The Republic of Dissent

Sarkozy, the burqa and the potency of identity politics

Agnès Poirier argues, and I agree almost fully with her, that the ban against the Niqab/hijab/burqa has become a legal nightmare for Sarkozy:

If the niqab ban is passed as law, the question then arises of how you make it effective. Do you also forbid visiting tourists from Saudi Arabia from wearing it? A number of French MPs want to limit the ban to public administrations, but then a law already exists which bans all conspicuous religious symbols from public places such as hospitals, courts and schools. Or do you simply resort to a fine? Even the National Front is against a law: "it should simply be a police regulation."
The ban of the niqab: a fine legal mess.

I don't think that Sarkozy cares about the law because otherwise, he would have been mindful of these complications, which were to be expected. His goal is to change the focus of the political debate in France from his policies and their ineffectiveness to an irrational and explosive one about Frenchness and about the conviction that many French have to all their problems come from the fact that too many French are refusing to be French and to respect French values. The burqa/niqab/hijab debate  provides the best way to do it because it isn't based on facts, but on fears, suspicions and ideology, which suit Sarkozy just fine because it embarrasses the Left and while reminding the right and the lower classes that he is defending their right to who they are and for the others to assimilate if they want to be good citizens of France. In short, Sarkozy must be happy in spite of the legal complications because while the French are talking about the burqa, they aren't focusing on the fact that his presidency has been a disappointment, so far.

Sarkozy and Lady Ashton

Funny and indicative of the problems with the structure of the European Union r rather of the lack of power of 'Europe's foreign minister':

Europe's under fire foreign minister Catherine Ashton has today denied that she was given a stern lecture in how to do her job by Nicolas Sarkozy.
The French president was said to have grilled Lady Ashton, a Labour Party peer whom many consider woefully unqualified for her job, at a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris.
To add insult to injury, most of the dressing down was said to be in French - a language which Lady Ashton has frequently been criticised for not being able to speak very well.

I for one don't Lady Ashton's denials. Sarkozy is too much in a bad mood to resist the temptations to scold, to say things with finesse, somebody who is more impopular and weaker than him.

Running to nowhere

Best pic of last week from Eddie Doo. I know that action figures make great politicians, just wondering whether they make good presidents.

Sarkozy is in DC

The ego has landed and has met his match!

Sarkozy as the product of a good sex night

Quote of the day from Pál Sarkozy,the father of the French President:

When people ask me what I felt on the birth of Nicolas, I reply that he was the logical conclusion of a very good night spent with my wife

A good European

Angela Merkel, German's Chancellor who is so unSarkozy that it makes her likable, on what it means to be a good European:

A good European is not necessarily one who offers help quickly. A good European is one that respects the European treaties and national rights so that the stability of the euro zone is not damaged.

My only issue with Merkel's pronouncement is that I don't think that Europeans care being good Europeans for most of them believe still that Brussels is far away from them and has taken away from their government the ability to affect their lives for the better.

Sarko shrunk

John Lichfield offers an on-point explanation of why Sarkozy has shrunk from Superman to mini-Me, a caricature of a superhero who can't get anything right:

What has changed is that core Sarkozy supporters have lost faith, and patience, with the style and personality of Sarko himself. Two events, above all, have angered them. The first was the promotion to culture minister of Frédéric Mitterrand, the late president's nephew: not only another leftie but also a homosexual and writer of dubious autobiographical books about cruising Thai boy-bars.
Worse, there was the egregious Jean Sarkozy affair. Here was a President who spoke of equal opportunities for all and his determination to break down the French elites. Here was the same President pretending it was quite normal for his unqualified, handsome, law student son to be promoted to political head of the vast La Défense office ghetto on the outskirts of Paris. Mr Sarkozy's claim to be a different kind of politician, closer to the thinking of real people, died in defence of his overhasty son's right to be boss of La Défense.

I believe that one of the main sources of Sarkozy's problems is that he was so successful in killing the opposition that he believed that he could do everything, sell anything and that nobody would dare to challenge, After all, none of the members of his expansive court dare to say to him that he had stop to be able to read the French because he was isolated in the Elysée palace. But Sarkzoy isn't dead for as Obama, he has the advantage of having no credible adversary to personify the growing discontent against Sarkozysm.

Assessing Sarkozy's failures and the rise of far right

I  agree in part with Jim Wolfreys on this:

Sarkozy came to power on a promise to break with the compromises of previous governments. One apparent measure of his determination to do so was the trenchant language used on immigration. It is this combination of authoritarianism and anti-immigrant rhetoric that has contributed to Sarkozy's undoing at the expense of the FN.
This is largely due to the demagogic nature of racism in the political arena. Since it is based on the myth that immigrants (or ethnic minorities in general, or Muslims) are to blame for unemployment, crime or other aspects of social decay, it has become a self-defeating tool for the government.
Under Sarkozy, unemployment stands at its highest level for a decade, at 10%, and France has one of the worst youth unemployment rates in Europe. Here, the link between racism and authoritarianism is important. The debate over national identity engineered by Sarkozy's UMP has seen Islamophobia reach a new pitch – at one point the party spokesperson compared the burka to a "Mickey Mouse mask".
Yet however shrill the scapegoating of Muslims, it has done nothing to obscure the government's impotence in the face of serious social and economic problems. Moreover, the realisation that Sarkozy is not an enforcer but a rather insecure figure in thrall to wealth and celebrity, has strengthened the claims of Le Pen to be the real authority figure in French politics.

One of Sarkozy's biggest failures is that he has legitimated the arguments of the French far right by using its language and that by not providing results,he has lead a part of the electorate to conclude that they may as well vote for the real dea forl when they were voting for Sarkozy they thought that, contrary to the far right, he would do what he preached since he would have the power to do it.The trouble is that Sarkozy's rhetoric is likely to get tougher.  He needs the vote of his right whether it is extreme or not to get reelected. This reality explains why yesterday, in his first public intervention after the Sunday's elections, he put back the Burka/burqa in the center of the political debate, but saying that it was one of his priorities to have the parliament vote a law to ban it.

Burka, right wing ideology and feminism

Mona Eltahawy on the ban of the Burqa/burka,right-wing Muslim Ideology and women's right(hat tip: Norm Geras):

I abhor the rightwing Muslim ideology behind the veils but I equally abhor the political rightwing xenophobes of Europe. The European political right – be it President Nicolas Sarkozy, his ultra-right rival Jean-Marie Le Pen (who did alarmingly well in the first round of those regional elections) or Dutch provocateur Geert Wilders – do not give a rat's ass about Muslim women or their rights: they are merely using the issue in an attempt to win votes.
The racism and discrimination that Muslim minorities face in many countries — such as France, which has the largest Muslim community in Europe, and Britain, where two members of the xenophobic British National party were shamefully elected to the European parliament — are very real. But the silence of the left wing and liberals isn't the way to fight it. The best way to support Muslim women would be to say we oppose both the racist right wing and the niqabs and burkas which are products of what I call the Muslim right wing. Women should not be sacrificed to either.

My disagreement with Eltahawy comes from the fact that I don't view women as victims or particular creatures that have to remain clean, pure, and always make good choices. I consider that they have the right to be whoever they want to be even if it means becoming an object and making disturbing choices. My point on the burka/burqa/niqab debate is simple, women are instruments to fight Islamic ideology or to promote secularism, they are normal individuals whose rights to individuality should be judge by the usual criteria used in a society to decide when individuality becomes criminal and dangerous to a society. I'm not against a burqa ban in France and elsewhere in the name of feminism, because I don't think that women's rights (whatever that expression means) is the issue, but that the right of women as human beings to define their womanhood and their femininity is in question. I'm still waiting for somebody to tell what is the male's equivalent of the burqa to reconsider my position.

Running for office is not the same as governing

I agree with Simon Tisdall on this:

It may be true that Nicolas Sarkozy is one of those politicians who is better at running for office than running a government.

I will just include Obama on this list in spite of healthcare reform.

The soft vacuity of Sarkozy

I agree with Nicolas Lecaussin on this:

President Sarkozy has pursued a theme of "soft" reforms, even though he had the Senate and Assemblée Nationale on his side. This reluctance to go full-throttle with his own stated agenda is also evidenced by his declaration of March 12, 2009: "Universities, Sunday work, 35 hours, overtime. . . We will perform an audit of all the reforms to improve them. Then in the second half of 2011, the government will take a break so that Parliament can, if desired, de-legislate [sic]." Another commission? Another report?
Certainly, Mr. Sarkozy has presented several qualities that differentiate him from his predecessor, especially in his control of opinionated communications with the public. But who can define with certainty his convictions and the vision that guides him? Does he have any? Or is he just driven by a thirst for power? Without real reforms, the country has once more fallen into the rut of sterile governance, typical of the Fifth Republic.

