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Putin’s Pal on the French Right Wing

Business mogul, newspaper owner, and French senator Serge Dassault pulls out all the stops for the Russian dictator.

by
Kim Zigfeld

Bio

December 5, 2009 - 12:00 am
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Dassault Systems is owned and run by 84-year-old Serge Dassault, the Pat Buchanan of France (if Buchanan were successful and had a criminal record) and a close friend of Sarkozy. The company has used its influence with the French government to finagle itself and Russia into a 13-nation European consortium working on high-speed aircraft development.

Monsieur Dassault is deeply involved in French politics in a way Putin would immediately recognize; until this past summer he held both local and national office simultaneously. In June he was ousted from his mayoral position in Corbeil-Essonnes for buying votes and has been convicted in a corruption scandal involving the sale of military helicopters to Belgium. Nonetheless, he still holds a seat in the French senate.

Ultraconservative wackos like Buchanan and David Duke have long been great admirers of Putin, even without a personal financial stake in him. Buchanan calls Putin a man “determined to stand up to a West that Russians believe played them for fools when they sought to be friends.” He urges us to “show Putin some respect.” He puts full faith and credit in Putin’s popularity in opinion polls and wide margins of victory in elections, totally ignoring the fact that the Kremlin owns all the major TV stations and the elections have been shamelessly rigged.

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These folks like Putin because they’d like to govern us the way Putin governs the Russians. So if they can get rich by backing him, as Dassault can, that’s only tasty icing on the already delicious cake. Dassault openly proclaims it to be his goal, by fusing commerce, media, and politics, to wipe out democratic discourse because freedom of choice, which might lead to disagreeing with Dassault, is dangerous.

The French chose not to resist Nazi Germany during World War II, but to surrender instead. Perhaps the Sarkozy regime is now adopting the same strategy in regard to Putin. Like Obama, Sarkozy has shown no willingness to stand up for democratic values in Russia; to the contrary, both governments have shown every indication that they will sell democracy down the river in an attempt to appease Putin and win short-term gains.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal reports that, mimicking Le Figaro, the Obama administration “has toned down its once-strident criticism of two controversial Russian-backed pipelines,” projects designed to increase European dependence on Russian fossil fuels, projects that the Bush administration strongly opposed. The pipelines are also designed to obviate Ukraine as a transit point for Russian fuels, meaning that the country would lose the only leverage it has left against Russian imperialism.

Where, one must ask, throughout all this are the heirs of Ronald Reagan? Where are the conservatives who stood up to the “evil empire” and brought it down without firing a shot? Are they prepared to stand idly by and watch a disturbing alliance of far-right Europeans and leftist Americans turn the clock back on democracy?

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Kim Zigfeld is a New York City-based writer who publishes her own Russia specialty blog, La Russophobe. She also writes about Russia for the American Thinker and for Russia! magazine and is researching a book on the rise of dictatorship in Putin’s Russia.

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12 Comments, 12 Threads

  1. 1. Marie Claude

    well at first glance, it’s a misinformed article for almost of the statements

    What jumpted into my eyes first, Sarkozy doesn’t own a private jet, but the presidency does !

    Also, Serge Dassault isn’t possibly Pat Buchanan, cuz he is a french Jew

    France has the right to sell helicopters and Navy ships to Russia, up to now it isn’t under an embargo from the UN,and Russia isn’t a soviet country anymore like Israel also sells drones to Russia !

    Do you want me to enumerate to which countries the US sells arms and jet fighters to too ?

    Also France doesn’t need Russian gaz, our energy is producted by nuclear reactors at 83%, we also own Sahara oil sites

    BTW Do you know that France also sells helicopters, and many other army stuffs to the US too?

    Also I’m am not sure that Serge Dassault owns the “Figaro” today, his father did though

  2. 2. Marie Claude

    OK, I digged into your sources, they are second hand’s, if not third’s….
    can you manage to read french, and “le figaro” by yourself ?

  3. 3. Marie Claude

    “quelqu’un m’a dit” ben tu vas être modérée !

  4. 4. Mr. X

    Marie Claude,

    Kimmy Zigfeld who claims to be a young female writer from New York City is in fact probably a middle aged male sitting at a computer at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington D.C. And their m.o. is to smear anyone in the West who seems to “friendly” with the once and perpetual Evil Empire. Twenty years after the Cold War ended these old farts really have nothing else to do, but keep convincing their senile donors (and maybe some of the folks behind Saakashvili/Yuschenko) to keep the checks coming.

