« September 2009 |
Main
| November 2009 »
When the judge comes calling, French politicians always declare themselves "serene" because they are not guilty of anything. Today it was finally the turn of Jacques Chirac. From his luxury hotel in Morocco, he had his spokesman issue the traditional serene statement as France pondered on the prospect of putting its last president on trial. The charges that have caught up with Chirac, 76, are a trifle compared with the shenanigans that went on at the city hall during his 18-year-reign as the first Mayor of Paris since the 19th century. Against the wishes of the prosecutor -- an old friend -- the examining judge wants Chirac to stand trial over a couple of dozen allegedly fraudulent jobs on the city payroll when he was Mayor, from 1977-1995. Back in his 1980s and early 90s, when Chirac used the baronial city hall as his power base and seat for his Gaullist party, the mayoral machine was celebrated for this kind of largesse. Generous to a fault, Chirac commanded a grace and favour system that benefited friends, supporters and their associates. If you had the connections, someone in the Mayor's big private office could help your children with jobs or fix you up with a handsome Paris apartment at council-house prices. The son of Alain Juppé, Chirac's first Prime Minister, was among beneficiaries of such cut-price accommodation -- until he was exposed and forced to leave in 1996. Two of the charges facing the former President now involve the provision of chauffeurs on the mayoral payroll to a former prefect and a former trade union leader. Money was no object for the Chirac family, according to accounts from former insiders and judicial investigators. When Bertrand Delanoe, a Socialist, followed Jean Tiberi, Chirac's successor, as Mayor in 2001, his inspectors found that the city's tax payers had been funding 600 euros a day in food and drink for Jacques, Bernadette and Claude, their daughter. The funds did not even cover entertainment expenses, which were separate. Until today, the former President has escaped the legal fall-out from a period when the city hall was raking in millions of pounds a year in kickbacks from building contractors and other businesses. Several of Chirac's former lieutenants and about four dozen businessmen and former officials have been convicted in recent years for their role in the illicit payments and use of public money for financing the Rassemblement pour la République, the Mayor's party. The most prominent among them was Juppé, who received a suspended sentence and a brief ban on holding elected office in 2004 for corruption while he served as Mayor Chirac's deputy in the 1980s and 1990s. The fall-out from the case forced him to resign a cabinet post from President Sarkozy's first Government but he has bounced back as Mayor of Bordeaux. It is acknowledged in the political world that Juppé carried the can for his boss, who as president enjoyed immunity from prosecution for 12 years until Sarkozy succeeded him in 2007. But it was not always plain sailing. The cloud of sleaze dogged Chirac for much of his presidency, as it became ever clearer that the city administration had been a money machine. Until appeal courts confirmed a judicial ruling on his immunity in 2001, Chirac skirted disaster after the publication of a posthumous video tape made by Jean-Claude Méry, one of the RPR's clandestine financiers in the 1980s and early 90s. Méry depicted Chirac as the instigator and controller of the biggest kickback schemes. He claimed to have regularly collected suitcases of cash from donors and deposited them with the Mayor. At the same time, investigators found that Chirac, his family and friends, including a woman journalist, had recently made expensive trips to Indian Ocean resorts and the United States, with expenses paid in cash. The President's staff explained -- with difficulty -- that the money came from cash which he had legally accumulated when he had served as Prime Minister under President Mitterrand from 1986-88. Chirac shook off the brewing scandal by deploying his charm and an obscure word in a celebrated television appearance in September 2001. The sleaze allegations were "abracadabradantesque" -- pure fantasy -- he said. Nevertheless, the government of the time, under Lionel Jospin, put an end to the so-called "special funds". These were bundles of cash which were traditionally distributed to cabinet ministers once a month for use at their discretion. The money was supposed to be used to top up staff pay, but no records were kept. Chirac, who now enjoys his country's affection as its genial elder statesman, has always succeeded in 'passing between the raindrops', or staying dry, as the handy French expression puts it [passer entre les gouttes]. He has escaped serious scrutiny in other matters, such as persistent reports that he had held secret bank accounts in Japan, and may have had a second family there. This month, he was an invisible presence in the court in the so-called Clearstream trial. Dominique de Villepin, his former Prime Minister, was accused of plotting to smear Sarkozy and witnesses said that President Chirac had been involved. But the former President was not asked to testify. In yet another case, Charles Pasqua, a former Interior Minister and old Gaullist colleague, claimed this week that Chirac was implicated in bribery over arms sales to Angola in the 1990s. Pasqua was sentenced to 12 months' prison. The sentence was very stiff by the standards of French political corruption cases. Pasqua may never serve it but it is just possible that Chirac's alleged role will be investigated. Few people expect that case or yesterday's corruption charges to go far. Even if he is tried and convicted on the new city hall charges, the most Chirac can expect is a fine or suspended sentence. There is a lot of sympathy for the old man. His presidency achieved little and will probably be remembered by historians as an uneventful 12 years. His chief act in public memory was his opposition to George Bush's Iraq invasion in 2003. But he now enjoys the rank of most popular politician in France, according to polls. Even old foes think they should just leave him in peace.
I'm off for a few days this week. It's the Toussaint holiday, so time for the chestnuts and mushrooms in the Cévennes. Comments will be posted as usual, so please keep them coming. But I'm still on the steam modem.
This has not been a good week for airline pilots. Four American ones -- all employed by Delta, have been suspended for two blunders. Now we hear that Air France, the national carrier, has accused its pilots of dangerously sloppy flying.
The charge arises from a dispute between pilots and management over the Flight 447 disaster which killed 228 people off Brazil last June 1. There is a common thread in these three cases. It is the reminder that aircraft depend on human beings to pilot tham.
On Monday, a pair from Delta got muddled and put their Boeing down on a taxi-way at Atlanta instead of the runway. The other two, flying a Northwest Airlines Airbus from San Diego, failed to notice that they had flown past Minneapolis, their destination. That incident, which passengers did not even notice, has sparked a furore while the more dangerous Atlanta bungle has been largely ignored.
