Tag Archives: France

France Just Set a Very Scary Precedent, by Don Quijones

Posted on November 9, 2016 | Leave a comment

Grand frère (Google-French for Big Brother) has arrived in France. From Don Quijones at wolfstreet.com:

On October 30, the French government announced, as quietly as possible, the creation of a massive new database that will collect and store personal information and biometric data on nearly everyone living in the country. As tends to happen whenever a government seeks to enact this type of “reforms,” the law wasn’t passed by parliament but by decree on the eve of a national holiday.

As France 24 reports, the new decree will affect 60 million people and “marks the first time the country has collected population data on such a scale since the start of the Nazi Occupation in 1940.”

“Unacceptable Excesses”

The move has sparked outrage from civil rights groups as well as French media, with weekly magazine L’Observateur describing it as “terrifying,” and daily newspaper Libération dubbing it a “mega database that will do no good”. The National Digital Council (CNNum) “laments” the government’s lack of prior consultation and highlights the “many concerns” the new decree raises. “In a digital world where code is law, the existence of such a database leaves the door wide open to likely and unacceptable excesses,” it said.

The new database, known rather optimistically as Secure Electronic Documents (Titres électroniques sécurisés or TES) will store an individual’s name, date and place of birth, gender, eye color, height, address, photograph, digitized fingerprints, facial features, e-mail address, and the names, nationalities, dates and places of birth of parents. The aim — according to the government — is to make it easier to obtain and renew identity documents, and to aid in the fight against identity fraud.

Unlike a similar law proposed by Nicholas Sarkozy’s conservative government in 2012, which was shot down, the new database will only be used to authenticate individuals, not to identify them. In other words, it will be used to confirm that someone is who he or she claims to be, not to discover, say, the identity of someone whose biometrics have been found at the scene of a crime.

However, the potential for mission creep cannot be discounted. As an article in NextInpact points out, once the database exists, it is highly likely that there will be calls for it to be used for identification purposes, simply “because it is there.” There’s also good reason to suspect that a future government “will modify the aims,” as warns Gaëtan Gorce, a French senator and member of the National Commission for Information Technology and Civil Liberties (Cnil) who likened the TES to a “sort of monster.”

According to today’s government, the biometric data stored on the database could be used to identify criminal suspects only if “violations of the fundamental interests of the Nation and acts of terrorism” are involved. But who gets to decide what constitutes a “fundamental interest of the Nation” or, for that matter, “an act of terrorism”? [That was a rhetorical question, of course].

To continue reading: France Just Set a Very Scary Precedent

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Why the EU Is Doomed, by Alasdair Macleod

Posted on September 19, 2016 | Leave a comment

The Europeans are having a tough time making the economics and finance of union work, but it will probably be noneconomic and financial factors that cause the EU’s downfall. From Alasdair Macleod at mises.org:

We are accustomed to looking at Europe’s woes in a purely financial context. This is a mistake, because it misses the real reasons why the EU will fail and not survive the next financial crisis. We normally survive financial crises, thanks to the successful actions of central banks as lenders of last resort. However, the origins and construction of both the the euro and the EU itself could ensure the next financial crisis commences in the coming months, and will exceed the capabilities of the ECB to save the system.

It should be remembered that the European Union was originally a creation of US post-war foreign policy. The priority was to ensure there was a buffer against the march of Soviet communism, and to that end three elements of the policy towards Europe were established. First, there was the Marshall Plan, which from 1948 provided funds to help rebuild Europe’s infrastructure. This was followed by the establishment of NATO in 1949, which ensured American and British troops had permanent bases in Germany. And lastly, a CIA sponsored organisation, the American Committee on United Europe was established to covertly promote European political union.

It was therefore in no way a natural European development. But in the post-war years the concept of political union, initially the European Coal and Steel Community, became fact in the Treaty of Paris in 1951 with six founding members: France, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy. The ECSC evolved into the EU of today, with an additional twenty-one member states, not including the UK which has now decided to leave.

With the original founders retaining their national characteristics, the EU resembles a political portmanteau, a piece of assembled furniture, each component retaining its original characteristics. After sixty-five years, a Frenchman is still a staunch French nationalist. Germans are characteristically German, and the Italians remain delightfully Italian. Belgium is often referred to as a non-country, and is still riven between Walloons and the Flemish. As an organisation, the EU lacks national identity and therefore political cohesion.

