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.
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.
You remember this picture of Rachida Dati, the former star of the Sarkozy government, leaving the clinic with her new-born baby in her arms ? Her immediate return to work as Justice Minister earned her headlines around the world. We hear today that she wasn't holding Zohra, her daughter, just an empty baby-carrier swathed in a blanket.
This is related in a book out this week by Jamal Dati, the younger brother of the ambitious and difficult Sarkozy protegée who was cast out of the government last June and exiled to the European parliament. Scraps of A l'Ombre de Rachida [in Rachida's Shadow] appear in le Parisien today. They make clear that Jamal, who recently spent a few months in prison for drug dealing, is out to settle accounts with the sister whose Cinderella life story was meant to inspire France's immigrant working class.
Dati, one of 12 children of a Moroccan-Algerian couple, is depicted as hard-hearted and ruthless. Those qualities are usually mentioned by those who have fallen out with the woman who is seen by the establishment as a pushy parvenue. Dati refused to have anything to do with her black sheep brother when she was minister, he says. "Every time I tried to talk to her she turned a deaf ear." He accuses his sister of having him locked up because he was a nuisance. He gave a bracelet to Zohra, he says. "She did not even thank me. She just said 'put it down there'. She did not want to take the gift in here hands. That hurt me." 
The stunt on leaving the hospital last January was part of Dati's meticulous management of her image, he says. The child was taken away through a side entrance and then cared for by Dati's sister for months, says the brother.
Jamal apparently says nothing about the paternity of Zohra, which remains a mystery. But he describes the mortification of their widowed father, a strict Muslim, when it became known that she was going to have a baby out of wedlock. "For two months, he kept saying, 'It's finished. I don't want to see her any more'... We experienced the affair as a matter of dishonour. We are Muslims before anything else. My father... had to swallow his pride in front of the Arab families around us."
The brother says that his other siblings tried to prevent the book being published. They told him that he would be sent back to prison and that he would lose his own son, he says.
The book will no doubt sell well because Dati, with her glamour and steely style, continues to fascinate people well beyond France. She is already clambering back up the ladder, seeking status posts in the European parliament and keeping a firm hand on the 7th arrondissement, the Paris Left Bank district where she became Mayor before her fall from Sarkozy's grace. She is manoeuvering to run for Mayor of Paris in 2014. Sarkozy's local party chiefs are fiercely opposed, but she has a habit of getting her way.
The radio offered a familiar song today as I was driving down from the Channel: the French intellectual classes and government were in full cry against the United States.
The cause this time is Roman Polanski. His arrest in Switzerland has dominated the news for 24 hours in France and Poland -- ahead of the election of a new German government -- and it has been big elsewhere.
[See Wednesday update below*]
Like everyone, I feel sorry for Polanski. Aged 76, a naturalized French citizen and one of the star directors of his generation, he was arrested while on his way to a Swiss film festival held in his honour. California wants him extradited over a 1977 offence. But he is not helped by the explosion of outrage from the intello-celebrities and the way the French Government has succumbed to its anti-American reflex.
C'est normal that Bernard Henry-Lévy, the Left Bank's star thinker and auto-publicist, should be raging on the radio as I write this. It's fairly normal that France's Society of Film Directors should warn that the arrest "could have disastrous consequences for freedom of expression across the world".
It is more difficult to take the intemperate response of President Sarkozy and his government. Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister and friend of the stars, used the logic that Polanski's high artistic achievement should protect him from ordinary justice. "This affair is frankly a bit sinister. Here is a man of such talent, recognised worldwide, recognised especially in the country where he was arrested. This is not nice at all,"Kouchner said on France-Inter radio.
Frédéric Mitterrand, Sarkozy's Culture Minister and big film fan, went right over the top, calling Polanski's arrest "absolutely horrifying. Polanski had been thrown to the lions, he said. "In the same way that there is a generous America that we like, there is also an America that frightens us and that one has just shown its face," said Mitterrand.
It is true that Frédo, as they call him, and Kouchner, are from the leftish wing of the government, but Sarko himself took Polanski's side, in more diplomatic language.
There are mitigating factors. Polanski has suffered terrible events in his life -- his mother's death at Nazi hands and the murder of Sharon Tate, his pregnant wife, in 1969. The Los Angeles judge and prosecutor in 1977 appear to have reneged on a deal for a guilty plea to sexual relations with a 13-year-old girl. But some perspective would help. Polanski is not a victim of monstrous injustice -- or persecution by Hollywood, as Le Monde suggests this afternoon by comparing his case to that of Charlie Chaplin in the 1950s.
Since fleeing to France in 1978, Polanski has refused return to Los Angeles to end the case (He did not collect his 2003 Best Director Oscar for fear of arrest). After his LA lawyers asked last year for the case to be quashed, the judge indicated sympathy with his arguments. But Polanski still did not turn up in court for the hearing in May this year so the judge rejected the request.
You can argue about Switzerland's role. Polanski spends time there every year in his house at Gstaad and had never been molested. There are suspicions that Berne acted to extradite him this time because it wants to redeem itself with the United States after the affair of tax-evading bank accounts and other scandals.
But Polanski is in his predicament simply because the justice system, especially in the United States, is relentless once the wheels are in motion. The outpouring of sympathy from France's high and mighty is playing right into the hands of their populist opponents. Marine Le Pen, heir apparent to her father's National Front party, took an easy swipe today. "Does belonging to the super-protected show-biz caste exonerate you for 30 years from judicial pursuit?" she asked. Sarkozy's administration is setting a bad example for people fighting against sexual violence towards children, she said. For once, it difficult to disagree with Madame Le Pen.
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*Update Wednesday: Since I posted this on Monday, the pendulum has swung back in France. The Socialist opposition finally came down against the government for criticising the Polanski arrest. Several eminent figures in Sarkozy's UMP party are also unhappy with the way Mitterrand and Kouchner jumped to take sides against the USA. A few from the film world, including Luc Besson, are also unhappy with the rush to defend Polanski.
The Clearstream trial has opened with the expected theatre at the Palais de Justice. The spectacle yesterday afternoon was not in the court, where the lawyers argued over procedure. It came from the melodramatic performance outside by Dominique de Villepin, the former Prime Minister and star defendant.
Villepin, a man who has never been accused of modesty, swept up with his wife and three children and delivered a grandiloquent speech in which he cast himself as the victim of epic injustice. He was, he told the cameras, the target of a political prosecution that has been staged by a vindictive ruler. Here, in English, is a taste of the amazingly inflated rhetoric which Villepin uses about himself. Don't forget that he is accused of complicity in dirty tricks, including forgery, to discredit Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of the last presidential campaign.
"It is September 21. This is the anniversary of the creation of the French Republic. It is also the day dedicated by the United Nations to peace in the world.... I am here because of the will of one man and the relentlessness of one man - Nicolas Sarkozy, who is also President of the French Republic. I will come out of this a free man, exonerated in the name of the French people.
"Some would have us believe that there is in our country no such thing as a political trial. I would like to believe that too, yet here we are in 2009 and we are in France. I wish to restate that my combat is not personal. It is the combat of all those men and women who have fought against injustrice. It is the combat of all men and women who are victims of abuse of power. Justice is a very precious commodity and it is also very fragile. It requires the engagement of everyone. I know that the truth will triumph."
In French, his language does not sound quite so much like ham Shakespeare. It landed him, as planned, the opening slot of the evening news. But Villepin is taking a risk in claiming the high ground. When the trial gets down to the detail, he will face rough cross-examination on what he was doing when he allegedly colluded in, or perhaps instigated, the plot to blacken Sarkozy. Noble, Dantonesque speech-making will not help when he is up against the prosecutor and especially Thierry Herzog, Sarkozy's redoubtable lawyer (In French criminal trials, plaintiffs lawyers take part in the proceedings).
Sarkozy's riposte to Villepin came in today. Pierre Charon, one of the president's advisers, said the former Prime Minister appeared to think the law court was a Club Med resort. "You can be tall, handsome and arrogant and lose.... It's what happens inside the courtroom that counts."
Villepin is right to depict the affair as a duel between himself and Super Sarko. The president's determination to put his fomer colleague on trial has led to a new title for the case: "Kill Vill". Some in Sarkozy's own camp are worried that his pursuit of his former rival in the courts is not quite presidential.
The spectacle is good material for the comedians. On France-Inter today, Stéphane Guillon, the court jester of the state-run radio station, described the Clearstream trial as a fight for territory between two dogs -- an excitable little terrier (Sarkozy) and a languid Afghan hound. Watch below.
It's show-time for Nicolas Sarkozy and Dominique de Villepin. The occasion is the so-called Clearstream trial. Politicians land in court fairly often in France. On this occasion, the details are murky and complicated. People tune out when the TV starts explaining them. But the stakes tomorrow are high because the president is a player. We are in for some good theatre and don't forget that Watergate was initially just about a low-level break-in.
Villepin, President Chirac's last Prime Minister, is accused of plotting to destroy Sarkozy's chances in the 2007 presidential election by smearing him with suspicions of corruption. With the help of compliant prosecutors, Sarkozy has pushed the case to court. He wants to hang, draw and quarter the patrician, never-elected politician who tried to thwart his run for the presidency in 2007.
For Villepin, this tragi-comedy of revenge will probably end, as such cases do in France, with acquittal or a mild slap on the wrist. In the meantime, though, it offers a great glimpse of fear and loathing at the pinnacle of French power.
For a month, former spies, media bosses, an investigating judge and a cast from the ruling elite will parade in a spectacle played in the very court-room where Queen Marie-Antoinette was sent to the guillotine in 1793.
The plot, boiling down to attempted slander, is more Keystone Cops than Racine tragedy. It has been elevated to drama by the hatred between Super Sarko and the matinee idol of Chirac's Government who tried to stand in his path five years ago.
Villepin, 55, a former diplomat and Chirac protégé, is accused of "complicity in calumny, complicity in the use of forgeries, dealing in stolen property and breach of trust".
At the heart of the case is the charge that Villepin tried in 2004 to expose Sarkozy as a holder of an illicit account with Clearstream, a Luxembourg clearing-house bank. Sarkozy was Interior Minister, manoeuvering to seize control of Chirac's Gaullist movement and win the presidency in 2007. Villepin was Foreign Minister, before taking over as Interior Minister and then Prime Minister.
Sarkozy's name, in thinly disguised form, was among hundreds on the bank list, which turned out to be a forgery. The supposed money was believed to have been kicked back from millions of pounds of bribes over the sale of French frigates to Taiwan. Also on the bogus list were Dominique Strauss-Kahn, now head of the International Monetary Fund, and Laetitia Casta, the former super-model. Both are among 41 plaintiffs in the case.
Villepin denies wrongdoing. However his version differs from that of two other accused, Jean-Louis Gergorin, a former Vice-President of the EADS aerospace company, and Imad Lahoud, a computer expert. Gergorin reported 2004 meetings with Villepin that the former Prime Minister denies.
Changing his story for the fourth time, Lahoud said in a recent affidavit: "I knew that Jean-Louis Gergorin was in contact with Dominique de Villepin and that the conspiracy against Nicolas Sarkozy was planned with Dominique de Villepin's knowledge."
Without Sarkozy's desire for vengeance, it is unlikely that Clearstream would have become une affaire d'état. Back in 2004-2005, when he heard that that his name was on the list and that Villepin was in the know, Sarkozy made a show of indignation. He demanded prosecution and promised to "hang whoever did this on a butcher's hook". Sarkozy was vulnerable at the time. Cécilia, his wife, was tired of his infidelity and about to leave him for Richard Attias, whom she married last year. Gossip had it that she had been told of her husband's dalliances by informers sent by Chirac and Villepin.
Villepin argues that he was merely fulfilling his ministerial job when he asked for checks on the bank list that was brought to him in early 2004. He says that he dropped the matter when told that it was a forgery. Sarkozy was aware of the case far earlier than he let on, says Villepin.
Sarkozy's ire has intensified with recent leaks from Yves Bertrand, a former chief of police intelligence (Renseignements Généraux), who tracked Clearstream as well as the love lives of Cabinet Ministers and other tittle-tattle. Bertrand, who is appearing as a witness, says that the whole affair is driven by Sarkozy's lust for revenge.
The President has sent his lawyers along with those of the other 40 civil plaintiffs to do battle in court. At the start of the trial tomorrow, Villepin's lawyers will ask the judges to dismiss Sarkozy as a plaintiff because of conflict of interest. As President, Sarkozy is the nation's chief justice and immune from legal action. Sarkozy is sending Thierry Herzog, his ace criminal lawyer, to represent him (In French trials, plaintiff's lawyers act throughout the proceedings, examining witnesses along with the defence and prosecution).
Villepin's move is expected to fail, but he has scored a point. No president has ever taken legal action in office. Le Monde this weekend criticised Sarkozy, saying that he was using the might of the state against Villepin and calling on him to withdraw his complaint.
Villepin, who was positioned by Chirac to beat Sarkozy to the presidential nomination, is trying to turn the tables on the President, depicting himself as victim of an vendetta driven by obsession.
"Some day, he will have to explain his relentlessness [acharnement]," Villepin said this month. "Allowing oneself to be dominated by passion and hatred amounts to failure...I have faith in his ability to screw things up [faire des conneries]."
Don't be fooled by the stock image of Villepin, circulating in the English-language media ahead of this trial. He is portrayed as intellectual, literary, romantic, Chirac's hussar, and so on. He is best remembered abroad for his impassioned United Nations speech in early 2003 against the US Iraq invasion. But those who know him also describe him as an inveterate but amateurish plotter and devotee of backroom intrigue. They liken him to Joseph Fouché, Napoleon Bonaparte's chief of secret police. Bernadette Chirac, wife of his longtime boss, gave him the nickname Nero when he was serving as the then president's chief of staff in the 1990s.
Villepin, who has never been accused of modesty, has been selling himself in the media as a statesman in waiting. He has started a club of admirers with an eye to running for the presidency in 2012, although he has never presented himself for election to so much as a village council. He cuts a rather lonely figure but a friend of mine reports that she lunched at the table next to his at an Italian restaurant on the Left Bank yesterday and that he is in fine form.
Watch him sticking it to Sarkozy -- elegantly -- on his site
The trial of the "gang of barbarians" has finally ended, leaving the victim's family bitter. This, you may recall, was the case of the anti-semitic kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old assistant in a mobile phone store. The affair was so revolting that it was barely done justice by the usual media clichés about the 'banality of evil' and a 'horrific crime that shocked France'.
Halimi was held for three weeks in 2006 on an ethnic suburban housing estate by a loose gang headed by Youssouf Fofana, a swaggering young thug who claims to be a devout Muslim and who styles himself "the brain of the barbarians" [trial sketch above from LePoint.fr]. Halimi was found dying by a railway track after he had been dumped there alive and set alight. As expected, Fofana, 28, who was born in the Ivory Coast, received a life sentence with 22 years minimum before release. He expressed no remorse and displayed contempt for the court throughout the proceedings. He smirked at Halimi's mother Ruth and repeatedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" and at one point threw shoes at lawyers.
