A daily dose of odds and sods, some interesting, some bizarre, some funny, some thought provoking items which I have stumbled across the web. All to be taken with a grain of daily salt!!
this article was very interesting :), it talks about how the Merovingian graves had Indian beads, how they were manufactured, their composition, use and how they were traded. Given that we are talking about the 2 centuries after the Roman Empire crashed, its not surprising that the trade routes remained for 2 centuries afterwards although slowly dying. The authors talk about political upheavals in South India in 6th century and changes in fashion. Absolutely fascinating to see presence of Indian Manufactured goods in Europe so early in the human history. Peter Francis Jr. has devoted much of his research to Indo-Pacific glass beads. These productions are among the emblematic objects made by South Asian glass workshops for nearly two millennia. Despite their wide distribution, both in Asia and Africa and in the Middle East, these tiny beads have never been reported in Western Europe. They have recently been found in large numbers on funerary sites in Merovingian Gaul, dated to between the middle of the 5th and the middle of the 6th century AD (mainly in the form of necklaces or clothing ornaments). Their presence stimulates reflection on the extensive trade between the Merovingian and the Indian worlds. This contribution discusses the technological, typological and chemical characteristics of these beads, as well as their use. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352226716300095
I just finished reading this book by Bruno Colson called as Napoleon: On War.. Quite an interesting book, son. It reviews prior work on Napoleon as a military commander and compares his work with Clausewitz. you may think this is a bit of a chimney thing which Baba does. :) I have included the review below.
But I see this as a different matter, son. Deals are like battles. winning large number of deals is like a war. And then you have an overarching grand strategy of the sector and overall business. So learning from war, for me, is vital. Yes, there are significant differences between war and banking but its not that much of a difference in so far as there are limited resources, there are competitors, there is a political and economic element, there are winners and losers, and so on and so forth. Let me quote a bit from the conclusion of the book
> In an army, unified command is essential. Supplies are an important task and local resources are there to contribute. If troops are not battle-hardened, it is better to entrust them with a defensive mission, which is accomplished better by men used to staying in the same sector, where they will have acquired habits. They must not be arranged in a cordon: that is equivalent to being strong absolutely nowhere. When you do not know where the enemy will attack, it is better for troops to be positioned in close echelons, so that they can be concentrated rapidly at the point under attack. If you attack, you will seek to outflank or envelop the enemy, but out of his view. It is always difficult to combine different forms of attack simultaneously. The simplest moves are the best. They are accompanied by concentrated fire. In moun- tainous terrain above all, you must not attack an enemy position head on. The enemy must be flushed out by making for his flank or rear. If you attack a town, it is better not to commit your infantrymen in the streets. An occu- pation is always difficult. In any event, forces must remain concentrated and be mobile. The main towns, where the important people whose collabor- ation is essential reside, must be held. Mobile columns will pursue insurgents, but without committing blunders. It is necessary to make examples, but also to issue pardons. Finally, all possibilities must be envisaged when one engages in war. It is necessary to reckon on the worst. Plans must be carefully prepared, but remain open to adaptation depending on circumstances. You must always ask yourself how the enemy will react. When it comes to the enemy, it is necessary to target the essentials—the main front—and direct your efforts there. If a breach is made, the secondary fronts will fall of their own accord. A conquest must always be accompanied by political gestures. Any military objective is subordinate to a political objective and every general must possess civil qualities. This does not preclude the supreme commander having to enjoy a certain freedom of action in the theatre where he is in charge. These observations can be applied to all wars, including those of the early twenty-first century.
>
If nothing else, you can see how these basic rules will help you to think about where to place your relationship managers, your capital, your attention, your pitching, and so on and so forth. each of these rules are golden rules for warfare and will be similar to business as well. Very interesting indeed. If you look at the business leaders, they are all having history or military history book.
But one thing you have to remember about Napoleon. He was tactically brilliant, won so many wars, was very focussed on the human element, but he was not a strategist and its that inability to bring in the political, economic, and other elements made him lose in the end. At end of the day, he left France smaller than what he took. So despite his great reputation, he lost in the end. You learn more from failures, son.
Best of luck with your presentation, I am very proud of you, that is good work, really good work on the presentation.
In the more than two centuries since his rise to power during the French Revolution, the world at large has been fascinated with Napoleon Bonaparte, justly considering him as one of the great geniuses of all time. In particular, his military successes have led numerous authors, after his defeat and fall from power in 1815, to attempt to distill his writings into a series of maxims that could be studied and applied to current events. This concept has proven difficult. While exiled on Saint Helena, Napoleon himself considered writing about the art of war, but before his death in 1821 he ordered his efforts to be destroyed. Since the third decade of the nineteenth century, a number of scholars have sought to synthesize and recreate this material, with varying degrees of detail and accuracy, using the emperor's correspondence, official records, observations by his associates, and other sources.
