Archive for the ‘Federal EU?’ Category

International Socialism – the Pest of our Times.

mercredi, octobre 16th, 2019

BCiP member Evelyne Joslain takes issue with international socialism as the pest of our times:

La peste de notre temps_EJoslain_5.X.2019

La Peste de notre temps__2e partie_17.X.2019

French Politics – A Year Later…….The Reign of President Macron Appraised

mardi, juillet 3rd, 2018

BCiP member Monique Riccardi-Cubitt shares her thoughts:

Ever since the beginning of the 2017 presidential campaign I have not ceased, as have also done many others, to alert the opinion as to the potential dangers of Macron’s election and his stooge Brigitte. Their life record based on duplicity, venalty, vulgar seduction and moral corruption rendered them ill-fitted to govern France, and could only bring misfortune to the nation and to its citizens. In several articles published in French and in English on Mediapart and the British Conservatives in Paris’s website, I predicted the social, economic, human and cultural disaster of his future presidency. I quoted Professor Christopher Bickerton, University Lecturer in politics at POLIS and Official Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge, who has taught at Oxford, the University of Amsterdam and Sciences Po in Paris. On September 7th 2017 he published an article in The New York Times : Emmanuel Macron Will be Yet Another Failed French President.

 

Macron has been badly elected by default in surfing on the inner divisions and ancestral fears of the French nation. In capitalizing on the Right Wing’s debacle caused by the corruption and mafia actions of the Sarkozy clan Macron, the self proclaimed Jupiter,  succeeded in seizing the supreme power he and his accomplice wife had so ardently striven for. From the very beginning  he distinguished himself by his erratic misbehaviour, his abusive language, his infringements of the Law and of the Constitution  in pushing through liberticidal anti democratic, anti humanist laws. To such an extent that my prophecy on this state of affairs resulting in a country under a constant State of Emergency that allows the Goverment all possible abuses in repressive and restrive legislation, has become true. Not only have citizens’ civic rights, freedom and privacy shrunk considerably, but the country is in real danger of a civil war. Dark politico-religious, financial and économic forces are at work in an underhand manner. It is their implicit interest that such a catastrophic issue occurs, and the threat looms larger everyday. Such is Macron’s arrogant autocratic rule and his political imposture, that daily the destructive manipulations of the despotic author of the premonitory book Revolution and of his henchmen are becoming more explicit, even if apparently denied. As can be seen in the latest episode when the French Ambassador in Budapest brought support to the government of Viktor Orbàn whose migratory policies are all but similar to those of France. He denounced in a telegram to the Quai d’Orsay,  the true modern antisemitism, that of the Moslems of France and Germany … After its publication on the website of  Médiapart, the online newspaper, on June  29th 2018,  the Ambassador was dismissed and publically disowned by Macron. Yet in a first time he latter had declared not wishing to relieve  him of his post… It is characteristic of Macron’s erratic ambivalent credo : En même temps At the same time, allowing his words to deny the intent and the action, to say one thing and its contrary, to adapt to the changing blowing wind of the current opinion, to build a smokescreen where there should be transparency.

 

The result can only be disastrous for France and for Europe. Far from being the self-appointed saviour of Europe, the perversely ambiguous narcissic nature of Macron, his venalty, his Sarkozy-like hyperactive and incoherent manner of governing, his neoliberal policies giving priority to the wealthy few, the milliardaire upper-class, to the detriment of the middle and working classes who are nothing according to him, are steadily eroding and destroying the social, cultural and economic fabric of the country with ensuing disastrous results for the European Community at large. The middle and working classes, the very foundation stone of society, are feeling betrayed by Macron and his government. One can easily predict that, as did happen in the United Kingdom with the BREXIT’s fatall issue, this antidemocratic exclusion of the vast majority of citizens by a government sold to the rule of the financial markets and globalisation will breed in time rampant racism. A scapegoat will have to be found to justify the increasing proverty of the country and of its citizens. It will be easy then to accuse the migrants, the Moslems, those of a different religion or skin colour. At the end of this fateful presidency, France will no longer be a harmonious whole, a country united by a shared culture, its badge of honour and glory for centuries. It will be a worn-out country, deprived of its vital creative forces, bled to death by ‘This poverty born of money’ in the words of Joyce Mansour, the British Egyptian poetess who wrote in French. The country will be torn apart with internecine fights, thus denying the best of its cultural heritage based on Greco Roman and Christian values which recognize and welcome diversity in its universality. France will then deny and destroy the European dream and ideal and accomplish a FREXIT.

 

2018 has been declared the European Year of Cultural Heritage. The Italian Institute in Brussels under the direction of  Paolo Grossi, and with the support of the European Commission, has published a special edition in two volumes of its yearly review Cartaditalia  in four European languages : French, Italian, English and German. It aims to define, acknowledge, and seek the appropriate management to ensure the continuity in time of Europe’s tangible and intangible heritage.  During the presentation at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris, on March 14th 2018, Pier Luigi Sacco, the scientific editor of the publication has declared ‘ Heritage is what defines our ability to cope with everyday life, to cope with the world’. It is altogether‘ A flexibility to learn from others, and an accumulation of what we have learnt…It is a complex vision of human nature , a source of superpower…’ whereas ‘identity is static, heritage is dynamic’.

