Hollande declares Euro-crisis over!

Which came as startling news to 350 million Europeans!

Hollande made his declaration during a visit to Japan.  Assured by his top advisers that the Japanese did not have access to the internet, and that no one in Japan could read the English/French/German newspapers, he went out on a limb thinking he might be able to slip this whopper past his hosts.

This is but the latest example of the French President's inner circle giving him a bum steer. It was the court philosopher BHL who convinced the naive waif Hollande that invading Mali would be a good move.

Hollande fully believed he would "earn his spurs," as the persuasive Levy so seductively put it.

Not only did he fail to win any spurs, now he cannot figure out how to get out of Mali!

Nor does he have any clue how to turn around an economy that continues to shed jobs and accumulate debt. He remains totally befuddled about how to escape Merkel's austerity enema when in reality it would take merely two words; nein danke.

But it might do him good to visit a sovereign nation that doesn't do austerity and doesn't take orders from Merkel. If such independence is possible for Japan, perhaps it is possible for France too.

Socialists need secret Swiss bank accounts too!

I detect a double standard here.

For generations it has been considered the conventional order of things that any self-respecting member of the French bourgeoisie, whether from the left or the right, the far left or the far right, or anywhere in between, has at least one mistress and one secret Swiss bank account.

"Ce la vies," as the French would say, which roughly translated means "so what?"

Well, poor Hollande the would-be "crusader" just lost his Finance Minister due to some trumped up scandal that wouldn't even be a scandal if everybody wasn't so utterly sick to death of the hapless Hollande.

Big in Mali, a bust in France, that's how Hollande's brief turn in the limelight has turned out so far. Jerome Cahuzac is just the latest victim of the anti-Hollande crusade being orchestrated by the three disgruntled Frenchmen subject to the 75% tax recently imposed on super-high earners.

What's really got the folks pissed is Hollande's headlong rush into the Malian fiasco. While heartily lauded by supposed left-wing philosopher-heavyweight and all-round buffoon BHL, the hasty intervention has thus far succeeded in draining the French treasury of many millions and getting a dozen French troops killed, all in the name of some imbecilic notion of colonial greatness.

Latest word from the UN is that at least 11,000 "peace-keepers" will be required to contain the mess that the French have stirred up. Number of troops offered for this mission thus far?

Zero.

In fact, the French are still resolutely waiting for most of their African allies to field troops for the now-almost-over intervention, let alone the peace-keeping mission that will allow the French to go home.

Mind you, given the number of times the city of Gao has been liberated in the past three months, it's not hard to see why putative allies might be getting cold feet.

Looks like you're on your own, Mr. Hollande... and good luck!

Hollande the Conqueror's liberation merry-go-round in Mali

Back in January a chuffed Malian communications minister informed the world that the war in his country would be over in days.

Indeed, the key town of Gao fell the very next day.

You can watch it fall again in this entertaining You Tube clip from 10 February.

Two weeks after that the Islamists were driven out of Gao again!

And according to the BBC, guess who's back today?  Yup, it's those darned al Qaeda rebels!

But not to worry, the story has a happy ending. The rebels have been pushed out of town and the French and their allies are once again in control.

At least for the rest of today...

Hollande's halo fading fast

Is it possible that on the same day, Africans in Mali are chanting "merci Papa Hollande," while a couple of borders away in Tunisia, crowds are chanting "France out?"

According to this article from The Economist, the "Mali bounce" in Hollande's poll numbers has been a short-lived phenomenon indeed.

And that's less than 30 days into an occupation that will have to last for years, if not decades, if the goal is to snuff out Islamic insurgency for good.

That of course will never happen unless and until the causes of these so-called "Islamic" insurgencies are addressed, and then we face the fact that "Islamic" insurgencies are at root no different than insurgencies in other contexts.

Insurgents become that because they are fed up with being under the thumb or the boot of whatever power is depriving them of the right to choose their own path in the world.

It is only a matter of time until the crowds in Mali are making the same chants as their African brothers in Tunisia.