We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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‘Les 4 Vérités’ is a French libertarian/economic liberal magazine published weekly with 10,000 subscribers in paper format and also available online. The title comes from the French expression: «dire ces quatre vérités à quelqu’un» (“to speak home truths to someone”), in this case to a complacently statist France. Archived editions (about a month old) are available free and one can subscribe (paper or pdf) for the first month free.
In the current issue: Various denunciations of Iraq; Guy Millère’s piece on ‘France’s Debt to America’ and a review of Pierre Kohler’s ‘L’imposture verte’ (the Green Scam): a scientist’s attack on the various eco-scares.
One of the two things I also like on the site are the cartoons – almost every French site seems to have a cracking cartoonist: this week’s has Saddam welcoming the arrival of puppets on strings saying “At last! The return of the useful idiots!”.
The other is the box which advertises the (street) demonstration of the week and offers two recommended web links. Plugged this week are a new current affairs site called ‘Choc-info’ and a pompously witty ‘libertarian bureaucrat’ with the outlandish name, even in French of Aristophane Triboulet.
I now have over 120 links for French libertarian groups, publications, blogs and online forums. ‘Les 4 Vérités’ may not have the most polished web site, but it provides the free market view unashamedly, in a country that needs it badly.
On Sunday (2nd March) a demonstration will be held in Paris outside the U.S. embassy. The assembly point will be the place de la Concorde. The rally has an English name: “Friends and Freedom”, which in itself is unique.
It aims to promote: “Friendship and confidence between the French and American peoples” and “Friendship and solidarity between France and the United States of America”. The slogans are French. More details can be found here.
Among French libertarians there is the same division as in the US, with minarchists tending to support a war of liberation and both the anarcho-capitalists and the conservatives against. The Catholic liberals (almost the exact opposite of the socialist ‘liberal Catholics’) are opposed to war both for the damage it could cause (some French people remember the ‘collateral damage’ of Caen in 1944), and the fear that a successor government might be less religiously tolerant than Saddam. An example of this view can be found here.
I regard the different cases being forward (in public by Messrs Bush and Blair) for war with Iraq as poor because they are either wrong (the Iraqi dictator probably has fewer ‘weapons of mass destruction’ than either Kim Jong Il or General Musharraf) or contradictory (is Saddam an ally of Bin Laden Yes or No?). Tyranncide is good enough and UNESCO can go and get stuffed.
I also consider the British forces almost entirely incapable of offering any worthwhile help to the Americans for reasons I’ve mentioned here before. Lend-Lease the air tankers and the SAS to the US and that’s all. ‘The Borrowers’ are probably going to get in the way of a US air strike or hold up the advance when the British made tanks break down in “the wrong kind of sand”.
Despite these misgivings, I would certainly go to the place de la Concorde this Sunday if I could afford the fare. The nasty game being played by French and German political leaders is as much a threat to world peace and the prosperity of this corner of the planet as any gang of terrorists.
They weren’t able to save the Taliban, they won’t be able to save Saddam Hussein but, by gum, they’re going to dig their heels in and fight to the last drop of precious blood to save the French film industry:
“French directors and intellectuals say American films are producing a generation of “stupid children” in the country.”
And, to compound matters, they’re now running the place.
“I go very often to schools, and I have found a lot of young kids have difficulties in analysing a concept, an idea, in a film.”
Maybe that’s true but Hollywood would not be my prime suspect here.
“If we look at what the United States is exporting to the world that is creative, it has to do with computer, it has to do with software, it has to do with other kinds of technology – not the ideas.”
Well, you don’t need boring old ideas when you’re inventing new technologies and software and things, do you.
“But Phillipe Rogier, author of L’Enemie Americain, said the French were not willingly accepting the increase in American culture in their society.”
Except for French kids apparently, who can’t get enough of it.
“The French would not call it a culture – it is a non-culture, a non-civilisation, just a way of life,” Rogier contends.”
A merest, meanest existance. A hollow, empty sham. A pointless, soulless skimming over a vast ocean of nothingness. So primitif, so barbare, so SIMPLISME!!!.
