2012-12-05 Assange to meet with French Left Party politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon

AFP news agency has reported that Julian Assange will meet this Thursday in London with French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon, co-Chairman of France's Left Party (PG). A press conference will be held at Ecuador's London embassy after the meeting.

Promoting what he calls a "citizens' revolution," Mélenchon and his Left Front movement advocate a populist approach to governance. In an interview earlier this year, Mélenchon explained:

"The politics of the established order speaks to no one except the powerful. It speaks a dead language in which there are no people, no love, no fraternity, no poetry, no taste of the future, no passion for science. The only thing that counts is the balance sheet, and on the condition that public spending is reduced. We have dared to change all that. We have somehow broken the inhuman law of silence. And reintroduced human questions, by asking how to address them. We came to the realization that the possible was not far from the desirable. And that sometimes the possible can be greater than what people dare to dream. People had been taught to stunt their dreams. We, by contrast, tell them to let them flourish. This is actually another way of doing politics."

The Frenchman proposes a form of politics that would "rid society of fear and of the violence of exploitation".

During his London visit, Mélenchon is also scheduled to participate in a conference at the University College of London regarding alternatives to economic austerity measures in Europe.