. 

Despite a concerted effort to remake a cabinet dedicated to pleasing the Trump government, Zelensky’s political standing in Washington is still very much in question, according to recent reports.

On Friday, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that US officials have tired of Zelensky and could move to have him replaced within a “few months” by former top General Valery Zaluzhny. Now ambassador to the UK, Zaluzhny has long had extensive ties to the far right. Nearly a year and a half following his dismissal in February 2024, he remains one of the most popular figures in Ukraine and well connected within NATO.

As Hersh reported on Substack:

Zaluzhnyi is now seen as the most credible successor to Zelensky. I have been told by knowledgeable officials in Washington that that job could be his within a few months. Zelensky is on a short list for exile, if President Donald Trump decides to make the call. If Zelensky refuses to leave his office, as is most likely, an involved US official told me: “He’s going to go by force. The ball is in his court.” There are many in Washington and in Ukraine who believe that the escalating air war with Russia must end soon, while there’s still a chance to make a settlement with its president, Vladimir Putin.

Hersh’s article echoes a recent report in the Financial Times that despite renewing arms shipments to Ukraine, Ukraine’s European backers are “still assuming Trump was predisposed to seeing Putin as his main negotiating partner in any settlement and Zelensky as the primary obstacle to a workable peace deal.”

Apart from his shaky relationship with Trump, there are also indications that Zelensky has alienated sections of the Ukrainian ruling class. Amid mounting social discontent and fatigue with the war, they view Zelensky’s continued rule as a threat to their own interests. 

One recent article by the British Spectator titled “Ukrainians have lost faith in Zelensky” noted that a recent “spate of arrests and searches against Zelensky loyalists suggest serious political infighting at the heart of the Kyiv government.” The article continued to quote a former senior official in Zelensky’s administration as saying, “If the war continues soon there will be no Ukraine left to fight for,” and stated that Zelensky was “prolonging the war to hold on to power.” 

A recent poll showed that 70 percent of Ukrainians believe that their leaders use the war to enrich themselves. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed in the war so far, with many more maimed and wounded. 

Amid the cabinet reshuffle last week, Zelensky once again submitted to parliament to continue martial law and military mobilization for another 90 days, which was first implemented in February 2022. Under these measures, tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens such as the Trotskyist youth leader Bogdan Syrotiuk have been imprisoned, thousands of Ukrainian men have been dragged to the front by press gangs and over 6.8 million people have fled the country, the majority of whom will never return. Should the measure pass, it will mark the 16th extension of martial law and mobilization under Zelensky, whose presidential term was originally scheduled to end in May 2024.