After Barack Obama's two days in France and Germany, Europe is getting a clearer idea of the way the new US president operates. Lesson number one: he keeps his distance.
In Germany on Friday Chancellor Angela Merkel was put out by Obama's decision to steer clear of Berlin during his flying visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp. In France, Obama's way of imposing his own schedule has been more striking -- to the embarrassment of President Sarkozy.
As I write on Sunday morning, the US imperial cavalcade (30 vehicles), has just driven up to the Pompidou Centre. The Obama family are visiting the modern art museum before the President flies home and leaves Michelle and the children to lunch with Nicolas and Carla Sarkozy and their four offspring at the Elysée Palace (There's an echo of Sarkozy's 2007 barbecue with George W Bush at Kennebunkport, when Cecilia Sarkozy, the President's then wife, failed to turn up.)
In 39 hours in France, staying in Paris a one-minute walk from the presidential palace, Obama was unable to find a moment to accept Sarkozy's repeated invitations to drop by. They had a 20 minute working lunch with their advisers yesterday in Normandy but Obama has also had time to take his family to Notre Dame cathedral and to dinner at La Fontaine de Mars, a good brasserie near the Eiffel tower (230 euros for their dinner in a private upstairs room, with water, no wine).
Sarkozy could not hide his disappointment when they appeared yesterday in Caen, but he has clearly got the message. Theirs is a good working relationship but Obama is not out to play buddy-buddy with Sarko or any other European leader (Gordon Brown of Britain included).
Obama was tackled on the coolness in Caen. He insisted, of course, that he was excellent friends with "President Sarkozy" (who called him Barack). They also performed a high-five handshake for the cameras [top picture]. "I have a very tough schedule and I would love nothing more than to have a leisurely week in Paris, stroll down the Seine, take my wife out to a nice meal, have a picnic in Luxembourg Gardens," he replied. "I think it's very important to understand that good friends don't worry about the symbols and the conventions and the protocols."
Note that his leisure wish-list did not include the socialising with Carla and Nicolas that the French President had longed for. The Obama froideur was the top story in Le Journal du Dimanche this morning, above reports on yesterday's moving ceremonies at Omaha beach (which Gordon Brown pathetically mis-called 'Obama Beach' in his speech).
The Sarkozy administration is suffering from the unpleasant feeling of having been taken for a ride, reported the JDD. "Obama did not snub the French president in particular, but he refuses to play the game of familiarity with his peers," it said.
There is also the question of opposing personalities. "The American president is a man of reflection who turned himself into a man of action while Nicolas Sarkozy is above all famous for his spontaneity," said Simon Serfaty of the Washington International Institute for Strategic Studies.
[picture: The Obamas visit Notre Dame cathedral]
Watching the ceremonies yesterday, you got the impression that Obama was the host and Sarkozy the guest. That was certainly true in the commemoration in the Colleville US cemetery, by Omaha beach, which is US territory in perpetuity. But it also seemed to be the case in the prefecture (government headquarters) in Caen, where Sarkozy deferred to Obama. The US President led the press conference which, incidentially, the Americans did not want but the French insisted on.
I don't want to play the indignant Briton, but there was an impression of excessive American power, as usual in these events. There was of course the huge deployment in Paris and Normandy of manpower and carbon-gushing hardware -- jumbo jets, helicopters and the motorcade of behemoths -- much of it built by bankrupt General Motors. There was also the familiar impression in the ceremonies and media cover that the D-Day landings were an American affair in which Britain played a small supporting role (Brown's Obama beach didn't help). The France 2 main evening news last night referred to "the US landing in Normandy" and spent an inordinate amount of time covering Tom Hanks and his role in D-Day.
The impression of a purely Franco-American event was nicely summed up by Didier Porte, a humourist on France-Inter, the main public radio network. "The British just can't stop interfering with their disinformation. This is especially the case when they spread the rumour that they somehow took part in the Normandy landings in 1944. That's nonsense!"
Come to Abu Dhabi, visit the Louvre and take a degree at the Sorbonne. That seemingly odd idea comes closer to reality tomorrow when President Sarkozy starts the construction of a Gulf branch of the Paris art museum.
The Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo are not leaving town, but the world's biggest art museum and other leading state galleries are to lend hundreds of works to the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The venture has already earned 400 million euros just for use of the brand name.
The franchising of the Louvre is part of a push to extend French influence and power in the Gulf region. Since 2006, the Sorbonne, the ancient university in the Paris Latin quarter, has been offering law and human sciences degrees at its own campus in Abu Dhabi.
The "Louvre of the Sands" as it has been dubbed, will be housed in a sumptuous, marble-domed palace, designed by Jean Nouvel, on Saadiyat Island [picture above]. Nearby, work is already under way on a 200 million dollar branch of the Guggenheim. New York's modern art museum, whose affliliate is to open in 2011, a year ahead of the local Louvre, is said to have charged only 60 million dollars for use of its name.
The French cultural drive, started under President Chirac, is being matched by a new strategic effort in the Gulf. Tomorrow, Sarkozy is also opening a naval and air force base in Abu Dhabi, which is France's first new military outpost overseas in half a century. The step follows the new defence doctrine that focuses on the "Mediterranean, Arab-Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean strategic axis." Paris wants to signal to Iran its defence alliance with the emirates. "If Iran were to attack, we would effectively be attacked also," said an Elysée Palace official.
On his second Abu Dhabi trip in just over a year, Sarkozy is desperately hoping to convince Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan to buy the Rafale jet fighter. The very expensive new-generation aircraft, built by Dassault and in service with the French military, has so far failed to win a single export order.
France's entry into the culture export business ran into resistance when it was announced two years ago. Luminaries of the state art world staged a campaign called "Museums are not for sale" and charged Henri Loyrette, the Louvre director, with betraying the national heritage.
But the complaints have subsided as the state museums realised the windfall that is coming their way from the 30-year deal which Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister, estimates will eventually earn over a billion euros.
A new agency has been set up to coordinate loans for the first 10 years from many state museums, including the Versailles palace, the Musee d'Orsay, the Pompidou Modern Art centre and the new Quai Branly museum of primitive art. As well as going to the Louvre, the income will be spread around the state museums.
The Abu Dhabi affiliate is already starting its own collection. One of the first items is thought to be Piet Mondrian's 1922 "Composition avec bleu, rouge, jaune et noir", which sold for 21.7 million euros at sale of the collection of the late Yves Saint Laurent sale in Paris in February. The Gulf museum is also said to have bought European mediaeval figures and tapestries.
Loyrette is being congratulated for his pioneering work raising commercial funding for the Louvre, which with over eight million annual visitors is by far the worlds most frequented museum. Though heavily subsidised, the Louvre was until recently short of cash for new works. Loyrette is also opening a Louvre branch in the northern French city of Lens and a Louvre section has been on show in an Atlanta museum.
Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, the last Culture Minister, said the break with the old, conservative habits of the Louvre was an unmitigated success. "No principle in our museum policy has been abandoned," he wrote on his blog. "The inalienable caracter of our national collections has even been reconfirmed. We have given a new impetus to our ability to make France shine in the world," he said. Actually, he was even more gushing in French. There's no real English translation for rayonnement... shining out to the world, as France likes to think it does.
To close on Abu Dhabi, here's a nice bit of French rayonnement: The Helicopter by Hermès. The Paris leathergoods house teamed up with Eurocopter, the French-based European helicopter makers, to produce this luxurious flying machine. The first one has just been delivered to Falcon Aviation Services of Abu Dhabi. Perfect for taking you out to the Louvre of the Sands. And at only six million euros, it's less than a third of the price of the Mondrian and a fraction of one Rafale.
AUSTRALIAN NOTE:
President Sarkozy, who travels more than any of his predecessors, is to make history in early August by dropping in on Australia, a nation never before visited by French leader. Sarko and Carla Bruni can expect a boisterous welcome on their 36-hour trip to Sydney after a Pacific summit in New Caledonia. "Bonjour mate, allez down under", said the not quite French headline in the Melbourne Age.
Australia enjoys a fine reputation in France as a distant home to exotic animals and people, rugby players and Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman and Mel Gibson. However France's image is not so good in Australia thanks to disputes over farm exports, the Iraq war and, most of all the nuclear tests that President Chirac carried out in the mid-1990s in the French Pacific. Before that, in 1985, President Mitterrand poisoned relations with the antipodes when French secret agents blew up the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour. 
Australian anger has cooled in recent years. Australians have even come to France to teach the locals how to make "modern" wine and how to play rugby. At the weekend, one Australian newspaper chain described the Sarkozys as "the world's undisputed glamour political couple" -- a rank that neglects the Obamas and which I have never seen any French media bestow on them. My Adelaide sources tell me that Bruni's latest album of songs, a flop in France, has even been given a serious airing on a local radio station.
[Note for French readers, Oz is Australia]
Spot the common factor among the following:
-- A train crash that paralyzed rail service between Paris and Bordeaux all day on Wednesday.
-- Plans this week to introduce guilty pleas in French criminal courts
-- The anguish of thousands of university students who are not prepared for end-of-year examinations next month.
The answer is not Nicolas Sarkozy. The common thread is the free market, or more precisely France's reflexive suspicion and fear of "Anglo-Saxon liberalism". Sarkozy is behind two of the three items. The case of the universities is the most immediately damaging, but first, in order:
The unions and left are blaming the train crash in the western Charente département on the opening of rail freight to commercial operators. No-one was injured but the accident was spectacular. A load of tractor diggers on a German-operated train ripped the side off a passing state railways locomotive.
According to the unions and leftwing parties, the accident was the consequence of the deregulation of rail freight that the European Union supposedly forced on France. Britain's disastrous privatised system is always held up as the example of how not to run a railroad.
In reality, the crash had nothing to do with the new rules -- introduced in 2006 before Sarkozy was elected. "Privatisation" is limited to allowing some competition for freight services. France reluctantly agreed to this to conform to EU single market rules. Dominique Bussereau, the transport minister, pointed out that the badly-loaded goods wagon was being hauled by German state railways and that foreign trains have been using French rails for over a century.
On the law courts, the traditionalists and the left are up in arms over a supposed attempt by President Sarkozy to sell out France's Republican criminal court system and replace it with Anglo-Saxon rough justice.
We've visited Sarkozy's court reforms before. What's new are the proposals this week for revamping the assizes, the jury courts which try the most serious crimes. The judicial unions are upset over two items. One is the introduction of guilty pleas, in the style of English law.
The idea is to free-up the hugely overloaded courts. In France, assize cases are given a full court trial with all the witnesses and evidence even when the defendant admits guilt. The reform, say the critics, will create cut-price "American-style" justice with plea-bargaining and pressure on those who cannot afford lawyers to plead guilty. Sarkozy has already introduced the system in lower courts.
Judges and prosecutors (who are also judges) are also resisting Sarkozy's plans to reform the court structure. He wants judges to become referees, in the English-law style, rather than super-prosecutors, as they are under France's Napoleonic law system. Prosecutors would then plead their cases as adversaries of the defence lawyers rather than high accusers. This, according to the unions and traditionalists, boils down to "privatising" criminal justice.
On the Universities, the academic year has been disrupted and, in some establishments, ruined, by a campaign of strikes and "blocages" by staff and students in protest against Sarkozy's reforms. The protesters at the Sorbonne in Paris and most of the remaining hotbeds of strife caved in this week and went back to work, but months of disruption by a militant minority has wasted a year for many students around France -- and the parents and tax-payers who finance them.
The protesters accuse Sarkozy of "privatising" the state university system. This, they say, is his secret agenda though all he has done is grant limited autonomy to university directors and encouraged competition among establishments. The protesters are also resisting changes to teaching duties by research staff but it is not clear what their objection is.
French universities have long been neglected. They are starved of resources compared with the well-endowed grandes écoles which educate the higher achievers. The waste is colossal. A third of the 741,000 undergraduates leave without a degree. Sarkozy's reform, which has already been watered down, is supported by most university chiefs as a move to help France catch up with the rest of the world. It is absurd to claim that the system is being privatised.
The conclusion from all this is that Sarkozy is still pushing on with reforms that he promised in 2007 despite his unpopularity and resistance from the left and traditionalists. He has been giving ground on some fronts, like health, where he hit resistance against plans to put managers rather than doctors in charge of hospitals. But his persistence is remarkable at a time when the old dirigiste République has been given new legitimacy by the financial crisis.
Sarkozy is no free marketeer in the Anglo-American sense. He is the first to use his formidable presidential power to shore up the old interventionist system and he has dropped the free market rhetoric that took him to office in 2007. But he is pragmatic and is largely sticking to his project for fixing what does not work in France.
As a follow-up to the last post on Sarkozy's new French model for Europe, have a look at the cover of the latest edition of The Economist. Sarkozy towers over Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany while Britain's Gordon Brown wallows in a hole with the Anglo-Saxon model.
The editorial neatly summarises the ideas behind the debate that we're always having here. Naturally it's on the Anglo-Saxon side, but it admits the merits of the continental approach. Their report from inside France, by Sophie Pedder, the Economist's Paris correspondent, is excellent.
France has been cooing along with everyone else over the arrival of Bo Obama at the White House, but the master of America's new First Dog is no longer in such good odour with Nicolas Sarkozy.
[Friday Update: Here's Sarkozy's latest outburst over Obama and European leaders.]
The French presidency is pouring cold water on President Obama's efforts to recast American leadership in the world, depicting them as unoriginal, unsubstantial and over-rated. Behind leaks and briefings from the Elysée Palace lies Super Sarko's irritation at the the rock-star welcome that Europe gave Obama on his Europan tour the other day.
The American President's call "to free the world of the menace of a nuclear nightmare" was hot air, said a report to Sarkozy by his staff. "It was rhetoric, not a speech on American security policy but an export model aimed at improving the image of the United States," they said. Most of Obama's proposals had already been made by the Bush administration and Washington was dragging its feet on disarmament and treaties against nuclear proliferation, said the report, leaked to le Figaro.
Personal pique and French politics are also behind the souring of Sarkozy's self-promoted honeymoon with the United States. On the personal side, the French President is needled by the adulation for an unproven US leader whose stardom has eclipsed what he sees as his established record as a world troubleshooter. "The President is annoyed by what he sees as the naiveté and the herd mentality of the media," wrote Claude Askolovitch, a commentator with good Elysée sources.
Sarkozy has put out a version of the London G20 economic summit which casts him as hero, in the classic French role of intransigent defender of principle in the face of the American steamroller. This recolours last week's account of Obama saving the day by persuading President Hu of China to accept Sarkozy's demand for naming tax havens. According to the leaks, Sarkozy shamed Obama into intervening: "You were elected to build a new world. Tax havens are the embodiment of the old world," he lectured the younger President. He also reprimanded Obama on setting US goals for climate change that were inferior to Europe's, according to his staff.
Again, according to the Sarkozy version, at the Nato summit in Strasbourg, Obama was meekly yielding to Turkey's refusal to endorse Anders Fogh Rasmussen as the alliance's new Secretary-General. It took pressure from Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to stiffen him up and change his mind, say the French.
Obama's favour for Ankara has irked but also helped Sarkozy as his Union for a Popular Movement campaigns for European Parliament elections in June. Sarkozy slapped down the US President on French TV after he publicly encouraged Turkish entry to the European Union. Permanent refusal of Turkish membership is a popular Sarkozy policy plank. Obama's venture into EU affairs has enabled Sarkozy to score political capital. It shows that France can still stand up to the United States despite rejoining the full Nato command last week after four decades' absence.
It was good old Franco-American business as usual this morning when Bruno Le Maire, Sarkozy's young Europe Minister, accused Washington of backing the northern and Eastern EU members who want to turn the Union into a mere free-trade zone. France and Germany are sticking to their vision of the "political" Europe that "others" do not want, he said in a radio interview.
Behind the policy argument, it is easy to detect disappointment over Obama's failure to reciprocate the Sarkozy charm offensive that began when he befriended the junior Senator on a visit to Washington in 2006. Obama showered compliments on France's "hyper-president" in Strasbourg, but the one that has stuck was double-edged: "He is courageous on so many fronts, it's sometimes hard to keep up with him."
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Nicolas Canteloup footnote: You might have heard the impersonator's rather cruel gag on Sarkozy's dog rivalry with Obama on Europe radio this morning. Canteloup's Sarko said that he had a pet long before Obama -- François Fillon, his Prime Minister.
Sarko's moment finally came. After months of frustration during which the White House stayed cool to the entreaties of the French President, Barack Obama stood alongside Nicolas Sarkozy today and showered him with praise.
You could feel the joy radiating from Sarko as the pair proclaimed a new era of Franco-American unity on the steps of the Palais des Rohan, the old bishop's palace in Strasbourg. Obama listed the qualities of his friend 'Nicolas'. "Thanks to the great leadership of President Sarkozy, courageous on so many fronts at once that it's sometimes hard to keep up with him...." .
He thanked Sarko "for France's outstanding leadership with regard to Afghanistan" and he praised him again for his "extraordinary leadership role in NATO". The London G20 summit could not have succeeded without the problem-solving leadership of the French President, Obama added. "I am personally grateful for his friendship". Obama also announced that he will be back to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the allied landing in Normandy on D-Day.
This was all sweet music for Sarko, who had rolled out maximum military and civilian pomp to welcome the Obamas to France ahead of tonight's Nato summit. Only this morning, French media were noting Obama's apparent indifference to Sarko at the London summit. Sarkozy's offensive against Les Anglo-Saxons before the G20 summit also chilled the atmosphere.
After an hour's tête-à-tête, his first with the new US President, Sarkozy struck an unusually solemn and statesmanlike tone as he opened their joint press conference referring to "The President of the United States" and addressing "President Obama" with the formal 'vous'. But Sarko's excitable nature got the better of him and he closed trembling with emotion, using the the intimate "tu" and calling him "une sacrée bonne nouvelle" -- bloody good news -- for the world.
Sarko being Sarko, he could also not resist chucking a couple of stones in the direction of his former great friend George W. Bush. He contrasted, without naming him, Bush's closed, America-centric outlook with Obama's open-minded model and talked about the "terrorist methods" which the Bush team had used on the detainees of Guantanamo Bay
It was fascinating watching the pair: Obama grave, measured and still alongside the much shorter, energetic and punchy French leader. The monolingual Sarkozy also ventured timidly into English, saying "okay" to US journalists several times.
On the substance, Sarkozy and Obama of course agreed on everything, from emergency treatment for the world economy to Russia, Afghanistan and Iran. But the differences were there. Obama, for instance, wished that Europe would take on a bigger share of its own defence
Obama later talked bluntly about the rift in Transatlantic relations in recent years. Both sides were to blame, he said. America had failed to treat Europe with respect. "There have been times when America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." But anti-American feeling in Europe often seemed unfair, casual and insidious, he said. "On both sides of the Atlantic, these attitudes have become all too common. They are not wise."
Obama was greeted like a hero by the crowds that were allowed to get close to him as the French security forces locked down the deserted centre of Strasbourg. While their husbands were doing business, Carla Bruni lunched with Michelle Obama and showed her around town. Bruni stayed away from London as the US First Lady took the spotlight, but the Elysée Palace is deploying her in Strasbourg as a sure bet for enhancing Sarko's moment in the sun.
To end, the Elysée is delighted by the Francophiles in Obama's entourage. General James Jones, his National Security Adviser, grew up in France as the son of a US marine officer and attended a lycée in the Paris suburb of Saint Germain-en-Laye. He always talks in French with Jean-David Levitte, Sarkozy's foreign affairs director. Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser to Vice-President Biden, also studied at a Paris Lycée and Sciences-Po, the top political science college. Philip Gordon, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, is an academic France expert who translated the US edition of Testimony, the manifesto-memoir that Sarkozy's published during his 2007 campaign.
If location is everything in real estate, timing is everything in the news business. As we saw last week, President Sarkozy has been threatening to block the G20 economic summit in London if he does not win agreement to French demands for new global regulation. No-one beyond France took much notice.
The message was mainly aimed at the home market but today it got the attention of les Anglo-Saxons, the ancient foil for French leaders in search of a cause. The spur was a briefing yesterday afternoon in the Hotel Marigny, the majestic annex across the street from the Elysée Palace (Colonel Gaddaffi used its garden for his Bedouin tent in 2007). Xavier Musca, Sarkozy's new economic adviser, told us that Sarkozy would prefer "a failure to a false success full of generous declarations without consequence." Musca confirmed that Sarko might walk out of the London summit. He described this as a nuclear weapon that France is keeping ready. Musca, who is new to the job, also obligingly used the Anglo-Saxon word, lumping the British and the Americans together in the same intransigent camp when it comes to clamping down on hedge funds, tax havens and the other items that Sarkozy wants regulated by a new global police.
Coming on the eve of the summit, Sarko's hard line, which he has co-ordinated with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, has finally made headlines outside France. We put it on our front page today.
It has achieved Sarko's aim of casting France as vigorous champion of the new morality that Sarko wants to impose on world finance. Of course this is part of the theatrical stake-raising that preceeds summits and Sarkozy knows that Barack Obama is not about to embrace French-style ideas for a new world financial police.