People imagine that jets these days are guided to their destination by a web of computers, satellites and other high technology. In reality, the automation is simply there to help the pilots, who use their judgment to keep everything the right side up. New technology is on the way, but airline crew still take "turn left, turn right" instructions from controllers over old-fashioned radio, as they have since the 1920s. They put the plane down on the runway by hand -- after making sure that it is the right one. Airliners have even landed at completely wrong airports quite recently. Fatigue, boredom, emotions and many other things can get in the way. It's surprising that they do not cause damage more often. Flying near Paris airport in a small plane I sometimes have to correct incoming airliners who have called our aeroclub frequency by mistake because it is only a few digits on the dial from the Charles de Gaulle tower.
No-one was hurt in the two US incidents. Old airline pilots recall getting away with worse. The Delta crew made their error after being asked to switch, at the end of a tiring night flight, from one runway to a parallel one. It was not fully lit for the approach and its instrument landing beacon was off. They were rushing to disembark a third pilot who had fallen ill. They were very lucky that nothing was on the long taxi-way that they mistook for the runway. The Northwest pilots (whose airline is now owned by Delta) have not said publicly what was going on when they flew past their destination. Initially they talked of being distracted by a heated discussion. They were initially suspected of having fallen asleep -- something which has befallen many pilots but usually not both at once. [November 1 update: The pilots have told investigators that they were were distracted by a discussion in which they had opened their laptop computers. They seem likely to lose their jobs.]
In the case of Air France, the story is complicated. The airline management is reacting to unrest among pilots over the way they have been blamed for recent incidents and accidents and especially the AF 447 crash. On Tuesday, the management sent all crew a memo headed: "Enough argument and false debate on flight safety." They accused "over-confident" crew of ignoring standard procedures and risking their aircraft. Too many foolishly believe that they have "mastered elementary risk" -- according to the text leaked today.
The management said it was especially unhappy with the way that pilots have blamed the AF 447 disaster on the Airbus A330 and on faulty airline practices. "There are no procedures to correct, no new ones to create," it said. The Unions are furious. "The bond of confidence between pilots and management is totally broken," said the SNPL, the moderate main union. The more radical minority unions are in open war, accusing Air France and the state accident investigators of trying to cover up serious flaws in the Airbus A330 by blaming the dead crew for the Flight 447 crash [previous post].
None of these three episodes do much to inspire the confidence of passengers who travel on these major world airlines. But they are nothing new. Flying stirs special emotion. People put up with carnage on the roads but are outraged by every mishap in the much safer air. When you think of the thousands of airliners aloft 24 hours a day, it is a huge achievement that human error does not lead to more trouble.
It will still be fascinating to find out what the crew on Northwest Flight 188 were up to on Wednesday evening as they forgot to land.
[Top photo from Air France advertising]
France Television prefaced its Jean Sarkozy interview (last post) with a report on funny flash-mob demonstrations in which young people wielded bananas like mobile phones (video). At the risk of trumpet-blowing, this blog can claim a little credit here.
I made the banana republic comparison in a slightly cheeky post the other day which was picked up by French media and the net.(Last week's Paris Match: De toutes parts, les critiques fusent. Charles Bremner, le chroniqueur du très sérieux « Times », parle même de « Banana république » dans son blog.)
The fruity image was taken up by Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, a former TV executive and reader of this blog, who set up a site www.bananarepublique.org. Several hundred people signed up for instructions to appear at 1.13 pm yesterday in about 20 towns around France in a mobilisation éclair (official French for flash-mob). The idea was to gather bananas, which become 'magic telephones' for calling the Elysée Palace and asking for a job at La Défense. A few dozen people made a splash in front of the TV cameras under the great Arch of la Defense yesterday afternoon (top picture).
Jérôme told me today: "The flashmob bananarépublique is a citizen's initative which I organised spontaneously with Olivier Auber and Gilles Misrahi after a chat on Twitter. I had read on your blog that you had revived the term 'banana république' and it's with that Twitter tag that we mobilised the internet. Part of this success naturally is due to you. Thanks to you, and the foreign press, our regime now has a few fewer bananas."
It was quite a coup for Bourreau-Guggenheim and friends to land up as the intro to Jean Sarko's big moment on the TV [watch here]. It is a little revenge for him. Regulars here may remember that last year he lost his job as chief of technical innnovation at TF1, the biggest network, for the offence of lèse-Sarkozy. He had written to his parliamentarian to criticise the president's new law against internet piracy. The e-mail was passed to the government and TF1, owned by a friend of Sarkozy, dismissed its employee.
And no, The Times is certainly not attempting to foment unrest. I'm just reporting this because I was rather tickled to have contributed to a French buzz.
Nicolas Sarkozy finally called a halt to the massacre. Assailed by world-wide ridicule, he pulled the plug on the scheme to catapault Prince Jean, his 23-year-old student son, to the head of La Défense business district.
Jean announced his withdrawal in one of those only-in-France moments, interviewed with reverence live on the evening TV news. Coached by Dad's aces from the Elysée Palace, Sarko Junior did quite a good job -- at imitating his father. His self-assurance and rhetorical touches were pure Sarko. Was it an error to claim such an august post at his tender age? "One never makes an error by being candidate in an election. It is not a fault to commit oneself," said Monsieur Fils. "My passion for political engagement is unaltered because it is unalterable," he concluded. He has got the language down with all that noble talk about 'combat' in service of the public
The suave, self-confident mini-Sarko is still on the very fast track, despite his lack of work experience and his struggle to finish his second year of university studies.
This is not even a pause in his fabulous destiny. He is still being elected today to a seat on the board of the Epad, the development agency of la Défense which commands a budget of 115 million euros a year. He is just not going to grab its chairmanship for the time being, as Dad had planned for December. He is also still being lined up by the President and his local barons to take over the Hauts-de-Seine département council in 2011.
But the affair has left a stain on Sarko senior. His breathtaking act of nepotism will not be forgotten, no matter how much he and his team blame the media. The final straw was a flash-mob demonstration at la Défense yesterday -- shown on TV -- in which people turned up holding bananas to their ears, mocking Sarkozy's republic [see later post].