What was so appalling was that people on the estate at Bagneux, in the Hauts-de-Seine, knew that Halimi was being held for ransom in a vacant apartment and did nothing to stop it. The young man had been abducted after being lured on a date by a 17-year-old girl who was working for Fofana. Six previous targets had escaped his kidnap attempts. His idea was to "capture a Jew" and demand ransom because they supposedly had money and closeknit families who would pay. The horror was in the casual way that so many youngsters took part. This was seen to reflected the anti-semitism that prevails in the ghetto estates.
Twenty-four accomplices were convicted after a trial that was held with no media present because two of them had been under age at the time of the crime. The family and supporters are angry because of the relatively lenient sentences, ranging from six months' suspended to 18 years, against the supporting cast. They included the building caretaker who let Fofana use the flat and teenagers who took it in turn to guard the young prisoner, some of them torturing him. Yalda, the bait who charmed the shop-assistant into a date that doomed him, was given nine years, which means probable release in about two years. The father of one of the youths was given eight months prison for advising his son during Halimi's ordeal to keep quiet.
The jury, which in France includes the judge and two assistants, took 48 hours to set sentences that reflected the role of each of the young participants. Ruth Halimi has today called on the Justice Ministry to appeal against the sentences. If it does so, that will automatically mean a full retrial. "I regret that the court showed particular indulgence towards the people who aided and abetted Youssouf Fofana," said Francis Szpiner, the Halimi lawyer. He said the family was pleased that the jury had found the murder to have been anti-Semitic. "It was because he was Jewish that Ilan Halimi was killed and tortured. Noone can challenge this judicial truth."
The prosecution is unlikely to appeal because the sentences broadly followed the demands of Philippe Bilger, the chief assize court prosecutor. Bilger largely accepted the defence claims that many of Fofana's hired gaolers were kids who had acted under his influence without full awareness of the evil they were doing. Bilger is, by the way, an interesting character. He writes a well-read blog in which he talks in a surprisingly open and often critical way on current affairs, court cases, and the doings of the Sarkozy government.
Imagine the scandal that would ensue in some countries if prosecutors announced that they were pursuing the following trail: the head of state is suspected of possible involvement in a corrupt arms deal that led to the death of 11 of his citizens in a bomb attack attributed to Al Qaida.
That may sound like a movie plot or something from the third world but it's happening in France. It's the outline of a case that has begun to lap around President Sarkozy. With the exception of a couple of leftwing publications, the media are treading very carefully over this so-called Karachi affair. Sarkozy has dismissed it as pure fantasy. But he may not be able to escape further explanation, since vengeance is in the air -- in the person of his sworn enemy Dominique de Villepin, the former Prime Minister and right-hand-man of President Jacques Chirac.
The story involves a jump back to the 1990s but it's worth the effort. The trigger event is a 2002 suicide bomb attack on a bus full of French shipyard workers in Karachi. Fourteen people were killed, 11 of them French citizens working on submarines which France had sold to the Pakistani navy [bomb scene in top picture]. Two alleged Al Qaida operatives were sentenced to death in Pakistan for the attacks, but their convictions were recently quashed on appeal.
The French side of the investigation plugged away slowly until two new juges d'instruction were appointed a few months ago. Two weeks ago, they told survivors of the attack and families of the dead that the Al Qaida trail was now excluded. They said they had strong reason to believe that the bombing was staged by senior figures in the Pakistani military as retaliation against the French government.
Why ? Paris had incurred the wrath of the unnamed Pakistanis because in 1995, President Chirac had cut off payment of millions of euros of "commissions" -- bribes or fees -- to middle-men in the 825 million euro submarine contract. Chirac may have taken his decision because part of the illicit commissions were being kicked back to France to finance Edouard Balladur, the Prime Minister of the time, said the judges. Balladur was Chirac's party subordinate who turned coat and ran against his boss for the presidency in 1995.
And who was the head of Balladur's campaign that year? Nicolas Sarkozy. He was also, as Budget Minister of the time, the man who signed the paperwork to have the submarine commissions sent to a Luxembourg-based shell company. [Picture left: Balladur with his former chief lieutenant, N Sarkozy]
That's strong stuff. There are denials all round. But the judges in the Karachi case are not just theorizing. Documents support their suspicion. They discovered that in 2002 an internal investigation by the DCN, the state ship-building firm, concluded flatly that the bus attack was retaliation over non-payment of the full submarine commissions. The 2002 report, written by a former agent of the DGSE, the French Intelligence Service, said suitcases of cash from the commission were being delivered to Balladur's campaign in Paris, according to le Nouvel Observateur magazine
In 2007, Jean-Claude Marin, the Paris Prosecutor, wrote a memorandum mentioning a suspected link between the Karachi attack and the financing of the Balladur campaign, according to documents obtained last week by Reuters news agency.
Last week, Charles Millon, who was Chirac's defence minister after he won the presidency in 1995, confirmed that the incoming administration had halted payment of the submarine commissions because part of them were thought to be paid back into France. De Villepin, who was serving as Chirac's chief of staff in 1995, said on Friday that Chirac had "refused payment of all commissions which could have been used to send kickbacks to France". He said that he had not been alerted "specifically" to the submarine contract.
Villepin must be relishing his chance to get back at Sarkozy after the humiliation that the President has inflicted on his frère-ennemi by having him pursued over the so-called Clearstream affair. In the Clearstream case, Villepin is to stand trial in a few months on charges of trying to smear Sarkozy with claims four years ago that Sarkozy had stashed a large sum of money in a secret bank account in.... Luxembourg.
Balladur, who earned Chirac's enmity for betraying him by running against him in 1994, said yesterday that everything about the submarine deal and his election finances were above board and he is happy to answer the judges' questions. But he added that he did not follow the detail of the submarine contract. It's worth noting that the 50 million or so euros of foreign commissions on the submarine deal were legal -- and tax-deductible by the shipbuilders -- in France at the time. Such payments became illegal only after France signed up to an OECD anti-corruption pact in 2000. It was always illegal for French nationals to receive kickbacks from such commissions.
This case is unlikely to fade because the survivors and families, who are mainly from the Normandy port of Cherbourg, have banded together and are demanding a full investigation. And parliament is getting involved. Bernard Cazeneuve, the Socialist member for Cherbourg and mayor of the city, said "we are discovering manipulation on all sides in an extremely unhealthy context." Sarkozy's blanket dismissal was not enough, he said. "It is the duty of Parliament to demand that full light is shed on the case." Michèle Alliot-Marie, the new Justice Minister, has just promised that the enquiry will be given priority.
Do not expect anything dramatic. L'affaire Karachi has not yet become une affaire d'état. In France, there is a long history of politico-financial skulduggery that simmers on for years and never reaches the courts. For example, a thick cloud of financial scandal dogged Chirac for his 12 years in the presidency but nothing came of it.
It is also worth recalling that Sarkozy is about to abolish the institution of independent investigating judges -- of the kind who are pursuing the Karachi case. Under his reform, the President is to put all investigation into the hands of the prosecution service -- a body which is completely under the orders of the government.
Spot the common factor among the following:
-- A train crash that paralyzed rail service between Paris and Bordeaux all day on Wednesday.
-- Plans this week to introduce guilty pleas in French criminal courts
-- The anguish of thousands of university students who are not prepared for end-of-year examinations next month.
The answer is not Nicolas Sarkozy. The common thread is the free market, or more precisely France's reflexive suspicion and fear of "Anglo-Saxon liberalism". Sarkozy is behind two of the three items. The case of the universities is the most immediately damaging, but first, in order:
The unions and left are blaming the train crash in the western Charente département on the opening of rail freight to commercial operators. No-one was injured but the accident was spectacular. A load of tractor diggers on a German-operated train ripped the side off a passing state railways locomotive.
According to the unions and leftwing parties, the accident was the consequence of the deregulation of rail freight that the European Union supposedly forced on France. Britain's disastrous privatised system is always held up as the example of how not to run a railroad.
In reality, the crash had nothing to do with the new rules -- introduced in 2006 before Sarkozy was elected. "Privatisation" is limited to allowing some competition for freight services. France reluctantly agreed to this to conform to EU single market rules. Dominique Bussereau, the transport minister, pointed out that the badly-loaded goods wagon was being hauled by German state railways and that foreign trains have been using French rails for over a century.
On the law courts, the traditionalists and the left are up in arms over a supposed attempt by President Sarkozy to sell out France's Republican criminal court system and replace it with Anglo-Saxon rough justice.
We've visited Sarkozy's court reforms before. What's new are the proposals this week for revamping the assizes, the jury courts which try the most serious crimes. The judicial unions are upset over two items. One is the introduction of guilty pleas, in the style of English law.
The idea is to free-up the hugely overloaded courts. In France, assize cases are given a full court trial with all the witnesses and evidence even when the defendant admits guilt. The reform, say the critics, will create cut-price "American-style" justice with plea-bargaining and pressure on those who cannot afford lawyers to plead guilty. Sarkozy has already introduced the system in lower courts.
Judges and prosecutors (who are also judges) are also resisting Sarkozy's plans to reform the court structure. He wants judges to become referees, in the English-law style, rather than super-prosecutors, as they are under France's Napoleonic law system. Prosecutors would then plead their cases as adversaries of the defence lawyers rather than high accusers. This, according to the unions and traditionalists, boils down to "privatising" criminal justice.
On the Universities, the academic year has been disrupted and, in some establishments, ruined, by a campaign of strikes and "blocages" by staff and students in protest against Sarkozy's reforms. The protesters at the Sorbonne in Paris and most of the remaining hotbeds of strife caved in this week and went back to work, but months of disruption by a militant minority has wasted a year for many students around France -- and the parents and tax-payers who finance them.
The protesters accuse Sarkozy of "privatising" the state university system. This, they say, is his secret agenda though all he has done is grant limited autonomy to university directors and encouraged competition among establishments. The protesters are also resisting changes to teaching duties by research staff but it is not clear what their objection is.
French universities have long been neglected. They are starved of resources compared with the well-endowed grandes écoles which educate the higher achievers. The waste is colossal. A third of the 741,000 undergraduates leave without a degree. Sarkozy's reform, which has already been watered down, is supported by most university chiefs as a move to help France catch up with the rest of the world. It is absurd to claim that the system is being privatised.
The conclusion from all this is that Sarkozy is still pushing on with reforms that he promised in 2007 despite his unpopularity and resistance from the left and traditionalists. He has been giving ground on some fronts, like health, where he hit resistance against plans to put managers rather than doctors in charge of hospitals. But his persistence is remarkable at a time when the old dirigiste République has been given new legitimacy by the financial crisis.
Sarkozy is no free marketeer in the Anglo-American sense. He is the first to use his formidable presidential power to shore up the old interventionist system and he has dropped the free market rhetoric that took him to office in 2007. But he is pragmatic and is largely sticking to his project for fixing what does not work in France.
Mocking President Sarkozy can land you in trouble. The French law is being deployed with vigour against citizens who take the President's name in vain.
The latest case is a 47-year-old philosophy teacher from Marseilles university who was tried in the city's police court today for shouting in a supposedly jocular way "Sarkozy, je te vois" ('Sarkozy, I can see you' -- using the familiar singular).
The prosecutor called for conviction and a 100 euro fine against Patrick X, the lecturer, for the quaintly defined offence of "disturbance of the peace with insults, during the daytime". The lecturer, who is witholding his surname from the media, has become a bit of a celebrity over the past couple of days. Recounting his misadventure on the radio, he said that he was walking through Saint Charles station, the Marseilles rail terminus, in the evening rush-hour and came across police officers who were aggressively checking the identity of two youths. To "lighten the atmosphere", he called out "Sarkozy I can see you" and the surrounding crowd burst into laughter. The police took offence and hustled him off to the station for booking.
It was an easy hit since the name Sarkozy is synonymous with law-and-order and our professor, though wearing a suit and tie at the time, is obviously one of those leftwingers who worry about "police repression". "It was an attempt to defuse the atmosphere, a teacher's technique to relax the mood," Patrick explained on France-Inter radio today. "People laughed a lot. The police must answer the question: 'does laughter disturb the peace ? Is laughter subversive ?'"
The prosecutor said Patrick's conduct was no laughing matter. The incident had lasted for five minutes, during which, the police calculated, he could have said "Sarkozy, I can see you" up to 62 times.
The lecturer's lawyer demanded a re-enactment of the alleged offence with a technical expert to measure how much peace would have been disturbed in the noisy rail station. The judges refused and said they will deliver a verdict in July -- which is about average speed for French lower-court cases.
People are only half-laughing at the "case of the rowdy professor" because it reflects increasingly heavy-handed behaviour by the French police in all manner of affairs. Accounts of pointless and abusive arrests are surfacing in the media almost daily.. Sarkozy is accused by civil rights groups and the left of creating a climate of repression with his anti-crime crusade. Jean-Pierre Dubois, head of the Human Rights League, said today's case "reveals once again the slide into police and judicial excess." The League is campaigning against a surge around the country in prosecutions for the offence of insulting a police officer.
The other famous case involving the president's person was the conviction by an appeals court in March of a demonstrator who carried a small placard that was deemed to insult the head of state. This simply read "Casse-toi pauvre con" ('get lost, jerk' or equivalent), the insult that Sarko himself made famous when he was caught on video shouting it at an unfriendly bystander early last year. Hervé Eon, an environment campaigner, was prosecuted under the rarely used presidential insult law after he had held his placard in sight of the presidential limousine in the town of Laval. On appeal, he was fined a mere 30 euros but he now has a criminal record.
Sarkozy is very sensitive over his dignity and he has already used the law more than any of his recent predecessors to pursue those who impugn his honour. He is notoriously harsh-tongued towards his subordinates, but he has a thin skin when he is mocked. This partly explained his initial refusal to attend the national football cup at the stade de France the Saturday before last. "J'en ai marre de me faire siffler par des cons," [I'm sick of being booed by a__holes] Sarko told aides, according to le Canard Enchaîné weekly. Football crowds have recently whistled and jeered his appearance in the stadium.
When Sarkozy did turn up for the final between two Breton teams [top picture], the Stade de France had orders not to mention the presidential presence or show his face on any big screen. When it was time to present the cup, the announcer avoided inciting jeers by announcing simply that the "high authority of state" would hand over the trophy. It was over before anyone had time to boo, which must have been a relief to the police. It would have taken hundreds to charge everyone with insulting the head of state.
[Picture: the law checking for insults in Marseilles station]
A jinx seems to have latched onto President Sarkozy's scheme to make France the first democracy with an internet police agency. A furore is raging in the French blogosphere over the sacking of a television executive because he criticised Sarkozy's imminent three-strikes-and-you're-out law against illegal downloading.
The episode tells you about the cosy ties between Sarkozy and TF1, France's dominant -- commercial -- television network. Here's what happened:
Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, 33, TF1's chief of technical innovation, voiced his disagreement with the internet law -- known as Hadopi -- in a private e-mail to Françoise de Panafieu, the member of parliament for his home district in western Paris. Panafieu is a one-time minister and veteran member of Sarkozy's UMP party (She's also my MP and her office is opposite my apartent). Her assistant forwarded the e-mail to the office of Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister [above], requesting points to make in response to Bourreau.
The deputy-chief of Albanel's staff then zapped a copy of the e-mail straight to TF1. Bourreau's boss called him in, read out his e-mail and told him he was fired because it betrayed the network's policy in favour of the internet law. When the story broke in Libération, Albanel dismissed it as absurd and indignantly denied before parliament that her office had forwarded the e-mail. Over the weekend, she reversed her story and admitted that the dirty work had been done by Christophe Tardieu, her staffer. He has been suspended for a month.
