No-one can accuse Nicolas Sarkozy of mincing his words over Islam, minarets and national identity. We thought he had retreated after his national debate on French identity began degenerating into a forum for immigrant-bashing. Today, he is back on the parapet, warning Muslims to keep a modest profile or face the failure of moderate Islam in France.
Sarkozy did this in a column for le Monde, draughted by Henri Guaino, his wordsmith on patriotic matters. He started out with sympathy for the Swiss who voted to ban new minarets last week.
The vote showed how important it was for France to define its identity, he said. "Instead of condemning the Swiss out of hand, we should try to understand what they meant to express and what so many people in Europe feel, including people in France. Nothing would be worse than denial."
Sarkozy of course called for tolerance and underlined France's respect for all faiths, but his message was heavily aimed at reassuring those who are unhappy about what they see as a threatening Muslim presence in the country.
"Christians, Jews, Muslims, all believers regardless of their faith, must refrain from ostentation and provocation and ... practice their religion in humble discretion," wrote Sarkozy/Guaino.
Addressing himself to Muslims, he reassured them that he would fight to protect them from discrimination. "But I also want to tell them that anything that could appear as a challenge" to France's Christian heritage and republican values would "doom to failure" moderate Islam in France, he wrote. [*Full quote at end].
Sarkozy's point was that Muslims must integrate into French society, embracing the Republic's values and traditions. It is legitimate to examine the malaise in Europe, he said, mentioning globalisation as well as Islam. "This dull threat that so many people in our old European nations feel, rightly or wrongly, hanging over their national identity, we have to talk about it together lest repressing this feeling ends up feeding a terrible bitterness."
In taking this line, Sarkozy is rejecting the onslaught from the left, the intellectual world and some senior figures in his own Gaullist camp over what they see as a political ploy that stigmatizes immigrants. Dominique de Villepin, one of three Gaullist Prime Ministers to disapprove, said today that Sarkozy's debate is "rushed and brutal". Jean-Pierre Raffarin, another former premier, said that Sarkozy has launched the sort of discussion that people have in the cafe.
Sarkozy's target audience is the conservative and rightwing voters who backed him for the presidency in 2007. He argues that defending national identity is a noble cause, opposed only by the elite. This, he hopes, will benefit his Union for a Popular Movement in regional government elections in March.
One should be careful not to put an "Anglo-Saxon" perspective on this. Disquiet over visible Islam runs across the political spectrum in France. The country subscribes to the doctrine of assimilation and does not approve of separate cultures and "communities". [This news item today on British policewomen with Muslim head-dress would be unthinkable in France]. Sarkozy enjoys strong public support for his opposition to Muslim women wearing face-covering in public. The National Assembly is reviewing ways of countering the practice and may propose an outright ban on the dress next month.
An Ifop survey last week found that 46 percent favoured banning minarets, with 40 percent against such a prohibition and the rest undecided or indifferent. That is stronger than Swiss poll figures before their vote. Forty-one percent of the French oppose building mosques, compared with only 19 percent in favour, the poll showed. France has 64 mosques with minarets but only seven are deemed to be tall ones, according to Brice Hortefeux, the Interior Minister.
The Socialists and much of the wider left are boycotting Sarkozy's debate, dismissing it as a crude political ploy. Some 30,000 people have so afar signed a petition by leading thinkers and poliiticians that calls for the exercise to be abandoned.
Sarkozy's unabashed campaign is also causing disquiet among quite a few UMP lawmakers. The line was crossed for them last week when André Valentin, a UMP mayor from a northern village, gave offensive endorsement to the debate. "It is time we reacted because we are going to be eaten alive (by immigrants)," he said on television. "There are already 10 million of them, 10 million who are getting paid to do nothing."
Anti-immigrant contributors have showered racist comments on an internet site opened for the debate by Eric Besson, Minister for Immigration and National Identity. These include remarks such as "being France means being white, that's all" and "being French means learning to park your car in a garage to avoid having it set on fire." Some 12 percent of the comments have been erased as offensive.
The identity debate has confirmed Besson, a former senior Socialist who switched horses during the 2007 election campaign, in the role of hate figure for his former camp.
The left-leaning intellectual world was also appalled when Hitler and the Nazis were brought into the debate by Christian Estrosi, a Sarkozy friend who is Industry Minister and Mayor of Nice. "If on the eve of the Second World war, the German people had taken the time to asked themselves upon what German identity was based... then perhaps we would have been able to avoid the ...shipwreck of European civilisation," said Estrosi.
After a month of state-organised town hall meetings around the country, Parliament began debating identity today. The campaign ends in February with recommendations for the Government to act on.
Final Note: Sarkozy also took on Google today. "We won't let ourselves be stripped of our heritage to the benefit of a big company, no matter how friendly, big or American it is," the President said. He was setting out plans to save French literature from the American data monster on a visit to eastern France. He would devote a chunk of a forthcoming national loan to financing a French book digitisation project, he said. "We are not going to be stripped of what generations and generations have produced in the French language, just because we weren't capable of funding our own digitisation project."
