From Azincourt to Chateau d’Yquem
SARKOZY, CANDIDATE OF “CHANGE”?

By Karel Vereycken, Paris

Reminding us of a campaign poster of 1981 showing François Mitterrand asking for “change” while standing in front of a small rural community enlightened by a magical sunrise so typical of Pétain’s propaganda for “la belle France”, Sarkozy seems cultivating a similar taste for the ambiguous paradox of a “la rupture”

[break].

Since November this year, Sarkozy’s “Cercle Azincourt”, thanks to “speed-dating” methods organized in the backroom of a Paris café whose identity is only revealed seconds before the appointment, recruits enthusiasts as young as sixteen. One of Sarkozy’s websites reveals the overall aim of the initiative: “Eighteen months before the presidential elections and beyond the question of the person, is France ready for change? Without doubt it isn’t. Whoever might be elected in 2007, there will be very small margin for reforming France and breaking with an archaic model, for lack of support from the civil society.” To organize that support, the Azincourt circle proposes to “popularize the idea of a break” in order “to get France out of its fears, to open it to the reality of the world” by bringing together “diploma carrying youngsters of SciencesPo [Paris elite political science school], of Normal Sup [Higher School for teachers], of the school of economical warfare (sic), the Higher School of Journalism, etc. rallying lawyers, financiers, communicators, entrepreneurs, etc.”

Why Azincourt?

In 1414, the “crème de la crème” of the French nobility suffered an overwhelming defeat by the British archers, far less in numbers then the French. “The French paid their arrogance, stuck in weaponry and old-fashioned concepts, the overprotection of armor, so heavy that it sucks them down, while facing the extreme mobility of the arrows.”

Drawing a metaphorical parallel with today’s situation, Sarkozy’s followers pretend that “once again, the French are crumbling under the overprotection of their social model [welfare state, NA], anachronistic, which prevents them from adapting to the environment. Again their arrogance leads them to imagine that their system is the best of the world. Somebody failed? It’s the fault of Europe! It’s the fault of free trade [libéralisme]! And here go the French rejecting the European constitution, to behave as ostriches refusing to see the world.”

Behind this sophistry, reality pops up when one realizes that their working document of reference is the October 2004 Camdessus Report! Michel Camdessus, who shares a praying group with his good friend Jacques Delors, is the former president of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the institution that became the iron fist of a bankers syndicate willing to impose blood, sweat, tears and genocide on the developing countries to recover a largely illegitimate debt.

Camdessus’report, written at the request of Sarkozy, calls now for brutal “reforms” based on incompetent and criminal austerity.

Unbridled financial globalization, outsourcing policies that transform the country into a pastoral museum, brutal privatization of indispensable public services, the dismantling of labor laws to obtain total “flexibility” of the labor force, the destruction of a performing health system, tax breaks for the wealthy, the installment of a “meritocracy” which would abandon the weakest: that is the philosophical Gingrich-style “revolution” that Sarkozy wants to impose on France, a revolution quite close to the neo-conservatives of the other side of the Atlantic. Doing so, would be indeed to break totally from the consensus that emerged after the war and came from the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR) and guided the postwar reconstruction policies called the “trentes glorieuses”, thirty glorious years of economic growth able to reduce economical and social injustice.

Sarkozy states that “France doesn’t fear change, she’s waiting for it.” But who are his friends and protectors? What is his model for the success he pretends willing to bring in the reach of all? One gets a better idea of that when looking at the wedding he went to in September this year, the wedding of Delphine Arnault, the daughter of his best friend Bernard Arnault, the man who, together with Martin Bouygues (giant construction firm), was a witness for Sarkozy’s own wedding with Cécilia in 1996.

Oh boy, what a feast!

Let us take a minute to look at this wedding, officially “chic and sober, in the image of the luxury products” of Delphine’s fathers group LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy), one of the worlds leading luxury goods producers (fashion: Louis Vuitton, Dior, Givenchy, etc.; perfume: Dior, Guerlain, Kenzo, etc; liquors: champaign Moët & Chandon, cognac; wines: Château d’Yquem; watches and jewelry; fancy stores: Bon Marché).

Delphine (30 years old), who recently entered the board of the Company and talks to her father at least once a day, married Alessandro Vallerino Gancia, heritor of the Neapolitan liquor group Gancia. Glamour magazine Paris Match took 25 pages to immortalize their, Musée Grévin-style wax faces.