Albanel says she regrets the incident but is pointing out that nothing in the e-mail said that it was confidential. Bourreau (the name means hangman or executioner) is suing TF1 for wrongful dismissal, citing a law which employees' rights to voice political opinions.
At this stage I would argue that an executive in a sensitive post should be more careful about airing opinions in contradiction with an important company policy. But that's not really the point here. The scandal comes from the Culture Ministry ratting on Bourreau to the private company that it is involved in regulating.
This is being taken as proof of the incestuous network of friends and interests through which Sarkozy influences -- some would say controls -- the media. TF1 is owned by the billionaire Martin Bouygues, a Sarkozy friend who is is godfather to his youngest son. As we saw here before, Sarkozy last year got rid of advertising from public television -- a huge gift to TF1 -- on the suggestion of Bouygues. TF1's second-ranking executive is Laurent Solly, who was deputy director of Sarkozy's 2007 presidential campaign. And so on.
Bourreau is being hailed as a hero, admired with dedicated Facebook groups and a special song "Qui a tué (Who Killed) Bourreau-Guggenhem ?" He has been called the first "internet martyr" in the cause of resisting what is seen as Sarkozy's Big Brother Hadopi scheme.
Much of the emotion is over-blown, but the Hadopi law is beginning to look like a loser before it has even finished its tortuous passage through parliament. It is supported not just by the big corporations of the entertainment industry but also by many artists as the only way to stop their work being pillaged. But its foes have done a good job painting it as an out-of-date plot by the establishment to punish the young and poor who download music and films.
That case was put today by a group of 90 independent record labels which have signed a declaration attacking the Hadopi law (which takes its name from the acronym for the new High Authority which will track down and punish illegal downloaders). The independents, who say they represent 90 percent of French musical artists, attacked the majors for impoverishing them and supporting a policy "which designates the public as potential thieves rather than music-lovers."
The anti-Hadopi crowd could not have wished for better ammunition than the case of the unfortunate Mr Bourreau.
[Picture at top is Albanel in parliament last month after a first attempt to pass the Hadopi law was unexpectedly defeated. It's back for a new vote later this month and will very likely pass]
![Bongo-sarkozy[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e20115707bdb46970b-400wi "Bongo-sarkozy[1]")
Here's a case that shows why President Sarkozy will be happy when he enacts his plan to get rid of the institution of the investigating judge. Françoise Desset, the senior juge d'instruction in the fraud division of the Paris courts, has just embarrassed the government by ordering an inquiry into the alleged corruption of three African leaders who are close to Paris.
Desset defied the request of the state prosecutor to halt proceedings and approved a case in which police investigators have already tracked tens of millions of euros of French-based assets belonging to the leaders of Gabon, Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) and Equatorial Guinea. These include mansions, châteaux, Paris apartments, dozens of bank accounts and stables of Ferraris, Porsches and other luxury transport.
The three are Omar Bongo, president of Gabon since 1967, Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Republic of Congo, and Teodoro Obiang, ruler of Equatorial Guinea. Gabon and the Congo are former French colonies and Bongo, the doyen of African leaders, is an old acquaintance of Sarkozy and a valuable French asset. All three states are part of France-Afrique, the little club of states with close ties to Paris.
When Sarkozy won office in 2007, he promised an end to the cosy relations with unsavoury African clients and sketched a new era "free of the dross of the past." But the President soon found that he could not do without the favours of Bongo, France's oldest African fixer, and it was back to business as usual in France-Afrique.
Some of Gabon's oil wealth has been spread around French ruling circles for decades. Dr Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, was embarrassed in January when it was revealed that Bongo had recently paid him handsomely as a consultant on his health system. It is not just about money. For example, when Nelson Mandela was reluctant to grant a request by Carla Bruni-Sarkozy for a meeting, Bongo stepped in and organised it. And if France needs to evacuate its citizens from the civil war in Chad, another France-Afrique nation, they will do it through Libreville, the Gabon capital.
The "case of the ill-gotten goods" was brought by the French branch of the anti-corruption watch-dog Transparency International. The group said that the three presidents’ holdings far surpassed their salaries and that corruption has deprived millions of education and medical care. "Every luxury apartment acquired in France means one hospital or school less in Libreville," said William Bourdon, the lawyer for Transparency. The group brought a suit against the three under the French offences of embezzlement of stolen public funds, money-laundering and breach of trust.
According to the police, Bongo and his family own 39 properties, including a villa near the Champs-Élysées, and they hold 70 bank accounts in France. The Sassou-Nguessos have 24 properties and 112 bank accounts. The Obiangs spent more than €4 million on four limousines in Paris.
The judge's decision has infuriated the Elysée Palace and the Foreign Ministry because it has shone a strong light on the continuing seamy side of France's African affairs. On the orders of the Justice Ministry, still run by Sarkozy's protegée Rachida Dati, the prosecutors have filed an appeal. This has halted the inquiry for the time being.
The affair may end there, but damage has been done. In trying to kill the investigation, Sarkozy is certainly behaving no diffferently than pragmatic leaders in other democracies when realpolitik prevails over commitments to ethical foreign policy. But his action conflicts with his promise of a break with the sleazy old ways in Africa. The Transparency lawyer rubbed in the point. “An appeal aimed at putting a lid on this investigation would make a mockery of President Sarkozy’s commitments at the G20 against tax havens, financial crime and international fraud," he said.
Lawyers for the African leaders say that they are victims of a vendetta and that their affairs have nothing to do with French justice. They wonder why investigators are not bothering with the Gulf families which have been buying up chunks of the Champs Elysées and mansions in western Paris.
My point about investigating judges is that this type of inquiry would never have opened under the new system that Sarkozy aims to introduce. This will abolish the juges d'instruction, the independent investigators founded two centuries ago under Napoleon Bonaparte. Some of the judges have in recent decades made life difficult for the ruling classes, exposing corruption in the political and business elite. Sarkozy plans to put investigation in the hands of prosecutors. They report directly to the Justice Ministry and its political master.
[Below: Sarkozy making his case to sceptial juges d'instruction]
Did a French law professor get off scot-free after murdering his wife? The question is being asked in France today after a court in Toulouse found Jacques Viguier, 51, not guilty of killing his wife Suzy, who was 38 when she vanished from their home. The trial was fascinating because no body, weapon or hard evidence was found yet the prosecution seemed to have a plausible case.
The acquittal caused surprise because, as we have seen here before, French courts often do not allow much benefit for doubt if investigating judges and prosecutors have built a strong argument. This time they did. The case sheds interesting light on the system.
The facts: Suzy Viguier [left], a dance teacher, was last seen when her lover dropped her off at the couple's home at 4.30 am on a Sunday morning in February 2000. The marriage was breaking up and she had been due to meet a lawyer to start a divorce the next day. Viguier, a low-key man who is a star of the Toulouse University law faculty, reported her missing four days later. He did so after Olivier Durandet, the lover, had raised a big fuss [see him in video below]
Continue reading "French court clears law teacher in missing-body murder trial " »
![Ferrari_paris_match[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e201156ec67651970c-250wi)
Paris Match today offered a good example of the hypocrisy in the way that celebrities use France's laws that protect the sanctity of private life. On its cover and six inside pages, Match featured a romance between Laurence Ferrari, the star TV news presenter, and Renaud Capuçon, a leading classical violinist. The article is the usual stuff, with carefully staged pictures and purple prose about the "duet at tempo appassionato" between the two stars "who fell head over heels in love a year ago."
Nothing wrong with that. Match, which has just celebrated its 60th birthday, leads the field with its mix of celebrity gush and good reporting and pictures. But we also learned today that Ferrari, who anchors the TF1 evening news -- the most watched in Europe -- came top of the league of French public figures who have won damages over the past year against the media for breaching their privacy.
Ferrari, 42, scored 144,000 euros in five separate suits that she brought against publications which mentioned her romantic life or published pictures of her without permission. Her last court case, in February, ended with 15,000 euros in damages against Voici, another celeb magazine, for reporting her liaison with the violinist.
The law is strict. You are committing an offence if you report on the private life of anyone or publish a picture of them without authorisation. President Sarkozy has used it successfully over the years and, as we saw in February, Ségolène Royal, the Socialist, has a case pending against Match for a picture of her in the street with her new boyfriend. Yes, you can argue that the key word is "unauthorised". But if celebrities and political figures market their private lives in self-serving magazine spreads, it's a bit rich that they can use the law to rake in damages from others who report on them.
Ferrari is, by the way, continuing to lose her audience to the competition, mainly France2's Journal Télévisé, which is broadcast at the same 8pm.
How do you fight racial discrimination if you have no way of measuring the racial make-up of your country? France, as we have seen here before, has never been able to solve this conundrum. It's trying again this week with a proposal to President Sarkozy that would allow the collection of statistics on citizens' ethnic origin.
In France, it is actually a criminal offence to collect such figures. The logic is the laudable one that all citizens are integrated as equals in a colourblind republic. Asking people to identify their race is deemed an encouragement to self-segregation, or what is known as communitarianism. Memories of past racism and particularly the persecution of Jews in World War Two, make France especially allergic to the idea of anything that smacks of registering people by ethnic origin.
But everyone knows that this ideal model has not worked. The problem is what to do about it. French citizens of black and Arab origin have a smaller chance of higher education and finding jobs and housing than whites. Unemployment among those of Maghrebin, or north African, origin is three times the national level. Schools in the immigrant areas are failing miserably to help children escape the ghettos. But the taboo over ethnic matters remains powerful. Such words are avoided in favour of the euphemism "visible minorities".
The latest attempt to break this taboo has come from Yazid Sabeg, an eminent businessman of Algerian origin whom Sarkozy appointed late last year as High Commissioner for Diversity. He wants surveys which would ask people to which ethnic and/or religious group they feel they belong. This would be a start to correcting injustice, he says.
The idea has split the country -- and not always along the usual lines. Some anti-racism groups are heavily against it while others support it. Fadela Amara, the feminist activist of Algerian background who is Sarkozy's Minister for the Inner City, said: "Our country must not become a mosaic of communities. No-one must ever wear the Star of David again" -- a reference to the war. A majority of the public is opposed to Sabeg's suggestion. A poll by the CSA institute found last week that 55 percent believed that an ethnic census would be ineffective, with 37 percent approving of the idea.
Louis Schweitzer, head of the High Authority for the Struggle against Discriminations and Equality (Halde) is strongly opposed to ethnic statistics. "There is only one human race," he says in today's Libération. "In creating ethno-racial statistics you create a reality. You risk turning these categories into reality." Schweitzer, a former Chairman of the Renault corporation, wants stronger pressure on employers and landlords over discrimination but has not explained how this can be brought about other than through the existing system of case-by-case complaints by victims.
Sebag, 58, faced a hard time this morning selling his idea to a sceptical audience on France-Inter, the public radio network. "All public policies directed at fighting discrimination have proved ineffective," he said. "The situation has got worse, so we have to equip ourselves with a new instrument which can show discrimination.
"There are a lot of fantasies about this. People find it hard to face reality in this country: the population has changed and a whole segment feels that they suffer discrimination on the grounds of their physical characteristics, their family names. They feel illegitimate."
Sabeg was attacked by the station's (all-white) commentators who argued the case for France as an indivisible, universal Republic. He gave an effective answer: "It is no longer possible to use the argument about universalism and the national community and that there is no racism or discrimination. It doesn't work."
It's not clear how Sarkozy will react when he meets Sabeg later this week. As presidential candidate, he favoured affirmative action, or "positive discrimination" as he calls it. Since then, he has abandoned the idea and has rejected suggestions of introducing ethnic or gender quotas in employment and housing. Sabeg said today that he is against quotas too. But he wants new mechanisms to incite employers, landlords and educators to take on and promote non-white people.
Sarkozy alone will decide what to do with Sabeg's ideas.
A row over a new French film gives me a chance to mention a routine but always troubling job for British correspondents in France. This is the trip to Calais. You always leave the Channel port feeling hopeless after observing the wretched lot of the refugees who gather on its outskirts with the hope of smuggling themselves into England.
Despite the fortress-like protection of the ports and attempts by London to diminish the attractions of the supposed British Eldorado, the flow to the Channel continues. The closure by (Interior Minister) Nicolas Sarkozy in 2003 of the Sangatte Red Cross centre, near the Channel tunnel entrance, did not end the affair. Hundreds of young asylum seekers, mainly from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey, are living rough on the edge of Calais and other Channel ports. They are cared for by individuals and small charities, refused shelter by the local authorities and harassed by police who have orders to keep them on the move. They inhabit a legal no-man's land because most cannot be expelled to their homelands yet they have no right to stay in France.
The British media have over the years whipped up unjustified indignation over supposed French laxness towards the refugees but French public opinion has never focused much on les miserables of the ports. The domestic army of clandestins in the big cities draw more emotion -- both sympathy and hostility -- than the ones who are trying to transit through France to Britain.
That has changed for a while with the release tomorrow of Welcome, a movie by Philippe Lioret and starring Vincent Lindon, one of France's biggest stars, which seeks to expose the brutal treatment of the Calais refugees.[Trailer here] The story involves Simon, a depressed local swimming instructor, who befriends Bilal, a young Iraqi Kurd, and helps train him for a highly dangerous project to swim the Channel to England, where he wants to find his girlfriend and play for Manchester United. In helping the lad, Simon learns of the savage existence of the asylum seekers and falls foul of the police.
Both Lioret and Lindon have scored pre-release publicity and incurred the wrath of the Sarkozy government by accusing the state of inhumanity towards the asylum-seekers. The pair are denouncing a law which makes it an offence to help an illegal resident. Lioret stirred special trouble by invoking the spectre of wartime Vichy France and comparing the harassment of the Calais clandestins to the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
"If tomorrow you help a guy who has no papers, you're guilty under the offence of 'helping a person whose papers are not in order'," Lioret told La Voix du Nord newspaper. "What country are we living in? I have the impression that we're in 1943 and that we've hidden a Jew in the cellar," he said.
That spurred a riposte from Eric Besson, the former Socialist who has just become Sarkozy's new Immigration Minister. "To suggest that the French police are like the police of Vichy, and that Afghans are hunted down, are the target of roundups ... is intolerable," said Eric Besson.
Lindon, who plays Simon, said that the "illegals are sometimes treated worse than dogs." With its dense barbed wire fences, Calais was "a town in a state of siege," he said.
Lindon, who has spent his career playing sensitive, flawed heroes, vowed on television at the weekend to stop frequenting posh Paris restaurants because he was so appalled by the suffering at Calais. The promise did not last long, according to today's Figaro. Lindon was spotted lunching yesterday at the Brasserie Lipp, the famed eating place on the Boulevard Saint Germain.
The end is nigh for Rachida Dati, the troublesome glamour figure of the French government. For months, Dati, 43, the symbol of ethnic diversity in President Sarkozy's cabinet, has been clinging on to her job as Justice Minister in the face of a revolt by the judges under her command.
Two weeks ago, the birth of a baby and her return to work five days later seemed to have won a reprieve for the former presidential favourite (see below for the latest on the paternity mystery). But last night she agreed under Sarkozy's pressure to run for next June's elections to European Parliament.