President Jacques Chirac made a similar promise in 2005, calling for a European answer to Google Books, called Quaero. It never got off the ground because other Europeans were unwilling to finance it.
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*Sarkozy's warning:
Mais je veux leur dire aussi que, dans notre pays, où la civilisation chrétienne a laissé une trace aussi profonde, où les valeurs de la République sont partie intégrante de notre identité nationale, tout ce qui pourrait apparaître comme un défi lancé à cet héritage et à ces valeurs condamnerait à l'échec l'instauration si nécessaire d'un islam de France qui, sans rien renier de ce qui le fonde, aura su trouver en lui-même les voies par lesquelles il s'inclura sans heurt dans notre pacte social et notre pacte civique.
Eight million viewers watched the coronation in Nice of the latest Miss France on Saturday night [video below]. That is a little less than usual, but it's still remarkable that 13 percent of the French population tunes in to watch young women parading in swimsuits and high heels and dancing in evening gowns for three hours as an oily host (Jean-Pierre Foucault) comments on their charms.
After controversy last time, the jury this year was relegated to the sidelines and a public vote decided the winner. They picked Miss Normandy, Malika Menard, 22, an undergraduate law student from Caen. Invited on the TF1 tv news yesterday, la nouvelle miss told the nation: "Being Miss France means giving love to people, happiness. I want to be a sympathique Miss." [The English word is used, not Mademoiselle]
How is it that Miss France is still a mainstream national institution when northwest Europe (Russia and east Europe are different) decided decades ago that beauty pageants were offensive and banished them to the margins? Yes, they are popular in Italy too, but France is part of the modern north for most purposes.
Part of the reason is nostalgia. Miss France symbolises a stable, rural golden age that figures in the collective imagination -- and which President Sarkozy sees as the key to French national identity. Miss France is supposed to carry French elegance to the four corners of the world but much of her job consists of travelling the country awarding prizes at agriculture shows and village fêtes.
The contestants are required to conform to the old virtues of modesty, chastity and decorum. No contestant may be married, have children or be living with a man. She must be of high morals and have no police record. The entertainment comes from the contrast between this kitsch, make-believe world and the tough, undemure organisation behind it. For years, we have watched a scandal-stained soap opera as Geneviève de Fontenay, the dragon-like President of the Miss France committee, has fought to keep her girls pure and her hands on the organisation.
The personality of Fontenay, 77, is a big part of the story. Born Geneviève Mulmann, "the lady in the hat" rules with an iron fist. She tried unsuccessfully to excommunicate Valérie Bègue, the 2008 Miss France, after a magazine published less-than-chaste pictures of her. A popular figure, Fontenay regularly deplores the decadence and moral collapse of modern France. She does not mince her words, drawing a contrast between her wholesome pageant and the sexual exhibitionism of the age. "I have never shown off my fesses (bottom) and I will never do so," she said recently. (Her contestants' swimsuit parades are presumably for showing off character). Last summer, she took a swipe at Carla Bruni over her celebrated former love life and changing politics. Bruni, she said "sleeps left at home and on the right at the Elysée Palace, and embodies a 180 degree turn from former first ladies."
In the Saturday extravaganza, Fontenay denounced "Secret Story", a popular TV reality show, as "trashissime" -- ultra-trashy, and warned the new Miss France to stay away from it. The show in question is produced by Endemol France -- the same company which now owns Miss France. Her tension with Endemol explains why Fontenay was only allowed brief remarks in the ceremony.
There is always a row. Today there are claims on the internet that the contest was loaded in favour of Miss Normandy, partly because she has an Arab first name. Fontenay said before the contest that she hoped that a woman of Arab background would win one day. Miss Menard is, it turns out, pure Norman. Her parents just liked the foreign name.
La nouvelle miss, who will represent France in the Miss World and Miss Universe contests, has big career ambitions. She dreams of one day becoming ... a journalist.
For over a year now, a popular topic at Paris dinner parties has been whether France could elect as president Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The Socialist heavyweight is top of the opinion polls, but he is dogged by a reputation as a serious Don Juan.
An active interest in the opposite sex has almost been a job requirement for recent presidents, from Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in the 1970s through François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac in the 80s and 90s to Nicolas Sarkozy. But the gossip holds that the case of Strauss-Kahn is different because he may have left a lurid trail. According to the rumour mill, someone has a video or pictures that could prove too much even for unshockable French voters. [Picture above: with wife Anne Sinclair, a TV news star]
You will recall that DSK, as he is known, is chief of the International Monetary Fund and that last year, he had a brush with scandal when a female IMF subordinate accused him of taking her to bed for a night at the Davos World Forum. An official inquiry cleared him of abusing his power but reprimanded him for a serious error of judgment in conducting the relationship. Current polls show DSK, 60, a senior Socialist, to be the only potential candidate who could beat Sarkozy in a presidential vote. Charming and reassuring, DSK exudes an image of competent statesmanship. Ségolène Royal and the younger bloods in own party want to stop him muscling in on the election. The former Finance Minister and would-be candidate in 2007 has been working hard from his perch in Washington to position himself for the 2012 race. His own Socialist rivals have just as much interest as Sarkozy in sinking his candidacy.
