The Minister of Education

Here in condensed form is the biography of Vincent Peillon, the new Minister of Education, taken from Le Parisien dated May 16, 2012.

His name was always mentioned among those most qualified to take charge of the second most important budget of the nation, after the payment of the debt. Tomorrow, Eurodeputy Vincent Peillon will take on the "Mammoth".

Note: The "debt" in question is the public debt, i.e., welfare, Social Security, etc… French readers can read more about the colossal French public debt at Chrétienté, where they will learn that it will reach 87.4% of the Gross National Product, or more than 1600 billion euros. The "Mammoth" is the national education budget.

Another view of the debt is in this article from The Economist, dated March 31, 2012. I provide it for those interested in the topic. The gist is that all the candidates skirted or ignored the most important issue confronting France: the financial disaster that lies ahead. Marine Le Pen had raised the question many times, but it is not likely that The Economist takes her seriously.

Peillon already knows what his job will be. On May 15, on the occasion of his homage to Jules Ferry, François Hollande listed the education reforms he intended to pass: the creation of 60,000 jobs, training of teachers, priority to the "working class neighborhoods" and to the "forgotten rural zones."

This trained professor, with an agrégation (note: a graduate teaching degree) and a doctorate in philosophy, is an astute connoisseur of socialist and republican thinkers and the heir of a family of doctors and researchers. At 51 years of age he "knows the school system by heart", comments a socialist leader. He was a high-school philosophy teacher from 1984 to 1997 in Lyon, Calais and Nanterre, a education teacher in la Nièvre before entering politics late in the 90's when he joined the Socialist Party.

Vincent Peillon's grandfather, Léon Blum was professor of medicine, his mother Françoise was director of research at Inserm and his maternal uncle is Étienne-Émile Baulieu, developer of the abortion pill RU 486.

Note: His grandfather, Léon Blum, is not to be confused with the famous politician of the 1930's of the same name.

Inserm is the National Institute of Health and Medical Research, founded in 1964.

"I grew up among Nobel Prize winners and professors at the Collège de France," he said to Valérie Trierweiler for Paris Match in 2005, recalling "endless, very political discussions at home with the Jewish and republican intellectual milieu."

After he entered politics he continued to write books on socialist and republican thinkers such as Pierre Leroux and Jean Jaurès, and Ferdinand Buisson, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

His friend and supporter Pascal Terrasse says of him: "He is still a researcher in his heart, not just by training. He will draw on the history of the Left and the French Revolution to construct the future. He lives in the real world, he's a reformer, but he has a very strong socialist ideal, that can sometimes turn into romanticism."

Since he entered the Socialist Party, Peillon has changed several times aligning himself first with Arnaud Montebourg and then with Ségolène Royal, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and François Hollande.

But there is, in this son of a Communist banker, a rigor that is more to the left of the Socialist Party: he urged a "no" vote in the referendum on the European Constitution and opposed financial crimes and money-laundering in Europe. He was elected Eurodeputy in 2004 and 2009.

Note: The two biggest groups that oppose the EU are the pro-sovereignty nationalists such as the Front National, and the extreme-Left, such as the Communist Party. Peillon appears to align himself with the extreme-Left on this issue.
 
Wikipedia informs us that his father Gilles Peillon (1928 - 2007) was a banker and a Communist. He was the CEO of the first Soviet bank outside of the USSR, the Banque Commerciale pour l'Europe du Nord - Eurobank, then of the Franco-Algerian Bank: Union méditerranéenne.

This father of four, who jogs daily, advocates a "republican recasting around the School". He was coordinator of the youth-higher-education-research team of candidate Hollande and intends to "recreate the common culture". He declared: "In 1882 the republicans created Normal schools, we have the same ambition today with the advanced schools for the training of teachers."

Note: Some of his ideas are difficult to conceptualize. He wants to "recast" the French Republic around the school, i.e., place the School at the center of the life of the Republic. He also has promised that after the 2012 school year has begun he will create schools of higher learning for the training of teachers. This is similar to what we call "Teachers Colleges" or "Schools of Education." These colleges in America have been largely a failure due to the unrealistic doctrines that govern them. Most teachers, despite this training, and because of it, are not prepared for the severe hardships they encounter in today's classrooms.

Vincent Peillon has been indoctrinated since childhood into the values of the Left and the Republic. He is clearly incapable of seeing any other potentiality in education except as a vector for those values. It will be interesting to see how he deals with the intractable and often violent behavior of immigrants, with the wide discrepancies in aptitudes between French children and those from other cultures, with the painful frustrations of the teachers who have to make it look as if they are properly teaching a subject , when in truth they are gearing their lessons to the demands of the immigrant children and their parents. And what will he do about restoring the teaching of the past, the history of the French monarchy, the grandeur of the culture, and the critical role of Christianity? French children today know much less about figures such as Clovis and Napoleon than they did fifty years ago. Will the cultural decline stop or accelerate under Vincent Peillon?

FN Candidate Threatened

This brief note from Midi Libre dated May 29:

France Jamet (above), the Front National candidate in the legislative election from the 7th voting district of l'Hérault, was threatened with a knife and insulted by a 22-year-old man in front of the party headquarters in Agde.

She filed a complaint at the police station and the person accused was arrested. During the hearing he admitted to the insults but insisted he was having fun with his knife and did not threaten the candidate.

Diversity at the École Centrale

This is a poster for the École Centrale of Paris, a prestigious public institution of higher learning that specializes in engineering, science and technology. Apparently the administration is reaching out for more diversity…

Read more about this school that offers double diplomas in partnership with equally prestigious American universities such as MIT, Harvard, etc…

Anti-Christian Attack in Carcassonne

This article appeared in Midi Libre a local paper that serves the city of Carcassonne on May 27, 2012:

Yesterday at 6:20 p.m., while abbé Roger Barthès was beginning to celebrate Mass, four young persons, ages 14 - 18, burst into the Saint-Joseph church, and threw handfuls of stones at the 150 members of the congregation. Men immediately chased after the young trouble-makers, but in vain. They managed to disappear, headed in the direction of the La Conte housing project.

