De Villepin Mop Up

The AP reports reports:

Domonique de Villepin called the rabbi of Boulogne-Billancourt, Victor Bellahcem, Monday, following the physical assault of his son in front of his home on Sunday. De Villepin also telephoned Aziz el Alaouani, head of the Regional Muslim Faith Council in Alsace, after an arson in front of his house in the early morning of the same day.

Concerning the violence directed against the Jewish adolescent, the Interior minister told Mr. Bellahcem of his "profound consternation before such unspeakable acts" and he expressed his "most severe condemnation of this assault of an obviously anti-Semitic nature."

He assured him that "everything would be done to locate the malefactors as soon as possible," according to the ministry.

Regarding the fire started before the home of Mr. El Alaouani in Strasbourg and the racist and nazi inscriptions seen on the wall outside his house, the minister told the Muslim official, "on behalf of the state," of his "vivid emotion" and of his "solidarity in these trying circumstances."

He also expressed "his most severe condemnation of these ignominious acts and his powerful determination to find those responsible as soon as possible."

Germany's Top Media Blogger Delivers the Goods

For several weeks, I've been wanting to make a link to No Pasarán et al's across-the-Rhine equivalent, David's Medienkritik, which skewers "the stale anti-American fare coming from the German media", and this time is as good as any. Actually, this time is better than any, for several reasons (nudge nudge), but perhaps especially because one of David Kaspar's latest posts concerns a Welt am Sonntag article that starts out by skewering France's foreign minister and his country's policies. It is by Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute office in Berlin.

I am not convinced, Monsieur Barnier!

Even if the Bush-haters don't like it — Iraq is not lost.

French Foreign Minister Barnier warned the US that the coming 'transfer of power to the new [Iraqi] government must be comprehensive, genuine, and without any ambiguity.'

The minister added that it was high time that the US behaved 'credibly.' We need not, as long as a French politician can make such comments, fear for the survival of cynicism. …

The two closely related ideologies, EU-nationalism and anti-Americanism like to keep themselves above mere facts…

America, Great Britain, Germany, France, Israel, the Arab world, and Peter Scholl-Latour all believed that Saddam had secret, illegal weapons depots. We should ask ourselves what went wrong, what could we have done better, how much do our intelligence services actually know about what the North Koreans and the Iranians have in their arsenals. But “Bush lied” sounds wonderful — so why bother to be at all concerned with unpleasant details?

Make sure you read the rest of the article…

A previous post concerns an analysis by Prof. Joachim Krause of Kiel University's Institute for Security Policy. His main conclusions (in "The Iraq Crisis and the International Order") :

There is no indication of any basis for the assumption that US policy is guided by a selfish interest in securing energy sources. By contrast, one is led to conclude that, above all, the French and Russian positions have been determined by very narrowly defined financial interests in crude oil exploration in Iraq.

The German position on the Iraq crisis has been characterized by an undifferentiated pacificism and an anti-American populism that has led to a serious degradation of trans-Atlantic solidarity.

David's conclusion: "Given his advocacy of these theses, Prof. Krause has little hope of being cited frequently as an expert by the German media. "

A third and final example concerns an interview Dubya gave last week. "Although he was speaking to a domestic audience, some of the President's remarks clearly counter the prejudices and misinformation spread about Mr. Bush in the German media." (That could apply to the French media too, needless to say.) One quote, in particular, seems to put the lie to the argument that W is a religious fanatic:

My job is to make sure that, as President, people understand that in this country you can worship any way you choose. And I'll take that a step further. You can be a patriot if you don't believe in the Almighty. You can honor your country and be as patriotic as your neighbor.

Bush also discourses on Iraq, Cuba, history, and the 2000 election. David's conclusion (which might apply to the French political class as well): "No wonder German Chancellor Schroeder doesn't get along with this guy.

"Bush has principles."

At this point, it is perhaps time to remember that yesterday and today were the birthdays of two great Americans. Here is one quote from each. (It is not altogether unfitting to ask whether they apply to the current crisis in Iraq, and the various responses of the "coalition of the willing" and the "peace camp".)

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.

Norman Vincent Peale

Lire la version française

Bad Moon Rising

I remain convinced something bad is about to happen in Ivory Coast even though I blogged on the matter two weeks ago and war obviously hasn't broken out since. I don't know when or where the "event horizon" will come and perhaps it can still be averted but it seems pretty obvious that things have gone from bad to worse and are now heading straight for disastrous.