 

The insight and wisdom of those words should inspire and encourage the European Heads of State to ponder on the new impetus to give to the European Union and create a dynamic other than the purely economic and fiancial aspect proposed byMacron.  If they would think in an enlightened humanist perspective taking into account the common past of all Continental countries, as well as of the United Kingdom, the relations with the Balkans, Russia and Turkey would be clarified and simplified. They would become an asset instead of being an obstacle. As in the past under the  Pax Romana  a common vision would unite Western Europe and Eastern Europe, allowing our European culture so rich and so complex to bring forward the values and the ideals that are our very own and have fashioned us through centuries. These values and ideals have been at the source of the New World beyond the Atlantic, yet in time they have diversified. In a rapidily changing world where new centres of power are emerging in Asia, Africa, the duty, the future of Europe, are independent of those of America whose culture owes much to ours. We Europeans have to remember our own values, to project them, to promote them so that the immense common cultural wealth that is ours in diversity, the very essence of the European spirit, might bring forward and carry through a message of peace and humanity.

 

Paul Cassia, University Professor of Law, has published on Mediapart a critical and objective assessment of Macron’s first year :

https://blogs.mediapart.fr/paul-cassia/blog/280618/la-premiere-annee-du-quinquennat-macron-livre-ouvert

He offers to the readers an E-book on the subject, to download free via a link in the article : La République du Futur. Penser l’Après Start-up Nation

MONIQUE RICCARDI-CUBITT

Paris, July 1st 2018

The Decline of France – by Monique Riccardi-Cubitt

mardi, juin 12th, 2018

France 3 TV Channel is about to release on June 13th a film BRIGITTE MACRON, UN ROMAN FRANÇAIS. It is yet another version of the nauseatingly slushy presidential saga, a tale of the seduction of an under-age pupil by a teacher his mother’s age, a woman without qualms nor ethics, who subjected her own husband to a crushing humiliation, and admits having brought suffering to her children in order to follow with impunity the ambitious plans she projected on a youngster enslaved to her will.

This latest version of a countlessly retold story during the past year and a half,  is aiming to whitewash her reputation and  exonerate her of all guilt since she supposedly acted ‘par amour’ notwithstanding the offence committed in the eyes of the law.  In so doing  it is meant to appeal to the heart of French citizens now that the presidential rate of popularity is plunging  in the opinion polls. Even Macron’s early supporters are denouncing the evil of effects of his social and economic policies, and of the accelerated rhythm of senselessly destructive reforms, dangerously disrupting the country.  It is the worse possible example of the French system of double standards, and a particularly potent symbol of its decadence and corruption.

LA FRANCE UN DÉCLIN J’ACCUSE

Monique Riccardi-Cubitt (Countess)
BCiP Member

 

 

Best Wishes for Easter from Erika Angelidi

lundi, avril 2nd, 2018

“This is Erika Angelidi, the Representative of the Conservatives Abroad in Greece.
I wish to all Happy Easter! May Peace and Joy be in your hearts!”

Thank you Erika. Our best wishes for Easter to you in return from British Conservatives in Paris, together with our thanks to you for your thoughtful contributions to our blog.

 

 

Overseas Elector Bill – Erika Angelidi, Athens

jeudi, mars 8th, 2018

From Erika Angelidi, the Conservatives Abroad Representative in Greece:

Ιn view of the 23rd February 2018 when the Overseas Elector Bill successfully passed its second reading in the UK Parliament, I wish to express some personal thoughts regarding the issue of the right to vote for Expatriates.

I personally believe that each British citizen who resides outside of the UK, even for a longer period of time, does not cease to be interested in the present or future of the UK. He is of British citizenship and this is something that he carries throughout his life. To refuse the right to vote to a UK citizen based on the date where he left the country to live elsewhere is equal to being cast off. This argument does not reflect emotions alone, it goes deep into the connection of the mother country and its people, the very bond of citizenship.

Besides this, a question of properly exercising civil and political rights is raised. It must be noted that each Party that is voted to power decides on, promotes and applies different policies regarding its citizens who live abroad. In view of this fact, it is obvious that a citizen living abroad must be able to vote in favour of the party that best represents his interests as a British citizen and as an Expatriate.

Let us hope that this Bill will eventually be brought into Law and provide that all British citizens living abroad will have the right to vote regardless of the time they stopped having residence in the UK. British Expatriates are a part of British society and contribute to its dynamic and welfare. Expatriates deserve to vote for life!

Erika Angelidi,
Conservatives Abroad Representative,
Athens.

Conservative Policy Forum (CPF) – Values (3/3)

mardi, octobre 17th, 2017

Our consolidated response to the Conservative Party Policy Forum questionnaire on « Values » can be found below:

Name of Constituency: Conservatives Abroad
Name of CPF Group: British Conservatives in Paris
Name of CPF Coordinator: Paul Thomson
Number of attendees: 8
Contact details for response:
Paul Thomson
BCiP Vice Chairman & CPF Secretary
Date of meeting: 29th September 2017

If you have a Conservative MP, please tick this box to confirm that you have sent a copy of this response to your MP: ?