As second place on the Paris region list of Sarkozy's UMP party, Dati will be guaranteed a seat. This will offer an elegant exit for the furiously ambitious, politically inept emblem of Sarkozy's promotion of non-white personnel. According to Le Figaro, Dati will wait until the election before resigning. Sarkozy has also guaranteed her a senior role in the party, it said.
Dati refused to say anything about her future today but Sarkozy made clear that she is on the way out. He will need a more consensual figure in charge of Justice to handle the resistance from the judiciary when he applies his promise to abolish the institution of investigating judge later this year.
Dati had hoped that she could follow French precedent and stay on in the government after winning a Euro-Parliament seat. The young Sarkozy once did that.However Sarko said this afternoon that he expects all his party's candidates to take up the seats they win.
A mixture of Cinderella and Cruella de Vil, Dati has both fascinated and irritated with her abrasive ways, good looks, sexy outfits and indifference to the conventions of the ruling elite. As we've seen here before, she was protected because she was the creation of Sarkozy until she fell out of favour. Her return to the ministry days after a Caesarian delivery was an act of devotion and desperation. It also deepened her unpopularity. Last week, before turning the ministry dining room into a nursery for Zohra, her baby, she announced that Sarko had assured her that she was keeping her job for 2009. That seems to have been an illustration of a cynical saying among French politicians that "promises commit only those who receive them." [Les promesses n'engagent que ceux qui les reçoivent]
For all her antipathique side, Dati, the daughter of Moroccan and Algerian working class parents, draws sympathy as a rather lonely figure. Sheer persistence took her from obscurity to a very senior government post despite her lack of political experience and minimal professional qualification. Marianne, a very Sarkophobic news weekly, painted a bitter-sweet portrait of her this week under the headline: "Rachida Dati: Why women hate her." The answer was that "She embodies at the same time the image of the superwoman and the archetype of the woman who has put her fate in the hands of one man...The king made her and he can unmake her." That's pretty accurate.
The mystery persists over Zohra's father. The names of several business tycoons are still doing the rounds, as is that of José-Maria Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister [below]. Aznar issued a denial months ago. On a visit to Paris today, he was tackled on the subject by Europe 1 radio.
"This is a libel," he said. "This question does not exist. It has never existed." He is taking legal action against people spreading the rumour he added.
Meanwhile, Dati's baby has become a running gag for Nicolas Canteloup, the political impersonator who has a popular morning slot on Europe 1. On Monday, he reported that Zohra Dati had resigned from her post as minister's daughter, becoming the 12th member of the entourage of the impossible Madame Dati to give notice this year.
A hint of revolt is floating in the French air these days. It's not dramatic enough to grab foreign attention, like rioting on the Left Bank or cars ablaze in the ghettos. But you get a sense that, with recession biting, a small part of the country is spoiling for a bit of old-fashioned insurrection.
There is a whiff of the old civil war which France has never really resolved since the revolution of 1789. President Sarkozy is, as usual, stirring it up, demonizing the foe. The adversary is embodied by Olivier Besancenot, the anti-capitalist figurehead, and a cast including a bloody-minded trade union called SUD, radical school students and an assortment of dreamy anarchists.
The most dramatic incident so far was the 24-hour shut-down by SUD workers last week of the Gare Saint Lazare, France's second-busiest railway station. Their wildcat strike caused havoc for hundreds of thousands of Paris commuters. It made a mockery of Sarkozy's new law on minimum public service during labour disputes. He told them that they would not get away with it again.
This was a new kind of strike -- or social movement, to use the funny euphemism. The SUD people have been gaining power over the past few years. They use the hard language of revolt and make clear that they want to break the system, not earn more money or retire earlier. Even the CGT, the communist-led union that used to dominate the railways, flinched from supporting SUD stoppage.
Besancenot, the cherubic Trotskyite who is one of France's most popular political figures, backs the SUD movement -- which extends beyond railways -- and the other radical stunts which have been making headlines.
Among the odder episodes has been the affair of the "Tarnac gang". This involves a group of anti-capitalist, middle class university drop-outs who were arrested in a spectacular police raid on a farm in November. They were charged with terrorism. Their alleged offence was to have stopped three high-speed TGV express trains by sabotaging their electricity lines. All but the alleged ring-leader have now been released on bail. Their rural neighbours are rallying behind them, the leftwing media like them and concerts are being organised to support them.
Then there are the highly publicised raids on supermarkets by self-appointed "Robin Hood" groups. They walk through the aisles of busy supermarkets piling up carts with food and drink, including luxury items like champagne and foie gras. They proceed to the check-out and refuse to pay. They explain to management that they are "liberating" the food for distribution to the poor. In all but one of about a dozen raids so far, the Robin Hoods have got away with their goods after causing a scene that risked driving customers from the store.
Since a raid that garnered 5,000 euros of food in Paris on December 20, the Monoprix chain has been attempting to prosecute these 'subversive shoppers' for robbery with violence and insults. Civil disobedience of this type is sometimes organised via Facebook. It is encouraged by various websites and leftwing media such as Libération and le Nouvel Observateur. Cheeky stunts like that please older journalists who remember chanting "Property is Theft" back in the demonstrations of their youth.
The Obs published an admiring piece last week on "Those French who don't want to play the game". It tracked groups that go around switching off department store lighting and state post-office workers who disobey orders to raise the price of services.
Writing approvingly of the "collectives" who raid supermarkets, Libération said: "The politicians would be wrong not to listen to these sounds from a society pushed to the limit, which feels that the straightjacket of ultra-liberalism is being torn apart." Of course Libé talks like that. It was born in '68. But it is also a respected mainstream daily, so that gives a flavour of the mood in part of France. (And for the record, I love Libé and it's the paper I buy first in the morning)
Sarkozy's people say that the President has been getting warnings from police intelligence that discontent is brewing, especially among the young. He is worried that a hard year will stir unrest in the streets. Fear of Greek-style riots by teenagers caused him over Christmas to shelve plans to reform the Lycées -- the high schools. The left are pointing out, with some cause, that Sarkozy is using the threat of the hard left for his own political ends in the same way as President Mitterrand used Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far right bogeyman in the 1980s and 90s. By inflating the importance of Le Pen, the Socialist president discredited the moderate right. Now, with the Socialist opposition in semi-coma, Sarkozy is exaggerating the dangers of Besancenot and the potentially violent left.
On the plane coming home from the Middle East two weeks ago, King Sarko I sounded a little anxious about his fickle subjects and his possible fate. "France is one of the most difficult countries to govern," he said. "Louis XVI, with his young wife, was one of the most loved kings for 10 years. Both of them ended with their heads on the block." Don't worry. No-one imagines that Sarko and Carla Bruni will end up on the guillotine.
 Here's a picture of a courageous super-woman. No, it's not. It shows a bad mother and disgrace to the feminist cause. The argument has been raging since the unexpected return to work of Rachida Dati, the French Justice Minister. Only five days earlier, she gave birth to her first baby -- by caesarean section. The father's identity remains a state secret. More on that below
Dati, 43, the glamour-figure of President Sarkozy's government, left her clinic in the 16th arrondissement yesterday morning. In freezing weather, the single mother showed Zohra, her baby, to admirers (picture below). An hour later, she turned up looking trim in stiletto heels and a tight suit for the weekly cabinet session. Sarko opened by contratulating "la jeune maman" -- the young mummy.
The very image-conscious Dati was pulling off one her stunts. Her decision to forego the standard three-month maternity leave was ridiculed by those who see her as a pushy, over-promoted favourite of the President. Her admirers saw her return as typical of the pluck that took her from a childhood on the immigrant housing estates to one of the highest government posts.
Everyone understood that Dati, who is deemed to be a disastrous minister, was desperate to keep her job and be there when Sarkozy announced his radical plan to abolish the institution of investigating judges (last post). The argument is whether she has set a bad example for women and is neglecting her daughter.
In the media, blogs and internet forums, the criticism is outweighing the approval. "Dati is doing a disservice to the women's cause," Sophie de Menthon, a feminist businesswoman, told Metro newspaper. "She is driving herself to a point that women who have children know is superhuman. Instinctively and not rationally, I abhor this."
Claude Askolovitch, Editor of the Journal du Dimanche, tore into Dati in his daily breakfast commenatary on Europe 1 radio. She was betraying the women who had fought for their rights by giving the impression that maternity leave is a luxury option, he said. It had been a mistake to see Dati as an icon of ethnic diversity because her case was unique. "She is a solitary character.. and even in happiness, she often inspires a little sadness."
Catherine Nay, a veteran journalist who wrote the authoritative biography on Sarkozy, said Dati was making a mistake because she was stirring up yet another row over her behaviour. "There is in her action an excessive determination to stay in power... It is not clear that being modern means being rushed and reckless," said Nay.
Luc Chatel, the minister who acts as government spokesman, defended Dati. "Rachida has always said that to be a mother was the greatest of happinesses, but at the same time that she had important duties that she would continue to fulfill," he said.
Everyone is bored with the Dati soap opera -- or so we are supposed to believe. A poll on the media in La Croix newspaper today ranked her as one of the subjects which the public believes is over-reported. Yet the internet is full of Dati and she repeatedly scores as a profitable cover story for magazines -- both news and celebrity. So a lot of people are intrigued by her.
It's obvious that the Dati saga has a lot of good old-fashioned ingredients: power, sex and rags-to-riches. Dati is a Cinderella who was elevated from obscurity as the prince's favourite and became a force in her own right. (She talked her way into Sarkozy's staff when he was Interior Minister and she was serving as a junior investigating judge in the suburbs.)
She has flouted decorum -- indulging a taste for showing off in luxury brands and posing for fashion shoots at the same time as imposing Sarko's harsh new sentencing rules and a painful overhaul of the justice system. She is deeply unpopular among her judges and civil servants whom she commands. For a while she was Sarko's social escort. Now he is said to regard her as incompetent but is unable to bring himself to remove her, if only because she is such a symbol. After having the baby and loyally come back to work, she is almost unsackable.
On the matter of le père, the media have been mainly silent this week, while the internet has been full of a picture of François Sarkozy, the President's younger brother. He visited Dati in the maternity clinic over the weekend. Today, Paris Match magazine confirmed that Dati had spent Christmas eve at the home of Andrée Sarkozy, the President's mother. It also published a picture of Madame Sarkozy visiting Dati's clinic. No further explanation was given.
The names of other possible fathers are still circulating. José-Maria Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister, is first among them despite his public denials last autumn. Then there is a suggestion that Dati, who was very keen to have a first child and in her 43rd year, simply chose an anonymous donor.
There is nothing that Nicolas Sarkozy likes better than throwing a spanner in the works when no-one is expecting it. His latest wheeze, according to media leaks, is to do away with the pillar of the French criminal justice system: the investigating judge.
(Update late Wednesday: Sarkozy has today confirmed that he aims to abolish the old investigating system, as previewed in this post)
The juge d'instruction, also known in English as examining magistrate, is the all-powerful independent inquisitor whose role has been cenral since the days of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
The judges' powers have ben whittled down over the years and Sarkozy's move, if born out, will bring a further alignment of the French system with the Engilsh common law method, practised in the "Anglo-Saxon" world and elsewhere. Some judges and experts have given a cautious welcome to a long-awaited overhaul of a system which limits suspects' rights and has led to recent spectacular abuses. But Sarkozy's plan, as reported by le Monde, smacks of another of the monarchical reforms that have the effect of reinforcing the President's powers. There has been an outcry from judges and leftwing politicians who are accusing Sarko of abandoning the French tradition of independent investigation and equality before the law.
"The Sarkozy state is sliding towards authoritarianism in all domains," said Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Socialist party's parliamentary leader. "The President is abusing the rule of law."
Continue reading "Sarkozy to banish Napoleon's judges" »
This could be a picture of any tropical island, but it's one with a terrifying past. l'Ile du Diable -- Devil's Island -- is the loneliest part of the South American penal colony to which France sent convicts for a century.
I took the picture at lunch yesterday on Ile Royale, one of the two other Salvation Islands eight miles off French Guiana. The fish and wine were excellent and the place is beautiful but it was hard to escape the mournful mood of islands where thousands of men laboured, mouldered and, in many cases, died.
We were dining at the neat stone building -- now an inn -- that was the officer's mess on Royale, the island that was used for administering this corner of "the green hell". That's what prisoners called le bagne -- the penal settlements that included Cayenne, the capital, Kourou and points inland. Down the hill was the quay where the commandant greeted new prison boats with the warning that "no-one escapes from the Salvation Islands."
The last convict left only 60 years ago but the solitary confinement cells, guards' houses and acres of force-labour stonework are still there. Rusting bolts and fetters still hang from some walls. Some of the buildings are restored but much of it is overgrown by the vegetation which is home to squirrel monkeys and agoutis, rabbit-sized rodents with orange bottoms.
There is a cemetery where personnel and their families were buried but no inmates' graves because when they died -- of disease, exhaustion or executed on the guillotine -- their corpses were just thrown to the sharks. The fish were alerted by the tolling bell at the little stone chapel, according to Henri Charrière, the prisoner known as Papillon, who wrote a fanciful memoir of his time here in the 1930s and 40s.
As brutal as they were, thanks to books and films, the triangle of little islands known in English collectively as Devil's Island stirs a bit of romance for the "Anglo-Saxon" world. The most recent film was the 1973 Papillon, with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. It was largely shot on Caribbean islands and was even more fictional than Charrière's highly embroidered tale. Papillon never escaped from the islands in a home-made boat as he claimed. He just walked out of a semi-open jail in Cayenne in the wartime chaos of 1944.
 [cell on Royale]
For the French, le bagne still stirs a chill -- as memories of the cruel British 18th and 19th century deportations still do in parts of Australia. Locals say the French got the idea from the British colony of New South Wales. The most famous of its victims was Alfred Dreyfus. The Jewish army captain who was wrongly convicted of spying for the Germans, spent nearly five years in the late 1890s as the lone prisoner on Devil's island. The smallest island was kept for a handful of celebrated or political offenders. A dozen guards kept a permanent eye on Dreyfus. In a cruel touch, they built a wall around his house so he could not see the sea. The building is in the picture above but now overgrown. In the days of the bagne, the convicts were made to clear all trees, leaving the islands barren. Dreyfus's letters to his family make sad reading in the little museum.
Serge Colin, who guided us around Ile Royale, ran through the horrors of the islands in matter-of-fact way, reeling off statistics on the 75,000 prisoners who were shipped off to the Guiana prisons from 1863 to the late 1940s. No more than 30,000 survived. "Many were just the kind of small-time repeat offenders with whom President Sarkozy is so tough," said Colin.
The islands lie low on the horizon when you set out for them by boat from Kourou. They belong to the French space authority, which fires its satellite launchers from the mainland. We were taken there on a catamaran by our hosts from the Arianespace firm (watch not very great video of our arrival here). A poster at the dock says: Venez vivre vos vacances aux îles du Salut -- come and spend your holidays at the Salvation Islands.
 [Picture: Sailing towards the islands. The boy is a Swiss 12-year-old who won a competition with first prize a trip to watch the Ariane launch.]