“This has been central to French attitudes towards America.”
No kidding!!
“Ultimately, Tavernier insists, the films are the first step of an American takeover of France.”
What’s the second step and when it is scheduled for?
“They always understood that the first way to occupy a country was to impose their films.”
Oh damn!! Somebody call the Pentagon, quick. They’ve gone and spent all these squintillions of dollars on Cruise Missiles and Aircraft Carriers when they could occupy Iraq by just sending in Martin Scorsese.
Note: The linked article on the BBC website is not satirical.
I was going to write about Les 4 Vérités a French free-market libertarian/liberal weekly magazine. However I came across a survey on pornography on the magazine’s site which produced the following results:
- 32.52 per cent – “The State must take strong restrictive measures”
- 23.40 per cent – “I’m against it, I try to persuade others, but it’s none of the State’s business”
- 2.13 per cent – “I’m a consumer and I would like politicians to stop me”
- 41.95 per cent – “It’s a pleasant past-time which should not be prohibited”
From these figures I assume that the number of British immigrants in France connected to the Internet is small.
Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, has arrived in Paris to take part in a Franco-African summit despite European Union sanctions against him.
France obtained a waiver to allow Mugabe to enter Europe as sanctions were formally extended for a further year on Tuesday. Mugabe will be joinig around 45 other African heads of state, Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, as part of French attempts to forge closer ties with Africa.
His arrival has prompted protests from Britain and other EU countries and human rights groups are planning a series of protests during Mr Mugabe’s visit.
Given the company Jacques Chirac likes to keep, I would be deeply concerned to see him getting along with Tony Blair and George Bush.
Or perhaps it’s not personal. It is worse. Philip Delves Broughton’s excellent analysis of France’s hang-ups and downs shows a burning desire to emulate de Gaulle and restore France’s glory. Chirac’s years of political hackery and alleged expense fiddling and kickbacks as Paris mayor will be forgotten as the echoes of General de Gaulle are ringing louder and louder:
The Franco-African summit that convenes in Paris tomorrow has long been one of his favourite events. In years of diminished French influence, this bi-annual get-together of African leaders was a chance for French presidents to stand tall. But this week’s summit will be especially satisfying.
It will mark the triumphant conclusion of phase one of the Chirac Doctrine, a foreign policy that has enraged America and large parts of Europe, but delighted the French and made M Chirac popular beyond his dreams.
M Chirac ignored Britain’s objection to the invitation to the Zimbabwean leader because he believed far more was at stake than antagonising the Foreign Office or pleasing the Zimbabwean opposition. He sees France extending its reach into Southern Africa, once a British preserve. France believes it can bring peace to Congo, for which it needs Zimbabwean help, and expand its political and economic interests in the continent.
Despite the continuing unrest in the Ivory Coast, worsened by a recent French-brokered peace deal, M Chirac is confident France can display its full diplomatic plumage in Africa and demonstrate to Washington that it has a sphere of influence too.
He may even not be worried about missing a post-war carve-up of influence in Iraq. It just could be that France, he believes, is now the leader of the anti-American world and with that come dividends and responsibilities appropriate to the grand ministries of Paris and far exceeding those in one corner of the Middle East.
I hope the United States does not forget French crude attempts at the realpolitik game. I hope that the important players in the international arena will not let France usurp more influence that it deserves and make it face the consequences of its actions. Or is it too much to hope for?
The French libertarian movement is split over war with Iraq, though needless to say, not for the purely venal reasons of Chirac, the bespoke purveyor of nuclear technology to national-socialist dictators.
Most of the French libertarians I have been in touch with seem torn between a quasi-Randian view: “exterminate all practitioners of violent irrational beliefs” and the absolutist horror of any state violence. With a president like Jacques Chirac (imagine a cross between Richard Nixon, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton and George Bush senior: with NONE of their redeeming features), such scepticism about the morality of one’s own government seems reasonable. My fear about America is that unlike most Americans, I assume that the next US president could be almost as bad. But that’s another issue.
