And finally, and most importantly, the new theme song (listen, read, watch.

This new theme song, as expected, highlights the sponsorship scandal:

Haut les mains citoyens
Martin, Chrétien, Gagliano, libéraux
Plein les poches, plein les sacoches
Ils jurent qu'ils ne sont pas croches
Facile d'avoir bonne conscience
Quand on se rappelle de rien
Facile d'oublier les gens
Quand on ne fait rien

Most amusingly, the video shows a guy who looks a little like Paul Martin seemingly giving testimony (before Gomery?) looking confused and lost, and saying continuously that he knows "rien" and that he's fogotten everything.

Once again, the Bloc makes me wish I was able to vote for them.

Sponsorship scandal? Je me souviens!

Let's pick these over. First, you notice I didn't list "fear of private health care." If Martin were against private health care, he'd designate Jean Charest as Public Health Care Enemy No. 1. Only last week, the Quebec government announced plans to let people buy private insurance for services covered under the public health care plan. But picking a fight with Charest would vaguely undermine the Grits' vague Quebec credentials. As long as there's still a chance of keeping Jean Lapierre's seat in Outremont, Martin won't do that. Fortunately, Ralph Klein's still around to play punching bag.

…

Many Canadians plainly find the Conservative leader terrifying. Yet, in most cases, his only crime is to believe today what Paul Martin believed in 2002: that the Kyoto accord won't work, that missile defence is swell, that gay marriage is icky, and that staying out of the Iraq war might be bad politics. In fact, if you push him on most of that, Harper will step back, which makes him more or less interchangeable with Martin.

Yet Harper remains an easy guy to demonize. Probably he can't do anything about the voters who've decided he's scary. His challenge in this election will be to hang onto voters who don't think he's scary -- but do wonder (a) what he'd actually do as prime minister; and (b) why he's always so cranky.

I'm told the Conservatives have produced a much more elaborate campaign platform than anything we've seen yet. They've been afraid to show it to you because they're sure the Liberals will steal it. My hunch, based on not very much, is that it's actually a good platform. My other hunch is that the Tories will complain, the day after voting day, that the Canadian public didn't have enough time to get to know it.

…

Last week, Layton broke a six-month parliamentary deadlock by agreeing with Harper that this government is no longer worth supporting. Harper looked as if someone had shot his dog. It would be really swell if he could greet good news as good news, just once, before we decide whether or not to let him run the country.

One last thing. The fourth Liberal theme I identify above -- the gullibility of New Democrat voters -- has bugged me for a long time. I don't write much about it lately because (full disclosure) my girlfriend now works for the NDP. But what the heck: if you like the New Democrats but you vote for the Liberals to stop Harper, you profoundly deserve to wind up with a Conservative MP. You're just as likely to wind up with a Liberal who won't do a thing about your issues until he suckers you in the next election. One question we're about to answer is whether the opportunists are the only people in this country with the courage of their convictions.

"La Zone" is the (pejorative) term used for the ghettos in France. It's a little strange that while North American "ghettos" are usually near the city centre (hence the term "inner city"), it is the suburbs in France that are known for poverty and crime. Indeed, there's usually a negative connotation for the French word for "suburb" ("banlieue").

Let's make this clear: "La Zone" ain't a tourist destination. There are no hotels in "La Zone". In Strasbourg, "La Zone" is composed of cold, brutal 1960's residential complexes. And, like many poorer communities in the Western world, these suburbs do display abnormal levels of crime, violence, and burning cars. And, indeed, there was an underlying racial undertone, often displayed when listening to the suburbs' youth.

These days, one article being quoted by the blogs is a piece by Theodore Darlymple written three years ago. Mr. Darlymple discusses many of the endemic problems with the class divisions in French society, particularly in "La Zone". This is an exceptional article, and is a definite must-read. Pretty creepy foreshadowing:

The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris -- Surrounding the City of Light are Threatening Cities of Darkness

...

...Where does the increase in crime come from? The geographical answer: from the public housing projects that encircle and increasingly besiege every French city or town of any size, Paris especially. In these housing projects lives an immigrant population numbering several million, from North and West Africa mostly, along with their French-born descendants and a smattering of the least successful members of the French working class. From these projects, the excellence of the French public transport system ensures that the most fashionable arrondissements are within easy reach of the most inveterate thief and vandal...

...There are burned-out and eviscerated carcasses of cars everywhere. Fire is now fashionable in the cités: in Les Tarterets, residents had torched and looted every store—with the exceptions of one government-subsidized supermarket and a pharmacy. The underground parking lot, charred and blackened by smoke like a vault in an urban hell, is permanently closed.

...like all human beings, they want the respect and approval of others, even—or rather especially—of the people who carelessly toss them the crumbs of Western prosperity. Emasculating dependence is never a happy state, and no dependence is more absolute, more total, than that of most of the inhabitants of the cités. They therefore come to believe in the malevolence of those who maintain them in their limbo: and they want to keep alive the belief in this perfect malevolence, for it gives meaning—the only possible meaning—to their stunted lives. It is better to be opposed by an enemy than to be adrift in meaninglessness, for the simulacrum of an enemy lends purpose to actions whose nihilism would otherwise be self-evident.

...Though most people in France have never visited a cité, they dimly know that long-term unemployment among the young is so rife there that it is the normal state of being. Indeed, French youth unemployment is among the highest in Europe—and higher the further you descend the social scale...

...It requires little imagination to see how, in the circumstances, the burden of unemployment should fall disproportionately on immigrants and their children: and why, already culturally distinct from the bulk of the population, they should feel themselves vilely discriminated against. Having been enclosed in a physical ghetto, they respond by building a cultural and psychological ghetto for themselves. They are of France, but not French.

...A profoundly alienated population is thus armed with serious firepower; and in conditions of violent social upheaval, such as France is in the habit of experiencing every few decades, it could prove difficult to control. The French state is caught in a dilemma between honoring its commitments to the more privileged section of the population, many of whom earn their livelihoods from administering the dirigiste economy, and freeing the labor market sufficiently to give the hope of a normal life to the inhabitants of the cités.... If that fails, as in the long run it will, harsh repression will follow.

Don't get me wrong. For the most part, I felt safe in Strasbourg. Likewise, I generally feel safe whenever I visit Paris. But the fundamental seeds of the current French violence have existed for a very long time. It's important that we recognize this reality.