As a daily user of the excellent Vélib self-service bicycles of Paris, I find it hard to be optimistic over the latest transport revolution from Mayor Bertrand Delanoe: self-service electric cars.
Instant car rental already operates in many cities, including Paris. The novelty of Delanoe's scheme is its very ambitious scale and the use of all-electric vehicles. A week ago, Delanoe opened the "Autolib" project to tender from potential operators. Renault, Peugeot and Daimler are possible suppliers of the 3,000 vehicles, along with new specialised green vehicle firms.
If it works, in about 18 months time, Parisians and residents of near suburbs will be able to pick up an electric car with a card swipe at 1,000 stations day and night and drop it off at any any of them. This will cost about 15 euros a month plus four or five euros per half hour of rental.
Delanoe said that the eyes of the world would be on his pioneering venture but he acknowledged that it faced many unknowns. Like the Vélib bikes, the Autolib is meant to cut pollution.
Delanoe, an enthusiastic promoter of alternative transport, estimates that the availability of low-cost vehicles will encourage Parisians to give up car ownership, saving some 22,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
"This is a world first... We are starting a little revolution," Delanoe said earlier this month when he announced specifications for potential operators. "We have to change. We have to invent another way of moving around. It is a new concept for communal life."
The scheme is backed by conservative suburban councils as well as by Delanoe's Socialist party, but it is opposed by the Greens who are his allies in the capital's council. Even green vehicles will increase congestion, they say. "Encouraging the public to use any type of car instead of taking bicycles or public transport is a mistake," said Denis Baupin, a Green Deputy Mayor.
Delanoe replies that cars are necessary even in a city with good public transport. An additional reason, compared with London or New York, is the abysmal taxi service in Paris. Taxi drivers have been been opposing Delanoe's attempts to increase their numbers and of course they are opposed to the Autolib.
The city is drawing on its experience with its bicycles. The 21,000 Velibs have improved life for many Parisians and tourists, but since 2007, the scheme has cost far more than expected because of theft and vandalism. Eight thousand have been stolen so far and 18,000 damaged. To help pay for the losses, the city last month renegotiated its contract with JC Decaux, the company that runs the bike system.
There will be elaborate security on the cars and users will have to give a substantial credit card deposit, but Delanoe and the suburban mayors are counting on civic spirit as they wean residents away from cars. Drivers will be expected to leave vehicles clean and plug them in for recharging. They will have a short range of about 100 miles and they will be be clearly identified. This is supposed to discourage mistreatment and theft. But I fear that abuse will be substantial. You only have to see the way that people inflict mindless damage on the bikes. These cost 600 euros each while electric cars will run to thousands.
The pricing is designed to encourage short trips, such as shopping, collecting children or taking the famiy to places poorly served by public transport. Users can check for nearest available vehicles and parking slots on their mobile telephones or internet.
According to a city study, Paris-based cars spend 95 percent of their time parked. Only 40 percent of owners use their cars daily. Owners are estimated to spend an average 450 euros a month on their wheels.
Delanoe says the new Autolib managing agency has been flooded with initial applications. One group includes Avis, the SNCF railway and the RATP, the Paris transport authority. Let's hope it works.
The image of French football has taken a new hit. Last month we had the hand of Thierry Henry in the World Cup qualifying match against Ireland. Now we have the mouth of Nicolas Anelka.
The 30-year-old Parisian is a star of the national soccer team. He has spent most of his career playing for the biggest clubs abroad, mainly in England. He is now in his second season as a striker with Chelsea. This week, he lived up to the caricature of professional footballers as overpaid oafs.
In an interview with 20Minutes , he said he will never live in France again because people don't like him owning a Ferrari and he would have to pay too many taxes. "When you have lived and played abroad, you can never come back to France," he said. "France has a problem with money...
"In Spain and in England, people have big cars and do not hide them. The French hide what they own... That's not my mentality. When you're a football player and you have dreamed of buying a beautiful car, a beautiful house, you do it."
He was asked if he missed anything about France. "Nothing. You can't do what you like in France. I don't want to play football and pay 50 percent tax on what I earn. If some people are shocked, too bad. France is a hypocrite country."