But it has shown France that Super Sarkozy is making a mark with his demands for the "refoundation of capitalism". This plays to his image as statesman, the game that has served him best since he crashed in opinion polls after winning office in May 2007. In the midst of the economic gloom, fewer than 40 percent of the public approve of Sarkozy's performance as President but when pollsters ask how he represents France abroad, he scores up to 70 percent.
"Super-Sarko" is admired for the vigour with which he charges around world capitals and especially for what was seen as his deft handling of his six months' turn in the EU's rotating presidency last year. He was given credit for persuading President Bush to stage the first G20 summit in Washington last November and he is claiming the paternity of its follow-up this week London.
But there is a paradox in Sarkozy's classical ploy of picking a fight with les Anglo-Saxons. Things are different now and not just because the Anglo-Saxon-in-chief is black. Obama is also more popular in France than the local president. Libération, the leftwing newspaper, yesterday contrasted Sarkozy negatively with the US President. "With his efforts against the crisis, Barack Obama is far ahead of his counterparts on the Old Continent," wrote Laurent Joffrin, the editor. Sarkozy and the rest of Europe's leaders are showing dangerous divisions and reverting to old-fashioned conservative policies, he added.
The French President finds himself in a tricky position. Until the spat ahead of the G20, he performed an intense charm offensive towards Obama. By returning France to the core of the Nato alliance he is trying to win new credibility with Washington and its allies. Before election, he called France's traditional anti-Americanism "that cultural cancer which prevents French diplomacy from working".
But things are not going well with the Americans. Obama has so far been unmoved by Sarkozy's campagne de séduction while the French President has risked looking over-eager to please him. That explains Sarko's reversion to the old Gaullist posture ahead of the G20. The mood will lift again on Friday when the Obama show reaches the French city of Strasbourg for the Nato summit. Sarkozy will hold his first tête-à-tête with the new President and no doubt declare a new era of Franco-American friendship.
Nicolas Sarkozy finally got his chance to talk to Barack Obama today. Phone calls between leaders may be routine, but so eager was the French President to get time with "My friend Barack", that the Elysée Palace cast the video conference via interpreters as a virtual summit. Take a look at the silly photomontage on the front of yesterday's Figaro, the pro-Sarko newspaper, below. The conversation lasted just half an hour, the Elysée tells us. [Top picture: anti-Sarkozy demonstrator in Nice last week]
The coolness of the US President towards the overtures from Paris is embarrassing Sarkozy. It has dampened his hopes of finding a kindred dynamic soul in Washington and founding a new Paris-Washington axis. It is leading him to realise that he may find few takers for his ambitious plans for "refounding capitalism" at the April 2 G20 summit in London.
China is certainly out. After making waves over Tibet and human rights last year, France is in Beijing's doghouse and Sarkozy is the only leader known so far to have been refused a session in London with President Hu Jintao. Sarkozy irritated President Calderon of Mexico with his behaviour on a visit there this month, so he does not have an ally there. Turkey abhors Sarko because of his promise of a permanent veto against its entry to the European Union. Relations with his European neighbours, Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel of Germany, are are not much better than "cordial", which is diplomatic speak for bumpy. President Medvedev of Russia may prove to be one of Sarko's main allies.
But it is Obama's resistance to the persuasive charms of Super Sarko that is causing angoisse at the Elysée. "Sarkozy l'Américain" as he was once proud to be called, has pulled out all the stops since the night of the US election, when he mis-spelt a congratulatory fax to "Dear Barak".
French lobbying failed to win an early invitation to the White House. While Brown was being fêted in Washington, Paris made it known that Obama would meet Sarkozy on a Normandy beach on April 3 on his way to the Nato anniversary summit in Strasbourg. US advance parties checked the local security and accommodation but Washington dropped the idea. It is now not even certain that Obama will give Sarkozy private time in Strasbourg.
Sarkozy was gratified last week when Obama welcomed his historic decision to take France back into the military command of the US-led Nato alliance. But the glow vanished when it became known on Friday that Obama had sent an effusive letter to -- of all people -- Jacques Chirac, Sarkozy's bête noire, who did everything to stop his younger colleague succeeding him in the presidency in 2007.
"I am certain that over the coming four years, we will be able to work togetyher in a spirit of peace and friendship in order to build a better world," Obama wrote. Chirac stuck it hard to his successor, saying in public how "sympathique" he had found Obama's letter. It provided obvious fodder for the comedians, who wondered whether Obama might be under the impression that the chief international opponent to President Bush's war in Iraq was still running France.
Nicolas Canteloup, the breakfast radio impersonator, today performed an hilarious sketch on the President's imagined phone-call with Obama. "Allô Barack, this is Nicolas... you know, Little Big Man," said Canteloup-Sarkozy. "You know me, the husband of Carla Bruni, you know, the bombshell."
Sensing the differences with Washington ahead of the London summit, Sarkozy has toughened his rhetoric this week while François Fillon, his Prime Minister, was dispatched to lobby in Washington. Sarkozy is determined at least to get a commitment from the reluctant Americans to start work on new world financial regulations.
In a speech in Saint Quentin on Tuesday night, he warned Washington and other foot-draggers that the G20 must take action to "put morality back into financial capitalism". He added: "I will not associate myself with a world summit which decides to decide nothing." It's not clear what he meant by that.
[UPDATE March 8. Sarkozy has apparently persuaded Obama to meet him for a quick session at a Normandy beach between the London and Strasbourg summits, on April 3 -- according to le Figaro.] ---------- For a French leader who has often seemed dazzled by the United States, Nicolas Sarkozy has not been helping his case for new friendship with Washington. But you can also understand that he is needled by today's White House visit by Gordon Brown, the first European leader to be invited by President Obama.
Sarkozy had pulled out the diplomatic stops to woo the Obama team before and after his November victory. As Europe's new strongman, as he saw it, Sarko was hoping to make France the new "go to" country for Washington in its relations with the EU. He began, though, with a little spelling mistake, sending a congratulatory note within minutes of the election result in which he wrote by hand "Dear Barak".
The Elysée lobbied hard for a quick Washington invitation and, US diplomat friends tell me, the White House hesitated before falling back on the old relationship with London -- which is really only seen as special on the UK side. "This is obviously a serious diplomatic reverse for President Sarkozy," said Le Nouvel Observateur, a left-leaning weekly that likes to play up the President's difficulties. "He was hoping to be designated by the Obama administration as the privileged interlocutor of the United States in Europe, as the de facto leader of the Old Continent," it said. Le Parisien says today that Washington is snubbing Sarkozy.
The President asked Obama to drop in for at least a photo-opp at the Elysée around the Nato summit in the French city of Strasbourg on April 3. That was refused too. Sarkozy now says that he will "receive" the US leader on the sideliness of the Strasbourg session. Yesterday he had a few minutes with Hilary Clinton at the Gaza aid meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. A few weeks ago, he was saying that meeting the Secretary of State was the job of his Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, not the President of France.
So why the relative cold shoulder from the Americans? Sarkozy is after all about to take a big step towards Washington -- much more than a gesture -- by bringing France back into the military structure of the Nato alliance after a 43-year break? Part of the reason is Sarko's big mouth. Since the financial crisis began in earnest last October, he has sought to score points at home at the expense of the Americans and the British, blaming them for starting the mess. The new administration is not greatly impressed by his messianic demands for "refounding" the international economic system. It has also been annoyed by his public refusal to send more French forces to join the Nato operation in Afghanistan. New French criticism of Israel is another factor. None of this has helped the atmosphere.
In private, Sarkozy is now saying that he has few illusions that the Obama administration will be much more open to Europe than its predecessor. He is said to be irritated by the global adulation of a US president who has eclipsed his own stardom. "It is difficult not to see a little jealousy on the part of a President who so loves to be on the front page -- a little annoyance towards someone who is more a media darling and more powerful than him," said Sud-Ouest newspaper.
That may just be atmospherics and Obama has yet to land in Europe. I suspect that Sarkozy l'Américain,as he once proudly called himself, has not lost the fascination for the United States that he has so often shown. Don't forget the compliments that he paid his last and current wives. Cécilia was the new Jackie Kennedy when he won the presidency in May 2007 and a few months later, he was calling Carla Bruni, her successor, his Marilyn Monroe.
[Picture: Carla and Nicolas taking Manhattan last September. Top picture:Sarkozy playing cowboy on election-eve 2007]
![Bronzes_chinois[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e20112790e45ab28a4-400wi)
France often quotes a 1995 pop song by Alain Bashung called Ma petite entreprise ne connais pas la crise -- The crisis isn't touching my little business.
The title could be sung by the art market today after the spectacular sale of theYves Saint Laurent-Pierre Bergé collection. The three-day auction at the Grand Palais has defied the economic gloom and brought in 373 million euros, breaking several world records.
The song does not apply to the petite entreprise of Franco-Chinese relations. Beijing is using the sale of those two little Chinese animal heads to further its punishment of President Sarkozy for his antics last year around Tibet and the Beijing Olympics. The hare and the rat, stolen when the British and French sacked Beijing in 1860, went for 14 million euros each to anonymous bidders despite China's attempts to block the sale. Jackie Chan, the Kung Fu actor, jumped in on Beijing's side today. Here is my story.
Back to the rest of the art. The sight of all those bidders flush with their millions has not cheered France much as the bleak times hit home but it is being greeted as as a triumph by Sarkozy's government. Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister, called the auction in the Grand Palais a "a world success which shows that Paris is one of the major centres for the international art market."
In a market that is apparently withstanding the slump, you would expect works by Matisse, de Chirico and Degas to notch up records. For example, Matisse's 1911 oil "Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose" [right], fetched 32 million euros, the sale's highest price and a record for the painter whose collages inspired Saint Laurent's designs.
![YSL-fauteuil-dragon_large[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e20112790e83fe28a4-300wi)
But how about this elephant-like arm-chair from the early 20th century Art Deco era? The squat, very worn, brown leather seat by the Irish designer Eileen Gray sold for 21.9 million euros. Souren Melikian, the veteran expert at the International Herald Tribune, said today that this was "a price that was until now utterly unimaginable for any piece of Art Deco furniture."
Crisis or no crisis, the Paris auction had shown that there had been no change since the days of bubbling optimism, he said. "The prodigious vitality of the art market across the board cannot be doubted for a second. If the goods are there, the prices rise higher than ever before."
To close, we can admire this piece by Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian sculptor. It was made from stacked wood blocks between 1914-1917 and entitled "Madame L.R.". It sold for 26 million euros -- 33 million US dollars.
A day out in Iraq must be relaxing for Nicolas Sarkozy, given the troubles that are stacking up for him at home. It's time for a run through his formidable list of headaches and I will respond to a false allegation from his office today that we British media misreported him.
First the news: Sarko dropped into Iraq this morning, becoming the first French president to visit the country. His arrival turns the page on the Franco-American spat over the 2003 invasion. It is a step towards restoring the diplomatic and commercial interests that France used to have in Iraq. Before the first Gulf war, Paris was one of the chief arms suppliers to the late President Saddam Hussein. And before the 2003 war, France's Total company had obtained Iraqi oil rights in anticipation of the end of the embargo applied to Saddam at the time.
Meeting President Talabani and Noori al Maliki, the Prime Minister, Sarkozy said: "France believes in the unity of Iraq. The world needs a united, democratic, sovereign and strong Iraq. France wishes your complete integration in the Middle East and in the world." France is ready to give Iraq unlimited cooperation, he said, adding: "We say to French companies that the time has come to return to Iraq.”
And here is what is not going right for the French President:
His TV talk last week failed to quell unrest over the crisis. The unions have called for another day of national strikes, on March 19 although that is in part a lever ahead of negotiations with the Government next week.
Sarkozy's ratings have slumped again after months of recovery. Approval for the President has sunk between five and 10 points over the past month to the mid-30s, according to several polls in the past week.
His bail-out for the car industry has started a fight with Brussels and Prague over protectionism. He obliged the two big car-makers to promise to stop off shoring production in return for the state's six billion euros. He singled out French car production in the Czech Republic in his TV talk. The Czech government, which now holds the EU presidency, has called an urgent summit to deal with this.
In a reversal of roles, the formerly free-market Sarko was attacked this morning by François Chérèque, leader of the big CFDT labour union, for indulging in protectionism. "Blocking the market economy in order to make the French buy French means going back to the level of debate of the 1970s," Chérèque said on France-Inter radio. Of course the same alarm is being sounded in Britain, the US and elsewhere.
A strike is spreading in the universities. Valery Pécresse, the Higher Education Minister, is trying to defuse a revolt by teacher-researchers. Sarkozy seems to fear a wild-fire uprising by teachers and students more than anything else.
Resistance is growing from both the opposition and Sarkozy's own camp against his plan to take France fully back into the Nato alliance in April, 43 years after President de Gaulle withdrew in the name of national independence. Sarkozy is being accused of selling out French sovereignty. He is worried that Parliament, in which his party holds a strong majority, may not support the Nato move.
Guadeloupe, the French-owned Caribbean island, is in insurrection [right] over high living costs and Sarkozy is worried that the unrest will spread back to France.
He is in a quandary. If he appeases the three-week revolt by giving in to demands for subsidising higher incomes, he will further disrupt the local economy and contradict his strategy for handling the crisis in France. So today, Sarkozy refused the wage rise demanded by the group leading the mutiny. It goes by the colourful Creole name Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon" (In French, Collectif contre l'exploitation outrancière or Collective Against Extreme Exploitation).
The Caribbean strike, which has now spread to neighbouring Martinique, underlines the impossible costs of subsidising poor colonies on the other side of oceans while treating them as almost ordinary French départements (counties) with welfare protection and seats in the national parliament.
Perhaps the most minor of Sarkozy's problems has been the fall-out from his swipe at Britain in his TV appearance. It seemed gratuitous and it has lost him the goodwill of Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister.
I don't like wasting time on cross-Channel rivalry, but will make an exception because the Elysée Palace blamed us for the row today. Sarkozy's office tried to weasel out of the affair by accusing us of mis-representing what he said. "President Sarkozy deplores the way in which his comments on the British economy were reported in the United Kingdom," their statement said.
That is shameless. There was no misreporting. As we saw here already, Sarkozy chose to bring up Britain as the counter-example of what he wants for France. Gordon Brown had cut taxes to re-start the economy and it had not worked, he said. Britain was suffering because it was so tied into the US financial sector, he said. "England no longer has industry, unlike France. That is because England, 25 years ago, made the choice of services and notably, financial services," he said.
This was accurately reported, though we did fail to point out that Sarkozy got his facts wrong. Le Monde made amends today, explaining that Britain still has more industry than France.
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Footnote: My use of the term Anglo-Saxon last week has stirred some argument. I don't think there's anything wrong with the French using it as short hand for the developed English-speaking nations that originated with immigration from the UK. For France and the rest of the continent this has a clear sense. Simply saying "English-speaking countries" does not cover the same thing. I'm hybrid Scottish-Australian but am not offended when Britons are collectively known as les anglais, los ingleses, англичане (Anglichanye - in Russian) or whatever. It's just custom that's all. And I also fail to see what's patronising in using Gallic as a variant for French in the broad sense, even if it offends Bretons, Basques, Ch'tis and residents of le neuf-trois -- the Seine Saint Denis département on the poor northeastern edge of Paris. I don't call the French Gauls -- although Variety, the Hollywood trade paper, has always done so [example here].
President Sarkozy pulled off a smooth performance in his long television audience with his restive nation last night. It was a strange show -- a regal lecture from the Elysée Palace in answer to soft questions from four journalists, one of whom he romanced a couple of years ago.
More on the behaviour of the journalists below, but first the summmary. Over 15 million people tuned in to one of the three main television channels whose prime time Sarko had commandeered for his pep talk. For 90 minutes, he held the stage, exuding his usual self-confidence as he explained that he understood people's anguish -- which was due not to his policies but to a world crisis caused by the Anglo-Saxons.
Sarkozy gave a little ground, promising corporate tax cuts, some welfare benefits and talks with the trade unions. Otherwise, he refused to follow demands that he cut taxes and raise the minimum wage to boost consumer spending. The British have tried that and it did not work, he said. France would stick with his 26 billion euro plan for investing in infrastructure and industry.
"The English have chosen to follow the strategy of stimulus through consumption, notably by lowering VAT (sales tax) by two points. It has done absolutely nothing," he said.
The British and the Americans came in for harsh treatment. The USA and the UK had been hit far harder than France in this "worst crisis for a century", said Sarkozy. "When you see the situation in the United States and the United Kingdom, we don't want to look like them."
Sarkozy also said he would refuse to "pay America's debt" and he demanded US agreement to radical reforms of the world financial system. "They're not going to get away with explaining that everything is going to go on as before."
You hear the same points about the US and Britain all over Europe, but not usually from heads of state. Sarkozy's relations with Gordon Brown and Barack Obama are clearly not as rosy as we thought. On the other hand, he went out of his way to praise Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, with whom he has really does not get on. Downing Street seethed as the British media and opposition had fun with Sarkozy's words today.
Predictably the unions and the Socialist opposition gave Sarkozy a low grade. "He is fobbing us off with talks and negotiations," said Martine Aubry, the Socialist leader. "He has no problem ramming decisions through when he wants to cut taxes for the super rich, or to make people work on Sundays," she said.
The unions are not satisfied and are talking of another day of strikes and protests. I have a feeling that they will happen.
The Sarko-show has generated another story today -- the meek behaviour of the star TV journalists who were invited by the palace to question the President.
There is not much new in this because France's political boss is also the head of state, unlike most other European countries. That makes an interview more ceremonial than with a Prime Minister. Since General de Gaulle in the 1950s, journalists have always deferred heavily to French Presidents. One exception was Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, who became an ex star presenter last year after telling Sarkozy in an interview that he had been acting like a little boy.
But Sarkozy does more than his predecessors to bully and influence the media and he can be intimidating in an interview, as I have found out first hand. As president, he loads his evening broadcasts in his favour by summoning the TV to his turf -- a studio set up in the palace ballroom. Last night there was a visible studio audience of palace staff.
He was given an exceptionally easy time by Laurence Ferrari of TF1, David Pujadas of France 2, Alain Duhamel of RTL and Guy Lagache of M6. Mediapart, a serious leftwing news site, poured scorn on them today. "Nicolas Sarkozy offered the pitiful spectacle of an idle king... revelling in vague but gilded questions."
The SNJ, the main -- and leftwing -- journalists' union, condemned the interviewers in a statement. "They perfectly played their role as court jesters... In no other so-called democratic country do politicians choose their interlocutors like that," it said.
No-one has publicly mentioned what many people knew as they watched Ferrari lobbing her questions to Monsieur le Président, that she went out with with him in the short period after his divorce in October 2007. He is said in the business to have played a role in her promotion Poivre d'Arvor's job.
When he was elected, Sarkozy promised to hold open US-style presidential news conferences. The only time he tried, in January last year, the result was so disastrous for him that he forgot about the idea.
[below: Ferrari and Pujadas not grilling Sarkozy]
President Sarkozy is going on television tonight to try to convince a sceptical country that he is doing enough to handle the economic crisis. He is not expected to shift course or announce anything. But for some in the political world, the main point may be what he says about Bernard Kouchner.
Sarkozy's Foreign Minister, who made his name decades ago as a crusading activist for human rights, is at the centre of a storm over allegations of sleazy behaviour. The fuss has been created by a book that takes an axe to Dr Kouchner's reputation as a dashing apostle of noble causes. It depicts him as an agent of US interests and a France-hater. The allegation of sleaze stems from details of work that Kouchner performed as a consultant for Omar Bongo, the President of Gabon for the last 40 years [picture below] and other less-than-savoury African leaders. That was before Sarkozy recruited him to his new government in 2007 as his prize catch from the left. [My Kouchner profile here]
Kouchner, 69, says that the "The World According to K"by Pierre Péan, is a a pile of nauseating nonsense. He denies any conflicts of interest or impropriety and depicts himself as the victim of a malicious attempt to destroy his name. He says that his consulting work was legitimate and led to a big improvement in health services for poor Africans. François Fillon, the Prime Minister, has rallied to his side, but so far Sarkozy has said nothing. The President does not get along well with his ageing rock star of a Foreign Minister and there are suggestions that his staff may even have had a hand in the book.
Here's the story from today's Times, but it's worth expanding on its seamy side. So far we have only seen extracts from the book, but they are enough to raise questions about the intent of Pierre Péan. His attack on Kouchner carries a whiff of anti-semitism and a poisonous tone that reminds one of the xenophobia of the old French far right.
Péan has made a career as a hard-hitting investigative journalist. He has delivered some scoops, such as the revelation in 1994 that the then President Mitterrand had held a senior job in the wartime Vichy régime.Le Monde newspaper has not yet recovered from a damaging investigation of its methods that he co-wrote five years ago.
Péan's pedigree explains why his Kouchner book carries weight. But Pean writes in an opinionated, often brutal way. He has hobby horses, one of which is the Rwanda. His last book turned history on its head, arguing that Tutsi leaders and not the French-backed Hutu were behind the 1994 genocide of 800,000 Tutsis.
