Thanks, interesting thoughts. I agree o.c. is an element of it and perhaps the dominant one. Not sure that excludes the hegemony aspect of it, though--could be an overlap between French o.c. and France's geopolitical interests/strategy. You could be right, though--I need to think about it some more. Hmmm--speaking of o.c., wonder if the Union Corse gets a cut of Chirac's bribes. . .
I don't know. My bet is that the bagmen will be caught handily and punished (if anyone is), but the real string pullers will never appear in the papers.