His remarks, widely deplored in the media, have reinforced the view that many of the country's top footballers are louts. One wonders what impact Anelka's remarks will have on the boys who idolize him.
Anelka, the world's second most expensive player in terms of transfer fees, has a new reason to celebrate. Last night, London's French community crowned him "Français of the Year" in the sports category. More than 4,000 of the French expats voted in the third year of the awards, which are run by the Grandes Ecoles City Circle.
(Artist of the Year was Roland Mouret, the fashion designer, Chief was Raymond Blanc of Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons. Businessman of the year was Georfffroy de la Bourdonnaye, the boss of Liberty, the London store and fashion brand.)
France sent nine Afghan refugees back to Kabul today, so it was time for another shower of abuse for the man who is known as The Traitor.
Rarely does a European government member stir such contempt as Eric Besson, 51, Minister for Immigration and National Identity. Leftwing sympathisers, much of the media and some of his own colleagues simply cannot stand the Moroccan-born minister who features in a current news magazine [picture below] as "the most hated man in France".
Besson's post, which he took over in January, has made him front man for the cocktail of hard right themes that President Sarkozy's critics find most repulsive: French identity, with its attendant issues of Islam and burqa banning, and the expulsion of asylum-seekers.
To compound his offence, Besson is an unrepentant defector from the Socialist opposition. As a senior Socialist, he was economics spokesman for the party in early 2007 when he walked out on Ségolène Royal, its candidate in the presidential election that spring. For the rest of the campaign he sided with Sarkozy, her opponent, though he had just written a pamphlet denouncing him as "an American neo-conservative with a French passport".
Former colleagues nicknamed Besson Judas and they still turn their backs to avoid greeting him. Arnaud Montebourg, a prominent Socialist MP, calls him Laval -- after Pierre Laval, Prime Minister in the wartime Vichy regime. For the left-leaning media and chattering classes, Besson is the sycophantic villain of a Molière comedy. François Reynaert, a novelist, wrote in a Nouvel Observateur column last week: "He is a cunning boot-licker who will stop at nothing to have a post, the ideal knave for the king". [Thanks to reader Elizabeth for the good translation of fourbe (knave)]
Distaste for Besson was augmented by a revenge book in October by his newly-divorced wife. Sylvie Brunel, a writer and geographer, said that he had never stopped cheating on her, to use the modern expression. At their wedding ceremony 30 years ago, he changed the vows to omit the pledge to be faithful and went off to watch a Formula 1 motor race during the reception, she wrote. "The only goal that interests him today is killing the Socialist party, ensuring the re-election of Nicolas Sarkozy and thus restoring his honour," she wrote. Besson responded by turning up at a big football match with the 22-year-old Tunisian woman who has moved in with him. He had always devoted his spare time to women, he told Marianne.
Besson's Government colleagues privately voice their dislike for the unsmiling enforcer of Sarkozy's hardline immigration policies. They are appalled at the zeal which Besson, who was raised by a widowed Lebanese mother in Morocco, has shown for expelling clandestins trying to reach Britain (Besson only arrived in France at the age of 17). The final straw was his televised performance in an operation to demolish the Jungle, a makeshift refugee camp at Calais, in October.
The more squeamish in Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement, of which Besson is now a deputy leader, are unhappy with the national debate on French identity which he launched for the President last month. The exercise has descended into an ugly spat about immigration and Islam. Centrist members of the Cabinet want Sarkozy to call it off.
Besson seems to takes a pride in his antipathique public persona and displays indifference to the anger against him. "When I am convinced of something, I don't give a damn if it does or does not please the people who are permanently indignant," he said the other day. In his view, the chorus against him is politically correct humbug. He points to opinion polls which show that over 30 percent of the public support him.
However, for all his apparent enjoyment of his job, Sarkozy's chief trophy from the enemy camp was reported yesterday to be at the end of his tether. "He is on the verge of breaking," a minister told today's L'Express magazine.
Alerted to Besson's distress, Sarkozy strongly defended for his protégé at a lunch with his parliamentarians last week. In particular, he attacked the centrists who had rallied late to his camp in 2007. "Some of you are shooting Besson in the back. At least he has courage. He backed me for the presidency without blanching. He didn't wait for the final round to negotiate their support," Sarkozy told them, according to the Canard Enchaîné account.