DSK's Lothario image is the stuff of comedy acts and media sketches [March post]. This week, it aquired more weight when le Point news magazine reported that he had tackled Sarkozy and accused his staff of dirty tricks against him. According to le Point, he buttonholed Sarkozy in the men's room at the Pittsburgh G20 summit last September and told him: "I have had more than enough of the gossip going around about my private life and supposed dossiers and photos which could emerge against me. I know that it all comes from the Elysée Palace. So tell your guys to stop or I'll take them to court."
DSK was particularly upset that a recent book had quoted Frédéric Lefebvre, a gunslinging spokesman for Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), as saying that a DSK presidential campaign would derail within days because "we have photographs".
Lefebvre, a sharp-tongued political bruiser, has since denied saying this.His remark, if made, may just have been drawn from the Paris rumour mill. Everyone has heard of supposed "DSK videos" but there has not been the slightest sighting of one on the internet or anywhere else. Sarkozy is likely to stop his Elysée team spreading rumours since he himself has suffered in the past from smear campaigns involving women.
There remains the question of whether the tale could dampen DSK's run to unseat Sarkozy in 2012. When the topic came up a couple of weeks ago, a senior elder of the establishment told me that a sex tape, even if one existed, would have absolutely no effect on voters. "The French just don't care about les aventures of their leaders," he said. A younger public figure at the table disagreed, saying the internet had changed old assumptions. A lurid video would blow up a candidate nowadays, not for moral reasons, but because it would expose him or her to ridicule. This remains hypothetical of course, but I would agree that even in imperturbable France, internet exposure woul finish off a presidential candidate.
We know that Americans are falling out of love with Barack Obama, but it is hard to believe that he is now less popular there than... Tony Blair. That is among the findings in the latest Harris Interactive survey of global leaders for France24, the state external news channel.
[Note December 5: I have rectified the link, which went to the previous survey. It now goes to the current one]
The survey has been tracking leaders' standing in five European countries and the United States since late 2008. Obama is slipping, but he still comes a distant first overall, with a 76 percent rating. Inside the United States he scores only 53 percent, compared with 65 percent for the former British Prime Minister and US ally in Iraq [Blair gets only 27 from his own people]. Second overall comes the Dalai-Lama, followed by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose stock has risen sharply to 59 percent. Blair is next, with 49 percent and Pope Benedict XVI follows with 43 percent.
Nicolas Sarkozy will be disappointed to find that he has sunk to sixth, at 39 percent, barely ahead of José-Luis Zapatero of Spain and Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General. Poor Gordon Brown of Britain follows at 36 percent, edging out José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission. Last of the 21 names that were polled comes President Ahmadinejad of Iran. It's interesting that he still gets the support of five percent of the 6,182 respondents in France, Germany, Spain, Britain, Italy and the United States. The Italians and Spanish rate the Iranian leader the highest.
In a separate ranking on leaders' global influence, Obama soars over all others, followed by Vladimir Putin, who is just Prime Minister of Russia, not its President. Merkel comes next, then Sarkozy, ahead of Hu Jintao of China. President Karzai of Afghanistan rates as the least influential. It's not clear how much can be read into this survey, at least from the US side, because I would guess that not many Americans have heard of Europeans such as Barroso or Zapatero.
The scores are the arithmetic average of the rankings in each country polled. Click here for pdf report, Or click on graphic below to see popularity index
Popularity ranking:
Barack Obama 78 percent
Dalai Lama 71
Angela Merkel 59
Tony Blair 49
Benedict XVI 43
Nicolas Sarkozy 39
Jose-Luis Zapatero 38
Ban Ki-moon 37
Gordon Brown 36
José Manuel Barroso 34
L I Lula da Silva 29
Benyamin Netanyahou 22
Vladimir Putin 20
Hugo Chavez 17
Fidel Castro 17
Silvio Berlusconi 16
Dmitri Medvedev 15
Hu Jintao 12
Hamid Karzai 11
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad 5
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The age of non-polluting air travel came a step closer today when Bertrand Piccard's amazing sun-powered aircraft left the ground in Switzerland on a brief maiden flight.
The Solar Impulse, which is designed to soar across oceans with four solar-driven electric propellers, flew 350 metres about a metre above the runway at a military aerodrome near Zurich with a German test pilot at the controls. A small hop for a plane, but it's more significant than generally realised. You'll hear more about the Piccard project in a year or two.
Several experimental aircraft have flown with pilots on solar power since the late 1970s, but the Solar Impulse is the first designed to fly indefinitely. It will stay aloft all night using batteries that are recharged by its solar-paneled wings in the daylight.
