Of course, with a view to being fair and objective I can hardly put "So here we are relishing the appalling spectacle of the UMP making complete dicks of themselves and thus annihilating all crediblity" though this would actually be pretty fair & objective.
So what's new on the French political scene? It's true that with all this Baby Bullshit (BBBS) the political posts have become few and far-between.
Well to start, it turns out that the Socialist party won the presidential election on May 6th; François Hollande has been prez for just over six months and to say that his presidency has started rockily would be the understatement of the millenium. In fact it would be more accurate to say that Sarkozy lost rather than Hollande won, as it was clearly the anti-sarko sentiment and the rise of the far-right party FN that contributed to the PS victory more than Hollande's shining charisma and promises to increase taxes. It'd also be easy to say that Sarko lost because of his personnality and the crisis context, but in fact we have to go back to the French presidential campaign to understand why the right, represented by the UMP, is in the dire straits it is today.
Sarkozy was always shadowed by a bunch of more or less well-known "conseillers" who advised him with more or less success what ideas to put forward in order to be in the air du temps. In the final stretch of the campaign, his main counsellor was Patrick Buisson, a man with a far-right background who advised taking the hard "security, Islam, immigration" line. As a result, during the campaign when Sarko should really have been focusing on unemployment, debt, competitiveness and the euro crisis, he gravely went on about the bad integration of immigrants, Roms, the risk of Islamist revolution and the secular state in peril. These positions, which found their audience in the part of the UMP represented by Jean-François Copé and the "droite poulaire" (read: populist) were undoubtedly meant to drain away votes from the FN ( a well-known Sarko technique, read here for an example) and gather the far-right and the more moderate centre of the UMP- as represented by Prime minister François Fillon- together.
It was pretty much a massive fail. The moderate Gaullists (centre-right) felt alienated and the FN loved that the UMP was recycling their favourite themes. Some of the former voted Hollande and the FN did an amazing score, and in the end, Sarkozy lost.
It could have been the end of it, but the question then arose of who was going to be the UMP's new leader. Sarkozy had the been the natural one: a new generation, with a wish to rehaul the French welfare state and economy and an "décomplexé" ( 'unashamed' is the best translation I can come up with) approach to money. He had managed to reunite all the trends present in the UMP with a clever dosage of microeconomics, labour, international affairs, security and immigration policies.
Now two different candidates had emerged.
On the one hand the current leader (since presidential campaign), Jean-François Copé. MP and mayor of Meaux, a town 50 kilometres from Paris famous for its Brie, he is also from the younger generation (nearly 50), omnipresent in the media, and could be described as a pale imitation of Sarkozy, who you either hated or loved but had to admit was the real spontaneous driven thing. Copé is smooth, has nice eyes but a shark's smile and is really a bit slimy. Wasp's honey to Sarkozy's flintstones. Copé represents the "droite décomplexée" which is conservative and a tad xenophobic and anti-islam.
On the other we have former PM François Fillon, a grave and silent man, who goes about his reforms and shuns interviews and TV appearances. He is the man who oversaw the major reforms of the last half-decade, as he was Sarko's right-hand man during the whole presidency. He represents the more moderate wing of the UMP, which is more liberal and "social gaullist".
An internal election was organised for the 300 000 UMP card-holders to vote on these two candidates. There were some other fleeting candidacies but on D-day only Fillon and Copé remained.
In the polls Fillon was given as the clear winner, 40 points ahead. And then the election happened. At 8pm the voting centres shut but no clear trend was visible. Same at 11. Then at around 11.20pm Copé came out and said he had won, 200 ballots ahead, though this result had not yet been validated by, well, anyone. They'd simply counted up the results as they came through from the various federations.
Twenty minutes later, Fillon made a statement,saying he had won, from tallying up all results from France and overseas, by about 1000 votes. This hadn't been confirmed by anyone either.
The Copé side retaliated saying that there had been evidence of fraud in Nice and Paris in particular, with ballot stuffing and people being turned away.
Chaos. On TV, other UMP figures tried to defend their side, some getting swept away like Christian Estrosi, mayor of Nice, who talked about the 'other party' forgetting that they're all supposed to be on the same ship.
Chaos continues during the next day, and finally JF Copé is declared victor by about 90 votes. He offered Vice-prez to F Fillon, who flatly refused and is now contemplating "his future in politics", clearly meaning he can't work with a populist little squit like Jean-François. And it would seem quite a lot of UMP voters might feel the same.
The belief is that the focus should be on the economy, micro and macro, with reforms to make French companies more competitive, dealing with the deficit and debt, and handling the euro-crisis, not Islam, gay marriage and yet more security. For example, Copé is famous for an anecdote he related on TV to illustrate the rise of an anti-white racism present in the dangerous 'burbs. Here a young French "gaulois-white" had had his pain au chocolat stolen at school by young French "musulmans- arabes" who had told him not to eat during Ramadan. Nevermind that there hasn't been a Ramadan during the school year for years, this was hot news to show that it's the white kids who are being treated badly because of the muslim invasion.
Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front national is rubbing her hands in glee. And it seems she might be the real winner of the UMP election, which has simply shown the fracture that exists in the French right. She and Jean-Louis Borloo who has just founded the centre-right party Union des démocrates et des indépendants.
The Socialists however are having a tough enough time with their own cock-ups, controversies and U-turns to milk anything out of this. They also have to remain very silent as they went through pretty much exactly the same thing, accusations and fratricide included, in 2008. It's worth noting that neither of the two candidates to the 2008 PS leader election were selected to run for President in 2012.
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est politics. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est politics. Afficher tous les articles
mercredi 21 novembre 2012
dimanche 15 janvier 2012
So here we are electioneering with Joan of Arc
Happy new year! And welcome to the official opening of the French presidential campaign 2012. Indeed, since the first of January, all announced candidates have been under scrutiny, and will be until round one on April 22nd; all their TV and radio appearances are now timed to guarantee perfect media-time equality. This is straightforward enough when announced candidates such as François Hollande (Parti Socialiste, credited as being next president if one takes any notice of the polls), Hervé Morin (Nouveau Centre, 0 to 1% depending on the day), François Bayrou (Modem, centrist, 7%) and others speak into the mike: their time is counted and the idea is that everyone will have spoken the same by the eve of the first round.
It gets a little more tricky whern it comes to counting the speech time of the unofficial candidates, the biggest of these being the current president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy has yet to announce his running for election (though there is a 98% chance he will stand) and, as the President has a certain number of speeches, conferences and visits in his diary, it is turning out to be a nightmare deciding when Nicolas "the Prez" Sarkozy is talking as opposed to Nicolas "the candidate" Sarkozy is. To be fair, this is nothing new under the sun. All former French Presidents have waited until the last possible moment before declaring their second candidacy. Valery Giscard d'Estaing in '81 waited until March (and lost), Mitterand in '88 waited until March (and won), and Chirac in 2002 waited about the same (and won). The notable difference between these guys and Sarko is the latter gives a conference every couple of days.
The CSA, the French audiovisual watchdog that cares about such matters, has decided to analyse every word of every presidential intervention; when he talks about the need to pull together in a crisis it'll be considered legitimate President-talk; when he slams into the opposition talking about their insane fiscal policies it'll be docked off his speaking time.
But of course it's a fine line as was recently illustrated by the Joan of Arc episode. Joan of Arc, French national heroin, martyr saint and semi mythological peasant maid who is meant, aged 14 to have kicked the English out of France under God's guidance, was born 600 years ago (we think).
An important figure in French national consciousness, she has been for decades the possession of the far-right Front national who seen in her the young, guided and original French resistant, who was burned at the stake for heresy no less. Staunch National front supporters actually gather around Joan's gold statue next to the Louvre every first of may to celebrate the dedication and sacrifice of the "pucelle d'Orléans." So when her rather approximate 600th birthday came round Sarkozy decided to celebrate the event in Vaucouleurs, from where she launched her military campaign that eventually led her to Orléans and the coronation of Charles VII, over half a millenium ago...
Sarkozy is communications genius, and his use of symbols was already omnipresent in his 2007 campaign. In 2007, he accumulated refernces to the right, with the great Charles de Gaulle, resistant who saved France from the nazis and went on to become the founder of the Vth Republic, or Jean Moulin and André Malraux, major figures of the Resistance. More interestingly, he also appropriated a lot of left-wing figures, as early as January 2007 he was raving on about Jaurès and a little later Guy Moquet, the communist youth who was shot for resiting the Nazis (see post here).
Now that it's 2012, he needs to innovate and find some new unifying figures. Napoleon would be an idea but of course for Sarkozy such a choice is impossible. Since day one he has been accused of strutting around with the same megalomaniac ambitions as his fellow shorty "hyperpresident", and is often nicknamed Sarko Ier in the satirical publications. Impossible equally for Louis XIV, who as well as centralising France around Paris and modernising the country a great deal was also an egomaniac who called himswelf the Sun King.
So Sarkozy has gone into French mythology and craftily nicked, with excellent timing, the Jeanne d'Arc figure from the extreme right. A misunderstood character who ultimately led France out of the Dark Ages and the Hundred years War to independence, peace and prosperity. Remind you of anyone? And of course because this was a national hommage to a French heroin, it was the president who was doing all the work, not the candidate so the CSA can't charge him for this. What other mythological character associations can we get from Sarkozy before he declares his candidacy?
Sarkozy is communications genius, and his use of symbols was already omnipresent in his 2007 campaign. In 2007, he accumulated refernces to the right, with the great Charles de Gaulle, resistant who saved France from the nazis and went on to become the founder of the Vth Republic, or Jean Moulin and André Malraux, major figures of the Resistance. More interestingly, he also appropriated a lot of left-wing figures, as early as January 2007 he was raving on about Jaurès and a little later Guy Moquet, the communist youth who was shot for resiting the Nazis (see post here).
Now that it's 2012, he needs to innovate and find some new unifying figures. Napoleon would be an idea but of course for Sarkozy such a choice is impossible. Since day one he has been accused of strutting around with the same megalomaniac ambitions as his fellow shorty "hyperpresident", and is often nicknamed Sarko Ier in the satirical publications. Impossible equally for Louis XIV, who as well as centralising France around Paris and modernising the country a great deal was also an egomaniac who called himswelf the Sun King.
So Sarkozy has gone into French mythology and craftily nicked, with excellent timing, the Jeanne d'Arc figure from the extreme right. A misunderstood character who ultimately led France out of the Dark Ages and the Hundred years War to independence, peace and prosperity. Remind you of anyone? And of course because this was a national hommage to a French heroin, it was the president who was doing all the work, not the candidate so the CSA can't charge him for this. What other mythological character associations can we get from Sarkozy before he declares his candidacy?
jeudi 1 décembre 2011
So here we are thinking about a new EU treaty
Well! Sarkozy is on TV, live from a crammed concert hall in Toulon, giving some hot presidential speech. Blah blah blah, he was saying, right at the end (3 minutes before credits) that he had had to deal with a very horrible financial and economic catastrophe at Eurozone level with Merkel, using the framework of a rusty 1992 Maastricht treaty which turned the EEC in to the EU and invented the economic and monetary union.
Fair point. As he mentioned, the treaty provided clauses for preventive measures against financial meltdown, but no body to make sure they were properly applied. Penalties were devised in case of ridiculous deficits and debt levels, but nobody put them in place or used them. There were no institutions that could take over when things flew out of control. Which is why France and Germany have had to pile the steaming ruins of EU economies into a shit heap and sellotape it together.
Sarkozy explained the eurozone countries economies must converge or the euro will be either too weak for some and too strong for others. To do this, wait for it, it was necessary to draw up a new treaty which implements... economic governance at an EU level. France and Germany would strive for this.
BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Well, what it probably doesn't mean is that the new institution/level of power would be independent like the ECB, which stays firmly out of politics and lives to keep inflation down, cos that's part of the whole fucking problem, that monetary policy (printing the money) cannot be used in crisis situations, and that is why all the governments are focusing on fiscal policy (more money in taxes, less spending). But the Germans would never agree to that. Independent monetary policy is their condition. So what? A new branch of the commission that decides on centralised economic plans for each sovereign country? sounds unlikely. So maybe they're just going to start applying what's been written all along since the bloody Maastricht treaty, followed by Nice, Lisbon and so on.
So is this the scoop? It takes European rules 19 years to apply? or are we going a step further ijn EU integration with an incredible new political system, where a supranational economic governance (nment?) which is independent from the supranational central bank, has to face the specificities of each (sovereign?) eurozone member?
Can't wait to find out!
Fair point. As he mentioned, the treaty provided clauses for preventive measures against financial meltdown, but no body to make sure they were properly applied. Penalties were devised in case of ridiculous deficits and debt levels, but nobody put them in place or used them. There were no institutions that could take over when things flew out of control. Which is why France and Germany have had to pile the steaming ruins of EU economies into a shit heap and sellotape it together.
Sarkozy explained the eurozone countries economies must converge or the euro will be either too weak for some and too strong for others. To do this, wait for it, it was necessary to draw up a new treaty which implements... economic governance at an EU level. France and Germany would strive for this.
BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Well, what it probably doesn't mean is that the new institution/level of power would be independent like the ECB, which stays firmly out of politics and lives to keep inflation down, cos that's part of the whole fucking problem, that monetary policy (printing the money) cannot be used in crisis situations, and that is why all the governments are focusing on fiscal policy (more money in taxes, less spending). But the Germans would never agree to that. Independent monetary policy is their condition. So what? A new branch of the commission that decides on centralised economic plans for each sovereign country? sounds unlikely. So maybe they're just going to start applying what's been written all along since the bloody Maastricht treaty, followed by Nice, Lisbon and so on.
So is this the scoop? It takes European rules 19 years to apply? or are we going a step further ijn EU integration with an incredible new political system, where a supranational economic governance (nment?) which is independent from the supranational central bank, has to face the specificities of each (sovereign?) eurozone member?