A small number of tourists visit and some stay over, camping and at the inn on Royale. US cruise liners put passengers ashore on quick visits. They are usually taken by sea for a look at Devil's Island, which is closed to all visitors. It's hard to imagine such a haunted place ever becoming a holiday resort.
[Below: At the island, members of the Paris fire brigade who are stationed on the space range. Not exactly hard labour]
The Sarkozys have taken to the law-courts again. The President failed to get a judge to ban a voodoo doll in his image last month. Today, Carla Bruni's lawyers were in court in the French Indian Ocean island of La Réunion demanding heavy damages against a firm that put her naked likeness on a bag.
Madame Sarkozy is seeking 50,000 euros for the "moral offence" and a further 75,000 euros in damages to her professional image as a model-singer. Pardon, a beach-wear firm, took the liberty of printing a drawing of a well-known nude portrait of France's Première Dame on its jokey three-euro cloth bag. A speech bubble had her saying: "My guy should have bought me Pardon."
The firm, which specialises in provocation and has a couple of outlets in France and on the internet, took fright and promised to burn all 10,000 of the offending bags, but that was not enough for Bruni's lawyers. A court hearing went ahead in Saint-Denis, the Reunion capital, and a verdict is due on Thursday.
Pardon should have known better. Bruni and Sarko are quick to sue when someone attempts to cash in on their images. Bruni won 60,000 euros a few months ago after a successful prosecution of Ryanair for putting the couple in an advert (She gave the money to charity, she says). That was for damages to her professional image. The court awarded only one euro for the alleged moral damage that it had caused her.
The lawyer for the clothes firm told the court that "no-one recognised Carla Bruni in the drawing on the bag." He also wondered why Madame Sarkozy had not sued Christie's auction house in New York for selling the original 1993 nude photograph last April on behalf of the photographer, Michel Comte. The picture, taken for an Aids awareness campaign, went to a Chinese collector for 91,000 dollars -- twenty times more than its pre-sale estimate.
President Sarkozy, a lawyer by profession, has turned out to be by far the most litigious head of state in modern French history. His predecessors kept a regal distance above abuses of their image -- though, like François Mitterrand, they sometimes resorted to dirtier means of revenge than the courts.
While Nicolas Sarkozy has been off sorting out Europe for the past couple of days, le microcosme -- the Paris political and media world -- has been chattering about another subject: his trouble with women.
When he was elected, Sarko appointed 13 female ministers. Three of them caused a splash because of their exotic origins, beauty or leftwing origins. None had political experience. These are Rachida Dati, 43, the Justice Minister, whose working class parents came from Algeria and Morocco; Rama Yade, 32, the Senegalese-born junior Minister for Human Rights, and Fadela Amara, 44, the Minister for the Inner City.
Amara, a tough-talking activist of north African back-ground, has failed to make a mark in the rightwing government. But Sarkozy's problem stems from the two glamorous protegées. Dati has been a disaster in her senior and sensitive post and Yade has committed repeated insubordination. The two icons of Sarkozy's "rainbow cabinet" are in disgrace yet he has proved unable to sack or transfer them.
[picture above: the pair at Windsor on Sarkozy's visit to the Queen last March].
So we have another chance to examine the President's well-known Achilles heel. Super Sarko may be an alpha male chief executive but he is putty in the hands of women. The point was made a couple of years ago by Simone Veil, the political grande dame who legalised abortion in the 1970s. "In the presence of women, Nicolas is a child," she said.
Yade, who was a civil servant before her elevation, has repeatedly spoken out of turn yet each time she has been forgiven. She has just refused an order from Sarkozy to leave her post to lead his UMP party in the European Parliament. Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, humiliated her in public on Wednesday, saying that it had been a mistake to create the Human rights post. He spoke of her unpleasantly in the past tense.
Yade's biggest public gaffe was condemning Sarkozy's invitation to Muammar Gadaffi to visit Paris. The Libyan leader "must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can wipe the blood of his crimes," said Yade.
Yade [left] has also taken a few swipes at her rival favourite at the royal court. She recently put down Dati, saying that she "is only interested in dresses and parties."
Dati, who previously worked on Sarkozy's staff, has offended just about everyone. She has infuriated judges, prison guards and lawyers with the ruthless way that she has imposed reforms. Once adored, she has become a figure of media mockery for her blunders, her high spending on designer clothes and official jets and her delusions of grandeur.
When Barack Obama won the presidency, she commanded the French embassy in Washington to get his mobile number so she could phone him. The Elysée ordered her to calm down. Sarkozy has put Dati under political house arrest and banned her from the media.
On Thursday he was incandescent after she was said by Le Point, a respectable news weekly, to have boasted that she was unsackable because she knew about past political corruption involving Sarkozy. Dati has denied this in an angry letter to the magazine (here)
The unmarried Dati has two strong cards. She is the star symbol of the ethnic diversity upon which Sarkozy places great store. She is also expecting a baby in February. She has refused to name the father and says that she plans only brief maternity leave. Sacking or demoting the new mother would not look good. (Guessing the father has been a Paris parlour game for the past few months.)
The President's need for the favour of strong women is a constant in his biography. The trait can be tracked from his fatherless up-bringing by a formidable mother through to his dependence on Cecilia, the wife who left him in pieces last year and his lightning remariage to Carla Bruni last February.
It can also explain his fraught relations with Angela Merkel. The reserved German Chancellor is cold to Sarkozy's compulsion to dominate through charm.
In Temoignage (Testimony), a hastily written pre-election memoir, Sarkozy wrote in gushing teerms of of his admiration for women and the need, when dealing with them, to "dare to say sensitive things without being sentimental". He added: "Women generate drive in their own way. They have their own ways of thinking and acting."
Yazmina Reza, the playright who followed Sarkozy throughout his campaign, depicted him as both a bully and a little boy eager to please. Isabelle Balkany, a Paris suburban politician and friend, describes him as "un séducteur -- a seducer or a charmer -- whom it is hard for a woman to resist."
Sarkozy finds it hard to say no to women or incur their displeasure, according to those who know him. "This is the case even when they go beyond the limits in the eyes of most other people," said Caroline Derrien and Candide Nedelec, authors of Sarkozy et les femmes: Un homme sous influence (Sarkozy and women: a man under the influence). The pair describe the President as a "like a big self-centred teenager who is very proud of his political and private conquests".
The latest influence is the supermodel-singer whom he married in February. Bruni, who hails from rich artistic circles, has swayed the authoritarian president towards her leftwing thinking. She persuaded him to cancel the extradition to Italy of an alleged former terrorist last month and she encouraged him to slap down Dati last week when she proposed locking up 12-year-old delinquents.
Dati's fall from grace is dated to Sarkozy's romance with Bruni last winter. In a widely reported incident, Bruni is said to have teased Dati one evening as they walked past the Presidential bedroom in the palace. "You would have liked to be there wouldn't you," Bruni said. That tale sounded far-fetched when it came out in a book earlier this year, but I have heard from good sources that it was true.
The subject today is the abuse of power by French police and judges. Two lurid examples have made the headlines for different reasons. One involves a journalist and the other a recreational pilot. Since I am both, I of course feel extra indignation.
Journalists do not usually get sympathy when they complain about mistreatment, but the tale of Vittorio de Filippis [in picture], a manager with Libération, has caused an outcry. It tells you about the heavy-handed methods of a system which has extensive power to arrest and hold people.
Plainclothes officers hammered on de Filippis' door at 6.40 am last Friday. He was arrested in front of his two young sons and insulted. An officer called him "worse than garbage". He was taken in handcuffs to a holding cell and twice subjected to an intimate body search. He was questioned without access to a lawyer and released five hours later.
The police carried out their raid on the orders of Muriel Josié, an examining judge. De Filippis' alleged offence is that he was liable as publisher of Libération for a defamatory comment left by a reader on its internet site. In France, when you sue for libel, the case is prosecuted as a criminal one. In this instance, the victim of the supposed libel, an internet businessman, has already lost two cases against the newspaper.
In other words, a judge ordered a newspaper executive to be dragged from his home and abused over an internet comment. "I barely had time to reassure my son that I was not a crook and that this had to do with the newspaper," said de Filippis.
Continue reading "Rough justice for French journalist and pilot" »
 It's hard not to feel sorry for Rachida Dati, the Justice Minister and glamorous protegée -- at least until now -- of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Dati, who is expecting a baby in a few weeks time, is unpopular with just about everyone. Judges, lawyers and court personnel see her as arrogant and heavy-handed.
On Tuesday, 536 judges signed a protest letter demanding that she apologize in public for her conduct and "incoherent policies". Sarkozy is said to have run out of patience with the woman whom he appointed as a symbol of success for non-white immigrant France. Dati depicts herself as Sarko's loyal soldier but he refused to give her any support at a Cabinet meeting yesterday. The President has been especially annoyed by Dati's fondness for posing in glossy magazines wearing expensive designer gear. Last month, he told the whole cabinet to avoid appearances in evening dress or luxurious contexts. His "anti-bling" order was intended to avoid offending people at a time of economic hardship.
So Sarko cannot be pleased by the fuss over the pictures above. The lefthand portrait of Dati appeared across le Figaro's front page yesterday. Today, L'Express.fr found that le Figaro, the most pro-Sarkozy newspaper, had erased the expensive ring that Dati was wearing in the original. It was identified as a grey gold and diamond item from Chaumet, the Paris jewellers, which costs 15,600 euros. Le Figaro insists that there was no political intent behind the retouching. Paris Match claimed the same thing when it slimmed down Sarko's naked torso in a beach shot last year.
Debora Altman, Figaro's Photo Editor, says that it was an honest error of judgment. Her team removed the ring to stop it monopolising a picture that was being used to illustrate the revolt of the judges, she said.
The unmarried Dati, whose working class parents came from Algeria and Morocco, plans to take only one week off to give birth to the baby. That is 15 weeks less than the maternity leave that is offered to all French women. She has refused to name the father and no-one has come forward. Two politicians -- Jose Maria Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister, and Bernard Laporte, the Sports Minister -- have publicly denied paternity. That has helped fuel the frenzy of gossip, which I am indulging in here. Dati has been close to two captains of French industry over the past couple of years, as well as Aznar.
Sarkozy is expected to reshuffle his Cabinet in January. It is likely that he will move Dati -- who was a judge herself -- out of Justice. But he is thought unwilling to lose one of the icons of his government so may give her another job.
[Below: The Chaumet ring, called Liens (links)]
In Sarcelles, a northern suburb, I walked through a crowd of black children yesterday who were arguing about which of them was "le plus Obama" -- the most like Obama.
As it has done all over Europe, the election of a US president called Barack Hussein has given a lift to minorities who feel marooned outside the mainstream.
This weekend, the imminent arrival in the White House of someone with an African Muslim name has prompted a new campaign for racial integration, supported by Carla Bruni, President Sarkozy's wife.
Yazid Zabeg, an Algerian-born millionaire and the JDD Sunday newspaper have produced a "manifesto for real equality". Under the Obama slogan "Oui, nous pouvons" (Yes we can), the manifesto points to the "cruel contrast" between France's racially divided society and the lesson of inclusion that came from the United States. Bruni says in the JDD that she loves multi-ethnic France and that it is time to "help the elite to change".
This is a touchy subject because of France's policy of assimilating immigrants into the mainstream society of la République without much tolerance for other ethnic and religous communities.
The Obama election is in tune with a new assertiveness among non-white French over the matter of their names. Increasingly, young descendants of immigrants are seeking to drop their Christian names and claim new ones -- and identities -- from their Arab and African backgrounds.
The trend in which Louis, Laurent or Marie want to become Abdel, Said or Rachida has made the media recently, so, along with Marie Tourres, our Paris reporter, I looked into it. We found that the requests from immigrants' children for name changes are mounting in the law-courts and worrying a state that lays store on melding a single national culture. Most of the applications are coming from people with families from Algeria, Tunisia and Moroco, the three former Maghreb colonies.
Continue reading "The Obama effect and why François becomes Mohammed" »
"Quel con" translates into polite English as 'what a fool'. That's the expression that many in France are applying to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the talented and popular Socialist who has made his mark lately in Washington as boss of the International Monetary Fund.
Strauss-Kahn, 59, as you will probably know, is in trouble over a one-night fling that he enjoyed with a married subordinate last January at the Davos international forum in Switzerland. It seems pretty likely that "DSK" , who is married, will be cleared later this month of allegations that he abused his authority when he seduced Piroska Nagy, a Hungarian-born banking expert who worked in the IMF Africa department.
When he heard of the matter a few weeks ago, Sarkozy was furious that DSK, one of the most admired French politicians and a likely Socialist candidate for the next presidency, had risked his chance to restart his career and help France. But the Elysée Palace had been hoping that no news would break until Strauss-Kahn had been cleared by the Washington DC legal firm which was brought in last August to investigate.
DSK is a likeable man with a reputation for enjoying the company of women (the flattering picture above was used when he was trying to win the Socialist presidential nomination last year). One newspaper today called him un grand séducteur. Last year, a Libération journalist caused a fuss by wondering on his blog how long it would take for Strauss-Kahn's wandering eye to land him in trouble in Washington.
We got the answer last spring when Mario Blejer, a senior Argentine economist who is Nagy's husband, began campaigning to have him investigated for abusing his power. We were tipped off along with other journalists in Paris. Mr Blejer discovered the episode via the classic route of stumbling on an incriminating e-mail. His wife confessed and the couple were both very upset and blamed Strauss-Kahn for pursuing her aggressively, IMF colleagues said at the time.
The investigation was made public by the Wall Street Journal on Saturday with timing that could hardly have been worse for Sarkozy's attempts to put a French stamp on a new world financial order. Sarko has teamed up with DSK in an attempt to shape a new "Bretton Woods" pact on financial regulation. Sarkozy put the French-led European case to President Bush at Camp David, Maryland, yesterday, and got a frosty reception.
So you can guess the response from some sections of the French political and media world: The IMF affair is another absurd case of American hysteria over sex, like the affair of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. DSK's private life is nobody's business and he has obviously been stitched up in a plot to undermine France. That charge was laid, for example, by Jean-François Copé, the parliamentary leader of Sarko's UMP party.
But the view is by no means universal. Even allies of DSK are privately calling him idiotic for letting his taste for dalliance get the better of his judgment.
In a well-informed piece today, Claude Askolovitch, Editor of Le Journal du Dimanche, wrote that "Dominique le Magnifique" had caused a French farce by breaking well-understood rules.
"The affair may well be ridiculous compared with the destiny of the world but it touches the heart of the culture of the American government and the IMF," he said. "It is less about sexual puritanism.. than a deep horror of lies and conflict of interest. The absolute sin is not fornication, but denial, in which private life is mixed with public behaviour."
His newspaper carried its usual Washington political column by Anne Sinclair, DSK's glamorous wife, a celebrity television journalist. Sinclair, who is a tough cookie, is publicly standing by her man. She has written on her blog today that she has forgiven "cette aventure d'une nuit" -- this one-night adventure. "We love each other just as much as at our beginning," she said.
For the record, Nagy left Washington in the summer and now works in London at the Bank for Economic Reconstruction and Development (BERD). Strauss-Kahn has confirmed the "incident in my private life in January 2008" and denies that he abused his position as managing director of the fund. The BERD said that there was nothing irregular about Ms Nagy's recruitment and it is not investigating.