After this unfortunate unexpected interruption, the Mass finally continued to its conclusion. If no one was injured and nothing broken in the church on avenue Jean-Moulin, the parishioners, including many older persons, were profoundly shocked by the not very respectful action of these young Maghrebins. One of the parishioners even went to the police station yesterday evening to relate what had happened and to show one of the stones…

This affair bears a strange resemblance to the stoning of the parishioners of the Saint-Jacques church in the neighborhood of le Viguier on November 2, 2010. That day, a statue of the virgin had been slightly damaged. A reminder too that a reconciliation Mass had been celebrated by the bishop of Carcassonne and Narbonne a few days later, in the presence of the imam of le Viguier, Mohamed Hanou…

At Nations Presse Robert Morio (photo below), federal secretary of the Front National of the department of l'Aude notes the anti-Christian nature of the act:

For the second time, a church has been attacked in Carcassonne by Maghrebins. Their hatred of France is also a hatred of Christians. Once again, a church near a difficult neighborhood with a large population of immigrants is the target of an attack. After the attacks every Sunday on the Saint-Jacques parish, it is the Saint-Joseph church that is targeted.

Holy Mass was desecrated by a group of young men, armed with stones, who attacked the faithful in prayer, in the middle of the service, inside the church.

This premeditated act, that fortunately did not injure anyone, is an act of hatred and of pressure on the Catholics of this neighborhood.

It is not only in Egypt or in Nigeria that Christians are persecuted, but in Carcassonne as well.

Who armed these practitioners of terror, in a neighborhood that has already experienced the population replacement desired by our governments both of the right and the left?

Robert Morio and the Front National are supporting the congregation of this parish, victims of an anti-Christian attack during the period of Pentecost.

Racism is not where the media say it is.

Update: May 30 - Click here for my 2010 post on the attack on the Saint-Jacques church in Carcassonne.

Éric Zemmour - Question still unanswered

It still isn't clear if Eric Zemmour has been dismissed or not. As I said in my previous post, the journal l'Express claims he was already told several weeks ago that he would not be returning to his morning editorial on RTL. Therefore, the dismissal (if true) had nothing to do directly with his remarks on Wednesday about Christiane Taubira. Here is a short synopsis from Le Salon Beige of a longer article:

RTL denies having ruled on whether or not to keep Eric Zemmour on the air. "No decision has been made", says the management of the station. "The program schedule is in the process of being revised. There will be changes as there are every year, but Eric Zemmour will finish the season as scheduled."

Zemmour's lawyer has announced he will sue l'Express for "spreading malevolent rumors":

Olivier Pardo (Zemmour's lawyer) feels that the article in l'Express is part of a campaign to "put pressure on RTL to fire my client."

Le Salon Beige then links to an article about pressures to keep Eric Zemmour at RTL. The article in question is by Myriam Picard, a young Catholic woman who often writes at Riposte Laïque. Her long impassioned essay includes a link to a petition demanding that RTL keep Zemmour on the air every morning or else his listeners will turn to a rival station.

The gist of Myriam Picard's article is that this may be just the beginning of a purge:

Re-read Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Bukovsky. Read them carefully. They tell a story that resembles our own terribly. It begins with some columns of official thought in the papers. Then it moves on to the firing of journalists and dissident intellectuals, for saying "yes" too softly, or "no" when it is forbidden. Then it unfolds mathematically. Pravda sets an example, gatherings are forbidden ("for fear of disorder": always the same excuse), and as our humorist Coluche said, you can no longer spit in public, it is forbidden to hold political rallies in the street. 

They carefully conceal the realities that lead to murders. Yesterday, the Russians to their disgust discovered, in the press, that they were not dying of hunger, and that the voices who dared claim that the walls of the USSR were wet with the sweat of misery were monsters in the employ of Western imperialism. Today, we must not say that immigration poses serious economic, social and cultural problems, and that the guilty are not necessarily ethnic Frenchmen; or that there is a crime wave among the young immigrant population. We must say the opposite. We must repeat it. Endlessly. At the end of this operation the whole world will know that immigration is an opportunity for France, that the young delinquents and criminals are nothing but poor kids conditioned by their social environment. At the end of this operation, these poor kids, with the help and support of a crowd of journalists, politicians and judges, will kill, steal, harass, and offend without anyone blinking an eye. It's no big deal. It's only France that is dying. (…)

Note: Regarding Vladimir Bukovsky mentioned above, here is one short quote from his Wikipedia page (linked above):

“ Having failed to finish off conclusively the communist system, we are now in danger of integrating the resulting monster into our world. It may not be called communism anymore, but it retained many of its dangerous characteristics... Until the Nuremberg-style tribunal passes its judgement on all the crimes committed by communism, it is not dead and the war is not over."

Marine Le Pen has come out for Eric Zemmour. At Nations Presse she makes the following declaration:

If the information is confirmed, the dismissal of Eric Zemmour from RTL radio constitutes a serious attack on pluralism of opinions in the media.

Along with a few others, Eric Zemmour stands out in an environment that is monolithic in terms of speech and ideas, and disconnected from the aspirations of our compatriots.

Through his positions, he represents almost a type of dissidence with regard to the self-proclaimed elite of the French radio-television landscape, and the editorialists who march in step with conventional bien-pensance. For this reason, he often resonates with the French people.

His presence is therefore indispensable to a rich and varied public debate.

