An Ineluctable Phenomenon?

Le Conservateur also wrote an article criticizing the news about the "rise" in French births. Here are a few passages:

In reality, these raw figures are hiding that which remains unsaid: the number of births of foreign origin and the number of births from non-French cultures. In terms of national cohesiveness and the survival of French culture, it is ethnic French births that we need; let us not put on the blinders. In truth, possessing a document from the French Republic is not enough to make you a person of French Culture. I remind everyone that France existed before the Republic and defines itself essentially by cultural rather than administrative criteria.

And what do we get? We see that the press in its ensemble hides the truth, maybe out of lack of information since this topic is a real TABOO in our so-called free society obsessed with transparency...The only real indicator - the degree to which one belongs to French culture - is not measurable. And yet it's the only standard that ought to be of interest to us...

To clarify my remarks, I remind you that the right to the respect and protection of one's culture is inscribed in the fundamental charters of the United Nations. When the Kanaks or the Peruvian Indians demand it, it is called a just struggle for emancipation. But when it's about "ethnic French", then it is nothing more or less than fascism or racism...We have an inalienable right to defend our culture, and no moral principle can deny it to us.

Le Conservateur was vindicated when François Héran, the director of INED (National Institute of Demographic Studies), announced on January 27 that if nothing changes, the French population will be replaced by a population of immigrants within 100 years:

The lies are being exposed, without anyone being disturbed by that, least of all the liars themselves: politicians, intellectuals and journalists...

Lie Nº 1 - There aren't so many immigrants as you think.

Mr. Héran's position is tactful - he limits himself to observing an imbalance...and calls on politicians to prepare public opinion for this population substitution:

"We cannot predict future immigration, but it will be greater than it is today. There will be more deaths and fewer births, because there will be fewer women of child-bearing age...Immigration, without anyone wanting it, will be the primary source of population growth..."

Lie Nº 2 - Mr. Sarkozy's selective immigration would be a solution.

Mr. Héran opposes the notion that "immigration could become secondary in the growth of the French population...through selectivity. That won't work, because family re-unification and asylum are still very important since they accompany immigration of labor, even if it is selective.

Lie Nº3 - Politicians are not blind and would not try to stifle the debate on immigration.

"The mixing of races is going to continue. It's not that I'm for it or against, it's an objective question: immigration will become the main motor of growth, so inevitably the mixing will proceed, and nothing will stop it. It's better to prepare for it rather than to deny reality..."

In conclusion, we can answer Mr. Héran when he speaks of the ineluctable nature of this phenomenon. It is up to us to save our heritage and our culture, without worrying about the moralists of so-called anti-racism who have been lying for decades, which is what Mr. Héran implies in his remarks. In addition, let's sweep away the preconceived notion that the population must not decrease. A few generations of demographic winters would be better than the cultural catastrophe that awaits us, no matter what MEDEF thinks...

This message is to the attention of the voters: "Those who have ears will hear."

Note: MEDEF (Movement of French Enterprises) refers to an organization of entrepreneurs and business leaders who advocate immigration as a solution to the labor shortage.

The photo of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, New York is from Fotosearch. The photo is a memory of a very different type of immigration: limited, controlled and compatible with needs and values of America. This is why it worked so well. Most immigrants before the '60's flourished in America and made major contributions to society. Immigration was a privilege, not an entitlement.

Birthrate "Rising"

My preceding post gave a rundown of topics being discussed at the French websites. One of the most discussed related to the findings of INED (National Institute of Demographic Studies) showing an increase in the birthrate for 2006 to 2 births per woman. Jean-Marie Le Pen had these comments as quoted by Le Monde:

"This relates to the totality of births by women residing in France, not to
women of French origin, " he said, deploring the fact of "population substitution...There are about 700,000 births of ethnic French babies out of 830,000 births. The number of children per Frenchwoman is closer to 1.66 than to 2..."

The presidential candidate proposes a family policy that is the opposite of that advocated by both Left and Right (meaning Sarkozy) whose socialistic excesses and anti-nationalism he denounced. He feels it is surreal madness to grant family subsidies to foreign families or to favor the poorest families by maximizing certain subsidies.

He proposes ways to encourage the births of ethnic French babies by means of subsidies set aside just for them, subsidies that would be adjusted to cost-of-living index, and "parental benefits" for mothers and fathers who wish to raise their children at home (I think he may be referring to home-schooling). This benefit would carry with it a "legal status" that includes social protection, the right to professional training and the right to retirement. There would also be a "family loan" allowing "French families to have access to property ownership". And he would favor "prenatal adoption."

Note: My question is: don't French families already have these benefits? Is this an addition to what they have, or something new?

Finally, Le Pen is committed to holding a referendum on a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the "sacredness of life." This would be one way to counteract the abortion law...

Note: This constitutional amendment is interesting because it is the Patriots' counterpart to Chirac's proposal for an amendment than bans all capital punishment, no matter what the crime. Chirac's amendment is also finding favor with the socialists, not surprisingly.

On January 21 there was a big rally in Paris, organized by the collective group "Thirty Years Is Enough" against the abortion law. Reports are that it was very successful.

The photo shows Le Pen with his wife.

Drowning In News

I spent the day yesterday browsing through numerous websites but did not post because the volume of information was too large to pin down to one or two topics.

Many bloggers and politicians are talking about the official rise in the French birthrate, and the unofficial interpretation of these statistics, i.e. that the rise is due to French women who are nationals but not ethnic French. Le Pen had some excellent comments.

The agency that released the birth statistics has admitted that the ethnic French population is being replaced by foreigners. That is an admission that immigration is not for labor or even family reunification but for...other motives. Le Conservateur has a good article.

Vox Galliae comments on the leftward drift of the conservatives, not just Sarko, but Le Pen and de Villiers, all of whom have taken to quoting the founder of French socialism, Jean Jaurès, probably to show that they are not the fascist pigs they are taken for by the media but really socialists at heart. This seems to be a trend of the times - reassuring everyone that you really love all humanity, or something like that...

A deputy of Sarko's UMP party, Christian Vanneste, has been condemned for speaking out against gay marriage and parenthood. A prominent socialist Georges Frèche has been kicked out of the party by Ségolène Royal for commenting that there were too many blacks on the French soccer team. Another socialist, René Rivol has also been kicked out apparently because he was an associate of Frèche.

Ségolène Royal has come out in favor of euthanasia, but not with great conviction - she says she accepts her party's position on the issue. I also learned that former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's mother was a major activist for euthanasia, and administered her own death in 2002.

Jean-Marie Le Pen gave a great speech at Yvetot about France's internal and external problems. It was the usual laundry list, but he has a cogent way of communicating the seriousness of the current situation. He's a powerful speaker, if nothing else.

His daughter, Marine Le Pen, has stirred up anger and even hatred among her own Front National constituents, by advocating the use of the French language in the provinces. She is, I believe, "Bretonne" (from Brittany) and apparently she is expected to encourage the use of the Breton language as a sign of solidarity. Her remarks were taken as a sign of her "jacobin" tendencies and the commentators wondered why JMLP allows her to walk all over him the way he does.

In an article at Resilience TV a Muslim named Kemal Khan has called on Muslims to vote for Jean-Marie Le Pen because the Jews are ruling France.

In an interview on France 5 Philippe de Villiers faced Muslim activist, writer, professor, Tariq Ramadan, who has been denied entry into the United States for contributing money to Hamas. The video stopped and started frequently and I cannot make a definitive analysis, but it seemed that PDV was not well-prepared to take on this man. First, he pandered to him, calling him "intelligent", then Ramadan proved he really was intelligent. De Villiers listed specific complaints about Islam, to which Ramadan replied that he had the same complaints, i.e. that he AGREED with de Villiers. This is the trap one falls into when one complains about obvious atrocities committed by Islam: stoning, female circumcision, etc...Any smart Muslim will agree with you. Then what? What argument to you have to fall back on?

An Israeli writer named Raphael Israeli has warned Europeans that they are being overrun by Muslims and that 100,000 French and Britons have converted to Islam.

There were several crimes during January that made news among the bloggers: a savage attack on Rue Mouffetard in Paris on young ethnic French youth by North Africans and blacks; an attack by a gang of Jewish youth from Rue des Rosiers (the Jewish section) on the city street cleaners of African origin; an attack on four Jewish girls as they were leaving school.

Warnings from French-Canadian writer and traditional Catholic, Maurice G. Dantec, that we are heading for planetary war.

