araucaria
24th March 2014, 21:05
News from the campaign to clean up French politics. I am posting it here because I haven’t time to document this properly, and also because it is rather hilarious.
1) The (fraudulently elected) president of the rightwing coalition now in opposition is in trouble for siphoning off vast amounts of party funds through no-bid contracts to an agency run by some friends of his. Some of this cash was part of Sarkozy’s presidential campaign funds. He was penalized for overspending and lost 11 million euros in a state refund which was made up for by collecting donations from sympathizers. So basically, it would seem that they have shot each other in the foot: it’s going to be hard to claim that the overspending was overstated on the grounds that it was illicit…
2) Sarkozy himself is in trouble for any number of crimes and misdemeanours currently under investigation. Given his longstanding need to run the whole show, his name invariably crops up whatever misbehaving is going on. The latest is that he has had his phone tapped by judges for a year now. But since he liked to buy off magistrates with promises of promotion, he found out pretty soon that he was under surveillance. So it emerges that he got another phone through his attorney under an assumed name, which he borrowed from an old classmate based in Israel. This classmate is not at all happy at having his identity stolen and is considering litigation. But the major part of this is that Sarkozy thought he could talk freely on this phone; ‘unfortunately’ it was also being tapped, and so investigators have collected another load of damning evidence from the horse’s mouth.
3) Sarkozy’s long-standing adviser Patrick Buisson brought away from the years in the Elysée Palace 280 hours of Dictaphone recordings of everything said in his presence, including discussions of sensitive material in the presence of people with no clearance (including Carla Bruni). ‘Buisson’ means Bush, but this is more reminiscent of the Nixon tapes. Methinks le Petit Nicolas has a lot o’ ‘splainin’ to do.
Meanwhile, the socialist government struggles on, being unable to make any inroads curbing the financial elite. This is a time when the opposition should really be making progress, but it’s not. Maybe the government refraining from interfering in the justice system will be enough to put a few big fish behind bars and eventually cut the financiers’ stranglehold on political power.
I am reposting this in a separate thread along with a couple of articles in English for people to check out for themselves. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy is up to his ears in criminal cases currently under investigation by magistrates.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/07/nicolas-sarkozy-phones-bugged-gaddafi-claims-judges (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/
News from the campaign to clean up French politics. I am posting it here because I haven’t time to document this properly, and also because it is rather hilarious.1) The (fraudulently elected) president of the rightwing coalition now in opposition is in trouble for siphoning off vast amounts of party funds through no-bid contracts to an agency run by some friends of his. Some of this cash was part of Sarkozy’s presidential campaign funds. He was penalized for overspending and lost 11 million euros in a state refund which was made up for by collecting donations from sympathizers. So basically, it would seem that they have shot each other in the foot: it’s going to be hard to claim that the overspending was overstated on the grounds that it was illicit…2) Sarkozy himself is in trouble for any number of crimes and misdemeanours currently under investigation. Given his longstanding need to run the whole show, his name invariably crops up whatever misbehaving is going on. The latest is that he has had his phone tapped by judges for a year now. But since he liked to buy off magistrates with promises of promotion, he found out pretty soon that he was under surveillance. So it emerges that he got another phone through his attorney under an assumed name, which he borrowed from an old classmate based in Israel. This classmate is not at all happy at having his identity stolen and is considering litigation. But the major part of this is that Sarkozy thought he could talk freely on this phone; ‘unfortunately’ it was also being tapped, and so investigators have collected another load of damning evidence from the horse’s mouth.3) Sarkozy’s long-standing adviser Patrick Buisson brought away from the years in the Elysée Palace 280 hours of Dictaphone recordings of everything said in his presence, including discussions of sensitive material in the presence of people with no clearance (including Carla Bruni). ‘Buisson’ means Bush, but this is more reminiscent of the Nixon tapes. Methinks le Petit Nicolas has a lot o’ ‘splainin’ to do.Meanwhile, the socialist government struggles on, being unable to make any inroads curbing the financial elite. This is a time when the opposition should really be making progress, but it’s not. Maybe the government refraining from interfering in the justice system will be enough to put a few big fish behind bars and eventually cut the financiers’ stranglehold on political power.I am reposting this in a separate thread along with a couple of articles in English for people to check out for themselves. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy is up to his ears in criminal cases currently under investigation by magistrates.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/07/nicolas-sarkozy-phones-bugged-gaddafi-claims-judgesSarkozy lashed back last Friday in a diatribe published by the Le Figaro newspaper in which, copying Berlusconi before him in Italy, he described the justice system as using the methods of the Stasi, the infamous secret service of the former East Germany.