Old Year Mudbath Overkill
A Sceptic Trawls the EU
Like to read about faraway places, armchair adventurer ? Care for a longish diatribe about Europe ? Perhaps you are unlike other Medium readers and like to chew different fat from time to time. Here goes. You can find other excursions in the Olde World atContinental Riffs on Substack. Happy year and happy reading.
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The lion has escaped, and he’s hungry, pacing the quiet streets of Europe in the dead of the night. What could he possibly be searching for, this lion who’s only known circus acts and tame spectators ? What does he want from this wealthy continent that cannot decide what it wants to be ?
There’s still a chance for peace in the Ukraine. The end game is in sight; death and destruction are all that’s left for the killing fields if things go on as they have. If one leader in Europe stuck his or her head above the parapet and said the obvious, that the war in the Ukraine is obscene and unwinnable, the omerta of silence would be broken. Who and where is this leader ?
Consider this a plea for peace during the holiday season.
Negotiations could begin as soon as the New Year, unless either side refuses, Putin to go on annexing territory, Zelensky issuing orders to fight until the last flight out to Miami. Rallying cries of ‘Until Victory!’ have faded while European bigs turn their attention to cheering on the Gaza massacre. Still verboten to mention, countries like Germany and the Netherlands continue to rely on Russian gas. A record cold winter is predicted. Emmanuel Macron, who once characterized NATO as ‘brain dead,’ has made a new lifestyle choice and fancies himself the interior decorator of Notre Dame. Ask him about Israël and the Ukraine in the spring.
The alternative is a destroyed country run by corrupt oligarchs on Europe’s doorstep, mines and mass graves as far as the eye can see, a bloody bone fought over by two rabid dogs, another success to add to NATO’s previous triumphs in Serbia, Afghanistan and Libya. Can anyone tell me why this organization still exists ?
I know you’d rather be reading about open air markets, fabulous expositions, the whole getting lost in Paris schtick. So it goes. Welcome to the Free for All where Riffs throws together news and notes from the last two weeks. Reportage and rampant speculation. A wild shot at the Big Picture and Small, it runs a little long. Take what suits.
Someone accused me of being into conspiracies. Into them ? I’m a writer. Every novel is a conspiracy that wants to you to believe an obvious invention, a writer’s revenge on a world that never pays attention. Just make the conspiracy a good one. And the world, the real one ? The whole thing is a never-ending, spiralling conspiracy and the fix is in. Do you think that when dear friends Ursula and Klaus lunch they pass the time talking about the weather ? They work up a conspiracy, 99% nefarious. Life itself is conspiracy between a lump of carbon and two hungry, horny cells hanging out on a planet dying for a bit of life. You can see what came of that.
Cults keep conspiracies alive. Not exactly cults in the religious sense but not far off. You believe Ozu is the greatest filmmaker and Bergman Scandi-schmertz ? You are the proprietor of a private aesthetic cult. Poetry itself is a cult, whose participants are either inspired or deluded. An unflagging enthusiasm for the European Union, no matter what minefield they charge into ? A political creed or cult. Anyone who asks why Europe is swamped with refugees is a racist ? You’re a Guardian reader, definitely a cultist. Like religions, all cults exile free-thinkers who question house dogma. Life is sacred, we all know that, except we’re too busy killing each other to enjoy it and Europe’s leaders do nothing to stop the slaughter.
It’s the winter of our discontent. Last week a single painting stirred the embers of the culture wars in France back into flame. What ? You ask. Which painting and what do you mean ?
Giuseppe Cesari, Cavalier d’Arpin, painted it in 1604. Cesari struck gold with this tale from Ovid, young Actéon stumbling on the goddess Diane and her naked entourage, so he painted it several more times. This one hangs in the Louvre. If we knock off the beautiful jive, we may then be able to see it for what it is, a provocation, a declaration in the eternal war of the sexes, a good one for our times, what with strange men wandering into women’s spaces and sports….