I'm not providing links rignt now, but will add them as I go into more depth on these stories - at least as many of them as time permits.

I also want to thank two readers for the link to Guillotine.
The English is a bit fractured, but the meaning is clear. Sarko and Ségo as two "peas out of the same pod" is a common theme. One difference between them: she has come out against Iran - it may be the only piece of current events she has studied.

China Bows To Islam

There is a new pig story, this one from China, known world-wide for its compassion and solicitude towards the sensitivities of ethnic minorities. France-Echos brings the good news:

It may be the Year of the Pig, but national Chinese television has banned from its programming all images of pigs. It made this decision out of fear of offending the Muslim community.

Throughout China, as in much of Asia, images of the animal are everywhere as the new year approaches early in February. But Central Chinese Television (CCTV) "is a national network", noted an executive of programming services. The Swiss group Nestlé stated that it cancelled a projected advertisement that would have used a drawing of a pig, when it was notified of the CCTV policy.

"Due to concerns about cultural and ethnic mores, we will ban images of the pig. We do not want to have a bad influence or to offend the feelings of ethnic groups," he added under cover of anonymity.

The TV channel "explained that this was about showing respect for Islam and that it came from the highest echelons of government," declared Thierry Vapperaeau, spokesman for Nestlé China.

Some 18 million Chinese are Muslims, out of 1.3 billion people, according to the official statistics.

France-Echos adds some additional remarks:

This information confirms the hypothesis that forms the basis of the book The Third World War Has Begun, published by Laurent Artur du Plessis in 2002: China will enter into the conflict on the side of Islam.

Like China, France, by banning soup with pork meat (not to mention the postage stamp for the Year of the Pig) can boast about being in tune with the Chinese Communist dictatorship. Now all you brave little French politicos, just a bit more of an effort in support of Iranian "civil nuclear weapons" and we'll be in tune with the Muslim Persian dictatorship.

France on the same level as the two prestigious civilizations of China and Persia - it's an attainable goal. Just vote UMPS in the election, especially the second round!

Reminder: UMPS = UMP (Sarko) + PS (Ségo)

The postage stamp story, alluded to above, concerns the banning by the French Council of State of the postage stamp created for the Chinese New Year - the Year of the Pig. It seems that the Minister of the Interior has deemed the postage stamp to be degrading to human dignity and feels it must be banned...

No. It's not true. It's France-Echos' tall-tale-of-the-day. They do a great job of misleading you, and I was totally taken in until the end because I hadn't seen the word "Humor" in the title... They even give you instructions on how to print the stamp on your envelopes, should the need arise.

A practical joke...but not without a firm basis in fact. For France-Echos links to the official State documents that banned the soup a few weeks ago.

Serious Questions

When prominent socialist writers and "philosophers" are critical of their own candidate, you know something is terribly wrong. Powerful political organizations tend to close ranks and defend their candidate through thick and thin. But it seems that this time the ice is just too thin. In my last post I quoted Ségolène as saying that her worst enemy is mediocrity. Those words may be used against her as she unwittingly reveals her inaptitude, if not her irrelevancy, for the post she is seeking.

Wealthy, jet-setting socialist writer Bernard-Henri Lévy, known as BHL, finds Madame Royal's campaign most demoralizing, according to an article from Yahoo:

The presidential campaign fills philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy with "a feeling of discouragement" due to the fact that "in his entire life" he has "never seen such a mediocre campaign."

In an interview scheduled to appear in Sunday's Parisien/Aujourd'hui, BHL declares that this election will be "the moment of truth", for we will see if the "next president has the strength and the grace to make the necessary reforms."

In this case, "France will keep the place in Europe and in the world that she has long held". In the opposite case, "we will become a sort of second Switzerland."

After recalling that he had been "among the first to welcome the rise in popularity of Ségloène Royal, the novelist/philosopher notes with bitterness that "six months later, and with the best will in the world, it is difficult not to ask some questions: What does she want? What is her goal?"

"Can a candidate for the presidency not know, as it seems to be the case, how many nuclear submarines will be under her control?" laments the philosopher.

Questioned on the future of Ségolène Royal between now and the election, BHL feels that she is "such an atypical candidate that anything can happen. Maybe a spectacular recovery (...) or a sudden extinction of all the lights around her and in her that will cause her to free-fall."

In view of this catastrophic perspective for the Socialist Party, BHL declares he is aware that "some in the Party (...) are envisaging a sort of grand appeal from the higher elected officials to the candidate that she sacrifice herself on the altar of a special convention that would nominate...François Hollande! Perhaps..."

Note: I think she should continue to be the candidate. This way she may disable the socialists for a long while. Even if she won the election, she would be such a disaster that the socialists would be out of power for a long time. Machiavellian, I know...

Note: I'm having trouble realizing that they didn't know she was like this before they nominated her.

Note: Nor do I know what he means by a "second Swtizerland" unless it be "insignificant". Swiss people, take note!

BHL's trendy political correctness and chic socialism has its own brand of mediocrity. But that's a different topic...

One final note: François Hollande is Ségo's "partner" and the father of her children. Recently he has been pushed into the background while she grabbed the spotlight. Revenge will be sweet...

Keeping Up With Ségolène - Part 2

News about Ségolène Royal is tumbling out of the websites faster than I can keep up. She has made several more of her signature gaffes, she has intimidated the bloggers who criticize her, she has had one prominent socialist removed from the party for racist comments and she has made a trip to Martinique where she repeated her desire to be president of a "mixed" France (mixed blood, that is). If she is mixed up on certain issues, she seems to be wielding her sword effectively on others. There are hints, notably from BHL (socialist philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy) that she may not get through the campaign.

Here is a very brief summary of her comings and goings:

From France-Echos comes this video where she states that in France one woman out of three is "assassinated" by her spouse (or partner). She deplores the fact that these figures are never discussed in the media because it has become a routine event...

I don't know if the verb "assassiner" is used loosely in France today to mean "to beat up". Nor do I know if 33% of all women are beaten so harshly that they die or come close to it. Nor do I know if she was speaking of ethnic French women or foreigners.

Anyway, France-Echos said it was a "superchérie" - a complete lie.

Another video at France-Echos that has been mentioned at many websites shows her total lack of military knowledge. During an interview on RMC (Radio Monte-Carlo) she was asked by Jean-Jacques Bourdin if France really needed so many nuclear submarines.
The dialogue went as follows:

Bourdin: How many do we have?

Ségo avoids the question twice, but Bourdin repeats it twice.

Ségo: We have...uh..ONE.

Bourdin: No. We have SEVEN.

Ségo: Yes, seven, yes.

France-Echos reminds us that she would be commander-in-chief of the armed forces and responsible for nuclear weapons...

Moving on. Le Conservateur who has been severely critical of her and who has spoken of her alleged love affair with Louis Schweitzer, head of HALDE (High Authority in the Fight Against Discrimination, etc...) tells of a fellow blogger named Major Tom who has received a warning from Ségo's lawyer, Attorney Mignard of Lysias Partners law firm. The warning, in the form of a "mise en demeure", which is similar to an ultimatum, is over the allegations of her affair with Mr. Schweitzer. Le Conservateur has this to say:

I have noticed that Lysias has been visiting my website. Perhaps my ultimatum is now being prepared.

My advice to Major Tom is to give in and to censor all references to this love affair within 48 hours. The topic is not worth a confrontation and this move on the part of Madame Royal is already a victory for the incriminated blogs - a victory for freedom of expression against sectarianism.

It goes without saying that defamation, insults and offensive language used against the candidate are ineffective, useless and lacking in the class that befits a blog. Still, the question remains: where does repression stop?

As for the trip to Martinique (photo), she made no major error that I know of, probably because she felt herself to be in much friendlier territory where her basically anti-French point of view is highly regarded. This is from Nouvel Obs:

Before several hundred people gathered at the market place in Fort-de-France, the socialist candidate urged the French to look lucidly at all the periods of their history, including colonization:

"It is the necessary condition for a History that is shared, assured, appeased, in a Republic that welcomes all of its members and that tolerates no discrimination...I will not allow us to speak of children of the first, second, third generation. You are, we are all, the young people are all children of this Republic that must open its arms...Racial mixture, I say it here, is a lucky thing for France. I will be the president of a mixed (métissée) France that sees itself as such..."