Piccard, the Swiss pioneer behind the 80-million euro project, was thrilled by the first feat of the spindly, ultra-light machine which has a wing-span as wide as that of a big airliner.
"It is a very strong emotion. It has been a dream for 10 years and now we have got to this point," he told me. "I am elated that we have managed this a week before the Copenhagen climate summit. That sends a strong message that there can be sustainable powered flight with no pollution."
On his site tonight, Piccard says: "Never before – in the whole history of aviation - has an aircraft so big, so light and consuming so little energy, actually flown"
After perfecting the single-seater, which weighs only as much as a medium car and flies at about 40 mph, Piccard, 51, and André Borschberg, 57, his partner, aim to fly the Solar Impulse across the Atlantic and then around the world. They will land every five days to exchange pilots.
The team developing the prototype at Dubendorf Air Base said they were thrilled by how well the pioneering technology was working. "It has behaved even better than expected. It is a very new flight domain," Borschberg, an engineer-businessman, said.
Piccard set out to blaze the way for future low-polluting flight after he and Brian Jones of Britain made the first non-stop flight around the world in a hot-air balloon, in 1999. After expanding test flights, Piccard and his partner aim to fly for a day and a night by the end of next spring over Europe. All going well they will set off around the world with the Solar Impulse in 2012. The International Air transport Association (IATA) has committed itself to zero-emission airliners by 2050. 
Those who worry about France losing its identity should be relieved by the thoroughly Gallic way that the country has greeted swine flu. Over the past month, we have swung from one extreme to another. Behind the story lies France's deep suspicion of authority and its devotion to conspiracy theory.
First, the government ordered enough vaccine for the whole nation and more -- - a measure taken by few other states. Word then went around that there was more risk in vaccination than in contracting the disease. Some medical personnel fuelled the hysteria by refusing vaccination for themselves and a couple of government ministers said they were reluctant too. Then, two weeks ago, there was a sharp rise in flu deaths and millions rushed for their free injections.
The result is a fiasco. People are waiting all day for their piqure at state health centres. Roselyne Bachelot, the Health Minister, has called in military personnel and medical students to help but she is refusing to let civilian general practitioners do any innoculating [Bachelot in picture being vaccinated]. The reason for that is to save money. The tax-payer has already spent nearly a billion euros on over 90 million doses.
President Sarkozy gave his Cabinet an angry lecture on the mess yesterday. "If I were in your shoes I would make an example of someone immediately," Sarkozy told Brice Hortefeux, the Interior Minister. That means that the head of another prefect (local state administrator) may roll for displeasing Sarkozy. The president wants to see no more television news pictures of vaccination queues snaking round the block, he said. The 1,200 centres are finally to open in the evenings and on Sundays.
Why has swine flu produced such a psychodrame?
France distrusts its rulers and especially when it comes to public health. In recent decades, thousands have died because of government conspiracy, negligence or bungling. There was the scandal of the HIV-contaminated blood in the 1980s, in which the Socialist government delayed Aids-testing on donated blood because a French-made process was not yet available. A former Socialist Prime Minister was tried and aquitted. Other officials received criminal convictions. There were also the deaths of dozens of children because of France's enthusistic use of growth hormones in the 1980s. Nearly 60 percent of all world cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease due to growth hormones have been recorded in France. And there was the August heat-wave of 2003 in which thousands of elderly and infirm died while the health and social services were on holiday.
There was also a suspicion that the whole vaccination scheme was a plot to make money for GlaxoSmithKline, the pharma giant. Corroborating evidence for this theory -- which quickly infected internet -- was the fact that Bachelot, the Health Minister, is a pharmacist by profession. Suivez mon regard...
In case anyone thinks I am taking a gratuitous swipe with this analysis, Le Monde gave a typically succinct summary of the reasons for France's flu tizzy last week.
"Four categories of reasons can be singled out, all exacerbated by the economic crisis: those linked to uncertainties, the links between health and money, the reactions to the course of the epidemic and a durable crisis of confidence with regard to governments and institutions." [*French quote below]
As a final note, President Sarkozy is not setting a good example. He has so far failed to be vaccinated and le Parisien reported on Monday that he hates injections.
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*Le Monde:
Quatre catégories de raisons peuvent être individualisées, toutes exacerbées par la crise économique : celles liées aux incertitudes, les liens entre santé et argent, les réactions au cours suivi par la pandémie et une crise de confiance durable à l'égard des gouvernants et des institutions.
John Major, the luckless British Prime Minister of the early 1990s, is serving as a model for Nicolas Sarkozy this week. In 1991, when European leaders tied up the last big treaty, at Maastricht, Major [picture below] rashly declared victory for Britain, saying it was "game set and match". This time, saluting Europe's new dawn under the Treaty of Lisbon, which took effect today, Sarkozy has proclaimed a grand slam for France.
The French President believes that he came out on top in the carve-up of senior jobs in the new streamlined European Union. Unlike Major's claim, the boast seems justified.
