Japan Times (Free subscription) | 21/11/2009
PARIS — No tumbrels have appeared in Paris' Place de la Concorde, but a revolution may be under way in France nonetheless. Recent weeks have seen the trial of former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and the conviction of former Defense Minister Charles Pasqua. Now even former President Jacques Chirac has learned that he is not immune from prosecution. Is France's "Republican Monarchy,"...
The Untrusted (Free subscription) | 14/11/2009
In 1889, pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly(aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in seventy-two days. Jules Verne eat your heart out. Czechoslovakia became a republic on this day in 1918, while in 1940, the city of Coventry is attacked and Coventry Cathedral almost razed to the ground by the Luftwaffe. In 1971,...
France 24 (Free subscription) | 12/11/2009
A former French minister convicted in the arms-to-Angola affair said Thursday that ex-president Jacques Chirac knew about the trade, holding up secret documents he claimed prove his case. Charles Pasqua, who served as interior minister in the 1980s and again in the 1990s, named Chirac and other senior government officials who he said were aware of the weapons sales and did nothing to stop them. "In...
BURMA DIGEST (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
by Guy Sorman - Guy Sorman, a French philosopher and economist, is the author of Economics Does Not Lie. PARIS – No tumbrils have appeared in Paris’s Place de la Concorde, but a revolution may be underway in France nonetheless. Recent weeks have seen the trial of former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin [...]
French Politics (Free subscription) | 08/11/2009
Bruno Le Maire, who was Dominique de Villepin's chief of staff but is now Nicolas Sarkozy's minister of agriculture, has spoken out against Villepin's persistent sniping at the government. "There is a limit" to legitimate debate, he said, defined by "the interest, the unity of the majority." As normative political theory, this is of limited interest, but as a sign that Villepin's...
French Politics (Free subscription) | 04/11/2009
So, what to make of a presidential poll that gives François Bayrou 14%, Marine Le Pen 11, Olivier Besancenot 10, and Dominique de Villepin 8? If we read those numbers as expressing some kind of dissatisfaction with the current regime, and add Martine Aubry's 20%, we get the usual conundrum of French presidential politics: the vast majority of voters are unhappy with what they've got, but there's...
PrairiePundit (Free subscription) | 03/11/2009
Bret Stephens: I once overhead a guy try to make a date over the phone. His end of the conversation went roughly as follows: "How about Friday?" (Pause.) "Not Friday? Because I'm free most of the weekend." (Pause.) "Not this weekend? What about next Saturday?" (Pause.) "Are you free at all next week?" (Long pause.) "Well, are you ever free?" Apparently...
LATICONOMICS (Free subscription) | 03/11/2009
When No Means No Pleading with Iran will get the West nowhere. By BRET STEPHENS I once overhead a guy try to make a date over the phone. His end of the conversation went roughly as follows: "How about Friday?" (Pause.) "Not Friday? Because I'm free most of the weekend." (Pause.) "Not this weekend? What about next Saturday?" (Pause.) "Are you free at all next week?"...
Dr Roy's Thoughts (Free subscription) | 31/10/2009
Not only black jacques dog is biting him. French justice threatens to take a bite out of chirac crime. PARIS — A French judge ordered former President Jacques Chirac to stand trial on embezzlement charges predating his presidency — a case that could mark the first time a former leader of modern France is forced to defend himself in court. A prosecutor can still appeal the judge's decision...
The Corner (Free subscription) | 30/10/2009
Jacques Chirac is not the most apparently corrupt politician in France, but only because the numbers are in his favor and because Charles Pasqua and Dominique de Villepin are both still living. But it's smilin' Jacques who's being put on trial nonetheless, according to Bloomberg and other reports. The investigating magistrate must have pulled the charge -- giving make-believe jobs to his faithful party...
Instapundit.com (Free subscription) | 30/10/2009
JACQUES CHIRAC ORDERED TO STAND TRIAL FOR CORRUPTION. “Already, the mere fact of 76-year-old Chirac’s being investigated has been a humiliating coda to his four-decade political career. On top of that, one of Chirac’s former prime ministers is on trial in a separate case. Dominique de Villepin is accused of orchestrating a smear campaign [...]
The Economist (Free subscription) | 30/10/2009
Jacques Chirac, a former president of France, faces trial for corruption A DECISION by an investigating judge to send Jacques Chirac, a former president, to stand trial in a criminal court is without precedent in modern French history. Mr Chirac is accused of “misappropriation of public funds” during his time as mayor of Paris. The decision comes in a month in which the entrails of France’s...
France24 (Free subscription) | 28/10/2009
Former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, who faces charges of complicity in a smear campaign targeting Nicolas Sarkozy, has re-positioned himself as a potential rival for the presidency, saying he wants to embody a "Republican alternative".
French Politics (Free subscription) | 28/10/2009
Dominique de Villepin seems to enjoy the little game he's playing : pretending that he's a serious rival--a "republican alternative," as he puts it--to his nemesis Nicolas Sarkozy. Yesterday he tried to plant a dagger in the back of another ambitious dreamer, Jean-François Copé, by insisting that he and the UMP Assembly leader were hand-in-glove: "Je travaille avec lui...
Ana the Imp (Free subscription) | 26/10/2009
I love keeping an eye on the political antics of our Latin cousins. I confess that Italy and Sleazy Silvio always manage to lighten a dull day but France and Super Sarkozy are not far behind. :-)) I mentioned in a recent blog ( Sex Tourism and Nepotism ) that the Midget put forward his twenty-three year old son Jean, a second year undergraduate, as a possible director of the prestigious La Défense...
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