As for the man himself, Eric Zemmour in his latest video explains that his remarks about Christiane Taubira were directed at her policies not at her personally. He says he does not attack persons, only their ideas. And that this is always the case. For example, criticizing a black man's policies is not to be taken as a criticism of blacks, any more than a criticism of a white man's policies is to be taken as a criticism of whites.

However, in the video he did not answer the big question - will he be with RTL in September or not? Will he have his regular morning show or be relegated to a weekend time slot?

Eric Zemmour Sacked

There is bad news for journalist Éric Zemmour who has been dismissed from his morning editorial on RTL (Radio-Television Luxembourg) after severely criticizing the new minister of Justice Christiane Taubira, accusing her of going after white men and coddling criminals.

There is however a question regarding this dismissal. According to L'Express, the decision by RTL to remove him from his daily editorial had been made a few weeks ago, but the station did not want it to look like a political decision, and so agreed to give him a spot on week-ends, beginning in September. Now that he has criticized Taubira and become once again the target of accusations by SOS-Racism and MRAP, the station may have to reconsider its position.

Éric Zemmour has been one of the few voices of resistance in a main-stream-media supersaturated with leftist propaganda and bleeding-heart indulgence for immigrants and criminals. In February 2011 he was sentenced to pay heavy fines for his comments on race, after anti-racist organizations accused him of racism when he declared that "most drug traffickers are black or Arab." (The actual conviction was for his comment that employers have the right to refuse to hire Arabs and blacks.) He also said famously that race was the reason why some are white and others black, adding that if there were no such thing as race there would be no such thing as métissage.

Reason is not the forte of the Left, and Zemmour's reasonable remarks cost him some euros.

Le Nouvel Observateur reacted to the Zemmour's Wednesday morning editorial with such indignation that it took the trouble to print out 99% of the 3-minute video below, for which I am eternally grateful. (You will have to put up with ads):

Eric Zemmour : "Comme un petit parfum de mai... by rtl-fr

"From the day she arrived at place Vendôme (i.e., the ministry of Justice), Christiane Taubira has been merciless. Sounding almost like Sarkozy, she expressed sorrow over the suffering of victims, and promised to pursue the killers, to be tough on crime and criminals.

The crime: sexual harassment. The criminals: men. A female harasser is still a rare species, and men's complaints are even rarer. But no laughing is allowed, no jokes (…) this crime must find its way back into the penal code, from which the Constitutional Council had inconsiderately removed it, and the harassers must go to prison."

Note: On May 4, 2012, two days before the second round, the Constitutional Council removed the law on sexual harassment from the penal code on grounds it was too vague.

"But Christiane Taubira also knows how to be gentle, compassionate, and understanding, a mama for her children. Those poor kids who steal, sell drugs, torture, threaten, blackmail, rape, and sometimes kill. They are still adolescents, but some are feared gang leaders. Others are apprentices but they learn fast. (…) Perhaps it is because of this social role that our new left-wing minister is so full of solicitude for them.

She rushed to visit a prison and attend a basketball game between prisoners and guards. A player took advantage and escaped. She abolished the criminal courts for adolescent repeat-offenders created by the preceding government. Juvenile court judges will be able to return to their flock.

She also announced her intention to abolish minimum sentences for the same adolescent repeat-offenders, which had forced some judges to abandon the culture of excuse in the name of reality.

But Christiane Taubira could not care less about reality. She applies the Dogma. Her gospel is the famous ordinance of 1945 on juvenile delinquency that gives priority to education. For Christiane Taubira and her mentor, Pierre Joxe, these poor children are the victims of a society that rejects them out of xenophobia and racism.

Note: Pierre Joxe was a major Socialist leader of the past. He was twice Interior Minister under François Mitterand and also Defense Minister for about two years. Very active in the Socialist Party he was in favor of the formation of a new Left that included Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Joxe is an impressively well-educated man, and a classical musician who learned the cello late in life. He opposed certain sections of the law of 2004 on delinquency, and objected to the prolonged detention of up to ninety-six hours for juveniles in custody.

Within a few days, Christiane Taubira has chosen her victims, her executioners. Women and ghetto youth, are in the good-guys camp to be protected. White men are the bad guys. After all, women, in the majority, have been voting for the Left since 1981. And in the ghettos, Hollande won a victory worthy of an African dictator. But in a few days, the minister of Justice (…) has given a sister-of-mercy color to the first days of rule by the Left, bringing it back to a place it did not necessarily want to return to."

At this point, the author of the Nouvel Observateur article excoriates Eric Zemmour's ideas, saying:

(…) never before has the star editorialist of RTL gone so far in the expression of his deepest thoughts, his vision of the world, further even than the remarks that led to his conviction.

To accuse Christiane Taubira of restoring the law on sexual harassment in order to go after white men - isn't that a variation, but a worse one, on the "anti-French racism" theorized by the Front National?

Is it a sign that people's minds, speech and behavior have been "lepenized" (i.e., converted to the thinking of Marine Le Pen) to such a degree in the public life of this country that it can no longer produce the indispensable democratic antibodies?

So for Bruno Roger-Petit, author of the article, the Front National is a disease that has to be combated by antibodies, and anti-French racism is a fantasy born in the mind of Marine Le Pen and her followers.

It's interesting to note that both sides regard the other as a disease against which the immune system of the body attacked was not equipped to fight back. The medical analogy is often used to depict vividly the take-over by invaders of naive and passive Western lands, whose inhabitants were incapable of resisting. Now it seems the reverse is true as well. The patriots are regarded as the disease in the mind of the Left. It doesn't take a medical scientist to know that the stronger immune system always wins, even if the person with the stronger immune system is not worth a dime.