Sarkozy has spent the past few days gloating over the way that he outmanouvered Gordon Brown and other EU leaders. "The English are big losers in this affair," he told Le Monde while visiting the British Commonwealth summit in Trinidad at the weekend. He is especially happy to have landed Michel Barnier, his candidate, in the post of boss of the internal market, with additional responsibility for policing financial services [Barnier in top picture with Sarkozy].
The arrival of a commissioner from regulation-minded France was grim news for the City of London, Europe's main financial centre. Sarkozy said that his achievement was proof that "French ideas for regulation are triumphing in Europe". In a speech in the Var département today, he came back on the subject again, blaming the recession on the "Anglo-Saxon model" and claiming that Barnier's appointment was "the victory of the European model, which has nothing to do with the excesses of financial capitalism."
France had never run the internal market in 50 years, he noted. (A brief for those outside Europe: France has benefited greatly from the open single market over the past 17 years, but politicians and public opinion demonise it as an Anglo-Saxon-inspired threat to French workers and the welfare state. The view is the opposite in shop-keeping Britain, where the EU's free trade zone is viewed as one of the few good things the Union has done.)
Sarkozy's artistry was evident when he imposed Herman Van Rompuy of Belgium as the new permanent President of the Council of 27 member states. No one else except the Belgians was keen on anointing the little-known prime minister as the first European president. Gordon Brown blew his hand by insisting on Tony Blair for the job while knowing that the former Labour prime minister faced too much hostility -- mainly from his own left-wing family -- to stand a chance. [Picture: John Major]
Sarkozy then ensured that Pierre de Boissieu, a wily French diplomat, retained his job as the Council's Secretary-General, its manager. What Britain got was the appointment of Catherine Ashton, a Labour party apparatchik with no diplomatic experience, as the Union's new foreign policy representative. Baroness Ashton was Brown's third choice for the post, after Geoff Hoon and Peter Mandelseen, two heavier-hitting Labourites. The upshot is that the Union Council is in the hands of two lightweights who will be unlikely to cramp the style of the EU's paramount leader, as Sarkozy casts himself. Having Barnier running the market gives France more power than landing the jobs of chief diplomat or chairman of the council, in Sarkozy's thinking. Brussels insiders agree.
The cherry on the cake was the success of a barrage of telephone calls last week in which Sarkozy persuaded José Manuel Barroso, the President of the European Commission, not to listen to British objections to Barnier taking the financial portfolio. This appointment had brought him "satisfaction and joy", Sarkozy told leaders of his Union for a Popular Movement. As they say in French, C'est plus fort que lui -- he cannot resist his instinct for boasting.
Sarkozy dispatched Barnier, a former Agriculture and Foreign Minister from the Gaullist Party, to soothe the City yesterday. A mild-mannered executive who is loyal to his master, Barnier flattered the financiers on their important role. He also served up some Sarkozy-style rhetoric on the evils of speculation and the need to put capital at the service of entrepreneurs. Sarkozy could not resist rubbing in the message at his weekend session with his party. "We will both go and reassure the City, but I prefer the worry to be on that side of the Channel than chez-nous," he said.
Brussels experts may retort that Barnier must report to Barroso, a free-market advocate, that he is outranked by Ashton, who becomes Commission vice-president, and that British civil servants wield considerable power in the Commission machine. That is certainly true, but Barnier's presence means France is going to make itself felt.
Sarkozy is on a self-congratulating roll this week. Today in the Var he has delivered a speech in which he claims the credit for France's relatively mild economic downturn.
"When you see that France has the smallest recession, you have honestly to say to yourself that the prevailing economic policy has something to do with it," he said, then added: "Natually, I am not saying that out of self-satisfaction. "
The oddest reaction to the Swiss vote prohibiting new minarets has been the surprise of the local media. They are voicing their shock today. Certainly, the opinion polls had shown a fairly solid rejection of the initiative of the nationalist SVP party, but the Swiss establishment was taking its wishes for reality, as the French say.
On my Swiss trip last week, I could sense strong feeling over what to many seems to be a rise in visible Islam. And it is ancient experience that supporters of morally dubious causes do not tell pollsters their true voting intention. For years French pollsters grossly underestimated support for Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far right leader, until they added a big correction.
The fall-out from yesterday's referendum has followed classical lines. Muslim organisations from Indonesia to Egypt have voiced outrage. Swiss Muslims, who come mainly from the Balkans and Turkey, have reacted with sorrow. "The most painful thing for us is not the ban on minarets, but the symbol sent by this vote," said Farhad Afshar, leader of the Coordination of Islamic Organisations. "Muslims do not feel accepted as a religious community."
The Swiss and European establishment has deplored what is seen as an irresponsible act of intolerance by a nation that has yielded to its populist streak. Le Temps, Geneva's establishment newspaper, said: "The vote was inspired by fear, fantasies and ignorance." Damage to Switzerland's international standing would be spectacular, it said. "Vengeance, boycotts, retaliation ... this clash with Islam could cost dearly." In France, Libération's front page said simply: "The Vote of Shame".