When I last blogged the matter, rebel forces were seeding rumors about staging events to provoke a riot and a subsequent military confrontation that would involve "attacking the civilian population." The day after I wrote that post, all French schools in Ivory Coast were closed following an attempt by a few dozen members of student union linked to president Gbagbo to force their way into a French high school. A group of about 15 youths hopped the outer wall of the property and ran riot, physically assaulting two students and a teacher.

At that very moment, president Gbagbo was announcing measures to send the rebel representatives in the power-sharing government packing, canceling their salaries and denying them access to government buildings. They'd been boycotting government functions since March anyhow. Rebel leader Guillaume Soro then told the members of his movement to regroup in Bouaké.

Furthermore, a French magistrate (who must be very brave) has had someone very close to president Gbagbo (Michel Legré, Gbagbo's wife's brother-in-law) arrested as an accomplice in the April 16 disappearance of a francophone Canadian reporter, Guy-André Kieffer. The investigation is apparently also turning up a whole list of names of people in power and close to the president. The theory of the case puts Kieffer at a supermarket parking lot whence he was abducted, all of which indicates that there was a high-level conspiracy to silence him. Kieffer's beat was primary materials exports, particularly cocoa (of which Ivory Coast is the world's largest producer).

Yesterday, African news agency PANA reported that an anonymous French woman recently returned from Abidjan claims that a black list of 70 French nationals likely to be held as hostages to put pressure on France has been drawn up in Abidjan.

"It was asked of me that I return to France from Abidjan, where I lived for 30 years, because my name appears on this black list of 70 persons. The aim of the lists' authors is to kidnap the French in order to put pressure on France so that it will intervene in the conflict," said the French national. Pana continues:

According to her, the black list, on which the names of French nationals of various professions have been written, may have been drawn up "by those who have had a taste of the Republic's treasure and who do not want the situation in Ivory Coast to be normalized."

"The climate of insecurity in Ivory Coast favors certain gangs who profit from it. For those people, the end of the war means the end of their position of income. ..."

There are around 16,000 French nationals currently living in Ivory Coast and some 4,700 French soldiers have been deployed to maintain peace since the start of the insurrection in late 2002.

Abu Ghraib, Aussaresses... Enough!

Paris Mayor Betrand Delanoë and historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet have christened a place in Paris in memory of Maurice Audin. The place is at the intersection of rue des Ecoles, rue Saint Victor and rue Monge in the 5th arrondissement.

Audin was a young communist militant and mathematician murdered at age 25 in Algeria as punishment for his anti-colonial activities. (View his doctoral thesis here — it was defended and published posthumously) The awful truth at long last grudgingly admitted is that Audin was killed by the French army, specifically by forces under the command of the now notorious general Aussaresses. (See here for Human Rights Watch's letter to president Chirac on the matter of Aussaresses and torture in Algeria.)

Apart from his heroism, his legacy remains as an indictment of France's past, such that in its most serious endeavors the country was opposed by its best and bravest citizens, for whom it reserved an ignominious end. Vidal-Naquet, the son of Holocaust survivors, is a pro-Palestinian historian who has also long waged a campaign against negationists, (against Robert Faurisson and Roger Garaudy in particular, but also against Chomsky, who prefaced an edition of a negationist book by Faurisson). Vidal-Naquet led the Audin Committee from 1957 to 1959. The committee attempted to establish the truth of the Audin case and he was also among the first to denounce the French army's use of torture.

Communist representatives on the Paris city council were the first to take the initiative in naming the place for Audin. In July 2001, they brought a resolution to a vote which stated: "The revelations of general Aussaresses about the torture practiced by the French army during the Algerian war have brought to life a part of our country's history that is far from recognized. Maurice Audin, a young intellectual, was most likely killed by Aussaresses' men."

During the ceremonies, Vidal-Naquet recalled the facts as they are currently known. In Algiers on June 11, 1957, the young mathematician was arrested at the home he shared with his wife Josette and his three children. Henri Alleg, then editor of the newspaper Alger républicain, and who would later write the book La Question, the decisive work on torture in Algeria, published in 1958 (four years before the end of the war), was arrested in the same place the next day. Alleg was present at the ceremony and heard Vidal-Naquet call him "one of the last witnesses, apart from his murders, to see Audin alive." Vidal-Naquet added, "to this day, the Republic has not solemnly recognized the murder of Maurice Audin. The one accused of the murder continued his career in the army and died having been awarded the legion of honor. I repeat, of honor."

