DSK Affair: Conspiracy Theories

One of the most enjoyable (and truly unexpected) delights to be found in the Hexagone are the many carefully constructed conspiracy theories that one can savor over a demi and a cigarette with friends and colleagues at the local bistro.   My personal favorite (and I've heard several variations) is the theory that 911 was not committed by actual terrorists but was either perpetrated by the U.S. government itself (in collusion with Israel, of course) or was staged (like the moon landing) to set up an eventual invasion of Irak.   "Look at who benefitted and you'll find the real culprits,"  my friends say knowingly, chiding me for my innocence.  I usually reply by thanking them for attributing so much cunning and intelligence to my government - more intelligence, frankly, than I have ever given it credit for - and I will, as a vote-casting citizen of the government in question, take it as a compliment.

The recent DSK affair was a veritable godsend for those who love to speculate about who did what to whom and why, and it has spawned some remarkably creative and sometimes truly brilliant conspiracy theories.  Slate.fr recently did us all a service in this article, "Quel Complot pour DSK?" which lists some of the main theories being discussed on the internet, in bars, bistros and even in fairly respectable mainstream media:  le socialiste, le patron du FMI, le "juif", le "riche."  All of them are a good read and I recommend them to you.

Here is one from the Slate article that I particularly enjoyed:

Le patron du FMI/The boss of the IMF

"Un complot international qui se décline en plusieurs possibilités et qui a été relayé par de nombreuses personnalités"

An international conspiracy with many variations which has been put forward by many well-known personalities.

«Je suis convaincue d'un complot international. C'est le FMI qu'on a voulu décapiter et pas tant le candidat à la primaire socialiste [...] C'est l'homme le plus puissant après Obama [...] c'est une nouvelle forme d'attentat politique», déclarait Michèle Sabban, vice-présidente du conseil régional d’Ile-de-France, ajoutant: «Tout le monde sait que sa fragilité, c’est la séduction, les femmes. Ils l’ont pris par cela.»

"'I am convinced of an international plot.  It was the IMF they wanted to destroy and not so much the candidate for the socialist primary,' declared Michèle Sabban, vice-president of the regional council for the Ile-de-France, adding: ' Everyone knew his weakness was seduction, women.  That is how they got him.'"

Starting from this main theme there are several variations naming the usual suspect (the United States).  It was the variation concerning the Russians that caught my eye.  Here it is:

La piste russe/The Russian Angle

"Pourquoi: Pour remplacer DSK au sein du FMI. Las que l’organe soit dirigé par des Européens, les Russes auraient décidé de discréditer un des économistes les plus respectés du vieux continent... et proposer un nouveau directeur à sa place. Les «alliés français» de Poutine, eux, voudraient empêcher sa candidature en 2012."

"Why:  to replace DSK at the IMF.  Angry that the organization was managed by Europeans, the Russians decided to discredit one of the most respected economists of the Old Continent... and to propose a new director in his place.  The 'French allies" of Putin wanted to prevent his (DSK's) candidacy in 2012."

Again, read them all - you will find them highly entertaining.  Hopefully Slate will provide translations for non-Francophones.

And, just for fun, I must confess that I voted for the "Sarkozy's Michavellian Plan."  Quite honestly when I got the news in Germany, my first thought was that this was a diabolical plot by the current President of the Republic. I was sure that he had something to do with it and I was not alone in thinking this.  I take this as a sign that I have indeed achieved a good level of integration into this culture though I doubt that the Front National would agree.

Bon weekend. 

French Feminism: Seduction and The Cultural Exception

There is a fascinating exchange going on right between the American historian Joan Scott and some (not all) French feminists.

