{"id":68732,"date":"2007-04-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-04-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2007\/04\/22\/la-france-vote-les-anglo-saxons-eternuent\/"},"modified":"2007-04-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-04-22T00:00:00","slug":"la-france-vote-les-anglo-saxons-eternuent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2007\/04\/22\/la-france-vote-les-anglo-saxons-eternuent\/","title":{"rendered":"La France vote, les Anglo-Saxons \u00e9ternuent<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

La France vote, les Anglo-Saxons \u00e9ternuent<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t22 avril 2007 Les Fran\u00e7ais se d\u00e9chirent en se demandant comment ils vont voter aujourd’hui et dans deux dimanches apr\u00e8s. Ils n’imaginent pas combien le reste du monde s’int\u00e9resse \u00e0 eux. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLa r\u00e9alit\u00e9 est que la France soul\u00e8ve l’\u00e9motion, surtout anglo-saxonne, par ses coups de sang plan\u00e9taires. C’est la quatri\u00e8me fois en cinq ans que la France occupe l’avant-sc\u00e8ne du th\u00e9\u00e2tre du monde (d’abord avec la pr\u00e9c\u00e9dente pr\u00e9sidentielle o\u00f9 l’on se fit peur en se regardant dans un miroir, ensuite \u00e0 l’hiver 2002-2003, lors du pr\u00e9lude \u00e0 la guerre contre l’Irak, enfin en mai 2005, lors du r\u00e9f\u00e9rendum sur la Constitution europ\u00e9enne, avant celle-ci). C’est la ni\u00e8me fois (disons, depuis la guerre de Cent ans) qu’on annonce la fin de la France. Vieille habitude.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLes Anglo-Saxons, les Britanniques surtout, ont d\u00e9cid\u00e9 que, cette fois c’est la fin. Ils ont donc enterr\u00e9 la France, surtout apr\u00e8s avoir constat\u00e9 que Sarko-de-Lille<\/a> pourrait se r\u00e9v\u00e9ler \u00eatre un tra\u00eetre. Cette pratique critique et si syst\u00e9matique qu’elle en deviendrait syst\u00e9mique, finit par en agacer certains, outre nous-m\u00eames, avouons-le. Ainsi en est-il du professeur de philosophie Michael Neumann, de Trent University, Ontario (Canada). Apr\u00e8s avoir rapport\u00e9 les appr\u00e9ciations de l’un ou l’autre expert britannique commis \u00e0 la mise \u00e0 mort de la France, les noms de Saunders, Smith et Giddens font l’affaire, il se met \u00e0 \u00e9grener quelques chiffres de comparaison entre la France promise \u00e0 une mort inf\u00e2me et l’Angleterre \u00e9patante, brillante et scintillante, que cette stupide France aurait d\u00fb tant imiter Puis il s’exclame, le professeur de philosophie exc\u00e9d\u00e9 : enfantin (Sur le site CounterPunch<\/em>, en date du 14-15 avril<\/a>.) <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00abHow about infant morality, a pretty basic indicator? It’s 4.21 deaths\/1,000 live births in France, 5.08 deaths\/1,000 live births in the UK, so it’s not surprising that France also leads in life expectancy at birth: 79.73 years compared to 78.54 years for the UK. What’s going on? Well, there is one really striking difference between the two countries in the area of ‘human development’: while France has 6% of its population below the poverty line, the UK has almost triple that, 17%. Perhaps Saunders, Smith and Giddens view this negatively, as a sign that France has, as they claim, failed to face up to new economic challenges.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThe economics of the two countries could be debated forever, but that’s the point. France has a lower per capita GDP, $33,015.40 versus the UK’s 35,421.19, but this seems a difference, not a disaster. The same is true for GDP real growth rates: France’s is 1.4%, the UK’s is 1.8%. Again, there is at least one pretty spectacular contrast, external debt. The head-screwed-on-right British come in at $8.28 trillion, while the insane, foolhardy Frenchies owe $3.461 trillion. I don’t claim to know what this means, just what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that Saunders’ gurus have the right to claim The British Way outshines The French way.