Sarkozy's troops, having been forced to sacrifice their dignity in the impossible defense of the royal appointment, have been humiliated. Today, ministers and spokesmen are dutifully praising Junior's courage and congratulating him on his wise decision, which was the right thing to do, his great maturity and so on. If it was so right, one wonders why no member of the government or parliament said so before the presidential order to retreat ? I feel sorry for François Fillon, the Prime Minister, but at least he kept his head well down throughout the storm.
In a crowded field of flatterers, the prize for best courtier goes to... Brice Hortefeux, the Interior Minister and lifelong friend of le Président. He came on TV right after Jean and attacked "the lies, the contempt, the arrogance, the stupidity" of the opposition and media in the affair. He then saluted brave Jean -- who is his godson. ""This is a difficult moment for the son of the President. It is a moment that inspires respect," he said. Not -- as my teenage children say.
We don't get around very often here to faits divers -- that useful journalistic term for random, human-interest news events. Here is one with interesting implications.
It is the tale of a retired accountant from near Toulouse who ordered the kidnapping of a retired cardiologist in Germany over the weekend. The case is unusual. It goes back to 1982. André Bamberski, 72, the accountant [above], was on the radio explaining this morning how he paid 20,000 euros to have Dr Dieter Krombach, 74, [below] abducted in his home-town of Scheidegg in Bavaria on Saturday. He was dumped in the French city of Mulhouse on Sunday.
Public opinion is on Bamberski's side because his act in hiring a gang of east European kidnappers is seen as understandable. In 1995, Krombach was convicted in his absence by a Paris court of killing Bamberski's 14-year-old daughter Kalinka.The German authorities refused to take any action because their prosecutors had found that there was no case to answer in the 1980s. The French authorities made no serious attempt to seek Krombach's extradition, the father says.
Kalinka was found dead at Krombach's home in 1982. Bamberski's wife had moved in with the doctor. Bamberski alleged from the start that Krombach had killed his daughter with an injection in an attempt to rape her. After having the body exhumed, the French prosecutors brought homicide charges over a decade after her death. The Paris assize court sentenced Krombach to 15 years prison for "causing death by deliberate violence without the intention of killing" --roughly manslaughter in British law.
In the late 1990s Krombach was convicted in Germany of sexually abusing patients and he was struck off as a doctor, but Germany still took no action over the 1982 killing. Bamberski remained obsessed by what he considered to be an unavenged crime. He kept tabs on Krombach and campaigned in the media.
He said today that his principles as a Catholic meant that he had never imagined killing Krombach. Finally, this month, he met a man in a park in Germany and arranged the abduction. Krombach was left in Mulhouse,trussed up and badly beaten and Bamberski tipped off the police.
The upshot is that Krombach will be kept in France and will probably to be sent for a new trial in Paris -- the normal procedure after an initial conviction in absentia. "I have achieved my goal," Bamberski told today's Le Parisien. "My daughter's murderer will be tried.... It will be the moment to expose all the dysfuncion in this case...I feel relieved. I am in peace with myself." He said that he gave no instructions to have Krombach beaten. Krombach's lawyers are demanding his return to Germany, arguing that he was illegally abducted.
Bamberski was released on bail after his arrest on Monday. He has been charged in France with kidnapping and other offences, but says that he does not fear prison. He will probably face a lenient court in France. Beate Merk, the Bavarian Minster of Justice, has publicly condemned Babmerski's action. However Bavarian prosecutors may not get their hands on him because France refuses to extradite its nationals. The German police are meanwhile pursuing the alleged ringleader of the kidnap gang, a Kosovar who is said to be in Austria.
It's interesting that we have only had the French side of this story.
Have Parisians finally got the green message and stopped buying cars ? There has been an extraordinary 60 percent drop in vehicles registered with '75' plates that denote Paris since a new licensing system came in last April. Even more spectacular, nearly 80 percent fewer new cars have been registered with plates from the Seine-Saint-Denis, the rough northeastern suburbs that go under the number 93.
The explanation is simple. The locals are buying cars the same as usual, but taking advantage of the new system to hide their place of residence. Regular readers will recall the fuss which led to a hybrid system, in which people are allowed to pick the département and surrounding region of their choice for the car plates.
So Parisians are simply choosing other localities for their wheels to spare themselves the stigma of being city slickers from the arrogant capital. Le neuf-trois, 93, -- with its image of lawless ghettos -- is such a burden that people there prefer to claim motorised allegiance to just about anywhere else.
The government came up with these figures in a review of the first six months of the new registration system. The national top choice of département for people living elsewhere is 69, or the Rhone, which encompasses Lyon. Then follows 59 (Nord), 13 (Bouches-du-Rhône -- Marseille), 31 (Haute-Garonne -- Toulouse) and le 33 (Gironde -- Bordeaux).
These choices reflect regional loyalties. People want to boast with their plates that they belong to Toulouse or Lille, but no-one wants to crow about being Parisian. With the fierce attachment that they inspire, Corsica and Brittany are also enjoying a license-plate boom beyond their shores.
This all upholds the tradition that Parisians, even those who have been Parigots for generations, cling to their provincial roots. Those without any just pick places that they like, such as the location of their holiday homes (Young Jean Sarkozy should note that this applies even inhabitants of the Hauts-de-Seine, the rich western suburbs where he is striving to become the political boss. Registrations with the département's tell-tale "92" are also withering away.)
The lesson is that the geographical system is now pointless. The old département numbers told you where the car owner lived so, if a 75 roared through town, the locals could swear at the bloody Parisians. Now the road hogs from the capital can quite legally disguise themselves as humble villagers.
Admirers of Philippe Pétain, head of the wartime Vichy government, are dwindling but they still have some money. Today they paid 40,000 euros for the desk from which the old marshal ran his collaborationist regime.