Péan discredits his indictment of Kouchner by painting him as a money-mad outsider whose primary motivation springs from his Jewish origins. Kouchner is driven, he says, by "hatred for the values of the French Revolution, of the wartime Resistance, of a national independence that is loathed in the name of an Anglo-Saxon cosmopolitanism...". The Foreign Minister is guilty of "selling out French interests" to the United States and of hating himself as well as France.
That is odious stuff, the kind of language that was used against Jews and other supposed enemies of France in the Dreyfus affair of the late 1890s and by the hard right in the years up to 1945. Even Jean-Marie Le Pen, the sulphurous boss of the far-right National Front, would think twice before using the old anti-semitic codeword "cosmopolitan".
Kouchner was right to call this sickening and I'm pleased to see that a few commentators have come round to the same view.Le Monde has just denounced Péan's language as a loathsome "cocktail of qualifiers used by a certain French right wing". Jean-Michel Aphatie, one of the sharpest political commentators, has written a blog post pointing out Péan's apparent anti-semitism.
The minister may be helped by the sinister tone of Péan's book because it distracts attention from his consulting work for regimes with records far removed from the moral causes that he has always promoted. Everyone knows that Kouchner is a bit of a showman with a prima donna side. Péan's book does not seem to reveal any facts that were not already known about the minister. He will no doubt survive in his job, for a while at least.
 After air crashes, everyone usually jumps to conclusions and gets the story wrong. This is unlikely to be the case with US Airways Flight 1549, the Airbus which ditched in the Hudson River just off Manhattan's west side. The facts seem straightforward and the credit goes to extraordinary old-fashioned airmanship.
The flying world is full of admiration for the pilots who put a big, all-electronic airliner, down so softly on water that it stayed in one piece. Bored passengers are used to briefings on the "unlikely event of water landings", but in reality, big planes more often break up and sink quickly, killing many of their occupants.
Along with his first officer, Captain Chesley Sullenberger achieved a text-book 'dead stick' landing only three minutes after hitting a flock of birds as their Airbus A320 was was climbing low over northern New York City. I can imagine the picture well because I used to pilot light aircraft along the same low path over the George Washington Bridge and down the Hudson beside Manhattan.
Praise is also going to the three cabin crew who organised the evacuation of the 150 passengers. And there is credit for the French-based European Airbus firm for building a tough airliner. Among other things, unlike Boeings, the Airbus has an emergency "Ditch button", which closes vents and makes the fuselage more watertight. Airbus pilots have always been sceptical about the button, on the overhead panel. Today, they are saying today "Oh, so that's what it's for."
Here is what is known about an episode that will go down in flying lore. We do not know if Sullenberger or his co-pilot was flying the leg when the the Airbus left La Guardia, a difficult airport on the water's edge inside the borough of Queens. They were at 3,200 feet in the climb when they reported hitting large birds. These stopped one engine and severely dropped the power or killed the other one. When that happens, there is no-where to go but down.
At that moment, the aeroplane driver is no longer a systems manager. He or she has to forget the electronics and call on the most old-fashioned aviator's skills. A Dutch airline captain called Denkraai decribed it on the PRUNE pilots' network this morning: "What a nightmare. We sit there in our cockpits for years and years and nothing goes wrong. Then all of a sudden you have seconds to decide. I salute you sir, and your crew." 
Continue reading "Airmanship, not miracle, saved US Airways jet in New York" »
Here's another reason for France to cheer up. The country is enjoying its biggest baby boom for three decades.
In 2008, 800,000 babies were born in continental France, a figure not achieved since 1981, according to figures today from the National Statistical Institute. The fertility rate rose in 2008 from 1.97 to 2.02 children per woman, consolidating France's lead over the rest of Europe.
The Europeans have lately produced on average 1.5 children per woman. The EU's 2008 figures are not out yet, but Ireland was second behind France in 2007 and Slovakia was bottom at 1.25.
The rising birth figures are testimony to the success of France's long-standing effort, following long population decline, to encourage people to have children. I don't need to run through all the generous (expensive) state-provided child care benefits, the free nursery schools, travel subsidiess and the family allowances than can reach 500 euros a month.
The return to work last week of Rachida Dati, the Justice Minister, five days after giving birth, was an exception to the tradition of long, paid maternity leave. One of Dati's Cabinet colleagues has just suggested making the 16 weeks' paid leave compulsory for all working women.
If recent trends continue, France will overtake Germany as Europe's most populous nation around the middle of this century. The new year began with 64.3 million inhabitants, 366,500 more than in 2008. Germany has 82.4 million but has long suffered from a low fertility rate of below 1.4. Russia, with its big demographic problem, managed to get back to that level in 2007 from 1.2 in 2000. The United Kingdom, with a population of just under 61 million, has been doing better lately with a 1.85 fertility rate and it could also overtake Germany.
France is approaching the fertility of the United States, which, with its influx of young immigrants, is usually held up as the model for ageing Europe. The expected US rate for 2008 is 2.1. The very healthy French birth rate is certainly helped by the fairly large and young part of the population of recent immigrant origin -- as in Britain and Germany. Public discussion of the role of immigrants in the population growth is still largely taboo in France, though this is changing.
The French figures are impressive because the population is ageing faster than that of the USA and other regions outside Europe. The number of women of child-bearing age -- mainly born in the 1970s and 80s -- has been shrinking by two percent a year for the past two years. The average age of motherhood has now risen to nearly 30. Another big change from the old days is that 52 percent of children were born to unmarried parents. The figure was only six percent in 1970.
That's a big load of statistics, but they tell a story. The good population news is an example of the intelligent long-term policies in which France has excelled in recent decades. It was echoed, in the economic domain this week in a Newsweek magazine column headlined: The Last Model Standing is France.
[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 " »
Before getting onto the usual subject, let me wish everyone a Happy New Year and thank you for the messages by way of the blog and e-mail.
Nicolas Sarkozy has launched 2009 true to energetic form. In his traditional address to the nation (video below), he opened by saying that "2008 has been a rough year". He promised blood, sweat and tears to get France through a new year in which "the difficulties will be great". Under Sarko's guidance, France will emerge from the crisis stronger and a new world will be born, he said. "We have to prepare ourselves by working more."
It was no surprise to learn that Sarko plans to continue as de facto leader of Europe although at midnight France ended its six-month turn in the Union's rotating presidency and handed over to the Czech Republic. He announced that his latest mission is to bring peace to the Middle East. He is off to trouble-shoot in Jerusalem and the West Bank on Monday, with no mandate beyond his enthusiasm for crisis management and France's historic weight in the Arab world.
Sarkozy's intervention over the Gaza strip confirms that he has no intention of taking a back seat after what he sees as the most dynamic turn by any leader in the Union's rotating chair. With his usual chutzpah -- and contorted syntax -- he boasted that he has shaped not just France but the whole world since he has been "President of Europe".
"The initiatives which I have undertaken in the name of the French Presidency of the Union -- coordinating the action of all the Europeans and bringing the heads of state of the 20 biggest world powers to Washington -- have enabled the world to avoid sliding down the slope of 'everyone for themselves', which would have been fatal." That's quite a claim.
In Sarko's view, the leadership of Europe cannot be left to the Czechs, a small, recent member state with a Eurosceptic Government. The Union needs a powerful figure from a founder state to steer the Union through dangerous times, he believes. "Of course I will be taking initiatives," he told the European Parliament the other day after a triumphant review of his management of the financial turmoil and his peace-brokering in the Caucasus war.
To bolster his claim to senior statesmanship, Sarkozy has invited Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister, to chair a grand two-day conference from next Thursday on the theme of "A new world, new capitalism". Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who does not get on with Sarkozy, has agreed to attend the closing speeches. The star speakers include a batch of American Nobel economics prize winners and Francis Fukuyama, the economist who is remembered for predicting the end of history in 1989.
Super Sarko is reported to be telling colleagues that he is worried that France will feel small after he has been commander of Europe. "He has one fear -- becoming again the President of an average country, disarmed in the face of recession and confronted by soaring unemployment," said Le Monde.
Sarkozy was reported yesterday to be persisting in a plan -- rejected by Germany -- to appoint himself leader of a new governing council of the single currency states for 2009. The justification is that the Union is chaired by two non-euro nations this year -- the Czechs and Sweden.
According to le Canard Enchaîné, Sarkozy has persuaded Jose Luis Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister, to co-chair the new group with him. Spain takes the EU presidency in January 2010. Sarkozy argues that the euro needs an economic government at a time of upheaval and that the existing "euro-group" of finance ministers does not have the power for the job.
Sarkozy is banking on the support of Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, with whom he has good relations. The pair share a common scorn for the European Commission, which Sarkozy believes he has cut down to size by asserting the power of the council of national leaders.
Despite his boasting, it should be recorded that quite a few of Sarkozy's political foes have admired his energetic tour of European duty. Michel Rocard, a former Socialist Prime Minister, praised his courage today. Europe, said Rocard, had weathered the financial crisis because it had the luck to be chaired by Nicolas Sarkozy, "who is impulsive, courageous and has culot". That last word translates as nerve or chutzpah.
Others have tried to cut Sarko down to size. Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far right National Front, dismissed his Euro-Presidency with a typical sneer. "The half-year of Mr Sarkozy will be forgotten in two weeks time," he predicted. For all his poisonous side, Le Pen is often a sharp observer of the political scene. In this case I think he's wrong. Sarko is going to do his best to make Europe -- and President Obama -- think that he is still in charge of the continent.
 It's been a good Christmas week in Paris, with freezing weather but sunshine every day. Shops and restaurants have been doing roaring trade and just about everywhere is booked up for the New Year's celebrations.
President Sarkozy will be back from his beach holiday in Brazil to deliver his seasonal pep talk on Wednesday night. He aims to look on the bright side -- or positiver, to use the vogue word.
Sarko is said to be telling colleagues that he is worried about the impact of recession on the national mood. He thinks that fast-rising unemployment -- especially among the already very under-employed young -- could trigger one of the uprisings that punctuate French history. "La France n'est pas fragile mais elle est éruptive," Sarko told visitors the other day -- France is not fragile, but it has a tendency to erupt. Fear of protesters explained his retreat a couple of weeks ago over Sunday shop opening and on a promised high-school reform.
As we've often noted here, it's always hard to gauge France's mood because the default mode is pessimism, whatever is going on in the economy. France has believed itself to be en crise for the four decades that I have known it. The news media do not help. Over Christmas the top domestic story was the accidental death in hospital of a three-year-old boy. Close behind was the suicide of a teacher in her school and a sleeping pill overdose by a former minister who was France's first woman astronaut. The need to sound gloomy, at least in public, is just part of the national character. Where else would a performer make a good career with a name like Grand Corps Malade -- literally big sick body? That's the nom de scène used by Fabien Marsaud, a 31-year-old slam music star (picture above). A clinical-sounding word is used to convey the obsession with looking at the dark side -- la sinistrose, or sinistrosis.
There will no doubt be a lot of groans if Sarkozy sounds too up-beat on New Year's Eve. France is not yet officially in recession, but it is entering what is expected to be the worst one since at least 1993, according to the experts. Yet, as we've seen here recently, there are quite a few factors that suggest that the slump will not hit France as hard as other places.
One is France's failure in the past decade to capitalise, like Britain, Spain and elsewhere, on the boom in banking, financial services and real estate. Another is the much-decried and very expensive welfare state.
Elie Cohen, a prominent economist, looked on the bright side in le Parisien on Friday: "As a country with little economic specialisation and average growth, France is drawing benefit from its past failing. Add to that the fact that we have a state that redistributes wealth and which is acting as a formidable shock-absorber. We are rolling quite well with the punches."
Just listening to the middle class chatter in Paris, you hear grumbling but it's clear that people are not hurting as much as they are in Britain, Spain, Ireland, or the USA. The property boom arrived relatively late and France still has a relatively low level of home ownership. People put fewer savings in the stock market and they do not live on credit to anything like the degree of the US or Britain. I don't know anyone who has taken out a second mortgage on their flat or house.
And the French save much more of their income than the European average. In recent years they have been putting aside 15 percent, in third place after the Germans and Italians, at 16.5 and 15.8 percent. The Spanish save only 10.6 percent and the British 5.5 percent.
These are just a few elements and many point the other way -- such as France's high national debt and budget deficit compared with Germany. But Sarkozy will be entitled to sound a positive note on Wednesday.
This could be a picture of any tropical island, but it's one with a terrifying past. l'Ile du Diable -- Devil's Island -- is the loneliest part of the South American penal colony to which France sent convicts for a century.
I took the picture at lunch yesterday on Ile Royale, one of the two other Salvation Islands eight miles off French Guiana. The fish and wine were excellent and the place is beautiful but it was hard to escape the mournful mood of islands where thousands of men laboured, mouldered and, in many cases, died.
We were dining at the neat stone building -- now an inn -- that was the officer's mess on Royale, the island that was used for administering this corner of "the green hell". That's what prisoners called le bagne -- the penal settlements that included Cayenne, the capital, Kourou and points inland. Down the hill was the quay where the commandant greeted new prison boats with the warning that "no-one escapes from the Salvation Islands."
The last convict left only 60 years ago but the solitary confinement cells, guards' houses and acres of force-labour stonework are still there. Rusting bolts and fetters still hang from some walls. Some of the buildings are restored but much of it is overgrown by the vegetation which is home to squirrel monkeys and agoutis, rabbit-sized rodents with orange bottoms.
There is a cemetery where personnel and their families were buried but no inmates' graves because when they died -- of disease, exhaustion or executed on the guillotine -- their corpses were just thrown to the sharks. The fish were alerted by the tolling bell at the little stone chapel, according to Henri Charrière, the prisoner known as Papillon, who wrote a fanciful memoir of his time here in the 1930s and 40s.
As brutal as they were, thanks to books and films, the triangle of little islands known in English collectively as Devil's Island stirs a bit of romance for the "Anglo-Saxon" world. The most recent film was the 1973 Papillon, with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. It was largely shot on Caribbean islands and was even more fictional than Charrière's highly embroidered tale. Papillon never escaped from the islands in a home-made boat as he claimed. He just walked out of a semi-open jail in Cayenne in the wartime chaos of 1944.
 [cell on Royale]
For the French, le bagne still stirs a chill -- as memories of the cruel British 18th and 19th century deportations still do in parts of Australia. Locals say the French got the idea from the British colony of New South Wales. The most famous of its victims was Alfred Dreyfus. The Jewish army captain who was wrongly convicted of spying for the Germans, spent nearly five years in the late 1890s as the lone prisoner on Devil's island. The smallest island was kept for a handful of celebrated or political offenders. A dozen guards kept a permanent eye on Dreyfus. In a cruel touch, they built a wall around his house so he could not see the sea. The building is in the picture above but now overgrown. In the days of the bagne, the convicts were made to clear all trees, leaving the islands barren. Dreyfus's letters to his family make sad reading in the little museum.
Serge Colin, who guided us around Ile Royale, ran through the horrors of the islands in matter-of-fact way, reeling off statistics on the 75,000 prisoners who were shipped off to the Guiana prisons from 1863 to the late 1940s. No more than 30,000 survived. "Many were just the kind of small-time repeat offenders with whom President Sarkozy is so tough," said Colin.
The islands lie low on the horizon when you set out for them by boat from Kourou. They belong to the French space authority, which fires its satellite launchers from the mainland. We were taken there on a catamaran by our hosts from the Arianespace firm (watch not very great video of our arrival here). A poster at the dock says: Venez vivre vos vacances aux îles du Salut -- come and spend your holidays at the Salvation Islands.
 [Picture: Sailing towards the islands. The boy is a Swiss 12-year-old who won a competition with first prize a trip to watch the Ariane launch.]
A small number of tourists visit and some stay over, camping and at the inn on Royale. US cruise liners put passengers ashore on quick visits. They are usually taken by sea for a look at Devil's Island, which is closed to all visitors. It's hard to imagine such a haunted place ever becoming a holiday resort.
[Below: At the island, members of the Paris fire brigade who are stationed on the space range. Not exactly hard labour]
[Update: here's my related story on Ariane launch Saturday night]
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It's difficult to avoid describing the scene this morning without thinking of clichés from James Bond films. The sun was beating down on the equatorial jungle when we emerged by the Atlantic Ocean and came across a new Russian space base. Towers and cranes loomed over a launch-pad for Soyuz rockets, exactly the type that took the first Soviet cosmonauts into space all those decades ago.
And adding to the atmosphere, the Russians were labouring away a few miles from the dreaded Devil's island and the rest of the pestilential penal colony off Guiana where, for a century, France sent its prisoners to be broken.
But this wasn't the cold war or the secret lair of SPECTRE. The Russians are the latest addition to an extraordinary European success story. The 100-strong team of engineers from the Baikonur space base in Central Asia are here to build and operate their rockets to reinforce the French-run outfit that has become the world's leading launcher of commercial satellites.
Sometimes it's healthy to get a little perspective away from Paris. I'm 4,500 miles away but still in France, at least technically. I am in French Guiana, on the northeast side of Brazil, to watch the latest launch of an Ariane 5 [Picture above and launch below]. This is the 20-storey tall rocket which deposits bus-sized satellites in stationary orbit half a dozen times a year (That's Ariane waiting for launch in the picture). The project, which France began in the mid-1970s, has benefited from persistence, skill and good luck to overtake the Americans and Russians in the business of commercial space launching. Now, 185 flights since the first small Ariane, they have bought Russian service. A dozen Soyuz rockets -- smaller than the French heavy lifter -- will hoist television, internet and communications satellites into orbit from the French base.
This is all done from a site of a few dozen square miles carved out of the jungle swamps at Kourou, north of Cayenne, the Guiana capital.
Continue reading "Reaching for space from French jungle" »
What words do the French find the most reassuring in this winter of economic doom? It's not Sarkozy, Santa Claus or Social Security. It's Barack Obama.
This comes from a survey on the language of crisis performed by the Médiascopie institute at the request of Euro RSCG, the advertising firm. And before any Americans get too smug, the word that most frightens the French is Bush.
Bernard Sananes the head of Euro RSCG, C&O division, said he had the idea of sounding out the impact of words after realising that the financial and economic slide did not have a human face. Médiascopie drew up a list of 100 expressions and names that have been used most frequently with reference to the crisis in the media, including the internet. They asked a sample of 200 people to rate the words on two scales: worrying/reassuring and local/global.
The incoming US President scored highest in reassuring and global. That shows the expectations awaiting Obama. I would guess that the French response represents general European feeling. George Bush scored top in worrying and global, reflecting the irrevocable demonisation that he underwent with the Iraq invasion of 2003 and its aftermath. Nicolas Sarkozy, France's own leader, came only mid-way on the worry/reassurance axis.
As might be expected in France, the state is deemed very reassuring but what is surprising is the return to favour of Europe. For about 15 years, the Union has been a scapegoat, taking the blame for everything that is wrong, including rampant capitalism. Sarkozy is being given credit for the reversal with his energetic conduct of his six month turn in in the EU Presidency. The single currency, long seen as negative, gets credit for holding up so well while the pound and the dollar have gone south. "The crisis has brought the French closer to the euro and Europe as well as to Nicolas Sarkozy," said Sananes. The winners are....
The most worrying:
Bush
job redundancy
market crash
madness of the financial world
financial tsunami
subprimes,
traders,
virus of crisis,
golden parachutes
toxic products,
contamination
The most reassuring:
Obama
Europe
the euro
livret A (state-regulated standard savings account)
moralisation of the economy
transparent transactions
protection
state intervention
stimulus plan
European Central Bank
The most global:
World governance
new world financial order (a goal of Sarkozy)
International Monetary Fund
Closest to home:
Livret A
French savings
Nicolas Sarkozy
state guarantee
the real economy
rigour (which corresponds to austerity in English)
nationalisation
President Sarkozy is chairing his last summit as temporary boss of the European Union today. The story in France is Sarko's struggle to get a reluctant Germany to spend more on relaunching the EU economy and to overcome German and Polish resistance to an ambitious climate control pact.
Whatever the outcome in Brussels, Sarkozy is basking in French praise for his skillful handling of the country's storm-racked six months in the EU presidency. Super Sarko has had such a 'good crisis' that he hopes to reign on as Europe's de facto leader after the lowly, and Eurosceptic, Czech Republic takes over on January 1.
France will have an advantage next year because because Germany will be focused on elections and Britain will be mired in a more painful recession than the countries of the eurozone, the Elysée Palace believes. The Elysée also thinks that Britain will soon abandon its qualms and join the euro to save itself from the collapse of the pound.
The hyper-active President is convinced that he has galvanised Europe and given it new power in the world with deft management of the financial crash and the other emergencies, such as the Russia-Georgia war in August. Close partnership with Britain's Gordon Brown is part of the new European power balance, says Sarkozy.
The President, who does not claim modesty among his qualities, is telling colleagues that he has restored a sense of political purpose to the moribund Union. He has also cut down to size the Brussels Commission -- the supranational executive bureaucracy. Power is back where it should be, in the hands of the elected governments who run the member states -- and especially the big ones, he says.
