May 6, 2007: Nicolas Sarkozy defeats Segolene Royal in the 2007 French Presidential election. According to French investigative news website Mediapart, Sarkozy's campaign was partially funded by a 50 million Euro payment from the regime of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, which was laundered through banks in Panama and Switzerland.
July 24, 2007: Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are released by the Gaddafi regime after being jailed for 8 years in Libya. The release is thanks to French diplomatic intervention.
July 25, 2007: President Sarkozy travels to Tripoli, Libya. According to French magazine Les Inrockuptibles, Sarkozy secured the release of the foreign medics the previous day by signing a secret nuclear accord with Libya on top of a public accord to provide Libya with a nuclear-powered desalination plant.
December 10, 2007: Libyan leader Gaddafi arrives in Paris for a five-day visit with President Sarkozy. Gaddafi notoriously pitches a Bedouin-style tent in the gardens of the former Paris mansion of Baron Gustave de Rothschild. Gaddafi signed $15 billion worth of business contracts while in Paris, which included the purchase of French-made conventional armaments.
March 19, 2011: French aircraft are the first to enter Libyan airspace as NATO declares war on the Gaddafi regime.
March 26, 2011: In the opening stages of the Libya-NATO War, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, publicly reveals that Libya funded Nicolas Sarkozy's 2007 Presidential campaign and that the Libyan regime has the financial documents to prove so.
September 1, 2011: French newspaper Liberation publishes a report that the anti-Gaddafi rebel force known as the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) promises to reserve a third of Libyan crude oil output for French companies in return for French support of the anti-Gaddafi uprising.
September 4, 2011: In the midst of the Libya-NATO War, files are found in Tripoli showing the deep connections between the Libyan national intelligence agency under the Gaddafi regime (led by Moussa Koussa), the U.S.'s Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom's MI6 intelligence agency. The files show that the CIA had transported several prisoners to Libya in order to tortured under the "extraordinary rendition" program.
October 20, 2011: Muammar Gaddafi is killed in the Sirte District of Libya by rebel forces.
April 22, 2012: Sarkozy loses the first round of voting in the 2012 French Presidential election to Socialist Party candidate Francois Hollande.
April 29, 2012: Shukri Ghanem, Libya's Oil Minister at the beginning of the Libya-NATO War, is found floating dead in the Danube River in Vienna, Austria. Police have no indication it was a suicide.
Showing posts with label NATO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NATO. Show all posts
Monday, April 30, 2012
Sunday, April 22, 2012
2012 French Presidential Election Round One: Political Fragmentation and Rethinking the European Union
Preliminary results for round one of the French Presidential election are emerging. As of Sunday, April 22nd (7:00 PM PDT) the results indicate that Francois Hollande and incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy will move on to the second round.
This election proves that the political landscape in France is extremely fragmented. Together, Hollande and Sarkozy will likely take less than 60% of the total vote. Regardless as to which one of the two eventually becomes President, he will be the first choice of less than one-third of the French electorate (that actually bothered to vote).
Marine Le Pen of the National Front will likely take about 18% of the vote. Jean-Luc Melenchon of the Left Front will likely take about 11% of the vote. Francois Bayrou of the Democratic Movement will likely take about 8% or 9% of the vote.
It is very rare for a Presidential election in a developed-economy, major Western power to have five serious candidates, each of which takes a significant percentage (>5%) of the total vote. The standard model in developed Western powers is the political version of a duopoly. That's noteworthy and signals political fragmentation. The French populace feels alienated and disenfranchised by the current political establishment.
The break-out stars of this election (Le Pen and Melenchon) are very critical of the European integration project (to a degree that would be considered quite radical in several other European Union nation) and that is not a coincidence.
Le Pen wants to take control of monetary policy away from the European Central Bank and return it to the French state. That would necessitate pulling out of the Euro common currency (and presumably returning to the Franc). Le Pen is extremely critical of the Eurozone financial system. She recently said:
Even Sarkozy, one of the biggest pro-European integrationists (europhiles in the European jargon) in the world, has taken to nationalism. Sarkozy has threatened to pull France out of the Schengen Area, which allows for greatly relaxed border controls within the EU. Sarkozy took this position as part of his stated policy aim of reducing immigration into France by 50%. Sarkozy likely took this anti-immigrant position in order to stem the loss of voters to Le Pen, the candidate most critical of existing immigration policy.
If this French election is any indication of what we can expect elsewhere on the continent, the European political landscape is in the process of fragmentation and the European populace is seriously rethinking European integration (or at least the form that integration will take).
Sources:
[1]: http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/le-pen-blasts-goldman-sachs-for-toppling-governments-1.423181
This election proves that the political landscape in France is extremely fragmented. Together, Hollande and Sarkozy will likely take less than 60% of the total vote. Regardless as to which one of the two eventually becomes President, he will be the first choice of less than one-third of the French electorate (that actually bothered to vote).
Marine Le Pen of the National Front will likely take about 18% of the vote. Jean-Luc Melenchon of the Left Front will likely take about 11% of the vote. Francois Bayrou of the Democratic Movement will likely take about 8% or 9% of the vote.
It is very rare for a Presidential election in a developed-economy, major Western power to have five serious candidates, each of which takes a significant percentage (>5%) of the total vote. The standard model in developed Western powers is the political version of a duopoly. That's noteworthy and signals political fragmentation. The French populace feels alienated and disenfranchised by the current political establishment.
The break-out stars of this election (Le Pen and Melenchon) are very critical of the European integration project (to a degree that would be considered quite radical in several other European Union nation) and that is not a coincidence.
Le Pen wants to take control of monetary policy away from the European Central Bank and return it to the French state. That would necessitate pulling out of the Euro common currency (and presumably returning to the Franc). Le Pen is extremely critical of the Eurozone financial system. She recently said:
"Goldman Sachs topples governments everywhere. [...] Goldman Sachs places its men at the top of Eurozone countries. Goldman Sachs puts its man at the head of the European Central Bank [...] In Greece, Italy, the ECB, oligarchs have taken power." [1]Melenchon is against the Treaty of Lisbon, one of the foundational documents of the European Union. Melenchon argues that the European Union has been hijacked by technocrats and financial interests and is no longer a democratic project. Melenchon also calls on France to leave NATO.
Even Sarkozy, one of the biggest pro-European integrationists (europhiles in the European jargon) in the world, has taken to nationalism. Sarkozy has threatened to pull France out of the Schengen Area, which allows for greatly relaxed border controls within the EU. Sarkozy took this position as part of his stated policy aim of reducing immigration into France by 50%. Sarkozy likely took this anti-immigrant position in order to stem the loss of voters to Le Pen, the candidate most critical of existing immigration policy.
If this French election is any indication of what we can expect elsewhere on the continent, the European political landscape is in the process of fragmentation and the European populace is seriously rethinking European integration (or at least the form that integration will take).
Sources:
[1]: http://www.haaretz.com/news/international/le-pen-blasts-goldman-sachs-for-toppling-governments-1.423181
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