Can't wait to find out!
jeudi 23 décembre 2010
So here we are welcoming you to France
Before we start, a quick question: in which country was the secretary of State accused of and charged with racism, having said that "when there is one Arab, it's ok, but when there are many it's a problem"? Where, and when, would it be considered the norm to invent statistics linked to a particular ethnic group? And where in the world would these stats then be used to formulate and justify policies, such as deportatation?
Welcome to France 2010.
A few evenings ago on a Saturday night I met up with a few friends for a drink in Paris. Two, out of the six of us, work for the Police; both are located in commissariats in shitty towns in the worst suburbs of Paris- nobody's dream destination, but where they put the green policemen. Both answer to the Ministre de L'Intérieur, Brice Hortefeux, a long term buddy of Sarkozy's and, as mentioned above, guilty of the most ridiculous statement about Arabs (which he gracefully coined during a filmed political meeting where Arabs -or maybe just one?- were present, which also gives you an idea of his IQ. Potentially, the funniest thing about this was that he defended himself by saying that he didn't mean the Arabs, but the Auvergnats, the people who live in the region in central France! much better).
During the conversation, one of the two casually mentioned that a few weeks previously, in the middle of the "Roma crisis", they had received a call from head office, asking all the commissariats in France to give that year's criminality rate for the Romas. Problem is, it is unconstitutional in France- in the name of the indivisible and unified Republic- to gather statistics based on race, colour or religion. The answer to that was: make them up, which the policemen in every police station dutifully did. A while later this figure appeared in the newspapers: 80% increase in Roma criminality! And this led to not very much noise being made when the Roma camps were dismantled and people, including women and children, being loaded on to coaches and deported back to Romania and Bulgaria (mainly). For more information on this and its absurd application, read here.
This left me gobsmacked but nobody really seemed to react. When I pressed my friend- a decent, honest, left winger who joined the police force in order to be useful to society- why on earth the fuck was he thinking?? he answered: we didn't have a choice. When I put on a German accent (I was admittedly a little drunk) and mentioned "vee vere just obeying orders" all hell broke loose, I was accused of French bashing and became friendless.
This is what I would like to analyse: where does the statistical problem stem from and why does it matter, but also on a more personal level why am I so profoundly shocked by this whereas my friends are not or, rather, have already declared defeat?
On the question of statistics. As said, France does not allow any kind of information gathering when it comes to ethnic origin, though this can of course be grossly estimated with name (dixit the police) and address. This is why a huge amount of discrimination occurs on the job market, where, ceteris paribus, Jean-Benoit Dupont from Paris will have less trouble finding a job than Mohammed Abdel Bouna from Argenteuil. The logic behind the lack of stats dates back from the collaborationist France, which denounced and deported hundreds of thousands of Jews (and Romas!) during WW2 and the Algeria fiasco. From after the war, France had no colour, no religion and no overseas origins; you were born and/or became French: republican, secular, invested in meritcracv, democracy and brotherly love.
Absolutely fabulous on paper, and one of the reasons why I am devoutely francophile, but one should not lose sight of a little Realpolitik here. If it's a question using of stats when it comes to internal police affairs or making up the figures randomly, I think the former is closer to what the original republic had in mind. If there are stats and it turns out the Romas are illegally settled and criminally surviving, then policies could, and should be formulated. While we're at it we could turn back the clock and find out if it really was the "French with Arab origin-muslim" youths that rioted around Paris in 2005 (as opposed to a much more varied population of poor and desperate). And we could also check out whether wealth in Guadeloupe is correlated to colour (a massive yes there). The fact is, stats reveal the truth, which may be uncomfortable. It is then up to politicians to find solutions and for everyone, especially the media to make sure that the stats are calculated scientifically and independently, and not manipulated.
This coming from a person who can see the philosophical point in not having statistiques ethniques. My point is, simply, that if one needs them one could have them implemented which would always be better than simply plucking them out of thin air.
On the second point I must be careful with what I say. I have been told that I am a French basher and a hypocrite and that I am far too critical. I can see where the first two points come from, but I refuse to not be critical of such news. I think this betrays a fundemental difference between our views on personal responsability and how this has changed the course of history.
Though I am fully aware of the cliché and the weight of the term, I am convinced this goes back to when France collaborated with the nazis. When Maréchal Pétain decided it was better for France as a nation to cut its losses and give in to Hitler. All over the country people complained, but it was a million little wrists stamping the deportation documents, a million ankles pedalling over the place delivering food and documents and a million hands making the weapons and all the body of the nation working actively, though minutely, to animate the occupied monster. I have no doubt whatsoever that Britain would have fared much better. We will never know, only that being an island has its advantages. But no matter: the fact is the Brits are in the comfortable position of knowing that it never happened to them and can build on values such as stiff uper lipness, Blitz courage and the belief in bulldogs.
In France however, there hasn't been anything very positive to milk from the war experience, except for the Resistance, the underground network of opposition that the bravest took part in, at the risk of their lives. From to Gaulle to Guy Moquet to Jean Moulin, the heroes of the Resistance are the heroes of France. The issue is that only a minute part of the population resisted. Fear, despair, defeat, pessimism, indifference and approval of the new régime made 98% of occupied France go along with things, i.e. everybody, people like you and me and all the people we know. Your only link to resistance would be a teacher you once knew, or the communist freak from high school.
But that's not how it's taught in history class, or at least wasn't when I was at school (like Algeria and colonialism). My experience of the lessons are that the Maréchal Pétain was a senile 80 year old who didn't have a clue about what was going on, and that he was hoping to make a deal with Hitler which totally backfired. The population bravely resisted. History books focus on the bravery of a few (Guy Moquet who was executed at 17 wrote a gut-wrenching letter, which is read out every year), the danger of the occupier and the late arrival of the US in the war.
Only when I arrived at University, in the UK I might add, did I read serious books on the subject and discovered in one analysis an interesting portrait of post-Vichy France. Henry Rousso describes le syndrome de vichy and describes four phases. The first, le deuil inachevé, "the unfinished mourning", until the mid fifties where france woke up from the bad dream and saw the steaming remains of war. Hundreds of officials and high-level fonctionnaires were condemned (people looked upwards when it was time to name the guilty), but faced with the need to rebuild, France couldn't charge all who were guilty! The second phase, refoulement, "blocking out" lasted until the early 70s, and was when the heroes were named (including the communists) and myth of widespread resistance appeared. From 1971 to 1974 Rousso talks of the "broken mirror" where a new post-war generation comes into politics and contests the power of De Gaulle. Finally, the Vichy syndrom which lasts until today and is characterised by a national uneasy feeling of shame and frequent (though less so these last few years) bursts of mass media sensationnalisme (finding octogeneraian collaborators, discovering president Mittérand's role in the war and the Vichy government, trials).
Henry Rousso concludes that all this led to a lack of action, shoving dust under the carpet, a general feeling of guilt but without any clear distinction between those who actively took part, or whose parents did, and how much they invested themselves in it. Chirac recognising the French State's guilt in 1995 was a symbolic measure but, in my opinion simply added to the vagueness of it all. After all, what is the State- including-especially!- the police, if not each and every one of us who takes part in it? My belief is that France has never had the comfortable position of Britain saying "look! we defeated those fritzy bastards", but has never been able to look inward and ask, but how did we get to that? what was the tipping point? and could I be the drop of water that made France capitulate?
This all gets dramatic when brought back to the original concept, but the idea is: if you are wearing a uniform, or represent the State, do you not have the obligation to refuse when you are asked to do something illegal?
In the shorter run, as I have immense faith in the French nation and do not think it will topple into fascisme any time soon, it will be interesting to see what this does to the National Front's 2012 presidential elction score. "A 8O% increase in Roma criminality, eh? Told you we should kick the thieving gipsies out. And Europe too while we're at it. 10 million immigrants (including yours truly) and 5 million unemployed, you know". Marine le Pen said that on tv. And one French in 4 agrees with her.
Welcome to France 2010.
A few evenings ago on a Saturday night I met up with a few friends for a drink in Paris. Two, out of the six of us, work for the Police; both are located in commissariats in shitty towns in the worst suburbs of Paris- nobody's dream destination, but where they put the green policemen. Both answer to the Ministre de L'Intérieur, Brice Hortefeux, a long term buddy of Sarkozy's and, as mentioned above, guilty of the most ridiculous statement about Arabs (which he gracefully coined during a filmed political meeting where Arabs -or maybe just one?- were present, which also gives you an idea of his IQ. Potentially, the funniest thing about this was that he defended himself by saying that he didn't mean the Arabs, but the Auvergnats, the people who live in the region in central France! much better).
During the conversation, one of the two casually mentioned that a few weeks previously, in the middle of the "Roma crisis", they had received a call from head office, asking all the commissariats in France to give that year's criminality rate for the Romas. Problem is, it is unconstitutional in France- in the name of the indivisible and unified Republic- to gather statistics based on race, colour or religion. The answer to that was: make them up, which the policemen in every police station dutifully did. A while later this figure appeared in the newspapers: 80% increase in Roma criminality! And this led to not very much noise being made when the Roma camps were dismantled and people, including women and children, being loaded on to coaches and deported back to Romania and Bulgaria (mainly). For more information on this and its absurd application, read here.
This left me gobsmacked but nobody really seemed to react. When I pressed my friend- a decent, honest, left winger who joined the police force in order to be useful to society- why on earth the fuck was he thinking?? he answered: we didn't have a choice. When I put on a German accent (I was admittedly a little drunk) and mentioned "vee vere just obeying orders" all hell broke loose, I was accused of French bashing and became friendless.
This is what I would like to analyse: where does the statistical problem stem from and why does it matter, but also on a more personal level why am I so profoundly shocked by this whereas my friends are not or, rather, have already declared defeat?
On the question of statistics. As said, France does not allow any kind of information gathering when it comes to ethnic origin, though this can of course be grossly estimated with name (dixit the police) and address. This is why a huge amount of discrimination occurs on the job market, where, ceteris paribus, Jean-Benoit Dupont from Paris will have less trouble finding a job than Mohammed Abdel Bouna from Argenteuil. The logic behind the lack of stats dates back from the collaborationist France, which denounced and deported hundreds of thousands of Jews (and Romas!) during WW2 and the Algeria fiasco. From after the war, France had no colour, no religion and no overseas origins; you were born and/or became French: republican, secular, invested in meritcracv, democracy and brotherly love.
Absolutely fabulous on paper, and one of the reasons why I am devoutely francophile, but one should not lose sight of a little Realpolitik here. If it's a question using of stats when it comes to internal police affairs or making up the figures randomly, I think the former is closer to what the original republic had in mind. If there are stats and it turns out the Romas are illegally settled and criminally surviving, then policies could, and should be formulated. While we're at it we could turn back the clock and find out if it really was the "French with Arab origin-muslim" youths that rioted around Paris in 2005 (as opposed to a much more varied population of poor and desperate). And we could also check out whether wealth in Guadeloupe is correlated to colour (a massive yes there). The fact is, stats reveal the truth, which may be uncomfortable. It is then up to politicians to find solutions and for everyone, especially the media to make sure that the stats are calculated scientifically and independently, and not manipulated.
This coming from a person who can see the philosophical point in not having statistiques ethniques. My point is, simply, that if one needs them one could have them implemented which would always be better than simply plucking them out of thin air.
On the second point I must be careful with what I say. I have been told that I am a French basher and a hypocrite and that I am far too critical. I can see where the first two points come from, but I refuse to not be critical of such news. I think this betrays a fundemental difference between our views on personal responsability and how this has changed the course of history.
Though I am fully aware of the cliché and the weight of the term, I am convinced this goes back to when France collaborated with the nazis. When Maréchal Pétain decided it was better for France as a nation to cut its losses and give in to Hitler. All over the country people complained, but it was a million little wrists stamping the deportation documents, a million ankles pedalling over the place delivering food and documents and a million hands making the weapons and all the body of the nation working actively, though minutely, to animate the occupied monster. I have no doubt whatsoever that Britain would have fared much better. We will never know, only that being an island has its advantages. But no matter: the fact is the Brits are in the comfortable position of knowing that it never happened to them and can build on values such as stiff uper lipness, Blitz courage and the belief in bulldogs.
In France however, there hasn't been anything very positive to milk from the war experience, except for the Resistance, the underground network of opposition that the bravest took part in, at the risk of their lives. From to Gaulle to Guy Moquet to Jean Moulin, the heroes of the Resistance are the heroes of France. The issue is that only a minute part of the population resisted. Fear, despair, defeat, pessimism, indifference and approval of the new régime made 98% of occupied France go along with things, i.e. everybody, people like you and me and all the people we know. Your only link to resistance would be a teacher you once knew, or the communist freak from high school.
But that's not how it's taught in history class, or at least wasn't when I was at school (like Algeria and colonialism). My experience of the lessons are that the Maréchal Pétain was a senile 80 year old who didn't have a clue about what was going on, and that he was hoping to make a deal with Hitler which totally backfired. The population bravely resisted. History books focus on the bravery of a few (Guy Moquet who was executed at 17 wrote a gut-wrenching letter, which is read out every year), the danger of the occupier and the late arrival of the US in the war.
Only when I arrived at University, in the UK I might add, did I read serious books on the subject and discovered in one analysis an interesting portrait of post-Vichy France. Henry Rousso describes le syndrome de vichy and describes four phases. The first, le deuil inachevé, "the unfinished mourning", until the mid fifties where france woke up from the bad dream and saw the steaming remains of war. Hundreds of officials and high-level fonctionnaires were condemned (people looked upwards when it was time to name the guilty), but faced with the need to rebuild, France couldn't charge all who were guilty! The second phase, refoulement, "blocking out" lasted until the early 70s, and was when the heroes were named (including the communists) and myth of widespread resistance appeared. From 1971 to 1974 Rousso talks of the "broken mirror" where a new post-war generation comes into politics and contests the power of De Gaulle. Finally, the Vichy syndrom which lasts until today and is characterised by a national uneasy feeling of shame and frequent (though less so these last few years) bursts of mass media sensationnalisme (finding octogeneraian collaborators, discovering president Mittérand's role in the war and the Vichy government, trials).