The break? The glittering Phantom Rolls Royce of 1937 used to bring the young happy few to the cathedral where the “emperor of luxury” was welcomed by “a procession of royal highnesses and finance barons”, while simple dressmakers feverishly engaged into a last minute streamlining of Delphine’s splendid wedding dress, specially designed for the occasion by John Galliano and crafted out of 165 meters of organza, 180 meters of tulle and 152 meters of lace…

Strange break also, the 700 person dinner, where Nicolas Sarkozy joined Thierry Breton, the French Finance Minister, Jean-François Copé official spokesman of the government and Minister of the Budget, Renaud Dutreil, Minister of the small and medium sized companies, and Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, Minister of Culture.
Real “sacre” [coronation] for the father, the wedding looked more like the incestuous meeting of the board of directors of “France Inc.”, with the presence of Claude Bébéar (Axa insurance), Jean-René Fourtou (Vivendi Universal entertainment), Serge Daussault (weapons and jetfighters and owner of the rightwing daily “Le Figaro”), Michel Pébereau (BNP Paribas, France’s largest bank), Ernest-Antoine Seillière (former president of the reactionary employers union), Henri Lachman (Schneider Electric), Albert Frère (Belgian millionaire now on the board of LVMH), Edouard de Rothschild (new owner of "Libération", without forgetting former French Socialist Foreign Affairs Minister Hubert Védrine, also recently integrated into LVMH’s board.

A closer look at today’s board of directors of LVMH indicates that those gathered did not just come to shake hands with the new couple. LVMH’s vice-president is Antoine Bernheim, one of the “eminence grises” of the Lazard Frères bank and of the “Venetian insurance giant” Generali, and real king-maker of most of France’s financial big shots (Edouard Stern, Vincent Bolloré, François Pinault, Jean-Marie Messier, etc.). In regard to political choices, an article of the economic weekly “l’Expansion” of July 2004 writes that “with the exception of leftwing personalities such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Laurent Fabius or [Paris region president] Jean-Paul Huchon, Bernheim’s sympathy goes for right wing figures. Among these are [Kojève’s follower and former prime minister] Raymond Barre, former administrator of the Generali and personal friend, and the current Finance Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy.”

But since the world of finance is a small nutshell, one also finds on LVMH’s board Nicolas Clive Worms, of notorious synarchy family reputation; Jacques Friedman (UAP insurance); Arnaud Lagardère (missile producer and owner of the daily paper “Le Monde”); without forgetting the unsavory Felix Rohatyn (“the fixer”) of Lazard Frères bank in New York, and with whom Sarkozy had dinner when he visited the United States.

LVMH, Thatcher, Cheney and Blair

If some in France might end up believing that this “elite” nevertheless incarnates some form of national interest they are greatly mistaken. It is useful to remind the reader that the largest part of LVMH’s profit is made in the USA (26 %), against only 21% in Europe and 15% in Asia. The integration factor into the Anglo-American financial establishment becomes also very clear when one looks to another powerful member of the board of LVMH: Lord (Charles) Powell of Bayswater. The latter was the private secretary on foreign affairs and defense matters for both the Pinochet-loving Margaret Thatcher and Prime Minister John Major. Lord Powell has good relations with George Bush, Sr. and sits also on Barrick Gold. He is also the former director of the opium-war famous Jardine Matheson Group and member of the board of New Bridge Strategies, a company headed by Joe Allbaugh, former campaign manager of George W.Bush in 2000. New Bridge Strategies sells advice of how to obtain juicy contracts in Iraq. Lord Powell, a trustee of the Aspen Institute also participated at the American Enterprise Institute neo-con gathering in Beaver Creek, Colorado (June 2000), where he spoke on the “New Europe” along with former French president Valérie Giscard d’Estaing, and met Lynne and future vice-president Dick Cheney. Remember Cheney’s company Halliburton is now being investigated, precisely for stealing money destined to rebuild a destroyed Iraq. Also remarkable, but not astonishing, is the fact that Lord Charles Powell’s brother, Jonathan Powell is still today Blair’s chief of cabinet, while Blair also takes advice from Charles. Remember that Blair is another of Sarkozy’s affinities, and that Sarkozy doesn’t hesitate to go beyond formal ideological divisions, especially when power grabbing is on the agenda. One also understands much better why Sarkozy declared he felt “ashamed being a Frenchman” during his visit in the US, in contrast to Chirac who opposed the Iraq war.

It therefore seems fairly improbable that Sarkozy will “break” with the policies of the arrogant French oligarchy that shaped entirely his own career. It was precisely this oligarchy, that, through its “old-fashioned, anachronistic” short-sighted financial policies, has de-industrialized and vastly indebted the country and lead France into the present full scale depression.

The “cuvee Sarkozy” clearly presents itself as a pure produce of the owners of Chateau d’Yquem. His “break” will be a break with some continuity: that of the defense of people not to be confounded with that of the people.

Long live the archers of Agincourt!

END