While everyone has been commemorating the moon landing this month, aviators in France and Britain have been remembering another epic feat -- the world's first air journey. It was 100 years ago today that Louis Blériot flew his flimsy flying machine across the English from Calais to Dover.
A flotilla of ancient and modern planes began crossing the Dover Strait at dawn today in salute to the great pioneer. The fleet today includes original monoplanes built by Blériot and replicas as well as some 130 microlight aircraft and the Red Arrows and la Patrouille de France display teams. Watch Blériot's historic take-off at the end of this post.
The festivities, which include a postage stamp issue in France and exhibitions in Paris, Calais, Dover and Cambrai, the pilot's birthplace, are reminding younger generations how sensational at the time was the landing of the frail wood and fabric 'Blériot XI'. Among other things, it shocked Britain into realizing that foreign invaders could just hop over its glorious navy. [below: a Bleriot XI in flight]
"Flying machines are no longer toys and dreams, they are established fact," said David Lloyd George, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after reading The Times' breathless cover of the historic flight. "The possibilities of this new system of locomotion are infinite, I feel as a Britisher, rather ashamed that we are so completely out of it." [Read the original Times reports here]
Lord Northcliffe, the press baron who had offered a 1,000 pound prize for the first Channel flight, told his Daily Mail to proclaim: "Britain is no longer an island".
The secretive Wright Brothers had achieved the first aeroplane flight in North Carolina in 1903, but aviation was seen as an eccentric pastime pursued mainly by French sportsmen until Blériot, a 37-year-old engineer, crash-landed on the Northfall meadow by Dover Castle. Four years later, the Royal Navy bought Blériots to found Britain's first military squadron and his SPAD biplanes became the favourite mount for the allied aces of the Great War.
"The crossing was the starting point of modern aviation," Louis Blériot, the pioneer's 64-year-old grandson, said this week. "He was an exceptional character whose trail is still being followed. Today's aircraft are still handled the same way: a rudder bar under the pilot’s feet, and a stick to control the aircraft."
The shy and mournful-looking Blériot, was an unlikely hero. He was an unglamorous business-man inventor. The Belle Epoque playboy-aviators mocked him for crashing 38 times as he developed his machine through trial and error. At one point he even called in the aging Gustave Eiffel, who knew little of aeronautics, to design him a steel propellor -- which he abandoned.
Blériot's triumph was so unexpected that The Times man who reported his daybreak take-off suspected foul play against Hubert Latham, his rival and hot favourite for the prize. Latham, a languid playboy with a British grandfather, had ditched in an attempt earlier in the week and was to try again that dawn. His mechanic failed to wake him, "robbing" him of his triumph, wrote The Times' correspondent. "Incredible as it may sound, M. Levavasseur allowed M Latham to sleep on. ...and the thing ended in M Latham's not being aroused until 5 o'clock, 20 minutes after M Blériot had actually left the coast of France."
Monsieur Blériot did not make things easy for himself. He was a non-swimmer, he was on crutches because of a recent crash and he had no compass. He reluctantly took his chance and limped out before the crowd as dawn came up. "I admit it, I absolutely did not feel like doing it," he said after his 37-minute journey. You can clearly see his unhappy expression in the film.
Everything went well until he ran into fog and lost sight of the Kent coast. "The flight continued for about 10 minutes with nothing in sight but sea and sky," he told another Times man, who claimed to be the first reporter to greet him at Dover. "It was the most anxious part of the flight... I had no fear for the machine, which was travelling beautifully. At last I sighted the outline of the land, but I was then going in the direction of Deal."
Arriving by Dover, he spotted a French journalist waving a big tricolor to mark the landing spot, cut his motor at 60 feet and thudded onto the hillside, breaking his undercarriage and propellor. When the customs officer arrived, he only had forms for boats, so Blériot was registered as the master of a yacht. Land and wireless telegraph splashed the news around the world, Blériot was feted in London and Paris and his monoplane went on show in Selfridges department store.
The aviator received the world's first pilot's licence from the Aéroclub de France. He retreated from the limelight and went on to mass-produce his invention. The Blériot XI, of which some 900 were sold, became the standard aerial runabout.
Blériot's original cross-Channel plane has been at the Paris Musée des Arts et Metiers since 1909 and it is the heart of a special exhibition which runs until October. Elegant and fragile but a little forlorn-looking, it hangs from the ceiling of the church of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, on the museum grounds. They have even built a simulator on which you can try to fly a Bleriot XI. I had a go and found it not at all easy. The plane is very unstable. Like the Wright Brothers' Flyer, the plane is banked by pulling on a cable that warps the wings, rather than moving ailerons.
Bleriot took 37 minutes for his flight. My little plane does the same short crossing in about 10, but it is still pulled along by a single wooden propellor, like his was. If it stops, you swim. Flying out over the coast, I always think of old Louis and his magnificent achievement.
The schools have closed, France is heading for the summer holidays and Lance Armstrong is back on the Tour. That summed up the news today * at the start of the 96th edition of the Tour de France. The three-week, 2000-mile ordeal is of course not just the world's greatest cycle race. Under the headline "A La Vie, A l'Amour," L'Equipe, the sports daily, waxed poetic yesterday, calling the Tour a "unifying force... that possesses us and bewitches us beyond the flaws of humankind."
For France, those human failings are at the heart of the matter with Lance Armstrong. The Texan wonder-cyclist, who won the tour an astonishing seven times in a row, has returned from retirement and is aiming for an eighth victory in the tour that opens in Monaco today. Armstrong's comeback in his 38th year stirred dismay back in the winter. He may be worshiped as a hero at home in the States, but in France he was the object of suspicion. "Good riddance" was the feeling when he left in 2005.
Unlike dozens of others in a dope-plagued sport, Armstrong had never been caught using any performance-enhancing drugs. As he explained: "For France, my story was just too good to be true." He had survived a grave bout with cancer in the mid-1990s to become the biggest champion of all time, breaking the previous record of five wins, shared by the legends Miguel Indurain, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx and Jacques Anquetil.
Armstrong was an American at the time that France had fallen out with George Bush. He alienated the Tour crowd with what was deemed to be an arrogant, hard professionalism. He kept to himself and surrounded himself with bodyguards. In public, he refused to play the plucky regular guy, the traditional cycling hero. He barely spoke French despite five years in residence. Crowds even booed him as he led the pack through the mountain passes.
But this year, things have changed. It's not le grand amour, but Armstrong is enjoying new respect and it's not just because France has forgiven the United States. Armstrong is recognised as a star who brought glamour to a sport that is little known in much of the world. For the young cyclists, Lance is the boss but they have a chance of beating him. Andy Schleck, a Luxembourg Tour racer, said today: "It's good for cycling to have un Monsieur like him. He inspires a lot of people. Hat's off!."
Armstrong is enjoying gentler treatment from the media. Michel Drucker, France's favourite TV host, treated him to a gushing interview last Sunday. People are not scoffing at his argument that he has returned to promote his cancer foundation Livestrong. Armstrong, who broke a collarbone earlier this year, is now benefiting from the old Tour phenomenon of sympathy for the underdog. He is not even squad boss of Astana, the Kazakhstan-owned team for which he is pedalling. First place is held by Alberto Contador, the Spaniard who won in 2007. The first week will see a battle between the two for the real leadership. Armstrong says he will ride loyal back-up to Contador if he does not make the Yellow Jersey early on. The Texan cyclist is, by the way, one of the most active celebrity Twitterers. He has well over one million followers on http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong
In the meantime, the tour is holding on to its magic despite the decade of seemingly endless doping scandals. Christian Prudhomme, the director of the Tour, says that the all-out testing is making cycling the cleanest sport. No other sport employs such stringent methods to track new ways of cheating, he says.