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbAt this point the word ‘childish’ comes to mind. Can purportedly intelligent and well-informed people really make such sweeping pronouncements without spending five minutes checking their facts? Apparently so – perhaps you can be intelligent and well-informed, but not adult. In Saunders’ case, this impression is reinforced by his political thinking. The guy has the nerve to worry about French authoritarianism before running off to the freedom-loving sanctuary of an English breakfast with Giddens. So a country which puts surveillance cameras all over its landscape, which throws out ancient strictures against self-incrimination, which, in a fit of anti-terror hysteria, allows its special cops to kill a totally innocent man, which cooks evidence to mislead its population into a criminal war, which enacts vague, punitive, class-ridden and evidence-free legal procedures to pillory socially undesirable ‘yobs’ – this is where you go to get away from the shadow of French authoritarianism? Childish.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t On pourrait ajouter beaucoup d’autres chiffres. Mentionnons celui de l’inflation, qui est de 1,2% en France. Aux USA, l’inflation a atteint 4,7% en mars. La situation au Royaume-Uni est caract\u00e9ris\u00e9e par le plus haut chiffre d’inflation depuis une d\u00e9cennie (3,1%), le chiffre le plus haut depuis que l’actuelle m\u00e9thode d’\u00e9valuation (indice mensuel des prix \u00e0 la consommation) a \u00e9t\u00e9 adopt\u00e9e en janvier 1997. La situation a conduit la Banque d’Angleterre a prendre pour la premi\u00e8re fois l’initiative pr\u00e9vue par cette r\u00e9glementation (pour un d\u00e9passement substantiel des pr\u00e9visions d’inflation : envoyer une lettre d’explication piteuse au gouvernement).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t Un bon exemple de l’esprit de haine r\u00e9gnant contre la France se trouve dans l’article de l’ancien parlementaire conservateur George Walden : \u00abFrance is a vegetating catastrophe France’s economy and culture is blocked<\/em>\u00bb, le 21 avril<\/a> dans le Times<\/em>. L’auteur et pr\u00e9sentateur TV, ancien candidat conservateur Ian Dale d\u00e9crivait ainsi Walden sur son site, le : \u00abFormer Tory MP George Walden was one of Britain’s worst ever High Education Ministers. Since leaving Parliament he has earned a living writing pseudo-intellectual drivel about politics and culture. It’s usually unreadable. I attended a discussion evening with him and his wife a couple of years ago, organised by Living Marxism. He was insufferable and spent the whole evening putting down his wife.<\/em>\u00bb Par cons\u00e9quent, Walden publie dans le Times<\/em>, pas Ian Dale.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t Un autre aspect du d\u00e9cha\u00eenement britannique est l’exemple, bien plus chic et polic\u00e9, de Timothy Garton-Ash (TGA). La France est l’homme malade de l’Europe mais nous en sommes tous bien tristes. Quand la France est malade, l’Europe l’est aussi et c’est une mauvaise nouvelle pour l’Angleterre. (Dans le Guardian<\/em> du 19 avril<\/a> : \u00abA sick France means a sick Europe and that must be bad for Britain.<\/em>\u00bb) M\u00eame fa\u00e7on de pratiquer l’inconsciente promotion de la puissance fran\u00e7aise que dans le cas Hutton<\/a>. L’argumentaire TGA n’a aucun int\u00e9r\u00eat, c’est du minimum syndical d’un intellectuel appoint\u00e9 par le syst\u00e8me, un apparatchik<\/em> chic (dur \u00e0 dire) d’un r\u00e9gime plus propre sur lui que le marxisme mais, en un sens, plus d\u00e9gueulasse. Citons plut\u00f4t cette r\u00e9action substantielle d’un de ses lecteurs, Howard D. Peel, le m\u00eame 19 avril \u00e0 la suite du texte de TGA :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00abAs someone who moved to live in France to get away from the right-wing, hierarchical, oppressive ‘dog eat dog’ society Britain has become, I see few signs that France is a ‘sick’ nation, especially when compared to the UK. True France has some social and economic problems, but for the most part these are on a far smaller scale than those which exist in such ‘model’ neo-liberal states as the UK and USA.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThe small village school which my young daughter attends is modern, well equipped, very clean and provides a range of stimulating activities, even taking the children on theatre trips, farm visits and so on. My daughters class is the largest in the school, having 12 pupils, something which the headmistress feels is far from the ideal, and she feels her school could benefit from a higher level of funding. Perhaps in a survey she would be one of those French people who, or so some in the UK would have you believe, do little but express their concerns about the state of France, but one cannot help but feel that if she were to see the conditions most British teachers work under she would have her perceptions altered somewhat.