Sarkozy's team have been talking up their boss at the official end of his term as President of Europe, as he like to call it. "Europe will never be the same again," Jean-Pierre Jouyet, Sarkozy's Minister for Europe, told Libération. "There will be the before Sarkozy and the after Sarkozy." Jouyet, a respected Europe expert, has just resigned. He told me that he was exhausted with the never-ending crisis management that engulfed the French turn in the chair.
Continue reading "France hails Sarkozy, European saviour -- Germany doesn't" »
In some places -- including Britain and the USA -- beauty pageants are no longer deemed suitable for prime time on main networks. Happily -- or I should probably say unfortunately -- that's not the case for France.
On Saturday night eight million people -- that's 13 percent of the population -- watched the Miss France contest, a jamboree that makes few concessions to feminist principles and is strong on soap opera. The young women parade in high heels in both one and two-piece swim-suits as the commentator praises their charms and talents [bottom picture]. The contestants tell us of their ambitions. Miss Pays de Loire, for example, hoped to "invest myself in humanitarian charities as a representative of elegance."
It's supposed to be family fun and there is usually a feud to keep up the interest. Tensions are soothed by Jean-Pierre Foucault, the oily compère, but the whole thing is ruled by Geneviève de Fontenay, a dragon who is known as "the lady with the hat" [right in the top picture].
De Fontenay, 76, has managed Miss France since 1953 and has been its boss since 1981. Without her, it's likely that the whole kitschy exercise would collapse. This year's drama arose from de Fontenay's banishment of Valérie Bègue, the 2008 Miss France after a former boyfriend circulated photographs of her in less than chaste poses. 
The unfortunate Bègue, from the French island of La Réunion, had kept her title, but she was exiled to los Angeles last Thursday to keep her away from the show where she was supposed to crown her successor. TF1, the host network, wanted her there but de Fontenay over-ruled them. They got their own back when Foucault announced on air that de Fontenay had vetoed the popular Bègue and the crowd booed the lady with the hat.
The winner this year, picked by judges and popular telephone vote, was Chloé Mortaud, a 19-year-old student from the southwestern Ariège département. Like some previous Miss Frances (It's Miss France, not Mademoiselle) she is of mixed race. She is also the first to hold dual French and US citizenship. Her African-American Mother came from Mississippi. Mortaud, who is studying business and had already been crowned Miss Albigeois-Midi Pyrénées, said she deserved the national crown because "with a smile I will transmit happiness to people." She also seized l'air du temps and made the most of her mixed race in her pre-decision pitch. "This polyvalency is an advantage," she said.
As the press talked about the Obama effect yesterday, Mortaud said she would be an ambassadress for racial tolerance. "I want to go to people and explain to them that fear of the other is unfounded. I want to incarnate today’s French diversity".
While Mortaud starts her year of glory, de Fontenay has moved on to another battle. She is fighting rebellion by Guadeloupe, the French Caribbean territory. The island has had the effrontery to send a dissident Miss Guadeloupe to the Miss World pageant in South Africa next week. "She is illegitimate", says de Fontenay. Guadeloupe is part of her Miss France empire and France is to be represented in Johannesbourg by the second runner-up to the banished Ms Bègue from 2008.
De Fontenay usually gets her way, so I hope the insurgent from Guadeloupe is watching her back. Yes this is all frivolous stuff -- despite the millions of euros tied up in the exercise. It's taken with a pinch of salt here, although France has fewer qualms than some other places when it comes to patronising women. As an example of that, I just heard Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a recent Prime Minister, defend Rachida Dati, 41, the embattled Justice Minister, on the radio, calling her "une fille exceptionnelle" -- an exceptional girl.
The Miss World contest, launched in London in 1951, has become an off-shore exercise in recent years, being staged in China, Africa and so on. But don't forget that about 2.5 billion people are expected to watch it next week. To close on a memory, one of my first assignments as a journalist was to report backstage from a Miss World contest in the Albert Hall. It was a morally confusing mission of course.
[Below: swimsuits for Miss France 2009]
Here is Carla Bruni doing her bit on David Letterman's show in New York on Tuesday night. She also appeared on the NBC Today breakfast show (watch here). Madame Sarkozy is promoting her latest song album but she is more than earning her keep as goodwill ambassador for France.
As in all her interviews, she gave an excellent performance as beautiful and bland royal consort. But she also managed a couple of undiplomatic slaps at President Bush. Letterman asks her if Sarko and Bush got on together. "They have to, you know. There's no choice," she replies. Then, asked about Barack Obama's election, she says: "France is thrilled, delighted. I think the whole world is delighted."
The remarks in part reflect Bruni's own anti-Bush views as a leading member of the Parisian engagé, artsy crowd. She has been making herself heard on the leftwing front lately. She persuaded her husband last month to exempt a former Red Brigades activist from extradition to Italy on old murder charges. She also fired a round at Silvio Berlusconi, over his bad joke on Obama's sun-tan and she signed a manifesto for affirmative action to combat what she called France's entrenched racial discrimination. And don't forget that Sarko sent Bruni on his behalf to talk to the Dalai Lama last August.
Le Nouvel Observateur notes today how Bruni has acquired power of her own. It puts her among what it calls "the real government of France". These are the palace advisers and political and business chums who wield more clout than the Prime Minister and Cabinet, according to the Nouvel Obs. It dubs Carla the Minister for Diversity, Humanitarian Causes and the Presidential Image.
But Bruni's swipe at Bush also reflects Sarkozy's recent renewal of France's old antagonism towards Washington. This is part of Sarko's move to use the economic crisis to stake out European leadership for France and a even a world role for himself. Talking like a good old leftist, he has been blaming the United States for starting the slump and castigating the greed of its financial world.
His latest act has been to call a private summit in Paris in early January to push his project for "refounding capitalism". The Americans were annoyed when Sarkozy announced his gathering -- to be co-hosted by his friend Tony Blair -- as soon as he got back from the G20 summit in Washington last weekend. Obama is supposed to chair the follow-up to the Washington summit in April. As Mark Landler of the New York Times says today: "The dispute epitomizes what has become an increasingly tense trans-Atlantic contest over summitry and the global economy."
While officially delighted by Obama's election, Sarkozy is said by people close to him to be worried that he will be eclipsed by the new US President. He wants to make a maximum impact before the January inauguration. In so doing Sarkozy has become an advocate for strict new international regulation.
One of Sarkozy's staff told me that he expects the Obama administration to play tough with Europe despite all the good vibrations. Sarko is irked by Obama's refusal to meet him last weekend. He was keen to be the first foreign leader to see the President-elect and he offered to make the hop to Chicago for the session with his "copain" (pal), as he calls Obama.
Sarkozy's strategy on world affairs has evolved. He subscribes to a new doctrine of "relative powers", devised by Jean-David Levitte, his diplomatic adviser (who is called the real Foreign Minister by the Nouvel Obs). This means that France can enhance its power by being close to all the big players, whatever their governing regime. We have seen this in action with Sarko's overtures to Moscow and Beijing.
In reality the policy is not very new. "Sarko l'Américain" as he was once proud to be known, is just reverting to classical French mode, performed by all leaders from Charles de Gaulle to Jacques Chirac. Keeping a distance from America helps give traction to French foreign policy. But Sarko remains in awe of the wounded super-power and must be thrilled with the gushing admiration that his latest wife receives from the likes of David Letterman.
We heard a little drama on France Inter's breakfast radio this morning. Mikhail Saakashvili, the President of Georgia, was making a passionate case against Russia when they read out to him the following exchange between Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Sarkozy.
The scene was the Kremlin on August 12, when Sarkozy flew in to persuade Moscow to call off its invasion of Georgia.
Putin: "I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls."
Sarkozy: "Hang him?"
Putin: "Why not? The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein."
Sarkozy "Yes but do you want to end up like Bush?"
Putin, after a long pause: "Ah, you have scored a point there."
Saakashvili laughed nervously when he heard this today. "I knew about this scene, but not all the details. It's funny, all the same," he said. He went on to argue that Europe had capitulated to Russia over Georgia in the same way that it had surrendered to Adolf Hitler at Munich in 1938 when it let Germany occupy Czechoslovakia. That's how Saakashvili talks. He is seeing Sarko at the Elysée today and tomorrow President Medvedev is meeting him in Nice for a Russian-European summit.
The Kremlin conversation was recounted by Jean-David Levitte, Sarkozy's chief of diplomacy, to le Nouvel Observateur magazine which printed it today. Last August, I was down the corridor in the Kremlin with other reporters during the Sarkozy-Putin chat. Sarko was tense and shaky when he came out, announcing the deal to stop the war. The price was letting Russia keep the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Assuming that it's accurate, the exchange tells you a few things. It confirms that Russia aimed to to depose the hot-headed Georgian president. It confirms that Putin, the Prime Minister, was calling the shots, not President Medvedev. It also shows how Sarko has ingratiated himself with the Russians. Using the familiar "tu" with Putin, Sarko allowed himself a cheap shot against President Bush.
Levitte recounted the conversation presumably to make Sarkozy look good and bolster the claim that he really did save Goergia. It also underlines the striking U-turn performed by Sarkozy since he ran for election last year promising to get tough with Moscow over human rights.
Sarkozy said in the campaign that he preferred "to shake the hand of Bush than Putin" and promised to end the cosy ties that President Chirac had enjoyed with the Kremlin. Yet as soon as he was elected, he rushed off to cultivate first-name friendship with Putin. Levitte and Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, are close to their Russian counterparts. Sarkozy and his advisers say that the goal is to engage the Kremlin and treat Moscow with the respect which it is due as an old power. Paris wants to be Moscow's advocate in Europe.
Putin has not reciprocated the chumminess, but Moscow is pleased by the way that Sarkozy is pushing the European Union back to normal relations after the Georgian chill. "I want to pay tribute to President Sarkozy's efforts to reinforce relations between the EU and Russia in all areas," Medvedev told le Figaro today.
Sarko has turned a deaf ear to warnings from old hands about the way that Russia operates. He was briefed by Vladimir Bukovski, one of the leading dissidents of the Soviet era. Bukovski, a veteran of the Soviet era labour camp, told the Nouvel Observateur that he warned Sarkozy about the former KGB clan that runs the Kremlin.
"For an hour, I told him that it was dangerous to play matey-matey with those people and that there was nothing to gain from it except their contempt and that he risked being taken for a ride.... It did not serve any purpose."
Sarkozy has been defending himself today, attacking Bush for weakness over the Georgian conflict. Bush telephoned him and urged him not to go to Moscow to try to stop the Russians, he said. "Don't go," Bush told him. "The Russians want to go to Tbilisi. They are 40 kilometres away. Don't go. Just condemn them."
Sarkozy insisted that he had done more for human rights by persuading the Russians to stop their advance than Bush who stayed in Washington and did nothing. Sarko was speaking after receiving an annual prize for "political courage", awarded by France's Politique Internationale review.
(below:Saakashvili)
 [update: Sarkozy ceremony story here]
The Prince of Wales is dining with President Sarkozy at the Elysée Palace tonight ahead of tomorrow's 90th anniversary of Armistice Day. We are taking a train in the early morning to watch them mark the event at Verdun, site of one of the most terrible battles, along with Peter Müller, President of the German upper house. Sarkozy is breaking with tradition by visiting the battlefield rather than just presiding over the ceremony at the tomb of the unknown soldier under the Arc de Triomphe [Picture above updated after Tuesday ceremony]
Nine decades on from 1918, older people have been voicing surprise at the lack of concern among the young for la der des ders -- the war to end all wars. A large village in Brittany could not raise enough young volunteers to represent symbolically the 699 dead whose names are inscribed on the local memorial. Nothing brings home the butchery of the Great War than those sad lists on the monuments aux morts in the villages and towns across France.
The last French poilu -- Great War soldier -- died last February. There are two surviving veterans in Britain. As Sarkozy has said, the war is passing from memory into history. My 17-year-old son asked over breakfast what was the point of the ceremonies, since it was was a long time ago and those who took part are nearly all gone. It was hard not to express surprise at the question because the Great War was so much part of our lives, even though we were born after the Second World War. My grandfather drove a tank on the western front with the Seaforth Highlanders and survived. His brother James was killed at Ypres. We grew up knowing survivors. They didn't talk much about it but we were aware of the horror of the shells, machine-guns and gas.
Like all French lycée pupils, my son has studied the la Grande Guerre. My 15-year-old daughter reels off the basic facts. In France, as in Britain, there has been a literary fascination over the past two decades for the war. But it is understandable that the emotion has faded.
Britain tries to keep the memory alive, mainly with the ritual of wearing Flanders poppies. In France, November 11 is a public holiday and every town and village has its wreath-laying. Most people are just happy to have the day off and do some early Christmas shopping, le Monde noted today. "Very few people could tell you exactly what happened on that marvellous November 11," it said. "The majority celebrate the beauty of autumn, the pleasure of going to the cinema and lying in late...". Le Monde's commentator concluded that even if people knew little about it, the war was inescapable. It had left an indelible mark on the collective conscience of France. He used a quoted from William Faulkner that Barack Obama cited during his campaign: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
There is a little row going on today because a government-appointed expert has concluded that France has too many memorial days, including an excessive number covering World War Two. André Kaspy, an historian, recommended down-grading annual days commemorating such things as the world war two deportations, the abolition of slavery, the dead of the Algerian war and six other historic events. He wants to keep as national events just November 11, May 8 -- the Victory over Nazi Germany -- and the July 14 celebration of the 1789 revolution.
Downgrading the days linked with past shame -- slavery, deportation and Algeria and so on -- is in keeping with Sarkozy's belief that France repents too much for past sins. But Sarkozy is also enthusiastic about keeping wartime memory alive.
Kaspy's proposal has prompted anger from those involved in the lesser commemorations and the Government appears to be ready to back down. It has also abandoned a reported plan to end the national holiday on May 8 and turn it into a simple Europe day. That is not such a revolutionary idea since General de Gaulle got rid of the VE day holiday in 1959 in the name of reconciliation with Germany. President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing revived it in 1975 -- at about the time that France was beginning to examine its record under the occupation.
In Sarcelles, a northern suburb, I walked through a crowd of black children yesterday who were arguing about which of them was "le plus Obama" -- the most like Obama.
As it has done all over Europe, the election of a US president called Barack Hussein has given a lift to minorities who feel marooned outside the mainstream.
This weekend, the imminent arrival in the White House of someone with an African Muslim name has prompted a new campaign for racial integration, supported by Carla Bruni, President Sarkozy's wife.
Yazid Zabeg, an Algerian-born millionaire and the JDD Sunday newspaper have produced a "manifesto for real equality". Under the Obama slogan "Oui, nous pouvons" (Yes we can), the manifesto points to the "cruel contrast" between France's racially divided society and the lesson of inclusion that came from the United States. Bruni says in the JDD that she loves multi-ethnic France and that it is time to "help the elite to change".
This is a touchy subject because of France's policy of assimilating immigrants into the mainstream society of la République without much tolerance for other ethnic and religous communities.
The Obama election is in tune with a new assertiveness among non-white French over the matter of their names. Increasingly, young descendants of immigrants are seeking to drop their Christian names and claim new ones -- and identities -- from their Arab and African backgrounds.
The trend in which Louis, Laurent or Marie want to become Abdel, Said or Rachida has made the media recently, so, along with Marie Tourres, our Paris reporter, I looked into it. We found that the requests from immigrants' children for name changes are mounting in the law-courts and worrying a state that lays store on melding a single national culture. Most of the applications are coming from people with families from Algeria, Tunisia and Moroco, the three former Maghreb colonies.
Continue reading "The Obama effect and why François becomes Mohammed" »
It's been a while since France went so crazy over the United States. Decades at least and perhaps not since John Kennedy's days in the early 1960s.
The pleasure and admiration today over the election of Barack Obama is genuine. It's coming from all sides -- not just the editorialists, politicians and philosophers who have been spouting in the media.
President Sarkozy was so enthused that he dashed off an effusive note at 5am Paris time, about an hour after the result appeared. However, he didn't get the name right and scribbled "Cher Barak".
The man at the newspaper kiosk congratulated me with a broad smile. He knows I'm not American but Anglo-Saxon is close enough. Like quite a few people, he had stayed up very late watching the results.
The picture above gives a flavour. It's from Rue89, a popular leftwing news site. The headline reads: This time the world says thank you to America. Le Monde, also on the left, was breathless about Obama's campaign. "What intelligence, what mastery, what sang-froid..." it said this afternoon.
Or take the response of Jack Lang, a senior Socialist and long-serving culture minister under the late President Mitterrand: "The America that we love is back. This election will have the effect of an electric shock and will bring about a spiritual revolution."
The goodwill is just as strong from Sarkozy's centre-right party. "The Americans have voted for the American dream," gushed Patrick Devedjian, a Sarkozy friend and leader of the president's UMP party.
As well as sending high-speed congratulations, Sarkozy is talking to Obama by phone tonight. Super Sarko is losing no time in seizing glory from Obama's victory, to the point of suggesting that the Democrat copied him. "America last night made the choice of la rupture", the President told the weekly Cabinet meeting today. La rupture -- a clean break or fresh start -- was the formula that won Sarko the presidency in the spring of 2007.
Sarkozy is pointing out to everyone that he spotted Obama early on, holding talks with him in Washington in 2006 when he was Interior Minister. Sarko's people say that Obama's team sought tips from them -- as John McCain's did too -- after his blitzkrieg election campaign last year. In Paris last July (picture below), Obama joked that he asked France's hyper-president what he was on. "He's constantly in motion -- but that's the way to be," said the Senator.
Obama has been tickled by the French passion for his candidacy. "It's strange that I am so popular in France," he told a group of tourists in Florida on Monday. "I hear that you have problems in the banlieues (ethnic estates) and that the blacks are demonstrating. yet I hear that all the French, even the whites, would vote for me" (Today's Canard Enchaîné reported the exchange).
Obama then joked about the way that McCain was accusing him of being that most un-American animal, a socialist. "You have socialists in France. Tell me, is it a serious disease?" he asked.
The euphoria, which is partly driven by the imminent farewell to George W Bush, will soon subside. Some commentators are trying to calm the near hysteria, reminding France that Obama is still an American, not a Frenchman, and that there will be inevitable disappointment. But rekindled love affair with les Etats Unis is enjoyable while it lasts. 
Thursday update: As French Obamania rages on, we learned today that the President-elect is part French and a descendant of royalty, no less. Le Parisien reports that one of his ancestors was Marin Duval, a protestant who fled to Maryland from Nantes during the religious persecution of the 17th century. Another was the 14th century King Jean le Bon.
Listening to the crackly radio in the Cévennes hills this morning, I heard President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela congratulating Nicolas Sarkozy on his enlightened leadership.
It seems that Sarkozy's recent self-appointment as the strongman of a new protective Europe has won the approval of the Latin American populist. You can see why.
The financial mess of the past month has opened a boulevard for the French president to do what he believes he does best: rushing into the breach to take charge. In so doing, he has cast himself as the scourge of international capitalism.
It has been a good autumn for Super Sarko. Before the banking drama, he had already ridden to the rescue to halt the Russian advance on Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, last August. Then he got his chance to use France's six-month turn in the presidency of the European Union to rescue the continental economy.
After a shaky start, he persuaded the reluctant Germans to sign up to his co-ordinated bail-out of the euro-zone. Britain's Gordon Brown was the first to come up with the idea of injecting capital to prop up the banks, but Sarko claimed the glory for the pan-European plan which was endorsed in Brussels under his chairmanship.
Sarkozy then went on the warpath, attacking the greed of a banking and business world that had brought the global economy to its knees. He went to America as Mr Europe and made the case for a new Bretton Woods conference that would do no less than "refound capitalism" and create a new international order. President Bush was not in such a rush, but eventually agreed to call a G20 world summit next month to start drawing lessons from the crisis.
Sarko's latest act has been to propose that Europe set up sovereign funds to protect its industry from foreign predators -- presumably Americans, Russians, Asians and Arabs. To set an example, Sarkozy has created a multi-billion euro strategic investment fund that will mount an aggressive defence of national assets. "I will not be the French president who wakes up in six months' time to find that French industrial groups have passed into others' hands," he said.
Sarko has in effect reverted to old French custom of strong intervention by the state. Its rulers, from King Louis XIV through to the post-war Republic of Charles de Gaulle, practised the tradition that l'état knows best. Some of the time, they have been right. The USA and Britain have taken this road in the crisis, intervening to save collapsing markets, so it is no surprise that France is reverting to form with a vengeance. Sarko has been adding a redistributive, leftwing flavour to his rhetoric of volontarisme, or forcing initiatives into action by will power. This has the effect of cutting the grass under the feet of the hapless Socialist party, the main opposition, which is paralysed by a battle for leadership.
The President is reported by visitors to be delighted with his crisis. "Imagine if I wasn't in the European chair and the union was being led by someone else," he is telling people. From there it has been only a short step to offering his services on a more permanent basis than the rotating presidency. His team has come up with the answer. Sarko, they say, should stay in charge of the euro-zone, the 16 countries that will be sharing the currency when the Czech Republic takes its turn in the presidency on December 31. He could keep the job till at least January 2010. In this way, he could create the "economic government" that France has long demanded. "In stormy times, the Union needs a strong hand at the helm," say his entourage. They invite us to imagine Czech leaders going on behalf of Europe to sort out the world head to head with the new US President, the Russians and Chinese.