And to wrap it up, Nicolas Sarkozy has got into the act. The President, who is an amateur cyclist and an Armstrong fan, told the Cabinet this week that it is time to stop knocking the Tour. "It is the victim of dopage, and not the perpetrator," he said. "You must support this great popular event as well as its management," he told Rama Yade, his new Sports Minister. [*Since writing this, a train crash has joined today's headlines]
Usually it's the British who like reminding the French of Waterloo and Trafalgar. Today, French commentators have been invoking the ancient humiliations to qualify the epic defeat that their rugby team suffered at the hands of the English at Twickenham yesterday.
This is not about gloating (I'm Scottish and the Six Nations Cup has three sides from Great Britain). But here for any interested fans is what France has been saying about the 34-10 débâcle that England inflicted on les Bleus. The defeat was the second worse after the 37-0 rout by les rosbifs in 1911.
"C'était Waterloo !" said the headline on the front of L'Equipe, the sports daily. "Massacre in an English Garden," said le Figaro. Le Monde called it "un coup de Trafalgar" and said France had been "administered a spanking like in those strict boarding schools in 19th century England".
Unlike Trafalgar, where Nelson did not follow the conventions of naval battle, no-body accused the perfidious English of any sneaky tricks. The French team took the blame entirely. "We humiliated ourselves. We were thrashed. We weren't worthy," said Thierry Dusautoir, a French player.
Wheeling out the old clichés, Midi-Libre, the paper of the rugby-loving southwest, said the rosbifs had spent the afternoon "munching on trembling frogs' legs". "The French took a lovely thrashing, one of those which will be remembered and will feed the sarcasm of our cross-Channel friends for centuries.".
The players and commentators were puzzled over the failure. "I got the impression that we were arriving late in each phase of the game," said Lionel Nallet, the captain. Marc Lièvremont, the manager, said simply : "I don't get it."
There was a consensus that France was taking it easy after beating Wales, the reigning champions, 21-16 the other day. They were under the impression that England was weak and never caught their breath when they were hammered from the start.
The match was one of those sudden reversals of fortune for which rugby is famous. With good sports clichés François Trinh-Duc, French fly-half, said: "They don't have anything to teach us rugbyistically. C'est un problème de mental."
The funniest commentary came, as often, from Nicolas Canteloup, the comedian, in his daily radio slot. With the voice of Bernard Laporte, the Sports Minister and last French rugby manager, Canteloup announced that les Bleus would swap their rooster emblem for a hedgehog. The defeat was also being investigated by the government as breach of human rights, said Laporte/Canteloup.
It's worth pointing out that if the shoe had been on the other foot, no French headlines would have crowed over the defeat of the ancient rival as some of the British ones did today. The prize for obnoxious little-Englishness went to Matthew Norman of the London Evening Standard. "I may know next to nothing about rugby, but I know what I like," he wrote. "What I like is our boys giving the cheese-eating surrender monkeys the mother of all hidings." It seems that Norman does not know much about the spirit on which rugby prides itself.
Nicolas Sarkozy's recent energy is not just a result of his marriage to Carla Bruni. The French President's extra zoom comes from getting in touch with his pelvic floor, under the orders of a coach.
I learnt about the secret of Sarko's new zoom from the woman responsible: Julie Imperiali, 26, the personal trainer who had honed his supermodel wife for four years and who has been remodelling the President since their marriage last winter. [Here's the feature on her from today's Times]
Imperiali has the kind of looks, charm and energy that make non-French women weep. She is also persuasive. Chatting for an hour in her flat near the Eiffel Tower, she convinced me that she could make everyone as slim as Bruni and speedy as Sarko. Her clients pay her over 100 euros an hour for the privilege.
Since last April, Imperiali, a former aerobics champion and dancer, has applied to Sarkozy a method which she calls Tectonic Wellbeing (nothing to do with a French techno dance style of that name). Visiting the Elysée Palace three or four times a week, Imperiali has helped the pint-sized President break his evening chocolate habit and lose over three kilogrammes (seven pounds) and two trouser sizes. "His body has radically changed," she said. "He is a dream pupil. He is always ready and motivated."
Sarkozy, the first jogger to sit on France's the presidential throne, stopped running in public last winter as part of his attempt to look more dignified. His spreading waistline was ascribed by some to his hobby of collecting old manuscripts and pstage stamps. He has since been pounding the paths of the walled Elysée garden under Imperiali's guidance.
"He was a sporting type, but he did not have the right methods," she said. "He used just to run and run and run without being aware of his body. Now he runs faster and more solidly. He is doing about 10 kph around the garden."
Imperiali talks breezily about how she resculpts the body through exercise and diet. Her work is 60 percent mental and 40 percent physical, she said. The trick is to focus on the perineal muscles -- those around what the British call the groin. These "core" muscles are also important in Pilates and Yoga, I gather (fans of these disciplines, please forgive my inaccuracies).
For a long time, French women have been taught to work on the perineum, especially after childbirth, but in the English-speaking world it has not been quite such a big thing. "The Anglo-Saxons are a bit prudish about this and say that they don't know what we are talking about," said Imperiali. "The perineum is the floor of our body. If it is not kept in shape it like a house with no floor...By becoming conscious of your perineum you become aware of the interior of your body."
Her method not only improves posture and delivers a healthier body and mind. It also improves the sex-lives of her clients, she says. Although most are women, this applies to men too [more details in the feature].
We have not had confirmation from the Elysée Palace about Imperiali's achievements with the President, but I took her on her word after she made her public debut in Elle magazine last month. She is now expanding, with the help of her Belgian husband, into fitness via internet. For a euro a day, she will coach you electronically, almost like Sarko and Bruni. Her site is www.tectonicworkout.com , where you can watch her routine.
[Pictures by Magali Delporte. Above, Julie leaps on the Place de la Concorde, near the Elysée, for The Times]
[Wednesday update on latest rescue here]
To get away from wondering what trouble 2009 might bring, let's pause to salute the epic adventure of a band of men and women on the other side of the world.
I'm talking about the skippers of the Vendée Globe, the only single-handed, non-stop around-the-world yacht race. The "Everest of sailing" as it is known, is staged every four years. It's a test of physical and spiritual endurance like no other. Breakages and injury have forced half the fleet of 30 to abandon the race which began at les Sables d'Olonne on November 9. The surviving 15 are this week blasting down the Southern Ocean in permanent gales, dodging icebergs on their way to Cape Horn.
The boats are pure racing machines of the 60 Foot Open class and their skippers push them hard, snatching sleep in small doses for the three months that it takes to sprint down the Atlantic, around Africa, below Australia, around Cape Horn and back to France. They are not allowed to touch land or another boat or receive help or supplies apart from weather information.
That's Samantha Davies in the picture. She's one of five Britons still left in the fleet. The only other woman is also from the UK -- Dee Caffari. In her latest report, Davies says that one of her new year's resolutions is to stop eating Nutella with her fingers. Her boat Roxy is in sixth place, 2,000 miles behind Michel Desjoyeaux, the leader. Sam Davies is also reporting for The Times (video here)
Desjoyeaux is a mere 60 or so miles ahead of Roland Jourdain, who has been duelling with him for weeks, each covering up to 400 miles a day. (Jourdan's Véolia pictured below).
The precision of those figures is, I suspect, part of the reason that the world has grown a little blasé about solo ocean racing. The technology of satellite positioning and high-speed data connections brings the sailors so close that their venture seems less superhuman than it once did. (see their real-time positions here)
As well as fighting giant seas, changing sails and navigating, the skippers are expected to chat and blog and send video of themselves. It wasn't like that in the pioneering days of the late 1960s when round-the-world yachtsmen such as Francis Chichester became national heroes simply for achieving the voyage. In the first race, organised by the (London) Sunday Times in 1968, contestants would disappear for weeks at a time, sending positions over crackly high frequency radio. One, named Donald Crowhurst, tried to win by faking his route. He went mad and disappeared at sea.