Sarkozy is at the defining moment of his presidency, one when control is  escaping him and creating potential adversaries for him on his own side of the political spectrum. For this reason, he has to decide who he needs to be and what he wants to do quickly before he is irreparably damaged by the perception that he can't get reelected and becomes a lame duck He has started to return to his favorite theme of security probably because he is ticked up by the resurrection of the extreme right, which he thought that he had killed,. The trouble is that talking tough on security is not enough to unify his right and to keep on weakening the left because he has done too much of it already and he hasn't had good results to show the French. To say in bluntly, Sarkozy's main challenge is to redefine himself to keep at much of the Right with him as possible to avoid the rise of a strong challenge within his own party. It s too late for Sarkozy to become the reform president because he is too weak politically to pass any great reform. He is going to have to focus on strategy, communication , and image to get reelected while doing symbolic gestures. Something tells me that he is going to venture more on the international scene and try to take the lead on issues such as Iran and climate change to get his mojo back.

Psychologizing Sarkozy's love life

I'm not touching this bit from Duncan Brown on Sarkozy's sex life, but it's interesting because it offers a different read of the gossip around Sarkozy's marriage who for once must thinking his lucky start that he is not an American president:

When his last marriage to the long-suffering Cecile broke down, Nicolas Sarkozy was attacked over his lack of “pudeur” (a word part-way between shame and modesty) as he pandered to the press: an Anglo-American tactic that went against the grain of the Fifth Republic’s Catholic origins.
However, all the French coverage of the recent alleged Bruni/Sarkozy dalliances isn’t necessarily a sign of the French media becoming more like the British in its appetite for celebrity scandal. Rumours that Sarkozy’s liaison with his ecology minister has been invented to salvage his reputation as a “sex dwarf” (in the face of being cuckolded by his man-eating wife) point to an undiminished gulf between French and English attitudes to sex.
We have no concept of the chaud lapin: the very idea of a prime minister sleeping with a member of his cabinet would make English blood run cold. But for the French, such news can be bundled together with Bruni’s liaison as “extramarital affairs” as a face-saving measure. Meanwhile, the English-speaking internet resounds to a dwarf joke about Sarkozy that David Cameron made in September. We’re not identical yet.

Sarko's down

Charles Bremner on Sarkozy and the butt whipping he got last night in the French regional elections:

Sarkozy no longer looks like the automatic choice for the centre-right in the next presidential election in two years time. He could face a rival from his own camp. The vote was not just a signal of unhappiness with the recession and unemployment -- which have been milder in France than elsewhere. It was a protest against the way that Sarkozy conducts himself and France. The ultra-confident, I'm-in-charge manner, has come to look hollow, unpresidential and divisive.  He has changed course too many times. His two most recent U-Turns have been the abandonment of his inflammatory debate on national identity and a decision to dump his trail-blazing carbon tax.

I still remember when Sarkozy, pretty much like Obama, was thought to walk on water and to be the best thing that happened to France since the revolution or just Brigitte Bardot. My own opinion on the issue is that although Sarkozy is down, he is not out and that last night's results are such a warning to him to get a grip and to stop to try to be a Superhero who does everything except please his base and the electorate. Like Obama, Sarkozy has the advantage of being predominant and of not having an opposition with an audible alternative that is just anti-him. That may change if he doesn't get a grip and realize that his supporters need proofs of love.

Volapük

I've always said that Sarkozy was as good with words as Obama, just in a different way, this proves my point:

The French president, complaining about negotiations leading up to last December's UN climate summit, said world leaders had been handed a draft text "similar to volapük."
Even native French speakers were stumped by this one, and some at first thought he said "vol a Buc", or "flight to Buc," a small and obscure town near Paris that has no airport.
Better-versed minds prevailed, and it turned out not only that Mr Sarkozy was making a nod to history and his hero. Volapük is a language invented in the late 19th century by a German Roman Catholic priest, Johann Martin Schleyer, who dreamt of creating a universal means of communication. His idea never really took flight and other international languages, such as Esperanto, emerged as more successful candidates. In French, "to speak volapük" was once used to denote gibberish or gobbledegook, but it was last used in any major context at a press conference in 1962 by General de Gaulle, who is revered by Mr Sarkozy.

Would it too condescending or too cynical of me to suggest that Sarkozy had no idea what Volapük meant until his advisers suggested that he used the word this morning to convey his mastering of the situation? It is amazing how language is important in politics especially when it is used either to elevate one self or to suggest that one is part of the common folk. Something tells me that Sarkozy is about to undergo another transformation just in time for his reelection 2012.

Agathe Habyarimana, dirty hands, and responsibility

Philip Gourevicth on the arrest of the former first lady of Rwanda, Agathe Habyarimana and what it says about the new and improved relation between France and Rwanda

French statesmen are not in the habit of travelling to small African countries that they used to run as puppet regimes to eat fistfuls of crow. But that is precisely what Sarkozy did last week when he stood beside Kagame in Kigali and declared that France had made mistakes during the genocide, and had to reckon with them. Afterwards, commentators made much of the fact that Sarkozy had not issued a full apology. But in a country whose history is still bloodily contested, Sarkozy’s frank acknowledgment of the truth of his former antagonist’s reality sent an unmistakable message. Without France’s cover, the pretense that Rwanda’s genocide is an open question is stripped barer than ever. With this morning’s arrest, we can see that France’s change of attitude toward Rwanda was at least partly influenced by the facts presented in the case against Madame Habyarimana. In November of last year, a pair of French judges went to Kigali to study the evidence assembled by Rwanda’s Genocide Fugitives Tracking Unit. Meanwhile the French case against Kagame’s coterie appeared to be crumbling. Whether France will extradite Madame Agathe to Rwanda remains to be seen. She has already been released on bail. But such is the warm mood between the two governments that Rwanda’s prosecutor general, Martin Ngoga, declared today that he had every confidence in the French judiciary—a statement that was simply unimaginable from a Rwandan official six months ago.

I don't think that Madame Agathe will ever be extradited to Kigali. She is one of the few remaining relics of a stubborn an still alive past and she is the symbol of what used to the French Rwandan policy. Extraditing her is a risk that France cannot afford to take because it would force it to consider the responsibility of its own politicians and government officials. To me, the key question remains how far Kagame  is willing to go to prosecute of the members of the Habyarimana regime and those who played a role in the genocide and more importantly what price he is willing to pay to have them judged by a court of law. I may be wrong and it is surely too easy to say what I'm about to say far away from the situation, but I believe that an inflexible obsession with punishing all of those who have dirty hands as Sartre would say may hinder reconciliation for it is clear that the genocide happened because the majority of the population got their hands dirty or did nothing while people were being viciously slaughtered like animals. Thus, in short, the central issue is what does a country do when it becomes obvious that almost all of its citizens bear some responsible for the darkest hours of its history, what level of responsibility becomes forgivable or at the very least tolerable to move it forward?

Defining Obama's socialism

Tom Tancredo attempts to answer the question what is it about Obama that makes him a socialist:

Well, first of all, the definition of socialism is constantly evolving it seems. And given today’s definition, I guess I should have used the word ‘euro socialism’. European type socialists think that big government is acceptable. You don’t own the means of production but you tax the hell out of them for the purpose of redistribution of wealth. That’s closer to his position than the textbook definition in which the government own the means of production.’ (... )He talks about the people that have influenced him, and some of them are committed Marxists. So he thinks that way, he works with people who think like that, and he really has no qualms about the government taking over General Motors. I mean, the government saying who can be the chairman of GM? I do not understand that anybody can look at that and say, ‘No that’s not socialism’.

The reason why I dislike people like Tom Tancredo is that they make me have to defend Barack Obama by using solely their inculture to attack. Tancredo needs to spend some time in Europe  and visit Sarkozy in Paris to realize not only what it means to be a socialist or rather what it no longer means.

Femininity as political bling bling

Elizabeth Day had a worth-reading portrait in the Guardian of Rachida Dati, the Former French Justice Minister and now member of the European parliament . Here is what I thought was the sugary excerpt:

There is part of me that wonders whether Dati will be offended to be asked about her appearance, but this turns out to be entirely wrong. She is only too happy to talk about her clothes. "For a long time, 'femininity' has been synonymous with 'triviality', but that is not the case at all," she says, her gold hoop earrings shaking slightly as she nods her head for emphasis. "Femininity is part of being a woman. It is part of my identity to preserve my femininity."

Later, Dati tells a story about having her photograph taken in the street earlier in the day "and when we looked at the picture there was a line of teenage girls behind me and all of them had their eyes down, looking at my shoes!" She laughs, her brown-black eyes lighting up with unexpected enthusiasm.