Sarkozy is said to feel kinship with Besson. The careers of both have been marked by big betrayals. Sarkozy earned the name of traitor in the Gaullist camp when, as a rising protégé of Jacques Chirac, he abandoned his then boss in the 1995 presidential election. He backed Edouard Balladur, Chirac's chief opponent, who lost. Both Sarkozy and Besson are workaholic, iconoclastic non-drinkers. Sarkozy shared Besson's taste for extra-marital diversions, at least until Carla Bruni came along. They are both part-foreign outsiders from the establishment who grew up fatherless. Sarkozy's Hungarian father abandoned his family when he was a child. Besson's father, a flying instructor in the French Air Force, was killed before he was born.
Having said all that, it is difficult not to have a little admiration for the tête-de-turc (whipping boy) of the enlightened classes. In a field full of hypocrisy, at least he does not mask his cynicism and fierce ambition.
How much would you pay for a bit of the Eiffel tower ? How much for an old public urinal ? Bidders have just put down quite a lot of money on these items along with some 300 other pieces of memorabilia from Paris.
A 40-step stretch of spiral staircase from the original tower went for 85,000 euros (105 400 including taxes and commission). The iron vespasienne (urinal), from the days of Napoleon III's Second Empire, was snapped up for 3,348 euros -- twice its presale estimate (see note below on the name). An ordinary old 20th century ticket puncher (poinçonneuse) from the Métro underground went for 620 euros. It was the machine that could have been held by "Le Poinçonneur des Lilas", the hero of one of the late Serge Gainsbourg's best-loved songs. It's refrain goes, je fais des trous, des petits trous.... I make holes, little holes...
A pair of benches from the Métro dating from the late 19th or early 20th century fetched 22,320 euros. A hexagonal wooden newspaper kiosk sold for 14,260 euros. The proceeds from the sale, called "Paris Mon Amour," brought in a total of 256,912 euros, which was a pleasant surprise for the Drouot auction house.
The buyer of the Eiffel stairs, an eccentric scrap-iron merchant from Troyes called Yves Masson, has caused a stir by saying he plans to slice it up and sell off the pieces. In that way he will "bring art down to the street to multiply the pleasure of the beautiful," he said.
One lot in the nostalgia-soaked catalogue did not reach its reserve price. These were shards of glass from the Louvre pyramid. The sellers had hoped to attract fans of the Da Vinci Code, but it seems that even fans of Dan Brown were not quite as gullible as thought.
On the urinals: English speakers like to call these "pissoirs" but that's one of the numerous words that foreigners think are French but which the French have never heard of. The Germans, Slavs and Scandinavians also say pissoir. It may have come from old French, but the common slang in recent centuries was pissotière, from sailing ship days. The iron public urinoirs, introduced in 1834, were dubbed Vespasiennes after the Roman empreror Vespasian who imposed a tax on the urine that was used by dyers. When he was mocked for this, he replied with the famous line that "money has no smell" (pecunia non olet). The old vespasiennes have nearly all been removed since 1980. They linger on in literature such as Clochemerle, the 1934 satirical novel about a village row over one. The French Wikipedia entry tells you more on vespasiennes, including their notoriety in the 19th century as homosexual haunts.
Yet another French political star has been caught saying embarrassing things in front of a microphone. This time, the own goal has been scored by Rachida Dati.
Dati is the glamorous Cinderella figure who was wildly over-promoted from Nicolas Sarkozy's staff to the post of Justice Minister when he won office in 2007. She failed and he exiled her to the European Parliament last June, but she is working hard to stay at the top of national politics. While labouring dutifully as a European deputy in Brussels and Strasbourg, she is positioning herself to run for the national Parliament and then as Mayor of Paris, where she is already boss of the left bank's 7th arrondissement.
Dati casts herself as a good soldier who is happy and enthusiastic about her European job. She is cultivating her media image as a hard working parliamentarian, which is why she had a microphone on her lapel in Strasbourg the other day. She was being filmed by the M6 channel which for a piece on "a day in the life of Rachida Dati".