She spoke of the "execrable" February 2005 law that permits teachers to teach the positive role of colonialism (a law that has been repealed by presidential decree):

"This revision of history was unacceptable...(Colonialism) was a system of spoliation, domination and humiliation..." compared to liberty, equality, fraternity and "respect for identity".

Note: I was unaware that the February 2005 law had been repealed.

Note: Has she not contradicted herself? She wants a France that is "mixed" and she advocates "respect for identity". How are the French to maintain their identity if they mix in with other races. The word "métissé" usually refers to mixed-blood, not to different races living side by side.

Note: After Martinique she went on to Guadeloupe where she spoke several sentences in Creole, and said, among other things, that her worst enemy was mediocrity.

Mozart In Paris

Today is Mozart's 251st birthday. Last year the whole world celebrated his 250th with an endless outpouring of concerts, exhibits and discussions. Somtimes we can be excessive about Mozart. He continues to fascinate because his genius seems to grow and deepen as time goes on, although every now and then there's a critic. I believe the great Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi found Mozart too academic (meaning, I suppose, not original).

Mozart spent some time in Paris. His stays there were a mixture of happiness and tragedy, as this elegantly written article by Susan Spano of the LA Times, from last August, informs us:

This year, cities across Europe are sponsoring concerts and tours to mark the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Many places beyond Salzburg, Austria, where Mozart was born in 1756, and Vienna, where he died in 1791, can claim connections to him because, besides being a composer of genius, he was a great traveler. Mozart spent 10 of his 35 years on the road, performing, composing and looking for work.

As a child prodigy, he first visited Paris in 1763 and 1764 before going to England, stopped in the city again in 1766 on his way home and then returned in 1778. So I sought him out here, even though he wasn't altogether enraptured by the City of Light.

By the time of his second visit at age 22, with only his mother, Anna Maria, as chaperon, the composer had developed a distaste for the need to bow and scrape to musically ignorant members of the French aristocracy on whom his career depended. Paris, he wrote to a friend, "is totally opposed to my genius, inclinations, knowledge and sympathies…. God grant only that I may not impair my talents by staying here."

Still, Paris was an inescapable stop for any aspiring musician on tour in the 18th century: It was the capital of a strong, rich nation and epicenter of the Enlightenment. Mozart was here during the lifetimes of Rousseau and Voltaire and when France took up the cause of the American Revolution.

Mozart left light footprints here, partly because many of the places related to him no longer exist. For instance, the royal palace where several of his compositions premiered was burned by insurgents during the Communard rebellion of 1871; the beautiful Tuileries garden now occupies the site. Other apparent Mozart pilgrimage sites postdate the composer, such as the boulevard named for him on the western side of the city, in a 16th arrondissement neighborhood that grew up more than a century after his death.

It takes a little imagination to track the musical genius in Paris. But Paris and nearby Versailles were the scenes of several formative episodes in Mozart's life. On his first visit, Mozart and his family went to Versailles, where they were entertained by Louis XV. When he returned to Paris 15 years later, his mother died of fever, shortly after the debut of his "Paris" Symphony.

Here are some of the places in and around the City of Light that still make a Mozart aficionado hear the opening strains of the "Paris" Symphony:

• When Leopold Mozart, Wolfgang's father, arrived in Paris on Nov. 18, 1763, with his wife, 11-year old daughter Maria Anna (known as Nannerl) and Wolfgang, the family stayed in the town house of the Count van Eyck, the Bavarian ambassador to France, the Hôtel Beauvais at 68 Rue de François-Miron in the stylish Marais quartier on the Right Bank. The building has been beautifully renovated and now serves as the city's Administrative Court of Appeal.

You can step into the cobblestone courtyard and imagine the little family arriving in a carriage, weary but hopeful.

Nannerl's clavier performances delighted salon society, but when it was Wolfgang's turn to perform, audiences were astounded. He could play any music put before him and improvise for hours.

When the family returned to Paris in 1766 after a visit to London, Wolfgang performed for the Prince de Conti at the Palais du Temple. The building was later torn down, but there's a charming painting of the occasion, "English Tea in the Salon of the Quatre-Glaces at the Palais du Temple" by Michel Barthélemy Ollivier, at the Château de Versailles.

• Versailles, about a 45-minute train ride from Paris, is another important destination for Mozart lovers because it was there that he found favor with the French royal family on New Year's Day 1764. After the boy's performance, the daughters of Louis XV cuddled and kissed Mozart, as did the king's daughter-in-law Marie Antoinette.

When Mozart returned to France in 1778, he was offered a position as organist at Versailles, which he rejected. Still, his music will again echo there during a concert series dedicated to him, mounted by the Center for Baroque Music at Versailles, in November and December.

• Several Paris museums offer further traces of Mozart, especially the Music Museum at the Cité de la Musique in the 19th arrondissement. The museum is closed for renovation but will feature an exhibit on the creation of the composer's "Paris" Symphony when the museum reopens in mid-September.

The Sully Wing at the Louvre displays French paintings from the period, including Fragonard's "The Music Lesson," which recalls Mozart's employment as a composition teacher to the daughter of the Comte de Guines in 1778.

• Mozart's "Paris" Symphony was first performed on June 18, 1778, in the Salle des Cent-Suisses at the Tuileries Palace. Afterward, to celebrate his triumph, the composer had some ice cream in a cafe at the Palais Royale, where le tout Paris congregated. Today, you can do the same thing at the Restaurant du Palais Royale or indulge in a gourmet dinner at Le Grand Véfour, one of the city's oldest, most storied restaurants.

• Around the same time, Mozart's mother fell ill and spent her last days half delirious, with Wolfgang at her bedside in a cold, cramped Right Bank apartment. She died July 3, 1778, and was buried in a cemetery once attached to the church of St. Eustache on the northern side of Les Halles. Her gravesite is lost, but in a St. Eustache side chapel dedicated to St. Cecilia, is a marble tablet commemorating her death.

Mozart left Paris a few months later, alone and disheartened, never dreaming that the city's fabled light would eventually shine upon him.

The marvelous painting of the boy genius is by French painter Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805), who also did a beautiful portrait of Benjamin Franklin. The painting must have been executed during Mozart's first trip (1763) to Paris. Read about Greuze at Wikipedia.

Parallel Justice

A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail from one Hubert Delompré with a link to a Google video. The video is about 10 minutes long, entirely in French, and I did not understand everything, but I grasped the general ideas. I'm posting the link here for anyone who knows French well and who might be interested.

The author of the video, Eric Boutarin, describes it as an exposé of the "parallel justice system": the hidden network that operates according to its own laws.

It presents accusations against the French justice system by people who have been its victims. For example, the farmer whose neighbor wants 30,000 euros in damages because of the disturbance from the farm animals, a woman who talks of how Freemasonry has infiltrated the justice system; the numerous books about the Freemasons and their influence in the courts; Monsieur Delompré himself appears in the video and talks of the closed world of the Freemasons; throughout, there is emphasis on the closing of ranks and the self-protectiveness of the justice system, and the barrier between the judges and the real world.

I have no expertise in this matter. I found the video interesting, but I'm not able to evaluate its premises. But many articles I've read over the last year corroborate the notion of predetermined partiality on the part of the judges, especially in matters of crime.

So far over 3700 people have viewed the video and a sequel is promised. If you want to leave a message for Hubert Delompré, go to his website.

Magistrates Convicted

I came upon another pig story in France-Echos, but this has nothing to do with soup. It seems that a magistrates' union has insulted the police by portraying them as pigs. It's difficult to imagine a "labor union" for judges, but the Syndicat de la Magistrature seems to be just that, and very left-wing. I often see accusations of freemasonry directed against French judges by various bloggers:

The Syndicat de la Magistrature has been convicted of portraying a policeman as a pig.

This bit of information has been kept under lock and key by our dear media. One cannot repeat too often that scandalous manipulations of propaganda have replaced news, ever since the current resident of Elysée Palace took over.

The "Syndicat de la Magistrature", an extreme left-wing union, was convicted in the appeals court for having portrayed a policeman as a pig in one of its brochures...

For a union whose Islamic-Leftist orientation is well-known (systematic attacks against the police, defense of jihadists in the "banlieues"), to portray a policeman as a pig was nothing more than a new way of showing allegiance to the CPF (bringers of good fortune, i.e., immigrants, in the words of Chirac) who are in fact accustomed to calling the police "pigs"...

Note: This I can imagine very well. They probably got it from our own ghetto dwellers, who have been calling cops "pigs" since the '60's.

