the dissident frogman

16 years and 2 weeks ago

Rats in the Cradle

the dissident frogman

Necrothreading much?

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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.
  1. As a result, France doesn't have a Capitalist economy, simply because State Capitalism is an oxymoron.
  2. No big deal. Eurosocialism means a choking abundance of Chatterfests such as this one, all with pompous names and irrelevant speakers grandstanding and outbidding each other on the Holier-Than-Thou3 magnitude scale. They produce countless pages of reports and white papers filled with vain and empty noise, even less action (Thank God for that, actually) and a sizeable waste of taxpayer's money on video projectors, PowerPoint presentations and petit-fours, as well as a slight nuisance to the advancement of real and serious diplomacy. But they provide the participants with a priceless feeling of Being Serious There and Managing The World.
  3. A bit like the Richter one, only for more serious, frequent and imminent threats to mankind's welfare.
  4. See how I'm dedicated to you? See?
  5. For one thing because America remains the first foreign investor in the wobbly French economy, and France is broke, make no mistake about that — so it's not exactly a smart move to pee in them cowboy boots and hope they'll believe it's just rain. Next of course, is the concern that France's Superpower gamble and supposedly clever backyard moves with the big bullies of the world — Iran, among others — might turn sour, leaving France in the position where she'd need buckets of American blood to be shed on her shore, again. In addition to that, I suspect the slightly stinky diplomatic minds at work in the Quay d'Orsay figured that it's better to be a Trojan horse in NATO than a Chirac watching the game from the sidelines.
  6. Don't feel too bad though, he's a confirmed con artist — That's exactly how he fooled his electorate, and they've known him for quite some time.
  7. Cecilia, Carla, whatever... I lost the count. When it comes to expensive escorts, let me tell you: that Spitzer dude is an amateur, at least judging from the revelations in Anna Biton's book Cécilia, the publication of which the eponymous first former-future-ex-wife recently tried to stop through legal action (Not that she had anything to take back from her quotes on Sarkozy: "a serial womanizer" and "stingy philanderer", "unworthy president" with a "behavioral attitude"… etc, she just didn't want them to go public. Those claims, by the way, were made before the new former-future-ex-wife — Carla I think — came into the ménage à trois tableau.

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the dissident frogman

I own, built and run this place. In a previous life I was not French but sadly, I died.

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Comments thread (5)

3317 - Iwo Gina

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  • Iwo Gina Maryland

"...Sarkozy: "a serial womanizer" and "stingy philanderer", "unworthy president" with a "behavioral attitude"… etc..."

We had one of them... he's now stumping for his (never ex, possibly future-ex if she had any self-respect) wife.

Iwo Gina

3319 - TooTall

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Just some food for thought:

President Bush has been in office 7 years.....but, think about these facts.....
A little over one year ago:


1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high;
2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon;
3) the unemployment rate was 4.5%.


Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we've seen:


1) Consumer confidence plummet;
2) the cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3 a gallon;
3) Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase);
4) American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate
(stock and mutual fund losses);
5) Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars;
6) 1% of American homes are in foreclosure.


America voted for change in 2006, and we got it!

3320 - Lady Cincinnatus

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  • Lady Cincinnatus Ohio & Kentucky

TooTall,
Your statistics are awesome!! Can we use them? Where did you get them? I've been trying to explain this to my doom and gloom friends. And this doesn't even inlcude all the Dems that took over at the state level in most states. Ohio and Kentucky both have new Democrat governors and administrations.

And D. Frogman,
“Welcome to my Life in France." When are you just going to come to the U.S.? We're going to need all the good guys we can get.

3321 - TooTall

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My wife got them in a e-mail at her work. No way to tell who actually did the work of digging them out but they're easily verifable.

In my opinion some of them aren't directly attributable to Congress but what the heck. Lots of things laid on President Bush are things he actually has little control over so what's sauce for the goose . . . If it happens on your watch you're held to blame.

My accountant wife hates one of my favorite old sayings which goes "liars figure and figures lie".

3322 - the dissident frogman

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  • the dissident frogman France

TooTall,

I hear you, and it's not my intention to imply that everything is hunky dory in the Land of the Free.

However, and how odd as it may sound, the actual state of affairs in the US is beyond the point, as far as Les Echos' special dossier on the... State of affairs in the US is concerned — and the same goes for the French press at large.

This kind of "coverage" is a constant, and these dramatic headlines make up the stock-in-trade of the French media, Left to Right - You'd regularly find the same "special dossier" published just a few years ago, when the US economy was thriving, and (case in point) the situation in France was all gloom and doom.

Read "Cowboy Capitalism" by (US based) German journalist Olaf Gersemann: as Milton Friedman put it "a devastating rejection of common European fallacies about the American economy". Gersemann addresses and puts to rest all the "myths" constantly ushered in the French (and West European) media and political sphere about the US: declining living standards, poverty on the rise, "MacJobs", three jobs needed to (merely) survive, no health care, financial (credit) crisis, etc, etc.

The aforementioned stock-in-trade is all there, and this book was first published circa 2004. I, personally, have been hearing the same nonsense for the last two decades at least.

When discussing such matters, the share of people who actually believe this is simply stunning. 9 out of 10 in my experience.

KL,

When are you just going to come to the U.S.? We're going to need all the good guys we can get.

That is my dearest wish, but believe it or not, it's far from easy. At least, when one sticks to the principle of doing it honorably and legally.

I suspect the bad guys have it easier — only one river to cross — unfortunately.

Time to take sides