There is of course a snag. No other state of importance likes the idea. The Germans are amused by the presumption of the "Napoleon of Neuilly", as some of their commentators call Sarko, referring to his base in the posh western suburb. Chancellor Angela Merkel is weakened by the start of an election campaign against the other half of her coalition but she is saying that she has had enough of Sarkozy taking himself for Europe's natural leader. There is no prize for guessing the British reaction to the idea of Sarko as a sort of permanent European chief, even if the UK is not in the euro zone.
In reality the crisis has exposed some of the weakness of the Union rather than its ability to pull together in crisis. The rescue has been run by national governments, not by the Union's supranational institutions -- the executive Commission, the court and parliament. Germany, the biggest power, has been especially reluctant to get involved on any cross-border salvage. Sarkozy's initiatives look more like good old French-style protectionism than an insurance policy for the union. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi has seized the moment to promote state capitalism of the old kind. The same sort of reflex seems to be happening everywhere, and not just in Europe.
Sarkozy is perfectly aware that his volontarisme -- a polite way of saying cheek and bullying -- irritates his fellow leaders, but he is using a method that has often worked for him at home. You wear down opposition by sheer force of will. You may not get your way completely but you can carry the day.
We shall see how long Sarkozy can keep up his momentum. We will get an idea no doubt when the American-chaired review of world financial regulation gets into its stride under, presumably, President Obama. Sarkozy's emotional, in-your-face style may not be ideally suited to the more cool and cerebral former Senator.
The United States has been forced to recognize that Europe's mix of state and market is not so out-of-date as it thought. Keynes is back and American leadership of the world is more in doubt than it has been at any time since the 1940s. Sarkozy believes that with les Anglo-Saxons discredited, it's time for the old continent to seize the moment and he wants to be the one in front. The next year will be interesting.
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PS: I'm taking a few days off in the southern hills. Posting this means dodging the wild boar hunters to get within telephone coverage. Normal service resumes next week, but please keep up the flow.
"Quel con" translates into polite English as 'what a fool'. That's the expression that many in France are applying to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the talented and popular Socialist who has made his mark lately in Washington as boss of the International Monetary Fund.
Strauss-Kahn, 59, as you will probably know, is in trouble over a one-night fling that he enjoyed with a married subordinate last January at the Davos international forum in Switzerland. It seems pretty likely that "DSK" , who is married, will be cleared later this month of allegations that he abused his authority when he seduced Piroska Nagy, a Hungarian-born banking expert who worked in the IMF Africa department.
When he heard of the matter a few weeks ago, Sarkozy was furious that DSK, one of the most admired French politicians and a likely Socialist candidate for the next presidency, had risked his chance to restart his career and help France. But the Elysée Palace had been hoping that no news would break until Strauss-Kahn had been cleared by the Washington DC legal firm which was brought in last August to investigate.
DSK is a likeable man with a reputation for enjoying the company of women (the flattering picture above was used when he was trying to win the Socialist presidential nomination last year). One newspaper today called him un grand séducteur. Last year, a Libération journalist caused a fuss by wondering on his blog how long it would take for Strauss-Kahn's wandering eye to land him in trouble in Washington.
We got the answer last spring when Mario Blejer, a senior Argentine economist who is Nagy's husband, began campaigning to have him investigated for abusing his power. We were tipped off along with other journalists in Paris. Mr Blejer discovered the episode via the classic route of stumbling on an incriminating e-mail. His wife confessed and the couple were both very upset and blamed Strauss-Kahn for pursuing her aggressively, IMF colleagues said at the time.
The investigation was made public by the Wall Street Journal on Saturday with timing that could hardly have been worse for Sarkozy's attempts to put a French stamp on a new world financial order. Sarko has teamed up with DSK in an attempt to shape a new "Bretton Woods" pact on financial regulation. Sarkozy put the French-led European case to President Bush at Camp David, Maryland, yesterday, and got a frosty reception.
So you can guess the response from some sections of the French political and media world: The IMF affair is another absurd case of American hysteria over sex, like the affair of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. DSK's private life is nobody's business and he has obviously been stitched up in a plot to undermine France. That charge was laid, for example, by Jean-François Copé, the parliamentary leader of Sarko's UMP party.
But the view is by no means universal. Even allies of DSK are privately calling him idiotic for letting his taste for dalliance get the better of his judgment.
In a well-informed piece today, Claude Askolovitch, Editor of Le Journal du Dimanche, wrote that "Dominique le Magnifique" had caused a French farce by breaking well-understood rules.
"The affair may well be ridiculous compared with the destiny of the world but it touches the heart of the culture of the American government and the IMF," he said. "It is less about sexual puritanism.. than a deep horror of lies and conflict of interest. The absolute sin is not fornication, but denial, in which private life is mixed with public behaviour."
His newspaper carried its usual Washington political column by Anne Sinclair, DSK's glamorous wife, a celebrity television journalist. Sinclair, who is a tough cookie, is publicly standing by her man. She has written on her blog today that she has forgiven "cette aventure d'une nuit" -- this one-night adventure. "We love each other just as much as at our beginning," she said.
For the record, Nagy left Washington in the summer and now works in London at the Bank for Economic Reconstruction and Development (BERD). Strauss-Kahn has confirmed the "incident in my private life in January 2008" and denies that he abused his position as managing director of the fund. The BERD said that there was nothing irregular about Ms Nagy's recruitment and it is not investigating.
People who have talked to DSK say that he is confident that the affair will blow oved once the investigation has cleared him. If that is the case it will not have any impact on his chances of running as the Socialist candidate in the 2012 president election. At lunch today the (French) majority around my table argued that affairs at work are nobody's business if coercion is not involved. A woman who has une aventure with her boss should take responsibility and not seek to have him punished and pilloried, it was said. And before people pile in here, we all know the counter argument to this.
Strauss-Kahn, incidentally, ranked in a poll yesterday as France's second most political figure, behind Bertrand Delanoe, the Socialist Mayor of Paris.
With capitalism near the rocks -- at least in a widespread French view -- it seemed a good time to check in with France's leading advocate of old-style revolution.
Olivier Besancenot, the popular young Trotskyite and former presidential candidate, has been in the news this week, not just because many are looking to his anti-capitalist movement for salvation. He has also been the victim of a bizarre plot.
Besancenot kindly received me along with a colleague at his little office, on the first floor in the printing works of the Communist Revolutionary League (LCR) at Montreuil, the borough that adjoins Paris on the east. Fittingly, the nearest Métro stop is Robespierre, named after the leader of the revolutionary Terror of the early 1790s.
Besancenot, a part time postman in the posh western suburb of Neuilly, is only 34. In other lands, he would be dismissed as an oddity. In France, with its historic love of insurrection, he is a star. He and his fans believe that his time has come.
"We are at the end of a cycle. We are at a major turning point in the course of the world economy," Besancenot said as he surveyed the "crisis of capitalism" that was forecast all those years ago by Karl Marx and his successors.
In black sweater and jeans, the baby-faced Besancenot looks more like Tintin, the boy reporter, than political heavyweight. But his mix of eloquence and cheek have turned the "the red postman" into a serious player, a leftwing populist who needles the established parties from factory floors and tv chat shows. He won 1.6 million votes as the LCR candidate in last year's presidential election; he enjoys a 56 percent approval rating -- well ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy. An August survey ranked him second most effective opponent of the President -- after Bertrand Delanoe, the Socialist Mayor of Paris. On Thursday, Le Monde gave him half a page to pronounce on the crisis. "The system is ending by drowning in its own blood," he said.
With the wind in his sails, the timing could not be better for Besancenot to launch his New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA). He has been anointed as leader by most factions of the far left, except the fading Communist Party. Support is flowing in from the young, green activists, anti-globalisation types and from traditional leftists who are turned off by the Socialists' embrace of the free market and attracted by the romance of revolt. "If the Socialists have completely discredited themselves, it's not my fault. Holding power drove them crazy, made them giddy," he said.
But this week we glimpsed the darker of young Olivier when a judge revoked the parole of a leader of Action Directe, a 1980s revolutionary group, who was serving life for murder. Rouillan broke the terms of his release by publicly backing Besancenot and giving an interview in which he refused to voice remorse for the 1986 killing of the chairman of the Renault company. Besancenot has refused to disown Rouillan.
He has also hit the headlines after the head of the French distributers of Taser stun guns and six private detectives, police officers and a customs official were arrested and charged with spying on him and his family. They targeted him apparently to smear or blackmail him after he campaigned against the use of Tasers by French police.
The Socialists -- and the old trade unions -- dismiss Besancenot as a trouble-maker who has no plans for governing. He is seen as useful to Sarkozy because his cause undermines the mainstream opposition just as Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far-right leader, was long the bane of the Gaullist movement. Many commentators also see Besancenot as a charismatic magnet for discontent with little prospect of power, like Le Pen.
Besancenot's new party may be aiming for the barricades, but it is starting humble with candidates for the European Parliament in next June's elections. "We are proposing a change of software," said Besancenot, who took his proletarian job after earning a history degree at Nanterre university, Sarko's alma mater.
The world has only known capitalism and the bureaucratic communism founded by the Soviet Union, he said. "The only model that has not been tried is the one where the majority decides for itself." One of Mr Besancenot's ideas -- nationalising the banks -- no longer seems as extreme as it did a month ago. He is trying to link his party with anti-capitalist movements across Europe, including Britain's Respect coalition, in which his frend Ken Loach, the film director, is involved. [watch video of Loach endorsing Besancenot]
Besancenot is a fan of Che Guevara and other Latin American revolutionaries but his ideal, he says, is the Paris Commune of 1871. That brief exercise in people power ended with thousands dead, mainly at the hands of government troops who retook the city.
The young militant talks an ambiguous line on violence of the kind that has accompanied France's periodic upheavals since 1789. "For us, revolution is not terrorism," he said. "It is a majority of the population breaking onto the public stage to change society. It is counter revolution that is violent".
Besancenot softens such talk with jokes and assurances that his internet-age revolution will welcome a free press and multi-party democracy -- provided of course that they do not conflict with the will of the people.
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[Watch video of Besancenot in talk show action against class enemy Charles Beigbeder, businessman and capitalist champion]
Various barometers can be used to track the world's economic mood, from hamburger consumption (up when times are hard) to women's hemlines (down). Champagne sales must be one of the more reliable indicators, so it's no surprise that the producers of France's most famous fizzy wine have just reported their first downturn this century.
The big story is the United States, where sales are expected to slump by over 30 percent in volume this year. The slide began in March 2007, several months before the sub-primes crisis erupted. Britain, which went champaigne crazy in the boom years, is buying four percent less. Cognac is also suffering in the Americas, where it became fashionable in recent years. Sales in North America dropped seven percent over the past year.
The global champagne boom has been a constant story from Paris for eight years as demand exploded in Britain, the USA and more recently Russia and China. Sales had risen steadily since 1999. Up in the Champagne region, they are not panicking since the overall volume fall is expected to reach only three percent this year and exports will slide only about one percent thanks to demand from the east. Rich Russians are still loading up on the very high-end brands such as Cristal and sales to China are expected to rise by about 15 percent this year after 30 percent in 2007.
At Moet & Chandon, they say that that they have weathered war and revolutions, so they are not worried about a slide. Benoît Gouez, chief vintner at Moet, came up with a dubious argument for continued consumption. "It's probably when times are hard that people really like or need to dream more and luxury products are never more necessary as in the tough periods." he told the Associated Press.
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
France and much of Europe is saluting Nicolas Sarkozy today. Gordon Brown, the unloved British Prime Minister, is also winning praise.
Even François Hollande, the Socialist opposition leader, paid the French hyper-president compliments today on the energy with which he orchestrated last night's co-ordinated bail-out by the 15 states of the euro currency zone.
We hung around until after nine pm at the Elysée palace as Sarko, Angela Merkel of Germany and the rest of the euroland bosses settled the details of their package. So far, the decision to inject billions into their banks and guarantee their lending, has had the desired effect. The stock markets have bounced back from their Friday slump. This afternoon, Sarkozy, Merkel and the others are to announce at the same moment the numbers of euros that they will pump into the system.
It's of course too early to declare success, but we can note a few things about a novel situation. First, it would be uncharitable not to give Sarkozy credit for the way that he has banged heads together -- albeit a week after his first attempt -- as the current chairman of the European Union. Sarkozy is often criticised for making splashy announcements and failing to follow through, but this time, he seems to have managed. This was an example of le volontarisme -- getting hard things done by sheer force of will, a skill in which Sarko prides himself.
At the cost of bad feeling between them, Sarkozy brought Merkel into a joint operation which she had refused only a week earlier on the grounds that each EU state should clean up its own mess. The Chancellor had been extremely reluctant to offer a blanket guarantee to all banks. For their part, the Germans did their own bit of arm-twisting, persuading the reluctant French to go along with the British idea of guaranteeing loans between banks.
Another novelty was the reversal of roles. We are in strange times when a British Prime Minister comes to Paris to counsel the single currency bloc on the merits of nationalising banks and intervening in the markets. Brown's UK rescue plan served as the model for the euro-zone action. The former British finance minister, politically discredited at home, has emerged in European eyes as something of an inspiration in troubled times.
Paris and its supporters are noting another silver lining from the black cloud that has descended on global markets. This is the ability of the European nations to act in political concert in the interests of the single currency. The French right and the left have long complained that the euro, launched in 1999 under the control of a federal central bank, needed to have political steering. Germany was opposed. Thanks to the crisis, the eurozone states have joined in their first act of "political government" -- at least according to optimistic French politicians today. The argument may not comfort Germans who are worried by the way that Sarkozy has flouted the debt rules that underpin the currency.
The European leaders feel a certain pride in operating independently of the United States, which has been the moving force in just about all crisis management of the global economy since 1945. It has not gone un-noticed that, in Washington, the International Monetary Fund is asserting itself with a voice of its own, in the shape of its boss, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the French Socialist whose appointment Sarkozy secured last year.
While the dust may not even have begun to settle, it's worth noting that Sarkozy's domestic approval rating is holding up. A Viavoice survey in today's Libération reports that 53 percent of those polled approve of the way that he is handling the crisis, compared with 32 percent against. Only 40 percent approve of his presidency though. Of comfort to Sarko, the poll found that only 21 percent believe that the Socialists would do better than Sarko if they were in power.
Two major Nobel prizes in one week is not bad for a country that is anguishing about its cultural decline.
France has just pulled it off with the literature award for its novelist JMG le Clézio after Luc Montagnier and Françoise Barre-Sinouss (below) shared the medicine prize with Germany's Harald zur Hausen for their discovery of the HIV virus.
It was only the third time that a French writer has won the Literature Nobel since Jean-Paul Sartre was anointed but refused the honour in 1964. Not since 1952 had it won two prizes. They went that year to Albert Schweitzer for Peace and François Mauriac for literature. There was even an outside chance that this week could have produced a hat trick. Ingrid Betancourt, the Franco-Colombian former hostage, was thought to have been in the running for the peace prize and had even tempted fate by reserving a hotel room for a victory news conference.
Here's my story from today's newspaper. One of the first conclusions is that Le Clézio, 68, was well qualified for a Nobel. His style may be avant garde, but he is not one of the navel-gazing introverts who have given a bad name to the modern French novel (see last month's post on Christine Angot). He is seen as a big picture writer, dealing in universal human themes in the tradition of Hugo and Zola. He is also an apostle of the environment and specialist in endangered cultures -- qualities that play well with the Stockholm committee.
Le Clézio, whose father had British nationality, is a polyglot globe-trotter who lives mainly in New Mexico after a life travelling in Latin America, Africa and Asia. He was one of the signatories of a proposal by a group of authors last year to save the Gallic novel by uncoupling the language from France and turning French literature into "world literature" written in French.
An enigmatic character with the looks of a handsome adventurer, JMG le Clézio had been tipped for a Nobel for the past two decades and he was favourite yesterday. He is quite familiar in France from his television appearances and he has a devoted following but he has a reputation for being difficult and never been really fashionable. Most of his 48 novels have been translated, but he is far from a celebrity in the English-speaking world. Newsrooms scrambled yesterday to find background and commentary on him. I had to confess that I had never read him -- a shameful admission for a long-serving Paris journalist. All that will change as his work, ranging from his 1963 Procès Verbal (The Interrogation) to Ritournelle de la Faim (Same old Story About Hunger), published last week, reach global bookshops.
Here are some excerpts in English from Clézio's texts, in today's NYT
President Sarkozy was naturally quick to hail Le Clézio for bringing honour on his country. "He embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalized world," said the President's statement. "A child in Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clézio is a citizen of the world, the son of all continents and cultures." I would guess that Sarko, who is no great lover of fiction, may be among those inculte people who have not read him yet.
In the eternal contest of France versus les Anglo-Saxons, it has been a pretty good month for Gallic pride. As well as the Nobels, many in France have been saluting what is seen as the end of the "Anglo-Saxon" creed of deregulation and free markets which has held sway since the early 1980s.
This might be an exercise in what the French call "shooting at the ambulance", or kicking someone when they are down. But here's a look at the French reaction to Sarah Palin.
Like the Gallic adoration of Barack Obama, the French view of John McCain's vice-presidential choice has been simplified by the cultural filter. The personnage of Palin and the initial enthusiasm she generated were puzzling for a country that disdains displays of faith and moral certainty. Her convention joke about hockey moms being pitbulls with lipstick took a lot of explanation.
In le Monde, the elegant Dominique Dhombres explained that Palin was an elemental type from l'Amérique profonde. "She is a go-getter, almost an assault tank. A virago ? That's for you to decide... She believes in God, America, the family and firearms. She defines herself as 'une maman hockey'."
On France-Inter, the main state-run radio station, a commentator this morning described Palin as une sacrée bigote -- a really sanctimonious woman (literally 'a holy bigot', though the words are softer in French).
French feminists have had the biggest trouble with Palin. They have come round to the conclusion that she is a dangerous agent of anti-feminism. "The exhibition of this fundamentalist version of femininity and maternity in the American presidential election concerns all of us," wrote Julia Kristeva in Libération. "Whether she represents the banality of evil or tragic caricature, can this strangling of women's emancipation... be reversed?"
Elle, the thinking Parisienne's fashion weekly, denounced Palin on Monday as "the incarnation of a new femininism, as dangerous as the 'Islamic feminism', which has recently been invented by the Muslim fundamentalists." Marie-Françoise Colombani, Elle's editorial columnist, concluded that Palin was proof that the "worst enemy of woman is often a woman."
Palin's self-undoing with her inept interviews has been greeted with relief and a little gloating. Headlines today called her "Sarah la gaffeuse" and McCain's Achilles Heel. Libération had fun filling a page with her confused answers to questions from Katie Couric and others. Her words about Vladimir Putin "raising his head" and flying over Alaska and her incoherent views on the Wall Street bail-out have been prompting widespread mirth.
Below, from today's le Nouvel Observateur, McCain says: "There's only one solution left." Palin replies: "Bomb Wall Street".
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's ambassador in Kabul, has a reputation for holding strong opinions and making them heard. He may not, however, have wanted his views on the state of the allied effort in Afghanistan to be published in a French newspaper.
This nightmare for any diplomat appears to have happened today. Le Canard Enchaîné, a satirical weekly that often publishes embarrassing leaks, has printed extracts from a cable from the French deputy ambassador after a meeting with Sir Sherard.
The French Foreign Ministry tells us that it deplores the publication but does not deny the existence of the cable. According to François Fitou, the French deputy ambassador to Kabul, Cowper-Coles, 53, thinks that the war is lost and the allies should leave the country to a dictator. That is hardly the view of the British government -- or of President Sarkozy.
The French Socialist opposition holds about the same dim view on the Afghan campaign, in which France has some 3,000 troops. French military officers have been arguing the same points privately.
In his cable to President Sarkozy's office and Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, Fitou summarised Sir Sherard's thinking thus, according to le Canard.
The British ambassador and his deputy have in turn contacted me to pass on their analysis of the situation before the Franco-British meeting on Afghanistan. These were their main points:
-- The current situation is bad. The security situation is getting worse. So is corruption and the government has lost all trust. Our public statements should not delude us over the fact that the insurrection, while incapable of winning a military victory, nevertheless has the capacity to make life increasingly difficult, including in the capital.
-- The presence -- especially the military presence -- of the coalition is part of the problem, not the solution. The foreign forces are ensuring the survival of a regime which would collapse without them. In doing so, they are slowing down and complicating an eventual exit from the crisis (which, moreover, will probably be dramatic.
Ambassador Cowper was also quoted as telling the French the following:
The reinforcement of the military presence would have a perverse effect: it would identify us even more clearly as an occupying force and it would multiply the number of targets (for the insurgents).
We have no alternative to supporting the United States in Afghanistan... but we should tell them that we want to be part of a winning strategy, not a losing one.
