Valerie Pecresse, the young minister who dared to speak out against the calumny aimed at Ali Soumaré (see previous blog) has been summoned to the Elysée Palace on Tuesday. I don’t expect that Sarko wants to congratulate her.

Meanwhile, during a television interview, Vincent Peillon a Euro MP for the socialist party, produced a newspaper article concerning two very big fish. I quote from Wikipedia.

"Patrick Devedjian, photo, (born on 26 August 1944 in Fontainebleau, Seine-et-Marne) is a French politician of the Union for a Popular Movement(UMP) party. A close adviser of Nicolas Sarkozy since the 1990s, he has been Minister under the Prime Minister in charge of the Implementation of the Recovery Plan, a special ministerial post created for two years..."
Alain Madelin is president of the right wing party, Démocratie libérale.

The article described how these two as students were convicted of:
Stealing a car
Stealing a marine engine
Siphoning petrol
Being in possession of stolen ID papers and an automatic pistol armed with 5 cartridges.
They were given a one year suspended sentence with 3 years probation.
Some might think they got off lightly but even then the extreme right wielded power. The French call it “Piston”. He was a member of a groupe called Occident which aimed at replacing democracy by “the selection of the elite by an elite”. The groupe also earned a reputation for beating up left wing students.
12 July 1967,the court at Rouen sentenced him to a fine of 1000 francs for “violence with premeditation and with the use of arms”. The sentence was considered very leinient . A facist commando had attacked the group of students who formed the committee against the war in Vietnam, with iron bars and pick axe handles leaving one student in a coma and the others in a pools of blood. Even the court described the attack as being of “ a rare savagery, and nameless barbarity” He still had a year’s probation to serve so how he got away with a fine is a mystery to all but the French.
In Patrick Devedjian Sarko has found the ideal advisor.

Shit sticks, check the wind before throwing

Ali Soumaré 29, became a semi-public figure in 2007 when he acted as a spokesman for the families of 2 kids, 15 and 16, killed when a police car collided with their motorbike. The “accident” provoked riots in what the French euphemistically call the “sensitive district” in the town of Villiers-le-Bel. Ali Soumaré, always a calming influence, always polite, was solicited by the local and national government and the media couldn’t get enough of him. So it seems natural that the socialist party should have chosen him to head their list of candidates for Val-d'Oise in the upcoming Regional Elections.
But, The UMP, Sarko’s party, is playing dirty again. I forgot to mention that the young man in question is black and the UMP is campaigning on the question of public safety. I’m prepared to bet you can guess the skin colour of the models used to illustrate the menace on election posters. This might explain why the UMP dug out his police record and began to shout “scandal, this man is a repeat offender with a string of convictions to his name.”
("If I may digress for a moment, I would point out that in France only a court or someone with authorised access to police files can dig up a police record, so how they got it nobody knows.)
They cried out on television, they sounded off on the radio, and they even gave the story to the press.
3 Sept. 1989,Aggravated theft condemned to 6 months prison.
4 August, 2004. Aggravated theft, theft with violence, use of a counterfeit bank card. 80 hours community service.
25 May, 2008. Violence resulting in physical injury. The court has not yet pronounced sentence.
13 May, 2009. Driving whilst his license was suspended. Sentence to be pronounced on the 16 February, 2010.
13 July, 2009. Rebellion against an agent of the Republic, (very serious over here, can mean anything from saying “shit” when the nice man in uniform asks to see your ID, all the way up to asking why the three men in riot gear are beating the foreign looking gentleman with their truncheons.) anyhow, on the 13 of October, 2009 he was sentenced to 2 months in prison for it.
So, how did such an unpleasant person come to be chosen by the Socialists?
Well, that’s the problem. They didn’t. They chose an altogether different person who just happens to have the same name but a different date of birth, ooups!
Now they are being sued and have gone down several percentage points in the latest poll.

Weekend Truce

No rant for the weekend. Just a pic.