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Question 1: Compile a list of up to a dozen values that your group considers to be Conservative values ? the distinctive and enduring core priorities that we should draw on in navigating the challenges of our age.
? Favouring reform over revolution ? For representative parliamentary democracy
? For the rule of law and for a law-abiding & orderly society ? For community
? For the notion of human stewardship (a responsibility which brings with it obligations & an ennobling endowment) ? For the dignity of the human person ? associated with a sense of tolerance for differences
? Patriotism ? love of ?nation? (though not in an ethnic sense) and country ? Acceptance of the fallibility of humans
? Appreciation for tradition(s) ? respect for the past at the same time as openness to the future ? For the ?conservatism of the working man?
? For pragmatism ? For ?aspiration?, freedom & a healthy individualism

Question 2: A short summary (up to 40 words) of what you understand by:
a. Modern Conservatism
We did not attempt to define these terms
b. Compassionate Conservatism
Idem
c. One Nation Conservatism
Idem
d. Blue Collar Conservatism
Idem
Having defined each of the phrases, on a scale of 0 to 10, to what extent do each of them resonate with your group?s ideas of Conservativism?
Comment: there was no unitary group view on any of the four items. Specific scores are instead indicated.
Modern Conservatism 0 1X1 2 3X1 4X2 5X2 6 7 8 9 10X2
Compassionate Conservatism 0 1X1 2X1 3X4 4 5 6 7 8 9 10X2
One Nation Conservatism 0 1X2 2 3 4X1 5X2 6 7 8 9 10X2
Blue Collar Conservatism 0 1X1 2 3X1 4X3 5 6 7 8X1 9 10X2

Question 3a: In what areas of life, our communities and the country would you say discrimination, division and the need for real equality [Comment: we agreed this was not the proper concept ? instead fairness should be considered] still persists? Rank the areas that you have identified according to how great a cause for concern you think they are.
? (In no particular ranking:)
– Education is too plutocratic (cf desirability of supporting grammar schools or finding some (better?) equivalent
– Foreign languages should be compulsory to a much greater degree ? to enable those from a less highly educated/cultivated background to be less disadvantaged compared to those exposed to foreign cultures/languages because of family influence
– Young people need to be given a better overall ?deal? going into adult life: the combination of high housing prices, high student debt and low wage growth is crippling ? consider (a) lower tuition fees (university), (b) material increase in housing supply, (c) otherwise employing tools to reduce the cost of housing for the younger generation
?
?
?

Question 3b: To what extent do you think it is the responsibility of the Government, of businesses, of charities, of families, of individuals and of other institutions in society to tackle entrenched disadvantage and to promote equality in these areas?
? Not covered due to shortage of time
? ? ?

Question 4: What Conservative principles do you think should guide the Government?s approach to reforms in each of the following areas? – Idem
? Brexit negotiations

? Social reform

? Political reform

Other Comments (if any)

Thank You. Please return to: CPF.Papers@conservatives.com

Brexit Negotiations & Public Opinion – Erika Angelidi

jeudi, juillet 27th, 2017

Erika Angelidi, the Conservatives Abroad Representative in Greece, sends her warm summer wishes and, for every reader of this blog, to « have a good vacation! », while also sharing the following personal thoughts on the Brexit negotiations:

« First thing after the upcoming August vacations, we’ll all put our minds together to the great issue of the [Brexit] negotiations between Great Britain and the EU. I personally hold the opinion that public opinion will play a large role (as expressed through polls) in their development.

It is not to be doubted that there will be rough patches as the discussion moves further; yet at such times optimism is most crucial! There will be crossroads but with unity and proper strategizing, difficulties will be overcome.

And thus we wait to see the course of events and the result of all discussions… »

Erika Angelidi
Conservatives Abroad Representative Greece
Athens

Life in Greece today

mercredi, mai 17th, 2017

Erika Angelidi, the Conservatives Abroad Representative in Greece, presents her own views on life for the Greek people today, as a new page opens below on the continuing Greek debt saga:

On the 22nd of May, 2017 a new page in the ongoing development of the Greek debt issue will be written. The Institutions are to present a Compliance Report to the Eurogroup. The new « Agreement » reads terms such as further cuts in salaries and pensions, more taxes, legalisation of collective dismissals, the abolition of Sunday as the day of rest and last, but not least, the privatisation of principal public sector companies.

Please, allow me to present my own views of life in Greece under 3 Memoranda.

As the Institutions and Governments pushed forward with more lay-offs, taxes, severed pensions and salaries, life changed dramatically as one may expect in times of crisis. Purchasing power that would fuel the national market and innovation plunged and with it living quality for large masses.

Furthermore, the neediest members of the Greek society have been marginalised and the healthcare system, which is public, experiencing serious problems with shortage in staff, and material.

In addition, sacrifices were made by the Greek people in promise of better days and for the common good. Yet, as the austerity deepens who is to tell why these days have never come over for many years now. What has gone amiss?

The market will move, I believe, with a reduction of taxes on taxes, investments in sectors that are unique opportunities in this country. This will see the market move upwards.

I wish to plead from the bottom of my heart that viable solutions will be given for the national debt. Even more, that policies will be proposed that will see beyond numbers to the human souls, who live with the conditions as have come to be. Great solutions stem from brave attempts to betterment as global history teaches us!

May solutions be found that this Country vastly rich in culture, history, and human warmth see better and brighter days!?

Erika Angelidi
Conservatives Abroad Representative Greece,
Athens

Brexit and My « Pelican Boat » Woodcut Print – Raf. Pittman

mardi, avril 25th, 2017

As presented by BCiP member and artist Raf. Pittman at our AGM on the 19th April, here is the unabridged story of « Pelican Boat », his personal account of the creation of the original woodcut print from Lima via Havana to the press in Paddington:

This time last year (April 2016) was a very different political scenario when campaigning had not yet started and when Brexit was largely associated with UKIP, a political deviation in terms of party and following from the « Voters’ Parties and Leaders (1967 ) » by Jean Blondel , a text for politics students like myself.