More conservative voices, including the parties of President Sarkozy in France and Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany, have tempered disapproval with the conclusion that, however irrational they might be, the Swiss have signalled real public disquiet over Islam.
Further out, the hard nationalist parties have been celebrating victory along with Switzerland's SVP. Italy's Northern League, cheered the victory of "Church towers over minarets". Marine Le Pen, of the French Front National, said: "The elites should stop denying the aspirations and fears of the European people, who, without opposing religious freedom, reject ostentatious signs that political-religious Muslim groups want to impose."
Swiss Green politicians say that they plan to challenge the minaret ban in the European Court of Human Rights. International rights groups are unanimous that it breaches the freedom of religion guaranteed by the European Convention. In the meantime, the Swiss government says it has no alternative to having the relevant sentence inserted in the Constitution. This says: "The construction of minarets is prohibited."
A brief conclusion: The Swiss have confirmed that their country is deeply divided between an elite of outward-looking modernisers and a population with many worried traditionalists who want to preserve Switzerland's separateness from the world. The vote has probably helped Muslim fundamentalists and hindered the cause of a moderate, European Islam of the kind desired by Sarkozy and other leaders.
It has also probably stiffened French determination to outlaw the wearing of face-covering by Muslim women. Xavier Bertrand, Sarkozy's party leader, was on the television this morning insisting that the Swiss vote had nothing to do with France's plans for an anti-burqa law, he said. "The burqa must be forbidden in France because it is a provocation by extremists," he said.
Mainstream politicians in France, Germany and other countries with sizeable Muslim minorities, are quietly grateful that they do not have Swiss-style exercises in direct democracy. France only has a handful of minarets, but if voters were asked whether they wanted to ban new ones, it is fairly likely that they would give the same answer as the Swiss.
King Louis XIV of France never said L'état c'est moi, Louis XV never said Après moi le déluge and Queen Marie Antoinette never said let them eat cake [Qu'ils mangent de la brioche]
Of course true scholars here on the blog already knew this but I didn't. Those famous royal remarks are among dozens of misattributed, misunderstood and outright false quotations in a fun little book just published by two academics.
In their Petit Inventaire des Citations Malmenées [Little inventory of mishandled quotations] Paul Desalmand and Yves Stallini delight in knocking down famous lines that were outright invented or wrongly attributed to great figures of the past. They blame lazy journalists and historians for popularising dodgy quotes and making them up because they sound right.
Among these apocryphal quotations is King Henri IV's Paris vaut bien une messe [Paris is well worth a mass]. No trace of this legendary quip by the ex-protestant king can be found in historical records. They suggest that it may have been invented by enemies of the popular 16th century ruler who switched to catholicism in order to have the crown.
Another quote spread by enemies is certainly Marie-Antoinette's Qu'ils mangent de la brioche, say the authors. The doomed queen never uttered the line or anything like it when the hungry Parisians were at the gates of Versailles. They trace the quote to the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau who described how, long before the revolution, there was a legend about a princess who said of hungry peasants 'let them eat cake'.
As for Louis XV and his supposed remark on the flood, the quote should be more accurately attributed to Madame de la Pompadour, the king's favourite in the 1750s. She is said to have joked to the king after a defeat by Prussia in the Seven Year War: "Après nous, le déluge". But even that is dubious and the remark was more likely to have been spread as gossip at the time, the authors say. 
Louis XIV never uttered the boast about being the embodiment of the state, says the book. The legend took off in 1655 when the 17-year-old monarch exerted his authority over the Paris parliament. There is no record of his using such language, which in any case would have contradicted his lifelong belief that he was the servant of l'Etat, not its incarnation.
Here are more made up or misattributed quotes:
Voltaire [picture] never uttered anything like his famous line on free speech "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". The authors say the quotation was invented in the United States and popularised in dictionaries of quotations there.
Machiavelli never formulated the concept of divide and rule [divides ut regnes in Latin, diviser pour mieux régner in French]. It is apocryphal.
Herman Goering never said "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver". It came from a 1933 play by Hanns Johst, a pro-Nazi writer, whose character said "When I hear the word culture, I load my Browning".
Sartre's famous line l'enfer c'est les autres [Hell is other people] has been taken completely out of context, says the book. A character in Sartre's wartime play Huis Clos says the words but he meant that the presence of other people forces one to practise moral behaviour. It is used now as a way of saying 'I can't stand other people'.
And a final quote to end, La vieillesse est un naufrage [Old age is a shipwreck]. General Charles de Gaulle is famous for using the line, but it is often attributed to Chateaubriand. In reality de Gaulle invented it. Writing about Philippe Pétain, he said that he believed that the World War One hero would not have collaborated with the Nazis in 1940 if he had been his younger self.