The Vendée Globe is a national event in France. It has always been won by Frenchmen. It doesn't attract much media attention elsewhere except when things go wrong or when a foreign star does well. That was the case for Britain in the 2000-1 race, when Ellen MacArthur came second, only one day behind Michel Desjoyeaux. In the last race Vincent Riou made the 25,000 mile voyage in an amazing 87 days. That compares with 312 days by Robin Knox-Johnston, the winner -- and only finisher -- of the first round-the-world race in 1968.
Modern communications greatly help the sailors mentally, but they do little to diminish the perils of sailing alone on the high seas. Masts have been falling like match-sticks and rigging, keels and rudders have been ripped apart by unusually severe weather this time.
Derek Hatfield, a Canadian skipper who was forced to abandon last Sunday, reported his shock. "This morning the seas were huge, maybe 25 feet and confused, but nothing we couldn't handle normally. I was exhausted and lying in my bunk and 'crash', the boat went over and I ended up on the ceiling with all kinds of articles whizzing past me. The boat came upright immediately and the carnage inside was immediate.
I rushed on deck and my heart sank to see two of the spreaders dangling limp on the shrouds. The shock hits you quickly that this is not fixable and the end of the race is here already. I started to cry and it was uncontrollable.
Most of the defeated skippers are managing to limp to port despite their damage. The exception was Yann Elies who broke a leg 600 miles south of Australia and was rescued by a naval frigate. The HMAS Arunta steamed flat out for two days to reach him and save his life in appalling weather. His yacht has since been lost.
Although the race is about the most extreme sporting event imaginable, only three skippers have lost their lives in six contests so far. Denis Horeau, the race director, defended its safety record today in le Figaro. "Unlike other human activities like mountain sports, we have had very few fatal accidents," he said.
The latest Vendée Globe has produced an odd spin-off. Some 300,000 people are racing in a game version on the internet called Virtual Regatta. Some players are said to have become so addicted that they are neglecting their normal lives to change sails, adjust their courses and outwit their rivals as the weather and sea conditions change. Many are e-mailing the real skippers seeking advice. In mid Southern Ocean, Roland Jourdain said last week that he found it incredible that so many people had been hooked on the game. "It would be really nice if they could tele-port these people onto the boat for 24 hours....just so they could see what it is really like," he said.
The first boats are expected to cross the finishing line back at Sables d'Olonne in early to mid-February.
There's a useful Wikipedia briefing on the race here
Continue reading "A tribute to a magnificent ocean race " »
Autumn is always lovely in the Cévennes. The chestnut forests turn a spectacular orange, mushroom pickers turn up from the towns and gunfire echoes around the hills much of the week.
It's la saison de la chasse -- the hunting season -- and many of our neighbours are out on the trail of the wild boar and deer that throng the forests. The word trail is poetic. What they actually do is stand at their positions on the roadside waiting for the hounds to beat the animals out of the woods towards them.
André, a farm worker and friend, was briefing me on the new season last night. He is very safety-conscious but was lamenting the foolishness of "civilians", as he calls them, who put themselves in danger. He recalled a recent incident. He was waiting for the sanglier -- boar -- to break cover when he heard rustling in the undergrowth and raised his high-powered rifle. "Then I saw it was a woman in a T-shirt on all fours. Une belle blonde. She was trying to crawl under the brambles. I told her she was lucky that I'm careful. Some others don't wait to identify the game and just shoot." Correctly identifying the game is rule number one, according to the hunting federation.
The local association at Saint Germain-de-Calberte is doing its best to improve the poor image of les chasseurs. One of the latest ideas is for the shooters to take up their positions a few yards away from the road rather than right on it. "It sometimes frightens people when they come round the corner and see a guy with a big gun," said André.
One of the frightened civilians this year has been Angelina Jolie. The actress complained about the boar hunters who were exercising their right of access to the land around the Pitt-Jolie's base down in the Var, south of here
There are fewer accidents these days thanks to safety campaigns and stricter enforcement of the law, but a handful of chasseurs and by-standers are shot dead every year. Last Sunday, about 40 miles from here in the Ardèche, a 25-year-old mountain biker was hit in the back and killed by a stray bullet from a boar shooter. [Try your hand at identifying shootable targets in internet test for French hunting permit]
I have mixed feelings about shooting animals for pleasure, especially large ones. France does too. There is an active anti-hunting movement as well as a powerful pro-shooting lobby. A handsome cerf -- stag -- entertained us at night in the summer, grazing in our field with up to five or six females. I wonder if they are still alive. They probably are because, unlike the low-cost boar, the hunters have to pay over a hundred for the "bracelet" that entitles them to shoot each deer.
Continue reading "The French art of boar hunting" »
It's not often that I cheer the leader of the French Communist party. But Marie-George Buffet hit the nail on the head this morning with her sensible view of an unhealthy fuss which blew up yesterday over the behaviour of spectators at a football match between France and Tunisia [see video below]
For 24 hours, the top story in France has not been the slumping markets or President Sarkozy's crusade to rebuild the world economy. It has been the fit of indignation, led by Sarkozy, over the fans who jeered the national anthem before the start of the match at the Stade de France on Tuesday night. (News story in today's paper). The crowd that demonstrated contempt for the Marseillaise with loud whistling were mainly youngsters from immigrant families from Tunisia and the other two former colonies Algeria and Morocco.
Their behaviour was certainly deplorable but it was also entirely expected because the same happened when France played Algeria and Morocco in 2001 and 2007. The Stade de France is in the heart of the "93", the département of Seine Saint Denis, which has some of the worst race-related problems and was home to the ethnic rioting of 2005.
The Government, the Socialist opposition, sporting bodies and almost everyone else in authority has piled in to condemn the spectators. A quick opinion poll by le Parisien found that 80 percent of the country is "shocked". Sarkozy has ordered all matches to be halted immediately if the anthem is booed. The police have been told to arrest the flag jeerers and charge them under a 2003 law that outlaws insults to national symbols. Bernard Laporte, the Sports Minister, upped the ante, saying that France should play no more games against Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco in Paris until the crowds stop dishonouring national symbols.
The Communist leader was one of the few eminent politicians to break ranks with the cross-party outrage. As well as condemning the jeering, people should ask why thousands of young French people boo the national anthem, she said. "Perhaps it is because they are suffering a lot. That they have the impression that they are stigmatised although they are in France, study here and work here."
Everyone knows that the malaise of the second and third generation immigrants leads some of them to act like the fans did on Tuesday night. Sarkozy's hard line plays well to the electorate that admires his zero-tolerance policies but it just makes the kids from the banlieue estates all the more determined to vent their loathing in the stadium. It was after one such incident that Sarkozy, then Interior Minister, introduced the 2003 law on protecting the Marseillaise and the flag.
The acts of collective contempt are of course stupid and counter-productive. The fans spoiled the match (which France won 3-1) and they humiliated two Tunisian-French stars on the pitch -- Lââm, the singer who performed the solo anthem and Hatem Ben Arfa, a France player whose parents came from Tunisia.
Ben Arfa said that he was not upset by the hostile crowd. "I'm not really angry with them," he said. "They need to exist, you have to understand them."
We have had another example of stupid counter-productive behaviour in the '93' zone this week. Luc Besson, the movie producer, has suspended work on a film that he is shooting there with John Travolta and other stars, after local youths burnt ten vehicles that are being used on the set.
Since posting this item, Le Monde has come out with a tough editorial against the excessive response to the footbal episode. It asks: Is it worthy of the main public leaders to turn a deaf ear to what this jeering expresses: the rage of the banlieues, the feeling of rejection and despair of the young descendants of immigrants, the searing and corrosive failure to integrate them into the community of the republic?