Henry Rousso concludes that all this led to a lack of action, shoving dust under the carpet, a general feeling of guilt but without any clear distinction between those who actively took part, or whose parents did, and how much they invested themselves in it. Chirac recognising the French State's guilt in 1995 was a symbolic measure but, in my opinion simply added to the vagueness of it all. After all, what is the State- including-especially!- the police, if not each and every one of us who takes part in it? My belief is that France has never had the comfortable position of Britain saying "look! we defeated those fritzy bastards", but has never been able to look inward and ask, but how did we get to that? what was the tipping point? and could I be the drop of water that made France capitulate?
This all gets dramatic when brought back to the original concept, but the idea is: if you are wearing a uniform, or represent the State, do you not have the obligation to refuse when you are asked to do something illegal?
In the shorter run, as I have immense faith in the French nation and do not think it will topple into fascisme any time soon, it will be interesting to see what this does to the National Front's 2012 presidential elction score. "A 8O% increase in Roma criminality, eh? Told you we should kick the thieving gipsies out. And Europe too while we're at it. 10 million immigrants (including yours truly) and 5 million unemployed, you know". Marine le Pen said that on tv. And one French in 4 agrees with her.
lundi 24 août 2009
So here we are being a francophobe cretin
This article appeared on the Guardian's comment is free page. I have no idea who James Bennet is, but I would certainly piss in his drink at a party.
Below is his incredible article, as found on http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/23/french-holiday-lazy-work; below that is my response, found on page 4 of the comments if you're interested. Happy reading.... cocksucker....
"Every day's a holiday, if you're French" by J Bennet.
"I love France. I'm half French and bilingual, have a French mother and dual nationality. Every summer we travelled across the channel on the ferry to France to see my relatives in a beautiful time-forgotten Burgundy village, where everyone knew each other and life tasted as a sweet as the freshly baked bread my grandmother sent me to collect every morning. It was the best childhood anyone could ever imagine. As I said, I love everything French.
Or rather I did. A week after coming back from my first holiday in Normandy with my wife, her two sisters and their four children, my affection for the country has been forever tarnished. Why? Because the French almost ruined it for us all, that's why.
Despite the country posting a slight recovery last quarter, France is still well and truly mired in recession. Its unemployment rate is currently running at 8.2%, one of the highest in western Europe, and is expected to go above 10% by the end of this year. And yet among all this financial misery and economic turmoil is a country in which people have rapidly descended into a state of supreme bone idleness but who equally demand second-to-none social welfare, lower taxes, benefits and a high standard of living.
Ever since the 35-hour working week was adopted in February 2000 under prime minister Lionel Jospin's socialist government, France has become a nation of languid retailers, invisible tourism employees and workshy shopkeepers. Try and find a cafe open in peak tourist season on a Monday, Wednesday or Sunday in Normandy and I'll break into the Louvre and deliver the Mona Lisa to you by hand. Even if you do manage to catch someone selling something in a shop or restaurant in France, they'll probably turn you away as they shirk off for a two-and-a-half hour lunch break.
Since the turn of the millennium, France has been on permanent vacances. So much for the 35-hour-week plan devised as a means to reduce unemployment and yield a better division of labour. It had more holes in it than a slab of Gruyere cheese. The then government had envisaged that a 10% reduction in the hours extracted from each worker would theoretically require businesses to hire more workers, and that as a result productivity would rise in line with more personal and family time for workers and an enhanced quality of life. In late March 2005, a glimmer of hope appeared when French MPs voted to relax the 35-hour limit, allowing private firms to increase working hours. But employers at the time all too quietly murmured that it had failed to create jobs and was uncompetitive and the new law failed to destroy what had now become a way of life.
But this was before world markets collapsed, previously resilient global currencies plunged and many thousands across the continent faced mass redundancies. Instead recruitment has fallen faster than the Maginot Line, per-hour production quotas have risen and many firms have in general avoided hiring new workers because French workforce regulations make it difficult to lay off workers during a poor economic period.
Only one man and a handful of his party faithful appear to have tried to shake the French from their slumber. Ever since becoming president, Nicholas Sarkozy's slogan of "work more to earn more" has earned him more enemies than admirers. The Catholic church is forever calling for the preservation of the balance between weekdays, devoted to work, and Sundays, devoted to family life, sport or "cultural activities", while members of his own party, despite assurances that it would improve the economy, have fiercely resisted reform, filing thousands of amendments to the president's original version of the law.
But the battle appears to have been worth it. Following more than 100 years of somnolence, last Sunday (August 14) marked the day finally France woke up. Well, partially. Sarkozy's law narrowly squeezed through the national assembly by a vote of 282 to 238 and now permits shops, department stores and shopping malls to open on the Sabbath in 20 zones of what are called "exceptional commercial" centres in and around three of the country's largest cities, Paris, Marseilles, and Lille. Additionally, 29 areas involving about 500 cities and towns will be added to the list of tourist areas, which already allow some economic activity on Sundays.
In less than a decade France has undone more than half a century's worth of work and gone from being one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe to a nation of comfortable and lazy individuals. Thanks to a bizarre twisted socialist-era government law coupled with a backward-looking Catholic church and a weak-willed public and private sector, a mindset of "work less but gain more" was created and influenced almost every worker in a population of more than 61 million.
If France really does want to recover it has a much longer and more painful journey ahead than the rest of us, and it only has itself to blame.
Enchanting, and highly researched. My comment:
Below is his incredible article, as found on http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/23/french-holiday-lazy-work; below that is my response, found on page 4 of the comments if you're interested. Happy reading.... cocksucker....
"Every day's a holiday, if you're French" by J Bennet.
"I love France. I'm half French and bilingual, have a French mother and dual nationality. Every summer we travelled across the channel on the ferry to France to see my relatives in a beautiful time-forgotten Burgundy village, where everyone knew each other and life tasted as a sweet as the freshly baked bread my grandmother sent me to collect every morning. It was the best childhood anyone could ever imagine. As I said, I love everything French.
Or rather I did. A week after coming back from my first holiday in Normandy with my wife, her two sisters and their four children, my affection for the country has been forever tarnished. Why? Because the French almost ruined it for us all, that's why.
Despite the country posting a slight recovery last quarter, France is still well and truly mired in recession. Its unemployment rate is currently running at 8.2%, one of the highest in western Europe, and is expected to go above 10% by the end of this year. And yet among all this financial misery and economic turmoil is a country in which people have rapidly descended into a state of supreme bone idleness but who equally demand second-to-none social welfare, lower taxes, benefits and a high standard of living.
Ever since the 35-hour working week was adopted in February 2000 under prime minister Lionel Jospin's socialist government, France has become a nation of languid retailers, invisible tourism employees and workshy shopkeepers. Try and find a cafe open in peak tourist season on a Monday, Wednesday or Sunday in Normandy and I'll break into the Louvre and deliver the Mona Lisa to you by hand. Even if you do manage to catch someone selling something in a shop or restaurant in France, they'll probably turn you away as they shirk off for a two-and-a-half hour lunch break.
Since the turn of the millennium, France has been on permanent vacances. So much for the 35-hour-week plan devised as a means to reduce unemployment and yield a better division of labour. It had more holes in it than a slab of Gruyere cheese. The then government had envisaged that a 10% reduction in the hours extracted from each worker would theoretically require businesses to hire more workers, and that as a result productivity would rise in line with more personal and family time for workers and an enhanced quality of life. In late March 2005, a glimmer of hope appeared when French MPs voted to relax the 35-hour limit, allowing private firms to increase working hours. But employers at the time all too quietly murmured that it had failed to create jobs and was uncompetitive and the new law failed to destroy what had now become a way of life.
But this was before world markets collapsed, previously resilient global currencies plunged and many thousands across the continent faced mass redundancies. Instead recruitment has fallen faster than the Maginot Line, per-hour production quotas have risen and many firms have in general avoided hiring new workers because French workforce regulations make it difficult to lay off workers during a poor economic period.
Only one man and a handful of his party faithful appear to have tried to shake the French from their slumber. Ever since becoming president, Nicholas Sarkozy's slogan of "work more to earn more" has earned him more enemies than admirers. The Catholic church is forever calling for the preservation of the balance between weekdays, devoted to work, and Sundays, devoted to family life, sport or "cultural activities", while members of his own party, despite assurances that it would improve the economy, have fiercely resisted reform, filing thousands of amendments to the president's original version of the law.
But the battle appears to have been worth it. Following more than 100 years of somnolence, last Sunday (August 14) marked the day finally France woke up. Well, partially. Sarkozy's law narrowly squeezed through the national assembly by a vote of 282 to 238 and now permits shops, department stores and shopping malls to open on the Sabbath in 20 zones of what are called "exceptional commercial" centres in and around three of the country's largest cities, Paris, Marseilles, and Lille. Additionally, 29 areas involving about 500 cities and towns will be added to the list of tourist areas, which already allow some economic activity on Sundays.
In less than a decade France has undone more than half a century's worth of work and gone from being one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe to a nation of comfortable and lazy individuals. Thanks to a bizarre twisted socialist-era government law coupled with a backward-looking Catholic church and a weak-willed public and private sector, a mindset of "work less but gain more" was created and influenced almost every worker in a population of more than 61 million.
If France really does want to recover it has a much longer and more painful journey ahead than the rest of us, and it only has itself to blame.
Enchanting, and highly researched. My comment:
vendredi 17 juillet 2009
So here we are thinking about what we are 'due'
I was sitting by the canal the other day having an early evening drink with some friends when I mentioned that I was now officially unemployed until September 14th, date at which my new contract starts at the language school. I was about to launch in to how I would spend this free time (namely start my new business) when all three quipped, almost in unison, "So, have you got your unemployment benefits yet?". "No", I answered, "I've got a job lined up, I live practically rent-free, have an allowance, was paid generously when my contract finished and have got plenty of money in my (three) accounts, I don't think I need it." Stunned silence. "But, but, you've cotised" they explained, as if to a jungle-resident who has just landed in the welfare state.
These three friends have a point. As a French employee, a generous hunk of my salary goes to the State: 327 euros a month to be precise, i.e. around 25% to 30% of my gross salary. In fact 33 euros a month have gone to the unemployment benefits vault and, true, I could claim around 500 euros a month until September (though I have only cotised around 270 euros). The way they see it is this: you've contributed to the kitty, you are entitled to the kitty. End of debate. Is it though?
These friends consider themselves fiendish left-wingers. One of them has already voted communist at a Presidential election. They think the right-wingers (dangerously close to the evil droite néo-libérale anglo-saxonne) are selfish, individualistic exploiters who like nothing better than sending the prolétariat down the mines so that they can afford a fourth annual holiday in the Maldives (a little exaggerated, but that is the gist.) Yet here they are saying that I should milk the State for a bit because, clearly, if I am entitled to it, then it is my due.
I also consider myself a rabid left-winger, but this has left me pensive. Thinking about it, it occured to me that here we have two very different views of taxes and the State. I adhere to the concept of redistribution, you take money from those who can afford a bit to spare and expect everyone to have a slice of it when required. This is true especially when it comes to health and education, but also unemployment benefits, especially when there are 800 000 extra unemployed - mainly unqualified industrial jobs, with mortgages to pay and children to feed - because of the financial crisis.
But there are very finite and limited ressources to share out, so what will there be left for those who need benefits if those who don't use up the money? The French debt and deficit are enormous, increasing and unsustainable. The Social security balance is so deep in the red that there is a serious debate about when the system will crash.
For me, not taking benefits is solidarity; I don't mind paying for those who need beneits and, the other side of the coin, do not expect people who don't need them to profit from them. My friends take a different view: the law says you can, so you should. But this seems to me very close to the pay-as-you-go individualist concept of welfare that is estasblished in the USA: put your money in then take your money out, regardless of whether others need it more, which they rightly criticise and consider non-humanitarian. This is the worst kind of non-individualism: when you see things through the prism of the State and no longer act out your views because you don't consider your individual self to be an actor in the scheme of things.
My moral to this anecdote is this: your views should not change according to whether there is a law in place or not. If you believe in redistribution and sharing out of wealth, you should be prepared to accept that some of the wealth you have is given out. The law is there to give you a right, not an obligation, to have support, and it is up to your political consience to determine who deserves it most- those entitled to it or those who need it. And then act accordingly. Amen.
These three friends have a point. As a French employee, a generous hunk of my salary goes to the State: 327 euros a month to be precise, i.e. around 25% to 30% of my gross salary. In fact 33 euros a month have gone to the unemployment benefits vault and, true, I could claim around 500 euros a month until September (though I have only cotised around 270 euros). The way they see it is this: you've contributed to the kitty, you are entitled to the kitty. End of debate. Is it though?
These friends consider themselves fiendish left-wingers. One of them has already voted communist at a Presidential election. They think the right-wingers (dangerously close to the evil droite néo-libérale anglo-saxonne) are selfish, individualistic exploiters who like nothing better than sending the prolétariat down the mines so that they can afford a fourth annual holiday in the Maldives (a little exaggerated, but that is the gist.) Yet here they are saying that I should milk the State for a bit because, clearly, if I am entitled to it, then it is my due.
I also consider myself a rabid left-winger, but this has left me pensive. Thinking about it, it occured to me that here we have two very different views of taxes and the State. I adhere to the concept of redistribution, you take money from those who can afford a bit to spare and expect everyone to have a slice of it when required. This is true especially when it comes to health and education, but also unemployment benefits, especially when there are 800 000 extra unemployed - mainly unqualified industrial jobs, with mortgages to pay and children to feed - because of the financial crisis.
But there are very finite and limited ressources to share out, so what will there be left for those who need benefits if those who don't use up the money? The French debt and deficit are enormous, increasing and unsustainable. The Social security balance is so deep in the red that there is a serious debate about when the system will crash.