The mayor, who made Mumia abu Jamal an honorary citizen of Paris last October, couldn't resist linking the case of French torture in Algeria to American torture in Iraq: "How many decades will it take to recognize that some French were collaborators and handed Jews over to the Nazis? Is torture an outdated struggle in 2004? In Iraq or elsewhere?"

It seems some in France are incapable of commenting on revelations of torture in Iraq without reference to Algeria. Really, the two are not comparable. There should be no comparison drawn. At all. Yet here is a review of a book on photographs of torture in Algeria. The title of the review, which is accompanied by a photo of Abu Ghraib, reads "Iraq, seen through the lens of the torture employed during the war of Algeria." The reviewer concludes that returning to such difficult matters is "to protect us from a vicious cycle that constantly threatens to crush our humanity, be it in Indochina, in Iraq, in Algeria or elsewhere."

Fortunately freelance journalist Hicham Ettayebi Ouzzani added a small measure of respectability to the discussion when he published an essay in Le Monde on May 24th entitled "Arab Jails."

[Arabs] know that torture defines them as citizens of their countries as much as laughter defines the human being, according to Aristotle. It is a common practice and many Arab states, doubtless in the name of a cultural exception, are eager to preserve it. In all honesty, few powers in the Arab world would have held up if they had not savagely inscribed their brazen laws in the flesh their opponents. [...]

Continue reading "Abu Ghraib, Aussaresses... Enough!" ...

Lanzmann Screens 'Shoah' for High School students of the "9-3"

On May 25, this was on the front page of Le Monde:

When the lights came back on, Monday May 24, at the Utrillo de Stains high school in Seine-Saint-Denis, there was a silence such as a class room has never known: total, heavy, overpowering. The same degree of attention, without any snickering or whispering, had been shown the screening of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, which came before. Subject: "the process of execution at Treblinka." The same serenity again while the filmmaker answered at length the questions of a hundred or so juniors and seniors. "What did they do with the ladies' hair?" ; "Why don't you mention the gypsies?" ; "What does 'Shoah' mean?"

Standing opposite the students for nearly two hours, Claude Lanzmann had chosen a school with a bad reputation in which to speak to these students, most of whom are the children of immigrants, "because of what's going on." But at no point was there talk of "what's going on," of the renewal of anti-Semitism, of the importation of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Not that the students had been selected in advance, obviously, or that their questions bad been screened. But viewing the film, which is "stabbing"(*), to repeat the pretty slip of the tongue made by a teary-eyed girl, and the presence of this impressive man with a grave voice who said he was moved and "honored" to be present, imposed not a submissive silence but absolute respect.

"When you see that nazi, you know it's true. When you see that barber who worked in the gas chambers, you know it will haunt him his whole life," said Djoudi, 17. So is it possible to teach the Shoah in the "9-3" serenely? "When I get to this subject in class, I hear some students say that the Jews were asking for it or that, because they suffered this, they're imposing the same fate on the Palestinians," says one of the history teachers who organized the event. "Some of those who made these statements were present for the screening. But I think the power of the film 'stabbed' them." The educational edition of the DVD of Shoah that Jack Lang had produced when he was Education minister "is sleeping in the drawers," laments the filmmaker, who, delighted, left Utrillo high school, repeating: "You have to talk to the students. You have to go talk to them."

Philippe Bernard
• PUBLISHED IN THE 26.05.04 EDITION
[(*) The slip of the tongue doesn't work in English. The verb poignarder, "to stab," gives the gerundive poignardant, which is close to "poignant."]

The 9-3 refers to the department number (93) for Seine-Saint-Denis (metropolitan Paris, for example, is 75 and all Paris license plates begin with that number). To be a "9-3" is often how hot-headed youths announce they're bad-asses. The students in this article will have been in large majority Arabs, many of whom, prior to seeing this film, could easily have participated in discussions like this one.

UPDATE: W. emails to say that "'le 9-3' [neuf-trois] is now being referred to as the 'neuf-cube' [as in '9 to the third power' or '9 cubes'] by the 93 kids themselves. Must be the ones that got a high school diploma or something." Thanks, Mr. W.

Cloak and Dagger: Thierry Imbot R.I.P.