[Conservative daily le Figaro splutters, popular tabloid le Parisien says :Marseillaise booed: a real affair of state]
 
Have a look at the video below. If you love birds, flying or mountains, it's impossible not to be moved.
It's a report from France 2 television on a flight last Friday by Sherkan, an American bald eagle from the summit of Mont Blanc, Europe's higest mountain. The eagle, which has a two-metre (6'6") wingspan, flew with Jacques-Olivier Travers, a professional falconer. He specialises in teaching flight to big birds born in captivity.
Travers, who runs the Eagles of Leman park on Lake Geneva had been training Sherkan, a 14-year-old bird born in Germany, the art of aviation for the past 18 months. When he was ready, he took him by helicopter along with paraglider pilots to the top of the mountain, which is at 4,800 metres (15,800 feet) altitude. The result was this film, shot partly from the escorting paragliders, of Sherkan making the 40-minute flight down to the Chamonix valley over 12,000 feel below. The thin air at altitude meant that the bird tired quickly and came back to his instructor mid-air to rest. He enjoyed himself more in the lower air, Travers says on the video. [Thanks, Dot King, for posting the link yesterday]
Jacques-Olivier Travers
 
A small black shape dropped into sight in my aeroplane's windscreen as we circled high over Calais in a brilliant blue haze after lunch today. Yves Rossy had just leaped from the safety of his jump plane. Following behind, we watched in awe as "Fusionman" extended the eight foot wings strapped to his back, ending his free-fall and swooped into level flight.
Like a black hawk, Rossy throttled up his four little but noisy jets, accelerating in level flight to over 100 knots and headed out towards the thin white line that shimmered through the haze on the other side of the Channel. The distant Dover Cliffs were the only thing we could make out in the intense blue goldfish bowl in which sky meets the sea with no horizon.
The Times' Cessna 182 was part of the little squadron of two helicopters and two planes that escorted Rossy as he made history, zooming like Buzz Lightyear, the spaceman of Toy Story, out into the wide blue yonder. Protected by a special air corridor, we tucked in behind the Pilatus Porter drop plane which was guiding Rossy, following him just above like a body guard, with the two yellow helicopters in tow. Six thousand feet below, Channel ferries zig-zagged through the dense stream of container ships.
The helicopter escort was comfort, should Rossy have been forced to ditch among the shipping in the cold grey-green water. But his path did not waver as we sped along in his wake, a member of a strange flock of birds following their jet-powered human leader in extended V formation.
Unlike Rossy, we were in a warm cockpit behind controls and a reassuring engine, talking to air traffic control and with GPS navigation. Rossy has no instruments except an audio altimeter in his helmet and his wristwatch. And, apart from the throttle, he has no flight controls, just his body. To steer, climb or descend he moves his head and limbs slightly, a skill he first learned as a sky-diver. "I fuse with my machine. It was my dream as a boy to be a bird," he told me before the flight.
Within 10 minutes, the white lighthouse on Saint Margaret's bay hove into slight and the jetman descended, wheeling into a left turn as he crossed the coastline. Along with the flock we pulled aside to get out of his way as Rossy performed a spectacular "victory" figure of eight, turning out over the sea again to face the wind. We watched from just above as his blue, steerable parachute unfurled and Rossy lined up with the field where the media crowd waited. No-one said anything on the radio. "Bravo !". The cheer went up from my French companions in the Cessna when we saw Rossy touch down. "Spectaculaire!"
Much the same would have been heard near the same spot 99 years ago this year when Louis Blériot swooped down in his monoplane, becoming the first powered aeroplane pilot to fly the Channel (balloon and dirigible pilots did it before Blériot)
Rossy, cheerful, gangly and boyish was coolness itself before take-off. "There should be no problem today," he said as he tucked into pasta and mineral water in a tent beside the old air terminal that still welcomes arrivals with a sign saying "Gateway to the Continent". "It feels right. The weather is holding", he said.
Red wine was on the table, but Fusionman touched none. On Thursday, Rossy cancelled because of fog which he said gave him butterflies in the stomach, a warning sign that he does not ignore. Minutes after our lunch, he donned his flame-retardant flight suit and his team wheeled out his wings to the Pilatus. Close up, the black Kevlar and foam wings with their four Thermos sized engines look distinctly home made, which they are. Rossy strapped on the contraption and took position in the Pilatus cabin, which has a flame-proof floor. That is because he lights his four engines standing on a platform by the open door with two of the motors still inside. Several fire extinguishers are held at the ready.
"See you the other side, he waved' at his team as we took off ahead of the Pilatus to climb to await him.
The world's latest aviation pioneer has only a weekend to absorb the adrenalin. On Monday, he takes command of his usual "office" -- the captain's seat in a Swiss International Airbus 320 in which he will fly tourists to Luxor and Sharm El Sheikh.
CLICK CONTINUE FOR MORE PICTURES
Continue reading "Flying the Channel with the human jet" »
Regulars here may remember Yves Rossy, the Swiss airline pilot who has turned himself into the world's first human jet. I spent the day with him today at Calais as he prepared to strap on his wings and become the first jetman cross the English Channel.
At the last minute, with TV networks broadcasting live, fog rolled in over the landing area at Dover so he had to call off the flight, which starts with a free-fall from a plane. (That's him in the picture getting the bad news from Dover.) He is going to try again tomorrow (Friday) lunchtime.
Rossy, a lanky, boyish 49-year-old was disappointed after preparing himself mentally all morning for what remains a dangerous mission. His flight of about 23 miles will take only about 13 minutes at 115 MPH, but if he runs out of fuel too soon or his four little jet engines cut, he must splash down under parachute in the cold grey water of the Channel.
We flew up from Paris in a Cessna to tag along behind the little escort fleet of two helicopters and two planes. The visibility on the French side of the Channel was already so poor that I found it hard to make out the Calais airport in the murk below us. That's when we small-time pilots bless GPS, the satellite positioning system. I cannot imagine what it would be like to fly in the same conditions with no instruments and no flight controls apart from your body. That's what Rossy does when he is being Fusionman, the name he uses for his human flying machine. Rossy, who is constantly cheerful, said the descending fog was just one variable too much.
"There are so many unknown factors. We don't want to add another layer," he said after being told by phone of the closing cloud. His senses told him not to push it, despite the pressure of heavy media attention and commitments to sponsors. "I have butterflies in my stomach and that's a bad sign," he said as he rolled his wings back from the Pilatus jump plane. "I only have one life and I would rather keep it."
I hope that he makes it tomorrow. He has to be back in the captain's seat of his A320 Airbus flying out of Zurich early next week. The forecast is better but we're expecting a headwind wind that could force another cancellation. With only just enough jet fuel to get across the Straits, Fusionman has no margin for error.
The pressure to perform on schedule is a strain that the early aviators did not suffer so much. Only a few reporters were in attendance at Calais and Dover in July 1909 when Louis Blériot, a French pioneer, became the first man to fly the Channel in an aircraft.
We'll make another attempt to watch Yves from the air tomorrow. You can watch him live on natgeotv.com
[Calais pictures by Alastair Miller]
As Nicolas Sarkozy flies to the Olympics opening, he is being hammered in France for flip-flop behaviour that has let Beijing humilitate him.
China has got Sarkozy's number, le Monde said this afternoon. "He has lost on all fronts: whether human rights or the international image of France or its relations with the Chinese authorities."
Sarko's unfortunate Chinese gambit began in the spring when, under domestic pressure, he threatened to boycott the Olympics opening ceremony unless Beijing resumed dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Other leaders voiced criticism over Tibet and human rights, but none made the Olympics link. Britain's Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel of Germany was never planning to go to the opening.