A distinctive voice in France right now is Jacques Garello – a French Catholic economist of the Austrian school. Professor Garello has hosted the summer university of the “nouvelle économie” at Aix for twenty five years, probably the most significant event of it’s kind in Europe. Here M. Garello considers the case for a “just” war:
The error consists in talking of a war against Iraq, when it really is a war against terrorism, and a legitimate case of self-defense of universal civilisation against barbaric forces which happen to find support and encouragement in Iraq.
He goes on to suggest that the real purpose of French diplomacy in refusing to side publicly with the US is the fear of the millions of potential Islamic militants in France: they would rather ignore the problem than fight it.
*= The Other France
In the classic British television comedy “Yes, Minister” the bureaucracy engineered the elevation of a conviction-free mediocrity to the post of prime minister. The episode, called “Party Games” involved the following altercation between Jim Hacker, the minister who is looking for a “big idea” to campaign about and a French-speaking Brussels bureaucrat1:
Jim Hacker: “Do you know, there’s an office at the European Commission where they pay people to produce food and next door there’s another office where they pay people to destroy food?”
European Bureaucrat: “It is not true!”
Sir Humphrey Appleby (British bureaucrat): “Oh really?”
European Bureaucrat: “They are not even on the same floor!”
Now consider that exchange in the light of my Case for “War on Chirac” versus this defence by Gemini, presumably a Chirac fan:
Just a few things – Chirac as PM wasn’t sacked, he’s the only PM of the 5th Republic who actually willingly quit. Second, the bicentenary of the execution of Louis XVI couldn’t have been in 1992, since he was executed on 21/01/1793. So out of the 7 wrong-doings in 27 yrs, 2 at least are wrong….
The first objection is of the “yes he was pushed… no he jumped” variety. See this page for a very different view than the “official Chirac” line. I might add that Chirac’s nicknames include “Chameleon Bonaparte” and “Supermenteur” – Super Liar. → Continue reading: It isn’t true…they aren’t even on the same floor!
I can’t help believing that it was the British decision to abolish and thereafter actively campaign against the slave trade that first introduced moral concepts into foreign policy.
Whether or not that is the case, it is the popular expectation that all foreign policy will be at least partly based on moral imperatives as opposed to the uncomfortably amoral calculations of national interest.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Europe where the various heads of state are forever delivering nauseatingly self-righteous lectures to the rest of the world from their bully pulpit in Brussels. Aside from switching off whenever I am so able I have also taken refuge in the suspicion that M’lady doth protesteth too loudly, a view which has been in some small sense vindicated by news of the French extending a hand of welcome to Robert Mugabe.
“France has confirmed that it is inviting Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to take part in a summit of African Heads of State next month.
Mr Mugabe is currently banned from entering the European Union because of doubts about the legitimacy of his re-election last year.”
I suppose it would be bad form to have ‘doubts’ about his democidal marxist policies. And that is rather the point, for whilst I do not expect the enarques in Paris to rain down ‘Les JDAM’s du Francais’ on the former Rhodesia, it is nonetheless a reasonable expectation that the foreign policy decisions they make should reflect the ‘humanitarian’ principles they claim to live by.
Instead the French continue to do what the French have always done and pursue their own national interests in Africa under a cloak of Sartrean altruism:
“But French President Jacques Chirac was convinced that the Zimbabwean leader’s presence at the summit would help promote justice, human rights and democracy in his country, foreign ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau told journalists.”
When the language of ‘human rights’ can be employed with such spectacular mendacity in an attempt to mask a nefariously machiavellian agenda then we know that it is a coin which has become irredeemably debased.
But this move by the French tells us that the mask is beginning to slip and, whilst I daresay the language of Brussels (which is not synoymous with France but heavily influenced by it) will not change in the short term or even the medium term, the polite fictions which underpin that language are close to being unsustainable.
The ugly, old ogre of national interest is being prodded awake from its slumber and invoked to stalk the world again. To accompany it on its travels we will need not just a whole slew of new ideas but a whole new language in which to express them.
Azedine Berkane, held in France for the stabbing of Bertrand Delanöe, the homosexual Mayor of Paris, in October this year, may be refused a trial on the grounds that he is a nutter.