For me, not taking benefits is solidarity; I don't mind paying for those who need beneits and, the other side of the coin, do not expect people who don't need them to profit from them. My friends take a different view: the law says you can, so you should. But this seems to me very close to the pay-as-you-go individualist concept of welfare that is estasblished in the USA: put your money in then take your money out, regardless of whether others need it more, which they rightly criticise and consider non-humanitarian. This is the worst kind of non-individualism: when you see things through the prism of the State and no longer act out your views because you don't consider your individual self to be an actor in the scheme of things.
My moral to this anecdote is this: your views should not change according to whether there is a law in place or not. If you believe in redistribution and sharing out of wealth, you should be prepared to accept that some of the wealth you have is given out. The law is there to give you a right, not an obligation, to have support, and it is up to your political consience to determine who deserves it most- those entitled to it or those who need it. And then act accordingly. Amen.
dimanche 3 mai 2009
So here we are celebrating Labour day
May 1st, Labour Day, was on a friday so we had a lovely long weekend. Protest on the friday and picnic on the saturday, good stuff! Here are the highlights in pictures.
What is so totally cool about French protests are the slogans, which are usually rude, subtle and/or funny.
A personal favorite: This is a play on words on "Gone with the wind" (Autant en emporte le vent in French) with the first word a homonym of OTAN- Nato. A lot of French people are pissed off with Sarkozy for making France rejoin its integrated military command, which it famously left in 1966.
Protests in France are for all, of every age. This little girl, who had been casually left sitting on the reycling bin, had a sign that read: Nobody should let themselves be walked over, not even Carla! referring of course to France's first lady.
You could hardly move for these posters, the "Casse toi pov' con" ones. This means "sod off you sad bastard" and was famously said by Nicolas Sarkozy to a guy who refused to shake his hand.at the Agricultural Fair, and caught on video.
Another fave: "Couilles en or", or Balls of gold is slang for someone very rich. This says that as long as there are golden balls, there will be steel blades...
Karcher, Taser, Charter: the State's sponsors. Karcher is a brand of industrial hose, which Sarkozy poetically said he would use in the suburbs to flush away all the undesirables. Taser for the increasingly violent police methods. Charter for the 30000 expulsions of illegal residents
Outside the Republican guard.
Everybody had something to protest about: here the Tamil community marching about the current situation in Sri Lanka.
Paris, Notre Dame, the river... and politics.
These were plastered all over to Paris to represent the 28000+ people who have been deported.
It all ended at la Bastille, the symbolic location of popular uprising. Another protest started at Hotel de Ville.
One of the joys of living in Paris is the picnics by the Seine. In the summer it can get a bit crowded as the parisians squeeze on the riverside flagstones. But in Spring, on a chilly night, it was great!
Aaaah! Paris!
before...and after
As we were walking home, we crossed the Town Hall. In protest to the Pecresse Law on Higher Education and Research, professors, librarians and researchers have been walking in a circle for, at that point, 972 hours!! Not the same people obviously.
What is so totally cool about French protests are the slogans, which are usually rude, subtle and/or funny.
A personal favorite: This is a play on words on "Gone with the wind" (Autant en emporte le vent in French) with the first word a homonym of OTAN- Nato. A lot of French people are pissed off with Sarkozy for making France rejoin its integrated military command, which it famously left in 1966.
Protests in France are for all, of every age. This little girl, who had been casually left sitting on the reycling bin, had a sign that read: Nobody should let themselves be walked over, not even Carla! referring of course to France's first lady.
You could hardly move for these posters, the "Casse toi pov' con" ones. This means "sod off you sad bastard" and was famously said by Nicolas Sarkozy to a guy who refused to shake his hand.at the Agricultural Fair, and caught on video.
Another fave: "Couilles en or", or Balls of gold is slang for someone very rich. This says that as long as there are golden balls, there will be steel blades...
Karcher, Taser, Charter: the State's sponsors. Karcher is a brand of industrial hose, which Sarkozy poetically said he would use in the suburbs to flush away all the undesirables. Taser for the increasingly violent police methods. Charter for the 30000 expulsions of illegal residents
Outside the Republican guard.
Everybody had something to protest about: here the Tamil community marching about the current situation in Sri Lanka.
Paris, Notre Dame, the river... and politics.
These were plastered all over to Paris to represent the 28000+ people who have been deported.
It all ended at la Bastille, the symbolic location of popular uprising. Another protest started at Hotel de Ville.
One of the joys of living in Paris is the picnics by the Seine. In the summer it can get a bit crowded as the parisians squeeze on the riverside flagstones. But in Spring, on a chilly night, it was great!
Aaaah! Paris!
before...and after
As we were walking home, we crossed the Town Hall. In protest to the Pecresse Law on Higher Education and Research, professors, librarians and researchers have been walking in a circle for, at that point, 972 hours!! Not the same people obviously.
jeudi 30 avril 2009
So here we are in an electoral dilemma
So the campaign for the European elections has finally kicked off with, as usual, no fuss, no debate and little information. It's not easy being a conscientious European citizen and not only for the above reasons. The real challenge is to understand what exactly one is voting for and, in parallel, how the vote is perceived.
On paper, there is little doubt: on June 7th, France will be voting for the parliamentarians who will have a seat at the European parliament and technically the lucky ones will represent the European people and elaborate and vote for laws that concern all 492 million of us Europeans, according to their political beliefs. Easy peasy, let's vote left wing and get it over with. Unfortunately the reality of politics means that nothing is so straightforward. In fact, most national politicians would say that the election of the MEPs is just a bit of a strange side-effect of this election, which they consider a barometer of their popularity.
In 1980, Reif & Schmitt, two political scientists, coined the term "second order national elections". With this they explained that since the European vote has little bearing on national policy making and none on the current leadership, the voters will tend to vote with their hearts (or with their boots), knowing that voting for the local communist geek won't mean having to suffer the risk of a communist government actually getting sworn in. Hence the relatively huge difference in the smaller parties' results in the EU elections compared to the presidential, national parliament, or local ones.
So on the one hand, politicians see the European election result as support or condemnation of the current leadership, while it should really be about who and what you want represented in front of the world's biggest supranational legislative institution. On the other, voters vote for improbable or unreputable candidates to show they are pissed off with the big parties usual faffing around. In my case, the guys I would vote for on a European level are idiots at a local level, and the guys I like on a national level I think would be crap at an EU level. An electoral dilemma.
In more detail: the European election 2009 candidates in my constituency (the region of Ile de France) are (so far) 10 different parties. Once we have eliminated the extremes and weirdos- the NPA (new anticapitalist party, run by charismatic trotskist hamster Olivier Besancenot who is one of France's most popular politicians), the FN (ultra nationalist anti European), MPF-CNPT (alliance of nationalists and hunt'em shoot'em fish'em) and Debout la République! ('Nuff said), we are left with:
UMP: right-wing, includes Sarkozy, his government and a lot of parliament. Main candidates are Michel Barnier (agriculture minister) and Rachida Dati (justice).
PS: currently ridiculous Socialist party. Main candidates, Harlem Désir (founder of uber-symbolic anti racism organisation who has long since entered politics), Pervenche Beres (respectable current MEP) and Benoit Hamon (current MEP, opportunistic little twat who probably isn't sure where Brussels is).
The Greens: good old Ecologists, led by charismatic Daniel Cohn Bendit, a huge symbol of '68 France and Eva Joly, who used to belong to the Modem.
The Modem: poor François Bayrou's party, somewhere between the left of right and the middle of nowhere, led by Marielle de Sarnez (FB's faithful companion and current MEP).
The Front de gauche : communists- never heard of them.
Lutte ouvrière: a party as old as the world, more communists.
I have de facto excluded the last two, because despite my minimum wage status and my current respect for all things equalitarian, I don't actually want them to represent me in the EU. Modem: like(d) Bayrou for a while and would like to support him at a national level but at a European level I'm not sure about Marielle de Sarnez
The Greens: love the DCB character, am OK with EJ, but am extremely wary of my local green municipal councillor, and refuse to validate him at a local level via the European vote.
The PS: Jesus, my obvious choice but they are so fucking pathetic at a national level and I loathe and detest Benoit Hamon. This last fact could be overlooked if they weren't so hopeless, but they are.
UMP: I like MB, who actually knows a bit about the EU, but hate the current government and despise Dati.
That leaves... nobody, or abstention. And abstention is the same as not giving a fuck, so... damn, it'll have to be the Greens. But, I don't like you Mr Guadi!
On paper, there is little doubt: on June 7th, France will be voting for the parliamentarians who will have a seat at the European parliament and technically the lucky ones will represent the European people and elaborate and vote for laws that concern all 492 million of us Europeans, according to their political beliefs. Easy peasy, let's vote left wing and get it over with. Unfortunately the reality of politics means that nothing is so straightforward. In fact, most national politicians would say that the election of the MEPs is just a bit of a strange side-effect of this election, which they consider a barometer of their popularity.
In 1980, Reif & Schmitt, two political scientists, coined the term "second order national elections". With this they explained that since the European vote has little bearing on national policy making and none on the current leadership, the voters will tend to vote with their hearts (or with their boots), knowing that voting for the local communist geek won't mean having to suffer the risk of a communist government actually getting sworn in. Hence the relatively huge difference in the smaller parties' results in the EU elections compared to the presidential, national parliament, or local ones.
So on the one hand, politicians see the European election result as support or condemnation of the current leadership, while it should really be about who and what you want represented in front of the world's biggest supranational legislative institution. On the other, voters vote for improbable or unreputable candidates to show they are pissed off with the big parties usual faffing around. In my case, the guys I would vote for on a European level are idiots at a local level, and the guys I like on a national level I think would be crap at an EU level. An electoral dilemma.
In more detail: the European election 2009 candidates in my constituency (the region of Ile de France) are (so far) 10 different parties. Once we have eliminated the extremes and weirdos- the NPA (new anticapitalist party, run by charismatic trotskist hamster Olivier Besancenot who is one of France's most popular politicians), the FN (ultra nationalist anti European), MPF-CNPT (alliance of nationalists and hunt'em shoot'em fish'em) and Debout la République! ('Nuff said), we are left with:
UMP: right-wing, includes Sarkozy, his government and a lot of parliament. Main candidates are Michel Barnier (agriculture minister) and Rachida Dati (justice).
PS: currently ridiculous Socialist party. Main candidates, Harlem Désir (founder of uber-symbolic anti racism organisation who has long since entered politics), Pervenche Beres (respectable current MEP) and Benoit Hamon (current MEP, opportunistic little twat who probably isn't sure where Brussels is).
The Greens: good old Ecologists, led by charismatic Daniel Cohn Bendit, a huge symbol of '68 France and Eva Joly, who used to belong to the Modem.
The Modem: poor François Bayrou's party, somewhere between the left of right and the middle of nowhere, led by Marielle de Sarnez (FB's faithful companion and current MEP).
The Front de gauche : communists- never heard of them.
Lutte ouvrière: a party as old as the world, more communists.
I have de facto excluded the last two, because despite my minimum wage status and my current respect for all things equalitarian, I don't actually want them to represent me in the EU. Modem: like(d) Bayrou for a while and would like to support him at a national level but at a European level I'm not sure about Marielle de Sarnez
The Greens: love the DCB character, am OK with EJ, but am extremely wary of my local green municipal councillor, and refuse to validate him at a local level via the European vote.
The PS: Jesus, my obvious choice but they are so fucking pathetic at a national level and I loathe and detest Benoit Hamon. This last fact could be overlooked if they weren't so hopeless, but they are.
UMP: I like MB, who actually knows a bit about the EU, but hate the current government and despise Dati.
That leaves... nobody, or abstention. And abstention is the same as not giving a fuck, so... damn, it'll have to be the Greens. But, I don't like you Mr Guadi!
dimanche 8 mars 2009
So here we are protesting in Guadeloupe
After more than 40 days of protests and violence, the French island of Guadeloupe has been granted a salary increase for the least well paid. But is this only about the money? Or does the unrest betray a much deeper mal être in the French Carribean?
Guadeloupe is a butterly shaped paradise island located in the Carribean and holiday destination of well-off French people as it is officially part of France. Like Martinique its island neighbour, French Guyana - a small territory in the north-east of South America- and la Réunion, in the Indian ocean, Guadeloupe benefits from DOM status, that's département d'outre mer, and on paper is just another bit of France. For more than forty days and nights, until last thursday, the Guadeloupéens were on strike (told you they were French). The reason? A combination of being fed up with exorbitant prices, especially those of petrol and basic necessities, low salaries and the amplification of these with la crise, all tinted with a feeling of modern colonialism.
Elie Domota has emerged as the natural leader of the strike, which blocked the country for a total of 44 days and turned a little sour when a trade unionist was shot dead a couple of weeks ago by the police. The son of a carpenter and a cleaning lady, he is at the head of LKP, the "collective against profiteers", and represents the black population- the vast majority- of the island, who are denouncing a neo-colonialist system where the békés, the white descendants of the slavers, own and exploit the island's wealth, tourism and trade leaving only the menial jobs in the banana plantations and the factories for the blacks who are, of course, French citizens in equal right. There was a whiff of independence in the air as Domota talked of the "foreign press" to describe the journalists from Paris and as tens of thousands of Guadeloupeans sang "Guadeloupe is ours not yours" day after day outside official buildings.
It's true that they have something to complain about. As the island is part of France, it has the same wages and laws as metropolitan France. That said, prices are much higher : a quick comparaison showed that for the same goods, sugar was 98% more expensive, and milk and pasta 50% more. Petrol was also much higher and despite Guadeloupe being an island with a huge fishing industry, fish in the Caribbean markets costs the same as in Paris supermarkets. Those who own supermarkets and so on say that it is down to import costs and taxes, but for many it is simply exploitation of the ethnic population native to the island by the béké oligarchy. Oil was further poured on the fire when a prominent, rich béké said on TV that there had been no interbreeding in the last 250 years to preserve "the race". Ouch.