NP'ers, if you've been paying attention, you should all be familiar with this scandal (I've blogged about how it connects to larger global events here). But one of the innumerable scandals surrounding former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, also known as the "Prince of Intrigue," it concerns the illicit sale of 6 French frigates to Taiwan in 1991, a $3 billion sale that generated commissions at around $550 million, or almost 20%. It was known as "Operation Bravo."

Authorities alleged Dumas persuaded oil giant Elf (since merged with Total to form the world's fourth largest oil company) to hire his old girl-friend, an erstwhile underwear model named Christine Deviers-Joncours whose furious memoirs were entitled "Whore of the Republic" and detailed her exploitative and business entangled affairs with France's most powerful men. Authorities also alleged Elf then paid Deviers-Joncours millions of francs to bribe Dumas so that he would approve the sale of the frigates, which were manufactured by Thomson, a defense contractor that was then publicly owned. In exchange for their influence peddling, Elf allegedly received a commission on the sale. Dumas was also alleged to have received a few goodies directly, including $1,900 worth of Italian shoes and five antique statues worth $47,000. Dumas had long opposed the deal in accordance with mainland Chinese wishes but suffered a conspicuous change of heart. (He was sentenced to six months but his conviction was recently overturned after a court found he hadn't yet actually received the bribes from Elf). He also won a judgment for libel against Le Monde and their investigative reporter Hervé Gattegno, who accused Dumas of using the Conseil constitutionnel to protect Jacques Chirac from criminal prosecution for corruption while in office. See more here).

Anyhow...

There's been some developments... Earlier this month, the Advisory Commission on National Defense Secrecy (CCSDN) ruled that the Defense ministry could make public a selection of reports written by the recently deceased Thierry Imbot, head of of French intelligence in Taiwan. (He worked there for the agency, which is known as the Central Foreign Security Directorate (DGSE), from 1991 to 1993). The CCSDN has, however, refused to advise the release of Imbot's notes, which it said would reveal French intelligence gathering methods but do not directly concern the sales.

An unlikely candidate for suicide, Thierry died on October 10, 2000, age 48. He was found at the bottom of a stairwell, having fallen from his window four stories to his death. According to the AFP, authorities ruled the death an accident but Imbot's father says that his son's body landed too far from the building for this to be true. He also said that prior to his death, his son had spoken of massive graft in the case.

Imbot's father René was head of DGSE from 1985 - 1998. An interview given to Le Monde on May 14 contained the following exchanges with him:

In 1985, I was surprised to learn that we had close collaborations with the CIA, for example, but none with China, though we had a common enemy, the USSR. Beijing asked me to assign a correspondent over there: I named my son. He left in July 1986 and the Chinese opened all their doors for him. He was even brought into the company of General Masud. When I left DGSE, my successor needed a liaison to the CIA. He designated my son who left for Washington and worked on the Gulf War in particular in 1991.

How did Thierry Imbot end up in Taiwan?

Claude Silberzahn [head of DGSE from 1989 to 1993] needed an officer in Taiwan while economic discussions were going on with France regarding the sale of Mirage planes and frigates. He was sent there in September of 1991 under a cover provided by the Finance minsitry. Then in 1993, DGSE withdrew him from this position and my son sought to leave the service in order to get married. He remained in close contact with DGSE.

Did he reveal anything to you about the sale of frigates to Taiwan?

Not really. He just said to me one day, "Dad, you can't imagine the fortune that some people made in the frigate operations." He spoke of two people, a Chinese man and a French one.

Did he mention these things in his reports to the DGSE?

He wrote many reports. In their notes to their superiors, agents write everything they know. My son had to have mentioned these payments. I know that Silberzahn has supposedly told the investigators that he can no longer remember any reports written by my son. It's unthinkable! If these reports do not harm national security, which I believe, it is irregular that they shouldn't be declassified.

Your son returned to France, where de died on October 10, 2000, having fallen from his window...

I think that he frightened some people when he came back to France. He had this "accident." I went to the scene the day after it happened. I saw where the body had been. When you fall from a window, you fall vertically. My son's body was much further off.

Continue reading "Cloak and Dagger: Thierry Imbot R.I.P." ...

Our Man in Cannes (The Final Chapter)

"To K, E, V, I, N, space, K, L — no, a K, not a C — K, L, I…"

Weapons Manufacturers and Oil Barrons: France's Idealists?