People who have talked to DSK say that he is confident that the affair will blow oved once the investigation has cleared him. If that is the case it will not have any impact on his chances of running as the Socialist candidate in the 2012 president election. At lunch today the (French) majority around my table argued that affairs at work are nobody's business if coercion is not involved. A woman who has une aventure with her boss should take responsibility and not seek to have him punished and pilloried, it was said. And before people pile in here, we all know the counter argument to this.
Strauss-Kahn, incidentally, ranked in a poll yesterday as France's second most political figure, behind Bertrand Delanoe, the Socialist Mayor of Paris.
Here is an update on Edvige and the picnic tax -- subjects of posts here in the past two weeks. Both have just been dumped by President Sarkozy after they stirred a public fuss.
Data on sexual orientation, health and other private matters will not be collected on the police data base, which will no longer be called Edvige.
Jean-Louis Borloo, the Environment Minister (above) was told to stop alarming the citizenry with new green taxes.
Sarkozy is said to be angry with his ministers for mishandling their communication, not with the schemes themselves. It was a mistake to personify a snooping system with a woman's name and to allow something to be called une taxe pique-nique. The police intelligence service will continue to compile profiles of more or less anyone they want with a rebaptised system and in a few weeks, Borloo will still produce a carrot-and-stick scheme to promote greener consumer habits. It will focus on electronic and other consumer appliances and not include the picnic items.
Sarkozy has allowed Michèle Alliot-Marie, his Interior Minister, to be pilloried over Edvige, although he had been behind the data base and saw nothing wrong with it until it caused a stir. The President is off to New York for a relaxing weekend with Carla Bruni before addressing the United Nations next week. He has yet to say a word in public on the financial turmoil that has beset the world this week. He is to give his view on the crisis next Thursday in Toulon.
You would think that this Black September for the capitalist world would have been a godsend for the French Left. The Socialist opposition should be having a field day saying 'we told you so' about the liberalism and deregulation which has reigned for the past quarter century and been embraced up to a point by France. But the party is too busy tearing itself to pieces over its vacant leadership to spare time for ideas. I'll come back later to the war among Ségolène Royal, Bertrand Delanoe, Martine Aubry and the rest of the would-be bosses. They are to decide the leadership in Rheims in November. In the meantime, Sarkozy does not have much explaining to do.
The French state has a long history of spying on its citizens, as we have seen here before. There has never been much fuss over the Renseignements Généraux, the police intelligence service which snoops in cafes, work places and housing estates and currently holds files on some 20 million people. A vetting by an RG officer used to be the first the step to a press card for foreign correspondents in Paris.
France barely noticed when President Sarkozy, a long serving Interior Minister and law-and-order champion, beefed up the internal spy services earlier this year by combining the RG with the DST, the counter-espionage and anti-terrorist agency that equates to Britain's MI5. The new super-agency is called the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur.
In the past couple of weeks, however, a revolt has broken out. The spur was the revelation of a new data base that will track the lives, opinions and even sexual habits of what could be a big slice of the population.
Called EDVIGE* -- an acronym and also old-fashioned woman's name -- the system is authorised to store data on anyone aged 13 upwards who is thought "likely to breach public order". "Big sister", as it has been dubbed, will also track everyone active in politics or trade unions and or in a significant role in economic, social or religious institutions. Listed people will have only a very limited right to consult their files.
Insiders are pointing out that this is what the police RG and its predecessors have done for centuries. "EDVIGE is just a cut and paste of the 1991 decree on the RG data base," said Alain Bauer, a criminologist.
The opposition has taken off because Sarkozy's government was forced by the National Commission on Information Technology and Freedom (CNIL) to publish last July 1 the hitherto secret decree that created EDVIGE. This alerted rights groups to the potentially vast scope of the new network.
"With just a few clicks of the mouse, any government official or civil servant will have access to intimate data," said François Bayrou, a centrist politician and fierce opponent of Sarkozy.
Michel Pezet, a lawyer and former member of the CNIL agency, wrote in le Monde: "The EDVIGE database has no place in a democracy. There is nothing in the decree that sets limits or a framework. Whether the database is used with or without moderation depends only on orders from up high."
The main judges' union, civil liberties defenders, gay rights groups and leftwing lawyers have joined the mutiny against what the opponents are calling a new "electronic Bastille". Several suits against it have been filed at the Conseil d'Etat, the highest civil court, and an online petition has gathered over 103,700 signatures (http://nonaedvige.ras.eu.org).
Leading newspapers -- at least those which do not support Sarkozy -- have joined the anti-EDVIGE campaign this week. Le Monde said that it was legitimate for a state to defend its security with an intelligence base "but the defence of public order cannot justify such a threat to individual liberties."
Of course France is not alone. "Homeland Security" in the USA and the fight against Islamic terrorism in Britain have brought new, extra-judicial surveillance of the population. Defenders of EDVIGE are also pointing out that everyone is electronically tracked these days and that people volunteer their biographies and private details on Facebook and other networking sites.
That's true, but it is impossible not to see as sinister a police system that lists 13-year-olds who are deemed potential trouble-makers and keeps tabs on everyone anyone with a remotely public role -- including journalists of course.
-------
*EDVIGE stands for a mouthful of bureaucratese: Exploitation Documentaire et Valorisation de l'Information Générale. Here's the full government decree setting it up. Note that it authorises the agency to record "data relative to the environment of the person, notably including people who have or had a direct, but not accidental, relationship with him or her".
Sarkozy's internal spooks have another even more secret system called CRISTINA (Centralisation du Renseignement Intérieur pour la Sécurité du Territoire et les Intérêts Nationaux).
The French have finally been told that Rachida Dati, President Sarkozy's Justice Minister, is expecting a baby. The story is a chance to look at the way that France is tangled up between modern celebrity culture and the old taboos that protect privacy -- and especially its ruling class. [See Wednesday update at end. Thursday update: Aznar says he's not the Daddy]
As I mentioned here on Monday, Dati's condition has been the talk of the internet and Paris newsrooms for a month. Palace officials have now given the nod to the media to break the news. They have also been warned against intrusion into the life of the glamorous, 42-year-old whose rise from immigrant ghetto to Cabinet star is one of the feel-good tales of the Sarkozy administration.
Dati's condition is front page today in the celebrity magazines. What none offers, of course, is the identity of the father. The unmarried Dati, for whom this is a first child, has projected her Cinderella life story in the media, appearing on chat shows with her Moroccan-Algerian parents. But she brooks no other reporting of her life.
As Renaud Revel, a commentator on France-Inter radio, says on his blog: "The German or Anglo-Saxon press would have x-rayed Rachida Dati's pregnancy, to the point of producing the father's ID papers and his DNA. The French media are kept at a distance.... The father has been known to all the newsrooms for weeks. But not a line, not a name...not the slightest allusion has appeared, even on the net."
VSD magazine, which features the minister on its cover, writes coyly today: "She was seen for a time close to a French business leader. His entourage talks of a passionate and stormy relationship, doubtless now over. She was seen last December sunning herself on an island with another CEO who is a friend of the president."
What are readers supposed to make of that ? To satisfy curiosity here, the first companion was Henri Proglio, boss of Veolia Environment, and the man on the beach was Dominique Desseigne,chief of the Barrière casino and hotel empire.
You can argue that France's legally-enforced respect for privacy is healthy. Why should the public know who is a minister's partner? Media stars such as television news presenters, are after all happy to use the privacy law to protect themselves from gossip.
There is a simple answer to that. It is the same one that is applied to Sarkozy's private life. Dati, like Sarkozy, has long played the celebrity game, mixing her personal life with professional. She invites curiosity by appearing on chat shows and posing clad in Chanel in glamour shots for glossy magazines.
French media bosses defend their respect for public figures' private lives, contrasting it with the voyeuristic excesses of the "Anglo-Saxons". But they also relay every juicy detail that comes across the frontier. Sarah Palin's "baby-gate" has received full play here, though she would never have been troubled about her daughter if she were a French politician. And the distinction is fast fading at home, now that the politicians and media have gone so far down the celebrity track together. The complete silence on the identify of Dati's partner looks more like old-fashioned deference to the governing class.
Update: Dati has given an interview to selected French journalists to announce her happy event. She says that she will not speak about the father. "I have a complicated private life and this is the limit that I fix for myself with regard to the media. I will say nothing about this," she said.
There was another, related, example of the deference phenomenon today. Most of the media were having fun with Sarkozy's Corsican blunder (last post), reporting the political row and deploring his devotion to his show-biz cronies. But the story was not deemed fit for readers of Le Figaro, a venerable national daily. The newspaper, which is owned by Serge Dassault, a big Sarkozy supporter, can rarely bring itself to report anything embarrassing to the President. So it reduced the Corsica yarn to a few brief lines with no allusion to a row.
President Sarkozy has stirred up a fuss today by dismissing the senior police official on Corsica.
Dominique Rossi, coordinator of the island's internal security, was removed because he had taken no steps to prevent nationalist protesters from briefly occupying a villa at Porto Vecchio that is owned by Christian Clavier, the comedy actor.
Since Clavier is one of Sarkozy's close friends, everyone assumes that Rossi was removed on orders of the President. "It says a lot about the regime we are in," said François Bayrou, leader of the small MoDem centrist opposition party. "It's a ruling by the Prince. These are arbitrary and disproportionate decisions which show where you get to when all powers are concentrated in the same hands."
François Hollande, the Socialist leader, called for an explanation. "I want to believe that it was not because it was the home of Christian Clavier that he was punished," he said.
The Interior Ministry said that Rossi, who ran the police and Gendarmerie on the island, had been reassigned to Paris on the orders of Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Minister. He had made an error of judgment in failing to send police to block the protest last Saturday after being tipped off in advance, it said.
The main police union has sided with Rossi, saying he is a highly respected and experienced officer who had acted appropriately. "There was no mistake, there was no damage, the demonstration was peaceful," it said.
The action by about 50 nationalists was standard Corsican stuff. They strung out banners denouncing the "colonisation" of the island and the supposed plundering of its beauty by mainland property speculators. Clavier, who was not there, apparently gave orders to his staff to let the demonstrators into his garden and given them a drink.
Sarkozy loathes the hardline nationalists, with their banditry and lack of respect for the law of "le continent", as they call mainland France. The President cherishes his friendship with Clavier, a popular star who is known to the outside world for playing Astérix in the first two movies about the cartoon Gaul. Unless there is more to the story than appears, it is very unlikely that the police chief would have been removed without an order from Sarko. The episode does not make him look good.
[Below: the demonstration that got the police chief fired]
 You remember the French marriage that was annulled a couple of months ago because the bride had falsely told her Muslim husband that she was a virgin. In that case, the judge in effect adapted the law to Muslim values. Another case has just come to light in which the courts have done the opposite, ruling against a Muslim woman because of her religious practises.
The Council of State, the highest legal body on civil law, denied citizenship to a young Moroccan woman who wears a full veil on the grounds that her "radical" Islam is incompatible with French values.
Faiza M., who is married to a French national, arrived in France in 2000. She speaks good French and has three children born in France but she wears a black burqa, the full-length dress which also covers the face. She adopted it at the request of her husband, a member of the strict Salafist movement.
In 2005, a court refused her citizenship because she did not comply with obligation to integrate in French society. The Council of State rejected her appeal, making the refusal final. It was the first time that citizenship has been refused on such grounds. "She has adopted a radical practise of her religion, incompatible with essential values of the French community, particularly the principle of equality of the sexes," the Council said.
Listening to comment over the past 24 hours, it is clear that the decision enjoys public support. France is worried about Islamic practises that conflict with women's rights and the state takes seriously the doctrine of laicité, the religious neutrality or secularism that underpins the republic. The ban on girls wearing Islamic head-cover in schools is part of that and it has strong public support.
Jack Lang, one of the dinosaur stars of the Socialist party, was on the radio this morning approving of the decision against Faiza M. "Wearing the burqa amounts to defiance of women's right to equality," he said. "Wearing this, she is little more than the slave of her husband."
But Lang admitted that there might be faulty logic in punishing Faiza M for excessive submission to her husband. Danièle Lochak, a law professor, extended this thinking in le Monde, which broke the story of Faiza M. "If you follow that to its logical conclusion, it means that women whose partners beat them are also not worthy of being French," she said.
The ruling was delivered by Emmanuelle Prada-Bordenave, a government commissioner who specialises in the citizenship law. She wrote that Faiza M had presented herself for interviews "attired from head to toe in the clothing of women from the Arabian peninsula, with a veil covering her hair, forehead and chin and a piece of cloth over her face. Her eyes could only be seen through a small slit. She lives virtually as a recluse, disconnected from French society. She has no concept of laïcite nor the right to vote. She lives in total subservience to the men in her family."
France is stricter than other European states over requiring immigrants to integrate with national practises to qualify for citizenship, but other countries are catching up. Germany is about to join Britain in imposing a test of applicants' knowledge of national institutions and traditions. But there are no conditions anywhere else covering dress.
With its mix of Islam, the status of women and French law, the case of the non-virgin bride was certain to prompt a torrent of indignation. The outrage has continued all weekend in the media, blogosphere and political world. The affair is also stirring wider interest, judging by more than 120 comments on our newspaper story.
I feel sorry for the family court judge -- an enlightened modern woman by all accounts -- who tried to help a young couple by annulling a marriage that was never consummated and that neither finally wanted. But you have to wonder about her common sense, given the explosive ingredients of the case.
The quick facts: the groom, an engineer in his 30s, discovered on his wedding night in July 2006 that his bride, a student, was not a virgin. She had earlier assured him and his family that she was sexually "pure". The disgraced bride was sent back to her family while the groom and his father sought the annulment. The judge quashed the marriage on the grounds that the husband had been deceived over what the law calls an "essential quality" of the contract. The bride confirmed that she had lied about her virginity and consented, after initial reluctance, to the annulment. It was confirmed on April 1 but not noticed until a legal journal discovered it last week.
With few exceptions, rights activists, feminists, politicians and commentators have condemned a decision that is seen as a reversion to ancient notions of female subjugation
Continue reading "French marriage dissolved because the bride was not a virgin" »
Here is some advice to any man contemplating a love affair with a Parisian writer or artist: Don't.
You may find yourself held up to public ridicule and crucified in the name of art. It happened a couple of years ago to a banker who enjoyed a liaison with Christine Angot, a popular writer. She demolished him by recounting every gory detail of his performance in a book that became a best-seller. The unfortunate financier was not named, but everyone in his milieu knew who it was.
Now, Sophie Calle, a successful photographer and "installation artist", has gone one better by making a spectacular fool of a lover who dumped her with a callous, convoluted e-mail. It ended with a breezy, "prenez soin de vous". This comes from the English "take care of yourself" and sounds odd in French and even colder with the distant "vous" rather than intimate "tu".
To sooth her pain and exact revenge, Calle, 54, took the pompous "mail de rupture" to 107 women in fields ranging from marriage counselling and anthropology to the police and the state intelligence service. She filmed and photographed their reactions and turned their funny and vitriolic verdicts into a show that became France's entry to the Venice Biennale of contemporary art last year. An expanded version has just opened to acclaim in the old reading room room of the National Library in Paris.