By June 23rd and the referendum we were « out » – the cryptic text I received from a friend in London as I sat on a bench with my iPhone on La Rampa, the main highway in Havana where you can receive wifi with an official prepaid internet coupon.

Shock. My whole career since reading European Studies at Bristol University was about the new world order, a united Europe where I learned the skills of foreign trade, was trained in London, Hamburg and Paris for British multinationals , in a world of peace and harmony for which my father had served in the Armed Forces 1939 to 1945; an England that had welcomed my mother as a Basque teenage evacuee from Nazi Germany aggression.

I was truly saddened that those British voters who voted for the leave campaign had not sufficient understanding of the issues (there was no meaningful and coherent plan policy and analysis), that were to change the course of our history by taking us out of the European Union, and annoyed with David Cameron for wanting to consolidate his position (also maybe giving into the perceived UKIP threat) by offering the electorate a referendum. Worse was to follow with squabbling Tories vying for the leadership when the PM resigned, although sense appeared with the election of Theresa May to replace him, seen as a safe pair of hands at the helm.

This last week in June was my last week in Cuba where I had been working on a print that I had developed in January 2016 from my crayon drawing of pelicans on a boat anchored off the coast of Ica a desert region in south Peru. The flimsy piece of plywood I brought with me to Cuba (wood is in short supply) took shape from a monoprint I made earlier in Cienfuegos , central Cuba, at a society for artists. Then via bus train and ferry I reached the experimental artists workshop in Havana where I had booked myself in for a second fortnight the first being in 2014.

This was the first time I had seriously attempted a woodcut print and news of Brexit added to my ennui, with the project ending up in a mixed media print/ monoprint, the sort of art for which I am known at the Taller Grafica Experimental . The wood cut print per se was clearly still unfinished although we had taken some 20 prints from the ancient press to be used for future mixed media work. Within a few days I had packed half my plywood and donated the other half to my very able colleagues and was back at Heathrow but still with a wedge of dodgy prints.

Again within days I was at an art facility near Paddington and bingo!! Pelican Boat was born as a fully fledged woodcut print. It seemed both myself and Brexit had come out triumphant after a battering maritime journey full of metaphors: uncharted waters, ill-prepared , beleaguered. And yet like Sir Francis Drake’s original vanguard « The Pelican » , renamed « The Golden Hind », there was suddenly promise in this bold confident venture with global vision reminiscent of Drake’s voyage to the New World, and also in my print that had a purpose and meaning now in carrying the spirit of Britain and Brexit.

Raf. Pittman

Lies & Deceits, Postures & Imposture or The Decline of the Western Political Class.

vendredi, mars 24th, 2017

If throughout human history the manipulation of information and desinformation has always been used as a political weapon, the deceitful manipulation of public opinion as an acknowledged legitimate system is recent. It is the inheritance of the policies of the Bush government in the United States and of Blair?s in the United Kingdom. In 2003 both were said to act on a divinely inspired mission to get rid of a dictator and to forcibly impose democracy on a sovereign state in the Middle East in order to justify its violation and armed invasion, with the ensuing catastrophic results for the country and the region. Bush and Blair have opened a Pandora box that has not ceased since to let loose its monstruous emanations on the Western political scene.

Its poisonous breath has corrupted the Western political leaders. In sympathetic mimetism, they have taken on the postures and techniques of the two Anglosaxons leaders in the use of brazen lies, the manipulation of public opinion through fear and appeal to the lower instincts, the abdication of the public good in favour of their own personal interests, the total absence of moral and ethical principles in the implicit, or explicit, claim of a divinely appointed right to ignore them, to the benefit of their own plans and convictions.

The communication techniques of the British spin doctors, such as Alastair Campbell, who confessed cynically having sexed-up the Iraki dossier to force Parliament into war, has created a precedent. The same meticulous manipulation of public opinion for months spreading lies and false promises, honing up a sustained rethoric in acting on ancestral fears and the lowest of passions, whipping up xenophobic hatred, has allowed Nigel Farage and his UKIP party to push through the Brexit in the June 2016 referendum. Farage like David Cameron, the initiator of this referendum, has since resigned from his party and left politics, assuming none of the catastrophic results of his 17 years personal campaigning against the European Union as a European member of Parlement. The ensuing chaos left behind is beyond belief, it puts into jeopardy the very fate of democracy and of the European Union. Can a referendum be lawful when its premices are deliberately distorted through the use of propaganda and millions spent on lies, concealment of reality, media hype, manipulation of public opinion? Is such a vote valid when the voters are deliberately blinded and unable to assess the actual consequences of their vote ? The United Kingdom has wakened up too late to the fraud and crude imposture that has blinded the country and divided it as it was over the Irak war. It now seems that Tony Blair, this conjurer of deceit and political maneuvring, who earns astronomical sums in preaching his inflammatory gospel, has the impudence of contesting a Brexit won through his own spin methods. No doubt he sees there a way to regain power : he enjoys the distinct honour of being the most hated Prime Minister in Britain.

