For and Against Lagarde

Nicolas Sarkozy's current finance minister Christine Lagarde is likely (though not certain) to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn as head of the IMF. This article in The Telegraph tells why it is a poor choice. However, the author never mentions her role in bringing Islamic finance to France.

The view from France is quite different. Martine Aubry, the chairman of the French Socialist Party, and the mayor of Lille, has endorsed the candidacy of Lagarde to head the IMF. In a stinging article at Riposte Laïque Christine Tasin, who organized last year's demonstrations against Islamization, denounces Aubry and the coalition between big money and the Left. She begins by lashing out at those who took DSK for a Socialist, when he was in fact working for the United States, attempting to impose an ultra-liberal economic system, fueled only by economic interests, on the world, forcing countries (and the U.S. in particular) into debt, and leaving the people behind.

I cannot take time to comment on her thesis, but it is predicated on the assumption that old-time Socialists were "for" the people, and new-time Socialists are just a bunch of Americans/Internationalists out for money (or something close to that), hence not true Socialists. She is certainly idealizing the old-timers and assimilating the American system with everything evil in the world.

But her denunciation of Aubry is worth a look, and she reminds us of the unholy unofficial coalition between Sarkozy's UMP party and the PS, called the UMPS by bloggers and commentators:

(…) for several years, we have been denouncing the false bipartisanism that would like us to believe that we can choose and change. It is so fallacious that we are now used to speaking of the UMPS… The differences between the two parties have been blurred to such an extent that the French, in disgust, no longer vote.

The two enemy brothers could not care less, delighted that only their disciples go to the polls to confirm them in their lofty seats of power (…)

She lists the various collaborative efforts of the two parties, resulting in the Maastricht Treaty, the Treaty of Lisbon, privatization of energy, among others. She forgot open borders and Islam, but she has discussed these collaborations elsewhere.

(…) We've come full circle. This time it's Aubry who is supporting the candidacy of Lagarde to head the IMF! World capitalism suits perfectly the UMP and the PS, and clever is the one who can tell them apart! Moreover, is it not strange that those who can't find enough harsh words to lambast Sarkozy's bling-bling style, his evenings at Fouquet's and his yacht cruises, have never found anything to criticize about Strauss-Kahn's immense fortune, and who were ready, with one voice, to prove to us that, just as 2+2=4, this Socialist was authentic and competent. (…)

We won't be fooled this time: Aubry's support for Lagarde is the icing on the cake and her pathetic explanations will deceive no one. First, supporting a candidate merely because she is a "woman, European and respectable" is all the more senseless considering that Martine Aubry, if she were a real Socialist and if there were real differences between the two parties, would have shouted on the rooftops and proposed other candidates (man or woman, it doesn't matter, European or not) who might have been qualified to put order into chaos at the IMF that has not ceased bleeding the people. (…)

Next, no one can be surprised that the woman who dared agree to special swimming pool hours for the women of Lille, the woman who refused to allow an atheist who was born a Muslim to be cremated as he had requested and instead gave in to the demands of the grand mufti of the Lille mosque who claims that you cannot renounce the Muslim religion, this woman now proposes a guard of honor for the one who brought shame on France by imposing Islamic finance, at the opposite extreme of our egalitarian values.

We've come full circle. (…)

The cartoon below reads:


"Segregation by sex in the swimming pools in Lille, that's ME!"

"Islamic finance in France, that's ME!"

"Is the status of women regressing because of Islam?"

"We don't give a damn, we are POLITICIANS!"

Note that "politicians" here is masculine. The feminist Riposte Laïque has at least acknowledged that women in politics do not always do right by women.