It is difficult to imagine a British female politician expressing the same unabashed candour about a love of fashion. When, two years ago, Dati attended a French state banquet in a slashed-to-the-thigh midnight blue evening gown, it prompted a period of rueful questioning in the UK press about why our own female MPs were so sartorially uninspired.

In Westminster the consensus appeared to be that in order to be taken seriously, it was best not to draw attention to the fact one was female. Dati does not approve: "I've always been like this, even when I was 15, 20, it was always important to me to be well-dressed. It's important for me to hold onto my femininity because it's authentic to me and, you know, I was asked not to. I was told by my predecessor [at the Ministry of Justice], Elisabeth Guigou, a very pretty woman, that it wouldn't be long until I gave up my high heels. Well, I never wanted to do that."

Something about that excerpt troubles me because I suspect that Dati can only even go there because she is "attractive" and that therefore she has the ability to use her femininity as political bling bling knowing full well the risks and the advantages especially when she is aware of the dangers of the perception that she was Sarkozy's Beurrette (Arab) and that she never deserved to be France's Justice minister. The point here is simple, but has to be carefully made because the context here is everything, which Elizabeth Day forgets to emphasize: Rachida Dati had no other choices but to be very feminine and to care about her physical appearance, her chic clothes, her jewelry, all of it when it became an acquis to those who mattered (King Sarkozy and his court) that she didn't have the substance to be a political figure. I'm Sarah Palining her, to the contrary, I argue that she reached the top also because she was a symbol and that, thus, she has to keep on being a symbol to remain visible, relevant, and attractive. It's unfair, but life is too often tough, brutish and bitchy for ambitious women. Dati is smart and is using all the tools that she has not to become disposable the most potent of which is her femininity. What bother me is she gets praised for being feminine because it is seen as proof of substance and of courage when it isn't, for that matter, it is also not a proof of frivolity, lack of sophistication, dumbness, or inculture. Nowadays, femininity is political bling bling, it is a little bit like the American flag that American politicians wear on their suits/clothes to wear their patriotism on their sleeves (Obama refused for a long time to do that until he decided that he would rather be president that a principled senator trying to educe American on the unimportance of symbols).

Sarkozy is whipped

After reading Sarkozy's semi-excuses to Rwanda, I believe that there are two explanations for the changes in Sarkozy who used to be against repentance. The cutest and less plausible one is that he discovered Jesus. The most credible one is that he got whipped by the realization that France will not remain a player in some parts of Africa and elsewhere where it has a long and sorted histoiry unless it softens its image and seems at least to be aware that it made mistakes before.
I believe hat the Sarkozy's apology tour is less about redemption or a real change in policy, but about realpolitik and competing with the Americans and the Chinese for the attention of countries who love apologies because they believe that their past is one of the few commodities that they have to bargain their future.

Criminalizing psychological abuse

Lizzy Davies on the new French law designed to criminalize psychological abuse:

French MPs have voted unanimously to make "psychological violence" within a couple an offence punishable by up to three years in prison as part of new measures aimed at improving protection for victims of domestic abuse.
Politicians from the left and right supported the passing of a law which singles out "repeated" verbal actions intended to hurt the victim's rights and dignity or their physical or mental health. As well as a jail sentence, offenders could be ordered to pay a fine of up to €75,000 (£66,600).
Supporters of the law claim an estimated 8% of women in France are psychologically abused by their partner. Chantal Brunel, a member of Nicolas Sarkozy's majority Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) party, described it as "a preventative measure as psychological violence always precedes [physical] blows".

This measure is not only stupid but potentially dangerous for two simple reasons.The first reason is that the law doesn't exist to punish every single appalling behavior, but rather to control and to eradicate explicit behaviors that are clearly definable. We live in an age where politicians when they are out of the idea write up laws to please categories of people in order to have the whole society nod in agreement without thinking about the consequences of their actions and about the burden that they put on the judicial system to deal with societal problems when it isn't its role to do so. One just has to look at the way judicial systems deal with rape for example to realize that the problem isn't never really the law, but social attitude toward sex, gender, and sexual violence.
The second reason is the most obvious one and it is that psychological abuse here is defined by its consequences  (for there isn't any other possible way to define it). Those consequences when they are atrocious,  are usually already punishable by laws. In other words, this law is dumb, opportunistic and more importantly dangerous. Experience shows that in cases where there is psychological abuse in a relationship, there are also other visible signs of trouble, which society can use to intervene if it is serious not about protecting women,  the victims and emphasizing the fact that violence is never a private matter.
Lastly, there s another element here that bothers and it is the strong implication that this problem is a women issue. I find that reprehensible because it is part of the problem for it is always easier to dismiss or to shut down necessary conversations in a society on  critical and defining issues with dumb and inapplicable laws when they are characterized as "women issues" because then, the tacit assertion is that they are on the fringe of society and that the focus needs to be on visibility, flashy solutions and not practical ones.

France, Rwanda, and the weight of History

This sugary excerpt from the New York Times's article on Sarkozy's upcoming visit to Kigali bugs me:

“We will recognize the errors of judgment that France and the international community made,” said the palace spokesman, adding that the purpose of Mr. Sarkozy’s visit was not to ask pardon but to open a new chapter in relations.
Rwanda has taken steps to move past its French-speaking past. In November, it was admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations, only the second former colony without links to Britain to join.
At the same time, Rwanda also restored relations with France and each country decided to halt its genocide-related lawsuits against the other.
In an interview last week, with the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche, France’s foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, suggested the creation of a commission of historians on Rwanda, “to find out what happened then.”
“It will take months, years but we will do it,” Mr. Kouchner said.
Mr. Sarkozy, he said, “is not opposed to having France look at its history.”

I have the unsettling feeling that history is been used as both a bargaining and a political tool and that is despicable. That doesn't mean that France's hands are clean when it comes to the Rwandan Genocide, but rather it is too serious of an issue to be trivialized by short-term political gains. It's probably a naïve view to hold, but I don't like it when history becomes solely about present day politics and when politicians are trying to write history to either alleviate what they perceived as past, but severe mistakes or to place the emphasis of what they believe to be essential elements to justify their present conduct. Sarkozy's visit to Rwanda can only a positive if he doesn't try to blind Rwandans with history by forgetting to talk to its present's day political leaders about the present and some of their own mistakes in places like the Congo (Democratic republic of Congo).

Grand Frère France

This worries:

The lower house of the French parliament has approved a draft bill that will allow the state unprecedented control over the Internet. Although the government says it will improve security for ordinary citizens, civil rights activists are warning of a "new level" of censorship and surveillance.
For members of the French administration, it is a law against digital crime. For civil rights activists and politicians from opposition parties, it is a plan for censorship that excites fear and loathing -- and even conjures up the specter of Big Brother and the surveillance state.
The lower house of the French parliament, the National Assembly, passed the first draft of the bill, known as "Loppsi 2," on Tuesday. It will now go on for a second reading in the Senate, where it seems likely to pass, thanks to the government's majority. If the Senate approves the bill, the new law could come into force as early as this summer. The legislation could have far-reaching consequences: Loppsi 2 contains rules that would make France the European country where the Internet is subject to the most censorship, regulation, control and surveillance.

What gets to me is how easy Loppsi 2 was to pass. This frightening fact underscores two critical reality about France. First, Internet has become the fundamental political,cultural and economical tool, which political, cultural, and economical elites want to control before it undermines totally their influence and their ability to remain "the ones". Second, there is no organized and vital opposition to Sarkozy despite his increasing unpopularity. Whatever one can say about Sarkozy, he has total control of his side while the opposition whether it is in civil society or elsewhere is too busy focusing about what they don't like about each other as if it matters since they don't have any power without offering a credible alternative that would at least tear down the new myth that there is no alternative to Sarkozysm.

Buying la légion d’honneur

Apparently, it is possible to receive la légion d’honneur in you have enough money and are willing to spend in France to renovate "old buildings":

Azerbaijani First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva has been designated an officer of the Legion of Honor, France's most prestigious national award.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev received the news in a letter from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said the honor was granted in acknowledgement of Aliyeva's "outstanding service and loyalty to France."
Probably more to do with the fact that the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, which Aliyeva heads, has donated 40,000 euros ($55,000) to the cost of renovating Strasbourg Cathedral's stained-glass windows and financed some renovations at the Palace of Versailles.

I though that Sarkozy wanted to moralize capitalism. I'm so disappointed, I was duped. I should stopped. I sound like an Obamabot, an Obamaniac who has seen the light after believing in fairy tales.

