- Sep 25, 2009
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where does france really stand ?
can some france resident (frenchfry ?) make sense of the local elections ?
i scanned some main street french media and...came out confused. the media of course is having a field day with jokes, sarkozy tattoos etc, but the whiff of the serious comments i got were:
-france may be evolving from a traditional 2-party to a 3-party political animal
-the success of the far right, though less than predicted, is changing the political landscape. the crazy thing about the far-right voter base was that many traditional leftists switched to the far right. the germans (my sisters tell me) are suspicious of the flip-flop. the anglo saxons (my own view) interpreted, to put it mildly, the french left-right swings as not particularly unexpected.... the eastern europeans (if the polishs and czech reactions represent them) looked less than concerned.
-the sarkozy rise looks too little yet in terms of his presidential bid. his official declarations of a strict non-alliance with either the socialists or the le pen clan, sound disingenuous. at least that's how i interpreted him, b/c his other statements (as far as i could understand them) were betraying a right-leaning, the eu irritation stance...some statements (like about the crimea 'realities') would depart to the moon compared the eu/america official line...
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among others important european news (only the Carnegie foundation picked up on it among the west's english-language media, iirc)...ukraine has just devolved into its usual oligarch fights for their ill-gotten riches...the oligarch billionaire president of ukraine (poroshenko) gave an ultimatum to the oligarch billionaire-governor of a large province (kolomoyski) -
'disarm your private army in 24h or else'.
can some france resident (frenchfry ?) make sense of the local elections ?
i scanned some main street french media and...came out confused. the media of course is having a field day with jokes, sarkozy tattoos etc, but the whiff of the serious comments i got were:
-france may be evolving from a traditional 2-party to a 3-party political animal
-the success of the far right, though less than predicted, is changing the political landscape. the crazy thing about the far-right voter base was that many traditional leftists switched to the far right. the germans (my sisters tell me) are suspicious of the flip-flop. the anglo saxons (my own view) interpreted, to put it mildly, the french left-right swings as not particularly unexpected.... the eastern europeans (if the polishs and czech reactions represent them) looked less than concerned.
-the sarkozy rise looks too little yet in terms of his presidential bid. his official declarations of a strict non-alliance with either the socialists or the le pen clan, sound disingenuous. at least that's how i interpreted him, b/c his other statements (as far as i could understand them) were betraying a right-leaning, the eu irritation stance...some statements (like about the crimea 'realities') would depart to the moon compared the eu/america official line...
----
among others important european news (only the Carnegie foundation picked up on it among the west's english-language media, iirc)...ukraine has just devolved into its usual oligarch fights for their ill-gotten riches...the oligarch billionaire president of ukraine (poroshenko) gave an ultimatum to the oligarch billionaire-governor of a large province (kolomoyski) -
'disarm your private army in 24h or else'.