The New French Cuisine

In the Menu: French Fries, a Lot of Lies and Some Missiles

Sarkozy has wasted no time in showing his contempt for democracy both at home and abroad. Acting as an elected dictator, he recently decided, without any consultation with the french parliament, to sell weapons to the Libyan despot Khaddafi. It's no secret that Sarkozy has very close links with French arms dealers like Dassot, Lagardère... who openly sponsored his presidential campaign.

The newly elected president capitalized on the recent release of the Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who were held and tortured in Libyan prisons, and accused of deliberately infecting children with HIV in a grotesque attempt to coverup Libyan health system's own failures.

Sarkozy seized the opportunity to reward his good old chaps, offering them a deal worth US$400 million. Never mind the total absence of Human Rights in Libya, the systematic torture and imprisonment of political opponents... not to mention the psychopathic and totally unpredictable kind of nut, Khaddafi is.

One can only feel disgusted by the utter hypocrisy of most Western leaders' rhetoric on almost all topics ranging from Fair Trade to Darfur. A disguised propaganda aimed only at gaining always more markets, more money, even when that means empowering ruthless dictators. It's almost the resurrection of the good old Imperial ambition disguised in Humanitarian interventions or, as in the case of Sarkozy, openly dealing with the autocrats.

Jacques Chirac, the former French president, once said during an official visit to Tunisia that the "first of Human Rights is to EAT"(sic). If that was right, what made the French people revolt against their kings? what kind of madness stroke the British people to protest against the ruthless rule of their monarchs and spark a civil war? How crazy were the Russians to refuse their exploitation by their own emperors?...

Is History condemned to sway forever from blunders to redress... endlessly repeating itself?

(Picture by "Azrainman")