The Chinese were also upset by the very rough passage of the Olympic torch through Paris and French establishment sympathy for the protestors. China retaliated with an anti-French boycott. Then Sarko sent three emissaries to Beijing to apologize and announced that he would go to the Beijing ceremony in his capacity as current president of the European Union. But, he said, he would meet the Dalai Lama in Paris on his return.
Beijing then took the extraordinary step of having its Paris ambassador publicly warn Sarkozy that there would be serious consequences if he did any such thing. The ambassador -- a graduate of the ENA, the French high civil service school -- was hauled into the French Foreign Ministry and reprimanded for interfering in French affairs. Sarko himself told the European parliament that Beijing could not push him around and would never dictate his diary.
On Wednesday, before leaving for China, Sarko caved in and called off the meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader. Carla Bruni -- Mrs Sarkozy -- will instead meet him at a Buddhist ceremony in the south of France in late August.
Sarkozy says that the meeting was postponed by agreement with the Dalai Lama in order to avoid raising tension with Beijing at a delicate time. His office has announced today that he has transmitted to the Chinese authorities a list of dissidents about whom French campaigners are concerned. At the same time, he has given an interview to Chinese media in which he celebrates "the historic, indestructible, unshakable friendship" between Paris and Beijing.
Super Sarko has come out of this episode looking foolish. Brown and Merkel have both held talks with the Dalai Lama and spoken out on rights in recent months and neither are attending the opening, but Beijing did not punish them. Sarkozy showed weakness by blowing hot and cold. "It would have been better to have refrained from puffing up his chest for a few weeks before travelling to Canossa," said le Monde. In China, anti-French bloggers are jeering at Sarko, calling him a "paper tiger".
Pierre Haski, Editor of the Rue89 news site, calls it "the most serious diplomatic failure by Sarkozy since his election." Those are views from Sarko's usual critics, but few outside his own political camp are defending his bungled China venture. A French diplomat friend summed it up to me as "Beijing 1, Sarkozy 0".
One of the less lovely features of the French deep south is the passion for la corrida, or bull-fighting. The bloody pastime, though disliked by most French, enjoys devotion in a stretch of the country that runs from the Rhone delta to the Atlantic shore.
A 10-year-old Franco-Mexican boy is the centre of this summer's annual battle between les aficionados and the anti-corrida campaigners. Last week, Michelito, a child star in Latin America, was twice banned by local authorities from performing non-lethal shows in central southern towns. In Arles, the bull-fighting Mecca, gendarmes acting on government orders halted his appearance at the last minute although the aficionado mayor was a big supporter. The child was being put in danger, said the local prefect.
Last night, Michelito [video below] finally made his French debut to great acclaim in Hagetmau, a town in the southwestern Landes, and he is due to try again in Arles this evening. Flowers rained down on the young torrero after he exhausted an 80 kilogramme calf called Bastonsito. The event was a "becerrada", a fight for beginners in which the animal is not wounded.
So what's wrong with a gifted boy practising his favourite sport in public?
Continue reading "French fans adore bullfighter boy" »
The Olympic flame's day in Paris was a mess. I spent a few hours in the midst of yesterday's demonstrations, beginning with the sinister start below the Eiffel tower under the guard of hundreds of police and Chinese security.
Yet, despite the débâcle which ended with the Chinese rushing the flame out of town on a bus, it is impossible not to detect a little satisfaction in the air. The relay was a chaotic fiasco, marred by jeering crowds and scuffles with the militant pro-Tibetans. The torch-bearers, mainly French former champions, had a miserable time between hostile crowds and the strong-arm tactics of their Chinese handlers. President Sarkozy's government had reason to be embarrassed. But there is a feeling today that, even if it was futile, France at least made a gesture by venting its discontent over the Beijing games and human rights. I say France because the demonstrators enjoyed quite broad support. France prides itself on being "the home of human rights" and it likes a bit of rebellion and creative disorder in the name of a cause. The Beijing torch relay from the Eiffel tower down the Champs Elysées and on to Notre Dame cathedral offered the right moment and symbols. By the end of the afternoon yesterday, the demonstrations had become a festive occasion, joined by teenagers and office-workers.
Laurent Joffrin, Editor of Libération, was for once happy this morning. "Paris rediscovered its sense of revolt for the occasion. It took it upon itself to remind the world that hypocrisy has a limit," he wrote. "The Olympic flame has turned into a shameful candle-end."
Naturally the leftwing world was fully behind the la manif. Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, a Socialist, hung a rights banner across the front of the City Hall. Green councillors added a more aggressive one so the Chinese cancelled the ceremony there and the torch convoy sped past the Mayor without stopping. He shrugged and said: "The cohabitation of the Olympics and human rights disturbs them. That's their problem. We were ready to receive them but not to sacrifice our principles."
But there was also quiet support from President Sarkozy's conservative political camp. Half a dozen members of parliament for his Union for a Popular Movement joined a protest by mainly leftwing legislators outside the National Assembly. The organisers ordered the convoy to cancel a stop there.
On one level, the chaotic day made a mockery of the crowd control skills of the well equipped French police. They had said that the torch would be protected by an inviolable 200-metre long "security bubble". This burst within minutes. In the thick of it, however, I got the impression that they were not trying very hard. There were a few punch-ups but little of the brute force usually employed by the CRS riot police. Most of them were not wearing helmets and body armour. The feeling was confirmed this morning by Michèle Alliot-Marie, the Interior Minister, who is national police chief.
She essentially blamed the Chinese embassy for the mess. They had controlled the day's events and the police had been there to help keep order for them. "We had to balance this with the right of people to demonstrate," she said on Europe 1 radio.
Sarkozy watched events on television as the torch ran past the Elysée Palace. His people hope that the public excitement will cool because there is not much that they can do to satisfy public discontent over China. Sarko is maintaining his threat to stay away from the opening ceremony in Beijing in August but few imagine him doing so.
[Headline: China: the slap in the face]
Meet Virginie Guyot. She flies Mirage fighter jets for the French air force and has done two tours based at Kandahar in the Afghan war zone. Captain Guyot, who is 33 and a mother, has just made the news by becoming the first woman assigned to la Patrouille de France, the air force display team.
The eight-jet Patrouille is one of the best. It is equal or superior to the US Air Force Thunderbirds and Britain's RAF Red Arrows. Its tight formation aerobatics is breath-taking (watch one of their videos). Every July 14, the team opens the Bastille Day parade with a low-level run down the Champs Elysees trailing their trademark tricolor smoke.
Guyot, whose father was in the military, got the bug with her first flight in a light aircraft at the age of 12. She is due to become commander of the Patrouille from next year. She never saw flying as a men-only job, she says. "Flying a plane nowadays requires finesse more than physical force."
That has been the case for decades. Only in movies do pilots wrestle with the controls. Most planes are flown with the tips of the fingers. The need for delicacy is part of the reason why women make such good pilots -- including aerobatic ones. Look at Patty Wagstaff who in the 1990s was US aerobatics champion three times. When she was asked how a woman could beat men at such a demanding sport, she used to reply: "Do you think the airplane knows the difference?".
Another advantage is female judgment.
Continue reading "French pilots show women can fly" »
Europe is in a tangle over this summer's Olympic games in Beijing. Foreign Ministers of the Union are trying to reach a consensus today in Slovenia over the matter of using them to apply pressure on China. They will not manage because opinion is divided. This is a good moment to find out what readers of this blog think.
France and Britain have taken opposite sides, as President Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, made clear in London on Thursday. For Brown there is no question of even thinking about a boycott or staying away from the opening ceremony. The Olympics are purely about sport and London wants the best games possible, not least because it fears trouble when it hosts them in 2012. Sarkozy, however, is threatening to cancel his trip to the opening ceremony unless Beijing mends its ways, towards Tibet in particular.
