Damien Perrotin
I’ve always disliked writing biographical blurbs because I never know how to begin... well, let’s say I was born and raised in Saint-Nazaire, a small industrial city in Southern Brittany and have graduated from Science Po’ Aix, a school specialising in law and political science – I must still have the diploma in some drawer. Like most French men of my generation, I spent some time in the military and had a rather banal career in the municipal administration. At thirty-three I engaged in politics, in the UDB, a small autonomist party. As the head of the local branch, I do the usual campaigning, scheming and politickering, while measuring the growing impotence of traditional politics as a tool to get us through the energy descent without too much damage. I am also a member of a local think-tank called CELA. Being a minor politician, and a political scientist by education, I am especially interested in the political, sociological and cultural aspects of the energy descent.
Environment |
May 13, 2013
Notre-Dame-des-Landes and the risks of activism
Even if it is hardly a priority, I suspect that a significant minority of my readers have heard about the Notre-Dame-des-Landes question. For those who haven’t, I will summarize it. Notre-Dame-des-Landes (Our Lady of the Moors in English) is a rather unremarkable village in the southern Breton countryside, which happens to have been chosen as the location of a future airport. Locals have …
Society |
Apr 24, 2013
In memory of the Bank of Saint-George
There have been a lot of talks about banks lately in France, both because of the Cypriot debacle and because the minister in charge of the French IRS has been caught red-handed hiding a substantial amount of money in some Swiss bank.
Society |
Mar 4, 2013
Cultural Diversity
Modern societies like cultural diversity, preferably when it is far away, reasonably photogenic and does not inconvenience them politically. They also like to marginalize minority cultures and transform them either into folkloric caricatures or into assimilated ghosts of their former selves. During the last two centuries, modern civilization has absorbed most of Earth's cultural diversity and …
Society |
Jan 2, 2013
Political crisis and choices
Politics can be involuntarily funny. The 2000 presidential election certainly was, seen from this side of the Atlantic, and while the Dominique Strauss Kahn debacle was traumatic, the circumstances of our former president to be’s fall make the whole episode somewhat amusing, at least in retrospect. We just have had another of those Florida 2000 moments, but one which is very indicative …
Society |
Nov 15, 2012
Gay, gay, marrions-les
France is about to legalize gay marriage. This has caused some turmoil in some part of the opinion and the right wing opposition bitterly opposes it, mostly, I think, to show they are indeed the Opposition. Indeed, the very fact that a measure which concerns only 5% of the population has become, in the middle of a major economic crisis, one of the focuses of our collective conversation tells a …
Society |
Sep 30, 2012
A few words about education
There are two major school networks in France, and a large number of minor ones. Public Schools (écoles publique), also called Secular Schools (écoles laïques), are state run and free (as in free beer). In most areas, they are the default schools and their quality is highly dependent upon their localization. Some, in suburban ghettos for instance, are dreadful, others, such as Henri IV in …
Society |
Aug 11, 2012
Fascination for Death
We are a peculiar culture. We are extremely reluctant to accept the possibility that our civilization might decline and fall, like all those which have preceded us, yet consider the idea of utterly trashing the biosphere with a fascination which would have made an early twentieth century symbolist uneasy. We have had another example of it with a paper published in the June issue of Nature.
Society |
Jul 28, 2012
The end of the European dream
The European debt crisis is making the front page, again. Moody has changed the outlook of Germany to negative and Spain is forced to borrow at more and more unsustainable rates. The fate of the Euro is more and more uncertain and while it is not certain, it is quite possible that Greece, and perhaps other Mediterranean countries, will abandon it at some point of the future. This, of course, …
Economy |
Jul 19, 2012
(There ain’t no) green jobs
Jobs, or rather the lack of, have been a major issue during the last French elections. This is hardly surprising as mass unemployment has been a fact of life in France for a whole generation. Unemployment rates have begun to climb during the late seventies and have hoovered between eight and ten percent since then. Of course the real figure is probably higher.
Society |
Jul 5, 2012
Campagning with the Greens: the basic income delusion
The proponents of basic income claim that we deserve it because our societies are so rich. The problem is that this richness does not come from nowhere. A part of it is the product of a a failing but still vigorous imperial system which transfers wealth and resources from the south to the north under threat of military force. Another part come from the frenetic overexploitation of …MORE ARTICLES +
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