R. I. P., Jacques Chirac
Posted: Thu Sep 26, 2019 9:15 pmDied in his home yesterday, age 86.
Not my type of politician - Remember Fuck Chirac when he opened his first term with a round of underwater nuclear tests in the atolls? Or how he became the first ex chief of government in France to be sentenced for financial misconduct (as Mayor of Paris, he had employed people in the Hotel de Ville who really worked for his party)?
Stil he was an avid European and worked effeciiently with very different German and European governments - and even in his flaws he was no comparison to his dodgy successor. There there were two things one has to admire him for: He admitted a responsibility of his nation for the genocide of the European Jews under Nazi occupation. For a nation revelling in Résistance glory, that was a very, very big bite to chew, and a bitter one at that. And he led the resistance against George Bush's Iraq invasion, and who wouldn't like that today? At the time, he was cast as the European über-weasel by a docile American press. Remember "Forgive the Russians, ignore the Germans, punish the French" uttered by a power-drunk National Security Advisor at the time?
He was shrouded in dementia in his last years, and I do hope his end was a forgiving one.
Not my type of politician - Remember Fuck Chirac when he opened his first term with a round of underwater nuclear tests in the atolls? Or how he became the first ex chief of government in France to be sentenced for financial misconduct (as Mayor of Paris, he had employed people in the Hotel de Ville who really worked for his party)?
Stil he was an avid European and worked effeciiently with very different German and European governments - and even in his flaws he was no comparison to his dodgy successor. There there were two things one has to admire him for: He admitted a responsibility of his nation for the genocide of the European Jews under Nazi occupation. For a nation revelling in Résistance glory, that was a very, very big bite to chew, and a bitter one at that. And he led the resistance against George Bush's Iraq invasion, and who wouldn't like that today? At the time, he was cast as the European über-weasel by a docile American press. Remember "Forgive the Russians, ignore the Germans, punish the French" uttered by a power-drunk National Security Advisor at the time?
He was shrouded in dementia in his last years, and I do hope his end was a forgiving one.