They recorded her in telephone conversation with a friend in which she is complaining about the boredom of her parliamentary job and reveals that she is only showing up because of the media.
"I am in the Strasbourg parliament chamber. I can't stand this, I can't stand this. I think there's going to be bloodshed before I get to the end of my term. I have to stay here, play clever, because there are a few press around and there's the election of (Commission President) Barroso... When you're in Strasbourg, they see you if you don't vote. If you don't, that means that you're not there." [French original below*]
If you know the European Parliament, there is nothing remotely surprising in Dati's sentiments. Trekking to Brussels every week and to Strasbourg once a month for plenary sessions is an excruciating chore. Many deputies don't bother to show up in Strasbourg beyond the minimum to collect their comfortable daily allowances. Dati is one of the few who are national stars, so she is under special scrutiny.
Everyone has supposed that Sarkozy's outcast favourite must be going round the bend in her Brussels-Strasbourg purgatory, but it's useful hear her confirm it. The audio clip is of course today's internet hit. Some commentators think that Dati did this deliberately in order to create a new buzz about herself.
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Translation note: In English, "Je n'en peux plus", her complaint, translates somewhere between "I can't stand this" and "I can't take it any more. "
*Je suis dans l'hémicycle du parlement de Strasbourg. Je n'en peux plus, je n'en peux plus! Je pense qu'il va y avoir un drame avant que je finisse mon mandat. Je suis obligée de rester là, de faire la maligne, parce qu'il y a un peu de presse et, d'autre part, il y a l'élection de Barroso (...) Quant tu es à Strasbourg, on voit si tu votes ou pas. Sinon, ça veut dire que tu n'es pas là...
One story has dominated the French news for the past five days but you may not have heard about it. The matter gripping the nation is the poor health of Johnny Hallyday.
The veteran rocker is emerging from an an induced coma in the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Television crews have staked out the place for days, leading bulletins with sketchy, fact-free reports. Family and friends have flown to his bedside. Meanwhile in Paris, two hooded men have beaten up the celebrity surgeon who allegedly bungled an operation on Johnny for a slipped disk two weeks ago. There are mysteries around the whole affair. The tale of the ailing star, pushy managers and shady doctors is prompting comparisons with the Michael Jackson saga. [Here's how the LA Times reports the scene]
For beginners here, Hallyday, 66, is a former teen idol who has been France's native rock 'n roll hero for half a century. Jean-Philippe Smet, to use his real name, is a hard-living showman. Since the late 1950s, he has inhabited a pseudo-American persona that he invented as a youngster to cover US hits. "Le Johnny national" is a bit of a joke to the thinking classes and the young see him as a kitschy dinosaur. To President Sarkozy and legions of middle-aged fans, he is a cherished national treasure.
For people over 40, the idea of the l'inoxydable (rustproof) Johnnie in intensive care has been a sharp reminder of their own mortality. Sarkozy explained Johnny's role in the French collective memory to foreigners in Brussels last Friday. He told an EU summit press conference that he was relieved to hear that the singer was recovering from what we are told was an infected spine. His illness "provokes great emotion in France because he's a much-loved man and, for each of us, he represents a bit of our personal history: memories, feelings, songs, music," Sarkozy said.
The Hallyday health story is in keeping with the larger-than-life persona. He has exhausted himself this year with a gruelling seven-month "farewell" tour which he is still supposed to resume on January 8. He went into the Parc Monceau clinic in Paris for an operation on a slipped disk late last month and flew only four days later to Los Angeles. He collapsed soon after landing. Jean-Claude Camus, his impresario, accused Stéphane Delajoux, a young show-biz surgeon who operated on his disk, of "massacring" Hallyday. Within hours, Delajoux was beaten up. His lawyer accused the media of effectively having him lynched.
Like much around the Hallyday story, we have no idea what the attack was about. Secrecy has surrounded his hospital stay, with not a single medical communiqué on his condition. Internet rumours say of course that he is dead. News has trickled out via Camus, Laeticia, his latest young wife [above], and celebrity friends who have visited him. The latest to fly out was Nathalie Baye, the actress, with whom he had a daughter.