There are other European approaches. In Poland, Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister, has canceled his trip to Beijing and he urged other democratic politicians to do the same. Germany's Angela Merkel said that she is not going to the ceremony but had never intended to.
It's all a bit of a mess. The subject produced lively argument in a French TV show in which I took part today (Canal+ here. Click on 'L'émission de la semaine). In France, a country that prides itself on its sensitivity to human rights, the political world, media and public favour some gesture of disapproval towards Beijing's conduct in Tibet and to register distaste over the nature of the Chinese regime. They do not support a sporting boycott but a CSA opinion poll this week showed that 53 percent want national leaders to stay away from the opening ceremony. Sarkozy's threat was the least he could do after two weeks of public pressure. Despite the posturing, it is obvious that he will turn up in Beijing in August because he is as reluctant to incur Chinese displeasure as other leaders with heavy commercial interests at stake. A campaign for boycotting French goods is already under way at a site on SOHU.com, one of the big Chinese internet portals.
For the moment, though, France will make a little trouble. When French-led protesters flashed a banner at the lighting of the Olympic torch in Athens, the act was largely cheered here. It was seen as a grain of sand in the Chinese propaganda machine and there will be a lot more protests when the torch reaches Paris. Leading politicians from the Socialist opposition will take part.
The same incident was treated quite differently in the British media. They talked of "anti-China protesters" disrupting the Athens ceremony and they ran headlines on "fears" for the torch's passage through London.
The Times delivered an unequivocal endorsement of the games in an editorial today: "The newspaper ardently opposes any suggestion of a boycott, which would be unfair to the athletes ... self-defeating for those who want to see greater freedom in China and malicious towards a country and a people who have traveled so far to celebrate their achievements as a nation and their re-engagement with the world."
Our editorial was a response to an internet campaign in China against Jane Macartney, our Beijing correspondent. She reports today that she has become the most hated person in the country after the Government cited a Times commentator (not her) who had compared the Beijing Olympics to Nazi Germany's 1936 games.
In her report, Macartney, a Mandarin speaker who knows the country well, makes a strong anti-boycott case: The Chinese see the games as "a moment when they want to celebrate, with the world, their achievements, development and prosperity of the past three decades."
As no expert on China I bow to those with knowledge, but I recall that similar arguments were used about the Moscow Olympics of 1980. President Jimmy Carter and Margaret Thatcher, the US and British leaders of the time, led a sporting boycott that caused misery for the sportsmen and turned the games into a fiasco. That prompted a less effective retaliation by the Soviet bloc against the 1984 Los Angeles games. The Russians were understandably angry in 1980, but the message of international disapproval struck home. I was in Moscow in the run-up to those games and then for three years in the aftermath. The boycott -- ostensibly over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan -- added to the pressure that eventually unraveled the Soviet Union and ended the cold war.
Those were other times. China is a whole different story and I am not naive. But there is a similarity. Moscow's ruling communist party regarded the 1980 games primarily as a vehicle for political propaganda. They invested in them massively as a showcase for the Soviet state. Beijing's communist government is doing the same for its system.
I read in the US media today that Coca Cola and the other big Beijing games sponsors are now worried about possible damage to their image from their association with China's great event. It's odd that they did not see this coming a long time ago.
 Meet the new minister for French sport. Two days after France's rugby rout at the hands of Argentina, Bernard Laporte, the team manager, joins President Sarkozy's cabinet tomorrow with a loser's aura and the threat of investigation for tax fraud.
Political insiders are betting that Laporte, 43, blamed for France's pitiful fourth place in the World Cup, will not last long in the post of State Secretary for Youth and Sport. Sarko offered ambiguous support over the weekend after word that inspectors had reported false book-keeping and other serious irregularities in Laporte's varied business activites.
Continue reading "Sarko seeks distance from Mad Bernie, his losing pal" »
The English destroy the dream of an entire nation. So said the headline in le Parisien this morning after England ejected France from the rugby world cup in a semi-final that had stirred a wave of patriotic hope.
Rugby is only a game -- and one that is played only in parts of France -- but the match yesterday had been invested with all kinds of symbolism. It's always like that when the two ancestral enemies face off on a sports field. After their miraculous elimination of New Zealand last week, France believed that Gallic flair would triumph over the stolid rosbifs. They led for much of the game, but the genius was missing. Instead of daring runs to touch down, they kicked and blocked. The word today was that France blew it "by playing like the English".
Bernard Lapasset, the president of the French Rugby Association, sounded off on this theme after the 9-14 loss, largely to the magic boot of Jonny Wilkinson. "I don't understand the way we played tonight," Lapasset said. "When you play against the English, you don't play like the English. You play à la francaise and pass the ball."
The man being blamed this morning, inevitably, is Bernard Laporte, the team manager who is due to take over as President Sarkozy's Sports Minister next week. Sarko will still give him the job, but he may not last long.
As drunken English fans were still staggering around the Left Bank early this morning, l'Equipe, the sports daily, summed up the gloom. "The only thing that is beautiful is victory, especially when it is achieved against our strange neighbours. ... The big lesson of yesterday's match is this: the English won because they never gave up being English. So English."
A disappointed French fan summed up the disgust on the lunchtime TF1 television news: "Ces anglais nous feront chier jusqu' à la fin de nos jours [Roughly: Those English are going to screw us around until the end of our days]
France will now try to forget about rugby for a while -- at least after next weekend's final -- but the defeat is adding to a down mood as the country faces the first show-down between President Sarkozy and the unions (last posting).
It's certainly not going to be a great week for Sarkozy, who watched France's rugby defeat in the stadium along with half a dozen of his ministers. By all accounts, he is going to go public this week, possibly as early as tomorrow, over his estrangement from Cécilia. I have held off posting on this for a week because nothing has emerged beyond the fact that Mrs Sarkozy spent a couple of days in Geneva. I have heard that David Martinon, the presidential spokesman, will make a statement on the couple's separation. That comes from a reliable source in the Elysée Palace, but he cautioned that plans there are changing all the time. And that's getting away from the rugby.
[For anyone interested in seeing how the rugby, Cecilia and French politics tie together, here's a link to a TV show that I took part in yesterday on Canal +. They have split the topics into segments.]
There was joy in the air this morning when I jogged up the Avenue de la Grande Armée. France had just confounded everyone's expectations, including its own, and knocked New Zealand out of the world rugby cup. In the morning sunshine on the cafe terraces people were sharing their amazement over "the incredible victory". A gaggle of mournful New Zealanders were nursing their hangovers and joking about suicide. It was almost as if Paris was celebrating one of the Napoleonic victories inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe just up the street.
The 20-18 victory was so extraordinary because no-one had given France a chance against the invincible All Blacks. The players themselves sounded defeated in advance and comedians were joking all week about ambulance planes that would be flying back the French survivors from the massacre of Cardiff. Even at half time, with New Zealand 10 points ahead, they had started mourning in the bars around my home.
Then the old French flair suddenly revived and the team that became a national joke after going down to Argentina rose up and "committed history" as the TV commentator put it. Looking back, everyone said they could tell that a miracle was in the air after the French players faced down the All Blacks, eye-ball to eye-ball as they performed their Haka war dance before the start of play.
They danced in the streets all night in Paris, which was already staying up late to celebrate the "Nuit Blanche" -- Mayor Delanoe's annual all-night festival of arts. The exaltation was strongest in Toulouse, France's rugby capital. At four am there they were still singing On ira tous au paradis (We'll all go to heaven), an old pop hit that has become the rugby anthem.
The newspapers ran out of superlatives today. "Gigantic!" said the headline in le Parisien. "This victory, which will go down in history without a doubt, has been given to us by a French side that has stunned the world."
It may be only a game -- and a quarter final at that -- but the victory is balm for the national soul. After all the talk of decline and the feeling that France has lost out and can't do things right any more, its team has beaten the favourites. It also helps that the sport was invented, and dominated for most of its history, by les Anglo-Saxons.