The experts include celebrities, such as Jeanne Moreau, the actress, Leila Shaheed, the Palestinian ambassador, and a bevy of performers and writers, including Christine Angot of course. Most at the time did not know the identity of "G", the apparently married lover, says Calle. But of course everyone in the intello-artsy world knows that he is a certain writer. He dedicated a new novel to Calle on the day that he broke up with her. Angot's contribution says: "The chorus that you have created around this letter is the chorus of death." Not every commentary is so serious. On one video screen, a (female) parrot eats a print-out of the e-mail.
When you enter the magnificent vaulted chamber and see a big projected video of a woman firing a sniper's rifle that you are in for an uncomfortable time.
Continue reading "How not to end an affair, Paris-style. " »
France is pleased with the stylish way that its navy and special forces handled the seizure of the Ponant, the big French superyacht that was boarded by pirates off Somalia 10 days ago. Six of the 20 or so pirates were captured by helicopter-borne French commandos as they made an overland getaway with part of the ransom.
The operation, directed by President Sarkozy, was well run and it shows how France can put well-equipped forces into action on the high seas at long distance. The 30 crew, most of them young French citizens, were released on Friday and are flying back to Paris tonight on a military Airbus. Sarkozy is going to the airport to greet them. There were no passengers. The captured Somali bandits -- said to be former fishermen -- are being brought back to Paris to stand trial.
The armed forces have been putting out their story and le Figaro today has details of their intrepid exploit. The pirates, for example, brought two goats on board for milk but they spent a lot of their time draining the ship's copious bars. One pirate disappeared overboard in the night, apparently drunk.
I don't want to dampen the good news, but no-one is asking how much the whole thing cost or wondering about the ransom, said to be 2.5 million dollars, that was paid for the crew's freedom.
[le Ponant (an old word for west)]
Continue reading "Super Sarkozy greets hostages after pirate triumph" »
France is about to be shaken by another gross miscarriage of justice. The so-called Neuilly Bridge murder is the latest in a series of cases that highlight flaws in the inquisitorial French justice system. .
I have sat through many trials conducted under the modified Roman law system which prevails in much of Europe and the adversarial system of the English-speaking world. Both have merits and I am no expert, but this is a chance to look at the problems of the French version.
The case involves Marc Machin, who is serving an 18-year sentence for killing a woman in 2001 at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the western side of Paris. Machin, now 25, was convicted in two trials five years ago on the basis of a confession which he quickly retracted, and shaky testimony from a witness. The murder made news because Marie-Agnès Bedot, the 45-year-old victim, was stabbed to death by the busy bridge in the morning rush hour as she was on her way to her gym (the same one that I frequent, as it happens).
A month ago, another man walked into a police station and said that he killed Bedot and also another woman at the same spot five months later. David Sagno, 35, a drifter with multiple convictions for violence, gave precise details. Police have now found his DNA on the clothes of the first victim. So by all account the wrong man has been has been jailed for the past seven years.
Rachida Dati, the Justice Minister, has ordered a review but police and prosecutors are still reluctant to accept that they got it wrong. With hindsight it seems obvious that Machin should never have been convicted. Here's why.
Continue reading " French justice on trial over murder" »
Your writer
Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times. He started out as a journalist in Russia and then moved to the United States. He has reported from all the continents but most enjoys observing the exotic tribe on Britain's doorstep. Though France is home, he avoids going native by offering what the locals call an "Anglo-Saxon" eye on their country.
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Rick,
It is incredibly hard to escape your clan, it can be your safety as well as lock you in a historical and cultural pattern . Many people give in freedom for financial safety, totally understand, nothing noble in poverty.
Girls here are disappearing from schools here sent back home to get married to a members of their clans, as tribes and clans become suddenly incredibly important as is not losing sight of where you come from, even if had you been home you would not have considered that man. The aunt of an Asian acquaintance had a nervous breakdown rather than face to her parents and brothers and she is no better than a slave as she is unmarried. My Greek friend can't say no to her father despite the fact she is in her late 40's and he is a chauvinist pig, she is a tyrant to her children and expect the same unquestioning devotion she herself resent giving. If she ever did anything different she would be ostracised and given the guilt treatment by her family. I know Asian boys who want a bride from India or Pakistan because she would not fight or answer back and told them they are not Gods. When the bride comes over she is at the beck and call and call of the mother in law ( below her on the food chain and no more than a slave). One of my Asian co-workers cook for all her family at 6 am, (no grown men can cook for themselves apparently ) and well I resent her pungent smelly clothes next to mine.( I am not the only one). Maybe if I was raised on curry I wouldn't mind. My feminism and swearing upsets her.
Her daughter doesn't want to get up at 6am and cook, she likes pizza.
See I am no angel, my tolerance has limits.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 11 Dec 2009 10:36:24
I heard this morning that Harriet Harman (deputy Prime minister) was organizing a Karaoke show by Westminster parliamentarians!!
The idea must be catching on, or is it a show of solidarity with Gordon's "new friend" Nicolas?
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 11 Dec 2009 10:29:36
TO EMINENCE,
Just a refinement for you from the Orthodox Nuncio. The Greek diaspora comes in several spoken forms. First the so-called 'Post WW2 diaspora' which is a reference of the Egyptian nationalist movement under Nasser in the 1950's and on pressuring some 3 million Greeks to leave Egypt (wherein they were originally middle management and foremen on the construction and maintenance of the Suez canal). Large swathes of my wife's family are so categorised. They resettled in order of priority in Australia, USA, South Africa, Canada, Antwerp, the Rhodesias (as they then were), London, Hong Kong, Paris and Basel. 'Greek diaspora', simply stated means any other exodus from the independence period (1820 to 1830) until now, the USA being usually the prime target.
There is no inference of Jewishness in Greek circles (wheresoever they might be)until the city of Thessaloniki, or Slaonika, or even for the brighter ones, Makedonia (the Greek province, not the neighboring country)comes in the same breath.
The inferences are historic and date back to 1501 when a new, highly federalised but united Spain under the joint monarchy of Isabella of Castille and Ferdinand of Aragon (crossword clue - Poorly dressed provincial in Spain (6 letters))expelled their Jewish population. The Turks permitted them to settle in the fairly free millet of Thessalonika and the citie's population sextupled in 20 years as Jews arrived from Spain and the still Ummyad (but not for long)provinces in today's Morocco. Salonika was by 1600 the largest Ladino speaking (Spano-Hebraic language) in the world. Ladino is still used in the parts of the city (fastest growing city in Greece now, having surpassed Athens in view of its port facilities and trading outlets afforded to Macedonia and Kosovo and Southern Bulgaria) today.
Thus 'part of the Salonika diaspora', regardless of when it happened is the P C cover for of Jewish origin.
Posted by: richard jones | 11 Dec 2009 09:42:57
Americans can stop feeling smug about superior integration of Muslims when they see this
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6952501.ece
Posted by: John O'D | 11 Dec 2009 09:20:32
This is the full version of the clip:
http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/le-lip-dub-des-jeunes-ump-l-integrale_835219.html
Posted by: Romain.poustis@free.fr | 11 Dec 2009 07:17:00
Not moving.
Not engaging.
Not funny.
Pathetic.
Posted by: Yogi | 10 Dec 2009 23:11:04
RULF,
If Sarkozy is not "hated", then - if I rely upon what you write :), he is "despised", among other things because he is "un fils d'immigré" (and furthermore his mother and grand-father came from the "Greek diaspora" - this is a PC way to say that they were of Jewish descent :). Your mention of his first wife as being Corsican is funny :) - may be not for Corsicans...
Since I don't find Segolène's antics especially funny, and even less so the antics of a few other would-be PS candidates :), I fully understand that you (and many others as well :) can not stand Sarkozy's "traits de caractère".
Le vrai problème est que la gauche s'attendait à gagner la fleur au fusil la présidentielle et la suite, qui leur revenaient de droit :), mais ils se sont fait damer le pion par quelqu'un de plus intelligent et de plus décidé qu'eux. C'est d'autant plus mortifiant que le quelqu'un en question est loin d'avoir le profil jugé nécessaire pour occuper la fonction suprême (i.e. être descendant d'une lignée de hauts fonctionnaires bien français + X-Mines et/ou Sciences Po (avec un anglais décent :) + ENA.
Mais je ne tiens pas non plus à abuser de la patience de CHARLES :). On va donc s'arrêter là.
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 10 Dec 2009 22:44:12
DO-RE-MI, I wrote: ‘She’s sending out mixed messages. She or her string-puller should realise this. A pious pr*ck-teaser’. Yes, she and her minder choose to send out mixed message: I am super modest and I’m announcing the fact in the most striking way I can think of; I am ignorant of Molière and Freud (‘Cachez ce sein que je ne saurais voir’); men are apes; and if I offend the host community – am I bothered?
Posted by: Rick | 10 Dec 2009 20:37:45
23% of French residents from Muslim backgrounds attend mosque on a weekly basis.
Much more than Mass attendance by Catholics, but hardly the stuff of an Islamic fifth column.
Ah well... for French people who are French by chance and feel nothing about French identity (read, Sarko), Islam sure is useful in defining French identity... as if France did not exist before car manufacturers started importing slaves!
Posted by: Dominique II | 10 Dec 2009 20:22:13
DO-RE-MI, I appreciated your long and thoughtful piece. You wrote that moving to another country can be traumatic. Yes, indeed and you were brave because you stood on your own two feet. But don’t conflate your experience with the experience of others who arrive surrounded by (extended) family and maybe clan. You adapted and succeeded – they struggled. And this ties in with education and religious barriers to self-development. Hell, DO-RE-MI, I don’t like writing this sort of stuff because it makes me sound like the BNP... but I prefer honesty to self-righteousness. If one’s mind is closed, one never really arrives.
Posted by: Rick | 10 Dec 2009 20:21:54
La Cour des Miracles.
Posted by: Dominique II | 10 Dec 2009 20:13:21
DRM
Your vivid description about emigrating reminds me so of Isabel Allende's in 'Mi Pais Inventado.' You said you've read her, but did you read this memoir?
Humanists don't fare well when religious fervor is ignited. Erasmus, Mr. Humanist himself, and his buddies, were tolerated, even supported, by the corrupt papacy.
Then an enraged Martin Luther, emboldened by humanism, emerged to inflame the ignorant masses. After that, no sane soul, on either side, was safe from murderous zeal. Eminent humanists of the day were forced into exile to suffer lonely deaths.
Reminding us that decent human sensibility is a fragile contrivance.
Posted by: azloon | 10 Dec 2009 20:02:18
Charming, totally unself-conscious; they are really enjoying themselves. That's what politics is about for politicians. Thank God for them.
Posted by: thomasine | 10 Dec 2009 18:43:39
Azloon,
Classier than Heidi Fleiss.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 18:26:04
Rick you told me to read Homage to Catalonia didn’t you?
Moving to another country, even if you want, to can be traumatic. You have to learn another language, another way of being, thinking, acting, reacting to people and events. It can liberate you ( in my case) or events scare you into not functioning. If you have escaped war, rape, poverty, the promise land you thought you were reaching may not be as easy to negotiate as you imagined.
If your resilient quotient is low after your struggles, if you don’t find a support system, one more might push you over the edge.
It depend on so many things, your DNA, cultural heritage, your upbringing and the people you meet. I was alone, with a family to look after, you can become insular as the world out there can be harsh and you can be treated unkindly.
Your family becomes your heaven. You sometimes sentimentalise and romanticize the place you left and see it as you want it, you don’t want to forget where you come from, betray your ancestors. You send money back home to the wrong people. You have changed, your birth-place has too and sometimes you can’t acknowledge neither.
The covered head to toes is a cultural thing, it’s from the house of the Wahabi. I hate seeing women dressed like that, it’s desexualising but from a country in the throes of sexual repression it makes sense. Lots of it has to do with the culture and the politics of the time, and who pays for the books.
Yet many women welcome it ( peace and quiet from their folks – they are good Muslims so they can go about their business and out of the house), the equivalent of western women who dress short to please their men folks or shave the hair on their arms because they want to be feminine ( wanted by men) or pole-dancer shoes. Ok I exaggerate a bit.
“A pious pr*ck-teaser” , maybe for you, but I truly hate seeing it.
“suicide bombers ..., but victims of what? “
Your pain ( whatever that is- in second-generation immigrant in a cultural quagmire – or a Gaza resident with no hope), confusion gets taken away when your mind gets reprogrammed for the annihilation of others – ( yours included). Your mental and physical pain on this world will disappear and you will get willing girls. You are being programmed by people who will not be putting their own bodies on the line but like control and power.
Here we have “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God”..
In a changing world “stubborn conviction” is so reassuring, enlightened liberal humanists look like sissies or deluded dreamers.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 18:23:33
AZLOON
"Eating the creme brule out of a bag on the front seat of my car will be challenging, but I'll figure it out."
Suck it out with a straw, dude!
Be daring like the UMP!
Posted by: rocket | 10 Dec 2009 16:36:22
Dot -- yes, completely misread Estrosi.
African-Americans will remark occasionally that they were stopped by the police for 'driving while black.'
Following the money will usually lead one to the root of a problem. Easily-obtained European welfare benefits surely are a 'carrot' for many non-caucasian immigrants (and Brit retirees seeking medical care?). Why wouldn't a person want to go where he can live better and for free? This mindset starts the whole immigrant experience off on the wrong foot. Few emigrate to the U.S. for welfare benefits because they aren't there. When they were more liberal here, a taxpayer rebellion forced states to require recipients to get jobs quickly or lose benefits. It worked. But there have to be jobs for this to play out.
It's amazing how integrative an invitation to the capitalist orgy is, if one believe that they can as naked and drunk as everyone else.
Note: the orgy is currently on hiatus.
Lex -- Your Knox analogy is perfect.
Posted by: azloon | 10 Dec 2009 16:01:21
'Changeons Le Monde Ensemble"
Now that's the scary part......
....but 'cute' in a treacly way. People willing to make asses of themselves can't be all bad.
My jaundiced eye also noticed that France now seems to have its own fair share of portly/oversized citizens (as France delights in reminding Americans about their own disproportion of corpulent souls).
How creme brule can be such a good thing and a Big Mac so bad is one notion I've never quite been able to grasp. I am hoping McDo will offer both so I can have one followed immediately by the other.
Eating the creme brule out of a bag on the front seat of my car will be challenging, but I'll figure it out.
Posted by: azloon | 10 Dec 2009 15:42:40
JGF
I believe HEREWEGOAGAIN says Bible, not New Testament. Notwithstanding JC's updates on what is and isn't allowed in the New Testament, there are plenty of people who treat it as a documentary, rather than collection of works written hundreds of years afterwards to fit the known facts at the time and serving as a useful allegorical tool for the primitive. And I haven't even read Dan Brown!
Posted by: Ray Alist | 10 Dec 2009 15:25:13
It 's correct to put that on this blog?
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xbfdzb_lipdub-ump_fun
Posted by: Francois D | 10 Dec 2009 15:23:23
The video has dissapeared as of 15:48
?????????????????
Posted by: rocket | 10 Dec 2009 14:48:48
Dot,
As long as you don't promote Pyrénées bears wildlife, it's ok by me.
ROMAIN
Yes, I've often wondered what might happen in the unlikely event of my doing a spot of strolling about the Pyrénées in my swimsuit, tiara and spike heels, if I met a bear.