Fingers are pointing at Camus, a tough businessman, for pushing Hallyday too hard. Despite his lifetime sale of over 100 million records, Hallyday is said to need the money to pay past bills and keep his entourage in the luxury to which they are accustomed. Like many stars before him, Hallyday has a reputation for being manipulated by the people around him. He is said to have lost a lot of money over the years. The public is also not told why France's national institution divides his non-working time between homes in LA, Saint Barts' in the Caribbean and Gstaad, Switzerland. The reason is that he needs to stay out of France to retain non-resident status to avoid income tax. He has been domiciled in Switzerland for the past three years.
 [Picture: France was shocked to see the mighty Johnny in a wheelchair at LAX]
Johnny said recently that he was weary of his role as the guitar-slinging, Harley-driving rebel. "I have had enough playing Johnny Hallyday," he said at the outset of his tour last May. "I want more and more to be Jean-Philippe Smet."
Franck Nouchi, a Le Monde columnist, made a good point this afternoon. The "sacred union" of the nation at Johnny's bedside says more about France than all Sarkozy's great debate over the country's identity, Nouchi wrote.
The insurance experts and lawyers are now preparing for battle over the big losses expected from the likely cancellation of the next stretch of his booked-out farewell tour. Will the surgeon be blamed or will Johnny be deemed irresponsible for taking a Los Angeles flight straight after an operation?
Someone should tell Ridley Scott that English home-owners in France do not win battles with local farmers. The director of Alien, Blade Runner and Gladiator, has just been defeated for the sixth time in a legal feud that he is waging with a couple of chicken farmers in Provence.
Sir Ridley, 72, is one of the platoon of celebrities who have bought into the idyll of the Luberon in recent decades. John Malkovich, Peter Mayle and Pierre Cardin are not far from his holiday home at Oppède [Picture below], near Cavaillon. In 2005, Scott used the area to film Mayle's A Good Year, starring Russell Crowe.
His picture ceased to be perfect in 2004 when Rose and Christophe Orset bought neighbouring land and started raising poultry. The chickens cackled offensively and the smell wafted into his property, he said. He sued and his case was thrown out. Things got worse when the Orsets expanded, building new sheds and multiplying their poultry. He sued again and again, to no avail.
The couple told local papers that they were "living in hell" because of Scott's offensive against them. "He watches us every time we lift a little finger," said Christophe Orset, who has lived in Oppède for 30 years. Rose Orset said: "He bought a post-card of the Luberon and wanted everything to stay like that. He is there one week every year but everything disturbs him. Since he has money, he sues for nothing -- a chicken coop, a row of trees." The Orsets also said their property is several hundred yards from Scott's and that it is hidden by trees.
Scott's latest suit, in the Nîmes court, sought the anullment of permits from the Oppède mayor for the Orsets to build a shed for packing eggs. The building would aggravate "the aural and visual pollution and bad odours" from the property, his suit said. The court-appointed expert disagreed, telling the judges that the site "was integrated perfectly in the landscape and that the noise of chickes is in harmony with the environment."
Albert Calvo, the Mayor of Oppède, was on France-Inter national radio this morning. His accent was so thick, I had to play back the quote several times. "It's a pity that Monsieur Ridley Scott gives the impression that, because young farmers have installed goats and are bringing up chickens, the village and the environment have been been destroyed," he said. "I do not think that Mr Ridley Scott can hear the chickens at his place." Scott was not available for comment.
My advice to Sir Ridley, as a southern rural home owner for nearly two decades, is that you will never win by going to court. You are an outsider, a city-slicker and, worse than a Parisien, you are a foreigner. You have a drink or two with the village mayor and make friends with the neighbours and you will win a few little concessions. That's the best you can hope for.
We are getting a clearer picture of how France aims to stop Muslim women veiling their faces in public. Jean-François Copé, parliamentary leader of President Sarkozy's UMP party, said yesterday that he hopes to table a law simply banning the niqab, the burqa or other face-covering in public.
The legislation will not be based on from France's law of laicité, or secularism, he said. It will draw on two arguments: the protection of women's equality and public safety. The burqa, as it is popularly called in France, has nothing to do with religion, said Copé. "It is about extremists who are testing the limits of the Republic," he said on Europe1 radio.