And of course we all know who will make sure he gets the credit: Nicolas Sarkozy. France's new number one rugby fan leaped out of his seat in the Cardiff stadium and danced at his team's first try. "This was a match for history," he told the players in the changing room after. "In 20 years people will say 'I was there'." The implicit message was: "Under Sarko, France wins."
I'd prefer to see the epic victory as an illustration of the old saying, Impossible n'est pas français. But Sarko already purloined that for his campaign slogan last sping: "Tomorrow, everything becomes possible."
Next weekend France meets England in the semi-final. They are playing it modest today, sayng that it won't be a walk-over. But, after beating England in two friendlies just before the cup, France should make it to the last round. If they then manage to win, there will be no stopping the jubilation.
We may all be one European village nowadays, but it's interesting to note how people in each country are often preoccupied by completely different events.
Take the case of Madeleine McCann. A French TV show* has asked me on to explain the British media's fascination for what has seemed -- until this week's developments -- to be a sad but banal case of child abduction.
The story has intrigued France because of the way that, seen from this side of the Channel, the British have gone out of their minds. How, they are wondering, can one sad fait divers -- random news item -- drive such a tidal wave of media cover ? I won't court trouble here with my own view, but it's worth noting how news for one country is sometimes meaningless for another. Look at the affair of Janet Jackson's nipple in the USA -- or France's obsession in the early 1990s with the case of le Petit Gregory, the drowning of a village boy whose killer was never identified.
To illustrate the point, here is the list of the top 10 topics that the French are talking about. The Ifop polling company keeps tabs on this for Paris Match, asking the question: Which subjects have you talked about most this week with those around you at home and in the work place?"
1 -- The Rugby World Cup
2 -- The death of Luciano Pavarotti
3 -- The closure of 11,200 jobs at the Education Ministry
4- Plans for raising the retirement age
5 -- President Sarkozy's new scheme for tackling Alzheimer's disease
6 -- The utilities merger between Gaz de France and Suez
7 -- The possible introduction of a four-day school week
8 -- Cecilia Sarkozy's refusal to appear before a parliamentary inquiry on her mission to Libya
9 -- Gang fights at the Paris Gare du Nord rail terminus.
10 - Government plans to raise value added tax to pay for social security.
Final note: A campaign is under way to have the French media stage a Sarko-free day next month.
* The TV show is Un cafe, l'addition, Pascale Clark's talk show on Canal + at 13h55 on Saturday.
Pulling the cork from a bottle of rosé last night I realised that I had been caught up in the rugby madness that has taken over France as it prepares to host the World Cup from this Friday. When I bought the wine, from the southwestern town of Gaillac, I hadn't noticed the name on the label: Bernard Laporte.
Laporte, as we saw last week, is the national rugby manager, businessman and television personality who has been co-opted by President Sarkozy as sports minister after the cup final in Paris on October 21. With his usual flair for seizing the mood of the moment, Super-Sarko has adopted rugby as the symbol of his invincible, can-do presidency.
Rugbymania has been building since France discovered a taste for a minority sport that is played traditionally in the foie gras and armagnac country of the southwest and in Paris. The English "game for hooligans played by gentlemen" has now become a metaphor for French values and team spirit.
Continue reading "France fêtes rugby, Sarko orders victory" »
In what context would Britain's Queen Elizabeth rank just above Umberto Eco, the Italian novelist, but one spot below Dave, an ageing Dutch pop singer?
Give up ? The three landed midway in a list of France's 25 favourite Europeans. Number one was Ellen MacArthur, the British ocean sailor and 25th was Jose Manuel Barroso, the Portuguese president of the European Commission ("Who?", non-Europeans must be wondering).
This 2006 list is a good example of France's mania for opinion polls. The French do not go for American-style rankings, those unscientific, whimsical lists of such things as "the world's" (English-speaking) best jokes, worst sitcoms or things you must do before you reach 30. But they apply serious polling effort to sounding national opinion on just about everything.
One of the oldest fixtures of la sondomanie, as Gallic poll addiction is known, is a twice-yearly national survey of France's 50 favourite people.
Started in 1988 by the IFOP polling company for JDD, the main Sunday newspaper, this poll throws up a strange assortment of sports and showbiz stars, charity workers, politicians and television personalities.
Continue reading "France's favourite people" »
It's the time of year again when France observes a modern tradition: the lament over drug-taking by riders in the Tour de France.
The 94th edition of the world's biggest cycle race starts on Saturday in London. For the geographically alert, yes, the British capital is not in France, but the three-week test of human endurance sometimes visits neighbouring territory before finishing on the Champs Elysées. This is the first time in London for the great Tour caravan.
The event is once again over-shadowed by the endless scandal over doping. Floyd Landis, last year's winner, is fighting an implausible campaign to retain the title that was cast into doubt when he failed a drug test. Suspicion lingers over Lance Armstrong, the American who won every year from 1999 to 2005. In the past month, former riders have confessed to using EPO (erythropoietin), the favourite doping agent for would-be wearers of the Yellow Jersey.
The latest wheeze to clean up the sport is a pledge of purity that riders must sign for the International Cycling Union. If they do not publicly reject performance-enhancing drugs, they do not ride. Most have complied.
That's the background for this video. Among all the hand-wringing and media debate, a couple of enterprising song-writers have scored a hit with a joke song on the joys of doping. Posing as a Mexican mariachi cycle team, they sing in French and Spanish: "EPO te quiero, grace à toi je serai numero uno" ["EPO I love you, thanks to you I will be number one"]
Continue reading "The funny side of the Tour de France" »
Your writer
Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times. He started out as a journalist in Russia and then moved to the United States. He has reported from all the continents but most enjoys observing the exotic tribe on Britain's doorstep. Though France is home, he avoids going native by offering what the locals call an "Anglo-Saxon" eye on their country.
Send Charles an E-mail
Follow Charles on Facebook
Follow Charles on Twitter
Get the RSS feed
Categories
Select from the dropdown
Times Online blogs
More from Times Online
|
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
Ridiculous
Posted by: Francois D | 10 Dec 2009 08:00:38
MONIQUE,
"She (i.e. the US) is a nation of immigrants and these immigrant cultures meld into the general core culture..."
This is (or was) also true for France since she had successive waves of immigration coming from Italy, Spain, Portugal and also some other countries (for instance Poland). There were no major integration problems, since the cultures - including the religions - were more or less comparable. This immigration was wanted by the state, since France had a very low birthdate and had suffered very heavy losses in WWI (Source Wikipedia - Pop. 1914: 41.630 millions; pop. 1918: 38.670 m. Fallen soldiers: 1.4 m) and also in WWII, with heavy destructions.
After WWII, when the economy started to recover, immigration was encouraged. In 1945, the population was 39.660 m. It is now roughly 65 millions (including the départements d'Outre-Mer).
Muslim immigration (North Africa) started mainly well after WWII. There are now also sizable numbers of Africans.
If one believes CHARLES :), there are now roughly 6 millions Muslims in France - this is not far from 10% of the total population. The problem is the concentration in big cities.
Contrary to the US and Canada, France for a long time did not set and enforce selective quotas for immigrants.
"From my view some of the immigrant problems in France stem from French colonialism"
I am not bad-faithed enough to be able to contradict
you :).
Hereafter an interesting Wikipedia link:
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9mographie_de_la_France
ROMAIN,
Although I was aware of the English edition of "spiegel", it didn't cross my mind to check it for Caldwell's interview. Comme dirait (probablement :) ma femme: Daniel, tu as une grosse tête - grosse à l'extérieur, petite à l'intérieur...