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sarkozy-accuses-france-of-acting-like-stasi-after-bugged-9207954.htmlSarkozey has clearly lost it. Why? Because the most serious part of the Libya investigation involves not so much the millions in 2007 campaign funds received from Gaddafi as what happened afterwards. Here is the backstory.Below, Courrier International (October 1st 2012) translates a story from Il Corriere della Sera reporting that (my translation of the bold type) according to the Italian paper, Colonel Gaddafi was killed by a French secret agent with the complicity of Damascus. Why? Because the Libyan dictator was threatening to make disclosures on the funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign in 2007. For the Syrian regime, the idea was to have closer ties with France.http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2012/10/01/kadhafi-aurait-ete-assassine-par-un-agent-secret-francais Summarizing: these rumours are not new but this time the man making these allegations is Mahmoud Jibril, the former head of the National Transitional Council, expected to lead the country after elections in July. The killer, he says, was a foreign agent who infiltrated the revolutionary brigades, and he was almost certainly French. Gaddafi was not lynched but shot in the head. He says it was an open secret that Paris wanted rid of Gaddafi. According to European diplomatic sources in Tripoli, Sarkozy had every reason to want Gaddafi out of the way quickly. Bachar El-Assad supplied Gaddafi’s satellite phone number to the French secret service in exchange for reduced pressure on Syria for its repression of its rebels.Sarkozy hasn’t been charged with anything yet, but it seems to be only a matter of time before he is. Why he is panicking so badly right now is that these upcoming court cases are going to derail his attempt at making a comeback in 2017 by totally undermining the legitimacy of his first term, when it is proven that he owed his election to this massive injection of illegal funds. Why this is happening now has little to do with the municipal elections currently in progress. It is merely the result of justice following its sedate course after waiting for him to leave the presidency and forfeit his immunity. The scale of corruption reaching the mainstream news is such that the moderately moderate right-wing opposition has been sufficiently disabled for the far-right National Front to make major inroads.However this may be only the tip of the iceberg, because now that Sarkozy’s manipulation of certain judges has also come under investigation and presumably been stopped, this particular case could conceivably develop from a huge financial scandal attacking the institution of the presidency itself into a full-blown investigation into the gangsterism of regime change and murder pure and simple carried out not to protect the political interests of a nation but to cover up the crimes of a small group.There have long been calls to send a leader of a major western country to trial at The Hague. Sarkozy may be the one to get there first.)
Sarkozy lashed back last Friday in a diatribe published by the Le Figaro newspaper in which, copying Berlusconi before him in Italy, he described the justice system as using the methods of the Stasi, the infamous secret service of the former East Germany.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sarkozy-accuses-france-of-acting-like-stasi-after-bugged-9207954.html
Sarkozy has clearly lost it. Why? Because the most serious part of the Libya investigation involves not so much the millions in 2007 campaign funds received from Gaddafi as what happened afterwards. Here is the backstory.
Below, Courrier International (October 1st 2012) translates a story from Il Corriere della Sera reporting that (my translation of the bold type) according to the Italian paper, Colonel Gaddafi was killed by a French secret agent with the complicity of Damascus. Why? Because the Libyan dictator was threatening to make disclosures on the funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign in 2007. For the Syrian regime, the idea was to have closer ties with France.
http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2012/10/01/kadhafi-aurait-ete-assassine-par-un-agent-secret-francais
Summarizing: these rumours are not new but this time the man making these allegations is Mahmoud Jibril, the former head of the National Transitional Council, expected to lead the country after elections in July. The killer, he says, was a foreign agent who infiltrated the revolutionary brigades, and he was almost certainly French. Gaddafi was not lynched but shot in the head. He says it was an open secret that Paris wanted rid of Gaddafi. According to European diplomatic sources in Tripoli, Sarkozy had every reason to want Gaddafi out of the way quickly. Bachar El-Assad supplied Gaddafi’s satellite phone number to the French secret service in exchange for reduced pressure on Syria for its repression of its rebels.
Sarkozy hasn’t been charged with anything yet, but it seems to be only a matter of time before he is. Why he is panicking so badly right now is that these upcoming court cases are going to derail his attempt at making a comeback in 2017 by totally undermining the legitimacy of his first term, when it is proven that he owed his election to this massive injection of illegal funds. Why this is happening now has little to do with the municipal elections currently in progress. It is merely the result of justice following its sedate course after waiting for him to leave the presidency and forfeit his immunity. The scale of corruption reaching the mainstream news is such that the moderately moderate right-wing opposition has been sufficiently disabled for the far-right National Front to make major inroads.
However this may be only the tip of the iceberg, because now that Sarkozy’s manipulation of certain judges has also come under investigation and presumably been stopped, this particular case could conceivably develop from a huge financial scandal attacking the institution of the presidency itself into a full-blown investigation into the gangsterism of regime change and murder pure and simple carried out not to protect the political interests of a nation but to cover up the crimes of a small group.
There have long been calls to send a leader of a major western country to trial at The Hague. Sarkozy may be the one to get there first.
