A Nice experience: Sarkozy - Business as usual ?

After Sarkozy's regrettable win, I updated the end of my earlier post:

streets

and posted it in the diaries sections of http://www.eurotrib.com and http://www.progressivehistorians.com

This is the new conclusion:

A new Napoleon ?

In Rue Cassini, which runs almost parallel with the smaller Rue Bonaparte, there was the local election headquarters of another small man, Sarkozy, who also wants to run France - ironically in a more Anglo-Saxon way:

The slogan says: "Together everything becomes possible" - including developing the same increasing gap between rich and poor which we have seen over recent years in the US and UK:

Rich-poor gap grows in US and UK

Of course, this could only happen in the USA, right? Erhh, no. Actually the size of the gap between the richest and poorest 20% of society has been growing in the UK since the late 1970s almost mirroring the USA (graph below). If you wonder how much privatisation and financial deregulation have to do with this, look to Russia (right) where, since the population were `liberated' from the shackles of communism in 1990, the rise in inequality has been acute."

http://www.ablemesh....

Wellington would have approved.

A neocon Napoleon ?

So now Sarkozy is President and our new little Napoleon sees developments in the US and UK more favourably, and in the UK the Economist didn't just report on him, it put the case for him - as a new Napoleon:

Jérôme Guillet, a banker, but left-wing, argues that Sarkozy's success is partly due to this kind of very influential ideology; ironically our new Bonaparte was helped to victory by Anglo-Saxon media corporations:

... for the past twenty-five years, basically these people have been pushing a very ideological agenda, and for the past fifteen years they have nobody against them. And they can call anybody that dares protest what they are saying as "Communists" or "Socialists or "dinosaurs". And this is non-stop propaganda for "reform", for "globalization", that "profits are good", that companies must rule and "what's good for companies is good for the economy". And everybody has come to believe that.

... I mean, you heard Christine Ockrent just before. She's married to a Socialist man, and she's been repeating the same talking points that she gets from the right, declining "blah blah dynamism of Sarkozy, the economy's in a funk", which are all false, it's all propaganda, it's an ideological agenda, and has to be called as such."

http://www.eurotrib....

But it has worked again, lots of intelligent French people believe the propaganda which has been pumped out so relentlessly. In his post-election speeches Sarkozy called for unity. Thatcher had the nerve to quote Saint Francis of Assisi when elected:

http://news.bbc.co.u...

Far from bringing harmony she radically divided the country, but brought hope to media corporations like Murdoch's, whom Blair courted to help him get elected. We'll see if Sarkozy really brings unity to France - the scale of voter turnout and Royal's 47% share suggests otherwise.

State subsidies for corporations

One part of the ideology of the Anglo-Saxon model more favoured by Sarkozy is that the market must be left free from state interference; hence the opposition to the French model, in which the state has a strong role. But, as Chomsky has pointed out, the market ideology does not match the facts; in the US the state plays a massive role in subsidising corporations, particularly through the military, which consumes a huge amount of the US budget:

http://www.radiofree...

Thus there is the need for the propaganda of fear, which helps justify this enormous expense:

"The Power of Nightmares: Baby It's Cold Outside

... In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.

The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.

In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.

It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media."

http://news.bbc.co.u...

So this myth of external threats is used to justify the myth of the free market, and recently the military have realised that, with the pace of change in technology, they need to look beyond the major corporations they normally help support. Recently they have been turning to small start-ups (how Microsoft began) and more than ever to universities doing cutting-edge research, as in Chomsky's own MIT.

From the NYT:

Tech Investors Cull Start-Ups for Pentagon

? the participants argue that the project, called DeVenCI for Defense Venture Catalyst Initiative [Leonardo Da Vinci wrote a famous letter to the Duke of Milan, offering his services as a designer of weapons, and adding, almost as an afterthought, that he was also pretty good at painting and sculpture too], brings together two groups that have much to gain from each other and that have had trouble finding easy, efficient ways to work together. Those on the military side of things have adopted the Silicon Valley vernacular to explain the idea of systematically consulting investors to find new technology.

"We're a search engine," said Bob Pohanka, director of DeVenCI, noting that the program is a chance for military procurement officials to have more intimate contact with investors who make a living scouring laboratories and universities for the latest innovations."

But they don't want to upset their usual powerful clients (and dependents):

"The idea of these meetings is not necessarily to short-circuit the usual military procurement process, which usually involves doing business with one of a handful of big companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, DeVenCI officials said. Rather, the idea is that the military buyers will see technology that they can recommend to those massive contractors for new or continuing projects, or, conceivably, that they will sign small initial contracts with the start-ups so they can further develop a technology for military use."

Napoleon, founder of the Ecole Polytechnique (see above), would have approved, and even former anti-war protesters find themselves drawn into the huge, but rarely acknowledged system of state subsidies for corporations:

... he said his first impulse to help came from a recognition that participation in DeVenCI could be good for business. "When the DeVenCI people approached me, they said the magic words to a V.C.: `We'll hook you up with buyers,' " Mr. Fong said. "How can you resist that?"

http://www.nytimes.c...

Sarkozy will continue with the rhetoric of the "free" market and its supporting myths; but his corporate backers would be dismayed if he really cut the hidden state subsidies upon which they depend. He has said:

http://www.nytimes.c...

For an explanation of why France doesn't need change see:

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2007/5/4/113029/9034