Wednesday, April 25, 2007

SARKOZY: Leopard with the Same Spots!

The result of the first round of the French Presidential election showed right-wing candidate Nicolas Sarkozy (UMP) in the lead with 31.18% and the Socialist Ségoléne Royal with 25.87%. The remarkable turnout, 82.58% showed that the French were extremely interested in exercising their democratic rights and were seeking definite political leadership and concrete political positions from the candidates. Whether they are getting that is another question. It is a matter of supreme importance what happens in France, lynchpin of the European Union and one of the world’s great democracies and a country with world-wide influence and strong international presence. It is extremely gratifying that the neo-fascist and disgraceful National Front of Jean- Marie Le Pen was trounced at the ballot box, attaining only 10.44% having come second in the previous election.

There is an uphill battle now for the Socialists to garner enough votes from the smaller left, amounting to about 9% overall, and the centrists 25%, to beat the right-wing Sarkozy which, hopefully they will do. The Socialist error in presenting Mdme. Royal as some sort of Blairite “reformer” at the beginning of the campaign with an appeal directed at the centre, and then having to re-engage with the left as this tactic failed, badly affected the momentum of the Socialist campaign and allowed Sarkozy to gain the front position with a lot of smart-a$$ spin-doctoring and false flag political posturing.

A Sarknozy win would be a disaster for France and the EU. His maverick style of poltics on-the-hoof with reactionary, intemperate statements on current events would make him the Boris Yeltsin (the just-deceased former first President of post-Soviet Russia) of Western Europe. Sarknozy is a wrecker without a defined programme, a demolition man of gung-ho Yankee Doodle Capitalism, alien to France and the majority of Europe. It’s only a few months ago since he was in Washyertongue licking Buckfush’s boots. Now, the Sarknozy gang of hangers on and would-be king-makers might think that, given the initial success of Thatcher in Britain, they might have a chance of doing the same thing in France. NOT! The French are not squeamish about taking to the streets as their historic tradition of the Great French Revolution and the Paris Commune shows. The French Trade Unions are stronger and better organised than their British counterparts ever were. If Sarknozy and the Right-Wing are looking for a fight in the centre of Europe then they are going to get it! Sarknozy may get temporary residence in the Élyseé Palace but that will be the extent of his mini-empire. If he tries to implement neo-liberal piss-enomics in France he will end up as the lonely man in his Palace, unable to go in the street for fear of the people.

Sarknozy’s style, consisting of loud-mouth slogans attacking organised workers and also immigrant groups, although of immigrant origins himself, plays to the gallery of the right in France and in 2005 resulted in serious rioting in inner city ghettos throughout France, shows the irresponsibility and recklessness of this parasite who, lacking any creative talent or vision, stayed in the bureaucracy all of his life and is now seeking power on the basis of regurgitated Thatcherite vomit and discredited Buckfush claptrap unrelated to the real problems of the French economy. Sarknozy has chosen to act as merely Trojan Horse to further infiltration of the European economy by American monopolies desperate to extend their empire in the face of competition from China. The American monopolies have been pushing for years for “liberalisation” and opening markets in the EU such as allowing privatisations of state education systems and public water supplies. A Sarknozy presidency would increase the pressure in the EU Commission, already well-stacked with pro-monopoly careerists, to open the flood gates to further American monopoly penetration of the EU. The standard Sarknozy rhetoric corresponds exactly with their own.

A Sarknozy presidency would diminish France, as Blairschmuck has diminished Britain, by acting as another Buckfush poodle in Europe. Two Buckfush poodles in Europe is 2 too many! Anyway, the calamitous Buckfush regime is floundering in reams of corruption at home and total military disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and will be dismissed by the American people in 2008. So, Sarknozy is jumping on a wagon with the wheels falling off and will be left stranded within a year even if he does get to the Élyseé.

Hopefully, next Sunday, the socialist vote will consolidate and this right-wing barking dog will be sent scurrying back to its kennels.




Vive La France Revolutionaire! Vive La Gauche!


FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 25 Aibreán/April 2007.

Monday, April 16, 2007

CURSE OF THE BAGHDAD
MUMMY’S TOMB
(2)

As related previously, the War in Iraq has not turned out as expected for the main perpetrators from Buckfush down to his appointed officials and his main political allies in Europe, Blairschmuck and Balonisconi.

Now, another of the cabal which planned the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has got an unexpected come-uppance in Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank and former US Deputy Secretary of Defence in the discredited and crumbling Buckfush regime in Washington.

Wolfspits
(anyone who has seen the Michael Moore film “Fahrenheit 9/11” will remember the scene showing Wolfowitz, waiting to be intereviewed on TV, placing a large dollop of spit on his comb and then combing his hair with it! Yuck!) has been caught in flagrante delicto giving his current squeeze, Shaha Riva, a totally unjustified promotion and salary raise when she was given a transfer on an external contract to the US State Department. The transfer was needed because World Bank rules forbade executives having personal relationships with employees.