Donald Trump has done the same in the United States, using lies, insults, mediatic one-upmanship, inflammatory speeches and financial power allied to a blatant and deliberate vulgarity of manners, with the same calamitous results : a divided country cut from the rest of the world through isolationism, social, racist and xenophobic hatred expressed in verbal and physical violence spreading like a plague all over the nation. In the Neetherlands, Geert Wilders, the ally of the French extremist Marine Le Pen, advocates the ?shock of civilisations? of George Bush, whipping up religious hatred against Islam, and nationalist hatred against Europe. Marine Le Pen is becoming more and more legitimate on the more and more chaotic and unstable French political scene. Her party, the Front National, is based on the worse of France : xenophobia, chauvinism, opportunism under the guise of hypocrisy, physical and verbal violence. Its nationalism is anchored in the ignorance and denial of the rich and varied roots of this ?France profonde? it claims to be the sole representative. The Front National is the voice of a shrunk, narrow-minded France, turned back onto itself in a suicidal rejection of the others, of their human value, of the intrinsic richness of their diversity. Le Pen puts herself above Republican laws and institutions, judging ? ?immoral and illegal? all attempts from the Law to stop her excesses ; she claims that she is been victimized by the system. In fact, among others, she is guilty of corruption and embezzlement of public funds in a case of fictitious employment at the European Parliament of one of her assistants, but refuses to appear in front of the juges.

Nicolas Sarkozy, Tony Blair?s clone, had acted in the same manner throughout his career. He whipped up racial hatred in his infamous Grenoble speech against the Gypsies in 2010, opened pointless and pernicious debates on national identity, openly insulted French citizens calling them ? scum? who should be ?got rid of with a Kärcher?. When need be he invokes the Republican principles of past illustrious French personalities, while scorning them when it suits him. His attitude towards the Law is just as perverse and ambiguous : all attempts to call him to account provoke indignant protestations and accusations of victimization and persecution against him. Whereas he uses the legal system with ruthless efficiency against his opponents, even in his own party, to discredit them and eliminate all opposition that could threaten his position and his power. He does not act as a responsible and rational politician, with the good of his country at heart, but as the boss of a mafia type gang using methods associated with delinquants. To make a public declaration of his wish to see Dominique de Villepin ? a colleague and fellow member of the same party- ?hanging from a butcher?s hook? is unworthy of the presidential function, and an unacceptable example of verbal violence.
With the implausible Clearstream affair, in which Sarkozy had targeted and persecuted Villepin, he has effectively eliminated him from the French political scene. To any clear-headed and enlightened observer the whole affair was a vast deception destined not only to discredit a statesman superior to him in every way, but mostly to create a smoke screen and divert public attention from his own illegal activities. In particular the unlawful Libyan financing of his presidential campaign in 2007, for which Gaddafi and other protagonists paid with their lives. And as is stated by a parlementary attaché at the Senate, in the field of communication : ? Everbody knows that Sarkozy has abank account abroad, but it is not in Luxembourg??

His malevolence towards an opponent who threatens him through his achievements, his moral, intellectual and political international stature, knows no limits. According to some commentators, in 2006 he had already encouraged and supported the demonstration against the Contrat Première Embauche (CPE) First Job Contract, proposed by Dominique de Villepin to reduce unemployment. In 2012 Sarkozy systematically undermined and sabotaged de Villepin?s presidential campaign, to which I participated, see my website: http://www.monique-riccardi-cubitt.com/ 9. Political engagement. Day by day he stole away the supporters of République Solidaire, he isolated his opponent whose movement became, in the contemptuous words of Xavier Bertrand, Sarkozy?s spokesman in the 2007 campaign, ?République solitaire, Solitary Republique?, and eventually forced him to give up his candidacy. Dominique de Villepin once more showed himself superior morally and intellectually in rising above Sarkozy?s violent attacks and his own personnal and political prejudices. He pursued his own peace mission at the service of France and of his ideals, see his last volume, Mémoire de Paix pour temps de Guerre. Ed. Grasset, 2016 : ?Throughout the whole of my life I have endeavoured to put the peace process at the heart of my action? The moment has come to get down to the peace process, to open our eyes to the wounds of the world and to create the tools necessary to build a new order, more just and more stable?I am convinced that France has a role to play in this new world, if it renews with its vocation to initiate, to mediate, to promote a dialogue, if it is loyal to its message and to its history.? He has magnanimously forgiven to Sarkozy, and following his pacifist and diplomatic ideals, he offered his mediation in Tunisia in 2011 to try to prevent the armed intervention in Libya. Which did not fit with Sarkozy?s designs and interests. In emulation of Blair in 2003, and prompted by the ill-advised action of publicity-seeking Bernard-Henri Lévy, he blatantly lied on the Libyan situation in order to secure Britain and the United States? support, with the approval of the United Nations.