Sarkozy, Haïti, the past and reparations

Michelle Faul in the Globe and Mail on Sarkozy's visit to Haïti :

The trip brings Mr. Sarkozy to an island where, French officials acknowledge, fascination with things French duels with strong, lingering resentments.
One official close to the French presidency, briefing reporters in Paris on condition of anonymity, hinted that France is not deaf to calls for reparations, calling Mr. Sarkozy's visit “an occasion to show that France is mobilizing to give Haitians control of their destiny and pay past debts.”
France has already said it was cancelling all of Haiti's 56 million euro debt to Paris.
In 1825, crippled by the U.S.-led international embargo that was enforced by French warships, Haiti agreed to pay France 150 million francs in compensation for the lost “property” — including slaves — of French plantation owners.
By comparison, France sold the United States its immensely larger Louisiana Territory in 1803 for just 60 million francs. The amount for Haiti was later lowered to 90 million gold francs.
Haiti did not finish paying the debilitating debt — which was swollen by massive interest payments to French and American banks — until 1947.

The problem that I have with Faul's article is that it emphasizes the past as if it was the sole determinant of  the present and the future, by making it so heavy, and dark that the inevitable conclusion  becomes that it is impossible to escape a history of poverty and the future cannot be radiant or less obscure if there aren't reparations and repentance from the culprits. Haitians must allow their past, their history to die even though the world doesn't seem to want to allow them to do so. They must do so not to become amnesic, but to refuse to carry a history so heavy that it can only lead to the conclusion that their country is a forsaken place, that they are powerless and that to the contrary of every other human being they are condemned to poverty instead being condemned to be free. To come back to Sarkozy, I hope against previous experience that he resists the temptation to grandstand and to take on new causes by advocating huge and doomed to fail ideas. France doesn't have to cleanse its sins in Haïti , it only has to do the right thing and to help Haitians help themselves. The answer isn't more charity or guilt, but practical and yet so simple solutions that place Haitians at the center of everything, by acknowledging that they are in charge of the destiny of their country.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, and a piece of clothing

I have been waiting impatiently for Ian Buruma’s take on the French and the burqa. Here it is:

One could take the view that national governments should enforce laws, but not values. But, whereas most democracies are less prone than the French Republic is to impose "national values" on their citizens, the law cannot be totally divorced from shared values either. The fact that Europeans can marry only one spouse is both a legal and a cultural norm. And views on sexual, gender, and racial discrimination, which change with time, are reflected in the laws as well.

On the whole, individual practices, as long as they do no harm to others, should be allowed, even if many people don't particularly like them. It may be undesirable to have people who carry out public functions judges, teachers, or policewomen, for example cover up their faces. But one can impose dress codes for certain jobs, without banning a type of clothing for everyone. After all, we don't have judges and teachers wearing bikinis on the job, either.

There is another, practical, reason why the burqa ban is a bad idea. If we are serious about integrating immigrants into western societies, they should be encouraged to move around in public as much as possible. Banning the burqa would force this tiny minority of women to stay at home, and be even more dependent on their men to deal with the outside world.

So what should be done about practices that are judged to be illiberal, if we don't ban them? Sometimes it is better to do nothing. Living with values that one does not share is a price to be paid for living in a pluralist society.   

I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed with Buruma's take for he uses a lot of mambo jumbo when he should be saying that a society whose slogan is Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité cannot focus on the burqa and ban it especially when wearing it can be a choice, one made knowingly by somebody comfortable with submission or whatever else. In other words,  picking on the way women dress is a reinforcement of the view that they are not  equals to men for afterwards, is there any men’s wear that any government on earth would even entertaining banning by arguing that it symbolizes something? There is none and that is simply because it is accepted that men are individuals and that how they dress  is their business as long as they don’t expose their “best friend.”

The refusal to bury the dead Françafrique

Stephen Smith has, as almost always, an essential article in the London Review of Books on Françafrique. He argues, and I agree with him,  that it has been dead for a long time despite the fact that both France and African leaders, because they need to maintain the illusion of a special relationship, refuse to bury it. Sugary excerpt:

Then why not issue the death certificate of Françafrique and turn the page? Because neither successive French presidents – from the Socialist Mitterrand to the post-Gaullist Sarkozy – nor francophone Africa’s heads of state, especially the remnants of the old guard, want to let go. Too much is at stake, namely the political survival of the heads of state and the status of French diplomacy. France remains a last resort for weak regimes under threat in Africa, while francophone Africa is still an echo chamber for France’s international pretensions.
(...)A general I spoke to recently in Paris – a figure whose long history of postings and interventions resembles a political map of the continent – thinks much the same. ‘During the Cold War, we were a power to reckon with in our part of Africa,’ he said. ‘Since the 1990s, we’ve been moving out. That’s now visible to the naked eye. There’s not much left to show for our presence and no political will at home. And we no longer have the means. But we maintain the fiction of our “presence” and endorse the course of events we no longer determine. Which is the worst of all policies.’In a handful of European countries – Germany, Holland, Poland or Spain – where a bad Africa policy is thought to be better than none at all, France’s leverage on the continent is still admired. Their own approach is confined to the ritual expression of ‘grave concern’ in government press releases and the application of humanitarian band-aids to the continent’s open wounds. But seen from Paris and put into perspective, France is bound to become as irrelevant to its former colonies as Belgium is to Congo, 80 times bigger and seven times more populated than its former coloniser.

The key point here is that the illusion that there is a special relationship between France and Africa where sentiments, a long common history and in many cases a shared language are most important national interests is false and truncates the essential debate of the future of those countries and of their relationship with the rest of the world. In other words, la Françafrique is useful because it gives France the pretension that it still has its Gaullist grandeur while maintaining Africans under the self-satisfying but emasculating illusion that the French are in charge of their future and that they are the one enriching France.

The perpetual identity question

Agnès Poirier on what it means to French:

Eric Cantona didn't pull his punches when asked about the national debate: "They talk of the Marseillaise, of the French language, but politicians are asses. To be French is to be revolutionary and refusing all this politicking crap."
Precisely. Historical events have shaped the French mindset more than any debates will. The struggle of the French revolutionaries and the first republic up in arms against all the monarchies of the continent was the start of a profound shake-up and national identity construction. The Napoleonic setback and royalist restorations throughout the 19th century sharpened the minds, created deep national divisions, but also prepared for the glorious revolutionary episodes of the second republic (1848-1852) and the Commune (1870). The Franco-Prussian war, the Dreyfus affair, the Third Republic, the law of separation of church and state, followed by the two world wars, Vichy, the Résistance, the Algerian war and decolonisation at large made France as we have known it to be: confrontational, contradictory, unruly, restless, but also profoundly republican and secular.
And let's remember that, according to the National Institute for Demographic Studies, a quarter of the French have at least one grandparent born outside France.

Different realities

The following criticism of Bernard Kouchner (French foreign minister) by Evelyn Gordon,  shows how wide a gap there is between Americans and the French on the Israel-Palestine Question for Kouchner in France is considered to be pro-Israel when here in the US, he is considered as a leftist ideologue who doesn't understand facts and hate force even though he supported war in Iraq, supports the one in Afghanistan and has somewhat of a tough stand on Iran (less tough than Sarkozy's); that being said, I agree that he has been a terrible foreign minister in part because he is too emotive and too willing to take criticisms as attacks on his sublime aura; I have the feeling that Kouchner likes too much the role of the martyr, he liked being the martyr of the socialists throughout much of his career and now he is enjoying being the one of Sarkozysm:

Bernard Kouchner is “hurt” and “shocked” by Israelis’ “vanished” desire for peace. Israelis of all political stripes would undoubtedly be equally shocked at the French foreign minister’s ignorance — and at his willingness to hurl false accusations without even a minimal effort to check his facts. (...) But Kouchner couldn’t be bothered with the facts; he preferred to simply accuse Israelis of not wanting peace. Perhaps it’s his background as a human-rights activist showing: hurling accusations at Israel without checking the facts is practically de rigueur among human-rights organizations these days.

Defining national identities

I would like to say amen to these words from Jim Wolfreys on the debate on the definition of Francité (Frenchness) that is occurring in France, but a part of me is resisting it:

At one extreme those who find themselves concentrated in the poorest areas of France do so not out of choice, but through ethnicity and income. Neither Islam nor "ethnic communitarianism" are responsible for such divisions: they are the product of social deprivation and racism. At the other extreme, however, is a section of society that wilfully separates itself from the rest of France. The top 10% of earners choose to live in the most segregated areas of the country, well-heeled districts like Neuilly and St-Cloud on the outskirts of Paris. It is they who have created what Maurin calls "the bourgeois ghetto".
If the present debate is to reassert the historic republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity then government priorities will need to be overturned. The targeting of "illegal" immigrants – Besson aims to deport 27,000 people this year, more than double 2002 levels – focuses attention on a tiny proportion of the population. Likewise, high-profile campaigns to impose a republican dress code on Muslims are a distraction from more fundamental divisions shaping French society, divisions determined less by religion than by poverty, racism and inequality. In France, as in Britain, if debates on citizenship are to involve denouncing the extreme right while pandering to its bugbears, they will only obscure the real issues – and in so doing become part of the problem.