    “Imagine that (a) the Boeing aircraft company launched a major initiative doing business with Vladimir Putin’s Russia” LOL…Boeing already has several thousand employees in Russia and is supplying components to the Sukhoi Superjet. This is all open source. Ziggy is so tunnel vision into smearing “she” forgot.

    Great point too on the French allegedly being addicted to Russian gas. EDF is interested in Southstream because they want to make money selling Russian gas to Italian utilities, plain and simple…especially since gas will be the fuel of choice if all this climate hopey changey stuff goes through.

    FYI, I don’t think Kimmy has decided yet if evil Russia is against Copenhagen because it’s the world’s largest combined oil and gas producer and wants to cripple the American economy, or if evil Russia opposes Copenhagen/Kyoto since the hackers who leaked the AGW documents from East Anglia used a Russian IP. So she’s staying silent on that one, though she’s already slammed George Soros for dumping Saako and Yuschenko as the losers that they are and shifting tactics in Eastern Europe.

    Kimmy’s employers latest spin is that all the shale gas in North America, especially from the U.S., means that at last Europe will break free from its hateful addiction to Russian gas, what with all that cheap LNG from Qatar. What she and the Wall Street Journal won’t say is that cheap gas prices makes boondoggles like Nabucco even less economically viable than they already were. But it was never about the economics, it was always about bypassing Russia at all costs, getting some return on the investment in the invasion of Iraq, and possibly dangling a carrot in front of the mullahs, even if they would take the cash that would otherwise go to Russia (we can’t have that ZBig) and build nukes anyway.

    These people are so fanatically anti-Russia they would cut off their noses to spite their faces.

  5. 5. Mr. X

    On the arms sales I truly believe some D.C. think tanks, like the Center for Security Policy, are indirectly receiving kickbacks on the weapons sales to Georgia. Look at their military industrial complex board members paying salaries for honchos like Frank Gaffney to bloviate and get $500,000 a year salary plus travel expenses.

    The fact that the Georgians themselves cannot possibly afford $100 million for new arms should tell you all you need to know about Saako’s regime. It is simply a project and the Georgian people are pawns for the folks who want to fight Russia to the last Georgian and Ukrainian.

  6. 6. Marie Claude

    Mr X, I don’t care for whom Kim is working, probably for a lobby that has interest to find some headlouses in France’s hair, Russia is of course the ever useful “enemi”

    Now, She should also investigate which other countries trade with Russia, Germany is a much bigger partner, Italy is another one, Austria… and don’t forget the smartest’s, the perfid Brits !

    As far as me, I’m not spitting into the russian soup, a St Petersburg investor saved one of my place manufactury from bankrupting ! I reassure her, it isn’t an arms factury but a traditional artesans one, which used to sell its goodies to Americans when they still had money to spend for luxery porcellanery

    Mr X, BTW, I bought a St Petersburg thea service from them, like one of the Romanov that was in use in their palace. But it’s in a “vitrine”. I like to collect beautiful “vaisselle”

  7. Pat Buchanan is excellent commentator and writer whose only crime was being about 15 years ahead of his time in 1992. Calling him an ultraconservative wacko is uncalled for.

  8. 8. Mr. X

    Marie Claude,

    When you bring up who pays the bills, Kimmy Ziggy never responds. Ever. And that’s the giveaway. A crank in their basement wouldn’t resist the troll bait.

    Of course the Germans do more biz in Russia than anyone else.

  9. 9. Marie Claude

    Mr X, I understand your motivation, I was at the same level just a few years ago, please don’t resign on that site, explanations are aways better than rumors. I measure the distances since I undertake to counter any erronned facts about us. Of course, I may be taxed of excessive patriotism, or anything else, that some would label as arrogance, but nevermind, informations make their path

  10. 10. Ron

    Kim Zigfelds blog brings a huge amount of information about the Russians. Those who defend the Russians mostly engage in general complaining. When I was very young, a mature, nice neighbor lady said, “The Russians are natural born vicious”. We laughed at her. We aren’t laughing any more.

  11. 11. Marie Claude

    uh, may-be this has a rather certain importance :

    Do you think that the 15000 officials should avoid the prostitutes in Copenhagen ?

    http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2009/12/06/01011-20091206FILWWW00045-des-prostituees-gratuites-a-copenhague.php

  12. 12. mr

    Kim Zigfeld: listen your article was meaningless… Marie and Mr. X are 100% correct..
    Mr. X toy are correct that she is a he!!!!! and I bet you a drag queen!!! hot baby! Hot!!!

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