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 10 Dec 2009 00:00:16
All of this only reminds us of why France is so distant regarding religions : it is because of what religion is about : domination of the minds, proselitism, intimidation, power demonstration through symbols and clothings, and ultimatly....war
It's been like that for centuries and will be like that for centuries to come.
Atheism will save us from darkness...
Posted by: Dominique | 9 Dec 2009 22:34:59
Sarkozy is trying to put things in a sensible perspective and he is now hated by Le Pen voters (at least those I know). And you go on finding his every move wrong because he is not a man of the Left. France, love it or leave it.
Posted by: thomasine | 9 Dec 2009 21:43:37
@DANIEL STROHL
If it's not over-stretching Charles's patience, this should be my final comment to this post. I would like to deny that Sarkozy is "hated". He's actually not "hated" but disdained, more than any of his predecessors -- and increasingly so by his own troops. Even Chirac commanded more esteem than this man who in turn despises the French like no other president before him. In his heart, France and the French are foreign to him. No wonder, since his father was a Hungarian, his mother and grandfather (also his ersatz father) came from the Greek diaspora, his first wife was a Corsican, his second of Spanish-Moldovian extraction, his third an Italian. This "foreignness" is more and more shining through. I wouldn't be surprised if the Sarkozy Fallacy would end up in a Greek tragedy.
Posted by: Rulf | 9 Dec 2009 21:34:19
Susan
Before the final solution – the ground work had been done with “ Jews killed Jesus, they are not like us, they are dirty, have all the money, have lot of babies, they are communists” for years and centuries, sending them to the gas chambers to make killing very clean and not give executioners nightmares sounded almost normal .
You debase and dehumanised and the rest in on the slippery slope.
I am not all that happy with women covered head to toes but that is a cultural thing, it’s not in the Q’ran . That will change with time.
The pirates from Somalia might be “ Muslims” but they are just guys who want stuff in a country that is going back to the Middle Ages and that Paul Collier puts in the bottom Billion ( I think).
The pirates are Muslims like some my neighbours ( I live in the East end of London) yet they couldn’t be different. You don’t put all Catholics in the same bag.
I am not immune to prejudice, after the 7/7 I was in a bus where a young bearded Muslim with a bag was praying reading the Q’ran, moving forward and backwards, as I read that in Israel they spotted bombers like that, I panicked ( my line had been bombed and I missed the mess by 10 minutes), remembered that if he was planning to kill himself and us he would have had a shave. People were moving away from Muslims-looking people in the tube and buses openly at the time. The ironic thing of course is that the 7/7 plotters bombed Edgware Road, not exactly a “ white neighbourhood” and full of Muslims.
See suicide bombers as angry and lost human beings first, before you see them as Muslims.
The world is changing, old certitudes are being challenged.
Giving to fear and we are back in the bacteria pond.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 9 Dec 2009 19:38:43
JOHN GREGORY FLINN,
"Europeans are not supine as Caldwell seems to think"
And, at least I hope so, not stupid either :). First, I misread "supine" (an English word I didn't know) for "stupid"...
Interesting quote from Renan. The last time I heard of him was at school - er, some decades ago :).
Herafter a link to some quotes of Renan:
http://www.evene.fr/citations/auteur.php?ida=173
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 9 Dec 2009 18:28:04
Susan Durst,
One has to name the problem: if it is immigration, let's review immigration policies, review the code on nationality, e.g. right of the soil, family regrouping, double nationality etc.
But once immigrants are legally recognised as residents or nationals, how can one deny them and their descendants the right to practice their religion like anybody else ?
The demographic resultant of immigration is one in the very long term, it cannot be reversed easily. In other words, European countries have long practiced immigration on demand to satisfy the job market fluctuations, it is now unfeasable to turn the tide.
Posted by: Romain | 9 Dec 2009 16:12:22
I just wonder how much effort either "side" makes to engage the other. FOr basic "values" I am all for assimilation, except to the point where we become clones in a world of the same shops, clothes and so on. Everyone has the right to privately practise their spirituality, if they have one. For my sins and despite my misgivings about the extremists seizing the issue with the ensuing descent from rationality into pure racism, I have to admit a certain admiration for my hosts' secularism. Just a shame they can't shut up the bloody bells in my village at 7am!
Posted by: Johnny Foreigner | 9 Dec 2009 16:00:14
I'm just waiting for the first one to say "Ah but it says in the Q'ran this that or the other", because there are naturally no contentious parts in the Bible. Still less are there any nutters who believe that God actually made the earth in 7 days.
Quite a relief really.
Next you'll be telling me there are people who are prepared to kill other people to save unborn people. If that unlikely event were to happen we'd have to start segregating Christians too.
And if Isreal started on its neighbours, we should shut down the entire Jewish faith too.
Remember Islam is about 1100 years behind Christianity in terms of its maturity and blind obedience to the indefensible, so maybe we got to cut them some slack and help them along. Show them it's all a bit of a laugh really.
Joseph Goebbels said "Better 10 innocent men are killed than one guilty goes free". But then Nazism was a bunch of scary men dressed in black telling you what to do, whereas priests are, er....
Nothing wrong with "robust" debate, except that this is a PC term for pre-concieved Points of View.
Posted by: Here Wegoagain | 9 Dec 2009 15:50:47
JOHN O'D - Ive read Caldwell's book and (now) Matt Carr's criticism.
Caldwell paints a depressing picture of Europe and Islam. He indicates that he expects the present trends to continue, and Europe to change (for the worse). He is American and I've read other Americans who believe it could'nt happen in the US because muslims become integrated and assimilated quickly. Whereas in Europe they are segregated, and stay so. That seems to me to be Caldwell's thinking.
Matt Carr describes Caldwell thus, inter alia,
"His arguments are measured, thoughtful and nuanced, and considerably more sophisticated than the rantings of Melanie Phillips."
Yet later he contradicts this with, "But again and again the shrill tone of the ideological zealot breaks through the nuance and detachment,"
I have made my views clear in these and other columns. The muslim religion is a worthy one, but its Islamic temporal polemic is generally medieval in nature and maturity, and hardly acceptable. Indeed, consideration should be given to it being proscribed.
The european electorate is becoming more aware of the menace of political Islam, and european politicians are starting to notice. As, when and where the voter gets the opportunity he/she votes accordingly.
Europeans are not supine as Caldwell seems to think, nor racists as Carr may do.
Posted by: john gregory flinn | 9 Dec 2009 15:16:12
"Replace the word Muslim with Jew and we are back in the 30's." (Do-Re-Mi)
"This is a facile knee-jerk statement and grossly unfair to hundreds of millions of Europeans." (Susan Durst)
Susan, I think you misunderstood the point Do-Re-Mi was making. It is not a facile knee-jack statement at all. It's a very rational statement.
You just can't say that EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of a certain group, since the beginning of time, has been an exception to the rest of humanity -- just too different, too backward, too evil, too stupid, too dishonest or whatever, to fit in with the rest of us.
That's what Hitler said about the Jews. Today it's the Muslims that fall into this category. There is always SOME group that fits into the category of being the ONE exception to all the rest of mankind.
Well, I'm sorry, but it just isn't true. Yes, there are LOTS of problems with Muslims, the same as there have been lots of problems with Jews, blacks, Irish, untouchables or whatever other group you choose to look down on.
But they are NOT all on welfare. They are NOT all extremists. They do NOT all refuse to assimilate. They are NOT all to a man worse than the rest of us.
There are all kinds of decent, well-educated, assimilated muslims. This is not being politically correct. This is not saying there are no problems with Muslims. But you just can't make blanket statements about entire populations, no matter how irritating they might be.
That's what Hitler did. Surely we know better today.
This is what Do-Re-Mi meant when she said, "Replace the word Muslim with Jew and we're back in the thirties."
Posted by: Maggie | 9 Dec 2009 15:12:27