I believe that the trap of any debate on national identity, whether it be French, British, Moroccan, or Nigerian, is to cast it in the terms  Wolfreys is choosing to frame by emphasizing the risks as if nationals of a country should be afraid to define/decide who they are or who they would to be.There is this morbid and unhealthy connection between patriotism, any attempt to show national price and fascism and there is one between any admission that national identity can grow, change or even be redefined drastically with self-hatred, deculturation, Arabization, de-europeanization, and dewesternization.

Sarkozy and the expensive shower

This excerpt from the Guardian  on Sarkozy's expenses during his presidency of the EU is perplexing because it shows that he has lost touch with reality since it is a mistake that he wouldn't have made before becoming president when he was very much aware of how the French perceived their politicians :

French financial watchdogs slammed Nicolas Sarkozy for spending £160m during his country's six-month stint in charge of the EU – including £250,000 on a personal presidential shower that he never used.
The vast expense is set out in a report blaming poor management and a lack of transparency by the president's staff.
Costs soared because so many of the EU-related events were organised at the last minute, said the report.
On one occasion Sarkozy triggered the cancellation of an entire EU event he was due to host in Evian, because he wanted to sleep in his own bed at the Élysée palace. By then, hundreds of journalists, EU officials and national delegations had either already arrived in Evian or were on their way.

We knew that Sarkozy had expensive taste and that he liked bling, but having a shower build in times of crisis is outrageous, but I don't think any of this will affect greatly Sarkozy's political fortunes as long as he doesn't have a credible opposition. In other words, there is no audible alternative to Sarkozysm.

PS: The shower didn't cost 250, 000 euros to be fair since the price includes offices and other stuff which had to be build just for the occasion (is France a developing country to need to build infrastructure when it receives heads of state?). I'm wondering how it is possible to spend more over 5000 euros per person for a reception and almost a million euro a day just because France is presiding the EU.

Obama and the Europeans

This sugary excerpt form Timothy Garton Ash on Obama and Europe because I have no idea what Ash's point is since he is trying to have it both ways by asserting one thing and its opposite:

Barack Obama is the most European president of the United States that there has ever been. Barack Obama is the least European president of the United States that there has ever been.
(...) the approach of the Obama administration to "the Europeans" is quite pragmatic, unsentimental and realistic. It might be summarised as: what can you do for us today? On Afghanistan. On Pakistan. On Iran.
(...)Pragmatically, they take Europe as they find it. Where it acts as a single unit – on trade and competition policy – they deal with it as a single unit. Where it doesn't – on the deployment of soldiers to Afghanistan, for example, or even on tighter sanctions against Iran – they deal with 27 individual governments. That's tiresome, but it's just the way it is.
This attitude to Europe combines, in equal parts, respect and contempt. Respect inasmuch as they treat Europe as a bunch of grown-up, sovereign countries, no longer needing or wanting American tutelage. Contempt insofar as they recognise how far reality lags behind the rhetoric of European unity.
Officials in Washington know better than anyone how European leaders compete for an audience with the president or secretary of state; how they go behind each other's backs to win that contract, offer this special service, and generally preen themselves to be favourite poodle. Whether it's Nicolas Sarkozy insisting on being on stage with Obama to make his own agitated remarks about the discovery of Iran's hidden nuclear facility; or an importunate David Cameron, desperate to get his photo-op with Obama before the British election; or the Moldovan foreign minister needing his five minutes with Hillary – the silly game is the same. As for these promises of Europe finally getting its act together in foreign policy, if the Polish and Czech presidents now sign the Lisbon treaty, even the oldest friends of Europe in Washington sigh: we'll believe it when we see it.

First, Ash needs to explain  what it means for an American to be European? Does it mean to be well-read, cultured, refined, and aware that America isn't the center of the world? Second, I think that Barack Obama has no sentimental ties to Europe at the moment simply because Europe doesn't matter to his political future. This will undoubtedly change, but right now, he is more preoccupied with South America and Asia. This is about real politik. To make an  approximative comparison, I would say that Europe is to Obama what Africa is to Sarkozy, a foreign continent that he would love not to have to deal with, but that he cannot ignore  mostly because of history and because an American vacuum might led to gigantic catastrophes

A slow and painful decline !?

I love reading Kenneth Anderson especially when he compares both France and America and makes some thought-provoking points about Obama and the views of his administration on American and and American power. Sugary excerpt :

The question is whether President Obama is genuinely signaling a new paradigm.  Multilateralism as a signal of the Tired Superpower that wants to refocus inwards and let the rest of the world deal with its own problems?  Or what every first term American president always does – try to focus on the domestic issues that got him elected?  One can’t say with certainty at this point – what the President would like to do is clear; not clear whether political events will let him.
Nuclear weapon in Iran?  We’ll sing kumbayah at the Security Council and be presented with the remarkable spectacle of an openly incredulous French president reminding an American president that, tacitly, that as he speaks the Iranians knit together the pieces of their nuclear weapons.  It’s quite an exchange, and not one that initially even penetrated the warm syrup of the NYT or other American mainstream media, presumably because it didn’t fit many existing narratives, about the United States, about France, about many things.
But at the same time, American conservatives wonder why on earth, if there were no Israel to worry about, they should worry overmuch about a nuclear Iran aimed at Europe, when the Europeans have themselves been so relaxed about it.  If, in an alternate universe, the Middle East contained no Israel and never had, would America have much reason to care about nukes pointed at Europe?  When the Europeans have themselves been so unconcerned about it?  Not our world, of course, and we do worry correctly about both Tel Aviv and Paris, but that’s because – let’s be clear – we’re not multilateralists in things that truly count.  But then, what I have always admired about every senior intellectual I’ve known in France is that they are not multilateralists, either, not truly, and whether of left or right, whether they want to be or not, they are pour la France, Gaullists down to their toenails.
If you doubt it for a moment, watch closely the two YouTube videos of Sarkozy and Royal singing La Marsillease [Marseillaise]  the night Sarkozy won.  They both mean it, more so, I’m afraid, than Obama, husband or wife, or any of my academic friends in the administration, for whom something as embarrassing as the national anthem is to be strictly limited to ball games, and God forbid anyone be preserved on a FB photo putting a hand over one’s heart.  It’s Gaullist because it is finally not about justice or morality or any of the stuff that tends to move Americans and which, to be sure, moves me – it’s about honor. They’re not finally multilateralists, either, not when it comes to “France-of-Caverns,” to cite Rene Char: and therefore let us be more French.
The United States has done the inward-turning before, and notably following military defeat, in the post-Vietnam 1970s.  It appears, at this juncture, that the United States is moving to accept “soft” defeat – finally do what James Fallows, for example, has always wanted to do, simply declare victory and come home – both in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Enable the Obama administration to focus on achieving two fond dreams at once – domestic social democracy and, by reason of the domestic cost of that burden, ensure that the United States cannot play the role of ultimate security guarantor in the world over the longer term.

I don't think that Professor Anderson is right, but I think that he is on to something. I think that most Americans have no idea that they are hated also because they are number one and too often refuse to apologize for it.  It is like being the Yankees in Baseball or being Brazil in soccer if Brazil where the dominant superpower. I'm wondering whether Obama is willing to the right for America if it  means losing his popularity not only abroad, but also in America and within the press corp. Unlike conservatism, I have no doubt that Obama is American and loves his country,  I'm just wondering whether he understands the rest of the world and that being loved may be impossible for America and its leaders as long as it is a superpower. What worries is what will happen if Obama finds out that he has to be Bush -like in order to protect American interests.

The only Nkosi

I agree with Stanley Fish on this:

(...) because he is the object of unceasing criticism, Obama is also the object of unceasing attention. Day after day and night after night his is the face we see and the voice we hear. (On Sunday, we could have seen and heard him on five networks.) Like Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, he bestrides the political landscape like a colossus. Every administration takes its name from the president, but in this administration the president seems to be the only one performing.

In other words, Obama is just like Sarkozy. He loves the spotlight and hates sharing it when it doesn't suit him as all actors who know how good they are, more often than not , do. No wonder, Sarkozy wasn't here to clap as Obama gave his speech at the United Nations

C’est la même chose

At the eve of every international summit, it's always the same story about a French president and the Anglo-Saxons especially when the former is thinking about reelection and is unpopular at home:

In time-honoured French fashion, Mr Sarkozy is happy to make himself a nuisance to les Anglo-Saxons as he preaches his doctrine of “remoralising capitalism”. He calculates that with elections facing Mr Brown and Ms Merkel, he is the pre-eminent European, at least for the moment. He is busy cultivating Latin America and the East. He may have rejoined Nato but France is back to playing its old Gaullist game of middleman between Russia and the US. On Iran and its nuclear programme he is talking tougher than anyone outside Israel.
The French President is attempting a little one-upmanship over Mr Obama. He has made no secret of his frustration over the US leader’s failure to respond to his overtures. Privately, he sees Mr Obama as overrated and now politically weakened. He is said to have given him “9 out of 20” for his speech on the economy and healthcare this month.