Violence in Massy

The story appears at many sites. This is from Le Parisien, dated Friday May 25. The first incident occurred Wednesday May 23:

New outbursts of violence took place late Thursday into Friday between the police and the young residents of Massy (department of Essonne), after the accidental death on Wednesday of a young man.

Note: Massy is south of Paris.

Young persons threw fire crackers at the police deployed on the scene, who chased them away with tear gas, explained Claude Fleutiaux, chief of staff of the prefect of the Essonne. "There was no prolonged confrontation," he added. There were no injuries or damage and the police made no arrests. Another source close to the investigation indicated that peace was restored around 1:00 a.m.

Wednesday evening, rubbish on the sidewalk had been set on fire. Later, a car was overturned and confrontations erupted. Objects in the way, that had been left on the sidewalk, were placed in the street. The windows of about 20 cars were shattered. There were no arrests or injuries.

The violence followed the death of a young man, late Tuesday night into Wednesday, while he was riding a stolen motorcycle. Rumors were spread that the police were responsible. The young victim, age 24, was from the neighboring city of Antony (Hauts-de-Seine). He apparently lost control of the motorcycle that he had just stolen during a robbery in Vauhallan (Essonne), and he was speeding. He was not wearing a helmet and had no driver's license. His bike was found about 40 meters from the point of impact.

He was known to the police, had a blood alcohol reading of 1.08g and had consumed cannabis. Another young man, age 19, from Massy who was on the bike with him was seriously injured. He was taken to Kremlin-Bicêtre (Val-de-Marne). One source indicated on Wednesday that a witness had called the police who arrived on the scene after the event.

The Minister of Industrial Renewal

Arnaud Montebourg, born October 30, 1962, was appointed minister of industrial renewal ("redressement productif") on May 16, by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault (photo above). The son of Michel Montebourg, a civil servant employed in the Ministry of Economy and finances, and of Leïla Ould Cadi, an essayist and professor of Spanish from a family of "walis" of Algeria on her father's side and of a Norman mother. 

Note: "Wali" is an Arabic term here referring to State employees who serve as governors of provinces. 

His biography at Wikipedia is long and tedious. Here are some highlights:

He studied law at the university of Dijon, joined the Socialist Party, continued on to law school in Paris, did his military service in the train regiment, became employed in a ministry as a speech editor, and in 1997 married Hortense de Labriffe, daughter of count Antoine de Labriffe and Anne de Lacretelle. Two children were born, in 2000 and 2002. In 2010 the press revealed that he was living with Audrey Pulvar (below), a television journalist and anchor. He has been a deputy from Saône-et-Loire since 1997 and is president of the general council of Saône-et-Loire.

He won his third term as deputy after a bitter fight against his opponent whom he insulted during the campaign. His voting district tended to be conservative and voted for Nicolas Sarkozy by a 53.87% majority. The evening of his re-election he proclaimed: "Nothing will be as it was in the Socialist Party! The days of obsolete elephants are gone. Make way for the young lions!"

In the National Assembly he fiercely opposed judicial reforms initiated by Rachida Dati. He was also greatly in favor of the practice of the "mandat unique" - one office at a time - but in 2008, in the canton of Montret, he was elected general councilor. Thus he holds two positions of councilor and deputy.

He came in third in the Socialist primary in October 2011, after François Hollande and Martine Aubry, and ahead of Ségolène Royal.

François Hollande made the promise not to hire as part of his government anyone with a judicial record. So far, he has hired Jean-Marc Ayrault, convicted of favoritism, Christiane Taubira, convicted of abusive treatment of her parliamentary assistant, Laurent Fabius, indicted for voluntary manslaughter in a resounding scandal involving blood contaminated with HIV virus, and now Arnaud Montebourg, who was convicted on May 23, 2012 by the Paris tribunal for having publicly insulted, in September 2011, former administrators of the ferry-boat company SeaFrance, calling them "crooks". He has appealed the verdict.

Below, Montebourg in 2010:

Anything to Block the FN

From Le Point:

Martine Aubry (above), first secretary of the Socialist Party, emphasized on Wednesday that if there is any chance that a Front National candidate might win the second round of the legislative election, her party would tell its voters to vote "for a republican party."

During a visit to Châtillon, in support of two candidates in the department of Hauts-de-Seine, the mayor of Lille stressed that "on paper, there is no FN candidate that can be elected. If such a hypothesis should occur, we would advocate a vote for the candidate of a republican party," she declared.

Note: So the Front National is not a republican party.

A reminder that Martine Aubry, mayor of Lille, was a close collaborator of Dominique Strauss-Kahn before his arrest in New York. Both had hopes of being the Socialist candidate, but fate decreed otherwise. Later Martine Aubry had high hopes of becoming prime minister under François Hollande. Again, fate intervened, and Jean-Marc Ayrault was the lucky winner.

During her visit to Hauts-de-Seine, when reporters asked her about the rumor that she had called Ayrault a "good-for-nothing", she said she was delighted with the "fabulous duo" of François Hollande and Jean-Marc-Ayrault, and that she is "very glad he is prime minister." "Nobody can place any bone of contention between Jean-Marc Ayrault and me," she added.

