Free Republic

Mitterand was the FRENCH President between 1981 and 1995. He also died in 1996.

Philip Delves Broughton, in Monaco for the trial of Ted Maher, finds that the principality is a rotten little retirement home for fat catsIt was bucketing down in Monte Carlo and the casino was empty. Croupiers sat forlornly at the tables in the gilded Salle d’Europe and in the large private rooms at the back, overlooking a sheer drop to the Mediterranean. Several of them were horsing around with the sticks they use to gather in chips. The restaurant tablecloths were starched and laid with silver, but the waiters had no one to serve. A few old birds in dodgy...

CHANGER LA VIE ! 1981. François Mitterrand is elected as French President and wants to "change life" with 110 bills and the support of all the Left's voters. Time is short: he knows he's ill. But two years later, an unprecedented austerity plan is put in place... Directed by: Serge Moati, France, 2010 Written by: Serge Moati, Christophe Barbier, Hugues Nancy

Gay French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand's defense of Roman Polanski has now put his own past under the microscope. French politicians have called the defense an attack on the United States and at least one party has called for Mitterand's resignation. Mitterand, whom Sarkozy appointed as Culture Minister, in June, apparently wrote a book described as "a mixture of straight autobiography and more dreamlike reflection" in which he talks about paying boys for sex. Says Mitterand in the book: "I got into the habit of paying for boys [even though I knew] the sordid details of this traffic...All these rituals...

Total Recall A French oil giant's deals with a rogue regime--this time in Iran. Don't stop us if you've heard this one: French oil giant Total SA is being investigated for illicit dealings with a rogue regime in the Middle East. This time it's Iran, but maybe you recall its experience with another dictator and something called Oil for Food. A French judge is investigating bribes that Total executives allegedly paid Iranian officials to secure business in the Islamic Republic. Last week, the judge issued preliminary charges of abuse of company funds and corruption of foreign agents against Chief Executive...

!-- E IBYL --> The European Union claims it has secured peace among historical enemies, spread democracy to its neighbours and created a new model of international co-operation. But none of that was pre-ordained. The milestones of the past 50 years tell a story of bitter national rivalries, personality clashes and tortured compromises which have threatened the project's survival more than once and may do so again in the coming years. Churchill saw European unity as a means of breaking the cycle of conflict Winston Churchill, Britain's wartime leader, called postwar Europe "a rubble heap, a charnel-house, a breeding-ground...

Mitterrand and Chirac may have shared lover A BOOK about the sex lives of French politicians claims that President Jacques Chirac and François Mitterrand, his socialist predecessor, had a lover in common, writes Matthew Campbell. The woman is not named but the claim is raising eyebrows in France where journalists have, until recently, tended to accept an unspoken rule against delving into the private affairs of the ruling elite. The book, Sexus Politicus, catalogues decades of seduction and adultery by French leaders of all political persuasions. From Napoleon and Josephine to Félix Faure, the president who died in 1899 during...

Ah, the French. How to think of them? There is an easy default answer: kindly and gratefully. After all, they helped us in the Revolutionary War, gave us Alexis de Tocqueville and the Statue of Liberty, and to this day feel a keen republican spirit in harmony with America's own. Sure, we have had our spats. But when the chips are down, you can count on France to be on our side, more or less, and to supply some great wine if it is needed. ...Before 9/11, 77% of Americans held a favorable opinion of France. By March 2003, only...

Much has been said about the late President Ronald Reagan:how he stood up to the Soviets,etc. (You've all read the words.)What was not generally known was that he did quite a bit more. "At the Abyss" is an account of the Cold War years-from Harry Truman to George Bush,Sr.-as told by Thomas C. Reed:an Air Force officer who actually helped design our nuclear deterrent,and who went on to become Secretary of the Air Force. One of thepoints he makes is that Ronald Reagan became aware of just how desperate the Russians' financial condition was.They were spending 50 to 70% of...

With a cast of characters including a former prime minister, some of the richest executives in France and Germany, Paris' biggest-ever corporate crime trial continued this week with 37 defendants in the dock. France's largest-ever corporate corruption trial resumed in Paris this week with more drama than your average Mexican soap opera. The case offered further tales of illicit backroom dealing, a €5 million divorce settlement tab picked up by French taxpayers and allegations that a former French prime minister accepted bribes in connection with a string of acquisitions made by the state-owned French oil conglomerate Elf Aquitane in the...

A PARIS court has begun to hear the case against 37 defendants at the heart of the Elf-Aquitaine corruption saga, a scandal that has tainted leaders in France and beyond. The trial of Loik Le Floch-Prigent, a former Elf boss, and his associates, which began yesterday after an eight-year investigation, marks the final act of an affair that laid bare a system of state-sanctioned bribery and personal enrichment at the formerly state-owned oil concern. The Elf executives and other defendants are alleged to have embezzled and otherwise abused £140 million in the late 1980s and early 1990s in schemes that...

A JUDICIAL crusade against political sleaze in France came to an abrupt halt yesterday when Roland Dumas, the former Foreign Minister, won his appeal against a conviction for corruption in connection with the oil group, Elf Aquitaine. M Dumas, a close ally of François Mitterrand who went on to become head of the country’s highest legal institution, the Constitutional Council, was acquitted by the Paris Appeal Court. “I am happy that justice has been done,” said M Dumas, 80, after the judgment quashed a lower court ruling that he should serve six months in prison. His lawyer, Jean-René Farthouat, denounced...