The population of Guadeoupe is just over 400 000, and had the same proportion of metropolitan French demonstrated, there would have been 15 million people in the streets. It took Sarkozy a while to realise there was a problem (I draw a parallel to bumbling George W. who took a good week or so to realise that Katrina was a bit worse than just a few blacks in trouble). He memorably didn't mention it at all in his TV speech on the crisis, despite the troubles having started a week before.
After many negotiations with the French business lobby and the government have decided to grant those with the lowest salries (up to 1400 euros a month) a 200 euro pay rise. Is that really enough though. It may help Gualdeloupeans feed their children a bit more and has crucially stopped the strike, which had schools, offices, factories, distilleries, supermarkets, post offices and so on shut for 6 weeks, but given the cries against exploitation and the white elite, it may not be enough. The crisis has spread to Martinique, where they seem to be more radical, and la Réunion, and Elie Domota has been accused of "incitement to racial hatred" since this morning.
rance has always prided itself on the DOM's management; a successful decolonisation where the colonised became equal french citizens. What the last six weeks have shown is that this is a myth and that the black population of the island is fed up. With the crisis, France's help is no longer seen as useful, and 200 euros seems too little for people to forget this.
Guadeloupe is a butterly shaped paradise island located in the Carribean and holiday destination of well-off French people as it is officially part of France. Like Martinique its island neighbour, French Guyana - a small territory in the north-east of South America- and la Réunion, in the Indian ocean, Guadeloupe benefits from DOM status, that's département d'outre mer, and on paper is just another bit of France. For more than forty days and nights, until last thursday, the Guadeloupéens were on strike (told you they were French). The reason? A combination of being fed up with exorbitant prices, especially those of petrol and basic necessities, low salaries and the amplification of these with la crise, all tinted with a feeling of modern colonialism.
Elie Domota has emerged as the natural leader of the strike, which blocked the country for a total of 44 days and turned a little sour when a trade unionist was shot dead a couple of weeks ago by the police. The son of a carpenter and a cleaning lady, he is at the head of LKP, the "collective against profiteers", and represents the black population- the vast majority- of the island, who are denouncing a neo-colonialist system where the békés, the white descendants of the slavers, own and exploit the island's wealth, tourism and trade leaving only the menial jobs in the banana plantations and the factories for the blacks who are, of course, French citizens in equal right. There was a whiff of independence in the air as Domota talked of the "foreign press" to describe the journalists from Paris and as tens of thousands of Guadeloupeans sang "Guadeloupe is ours not yours" day after day outside official buildings.
It's true that they have something to complain about. As the island is part of France, it has the same wages and laws as metropolitan France. That said, prices are much higher : a quick comparaison showed that for the same goods, sugar was 98% more expensive, and milk and pasta 50% more. Petrol was also much higher and despite Guadeloupe being an island with a huge fishing industry, fish in the Caribbean markets costs the same as in Paris supermarkets. Those who own supermarkets and so on say that it is down to import costs and taxes, but for many it is simply exploitation of the ethnic population native to the island by the béké oligarchy. Oil was further poured on the fire when a prominent, rich béké said on TV that there had been no interbreeding in the last 250 years to preserve "the race". Ouch.
The population of Guadeoupe is just over 400 000, and had the same proportion of metropolitan French demonstrated, there would have been 15 million people in the streets. It took Sarkozy a while to realise there was a problem (I draw a parallel to bumbling George W. who took a good week or so to realise that Katrina was a bit worse than just a few blacks in trouble). He memorably didn't mention it at all in his TV speech on the crisis, despite the troubles having started a week before.
After many negotiations with the French business lobby and the government have decided to grant those with the lowest salries (up to 1400 euros a month) a 200 euro pay rise. Is that really enough though. It may help Gualdeloupeans feed their children a bit more and has crucially stopped the strike, which had schools, offices, factories, distilleries, supermarkets, post offices and so on shut for 6 weeks, but given the cries against exploitation and the white elite, it may not be enough. The crisis has spread to Martinique, where they seem to be more radical, and la Réunion, and Elie Domota has been accused of "incitement to racial hatred" since this morning.
rance has always prided itself on the DOM's management; a successful decolonisation where the colonised became equal french citizens. What the last six weeks have shown is that this is a myth and that the black population of the island is fed up. With the crisis, France's help is no longer seen as useful, and 200 euros seems too little for people to forget this.
samedi 7 février 2009
So here we are in Sarkozy's economic crisis
About ten days ago, an estimated 2 million French workers went on strike and marched through the streets of France's cities. They were not protesting specifically about job losses like in England, nor only from the public sector which is often the case. This strike was about a more abstract sense of fear and helplessness due to the crisis and a hefty dose of anger directed at Nicolas Sarkozy. This was about the country's relationship with its president, the man who won the election on the promise that people would work more to earn more, that he would boot up people's disposable income, that he would modernise the French economy by basing it on a more flexible anglo saxon model, complete with low unemployment.
In retrospect, these election pledges seem both awkward, absurd and hilarious. Unemployment is soaring; purchasing power is collapsing; the French car industry, which indirectly employs 1 in 10 French workers, is close to collapse; and the banks have had to be bailed out. This last point has gone down especially badly with the French. As they struggle with inflaion and stagnant wages, reducing consumption in many cases to bare necessities, the government managed to magic up billions for the banks, seen by the population as inefficient, dangerous and corrupt. Despite Sarkozy's characteristic hyperactivity- he has been running around France giving huge conferences every two days on average- his now-ludicrous promises and idiotic remarks ("Hoho! Now when there's a strike in Frane nobody notices" he said at a public meeting, which was seen a pure provocation by the unions) have made him a resented and distrusted figure.
All he could do was respond. So he decided to give an interview, that would be shown on 3 channels simultaneously, in his offices at the Elysée. The two journalists, which he chose, are the newsreaders of the leading private and state channels, bit they didn't reallydo much, just let Sarkozy talk.
Sarkozy looks a bit older and more tired, and certainly wasn't as arrogant and lively as usual. He was, as always, fidgety but his voice had a grave and softer tone. On the crisis, he solemnly announced that this was the worst crisis in living memory and that there were no easy solutions. Not exactly the reassurance the population was after. He justified his plan to help the economy through investment and companies, rather than by encouraging consumption, which is what the UK have done by lowering VAT (and which the French socialists would like to do). He justified bailing out the banks because French savings were at stake, not the treacherous banks, which he is furious with. He went off into a little spiel about how he had "summoned the G20 to refound world capitalism" which sounded a little bigheaded. He then dropped a couple of shock factor proposals. First to arrange a huge meeting on the 18th of february with the Unions, the different interest groups and so on where they would discuss, among other things, cutting taxes for the poorer slices of the population (50% of French workers don't pay taxes already) and getting rid of the taxe professionnelle, which represents 30% of companies' costs (but is also what funds local collectivities).
But behind the gravity and proposals, it was impossible not to notice a kind of megalomania: as well as the "I summoned the G20", there was also "I am your President, it is my role to protect you", "I went to wherever and did this", "I decided this and it was done". Amusingly, only when he suddenly came under fire for an unpopular measure unrelated to the financial crisis did he suddenly start saying that he didn't work alone, that he had a full council of ministers working round the clock and that he was absolutely not responsible alone for anything.
What came out of this was very little concrete measures. People had been expecting some emergency solution like Obama's $1000, but what they got was justification for saving the banks and helping companies, and a lot of Sarkozy saying that he would take on the crisis single handedly and not to worry. People are worried though. In the poll published today 52% of the French were unconvinced by his statements.
In retrospect, these election pledges seem both awkward, absurd and hilarious. Unemployment is soaring; purchasing power is collapsing; the French car industry, which indirectly employs 1 in 10 French workers, is close to collapse; and the banks have had to be bailed out. This last point has gone down especially badly with the French. As they struggle with inflaion and stagnant wages, reducing consumption in many cases to bare necessities, the government managed to magic up billions for the banks, seen by the population as inefficient, dangerous and corrupt. Despite Sarkozy's characteristic hyperactivity- he has been running around France giving huge conferences every two days on average- his now-ludicrous promises and idiotic remarks ("Hoho! Now when there's a strike in Frane nobody notices" he said at a public meeting, which was seen a pure provocation by the unions) have made him a resented and distrusted figure.
All he could do was respond. So he decided to give an interview, that would be shown on 3 channels simultaneously, in his offices at the Elysée. The two journalists, which he chose, are the newsreaders of the leading private and state channels, bit they didn't reallydo much, just let Sarkozy talk.
Sarkozy looks a bit older and more tired, and certainly wasn't as arrogant and lively as usual. He was, as always, fidgety but his voice had a grave and softer tone. On the crisis, he solemnly announced that this was the worst crisis in living memory and that there were no easy solutions. Not exactly the reassurance the population was after. He justified his plan to help the economy through investment and companies, rather than by encouraging consumption, which is what the UK have done by lowering VAT (and which the French socialists would like to do). He justified bailing out the banks because French savings were at stake, not the treacherous banks, which he is furious with. He went off into a little spiel about how he had "summoned the G20 to refound world capitalism" which sounded a little bigheaded. He then dropped a couple of shock factor proposals. First to arrange a huge meeting on the 18th of february with the Unions, the different interest groups and so on where they would discuss, among other things, cutting taxes for the poorer slices of the population (50% of French workers don't pay taxes already) and getting rid of the taxe professionnelle, which represents 30% of companies' costs (but is also what funds local collectivities).
But behind the gravity and proposals, it was impossible not to notice a kind of megalomania: as well as the "I summoned the G20", there was also "I am your President, it is my role to protect you", "I went to wherever and did this", "I decided this and it was done". Amusingly, only when he suddenly came under fire for an unpopular measure unrelated to the financial crisis did he suddenly start saying that he didn't work alone, that he had a full council of ministers working round the clock and that he was absolutely not responsible alone for anything.
What came out of this was very little concrete measures. People had been expecting some emergency solution like Obama's $1000, but what they got was justification for saving the banks and helping companies, and a lot of Sarkozy saying that he would take on the crisis single handedly and not to worry. People are worried though. In the poll published today 52% of the French were unconvinced by his statements.
vendredi 16 janvier 2009
So here we are fiddling the immigration figures
When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected President in May 2007, he included in his government Brice Horetefeux at the head of the newly created Ministry of immigration, integration, national identity and co-development. The creation of this Ministry had been an election pledge and was designed to attract the far-right voters and butchly address the illegal immigration issue in France. There has rightly been a lot of fuss over this Ministry's policies and actions, and especially the "quota policy" instaured. In a nutshell, in 2008 the precise number of 28000 reconduites à la frontière (escorts to the border) were to be done. To do this, there has been a massive increase of random police checks for identity papers which has led to shocking news items : an old Chinese man arrested outside his granddaughter's school in full view of the children, several suicides by defenestration when people have thought the police were coming to get them in their homes, people with families (and children born in France) and who have been working here for decades suddenly back on the plane to Africa. People who do not have the magic papiers live in fear of being caught randomly in the streets (it is compulsory to carry ID on your person at all time) while they go to work or collect their kids from school.
This was all true over a year ago (see post here)
That's it for the background, so did Brice Hortefeux make it to 28000? Well yes he did, and more; the Minsitry and the Minister are congratulating themselves for having reached the figure of 29796 reconduites. Not only that, but they are applauding the fact that just over 10000 of these, so around a third, were voluntary.
This is where we pause. Not for subjective moral issues about repatriating almost 20000 people against their will but for accountancy reasons. This figure of 10000 voluntary repatriations needs to be a little more analysed. Indeed, it seems that a pretty hefty proportion of these (I'm not sure anyone has the real figure) are EU citizens. This does not concern carts of Brits departing from the Cote d'Azur, but mainly the Roms, the (semi) nomadic gypsies settled mainly in Romania and Bulgaria which, since January 2007 have been EU members.
This means the Roms can travel freely in the EU. "But!", one could argue, "why would they depart voluntarily, especially if, as it seems, all they do is come back?" Because, believe it or not, the French state gives a repatriation bonus to all those who leave voluntarily of around 300 euros and provide transport back. It would seem, that a vast amount of the "10000 voluntary repatriations" involve busloads of EU citizens being given 300 euros andcarted off, after which they simply return to France and do it again. There have been journalist investigations into this and human rights organisations are denouncing it, but that's about it, and certainly no sound from the government. Weird or what?
This was all true over a year ago (see post here)
That's it for the background, so did Brice Hortefeux make it to 28000? Well yes he did, and more; the Minsitry and the Minister are congratulating themselves for having reached the figure of 29796 reconduites. Not only that, but they are applauding the fact that just over 10000 of these, so around a third, were voluntary.
This is where we pause. Not for subjective moral issues about repatriating almost 20000 people against their will but for accountancy reasons. This figure of 10000 voluntary repatriations needs to be a little more analysed. Indeed, it seems that a pretty hefty proportion of these (I'm not sure anyone has the real figure) are EU citizens. This does not concern carts of Brits departing from the Cote d'Azur, but mainly the Roms, the (semi) nomadic gypsies settled mainly in Romania and Bulgaria which, since January 2007 have been EU members.
This means the Roms can travel freely in the EU. "But!", one could argue, "why would they depart voluntarily, especially if, as it seems, all they do is come back?" Because, believe it or not, the French state gives a repatriation bonus to all those who leave voluntarily of around 300 euros and provide transport back. It would seem, that a vast amount of the "10000 voluntary repatriations" involve busloads of EU citizens being given 300 euros andcarted off, after which they simply return to France and do it again. There have been journalist investigations into this and human rights organisations are denouncing it, but that's about it, and certainly no sound from the government. Weird or what?
jeudi 11 décembre 2008
So here we are debating climate change
Last Friday, my dear friend Olivia who works for the Mairie (town hall) of the tenth on town planning and sustainable development issues asked me along to a play/debate on climate change. Out of solidarity and a little curiosity I agreed : it seemed original- a play put on by journalism students- and was free.