The mahogany, empire-style bureau and two armchars and book cases were snapped up by the Association for the Defence of Marshal Pétain after intense bidding from a starting price of 4,000 euros. The furniture, sold in Saint Dié in the Vosges, belonged to a Jewish family from Alsace. Pétain's staff requisitioned it from storage when they set up the puppet government in the Hotel du Parc in Vichy in the summer of 1940. The family got it back in 1948.
"We have been searching for this furniture for a long time. We thought it had disappeared," said Hubert Massol, 72, a Parisian who heads the late Marshal's fan club. "This is quite an emotional thing." The items are to go to a Pétain museum that Massol said is being planned by the association. It has thousands of members, he told Agence France-Presse.
The marshal still stirs strong emotion among the older generation. Massol would only have been three when the parliament voted Pétain into office as dictator in charge of a new French State. He and his supporters subscribe to the belief, dogma for the far right, that the national hero of the first world war was a decent sort who saved France in its darkest hour. François Mitterrand, the late Socialist president, served the marshal as a senior official and revered his memory all his life.
The Association's site -- which is not very up to date -- explains that it is devoted to rehabilitating the memory of the leader whose early military honours saved him from a post-war death sentence.
"If Philippe Pétain was glorious in 1914-1918, he was great in the 1940s," Massol says in a speech on the site. "He sacrificed his prestige and his tranquility after a well-filled life in the service of the motherland.... making the gift of his person to France in order to ease its misfortune."
A new book, Naufrage: 16 juin 1940, by Eric Roussel, shows the extent to which the marshal was adored when he took over in 1940. Le Point magazine published extracts this month.
Over 10 days have passed since the eruption of l'affaire du Prince Jean. Here's a quick look at the fallout from the catapaulting of the 23-year old undergraduate to the chairmanship of La Défense, France's premier business district.
It's possible that the public outrage will prevent the President's chums and appointees from hoisting Jean Sarkozy into the post on December 4. Signs of a withdrawl have begun appearing. But the episode -- which ignited interest in the foreign media before the French -- offers a lesson. It has shown how an otherwise consummate politician can inflict long-term damage on himself by persisting in a blunder over a minor matter.
The mess has been compounded by Sarkozy's dogged determination to force through the promotion, dragging his government with him in support of the indefensible. Ministers have been humiliated by having to line up behind Sarkozy's argument that young Jean is the victim of a campaign aimed at his dad.
"Who is the target?" Sarkozy asked in a rambling Q and A interview that was dutifully printed by Le Figaro, his house newspaper, on Friday. "It is not my son. It is me. Those who have never got over my election and who have nothing to say of substance are trying to attack me on all fronts with a bad faith and malice which will not deceive the French."
He was wrong on that point. The same day, Le Parisien published a poll that showed that 64 percent of the country disapproved of the imminent elevation of Sarko fils. I was surprised that it was not more, given the mockery we are hearing on all fronts.
Sarkozy's camp are appalled. They recognise in private that there is no argument to justify this act of nepotism. Sarko junior, who is taking a second crack at his second year university studies, is no doubt a genial fellow, but he has no credentials beyond a year on the county council that is run by his father's pals. His future post, albeit supervisory, involves decisions involving billions of euros and a mission to promote La Défense in the face of competition from the City of London, Frankfurt and other big corporate and financial centres. Never could he be in line for it if Dad was not the monarch.
Le Monde tried to explain the phenomenon yesterday. Sarkozy has, it said, fallen victim to the "reflexes of the court", the phenomenon that has afflicted all French presidents in the 51-year-old Fifth Republic. The courtiers do not dare tell the emperor that he is naked.
The affair has left its mark on Sarkozy's approval rating, which has sunk back to 38 percent from 45 percent in August in the Ifop version published today by Le Journal du Dimanche. Sarkozy's party, the Union for a Popular Majority, is concerned because the absurd gift to his son is largely deplored by their electoral base.
Whatever happens in coming weeks, Sarkozy will be damaged by the episode. Even if Jean withdraws or fails to win the appointment, the President loses face.
Getting away from the Paris soap opera, I have just landed in a little Grumman Tiger four-seater at Lausanne airport. Beside me at the controls in the blustery cross-wind was Bertrand Piccard. He has just spent the afternoon at a military field near Zurich showing me his astonishing new flying machine.
Flying-minded people will know what I'm talking about here. Piccard is the Swiss adventurer who made the first non-stop flight around the world in a balloon -- with Brian Jones of Britain in 1999. Now the first take-off is nearing for Solar Impulse, a plane that he and his fellow pilot aim to fly around the world, day and night, powered only by the sun.[Top picture: computer image of projected solar flight. Below: Piccard with me over Switzerland today]
That sounds a little crazy, but Piccard has excellent credentials. Not only is he an aviation pioneer of standing, but his grandfather Auguste was the first man to reach the stratosphere in a balloon. He also plumbed the ocean depths. Professor Tournesol in the Tintin adventures (Prof Calculus in English) was based on grandfather Auguste. His name was also the inspiration for Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the starship Enterprise in the second generation Star Trek.
Experimental planes have been flown with solar energy in daylight since the 1970s and un-manned versions have managed to fly at night on batteries at high altitude. What Piccard and André Borshchberg, his partner, are doing goes far beyond that. Their contraption, designed from scratch and built over five years by a team of 60 people, will circle the planet with a human pilot. That means pushing to the extreme the equation of weight and energy that keeps a heavier-than-air machine in the sky.
The prototype Solar Impulse, which is due to make its first short hops in a month or so, has meant almost going back to the beginning of aviation and thinking again. The gossamer-like machine has a huge wingspan, the same as that of an Airbus A340 airliner, yet it weighs only 1.6 tonnes, about the same as a medium car. Its four electric motors have the same total power as a motor scooter. They are driven by solar cells that cover the wings and charge 400 kilogrammes of batteries. The batteries let the craft fly through the night -- combined with the energy that it will obtain by gliding down from 25,000 feet to about 5,000 while awaiting the dawn and the return of power. And I almost forgot, the airspeed will be about 40 miles per hour.