The report of a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee?s enquiry published 14th Septembre 2016 questions the legitimity of the armed intervention in Libya. It claims that : ??Despite his rhetoric, the proposition that Muammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence? the immediate threat to civilians was being publicly overstated? to serve French interests in North Africa. The main purpose was to have access to Libyan oil resources, and more particularly to serve Sarkozy?s own political interests in gaining in prestige. He also wanted the international community?s approval to get rid of a generous sponsor who had became an embarassing witness to eliminate. In 2008 France had sold 168 million euros worth of weapons to Libya, in 2011 it spent 300 millions euros to fight Gaddafi?s regime with terrible losses in human lives. The allied intervention destabilized the whole region and created a vacuum filled by the forces of the Islamic State, Daech, forcing the population to migrate towards Italy and eventually to the North of Europe. Dominique de Villepin had predicted in 2011 : ? To win a war is one thing, to win peace is much more difficult? It is going to take many efforts from France?s diplomacy ?a wealth of savoir-faire to prevent this Libyan revolution to turn back against those who helped them yesterday?. Against the ensuing terrorist attacks on French soil, his position stated in September 2014 on French national TV France 2, in the programme Ce soir ou jamais, remains the same : ?We cannot win the war against terrorism because terrorism is an invisible hand, all the time in mutation, changeable and opportunist. It requires a capacity of thinking an action well beyond military action. One must be able to use cunningly the powers of the mind and all peaceful means available to desintegrate the forces that congregate around those terrorist forces.? He adds : ? All we know of this type of war since Afghanistan has led to failure? We need a political strategy, a political vision and a capacity to think our action beyond the use of bombs? We must become aware that this Islamic State, Daech, we have created it ourselves for the largest part from war to war?There is a vicious cercle in which we have locked ourselves up. It is not only ineffective, but it is dangerous because this region in the Middle East is shaken by crisis, by wounds. It is in a profund crisis of modernization.? His words reflect the long-standing French diplomatic tradition. It is one of France?s past glories : French was the diplomatic language by excellence until the Second World War. It stood not only for a culture but for a civilisation. Thus Philippe-Joseph Salazar sees it in his essay Blabla République. Au verbe, citoyens ! Ed. Lemieux, 2017. Rethoric or the oratorical art and science to convince in Aristotle?s manner, is also the art of the beautiful speech of Quintillien, the Roman orator. This art of debating with form and substance has become in the modern world ?a speech technology?, a political speech devoid of its essential meaning, where slogans and trivialities stand for action for the elite in power. The citizens themselves are baffled by this constant verbiage and unable to express their own legitimate needs and aspirations. Salazar adds : ? Since the Third Republic there is no longer a moral authority in France?.

In the prevailing cacophony some voices still sounds true, such as Villepin?s own. But they are quickly stiffled and deliberately discredited, as says Claude Angeli in an interview with Mediapart on the 12th February 2017, incidentally quoting the former French Prime Minister on war and terrorism. The ex-editor of the satirical weekly, Le Canard enchaîné, talks about his recent book Les plaisirs du journalisme, Ed. Fayard, where he denounces : ? a mediocre epoch?, ?a sluggish society?, where ? plain truth is been discredited?. In reference to the financial scandals and the corruption of the political class that have beset France for some months, speaking about the former socialist Cahuzac, and of the Right-wing presidential candidate, François Fillon, he adds grimly : ? I think that I have more respect for genuine thieves?? It is difficult to understand how the French Right-wing can still support a candidate whose legitimacy was based on ethics and moral integrity ( Tweet 18th September 2016. To govern a country, I am convinced that one must be above reproach. I want to bring forward the principle of examplarity for the President and the ministers.) After years of nepotism and embezzlement of public funds kept secret, Fillon has several times lied to the nation he pretends represent. He has played Tartuffe to great acclaim, discrediting the very religion he invokes, his heart on his lips, and his hand on his heart : ?I am a Christian !? . Like Sarkozy he plays the victim, speaks of media persecution, condemns the Law and the press, denouncing in the same breath his own party by asking them ? to make their own examination of conscience?.

The very structure of the French political system is brought into disrepute, according to Mediapart ?The Assemblée Nationale (French Parliament) has remunerated 52 wives, 28 sons et 32 daughters of members of Parliament in 2014?. France may have abolished the Ancien Régime but not its privileges : some are more equal than others. But no one wants to change this system of nepotism and favouritism, too many profit by it : the unscrupulous, not to say the crooked, politicians and civil servants. As for those, like de Villepin, who do not enter in these fiddles and rackets, his integrity is being discredited in vain attempts to prove that he has in some ways benefited from the Libyan financing of Sarkozy?s campaign. Which in the circumstances described above is highly implausible. So a so-called ?ficticious employment? for a Saudi firm is invented whereby a report in January 2009 apparently used some notes from a previous lecture. This is just an example of intellectual property when an author, or a lecturer, uses already researched material in a new service or performance, and is remunerated as such at the given rate by the contracting party. It is the same for a Tintin album bought at the aution sale of his library by a friend. An item put at auction has no intrinsic value other than that of the offer, as I have witnessed in London at Christie?s and Sotheby?s. Whether it be Elton John?s diamanté glasses, Marilyn Monroe?s underwear, or the huge tartan underpant John Brown, the faithful servant, and some say perhaps lover, of Queen Victoria, wore under his kilt. And I can therefore now answer the intriguing question : What do the Scots wear under their kilts ? other than the lemon yellow and pale pink Marks & Spencer pants I have observed at the Scottish Highlands Games during the tossing of the caber ! The value given to an item depends on its provenance and is reflected in the covetousness of the buyers who, through the aution process, bring the price up. If one wants to discredit the integrity of someone honest, all means are used to cast doubt on his or her reputation. It would then confirm public opinion in its conviction : ?They are all rotten !? and encourage the ones who are truly so to carry on their rackets and cover-ups.

It would also justify the need for new blood, a so-called maverick, out of the system, who wrote a book on his political intentions entitled Révolution. Emmanuel Macron?s political programme is anything but revolutionary. In fact his movement with the slogan En Marche, using the initials of his name, is walking backwards. His economic plan is inspired by the neo-liberalism of the 80?s et 90?s of Thatcher and Reagan, then of the Clinton?s and Blair?s era. According to economists this system is damaging to society, and it is denounced even by the IMF. Macron is supported in his campaign by the merchant banks from which he draws his wealth and expertise, and by the large multinational companies. Like Trump in the States he wants to give back to the banks all the privileges they enjoyed before the 2008 subprimes crisis, notwithstanding the devastating consequences on the middle class worldwide, and the resulting human tragedies. His stand over l?Europe is far from being innovatory, he only takes on the instructions of the Council of Europe. He brings no answer to the radical rethinking and restructuring of a 60 years old institution required by the present crisis caused by the rising of so-called populist movements that have triggered off the Brexit. Lasting solutions have to be found to the humanitarian crisis bred by terrorism in the Middle East with a resulting incrontrollable emigration. Economic and environmental crisis due to the diminishing of natural resources over-exploited by the very multinational businesses who finance him must be talen into account, as well as the global warming of the climate and the rise in economic and political power of new nations such as China and India.