"Within five or ten years from now... (it would be positive) if Afghanistan were governed by an acceptable dictator... This outlook is the only realistic one and we should prepare our public opinion to accept it... In the short term we should dissuade the American presidential candidates from getting more bogged down in Afghanistan.... The American strategy is destined to fail.
Since posting this, we have heard from British sources that the meeting with Fitou took place but that the ambassador's quoted remarks represented a "parody" of what he said. Our sources take particular exception to the line about installing a dictator, which the ambassador never uttered, they say.
How do you run a military campaign in the age of cell phones, the internet and media emotion ? The difficulty of doing so is being illustrated in France as the Parliament votes today on the continuing deployment of French forces in Afghanistan.
There is little doubt that President Sarkozy will win the endorsement but the government is embarrassed by the anger that has followed the deaths of 10 soldiers in a Taleban ambush
France heard immediately that the August 18 battle at Sarobi, 30 miles east of Kabul was a disaster. Survivors phoned home to their families the night afterwards and they also talked to reporters about the failures that allowed the Taleban to overpower them. As well as the dead, 21 were wounded in the all-night fighting. Reinforcements arrived late, no reconnaissance had been carried out in a dangerous zone, air cover did not work and ammunition ran out.
Bereaved parents and partners of the young paratroopers then went on television and radio attacking the army for getting them into the mess and Sarkozy for keeping France in Afghanistan. The President flew to Kabul to comfort the troops and the families were flown out to visit to the site of the ambush "to help them in their mourning".
Wives of soldiers in the French contingent were on the radio this morning complaining that they could not stand the strain of knowing their men were in possible combat. "If he doesn't phone by 8 pm I start worrying myself sick," said one. Others called for Sarkozy to bring the boys home from a mistaken war. Wives also reported that their husbands were poorly equipped to fight. One soldier has to take off his body armour to shoot because it is too big, his wife said. Another wife reported that morale in the Kabul detachment was very low.
The latest fuss is over the leaking of an American report on the French bungling of the hillside battle. According to the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper, which published extracts, the French paratroopers ran out of bullets and did not have proper communication equipment, forcing them to stop fighting after 90 minutes. The Taleban were better equipped and trained and used incendiary bullets to punch holes in the French armoured vehicles, and so on. The army denied that this was a Nato analysis, saying that it was just an ill-informed e-mail from an officer with American special forces who had taken part in the French patrol. But the damage has been done.
Not surprisingly, a poll after the ambush showed that 55 percent want Sarkozy to pull France's 2,700 troops out of the Nato operation in Afghanistan. With few exceptions today, the media are calling for a rethink and some for a French withdrawal. A serving soldier's mother wrote a plea in L'Humanité, the communist daily, calling Sarkozy and the generals liars at the service of Uncle Sam and ending: "Give us back our children".
Sarkozy and his government are committed to staying in Afghanistan, where France has been part of the Nato force since 2001. But they are hard on the defensive with a public opinion and military and political experts in a defeatist consensus that the war can never be won.
Of course democracies need public support to send troops into danger and the media are there to expose failures. But discussion of the merits of French engagement in Afghanistan is being drowned out by emotion over what in earlier ages would have been deemed a skirmish. This is by no means typically French. It happens everywhere now that we all expect instant information and video to go with it.
 For once Nicolas Sarkozy had some good news to announce this morning -- the release by French naval commandos of two hostages who had been held aboard their yacht off Somalia for the past two weeks (story here).
Sarko was in his best commander-in-chief mode -- with the Prime Minister and Armed Forces chief at his sides -- when he staged a 10am news conference to take the credit. He had been up all night running the operation, he said. He ordered the assault when it became clear that the pirates were taking le Carré d'As, the yacht, to the Somali mainland. Let this be a lesson to pirates everywhere, he said, that France would not allow crime to pay. "Whenever any French person is in danger in the world, the state will use all means to save them."
Sarko deserves praise. He took the risk of ordering the assault and he would have been immediately blamed if it had gone wrong. This is the kind of action that he does well. His talents as a tough enforcer made his reputation when he was Interior Minister and police chief from most of 2002-2007.
In an earlier existence, in 1993, I watched Sarko's courage close up when he negotiated with a dangerous hostage taker. A man calling himself "Human Bomb" had taken a class of kindergarten children hostage in Neuilly. Younger Sarko, then Mayor of Neuilly and a junior government minister, went in to negotiate with the man and persuaded him to release some children. We were waiting outside behind a police line. Human Bomb was eventually shot dead by officers from the RAID, the police intervention unit, and all the children rescued.
It is fair game to note, however, the brazen way that Sarko goes about maximising the credit. His performance this morning would have been worthy of George W Bush or Vladimir Putin at their most macho. Every citizen could count on Sheriff Sarko, he said. "For me two French hostages on the Carré d'As were the same as 30 on the Ponant." Le Ponant was the big cruising yacht whose crew and passengers were released after the payment of a ransom last spring. French forces seized six of the pirates and some of the ransom immediately afterwards. Today's action brings to a total of 12 the Somali pirates now enjoying the hospitality of French mainland jails.
The past few months have shown that the unpopular President has benefited from his exploits outside France. His aproval ratings have climbed about seven points from their high 30s or low 40s of the late spring, according to polls. The pollsters say this comes from his deft crisis management abroad in recent weeks: notably his brokering of a Russian ceasefire in Georgia on behalf of the European Union. France also reacted well to his handling of the deaths of 10 soldiers in Afghanistan, despite the unpopularity of his decision to send troops there.
Speedy Sarko, the micro-managing "hyper-president", may even be giving way to the classical kind of head of state that France has known since the creation of the Vth Republic 50 years ago next month. In this model, set by Charles de Gaulle, the president runs foreign policy while staying in the background as his Prime Minister takes the domestic political heat. Another sign of this is a sudden slide in the ratings of François Fillon, the Prime Minister, who until recently was much more popular than his boss.
Sarkozy was determined to let nothing spoil his glory today. He refused to say a word about the international financial crisis which is compounding French unhappiness over rising prices.
The French government has just invented another good reason to use china, glasses and cutlery when you eat outdoors. It's going to put a substantial tax on cardboard plates and plastic bags, glasses and eating implements.
The so-called taxe pique-nique is to be modelled on a Belgian law which came into effect a year ago. This applies a 20 percent levy on plastic bags, wrap, disposable dishes and cutlery. Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the Ecology Secretary, confirmed the tax this morning after it was disclosed by Le Journal du Dimanche. She did not say how big it would be.
President Sarkozy's government has been seriously smitten by the green bug. The picnic tax is part of an imminent big expansion of its "bonus-malus" scheme, which adds a penalty to the price of high-polluting cars and rewards those who buy green- friendly vehicles.
Starting from next January, the green bonus-malus system will be applied to about 20 products, including refrigerators, television, computers, mobile phones, wooden furniture, lightbulbs, paint, detergent, tyres and perhaps even new apartments and houses. The Ecology Secretary added a new item today: disposable nappies (diapers). "We could arrange it so that all maternity hospitals teach you how to use reuseable nappies," she said.
France already puts up with more taxes of different types than most places but the beauty of the scheme, in the eyes of Jean-Louis Borloo, the superminister for the Environment, is that the money will be given back to people who choose the most environmentally virtuous products. The system has worked well with cars. Buyers of small vehicles get up to 1,000 euros back. Completely electric vehicles will get 5,000 euros. Borloo is working on items and the levies ahead of the 2009 budget later this month. But the Finance Ministry is said to be unhappy over the complexity of a system that will need a whole new buraucracy to operate and which could dent consumption when the economy is already struggling.
Maybe they should just ban all produits jetables -- disposable products -- for picnics. French food and drink deserves more than cardboard and plastic. Here's the correct setting for un pique-nique (except for the paper napkins).
A priest in full soutane overtook me this morning. He was pedalling furiously on a Vélib, one of the Paris self-service bicycles. It was a sign of the day's big event -- the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI on a mission to stiffen morale in France's fading Catholic church.
[News story here]
The shy pontiff is not exciting the crowds as the late John-Paul II did on his visits to the Church's eldest daughter, as France has been known since the middle ages. But he has an unlikely ally in the person of the twice-divorced, not very devout President Sarkozy.
Sarko and Carla Bruni, the supermodel wife who this year converted to monogamy, went to Orly to pay the Pope the rare honour of an airport welcome. It's the first time that Sarko has made such an airport trip since taking office in May last year.
The President, a lapsed Roman Catholic, will as usual over-do things. He plans to the use the visit to renew his campaign for France to return to religious values and its Christian roots. He caused uproar at home but delighted the Pope when he first made the appeal in Rome last December (That was when he took along his friend Jean-Marie Bigard, the coarse comedian who does not believe that the 9/11 attacks happened).
Sarko was widely reproached for infringing the doctrine of laicité, the 1905 law that keeps religion out of all official aspects of the Republic. As an example of how this works, Charles de Gaulle, a very practising Catholic, did not take communion in public when he was president. Hardline republicains say that Sarko is trying to restore the church to the privileged role that it played in the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte. Interestingly, the Garde Républicaine band played The Emperor's March straight after the two anthems as the Pope reviewed the honour guard at the airport.
Sarkozy's doctrine of "laicité positive", as he calls it, means recognising that religion -- whether Christian, Muslim or any other -- has a valuable role in public life. "It is in the interest of the Republic that there are a lot of men and women who believe," he said in Rome. He compounded his offence in the eyes of France's leftwing, anti-clerical education establishment by saying that "the primary school teacher will never replace the priest" as a moral tutor for children.
Sarkozy persuaded le Saint Père, an impeccable French-speaker and scholar of modern French literature, to come to Paris before visiting Lourdes on Sunday in order to talk in the Elysée Palace and then address artists, intellectuals and scientists. He is unlikely to share with Sarko his very dark view of people who commit the "grave fault" of divorce, as he calls it. Over half a million people are expected to attend an evening service at Notre Dame Cathedral tonight and an open-air mass on the Esplanade des Invalides tomorrow. Nine thousand police are being deployed to guard him.
The trip is difficult because the Vatican sees France as one of the least godly among its senior flock -- certainly compared with the Americas, Poland, Ireland and the southern European nations. Just over half the French still call themselves Catholic but only seven percent of these attend mass regularly. There is a dire shortage of priests; hundreds of churches have closed; a majority of French children are born outside marriage.
The Vatican also faults its French church leaders for failing to market the faith more vigorously in the face of the state-enforced secularism. Monsignor André Vingt-Trois, the Archbishop of Paris, denied this week that the Pope was coming to deliver a pep talk and he insisted that "the church is not a field of ruins. I do not see him coming to tell us to pull up our socks," he said. "The Church in France is not gravely ill; it is even seriously alive."
Church French members conceded that their numbers have dwindled but they point to a new activism among younger believers who are focusing more on celebrating the faith than tradition. The trouble is that these younger Catholics are uneasy about the conservative, German-born Pontiff who was known as the PanzerKardinal when the he was the Vatican's doctrinal policeman.
Cardinal Vingt-Trois conceded yesterday: "For the French, the Pope is still John Paul II. He came to France every two or three years. It has to do with the two men's personalities. Benedict is not a man for the crowds. He is a very private person."
If anyone needed proof of France's love for Barack Obama, le Figaro offered it today with an opinion poll. This finds that 80 percent of the French want the Democrat candidate to win the US presidency while only eight percent favour John McCain.
The poll was carried out by TNS Sofres on September 2 and 3, before McCain benefited from the Sarah Palin bounce but it gives an idea of the overwhelming wish in France to see a President Obama take office. Eighty-six percent have a good opinion of him compared with only 35 percent for McCain. The strong support cuts across social class and the political spectrum. The most senior French politicians at the Democratic convention came from President Sarkozy's rightwing UMP party, not the leftwing opposition.
The BBC found pro-Obama feeling to be strong worldwide in a poll this week, but the passion seems to run higher in France than anywhere. There are reasons for this.
France has an idealised and schizophrenic view of the United States that dates back to 1776 when King Louis XVI helped the colonial insurgents fight Britain's peace-keeping force. France feels that it has a founding share in the nation which bestowed jazz, GIs, cocktails, JFK and Clint Eastwood on Europe. It dislikes what it sees as the more primary, messianic and intolerant America that is represented by Republicans and personified by George W Bush.
Continue reading "Barack Obama, the French American idol " »
This is a small gripe about how lightly our leaders spend money -- and other people's time. I have just spent a pointless nine hours on trains plus an unnecessary night in a hotel because Nicolas Sarkozy decided at the last minute that he preferred to have a decent sleep in his own bed in Paris (see Sarko's apology in update at end).
Sarko spent Monday doing his shuttle diplomacy between Moscow and Tbilisi, Georgia. He was due to fly back late at night for the long-planned summit between the European Union (represented by Sarkozy and the brass from Brussels) and Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian President. The session was due to take place at Evian, the spa town on lake Geneva. The meeting is quite important given that Ukraine, a country of 46 million people, is seen as Russia's next target after its de facto partition of Georgia.
(Here's the outcome of the summit)
Sarko's people knew that the day would be very long and that the President would not land back in France until the small hours today. But by the evening, Sarkozy was tired. His session with President Medvedev in Moscow had been especially trying. The president told people on his plane that he had picked up his jacket and threatened to walk out at one stage. Sarkozy prefers always to sleep at home, so he decreed late in the day that he would not make the trip to Evian. President Yushchenko would have to come to Paris instead.
We were just arriving in Evian after a long train journey. The grand Ermitage hotel was all set up for the summit, with French, Ukrainian and EU delegations in place and media pouring in. So it was about turn and a late-night free-for-all for transport back to Paris for the Ukraine talks.
The switch was just a nuisance to us humble reporters. But it cost the French and European tax-payer money and it annoyed the Ukrainians who are now being rushed through a shortened meeting at the Elysée Palace at the behest of France's impatient president. Speedy Sarko's indifference to protocol often ruffles feathers. He has annoyed India, Bulgaria, Britain and other parties over the past 15 months by cutting official and state visits to the strict minimum. That's his prerogative of course. But it would have been nice to have the dinner that they promised us at the Ermitage (below) last night instead of sitting on another train.
PS, I don't expect any sympathy. And I realise that this is the second post in a week about Evian.
Final note: Sarkozy has just apologised to Evian and those who made the pointless trip. "We got back to Paris at 5.30 am. You can understand that it was a bit complicated to leave again immediately [to Evian]".
Continue reading "The frustrations of keeping up with Sarkozy" »
Paris is missing its Americans. Visitors from the United States stayed 20 percent fewer nights in the French capital in the first six months of the year. It's nothing personal says the Tourist Office. The high euro and US economic trouble is being blamed.
But politics were clearly behind the 6.7 percent fall in Chinese visitors [table below]. Beijing travel agencies took France off their brochures in April in an anti-French boycott after the hostile reception in Paris for the Olympic torch.
The Japanese were also down eight percent, contributing to a an overall 2.6 percent drop in nights spent by foreign travellers in the French capital. Paris remains the world's most visited city and and tourists from the French provinces more than compensated for the first slide in foreign stays for years.
The owners of the expanding supply of ultra-luxury hotels are gleeful over the 14 percent rise of rich visitors from the Gulf states. Hotels in the "golden triangle", between the Avenue Montaigne and the Champs Elysées, are making a special effort to meet their late night and late-rising habits. A couple of cinemas in the district are doing well from showing Arabic films late at night. A Saudi prince paid 15,000 euros to have the Elysées-Biarritz theatre ship in a new film and show it to his friends at three am, according to Hugues Piketty, the cinema director.
Jean-Bertrand Bros, the Deputy Mayor for tourism, says that the outlook is rosy. The flow from traditional tourist nations may slow further, but they are being replaced by a surge from the BRIC powers -- Brazil, Russia, India and China. Wherever they come from, they all want to see the three top monuments: the Eiffel Tower, the Sacré Coeur basilica and the Louvre.
Students of the Paris mentality should have a have a look at an internet site which collects amusing snippets of conversations heard around town. It's called Entendu à Paris (Heard in Paris) and is modelled on the popular Overheard in New York. It does not yet have anything like quantity of entries on that site, but there are a few funny glimpses of the Paris mentality.
Take for example the line heard between two fifty-something women in the posh Bois de Boulogne at 12.37 pm on August 4. "How can you admire Marie-Claude? She has made a complete mess of her life. She lives in the provinces." People do still talk like that.
Here's the league table of main visiting countries. The Russians, who number about 200,000 a year, were counted in "other Europeans" which are not on this summary from the Tourist Office. The British have long been the biggest visitors, especially since the Eurostar tunnel express brought London closer in 1994.
France began the new year today. The children don't go back to school until September 1, but for most others, the last Monday in August is la rentrée. The summer is almost over, the government is back and the big event is the debut tonight of la Ferrari.
Laurence Ferrari, 42 (below), is taking over as presenter of the TF1 Journal Télévisé, Europe's the most watched TV news programme. The firing last June of Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, the "Pope" of the JT for the past two decades, was something of a national trauma, as you may recall. 'PPDA' got on many people's nerves but his daily communion with the nation has been missed. Ferrari, a friend of Sarkozy, has to prove quickly that she can fill his shoes.
The new season also means year two for President Sarkozy. Not that the hyper-president has taken much of a break, with August trips to the Beijing Olympics, to Moscow and Georgia to negotiate a ceasefire and to Afghanistan to comfort French troops after they lost 10 men (video below). Here's a quick view of Sarkozia at the opening of season II:
France felt different 12 months ago. Hopes for change were high and the newly elected Super Sarko was basking in 69 percent approval but suffering from the breakdown of his marriage. A year on, a slightly more humble Sarko has a new super-model wife, the economy is down, his promises appear unfulfilled and 59 percent disapprove of him.
For some, Sarko has become a hate figure, a self-obsessed showman who tricked voters with promises of prosperity, threw money at the rich and unleashed a whirlwind of reforms that has torn through cherished institutions. These include the hospital system, the 35-hour working week, unemployment and retirement benefits, the law courts, the universities and so on.
As François Hollande, leader of the moribund Socialist opposition, put it: "He is not reforming France. He is shaking it up, creating mayhem, unbalancing it. Sarkozy divides, stigmatizes and then destroys." Sarko's sin, Hollande told Le Parisien, is that he is trying to make France 'Anglo-Saxon'. "His project is to individualise social relations: everyone must now take care of themselves all alone."
The latest embarrassment for Sarko is this clip from his visit to Kabul last Wednesday. It drew little comment on the TV news last week but it has taken on a life of its own, feeding the Sarkophobes of the internet who say he is sneering with a misplaced joke.
Sarkozy's words to the comrades of the fallen soldiers were not especially striking. People are irked because he seems to make light of the Taleban ambush that befell the French paratroop patrol near Kabul. "If it had to be done again, I would do it," says the president, adding with an awkward smirk "Not the patrol..."
I disagree with the criticism. This video shows Sarkozy's awkward side, not contempt for the soldiers. The little smirk is one of his many nervous tics.
Continue reading "Sombre Sarkozy opens tough new season" »
Another weekend back in the Cévennes, thanks to Carla Bruni, Nicolas Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama. The Lerab Ling sanctuary, home of Europe's biggest Tibetan temple, is on the edge of the high Larzac plain, just across the hills from here. It was there that Sarko despatched his supermodel wife to meet the Dalai Lama.
We tagged along to what was one of the more exotic events of the Sarkozy reign so far -- a mixture of religious service, safron diplomacy and Woodstock-like happening. It certainly made for great pictures, with Carla joining the Tibetan spiritual leader at the head of a procession around the sumptuous hillside temple before they cut an inaugural ribbon at its door. Outside hundreds of faithful joined in communion as the monks chanted, horns sounded and cymbals clashed. Inside, arrayed before a 25-feet high golden Buddha, were a gathering of Parisian beautiful people and senior figures from Europe's thriving Buddhist movement. Among them were Juliette Binoche, the film star, and Inès de la Fressange, the former Chanel égérie
The idea was to show that the President was ready -- up to a point -- to defy stark warnings from China and show support for Tibet during the Olympic Games. You will remember that Sarkozy cancelled a plan to meet the Dalai Lama last month after the Chinese ambassador to Paris warned him that there would be "serious consequences" for France if he went ahead. Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister and Rama Yade, the Secretary for Human Rights, were also on hand yesterday to make the point that Sarko cares.
Bruni, whose new pop album is near the top of the hit parade, carried off her mission flawlessly. Elegant in her white khata scarf -- bestowed on honoured guests -- , she smiled gracefully, clasped her hands reverently and said nothing in public. Kouchner, a lifelong humanitarian campaigner, was clearly more embarrassed by the delicate exercise of minimising the ire of China.
Beijing warned Paris again on Thursday that it took a dim view of Sarko's "operation karma". His Holiness did his own bit to raise the stakes the same day. He dropped the pretense that his French trip was purely religious and publicly denounced Chinese repression in Tibet. After a 20-minute meeting yesterday, the normally voluble Kouchner would only tell us: "I told the Dalai Lama that he was always welcome in France." The Tibetan leader did not mince words. He told Kouchner that "a certain form of extremely brutal repression is continuing to reign in Tibet in parallel with the Olympics." We heard that from Matthieu Ricard, the French monk who is the Dalai Lama's spokesman here, as well as his biographer.