It was playing by the canal at the espace Jemmapes. A nice room with a fair sized stage, decorated to look like a café and terrace. The play was uneven: at best amateurish, at worst hopelessly incompetent. The plot was pretty good : we are in an undetermined near future, the warming of the planet is significant and the government & scientists have injected the atmosphere with sulphur to cool it down. (FYI: this is a real theory and solution put forward by... the Nobel prize winner for chemistry). However acid rains, respiratory problems and hideous climate change in other regions of the world have appeared as a result, though all this is hushed up by the government.
So various characters wander through the café giving their opinions and showing the various positions that people have on the issue. One girl is conspiracy-theoried up, suspects the government and is depicted as being closest to the truth. Her aunt is a farmer whose crops are suffering. There is a incompetent journalist who doesn't research anything but is spoon fed her story by a stern and corrupt climatologist. The plot gets a bit complicated as the long-forgotten murder of a climatologist is introduced and trails off, which is disappointing as the general idea was pretty good, though perhaps portrayed in a slightly black & white way (EVIL government! NICE hippie!). The acting was very uneven, some good, some forgetting their lines. Little things like empty glasses and crappy props made it difficult to suspend disbelief. That said, the one hour didn't feel too long.
What got me a little worked up however was the debate that followed. There were three experts : a young chick, a funkily dressed man and a quiet older guy. The chick knew nothing and kept turning to funky man for answers, figures and arguments. The funky man I quite liked: he had the guts to say that we were potentially all fucked and that it was possibly to late to do anything about climate change, and was also stern about some of the hypocrisy that underlies the climate change debate (do as I say not as I do, especially rich countries vis a vis poor ones). Then the third chap started to talk. He said that it was't so hard to save the world: we "just" have to cut out CO2 emissions by 4. So : if you have a car, always fill it up: by driving four people around instead of just one, you are cutting emissions by 4. Er... He then said that we had much to learn from the developing world. "Look at Senegal!" he said. Taxis and busses only leave when they are full. So let's do that in Paris! Er... Finally he said that we had a lot to learn from Ethiopian housing, which is biodegradable and moveable as made of mud. Great! It also lacks plumbing and electricity would dissolve in the rain, but who cares! It's all about saving the planet right?!
I left after he suggested this master world-saving solution. I am all for saving the planet and do my utmost to reduce at my own little level my CO2 emissions (public transport, veggie box, no shitty imports, avoid planes, recycle and so on.) but live in a mud hut in Paris? Lol. We could also suggest only having electricity one day in four (at the local hospital e.g) and that would also save energy.... This is the problem : we need feasible solutions that won't actually make the situation worse, so let's forget mud huts, car sharing and sulphur injections... and reopen the nuclear debate...
It was playing by the canal at the espace Jemmapes. A nice room with a fair sized stage, decorated to look like a café and terrace. The play was uneven: at best amateurish, at worst hopelessly incompetent. The plot was pretty good : we are in an undetermined near future, the warming of the planet is significant and the government & scientists have injected the atmosphere with sulphur to cool it down. (FYI: this is a real theory and solution put forward by... the Nobel prize winner for chemistry). However acid rains, respiratory problems and hideous climate change in other regions of the world have appeared as a result, though all this is hushed up by the government.
So various characters wander through the café giving their opinions and showing the various positions that people have on the issue. One girl is conspiracy-theoried up, suspects the government and is depicted as being closest to the truth. Her aunt is a farmer whose crops are suffering. There is a incompetent journalist who doesn't research anything but is spoon fed her story by a stern and corrupt climatologist. The plot gets a bit complicated as the long-forgotten murder of a climatologist is introduced and trails off, which is disappointing as the general idea was pretty good, though perhaps portrayed in a slightly black & white way (EVIL government! NICE hippie!). The acting was very uneven, some good, some forgetting their lines. Little things like empty glasses and crappy props made it difficult to suspend disbelief. That said, the one hour didn't feel too long.
What got me a little worked up however was the debate that followed. There were three experts : a young chick, a funkily dressed man and a quiet older guy. The chick knew nothing and kept turning to funky man for answers, figures and arguments. The funky man I quite liked: he had the guts to say that we were potentially all fucked and that it was possibly to late to do anything about climate change, and was also stern about some of the hypocrisy that underlies the climate change debate (do as I say not as I do, especially rich countries vis a vis poor ones). Then the third chap started to talk. He said that it was't so hard to save the world: we "just" have to cut out CO2 emissions by 4. So : if you have a car, always fill it up: by driving four people around instead of just one, you are cutting emissions by 4. Er... He then said that we had much to learn from the developing world. "Look at Senegal!" he said. Taxis and busses only leave when they are full. So let's do that in Paris! Er... Finally he said that we had a lot to learn from Ethiopian housing, which is biodegradable and moveable as made of mud. Great! It also lacks plumbing and electricity would dissolve in the rain, but who cares! It's all about saving the planet right?!
I left after he suggested this master world-saving solution. I am all for saving the planet and do my utmost to reduce at my own little level my CO2 emissions (public transport, veggie box, no shitty imports, avoid planes, recycle and so on.) but live in a mud hut in Paris? Lol. We could also suggest only having electricity one day in four (at the local hospital e.g) and that would also save energy.... This is the problem : we need feasible solutions that won't actually make the situation worse, so let's forget mud huts, car sharing and sulphur injections... and reopen the nuclear debate...
samedi 18 octobre 2008
So here we are losing €600million
Hoooowl!!!! The tears are pouring down my face from the fits of hysterical laughter! Moralisation of the banking system! Hoooooooooowl!!! There must be a God, only a superior, omnipotent being with the cruellest sense of irony could have done this.
So, Sarkozy and Lagarde, the finance minister, go on TV making srious noises about moralising the system. 360billion of the State's money have been poured into the banks to give them liquidities and to guarantee new debts. In exchange, the State is now the boss and a whole plethora of new rules and regulations have been introduced, from the amount of bonusses bankers can hope for and, crucially, how much risk can be taken when investing. No more crisis for us sir!
So one can only hoooooowl!! Two days after declarations of Sarkozy to the French, to the Europeans, to the Americans, to the entire World, what happens? Three idiot traders from the Caisse d'Epargne, one of France's leading banks go and lose 600million, having failed to take the slightest bit of notice of the new rules.
This is only the first example that IMHO shows that if you simply bail these fuckheads out, they will not see the opportunity to clean up their act, simply extra money to play around with and, let's face it, despite the government's reassurances if banks do this, we taxpayers are going to have to pay for it.
So, Sarkozy and Lagarde, the finance minister, go on TV making srious noises about moralising the system. 360billion of the State's money have been poured into the banks to give them liquidities and to guarantee new debts. In exchange, the State is now the boss and a whole plethora of new rules and regulations have been introduced, from the amount of bonusses bankers can hope for and, crucially, how much risk can be taken when investing. No more crisis for us sir!
So one can only hoooooowl!! Two days after declarations of Sarkozy to the French, to the Europeans, to the Americans, to the entire World, what happens? Three idiot traders from the Caisse d'Epargne, one of France's leading banks go and lose 600million, having failed to take the slightest bit of notice of the new rules.
This is only the first example that IMHO shows that if you simply bail these fuckheads out, they will not see the opportunity to clean up their act, simply extra money to play around with and, let's face it, despite the government's reassurances if banks do this, we taxpayers are going to have to pay for it.
mercredi 15 octobre 2008
So here we are in a financial crisis
Aaah, Armageddon. It's a strange day when you think for the first time that you are witnessing a moment whose handling will determine the course of history. Stuff the great grandkids might have to revise for their exams. The financial crisis is turning out to be a lot more than that : an economic but also a moral one. Sarkozy said while he was presidential candidate that international capitalism needed to be moralised, and it seems that it is not only desirable but crucial if the system is not to implode. So what are the causes of and the reactions to this shit creek situation?
As usual, it seems easy to blame it on the Americans, but they do rather deserve it. That said, it is impossible to pinpoint a first day of the crisis. Do we refer to the day that world stock markets crashed in historic unison? Or do we creep up the calendar to the symbolic day that Lehmann brothers went bankrupt? Or should it be when subprimes became an everyday word? Do we go further back to the first tremble of butterfly wings a quarter of a century ago when world leaders, led by Thatcher and Raegan, laid the groundwork for the liberalisation of international finance?
I think 9/11 is a good place to start as it was less than a year after the beginning of GWB's first term and smacks of the "before and after". 9/11 was an obvious blow to Amerian morale, and in Economics, a good way to cheer people up is to send them shopping, which also boosts consumption and gives the economy an adrenaline rush, whereas low morale turns the economy sluggish. So when the biggest morale crusher in American history devastated Manhattan, the Fed, or its governor Alan Greenspan, decided to cut interest rates, just as it had after the dotcom crash or Y2K angst. With historically low interest rates it became easier for the average American to borrow money and, more importantly, spend it. In contrast, many European countries had been nagging the independent ECB to significantly cut rates for years, which it didn't. The ECB's main reason for keeping interest rates high was to fight inflation but ultimately its decision might prevent Europe from sinking too far in the quicksand of an economy running on credit.
With lower interest rates (IR) the Americans started spending money they didn't have and, crucially, couldn't afford, courtesy of a banking system that lent money regardless of whether it could ever be paid back. This attitude was tied to the belief that house prices, which had been soaring for years, would continue to do so. Thus, anybody owning or planning to own a house was considered 'safe' as the value of their capital/house would surely increase. With low and sometimes negligible IR, through the irresponsibility of the banks and the property bubble, Americans stocked up on houses and cars and other consumer goods, living off trillions of dollars of credit to finance the American dream.
There was of course a catch to all of this. The IR were not fixed and by 2006 they had soared up. Soon, people who had been paying close to 1% interest on their loans found they had to pay five times that. Monthly repayments exploded. In three years the Fed's IR went from 2% to 5,75%, and the variable interest rates fluctuated accordingly. When repayment was impossible, banks seized the houses and put them on the market. All over America, as "for sale" signs were nailed to porches, the sound of the property bubble popping could be heard. The banks, far from being richer thanks to the sales of the houses, found themselves with a load of properties in a flooded market and they had to sell them for a fraction of their estimated price. They lost huge amounts of money and started going bankrupt. This is the subprime crisis.
So how did this very American problem (because linked to American banks and American loans, culminating in an American property crash) become a world crisis? To understand this, it is crucial to remember how investment portfolios are constituted and the importance of confidence and expectations on the market.
Concerning investment portfolios, while the details may be hideously complicated the general idea is pretty basic. Imagine you are a bank called Rippoff and co. You have lent vast sums of money to people and to show for it you have a load of virtual receipts saying that people owe you money. Like all banks you do not keep these virtual scraps in a vault, rather you chop them up, repackage them and sell them to a bigger or different bank who now "own" the money that Rippoff is owed. The new bank, Fukkem inc, will then do the same. It will take a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit of Rippoff and muddle it all up and sell it on to another bank, Skruya International which is based in 30 different countries and on 5 continents. Do this enough times and by the end it is obvious that nobody has a clue what they are buying and a bank the other side of the world will have a bit of Fukkem, Rippoff and Scruya in it. All they know is that the package, constituted of a million molecules of different companies, is worth roughly this at this time and is expected to increase or decrease in value.These packages are also border-blind and are thus present all over the world.
So all of a sudden, with the property market crash, Fukkem, Rippoff and Skruya find themselves broke (Lehmann Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac in the States notably, though the US bailed out the last two.) When that happened, packages in banks droppped in value because of the drop in value of what made them up. This is not the most dire consequence, though. Worse to come was the drop in confidence that led onto the stockmarkets crash seen all around the world, especially in the last couple of weeks.
Banks do not have a pile of banknotes locked in the cellar, and when you take out a loan they do not go to a backroom and peel off a sheaf of them. Most of this money is virtual. For example, in France, if someone wants a hundred euro loan, the bank need only have nine euros of its own. So imagine a bank (Arssfuk ltd) has 27 euros in the kitty and has granted three 100 euro loans : it can't give anymore. The way around this is the interbank lending system. Arssfuk borrows money from Sookmidic Bank and in return Soomidic's guarantee is, yup, in those little packages which contain bits of Rippoff, Fukem and Skruya. Or not. That's the problem, paranoia takes over and the banks no longer want to lend. This is the liquidity crisis. If everybody were to panic and run to the banks with an empty suitcase asking for their savings, there would not be enough in any of them. This is why leaders are saying DO NOT PANIC!!!!! And why the Central banks are pouring money into the system and/or promising to guarantee the loans, ie, if a bank can't pay back its loans the State will step in.
So banks no longer want to lend to each other, each thinking that the next is going to land them with a worthless package contaminated with bankrupt bank components. As a result, banks must be more careful with the loans they give (not necessarily a bad thing). This has however gone to extremes, where even small profitable companies now have difficulty borrowing money for investment, which is ultimately disasterous for the economy, giving lower growth and higher unemployment among others.
The most spectacular aspect of the crisis for most people has been the drop on the world's stockmarkets, sometimes double figure drops or close to them. This is due to the lack of confidence on the stock market which translates as people either selling wildly or reluctant to buy or a combination of both. Thus shares in France for example in some companies such as Renault or St Gobain fell by over 70%. This is the stockmarket crash which shows that despite money pouring in to the system from the Central banks investors are wary and specualtors less enthusiastic.
So what responses have there been on an international level?
There have been two interesting reactions (many more, but not in this post), one from the Amricans, the other rom the Europeans, and most notably the British. Sarkozy, much as I hate to admit, deserves a medal.
In America the Paulson plan aimed to simply buy back, for a trifling 800 billion dollars, the dodgy loans. This is intervention on an incredible scale and for the socialists among us, a certain amount of glee is felt, these people having aid for yars that the market "regulates itself" and does not need any kind of State intervention (which is true, if you don't mind a few million Americans becoming homeless). Any presidential candidate who promises even consiudering a tax cut in the future is either mad or lying.
