On 21 sept. 2009, at 07:10, Ira Glazer wrote:
> [It's amazing the difference in the political spectra between France
> and the United States: friends of mine who teach in the French
> equivalent of an 'inner city' school in Paris, genuinely consider
> Sarkozy to be a fascist. Can you imagine an elected national
> politician in the U.S. -- let alone the President -- suggesting what
> Sarkozy is suggesting here (albeit he's just ratifying the suggestions
> of Stiglitz, Sen, et al)]
There was an article in Le Monde just yesterday about that "measure of happiness". The author mentioned the fact that since pretty much everything Sarkozy had campaigned for in 2006-2007 had failed, including economic growth, he was now resorting to funky stats to make anything look good. One of his last attempts to cover his tracks regarding economic policy was to blame the influenza for the poor economic results.
It's important not to forget that Sarkozy managed to practically render the extreme right meaningless by fully embracing it not only during the campaign but also since he's been in office. He has created a ministry of "national identity and integration", he is pushing hard to expel undocumented foreigners, regardless of their family status in France, most of the times the legal procedures are not respected and it is only thanks to activist groups that families are not broken up, at the very last moment.
Sarkozy used to be interior minister, and even since he took office as president, he's been considered as "super cop". A DNA data base for sexual offenders he had created when minister has been extended to include _any_ possible offender (except white collar crimes), and has now about 1 million people, filed for between 25 to 40 years.
He sure does not sound as blunt as Bush, but to see him as a fascist you don't need to stretch your imagination too far.
Jean-Christophe Helary