Sweet! :)
I'd better take Simon Smith with me in case - it's just the "set Price" a girl has to pay. ;D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8zI5xjwKYw
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 14:17:28
Time for the Dalai Lama show.
Posted by: richard jones | 10 Dec 2009 14:09:56
What proportion of French Muslims consider themselves fully integrated and how many would be prepared to abandon parts of their religion and culture that conflict with French law? Would it be too dangerous to ask?
JOHN O'D
I think that might not be the right question.
The problem is that in France "looking Arab" is enough to get you stopped and asked for your papers more than once a day - it is also enough for you to be thought of as Muslim -> Islamist -> Integrationist -> Terrorist (or at least hoodlum).
Yesterday I heard Jamel Debbouze quoted as saying that he was born in France, grew up in France considers himself to be French and loves France, but is always referred to as being of a different nationality. What should he do, change his name to Jacques Dubois?
Come to think of it, perhaps all people with non-French names should change to being Jacques or Jacqueline Dubois - but what we do about their faces . . . hmm problem.
Many who are thought of as "Muslim" have already given up many of the habits and customs required by their religon, but, what a bummer, they still "look Arab".
So, maybe we should ask them to give up the Qoran, but keep the couscous?
I think the right question might be: What is it that prevents you from feeling French despite the fact that you were born in Trappes?
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 14:09:10
TO RICK,
Part 1 of 2
I tried to copy a map for you but technology defeated me.
I know yer old road very well. La mosque de Genève was built in the early 70’s at the junction of Champ d’Anier and ch. de Colladon would have been 5 minutes walk away. At the ave. Trembley junction would have been the newly started (prefabricated) Annexe to the UN, built on old League of Nations bequest land and initially viewed as a the L of N's ‘cultural centre’. This land was part of the L of N pension trust and still affords me Sfr. 200 a year.
You would also have been 10 minutes from la place de Petit-Saconnex and therein the outer stables (carriage and wagon horses only) of le duc de Budé, the attached groom’s lodgings used by Napoleon Bonaparte (not a long séjour apparently) and now called le café du Soleil. When I returned to Geneva in 1954 (maybe 1955) after settling all the problems linked to my illegal 1939 joining of the French Army, I lived in Moïse-Duboule next door to the café and had one of the first offices in the UN Annexe, on a daily contract, working under my Argentinian national identity CH not in UN). I was in charge of a project called GPBVA – Global Pig’s Bladder Verification and Assessment – no!I joke. I was part of a tiny group that eventually (I’d already gone) became UNCTAD in late 1962 with their first conference in Geneva in 1964.
1962 – no mosque, only bits of the first Swiss autoroute to Lausanne, still a tram into la Place. Wonderful world wasn’t it?
Posted by: richard jones | 10 Dec 2009 14:04:54
The danger with a French debate about identity is that definitions might result.
For example, who might be defined as French, part-French, or almost French?!
EU rules allowing migration of its inhabitants begs these questions.
And, how might (non-EU) immigrants be defined?
So, anyone without an acceptable definition might find life difficult.
This is what the Nazis did in the 30s with Jews, Slavs, Gypsies and certain other groups with a discernible ethnic origin.
However MAGGIE et alia, muslims come from all ethnic groups and are not a "race of people", so the analogy, and hence the comparison is not exact.
And the problem is with the AGENDA they might want to impose.
I'm not saying a pogrom aganst Islam won't develop, it could and it might, but the reasons would be more to do with those of the Crusades.
HERWEGOAGAIN - the New Testament does'nt say the earth was made in 7 days.
Yes DANIEL, "the problem is the concentration in big cities". It has a multiplier effect on their influence as we can see in the big cities of Europe.
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 10 Dec 2009 13:53:37
Dot,
As long as you don't promote Pyrénées bears wildlife, it's ok by me.
Posted by: Romain | 10 Dec 2009 12:39:11
Susan,
I am a hard-ass liberal by the way.
I read the Times for fun and challenge.
"Moderation is already gone out of the window"
Of course I hope I am wrong.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 12:33:54
Nat
Your comment is a little bit "condescendant" no?
I have watched the show and i don't like Jean Pierre Pernot, and i'm not a "beauf".
This year many girls seems to be not bimbos. The winner studies law. Miss provence (who was for me te most beautifull and the reason why i watched the end of the show ^^) is nurse student.
And Madame de Fontenay is a Revolutionary Left support! It's not a joke, she votes Besancenot ^^
Come on Genevieve!
Posted by: rem | 10 Dec 2009 12:14:40
"Amanda Knox, the American girl who was found guilty...in Italy. I am totally stunned by the hysterical reaction in the US." -- Maggie
We Americans were stunned when the British reacted hysterically when Louise Woodward was convicted of killing the baby in her care.
Had Amanda Knox been involved in that murder in the US, the mob would be demanding that she swing for it.
The mob never makes sense, and those selling soap often make even less sense.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 10 Dec 2009 12:11:14
Can you imagine Brown & co doing that!!
Posted by: Jake | 10 Dec 2009 12:07:18
Pathetic, not even funny.
Posted by: John O'D | 10 Dec 2009 11:59:27
In Matt Carr's criticism I was alarmed to read the following extract:
"Caldwell mobilises similar factoids in an attempt to demonstrate that 'the tabloid-reading public is not off-base to fear the introduction of sharia law'. To prove this thesis, he claims that 57 per cent of Irish Muslims want Ireland to become an Islamic state, citing a survey carried out for the Irish Independent/RTE by the Lansdowne market research company. The actual figure quoted in the survey found that 57 per cent of young Irish Muslims wanted this outcome, compared with only 37 per cent of Irish Muslims overall. The same survey found that 73 per cent of Irish Muslims considered themselves 'fully integrated' and that 58 per cent were prepared to abandon parts of their religion and culture that conflicted with Irish law."
What proportion of French Muslims consider themselves fully integrated and how many would be prepared to abandon parts of their religion and culture that conflict with French law? Would it be too dangerous to ask?
Posted by: John O'D | 10 Dec 2009 11:56:15
I'm sorry, but Miss France, when her prénom was mentioned the other evening on LGJ by Ali Badou, her reply was "Oui, mais je suis française, moi" (now how do you spell that farting noise of the hooter that signifies "mauvaise réponse"? How about THHHWWWWWPPP?) Ali Badou is also French, but he isn't called Pierre.
Malika means "queen" so Ali Badou said, but that was after she'd blurted out her Frenchness, spoiling the effect and ignoring the fact that someone with a brain was treating her as an equal.
After all, what's in a name?
Someone above posted that the Miss are all "gourdes" - this one certainly is - I think this year there was a subliminal collective selection of a physical style called "Carla".
And the same whispery, childlike, unconfident voice. She sounded like an insecure teenager.
Oh, and worry not Charles, she said she just wanted to be a journalist at local level.
(Anyone know if her father owns the local newspaper? :))
I would just like to say that if I'm elected Ms Blogger (wonderful typo - I'd put "Ms Blooger" ;D) of the year, I would like to travel and spread happiness and help starving children in Africa, discover a cure for AIDS, sponsor a white rhino and generally help save the planet.
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 11:32:21
@ DO-RE-MI : "I am not a bleeding-heart liberal ..." That makes two of us !
"Moderation is already gone out of the window." A truly scary thought, and I hope for the future of Europe that you're mistaken here.
Posted by: susan durst | 10 Dec 2009 11:30:13
Dumb question, but why is the Miss France winner standing next to Boy George in the first photo?
Posted by: textibule | 10 Dec 2009 11:28:07
TO RULF,
Currently Sarkozy looks more like a refugee from an Aristophanes comedy than any Greek tragodia.
Aristophane's 'Birds' or 'The Ecclesiazusae (Women in Politics)' spring to mind.
Posted by: richard jones | 10 Dec 2009 11:14:12
"being eaten alive by 10 million immigrants who are getting paid to do nothing" is not constructive.
SUSAN D
In his "interview" that Maire of that tiny commune, didn't mention immigrants, he just made a sort of grunting noise when asked who he meant, and said nothing, possibly realising he'd gone too far.
The day after, I heard on the radio news that he'd made a "back in the fold" declaration that he wasn't referring to immigrants, but to the unemployed, the old, the hadicapped - they are (he said) who he meant when he spoke of those who were being paid for doing nothing.
Just think, there are people who elected him - I wonder how bad the opposition was . . .
MAGGIE, excellent posts - in full agreement.
AZLOON - you have misunderstood Estrosi I think - he postulates that if the Germans (or rather the party in charge - ie the Nazi party) had launched a debate on national identity before WW2, the Holocaust might have been avoided.
I mean, do me a favour.
Had Hitler launched such a debate, it would have been in anti-semitic terms, just as this one in France was launched in anti-immigrant trems - or at least with a certainty that it would soon take that route.
Like property transactions, national identities and moral one-upmanship bring out the worst in people.
BTW I'm no historian, but I think centuries of wars in Europe have been more about land than race or religion - marriages made in politics, that sort of thing.
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 11:08:14
Instead of this "puéril" exercise in "futilité"
I think each and every member of the cabinet should have stood up straight and looked the camera in the eye and blurted out
I'm Tiger Woods.
Then in unisson
We're all Tiger Woods
Now that would have been superior and believable marketing
Posted by: rocket | 10 Dec 2009 11:01:42
DO-RE-MI, you write convincingly about the Muslim experience... ah, but you don’t, you write convincingly of the newcomer experience in London – who happens to be particularly disadvantaged because (s)he is Muslim.
‘I am not all that happy with women covered head to toes but that is a cultural thing’. A shrewd suspicion suggests the body and head covering are recent affectations, more defiant or identity-affirming in the metropolitan anomie than modest. It’s simple-minded, perhaps, since the end effect is to achieve the opposite to what was intended. Having it both ways: ‘eff-off’ and ‘I’m me’, all at once. She’s sending out mixed messages. She or her string-puller should realise this. A pious pr*ck-teaser.
‘See suicide bombers as angry and lost human beings first, before you see them as Muslims’. Yes, but victims of what? Loads of social forces: the immigrant experience, ignorance and fear of the unknown, peer-pressure, family and clan obligation, security in a tight-knit group, joblessness, elusive ‘success’, (unadmitted) envy of others, sexual frustration, ignorance of the world, real or imagined lack of consideration shown by others, security in a value-system too black and white – in all this the specific religion, sect or offshoot is rather incidental. But hardly helpful, in the circs.
A successful lawyer in Iran incurred the wrath of the regime and emigrated to Switzerland, along with his family. There, he couldn’t get a job commensurate with his education. While his wife and daughter integrated well, he became odder and odder: his by now pubescent daughter had to hide her prettiness, she got taken out of school trips, sports, and other lessons. To cut a long story short, this tale ended with assault, attempted rape, and murder. All because this highly educated lawyer was rendered more vulnerable, inflexible, and un-exportable by his ‘pensée unique’ one-dimensional upbringing. The orphaned daughter has now a boyfriend and is ‘Miss Earth Switzerland’ or something similar. [3 Sat, last week]
You write: ‘You don’t put all Catholics in the same bag’. Absolutely! The Western and Eastern Churches of the Catholic Church in communion with the Bishop of Rome; the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox; the Old Catholic, Anglican, and some Lutheran and other denominations that claim unbroken Apostolic Succession from the early Church, and see themselves as a constituent part of the Church – what a mixed bundle of fun. Their sheer multiplicity suggests that the Christian/Muslim (un)believers come in all shades and sizes.
Though, ‘sous la loupe’, they may have much in common – not least a stubborn conviction of the utter rightness of their own sectional, particular point of view. An infinite number if deep convictions cannot, each, be right. But by gosh, they help to keep the fervor going. And each adherent is for that very reason a potential zealot, a fanatic – to the extent that he isolates himself in certainties. And, if there’s one thing that scares enlightened liberal humanists it’s dingbats with their certainties.
Posted by: Rick | 10 Dec 2009 10:51:06
ROMAIN - loved the clip of Montagné driving - it's reassuring, non, that the Secretary for the handicapped has a "grand rêve" that blind should be able to drive!
Sort of a case of the blind driving the blind :)
And note how many times the instructor says "à gauche, à gauche, un tout petit peu à gauche".
Also please note that it is a German car - an Audi - but GM might not have seen that . . . ;D
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 10:29:50
Mme Lagarde and Mr Woerth have sent me a letter explaining the utility and harmlessness and - quite payer-friendliness on the whole really - of Taxes Professionnelles.
I'm not at all surprised to see them conveying their positive message full of hope for the future along with all the other idiots taking part.
For Gawd's sake, who can believe a word they say, or follow them down any road, after this?
And I notice the name Karl Zero at the end, CB please explain, who is sending up whom here?
The image of a blind man at the wheel is appropriate IMO.
Posted by: dot king | 10 Dec 2009 10:20:39
Susan
If I partly agree with you but I don't know here you live.
When I go back home and visit my parents, lets say in the South of France, descendant of immigrants of North-Africa and now technically French are still call "Arabe". Even when they are clean-shaven and speak proper. So life is real hard for the ones from inner cities whose French is patois and urban. It's almost a catch 22, assimilate, ignore your cultural identity and become " French" but somehow your Frenchness is always going to be questioned because it can't be traced back for centuries. I am the grand-daughter of a Spanish immigrant and my mother was born on a boat that landed in a French port and I look dark. Been there, the fact that my mother spoke perfect French and did better than French de souche made her life difficult. Like I said I am not a bleeding-heart liberal. In these economic climate where the bottom is going to fight for resources, moderation is already gone out of the window.
Getting votes any way you can is the way to go.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 10:15:39
Et Johnny..... fais moi mal!!!
Posted by: Peter | 10 Dec 2009 09:36:40
Look at Gilbert Montagné speed driving:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3g4r1_gilbert-montagne-roule-a-160-kmh
And Ray :"Je vous dépose quelque part ?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcMZ_u_vCog&NR=1&feature=fvwp
Posted by: Romain | 10 Dec 2009 08:54:28
@ ROMAIN : Exactly the point I've been trying to make - we need a constructive debate on (a) current and future levels of immigration and (b) full integration of those immigrants (often naturalised French) already in the country. However in my view the key to finding effective solutions is MODERATION. Mayors ranting about "being eaten alive by 10 million immigrants who are getting paid to do nothing" is not constructive. But harping back to Jews in the 30's and euro-guilty allusions to "hostile lands" is not constructive either. These are just the two sides of the same extremist coin.
Posted by: susan durst | 10 Dec 2009 08:49:35
What can you say. This is beyond words!
Posted by: rocket | 10 Dec 2009 08:45:03
Chris Morris is working in France now days?
Love the “ Ethnic theory of plane crashes in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and the “ Power Distance Index” or PDI, incidentally high in France.
Obviously nobody of the people above had the cojones to say “ no way Jose”. I understand cause in my job I have to cope with whatever bright idea a consultant has come up with since I want to keep my job.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 10 Dec 2009 08:39:12
Hilarious, Tks Charles !
Posted by: Romain | 10 Dec 2009 08:28:32
Daniel,
Y a un proverbe din Ch'Nord qui dit :"Au plus que t'es moins grand, au moins que t'es plus petit". lol
Posted by: Romain | 10 Dec 2009 08:23:36