If that fragile technology works, the plane could in theory achieve the dream of perpetual flight, never landing, say the project team. The big limiting factor is the human payload. Since the Solar Pulse can only carry one pilot, Piccard and Borschberg are to alternate, landing every five days to change seats. That still means that each will spend five days and nights snatching only momentary sleep as their attention is needed permanently to keep the plane in the air. There will be only a minimum auto-pilot. Piccard, who is a psychiatrist by profession, says he is training for it using self-hypnosis. Borschberg, an engineer and former fighter pilot, is depending on yoga and self discipline. They have already "flown" 25 hour stretches in the simulator.
For anyone who has survived a Europe-Australia flight in tourist class, the mind boggles. But the pair laugh it off, saying the excitement of the flight will keep them alert and pointing out that they will get lots of practice. They aim to start making longer and longer flights next year, if the prototype works, taking off from near Lausanne. Flying in bumpy air for just an hour over the Alpine scenery in the noisy little Grumman today, I asked Piccard how he felt about being cooped up in an even smaller space for five days at a time. "It's more comfortable and I'll be used to it," he said.
I'll write about the project for The Times in coming days. The two pilot-adventurers, both in their early 50s and extremely fit, have an infectious enthusiasm. Boschberg, the engineer, is more down-to-earth. Piccard talks more of his vision of transforming the way the world uses energy.
"Solar Impulse doesn't aim to change aviation. Its goal is to change mentalities and behaviour," he said. They are convinced that their project will make a big impact on the world's awareness of renewable energy if they achieve their flight. They compare it to Charles Lindbergh's first non-stop crossing of the Atlantic in 1927. Having humans circle the world on solar power alone will "help make people think sustainable development is sexy", says Piccard.
The term banana republic has been used by a couple of French friends in reaction to the news from Paris this week. They were referring to the high-handed way that France's ruler and his caste have been behaving in two or three current matters.The latest involves an astonishing act of nepotism by Nicolas Sarkozy. His barons are about to elevate Jean Sarkozy, the President's 23-year-old, undergraduate son, to a powerful and prized executive post.
More below, but first the other items. We have already visited the Clearstream trial here. As the case grinds on, at great expense to the people, it looks more than ever like a revenge play staged by President Sarkozy to demolish Dominique de Villepin, his erstwhile rival.
Royal revenge is more civilised than in the old days. When King Louis XIV decided, in similar fashion, to punish the noble Nicolas Fouquet, the Villepin of his day, he threw him into jail and let him rot. Villepin is not in jail. He is cocking a snook at Sarko by running in the Paris 20 kilometres foot-race today. His alleged crime -- abetting an amateurish and ineffective scheme to smear Sarkozy -- should never have been sent to a court. That's not just my opinion. It came today from Eva Joly, a formidable former investigating judge who specialised in corruption in high places. "The conflict between Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin should be settled on the political field and not in a court," she told le Parisien. Huge resources had been wasted in indulging the president's whim, including the full-time work of two judges and teams of investigators for five years, she said.
Then there is l'affaire Mitterrand [last post]. Sarkozy and the Paris thinking class has decreed the matter closed, a case of circulez, il n'y a rien à voir ['Move along, there's nothing to see' -- an old police expression]. Frédo submitted to his television grilling on Thursday night. He denied that he had ever paid for under-age prostitutes. All the "boys" he bought on visits to Bangkok were consenting adults, he said. He also condemned sex-tourism. That's that then, it's over, said the Sarkozy camp.
The serious media have sided with them, depicting Mitterrand as the victim of a witch-hunt by scurrilous muck-raisers. But the affair has left a bad taste. The fact remains that Sarkozy appointed a senior minister who, he knew at the time, had written about his exploits as a Bangkok sex tourist. People outside le microcosme, as the Paris chattering classes are known, are not impressed and they are telling their members of parliament. Paris gay activists are also angry, they told today's JDD newspaper, because Mitterrand has tarnished homosexuality by at least appearing to associate it with paedophilia and prostitution
And then to Prince Jean, Sarko's second son. He is to be appointed chairman of the Epad, the public agency which runs La Défense, the big business district on the west side of Paris. La Défense, an island of corporate towers that is seeking to rival the City of London, is in the heart of Sarkoland, the Hauts-de-Seine département which includes Neuilly, the President's fiefdom. Sarko Junior, who is repeating his second year of undergraduate law at the Sorbonne, was elected to a Neuilly seat on the notoriously sleaze-ridden departement council last year. He was immediately given the job of heading Dad's Union for a Popular Movement on the body.
Even Sarkozy stalwarts are embarrassed by the decision to catapault le Dauphin to the head of Epad, which oversees a billion euros of annual spending.Patrick Devedjian,a cabinet minister and retiring Epad boss, is bitter. To avoid lèse majesté, he voiced his thoughts with a quotation from Corneille, the 17th century dramatist. "For souls nobly born, valour does not await the passing of years."
The opposition are talking about dynasty-building. Putting Jean in charge of la Défense is part of Sarkozy's scheme for taking control of a new Greater Paris, say the Socialists who run both the city and the regional council. Sarkozy senior was boss of the Epad right up to his election in 2007. Young Jean says that he is qualified for the job "because I know all the issues" (see video below of FR3 tv news report) and he dismisses criticism as "pointless and frankly facile".
An internet petition is calling on Jean to do the decent thing and get his degree and some experience in life before rising to high responsibility. But we are told that Sarkozy père is determined to put the lad in the job. He will get the post in December at about the same as the dynasty enlarges. Jean's heiress wife is expecting the President's first grandchild in the same month.
The Polanski case may end up costing the job of Frédéric Mitterrand, the popular nephew of the late president who became Nicolas Sarkozy's Culture Minister four months ago.
You may have heard that Frédo, as he is known, been hit by a nasty boomerang. His outspoken defence of Roman Polanski on the paedophile charges last week opened a boulevard for the far right National Front to recall the minister's own past as a practitioner of gay sex tourism.