Copé Warns UMP Voters

This story is all over the web. The UMP party chairman, Jean-François Copé has urged his voters not to vote for the Front National in the legislative elections because the "the Left will get in and we will get Christiane Taubira as well." This report is from Le Point. A reminder that Christiane Taubira is the newly appointed minister of Justice:

The general secretary of the UMP, Jean-François Copé, warned his electorate not to be tempted to vote for the FN, saying that "when you vote FN, you let in the Left and you get Christiane Taubira" (…)

During the legislative elections, "there is also a need for us to address those of our compatriots who voted for the Front National in the presidential election, and to say to them: 'Watch out, voting out of frustration and exasperation will let the Left in because there is an objective alliance between Marine Le Pen and François Hollande'". These were his words during a press conference in the National Assembly (…)

Note: A reminder that the UMP spokeswoman Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet had said she would vote for the Socialists in any contest between the PS and the FN. Now, Copé is saying "don't let the Socialists in, don't vote for the FN." The UMP leader is deliberately confusing his voters, so that they will vote for anybody but the Front National in the first round on June 10, and he is implying again that the FN is repsonsible for Sarkozy's loss.  If there is any logic, it is this: if you vote FN in the first round, and it happens that the FN candidate faces a Socialist in the second, the Socialist will win. That may or may not be true. And what is the "objective alliance" between the PS and the FN?

Copé:

"I say to the French who would like to vote for the Front National that by voting for the Front National, the Left will get in. Therefore, when you vote for the Front National, you will get Taubira and the nullification of criminal courts for minors who have committed acts carrying a sentence of more than three years in prison," he affirmed.

"Therefore, I urge you to be very very careful because this vote in the legislative elections is a vote of capital importance for the future of our country," Copé continued.

Christiane Taubira has confirmed the government's intention to do away with criminal courts for minors and to guarantee the specificity of juvenile justice, as announced by François Hollande during the campaign. The courts, which have been functioning since January 2012, are composed of three professional judges, hearing cases where repeat offenders of 16 - 18 years of age are judged for crimes that carry a sentence of more than three years.

Update: May 24 - Le Salon Beige reminds us of an article that appeared in Le Monde on June 14, 2007, revealing that Christiane Taubira "had been approached" by Nicolas Sarkozy's team about the possibility of entering François Fillon's government. The deputy from French Guiana declined the offer.

Note: One way or another France would get Taubira, via the Socialists or via the... UMP!

Squatters Find a Home

Linked at Nations Presse, this story about squatters originated at the local paper Ouest-France:

Opened by the Droit au logement (right to housing) Association on May 6, this squat offers a decent roof to more than 200 migrants of 15 different nationalities.

They are from Mongolia, Chechnya, Georgia, Ivory Coast, Mali, Armenia, Afghanistan, and even Turkmenistan… Men, women, children, elderly. Some have identity papers, others do not. Their common ground: all are waiting to find out from the French services if they can stay in France or not.

"Normally, they should be entitled to a home following completion of the proceedings, but this is not the case," observed Yannik, of Droit au logement. "The great majority spent the winter outside with no place to live. Therefore, we requisitioned this place on May 6 to offer them a decent roof and decent living conditions."

This "place" is the résidence du Parc, located in Pacé (department of Ille-et-Vilaine in Brittany). A large building, 2300 square meters, unoccupied for more than a year and belonging to the corporation Les Foyers.

Very quickly, migrants in search of a roof settled there, including large families with very young children. "I couldn't stand it any more - for 18 months I've been looking for housing," explained Saïd, an Afghan refugee. "The emergency housing centers never had an opening." With three compatriots, he shares a room with a bath and kitchenette. "You can finally live in a little more dignity." The same is true for Willy, from the Ivory Coast, happy to no longer have to beg for a room.

On the second floor, a family of five Mongols settled into one big room. The mother is proud that everything is neatly arranged and clean. And she appreciates a veritable luxury: to have her own bath. Life is becoming organized inside the residence that is now full. And all hope to be able to stay there as long as possible. "Until the State finds them a real solution," affirms Yannik.

A view of the résidence du Parc, formerly an old persons' home.

Below, a poster from the Front National. "Immigration... Open your eyes. Stop fooling yourselves."

The Republican School

On the day of his inauguration François Hollande gave a speech in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris that stressed the critical role of free compulsory education in the history of the French Republic. He paid homage to Jules Ferry, the minister of education who was responsible for two laws: the law of June 16, 1881, establishing free elementary education, and the law of March 28, 1882 making education compulsory and "laïque" (i.e., separate from all Church influence).

But François Hollande was forced to acknowledge another aspect of Jules Ferry's character, namely, that of an apologist for colonialism. What Hollande did not acknowledge, for it would have been political suicide to do so, was that  Jules Ferry was a believer in racial differences. That he believed in colonialism because he believed it was the duty of superior races to civilize inferior races!

An English-language article from RFI describes the controversy.

The entire 13-minute speech is posted online in both video and text at the Elysée website.

Here are some excerpts from the speech, that illustrate the rigorously "laïque", and mind-numbing egalitarianism of French education today. Whatever Jules Ferry did, it is not likely he would recognize his ideas in the blackboard jungles of today's immigrant-populated public school system:

"School, as a place of true equality. Equality of opportunity, that recognizes only merit, effort, and talent, since birth, wealth, and chance establish hierarchies that the School must at least correct, if not abolish.

This equality makes justice between the territories necessary: how can we accept that a child has more chances of success if he grows up here rather than there? The School is the weapon of justice. And justice is social integration ("mixité"). It is to this noble task that the School has been devoting itself for more than a century.

To make of the School a place of integration for all the children of the Republic remains the most beautiful of our national ambitions. This is why I have decided that priority will be given to schools in working class neighborhoods and those in certain rural zones.

The place of equality, the public school is also the place of laïcité.

It is the framework in which freedom of conscience is acquired, that "sovereign freedom of the mind; (…) the idea that no power internal or external, no power and no dogma must limit the perpetual effort and the perpetual questioning of human reason," as Jean Jaures defined it. Confidence in the resources of their own mind, and the means to find these faculties, to exploit them, to develop them, to exercise them sovereignly: this is what the School must give to all its children. This is what the State must allow the school to be.