At first blush, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly unusual about this:

The escalation of violence and the horrors of the Middle East are plunging us into stupefaction and indignation. How in the 21st century can we come to this, when globalization summons us to understanding and tolerance, the bases for a peaceful and prosperous world? And, above all, how can our American friends have allowed themselves to be drawn into this mess and hornet's nest, engaging their best troops and hundreds of billions of dollars?

The successive pretexts: weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, eliminating a bloody tyrant, did not convince us, we, who are so keen on cartesian logic, that most French of singularities.

The mercantile motives suggested here and there do not stand up either and it would be an insult to this great people to suggest that they could be stirred to action on this account.

Some then spoke of promoting democracy and, consequently, of peace, in the Middle East, an entirely respectable aim, but which arises out of a messianic ideal and which submerges us in incomprehension before the scale and risks of such a crusade, especially if extended to the rest of the world.

Alone the trauma of September 11 may serve to explain and justify American conduct in this matter, especially if one thinks of the culture in this great nation, "melting pot" of the pioneers. One has only to recall that, in this country, they think nothing of the fact that the majority of citizens are armed and the American law trumps international law.

I'll spare you any more of this. I didn't pay it much mind myself when I first saw except for the fact that, even by Le Monde's standards, it struck me as a particularly boring piece of boilerplate. Even for people who opposed the war, could this essay possibly contain anything new?

Then I scrolled to the bottom to see who'd written it: Henri Martre, is a high-flying 76 year-old French aerospace industry magnate, president of GIFAS (Groupement des Industries Françaises Aéronautiques et Spatiales, an industry collective) and member of the board of directors of Renault. But — most significantly — I nearly doubled over laughing when I read that he is "honorary president" of... aérospatiale, an enormous French defense contractor that sold a great many weapons to Saddam.

In 1992 Aérospatiale merged with another French defense contractor Matra (which stands for Mechanique Aviation et TRAction) to form AéroMatra. Then in 2000, Aérospatiale-Matra merged with Daimler Chrysler Aerospance AG and Spanish contractor CASA to form the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS). Aérospatiale's most famous project was Ariane Espace, a commercial aerospace project for putting satellites into orbit. France's answer to NASA, (named for Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos and Pasiphaë, who gave Theseus the thread which lead him out of the labyrinth of the Minotaur when the former had been imprisoned on Crete).

You may remember that Aérospatiale once manufactured the Roland missile, found last autumn in Iraq by Polish troops who mistook the model number for the year and thought they'd found French weapons in Iraq dating from 2003 (it turns out Aérospatiale ceased production of the Roland-2 missiles in 1988 and of the Roland-3 in 1990.) The Roland turned out to be particularly handy for Saddam when the Russians ceased weapons deliveries during the war with Iran.

Get this: there is an uncanny similarity, right down to choice of words, between Martre's remarks and those of Jacques de Boisseson, director of foreign relations for oil company Total, who told a breakfast gathering on March 20 of last year that "one does not impose democracy and the American vision of the Middle East is terrible because it is founded on messianism." We are all well aware of what was at stake in Iraq for Total, of course. But note that de Boisseson was answering the question, "How do you view the democratization of the Middle East?"

Guess who put that question to him... the president of GIFAS? But he's the same one who...

No... it couldn't be.

Our Man in Cannes (V)

A fan of ¡No Pasarán! asks one of your webmasters for an autograph. "By the way," he wondered aloud, almost nonchalantly: "Who is the man (the woman?) hiding behind the W — who is the man behind the mask at MiF?" But nothing the fellow said would make us break our vow of secrecy.

'Beat it, you dirty kike'

'Barre-toi sale feujard'

At Nanterre University, Dieudonné, unfunny French comic, presided over an election rally for the Euro-Palestine ticket (a sort of appeasers and terrorists ticket) during which anti-Semitic comments were made and a Jewish participant was pelted with rubbish and insulted. On May 18 on radio station RMC, in response to a questionnaire on political figures, Dieudonné repeated that he prefers Bin Laden to Bush (Thanks to Charles for the RMC info).