The point on public safety, Copé said, springs from the fact that society requires people to show their faces. Schools, for example, should not be expected to hand children over after classes to people whose faces they cannot see.
Copé said no decisions had been taken and that legal experts had to be sure that legislation would not fall foul of guarantees of religious freedom in the European Convention on Human Rights.
Proposals for action on the burqa will come next month from the parliamentary commission that is examining the matter. Momentum is building in favour of a law rather than simple exhortation, as supported by some in Sarkozy's party. Seen from outside France, this sounds hard to believe, but there is strong public support for legislation and the French state has a tradition of intervening more to enforce social norms than other democracies.
As we have seen here, Sarkozy has hardened his line over Islam and immigration, putting them at the centre of the great national debate that he is conducting on French national identity. He has not supported an outright ban yet, but has repeatedly said that burqas, niqabs or other full veils are instruments of oppression and "have no place in France". His government said this week that it was right that women in full veils were being refused naturalisation as French citizens.
The Socialist opposition broadly supports action against full veils, but it has qualms about using the law. François Hollande, its former leader, said yesterday that ways could be found for prohibiting the burqa without passing special legislation.
Quite a few in Sarkozy's camp doubt the wisdom of a burqa ban. The legal experts are advising the government that the law on laicité could be used to justify a prohibition in state premises such as schools, hospitals and public services. But a broader public ban is much more problematic. Freedom to choose one's dress, short of indecency, is a basic human right. If an adult woman says she is freely choosing the veil, what business is it of the state? The pro-law crowd retort that society has an overriding right to enforce the values of the Republic. That essentially means putting the equality and fraternity over liberty.
New data on the question emerged today from the national police intelligence service, formerly known as the Renseignments Généraux. The service estimates that some 2,000 women wear full veils in France and that the number is rising quite quickly. Three quarters of them are French citizens and one quarter are converts. A large number are very young and recently married to converts or men from the immigrant community, said the JDD newspaper, which saw the confidential survey.
The phenomenon remains marginal among French Muslims, say the police experts. It reflects the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the Muslim housing estates. Young descendants of immigrants are increasingly attracted to the radical creeds, they said.
Mainstream Muslim leaders disapprove of the radicals but they are unhappy about the way that their religion has been singled out Sarkozy in his identity campaign and by the plans for a burqa law. They are supported by Christian church leaders. Yazid Sabeg, a Muslim businessman who is Sarkozy's state Commissioner for Diversity, has expressed his strong disapproval. "The row over the burqa is going to re-open frustration, antagonism, racism, while we should be working on uniting the French," he said.
LipDub Jeunes UMP 2010 - Officielenvoyé par Jeunes-Populaires.
[Post updated Friday with full video]
Here is a video of an all-singing, all-dancing version of Nicolas Sarkozy's cabinet of ministers. It is so preposterous that on first watching many people thought it was a gag. Ministers and senior officials of Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement display their stage talent, lip-synching and dancing in this performance for a campaign advertisement for the forthcoming regional elections.
France is having a laugh at the sight of starchy ministers like Xavier Darcos (Labour) and Christine Lagarde (Finance) doing their act to a 1976 stage song by Luc Plamondon called Tous ceux qui veulent changer le monde. [Everyone who wants to change the world] "In a climate of fraternity," sings Darcos. Rachida Dati, the ex-Justice Minister, follows on with "I hear the rumbling of revolt".
Also singing are Valérie Pécresse (Higher Education and Research) and Patrick Devedjian (Minister for Economic Revival). Spot Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the paunchy former Prime Minister, and Frederic Lefebvre, the UMP's rough-tongued spokesman. Eric Woerth, the minister in charge of taxation, drops his usual mortician's manner to sing: "living on love and hope".
The UMP's youth section filmed the video mainly at the party's summer conference. At least they don't mind risking ridicule. And, in case you missed, there is a rather heavy joke. The man driving past at the wheel of a car is blind. He is Gilbert Montagné, a popular singer who has been recruited by Sarkozy as a party secretary for the handicapped. And Sarkozy makes a brief appearance, not singing and with Barack Obama.
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.
---------
*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.
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