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThe French health service puts that of the UK to shame. The last time I needed to use the UK health service was in order to have blood tests done on my recently born daughter. These were finally done after a 6 hour wait in a crowded and dirty children’s ward. Since coming here both my wife and I have needed to use the health service and the quality of care comes as pleasant surprise after the UK, with, in my experience, access to specialists being available within hours rather than months.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThe French have a maximum 35 hour working week, 2 months paid holiday per year, retirement at 60 on a state pension of half one’s final wage (younger for public service employees), plus any supplementary pension benefits accrued and yet still has a higher productivity per person than the UK. Yes, there are unemployment problems, especially amongst the young, but comparisons with UK figures are very misleading. For one in the UK it is very difficult to claim benefits for more than a few months. In my experience of the UK after being given 3 months to find a job appropriate to ones skills and experience one is expected to take anything offered or have ones paltry benefits cut. No wonder so many feel that the effort of claiming benefits is so great that the hassle is not worth it. The calculated consequence of this is that whilst those officially unemployed has fallen, the number of economically inactive in the UK (that is those unemployed but not appearing on the official jobless figures) has soared. In France benefits are much more generous, so encouraging people to claim them. Also, one can have quite a substantial ‘part time’ job in France and still claim ‘unemployment’ benefits. In addition, there are vast numbers of seasonal workers in France who only claim benefits for certain periods of the year.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbFor a supposedly ‘sick’ country for most people the quality of life here in France is way ahead of that ‘enjoyed’ in the UK. Perhaps the biggest difference between the UK and France is the fact that most people here just look like everyday citizens, unlike the UK where society is so stratified and one can tell at a glance who is a ‘winner’ in the ‘look after number one’ society and who is a loser. Seeing the obvious poverty and the ‘Chav underclass’ alongside the BMW’s and ‘4×4’s of the ‘better off’ in car-obsessed Britain comes as quite a shock after a time spent in France, as does seeing the forests of CCTV cameras and the legions of quasi-police officers (Community wardens, support officers and so on) whose primary purpose appears to be ‘clamping down’ on those petty offences which offend the Daily Mail reading classes, such as begging and people cycling in pedestrianised areas. It appears that there truly is ‘no such thing as society’ in Britain anymore, with ‘society’ having been atomised into millions of individuals all of whom see everyone else as being a competitor and even a potential threat, where the only social affiliations are those which separate people out into ‘in-groups’ and ‘out-groups’. Here in France I can even go out for a cycle ride without having motorists trying to run me down, shout threats and abuse, or spit or throw things at me out of their car windows!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbIt is clear that many right-wingers in the UK and USA see France’s traditions of ‘Liberty, fraternity and egality’ as posing a potential threat to the hegemony of neo-liberal thought. Especially the bit about egality. Champions of the ‘free’ market economy such as The Economist have championed Sarkosy and argued that France needs another Thatcher (God forbid!). Even the BBC seems to have more positive things to say about Le Pen than it does about Segolene Royal. France is the fly in the neo-liberal ointment and as such is attacked wherever possible.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n

O\u00f9 est la crise, mon cher Holmes?<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