This is why the European Commission in Brussels has to go to great lengths to assert itself. But it has an insurmountable problem, and that is it has no democratic authority. The EU parliament was set up to be toothless, which is why it fools only the ignorant. With power still residing in a small cabal of nation states, national powerbrokers pay little more than lip-service to the Brussels bureaucracy.

The relationship between national leaders and the European Commission has been deliberately long-term, in the sense that loss of sovereignty is used to gradually subordinate other EU members into the Franco-German line. The driving logic has been to make the European region a protected trade area in Franco-German joint interests, and to protect them from free markets.

It was not easy to find the necessary compromise. Since the Second World War, France has been strongly protectionist over her own culture, insisting that the French only buy French goods. Germany’s success was rooted in savings, which encouraged industrial investment, leading to strong exports. These two nations with a common border had, and still have, very different values, but they managed to conceive and set up the European Central Bank and the euro.

To continue reading: Why the EU Is Doomed

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Fury and Fear in Paris, by Porter

Posted on September 2, 2016 | Leave a comment

Multiculturalism is to be worshipped, until multiple cultures move into the neighborhood. From Porter at kakistocrcyblog.com:

If you’ve spent more than a minute reading the counter rhetoric of conservative cuckoldry, you will have noticed that one of their most cherished articles of comfort is the self-assurance that the alt-right opposition are sloppy impoverished juveniles foaming from THEIR PARENTS’ BASEMENT.

This last part is key, since the logic implies positions taken from below ground level don’t merit consideration beyond stock accusations of raysis. That’s why I make a point of always posting from elevation within my own house, which was acquired with funds accumulated from my own ample compensation.

If we had the figures, I think it would be fascinating to contrast the alt-right’s basement quotient with that of other political factions. Do dilapidated row-houses in urban democrat vote-farms even have basements? Or parents plural? Perhaps those metrics aren’t the best to establish political validity after all.

Though the puppets of Soros can take refuge in one irrefutable claim: that demographic most thoroughly removed from their parent’s basement (and their parents, their posterity, their former community, and their nation) is unreservedly anti alt-right. This being the super-rich.

If a single living member of this cohort has been friendly to the future of their people, they have kept the sentiment closely guarded. I’m talking of course about our plutocrats and not theirs, who are fanatically tribal as a general rule.

The first commandment for this community of silk vests and pocket monocles is Never let a penny escape your grasp. Though a close second is the eternal Diversity for thee, but not for me. It’s this second imperative that leads these people like bloodhounds to Good Schools and gated compounds from which they primly lecture the hoi polloi on the benefits of Somali colonization.

Samuel Johnson said the insolence of wealth will always creep out. And like a mucus trail behind it is the morality of wealth. That is to say, a flamboyant virtue with carefully shielded consequence. They’re such good people, they’re willing to let you suffer to show just how much. And you can’t do that from anyone’s basement but your own.

Though sometimes I think it must require extreme myopia to accumulate vast wealth. It’s as if the end of their nose lies beyond Neptune. The wealthy appear to believe they can flood their countries while decamping to ever-shrinking atolls and never get wet. Probably Gates, Buffet, and Zuckerberg can. Though tiers below them will increasingly get doused with the rest of us. And schadenfreude rarely tastes so sweet as that.

Fury and fear in Paris: Wealthy residents outraged as huge wooden migrant camp is built directly opposite £3m apartments in elite neighbourhood which is home to Carla Bruni, Russian oligarchs and foreign embassies

* Two wooden buildings have gone up in the upmarket 16th arrondissement
* It is situated next to palatial Paris apartments worth up to £3million each
* Furious neighbours have delivered a 50,000-signature petition to officials

I’m inclined to start a petition to require every migrant camp, Honduran shanty, and Levantine refugee accommodation to go up directly beside multi-million dollar residences. Nothing would better align architects with their creations.

To continue reading: Fury and Fear in Paris

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France: The Coming Civil War, by Yves Mamou

Posted on July 17, 2016 | Leave a comment

Push—Muslim immigration—will come to shove—widespread resistance—in France. It may have already arrived. From Yves Mamou at gatestoneinstitute.org:

• For French President François Hollande, the enemy is an abstraction: “terrorism” or “fanatics”.