So here's the story I read. It is about this pilot who managed to successfully torpedo the most ferociously defended target and got a VC. His citation read
Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell, 22 Squadron, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve.In recognition of most conspicuous bravery. This officer was the pilot of a Beaufort aircraft of Coastal Command which was detailed to attack an enemy battle cruiser in Brest Harbour at first light on the morning of 6th April 1941. The aircraft did not return but it is known that a torpedo attack was carried out with the utmost daring. The battle cruiser was secured alongside the wall on the north shore of the harbour, protected by a stone mole bending around it from the west. On rising ground behind the ship stood protective batteries of guns. Other batteries were clustered thickly round the two arms of land which encircle the outer harbour. In this outer harbour near the mole were moored three heavily armed anti-aircraft ships, guarding the battle cruiser. Even if an aircraft succeeded in penetrating these formidable defences, it would be almost impossible, after delivering a low-level attack, to avoid crashing into the rising ground beyond.This was well known to Flying Officer Campbell who, despising the heavy odds, went cheerfully and resolutely to the task. He ran the gauntlet of the defences. Coming in at almost sea level, he passed the anti-aircraft ships at less than mast-height in the very mouths of their guns and skimming over the mole launched a torpedo at point-blank range.The battle cruiser was severely damaged below the water-line and was obliged to return to the dock whence she had come only the day before. By pressing home his attack at close quarters in the face of withering fire on a course fraught with extreme peril, Flying Officer Campbell displayed valour of the highest order.- See more at: http://ww2today.com/6th-april-1941-kenneth-campbell-attacks-the-gneisenau?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WorldWarIIToday+%28World+War+II+Today*+%29#sthash.rNyGiDWr.dpuf
But this photograph blew my mind
This is a vertical photograph of the flak over this area few nights before. These are tracers. And you know that only one in say 10 bullets is a tracer. So the actual amount of lead and exploding shells is actually 10 times of this photograph. And you have to fly through this insane multiple curtains of death, whilst your bombardier is begging you to fly steady and straight because his norton bombsights cannot handle movements. I dont think I can even comprehend the levels of bravery involved. And then we have bloody students demanding safe spaces. The mind boggles.
This was such an interesting article. If there is one thing which people get excited about, it's unfair discrimination. Whether it's on racial grounds or national origin or gender, this is a constant fight. The right to form groups is way gets in the way. That's why clubs and situations like the below happen. Religion kids, is one of the biggest sources of discrimination and that's why I hate it. Still a fascinating article on how the good fight for equal rights was fought in a little corner of India. Against the country which will end up doing the greatest for the rights of man. Kannu I'm referring to the Thomas Paine rights of man argument. :) Don't forget to book the fat crab today Kannu. Love both of you. Baba Cradle of democracy: When Pondicherry fought for the right to vote in 1789 http://scroll.in/article/805228/cradle-of-democracy-when-pondicherry-fought-for-the-right-to-vote-in-1789 (via Instapaper)
As Pondicherry prepares for legislative assembly elections this spring, it brings to mind a neglected anniversary: over 225 years have passed since residents of this former French colony first sought the right to vote.
Pondicherry is full of signs of France's colonial presence, which lasted from 1674 to 1954. Streets named after French officials, monuments to Indians who fought for France in the First World War, and the accents of French tourists who lounge in cafés all show that the heritage lives on.
A monument commemorates Pondicherrians who died in the First World War. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
But no monument acknowledges that Pondicherry was a cradle of Indian democracy, where Indians, facing off against an openly racist empire, first tried to participate in elections.
In the summer of 1789, the power of the French king collapsed and democratically-elected local governments sprouted across the French empire, including in Pondicherry. The white inhabitants of the colony, numbering only a few hundred (less than 2% of its total population), elected their own town government and excluded Indians from the elections. They claimed that the right to vote would be wasted on Indians, whom they described as too obsessed with caste prejudice to understand democracy. The French meant to have democracy all to themselves, while continuing to impose colonial rule on their Indian subjects.
Pondicherrians, however, not only understood the idea of equality, but were eager to put it into practice. Several communities pursued different kinds of political action to pressure the French government to recognise that Indians deserved the rights of citizenship.
This made me blink. Kannu. My image of the French forces wasn't good. The dien bein phu disaster, the Algerian mess. The Vichy regime and the performance in the two world wars. Etc etc all combined to make me doubt the efficacy of the French forces. This article may be tending a bit too on the other side. But the last line was good. If they decide to hurt somebody, they will. Now that's power. Reminds me of the clint Eastwood quote, if you want to shoot - shoot. Don't talk. And then the Eisenhower quote, speak softly but carry a big stick. And hit when required. That's where power comes in. You have to use it. British fail many times in this matter.
Still this promises to be a fascinating study of military tactics. Politically a mess, the military charge will be fun to observe.
Hope you get better soon son. I felt like cuddling You to me :) but you're a bit too big now :)
France's military may suffer from a poor reputation in American popular imagination, dating from historical events like the rapid fall to Nazi Germany in World War II and the colonial-era defeat at Dien Bien Phu. This is a mistake: The French airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Syria are only the beginning of the counterattack against ISIS, as French officials themselves are promising. And as anyone familiar with France's military capabilities can attest, when it comes to war the French are among the very best.