\tLa France est-elle en crise? Ou bien est-ce le monde anglo-saxon qui l’est, en crise? Le d\u00e9cha\u00eenement anti-fran\u00e7ais, surtout chez les commentateurs britanniques, est une pr\u00e9cieuse indication du degr\u00e9 de d\u00e9sarroi de l’\u00e9lite britannique. En g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, quand ces commentateurs se d\u00e9cha\u00eenent contre la France, c’est que les special relationships<\/em> ne marchent pas tr\u00e8s bien et que le cuir britannique a du mal \u00e0 supporter les humiliations am\u00e9ricanistes. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t(Comprenne qui pourra ce transfert, terme psychanalytique, mais non, finalement, nous comprenons tr\u00e8s bien la chose. Tant il est vrai que USA et France sont, aujourd’hui, dans le monde devenu fou d’une civilisation qui r\u00e9v\u00e8le aujourd’hui toute son imposture et son indignit\u00e9, o\u00f9 les v\u00e9ritables influences ne se trouvent pas dans les forces d’apparence, notamment \u00e9conomiques, USA et France sont les deux bornes et les deux p\u00f4les, les deux influences, les deux occurrences, les deux inspirations possibles, les deux termes de l’alternative. Cela est observ\u00e9 d’une fa\u00e7on symbolique, car rien n’est aussi simple dans cette crise syst\u00e9mique d’une extr\u00eame complexit\u00e9. Mais le sens de la chose, lui, peut ais\u00e9ment \u00eatre \u00e9pur\u00e9 et ramen\u00e9 \u00e0 cette alternative. Par cons\u00e9quent, oui, nous comprenons ce transfert : quand les choses ne marchent pas dans l’univers enchant\u00e9 des Anglo-Saxons, quand Londres titube sous les coups de pied de l’\u00e2me, le m\u00e9pris, l’inattention, l’indiff\u00e9rence, la suffisance, la stupidit\u00e9 surr\u00e9aliste de Washington, oui, les \u00e9lites londoniennes se redressent et maudissent la France. Rien de plus logique.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe d\u00e9cha\u00eenement anti-fran\u00e7ais des \u00e9lites britanniques a rarement atteint cette intensit\u00e9. La dr\u00f4lerie (doit-on rire ?) de la situation est que les r\u00e9actions outr\u00e9es, souvent plut\u00f4t pro-fran\u00e7aises et parfois violemment pro-fran\u00e7aises et anti-anglaises, des lecteurs de ces divers commentateurs n’ont \u00e9galement jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 aussi abondantes. Nous en d\u00e9duisons que la crise est s\u00e9rieuse dans le monde anglo-saxon, que les \u00e9lites sentent qu’entre l’Irak, GW et son gourou<\/em> Cheney, Le monde enchant\u00e9 de Tony Blair<\/em> (*) et les hoquets de la globalisation, tout ne marche pas comme sur des roulettes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tPeut-\u00eatre la France sera en crise s\u00e9rieuse ce soir, et peut-\u00eatre plus encore dans deux semaines, ou peut-\u00eatre pas, apr\u00e8s tout. Les crises, la France, \u00e7a la conna\u00eet. C’est \u00e0 cela qu’on voit une grande nation, et la France est, \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard, l’incontestable Grande Nation : la capacit\u00e9 de subir des crises, des humiliations, des d\u00e9routes, et de se relever ; et de poursuivre, malgr\u00e9 ses amis anglo-saxons et ses intellectuels-rive-gauche (et rive-droite aussi, d’ailleurs, bref, ses intellectuels). Quand on voit le destin historique de l’Outre-Atlantique, on mesure la diff\u00e9rence et la distance entre les deux termes de l’alternative.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t(*) Le royaume enchant\u00e9 de Tony Blair<\/em>, de Philippe Auclair, Fayard. A lire pour mesurer l’ampleur et l’extension de la tartufferie blairiste. Apr\u00e8s avoir lu ce bouquin, relisez l’\u00e9dito de Garton-Ash et son apologie du blairisme. Juste pour le fun<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La France vote, les Anglo-Saxons \u00e9ternuent 22 avril 2007 Les Fran\u00e7ais se d\u00e9chirent en se demandant comment ils vont voter aujourd’hui et dans deux dimanches apr\u00e8s. Ils n’imaginent pas combien le reste du monde s’int\u00e9resse \u00e0 eux. La r\u00e9alit\u00e9 est que la France soul\u00e8ve l’\u00e9motion, surtout anglo-saxonne, par ses coups de sang plan\u00e9taires. C’est la… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3426,2687,4832,5948,5925,4590],"class_list":["post-68732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-anglo-saxon","tag-france","tag-garton-ash","tag-neumann","tag-sarko","tag-sarkozy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}