In Europe, Gordon Brown made jaws drop. After the Thatcher/Major years where pretty much everything except the State was privatised, and after the Blair/Brown years where England produced an economic miracle based on the deregulated financial sector, first Northern Rock was nationalised, and in the last few days the State has become the main shareholder in eight major banks. Sarkozy, currently head of the EU, organised a meeting with all European leaders (no small feat) and has suggested the same on a continent wide basis. Despite (notably) Ireland and Germany's reluctance to participate in EU-wide measures, Sarkozy is somehow holding it all together. All European countries are now buying shares in the biggest banks and are thus guaranteeing any dodgy loans by pledging to bailout any lenders that default.
In France specifically, Sarkozy is producing 360billion euros to save the situation, including €320 billion in guarantees for new bank debt and a €40 billion fund for recapitalizing lenders. In exchange the State wants to have its say on how the banks are run and how bankers are paid, which is not unreasonable given the circumstances. Moreover, this will not be free for th banks who will have to pay interest. The blurb from the government is that this will not cost the taxpayer anything as a) the banks have to pay interest and b) the banks will be privatised again ASAP. Of course this is only true if the situation gets better. If not, the State will bail out and citizens get the bill.
In the next few days, Sarkozy and others are meeting Bush (god!!! why him?!) for the second "Bretton woods" this century. What lust come out of it is a complete upheaval and, yes, even if th word has been overused, moralisation of the international financial system. In the meantime I suggest you invest in gold.
As usual, it seems easy to blame it on the Americans, but they do rather deserve it. That said, it is impossible to pinpoint a first day of the crisis. Do we refer to the day that world stock markets crashed in historic unison? Or do we creep up the calendar to the symbolic day that Lehmann brothers went bankrupt? Or should it be when subprimes became an everyday word? Do we go further back to the first tremble of butterfly wings a quarter of a century ago when world leaders, led by Thatcher and Raegan, laid the groundwork for the liberalisation of international finance?
I think 9/11 is a good place to start as it was less than a year after the beginning of GWB's first term and smacks of the "before and after". 9/11 was an obvious blow to Amerian morale, and in Economics, a good way to cheer people up is to send them shopping, which also boosts consumption and gives the economy an adrenaline rush, whereas low morale turns the economy sluggish. So when the biggest morale crusher in American history devastated Manhattan, the Fed, or its governor Alan Greenspan, decided to cut interest rates, just as it had after the dotcom crash or Y2K angst. With historically low interest rates it became easier for the average American to borrow money and, more importantly, spend it. In contrast, many European countries had been nagging the independent ECB to significantly cut rates for years, which it didn't. The ECB's main reason for keeping interest rates high was to fight inflation but ultimately its decision might prevent Europe from sinking too far in the quicksand of an economy running on credit.
With lower interest rates (IR) the Americans started spending money they didn't have and, crucially, couldn't afford, courtesy of a banking system that lent money regardless of whether it could ever be paid back. This attitude was tied to the belief that house prices, which had been soaring for years, would continue to do so. Thus, anybody owning or planning to own a house was considered 'safe' as the value of their capital/house would surely increase. With low and sometimes negligible IR, through the irresponsibility of the banks and the property bubble, Americans stocked up on houses and cars and other consumer goods, living off trillions of dollars of credit to finance the American dream.
There was of course a catch to all of this. The IR were not fixed and by 2006 they had soared up. Soon, people who had been paying close to 1% interest on their loans found they had to pay five times that. Monthly repayments exploded. In three years the Fed's IR went from 2% to 5,75%, and the variable interest rates fluctuated accordingly. When repayment was impossible, banks seized the houses and put them on the market. All over America, as "for sale" signs were nailed to porches, the sound of the property bubble popping could be heard. The banks, far from being richer thanks to the sales of the houses, found themselves with a load of properties in a flooded market and they had to sell them for a fraction of their estimated price. They lost huge amounts of money and started going bankrupt. This is the subprime crisis.
So how did this very American problem (because linked to American banks and American loans, culminating in an American property crash) become a world crisis? To understand this, it is crucial to remember how investment portfolios are constituted and the importance of confidence and expectations on the market.
Concerning investment portfolios, while the details may be hideously complicated the general idea is pretty basic. Imagine you are a bank called Rippoff and co. You have lent vast sums of money to people and to show for it you have a load of virtual receipts saying that people owe you money. Like all banks you do not keep these virtual scraps in a vault, rather you chop them up, repackage them and sell them to a bigger or different bank who now "own" the money that Rippoff is owed. The new bank, Fukkem inc, will then do the same. It will take a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit of Rippoff and muddle it all up and sell it on to another bank, Skruya International which is based in 30 different countries and on 5 continents. Do this enough times and by the end it is obvious that nobody has a clue what they are buying and a bank the other side of the world will have a bit of Fukkem, Rippoff and Scruya in it. All they know is that the package, constituted of a million molecules of different companies, is worth roughly this at this time and is expected to increase or decrease in value.These packages are also border-blind and are thus present all over the world.
So all of a sudden, with the property market crash, Fukkem, Rippoff and Skruya find themselves broke (Lehmann Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac in the States notably, though the US bailed out the last two.) When that happened, packages in banks droppped in value because of the drop in value of what made them up. This is not the most dire consequence, though. Worse to come was the drop in confidence that led onto the stockmarkets crash seen all around the world, especially in the last couple of weeks.
Banks do not have a pile of banknotes locked in the cellar, and when you take out a loan they do not go to a backroom and peel off a sheaf of them. Most of this money is virtual. For example, in France, if someone wants a hundred euro loan, the bank need only have nine euros of its own. So imagine a bank (Arssfuk ltd) has 27 euros in the kitty and has granted three 100 euro loans : it can't give anymore. The way around this is the interbank lending system. Arssfuk borrows money from Sookmidic Bank and in return Soomidic's guarantee is, yup, in those little packages which contain bits of Rippoff, Fukem and Skruya. Or not. That's the problem, paranoia takes over and the banks no longer want to lend. This is the liquidity crisis. If everybody were to panic and run to the banks with an empty suitcase asking for their savings, there would not be enough in any of them. This is why leaders are saying DO NOT PANIC!!!!! And why the Central banks are pouring money into the system and/or promising to guarantee the loans, ie, if a bank can't pay back its loans the State will step in.
So banks no longer want to lend to each other, each thinking that the next is going to land them with a worthless package contaminated with bankrupt bank components. As a result, banks must be more careful with the loans they give (not necessarily a bad thing). This has however gone to extremes, where even small profitable companies now have difficulty borrowing money for investment, which is ultimately disasterous for the economy, giving lower growth and higher unemployment among others.
The most spectacular aspect of the crisis for most people has been the drop on the world's stockmarkets, sometimes double figure drops or close to them. This is due to the lack of confidence on the stock market which translates as people either selling wildly or reluctant to buy or a combination of both. Thus shares in France for example in some companies such as Renault or St Gobain fell by over 70%. This is the stockmarket crash which shows that despite money pouring in to the system from the Central banks investors are wary and specualtors less enthusiastic.
So what responses have there been on an international level?
There have been two interesting reactions (many more, but not in this post), one from the Amricans, the other rom the Europeans, and most notably the British. Sarkozy, much as I hate to admit, deserves a medal.
In America the Paulson plan aimed to simply buy back, for a trifling 800 billion dollars, the dodgy loans. This is intervention on an incredible scale and for the socialists among us, a certain amount of glee is felt, these people having aid for yars that the market "regulates itself" and does not need any kind of State intervention (which is true, if you don't mind a few million Americans becoming homeless). Any presidential candidate who promises even consiudering a tax cut in the future is either mad or lying.
In Europe, Gordon Brown made jaws drop. After the Thatcher/Major years where pretty much everything except the State was privatised, and after the Blair/Brown years where England produced an economic miracle based on the deregulated financial sector, first Northern Rock was nationalised, and in the last few days the State has become the main shareholder in eight major banks. Sarkozy, currently head of the EU, organised a meeting with all European leaders (no small feat) and has suggested the same on a continent wide basis. Despite (notably) Ireland and Germany's reluctance to participate in EU-wide measures, Sarkozy is somehow holding it all together. All European countries are now buying shares in the biggest banks and are thus guaranteeing any dodgy loans by pledging to bailout any lenders that default.
In France specifically, Sarkozy is producing 360billion euros to save the situation, including €320 billion in guarantees for new bank debt and a €40 billion fund for recapitalizing lenders. In exchange the State wants to have its say on how the banks are run and how bankers are paid, which is not unreasonable given the circumstances. Moreover, this will not be free for th banks who will have to pay interest. The blurb from the government is that this will not cost the taxpayer anything as a) the banks have to pay interest and b) the banks will be privatised again ASAP. Of course this is only true if the situation gets better. If not, the State will bail out and citizens get the bill.
In the next few days, Sarkozy and others are meeting Bush (god!!! why him?!) for the second "Bretton woods" this century. What lust come out of it is a complete upheaval and, yes, even if th word has been overused, moralisation of the international financial system. In the meantime I suggest you invest in gold.
vendredi 21 décembre 2007
So here we are commenting randomly
The posts are more and more infrequent, even though so much is happening, all day every day and all around the world. So much to say and so little time to say it in ; here is a random selection of all that I think is worth mentioning.
Schengen has grown !! At 00.01 on the 21st of decembre nine new countries joined, eight of Eastern Europe. Schengen is now a vast zone where 404 million people can travel freely without having to cross borders as they ain't any. Now we, in Paris, have a border with Russia and the Ukraine and it is possible to go from Lisbonne to Talinn without a passport. Incredible or what ? Britain, of course stays out of Schengen, undoubtedly fearing the hordes of AIDS ridden commies who would come over to eat their kids (on holiday). Still, 24 countries are now part of the Schengen area so see you all, passportless, in Gdansk !
Gordon, Gordon! what the hell do you think you are doing ? Talk about complete lack of diplomatic skills, lack of credibility skills, lack of popularity skills, lack of skill full stop in fact.
On December 13th 26 EU countries' leaders met in Lisbon to sign the Lisbon treaty (see previous posts). The LT will clean up the way the EU is run, making it more efficient both internally and on the world scene. Love it or hate it, one has to admit that getting the 27 to agree on it has been an incredible feat, and credit goes to the Portuguese and German presidencies of the EU, and to a certain extent Tsarkozy. So when the time comes to sign it, there is of course a certain amount of ceremony and pomp and champagne in Lisbon. Even the ghastly polish president, anti - Europe and mad, was there to sign and sip the Champers. France was represented by no less than four people : Tsarkozy, PM Fillon, Foreign Affairs Kouchner, and EU secretary of state In fact everyone was there, except for, yup, Gordon Brown who thought it a better idea to go to some dire meeting of a commitee in the House of Commons rather than turn up for the greatest European event of the century. As a result, he has lost all credibility with everyone. The EUphiles wept from frustration as Miliband signed in his place and the EUphobes guffawed with disgust as Gordon crept into the empty hall hours after the party was over to sign the treaty anyway. What the hell was he thinking ?
A glass of Chablis, at the sumptuous Parisian Hotel Meurice, costs 16 euros. The nibbles are terrific though.
Wednesday night, a small & cosy bar/restaurant/theater in the 20th called the Ogresse. The play : Tiffany Memory, starring Chucky Nylon. The food : Confit de canard with apples and potatoes, with pollen and honey. The red wine : not very nice. We troop downstairs in to the basement, where the lights and speakers are hanging from the plumbing and what seems to be the building's central heating. Very dark and small, the stage is an open space in front of us. Tiffany Memory, aka Alexandra, is wearing a low cut dress in black and looking like a 1950s cabaret hooker. Chucky, aka the other one, is wearing skinny black jean, a knitted black t-shirt and killer red high heels. He sings depressed glam rock, she talks in a sulfurous low voice. They ask us to miaow, and to cum loudly and we do. And we have no idea what they are on about but the music is cool - Chucky is like a young David Bowie; has peacock feathers in his hair - and Alex is scorching hot. Check it out here.
Schengen has grown !! At 00.01 on the 21st of decembre nine new countries joined, eight of Eastern Europe. Schengen is now a vast zone where 404 million people can travel freely without having to cross borders as they ain't any. Now we, in Paris, have a border with Russia and the Ukraine and it is possible to go from Lisbonne to Talinn without a passport. Incredible or what ? Britain, of course stays out of Schengen, undoubtedly fearing the hordes of AIDS ridden commies who would come over to eat their kids (on holiday). Still, 24 countries are now part of the Schengen area so see you all, passportless, in Gdansk !
Gordon, Gordon! what the hell do you think you are doing ? Talk about complete lack of diplomatic skills, lack of credibility skills, lack of popularity skills, lack of skill full stop in fact.
On December 13th 26 EU countries' leaders met in Lisbon to sign the Lisbon treaty (see previous posts). The LT will clean up the way the EU is run, making it more efficient both internally and on the world scene. Love it or hate it, one has to admit that getting the 27 to agree on it has been an incredible feat, and credit goes to the Portuguese and German presidencies of the EU, and to a certain extent Tsarkozy. So when the time comes to sign it, there is of course a certain amount of ceremony and pomp and champagne in Lisbon. Even the ghastly polish president, anti - Europe and mad, was there to sign and sip the Champers. France was represented by no less than four people : Tsarkozy, PM Fillon, Foreign Affairs Kouchner, and EU secretary of state In fact everyone was there, except for, yup, Gordon Brown who thought it a better idea to go to some dire meeting of a commitee in the House of Commons rather than turn up for the greatest European event of the century. As a result, he has lost all credibility with everyone. The EUphiles wept from frustration as Miliband signed in his place and the EUphobes guffawed with disgust as Gordon crept into the empty hall hours after the party was over to sign the treaty anyway. What the hell was he thinking ?
A glass of Chablis, at the sumptuous Parisian Hotel Meurice, costs 16 euros. The nibbles are terrific though.