A la fac de Nanterre, Dieudo, toujours de moins en moins drôle, a présidé une réunion électorale pour la liste Euro-Palestine (une sorte de liste de soutien aux terroristes et à ceux qui sont de mèche avec eux) pendant laquelle les commentaires antisémites fusaient et où on a lancé des ordures sur un participant juif en l'insultant copieusement. Le 18 mai sur radio RMC, en répondant à un questionnaire au sujet des personnalités politiques, Dieudo a encore répété qu'il préférait Ben Laden à Bush (Merci à Charles pour le tuyau au sujet de RMC).

Complex Reality

Erik alerted me to the following letter to the editor which ran in yesterday's Le Monde (no link available):

There are several ways to render the sporting triumph of a small Galilean town in Israel (Le Monde May 20). It all depends on the point of view you take. You took the opportunity to mention mainly the identity problems of Israel's Arab citizens and the tensions they experience among their fellow citizens. You thought it fitting not to leave out mention of the fact that Israel treats them as second class citizens, without exception. To state that the development of football is an escape for Israeli Arabs while you seemed surprised by the non-nationalistic nature of the team in question.

However the players, as is done in so many countries, rounded the stadium with a flag to celebrate the victory. The flag of... Israel.

Another choice was possible for Le Monde's front page. For example, [you could have] told of the symbol of the reconciliation of identities; insisted on the existence of such mixed teams, capable of winning all despite the obvious tensions. In doing so, you might have emphasized the numerous origins of the players in the lineup (There were Jews. There were Arabs. I believe there were also non-Israelis). On this occasion, you might have informed us on life inside the Judeo-Arab collective of this Israeli football club. You might have revealed with humor that Haifa, the unlucky finalists, were also a mixed side with two Arab players among them.

You might even have described the classic congratulatory telephone call from the head of state, Ariel Sharon, in this case, to Mazen Ghnaim, the club president, an hour after the victory. Without further comment. You might have told of how the winning team celebrated its victory on the pitch with Israeli Arab members of parliament, one of whom said, "This victory has done honor by all of Israeli society and demonstrates the potential for total equality between sectors [of society]." You might also have mentioned the remarks by the team captain, Abas Suan: "We represented the nation with pride tonight and we intend to do it with even more pride next year in Europe." At last, you might have told how the fans gathered to celebrate the victory, around 20,000 of them from the entire surrounding Arab neighborhood but also Jewish fans from neighboring cities.

All the choices to relate the event are possible. None is foremost or necessary. As is often the case, reality is many-sided. There are difficult matters and others, more happy. Sometimes the event bears symbolism and hope, beyond a mixed reality. Thus, on the subject in question, the choice ultimately depends on the way in which one has decided to illuminate the event.

Isabelle Langlois
email

When I say that this place is a Godless shithole, I mean it	Quand je dis que c'est un trou à merde oublié de Dieu par ici, je sais de quoi je parle
Zeropeans are squabbling about their Constitution and the absence of any reference to God. Expect a reference to God to be inserted faster than you can say 'dhimmi' as soon as 'second generation' Zeropeans start blowing themselves up in shopping centers.	Les zéropéens se chamaillent au sujet de leur Constitution et l'absence de toute référence à Dieu dans celle-ci. Attendez-vous à voir des références à Dieu insérées illico presto dès que des zéropéens 'issus de l'immigration' se mettent à se faire exploser dans les centres commerciaux.

Our Man in Cannes (IV)

A fan of ¡No Pasarán! asks one of your webmasters to pose for a souvenir picture. (Actually, she was disappointed, because she wished her real hero, Douglas (aka the last of the famous etc), had been present, but had to settle for our man in Cannes…)

"That's Why We're Fighting the Bastards, Isn't It?"

In his weekly column in the International Herald Tribune, John Vinocur brings us a story on how the Iraq war is affecting the British government's chances in the European Union elections on June 10, by reporting on the election campaign from "a town where Labor has ruled since the Flood".

"It hurts that war, it hurts me," [A A Khaliq of Rotherham] said. "Blair made a mistake in backing Bush. I support the British troops, but not the United States. We should never have let the U.S. draw us in. We're in with a regime that doesn't listen to anybody. We should pull out."

All this came out like ice, with such little bombast that the visitor offered the school board official an instant conclusion based on what sounded like the controlled rage of man with his mind made up: So you believe Iraq will blow up in Tony Blair's face.

"Oh, on voting day?" Khaliq said. "I don't think so."

