{"id":438,"date":"2011-03-22T09:02:11","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T13:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.wabash.edu\/studying-abroad\/?p=438"},"modified":"2011-03-22T09:02:11","modified_gmt":"2011-03-22T13:02:11","slug":"interesting-to-live-politics-scandal-in-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/2011\/03\/22\/interesting-to-live-politics-scandal-in-france\/","title":{"rendered":"Interesting to Live Politics, Scandal in France"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pete Robbins ’12<\/em> –\u00a0The weather is finally warming up in Paris, so the black of overcoats is no longer the only color on the sidewalks.\u00a0 Although it was still great, Paris was surprisingly somber in the winter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, however, the sun is out almost every day and it has hardly rained in a few weeks.\u00a0 Even better, in one of my classes, the professor had to go to Abu Dhabi for three weeks, so I\u2019ve been able to take that much more advantage.<\/p>\n

By now I\u2019ve seen most of the big tourist sites and museums, although of course there\u2019s always something left to see.\u00a0 What\u2019s been especially interesting is the amount of diplomatic and political crises that have been going on since I arrived in January.<\/p>\n

One French minister had to resign from her post after saying that the French government supported Ben Ali\u2019s dictatorship in January (and it was revealed that she had flown in his private jet on numerous occasions).\u00a0 President Sarkozy is nearing the end of his term and it\u2019s almost certain that he won\u2019t be re-elected.\u00a0 The Japanese tsunami\/overall disaster has spurred a serious nuclear energy debate in France, which receives 80% of its power from nuclear energy.<\/p>\n

Also, this year is supposed to be some kind of special year between Mexico and France (I guess it was called the year of Mexico here).\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of a weird concept, but anyway the celebration of all things Mexican has been tempered by the fact that Mexico is holding (and I think has sentenced) a French woman to prison for kidnapping, and the French think she didn\u2019t do it.\u00a0 So Sarkozy said something to the effect of, \u201cThe year of Mexico can no longer be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

And! former president Jacques Chirac is currently charged with serious allegations of embezzlement\/fraud from when he was president in the 1990s.\u00a0\u00a0 However, most people agree that while he\u2019s probably guilty, he\u2019ll never be tried, and some newspapers are now saying that he\u2019s too old and senile and that everyone should just forget about it.\u00a0 Basically, imagine if Clinton\u2019s scandal had been appealed and delayed for 15 years.\u00a0 Would we really still care?<\/p>\n

So all that stuff has been very interesting, but the wine and the cheese and the bread are all the same, so everyone is able to cope and carry on normally with their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pete Robbins ’12 –\u00a0The weather is finally warming up in Paris, so the black of overcoats is no longer the only color on the sidewalks.\u00a0 Although it was still great, Paris was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-study-abroad"],"w_featured_image_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/studyingabroad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}