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.”