France-Echos closes with this brief excerpt from a longer article by one Oswald Baudot, a member of the Syndicat, who wrote the doctrine it still lives by:

Always examine the strengths and the weaknesses, which do not necessarily correspond to "criminal" and "victim". Have a prejudice in favor of the wife against the husband, of the child against the father, of the debtor against the creditor, of the worker against the boss, of the person run over against the insurance company of the one who ran over him, of the thief against the policeman, of the plaintiff against the law.

I guess we have there, in very few words, the basis of the French judicial system. It's possible that on the surface it appears otherwise - that justice is applied fairly in many cases. But underneath that top layer runs this very subversive current of ...socialism? freemasonry? abuse of power?

Here was Jean-Marie Le Pen's reply:

One cannot but rejoice at seeing the Syndicat de la Magistrature convicted for having published a book insulting the police, the cover of which showed a polliceman as a pig, his eyes popping out and licking his chops.

It is nonetheless regrettable that this conviction, moderate and discreet, only comes in a higher court, more than five years after the fact.

And it remains scandalous that a third of the French magistrates are affiliated with a union that advocates subversive ideas, that undermines the job of the police and that stubbornly attempts to have a verdict overturned.

Is The Honeymoon Over?

While Le Pen's supporters berate Philippe de Villiers for not joining the union of patriots, we learn that Marine Le Pen would like to pretend that Bruno Mégret is NOT in the union. Since Mégret only recently joined in, to the applause of Le Pen supporters, it is all the more mysterious that Marine would want to break up the relationship once again. (Reminder: Mégret had been a Le Pen collaborator, but broke away to join his own party, the MNR).

This is from Marie, a contributor to France-Echos:

The vice president of the Front National, Marine Le Pen, stated today her belief that a joint presidential campaign of her party with the MNR of Bruno Mégret would not be a "good thing", because it could "ruffle the feathers" of the rank and file of the FN as well as the voters.

I thought that Monsieur Mégret was supposed to form an alliance with the FN; now look at how he's pushed aside, and this happens after certain people rail against Philippe de Villiers for his refusal to join the FN.

I believe that the FN is completely off course, it has taken a wrong direction. Monsieur Mégret ought to leave the FN and join de Villiers' MPF. The FN is a political cadaver!

About 10 days ago an article appeared in Le Monde that quoted Jean-Marie Le Pen as saying:

"Each organization that supports my candidacy in the framework of the Patriotic Union...will campaign each one separately, parallel to the Front National..." With regard to a convention scheduled for February in Lille, Le Pen said: "No one will be invited to participate or to speak..." Furthermore, Le Pen sees "no reason" to invite Mégret to a dinner being held in Yvetot on January 27. Finally Le Pen does not find it "fitting" to hold a press conference with Mégret in early February, as Carl Lang, the vice-president of the FN had suggested as a "minimal" gesture.

These decisions ought to please Marine Le Pen, the strategist of the FN, who does not want Mégret present in Lillie, and who sees "more disadvantages than advantages" in a joint campaign.

Bruno Mégret declared: "These decisions are contrary to the strategy desired by Mr. Le Pen when he formed the Union of Patriots, but I've known that there was a movement within the FN, led by Marine Le Pen and Louis Aliot,

It is still not clear whether the differences between the two men are ideological or personal, but it is seems undeniable that Le Pen only wanted Mégret for the signatures of "sponsors", and for little else. It's also not clear if Marine is running her father or if he wants it to look that way.

Uncharitable Disruption

Even if you don't know French, the video posted at François Desouche's website demonstrates clearly the efforts of the pro-Le Pen SDF charity to disrupt the meeting of the Movement for France referred to in the previous post. The SDF, whose rebelliousness resulted in a new law banning the use of pork meat in the soup kitchens, does not forgive Philippe de Villiers for his lack of support in the pork soup fiasco. Nor has de Villiers made any clarification on the matter. It is still not clear if Guillaume Peltier made a bad judgment, if he was acting independently of his boss, or if he was following orders.

At any rate it is necessary to read the long series of comments following the video to better understand the animosity that reigns between the followers of Le Pen and those of de Villiers. To do this you need to know French and French slang. And you need to be able to decipher the incredible number of spelling errors they made. Le Pen's followers are often called "identitaires" referring to French identity. Here are just a few excerpts that barely convey the animated nature of the discussion:

- I was there. They were ridiculous - very vulgar. The "identitaires" are not worthy of the animal they claim to be defending.

- "We all eat pork", don't we PDV? Don't we, Peltier? Come join the alliance and stop sulking in your corner...

- I'm torn between the FN and the MPF...But those "identitaires" who were shouting "sons of b......" to the people going in...What is the identity of these imbeciles? That is not France.

- The UMPS (combined UMP and PS parties) has a secret plan to close all the pig farms in France. We're heading right for the wall with these a..holes.

- The SDF charity was not rude or vulgar. It was Peltier who was vulgar when he came out against the charity.

- De Villiers' supporters are really UMP people who think like Le Pen but who are afraid to vote for him because he's a faaaascist! And if the second round is Le Pen vs. Sarko, they will vote for Sarko.

- Let's all get behind Le Pen. It's not too late. 2007 is our last chance to send a strong signal.

- Le Pen is for the PEOPLE. There are certainly more working class people in the FN than in the MPF. Being from Vendée, I know who will vote for de Villiers: bourgeois, non-traditional Catholics, wealthy estate owners, etc...or "arrivistes" who hope to get something at the departmental level...

- Frankly, I don't see how anyone could vote for de Villiers. It's clear that those who vote for him have the same ideas as Le Pen but don't dare vote for him because their conscience would bother them. De Villiers is a charlatan, that's clear!

- ...this meeting was a carnival. Between the tracts given out by the SDF, and those from the FN and AF (Action Française), it was a free-for-all. And frankly the reactions were positive on the subject of the pork soup, and on the topic of a union of patriots. So from that it's easy to infer a serious discrepancy between Peltier and the leaders and supporters of the MPF...

- ...Villiers must have been and still is very good in his region, but he has neither the charisma, the time or the backing for anything else...

The crux of the lively discussion centers on the real motivations of PDV, his raison d'être, and his foolishness at distancing himself from Le Pen. And their guiding principle is the belief that those who support PDV are really Le Pen supporters who are afraid to admit it out of fear of being associated with an anti-Semite and a "fascist".

The dynamics of the Le Pen/de Villiers rivalry have not changed in a year. Le Pen's dislike of Jews and his concerted efforts to win the Muslim vote, on the one hand, and Philippe de Villiers' efforts in the opposite direction, to win the Jewish support and to condemn the rise of Islam in France, is a BIG and surely irreconcilable division between these two men. Besides which, Le Pen has been in the public eye for decades as an outspoken patriot, while de Villiers appears an upstart. Over the next 5 years, Philippe de Villiers must work to win over as many Sarkozy supporters as possible, because it doesn't look as if he will win Le Pen's followers.

Reminders of the pork soup affair:

Last Straw - on the decision of the Council of State to ban the soup.

Tempest in a Soup Bowl - on Guillaume Peltier's unexpected support for the ban.

Soupe du Jour - an update on Peltier and some thoughts from France-Echos with comments from me very similar to those expressed here.

Kicking Off

Philippe de Villiers officially kicked off his campaign on Saturday January 20 with a big rally in Paris. As he says in the video posted at his website, he's been campaigning for a while but the media didn't know it. In his speech he sounds confident, assertive and in control of the situation. I'm still not sure how many "sponsors" ("parrainages") he has. A candidate needs 500 sponsors (usually mayors) to get on the ballot. Here is a synopsis of the event from his website:

The leader of the Movement for France, Philippe de Villiers, attracted more than 2600 people on Saturday, January 20 at Mutualité Convention Center for the launching of his campaign. "We're 13 weeks away from the election and Mutualité is overflowing," declared an enthusiastic Guillaume Peltier late Saturday afternoon. "This is our poll, our life-size poll." After the showing of two films on the Villiers campaign and his accomplishments on the national level and his accomplishments as head of the department of Vendée, the president of the MPF outlined in detail his program if he became president of the French Republic. "I want nothing of Ségolène Royal, because it's just socialism with marketing added. Nor do I want the American-style Right, with its Euroglobalization and its ethnic communities ("communautariste") so dear to Nicolas Sarkozy," declared Philippe de Villiers, stressing that he intended to represent "a patriotic Right that governs, that does not merely protest, and I want my ideas to prevail tomorrow."

