Welcome, sit down, have a drink why don't you?

Hello there my good friend,

and welcome to Aldana Unlimited. Here, all sorts of wild and wacky things will happen. For instance, I will post links; I will provide social commentary both serious and tongue-in-cheek; I will unwind.

I will also make some personal remarks - only not too often. (You know, like about the poignancy of autumn and those things...)

So to start off, a pretty serious piece about novels and politics in France, where people are enraged at the elites and at neoliberalism and have gone crazy. The left is out behind the left sidelines (European football joke!), France's bestselling writer in a bazillion years is a huge reactionary, and the only politician taking advantage is the monstrous Sarkozy. My god!

Is Islam really "a hypocritical anachronism that substitutes rage for a frank acceptance of our animal natures"?

Are the French really racist?

And just why have "[t]hese savage tirades against modern times ... struck a nerve in France’s body politic, currently seized by a dramatic crisis"?

You'll have to read "Reading Between the Lines" to find out (registration is required but also free - and, you can lie).

Readers with a short attention span might object that the article is boring - fair enough. They may also attack my failure to mention French PM Dominique de Villepin, who seems to be challenging Sarkozy from the right, right now. Well, the reason is that Sarko is the overwhelming favourite of righwing voters, and favoured by 90% of his party members; Villepin, a supposed centrist, may today jolt the left, but in the medium run, on the right, it's all Sarko. (And for more on the French constitution vote, click here.)

Otherwise, I'm distressed by the constitutional impasse in Bolivia, where the parties in power, who are about the get rocked in elections, are somehow completely failing to redistrict a handful of seats. If they can't work this out by the end of the week, December 4 elections would be cancelled. Silly, but true.