Bush & Romney Backer Suspected In French Insider Dealing

By Cernig

A friend of George Bush who has been a major donor to both Bush and Romney could face a criminal investigation into insider share dealing after selling £100million of shares just days before Societe Generale's rogue-trader losses were reported.

Robert Day, a member of the French bank's board, disposed of a million shares on January 9 and 10, plus a further 500,000 on January 18, according to official disclosures to Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF), France's market regulator.

The £3.7billion losses at the bank were not disclosed to the public or investors until January 24, despite reports that Societe Generale bosses were aware of the crisis several days earlier.

The AMF is investigating after complaints by minority shareholders who claim some protected themselves at the cost of less influential investors. A source confirmed that Mr Day's share dealings are part of that investigation.

A file lodged with public prosecutor Francois Foulon also demands an inquiry into alleged insider trading and fraud.

The claims were submitted by Frederik-Karel Canoy, a lawyer acting for 100 shareholders, who alleges that Mr Day acted after consultations with "three or four" other key figures in the bank to discuss the looming crisis.

Their meetings were held at Paris restaurants rather than over the phone or by email, Mr Canoy claims.

Mr. Day, of course, has denied the allegations and through a spokesman said he had no idea the bank was in trouble until a board meeting on January 20, two days after the last of his share sales. What coincidentally convenient timing.

Sarko Weds

By Cernig

According to the Daily Mail, France's president has wed his model fiancee.

President Nicolas Sarkozy married his girlfriend, former model Carla Bruni, in a small ceremony today at the presidential Elysee Palace, the mayor who performed the ceremony said.

...It was a historic occasion, "the first time in the history of the Republic that a president has gotten married in office," as Lebel said.

About 20 people attended the ceremony, he said.

Lebel called it "a moment of family intimacy for the young newlyweds, of great simplicity and apparently a lot of affection between the spouses."

I applaud his understated handling of the marriage - most politicos would have turned it into a massive photo-op and PR exercize.

Sarko's Multipolar World

By Cernig

Just a quick mention of a story that seems to give weight to my feeling that France's president Sarkozy sees an opportunity to enhance his nation's prestige and power in a world looking to multi-polar options. After seven years of Sarko's good pal Bush exploding the idea that the US as sole superpower could be a good policeman, the Frenchman has an easy sales pitch:

France is counting on India’s traditional non-alignment to sell New Delhi fighter aircraft and nuclear reactors amid stiff competition from Moscow and in particular Washington, officials say.

President Nicolas Sarkozy left India on Saturday night after sending a “clear message to the Indians,” a presidential adviser said.

“He told them, “choose French civilian nuclear equipment to be independent of the Americans’.”

But not independent of France, obviously. Is there a conservative alive who isn't a colonialist at heart?

Sarko's Nuclear And Arms Selling Jaunt Continues To India

By Cernig

Nicholas Sarkozy, president of France, seems to be following George W's example and has transformed the office of President into the primary sales office for weaponry and nuclear technology produced by his country. Following on his success selling nuclear know-how and a military base to the UAE, Sarkozy is in India trailed by 60 Captains of Industry, drumming up business:

India and France said they would push their military ties beyond weapons sales and open up nuclear power cooperation as soon as New Delhi is able to enter the global atomic energy market.

...The visit has seen defence ties high on the agenda, with France lobbying hard in a country ranked as the biggest weapons buyer among emerging nations and expected to spend an estimated 30 billion dollars on arms over the next five years.

French-Indian defence ties took a blow last month when New Delhi cancelled a Eurocopter bid for a 600-million-dollar (410-million-euro) helicopter contract due to alleged irregularities. The alleged payment of bribes in a submarine deal is also being probed.

France was the second largest arms supplier to India after Russia but has now been overtaken by Israel. The United States is also pushing for a place in the Indian market.

However, French firms are expected to be invited to upgrade India's fleet of Mirage fighters in a contract worth up to 1.5 billion euros -- and they are set to compete in a tender for 126 war planes.

Sarkozy also announced progress on a nuclear cooperation agreement that has been in the works for years to allow France to supply equipment and fuel to India once it has cleared hurdles with the UN's nuclear watchdog.

A joint statement said "this agreement will form the basis of wide-ranging bilateral cooperation from basic and applied research to full civil nuclear cooperation including reactors, fuel supply and management."

India is currently banned from buying fuel for atomic reactors and related equipment because of nuclear weapons tests in 1974 and 1988.

The French deal hinges on the outcome of negotiations between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and with the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group, which controls the global nuclear trade.

Sarkozy said he was confident that meetings allowing nuclear trade with India, a non-NPT signatory, would go well. Meanwhile, one of his captains of industry offered the Indians a sweetener on all the deals - transfer of technology to enable them to build Rafale advanced fighters under license along with 40 of the aircraft at a bargain price right now.

The offer was made by Charles Edelstennie, scion of the Dassult family, the makers of the Rafale and Mirage fighters. "We know the Indian Air Force, with which we have a decade-long close association, is facing force depletion. So we are ready to supply 40 Rafales, the world's first omni-role fighters to India, in a short span of time", the chairman and chief executive of Dassult, a multi-billion French military and civil aerospace company, told PTI.

Edelastennie said Rafale fighters could be an interim sale to India as New Delhi finalises preparations to acquire 126 Multi Role Combat Aircraft at an estimated cost of $10 billion ... Terming the Rafale fighter supply as a "friendly gesture to help close friend India," Edelstennie said his company was a strong bidder for India's MCRA contract.

Rubbishing notions that Rafale came with a heavy price tag, the Dassult CEO said "the fighters' cost to efficiency was not high. New Delhi would get a cheaper price tag as the fighters' assembly in India under technology transfer would not be high".