From the Louvre to tiny Issou, just outside of Mantes la Jolie in the Yvelines: Mantes is a small city on the Seine, population 44,000 souls, most of them largely forgotten by the shiny capital less than an hour away. A factory town, some large percentage of the people living there are first or second generation Muslim immigrants, as is the mayor of the town. I’ve never spent any time there so I can’t tell you anything definitive or even decently speculative. Maybe nothing ever happens in Mantes, and that’s why people chose to live there.
Issou is another story. Issou is way off the map, a forgotten town no one pays attention to. Who knows what’s going on there ? No one ever asks. I did pass the little school in Issou once. How’s that ? We were on our way to Normandy this summer and took a few wrong turns. It was a beautiful Sunday and we weren’t paying attention at the rond point… We passed the Jacques Cartier school twice, once going out and once after turning around. It sits behind a green wire fence that screams low security prison, its concrete blocks built like a shed for farm equipment. A negative, even sinister space in the green hills of Normandy… The school has a tough reputation, with instructors being threatened on a regular basis.
On Monday last week, a brave teacher in arts et culture, decided to show her students a bit of the world. She knows what they see on their cell phones and the computers at home, religion or no religion, so she tried to get a discussion going about Cesari’s painting. Instant uproar, threats against the teacher. Angry parents screamed racism, cultural provocation.
This is a country that prides itself on its laïcité, its bedrock the educational system, where the values of Republican France are instilled. And of course, the French aren’t prudes. There are nudes everywhere in public life. We have bodies. I remember my first trip to the City Hall in the seventh arrondissement, near the Tour Eiffel, taking in the smiling cherubs all over the walls and thinking the Mayor of Akron would get arrested as a pervert if he tried it.
In 2020 in a town not so far away, history teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded by a young Chechen militant. Earlier this year, another teacher in a region nearby was attacked, and a little over a week ago a man was killed at the Eiffel Tower by a deranged person who State Security supposedly had their eye on. Yes, the assailant was Muslim. In September, debate erupted when young girls wore traditional religious headgear to class. (Only applies to women, of course.) Those defending a strictly lay education took one side and left Identitarians (for lack of a better term) the other. One of the proud parents went on TV to defend it, while his daughter sat silently behind him in camouflage. One can imagine the scenes at home.
Teachers and sympathetic parents in Issou are now holding protests outside the school. The French, observing Monday’s incident, are content to grumble but they’ve just about had enough. They feel under attack.
While it was amusing to watch my local representative tie herself into knots, justifying her defense of Iranian women’s right to go out in public without headscarves and her belief that young Muslim girls should be allowed to wear religious headgear in the French classroom, the issue is serious. It involves culture, French culture, and immigration. France has the largest Muslim population of any country in Europe, a direct result of the country’s colonial adventures. It has also prided itself on being ‘la terre d’asile’ for many years. Yet it feels as if we are in the middle of a sea-change. People’s attitudes are hardening.
Repercussions ? You already know who will benefit at the ballot box. The smiling face of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands can give you the answer if you don’t. The lameness of the left response in both countries is enough to make you think that, like characters in a Houllebecque novel, they’ve given up on the European project and maybe even France. A battle royale looms, and no, you won’t carry the day by calling someone a fascist just because they’d like to see some control over the country’s borders. Progressives, Bobos, far left, left of socialist, call them what you like, have lost the majority of the French in a fog of cultural jihad.
Fat is Good for You
Bold EU Commissioners have tackled the piles of waste produced by a bourgeois continent. According to a directive submitted to the European Parliament in November a ban, scheduled for 2030, would replace the wooden containers Camembert, Mont D’Or and Pont d’Évêque cheeses are sold in with….wait for it… plastic (recycled).
Reaction was intense, from farmers, cheese producers and the public, blindsided by yet another directive from Les Invisibles. Camembert, you see, is good old natural fat and it can ‘breathe’ inside the flimsy wooden container. Nothing breathes in plastic.