Like mother, like daughter

Marie-luce Penchard who is the Minister for French overseas Territories (Guadeloupe, Guyenne, Reunion Island and Martinique.) stated on Sunday, “ I have a budget of more than 500 million Euros and I would be loathe to see that manna leave the Guadeloupe for Guyenne, Reunion Island or Martinique” She is the of course herself from the Guadeloupe.
Naturally, the independent press and the opposition parties protested and were accused by the Government of trying to stir up a storm in a tea cup. A spokesman said she was not speaking as a Minister but as a candidate in the forthcoming Regional elections. The obvious conclusion is that election promises are downright lies, something we all knew but I think it's the first time I've heard it confirmed by a government spokesman (it was a man but anyway I refuse the ridiculous spokesperson)
The family have reason to defend the Guadeloupe as the territory has always been kind to them. Her mother who was President of the Conseil Regional, in effect the government of the island, filled the family vault during her terms in office. In 2002 it was revealed that she had taken bribes totalling 20 million Euros. She is also thought to have received 60 – 65 million Euros in the allocation of contracts for schools, roads, and other public works. She was also accused of “abuse of her position as Mayor in a commune on the island and of making and using counterfeit documents”. She had created a structure called CGOS which received grants from the commune and imposed an illegal tax on all planning applications.
She was found guilty on all counts but curiously was only given a suspended sentence and a 20 thousand Euro fine.
The State works in mysterious ways!

SHOOT the JOURNALISTS

Eric Besson, a name that probably means nothing to my English speaking friends, is our curiously named “Minister for immigration and National Identity”. He launched a national “debate” about the national identity which turned out to be a wonderful tool for stirring up anti immigrant sentiments in time for the forthcoming regional elections here. In fact it wasn’t even a debate. Here in Lyon it was an invitation only event and it wasn’t difficult to predict who wouldn’t be invited. Police outnumbered the demonstrators who were kept well away. They didn’t feel the need to intervene when a group of National Front members turned up and attacked the pro-immigration demonstrators, four of whom finished the evening in hospital.
The press has been giving a lot of coverage to hundreds of cases of French citizens being told to prove their right to French Nationality. Among the many is Ann Sinclair, she is one of France’s best known journalists and the wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn who is President of the International Monetary Fund and a real heavy weight of the French Socialist party. The polls give him as the candidate to defeat Sarkozy at the next Presidential Election if only he agrees to stand. Ann Sinclair was born abroad and although she had French ID and a French passport which declares that the bearer is a French national, she was told she would have to prove her nationality.
All this is in complete contradiction to previous practise and press and radio coverage link the new aggressive attitudes with the minister’s appointment.

This may be responsible for the Minister’s declaration which I have translated as diligently as possible.
“the media are all the same, they should be cleaned up with a Kalashnikov.”

VICTORY

Yesterday the Culture Minister, Frederick Mitterand, (nephew of the Socialist President) ordered that Siu Lan Ko’s censored artwork be reinstated. The affair had grown to international proportions and the only way to put an end to it was to denounce the misguided little man who had started it all. I wouldn’t give much for his future.

Today is Sunday a day of rest, or at least it was until Sarko changed the law to allow supermarkets to open on Sundays. There were absolute assurances that no one would be forced to work but we have since discovered that the alternative is to be sacked and the supers won’t employ any one who won’t give a written assurance that they would love to work on Sundays.
So, day of rest, no rant today. (Although there is plenty to rant about.)
Instead, a rather strange picture inspired by decay and regeneration. Rather like the state education system in France, except that we are still in the “decay” stage desperately hoping that regeneration will follow.




Daniel Cohn-Bendit gave an impromptu speech about the inefficacy
and impotence of Europe in international affairs. Well worth watching if you speak French. Find it on utube.

Support for Siu Lan Ko and Police Custody

Support for Siu Lan Ko

The socialist Mayor of Paris has offered the artist Siu Lan Ko, whose work was censored earlier this week, exhibition space at the prestigious CENTQUATRE (104) centre. She hasn’t yet accepted but her lawyer has said that the Director of l’école des Beauxarts de Paris has ignored her client’s request for a meeting and that she would now consider court action.

......