[Mitterrand has spoken on TV this evening, See update below]
This is a very French, or at least southern European, affair because in the protestant political cultures of the north, Mitterrand, 62, would never have landed his job. His sulphurous autobiography, published in 2005, would have made it unthinkable.
Sarkozy appointed Mitterrand, a presenter of television arts programmes, knowing that his book, La Mauvaise Vie (The Bad Life), recounted his visits to brothels in Thailand where he said he paid for sex with boys. Sarkozy, who read the book in June, said this summer that he found it "brave and full of talent". In nominating the new Culture Minister, he was following the French tradition that the private lives of public figures are not a matter for public discussion. He should have known from his own much-reported love life that the old rules that protect the elite are breaking down. 
When Mitterrand took office, everyone (including us) mentioned his homosexuality and alluded to the critically admired memoir, but very few raised the details. These have blown up in Mitterrand's face, thanks to Marine Le Pen, heiress to her father's xenophobic Front National. She read out extracts on television on Monday night. "I got into the habit of paying for boys," said one line. "The profusion of very attractive and immediately available boys put me in a state of desire that I no longer needed to restrain or hide."
There is much more of this lurid stuff. Mitterrand himself calls it sordid. He writes, in Proustian style,of the exquisite pleasure of paying for sex. He refers to the Thai male prostitutes as garçons and sometimes gosses (kids). You could feel the embarrassment in the political world as Sarkozy administration and the mainstream opposition flinched from touching a cause launched by the unspeakable far right. The Socialists finally jumped in yesterday and condemned Mitterrand without calling for resignation. Today's main newspapers could still only bring themselves to give the affair minor mention.
Mitterrand has tried to take the high ground, saying: "If the National Front drags me through the mud, it is an honour. If a leftwing MP drags me through the mud, he should be ashamed." Sarkozy's team have tried to divert attention to the Front and invoked the old private-life defence. Xavier Darcos, a senior minister, said this morning: "It is the private life of a man which is in question, not the minister." Darcos also cited the literary defence -- that an author's words do not necessarily report reality. Sarkozy's advisers are talking about gutter tactics by the Front and a vile smear campaign.
These arguments do not wash. You can feel the tide turning. Mitterrand, a troubled soul with a gentle style, insisted on television after the book's publication that he never had anything to do with "little boys". But the damage has been done. France now knows that the holder of one the most prestigious government posts is an avowed practitioner of gay sex tourism.
It is unfair that Mitterrand is being crucified over a four-year-old book. And if a minister confessed to spending time with prostitutes in the past, there would be little fuss in broad-minded France. It is the suspicion of paedophilia that makes the difference. The possible involvement of children, that ultimate crime of our times, suggests that Frédo may be heading for the political guillotine.
Mitterrand is going on the main tv news tonight to account for himself. He is an eloquent and familiar figure after three decades as a television favourite and he will benefit from sympathy. It is possible that he will save his skin. Sarkozy will be very reluctant to fire a star appointee in response to a National Front campaign -- greatly amplified by the internet. But Mitterrand is now damaged goods and Sarko does not like that in his ministers.
Update: On TF1 television tonight, Mitterrand delivered an indignant but confusing defence. His memoirs were partly fictional, he said. He conceded that he had paid "boys" for sex in Thailand but insisted that they were all consenting adults. He abhorred sex tourism and was outraged by the notion that he was advocating paedophilia. Sarkozy had full confidence in him, and so on. The appearance was highly emotional but it has not cleared the air.
Brains and political talent are no longer enough to land a job in the French Cabinet. Under President Sarkozy, would-be members are also expected to have a trim figure.
Sarkozy's demands on his ministers' waistline have become a talking point in recent months. Eager to be surrounded by fit-looking people, he is said to have told at least one would-be appointee to drop some weight and change his hair style if he wanted the job.
Sarkozy acquired his passion for thinness after meeting Carla Bruni -- and Julie Imperiali, her fitness coach -- in late 2007. That was a few months after Paris Match air-brushed fat off Sarko's torso in a photograph of him canoeing
Living off cottage cheese, fruit compote and mineral water, the teetotal Sarkozy is said to have lost some 15 pounds over the past 18 months. His resolve was no doubt stiffened by Barack Obama, whose style he deeply envies.
"Nicolas Sarkozy is very attentive to the physique of his ministers. They have to show an example, keep in shape," an Elysée Palace insider le Point news magazine in July. Le Parisien yesterday noted a spectacular weight loss by several ministers. "You would think that the Elysée Palace has launched a real policy of political correctness for the figure," it said.
Gérard Apfeldorfer, a Paris psychiatrist specialising in nutrition, told us: "I know that Sarkozy is putting pressure on his ministers to have a flat stomach. He is a prisoner of the stereotypes of our age, to the point of imposing it on the others and making his choice as a consequence."
Ministers have grumbled privately about the pressure. Patrick Balkany, a senior figure in Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) also blamed the President's radical diet for the episode last July in which he collapsed while jogging.
The winner in the thinning stakes is Brice Hortefeux, the new Interior Minister, who shrunk visibly earlier this year as he strived -- successfully -- to win promotion [second left in top picture] . Friends worried about his health but were told that the bon vivant Hortefeux had just taken up a diet of soup, cream cheese and red berries, le Parisien says. Eric Besson, the new Immigration Minister [left in picture], has also drawn attention with his Sarzkoy-style new look. Christian Estrosi, 55, a former motor cycle racing champion, has regained his youthful shape since becoming Industry Minister in the summer.
Women are the perma-slim stars of the Sarkozy's Cabinet. Christine Lagarde, 53, the ultra-trim Finance Minister, was a champion synchronised swimmer in her youth and remains an active sportswoman. Michèle Alliot-Marie, 63, Justice Minister [picture below], has a model's figure. I can vouch for this after sitting beside her in a TV studio the other day. Rachida Dati, the glamour figure of his first Cabinet, made headlines with her spectacular weight loss after the birth of her first baby last January. The female exception is the well-rounded Roselyne Bachelot -- Minister for Health and Sports [with hand on Sarkozy's shoulder in picture].
