Elections and Expulsions

Tomorrow we vote, well, strictly, they vote. In my family I’m the only one who is disenfranchised. I can vote in the Municipal Elections, I could even be Mayor of Lyon, (in theory only) and I can vote here in the European elections, but I cannot vote in the Regional Elections. I pay my taxes and that’s as far as it goes.

The Regions are important. Last time, 2004, every region but one, Alsace, went to the Socialist Party. This time Sarkozy began by ordering Ministers to head the lists in various Departments (a region is made up of several Departments) and he seemed to be making the elections a test of his Presidency but, once it became clear his party was unpopular, he began backing off. It didn’t stop him trying to cull favour everywhere possible. He said publicly how important he thought ecology was, before meeting french farmers and saying that he was sick of the environmental lobby getting in the way of farming. He even went further in hypocrisy than even he had ever gone before by ordering, on Monday, that Najlae Lhimer should be allowed to return to France. This, only after the outcry against the injustice of her situation became threatening.

Who is Najlae Lhimer? She is an eighteen year old Moroccan girl who had entered France quite legally, was following a course in a state school, for a national exam which she will sit in May. Where is the problem? The problem is that when a foreign student reaches 18 they loose the right to remain in France. She would probably have been all right if her elder brother, with whom she was living, having had no contact with her parents for a number of years, hadn’t got into the habit of beating her up.

In February, after a particularly violent attack she decided to make a formal complaint, after all we have been made aware by all the media of the necessity of protecting women from this kind of abuse.

So on the 20^th of February she went to the gendarmerie to ask for protection. As her 18^th birthday had passed they arrested her and she was deported from the country the following day. There are some problems even french gendarmes can deal with!

The students at her school launched a national campaign against this obvious injustice and helped by Réseau éducation sans frontières (RESF), last Monday, the day given over to women’s right’s, Sarkozy revoked her deportation and ordered that she be granted a visa. Any ship in a storm, some might say.

When she arrived at the airport this morning her classmates held up a banner with the message, "le pays des gendarmes et des préfets t'a expulsée. Bienvenue Najlae dans celui de la solidarité et de la fraternité". (You were deported from the country of gendarmes and Préfects, welcome to the land of solidarity and fraternity)

RESF estimate there are probably several thousand young people in the same situation.

Latest estimations show that the Union for the Presidential Majority, UMP, has no chance of making the slightest progress in tomorrow’s elections.

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

France is a paradox and it is becoming a more and more inconsistent day by day. The national maxim, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, is everywhere, the French speak of their country as the inventor of the Declaration of Human rights, and yet.

Since the last presidential election I have discovered how little liberty we have and the learning curve continues. What is surprising is that I am no longer surprised. I have however prepared a small selection for any outsider who might read this.

I shall start with something small and work up.

Apparently, the new President may insult whoever he pleases. There are many examples but the most notorious is his “Casse toi pauvre con” addressed to a farmer who didn’t want to shake his hand.

This is not easy to translate as words used as insults tend to loose their intrinsic meaning but it is about the equivalent of “Piss off” or “Bugger off”, “poor bastard” or “poor cu**”. It might have been appropriate on the building site I worked on many, many years ago but it hardly seems ‘Presidential’ language.

Shortly after, while Sarkozy was visiting one of the French overseas territories, a bystander held up a piece of cardboard with the exact same words. The bystander was hauled before the court and fined for insulting the president. There have been other cases which have confirmed the jurisprudence. Insults are one way only. From the top down. A little thing which has spawned a plethora of complaints for “insulting an official”. The magistrates have never had so many of these cases. From the police to pen pushers the complaints flood in.

What can we civilians do? Bite our tongues. No magistrate is going to accept the word of a simple citizen against that of someone who represents the Republic.

We cannot discuss drugs in public. Even if one is a doctor and taking part in a debate, it is an offence. The law dates from Methuselah but it exists.

Apparently we may not even evoke the criminal past of some of those who govern us. It is considered libellous!

More recently, I discovered that it is illegal to talk about, organize, or participate in a boycott, as did Mme. Sakina Arnaud. She took part in a non-violent collective international action in a Carrefour supermarket. Her crime was to put a sticker which bore the message ‘Boycott, Apartheid, Israel” see above, on two items in the shop. The object was to protest against the ‘apartheid’ created by the Israeli wall. The shop, the biggest supermarket chain in France, accused her of “minor degradation” but the French Justice Minister wrote to the public prosecutor insisting that she be charged with “inciting racial, national, and religious discrimination”. This is direct government interference in the course of Justice. The law used dates from 1881. A circular has been sent to all the courts demanding that all “acts of discrimination be pursued with the utmost rigour.”

Mme. Arnaud was fined 1000 euros with 500 euros costs. With the aid of MRAP, movement against racism and for the friendship between peoples, and the League for Human Rights, she will appeal.

On the 4^th of February The Prime Minister attended a dinner held by the CRIF (Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France) and denounced “the scandalous movements to boycott kosher or Israeli products.” He was, deliberately, creating confusion between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Israeli’. This may go someway to explaining the present Government’s refusal to implement the decree made by the European Court of Justice on the 25^th February, 2010. This decree imposes heavy import duties on articles produced in the colonies i.e.: the occupied territories. Israel has been passing off these goods as “made in Israel” and thereby escaping import duties.

Michèle Alliot-Marie, Garde des Sceaux, minister of Justice and Liberty, also dined with the CRIF on the 19^th of February and also reinforced the amalgam jewish/israeli. She said,”I congratulate the court in the affaire of the individual who called for a boycott of Israeli goods in a commercial center.

The action of the Bordeaux courts illustrates my determination in the fight against anti-Semitism.”

It is becoming difficult to criticize anything done by Israel without being instantly tagged anti-semite.

To finish on a lighter note, I heard on France Inter this morning that the law which prohibits the wearing of trousers by women is still in vigour. Women who wish to wear male apparel should obtain prior permission from the Prefecture.

CENSORED, again

Damien Saez is a popular French musician. If you want the details Google his name, his biography is on Wikipedia, a lot of his songs are free on line.
A few hours after the 2002 presidential election when it became clear that the second round would be between Chirac and the extreme right Jean-Marie LePen, he had written and recorded and put on line a powerful protest song,“ Fils de France.”.
At the end of this month his new album will be released and the publicity campaign should already have begun. Posters on the underground, posters on the buses and on the newspaper kiosks that are so much a part of the French urban furniture, but it was not to be.
The Title song “J’Accuse” is full of meaning here. It was originally the title of an article by Emile Zola addressed to President Felix Faure when Captain Alfred Dreyfus was unjustly found guilty of spying. The article provoked a succession of crises which split France in two.
In this J’Accuse Damien Saez condemns our society in which we are led to believe that everything, from sex to the Christmas turkey can and must be bought and if it’s bought on credit, then that’s even better, especially for the shareholders who demand better returns year after year. “No, man didn’t descend from the ape, he descends from the sheep” sings Saez.
I hope the above goes some way to explaining the album cover which was also the poster but which has been censored. Saez then tried to replace the poster with a text but that was also banned. The reason? His poster demeans the human body. Well compare his poster with the one for a popular chain store. This photo was allowed, nothing demeaning here, it was inciting us to buy and that of course is highly moral. As he tried to say in the censored text, “Tell me, when will the time come when the ‘Liberty’ we see on our banknotes, is seen elsewhere.”

Patience

As it was fifty years ago.

After last night's concert I don't feel like getting het up so just a photo today, from Tunisia by my late father-in-law, Jean Bay.