by Alex in Toulouse
Tue Oct 10th, 2006 at 08:23:25 PM EST
Week from October 4th to October 10th.
Previous installments:
NOTA BENE:
Today's diary should be renamed: A superconcise look at
France
Sarkozy
this week
Why? Because I am doing a special on him this week. Again, why? Because I have decided that for all future installments of this series I will no longer ever mention him, regardless of whether he gets elected president of France next year (should my series run that long), and regardless of whether it would be expected for him to make the headlines of a week, thereby producing ET's first guaranteed French Sarkozy-Free diary series. Consider today's diary a good riddance tribute of sorts.
To assist myself in future weeks, I might have to equip my Firefox browser with Sarkremove (.xpi file), a Firefox extension by Mickaël Rémond, which removes all references to France's current Interior Minister in my favourite browser.
This will earn my series the following self-appointed label:
Attention deficit warning: To any PN lover out there, let's not get started about whether my series will truly be 100% Sarko-Free (on the basis of the label mentioning him once).
October 6th - Most uneventful event of the week - "Do not sow what you reap" |
 | On this day Nicolas Sarkozy visited farmers in southern Britanny, and our majestically independent media have related the following about his visit: the man was a good listener.
However, between two bouts of listening, Sarkozy opened his mouth and said the following:
" Farmers are more in need of prices (Alex note: this is a Brussels call) for their products than subsidies. Subsidies are humiliating, lead to paperwork, and perpetuate the notion that we are coveted and assisted. [..] Farmers want to live from their work, they do not want to be civil servants and do not want to be France's gardeners. [..] I feel at ease here, Your values are mine: effort, merit, reward, patience, resilience » |
October 5th - Most sordid event of the week - "Till the State do us part" |
| On this day, Sarkozy's holy "Law on the control of the validity of mariages" entered the Assemblée (lower house of Parliament) for a 2nd round of deliberations after the Senate slightly modified and ratified the text.
This law aims at, I quote:
"reinforcing controls exerced on the sincerity of matrimonial intent and fighting more efficiently against civil union fraud"
But what it really aims at are foreigners, through a series of measures meant to "verify" the veracity of Love vs the greater Evil of naturalisation fraud. |  |
October 4th - Quote of the week - "Just kidding" |
 | M. Nicolas Sarkozy, State Minister, Interior and Territorial Development Minister - « J'ai fait évacuer le squat de Cachan parce qu'il y avait une décision de justice et que ne pas exécuter une décision de justice, c'est ne pas respecter l'indépendance de la justice, ce que je ne puis accepter »
[ « I gave the green light for the evacuation of the Cachan squat because a judiciary decision asked for it, and not respecting a judiciary decision amounts to not respecting Justice's independence, which I cannot accept » ]
These were Sarkozy's words as published October 4th on the Assemblée's (lower house of Parliament) website, concerning the plight of "paperless people" temporarily squatting in a municipal complex in Cachan.
These words have to be replaced in context: two weeks ago Sarkozy criticized the youth Tribunal of Bobigny for not sending enough youths to jail, quote from then:
« I do not find it admissible that during last November's riots, the Bobigny youth's tribunal did not pronounce a single imprisonment verdict. In some youth tribunals, when you find multi-recidivists lying on the floor, waiting to be punished by the magistrate for the 22nd time, it's time to react » |
October 9th - Number of the week - "Generation Gulf" |
| 25. France Inter tells us that Sarkozy has now been elected for 25 consecutive years (at various positions). Since 1991. Oooohhh that long, ey?.Next morning Edit: I wake up to read afew's remark on this: 2006 - 25 is 1981, not 1991. So it was very late and I was a bit drunk, but I'm not going to change it, I think Generation Gulf is fine anyhow.
This is what our 51 year old man has to say about having been elected for half his life:
« I have been elected for 25 years. I am at the head of a large republican party [..] I am the political figure who has most often challenged Jean-Marie Le Pen. I believe I am one of those who can make him regress (Alex note: now of course this wouldn't be by stealing his voters). I defend my ideas with sincerity, with loyalty, with no hypocrisy. It's exactly the contrary of populism. » |  |
October 5th - Picture of the week - "I comb my hair on the Right" |
 | He was young, he was wild ... or was he? He wasn't. On this day L'Express magazine published a special on Sarkozy's childhood and studies, and in it we learn that in the 1970s in college, while a majority of the Western world's youths were flying high and trying to change things, this young man was a member of the UJP (Union des jeunes pour le progrès - Union of Youths for Progress), which unlike its name may suggest had little to do with progress but a lot to do with supporting the right-wing government in power at the time.
What the magazine also tells us is that this young man lost his UJP membership card somewhere on campus, and then found it photocopied on posters placated throughout campus with the label "No to power's servants! Fascists out!". One morning, a communist union student even tried to prevent him from entering college, with a crowbar in hand.
Poor Nicolas. We applaud his resolve, we are determined to congratulate him for persevering in his fight against communistofascist scumbags. Clapclapclapclapclap. |  |
