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Sometimes, there are coincidences.By which I mean, coincidences do exist, after all. But just not this time I suppose:
Tehran, March 11, IRNA - Iran news agency: French banks release Iran's frozen assetsFrance has not confirmed or denied the Iranian news agency report, and, typical of the French news
Presidential Advisor for legal and parliamentary affairs Majid Jafarzadeh said on Tuesday that the assets of Central Bank of Iran (CBI), which were seized by French banks, have been released.
Speaking to IRNA, he said that the move followed continued efforts by Presidential department for legal and parliamentary affairs on Monday. CBI assets were frozen by Bank of French Banque Populaire.
If the information proved to be true however, considering both the implications of such move and the sick and thick collusion between the French "private", semi-private (and public evidently) companies with the State1, there is no way — emphasis on no way — this could have happened without both knowledge and approval at the top level of the French diplomacy and Presidency — that means Kouchner and Sarkozy.
While there is little trust to put into an official Iranian news agency of course, the fact that France "won't deny or confirm" gives a lot of ground to suspicions of a — typical, if History helps and memory serves — French shady deal in the works.
In Paris, on the very same day (Tuesday, March 11) at the opening of some local fair grandiloquently dubbed "Forum for New Diplomacy"2, the Good Doctor Kouchner, that old school Socialist who was offered de Villepin's chair, staff and budget as France's foreign minister by France's New Supa Dupa President-Showman Sarkozy, couldn't help but serving the same old Leftist canard that "Bush damaged America's image in the World[...'s view of those who already hated America in the first place — Ed]", while speaking to Roger Cohen from the New York Times' European outlet, the International Herald Tribune (that manages to go further down and to the Left of the mother ship, making it a real chore to read4), a particularly receptive interlocutor to this kind of mantra:
'Magic is over' for U.S., says French foreign ministerLet's begin with a quick digression: many of us peons have been knowing that "it will never be as it was before" since September 11, 2001, 12:46:30 UTC, but it's apparently taking more than 6 years to penetrate the walls of the Great Diplomats at the Quai D'Orsay.
PARIS: Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France (...) says that whoever succeeds President George W. Bush may restore something of the United States' battered image and standing overseas, but that "the magic is over."
Asked whether the United States could repair the damage it has suffered to its reputation during the Bush presidency and especially since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Kouchner replied, "It will never be as it was before."
Or that's just not what the Good Doctor Kouchner has in mind when he says "it", perhaps — end of digression.
I'll say it once again, just because I know there will come a time when I'll have to say "I told you so": France's dirty bag of tricks is still open, because France's semi-secret weasel war against the US is still on.
The only difference is that rather than the unlucky and untimely frogs in the open strategy pursued by Chirac and de Villepin, Sarkozy and Kouchner have reverted to the insidious methods5 of the Mitterrand era — the 1980's Socialist President who "served [1940's Collaborationist] Vichy [regime] with such zeal that he earned himself the Francisque medal [Vichy's highest honour]" yet is still regarded as a semi-god by the French elite — who once (in)famously said:
"France does not know it, but we are at war with America. Yes, a permanent war, a vital war, a war without death".Hence Sarkozy, having briefly staged his pro-American act, telling US congressmen exactly what they wanted to hear6 and crying out loud for a few weeks how he loved America (As long as he had the international media's attention. Then he stopped, and he's not making such a fuss about it anymore.) — before going all hanky-panky with Putin's Russia. Hence his bypassing the Parliament by sending one of his future former ex-wives7 on a high profile mission to al-Gaddafi's Lybia with gifts of French warplanes and nukes in her bottomless yet rather dashy vanity case. Hence France's meddling in the Near and Middle-East, or even France's sudden interest in getting back into NATO, asking for a command position nobody was offering her.
"A permanent war" — and if you think that a few, much hyped, days of vacation in New Hampshire constitute a cease-fire (let alone a peace treaty), you've not learned much of French History.
A good KGB training is a terrible thing to waste
Not strictly related, but part of the French "ecosystem": a few more pages to add to the Chronicles of Ordinary Anti-Americanism (French chapter), with this cover of the current special issue of Les Echos; France's economics monthly that wished it was "The Economist" but is to Capitalism and the economy what Pravda was to actual Truth.