In the June 9th on-line edition of the French paper, Liberation, Joan Scott very thoughtfully writes, not about the DSK affair itself, but the reactions to the affair and the internal debate going on in France right now about what it means.    She questions the assertion that there is a «féminisme à la française» - that, for cultural reasons, feminism in France is not, can never be, and no one wants it to be, like feminism in other countries.   She quotes Irène Théry who defends the uniqueness of the French approach to sexual equality by saying:

«Il (ce féminisme) est fait d’une certaine façon de vivre et pas seulement de penser, qui refuse les impasses du politiquement correct, veut les droits égaux des sexes et les plaisirs asymétriques de la séduction, le respect absolu du consentement et la surprise délicieuse des baisers volés.»
(This (French) feminism is made of a certain way of life and not simply a way of thinking, which refuses politically correct dead-ends, wants legal equality between the sexes and the asymmetrical pleasures of seduction, has total respect for consent and the delicious surprise of stolen kisses.)

Scott attacks this on several grounds.  She certainly does not believe, for example, that the French "Game of Seduction" is based on any kind of equality between the sexes.  You can read Scott's entire article here.  There is a reply by Claude Habib, Mona Ozouf, Philippe Raynaud and Irene Thery Ehess here.

After reading the entire debate, I personally have the following objections to the arguments proposed by the defenders of the French Feminist Exception:

Forsakes Any Claim to Universalism - if French feminism really is particular to France then it could follow that French feminists have little or no relevance in matters pertaining to sexual equality at the international level and have absolutely nothing to offer the rest of the world in this matter.  If feminist ideas born here can only be understood and applied in a French context then you might as well stamp the work of many brilliant French feminists "Not for Export" which I think is absurd.  

Dons the Dangerous Cloak of Cultural Exception - I have found that people really don't understand how cultural exceptions are a double-edged sword.  Once you claim it for yourself and your culture, you can't really complain when someone from another culture uses it as a reason for a cultural practice in their part of the world.  I once stopped an argument cold over the death penalty in the U.S. by simply saying that it was part of American culture (part of our history, mentality and so forth).  If you can have your cultural exceptions, I said, so can we which means that this debate is now over.  Match nul.

Treats Culture as a Fossil - And not as a river that flows and ebbs and changes course over time.  100 years ago French people (and all other people on this planet) had ideas and rules and laws and morals that are vastly different from what we see today.  It is a fact that things changed - sometimes in very radical ways but more often slowly over generations.  As I sit here typing this I am almost certain that 100 years from now what French and American culture becomes will be quite foreign to us and that our descendants will find many of our ways to be, at best, rather quaint.  To say that something is a "part of our culture" is misleading.  More correctly we should say that such things are a "part of our culture today" and may or may not be there tomorrow.  "Culture" and "Eternal' together is an oxymoron.

I do not pretend to know which way the winds will blow French feminism or French culture for that matter.  For the time being, I am very happy to sit back and watch the debate unfold.  Hold onto your hats, this is going to be interesting.

Ambivalence

Very recently I have come into contact with a number of people visiting Paris.  This is unusual for me because I've always lived a bit off the beaten path (Parisian suburbs and close cities like Versailles) and I've pretty much lived a French-saturated existence (French friends, family and companies) since I first arrived in 1989.

The contact seems to follow a fairly predictable script.  They say why they are visiting and when they ask me what I'm doing here, I reply that, well, I've been here for nearly 20 years and....

The conversations forks at this point.  Most of the time the reaction is to tell me how wonderful that is and how lucky I am because they just love Paris and France and the French.  Less often (but it happens) people will tell me how France really didn't live up their expectations and how unhappy they are and how they can't wait to leave.

What is strange to me is how both these reactions provoke very ambivalent feelings in my gut.  To those who tell me how lucky I am, I want to snap and snarl and say that luck has nothing to do with it.  I've worked very hard to make a life here.  It was not easy and some of my experiences have been downright ghastly and painful and ego-destroying.  This is not Disneyland and the French are not Mickey Mouse and his pals.

I have an equally adverse reaction to the unhappy ones.  I become very protective of France and I try to explain gently that it's different but that is not necessarily a bad thing.  Different fields, different grasshoppers.

All my answers feel unsatisfactory to me.  I just don't know how to explain how I really feel in a few short minutes which is usually all the time I have.  I have a long and complex relationship with the Hexagone and its people and like all relationships it has its up and downs.