What is funny about this new and phony gimmick is that nobody seems to remember how much Sarkozy loves America (he spent his first summer vacation as president in New Hamsphire  and  how much America, at least some its too eager journalists (Roger Cohen) and its fashion victim politicians (New Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani) used to love him. What happened? Sarkozy realized that in France it never pays to be an Atlantist and that it wasn't in his interest to be as close to Obama as he was to Bush given that closeness in this case since Obama has been sanctified as the new Messiah even though he is losing his mojo, looks like weakness and subservience while in the case of Bush, it looked like an act of political courage given the fact that he was a president in a friend on the international scene .

Short-sightedness

Easy and worthless commentary, but not totally untrue:

Vanity, thy name is Sarko … Le président de la république Française made un peu d'un idiot of himself in front of the press by trying yet again – and failing yet again – to hide how short he is. He has previously been discovered standing on a box to give a speech, wearing shoes with heels notably higher than those of his supermodel wife (apparently confined to ballet flats since she married) and standing on tippy-toes during photos with the Obamas.

Culture of fear or fear of culture and humanity

Pankaj Mishra on what he considers to be a culture of fear that is created in too many countries by the increasing popular sentiment that foreigners are assailing their land, their culture, and their national identity as seen in Christopher Caldwell's latest book on the threat of Islam and of Muslims to Europe, Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West :

The social anthropologist Arjun Appadurai claims in Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger that "minorities are the major site for displacing the anxieties of many states about their own minority or marginality (real or imagined) in a world of a few megastates, of unruly economic flows and compromised sovereignties".
This at least partly explains why a few hundred women in headscarves incited such fierce passions in a nation-state whose geopolitical and cultural insignificance in recent years has only been partly obscured by its hyperactive president, Nicolas Sarkozy. In The Politics of the Veil, the distinguished scholar of gender studies Joan Wallach Scott explains how the banning of a small piece of cloth that covers the head and neck affirmed an "imagined France", one that was "secular, individualist and culturally homogenous" and "whose reality was secured by excluding dangerous others from the nation". Scott demonstrates that French Muslim girls, who were directly affected by the law on the foulard, were "strikingly absent from the debates" in France, which were dominated by intellectuals and politicians frantically defining the dangerous "other" (typically by describing the veil as, in Jacques Attali's words, a "successor to the Berlin wall").
The veil has now been turned into, Scott writes, a highly charged "sign of the irreducible difference between Islam and France". Elsewhere, too, politicians and journalists - self-proclaimed "liberals" as well as unabashed rightwingers - rhetorically ask whether "Islam", which allegedly enforces a harsh divine law on all Muslims, is compatible with "European" values of reason and tolerance, which are supposedly derived from the Enlightenment (or Christianity, as Sarkozy blurted out in 2007, in a revealing breach of republican protocol).

I have always thought that the debate about culture, assimilation, and identity masks what I believed to be the essential debate of our time, which is how free are we allowed to be when choosing who we are as people, citizens or whatever else? Because if one really thinks about the subject, one has to come to the realization that only people who believed in the totalitarianism of the Good./traditions/God are really obsessed with culture and with the idea that civilized people/nations can become barbarians or barbaric. The idea that if there is no God, no moralistic state or culture then everything is permissible is laughable and obscurantist because it dooms humanity since it asserts that people are incapable of making good decisions and that there is nothing that they won't forbid themselves to do if something or someone doesn't forbid them to do bad things or rather things that are for them. I may be stupidly or charmingly naïve but I don't think that banning the veil in France solves any problem with Islamism and I don't even think that it is the goal because otherwise, Sarkozy would have had the wildly imaginative idea to just ban Islamism and to therefore put the State at the center of deciding what kind of Islams are compatible with French Society.

Neo-cons and France

Well this is odd, but unfortunately, odd doesn't mean untrue even though the analysis here is too simplistic and too cute to clarify Poulos's point.

Summer is always hot for dreamers

I have to admit that it is becoming increasingly difficult to read and to understand André Glucksman because both his obsession with Putin's Russia and his mariage de raison to Sarkozy (who has never confronted Putin) have made him not so much inaudible but incoherent. In short, one can always guess what he will assert, but one cannot see how he reconcile the dichotomies between his idealism views on Russia, Chechnya and his realism on French issues. I read Kenneth Anderson's post on Idealism and Realism  in international relations (which is a great read) and still I don't get Glucksmann because reading him now is as odd as it would be to listen to Hitch explaining that God spoke to him and that the experience convinced him that s/he/it is great. Sugary excerpt:

Is there such a thing as the European Union? In Washington, the State Department has been seeking the phone number for such an entity since the days of Henry Kissinger. In Moscow, the EU is nothing but a television prop. Since the days of Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, regimes have come and gone, but the conviction endures that only classical powers matter: the United Kingdom, France, and above all Germany, long a political dwarf but always an economic giant. As for the historians, they’re uncertain: the De Gaulle–Adenauer and Mitterrand-Kohl relationships did not work for long, and London’s tiffs with Paris and Bonn (and then Berlin) were all the talk for decades. In the face of a global crisis, European disunity is evident.
The original, six-nation European Economic Community was able to overcome atavistic and ideological divergences only by focusing on limited but crucial stakes, of which two were most important: resistance to Stalinist expansion, and the will to have done with the economic warfare that led to global conflicts. Have such ventures now come to an end? Europe’s cherished “common values” are seriously damaged when a former Social-Democratic German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, is named to head the Russian natural-gas company Gazprom hardly a month after leaving office.

Change, bling, and fitness to lead

The Guardian Editorial on Berlusconi, Bling, Italy, and the G8 Summit:

Mr Berlusconi is the symptom but not necessarily the entire cause of his country's drift. Italians are not scandalised by him. They are dismayed about being criticised in the foreign press as a result of his antics, but they are not calling for the man himself to go.
Other European countries have coped with charismatic populists. France had a heavy dose of Nicolas Sarkozy in his bling phase, until the French said "ça suffit" and the president changed tack. But that is not happening in an Italy which secretly admires the agility of its leaders in escaping from the tightest of political corners. Until Italians start demanding serious standards from their leaders, the country is perhaps not the best venue for serious world summits.

I'm not buying it and I'm puzzled that all that the Guardian finds wrong with Berlusconi is his bling and clownesque behavior when his different times as the prime minister of Italy has shown that they are just a side show designed to distract attention away from his politics and policies. It is ridiculous to focus on Berlusconi the clown because such a distraction enables him to flirt shamelessly with Neo-Fascism groups and to concentrate his power while entertaining Italy and the world.

The real clowns

Stanley Fish has a great article on the troubles of Mark Sanford and the resignation of Sarah Palin and the way Journalists are covering them. It is a must-read because it shows that it is impossible to cover the circus without becoming a part of it. As I said last fall, I like Sarah Palin just as I like Obama and Sarkozy for that matter (I was never able to hate Bush because I believe that he wasn't the issue, that his politics were), after all, how can you not like people who work so hard at being liked and who believe that they have a destiny. However, the fact that I like Palin isn't enough for me to ever vote for her, for them because politics isn't about liking or hating the politicians, it isn't about the personal, it is about the beef not the  syrupy fluff, which is what the media seems to think that it is. It is sad that in era when seriousness is needed, the world is dominated by the politics of me where politicians believe that being liked, beloved, venerated is everything. To come back to Palin, it was sad for me to see how easy it became/is for people, women especially to hate her/ despise her as if she didn't have the right to exist, as if she is an abomination, as if the only possible way to fight her ideology is to smack her down as manly guys mount a bitch in heat to remind her that she was only created for one thing, to be taken and to be bred.

Change you can believe in

Aah, chassez le naturel:

Sarkozy said he would no longer reply sarcastically to the newspaper editor who provoked him at a press conference, “not only because of my respect for the person in question, but because of my concept of my function . . . When one is president of the republic, one is never right to be aggressive. I think of it constantly.”
The old Sarkozy was determined to impose a “rupture” in French mentalities and habits. The new Sarkozy says: “I must take account of criticism, of difficulties and failings, try to do better. I want to carry out reforms by seeking broad acceptance, by developing discussion. I’m listening. I’m learning. Perhaps I’m making progress.”
(... )Commentators are unanimous in attributing the new, improved image to Carla Bruni Sarkozy. Le Nouvel Observateur did not ask Sarkozy about Bruni’s influence, perhaps because Denis Olivennes, the director of the magazine and an ex-boyfriend of the first lady, was one of two journalists who conducted the interview.
In an interview last year, Bruni told this correspondent that her husband “is not very aggressive. He’s impulsive”. She is a great believer in correcting character flaws through psychoanalysis. Thanks to Bruni, Sarkozy has reportedly abandoned the worst of French pop culture to read Borges and watch film classics by Kubrick, Chaplin and Capra. He has invited Woody Allen and Michel Houellebecq to the Élysée Palace.