• Instead, the French president reaffirms his determination to military actions abroad: “We are going to reinforce our actions in Syria and Iraq,” the president said after the Nice attack.

• So confronted with this failure of our elite who were elected to guide the country across nationals and internationals dangers, how astonishing is it if paramilitary groups are organizing themselves to retaliate?

• In France, the global elites made a choice. They decided that the “bad” voters in France were unreasonable people too stupid to see the beauties of a society open to people who often who do not want to assimilate, who want you to assimilate to them, and who threaten to kill you if you do not. The elite took the side against their own old and poor because those people did not want to vote for them any longer. They also made a choice not to fight Islamism because Muslims vote collectively for this global elite.

“We are on the verge of a civil war.” That quote did not come from a fanatic or a lunatic. No, it came from head of France’s homeland security, the DGSI (Direction générale de la sécurité intérieure), Patrick Calvar. He has, in fact, spoken of the risk of a civil war many times. On July 12th, he warned a commission of members of parliament, in charge of a survey about the terrorist attacks of 2015, about it.

In May 2016, he delivered almost the same message to another commission of members of parliament, this time in charge of national defense. “Europe,” he said, “is in danger. Extremism is on the rise everywhere, and we are now turning our attention to some far-right movements who are preparing a confrontation”.

What kind of confrontation? “Intercommunity confrontations,” he said — polite for “a war against Muslims.” “One or two more terrorist attacks,” he added, “and we may well see a civil war.”

In February 2016, in front of a senate commission in charge of intelligence information, he said again: ” We are looking now at far-right extremists who are just waiting for more terrorist attacks to engage in violent confrontation”.

No one knows if the truck terrorist, who plowed into the July 14th Bastille Day crowd in Nice and killed more than 80 people, will be the trigger for a French civil war, but it might help to look at what creates the risk of one in France and other countries, such as Germany or Sweden.

The main reason is the failure of the state.

1. France is at War but the Enemy is Never Named.

France is the main target of repeated Islamist attacks; the more important Islamist terrorist bloodbaths took place at the magazine Charlie Hebdo and the Hypercacher supermarket of Vincennes (2015); the Bataclan Theater, its nearby restaurants and the Stade de France stadium, (2015); the failed attack on the Thalys train; the beheading of Hervé Cornara (2015); the assassination of two policemen in Magnanville in June (2016), and now the truck-ramming in Nice, on the day commemorating the French Revolution of 1789.

To continue reading: France: The Coming Civil War

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Paging Monsieur Napoleon, by Eric Margolis

Posted on May 13, 2016 | Leave a comment

France may be reaching the end of democratic socialism, which generally leads to repressive, undemocratic socialism. From Eric Margolis at lewrockwell.com:

PARIS – Ah, the joys of Paris in the springtime. Riots every day and night; vandals smashing store windows and looting; traffic jams horrendous even by this city’s standards; air, train, and metro disruptions. Tear gas wafts in the air.

Add to this toxic mess the ongoing guerilla war between Uber cars and Paris’ notoriously nasty taxi drivers; a virtual civil war within the fragmented Socialist government of President Francois Hollande; a little war in the Sahara; and an economy that has all the get up and go to a flat Michelin tire.

Even with all this craziness going on, the City of Light is still exquisite though too often painful and frustrating. I have always compared Paris to being deeply in love with a totally difficult, beautiful, self-centered woman who does not give a damn about you.

Strikes have raged in France’s major cities for the past three weeks as the bully boys of the left and anarchists protest some laughably feeble labor law reforms that the government just rammed through parliament. To the hysterical left, efforts to pare back the notorious 35-hour work week and make it slightly easier to hire and fire marked a return to brutal 19th-century capitalism.

France’s biggest problem is that the public brought up in the philosophy of statism and die-hard socialism, looks on the national government as a father figure. Papa will provide everyone with everything – provided they pour into the streets and riot.