Moreover, whatever France does probably will not look like anything the U.S. would do. There is a French way of warfare that reflects the French military's lack of resources and its modest sense of what it can achieve. They specialize in carefully apportioned and usually small but lethal operations, often behind the scenes; they can go bigger if they have help from the U.S. and other allies—which they will probably have in any case and know how to put to good use.
This was a fascinating story kids. About how the croissant was born and then moved to its adopted country France. I always thought that it was invented as a response to the win over the ottomans but no. The French really make delicious croissants. I loved their food. The only quibble is that the portions are too small.
Today is the final of the great British bake off. It's so popular. No wonder. I think desserts and pastries are the toughest to make. You have to be precise. Desserts are unforgiving. Unlike main dishes and starters and soups, a good dessert is a mark of a great chef. Takes time. Takes precision. Takes dedication. Takes huge amounts of practise. And practise. And practise. Quite a tough one. And all that I am not. All you are so health conscious that I cannot even practise. So my idea of going on a dessert course is now shelved. Grumbles.
One bite of a croissant just pulled from the oven at Michel Lyczak’s bakery in the southern Parisian suburb of Malakoff is bliss: a satisfying crunch and scattering of crumbs, the indulgent mouthfeel of butter wrapped in the overwhelming sensation of lightness. Few foods are as culturally iconic as this flaky breakfast food, so quintessentially French that many English speakers defer to its native pronunciation (krwa-sohn).
Yet as recently as the 19th century, the French viewed the croissant as a foreign novelty, sold only in special Viennese bakeries in the pricier parts of Paris. And how it came to France in the first place remains obscured by layer upon layer of legend.
Experts do agree that the croissant was inspired by the Austrian kipfel, a crescent-shaped baked good featuring a generous amount of butter or lard and sometimes sugar and almonds. According to popular lore, the kipfel originated in 1683 as a comestible celebration of Austrian victory over the Ottomans at the siege of Vienna. The story follows that a baker, up early to make bread, saved the city when he heard the Turks tunneling underneath the city and sounded an alarm. The kipfel’s curved shape, said to mimic the crescent moon of the Ottoman flag, then would seem to pay poetic tribute to the indomitable spirit of a city that resisted a powerful invading force. (Conveniently, another legend holds that the cappuccino was invented almost simultaneously, inspired by the strong
King Charles I was beheaded on 30 January 1649 outside Banqueting House in Whitehall. His embalmed body was put into a coffin and taken to St James’s. Parliament then gave permission for the King to be buried in the Chapel of St George at Windsor. Mr Herbert who had been a groom of the royal bedchamber was entrusted with overseeing the interment.
Lord Clarendon later stated that the King’s body could not be found at Windsor some years later. There was a suggestion that King Charles II had re-interred his father at Westminster Abbey.
An interesting comparison between France Latvia and Greece. On the reactions to austerity. One more thing. It's easier to give than to take away. Specially other peoples money. Sooner or later you will run out of other people's money. Debt is borrowing from your children.
My mind boggles at who would be stupid enough to do so but as you can see, there are tons of such people and nations.
PARIS—For a brief moment before Christmas, self-doubt gripped France. The beloved French actor Gerard Depardieu—who recently played Obelix, an even more beloved French comic book character—announced he was moving to Belgium because President Francois Hollande had threatened to tax millionaires at 75 percent of their income. The nation plunged into depression. Opponents of the wealth tax geared up to attack the president. Pictures of Depardieu in his new “home” in Nechin, a Belgian town just across the French border, appeared in Paris-Match alongside an article titled “France, which is a haven for rich Qataris, is a hell for its own inhabitants.”
I thought you might like this story about how the French are trying to protect the French language from being polluted by English.
Languages are a bit like religion kids. They have a root, but they evolve and change as life goes on. When their speakers die or they don't want to change, the language also dies with them. Like so many religions have died as their worshipers died. It's a bit sad that that entire culture disappears like so many languages have done so as well. But life goes on and needs to evolve. Darwin would be nodding. You don't change you become extinct.
Nobody speaks Latin or Sanskrit any more in common parlance. That's because they refused to change and therefore local vernacular languages took over. Classical Arabic is going the same way. Very few young people read or understand it. And so that's on its way out.
A leading French intellectual has called for a boycott of all products whose advertising slogans use English and of films whose titles are not translated, in the latest salvo in a rearguard action against the “invasion” of Franceby the English language.
“There are more English words (in adverts) on the walls of Toulouse than there were German words during the Occupation,” said philosopher Michel Serres, a member of the Acadamie française, the state body which aims to protect the French language.
“I want to invite the French to go on strike. Each time that advertising is English, you don’t buy the product, each time a film’s title is not translated, you don’t go into the cinema,” he said in an interview with la Depeche du Midi newspaper.
We analyse the role of financial sector workers in the huge rise of the share of earnings going to those at the very top of the pay distribution in the UK. Rising bankers’ bonuses accounted for two-thirds of the increase in the share of the top 1% after 1999. Surprisingly, bankers’ share of earnings showed no decline between the peak of the financial boom in 2007 and 2011, three years after the global crisis began. Nor did bankers’ relative employment position deteriorate over this period. We discuss proposed policy responses such as transparency, bonus “clawbacks”, numerical bonus targets and tax.