Wednesday night, a small & cosy bar/restaurant/theater in the 20th called the Ogresse. The play : Tiffany Memory, starring Chucky Nylon. The food : Confit de canard with apples and potatoes, with pollen and honey. The red wine : not very nice. We troop downstairs in to the basement, where the lights and speakers are hanging from the plumbing and what seems to be the building's central heating. Very dark and small, the stage is an open space in front of us. Tiffany Memory, aka Alexandra, is wearing a low cut dress in black and looking like a 1950s cabaret hooker. Chucky, aka the other one, is wearing skinny black jean, a knitted black t-shirt and killer red high heels. He sings depressed glam rock, she talks in a sulfurous low voice. They ask us to miaow, and to cum loudly and we do. And we have no idea what they are on about but the music is cool - Chucky is like a young David Bowie; has peacock feathers in his hair - and Alex is scorching hot. Check it out here.
jeudi 8 novembre 2007
So here we are wondering about Kosovo's future
So here we are ten days away from parliamentary and local elections in Kosovo (a province whose population is 95% Albanian). Negociations between Serbia and the province, which is technically part of Serbia but wants its independence from Belgrade, are going so slowly they are almost going backwards. Despite the efforts of the international group of mediators, the troïka, Serbian and Kosovan-Albanian positions seem irreconciliable and Kosovo has threatened to declare independence by or on December 10th, the day the different sides are supposed to report back to the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon.
Here is a quick history of Kosovo and its relations with Serbia, to understand what is going on (thank you the BBC). A brief (and amateurish) analysis of what has been happening since 2005 follows.
1946: Kosovo is part of the Yugoslav federation
1960s : Belgrade (capital of Serbia) shows increasing tolerance for Kosovo's autonomy
1974 : the Consitution of Yugoslavia recognises the autonomous status of Kosovo and gives the province self-government
1989 : President Slobodan Milosevic amends the Constitution and starts withdrawing Kosovo's autonomous rights
1990 : Ethnic Albanians declare independence. Belgrade dissolves the government of Kosovo
1993-1997 : Inter ethnic strife worsens between Serbs and Albanians
March to September 1998 : Open conflict between Serb police and separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Serb forces launch a brutal crackdown. Civilians are driven from their homes
Septembre 1998 : Nato gives an ultimatum to President Milosevic to halt the crackdown on Kosovo Albanians.
March 1999 : Internationally-brokered peace talks fail. Nato launches air strikes against Yugoslavia lasting 78 days before Belgrade yields.
June 1999 : President Milosevic agrees to withdraw troops from Kosovo. Nato calls off air strikes. The UN sets up a Kosovo Peace Implementation Force (Kfor) and Nato forces arrive in the province. The KLA agrees to disarm. Serb civilians flee revenge attacks.
October 2003 : First direct talks between Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders since 1999.
December 2003 : UN sets out conditions for final status talks in 2005.
January 2006 : President Rugova dies in Pristina after losing his battle with lung cancer. He is succeeded in February by Fatmir Sejdiu.
February 2006 : UN-sponsored talks on the future status of Kosovo begin.
March 2006 : Prime Minister Kosumi resigns following criticism of his performance from within his own party. He is succeeded by former KLA commander Agim Ceku.
July 2006 : First direct talks since 1999 between ethnic Serbian and Kosovan leaders on future status of Kosovo take place in Vienna.
October 2006 : Voters in a referendum in Serbia approve a new constitution which declares that Kosovo is an integral part of the country. Kosovo's Albanian majority boycotts the ballot and UN sponsored talks on the future of the disputed province continue.
February 2007 : United Nations envoy Martti Ahtisaari unveils a plan to set Kosovo on a path to independence, which is immediately welcomed by Kosovo Albanians and rejected by Serbia.
July 2007 : US and European Union redraft UN resolution to drop promise of independence at Russian insistence, replacing it with pledge to review situation if there is no breakthrough after four proposed months of talks with Serbia.
Kosovo's current status is regulated by the UN Security Council's resolution 1244 of 10th June 1999, that places the province under international administration. The Security Council has given UNMIK, created by resolution 1244, the task of administrating Kosovo's territory and population as well as the executive, legislative and judiciary powers. KFOR is the multinational armed force put in place by NATO to ensure stability in the region.
On November 2nd 2005, the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari was mandated by the UN in order to supervise negociations between the Serb government and the Albanian government in Pristina (capital of Kosovo) on the future status of Kosovo.
In February 2007 he presented a plan which made provisions for the independance of Kosovo, albeit one supervised by the international community. This plan was welcomed by the Kosovo Albanians, and the EU and the USA, but was rejected by Serbia on March 10th 2007.
With the breakdown in negociations, the dossier was sent back to the 'contact group', which has no official powers or legitimacy and is made up of the USA, the UK, France, Italie, Belgium and Russia. A new phase of negociations, to last 120 days, was launched.
On July 25th 2007, the 'contact group' agreed to create a reduced troïka, made up of the EU, the USA and Russia. The representatives of the troïka - the German Wolfgang Ischinger, the Russian Alexander Botsan-Kharechenko and the American Frank Wisner - lead the negociations between Belgrade and Pristina in order to reconcile their positions before December 10th, at which time they must present the case to the UN's Secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
So far there have been four rounds of negociations between Pristina and Belgrade, supervised by the troïka, each as unhelpful as the last.
On September 27th the negociations took place in New York and gave nothing as Sern and Kosovan positions were irreconciliable. Serbia sees Kosovo as largely autonomous while Kosovan Albanians wil settle for nothing less than full independence.
On October 14th in Brussels things did not go better. For over four hours the delegation of Kosovan Albanians led by President Fatmir Sedjiu and Prime Minister Agim Ceku- and the Serbian Ministers Vuk Jeremic and Slobodan Samardzic, in charge of Foreign Afairs and Kosovo respectively, argued their positions without any result. However, Serbs and Kosovans agreed to abstain from any provocation or declaration likely to put the region's security in peril.
The third round of negociations were in Vienna on October 22nd. The delegations were to discuss the troïka's fourteen point plan, which includes the end of all Serbian presence in Kosovo. The plan does not put forward any definite proposals on the region's future status, but esablishes areas in which deeper cooperation would be good, including energy and fight against organised crime. No results came out of this meeting
On November 5th, the fourth round of negociations were held in Vienna and once again focusd on the troïka's plan. At this meeting one of the Albanian negociators warned that the province was prepared to declare independance if talks with Belgrade didn't get anywhere by December 10th. Onbviously, Belgrade has strong objections to this.
A new meeting has been pencilled in for November 20th.
As things stand, Kosovo wants total independance from Serbia and is prepared to self-declare independence on December 10th or even earlier. The Serbian Prime Minister has declared this to be illegal.Serbia
Here is a quick history of Kosovo and its relations with Serbia, to understand what is going on (thank you the BBC). A brief (and amateurish) analysis of what has been happening since 2005 follows.
1946: Kosovo is part of the Yugoslav federation
1960s : Belgrade (capital of Serbia) shows increasing tolerance for Kosovo's autonomy
1974 : the Consitution of Yugoslavia recognises the autonomous status of Kosovo and gives the province self-government
1989 : President Slobodan Milosevic amends the Constitution and starts withdrawing Kosovo's autonomous rights
1990 : Ethnic Albanians declare independence. Belgrade dissolves the government of Kosovo
1993-1997 : Inter ethnic strife worsens between Serbs and Albanians
March to September 1998 : Open conflict between Serb police and separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Serb forces launch a brutal crackdown. Civilians are driven from their homes
Septembre 1998 : Nato gives an ultimatum to President Milosevic to halt the crackdown on Kosovo Albanians.
March 1999 : Internationally-brokered peace talks fail. Nato launches air strikes against Yugoslavia lasting 78 days before Belgrade yields.
June 1999 : President Milosevic agrees to withdraw troops from Kosovo. Nato calls off air strikes. The UN sets up a Kosovo Peace Implementation Force (Kfor) and Nato forces arrive in the province. The KLA agrees to disarm. Serb civilians flee revenge attacks.
October 2003 : First direct talks between Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders since 1999.
December 2003 : UN sets out conditions for final status talks in 2005.
January 2006 : President Rugova dies in Pristina after losing his battle with lung cancer. He is succeeded in February by Fatmir Sejdiu.
February 2006 : UN-sponsored talks on the future status of Kosovo begin.
March 2006 : Prime Minister Kosumi resigns following criticism of his performance from within his own party. He is succeeded by former KLA commander Agim Ceku.
July 2006 : First direct talks since 1999 between ethnic Serbian and Kosovan leaders on future status of Kosovo take place in Vienna.
October 2006 : Voters in a referendum in Serbia approve a new constitution which declares that Kosovo is an integral part of the country. Kosovo's Albanian majority boycotts the ballot and UN sponsored talks on the future of the disputed province continue.
February 2007 : United Nations envoy Martti Ahtisaari unveils a plan to set Kosovo on a path to independence, which is immediately welcomed by Kosovo Albanians and rejected by Serbia.
July 2007 : US and European Union redraft UN resolution to drop promise of independence at Russian insistence, replacing it with pledge to review situation if there is no breakthrough after four proposed months of talks with Serbia.
Kosovo's current status is regulated by the UN Security Council's resolution 1244 of 10th June 1999, that places the province under international administration. The Security Council has given UNMIK, created by resolution 1244, the task of administrating Kosovo's territory and population as well as the executive, legislative and judiciary powers. KFOR is the multinational armed force put in place by NATO to ensure stability in the region.
On November 2nd 2005, the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari was mandated by the UN in order to supervise negociations between the Serb government and the Albanian government in Pristina (capital of Kosovo) on the future status of Kosovo.
In February 2007 he presented a plan which made provisions for the independance of Kosovo, albeit one supervised by the international community. This plan was welcomed by the Kosovo Albanians, and the EU and the USA, but was rejected by Serbia on March 10th 2007.
With the breakdown in negociations, the dossier was sent back to the 'contact group', which has no official powers or legitimacy and is made up of the USA, the UK, France, Italie, Belgium and Russia. A new phase of negociations, to last 120 days, was launched.
On July 25th 2007, the 'contact group' agreed to create a reduced troïka, made up of the EU, the USA and Russia. The representatives of the troïka - the German Wolfgang Ischinger, the Russian Alexander Botsan-Kharechenko and the American Frank Wisner - lead the negociations between Belgrade and Pristina in order to reconcile their positions before December 10th, at which time they must present the case to the UN's Secretary general Ban Ki-moon.
So far there have been four rounds of negociations between Pristina and Belgrade, supervised by the troïka, each as unhelpful as the last.
On September 27th the negociations took place in New York and gave nothing as Sern and Kosovan positions were irreconciliable. Serbia sees Kosovo as largely autonomous while Kosovan Albanians wil settle for nothing less than full independence.
On October 14th in Brussels things did not go better. For over four hours the delegation of Kosovan Albanians led by President Fatmir Sedjiu and Prime Minister Agim Ceku- and the Serbian Ministers Vuk Jeremic and Slobodan Samardzic, in charge of Foreign Afairs and Kosovo respectively, argued their positions without any result. However, Serbs and Kosovans agreed to abstain from any provocation or declaration likely to put the region's security in peril.
The third round of negociations were in Vienna on October 22nd. The delegations were to discuss the troïka's fourteen point plan, which includes the end of all Serbian presence in Kosovo. The plan does not put forward any definite proposals on the region's future status, but esablishes areas in which deeper cooperation would be good, including energy and fight against organised crime. No results came out of this meeting
On November 5th, the fourth round of negociations were held in Vienna and once again focusd on the troïka's plan. At this meeting one of the Albanian negociators warned that the province was prepared to declare independance if talks with Belgrade didn't get anywhere by December 10th. Onbviously, Belgrade has strong objections to this.
A new meeting has been pencilled in for November 20th.
As things stand, Kosovo wants total independance from Serbia and is prepared to self-declare independence on December 10th or even earlier. The Serbian Prime Minister has declared this to be illegal.
Also, within the troïka, opinions are divided. The EU and the
The biggest problem with Kosovo’s independence is that it could start a whole series of calls for independence from regions.
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First things first: are you criticising the 35 hour week or shops not opening on Sundays? and how do either make us lazy? Concerning the former, you might be surprised to learn that the 35 hour week is not the norm, any cadre (equivalent of a managerial position) or for that matter artisan boulanger could tell you that. Equally, for those it does concern what exactly do you have against having an extra afternoon/morning off a week, or a couple of extra days off a month? There are some things money can't buy, and spending time with your kids on a wednesday afternoon or taking a long weekend to visit the family are obvious examples. It might even be because of a certain equilibrium between work and leisure that French workers have the highest hourly productivity rate in Europe, something you forgot to mention when qualifying us of lazy. It's not all about length I guess, quality does count.
As for the catholics being behind the plot against Sunday shopping I find that very strange, the main argument against it being, as far as I can tell, that it is the most vulnerable workers (women working part time, pour ne pas les nommer) who would be working that day (for no extra pay I might add), when they would normally spend it with the family.
Again, it all boils down to the question of whether a strong(er) economy, fueled by more consumption and more working hours, is really what makes a society happy and healthy. We have good, free, schools, an excellent health service, and awesome transport. Who cares if the train driver works 35 hours a week when you can go from Paris to Marseille in under 4 hours?
France has its problems, no doubt. As you say, high unemployment, sluggish economy , massive debt, (hang on a sec, aren't you also British?) crappy universities, abominable prisons, social and racial inequality, etc. But there is also much to be proud of, not least the fact that we cling to the belief that we are not just labour, but human beings.
Last but not least: waiters will never refuse you for lunch to take a two and half hour lunch break. they geneally eat at about 11.30, before the first rush, or at 3 after the second. In fact the 2 and a half hour lunch beak is a myth today, and when it does last more than an hour, it's not so bad because we usually leave the office around 8, rather than head off to the pub at 5...