Through his work as legislator, Jules Ferry made the public school what it is: a right. All the children of France have the right to study. They have even the duty to study. Nobody can be refused this right, nobody can be exempted from his duty. But the School is much more than that. The school is the spirit of the Republic.

(…)

It must be sure of its resources. You cannot teach correctly without an adequate staff for our children. This is why I have committed to recruiting 60,000 more employees in the course of my term in office.

(…)

And the School still maintains this high function that Jules Ferry conferred on it in the same letter to teachers: "(…) prepare a generation of good citizens for our country."

Equality, integration ("mixité"), laïcité, instruction, an apprenticeship in citizenship: such are the principles obtained in the so-called Ferry laws. They are alive. They will find their place in the politics that I will conduct so that the next generation may live better than ours and so that the republican promise may be scrupulously kept.

The whole speech is longer of course, but the above excerpts are an example of the style and tone. Hollande has better speechwriters than Sarkozy. His language is not encumbered by constant and harassing repetition, and he gets to the point: the School in France exists to create a certain type of individual: the non-nationalistic, beholden-to-no-God, egalitarian republican reasoner. As if the functioning of human reason depends on integration with other races and absolute equality of all peoples, even unto parity in the government and parity of territories, and who knows? one day parity in the armed services. Until we have perfectly equal pupils from all strata of society educated by obedient State functionaries, our reason cannot flourish.

There is however one word that is not entirely clear: "mixité", which I translated above as "integration." In the old days, when Jules Ferry was legislator, "mixité" meant co-ed, boys and girls together in the same school. But this type of "mixité" did not become immediately universal. Separate schools for boys and girls were prevalent in France. "Mixité social" as used in Hollande's speech is quite different. It refers to the cohabitation of diverse groups. One website defines it thus:

"Mixité social" is at once a state of being: the cohabitation on the same territory of social groups with diverse characteristics, and a process: the act of facilitating the cohabitation on the same territory of diverse groups differing according to age, nationality, professional status, and income, in order to have a more balanced distribution of populations.

In this speech François Hollande did not mention "métissage", which is mixed marriage among the races. Possibly it wasn't the moment. "Mixité social" has the advantage of being vague and subject to different interpretations. Nonetheless, we get the impression that "mixité social" is high on the list of the government's Utopian priorities, similar to busing in the United States. And like busing, we can assume it will drive off the cliff and crash onto the pointed rocks of reality. But not before  destroying everything it comes in contact with, such as education, the workplace, neighborhood living, and social relationships.

Note: This article should have been posted two days ago, but I have fallen behind, as usual. I'll try to catch up in the days to come.

The Minister of the Interior

The man appointed to the Ministry of the Interior, Manuel Carlos Valls, was born on August 13, 1962 in Barcelona, to a Spanish father and an Italian-Swiss mother. He became a French citizen in 1982. His biography and background, as presented at Wikipedia, show a man of mixed principles, sometimes aligned with more traditional positions, sometimes loyal to the Left, or at least a certain Left.

He will be hard to pinpoint, but since Hollande appointed him, it is safe to assume that he will follow his boss's general policies.

The following information is adapted from Wikipedia, but is not a full translation of the page:

Like so many politicians he holds two important posts: mayor of Évry since 2001 and deputy from the 1st district of the Essonne since 2002. He has been re-elected to both posts. He turned down an invitation from Nicolas Sarkozy to join the François Fillon government in 2007. He claimed to be against the Lisbon Treaty but worked for the Socialists during their campaign to get it ratified. In July 2009, the general secretary of the Socialist Party, Martine Aubry, told him that if the things he said were a true indication of his beliefs then he should leave the party. He refused. He was named communications director for Hollande's campaign and succeeded in keeping the press at a distance. For this he was nicknamed "Kommandantur", and then rewarded with the Interior Ministry.

As mayor of a difficult city he believes in firmness and favors, if warranted,  an armed  municipal police.

Manuel Valls considers himself a more realistic Socialist and feels closer to Bill Clinton or Tony Blair than he does to François Mitterand. At one time in 1980 he supported Michel Rocard against Mitterand in a conflict within the Socialist Party as the election of 1981 approached.

He has advocated rewriting the 1905 law separating Church and State because, he says, it is not obeyed and a new version of the law would breathe new life into the concept of laïcité.

However, there is no evidence that he wants to limit the power of Islam in France. In 2003 he advocated public funds for the building of mosques! The following is from Islamisation:

In an editorial published by the weekly Marianne, the Socialist deputy-mayor of Évry, Manuel Valls, maintained that it is necessary "to modify the law of 1905 in order to permit the construction of houses of worship through transparent, hence public, financing."

Such a change would prevent "financing and control by foreign countries." According to the Socialist deputy, laïcité must not be a constraint but a 'shared value'. And he added that it must not be "perceived by the Muslims as a pretext to prevent the practice of the country's second religion."

The above statements by Valls go back nine years. I have not found evidence of any change in his views. The ironic thing is that he wants to change the law to make it even more costly to the French State, which would be charged with building mosques instead of "merely" contributing funds for the cultural centers next to the mosques, which is the current arrangement. And for the French State to be authorized by the law to build a house of worship defies blatantly the very purpose of the law in the first place.

However, there's more. According to La Croix, if François Hollande inserts the 1905 law into the Constitution, the door to any modification will be closed. This, in turn, may have unforeseeable consequences for the country.

On the other hand, Valls has supported the director of a day-care center for dismissing a veiled employee, and was critical of a supermarket in his city that advertised exclusively halal foods.

He has four children by his first wife. He is currently married to violinist Anne Gravoin.