The Dassault boss also told reporters that French arms sales came without strings attached, unlike sales from other nations like the US and Russia.

I'm beginning to wonder what's on Sarko's mind. This might all be just friendly competition and he may even have discussed his tour and the deals he's making with his pal Bush. But then again it is beginning to look like the early days of a deliberate French attempt to steal some of the US' superpower status. That's only possible, if so, because Bush has so weakened American prestige and power with his adventure in Iraq and a string of diplomatic idiocies. That weakening may have left enough of a power vacuum that nations like the Russians and French are looking to fill that vacuum to their own benefits. Wouldn't it be ironic if George Bush, the president who has used America's lone-power status in a bid for hegemony, instead has ushered in a new multi-polar period of instability as lesser powers compete (and quite possibly clash) for the gap his policies have created?

Update Swaraaj Chauhan, an Indian professor of journalism who blogs at The Moderate Voice, has noticed recent arms deals too and rightly points out that the Indian military's bugbear is always Pakistan (and vice versa). He reminds me that I wrote a post back in 2005 exploring how arms deals to the region, especially some key deals from the US, have helped make it potentially the most dangerous place on Earth.

France's New First Lady

By Cernig



I know that's a gratuitous pic, but c'mon, imagine if that was the wife of a US or UK political leader up there. It's Carla Bruni, fiancee to conservative French president Nicholas Sarkozy, wearing a wedding band and kinky boots in the february edition of a French mag. The French really are a lot less uptight than the rest of us. (Via the Daily Mail)

If we all promise to vote for Dennis Kucinich, do you think Elizabeth...nah.

France Does Algerian Nuke Deal

By Cernig

I just thought it was interesting that France - which is saying the new NIE makes no difference to treatment of Iran - has today signed a nuclear deal with Algeria (and a deal for a big petrochem complex too). It's an axiom of European politics that the French only ever do what serves France - so what's in it for France if Iran keeps taking a beating from sanctions? This deal may give a hint.

(As an aside, Sarkozy has a more personal Algerian problem - his son is embroilled in a legal scandal involving a scooter. Police and three judges have apparently gone out of their way to make his life easier after he was accused of leaving the scene of an accident. And US conservatives wonder why little things like this, part of a pattern, might be taken as bigotry by the poor in the suburbs.)

Those Rioting French

By Cernig

Dave Schuler at The Glittering Eye gets it almost exactly right:

Once again, I think it’s important to understand the actual nature of the problems. The two young men who were killed in the collision that touched off the rioting were said to have been of North African descent. We don’t know where they were born. In all likelihood their grandparents emigrated from Algeria or another French department. We don’t know if they or those who’ve been rioting are Muslims. Nominally, they probably are but we have no idea if they were particularly religious.

This is not about religion; it is not about culture. That’s not at the root of the problem here. There is a problem and it’s not unique to France but one that will be of increasing significance to all of the (traditionally) ethnic states of Europe. How are those who’ve lived in France all their lives but aren’t Français de souche to be considered? Right now they’re neither fish nor fowl.

That’s why I’ve emphasized the importance of our birthright citizenship over here. It at least has a chance of giving the descendants of immigrants a stake in the country that’s the only one they’ve ever known.

That's pretty much it - but it's the grinding poverty and bigoted discrimination attendant on their status (by deliberate if unstated policy) that creates a recipe for violence. Pretty much the same recipe that gave rise to the U.S. riots of the 60s or the UK riots of '81, 85, '95 and '01.

Some European wingnuts are calling for the French military to be used to put down these rioters, who it is reported have used shotguns against police in some instances. It's unclear, however, that the army could accomplish any more than the 25,000 paramilitary riot police of the well-trained and equipped CRS and the Mobile Gendarmerie are doing already. France has a long history both of protest riots and of putting down those riots, which is why it has these units already. It's ludicrous to suggest that current events are anything more than a law enforcement problem in that respect - it's certainly no war. Treating the underlying causes would be more of an option than sending in the tanks.

Update In an excellent post BJ at Northman's Fury worries, as do I, that tough-guy Sarkozy is the wrong person to deal with the underlying causes:

I don't envy the French police the job they have ahead of them to get order restored once again, but I'm fairly sure they'll be able to do that without putting tanks onto the streets. That's when the real work should begin.

They have to find a way to make the people there trust them; to make them feel like they're being treated in a fair manner and not like some second-class citizens. Find some way, some fashion, to properly integrate the immigrant-descended population into the rest of society. Given the current French leadership, I'm not so certain there will be any attempt to do so, which is unfortunate.

Because when your only response is to use force to keep a population under control, the amount of force you need to use keeps rising, as do the costs and retaliations.

However, I'm encouraged that, so far at least, Sarkozy is far more soft-touch in his handling of the situation now that he actually is the guy in charge than his rhetoric back when he simply wanted to be the guy in charge suggested. I'm sure the wingnuts are equally as disappoined as I am encouraged.

Your moment of "France is Collapsing!"

by shamanic

Well that was fast! It was literally weeks and weeks of a right-wing lovefest for all many some one things French, but that's all gone now as violent riots north of Paris have let the air out of the souffle.

Cut to France-obsessed Gateway Pundit for the photo extravaganza! Oh no! Pamela at Atlas Shrugged says "It's war!" "They've lost control of their country," she warns, then prints sections of an article showing no such thing.

Oh, and for those who don't recall the 2005 riots in France that, at the time anyway, seemed to these bloggers to prove that France was on the verge of joining the new caliphate... well, call me hopelessly complacent, but I still think that's unlikely. Just saying.