President Sarkozy's irritation with Barack Obama seems to be getting the better of him. In private and in public he barely misses an opportunity to put down the US President.
Before we get to today's swipe, a piece of fashion news will not have pleased the Elysée Palace. Elle, the Parisienne's fashion bible, has announced its 2009 best-dressed list, giving first place to Michelle Obama in the "political chic" category. Carla Bruni, Sarkozy's supermodel-wife, was relegated to second. Last year Bruni was ahead of Mrs Obama, but behind Asma al-Assad, the British-born wife of the Syrian President.
Elle's jury, led by Nathalie Rykiel, said the emphasis this year was on strong personalities who shine with their distinctive style. That was enough to knock Bruni, a career supermodel who has developed a demure new style, off her perch. "Mrs Obama resembles no-one else. Her style is unique," said Elle. "She encourages young designers and has succeeded in imposing the waisted cardigan as official dress."
Chou-chou, as she calls her husband, criticised the US President today over his decision to turn up at the forthcoming Copenhagen climate summit nearly a week ahead of the other national leaders, "when the decisions will be taken." Suggesting that Obama was imposing his own timetable, he said: "I would not want anyone to be discourteous towards the Danish Prime Minister, who has organised the conference."
Sarkozy was in Brazil seeing his friend President Lula in a tour to put together a coalition to lean on the United States over targets for greenhouse gas emissions at Copenhagen. He flew to Manaus, in the Amazon, to find that he was almost the only international leader at a summit chaired by President Lula to save the rainforest [Sarko as Amazon rep is not so far-fetched. A chunk of Amazon jungle is part of France -- in the form of Guyane, a French overseas département] Today Sarkozy has dropped into the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad to recruit Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, to his cause.
Sarkozy's sniping at the US President has made the news in France this week. The French leader is seriously irritated by the cool shoulder that Obama has given to his overtures. He has not digested his refusal to drop in to the Elysée last June when he spent 24 hours next door with his family. Sarkozy has been telling colleagues and journalists that he considers that Obama has more style than substance and that his foreign policy so far is lamentable. He told the media earlier this month: "Obama has been in power for a year and he has already lost three local elections. I have won two parliamentary elections (French and European)."
L'Express magazine devoted its cover to Sarkozy's Obama Obsession this week [picture below]. Sarko is infuriated by the "irrational magic" that surrounds the US leader, it said. "Politics is more than form and glamour, it is about issues," Sarko was quoted as saying.
Sarkozy's attitude stems from a sense of rejection, say the insiders. Le Parisien recalled yesterday that the President started out by calling Obama "mon copain" -- my pal -- but dropped it after Obama resisted his charm. Already 18 months in power when Obama took office, Sarkozy wanted to play the mentor, keeping the high profile that he had created for himself as Europe's most dynamic leader.
The Americans have been consoling the French, telling them that Obama is the same to everyone. Distance is his style. But that does not please Sarkozy because he considers that he is Europe's paramount leader.
Ah, Switzerland, its Alpine pastures, its milk chocolate, its army knives and… its minarets. You might get that impression from the poster above. It is featuring in a campaign for one of those people's votes that only the Swiss come up with. The whole country votes on Sunday on a move to ban minarets from the country.
[Thursday update see end of post]
The controversial poster is not visible in the orderly, picturesque streets of Berne, the capital, where I have been talking to parliamentarians this morning, but it nevertheless represents an idea that a sizable minority of the Swiss agree with, according to the polls. There are too many Muslims in Switzerland and they should not be allowed to impose their religion in public, the argument goes. It is one of those Swiss paradoxes that the country which is most associated with tolerance, democracy and consensus should stage such a provocative referendum.
It was proposed by the nationalist Swiss People's Party (SVP), which had no trouble raising the requisite supporting signatures. The party, which is the biggest in the Swiss parliament, has a history of tweaking the populist nerve. This one got going when a mosque at Langenthal, a quiet town near Berne, was refused permission to build a minaret. Here it should be explained that there are a total of four working minarets in Switzerland and one built for decoration in 1865 by Philippe Suchard, the great chocolatier. The Muslim population has grown swiftly since the 1970s but its members, who come mainly from Turkey and the Balkans, still represent only four percent of the population. The majority are not practising. Swiss law already forbids the outdoor practice of religion, so there will be no muezzin calls to prayer in any event.
The absolute numbers are not important, I have just been told by Ulrich Schluer, an SVP parliamentarian who is one of the founders of the anti-minaret movement. Switzerland's Muslims are expanding swiftly and imposing practices -- notably the oppression of girls and women -- which break Swiss law, he said. "We are going in the direction of Germany and France and the UK. We have to stop it here," he said. For the SVP and its supporters, minarets are not part of Islamic faith, but symbols of aggression towards the rest of society.