N’a-t-elle rien mieux à faire ? was the outraged reaction. Don’t you have anything better to do ? Parliament wisely decided this was one directive too many.
It reminds me of an incident early in Paris Mayor Hidalgo’s reign. Supposedly concerned about the smog in Paris, she issued an executive order banning wintertime fires in those rare apartments lucky enough to have working chimneys. Save the trees. Problem solved.
This sort of thing just piles up and up and comes at the populace at all levels, from all directions. On Tuesday, the more or less completely out of it Strasbourg Parliament passed a motion decrying the ‘systemic racism’ immigrants face in Europe…When I hear the word systemic, I light a cigarette and get ready to write an angry sentence or two…Is it possible that by systemic, the authors of this testament to their sensitivity in fact mean old cultures, proud of their accomplishments, who demand a certain interest in and fidelity to their way of life ? A non-binding (be who you want to be, live your life), non-religious cultural integration is what the French demand. It’s been the rule since the Charles the Plain gave Normandy to the Vikings in 911 on the condition that they adopt French manners. (Item one, lay off sacking Paris.)
There’s no easy way out of this labyrinth. It deserves a more detailed, nuanced discussion than I’ve given here. But immigration, integration, defense and criticism of tradition, all demand open debate because at some point soon, the French, a tolerant, laidback people despite their reputation, whose motto might be soyez raisonnable!, are going to want changes only a raging populist desperado is willing to give them. It won’t be pretty if and when Marine Le Pen takes over.
Let’s Talk About Something We Can’t Control
A little lighter, shall we ? How about the weather ?
A little over two weeks ago, we bundled up while the temperature headed down, down, down. Olympiades where I live became an awesome wind-tunnel; you had to grab your hat with one hand and your cigarette with the other. The freeze was on and snow was coming, the lowering sky was in dress rehearsal, you could almost taste it as the clouds squatted over the city. We prepared for what prognosticators told us would be the coldest winter on record.
Now, the 14th, we stroll the bridges over the Seine with our hats off, coats open. Nice breezes, eh ? Look at that: the Seine is rolling high, swirling up the last six feet or so on the ramps to the quais. That would be a first, a flood in December. It’s already up to their knees this morning in Charentes Maritime on the Atlantic. We stare at the river half in alarm, half in gleeful anticipation. Could it happen ? January is the month of floods. The last truly great one was in 1910. You’ll occasionally pass a flood marker without knowing precisely what it is as you ramble around town.
Ah, one of my bête noirs. What is it with our dear leaders, that flotilla of middle-aged progressives who run Paris, some of them prophets of the brave new ‘15-minute city,’ can’t they get anything right ? They ban cars, set up confusing bike lanes that cause heart attacks on a daily basis and… Public toilets are beyond them. We have ugly romboid-shaped loos in a few select touristy locations but what about the rest of us ? You’ll walk a kilom to find one…This is Paris, we demand elegance and utility ! (Both in short supply these days.) When neighborhoods complain, our disliked Bobos (bourgeois bohemians) drop a few portosans at the entrance to a park. A few summers ago they premiered an open-air bright red johnny on Île Saint Louis (you were supposed to open your pants and start pissing in front of everyone) that went over like cheap perfume on that Isle of the Blesséd…I end up climbing into construction sites in search of a box-toilet to avoid pissing on the street…After a long festive weekend like this last one, Paris stinks !
A solution does exist. It’s old fashioned, inexpensive to build and maintain, has elegant S contours, a modest presence, can handle several gents at once. They used to be all over town. Before anyone stutters, only for men ? let’s admit guys are the culprits out there on the street. So, not a chance, goes against Progressive dogma (‘inclusivity’). It’s a cult, I tell you.
Here’s a photo of the last one in Paris, on the street outside the walls of the Santé prison. Why it hasn’t been carted off ‘because of the Olympics’ I’ve no idea.