I'm counting the seconds until this change lasts and I can't wait to hear Obama say that he has grown or rather evolved for after all he does't have any reason to sing the I have change pitiful tune for now America and the world love him while they are weary of my Sarko.

Attention grabber

Ah, ah, ah, and ah:

Say what you like about Nicolas Sarkozy, he certainly knows how to capture your attention.  At a meeting in the Elysée Palace last week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it appears that the French president recommended in no uncertain terms that Avigdor Lieberman, the hardline foreign minister, should be dropped from the Israeli cabinet and replaced with Tzipi Livni, the less abrasive opposition leader.

Becoming Robespierre

Stuart Jeffries on Sarkozy, the Burqa, and its assertion that it isn't welcomed in France (hat tip Arthur Goldhammer)

Sarkozy now goes further, following revolutionary logic in not just chasing those who dress in ways he and French political culture finds intolerable out of public spaces, but pursuing those who dress in a way that is a rejection of western values even into their private worlds. He said: "The burka is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic." Even religious justification is bad enough, run the suppressed premises of this argument, but the absence of such despicable justifications is worse.
The woman in a burka is revealed as subservient to patriarchal culture. She must be made free to choose to be more western. Sarkozy proposes, in giving his backing to the establishment ofa parliamentary commission to look at whether to ban the wearing of burkas in public, that such imposed freedom would improve her lot.
French venerate such abstract freedoms. We needn't. They were, for Hegel, the basis of the revolution's collapse into the Terror in which, he argued, individuals were sacrificed to the ill-conceived pursuit of abstract freedoms. Sarkozy is thus a modern-day Robespierre, proposing some women – whom he presumes to have been silenced by patriarchal society and whose voices he doesn't want to hear –be terrorised in the name of the kind abstract freedoms France has venerated for 210 years. Let's see if he succeeds.

The ego of the Man in the Mirror

Ahead of Obama's visit to France thus to Sarkozy, it was predictable that Americans journalists and others were going go be tempted to remake the portrait of Sarkozy and to point that he never become what they expected him to be. Here is an example from the Economist (hat tip: Schott's Vocab)

Or take François Bayrou, a centrist leader, who kicked off his campaign by publishing a vitriolic book entitled “Abuse of Power”. Describing France under Mr Sarkozy as an “egocracy”, he refers to the president variously as “a blind monarch” and “a barbaric child”, who “believes himself all-powerful and imagines that the world starts with him and is in his hand”. Magazines devote many pages to analysing the president’s psychological make-up. The French blogosphere, too, is filled with caustic anti-Sarkozy commentary, mocking everything from his taste for Rolex watches to his overbearing posse of bodyguards and his tough policies on crime.(...)Above all, it is Mr Sarkozy’s style and method of governing that prompts real passion. No president under the fifth republic has run so much directly from the Elysée Palace. Presidential advisers are as likely to decide policy as ministers. The prime minister’s job has been downgraded to that of manager. Mr Sarkozy’s network of business chums invites suspicions of cronyism. Moreover, by opening up his private life to public inspection, he has made his own behaviour, with all its quirks, a legitimate subject of debate in a way that would have been unthinkable in the past. He recently posted on Facebook a video of himself and two dogs dropping in on Carla Bruni, his wife.

I have always believed that Sarkozy was a politician in the wrong country and that he would have made a popular president of the United States. The funny thing about all the articles on anti-Sarkozysm and egocracy is that their authors haven't yet realized that Sarkozy has a lot in common with Obama, that he is Obama's twin; his main problems are that he reigns in an environment where all his faults overshadow his qualities. If I wanted to be cute, I would says that Sarkozy is Danny de Vito in the movie Twins and that Obama is Schwarzenegger. The difference is that both are very good at what they do and that one, unfortunately, in part because he has the looks and governs in the right environment gets all of the praise and of the adoration while the other has to pick up the flowers. Sarkozy must wake every morning and see Obama in the mirror, but Obama is too beloved right now to see himself in Sarkozy.

The politics of sexual appetite

I had a lot of fun reading Lucy Wadham's article on Sarkozy's manliness and the desire of France to be taken by a macho man in the Prospect Magazine. After my laughter stopped (it took a long time), I had to wonder what is it about the French that make Americans and Brits focus solely on their sexuality by using the excuse as one of my best friends used to put it that they are the horniest people in the world. Sugary excerpt:

My son, Jack, a French philosophy graduate, has a theory to explain the president’s success: the upstart Sarkozy is the conquering hero, the Nietzschean superman, whose will to power sets him above the constraints of conventional French morality. This, for Jack, explains his election and his massive, if short-lived popularity, as well as his ability, where others have failed, to push through difficult reforms.
I would go one step further, however, and suggest that it was also Sarkozy’s conquering libido which, more than his policies, explain the labels “courageous” and “dynamic.” Borrowing from my sisters’ rich vocabulary of male sexual stereotypes, I would describe Sarkozy as a sex dwarf. To my mind, what defines France’s president and explains his magnetism is not simply his “will to power,” but the particular circumstances that drive it: his small stature and his large sex drive.
In a culture unreconstructed by either of the great movements that have fashioned Anglo-Saxon society (Protestantism and feminism), the libido is still a force to be reckoned with in France. The last presidential election was not a battle between left and right but rather a contest between two “styles”—one gentle, the other tough; one consensual, the other coercive; one feminine, the other masculine. In the end, the French opted, not for the reassuring arms of Ségolène Royal and her “gentle revolution,” but for Nicolas Sarkozy, the libidinous sex dwarf. All the iconography of the presidential campaign pointed to the subliminal forces in the battleground. Picture Royal, dressed all in white, as if in homage to that alliance of virginity and female power embodied in such icons as Elizabeth I and Joan of Arc. Now picture Sarkozy, short and strutting in an oversized and sweat-stained suit, like France’s favourite dictator, the potent and charismatic Napoleon Bonaparte. Sarkozy, like Bonaparte, has all the characteristics of the sex dwarf: he is short, shamelessly flirtatious and tireless in his pursuit of women.
No record of his sexual conquests has seen the light of day, but I don’t need documentary evidence to know that Sarko is a sex dwarf.(...) There is something baffling about Nicolas Sarkozy’s rise to power, not only to the millions of people who didn’t vote for him, but for many of the millions who did and who now, like my own children, regret it. His success can only really be explained in psychosocial terms: that it was the collective desire of the French people to be represented by a dominant and libidinous male, rather than a dominant and matriarchal female. This particular fantasy could only have found an outlet in a society unreconstructed by feminist ideology—in short, a patriarchy. For France, despite its many powerful women, still wants to be controlled by a man.

I can't wait for somebody, an analyst, a journalist to dare to write about Obama and America in the some way. If that day ever comes, it doesn't take much to know what will happen, to guess the outrage that will follow and the accusations of racism, of using old and disgusting images of Black males as having a bestial sex drive and of some white women being curious to go black. Because if we apply Wadham's analytical frame to America and that we go along with the assertion that sexual innuendos are permitted in political analysis then what we could say about Obama and America ? Would it be permissible to say that Obama is a sexy poet and that America, after years of being taken by a cowboy who was obsessed with forceful penetration, has decided that it wants more foreplay with a sexy poet whom it imagines must have the legendary appetite of black males (since it views Obama) making it possible to assume that after the gentle foreplay, the sex will be incredible?
When I was in High School,  there was the hyped perception among my peers that going out with black guys (black girls weren't as popular, they weren't available mainly because going white for a black girl gave the impression that she was settling for milk when she should get coffee because she couldn't handled the real deal, a man of the same race who can match and more than likely surpass her own sexual insatiability) was the coolest thing, it was a way to break away with your parents's generation, appear ethnically cool and culturally radical while at the same time showing that you are in vogue and in touch with the Boys II Men era. If I wanted to be creatively mean and shallow to make a cheap point about Obama and America,I would say that we are in American politics, in the Boys II Men era and America, like a teenage girl who wants desperately to be popular and to be in sync with pop culture, has decided to go black. But I know better, I know that sex, sexual appetite in politics is important, but becomes seductively and dangerously limiting when it focuses on fun, exciting, but cheap stereotypes.

