Exceptionalism may apply to all sorts of countries. But, in France, it is a French specialty. French-reading readers, though, might want to have a look at the last issue on “The French Exception” of the very fine journal (this is a plug) Cosmopolitiques. The presentation of the issue (and more) is available here.
The amount of evidence in favor of the extreme but plausible hypothesis according to which Nicolas Sarkozy would be, in fact, a dangerous piece of fascist junk (but this is just a working hypothesis) is increasing slightly. This past Thursday, in a much commented TV appearance, he firmly praised against any amnesty to undocumented workers, in reference to recent strikes for work papers (see a couple of background articles from the International Herald Tribune here, here and here). But the problem is that he just confused “régularisation” (giving a work permit, i.e. a green card) and “nationalisation” (granting French citizenship):
“You don’t become French just because you’ve got a job in the kitchen of a restaurant, no matter how fancy.” (quoted in “Nicolas Sarkozy confond naturalisation et régularisation”, 20Minutes.fr, April 25 2008, and in “Quand Sarkozy confond ‘naturalisation’ et ‘régularisation’”, Nouvel Obs, April 25 2008)
Ok, but let’s be fair. This may be just a temporary lapse of awareness, a sign of fatigue, a slight misunderstanding. Perhaps nothing to do with the “Français d’abord” economic unconscious.
(Well, to be checked.)
In the morning of Thursday April 17, 2008, at the Gare du Nord in Paris, passengers were boarding into the 8:25am Thalys train to Brussels, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. No border control to pass, since all countries involved are all happy members of the European Community, and their border control policy fall into the Schengen Agreement. But still, some vigilant agents from the customs authority were there to stop and interrogate passengers that look suspicious. Poor agents, torn by the difficulties of their almost impossible semiotic venture. Who shall they pick for interrogation? On the grounds of what? Is there something in a person’s face that should tell something meaningful about faulty behavior? Or should their drop any criteria altogether and put the fate of their vital task into the hands of blind randomness? Well, no. They found the solution to their epistemic quarrel in less than a second: pick the Negro.
The French newspaper Libération makes today available here a facsimile of a very instructive French administrative document:
“Sir,
You have expressed a request for the regularization of your administrative status in France.
I am pleased to inform you that requests for regularization are not handled through postal correspondence. You are kindly asked to proceed in person at the Police Station, Bureau for Foreigners, on Tuesday or Thursday morning, in order to request an examination of your case.
Sincerely yours,
The Prefect”
(from an administrative letter from the Préfecture de Nanterre, reproduced in “Quand les préfectures piègent les sans-papiers”, Libération, April 14 2008)
That’s another trick to catch some immigrant. An internal administrative note, commented also by Libération in the same article, explains how to proceed with the trick: when the obedient applicant pops up, first, the police agent has to ask for the victim’s passport and put it aside, then ask the victim or victims (if it’s a family) to sit in the waiting room, and then arrest them. This second note urges cops to do that conscientiously:
“Expelling foreigners in irregular situation is a priority mission for our services. We are committed to performance targets. I therefore ask you to implement these instructions with great zeal.” (quoted in “Quand les préfectures piègent les sans-papiers”, Libération, April 14 2008)
The game for today is to tell what kind of trick this is. Any guess?
(A hint: it’s not of the hidden camera prank kind.)
Parliamentarians from the ruling conservative majority in France, headed by prime minister François Fillon, attacked Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, state secretary for the environment (also polytechnic engineer specialized in biology), for allowing an opposition-backed amendment to a bill on GMOs, a bill which is fairly harmful to pollution control. But Kosciusko-Morizet replied back, aptly defining them as “a bunch of cowards” unable to take the debate on GMOs seriously and to put forward a coherent appraisal. Sarkozy made a phone call and she decided she had to apologize, though — a pity.
Well, but let’s come to some hard statistical facts. The bill was voted yesterday (after some heated debate) and, as noted by Greenpeace, the figures show that only 245 parliamentarians from the conservative majority, out of 316, voted for that bill. Only three out of four. Which gives mathematical proof of the fact that Kosciusko-Morizet’s statement was scientifically correct.
For the record: another person died last week out of Sarkozy’s statistical terror. On Friday April 5, the cops where using (as it is becoming usual) transportation fare control as a device to capture some immigrant at the Joinville-le-Pont RER station, near Paris. Someone jumped into the Marne and died of a heart attack. Here is some media coverage at Libération and Le Monde. There is also a statement by RESF (Réseau Education Sans Frontières) here. And Rue89 reported and attempt from associations at occupying the EHESS (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales) in order to alert intellectuals.
The purpose of this post is to quickly insult the guy who destroyed Alban Berg’s Wozzeck in tonight’s new production at the Opéra Bastille in Paris. He is an idiot.
(You can perhaps trust this review from Libération, but definitely not this one from Le Monde.)
See, some scholars took that seriously and started some action here (it’s a petition defending the abrogation of article 56 of the Lisbon Treaty which forbids any restrictions on capital flows).
Another great piece of thought by cartoonist El Roto from yesterday’s edition of El País, available here (“The path of nationalism is very short: the origin is the end”).
Two in a row, because the one from Monday’s edition, available here, is very educational too (“If capitalism fails, we can try cannibalism”).
Is financial innovation the ultimate unintended path towards socialism?
“Some banks are just going to explode if we do not nationalize them. Or if the Government does not buy their bad credit. This of course would translate into massive costs for the State. But we do have a problem anyway. There is nothing to do but a major intervention.
- And that’s the solution?
What? To nationalize all banks? Well, not really. But there is no other option. If the State buys all the junk credit, this is just like a huge subsidy. It can buy all banks instead and then make money.
- Does the State have money enough to do that?
Well if we trust the figures, the value of distressed banks is only 7% of the GDP. This is a lot, but only a part of the total value creation. At worst 20%. Other countries already did that.”
(from “Amerika muss seine Banken verstaatlichen”, Frankfurter Allgemeine, March 17 2008, available also in Spanish here)
That’s from an interview with NYU Stern School of Business economist Nouriel Roubini on the current credit crunch and financial debacle. In the light of other scholarly sources, this may also be described as the natural development of the internal contradictions of financial capitalism towards the achievement of socialist revolution. No?
No kidding. Maybe the social-scientific avant-garde of the socialization of finance would soon be called to the glorious task of thinking through the “how” of this unmissable opportunity for economic experimentation.
