Erik Svane, No Pasaran blogger and man-about-town in Cannes, and his co-blogger U*2, are following Michael Moore‘s Sicko at the Festival, so don’t miss their posts.
Erik has two books in French that are soon to be translated into English: La Banniere Etalee (sorry about the punctuation marks – they don’t show well on my server), and General Leonardo, which you can purchase at the above links.
Erik’s publisher, Editions Underbahn, also publishes September 11 Wall Street Sonnets by Eugene Schlanger.
In yesterday’s podcast Erik and I discussed Nicolas Sarkozy’s new cabinet. (It was approximately 14 minutes into the podcast. We had phone connection problems prior to that). My question was, in appointing socialists like Bernard Kouchner to his cabinet, would Sarko be setting himself up into a situation similar to Chirac’s when Jospin was Prime Minister, where Chirac and Jospin spent all their time bickering?
Erik stated that appointing Kouchner as Foreign Minister, is part of Sarkozy’s stratey to win the legislative elections. Sarko has to be open in order to win, and is doing a great job. Kouchner’s the Socialist Party’s most popular member.
Kouchner was not the front-runner because he appeared too pro-American. As Erik puts it,
“The world did really well in getting Sarkozy as President and Kouchner as Foreign Minister.”
…
“Bernard Kouchner has been to Biafra, to Bangladesh, to Saddam’s Iraq; he wrote the foreword to The Big Black Book of Saddam Hussein, a 600-page opus on Saddam Hussein’s crimes.”
Doing this podcast was a lot of fun, as Erik was talking from his cell phone en route to downtown Cannes. I could only wish we could have enjoyed the scenery, too.
You can listen to the podcast here.