Beef and fluff

The Guardian on the fall from grace of Rachida Dati, France Sarkozy's justice minister who, no so long ago, was celebrated as a successful example of integration à la française only to be dismissed from the Sun king's court for her exuberance and luxurious taste:

Rachida Dati, the beleaguered French justice minister, may have been lampooned for her devotion to wearing ostentatious catwalk fashion at inappropriate moments, but having been forced by Nicolas Sarkozy to run in the European elections as a way of sacking her from government, she remains defiant in her choice of footwear.
Once she was Sarkozy's handpicked symbol of change, hugely popular with the public as the first Muslim woman to hold a major government post. Now, after a spectacular fall from grace, Dati is using the European election campaign to fight back.
Despite trying to prove her commitment by returning to work five days after giving birth by caesarian section, Sarkozy ordered her to run in order to sack her after the 7 June vote. She felt "humiliated", according to the former prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin.(....) Dati wants to repair her own personal standing in order to be able to pursue her ambitions to become Paris mayor at a later date.
But even her symbolism as a hero of France's new ethnic minorities has taken a dent. "With her tenacity, she's a total inspiration," said Madad Zineb, 25, a student at the meeting. "But I think after Dati it now might be even harder for the young generation of ethnic minorities to break through in politics. There is now so much focus on personal history and all the tiny details of your private life. France has gained new ­hunger for that."

The problem for Dati is that she is no longer useful to Sarkozy precisely because she was solely a symbol. In politics, as anywhere else in life, it is always possible to replace symbols where they are no able to become gain some substance and gravitas by proving that they are about more than their gender, their beauty, their race or their religion . In Dati's case, she remained the glamorous and ambitious woman of Algerian and Moroccan origin, with a admirable life story, but never became fully a political woman with ideas and indispensable skills. In other words, she is just a celebrity and people don't take her seriously because she is perceived as one of Sarkozy's creatures who needs to accept her bannishment because she didn't seize the chance of a lifetime. Most people want her, especially her peers who are competing with her for the king's attention,  to fade in the background or to just die of boredom in Strasbourg. The saddest thing about Dati is that she is worth more than her caricature even though she was content with being fluffy because she thought probably that her status as a symbol would protect her from political and public attacks and would stop the French from viewing her as a cold calculating woman who did everything to succeed except studying her craft to become competent. Rachida Dati suffers from the same ill that plagues Sarah Palin, the airhead syndrome except that in her case her minority status and the fact that she does have a compelling rise from poverty to riches immigrant story makes her more sympathetic  and less contemptible because some fills that she had/has no control over her political fate and that she had/had few choices in life.

The Rebellious French Left

Mark Mardell on Olivier Besancenot and the popularity of the French extreme left:

Olivier Besancenot has enough charisma and charm to be able to stress that policies, not personalities, are what matter. But I think my mum would like him. A good-looking, well-groomed young man, casually smart in jeans and a black shirt, who sounds like he cares. But he is not leader, for there is a collective leadership and 10 people share the platform. [...] Besancenot tells me: "There is a new political space opening up. We feel there is even a part of the French political class that is taking up ideas which only we were expressing four or five years ago. That allows us to go a bit further. But our discourse only makes sense if there is a mass of the population who thinks politics belongs to them, not professional politicians."[...] My feeling is that if there is something of a resurgence of radicalism in France, it is a mood, not a movement. But that stylised megaphone does make a lot of noise (ah yes, we in the media amplify the phenomena). And we will have to wait until 7 June to see who is marching to a post-revolutionary tune.

I have never liked Olivier Besancenot precisely because he s only in perfect control of his image, which he uses to mask the fact that his ideas are as odd, outdated and uncool and he appears to be young, hip, and modern. The problem, as Mardell points out, is that there is a political vacuum in France created by the divisions within the French Socialist party and the absence of opposition to Sarkozy who is extremely happy to have Besancenot, who is not a real threat to him in the sense that he will never become president, rise in the polls and become his sole political opponent.

The case for enlargement

Borut Grgic makes the case for further enlargement of the European Union, which both Sarkozy and Merkel oppose:

The EU is a project in the making, which is why we have an enlargement policy, which has been the single best tool for reuniting the Continent. It has turned Europe into the biggest market in the world, and it has injected dynamism into the European economy. Now, it seems, someone wants to reverse this progress and halt enlargement.
The story of Europe, the dreams of Churchill and Roosevelt and Truman, later embraced and championed by Helmut Kohl, was a united, free and prosperous Europe. When the Berlin Wall fell, tyranny cracked. Millions of oppressed were free to speak, to act and to create. The splash of creativity that was reborn in the East is still surging and radiating energy across all of Europe. This is what the European dream is all about -- hope. Enlargement is the policy that gives our European brothers and sisters stuck on the margins of Europe the hope to be brave, to continue with reforms and political transformation despite the risks.
Enlargement is not about the political elites, but about the European citizens. It was always about improving the lives of the citizens across Europe. It is easy to dismiss our eastern neighbors on account of their leaders. Eurocrats with big egos dismiss the prospect that Ukraine, Georgia or Azerbaijan may one day become full members of our EU family. They criticize their leaders and their systems: there's too much corruption, too little political pluralism, and they are too slow at embracing economic change.
This all may be true today, but enlargement is about tomorrow. Having a strategy is having a vision, and the EU has no strategy for the East, which suggests there is no vision of what Europe ought to look like in 2030.

The problem for those who favor further enlargement of the EU and the reunification of Europe is that it is still dealing with the 2004 enlargement . Moreover,  without the support of France and Germany, which is unlikely to come any time soon, it is impossible for more countries to join the union because those are the two largest and most powerful of the union and that their support is essential. Enlargement of the EU is a romantic notion on paper, but it has started to be viewed by the most powerful countries, which favor a deepening of ties, as a hindrance to the growth of the EU as a rival to both China and the US especially in the times of economic crisis.
The elephant in the room is Turkey and the fact that the EU has started enlargement talks with that country even though many countries don't it to become a member makes it more difficult for the EU to open up to new countries while it hasn't found a solution to its Turkish problem.

Sarkozy and the objectification of Europe

Charles Bremner has a good post on Sarkozy's latest new remixed ideas about Europe as he launched the European elections in France. Sugary excerpt:

Sarkozy sees the economic slump as a chance to assert France-friendly regulation in the Union after two decades in which, in French eyes, Europe has worshipped at the "liberal" -- meaning free market --  altar. He wants an end to competition among states on tax rates and an end to market rules that block mergers between big European companies, he said. A "European preference" must also be applied to favour the goods and services of the Union over those from outside. That was a Sarkozy campaign promise in 2007, but we had not heard about it since then. 
Looking to the outside, Sarkozy said Europe "must cease diluting itself in an endless enlargement. Europe must have frontiers." Turkey could never become a member but should have a special partnership. Russia should have the same, he said. That goes down well in France and Germany but not with Britain -- nor the United States, as we saw when Barack Obama called last month for Turkish EU entry.  Sarkozy has not been so tough in practice as in his rhetoric. He has not attempted to stop Ankara's accession negotiations, which began in 2005. 
(...) Sarkozy is of course telling voters what they want to hear ahead of an election which will serve as a referendum on his two years in power. He is echoing the public mood. The Socialist opposition wants roughly the same though it disagrees with Sarko's hostility to the Commission and Parliament. Northern Europeans do not generally realise it, but Europe has been widely seen in France for the past 15 years as a British-backed plot to undermine the French welfare state and way of life. Sarkozy is posing as its saviour. Or, in the gushing words of Luc Chatel, the Government spokesman, today: Sarkozy's vigorous leadership has revived in Europe "la pensée universelle française". 

The sad truth is that Sarkozy is not really an European in the sense that he has solely an ideological view of Europe, which explains why Europe is an object in his political campaigns, which he uses to talk about France, its fears, its aspirations and the sense that the many French have that Europe to be acceptable must be French or rather France with bigger frontiers. I will start taking Sarkozy's ideas about Europe seriously when they are about something other than grandstanding and winning elections or rather showing that his political party is more patriotic and nationalistic than the French Left. The saddest thing is that the French Left cannot counter successfully Sarkozy's grand European ambitions or at least bash them for their insincerity because it too has objectified Europe by making it about Sarkozy and Neoliberalism. Europe is a subject which divides the French Left's electorate and upon which its leaders do not want to have to take a definite stand, which means that sadly elections, which are supposed to be about Europe are about nothing else than France.

On beauty

Reading this article by India Knight on Carla Bruni makes one realizes how much women can hate one another or at least enjoy another's perceived misery especially when she is perceived as being too beautiful. I'm not quoting it because just doing so makes me dirty and because I have this crazy idea that political wives have the right to be whoever they want to be not objects.

L'amour sot

I won't even pretend that I can watch this video without shaking my hand and resisting the urge to vomit. This reminds of  years ago when I live in a dorm where people believed fanatically that Titanic was the best ever made and no movie would ever be able to measure to it. How shallow!