Bankers seem to be doing very well out of the crisis. And this was a well argued paper. For example: I quote:
In terms of policy, we begin by considering whether there is really any “problem” to be addressed. If bankers are paid in a competitive labour market and simply rewarded for their talent, there seems little reason for government intervention, at least on efficiency grounds. However there seems to be substantial evidence of rents within the sector – a result of imperfect competition or arising from the implicit and explicit guarantees and subsidies that the sector receives from the government due to the “too big to fail” problem. We discuss various policy options that seek to either remove the basis for these rents or to tax them ex post. Finally, we note that on equity grounds, policy may seek to reduce the post-tax income taken by those in the upper echelons of the income distribution – which implicitly targets bankers given their prominence among high-earning workers. This has primarily taken the form of higher marginal tax rates.
The authors argue that regulators are unable to remove the rental issue. Which is a curious argument to make but then in the absence of a truly global government with one currency, this issue will keep on happening as national regulators will keep on making suboptimal decisions based upon large banks presence in multi country jurisdictions. We have been here before, remember the Dutch and East India companies? They were also too big to fail. So I suspect and concur with the authors that the result will be to increase the marginal tax rates on the top earners. This can have unforeseen implications.
See for example what happened in France. Here’s one example:
Over 8,000 French households paid taxes topping 100% of their incomes, according to French Finance Ministry data. See Taxes on Some Wealthy French Top 100% of Income. You may scratch your head in disbelief. How is that possible?
Stateside, you might guess it was the alternative minimum tax. In France, it was a one-time 2011 levy on incomes for households with assets over 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million). 8,000 families paying 100% may seem a small number, but nearly 12,000 households paid more than 75%. The percentages sure do grate.
Hollande's 75% supertax on the mega-rich is at the centre of another row after French football clubs said they would cancel all matches scheduled for the final weekend in November to protest at the levy.
The symbolic tax – a 75% tax on income exceeding €1m (£850,000)a year – has caused a headache for the Socialist government since it wasthrown out as unconstitutional by France's top court. To avoid the embarrassment of a major policy U-turn, ministers redrafted the tax earlier this year to shift the burden from individuals to employers – a legislative shimmy that has spooked football clubs, which famously pay vast salaries even to bit-part players.
Clubs say they are already under financial pressures and that the tax would spark an exodus of top players to rival leagues abroad, killing the domestic game. In spite of a poll showing that 85% of French people are in favour of the tax being applied to football clubs, the clubs decided to step up their protests.
this promises to be fun. Much more ink and excited electrons will flow below the bridge before this is settled.
How did modern and centralized fiscal institutions emerge? We develop a model that explains (i) why pre-industrial states relied on private individuals to collect taxes; (ii) why after 1600 both England and France moved from competitive methods for collecting revenues to allocating the right to collect taxes to a small group of financiers—an intermediate institution that we call cabal tax farming— and (iii) why this centralization led to investments in fiscal capacity and increased Fiscal standardization. We provide detailed historical evidence that supports our prediction that rulers abandoned the competitive allocation of tax rights in favor of cabal tax farming in order to gain access to inside credit, and that this transition was accompanied by investments in standardization. Finally (iv) we show why this intermediate institution proved to be self-undermining in England, where it was quickly replaced by direct collection, but lasted in France until the French Revolution.
You know something, whenever I hear people fulminating about bankers and credit and and and, I just feel sad. More life changes, more it remains the same. The situations we are going through has been seen before, quite a lot of times. People forget that once taxation goes through the roof, people do tend to revolt. Typically, its the rulers (governments in today’s parlance) who usually bugger up the economy and then go for the tax take to try to make up for those stupid policy decisions. But the British were better at this, one of the reasons why we are still celebrating the birth of Prince George while the French are, well, French.
That graph, son, is one of the greatest pieces of graphic design or brevity known to man. In a 2d imagery, Charles Joseph Minard has managed to cram in so much information that its ridiculously brilliant.
One of my problems is how can I get my salespeople to absorb a giant amount of information in a very limited time and actually do something about it which will help my clients and compete against other salespeople. It's a constant battle against suppliers who think that more is good versus sales people who are constitutionally unable to absorb any more than 3 things at one time. Which is good, I want them to sell, not spend time on data.
Fascinating, I am spending quite a lot of time thinking about data visualisation these days..
Sales of stilton, real ale and chicken tikka masala are up in France. Are the French learning to love British food?
You're eating at a pavement cafe in France. "You are Engleesh?" the waiter asks.
His pitying expression says it all. Whatever you order will be a delight after the boiled nursery food you've been brought up on.
You can't trust a country with such bad food, Jacques Chirac said of the UK.
To many French people the English are les rosbifs - a people unhealthily obsessed by roasting cows. That, and fish and chips and a few messy puddings and you have the extent of the UK's culinary repertoire, went the argument.
But something is changing across the Channel. People are buying British.