In short, the entire nation is on an allowance. This is no exaggeration. Half of all French work directly or indirectly for the government. The government has been gobbling up the economy for decades. But French really cherish their over-staffed state that runs very well indeed. Civil services in France are lavish. The government even has inspectors patrolling the seashore to protect its beauty and wildlife. France’s high-speed TGV trains are the best in the world. France’s cities are clean and resplendent.

However, keeping France beautiful costs a fortune. So does massive feather-bedding in industry, transport, and education. So taxes must remain high to protect special interests and sacred cows. Every French regime since Louis XIV has faced this problem.

Only about 8% of France’s workers are unionized. But hard leftwing unionists, led by the big bully CGT union, dominate key economic sectors and, as they show each year, can paralyze France with strikes. Inevitably, the government must capitulate and buy them off. No Ronald Reagan in France to fire anti-social workers. French farmers are among the most belligerent anywhere and experts at terrorizing government officials.

In France, it’s hellishly difficult to dismiss any workers and, consequently risky to hire. In fact, I have never understood why anyone in his or her right mind would open a business in France. The two commercial operations with which I’ve been involved were a nightmare of labor problems, government red tape, tax audits and wildcat strikes – and made no profit.

To continue reading: Paging Monsieur Napoleon

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Obama Readies To Fight in Libya, Again, by Jack A. Smith

Posted on February 6, 2016 | 1 comment

The US and Europe’s intervention in Libya has been an unmitigated disaster, and Hillary Clinton’s role in it should be enough to disqualify her from public office. Further intervention will be insanity. From Jack A. Smith at antiwar.com:

Nearly five years after the U.S., Britain and France launched a bombing campaign against the Libyan government to bring about regime change, these same countries are contemplating a resumption of the war they thought was won when rebel forces they supported grotesquely tortured to death the country’s leader, Col. Muammar Gaddafi.

The result today in Libya is utter disarray. But at the time, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – a leading advocate of the bombing who justifies the deed to this day – was ecstatic when told the news of Qaddafi’s death while she was appearing on a TV talk show. Laughingly she shouted to the cameras, “We came, we saw, he died!”

No one is laughing in Washington now. President Obama came, saw and created the very opposite of what he sought, a hardly unusual outcome for the Obama and Bush Administrations in the Middle East. Instead of a pliable dependent government willing to do the bidding of Washington and its NATO foreign legion, there has been an explosion of civil war and Sunni jihadism.

The US and UN have been striving for months to unite the two factions in Libya that claim to be the country’s government. On Feb. 1 the faction that that has been recognized by the US and many nations rejected unity with its opposite number. The bedlam in Libya caused by the 2011 overthrow has allowed the Islamic State (IS) to grow strong and occupy several territories.

Agence France-Presse reported Jan. 29: “Barack Obama has asked key advisors to draw up options for ratcheting up the fight against the Islamic State group, including opening a new front in Libya…. Potential options are said to range from intensified air strikes to participation in a UN-backed ground force that would help take on Libya’s estimated 3,000 Islamic State fighters…. The Defense Department announced it stands ready to perform the full spectrum of military operations a required.”

The US and France are preparing for “decisive military action” in Libya against the IS, according, to a statement Jan. 22 by Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said a final decision would be made in a matter or weeks, and that President Obama “has made clear that we have the authority to use military force.”

To continue reading: Obama Readies To Fight in Libya, Again

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Hollande’s Socialist Wonderland, by Pater Tenebrarum

Posted on January 21, 2016 | Leave a comment

From Pater Tenebrarum at acting-man.com:

Everything’s an Emergency

If memory serves, France remains in a state of emergency on account of the terror attack in Paris in last November. As terrible as terror attacks are, they are a statistically insignificant cause of death and injury in developed nations. It is also worth noting that the countries that seem most prone to suffering terror attacks are the ones that are most active in intervening militarily in foreign countries. This is probably no coincidence. Just saying.

We also imagine that a state of emergency is a costly exercise (France’s government immediately exempted itself from meeting the Maastricht deficit target in the wake of the attack, so we can conclude this by inference). Moreover, the recurrence of such attacks shows that ubiquitous snooping on everybody’s digital communications is a wasted effort, if the goal is indeed to keep such attacks from happening (which is doubtful, but that is a topic for another day).

France is in fact one of the world’s top snoopers, but appears to have ignored information and warnings from Turkey’s secret service – information which reportedly was obtained by traditional investigative means and turned out to be correct.