1) The (fraudulently elected) president of the rightwing coalition now in opposition is in trouble for siphoning off vast amounts of party funds through no-bid contracts to an agency run by some friends of his. Some of this cash was part of Sarkozy’s presidential campaign funds. He was penalized for overspending and lost 11 million euros in a state refund which was made up for by collecting donations from sympathizers. So basically, it would seem that they have shot each other in the foot: it’s going to be hard to claim that the overspending was overstated on the grounds that it was illicit…
2) Sarkozy himself is in trouble for any number of crimes and misdemeanours currently under investigation. Given his longstanding need to run the whole show, his name invariably crops up whatever misbehaving is going on. The latest is that he has had his phone tapped by judges for a year now. But since he liked to buy off magistrates with promises of promotion, he found out pretty soon that he was under surveillance. So it emerges that he got another phone through his attorney under an assumed name, which he borrowed from an old classmate based in Israel. This classmate is not at all happy at having his identity stolen and is considering litigation. But the major part of this is that Sarkozy thought he could talk freely on this phone; ‘unfortunately’ it was also being tapped, and so investigators have collected another load of damning evidence from the horse’s mouth.
3) Sarkozy’s long-standing adviser Patrick Buisson brought away from the years in the Elysée Palace 280 hours of Dictaphone recordings of everything said in his presence, including discussions of sensitive material in the presence of people with no clearance (including Carla Bruni). ‘Buisson’ means Bush, but this is more reminiscent of the Nixon tapes. Methinks le Petit Nicolas has a lot o’ ‘splainin’ to do.
Meanwhile, the socialist government struggles on, being unable to make any inroads curbing the financial elite. This is a time when the opposition should really be making progress, but it’s not. Maybe the government refraining from interfering in the justice system will be enough to put a few big fish behind bars and eventually cut the financiers’ stranglehold on political power.
I am reposting this in a separate thread along with a couple of articles in English for people to check out for themselves. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy is up to his ears in criminal cases currently under investigation by magistrates.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/07/nicolas-sarkozy-phones-bugged-gaddafi-claims-judges (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/
News from the campaign to clean up French politics. I am posting it here because I haven’t time to document this properly, and also because it is rather hilarious.1) The (fraudulently elected) president of the rightwing coalition now in opposition is in trouble for siphoning off vast amounts of party funds through no-bid contracts to an agency run by some friends of his. Some of this cash was part of Sarkozy’s presidential campaign funds. He was penalized for overspending and lost 11 million euros in a state refund which was made up for by collecting donations from sympathizers. So basically, it would seem that they have shot each other in the foot: it’s going to be hard to claim that the overspending was overstated on the grounds that it was illicit…2) Sarkozy himself is in trouble for any number of crimes and misdemeanours currently under investigation. Given his longstanding need to run the whole show, his name invariably crops up whatever misbehaving is going on. The latest is that he has had his phone tapped by judges for a year now. But since he liked to buy off magistrates with promises of promotion, he found out pretty soon that he was under surveillance. So it emerges that he got another phone through his attorney under an assumed name, which he borrowed from an old classmate based in Israel. This classmate is not at all happy at having his identity stolen and is considering litigation. But the major part of this is that Sarkozy thought he could talk freely on this phone; ‘unfortunately’ it was also being tapped, and so investigators have collected another load of damning evidence from the horse’s mouth.3) Sarkozy’s long-standing adviser Patrick Buisson brought away from the years in the Elysée Palace 280 hours of Dictaphone recordings of everything said in his presence, including discussions of sensitive material in the presence of people with no clearance (including Carla Bruni). ‘Buisson’ means Bush, but this is more reminiscent of the Nixon tapes. Methinks le Petit Nicolas has a lot o’ ‘splainin’ to do.Meanwhile, the socialist government struggles on, being unable to make any inroads curbing the financial elite. This is a time when the opposition should really be making progress, but it’s not. Maybe the government refraining from interfering in the justice system will be enough to put a few big fish behind bars and eventually cut the financiers’ stranglehold on political power.I am reposting this in a separate thread along with a couple of articles in English for people to check out for themselves. Former president Nicolas Sarkozy is up to his ears in criminal cases currently under investigation by magistrates.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/07/nicolas-sarkozy-phones-bugged-gaddafi-claims-judgesSarkozy lashed back last Friday in a diatribe published by the Le Figaro newspaper in which, copying Berlusconi before him in Italy, he described the justice system as using the methods of the Stasi, the infamous secret service of the former East Germany.