This is what newspapers call anecdotal evidence. Still, it's the kind of exchange that Labor cabinet members like Denis MacShane, the minister for Europe, have been hunting down for the past two weekends. Expecting poor European parliamentary results in any circumstances — more engagement in Europe is a tough sell with Britain's economy now outperforming France's and Germany's — Labor leaders have gone back to their constituencies looking for traces of a late spring catastrophe.

After all, in London, the prisoner abuse scandal had a sickening run of new chapters, the America of George Bush did not inspire confidence, and much of the British media was reporting a leadership wobble within the government. That, it was said, could lead to the prime minister's departure in favor of Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the Exchequer, whose label, within Labor, is paradoxically more pro-American and protective of Israel than Blair's.

… In London, Iraq could seem like "an elephant in the dining room," [MacShane] said, but what counted most here was a 3.1 percent unemployment rate in a place once designated as poverty-stricken by the EU, and private home values that have at least doubled in recent years. All on Blair's watch.

Rotherham's member of Parliament during the same period, MacShane said of Khaliq, "A ways back, this is a guy who was shouting that the Brits and the Americans were wimping out and demanding the 7th Fleet bombard Milosevic when the Serbs were mistreating the Muslims."

Which, he points out, wound up happening.

"Going door to door," said MacShane after two days of talking, "I don't get the impression that Iraq is what's on people's minds. It's how things are working out for them. One guy said, 'Iraq's a problem, isn't it Denis?' Then he talked about the young fellow beheaded on television, and he said, 'that's why we're fighting the bastards, isn't it Denis?'"

…In the real world of hard jobs and cheap flights to the sun, in which Rotherham holds charter member status, Labor appeared to think these arguments had their eternal merit. As for MacShane, he could report back: from up here, nothing like disaster in sight.

Incidentally, today is the Duke's birthday — he who once said: "Courage is being scared to death — but saddling up anyway."

Our Man in Cannes (III)

A fan of ¡No Pasarán! asks one of your webmasters for an autograph.
(The fan had a question: Why does Jonathan never blog on The Radical anymore?
We had no answer to that one…)

Le Monde, the Mouthpiece of the French Foreign Ministry

When referring to Le Monde, is it any wonder that the International Herald Tribune's John Vinocur speaks of the newspaper's close relationship with the French Foreign Ministry? A front-page "analysis" in the newspaper of reference is consecrated to foreign minister Michel Barnier's decision not to send French soldiers to Iraq, "not now nor in the future".

First of all, the title — The Chirac-Bush Rupture over Iraq — is misleading — making it sound like the rupture of a patient Jacques Chirac was recent and has not been ongoing for the past year and a half. Throughout the article, the wording benefits — nay, lionizes — France and castigates not only America, but, at times, everybody else, including the UN and Berlin ("contrary to Germany, France affirmed that it 'would assume its responsabilities'"). The message is loud and clear. France is responsible, sensible, humane, and the only country to conduct a responsible, sensible, and humane policy towards Iraq. Some outtakes:

• "Never have France's leaders been so categorical" (when Washington is categorical, the French call it "being intransigeant")
  
• "France considers the time has come to clearly say…" (only Paris is frank and forthcoming)
  
• "Today, Paris has decided to draw the necessary conclusions" (only the French know how to reason in a reasonable manner)
  
• "Washington's double-dealing with the UN" (self-explanatory)
  
• "To make a long story short, the American administration wants support and relief but will not let go of the reins. It calls on the UN for help all the while maintaining the vagueness on the role it is ready to grant to it" (the article immediately follows this example of "double-dealing" with a quote calling the August 2003 bombing of the UN's headquarters in Baghdad the result "the UN paid for this ambiguity", i.e., it is all Washington's fault)

And when questions arise as to the righteousness of France's conduct, now or earlier, author Claire Tréan raises them only to have some French official, identified or not, conveniently provide an answer in the next line that shows that the French policy is not only coherent, it is the only correct one.

In fact, there are 19 quotations in the article, ranging from a short phrase or even a single word to full-blown paragraphs. Not a single one is from an American. Not a single one is from anybody else but a Frenchman. Not a single one.

Lire la version française

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For EU Deputies, the Gravy Train Can Add 100,000 Euros a Year

In a front-page article in the International Herald Tribune concerning perks at the EU Parliament, Doreen Carvajal and Martin Gottlieb ask whether it is a system out of control.