Now there is another emergency, this time an economic one. Mr. Hollande (a.k.a. “the welfare state incarnate”, h/t Gaspard Koenig) has just declared that his government will pull out all stops in terms of labor market intervention, so as finally stop the inexorable rise in French unemployment. His main motive seems to be saving his own job, as Mish notes.

Apparently Hollande made a vague promise that he would step down if unemployment failed to decline this year. Given the persistence of the trend and the inability and/or unwillingness of France’s government to institute meaningful reform, it seemed a slam dunk that it would keep failing to do so.

France’s unemployment rate. If this were a stock, we’d be inclined to buy it on technical grounds

Back when Mr. Hollande’s approval rating fell to the reciprocal of Mr. Putin’s (namely 13%), we briefly gave him the benefit of the doubt, on account of the fact that he evidently had nothing to lose (see “Mission Impossible?”). Nothing much has happened since then – what has happened, was essentially of the too little too late variety.

To continue reading: Hollande’s Socialist Wonderland

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So Why Did Turkey Shoot Down That Russian Plane? by Conn Hallinan

Posted on December 12, 2015 | Leave a comment

A detailed analysis of the Syrian situation, and a prognosis on the prospects for some sort of peace. From Conn Hallinan at antiwar.com:

Why did Turkey shoot down that Russian warplane?

It was certainly not because the SU-24 posed any threat. The plane is old and slow, and the Russians were careful not to arm it with anti-aircraft missiles. And it wasn’t because the Turks are quick on the trigger, either. Three years ago, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emphatically declared that a “short-term violation of airspace can never be a pretext for an attack.” There are even some doubts about whether the Russian plane ever crossed into Turkey’s airspace at all.

Indeed, the whole November 24 incident looks increasingly suspicious, and one doesn’t have to be a paranoid Russian to think the takedown might have been an ambush. As retired Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, former U.S. Air Force chief of staff, told Fox News, “This airplane was not making any maneuvers to attack the [Turkish] territory.” He called the Turkish action “overly aggressive” and concluded that the incident “had to be preplanned.”

It certainly puzzled the Israeli military, not known for taking a casual approach to military intrusions. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon told the press on November 29 that a Russian warplane had violated the Israeli border over the Golan Heights. “Russian planes do not intend to attack us, which is why we must not automatically react and shoot them down when an error occurs.”

So why was the plane downed?

Perhaps because, for the first time in four years, some major players are tentatively inching toward a settlement of the catastrophic Syrian civil war, and powerful forces are maneuvering to torpedo that process. If the Russians hadn’t kept their cool, several nuclear-armed powers could well have found themselves in a scary faceoff, and any thoughts of ending the war would have gone a-glimmering.

A Short Score Card

There are multiple actors on the Syrian stage – and a bewildering number of crosscurrents and competing agendas that, paradoxically, make it both easier and harder to find common ground. Easier, because there is no unified position among the antagonists; harder, because trying to herd heavily armed cats is a tricky business.

A short score card on the players:

The Russians and the Iranians are supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and fighting a host of extremist organizations ranging from al-Qaeda to the Islamic State, or ISIS. But each country has a different view of what a post-civil war Syria might look like. The Russians want a centralized and secular state with a big army. The Iranians don’t think much of “secular,” and they favor militias, not armies.

Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and most the other Gulf monarchies are trying to overthrow the Assad regime, and are the major supporters of the groups Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah are fighting. But while Turkey and Qatar want to replace Assad with the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia might just hate the Brotherhood more than it does Assad. And while the monarchies are not overly concerned with the Kurds, Turkey is bombing them, and they’re a major reason why Ankara is so deeply enmeshed in Syria.

The US, France, and the United Kingdom are also trying to overthrow Assad, but are currently focused on fighting ISIS using the Kurds as their major allies – specifically the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party, an offshoot of the Turkish Kurdish Workers Party that the US officially designates as “terrorist.” These are the same Kurds that the Turks are bombing and who have a friendly alliance with the Russians.

Indeed, Turkey may discover that one of the price tags for shooting down that SU-24 is the sudden appearance of new Russian weapons for the Kurds, some of which will be aimed at the Turks.

