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Imperial leftovers

You probably don’t know it, but Réunion Island has been racked by riots about the price of gas last week. For those of you who happen not to be specialists of African geography, Réunion Island is a...

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False Choices

It is election time in France. Five weeks from now, we will elect our president for the next five years and unless he does something really stupid, the socialist pretender, François Hollande, will win...

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Speaking of France

  France is an interesting case. It was long the most populous state in Europe and the main rival of England, then Britain for the title of world hegemon. Unlike Britain, however, it did not face the...

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Disunited Kingdoms

In 2014, Scotland will decide whether it should leave the United Kingdom or not. At this point, the pro-independence opinion is still a minority, even though the unionist parties do their best to make...

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Party politics

The electoral campaign in France is nearing its end and we already know  the outcome. A few months ago, I would have said that the incumbent president's only chance was an islamist spree killer...

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The shadow of fascism

The presidential election is over, and the result has been exactly what was expected : the "socialist"candidate won over the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, even if by a relatively small margin. All...

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The Eliott Effect

One of the major problem I have in discussing the nature of the ongoing crisis and the fate of the industrial society is dispelling the myth of the "immaterial economy". It is, I must say, particularly...

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Campagning with the Greens : the basic income delusion

As you may know, there have been legislative elections in France. In my constituency, I supported the Greens because... well, because there was a national agreement which could (and actually did) get...

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(There ain’t no) green jobs

Jobs, or rather the lack of, have been a major issue during the last French elections. This is hardly surprising as mass unemployment has been a fact of life in France for a whole generation....

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The end of the European dream

The European debt crisis is making the front page, again. Moody has changed the outlook of Germany to negative and Spain is forced to borrow at more and more unsustainable rates. The fate of the Euro...

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Fascination for death

We are a peculiar culture. We are extremely reluctant to accept the possibility that our civilization might decline and fall, like all those which have preceded us, yet consider the idea of utterly...

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From Russia with narcissism

Summer months tend to be quite uneventful in France. We have earned the right to go on extended leaves in 1936 and consider it somewhat sacred, so everything is put on hold in July and August. The...

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A few words about education

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The importance of handwriting

As part of my midlife crisis I have taken up calligraphy (along with a lot of other vices). Like all serious arts, it is trying, hard to master and demands a lot of practice (and yes, that does mean...

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Gay, gay, marrions-les

France is about to legalize gay marriage. This has caused some turmoil in some part of the opinion and the right wing opposition bitterly opposes it, mostly, I think, to show they are indeed the...

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Political crisis and choices

Politics can be involuntarily funny. The 2000 presidential election certainly was, seen from this side of the Atlantic, and while the Dominique Strauss Kahn debacle was traumatic, the circumstances of...

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Client states

As you probably know, France has been at war for two weeks now. This does not change everything to our daily life and I don’t plan to raid the nearby supermarket for supply (well, maybe for cat food...

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Cultural diversity

P { margin-bottom: 6pt; }Modern societies like cultural diversity, preferably when it is far away, reasonably photogenic and does not inconvenience them politically. They also like to marginalize...

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In memory of the Bank of Saint-George

P { margin-bottom: 6pt; }There have been a lot of talks about banks lately in France, both because of the Cypriot debacle and because the minister in charge of the French IRS has been caught red-handed...

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Notre-Dame-des-Landes and the risks of activism

Even if it is hardly a priority, I suspect that a significant minority of my readers have heard about the Notre-Dame-des-Landes question. For those who haven’t, I will summarize it....

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Corruption and privileges

Just before tearing itself apart about whether gay people should be allowed to marry, France has gone through another political financial scandal. This is not an uncommon occurrence. We tend not to...

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Remember Tewdrig

Mass migrations, or more specifically mass culture replacement, is one of the more troubling aspects of peak energy. Doubtlessly the perspective of witnessing one’s civilization slowly declining is...

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The Great Pruning

Collapses result in considerable cultural loss and there is no reason to think that the coming one will be an exception. In fact it is likely that the losses, in this domain like in many others, will...

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On socialism

As you probably don’t know, France is ruled by a Socialist Party. Of course, this party is no more socialist than the Institutional Revolutionary Party is revolutionary. It is a pro-statu-quo party...

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Green bankruptcy

There have been a lot of bad news for Eupropean Green parties lately and it must be said that those woes are not really undeserved. In Germany, the local Green Party had commissioned Franz Walter and...

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