Hollande gets cold shower in municipal elections

Hollande the Conqueror may be a hero in the CAR and Mali, but he's toxic in France.

The big winners in the municipal elections are allegedly the centre-right main opposition, but read between the lines and it's obvious that the real winners are the once-marginalized National Front.

We've said it before and we'll say it again; once the mainstream left makes itself irrelevant, the fringe right will pick up the pieces.

National Front is long past being on the fringes. The roots of the far right go deep in France. Yes, there is a substantial "silent majority" that will be in denial about that forever, but look at the election results and tell me who is in the ascendancy.

A big part of the reason is that the left cannot seem to come up with viable candidates who capture the imagination of the people. What did Hollande ever have to offer?

Those with even a marginal appreciation for the difference between left and right would have been putting their eggs in the Melenchon basket two years ago.

National Front soars as Hollande dithers

After almost two years at the helm, Hollande has impressed the populace with his non-existent grasp of issues both domestic and overseas.

The early enthusiasm for foreign adventures, as typified by the ever-unctuous BHL claiming that Hollande would "earn his spurs" in Mali, has long faded.

It has so faded that Hollande is now the single most effective recruiting tool for the National Front.

Hang in there Francois, if anyone can bring back Vichy it will be you!

The power of bare boobs

I see where the Ukranian FEMEN group has once again garnered world-wide attention with their topless protest of a National Front rally in Paris.

The rally was in honour of French icon Joan of Arc, who has been adopted quite against her will as a mascot of the far right in France.

FEMEN founder Anna Hutsol describes the group as the new wave of radical feminism. That's good news I suppose; who isn't beyond sick and tired of the old wave of radical feminism?

While there does not appear to be a unifying theme to who and what they protest, if you connect the dots between their targets you can see a pattern of sorts:

• human trafficking
• sex trade
• Islam
• Christianity
• Strauss-Kahn
• Berlusconi
• Putin.
• Pope Benedict.

As you can see, they seem to hold a grudge against anyone who ever told them to sit down and shut-up.

I like that about them.

They are also consistently against the many faces of sexual exploitation, and that too is worthy of support. They've also protested the lack of public toilets in Kiev, although I'm not sure how that ties in with the broad strokes of what appears to be an anti-exploitation agenda.

They have protested the Davos summit too, although there is no explicit anti-capitalist plank in their somewhat chaotic platform.

What's noteworthy is their methodology. Plenty of middle-aged men and women have been protesting the National Front for years, but you don't see them making international headlines, do you?

But get a few attractive young women to remove their shirts, and suddenly we have front page news.

Which raises the question; is the international news-consumer interested in their message or merely in their breasts?