Translation: "After Bush. Financial crisis, social divide, immigration, environment. Why America must reinvent herself.">
On her long agony towards oblivion, France is experiencing as a result of decades of dedication to Socialism, those very flaws Les Echos are projecting on America here — though to a critical degree nearing the point of no return, as far as social unrest is concerned. As a result, her "elite" in the political-media complex have little options left but to resort to a well-known (soft) Soviet tactic: keep your masses more or less in check by telling them, repeatedly, that no matter how bad they feel, people are doing far worse in the USA.
That's the basics of propaganda, so I'll just let you enjoy the tone, the subject, the imagery, the substance, and the style.
Welcome to my Life in France.
Comments
Comments thread (5)
3317 - Iwo Gina
Iwo Gina Maryland
We had one of them... he's now stumping for his (never ex, possibly future-ex if she had any self-respect) wife.
3319 - TooTall
TooTall Utah
Just some food for thought:
President Bush has been in office 7 years.....but, think about these facts.....
A little over one year ago:
1) Consumer confidence stood at a 2 1/2 year high;
2) Regular gasoline sold for $2.19 a gallon;
3) the unemployment rate was 4.5%.
Since voting in a Democratic Congress in 2006 we've seen:
1) Consumer confidence plummet;
2) the cost of regular gasoline soar to over $3 a gallon;
3) Unemployment is up to 5% (a 10% increase);
4) American households have seen $2.3 trillion in equity value evaporate
(stock and mutual fund losses);
5) Americans have seen their home equity drop by $1.2 trillion dollars;
6) 1% of American homes are in foreclosure.
America voted for change in 2006, and we got it!
3320 - Lady Cincinnatus
Lady Cincinnatus Ohio & Kentucky
TooTall,
Your statistics are awesome!! Can we use them? Where did you get them? I've been trying to explain this to my doom and gloom friends. And this doesn't even inlcude all the Dems that took over at the state level in most states. Ohio and Kentucky both have new Democrat governors and administrations.
And D. Frogman,
“Welcome to my Life in France." When are you just going to come to the U.S.? We're going to need all the good guys we can get.
3321 - TooTall
TooTall Utah
My wife got them in a e-mail at her work. No way to tell who actually did the work of digging them out but they're easily verifable.
In my opinion some of them aren't directly attributable to Congress but what the heck. Lots of things laid on President Bush are things he actually has little control over so what's sauce for the goose . . . If it happens on your watch you're held to blame.
My accountant wife hates one of my favorite old sayings which goes "liars figure and figures lie".
3322 - the dissident frogman
the dissident frogman France
TooTall,
I hear you, and it's not my intention to imply that everything is hunky dory in the Land of the Free.
However, and how odd as it may sound, the actual state of affairs in the US is beyond the point, as far as Les Echos' special dossier on the... State of affairs in the US is concerned — and the same goes for the French press at large.
This kind of "coverage" is a constant, and these dramatic headlines make up the stock-in-trade of the French media, Left to Right - You'd regularly find the same "special dossier" published just a few years ago, when the US economy was thriving, and (case in point) the situation in France was all gloom and doom.
Read "Cowboy Capitalism" by (US based) German journalist Olaf Gersemann: as Milton Friedman put it "a devastating rejection of common European fallacies about the American economy". Gersemann addresses and puts to rest all the "myths" constantly ushered in the French (and West European) media and political sphere about the US: declining living standards, poverty on the rise, "MacJobs", three jobs needed to (merely) survive, no health care, financial (credit) crisis, etc, etc.
The aforementioned stock-in-trade is all there, and this book was first published circa 2004. I, personally, have been hearing the same nonsense for the last two decades at least.
When discussing such matters, the share of people who actually believe this is simply stunning. 9 out of 10 in my experience.
KL,
That is my dearest wish, but believe it or not, it's far from easy. At least, when one sticks to the principle of doing it honorably and legally.
I suspect the bad guys have it easier — only one river to cross — unfortunately.