Did you know that they now like Scottish Beef better than French Beef? And that UK produces more different varieties of cheese compared to France? and best of all?
The entire debate about GM foods is now in fairly ridiculous territory. USA is merrily going about growing and using GM food. But here in Europe, its like its Frankenstein food. Which is also such a big reason why Europe is so much more expensive food wise and the poor end up spending more money on food. But then, never let it be said that the politicians can actually do something smart. They would prefer to ban GM food and say it benefits farmers. But here’s an interesting counterpoint. I quote
French maize growers and seed companies have appealed a ban on the cultivation of a strain of genetically modified maize to the country's highest court, saying it was unjustified and economically harmful for farmers.
France placed a temporary ban on the growth of Monsanto's MON810 GMO maize earlier this month after a previous moratorium was annulled by the country's top court in November on the basis that it was not sufficiently justified.
"This restriction does not rely on any serious scientific element, and maize producers, hit by [insects], sustain real financial damage," French growers group AGPM, French seed firms group UFS and the maize and sorghum producers federation FNPSMS said in a joint statement yesterday (29 March).
EU countries are able to restrict genetically modified crop cultivation under strict conditions asauthorisation licences are valid across the 27-country bloc, in accordance with the principles of the EU's single market.
Several member states have repeatedly invoked an EU safeguard clause enabling them to suspend the marketing or growth on their territory of GM crops that enjoy EU-wide authorisation, but the European Commission has never substantiated their applications and has always ordered the lifting of national bans.
France asked the European Commission in February to suspend authorization to sow the insect-resistant maize, the only GMO crop allowed for cultivation in the European Union.
The French government's request to the EU Commission was based on "significant risks for the environment" shown in recent scientific studies, it said.
Global agribusiness company Monsanto said its GMO maize is perfectly safe.
French and European farmers have expressed concerns about the consequences of EU consumers' hostility to GMOs, saying it is likely to make them fall behind in the competitive world grain market.
The safety assessments performed by the European Food Safety Authority have come under criticism over the years. The EU executive has tried to introduce practical changes to the EFSA'sGMO-approval process.
Of course it will fall behind, it is already behind and my taxes are currently going to keep these more efficient agricultural practises out and inefficiency in. Bah
France, Germany and and and are trying to launch a Financial Transaction Tax and David Cameron has promised to vote it. Good. Business will run away into American or Asian markets, is that what they want? Morons.
I don't have any thing further to say. Here’s a newspaper article on this seriously stupid idea.
As Europe debates whether to apply a tax on financial transactions, a former Swedish finance minister says Sweden's experience in the 1980s was so negative it repealed the tax as plunging trading volumes led to disappointing tax revenues.
"The Swedish experiences were negative, both from the point of view of the state's finances and from a general socioeconomic perspective," former finance minister Bo Lundgren, 64, told AFP. In 1984, the Social Democratic government introduced a tax of 0.5 percent on each purchase or sale of shares (a level that was doubled two years later) and 1.0 percent on options. The tax on bonds varied depending on the maturity, ranging from 0.03 to 0.001 percent. The tax was levied on brokerage services. The Swedish government later introduced a tax on currency transactions in 1989. But the consequences of both taxes were considered so harmful to the markets that they were soon abolished: the one on currency transactions was removed after just 16 months, in 1990, and the other was removed after eight years, in 1991. Lundgren, who had the tax on shares, options and bonds abolished when he was finance minister in a centre-right government, told AFP the effects of the currency transaction tax "were so dramatically negative that all currency trading basically moved from Stockholm to London, so the Social Democratic government (in power at the time) abolished the tax." Meanwhile, the tax on shares, bonds and options "led to share trading moving abroad but the effects were not as dramatic as the currency transaction tax." "The year we abolished it, in 1991, the tax revenue amounted to around three billion kronor", or about 375 million euros ($476 million) in today's currency. "But on the other hand the tax had reduced share trades so much that once it was abolished, trading increased and that in turn led to an increase in brokerage fees which led to an increase in corporate tax (revenues) and other tax (revenues) increased." "When the tax was abolished we estimated that there was no loss (of revenue) involved, because it led to such a sharp increase in trading." In his proposal to parliament repealing the tax on shares, options and bonds, Lundgren said at the time that "activity on the Swedish stock market has decreased sharply in recent years which has resulted in a series of disadvantages for Swedish industry." "The tax on shares and other securities has contributed to this development," he said. He said Swedish companies suffered from reduced liquidity on the stock market and had a harder time raising risk capital. Lundgren, who is now the head of Sweden's National Debt Office, and Sweden's current Finance Minister Anders Borg -- both members of the conservative Moderate party -- have voiced opposition to the European Commission's proposal to tax financial transactions. The Commission in September proposed a tax of 0.1 percent on stock and bond transactions and 0.01 percent on derivatives, aimed at pulling in up to 55 billion euros ($70.4 billion) annually. France and Germany are in favour of the tax and have said the 17-member eurozone could adopt it on its own, while non-euro member Britain is fiercely opposed to it amid fears it could prove devastating to its global financial hub, the City of London. Paris has gone so far as to say it could begin introducing the tax on its own if a broader agreement is not reached.