White House Gathering

The wives (except for one "girlfriend") of the leaders of the G8 summit gathered for a lunch of Maryland seafood, vegetables from the White House vegetable garden, clementine sherbet, and Virginia strawberries. This time the fashion was quite acceptable. Michelle Obama looks good (to me), in an old-fashioned swirling skirt. Valerie's dress stayed in place, but again her heels are too high. She is taller than Hollande and does not need to make herself tower over him. But I suppose that's the idea. The American press has noted with great interest that for the first time an unmarried couple has moved into Elysée Palace.

A Minister of "Dependency and Old People"

The following information is adapted from an article at Infos-Bordeaux:

The minister-delegate of Dependency and Old Persons (Dépendance et Personnes Agées) is Michèle Delaunay, an oncologist who was elected deputy from Bordeaux (more precisely from the 2nd district of the department of the Gironde) in June 2007. She defeated mayor of Bordeaux Alain Juppé, who, because of this defeat had to resign the ministerial post accorded to him by Nicolas Sarkozy. (Note that at one point Juppé was minister, mayor and candidate for deputy.) Juppé then went back to being merely the mayor of Bordeaux.

As for Delaunay, she is running again for deputy, and if she wins, which is likely, she will immediately resign to devote herself fully to her new function in the ministry of Health.

Note: Her title is minister-delegate, not minister. She will be working under the minister of Health in a subordinate capacity. But the issues she will deal with are anything but secondary.

She lives in a posh area of Bordeaux and has been an advocate for "mixité", which here seems to refer to the mixing of social classes and ethnic groups. And she is married to Klaus Fuchs, a high functionary of the Council of Europe, now retired.

The crucial question revolving around the appointment of Delaunay to this ministry is euthanasia. What is her point of view? She has expressed some views at her blog, but for now, considering that she was a devoted worker for François Hollande in the primary and presidential campaigns, I will present Hollande's views, which must coincide with her own, in the main, if not in every detail.

Before the election on May 6, Le Salon Beige printed examples of Hollande's views on euthanasia, and the chilling probability that euthanasia will be employed as a cost-saving measure. This has been the Socialist point of view on euthanasia for a long time. Socialist economist Jacques Attali famously said that everyone over 65 should be euthanized for the economic benefit of the Socialist State.

Here then are some of Hollande's views:

"I hope that any adult in an advanced or terminal stage of an incurable illness, that is causing unbearable physical or psychological suffering that cannot be palliated, may request medical assistance to end his life in dignity."

He then committed himself to making this law before the Spring of 2013.

André Comte-Sponville, one of the leading philosophers of the pro-euthanasia lobby signed an editorial that lifts a corner of the veil on this Socialist plan:

"The reform (…) would not cost the State a dime. It would even (although that is not its goal) allow Social Security to save some money."

Le Salon Beige continues:

When we became aware of François Hollande's presidential program last January, we envisaged the possibility of unmentionable financial motives. Does the Left hope to save a substantial amount of money in these days of budgetary crisis by speeding up the death of terminally sick people? It is true that a lethal injection of potassium chloride costs less than one euro while a night in the intensive care unit is more than 1500 euros.

LSB then returns to words of Jacques Attali:

In a work entitled L'homme nomade (2005), Jacques Attali once again summarized the economic criteria that justify State euthanasia:

"When he is past 60/65 years of age, man lives longer than he produces and he costs society dearly: it is far preferable for the human machine to stop brutally, rather than to slowly deteriorate (…) One could accept the notion of a prolonged lifespan on the condition that old people were solvent and thus created a market (…) I believe that in the very logic of the industrial system in which we find ourselves, lengthening the life span is no longer an objective sought by the logic of the powers that be."

The French must not allow themselves to be terrorized by insane talk such as this. It is beyond belief that a cold-blooded cynic such as Attali thinks he can convince people that they "deteriorate" past 65 or that we are in some kind of robotic sci-fi world where psychopathic doctors will shoot potassium chloride into us if we have a pain somewhere. It is beyond belief that anyone believes euthanasia would save money. The cost in loss of humanity and hope for the future would be incalculable. The people have to resist this en masse and refuse to draw up legal documents giving the State or anyone else the right to end a life. They also have to defy the State by staying healthy through natural therapies and the refusal whenever possible of dangerous drugs, through the cultivation of good eating habits, and adequate exercise. And they must try one last time before 2017 to keep the National Assembly out of the hands of Death.

At Michèle Delaunay's website we find an article opposing the "euthanasia of pigeons" in Bordeaux. It seems the over-abundance of birds is a nuisance and she is concerned over the sterilization and gassing used to limit their numbers. Instead, she proposes the construction of pigeon coops that would regulate nesting and destroy the eggs as a means of controlling the bird population.

It isn't clear if she has proposed pigeon coops for old people with nesting instincts. More likely there will be euthanasia centers where old people of 65 who are convinced they should die will go to do their republican duty.

And so euthanasia will be the metaphor for the suicidal French Socialist State.

The Minister of Culture

The video portion lasts for 1'05" but the blank video goes on for over 3 minutes.

This is Aurélie Filippetti, the new minister of Culture, who comes across in this video as totally unhinged. If she is always like this she could provide us with some psychotic thrills during the next five years, should she last that long. I give her five weeks...

Here she is protesting the use of DNA in determining if an immigrant is really a member of a family he claims to be rejoining. She says no to the criminalization of immigration. She shouts that the immigrants are and will always be the great and good fortune of France, that generations and generations of immigrants have made the economic and cultural wealth of France what it is today.

Filippetti, born in June 1973, is the granddaughter of Italian immigrants. She has been involved in left-wing politics for many years, first as a member of the Green Party, and later in 2006, in the Socialist Party. She joined the campaign team for Ségolène Royal as adviser on environmental affairs.

Her qualifications as minister of Culture are scant. She did receive a classical education and has written a few novels, one dealing with the ordeal of her grandfather, a miner during WWII, when he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp.