When I was living in Seattle, a friend of mine who has been married for over 30 years,  told me that a long-term marriage is a wild ride:  sometimes you and your spouse are the best of friends, sometimes you are the most ardent of lovers and every so often you become each others worst enemy.  Over the years you cycle through through these states over and over again.  The secret, she said, was learning how to ride through them.  What holds you together in the end is a commitment to work through the bad times and to wait for better days.

Just as people who are in long-term relationships can be very ambivalent about how they feel about their partner, so I find myself incapable of explaining the exact nature of what holds me here in this place with these people.  There is love, certainly, but there is also a great deal of anger and hurt.  It should be noted that the ambivalence is not just on my side, the French being a bit unsure these days about immigrants in general.  But like a long-term marriage there is an underlying commitment to work it out, to stick it out, even when it is so bad that all I want to do is run and all they seem to want is to punish you in some way for being here.

There is an excellent saying about the difference between dedication and commitment.  The chicken, they say, is dedicated to your breakfast.  The pig, on the other hand, is committed to it.

I am committed to this odd place, this strange tribe, and our sometimes very uneasy relationship. I threw in my lot with the French long ago by leaving everything I knew and loved - all that was familiar and safe - in order to live a life that is not better or worse than the life I could have lived at home, just different.  I do not regret this even during dark times.  However ambivalent I may feel some days, the commitment is a constant and the foundation of my love for this country.

Bac 2011 - Philosophy bis

And we are not out of the woods yet.  If the leaks weren't enough now we have the media disclosing an issue with the Philosophy exam.

Le Point and other news sources are reporting that there are not enough professors to correct the philosophy exams.   There are, as of last week, 3000 copies that are not even in process.  That is to say that they have yet to be assigned to a professor for correction.

According to Le Point the reasons for this are staff reductions in the education system and a slight increase in the number of students taking the exam.

This means that the remaining philosophy teachers have to pick up the slack.  Le Point says that professors are being asked to correct up to 140 philosophy papers in 11 days.  Remember that this is not a multiple-choice exam like the SAT - this is an essay exam with tough questions requiring thoughtful answers that can run for pages and pages (the elder Frenchling said that she wrote around 12).

Now I know that the professors are dedicated people who will do what needs to be done.  I have no doubt we will get the results on time and, as a parent, I am deeply grateful to them for putting up with a situation that is not of their making.

Grateful enough, frankly, that the next time they go on strike, I will be cheering them on.

Bac 2011 - The Leak(s)

Looks like I spoke too soon in my last post.  TF1 is reporting that parts of the English and Physics exams for S students were also leaked via SMS.  See the photos here on RTL.

If that weren't enough my daughter is glued to Facebook right now because her friends are reporting that there are suspicions about other exams for the ES and Literature students (my daughter falls into the latter group).

We'll see how this plays out.  For years I have heard very cynical stories from some of my friends and family here about isolated cases of cheating but I never heard anything that led me to believe that anyone questioned the overall fairness of these exams and the security and integrity of the system itself.

Was it because it was nearly impossible to aid and abet cheating in such a grand manner in the era before cellphones and internet?   Was it because past incidents truly were so rare and isolated that one could be nearly certain that the overall process was just and fair?  Or was it because we didn't have social media then and it was possible to preserve the illusion of fairness by suppressing information that was in everyone's interest not to know?

If the rumors pan out, (and for my daughter's sake I sincerely hope they do not) this will be a scandal of monumental proportions.  Equality (as in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity) is a fundamental and, in my opinion, highly admirable principle of this Republic.   This principle is instantiated in the education system where merit is what gets a student a good grade and entry into a good school - not social position, or money or inside information. If there truly is evidence to the contrary, I suspect that would really shake the foundations of this nation.

Bac 2011 - The Leak

The elder Frenchling took her last exam yesterday and is celebrating with her friends today.  The last test was in German and her only remark when she returned home yesterday was "I hope I passed".