When he speaks of the American "Right", he is of course speaking of the current style of the Republican Party, with its emphasis on globalization, open-borders, Turkey in Europe, multi-culturalism, and universal democracy for all. There is another American conservatism, much closer in spirit to that of de Villiers, but it hasn't yet become a force to contend with. In our 2008 election it may make a strong showing, and look ahead to 2012, just as de Villiers' supporters are looking to 2012.

This will be a long 5 years.

A New Collaboration

Jérôme Rivière, the deputy from Nice, and a member of Sarkozy's UMP party has been the subject of two posts at Galliawatch: the first when he defended Pope Benedict XVI and the second when he was summarily removed from the UMP's slate, as candidate for the post he now holds, in the upcoming legislative elections (June 2007). All of his attempts to be heard in court over the issue have proved futile.

Many of his positions are close to those of Philippe de Villiers and much speculation has been stimulated over a possible shift to the MPF, de Villiers' party. Such speculation cannot but increase now that he has been named as chairman of Philippe de Villiers' election committee.

According to Le Monde:

The UMP deputy from Alpes-Maritime, Jérôme Rivière, whose candidacy in the next legislative elections was not renewed, will be the chairman of Philippe de Villiers' election committee...

The official announcement will be made Thursday (January 25) in Paris, during a joint press conference by Rivière and de Villiers. Mr. Rivière, age 42, was elected deputy for the first time in 2002, and is also a member of the CNI (National Center for Independents and Farmers), a group affiliated with UMP.

Though a member of UMP, Jérôme Rivière defended positions that were close to those of de Villiers. He had voted "no" on the referendum for a European constitution. He criticized the backing-off of the government on the CPE (First Job Contract) in the spring. And he has denounced immigration and the rise of Islam in France. In December, he sided with Mr. de Villiers in his proposal to ban the veil in public places.

Mr. Rivière lost his place on the UMP slate to Eric Ciotti, a close collaborator of Sarkozy's Minister of Territorial Development, Christian Estrosi, after a vote taken by the rank and file ("militants") in his district. He took legal action, but the lower courts refused to hear the case.

The photo showing him with his constituents from Nice comes from his website.

Winter Procrastinates

I've been waiting for snow to give me an excuse to post some wintry scenes, but on the East Coast we've had but a few handfuls of snowflakes, while other parts of the country have encountered calamitous weather conditions, and I see that Canada experienced wind storms.

The small amount of snow we've had has resulted in scenes not unlike the one in Edward Willis Redfield's painting of a Bucks County, Pennsylvania road. Bucks County is not far from where I live. It is an area famous for the many artists, musicians and writers who have lived and worked there. Redfield, an American who studied in Paris, is described thus by the University of Kentucky Art Museum:

Redfield was the leading spirit of Pennsylvania "Impressionists" and critics praised his matter-of-fact depictions that avoided sentiment and anecdotal detail. A native of Delaware, Redfield studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (under William Merritt Chase) before traveling to Paris with Robert Henri in 1887. He later recalled that, when he was in France, "our gods were painters like Degas and Monet." As early as 1891, when he was in the art colony of Fontainebleau, the artist was fascinated by the beauty of a landscape cloaked in snow, a subject which would become his signature theme after returning to the United States. Redfield’s working method was to paint on site and to allow one "tone" to infuse the scene in color and in mood. Bucks County Winter is a view from near the artist’s home at New Hope, Pennsylvania, and its diffuse light of twilight and restrained color scheme are typical of the artist’s winter landscapes which seem to dissolve amid the effects of light and weather.

EDWARD WILLIS REDFIELD American, 1869-1965
Bucks County Winter, 1898
Oil on canvas

Candlelight Vigil

A 6-minute video has just been posted at Daily Motion showing the candlelight vigil that took place on January 21, in Paris, in honor of King Louis XVI who was guillotined on that day.

Unfortunately the video is very dark, but I still found it interesting, a bit eerie and somewhat out of tune - they sing patriotic chants, but the soloists, whoever they are sound flat. Despite these defects, if you're interested in this showing by the most patriotic segment of French society, you should take a look. I don't know if this happens every January 21, or if it's a new movement. It seems to have been sponsored by "Action Française", an old and ultra-patriotic organization founded by Charles Maurras, a rather notorious figure in French history.

The little logo says: For God and for the King. Fight Back!

Keeping Up With Ségolène

This English-language synopsis on the perils of Ségolène appeared in The First Post. With thanks to the reader who sent it:

French socialists who feared all along that once Segolene Royal's novelty value wore off there would be little else to appeal to voters are already saying: 'We told you so.'

Only a week since her opponent Nicholas Sarkozy was anointed presidential candidate for the right, Royal's shaky start for the left has deepened the suspicions that she lacks substance.

One Socialist Party mischief-maker even called a reporter from Le Monde during a private party summit and left his mobile phone open so that the journalist could listen blow-by-blow as Royal attempted to defend her attachment to an uninspiring electoral strategy of 'public participation'.

All Sarkozy has had to do is look on amused as Segolene staggers from one false move to another. First, she had to slap down the soak-the-rich tax plans of Francois Hollande, the father of her four children as well as the Socialist Party general secretary. People must not be discouraged from working hard, she warned - only to learn that most French voters actually side with Hollande.

Then the Royal household was hit by internet whispers about its own tax arrangements. And just as she was reassuring the public that her affairs were beyond reproach, her campaign was undermined by a bizarre gaffe involving a senior spokesman.

Arnaud Montebourg protested that he was only joking when he said on television that Royal's only drawback was her partner. It failed to stop her suspending him for a month, an unwelcome embarrassment at a time when she needs all the communications help she can get.

Royal's admirers are pinning their hopes on a powerful showing when she reveals her 'hierarchy of priorities' on February 11. They may also be hoping she avoids the sort of slip of the tongue that caused her to refer to the manifesto launch date as September 11.

From Boz, whose ability to keep up with the stellium of candidates borders on the miraculous, come these and scores of other posts:

- The one on tax cuts - where she says that Sarko's plan to reduce taxes is a "dangerous step...it is scandalous to lower taxes on the most favored."

- The one on her radio interview with Quebec's André Boisclair, head of the Quebec Independence Party - where she manages to say the one thing she should have known not to say. Although Charles de Gaulle did the same thing back in the '60's and raised a storm of controversy too. She apparently didn't learn the lesson - is she even aware of what happened back then?

- The one on her own tax situation - where Ségolène Royal's personal tax situation is the topic du jour. Boz is right to be perplexed about the taboo on money. Apparently the French expect their socialists to be real members of the working-class, while here we tend to expect people to have money even if they're socialists. I worked with many left-wingers and socialists and they were all well-off and talked endlessly about money. The people with less money tended to be more religious, more patriotic and much more conservative. It took a while for me to realize this.

- Finally, Boz links to a 3-page Newsweek article on the Ségo/Sarko confrontation. Here are two short excerpts:

Both Sarko and Ségo are free floaters—belonging to neither of their parties, but to their own ambitions. Each is running as an outsider, against the old idea of France but not defining, more positively, the new France that they imagine. And so, instead of a battle of ideas we have a clash of personalities.

...the French today (as in the era of Mollet) seem to have forgotten that France remains the European Union's indispensable nation. No other country has done as much to create modern Europe; no other can lead it to a more dynamic future, Germany's pretensions notwithstanding. Without a new France, Europe will remain stuck. Which makes this spring's election prospects seem altogether discouraging.

Note: When you finish reading Boz's post on her interview with Boisclair, go to Covenant Zone where Charles Henry has both pertinent comments, and a video showing her as she fell into the trap created by her own ignorance. She breezily moves on and smiles as if nothing had happened.

No question that she is repeating the same mistake over and over of not being prepared to deal with questions of substance and hot-button issues that may not be important to her but matter to others.

Abbé Pierre (1912-2007)

Abbé Pierre, born Henri Antoine Grouès, has died at age 94. French Wikipedia has a long, mostly flattering web page on his life and works. A shorter version of the same in English can be found here.

I'm not intimately familiar with the details of his life, but I know he has been a polarizing figure, with many French people regarding him as a saint, and others firmly convinced he was a subversive. He has been consistently at the top of popularity polls in France, like a show-business idol, something his critics have often accused him of being.

