A postcard from France

By Mirino

Maybe the idea of  'A postcard from France', will encourage a flagging contributor to send the odd one, based on selected news items from the French press, to Wind Rose Hotel more regularly. Hopefully it will also incite readers to make constructive comments.

To begin with, and as the Polanski case was alluded to here before, it might be  appropriate to refer to a recent article on him from Le Figaro.

Polanski had just published a text confided to 'La Règle du Jeu', a site directed by Bernard-Henri Levy, stating that he can no longer remain silent. He considers that he is the victim of lies. According to him, the threat of extradition and legal proceedings in the USA for what he had done so long ago, are based on trumped up charges.

The Franco-Polish actor, writer and film producer maintains that his sentence of 42 days in a Californian prison in 1977 per 'having had sexual relations that year with a 13 year old adolescent', correspond with the sentence for which he was condemned and which he had thus already endured.



"I am accused of having avoided US justice, but in the 'pleading guilty' procedure I had recognised the facts and had returned to the USA to purge my sentence".



Roman Polanski (76) was arrested the 26th September last year in Switzerland and has been assigned to residence since the 4th December.

"I can no longer remain silent when the victim has been dismissed by the Court of California after having asked several times to stop the proceedings of my case", he also underlines.



"I can no longer remain silent because the United States continue to demand my extradition, more to deliver me as fodder to the media of the entire world than to pronounce a judgement on which an agreement was made 33 years ago".

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My own view is that justice can hardly prevail if it chooses to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to the actual victim of the crime and her repeated demands. I also have the impression that Polanski has never been overly appreciated in the USA, and suspect that the atrocious Manson killings may also have something to do with it. (If one remembers, whilst Polanski was working in Europe, his then pregnant wife, the actress Sharon Tate, was brutally stabbed to death in the Polanski residence in California with several other, horribly murdered victims. This was in August 1969, and carried out by members of the Manson gang. Manson (74) is still alive, seemingly without any regrets, and is even a 'cultural' source of influence in America.

Whilst there doesn't appear to be any 'rabid witch hunts' going on in the States for real pedophiles, whether they be the ecclesiastic kind or otherwise, Polanski, on the other hand, seems to incite fierce suspicion and resentment, and this perhaps even more so in the State of California than anywhere else in the USA.



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                                         Italiano

One can't solve a crisis of debt by increasing the debt

A postcard from France              By Mirino



In view of the last post, this interview from Le Monde seems suitable.



Thorsten Polleit is the head economist of Barclays Capital in Germany. He is very critical of the massive rescue loan of the euro zone States.



'How do you judge the rescue plan of 750 billion euros for the euro zone?



'One cannot solve the problem by additional debt. To support certain countries suffering from a debt crisis, the governments will still have to borrow. It's not a solution. The urgency for the euro zone today, is to announce a credible strategy of reduction of deficits. If the pressure of the markets have become so strong, if the investors are losing confidence, it's precisely because such a concept doesn't exist. It's time to clarify this.



'What should be done?'



'The decisions are the recourse of each government, at national level. One should decide how to reduce expenditure, to reduce the deficits as soon as possible, to engrave these objectives in marble as we did in Germany by establishing a mechanism in our constitution to reduce the debt... One must remember that from the very beginning, had the stability pact been fully respected, this situation would never have occurred.



'Thanks to this plan, wasn't the risk of contagion of the Greek crisis nevertheless countered?'



Yes, with regard to the countries threatened in the immediate future. But it's the quality of credit of notable States which will cause them to suffer from the consequences. The conditions of loan of the lending countries will undoubtedly be degraded. In fact the problem only shifts itself, and in the long term it's likely to worsen.



'Does the decision of the European Central bank (ECB) to buy national debt threaten its credibility?'



'It's clear that if the ECB acts in this way, it's because the European governments wish it. There's an instrument of monetary policy which doesn't seem to be decided in total independence. This decision is very problematic: in the long term such a program is likely to create inflation as well as a lack of confidence of investors.



'What is the situation regarding the long term stability of the euro?'



'If the States don't find the means of reducing their debt which often reaches intolerable levels, the euro is seriously threatened. The creation of the single currency has been a vast experiment of which the result is now uncertain. Especially if things continue in such a way, with certain countries condemned to pay again and again sums increasingly more important.





'Do you believe that Germany will recover the money of the loans made in Greece?'

 

No, on the contrary, I don't believe that the sums will ever be reimbursed.



(Remarks put together by Marie de Vergès)



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                                           Italiano