But the best part was from France. They are all gung ho about implementing this tax. So what are they going to do? They will impose this tax on shares and derivatives. oh! really? why not on bonds? Of course not, no question of levying a tax on bonds as you see, they have to sell bonds. They cannot conceivable have a tax on sovereign bonds as it will raise the cost for them, see? So as long as others pay the tax, its fine, but if its a question of the state paying the tax, god, its bad then.
Good lord, the hypocrisy is mindboggling and nose wrinkling smelly.
Its sad what these purveyors of religion are reduced to. I quote:
(ANSAmed) - PARIS, MAY 4 - Protests in France against the daily aggression against women working in Hassi Messaoud, the oil city in the heart of Algeria, continue. These women are considered to be prostitutes by fundamentalist imams, only because they live on their own. The imams set people against them in fiery sermons, which are always followed by punitive expeditions in which the women are robbed, beaten, tortured and raped. Today Francés Grand Lodge for women in a statement denounced "the silence that reigns on this extreme violence, aggression, the rapes and even murders" and deplores "the indifference of the media regarding these dramatic and barbaric events". The violence has also been denounced by other French associations, particularly that tragic night in 2001 when around a hundred women ended up in hospital after an expedition of men armed with clubs, steel bars, knives. The story was recently told in a book by Algerian writer Nadia Kaci, unveiling the drama to France. But the drama still continues according to articles in Algerian dailies in the oil city, which denounced the impunity of the aggressors, the silence of the institutions and local authorities, the laxity of the community regarding the general condition of women in Algeria.
These parasitical misogynistic patriarchal imams should be removed, they are ruining the religion. Good way to develop your image and treat womankind, chaps. I spotted this quote on a fb page:
"i stopped wearing skirts, for their eyes would haunt me/ salwar kurta could not keep their hands away from me/ hair opened or tied, they did not stop hounding me/ legs, arms and face covered, my existence was dead/ but they were flourishing all around me/ their hands could reach me even in the dark/ i screamed, my eyes searched for help/ but they looked on, laughed for i was an entertainment for them. "
Some very powerful images here of poverty in London and Paris. Poverty is something that you will need to handle and manage and oversee and discuss and debate. I cannot see poverty ending over the next century or even further onwards. While you arent poor and can indeed be said to be fairly well off, these poor people exist outside your existence. You havent seen them really. Yes, you have been to India and might have seen poor beggars outside the window of the air conditioned car or gaped at some of these on the platform, but generally you havent seen poverty, much less experienced it.
Poverty is fun – NOT, it is degrading, it reduces you to a quivering mess of jelly. You do anything to get out of it. Its horrible. I dont think you will ever face it either but if you are going to be all what you want to be, you will face poor people, this article gives a rather interesting overview of the poor. And yes, they also exist in the UK and France, the first world nations. Not to the extent of what we have seen in India! but still, interesting to check and read.
6 August 2011 Last updated at 01:40 By Emma Jane Kirby BBC News, Paris and London
Orwell’s narration begins in the street he called the Rue du Coq d’Or, in the 5th Arrondissement, where he once lived
Some 80 years after George Orwell chronicled the lives of the hard-up and destitute in his book Down and Out in Paris and London, what has changed? Retracing the writer’s footsteps, Emma Jane Kirby finds the hallmarks of poverty identified by Orwell - addiction, exhaustion and, often, a quiet dignity - are as apparent now as they were then.
“Quarrels, and the desolate cries of street hawkers, and the shouts of children chasing-orange-peel over the cobbles, and at night loud singing and the sour reek of the refuse carts, made up the atmosphere of the street…. Poverty is what I’m writing about and I had my first contact with poverty in this slum.”
Such was George Orwell’s recollection of what he called the Rue du Coq d’Or in Paris, 1929 - the real-life Rue du Pot de Fer. Today it’s pleasure rather than poverty that defines the Latin Quarter that Orwell frequented 80-odd years ago. The chic pavement cafes are full of contented-looking people leisurely sipping their vin rose, and the air is perfumed by the sweet smell of crepes and tourists’ money.
But poverty hasn’t left Paris - she’s simply changed address. She may not look quite the same as she did in the 1920s but if Orwell were to meet her again on these streets, he’d know her straight away. And I doubt he’d find her greatly changed…
Poverty came knocking on Claudine’s door five years ago when she was made redundant. She leans in close to me as she talks, her right hand often rising to her mouth as if it wants to censor the words that her lips keep forming. “Tomber dans la misere” (falling into misery), is the phrase she whispers most and I notice her breath is sour like someone who diets or skips meals.
“We don’t eat lunch,” she tells me. “It’s just my little way of economising.” She nods down to her bulging shopping caddy. “It’s enough for my family’s dinner,” she says, “but not enough for two meals a day.”
Shame
Claudine and I are sitting in a big warehouse in the north of Paris, which serves as a food distribution centre for the city’s chronically poor. It reminds me of the sort of indoor market you find in the less salubrious quarters of former Soviet states - mountains of unbranded pasta and rice piled on tables, misshapen, anaemic-looking vegetables wilting in crates, biscuits and chocolate wrapped in such bland, stark white paper, that not even a child could be excited by its contents.