As far as I can gather this all breaks down along political lines. The socialists adore him and the patriots hate him, or at least have serious reservations. There are also unresolved issues. For example, his supporters claim he helped the Jews during the war, but these claims have never been corroborated. There is also a suspicion that he joined Pétain for a while, that his work in the French Resistance was a last-minute affair, and so on.

A French blog entitled I Like Your Style (Ilys, for short) has a long condemnation of Abbé Pierre that includes a link to another accusatory article at France Courtoise. In this article we learn that after World War II France was in desperate need of housing. Four million housing units were lacking and the housing that did exist had no comfort. We learn also that this was due in part to the criminal negligence of the governments that ruled between the two wars. Two radically different plans were proposed: the first, that of the highly successful planner and entrepreneur Raoul Dautry, advocated a long-term quality housing program; the second plan, that of the construction industry, sought twice as many housing units immediately:

Behind this (second) lobby was an occult group, called "X-crisis", consisting of idealistic Stalinists, Fascists, world-governmentalists, all determined to replace France with a mixture of individuals without roots, without traditions, without family, coagulated into a force of production and consumption on State territories run first by a supra-national European administration, and then by a world organization.

This plan presupposed the eradication of traditional structures, which in France means essentially race, peasantry and family.

To accomplish this genocide mass housing is the most discreetly efficient weapon...

The confrontation between Dautry and what one could call the "ruling groups" was vicious and killed Dautry.

At this point Abbé Pierre comes into the picture. The pressure groups needed a person of "star" status to convince the public of the need for massive housing:

It was a man from the "World Citizens" movement, a companion of Albert Camus, André Breton, of the communist Vercors, etc..: Abbé Pierre, priest, deputy, resistance fighter, with a big mouth, in short an "icon"...

From then on the "priest in a Canadian beret" spoke regularly on the radio...

In a few days, under public pressure, the Dautry plan was forgotten, the project was refinanced: one part of the money would finance the urgently needed projects, the rest would pay for durable housing, of a more rudimentary quality that originally intended.

We know the result:

- Large inhuman developments, with no infrastructure, no businesses, no recreation, no green spaces. Provisional structures that have lasted...

- The over-burdened building industry began importing more and more immigrant workers.

The social bomb that is today exploding in the face of the French was born like that. And one of its engineers was Henri Grouès, alias Abbé Pierre.

Returning now to the original article in Ilys, it mentions his sexual adventures, his support for the ordaining of homosexual priests, his close friendship with Roger Garaudy, a writer who was imprisoned for holocaust denial, his support for the European constitution, but it stresses most of all his association with organizations seeking world democracy and his relations with Garry Davis, founder of the World Citizen Foundation. Davis at one point sought an International Registry of World Citizens, i.e. a registry of human beings in a world-governed data base.

The article cites passages from the 1947 declaration of the Universal Movement for a World Confederation of which Abbé Pierre was vice-president:

"We, the world federalists, meeting in Montreux for the first Congress of the Universal Movement for a World Confederation, call on all peoples to join our efforts.

"We are convinced that humanity cannot survive another world conflict...

"It's not between free enterprise and regulated economy, between capitalism and communism that we must choose, but between federalism and imperialism.

"Only federalism can assure the survival of man...

"Such a federation would rest on the following principles:

...Limitation of national sovereignties and transferral to the Confederation of legislative, executive and judiciary powers necessary for the management of world affairs.

...Guarantee of the rights of man and repression of any attack on the security of the Confederation.

...Creation of a supra-national army...Disarmement of the member States, taking into account their need for a police force

...Power of direct taxation...independent of the budgets of the member States

The article closes with a reminder that it is no surprise that former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, author of the European constitution, has called for a State funeral for Abbé Pierre...

The Snake Pit

It appears, from an article by Le Conservateur, and cited by Vox Galliae, that Guillaume Peltier has once again put his foot in it. This time it is not so much what he said but the venue where he said it that has aroused the anger of conservatives who are, more or less, on his side.

For reasons known only to him, Peltier agreed to face off with television host Laurent Ruquier, known for his aggressive method of questioning, his rapaciousness, and his extreme left-wing positions. Besides the host, the young left-wing audience was primed to boo and hiss at the mere mention of the name Sarkozy.

Peltier's decision to appear allowed him to experience the "sting of French intellectual terrorism, of being shouted down...and attacked both by the other guests and the host himself."

Le Conservateur believes this type of show is a remnant of the past when a small clique attempted to direct the country and to dictate which opinions were good or bad:

If the media still possess an enormous power that benefits principally the Left, the progressives, and the immigrationists, recent history has shown that in France, as in other Western countries, there is an ever-widening chasm between popular opinion and the Master's Voice of the media, a chasm nowhere more visible than in election results and other nationwide referenda.

I should add that Guillaume Peltier committed a serious error of communication, which unfortunately is becoming a trademark of the MPF: during the discussion, the young general secretary let fly his entire repertory of proposals, that were often out of sync in the stifling cosmopolitan-Parisian context of the show, instead of concentrating on a few ideas solidly defended. Opposite him, was an especially hateful Ruquier, who lashed out on the topic of the death penalty in contradictory fashion, and denounced limitations on the rights of illegal aliens and punishment of those that help them as bad ideas.

And then there was the rapper Abd el Malik, who questioned Guilaume Peltier on the theme: "why do you want to frighten people with Islam, and what do you know about Islam". Great example of Muslim double-talk. What connection is there between this rapper who is a Mohammedan media creation, and the real Muslims that the French encounter every day, in Gennevilliers or in Clichy for example, with their beards, jellaba, veiled wife, and 5 kids, some of whom, if girls, may also be veiled?

The fact is that Monsieur Peltier would be well-advised not to appear on this type of show where his massacre is prepared in advance. Of course, the job of this ambitious young man is to increase the fame of his candidate, not to convince or convert brainless young left-wingers. But the adage "all publicity is good publicity" has inherent limits.

I don't know if there is a video available of this television show, but I have seen Laurent Ruquier in action on another video when he interviewed at length Ayan Hirsi Ali, the Somalian anti-Islam activist. While she was certainly as a lamb to the slaughter, she remained resolutely calm as he tore into her, humiliating her by stressing over and over the fact of her circumcision, pretending that he had been deeply affected by her description of her ordeal, and so forth...She never lost her composure and maintained throughout her conviction that the problem was the Koran. I think she had an easier time than Guillaume Peltier, because she had to have an interpreter. This probably acted as something of a buffer between her and the media predators.

January 21, 1793

A painting by an anonymous artist of the execution of King Louis XVI on this date 214 years ago. The painting, featured at Insecula, is in the Carnavalet Museum in Paris.

From Herodote, this brief recollection:

Louis XVI, age 38, was executed on January 21, 1793 at Place de la
Révolution (formerly Place Louis XV, today Place de la Concorde).

The fallen king died with dignity and courage. His hands tied behind his back, he advanced toward the scaffold and cried out to the crowd:

"Frenchmen, I die innocent; I forgive my enemies; I want my death to be..."A drum roll covered his last words.

As soon as Louis XVI was decapitated, the executioner showed the head to the crowd which responded with the cry: "Long Live the Nation! Long Live the Republic!"

The Right In The EU Parliament

I first learned of a new political group in the European Parliament from Vox Galliae:

Following one last meeting, the various elected officials of the Right in the European Parliament reached an accord on Tuesday on the formation of a new political group...The new group will contain 20 members, 3 of them from Vlaams Belang (the Belgian right-wing party) and 7 from the Front National. This is the minimum required by parliamentary rules to form a political group. The new party, which is called "Identity, Sovereignty and Tradition, will be presided over by Bruno Gollnisch (Le Pen's nº2 man).

An article in Le Figaro elaborates, explaining that the arrival of Rumanian and Bulgarian deputies enabled the formation of the new group:

The hardest task remaining for this extreme right-wing group is to formulate a political synthesis. Seven deputies from the FN will have to cohabit with 3 colleagues from the Flemish Vlaams Belang which advocates the breaking-up of Belgium. In this heteroclite group one also finds the granddaughter of Il Duce, Alessandra Mussolini, the British deputy Ashley Mote, whose anti-European party, the UKIP, delights in the financial scandals involving ethnic communities, as well as the 5 deputies of the Grand Rumania party, and a Bulgarian from the Ataka coalition, two groups reputed to be anti-Semitic and anti-gypsy.