More Brooding
A few ‘outside’ observations from the Ukraine and Gaza conflicts : Sanctions are a feel-good fiction staged by clueless politicians. They make life harder for people, not leaders or oligarchs. Russia, harried by sanctions, has abandoned rapprochment with Europe and made new friends. Their economy is in better shape than Europe’s. Two, our geopolitical playboys in the State Department might want to consider one of the many unintended consequences of their never-ending crusade: the Global South has moved closer together, strengthening ties and trade and moving, ever so slowly, away from the dollar. They regard the U.S., not Russia, as the elephant in the room. Finally, an overwhelming advantage in firepower and technology won’t stop public opinion turning against you, as Israel is learning in its attempts to level Gaza. Maybe the opposite. You can lose a war after winning every battle, to turn a poet inside out.
- Quiz question : Who was the young Italian economist whose MIT thesis concluded that “The single currency was madness, something absolutely not to do” and what did he go on to do ?
What happens if Geert Wilders lives up to his word, and stages a Netherlands EU exit referendum ? Will Dutch farmers, fed up with inane eco-directives, just say, ‘Sod it, we’re out,’ and pull the lever ? And what if just-enough denizens of the Dutch cities overrun by a permissive immigration policy that feels like open borders say, ‘It’s just a protest vote, but it’s my chance to send a message?’ Don’t place your bets yet.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the European Parliament in Strasbourg debates and creates the laws for the continent. It isn’t so. It’s the European Commission (as in l’affaire Camembert), the Council of Ministers, and most tellingly, the Eurogroup, dominated by the Troika (the EU’s Financial Affairs Minister, the Central Bank and the IMF) that make the real decisions. Aided by a cadre of some 32,000 aides and operating in almost total secrecy, this is where European dreams go to die. A rather secretive cabal, if you’re in that frame of mind. A conspiracy even.
French president François Mitterand insisted on the creation of the €uro, believing that only a single currency could keep Germany from dominating Europe. It fell to the rising young technocrats of the 90s to work out the details. Mario Draghi lead the way, he who as a post-grad believed it was madness. The introduction of the Euro and the Lisbon treaty a few years later have brought us to where we are today, with national governments restrained by rules they cannot appeal, and in some cases, can’t even debate. Mitterand’s idea has backfired spectacularly.
What this structure has done is to enable a generation of incompetents to sit in elected office, all of them with their eco-mini-plans, austere budgets and breadcrumb influence-peddling scandals. Rutt in Holland, Macron in France, the spectacular bumbler and former peacenik Scholz in Germany with his frothing Foreign Secretary Baerbock, zeros all of them. The High Commissioners call the tunes and the elected leaders dance. It’s the Austro-Hungarian empire all over again. The current Italian Prime Minister dared to suggest NATO’s Libyan invasion was in hindsight a mistake, and quickly went silent. She is reportedly in a re-education camp somewhere in the Alps.
The European Idea was to be a island of culture and cooperation between nations, an agent of peace and development in a war-torn world. It still can be, and sometimes is. Meanwhile the lion paces. (Du mußt dein Leben ändern, he growls. Tu dois changer ta vie!)
Enough. This piece is beginning to sound like the revved up guy at the Christmas party who won’t give it a rest. Whereas in fact I spent the weekend in my local police station making notes and waiting for an officer to see me… Anyway, beat the odds and have a good one.
ONE LAST QUESTION BEOFRE YOU LEAVE THE COMMISSARIAT
Who might the scowling man in the photo be ? Not a pol with fashionable opinions but a dude who laid his life on the line during the rampant colonialism of Africa from which it is still recovering. He ran guns to Ethiopian rebels fighting the Europeans, lost one of his legs below the knee, and not long after he’d made it back to Marseille, his life. Maybe you’ll recognize him in the cherubic image below. Incredible when you realize that the two images are barely a decade apart.
May 20–24 give you fewer headaches, a dozen less apps and a lot more life.