We watch the steady line of people, Europeans, Maghrebians and West Africans, methodically trudging from table to table, collecting their rations and stuffing them quickly into a pram hood or caddy. Despite the animated cheerfulness of the staff, I notice not one of the customers meets their eye as they take the food parcels.
Shame, Claudine - who is French - tells me, is what links everyone here. She’s told no-one that her weekly shop is a hand-out and she doubts anyone else here has admitted it either.
The secrecy that’s attached to poverty is one of the first things that struck Orwell.
“From the start,” he wrote, “it tangles you in a net of lies and even with the lies you can hardly manage it.”
Milly is fighting poverty with a fierce, indignant energy. A bilingual secretary from Cameroon, she is immaculately dressed and has the practised deportment of a society debutante.
In the drop-in centre where I meet her, she looks decidedly out of place next to the dusty, weary figures that are slumped beside her. Appearances, she tells me, are everything if one is to cling on to one’s dignity. She agrees to talk to me but only in a private room so that the other people here won’t realise that her situation is as bad as theirs. When the door closes she tells me that she’s homeless and last night she slept on a veranda.
Milly is facing deportation. She came here legally but after she fell ill and had to stop working, her carte de sejour - the papers that allow her to stay and work in France - were revoked. She admits that she is homesick but is terrified to return to Cameroon empty-handed. I ask her if her family know she’s homeless and she throws her hands up in the air and rolls her eyes in horror.
“It would kill them,” she tells me. “They would drop down dead with shame.”
Aching all over
When I meet Modi from Mali, he looks as if he might drop down dead with fatigue. Like Orwell, Modi is a plongeur, a washer-upper in a big restaurant and he works six days a week, 12 hours a day cleaning pots and pans.
When we talk in the bar of a neighbouring restaurant, his head keeps drooping onto his folded arms and it seems to be such an effort for him to articulate his words that he either slurs them all together in a gluey, glottal jumble, or shoots out small phrases in tiny bursts of energy that fizzle out before the last word has been formed.
Orwell complained that when working as a plongeur he felt as if his back were broken and his head “filled with hot cinders”. Modi agrees that he aches all over and at the end of the day he cannot feel his feet.
Because rent in Paris is too expensive, he lives an hour’s train ride outside the city. Although after midnight the trains are slower so it takes two hours for Modi to get home. He gets up at 0700 and gets to bed at 0200. Most plongeurs in Paris these days are either Pakistani or West African. I stop asking myself why that is, when Modi tells me how much he is paid - just under 4 euros (£3.50) an hour. He’s working, of course, “on the black”.
“The last time I had a night out,” he says flicking through a virtual diary in his brain, “was… last year.”
Madame Jolivet can have as many nights out with friends as she wants to - her problem is she’s not allowed to have any nights in with them.
Madame Jolivet’s tiny B&B room costs 1,730 euros a month
The rules of her B&B state clearly that visitors are not permitted, but I have managed to frighten the landlady into admitting me by pretending to be an official from the local authority. Now I’m standing (albeit slightly stooped) in her fusty-smelling attic apartment.
I am Madame Jolivet’s first visitor in six years and she is laughing hysterically at having won this tiny victory over her hated landlady. I tell her that in Orwell’s day, the residents in his filthy hotel used to yell “Vache! Salope!” (“Cow! Bitch!”) at their landlady, and Madame Jolivet doubles up with mirth as she mimes the insults at the sky-light. Then, quite suddenly, she looks sick with fear and switches the TV on at a high volume, motioning to the door and telling me the landlady is probably listening at it. She’s right. We hear her tread softly back down the stairs.
Orwell’s hotel room was infested with bugs - Madame Jolivet’s is infested with mice. She’s tormented by their scratching at night. She’s caught them on camera during the day, and once she found one in her fridge. She complained to the landlady who warned her that if she mentions it again, she’ll kick her out - after all, she’s already been warned that her daughter’s voice is too loud.
Madame Jolivet is a large lady and she squeezes herself round the tiny space of her apartment. When she’s at the sink she’s jammed between the bed and the table, her body painfully curved sideways to avoid smacking her head on the sloped ceiling. The landlady charges 1,730 euros (£1,500) a month for this space which she rents out as a 16 sq m apartment. Recently the police did a spot check on Madame Jolivet’s apartment and recorded the actual habitable surface area as just 5 sq m - that’s the size of about six or seven beach towels.
Madame Jolivet lives here with her grown-up son and daughter. Until last year her other daughter lived with them, too, but she tried to kill herself twice and is now in psychiatric care.
Although it’s miles from the hostel where she’s staying tonight, Milly, the dignified lady from Cameroon offers to come with me in the taxi to the Gare du Nord where I’m catching my train home to London to make my next step of Orwell’s journey.
“In my country,” she smiles, “we never let a traveller start a journey alone.”