"The fashion for dieting comes from the boss," said Jean-Michel Cohen, a nutritionist who advises politicians. "The trim figure has become a vehicle of political communication. The time when fat men were reassuring is over. The chief is sweating to lose weight. They others have to control themselves too," he added.
The push for slimless has proven especially challenging for UMP party heavyweights. Xavier Bertrand, the slightly portly party chief, is especially partial to traditional French cuisine. Dieting is anathema to many members of the senate, which has long enjoyed an image as a club of plump elderly men.
There was no official reaction from the Elysée to the latest talk about the chief's physique. Last month, you will recall, the palace was embarrassed after short people were chosen to stand around Sarkozy on a televised visit to a factory in Normandy.
A casualty of Sarkozy's "politique de la silhouette" has been the cuisine at the Elysée and Paris ministries. Meat, cheese and traditional desserts have given way to frugal servings of fish, vegetables, salad and sorbets. Wine is still served, but it is hard to enjoy it when the host is sipping mineral water.
[Below: Hortefeux before and after diet]
If you wanted to parody a Carla Bruni website it would be hard to do better than the real thing which has just opened. The new showcase for the chanteuse-supermodel looks like a caricature of the persona which President Sarkozy's image minders have shaped for the new première dame since their marriage early last year.
Opened yesterday to great fanfare, carlabrunisarkosy.org has been unable to keep up with demand. It froze for much of the day, but now works in sticky fashion.
In impeccable pastel tones, Bruni is cast as a caring, free-spirited but demure artiste and patroness of noble causes. Portraits of Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suukyi, the Burmese opposition leader, are among the heros in Carla's gallery. Her other acquaintances, such as the Obamas and Sarah Brown, the wife of the British Prime Minister, appear in rather odd line drawings. The home page is topped by an interview with Jean-Paul Gaultier, the fashion designer.
A gushing Paris Match-style biography notes that the single name Carla now suffices to identify the French first lady the world over.
"Born at the beginning of the women’s liberation movement, she questions the contradictions that afflict all self-assured people in this period," it says.(What does that that mean ? She lives with one of the world's most self-assured men). Then they drag in that good old tabloid invention, "a close friend", who notes: “She may not have been a suffragette or invented the miniskirt, but she is the very epitome of the modern woman in the way she approaches the world”,
The first lady's hectic first two years with the President are sketched thus:
What memories will France’s current First Lady take away with her? Her state visit to the UK making her title official? Her trip to Burkina Faso after taking up her functions as ambassador for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS? The shot fired just a few metres away at Tel-Aviv airport on leaving Israel? This exposure to the cameras in life and death situations is unavoidable for anyone who has to face history with a cool head and a smile on their lips.
The site -- much slicker than Ségolène Royal's disastrous new internet base -- is meant to publicise Bruni's charity work in France and her post as ambassador for the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
It comes in French and English versions -- with a few adjustments in the translation. For example, Bruni was "born into a wealthy family of Italian industrialists" in the English one, but "into a rich family" in the French. Bruni's showbiz friends get a mention. There are links to Bob Dylan, Cindy Lauper and the Rolling Stones, to whose leader she was once especially close.
An "A to Z" of Carla mixes causes and first lady-like pursuits with some light nods to themes that have not helped her husband. For example, "Bling bling", the showy style which Sarkozy brought to the presidency, is dismissed as an invention of the media. It gets a mention above Sarah Brown, wife of Britain's Prime Minister.
The delicate, sugary site, with its emphasis on fashion and hip causes, fits the mission that the Elysée Palace has conferred on Bruni -- that of antidote to her brash, combative husband. Occasional web visitors may find it pleasant enough. The trouble is that bland corporate-style communication of this type does not work in a medium which prizes spontaneity and sharpness. Reaction on the French web to the Bruni site today has been contempt. "Nauseating...propaganda...they take us for fools..." was one of the more caustic lines.
Those wishing to visit Carla Bruni the singer can always go to her old site, carlabruni.com .
Super Sarko is also benefiting from a web remake. Under the direction of Nicolas Princen, its 25-year-old manager, the presidential site has loosened up a little. This week they are featuring a "making of" video from behind the scenes of a television interview with Sarkozy in New York last month. It neglected to include the scene in which Sarkozy tore a strip off Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, in front of the television crews. Sarkozy's official Facebook entry is being freshened and a Twitter account has been opened for the President's visit to the Copenhagen environment summit in December. Twittering is still not deemed presidential activity, so staff will be pecking out the copy.
Ireland's 'yes' to the EU Lisbon treaty clears the way for Nicolas Sarkozy to stage his next big splash on the diplomatic front. This will take the form of a grand proposal to Chancellor Angela Merkel to renew the marriage vows that have bound Germany and France since 1963.
Europe (don't yawn, British and American readers), is now about to enter a new political phase after a decade of paralysis and self-absorption. It is to get a voice, in the person of a permanent President and Foreign Minister. The new boss might be Tony Blair, but I wouldn't bet on it yet -- see below.
Paris ministries have been under orders since the late spring to come up with ideas for putting Europe's famed Franco-German locomotive back on the rails. These include the possible assignment by each of a minister to the other's government and alignment of energy and industrial policy. Other ideas, outlined by the Institut Montaigne think tank, include co-ordinating budgetary and fiscal policies and merging the Paris and Frankfurt stock markets.
In a symbol of reconciliation, Merkel is expected to become the first German leader to attend world war one Armistice Day ceremonies at the Arc de Triomphe on November 11. That's just after the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which Sarkozy aims to use to relaunch new Franco-German friendship. This was first formally enshrined in the 1963 Treaty of the Elysée, signed by Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer . Pierre Lellouche, the French Europe Minister, hinted this morning that we should expect something special on the Berlin wall day.
Sarkozy is taking a well-trodden path. Every new French president for decades has strayed from the Franco-German core and flirted with other partners before reverting to it. François Mitterrand, for example, fell out with Helmut Kohl in 1989 when he joined Margaret Thatcher in trying to stop Germany reuniting. They made up and launched monetary union in the early 1990s.