Wolfspits is a long-time associate of conservative and right-wing operators in the US political and academic elites like Bumsfeld, Bremerprick, Cheneyshite and Eagleburgercrap. Lewis “Scooter” Libby former top aide to Cheneyshite and recently convicted in Federal Court of obstructing justice and facing 25 years in the Federal Pen, was one of his students when he was in the Department of Political Science at Yale University.

In a resonance to current events, Wolfspits was part of a team appointed by then director of the CIA, Buckfush Senior, which produced, in 1976, an exaggerated report of Soviet Union (Russia) weapons development in an attempt to negatively influence US policy in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks then going on between the USA and Soviet negotiators. Wolfspits’ team produced the ludicrous suggestion that the Soviets had produced a submarine sonar system (which, by definition, is based on sound) “not based on sound and undetectable by US technology”. Wolfspits was Deputy Secretary of Defence when the notorious “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction” scare-story was conjured up by Washington and London to justify the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.

Since getting the job at the World Bank, Wolfspits has been notorious for lecturing the governments of third-world countries about corruption (hypocrisy writ large) and for getting World Bank funding for Israel’s building its infamous Wall in occupied Palestine.

On Thursday, he was forced to make a public apology for his sleazy manoeuvres favouring his fancy woman but, faced almost 100% hostility from Bank staff representatives. Admitting he “made a mistake” but refusing to step down, Wolfspits has attracted even more hostility and his tenure at the Bank must now be short-lived. There was no apology for his “mistake” in Iraq which has now cost over 100,000 people their lives. These victims will yet have their justice.


FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 16 Aibreán/April 2007.

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

THE BLACK HEART OF CORPORATE SWINDLING:

The indictment and trial of Conrad Black, Canadian-born multi-millionaire and newspaper tycoon, and owner of the title of Lord Black of Crossharbour in the British House of Lords, arranged for him by Tony Blairschmuck in 1999, has caused shock among the billionaire class of media moguls and their hangers on throughout the world. Blackheart had to give up his Canadian citizenship to accept the title but he stands to lose a lot more than that as he faces up to 100 years in The Pen if convicted on the charges announced in November 2006 by US Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Asst. Attorney General Alice Fisher of the US Department of Justice’s Criminal Division;

“Officers and directors of publicly traded companies who steer shareholders money into their pockets should not lie to the board of directors to get permission to do so. The indictment charges that the insiders at Hollinger (Blackheart’s Company) – all the way to the top of the corporate ladder; whose job it was to safeguard the shareholders; made it their job to steal and conceal” Mr Fitzgerald told the ravenous press crowd waiting for details.

“Even the highest level executives must know that they cannot escape responsibility if they engage in fraudulent misconduct. The frauds alleged in this indictment were blatant and pervasive; they extended from back rooms to the board room, and from Park Avenue to the South Pacific” added Mr Robert Grant, Special Agent-in-Charge of the Chicago Office of the FBI.

Keep on Singing

However it was another musical note from the singing of David Radler, former crony of Blackheart at Hollinger International who turned State’s Evidence last September and is now cooperating with the prosecutors against his former colleagues, which snookered Blackheart and the rest of the gang. Blackheart himself was caught on videotape loading 13 boxes of documents from his Toronto office into his limousine on March 20, 2005 only hours after a US District Court ordered the production of the documents as part of another investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission alleging that Blackheart and others swindled Hollinger International of more than $80 M.

The Chicago indictments allege that the sale, in 2000, of hundreds of Canadian newspapers owned by Hollinger for $2.1 Billion was skimmed of $51.8 Million in so-called “not to compete” under-the-counter deals by Blackheart and his accomplices which were concealed from the Hollinger board of Directors which included such worthies as Henry Kissinger and Richard Perle. Also included are such gems as the allegation that Blackheart charged $40,000 of a $62,000 bill for a party for his wife, right-wing loud mouth Barbara Amiel, at swish New York restaurant “La Grenouille” to the Hollinger company accounts without informing the Board.


Blackheart and his right-wing screech-owl missus, Barbara Amiel, have been darlings of the Right in North American and European politics for years. Amiel, born in London to a jewish family, but brought up in foggy Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, where she must have felt at home among the smokestacks and permanent fog over the city to which her mother emigrated the family after a divorce. Known for OTT rants in “The Spectator” and “Daily Telegraph” owned by fourth hubby Blackheart, Amiel’s unabashed addiction to galactic shopping expeditions for $2000 handbags, fur coats and hundred-pair shoe raids on the glitziest New York shopping emporia hasn’t helped Hubby in his hour of trial since most of it was allegedly paid for out of Hollinger company funds.

When Blackheart visited Dublin in 2003 he was eulogised by the “Irish Times” in a full-page, grovelling display of “sun-shines-out-of-his-a$$” idolatry usually reserved by the likes of the “Catholic Herald” for the Pope. Needless to say, no such effusions appeared in the same newspaper when the trial opened of this puffed-up media baron whose “achievements” we were all supposed to admire and emulate not too long ago.


FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 04 Aibreán/April 2007.

(Sources: Chicago Tribune; The Guardian; Toronto Globe & Mail; Canadian Broadcasting Corporation; Agence France Presse)