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sarkozy-accuses-france-of-acting-like-stasi-after-bugged-9207954.htmlSarkozey has clearly lost it. Why? Because the most serious part of the Libya investigation involves not so much the millions in 2007 campaign funds received from Gaddafi as what happened afterwards. Here is the backstory.Below, Courrier International (October 1st 2012) translates a story from Il Corriere della Sera reporting that (my translation of the bold type) according to the Italian paper, Colonel Gaddafi was killed by a French secret agent with the complicity of Damascus. Why? Because the Libyan dictator was threatening to make disclosures on the funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign in 2007. For the Syrian regime, the idea was to have closer ties with France.http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2012/10/01/kadhafi-aurait-ete-assassine-par-un-agent-secret-francais Summarizing: these rumours are not new but this time the man making these allegations is Mahmoud Jibril, the former head of the National Transitional Council, expected to lead the country after elections in July. The killer, he says, was a foreign agent who infiltrated the revolutionary brigades, and he was almost certainly French. Gaddafi was not lynched but shot in the head. He says it was an open secret that Paris wanted rid of Gaddafi. According to European diplomatic sources in Tripoli, Sarkozy had every reason to want Gaddafi out of the way quickly. Bachar El-Assad supplied Gaddafi’s satellite phone number to the French secret service in exchange for reduced pressure on Syria for its repression of its rebels.Sarkozy hasn’t been charged with anything yet, but it seems to be only a matter of time before he is. Why he is panicking so badly right now is that these upcoming court cases are going to derail his attempt at making a comeback in 2017 by totally undermining the legitimacy of his first term, when it is proven that he owed his election to this massive injection of illegal funds. Why this is happening now has little to do with the municipal elections currently in progress. It is merely the result of justice following its sedate course after waiting for him to leave the presidency and forfeit his immunity. The scale of corruption reaching the mainstream news is such that the moderately moderate right-wing opposition has been sufficiently disabled for the far-right National Front to make major inroads.However this may be only the tip of the iceberg, because now that Sarkozy’s manipulation of certain judges has also come under investigation and presumably been stopped, this particular case could conceivably develop from a huge financial scandal attacking the institution of the presidency itself into a full-blown investigation into the gangsterism of regime change and murder pure and simple carried out not to protect the political interests of a nation but to cover up the crimes of a small group.There have long been calls to send a leader of a major western country to trial at The Hague. Sarkozy may be the one to get there first.)
Sarkozy lashed back last Friday in a diatribe published by the Le Figaro newspaper in which, copying Berlusconi before him in Italy, he described the justice system as using the methods of the Stasi, the infamous secret service of the former East Germany.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sarkozy-accuses-france-of-acting-like-stasi-after-bugged-9207954.html
Sarkozy has clearly lost it. Why? Because the most serious part of the Libya investigation involves not so much the millions in 2007 campaign funds received from Gaddafi as what happened afterwards. Here is the backstory.
Below, Courrier International (October 1st 2012) translates a story from Il Corriere della Sera reporting that (my translation of the bold type) according to the Italian paper, Colonel Gaddafi was killed by a French secret agent with the complicity of Damascus. Why? Because the Libyan dictator was threatening to make disclosures on the funding of Nicolas Sarkozy’s election campaign in 2007. For the Syrian regime, the idea was to have closer ties with France.
http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2012/10/01/kadhafi-aurait-ete-assassine-par-un-agent-secret-francais
Summarizing: these rumours are not new but this time the man making these allegations is Mahmoud Jibril, the former head of the National Transitional Council, expected to lead the country after elections in July. The killer, he says, was a foreign agent who infiltrated the revolutionary brigades, and he was almost certainly French. Gaddafi was not lynched but shot in the head. He says it was an open secret that Paris wanted rid of Gaddafi. According to European diplomatic sources in Tripoli, Sarkozy had every reason to want Gaddafi out of the way quickly. Bachar El-Assad supplied Gaddafi’s satellite phone number to the French secret service in exchange for reduced pressure on Syria for its repression of its rebels.
Sarkozy hasn’t been charged with anything yet, but it seems to be only a matter of time before he is. Why he is panicking so badly right now is that these upcoming court cases are going to derail his attempt at making a comeback in 2017 by totally undermining the legitimacy of his first term, when it is proven that he owed his election to this massive injection of illegal funds. Why this is happening now has little to do with the municipal elections currently in progress. It is merely the result of justice following its sedate course after waiting for him to leave the presidency and forfeit his immunity. The scale of corruption reaching the mainstream news is such that the moderately moderate right-wing opposition has been sufficiently disabled for the far-right National Front to make major inroads.
However this may be only the tip of the iceberg, because now that Sarkozy’s manipulation of certain judges has also come under investigation and presumably been stopped, this particular case could conceivably develop from a huge financial scandal attacking the institution of the presidency itself into a full-blown investigation into the gangsterism of regime change and murder pure and simple carried out not to protect the political interests of a nation but to cover up the crimes of a small group.
There have long been calls to send a leader of a major western country to trial at The Hague. Sarkozy may be the one to get there first.