The Bulgarian deputy, Dimitar Stoyanov recently brought attention to himself when he explained that in Bulgaria, the gypsy women were "much prettier" than elsewhere...He added that in Bulgaria, "one can even buy an adorable little wife 12 or 13 years old. The best ones are very expensive, up to 5000 euros."

Austrian deputy Andreas Mölzer, a member of the FPÖ, the party formerly led by Jorg Haïder, stated: "The parties we come from are very different, but we can, nevertheless, agree upon a minimal political consensus...opposition to massive immigration, to Turkey in the EU and to a European constitution." Polish deputies from the Family League, which has been accused of being anti-Semitic and anti-gypsy, could join the group in the future...

Le Figaro closes with word that European NGO's have expressed alarm and have called on the other parliamentary parties to refuse to work with this "extremist" group.

Le Conservateur, the polar opposite of the European NGO's, warns about the attempts by the Left to sabotage the new parliamentary group:

By exceeding the requirement of 19 deputies from 6 different nationalities, this group theoretically has the right to 2 vice-presidencies in the European Parliament. But not if the Left has its way. They are putting into place a "quarantine" ("cordon sanitaire), by means of a temporary transfer of deputies between the socialists, the extreme-Left and the ecologists that may deprive this new group of its legitimate parliamentary rights.

However, to be willing to get into bed with the communists and ecologists in order to "protect oneself from the vermin" does not strike me as a very satisfying or sanitary solution.

I might add that the FN should be wary of its new Rumanian and Bulgarian allies whose political track record is non-existent. Creating a parliamentary group is fine. But getting in with bad company is dangerous.

Photo from Archiguide.

Bruno Gollnisch Convicted

A reader pointed out to me this article about Bruno Gollnisch in Al-Jazeera. It is an instructive testimony to two things: 1) The Gayssot Law is a disaster and should be abolished 2) Le Pen and his men never cease to be deliberately provocative.

Here are the opening paragraphs:

The leader of a new far-right bloc in the European Parliament has been found guilty of holocaust denial and given a suspended three-month prison sentence.

Bruno Gollnisch, the number two in Jean-Marie Le Pen's Front National party in France, was also fined $6,500 by a court in Lyon.

The court ruled on Thursday that Gollnisch had "disputed a crime against humanity" in remarks he made during a news conference in the French city on October 11, 2004.

Gollnisch was not in court for the verdict as he was attending a session of the European Parliament, where he recently became the leader of a new far-right political group called Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty.

Read the whole article here.

The Gayssot Law, in case it needs to be repeated, makes holocaust denial a crime. The law, controversial from the start, was the presumably progressive, but in fact totalitarian response to the problem of overt statements by various people that the holocaust was a myth.

We can forbid children to say certain things in the classroom; outside of the classroom we have no power over them. In passing this law Chirac was treating his subjects like school children, forgetting or not caring that designating certain statements as a crime was only to invite the uttering of such statements by those who refuse to be cowed by such a law. Bruno Gollnisch knew exactly what he was doing when he made his remarks and his purpose was to show the inherent wrongness of Gayssot. But more than that, he wins allies among the rather large block of voters who believe the holocaust is a myth.

I understand that in many French schools teachers are unable to teach the holocaust because the Muslim kids react and rebel, sometimes violently, against such information. Chirac would do better to go talk to his young Muslim subjects and tell them they have to learn European history including the full story of the Second World War, rather than pass laws designed to make a bad situation worse.

The Gayssot is one of several crippling laws that attempt to legislate history or to make the French feel guilty for their past. There was also a bill to make Armenian genocide denial a crime. Taubira's law designates the Atlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity, opening the door to possible legal action against descendants of those who practiced it. And finally, on the other side of the coin, there is a law requiring (or at least authorizing, I'm not sure) history teachers to teach the positive side of French colonization in Africa and elsewhere. This was passed in response to complaints that only the negative side of colonization was permitted as a topic in the classroom. So here is a law designed to make the French feel less guilty!

As society deteriorates it become litigious, and both leaders and subjects become dependent on an ever-growing number of laws to bail them out of situations that never should have been created in the first place.

As for the last part of Al-Jazeera's article, it is commendable of Chirac to pay homage to the Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who risked their lives to help Jews during the war. But this recognition comes rather late, since many of those people are now gone.

One last note: There are different opinions on the Gayssot Law. Philippe de Villiers has expressed support for it.

Sarko Ho Ho Ho

A campaign video from Nicolas Sarkozy is making the rounds of some websites. Le Conservateur posted it, and anyone can view it at Daily Motion. It may be unfair to judge men by the type of campaign they lead. They are under intense pressure to please as many people as possible. And I am certainly too old to appreciate the type of "sounds" that accompany the video. But let's hope he governs better than this video leads us to believe. The opening "lyrics" are as follows:

Sarko Ho Hooo
Sarko à l'Elysée Ho
Sarko Ho Hooo
Dansent les drapeaux (the flags are dancing)
Sarko Ho Hooo
Notre président nouveau (our new president)
Sarko Ho Hooo
Go Go Sego KO ! (knock-out Ségo)
Sarko Ho Hooo
Il gagnera haut la main hoooo (he'll win hands down)
Sarko Ho Hooo
Y aura jamais photo! (there will never be a photo - possibly refers to photo-finish?)
Sarko Ho Hooo
Des lendemains toujours plus beaux ! (our future is very bright)
Sarko Ho Hooo
C'est tout ce qu'il nous faut. (he's all that we need)

C'est de l'énergie Sarkozy (It's Sarko's energy)
C'est l'amour de notre pays (It's the love of country)
Relever tous les grands défis (Facing all the great challenges)
Ca va nous changer la vie (That will change our lives)

Click here for this virtuoso performance.

One comment from the Daily Motion site:

This is painful. This guy is shameful...and to think he's going to be president. Yes, frankly it's frightening and completely ridiculous.

It's important to remember that he is running as a "rightist", or a "conservative". The trend by "conservatives" to partake of the vulgarities of popular culture is as apparent in France as here. This seems to be both a matter of taste and an attempt to prove to the world that they aren't really bad guys like Le Pen and Adolf Hitler, but nice everyday joes who love everybody. And it explains in part why some French bloggers have adopted the acronym UMPS which combines Sarko's UMP and Ségo's PS into one.

However, I'm not certain that even Ségolène Royal does this sort of thing. Her tactic is different: to present herself as modern version of Saint Joan, pure, clean as a whistle and deeply concerned about the inequalities she sees all around her. Sarko on the other hand, wants to be all things to all people.

"Frangland"?

I enjoyed reading this article, sent by a reader, about the secret proposed attempt to unite France and England back in 1956. Here are the opening paragraphs:

LONDON: Would France have been better off under Queen Elizabeth II?

The revelation that the French government proposed a union of Britain and France in 1956 — even offering to accept the sovereignty of the British Queen — has left scholars on both sides of the Channel scratching their heads.

Newly discovered documents in Britain's National Archives show how former French Prime Minister Guy Mollet (photo) discussed the possibility of a merger between the two countries with British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden.

"I completely fell off my seat," said Richard Vinen, an expert in French history at King's College in London. "It's such a bizarre thing to propose."

Eden rejected the idea of a union but was more favorable to a French proposal to join the Commonwealth, according to the documents — one of which said Mollet "had not thought there need be difficulty over France accepting the headship of her Majesty."

While the two nations — separated by a thin body of water — have been bitter rivals since the Middle Ages, the two EU partners now concentrate on trading tourists rather than arrows. What animosity remains has been relegated to name-calling, with the French and British reduced to froggies and rosbifs (roast beef) respectively.

Read the whole article here:

My question: was this the beginning of the abdication of national identity that we see today, or was it just a chimerical passing fancy? However my dictionary defines "chimera" as a "monster with a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail; a thing of hybrid character..." So, if such a fusion had taken place it could have rightly been called a "chimera".

The photo of socialist Prime Minister Guy Mollet from Charles de Gaulle.org . Though I cannot provide details, Mollet's brand of socialism conflicted with that of François Mitterand whose star was rising at this time. Mollet eventually withdrew from the new socialist party founded in 1971.

Farewell To A "Poilu"

Until Tuesday there were four veterans of the First World War left in France. Now they are three. René Riffaud, age 108, died in a nursing home in Tosny (Eure). On November 11 he had attended for the first time the armistice commemoration at the Arc of Triumph, since it wasn't until March 2006 that he was officially accorded the title of "veteran of World War I". Apparently he had never filed a request, an oversight recently corrected by his granddaughter.