Naturally, the Swiss establishment, including the Government, the churches and intellectual classes, are appalled by the referendum and are urging the country to reject it. Polls show that it should lose, but not by a great margin. Opponents expect about a 55/45 percent rejection. Hugues Hiltpold, a Radical party MP from French-speaking Geneva told me the vote was a "catastrophe for the image of Switzerland which ever way it goes." Banning minarets would only stigmatize Muslims. Switzerland has no problem with Islam and should live up to its tradition of absolute freedom of religion. He allowed that there was widespread disquiet over the presence of relatively large numbers of Muslim immigrants, but the answer to that lies in education and better integration, he said.
Behind the referendum lies anguish in Switzerland about the country losing the special identity which has been its pride for centuries. This quality of Swiss-ness, known by the German word Sonderfall, has taken a beating in recent years, with exposure of the country's less than gleaming wartime record and the recent global opprobrium over its banking secrecy. Hiltpold says rejection of the minaret motion will shore up la Suissitude, as the French-speaking Swiss call the exceptionalism, but the SVP and its backers see themselves as the last bastion against the country's betrayal by the elite which wants to integrate with Europe.
Switzerland, still one of the very richest nations, finally got around to joining the United Nations in 2002 and they have opened up to Europe with bilateral agreements, but there is no broad support for a referendum on joining the Union. The last one was rejected in the early 1990s.
I sought a view from Pascal Sciarini, director of political sciences at Geneva University. He sees the referendum as a battle between the still powerful rear-guard that wants to keep Switzerland closed and the educated elite who are for joining the world and making the most of a national brand name that is still one of the most admired and respected. "The trouble is that Switzerland has always defined its identity negatively. It cast itself against the surrounding big powers and did not want to open to the exterior," he said.
A note to any Swiss readers here, this is just an outsider's snapshot. Of course the matter is far more nuanced that I have conveyed in these lines.
Update: After posting this, I've talked with a few other players in the war of the minarets. Among them was Mutalip Karaademi, the Muslim community leader at Langenthal, the town near Berne where the anti-minaret campaign took off. He says he is shocked by the ferocity of the referendum advocates. "They think we are animals. We are normal people. We just have a different religion. ... They call us new names every day, like terrorists, Islamists. It's absurd. " Karaademi, an Albanian of Macedonian origin who works as a salesman, suggested building a minaret at the Lanenthal mosque three years ago. It was blocked by opponents and led to the referendum. He says his children are Swiss but after 27 years of living here and paying taxes, the authorities still refuse to grant him nationality. "People have to pay a lot of money to get it," he said.
[Picture. Outside the Swiss parliament In Berne. Taken with my phone at lunchtime today. ]
The Renault company has run into trouble with young French parents over the name of its latest car. They are unhappy that the firm has bestowed the name Zoé on its forthcoming all-electric offspring.
This is not the first time that Renault has caused discontent since it began giving its vehicles cute feminine names in the late 1980s. Clio and Mégane dropped from favour for girls after the car maker used them for two popular models. At least no-one was called Twingo or Safrane, names which Renault made up for other models. Scots were bemused by the choice four years ago of the pedestrian surname Logan for the low-cost car that has been a European hit for Renault. The oddest of all coinages was the Renault Vel-Satis, the company's luxury car, which has been a failure. The name was supposed to conjure up something futuristic.
With Zoé, Renault is taking a name that has been fashionable for the past few years in France. Its defenders think they have a chance to stop the company from devaluing it because the car remains at the concept stage and could be released under another name.
Petitions have sprung up on the internet. Sébastien Mortreux, from the northern town of Auby, is gathering signatures witha text that calls Renault's action shameful.
"Because our daughters have a beautiful first name, which must not be associated with that of a car, let's unite to bring pressure on a multi-national which is going to destroy this pretty name for our children. It is a scandal that they are able to use common first-names for a product".
A mother of a one-year-old Zoé called Rebecca226 is appealing for support on another site. "I am scandalised by this action and I find it totally abnormal that Renault should decide to take the name of a woman, that of my daughter, to apply to a car, that is to say a marketing product." The name will become ridiculous if it is used for the car, she wites.
You can detect a whiff of good old anti-capitalism in some of the comments on these sites. These are obviously not the kind of people who follow the fashion of giving brand names to their children, like Chanel, Fanta and Armani. Rue89, the excellent French news site, expands on the theme today.
Renault said that there is nothing insulting in the choice. "It is a name that evokes values of femininity, of youth, a playful spirit and vivacity," Valérian David, a Renault spokesman, told us. "It is also a reference to the concept of zero emission.... I think people will be able to tell the difference."
Using girl's names on cars is hardly new. In 1902, Emil Jellinek, a German-born businessman, called a car after his daughter Mercedes. Also, my prize for the oddest vehicle moniker goes to Citroen for a popular van, used by the police among others. It is called the Citroen Jumpy.
Your writer
Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times. He started out as a journalist in Russia and then moved to the United States. He has reported from all the continents but most enjoys observing the exotic tribe on Britain's doorstep. Though France is home, he avoids going native by offering what the locals call an "Anglo-Saxon" eye on their country.
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