Fillon serves the High Mass if hypocrisy and invites Molière to the political scene, playing Tartuffe and M. Jourdain. His Pater familias image as a paragon of virtue and morality, a gentleman farmer with Landed Gentry ideals in his provincial manor house where his wife?s horses frolic around, is forever shattered. He has become Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, The middle-class aristocrat whose bright plumage conceals a venal and grasping soul, with the mean and petty spirit of a small provincial bigwig who, as in one of Balzac? novel, has made it good in the capital through crooked means. In refusing to acknowledge his donwnfall, he has taken hostage the country and his own party, to further his own interests and ambitions. In any other country he would have had to resign and leave his place as presidential candidate to the second candidate, Alain Juppé. It is the logical outcome in such a case, as Dominique de Villepin pointed out. But the crazed obstination of Fillon has played in favour of Sarkozy, who cunningly went on supporting him, thus preventing the second candidate to take on the party candidacy. With malicious forethought he has put his own henchmen into place to pave the way for his eternal return.

As for Macron he officiates as the high priest of a narcissic cult at the service of Mammon, with for vestal virgin a mother goddess who plays Pygmalion : ?We need young French people who want to become milliardaires? . He is the guru at the head of a sect, manipulating the adepts and sending them into trance with the brainwashing methods and collective hysteria used by American companies to motivate their employees at the end of the 20th century. His lieutenants, brainwashed young people, are conditioned to react to the meeting planner?s SMS orders, and clap or shout theur approval at the given moment. Their reward is an all-night party paid by the party in a local nightclub. They are bribed to belong to what is made to appear as an exclusive club, a group of chosen few adepts with its own language, an incomprehensible franglais jargon taken from the business world. ?I know the grammar of business? says Macron, it is obvious in his political stance, a market research to build his programme, as much as in his way of conducting meetings. On December 10th 2016 in Paris at the Porte de Versailles, he got carried away by his messianic zeal and yelled at the end of his speech: ? What I want is that wherever you go you are going to carry it, because it is our project. Vive la République, vive la France?. His astonishing stance recalls Leonardo di Caprio?s performance in the film The wolf of Wall Street, brainwashing his traders at the New York Stock Exchange in the 80?s : ?I want you to deal with problems by becoming rich, we are going to be f?telephone terrorists?? The verbal violence, the collective hysteria are those of the American evangelist meetings where considerable financial and media hype are used to attract, brainwash and psychologically manipulate the adepts. The Macron sysrem has the same hypnotic effect on the pyblic and the media It is an imposture on a large scale supported by a powerful financial apparatus and dubious éminences grises, such as Alain Minc, who was a long-standing adviser to Sarkozy.

Macron is in no way the little creative genius he believes himself to be, and the media hype presents. The little Mozart of the Élysée, after 3 years musical studies at the Conservatoire, ( Mozart himself has not done as much !) has still to give us his version of The M agic Flute. His Papageno is more like the Pied Piper, the definition of which states: 1. A person who offers others strong yet delusive enticements, 2. One, such as a leader, who makes irresponsible promises. In both cases the ineluctable end leads to death and destruction, the hidden symbol of the flutist.

This Mr. Macron clad in a variegated political plumage is a bird of sinister omen. In fact there is around his couple a strange and disquieting aura of fakery and artificiality. It would be easy to describe this malaise in Freudian terms : the Oedipus complex is far too obvious. Macron has effectively eliminated and killed the father figure in getting married to his teacher, of the age of his parents, and taking on the banking profession of her former husband, whose family he stole in settling in his nest like a cuckoo. He shows no loyalty toward the men who have helped him on his way to power, such as François Hollande : symbolically he kills him in standing as a presidential candidate (Sarkozy did the same with Pasqua and President Chirac). It is a very bad example of ruthless betrayal, of a total lack of principles and ethics given to the youth he pretends to lead. However Jung suggests a subtler profile : the Peter Pan syndrome. It stands for the emotionally immature man, the eternal narcissic teenager, suffering from contradictory emotions with an impredictable beahaviour and incontrollable urges, Sarkozy is one example as is Donald Trump. In fact there is a strange correlation between the political couple formed by Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka ?The woman Donald Trump cherishes most? according to Newsmax, who is also his adviser, and the Macron couple. The Trump couple in their father/daughter relationship seems to be the verso of the Macrons (wife-mother/son). Even to the disturbing physical similarity between Trump et Brigitte Macron?s artificial image going back to the 80?s : same shock of blonde hair crowning a permanent orange tan.