Other students had more reason for concern.  The French papers are reporting that someone, using a cellphone camera, took a photo of one of the questions on the mathematics portion of the Bac S (scientific) exam and published it on the internet prior to Tuesday's exam.

Now this posed quite a conundrum for the government and a real nightmare for the S students since one option for correcting the situation would have been to make 165,000 high school seniors retake the test.

The decision came down today.  The National Education Minister, Luc Chatel, who seems to be a sensible sort, decided to simply eliminate the one question that was leaked - students will only be graded on the other 3 questions.  I'm sure a lot of S students breathed easier after that announcement.  They certainly needed all their concentration for today's tests in Physics, Chemistry and Earth Sciences.

The government launching an investigation into the incident and will file criminal charges if they find the source.  Still, I think this is just the beginning.  Obviously they are going to have to improve their security and start taking into account the cheap, omnipresent, always connected, devices that we all have and adore.

The sun is shining for the first time this week and, for obvious reasons, I'm not really inclined to spend one more minute indoors tickling the keyboard, but when I hear about the immoral use of an otherwise useful technology (and please consider the irony here - the Science students were the victims of the fraud),  I contemplate re-reading Jacques Ellul's book, The Technological Society and his position on "technique."    "Technique," he said, "never observes the distinction between moral and immoral use.  It tends, on the contrary, to create a completely independent technical morality."

Bac 2011 - Philosophy

The second and most important round of final exams for the baccalaureat started yesterday.  Six hours, two subjects:  Philosophy (4 hours) and Literature (2 hours).  The elder Frenchling returned home last night in a state of utter exhaustion but still had enough strength left to do some last minute studying for this morning's History-Geography exam.  

The French school system is unusual in requiring all high school students to take at least one year of philosophy.  I have heard some criticism about this from students and their parents who question the utility of teaching 17-year olds about Kant and Nietzsche.  The loudest complaints, in my experience, come from those who choose a Bac S (Science).  After all, if one is good in math and science, why bother with the finer points of existentialism?  

Having spent the better part of my life surrounded by engineers and having built a career in IT, I am personally delighted that philosophy continues to be a part of the curriculum.  I have sat through many a meeting rather wishing that the people around me had spent a little more time thinking about free will and a lot less solving equations.  I also find it absolutely delicious that my elder Frenchling comes home from school struggling to understand the merits of a philosophical argument and we spontaneously find ourselves deep in a discussion about the meaning of life and the nature of man's illusions. 

Here are the exam questions for the 2011 Bac General Philosophie Serie L.  There are three questions and the students must choose one and then spend the next four hours formulating an answer :

1.  Can we prove a scientific hypothesis?

2.  Is man condemned to create illusions about himself?

3.  Explain the following text by Nietzsche (The Gay Science):

The virtues of a man are called good, not in respect to the results they have for himself, but in respect to the results which we expect therefrom for ourselves and for society: we have all along had very little unselfishness, very little "non-egoism "in our praise of the virtues! For otherwise it could not but have been seen that the virtues (such as diligence, obedience, chastity, piety, justice) are mostly injurious to their possessors, as impulses which rule in them too vehemently and ardently, and do not want to be kept in co-ordination with the other im pulses by the reason. If you have a virtue, an actual, perfect virtue (and not merely a kind of impulse towards virtue!) -you are its victim! But your neighbour praises your virtue precisely on that account! One praises the diligent man though he injures his sight, or the originality and freshness of his spirit, by his diligence; the youth is honoured and regretted who has "worn himself out by work," because one passes the judgment that "for society as a whole the loss of the best individual is only a small sacrifice! A pity that this sacrifice should be necessary! A much greater pity it is true, if the individual should think differently, and regard his preservation and development as more important than his work in the service of society!" And so one regrets this youth, not his own account, but because a devoted instrument, regardless of self - a so-called "good man”, has been lost to society by his death. (Translation from the Full and Free Nietzsche Portal)