Her appointment as minister of Culture seems to be a reward for her contributions to François Hollande's victory in the primary. 

The Minister of Justice

As I mentioned two days ago, Christiane Taubira, the author of a 2001 law designating slavery as a crime against humanity, has been named minister of Justice. Three of my older posts relate to her law and her position on slavery:

From May 2006: the text of the 2001 law. Here are Articles 1 and 2:

Article 1 -

The French Republic recognizes both the transatlantic and Indian Ocean Negro slave trade, on the one hand, and slavery itself, on the other, that were practiced from the 15th century, in the Americas, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, and Europe against African, Amerindian, Malagasy and Indian populations, as constituting crimes against humanity.

Article 2 -

School curricula and research projects in the fields of history and the human sciences will accord to the subjects of the Negro slave trade and slavery the important place they deserve. A spirit of cooperation will be encouraged and supported in order to make readily available the written archives in Europe, along with oral sources and archeological records that have accumulated in Africa, in the Americas, in the Caribbean and in all other territories subjected to slavery.

(...)

Note: Taubira's law does not mention the Arab-Muslim slave trade or the exactions inflicted on Negros by Muslims.

From May 2008: the decision by Nicolas Sarkozy to designate May 23 as a day commemorating abolition. Sarkozy originally wanted May 10, the date of the law itself, but leftist opposition pushed him into electing May 23, the day, in 1998,  when 40,000 Frenchmen from overseas departments marched in Paris.

From June 2008: an interview with Tidiane N'Diaye, a Senegalese writer and economist, and a Muslim, who exposes the crucial role played by the Arab-Muslim wars and Negro slave trade in keeping African countries backward. He refutes the notion that the transatlantic trade was the only factor in Africa's fate and reveals the extreme brutality used against the Negros by the Arab-Muslims.

In my introduction to the above post, I referred to a statement made by Mme Taubira in response to critics who reproach her for placing the entire blame for Africa's economic and cultural backwardness on the shoulders of the West:

(…) the Negro slave trade practiced by Arab-Muslims must not be brought up too often so that "young Arabs do not bear on their shoulders all the weight of the heritage of Arab misdeeds."

Had François Hollande made her minister for Overseas Affairs, it would have made some sense. But as minister of Justice for all of France, she may impose a degree of judicial terrorism never before seen, resulting in even greater suffocation of the truth and deformation of the reality faced by the people in their daily lives.

I wondered about her qualifications to be minister of Justice. Does she have a law degree? According to Nouvel Observateur:

(…) But this out-of-the-ordinary orator, with her fiery temperament, has had less success in local elections: she failed twice, in 1995 and 2001, to win the post of mayor of Cayenne, and in 2010, she lost in the regional elections.

Born in Cayenne in 1952, into a modest family where her mother raised six children by herself, Christiane Taubira has a doctorate in economic and agro-alimentary sciences with graduate degrees in sociology and Afro-American ethnology. Divorced, she is the mother of four.

It seems that the post of minister of Justice is now reserved for unqualified non-European women. Nicolas Sarkozy's first Justice minister was Rachida Dati, a Muslim woman who, to her credit, did almost nothing. Let's hope Mme Taubira does likewise. 

Update: May 18 - Just after posting I found an item at Nations Presse revealing that Mme Taubira, as deputy in the National Assembly, had been convicted in September 2004, by the council of prud'hommes of Paris for not having paid her assistant, Sylvia Edom, the overtime accrued between October 2002 and April 2003. The council also ruled that Edom's dismissal was "abusive".

So far, François Hollande has appointed three persons with past convictions or indictments, despite his solemn promise not to hire anyone with a record. Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, convicted of favoritism, Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira, convicted of unethical conduct within the National Assembly, and Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, indicted for voluntary manslaughter in the affair of contaminated blood in 1999 and later exonerated. More on that later. 

The Ministers

For a list of those appointed to François Hollande's government, you can consult Le Salon Beige. Even if you don't know French you will understand some of it. The words "mention très insuffisant" following some of the names means "very inadequate" in terms of the appointee's record on family values. Note the following vocabulary aids:

Affaires étrangères - foreign affaires

Santé - health

Egalité des territoires - equality of territoires (what is that?)

Redressement productif - productive recovery (?)

Travail - labor

Enseignement supérieur - higher éducation

Droit des femmes et porte-parole - Women's rights and government spokesman -

Outre-Mer - overseas territories and departments

Réussite educative - educational success (?)

Personnes âgées - Old people (I've never seen a minister of "old people".)

PME et innovation - Small and medium enterprises

Anciens combatants - Veterans

I'll have more later on these people taken individually. But according to Le Salon Beige it's a disaster. All are extremists, almost all have anti-family values. The ministers were chosen on the principle of parity - an equal number of men and women. Close friends and those who rose to prominence during the campaign and contributed to the victory were rewarded.

Police Attacked in Nantes

While searching for some information about the city of Nantes, where Jean-Marc Ayrault was elected mayor for four terms, I came upon this item dated May 16:

A judicial inquiry has been opened on the attempted murders of seven police officers, the theft by gangs of three vehicles, voluntary acts of violence perpetrated on police officers, driving without a license, rebellion and endangering the lives of others. This happened yesterday, in Nantes, after seven policemen were injured on Monday, struck by stolen cars driven by minors. One of the six young persons, who had attempted to flee by jumping into the Loire River, is listed as missing. The five others, including one girl, who were in the cars, were taken to court. Two were placed in custody (one was the driver of one car, the other a minor over 16), and two were placed in a rehabilitation center. The hearings were scheduled to end late in the evening.

Two hundred policemen gathered yesterday before the central headquarters in Nantes in sympathy for their colleagues after Monday's events.