The number of garde à vue, people detained by the police for questioning, has increased in France by 35%. Has there been a crime wave? Not according to the government but the conditions in which suspects are held have been described as “degrading and inhuman” by the Inspector of Prisons and this week after visiting the cells at Charleville-Mézières the Judge was shocked.
Appearing before him was a man who pleaded guity to driving under the influence but who was also accused of physically and verbally assulting a police officer.
You must understand that police custody in France is designed to break the spirit of the detainees. Prisoners are detained together in cells which are often no bigger than 2 square meters and fitted with a bench only 25 cm wide, not wide enough to sleep on. Although, in theory, there is a right to be assisted by a lawyer there are not nearly enough lawyers, and where there are lawyers they only have access to the charges and evidence after 48 Hours.
This man was held in a cell of 2.3 sq meters with 2 other people. The Judge described the cell as “repulsively filthy, the walls smeared with blood and excrement”. After a number of hours in the cell the man contested the conditions of his detention and was put in another cell with an overflowing lavatory in the centre of the floor.
The Judge found the man guilty but imposed no sentence declaring that the man had already been subjected to a traumatising experience and that he had paid dearly for a very minor offence. In his summing up the Judge said that if people are kept in crowded cells which are repulsively filthy without a minimum of personal hygiene he could only conclude that it constituted “a degrading and inhuman experience.”

Art in France subjected to Political censorship

Today’s tale comes from one of the rare newspapers in France that doesn’t belong to one of Little Nicky’s bosom friends. The newspaper is “Liberation”, it’s all in the name. The story in the edition for Thursday 11th February is about an exhibition at the prestigious Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-Arts de Paris.

The exhibition, called The Seven Day Weekend, brings together work from the Royal College of Art in London, from LASALLE College of the Arts de Singapore, and of course Paris. Siu-lan Ko, a Chinese installation artist had her work approved in January. It consisted of banners hung on the front of the building with words parodying one of Nicky’s campaign slogans, “Work more, earn more”. She chose Work, Earn, More, and Less. It read, “Work more earn less” or, “Work less earn more” according to how you approached the piece.
Siu-lan Ko said, “Last night I got an email from the exhibition curator, Clare Carolin of the Royal College of Art”. She explained that , Henry-Claude Cousseau Directeur of the Ecole des beaux-Arts, considered that the Minister of Education might be offended and that as he would soon be fixing the school’s budget, the work was not appropriate.
Clare Carolin said she was opposed to the censorship felt insulted by it and that as Curator of the Exhibition she had not even been consulted. She added that the artist had not even been informed when the installation was removed on Wednesday.
Siu-lan Ko is an International Artist who specialises in using political slogans. “Coming from China”, she said, “I cannot understand this brutal censorship in France particularly in one of the oldest schools of art which is supposed to encourage freedom of expression. It shows the degree of political conservatism and the extent of the fear Sarkozy provokes”. The artist said she would consider court action if her work was not restored to its place in the exhibition before the opening today, Friday 12th February.

Nicolas Sarkozy restores the Royal (sorry) Presidential Hunts

This information was the subject of a Broadcast Editorial on France Inter, France’s only independent “talk radio”, this Monday, 7th February. President Chirac had abolished the hunts at Marly and Rambouillet and although the 160 hectares of the hunt at the Chateau of Chambord remained they were never used. But, ‘Little Nicky’ likes expensive toys so he has appointed his advisor and personal friend Pierre Charon as the functionary to be responsible for the restoration of Chambord. The orders are t to make it into an object of “Prestige and Influence”.
The first hunt took place last Friday and everything was done in the Grande Tradition. It began with breakfast for the 30 invited guests assisted by their wives or husbands and finished with a dinner at the Chateau preceded by the tableau de chasse, a display of the day’s kill, with the Republican Guard in full ceremonial uniform and armour holding flaming torches (all the better to see you by). All of the obscene and bygone splendour rolled out for a minority President who would have liked to have been king. Where ever he goes hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of military police are drafted in to evacuate any protests before coach loads of his supporters are bussed in to ensure that he can shake hands for the cameras. Day by day the power and abuse of the police gains ground and the state motto Liberté Égalité Fraternité means less and less. This week saw a fourteen year old girl taken from her home at dawn, in her pyjamas,handcuffed and detained in police cells for questioning. Her crime? She is accused of brawling in the school playground! She says she was trying to break up a fight. A middle aged man, perfectly respectable, watched police lining up teenage boys, faces against the wall arms and legs spread, in the Metro. He asked what was going on and got no answer. He left the station and was immediately arrested. The charges are, “insulting a police officer” and “resisting arrest”.
More news will follow.