She’s very jolly in the cab, reminiscing about her family, her sister in London, the present she sent her nephew in America last year. By the time we get to the Eurostar terminal I’ve completely forgotten that Milly’s homeless and I realise with a real physical shock that this is exactly what she wanted, that she wanted me to see her as she was before poverty possessed her - a very proper, very animated, valuable woman.
She waves me off, her whole body swaying into the gesture, in that exaggerated way that small children say goodbye. Each time I turn, she’s still there, both arms in the air, her head following the rhythm.
Sitting in my seat on the train, my eyes closed, I can see her still. The last line from a Stevie Smith poem comes into my head:
And this is happening all legally. Remember, you chaps, your money is not save from these grasping politicians who will rob the people who scrimp and save to give to the feckless and useless. Bloody thieves. Argentina did the same. And then these buggers want you to increase your pension contribution. Bah!, no wonder pensions are the furthest things from people’s minds.
People’s retirement savings are a convenient source of revenue for governments that don’t want to reduce spending or make privatizations. As most pension schemes in Europe are organised by the state, European ministers of finance have a facilitated access to the savings accumulated there, and it is only logical that they try to get a hold of this money for their own ends. In recent weeks I have noted five such attempts: Three situations concern private personal savings; two others refer to national funds.
The most striking example is Hungary, where last month the government made the citizens an offer they could not refuse. They could either remit their individual retirement savings to the state, or lose the right to the basic state pension (but still have an obligation to pay contributions for it). In this extortionate way, the government wants to gain control over $14bn of individual retirement savings.
The Bulgarian government has come up with a similar idea. $300m of private early retirement savings was supposed to be transferred to the state pension scheme. The government gave way after trade unions protested and finally only about 20% of the original plans were implemented.
A slightly less drastic situation is developing in Poland. The government wants to transfer of 1/3 of future contributions from individual retirement accounts to the state-run social security system. Since this system does not back its liabilities with stocks or even bonds, the money taken away from the savers will go directly to the state treasury and savers will lose about $2.3bn a year. The Polish government is more generous than the Hungarian one, but only because it wants to seize just 1/3 of the future savings and also allows the citizens to keep the money accumulated so far.
The fourth example is Ireland. In 2001, the National Pension Reserve Fund was brought into existence for the purpose of supporting pensions of the Irish people in the years 2025-2050. The scheme was also supposed to provide for the pensions of some public sector employees (mainly university staff). However, in March 2009, the Irish government earmarked €4bn from this fund for rescuing banks. In November 2010, the remaining savings of €2.5bn was seized to support the bailout of the rest of the country.
The final example is France. In November, the French parliament decided to earmark €33bn from the national reserve pension fund FRR to reduce the short-term pension scheme deficit. In this way, the retirement savings intended for the years 2020-2040 will be used earlier, that is in the years 2011-2024, and the government will spend the saved up resources on other purposes.
It looks like although the governments are able to enforce general participation in pension schemes, they do not seem to be the best guardians of the money accumulated there.
France’s arms industry was under scrutiny on Tuesday after an arbitration court ordered the payment of €630m ($820m) in damages to Taiwan over a controversial defence sale that has dogged politicians in Paris and Taipei for two decades.
The ruling comes as France faces allegations of bribery over the sale of submarines to Malaysia in 2002 and as questions are being raised over a similar deal with Pakistan in the 1990s.
Thales and the French state were fined over commissions linked to a sale of six Lafayette class frigates to Taiwan in 1991, in breach of the contract banning the use of intermediaries.
Thales, at the time known as Thomson-CSF, is liable for 27.5 per cent of the fine, in line with its share of the contract, and the French state is responsible for the balance.
The intensely political controversy has touched the highest levels of government in both Taipei and Paris, with allegations against top-ranked Taiwanese defence officers and a former French minister.
The frigate affair was even used in the Clearstream smear scandal that pitched French President Nicolas Sarkozy against his arch-rival Dominique de Villepin, over claims that kickbacks from the deal ended up in accounts – later proved to be forged – of senior French politicians.
In October, French investigators abandoned a separate criminal inquiry into whether some of the payments helped fund political campaigns, due to lack of evidence. The French government has repeatedly refused to release certain documents, citing “defence secrets”.
Thales said it would appeal against the decision by the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Court of Arbitration. “Thales disputes the very grounds of this decision. The company will initiate all available proceedings and actions against this award,” it said.
French government officials refused to comment, though Wu Den-yih, Taiwan’s premier, welcomed the ruling.
The affair came to light when a Taiwanese Navy captain and head of the island’s procurement office was found dead, floating off the coast of Taiwan in December 1993. His death sparked controversy over Taiwan’s decision to buy French frigates after initially favouring cheaper South Korean vessels.
French relations with China, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan, also suffered over the sale.
The arms industry has a long shadow, specially with emerging markets. It stinks and the fact that politicians go about helping this corrupt behaviour is criminal. This is so shameful, the French State itself has been found corrupt. I know this could well be met with a Gallic shrug but come on, guys, you are supposed to be civilised and all that, proud of your culture, your education, your principles and your language. How does it feel when people say that’s all very fine and good, but where did all this culture and principles go when dealing with Taiwan?
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