 [Lerab Ling temple, near Lodève, Hérault]
Meanwhile, the Socialist opposition continued to mock Sarko for his "pseudo-diplomacy" and wobbly policy in which he talked tough to Beijing over human rights and then backtracked under Chinese pressure. The President will glad to see the end of the Olympics and the back of the Dalai Lama.
Away from the politics, it was impressive to watch the "Ocean of Tranquility" in action. Under his leadership, you can see why Buddhism, with its relaxed, tolerant view of the world has so many acolytes in Europe. Six million French say they feel drawn by the religion, according to polls, though only 600,000 are practitioners. About 2,000 people turned out for yesterday's ceremonies, including many who had driven far across Europe to get there.
The Dalai Lama's sermon, delivered cross-legged atop a high dais after 45 minutes of chanting and prayer, could not have been more different from a homily by the Pope or England's Archbishop of Canterbury. It was improvised and chatty and punctuated by a self-mocking laugh.
The message was simple: since even billionaires could be unhappy, material comfort was not the way to a good life. "We should strive for inner peace in the concert of God.... We also have responsibility to take care of the planet. The trees and all beautiful things are part of creation ... Harmony is very very essential." He blessed all religions and then broke off, saying: "I won't go on because our most important item today is lunch."
I'm back in Paris from Moscow but the news is still Russian. President Sarkozy has warned the Kremlin of the dire consequences that will ensue if it fails to pull its troops out of Georgia. If it does not, he will... call a special meeting of the European Union council. That will give Vladimir Putin pause for thought.
And we have confirmation today that a spectacular Belle Epoque villa on the Riviera is being bought by a Russian billionaire for the astonishing sum of 496 million euros (731 million dollars).
The two events can be linked. The Russian purchase of the Leopolda villa [above] is an in-your-face display of the power enjoyed by the oligarchs who have amassed fortunes with the indulgence of Russia's governing caste. We do not yet know who is behind the world record real estate deal. The French media reported that it was Mikhael Prokhorov, 42, [picture below], a nickel baron, who was humiliated by French prosecutors when he was detained him at Courchevel, the glitzy ski resort 18 months ago. He was held for four days on suspicion of bringing dozens of prostitutes from Moscow to entertain his Alpine party guests but no charges were brought. The episode was seen in Moscow as a French plot to humiliate a leading Russian. Prokhorov's office in Moscow has denied that he is the purchaser and added that he will not set foot in France until the French apologise for the way he was treated.
Whichever oligarch splashed out on the Leopolda, the deal symbolises the new Russians' taste for flaunting their power in a west which in recent decades gave their country little respect. The rush by the Moscow rich on London and French playgrounds, is part of the renaissance of Russian confidence and muscle that we have seen applied to Georgia over the past 10 days.
The hammering of Georgia has ended western illusions that Putin's Russia was still a tame, diminished version of the former super power. You can argue about who should be blamed for what, as a couple of hundred people have done so far on the last posting here. In my humble view, after last week in Moscow and watching Russia since the Cold War, the west sowed trouble and missed a big opportunity with its triumphalism after the collapse of communism and its condescending approach during the chaotic years of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.
After that, the west was naive towards the authoritarian, reviving Russia of Vladimir Putin. The Americans should have realised that pushing Nato into the Caucasus and Ukraine would sooner or later goad the Kremlin into action. Georgia's unwise attack on its separatist, Russian-defended, province provided the occasion. At the same time, Europe's western continental states have been over-indulgent towards the Kremlin, allowing themselves to become dependent on Russian energy.
Everyone has woken up now that the empire has struck back. The calendar seems to have been unwound by a quarter of a century as the west wonders what to do about Russia's assertion of power beyond its frontiers.
No doubt the answer is a modern version of the formula that worked before -- firmness along with a willingness to engage. But things are different this time. For all its need for Russian resources, the west has levers that it did not have with the Soviet Union. Think of that 496 million euro villa on the Riviera. Russia is now part of the global financial and economic system and it is eager to become a full member of the club. The west should make this, and the respect which Putin craves for Russia, conditional on good behaviour. At stake are Moscow's applicatoin for membership of the World Trade Organisation and its continuing presence in the club of rich nations, known as G8 since it was admitted to the G7 in 1997.
A more personal argument was set out to me in Moscow last week by Pavel Felgenhauer, a Russian military analyst who is critical of the Kremlin. "It's not like the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan or Stalin's days," he said. "The men in the Politburo weren't businessmen. In crises, they weren't worried about losing billions of their personal funds if things went wrong." Sections of the current leadership with big interests in the outside world are very worried about being ostracized by the west, he said.
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PS: Apologies to those who want me to get back into Franco-French matters. Next time, I hope, though there may be an incursion into Belgium first.
As the sun rose over a hot Moscow this morning, it was hard not to imagine that we are in the remake of an old movie. I was criticized by some here yesterday for making the cold war comparison, but it’s difficult to escape.
The radio I was listening to was not the old Radio Moscow of Soviet days. But Vesti FM, all jingles and sizzle, opened the morning news with an attack on the United States for fanning the flames of cold war via the Caucasus. The Georgian attack on South Ossetia was part of a plot masterminded by Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, we were told. The war-mongering neo-conservatives are using it to get the Republican John McCain elected to the White House in November. The Washington plot line, widespread in Moscow commentary this week, was last heard in the days of Presidents Andropov and Reagan.
The world is a different place since those times a quarter of a century ago, but the plot is familiar. The Russians are using military power to assert their authority over troublesome small neighbours in their “near abroad”. The Americans are flexing their muscles and trying push the frontiers of the Atlantic alliance eastward – this time into the Caucasus, a region which Russia has for centuries deemed to be its back yard.
As President Bush ordered the US military to take humanitarian relief into Georgia, Condaleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, made a direct comparison:
“This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbours, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed.” Just like the old days, the tough stance in Washington is making the Europeans nervous.
The old-style language is all over the Russian media, voicing defensiveness and anger over what is seen as bullying by what used to be the other super-power. “The West has spent a lot of time, energy and money to teach Georgia the tricks of the trade … to make the country look like a democracy,” said Vasily Mikhachev, a former Russian ambassador to the EU. “We and many other nations see through this deceit. We understand that the seditious tactics of the so-called colour revolutions are a real threat to international law and the source of global legal nihilism.”
Last night, Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister, a blustering but suave type, said Washington had been playing a "dangerous game" .
This time around, the Russians have more ammunition for the war of words since the Washington administration has put raw ideology high in its own public communications effort for years – especially over Iraq, as Russian friends keep pointing out. One friend made a sharp point: "In the old days under Soviet rule we didn't believe a word of our own propaganda but we thought that information was free in the west. We admired that and wanted to be like that. But we have learned since that you have your own propaganda and in some ways it is more powerful because people believe it. "
So how does this play out ? While most outsiders agree that Russia reacted with calculated brutality to Georgia’s attack on South Ossetia last week, there is disagreement on the way the west should respond.
It’s the old hawks and doves argument again. The old Soviet bloc states of Europe are behind Washington and pushing for a hard line against their old master. Other Europeans and some Americans believe that Washington’s drive for Georgia’s Nato membership and a US s anti-missile shield have needled Moscow too much. I was talking to Carlo Gallo, a Russia specialist at Control Risk yesterday. The US would be making a mistake to revert to a policy of containment – the old cold war policy, he said. “It would backfire and play into the hands of hardliners who argue that the west is always conspiring against Russia.” You hear the same from the French, who are trying to play the role of honest broker.
Meanwhile, down in the Caucasus, the hot part of the little war is not yet over. The Russians are reported to be starting to pull out of the Georgian town of Gori – - meeting one of President Bush’s demands yesterday. And Condoleezza Rice is about to arrive in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, to bolster a government that President Medvedev of Russia calls barbaric and a perpetrator of genocide.
Russia is back. Simplifying a little, that was the line that President Medvedev conveyed as he lectured us in the Kremlin about the new situation in the Caucasus after Russia’s lightning war with Georgia.
It felt like old times for someone who lived in Moscow in the days of the old Soviet bear. As the headline of this post, I almost wrote "Back in the USSR"
We had hung around for five hours under the splendid white and blue dome of the Catherine Hall of as President Nicolas Sarkozy of France huddled with Medvedev and, more importantly, Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister. The outcome was a cease-fire that restacks the Caucasian cards in Russian favour (story here) after Georgia’s ill-advised attack on South Ossetia. Putin, who remains the boss despite leaving the presidency, disappeared after the talks, leaving Medvedev to savour in public the fruit of what amounts to a short, sharp military lesson by Russia towards one of its upstart former Republics – which happens to be a protégé of the USA. “When crazy people scent blood, you have to use surgery halt them,” Medvedev said of Mikhail Saakashvili, Georgia’s young, US-educated president.
Breaking off his holidays on the Riviera, Sarko had come with Bernard Kouchner, his Foreign Minister, to mediate as current chairman of the European Union. (We had to pile onto the French Air Force Airbus at 4.30 am yesterday).
Usually the French president loves to grab the limelight as trouble-shooter, but he was on the defensive and a little sheepish when he emerged.
Continue reading "Russia calls the shots with Sarkozy" »
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".
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John,
Sorry for still having some white people around.Are we still allowed to display old postcards, pictures of our grand-parents, see our former kings queens eventhough they were all white? If you have a problem with Europe being mainly white, Africa being mainly black, China being mainly asian, then i am afraid you'll have to deal with it and... suffer...Maybe you have a problem with skin colours?
You remind me some politicians claiming after loosing an election "We are right, the people is wrong, let's change the people!"
Daniel Strohl,
Et pourquoi voulez vous me changer mon biotope à moi que j'ai? Vais-je me plaindre des concerts, des bateaux sur les canaux, ou de l'accent charmant des habitants de Strasbourg en des termes aussi violents? Je pense que vos mots ont dépassé votre pensée. Les parisiens ont-ils encore le droit d'organiser des évènements sur Paris ou bien n'est-ce réservé qu'aux provinciaux en province? Les parisiens vous semblent "rances"? Je ne n'aventurerai pas sur ce terrain là...
Posted by: Dominique | 17 Jul 2009 18:17:21
"Touché" (DOMINIQUE II)
LOL !
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 17:11:22
DOMINIQUE II,
Per pure coincidence, we watched a "retransmission" of Dr.Knock on TV may be 3 or 4 days ago (on cable TV - can't remember the channel).
A perfect complement to an article about (the well and purposely organised) waste of money in our Sécurité Sociale system :
http://www.lefigaro.fr/sante/2009/07/18/01004-20090718ARTFIG00001-medicaments-des-milliards-d-euros-gaspilles-.php
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 17:04:54
"and France's moderate drinking habits" (CHARLES)
LOL - reminds of some recent poster comments on various more or less exotic drinking habits :).
"which will throw all these central Paris bobos and their stale view ..." (JOHN)
Let us hope so - mais ils vont essayer de s'accrocher :).
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 16:51:29
(demure single-piece swimsuits are the fashion this year, but I'm not sure what's the tower is doing there).
Surtout qu'elle est agressivement placée sous le menton de l'ondine volante.
Posted by: DODO | 17 Jul 2009 16:40:30
.....I'm sure Cabu will have a nice pension until his last quiet days drawing such rubbish. I'm not so sure about the rest of us.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 17 Jul 2009 12:41:42
Excellent comment Robert! Délicieusement politiquement incorrect. A chaque action répond la réaction. Loi physique implacable qui fait que le jeune révolutionnaire (Paix-au-Vietnam) devienne généralement un vieux conservateur (Bobo)
Posted by: DODO | 17 Jul 2009 16:30:09
RM
you've explained the lack of comment on countering the vandalism, and the dismissive tone of remarks about 'hard to discover in the middle of the night,' other excuses for not pursuing perpetrators.it almost excuses the abuse, the price society pays for pissing off various societal sub-groups because of lack of opportunity, gross inequity of wealth, etc.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 15:12:58
What's shocking in this picture is the whity-white Aryan woman that they chose. It completely negates the ethnic diversity of the Parisian population. But then it's typical of Delanoë's municipality, which has unfortunately ruled this city since 2001. Their waspish and Amélie-clichéesque boboism is sickening. I can't wait for Nicolas Sarkozy to finally create a Greater Paris including the ethnic and working-class suburbs which will throw all these central Paris bobos and their stale view of the city into the dustbin of history.
Posted by: John | 17 Jul 2009 15:05:38
[demure single-piece swimsuits are the fashion this year] CB
is 'poster woman' flying or diving? no matter, esther williams 'lives.'
the only good thing i can think of about one-piece suits is not having to look at navel rings/studs, or those defiling, small 'gremlin,' or rose, tattoos peeking out above the suit line.
how do you do 'topless' in a one piece suit? the upper portion of the suit hanging down at the waist? hmmmm, not the 'look' you'd want to emphasize.
Paris Plage: cool idea. CB, will you be taking your pastey-white (i presume) British form, and sandwiches, over there from time to time? Take SPF 30 or above.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 14:51:49
RICK my anecdote on the U-Boot (which I can substantiate on request) was not meant as random entertainment nor as a profound view of potential parallel histories. It was to be read in the same breath as the previous sentences: "I wouldn't have posted the pics but you were fair game. Enough with the posturing." (said pics being HRH the Duke of Edimburgh and the Missus on the best of terms with the distinguished Chancellor of the Third Kingdom).
My point, which was clear to anybody with average command of standard English, was that you do not, and should not, enjoy immunity from taunts about appeasement and ill-placed sympathies, because only a very thin hull or a leaking gasket spared you the dire straits we floundered in.
We were not a weak, cowardly populace as opposed to you, a proudly fighting nation; we were very similar human beings in slightly different circumstances. And Sir Winston, who perfectly perceived this, had the genius and the unique ability to mold the circumstances so the English had no choice but to stand proud. In so doing, he took the only path to the good side's victory and I am unreservedly thankful to him.
(Layman's summary: I was not delving in non-realized theoretic possibilities, but in historical fact, ie the status of opinion and political tendencies in Britain before and at the beginning of the war).
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 14:51:44
ROCKET "Whereas in the case of French soldiers, both men and women no hygienic products necessary. (very wide grin)"
LOL it is clear Daniel had opened himself to your well prepared and well delivered broadside. Touché.
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 14:14:56
RICK "persecution fantasies, (...) xenophobia, ‘esprit de clocher’, localism, infantilism, and so on"
Are you morphing into the blog's Dr Knock, head shrink variety?
(I won't insult you by explaining to you who Dr. Knock is).
It's so much easier to slap pathological-sounding labels on arguments than to address them...
I know, I know: René's post contained no arguments. That's your standard and rather tiresome summary of anything that riles. Find something else... it's especially ludicrous in that case. René certainly held an opinion, but he made his points with clarity, supported them with fact and remained courteous throughout. (The last one is why I'm not promoting him to honorary Frenchman).
Meeting his post with such undeserved contempt may help you vent your bile, a laudable end per se, but your own credibility isn't enhanced a single bit.
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 14:04:25
Thanks Azloon - yes you are right in principle: Democracy is to be valued. But my problem is that France has a long history of extreme division and when the figures are that close it leaves a lot of people disgruntled as we have seen lately. It would have been better if they had been more like 60% - 40% something decisive even though I still wouldnt have liked the outcome (smile). Anyway we shall see at the next parliamentary and presidential elections. I just hope by then that the *Socialist* party has got itself together so there are real differences of policy. Democracy is about choice and if there is no real difference (look at Con servative and New Labour policies over the last 20 years broadly speaking) then there is no real choice. Anyway as you say keep hoping!
Posted by: thinknoworpaylater | 17 Jul 2009 14:02:25
[since old hand posters like myself and others know your name and address] Daniel
Thanks for reminding me. Just knowing this helps keep me from going completely overboard. and we 'old salts' don't want to become 'all wet.' :)
Rick, indeed.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 13:54:18
"consistently monochromous' -- Dom2
i love it when you talk that way to me.....
'probably sincere'
faint praise, indeed. but better than a stick in the eye. :)
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 13:34:27
As Charles Bremner has hinted, the official poster campaign purporting to dissuade vandalism on Vélibs is woefully inadequate. In fact, it encompasses the contradictions of modern-day political thinking on multiple levels.
Cabu, who drew the poster, is one of the French icons of May-68 rebelliousness. He spent decades using his (real) talent to depict, in his cartoons, long-haired youngsters making fun of old farts : teachers, army officers, priests, bosses and politicians.
Unfettered freedom was good ; authority was bad.
Cabu's character "mon beauf" acquired such celebrity that he coined a new word into the French language.
Cabu's "beauf" was the brother-in-law ("beau-frère") of the young, cool and leftist narrator.
His "beauf" was the anti-hero : middle-aged, working-class, ugly, vulgar, loud-mouthed, and, especially, right-wing and racist.
"Mon beauf" spent hours at the bistro du coin drinking Ricard, ranting about law and order and criticising excessive immigration.
Cabu's young, easy-going and likeable hero (presumably himself) seemed constantly appalled by his beauf's dreadful inclinations. The cute, blonde young things with short skirts and pointing tits who always seemed to surround the hero helped ram the message home : racist right-wingers don't get laid.
(How do I know they were blonde, since the cartoons are black and white ? Don't ask. That's obvious.)
Now, everybody in France understands what "un beauf" means : a middle-aged reactionary, pleased with himself, disparaging the young and ranting about law and order.
The irony is even greater, since Cabu's character evolved into a second-generation "beauf", more in line with modern times. This born-again, upmarket beauf' sports a ponytail and flashes his wealth around.
He's dangerously close to the "bobo", the bourgeois-bohême who, surprise, suprise, is the prime user of Vélibs.
Now Cabu seems to be on the Paris mayoral payroll : he has a regular column in the free municipal magazine, drawing cartoons as tame and unfunny as the Vélib poster.
Of course, the Paris mayor is socialist. I suppose that might be viewed as an excuse.
Also, note the downright stupidity of the poster's argument : don't attack Vélibs, because they can't defend themselves.
This shows how deeply out of touch our elites are with modern-day reality. If anything, such an argument will encourage vandals, not the other way round.
Haven't they noticed that the traditional, Western, French, Christian sense of honor, borne out of Middle-Ages chivalry, that this poster is appealing to, has completely disappeared ?
When was the last time hoodlum violence followed those time-honoured rules : you will fight one-on-one, you won't attack from behind, you won't hit a man on the ground, you won't hurt the weak, the old, the handicapped, or, God forbid, the women ?
Did not those snotty intellectuals and politicians notice that the rules for street violence have been turned on their head ?
Did not they notice that the rules now are : you will attack ten to one, you will hit from behind, you will make your victim fall, you will kick him in the head when he's on the ground, you will jump on his head with both feet, you will preferrably target the weak, hit the women, hit the old, hit and torture the handicapped ?
Did they not notice that the rules of chivalry have been replaced by the rules of Muslim warfare and African barbary, thanks to 40 years of uninterrupted immigration, of "anti-racist" propaganda and policy ?
If those rules stopped at Vélib vandalism, we'd be very fortunate.
Now that those old leftists are beginning to fathom the consequences of the hostile and deadly immigration they have foisted upon us, all they manage to do in order to repair their mistakes is use our money, from our taxes, to distribute to their friends who'll draw some lame propaganda posters.
I'm sure Cabu will have a nice pension until his last quiet days drawing such rubbish. I'm not so sure about the rest of us.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 17 Jul 2009 12:41:42
Oh la la - quelle belle phrase - vraiment formidable - "est-ce que le pays a les moyens de ses ambitions"? Really, when you come to think about it, it could apply to practically any other European country and European leader, and to Gordon and New Lab more than most. Helas, trois fois helas, l'Angleterre n'a plus les moyens des ambitions de New Lab. Cher Premier Ministre, que vous le vouliez ou non, vous devrez tres bientot couper les defences publiques, et tout le monde le sait- ca a deja commence- sauf vous. Cher Monsieur Brown, le pays n'a plus les moyens de vos ambitions. Excusez, je vous prie, le manque d'accents - mon PC est plutot New Lab et n'a pas les moyens de ses ambitions- graves, aigues ou petit chapeau circonflexe.
Posted by: Marguerite | 17 Jul 2009 12:24:20
They tried this too in Dublin's docklands for the last couple of years, but being typical Irish summers it rained every day and was a washout
Posted by: Evening Herault | 17 Jul 2009 11:42:27
"No, DOMINIQUE 2, to stop France looking foolish - something her friends DON'T want!" [RICK]
Gardez moi de mes amis. Quant à mes ennemis, je m'en charge.
("Protect me from my friends. I'll take care of my enemies").
Yes, ho ho, but unfunny, undignified too. The sheer capacity some French bloggers have for making for making fools of themselves is a source of constant wonderment.... and great disappointment.
Elsewhere, I wrote two long pieces to YOU. You quote for one (above). They were written in a sense of earnest seriousness. In return I get a snide aside.