?In the realm of the blind, the one-eyed are kings? , according to the defination of the Robert Dictionary of French phrases and expressions ed. 2017 :
?Even a person of mediocre quality appears to be outstanding in the midst of people without discernment?, an apt description for Macron. He would lead France to disaster, tranforming it in a vast tourists? Disneyland where large publicity panels would disfigure the countryside and promote consumerism as in Las Vegas (This Macron project was vetoed against by the Hollande government). On can also expect the French countryside to be devastated by the extraction of oil shale. And this French culture he says does not exist: ? There is no such thing as French culture? he declared in London the 4th February 2017, would be diluted, distorted into an ersatz of American culture dominated by money. Far from being a trend-setter, the man himself is an ersatz : he says all and its contrary, adopting a particular posture according to the circumstances in Sarkozy?s manner. In Algeria, he described colonisation as ?crimes against humanity? and in emulation of the Général de Gaulle during the Algerian war, he ended his speech by the historical words ?Je vous ai compris ! I have understood you !?. Carrying on this patriotic note, he quoted in his Lyon speech the words of the French poet René Char, engaged in the Résistance, from his work Les feuillets d?Hypnos : ?On that day I fiercely loved my companions, well beyond self-sacrifice?. For a technocrat without empathy towards others, a man without any sense of collective history and memory, it is no longer theatrical trickery, it is a a shameful melodramatic fraud, indecent in its cheap sham.

Once more in London, on February 21th, and no doubt aiming to flatter his hosts, he reiterated the absence of ?French culture?, adding that he had never seen ?French art?. Which is most surprising considering that he has worked for the Rothschild bank. He seemed to have remained totally ignorant of the fact that the British branch of the Rothschild possess in Buckinghamshire one of the msot important collection in the British Isles of the French decorative arts of the 18th century and of paintings from the 17the and 18th century, with the Wallace Collection in Londres. Waddesdon Manor was built beween 1874 and 1889 in the style of the Loire châteaux by a French architect, art historian and collector, Hippolyte Destailleur. The British are enlightened art lovers and collectors and have always been keen on French art, which they have collected avidly. Furthermore French art has had an important influence on the development of British art since the arrival of Huguenot artists and craftsmen in the 17th century after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The two famous British auction houses, Christie?s et Sotheby?s have gained their renown and wealth through the French royal and aristocratic sales following the Revolution. M. Macron is an ignorant and uncivilized philistine, despite the supposedly ?incredible culture? of his wife. Smug and vain, he is showing off and strut his stuff, echoing Chérie Blair?s ill-meaning ignorant words during the campaign for the 2012 Olympic Games : ?And what has Paris got to do with culture ??. André Malraux created the very concept of a French national culture in 1959, with the Ministry of Cultural Affairs which he headed until 1969. He thus included culture in the social and economic modernisation projects of the De Gaulle government. France?s initiative set an example and has had a worldwide following ever since.

The level of mediocrity of the French presidential candidates makes one shudder for the country?s future. And if one can assess the moral stature of a man by his attitude towards women in general and his wife in particuluar, neither Fillon nor Macron show signs of practising the chivalry and courtesy usually described as French traits. Already Sarkozy treated his wife like a trophy, exhibiting her charms to public applause like a vulgar animal on the market-place. To defend himself and keep his candidacy Fillon has pushed his wife to lies and perjury after her past public statements of having never worked for him. As for Macron, when challenged about an interview in the magazine Paris Match, he accused his wife of ?blunder and foolishness?. The couple has since given three more interviews to the magazine, of which Mrs. Macron has declared to be ?very satisfied of the photographs !? . Her husband does not seem to be overly concerned by her feelings. In his Lyon speech, with a smug, self-satisfied look on his face, he thought it fit to tell a bizarre story about the marital infidelity of the Princess de Ligne, a particularly indelicate act in the presence of his wife 24 years older, who looked very uneasy. Macron is not only a ham actor, he is a cad. His lack of consideration for others, and personal and professional ethics are reflected in his performance as a minister. He neglected his ministerial duties while Minister of Finances to spend his time and the ministry budget creating his own party. In short he is no different in his lack of principles and integrity than Sarkozy or Fillon. He lied to the country in concealing the complete privatisation of Toulouse airport in the 2015 sale to a Chinese investor, when the French authorities : the State, the region, the town were supposed to retain their shares. In any other democracy other than France, he should have had to resign. He is also responsible for the sale of the railway factory Alstom in Belfort. This factory, dating back to the 19th century and creator of the TGV, will stop its activities in 2018 following the sale organized byMacron to the American group General Electric, blocked by the precedent Finance Minister, Arnaud Montebourg, 450 workers and as many subcontrators will lose their jobs. Macron is selling off France?s family jewels to the highest bidders who become thus indebted to him for the future. He does not act for the benefit of the country, but for his own interests.

His wife says of him : ?He thinks he is Joan of Arc? he comes from another planet?. He seems to be on a divine mission : in Lyon, his hand on his heart in the American manner like Fillon to emphazise the sincerity of his feelings, eyes shut, he sings La Marseillaise. It is an embarassingly ham perfomance worthy of Hollywood. He and his wife are living in the slushy dreamland of a TV soap series they have both created, which is daily recounted by the media : the world of the Wizard of Oz. One expects to see them in technicolor, leaving hand in hand for a new rosy dawn, hopping along like Judy Garland on the tune of Somewhere over the rainbow, in company of the brainless Scarecrow. This was the very role played at school by the 16 years old Macron in the play directed by his French teacher who is now his wife. Video to be viewed on YouTube : Macron fait l?épouvantail.

MONIQUE RICCARDI-CUBITT
BCiP Member
Paris, 15th March 2017

NB. Monique Riccardi-Cubitt is working on an essay on the decline of French prestige and culture.