Again, I quoted this when it happened back in September, but it's worth printing again:
Douste-Blazy was visiting the new Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem. While looking at a map of Europe showing the number of Jews living in each country before and after the Holocaust, he asked: "Were there no Jews killed in England?" "But, Minister, England was not occupied by the Nazis!" (replied the appalled curator) "But no Jews were expelled from England?" insisted Douste-Blazy.
"Were there no Jews killed in England?"
"But, Minister, England was not occupied by the Nazis!" (replied the appalled curator)
"But no Jews were expelled from England?" insisted Douste-Blazy.
Of course, with Chirac avoiding domestic issues as much as possible and Villepin, a former diplomat and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Douste-Blazy is not really a powerful figure, but it's still pretty pathetic. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
A few months ago, Condoleeza Rice called his office. The President's advisor had gatherer all their counterparts and wished to talk to Philippe Douste-Blazy. It was a Friday. The Minister was at his Toulouse constituency. Without a translator or a diplomatic advisor by his side. According to diplomatic sources, the ministry, to Washington's great surprise, preferred to tell the American to call again after the weekend.
PDB is also known to have trashed a hotel room with his girlfriend recently.
Might your schools focus a bit too much on mathematics and a bit too little on common sense? Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
<ducks the tomatoes and medical knives> In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
But still, Villepin put him where he is today, and Villepin went through the schools. I guess being elite is no guarantee against being a bastard. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Better have a non-entity you think you can control than an ambitious, and possibly competent, rival building up experience... In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Of course this means that when Persson resigns the Social democrats will be racked by vicious internal fights and the Swedish right will have a field day. :)
Anyways I thought things would be better in France where everyone in a position of power have gone through elite schools and hopefully would have been instilled with a spirit of humbleness and patriotism. Wrong obviously.
Sometimes I feel the "servant" in "civil servant" should be a lot more emphasised. :/ Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
have gone through elite schools and hopefully would have been instilled with a spirit of humbleness
If so, yes, I checked it superficially. But do you mean they have these elite schools without telling the students (over and over again) they are privileged servants whose mission is to serve the People and the State (with capital letters)?
Not showering them in that kind of patriotic propaganda seems like a recipe for disaster. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
To me it is reminiscent of what goes on in Spanish engineering schools (especially at the Madrid Polytechnic University). Students moan and groan their way through the first three courses and few make it (many drop out after years without making it beyond first-year classes) but by the time they make it to the 4th-year classes they extol the virtues of the selection system and the "prestige" it confers on graduates. They feel like insiders now.
Maybe the French grandes ecoles do a better job since their stated purpose is to form technocrats to runthe state, but I doubt it. guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
But the brutally competitive selection process and the elite ethos is incompatible with humility.
It used to be compatible (and it still is to some extent) because there are values passed on by the system that made it so.
These values are undermined by the lure of lots of money that the elites can make in our current economic system. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
If you end up not becoming a bastard you drop out of the elite, like Jerome here. guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
If the first, I was not part of it. They are brilliant people all of them. Sometimes they are so arrogant that they lose touch with reality, but they are all really brilliant. A number of them do have, still today, a strogn ethos of serice. They are less visible than those that do not.
The second category (of which I am, and always will be), often toils in the relative anonymity just below the first layer and the politicos. You can find everything there, including bastards, but again, it's not the dominant descriptive. Those that are ambitious can go pretty high, and now that pretty high includes lots of money, and the FT mindset, for lack of a better expression.
The third category is already too large to categorise meaningfully. The majority of these has always gone to the private sector, so the lure of money has not changed so much in the past decades. They follow the common wisdom (l'air du temps) more, I suppose - like everybody else. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
He's an MD and has a master's in biochemistry.
Not that that explains anything...
(Not, I don't think, that many people believe the fantastic sex stories had any truth to them, but that the case exposed a seamy, probably corrupt side to the way Toulouse town/police/justice were administered ten to fifteen years ago).
winning with a margin suitable for an Belarus dictator
Er, the Belarus dictator bit is a joke, isn't it?
BTW he's a doctor by profession. I'd say he beats the one Barbara met (Venezuela/Spain) by a mile, seeing the comments Jérôme cites.
Naming non-entities to the Quai d'Orsay and the Defence Ministry is the expression of the 5th Republic doctrine of the president's hold on these policy areas. Chirac is de facto head of Foreign Affairs and Defence. The Prime Minister is only consultative in these matters.
