Sometimes, there are coincidences.

By which I mean, coincidences do exist, after all. But just not this time I suppose:

Tehran, March 11, IRNA - Iran news agency: French banks release Iran's frozen assets

Presidential Advisor for legal and parliamentary affairs Majid Jafarzadeh said on Tuesday that the assets of Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which were seized by French banks, have been released.

Speaking to IRNA, he said that the move followed continued efforts by Presidential department for legal and parliamentary affairs on Monday. CBI assets were frozen by Bank of French Banque Populaire.

France has not confirmed or denied the Iranian news agency report, and, typical of the French news occulting reporting, I could not find any mention of this here — even simply to say that Iran "claims" the assets were released.

If the information proved to be true however, considering both the implications of such move and the sick and thick collusion between the French "private", semi-private (and public evidently) companies with the State¹, there is no way — emphasis on no way — this could have happened without both knowledge and approval at the top level of the French diplomacy and Presidency — that means Kouchner and Sarkozy.

While there is little trust to put into an official Iranian news agency of course, the fact that France "won't deny or confirm" gives a lot of ground to suspicions of a — typical, if History helps and memory serves — French shady deal in the works.

In Paris, on the very same day (Tuesday, March 11) at the opening of some local fair grandiloquently dubbed "Forum for New Diplomacy"², the Good Doctor Kouchner, that old school Socialist who was offered de Villepin's chair, staff and budget as France's foreign minister by France's New Supa Dupa President-Showman Sarkozy, couldn't help but serving the same old Leftist canard that "Bush damaged America's image in the World[...'s view of those who already hated America in the first place — Ed]", while speaking to Roger Cohen from the New York Times' European outlet, the International Herald Tribune (that manages to go further down and to the Left of the mother ship, making it a real chore to read⁴), a particularly receptive interlocutor to this kind of mantra:

'Magic is over' for U.S., says French foreign minister

PARIS: Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France (...) says that whoever succeeds President George W. Bush may restore something of the United States' battered image and standing overseas, but that "the magic is over."

Asked whether the United States could repair the damage it has suffered to its reputation during the Bush presidency and especially since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Kouchner replied, "It will never be as it was before."

Let's begin with a quick digression: many of us peons have been knowing that "it will never be as it was before" since September 11, 2001, 12:46:30 UTC, but it's apparently taking more than 6 years to penetrate the walls of the Great Diplomats at the Quai D'Orsay.

Or that's just not what the Good Doctor Kouchner has in mind when he says "it", perhaps — end of digression.

I'll say it once again, just because I know there will come a time when I'll have to say "I told you so": France's dirty bag of tricks is still open, because France's semi-secret weasel war against the US is still on.

The only difference is that rather than the unlucky and untimely frogs in the open strategy pursued by Chirac and de Villepin, Sarkozy and Kouchner have reverted to the insidious methods⁵ of the Mitterrand era — the 1980's Socialist President who "served [1940's Collaborationist] Vichy [regime] with such zeal that he earned himself the Francisque medal [Vichy's highest honour]" yet is still regarded as a semi-god by the French elite — who once (in)famously said:

"France does not know it, but we are at war with America. Yes, a permanent war, a vital war, a war without death".

Hence Sarkozy, having briefly staged his pro-American act, telling US congressmen exactly what they wanted to hear⁶ and crying out loud for a few weeks how he loved America (As long as he had the international media's attention. Then he stopped, and he's not making such a fuss about it anymore.) — before going all hanky-panky with Putin's Russia. Hence his bypassing the Parliament by sending one of his future former ex-wives⁷ on a high profile mission to al-Gaddafi's Lybia with gifts of French warplanes and nukes in her bottomless yet rather dashy vanity case. Hence France's meddling in the Near and Middle-East, or even France's sudden interest in getting back into NATO, asking for a command position nobody was offering her.

"A permanent war" — and if you think that a few, much hyped, days of vacation in New Hampshire constitute a cease-fire (let alone a peace treaty), you've not learned much of French History.

A good KGB training is a terrible thing to waste

Not strictly related, but part of the French "ecosystem": a few more pages to add to the Chronicles of Ordinary Anti-Americanism (French chapter), with this cover of the current special issue of Les Echos; France's economics monthly that wished it was "The Economist" but is to Capitalism and the economy what Pravda was to actual Truth.


Translation: "After Bush. Financial crisis, social divide, immigration, environment. Why America must reinvent herself.">

On her long agony towards oblivion, France is experiencing as a result of decades of dedication to Socialism, those very flaws Les Echos are projecting on America here — though to a critical degree nearing the point of no return, as far as social unrest is concerned. As a result, her "elite" in the political-media complex have little options left but to resort to a well-known (soft) Soviet tactic: keep your masses more or less in check by telling them, repeatedly, that no matter how bad they feel, people are doing far worse in the USA.

That's the basics of propaganda, so I'll just let you enjoy the tone, the subject, the imagery, the substance, and the style.

Welcome to my Life in France.