According to the article in La Croix:

He was born into a family from the Jura (Eastern France) on December 19, 1898 in Souk el-Arba, Tunisia. There he was mobilized in 1917 into the 75th light artillery regiment...

"The war was a massacre...At the time, I did what everyone else did, I followed the movement, I was mobilized like any citizen," he explained last year.

On November 11, 1918, René Riffaud was in a small village in Lorraine when he heard that the war was over. "We were watching a bridge. An officer came and told us that the armistice had just been signed...That day we went into town to party, to eat white bread and to enjoy watching the flight of geese that took off to go bathing in the Rhine."

After the war René Riffaud worked as an electrician, then headed a company that repaired electrical motors...until his retirement in 1973.

Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie expressed her "sadness" at the death of the former "poilu" (the nickname for soldiers of 1918). "Each time it happens, it's a part of our living memory that disappears, but it is perhaps also an opportunity for us to remember and to show that the freedom, the independence of a country are values that are not definitively acquired...This should lead our young people to reflect on what they do for their country".

As bad as it is to see such men go, with their precious memories and their unique experiences, I can only express my admiration for his having lived to 108! He beat the odds many times over. He must have had great genes, and a tenacious will to live.

The First World War began in August 1914, intentionally triggered by Germany whose Kaiser had dreams of imposing German hegemony over all of Europe. The conquest of France was one of Germany's prime goals. The United States under Woodrow Wilson remained neutral until April 1917, when engagement became unavoidable. According to Wikipedia:

At 11:11 am on November 11, 1918 — the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month — a ceasefire came into effect and the opposing armies on the Western Front began to withdraw from their positions. Canadian George Lawrence Price is traditionally regarded as the last soldier killed in the Great War: he was shot by a German sniper and died at 10:58.

The war, known (sardonically) as the "war to end all wars" changed the face of the world and brought several great empires to a brutal end: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire that underwent the murderous transformation to communism.

Again according to Wikipedia:

The number of World War I casualties (military and civilian) was over 37 million - over 16 million deaths and 21 million wounded. This includes 9.7 million military deaths and about 6.5 million civilian deaths. The Allied Powers more than 5 million soldiers and the Central Powers about 4 million. Casualty numbers are a topic of debate due to the fact that official casualty statistics include combat related deaths as well as losses caused by accidents, disease and prisoner of war deaths.

France was devastated by the war that cost her a generation of young men: 1,397,800 military deaths, 40,000 civilian deaths, 1,437,800 total deaths, 4,266,000 military wounded.

The war did not really end with the Treaty of Versailles, but went into remission to explode again twenty years later. One could say it is still raging today.

Home-Schoolers Unite

Home-schooling has become almost a necessity in today's world. Parents wishing to spare their children the agony of dumbing-down and multi-cultural indoctrination, not to mention the violence and sexual aggressiveness that are rampant in our schools, often decide to "do it themselves". It's a very hard job and fierce discipline is required to home-school your own kids. I admire anyone who takes it on. The results have been, as far as I know, excellent. Of course, you also have to find a way of providing your kids with companions and group situations, since they are almost as important as the subject matter.

I had heard that the French parents who home-school their kids run into trouble with the authorities. An article by Charles Henry at Covenant Zone, based on an article at Le Salon Beige, discusses the support given to French parents by Americans who sympathized. I left a brief comment to which Charles responded. His response confirms what I have heard about home-schooled children.

France-Echos vs. Primo-Europe

Initially I saw article #11558 at France-Echos. I skimmed through it but all I could grasp was that a verbal battle was taking place between FE and the Jewish website Primo-Europe. It seemed that Primo had seriously insulted FE and its contributors, calling them, among other things, "brainless", "thirsting for raids against Muslims, "hordes of racists hungry for interethnic confrontations," "having genocidal thoughts on an unparalleled scale", "seeking to slaughter the Muslims of France, and by implication 1.2 billion others throughout the world." They did this without actually naming France-Echos, but the FE staff had no trouble recognizing themselves.

The reason for Primo's rage? The fact that France-Echos came out strongly for the SDF charity that until recently distributed soup with lard to the homeless of Paris and Nice. The accusation? Willfully depriving Jews and Muslims of food by adding lard to the soup, and thus being party to racial discrimination with implications of genocide, etc...

When I tried to access the Primo-Europe website it was unavailable (this was January 15).

Since then France-Echos has been flooded with e-mails and commentary from supporters, many of whom are now "refugees" from Primo-Europe. Its article #11569 published a few that I'm excerpting:

A contributor named Danièle addressed Primo:

What planet are you from? Do you realize what you have written? I'm not sure that your readers are following you into this mess of insults. Many of them, maybe most of them, must have recognized themselves since they read the sites that you are targeting as much if not more than they read Primo-Europe. If you want to kick them out of your group, you have succeeded...

I don't get it. What exactly do you want? That Primo-Europe become a private club whose members all speak like you?...This is not the Primo-Europe I knew. I was wrong about you and am removing you from my list of favorites, since you have offended me.

The French don't need people like you. Nor do the Israelis. They have just authorized the production of pork in their country and now you want to forbid its free distribution in a Christian or atheist country.

Note: It's news to me that Israel has authorized pig farming.

Another contributor who calls himself "A poor citizen sorry to be French and living in France" condemns Pierre Lefebvre, head of Primo-Europe for not caring about France:

All you have to do is read Pierre Lefebvre's New Year's wishes for 2007: "We will fight so that Israel is never again designated by the term "Zionist State" which implies an uncertain future; so that Sudan stops its genocide in Darfour; so that Iran becomes an enlightened democracy; so that foreigners are no longer foreign to us..."

Those are his "combats". And where are France and the French in all that? One would almost think it's not his problem...

To which a France-Echos editor adds:

And doesn't it bother him that France is designated as a racist State by the "racaille" and their friends?

Another Jewish reader named Golda says:

After reading you pamphlet I suggest that Primo-Europe take care of Israel and that's all, for you'll be much more useful.

Leave it to those whom you slander and who want France to be France once again (and not this multicultural magma in which France has lost her identity) to defend her. After all, would anyone deny her this right?

As for the pork soup, it's a false debate: it does not concern Muslims or Jews since they don't eat it. I don't see why the soup kitchens of France shouldn't use lard!!! They can eat pork if they feel like it, it's their right; France has been a Christian land for centuries.

After banning pork, they will forbid Jews to eat Kosher. Then you'll be caught in your own trap...

It will be as it was during the Inquisition except we'll all be obliged to eat Hallal.

So I support pork soup, not to eat it, but because I want to keep the right to eat Kosher.

Golda also sent a letter to the anti-pork soup mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë:

Rest assured, the Jewish community generally takes care of its own poor. As for Muslims, they have the right to refuse to eat it.

But one cannot forbid poor atheists, agnostics or Catholics from eating pork meat.

It boils down to allowing the Muslims - since this is really about them and they are your main unofficial preoccupation - to impose their food laws everywhere...

The battle raged on. But in subsequent articles at both Primo-Europe and France-Echos the underlying motivations for Primo's conduct became evident - at bottom was the fact that France-Echos had many more readers than Primo and this in turn was due to Primo's utopian outlook on Islam as a religion that could be modified and reformed. In fact Primo-Europe belongs to the now antiquated school of thought that says that "moderate Islam" is the solution. A corollary to this point of view is the tendancy to charge with "racism" anyone who does not agree.

France-Echos and Occidentalis have long since abandoned the belief in "moderate Islam". Primo-Europe admits to seeking the "impossible" and has lost readers and contributors because of it. To insult France-Echos for being more realistic and to take the side of those that are avowed enemies of Israel is foolish and self-defeating for an Israeli-based website. Some Jewish people rush to the defense of Muslims out of identification with an "oppressed minority". In doing so they disparage those elements in the Western countries that are trying to fight Islam and help the Jews. These internal divisions among the patriots serve the Muslims, the socialists, the establishment politicians, and the media very well.

A reminder that in America we have been told (was it Bush or Rice?) that anyone who does not believe Iraq is ready for democracy is a racist. And it was Rice who identified with the Palestinians as a fellow oppressed minority.

The same deadly arguments and the same deadly effects.

One last comment. If Islam is reformable it has to be done by Muslims themselves at their own pace, in their own countries. It cannot be forced on them. The Koran to them is the word of God, hence unchangeable.