Two psychiatrists have concluded that the Islamic fundamentalist who was assumed to have acted in accordance with Islamic hatred of homosexuality, is in fact suffering from a psychosis which often leads to violent behaviour “within a religious context”.
A second opinion is expected before prosecutors have to decided whether Mr Berkhane, 39 years old unemployed and without fixed abode, can be considered mentally fit to stand trial for attempted murder.
In fairness to the psychiatrists, Mr Berkhane has a history of mental illness, and has allegedly claimed that he was being pursued by a “satanic cult”. In 2001, Mr Berkhane was a voluntary patient at a psychiatric hospital in the Paris suburb of St Denis. In March 2002, he was reported missing to police by his mother.
If the French authorities deal with homophobic attacks by Muslims by shaking their heads, saying “poor chap, he’s off his rocker”, locking them up indefinitely, and giving them drugs or electroshock treatment, it doesn’t seem a very glorious path for a young Mudjaheddin to follow. Might this be better than the death penalty? Or is it too cruel?
Poor, beleagured France! All they’re trying to do in West Africa is to keep the peace and impose some semblance of order.
“A rebel group in the Ivory Coast has accused France of waging war after a battle with French troops who are trying to maintain a truce in the country’s civil war.”
Meanwhile, the EU Commission in Brussels has denounced French unilateralism. The country’s ‘intellectuals’ are doing nothing except sneer at their leaders ‘simplisme’ foreign policy. The UN has passed a resolution condemning French aggression. Church leaders are urging the French to be more tolerant and understanding. Thousands of left-wing academics and celebrities have launched a ‘Not In My Name’ Petition. African leaders are calling upon the rest of the world to resist French militarism and both the Guardian and the Independent are running editorial columns focussing on France’s right-wing, red-necked President, their dangerous and uncivilised obsession with gun-culture and the danger that their blind, one-sided foreign policy represents to the rest of the world community.
Okay, none of those things have actually happened yet. But I’m quite sure they will. Any day now. You mark my words. Just wait and see.
The French economy is deteriorating, so much so, that the French themselves admit that the growth of 0.2% between July-September 2002 is worse than expected, according to Nicolas Claquin, economist at CCF bank.
“We can expect [the weakness] to continue at least until the start of 2003, confirming our forecast of gross domestic product growth of 1.4% next year. The government’s growth target (2.5%) for 2003 is too high.”
So far not a surprise deserving a mention on this blog – it is the ability of the French to manage an arrogant spin of their worsening economic situation that is astounding:
“The figure confirms that France is not immune from the slowdown affecting our European partners and the United States.”
Perhaps Mr Cavalier, a Credit Lyonnais eurozone economist, failed to notice that despite the other countries’ economic problems the French economy is doing still worse than Germany and Italy in the last quarter and far worse than the UK and the US.
Jul-Sep 2002
UK +0.8%
Germany +0.3%
Italy +0.3%
France +0.2%
US +1.3
But, of course, let’s blame it all on the Americans.
Samizdata Illuminatus occasionally has a turn of phrase that I can only envy:
“This bespeaks a political elite on the Continent of Europe that is increasingly aloof and out of touch with ordinary citizens. On one level, this is encouraging, because such arrogance usually comes before a fall from grace. However, it also suggests that if the situation is not tackled soon, the anger boiling up in Germany and elsewhere could turn ugly.”
I don’t know about Germany but I can report that to some extent the problem of an out of touch elite may be addressed in France. Unlike anywhere else in Western Europe the French presidential election in France this year produced a second round run-off between one right-wing sleazeball and a beyond the pale authoritarian populist. The Socialist Party candidate got less than one in five votes on such a low turnout that the abstention rate alone spoke of “a crisis for democracy”.
In Britain we’ve become so accustomed to hearing hyped up scaremongering every time a racialist candidate gets more than 500 votes in Blackburn, that we don’t realise that the scared commentators in France were, well… really scared.
Unlike Britain, most of Europe contains large numbers of people who actually know what it’s like to have soldiers kick down the door of their home, or a neighbour’s. → Continue reading: “Oui, premier ministre!”
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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