Please understand this, PIERRE, I wrote “to stop France looking foolish”. That fact stands, no matter how often you scoff. In the big wide world out there, a lot of people don’t have much time for the French. Undeceive yourself. And recognise a friend.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 10:18:43
The Paris scheme is truly excellent and its a shame so many bikes are being lost. To be honest its not really a French phonnomeon if you put schemes things like this in big cities where people with huge degrees of wealth live side by side your always going to get people inclined to steal or vandalise such things, its just the way it is whethet in London, New York Paris or wherever. I'm suprised there's been such problems in Norway though can't account for that.
Posted by: sct | 17 Jul 2009 10:17:24
RH OMEA
2. And the idea that any American, where most every violent crime rate far exceeds that in France
If you are speaking about violent crime your appreciation is erroneous and this since the early 2000s
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/266umtwb.asp
en français
http://laurent.mucchielli.free.fr/france-usa.htm
which goes deeper into the phenomenon of criminality. So your remarks about criminality should really be checked before you are certain that you hold the absolute truth (stereotyped of course)
A few years back Le Figaro did a long piece on this subject.
But as DOM2 said
We laugh at ourselves much more, and much more cruelly, than you could even dream. I suppose that he also meant that France's own offer a critical eye also.
But lest one of "sang impur" dare raise their voice in opposition to the "esprit de corps" and "pensé unique" of "il ne faut pas affoler les français" then we hear many crying foul.
Posted by: rocket | 17 Jul 2009 09:36:21
"No, DOMINIQUE 2, to stop France looking foolish - something her friends DON'T want!" RICK
Gardez moi de mes amis. Quant à mes ennemis, je m'en charge.
("Protect me from my friends. I'll take care of my enemies")
Posted by: Pierre | 17 Jul 2009 09:35:34
STEPHANE (a bit late) AFAIK a troll is somebody who gets his jollies by incensing fellow bloggers with outrageous posts, which generally have nothing in common with his true opinions (if he has any). AZLOON's posts are consistently monochromous, thus probably sincere, and he's not the most obdurate basher - I'm not even sure I would qualify him as a basher, more as an honestly prejudiced product of his education and environment.
Posted by: Dominique II | 17 Jul 2009 08:38:03
‘There was a German U-Boote commander who had to be promoted to a land-based posting after he underwent a deep nervous breakdown: a torpedo he launched was one of the many pieces of defective ordnance the Kriegsmarine had in its arsenals... and the target was a dreadnought with Churchill onboard. But for a rusty gasket or a leaking joint, you might now be in thrall of Lord Halifax, Prince of Peace and Gauleiter von der See.’ [DOM2]
Whether this is true or not is a matter of profound insignificance. The past is cluttered with ‘what ifs’.
On the other hand this kind of recourse to the realms of theoretic possibilities – non-realised – is richly illustrative of the state of your troubled psyche.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 08:11:09
‘RENE MOYA : wow, was that a cavalry charge or carpet bombing? you sure don't take prisoners. A pleasure to meet you, sir.’ [DOMINIQUE II]
It takes one to know one. DOM2, herewith your diagnosis:
Denial. Ego defence mechanisms are psychological strategies brought into play by various people to cope with reality and to maintain self-image. The observed features include:
persecution fantasies, morbid fear of straight questions, rationalisation, (deliberate) misunderstanding, misquoting, bad faith, intellectual dishonesty, shooting the messenger, projection, moral cowardice, obfuscation, narrow-mindedness, wishful thinking, mythomania, provocation, the ‘smear and sneer’, hypocrisy (‘cheap and cheerful’), hypocrisy (advanced, tangled), deceit, self-deceit, delusional vanity, ‘fool’s paradise’ syndrome, ‘exceptionalist’ delusions, morbid inability to admit to mistakes, recourse to not-entirely-convincing-or-comprehensible American demotic mode of speech, narrow vision, lacunae in comprehension of standard English, anxiety-projection on near-to-hand ‘hate object’, minimal self-awareness (‘figure of fun’ syndrome), retreat into Oblomovian womb-substitute, compensatory tactics ( ‘Francophonie’), xenophobia, ‘esprit de clocher’, localism, infantilism, and so on... oh, and chickening out of straightforward questions (bis).
Now, how many of these boxes do you tick? Sorry, pal, but your credibility is shot to hell.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 07:59:20
"the infrastructure in the United States is not crumbling."
Remember what I was saying the other day about believing that 'saying it makes it so'?
"For example, the inter-state highway system is proably the best in the world."
Do not confuse the extent of the system with the quality of the roads. (The Autopista in Spain is first rate. I hear that the Autobahn is something to behold.) The Interstates I've been driving in various parts of the US in the last couple of years are in bad shape. In a couple of places it is downright dangerous. It has not always been this way. Billions have been spent on improvements, while far too little has been spent on maintenance.
"The infrastructure falling down bit was way over exaggerated by politicians from the Left"
Fox or Limbaugh, no doubt. Bridges? School buildings? Power grid?
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 17 Jul 2009 07:40:46
AZLOON, I presume that the first two paragraphs of your most recent posting were not intended for me. We MUST continue to disagree like this and set - as I know you will agree - a fine example in the art of reconciliation.
For the last two paragraphs, thanks.
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 07:13:48
‘CHARLES - I am, as you know, not David Moorcroft, nor he I.
However he (David Moorcroft) makes a very fair point.
A very fair point indeed.’ [DOT KING]
As, usual, DOT KING is her own worst enemy. A few months ago, I complained about her antics. These actions make her ‘fair game’, now and in the future.
‘‘I do not post under anything other than my own name (except I was Henry Wilt briefly last week only to take the p-ss, quite gently, out of Rick as a teacher*’ [DOT KING] Beneath contempt. Worse, the problem of assumed identities again rears its head. (Henry Wilt from the Tom Sharpe novels) In this writer’s case, we’re into anonymity and poison-pen territory. How charming! Like the Yanks, I can take this kind of thing, but can’t help wondering: ‘What if it had been someone else?’’
Posted by: Rick | 17 Jul 2009 07:02:49
"They convey a reaction against the problems of mobility in general." -- Bruno Martzloff
I think he is referring to the difficulty of getting around in a large city. So many people spend a couple of hours each day going to and from work and doing other errands, which can be tiring and frustrating and sometimes infuriating. People may lash out at the bicycles because they are seen as taking money away from the metro, buses and roadway improvements, which would more directly improve the lives of the vandals.
How respectful of pedestrians are bicyclists in Paris? I have been run over and knocked to the ground three times in Boston, each time while walking down the sidewalk.
I imagine that it is difficult to know if the vandalism is being done by various types of people for various reasons, or if there are a handful of people doing most of the destruction. A dedicated few can wreak a great deal of havoc, as with graffiti.
In fighting graffiti in New York, the metro found that if no train which had been painted left the yard, the graffiti artists derived no pleasure from their work. Eventually, most of them lost interest, and went on to other venues where their work would be seen.
In Australia or New Zealand, they have tried insinuating that men who drive too fast have small penises. I have heard how well this has worked.
Others perception of one's act seems to be important in anti-social behavior. Maybe the ad campaigns should focus more on only losers vandalize bikes, or cool people ride bikes, or girls don't date boys who do such things.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 17 Jul 2009 06:45:16
To all those forlorn French (and French-loving) souls who are offended by my remarks, let me try to establish my bona fides as an admirer of things French. I came to this blog as a lifelong admirer of French culture which began when I first encountered the wonderful word of french film as a teenager. If this is 'trolling,' I plead guilty.
So Let Us Now Praise the French:
Agnes Varda, whose wonderful film autobiography is just opening here, is one of the world's truly great film makers, and she only happens to be a woman. And she had the good taste and good fortune to marry another of the planet's true film masters, Jacques Demy. The French invented great film making, and the world is in its debt.
Nuclear Power. The French fearlessly surged forward in this fleld when the rest of the world cowered. It will now reap the benefit of being the 'go to' country for all things nuclear which is as it should be. Chapeau.
Health Care. French citizens can rest easily knowing that their health care is provided for, and high quality health care at that. Not having to face debilitating anxiety, as many do in the u.s., about catastrophic illness, the French can pursue their life interests with more zest and assurance. The country also has world-class pharmacological research and development.
Cultural Preservation. With a culture worth preserving, the French do this as no other country. And the natural beauty of France is taken seriously and protected. A great example for others.
Innovational Financial Instruments. France has been ahead of much of the rest of the world in the development of sophisticated derivative instruments used in risk management. It's regulatory approach to its financial services industry is an example the u.s. might well have followed (and may yet:)) A nod to you, Daniel.
This may or may not dissuade you from your impression of some of us inveterate critics of contemporary French goings-on as cretinous French bashers. Some of us actually like the place. And we take our cue for our criticism from Voltaire, and our deep solace from Montaigne
I believe that if this were a blog about Fiji, we'd be talking now about Fiji-bashers. Please lighten up a bit. Life is short.
Posted by: azloon | 17 Jul 2009 02:24:35
DON -
And how is California doing?
Posted by: christopher muir | 17 Jul 2009 02:23:43
1. Discussing bike theft as if it were a uniquely French tendency is bollocks. In Holland, bicycle theft is as normal and expected as the sunrise. The expression quoted in a WSJ article concerning the composition of the canals below the water line was:
"een derde Modder
een derde Water en
een derde Fiets"
2. And the idea that any American, where most every violent crime rate far exceeds that in France - while many LE budgets have been slashed, has any moral high ground from which to lecture about enforcing the law is laughable at best.
Posted by: RH Omea | 17 Jul 2009 00:40:32
GILL,
Bona fides is also used occasionally in French. However, one would not use it (or its translation "bonne foi") to say that a word or expression is correct because it is listed and defined in a recognised dictionary.
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 00:21:11
AZLOON,
No major problem with French bashing or whatever bashing, as long as it is not morbidly obsessional and not courageously :) anonymous.
Fortunately, you don't fill these criteria since old hand posters like myself and others know your name and address and know also that you are not morbidly persuaded that you alone (along with your country) hold the universal truth :).
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 17 Jul 2009 00:09:07
The 14th July always produces mixed feelings. There is the toy soldiers' bit like the parade of tanks and bridge layers in my local High street or our miniature Joan of Arc military parade in front of the statue in my street (8th May).
But it might be worth reflecting on the ambiguity of the situation : a French army and navy with its aristocratic officers still in a very anti-British tradition. No meaningful participation in World War II (the soldiers were all made German prisoners). Yet a Franco-German axis it is said (German president was there too). Yet an army that put down immediately after the war the Algerian, Vietnamese etc populations using Gestapo torture methods. I would like to think that modern France is that creator of republican freedoms.
In, case in any one thinks the Sarkozy interview was an exceptional example of bad French journalism, remember the exploitation by Giscard and Mitterrand of journalists who could be on very intimate and private relations with the same politician (the French word is 'couché'). On the other hand French viewers who look around their channels can find excellent discussion programmes for the happy few (C dans l'air, or the excellent parliamentary channel LCP AN.
,
Posted by: paul | 16 Jul 2009 23:29:14
DANIEL,
I had thought perhaps that nous was only UK English and not American English but I was obviously wrong. It is in the Oxford English Dictionary which I think proves its bona fides (bonne foi in French?)
Posted by: Gill | 16 Jul 2009 22:59:18
The problem in Paris must be related to the fact that it houses a large proportion of the under-priveleged in relation to the highly priveleged but I cannot understand why Norway should have the worst vandalism. I am sure if this scheme is introduced in London, as has been mooted, we would also see a high level of vandalism.
Posted by: Gill | 16 Jul 2009 22:51:02
RENE C MOYA AND STEPHANE,
I know that Azloon is old enough and big enough to look after himself but I cannot ignore your comments. Azloon made valid comments on Charles' article and asked some equally valid questions. You, however, have contributed nothing constructive to the discussion and I am not even sure if you have read Azloon's comments in their proper context. All you have done is to criticise another blogger for no readily apparent reason. Who are the trolls?
Sorry, Charles I do not normally get this uptight but this incensed me.
Posted by: Gill | 16 Jul 2009 22:42:44
On a more practical note, I've been using Velibs in Paris since the beginning.
The system was horrendously complex to work out on the first time, but once you'd went through the hoops once, it was OK.
However, there has been a dreadful fall in the quality of service since the system was launched. The proportion of out of order bikes, docking posts or even whole stations is staggering.
Vandalism is bad enough, but it's not the only culprit. Many bikes obviously in working order are locked onto their posts, with a red light signalling that the computer won't release them. Sometimes, half of all the bikes on a given station are unavailable because of that.
It's not uncommon for a whole station to be out of order, because of a mysterious computer glitch.
There's also one particularly irritating and now frequent failure -- or should I say deliberate scam ?
If you pay by the day as I do, the machine gives you a ticket. You need it if you want to take advantage of your "subscription", which enables you to as many further free rides as you wish during the next 24 hours, provided they last less than 30 minutes.
More and more often, the expected ticket does not appear at all. If you wait too long for a ticket that refuses to come out, you've lost your 1 euro : you are entitled to begin the process all over again for free -- except that you need to punch in your client number, which is supposed to be printed on the ticket, which doesn't exist.
Knowing the French, I suspect some foul play is at work there.
I'm about to give up Velibs altogether.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 16 Jul 2009 22:27:14
And then you surpassed yourself, RENE:
‘I've got to say, Charlemagne, that this post by itself--and the tendentious Europhobia it displays--is more than enough to get me off reading your blog, and almost enough to get me off reading the Europhobic, Psycophantic/America-Praising Economist as a whole.’
Posted by: Rick | 16 Jul 2009 22:09:44
On March 12 of this year a RENE C MOYA addressed the European correspondent of ‘The Economist’ as follows:
‘Charlemagne, Your logic is impecable(-ly stupid).’
‘...but did The Economist hire you because there was a gap in the 'tortured logic' department?’
Needless to add, you continued in this way for a long time. You’ve got ‘form’, boy.
Posted by: Rick | 16 Jul 2009 22:06:23
"I don't really know what that means."
A delightful understatment by our favorite British correspondent.
Actually, he's far too polite to give it straight to you : most French sociologists, and 100 % of those who get quoted in the media, are half-wits on the state payroll churning out leftist propaganda -- and that's in the rare cases where anyone can make some sense out of their pronouncements.
Posted by: Robert Marchenoir | 16 Jul 2009 21:56:50
DAISY "Perhaps the french [sic] should learn to lighten up a bit and poke fun at themselves. If they did, others wouldn't have to do it for them."
Ma petite Marguerite, perhaps you should learn some French and peruse some French media. We laugh at ourselves much more, and much more cruelly, than you could even dream. Why, think you guys actually keep bleating Sarko is the best ever thing that happened to France... when he is the most mocked man in the country.
What we find unpleasant and boring is the endless repetition of prejudiced stereotypes which only advertise the inanity of those who mouth them with such naive self-assurance. And what makes these inanities unpleasant is not that they hurt our pride, which they don't; it is that they end up building a wrong, adversarial, despicable picture of a great people we always liked and admired.
Now, Daisy dear, do feel free to "poke fun" at us. As long as it is - you know? witty. Funny. To the point. Otherwise, don't be surprised if you're booed. And, it now appears, from both sides of the pond.
Posted by: Dominique II | 16 Jul 2009 21:50:32
RENE MOYA : wow, was that a cavalry charge or carpet bombing? you sure don't take prisoners. A pleasure to meet you, sir.
Posted by: Dominique II | 16 Jul 2009 21:35:50
p.s. to Daniel
You can't be oblivious to the fact that there is liable to be more french-bashing on a blog about France that there is to be A-S bashing. Just the way it is. If we had met on a blog about Fiji, we'd be arguing about Fiji-bashing. :)
Posted by: azloon | 16 Jul 2009 21:26:03
[Azloon, may be you are not the best placed to qualify a person or a nation as being hypersensitive - I remember some of your reactions which one could have qualified as "réactions de vierge outragée" :)).]
sans doute, c'est vrai. why am i supposed to 'best placed to qualify' in order to spout off? that' no fun.
and do i have to be insensitive myself in order to accused others of excessive sensitivity? not possible :)
Rick, my comment about Indian troops was truly simpleminded, in keeping with my simple mind. Marching 'british style' means behaving marginally like those who are occasionally derided by he French. that' all. about u.s. troops? just another potentially controversial invitation. no big deal, or deep meaning.
Posted by: azloon | 16 Jul 2009 21:23:00
'the xenophobia of some half-wits'
'Perhaps WASPs could stop being so self-righteous. That includes you, in case there is any doubt.'
STEPHANE, are you applying for the post of judge or the accused?
By the way, you have a nice line in reasoned argument - not.
Posted by: Rick | 16 Jul 2009 21:12:12
Daniel
"The reason why the American army deems it necessary to have more personnel in logistics than for instance the French army is now fully clear for me: they have to transport all the extra stuff needed by their lady warriors - creams, powders, mirrors, combs, mobile showers with huge water reserves, hair dryers with powerful generators to feed them adequately in the desert and so on :). I am not sure whether the yield is optimum..."
Whereas in the case of French soldiers, both men and women no hygienic products necessary. (very wide grin)
Posted by: rocket | 16 Jul 2009 21:10:16
[Perhaps the french should learn to lighten up a bit and poke fun at themselves. If they did, others wouldn't have to do it for them] Daisy
Daisy, your check is in the mail. :)
and, of course, as usual, you are spot on !
But don't expect widespread French 'lightening' soon. it's a bit endemic, but mercifully not universally accurate, witness several French posters here, Dominique II being a prominent example (he will probably disavow any praise from me out of concern for his reputation :)).
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To: Rene C. Moya
Rene, I welcome your characterization of me, unflattering though it is. You've got spunk, a good brain and write well.
But, of course, as we all are from time to time, you're dead wrong in this matter.
You said:
[And then of course you round on the French by obliquely suggesting they're either law-breakers ('...a population that thinks taking your boss prisoner is just fine.') or too watery to hold criminals to account] Rene
'Lawbreakers' is a perfect description of the French in the matter of sequestration (what the rest of the world calls 'hostage-taking'), and it's done with a wink of the eye from police. If you had participated on this Blog as long as i have, you might recall CB's piece that cited a poll showing more than 50% of all French approve of 'sequestration.' Enough said?
And as for bicycle vandalism? Is it not fair, and completely logical, to inquire of about law enforcement efforts to catch offenders? You may not be a particularly curious person. I am.
I obviously feel no compunction about defending France's reputation, or the u.s.'s for that matter. Stupid is stupid, wherever it occurs, and there's no known cure for stupid. If you want a tamer blog, a little more polite, and sugar-coated, may I suggest La Petite Anglaise.
---------
[But on most blogs and chatrooms the likes of Azloon are just called trolls] Stephane
About other chatrooms/blogs, I wouldn't know since I participate in none of them, and never have. I've been here two and half years and have made my share of outrageous comments. But my reading of the various definitions of 'troll' leads me to believe I don't quite achieve a level of troll pathology.
But I'll accept your verdict if enough other posters here agree with you. You're off to a good start with Ms. Moya, and Jay Whachamacallit.
BTW, are you aware that you are not required to read the posts of those who annoy you? This isn't a school exam. You won't be tested on everything printed here. :)
Posted by: azloon | 16 Jul 2009 21:03:20
[I wonder, Azloon, how you manage to have nothing better to do than come to this blog just to make snotty comments about the French. …. Because that's a sure-fire way of getting the generally high-quality public services the French have...as opposed to, say, a decrepit train network as in the UK, or a crumbling public infrastructure as in the United States. - Rene C. Moya]
Rene, the infrastructure in the United States is not crumbling. For example, the inter-state highway system is proably the best in the world. The infrastructure falling down bit was way over exaggerated by politicians from the Left to get the Obama stimulus bill passed a few months ago.
You think the French have “generally high-quality public services”? Tell that to the 15,000 older people who died in ONE month in France a few years ago (Aug. 2003). That would be equivalent to 75,000 older people dying in one month in the United States. Not even close.
Or how about the deficit of 200,000 people willing to work in the French health care system.
http://www.webinfrance.com/france-hopes-to-recruit-200000-young-people-over-5-years-to-hospital-jobs-in-france-221.html
For two generations young French people have been avoiding going into probably the most important of the public services in France. If it is so ‘high quality” then why are they avoiding it like the plague?
Or the fact that the average age of a French surgeon is over 55 or that they periodically go into exile in Spain or Britain (strike). Why is this? Or the fact that almost no new drugs, diagnostic procedures, surgical procedures have been developed in France over the past two generations. The U.S. produces 80% of the world’s new drugs, diagnostic procedures (e.g. MRI scanners) etc.
You might want to read several books by French authors who have detailed the many, many years of America bashing by the French. (“Anti-Americanism” by Revel, “The American Enemy – History of French anti-Americanism” by Philippe Roger.)
The criticism of the French by Americans is a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny percentage of the bashing the Americans have taken from the French for many decades. Think I am
exaggerating? Read those books and contradtict the facts that they recount and document copiously. Revel was a member of the Academie Francaise and hardly a Francophobe.
Wouldn’t you do better to get your facts straight before going after Azloon? Just a suggestion.
Posted by: Don | 16 Jul 2009 20:28:20