To continue reading: So Why Did Turkey Shoot Down That Russian Plane?

 

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Why the US, France and Britain are destroying Syria, by Sam Gerrans

Posted on December 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Sam Gerrans, on a guest post on theburningplatform.com:

Since Russia stepped up to the plate, suddenly western countries can’t wait to bomb ISIS. Are they now there to get the job done? Or are they there to stop Russia increasing its influence, and to make sure it doesn’t succeed where they failed?

The world is falling over itself to bomb Syria.

The following statement from Reuters summarizes the situation: “Most of the world’s powers are now flying combat missions over Iraq and Syria against Islamic State. But any consensus on how to proceed has been thwarted by opposing policies over the 4-year-old civil war in Syria, which has killed 250,000 people, driven 11 million from their homes, left swathes of territory in the hands of jihadist fighters and defied all diplomatic efforts at a solution.”

While it may seem to the outside observer that this catalogue of mayhem is the result of incompetence, to me – on the contrary – it is evidence of things going to plan.

I have never, thus far, seen a war the ruling elite clearly wanted to happen not happen.

Here, as in all other cases, there has been a bit of hand-wringing, some crying, some protests, some moving speeches. But like the morality plays of medieval times, after enjoying the sermon dressed as entertainment, life has inevitably carried on as normal with the barons raping and pillaging and everyone else having to put up with that reality.

Destruction of Syria is the plan

This time the plan – at least judging from the outcomes – is to destroy Syria.

Syria has been anathema to the self-appointed arbiters of righteousness: the ‘international community’, that coterie of hypocrites which arrogates to itself the monopoly on meting out death to those who won’t get with the program.

This group dislikes Syria which has had an uncompromising stance towards Israel and an independent financial system, and is using the chance to destroy it to flood Europe with refugees, thus further debasing the makeup of its constituent nations, and simultaneously justifying a lockdown in those countries.

Enter Putin

Everything was going swimmingly until Putin stepped in.

To continue reading: Why the US, France and Britain are destroying Syria

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Rue Sans Issue: French Middle East Policy Reaches a Bloody Dead End, by Steven Vujacic

Posted on November 19, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Steven Vujacic at antiwar.com:

The media high-fiving didn’t last long. Barely hours following the announcement of the “probable” death of anti-celebrity and throat-cutting ISIS pin-up boy “Jihadi John”, Paris was treated to a stunning choreography of terrorist attacks in supposed revenge for the constant and mostly ineffectual French bombing of ISIS targets in Syria.

The eternally hapless president of France did his best to look stern and statesmanlike in response to the massacre but anyone with half a brain must by now be asking themselves whether “Flamby” has a Plan B beyond more sanctimonious rhetoric and flashy air sorties.

The truth hurts. Hollande’s trademark denunciations of terrorism failed to hide the simple fact that French policies have consistently played into the hands of jihadists. From the ill-conceived removal of Muammar Ghaddafi, sworn enemy of Islamic fundamentalism, to the current French government’s strident defense of the incessant and puerile anti-Islamic insults of Charlie Hebdo, to its farcical attempts to weaken the anti-terrorist regime of Bashar al-Assad by judicial means, (i.e., the announcement of war crimes “investigations”), ISIS’ influence and confidence has grown with each French blunder. ISIS has always known exactly what it wants and it senses it is on a big winning streak. As leader of the country with the biggest Arab immigrant population in Europe, one wonders what more Hollande could have done to make life easy for ISIS short of issuing French passports to its entire leadership.

There is only one word to describe France’s foreign policy in the Middle East: reckless. France appears to have taken leave of its senses. Instead of maintaining a low profile anti-terrorist approach which guaranteed security at home, it has opted for the worst of all worlds – loud liberal sermons combined with overt and bloody intervention in a hugely volatile part of the world that has strong ties with a large and increasingly alienated segment of French society.

As the death toll rises, I listen in vain for any recognition that France has taken a wrong turn. That defending Western values in the Middle East and North Africa with air strikes, drones etc. is a moral and military dead end, pure and simple. Nothing. No self-reflection. No doubts. The liberal enlightened West never makes mistakes.

To keep reading: French Middle East Policy Reaches a Bloody Dead End

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