Sarkozy took France back into the heart of Nato but his shine for Britain and its big Anglo-Saxon brother across the Atlantic has faded. He blames them for the financial crisis and is frustrated by their failure to back his plans for "remoralising capitalism" -- which Merkel has supported. Sarkozy is said to be bitter over President Obama's rejection of his attempts to forge complicity between them [See a new account of Sarkozy's Obama envy by my old friend Chris Dickey of Newsweek]. Britain will become Europe's main troublemaker again if, as expected, David Cameron wins power at the head of a Conservative government next spring.
Merkel's enthusiasm for a new 'Franceallemagne' (note which country comes first in the French coinage) is not as hot as Sarkozy's. The chemistry has improved between the pair since their early friction. But Germany still sees France as hopelessly profligate and it is suspicious of Sarkozy's return to state dirigisme of the kind that they do not like across the Rhine. The French are, on their side, unhappy with Berlin's intervention last month to save the German operations of the Opel car firm. Sarkozy has been trying to sweeten the Germans by putting Germanophiles in high places. Chief among them is Bruno Le Maire, his new German-speaking Agriculture Minister.
Wishful thinking may be part of the new romance. Enjeux des Echos, a business magazine, gave this impression last week when it said: "There is a common will in Paris and Berlin to break with the ultra-liberalism of a Brussels Commission that has fallen into the hands of the English. Now that the Anglo-Saxon model is on its way out, the future is once again focused on an economy regulated by states." I'm not sure that Germany goes along with that.
An important factor in the Franco-German relaunch will be the carve-up of new jobs. Sarkozy would, we gather, be quite happy if Blair took over as president and the 'Foreign Minister' job went to France, possibly to Hubert Vedrine, a former Socialist French Foreign Minister who is well thought-of around Europe. But Merkel, strengthened by her re-election last month, does not want a Blair presidency. Germany will need something big in return and there is the small matter of winning the consent of all the 27 member states. Blair is broadly accepted because he is the only heavyweight in the running, apart from Felipe Gonzalez, the former Spanish Socialist premier. But there is little enthusiasm for him. Expect a heavy bout of old-fashioned EU horse-trading at the late October leaders' summit in Brussels.
In the meantime, Sarkozy has been taking the credit this weekend for the success of the Irish referendum. It was he, we are reminded, who insisted in the face of widespread opposition that the Irish should be asked to think again after they refused the Lisbon treaty the first time around.
And to close, my slightly bleak view of European politics should not be put down to hostility to the Union. Okay, the machine is bureaucratic, elitist and all the rest of it, but it has succeeded in uniting former enemies, reinforcing democracy and spreading prosperity across the whole continent. It is hard to fathom the hostility that still prevails in Britain, 36 years since it joined. The EU has been of enormous benefit to Britain, whatever its drawbacks. I see that Boris Johnson, Mayor of London and a former Brussels colleague of mine, has been ranting against the Union this weekend, demanding a British referendum on the ratified Lisbon treaty. And the Daily Mail, the Little England newspaper, has a ludicrous lament today, headlined So Our 1,000 Years of History Ends Like This.
The Russian navy has its eyes on a new helicopter-carrying warship. The impressive model that they want to buy could have let Russia drive Georgian forces from the north Caucausus last year in a flash,says Admiral Vladimir Vysotski, the navy chief.
And who makes this great vessel ? France. In Moscow yesterday, two ministers -- Bernard Kouchner of Foreign Affairs and Hervé Morin of Defence -- settled the outline of a deal to sell a 700 million euro Mistral-class helicopter-carrier to the Russians.This would be the first sale of a major western weapon to Russia since World War Two, so President Sarkozy will have some explaining to do with Washington and the Nato allies.
Paris is optimistic. Kouchner, a lifelong human rights activist, waxed enthusiastic about the imminent sale. "This political agreement should be reached, I think, but it's not up to me to decide ... concerning this wonderful warship," he told Moscow Echo radio station.
Moscow is aiming to order one or two Mistrals from the French naval dockyards, plus the technology to put together their own versions. The ship, which is France's second biggest after the Charles de Gaulle nuclear-powered carrier, is capable of carrying more than a dozen helicopters and 470 infantry along with dozens of tanks and other armoured vehicles.
Moscow wants the ship to supplement its antique surface-fleet. It is just the thing to project Russian power around the world -- and close to home. Russia's Black Sea neighbours are appalled and Admiral Vysotski helpfully spelt out why. Talking about Russia's ejection of Georgian troops from the rebel province of South Ossetia last August, he said that a Mistral "would have meant that our Black Sea Fleet could have accomplished its mission in 40 minutes instead of 26 hours by road."
France, you may recall, claims credit for stopping that conflict. Sarkozy flew to Moscow and Tbilisi and brokered a ceasefire after three days of fighting in August last year.
Dutch and Spanish firms are also bidding for the Russian deal but the French are confident that they have it sewn up. But there are obvious hurdles. The United States jealously guards the export of its technology, especially of a military kind. It is pretty likely that despite French expertise, the Mistral class carries a load of US patents. So if France is determined to go ahead, Washington will become involved.
The Obama administration would have to decide whether it will accept what would in Cold War times have been an unthinkable deal in the interest of the famous US-Russian reset button. Washington is unlikely to be happy about a western ally giving a helping hand to the Kremlin to flex Russian muscles on the high seas. Whatever happens, Moscow has a good chance of driving a wedge into the Nato alliance over the affair.
The sale would be a nice boost to the French arms business after last month's provisional agreement by Brazil to buy 36 Rafale fighters plus the technology to build them.
But before everyone piles in against French "merchants of death", here is last year's table of suppliers. The USA was top with 49 percent of the world military export market. Britain was second with a 15 percent share. Russia scored eight percent and France seven percent.
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.
Send Charles an E-mail
Follow Charles on Facebook
Follow Charles on Twitter
Get the RSS feed
Categories
Select from the dropdown
Times Online blogs
More from Times Online
|