…the legislature's well-oiled system of perks and privileges … might make a corporate president smile in recognition: chauffeured cars; daily and monthly stipends that can add tens of thousands of euros to basic salaries; jobs for relatives paid out of a E150,000 (about $180,000) a year secretarial allowance; free health care; pensions that, as one legislator put it, can put "gin on the terrace"; and, most stunningly, a travel expense procedure that reimburses legislators for as much as 10 times the amount of their airfare ticket prices.

According to payroll and expense records obtained by the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, a legislator can add well over E100,000 to a base salary when all the tax-free benefits are calculated. …

"I have been accused of boarding the gravy train," said Bill Miller, a Scottish member who argued for reforms. "I have been accused of being dishonest. I've been accused of being greedy. I've been accused of being a parasite. I've been accused of being a leech. And that's just by members of my own political party."…

Whether the legislators will be crucified remains unclear. Europeans will engage in sweeping elections June 10 to 13, sending 732 delegates from the 25 countries of the newly expanded European Union to a legislature whose laws will govern life from western Ireland to the borders of Ukraine.

Substantial issues involving trade, immigration and integration of the 10 new, mostly Eastern European members are certainly campaign trail topics. But so, in many places, are the legislature's grab bag of goodies, with items like the E262 daily expense allowance legislators receive when they register for work in the Parliament's seats in Brussels or Strasbourg, a delicate election problem for some who have been seen signing in at 8 a.m. and then bolting for planes home.

Michiel van Hulten, a Dutch Democratic Socialist member who has campaigned for reform, said the issue was basic for the EU because to win popular acceptance it needed "institutions that citizens have faith in." …

Budgeted at nearly E100 million in the aggregate, European deputies' benefits easily top those for members of any EU-member national parliament. (The U.S. Congress, in which members of the House receive million-dollar budgets to finance sizable staffs is another story, but nepotism in hiring is barred there and reimbursement is generally tied to actual costs incurred.) …

The system of pay and perks has evolved like new generations of computers, each more efficient and faster than the last.

When members complained that they couldn't sign for their daily expense money at 8 a.m. without risking missing their flights, registration hours were pushed back to 7 a.m.

Read the entire article, notably how one slightly disheveled Austrian legislator (Hans-Peter Martin) assembled some of the most revealing information about the perk system with "a hidden minicam the size of a big sponge".

France Briefing

New Terminal at Paris Airport Collapses My own mom passed through Roissy - Charles de Gaulle to-day, hours after Sunday morning's partial collapse of the new 2E departure terminal. Authorities have revised the number of dead killed in the collapse downward to four (it had been five earlier) because, as the Times' Craig Smith reports in ghastly detail, "earlier reports of additional deaths were based on body parts that have since been determined to belong to one victim." Among those killed were a Chinese man and a Czech woman. At the moment of the collapse, passengers were getting off planes from Newark and Jo-burg while another flight to Prague boarded. In addition to Air France, five other airlines used the terminal: AeroMéxico, Alitalia, Czech Airlines, Delta and Koran Air. Paris firefighters continued to search for survivors to-day, using dogs to sniff for bodies and crane to remove debris, but cracking noises and the appearance of additional fissures, halted rescue efforts temporarily for fear of subsequent collapses. The AP reports that another 30 people working in adjacent offices had had to be evacuated for this reason. I can find no estimates as to how many people may still be buried beneath the rubble or how many have been reported missing. Reuters reports that not a single flight was canceled due to the collapse and all flights scheduled to dock at terminal 2E have been rerouted to terminal E. Prime minister Raffarin came to the site of the disaster as did Finance minister Sarkozy (how the finance minister's presence will help at the site of an airport terminal collapse I fail to see... unless it serves to lionize the great Sarkozini yet again in his quest for the prime ministership...) Le Parisien (...as an aside, I should note that, to advertise Nescafé, all copies of the print edition of this newspaper will bizarrely be scented with coffee to-morrow, according to the AFP) also reports that three border police agents saved the lives of 80 people. Five to ten minutes before the collapse, passengers alerted them after seeing a fissure develop in the ceiling and the three men evacuated as many as they could and blocked of the area to prevent others from entering. I was in that space myself last August just after it opened last July and I had to admit it was really beautiful. I hadn't flown internationally for a while and I was surprised by the new renovations I saw at JFK but they were no match for this. The interior was an enormous open space yet there was very little echo from the sound of so many people, creating a feeling of intimacy. You were also surrounded in light that peered in through the vaulted concrete shell down the length of the terminal. The seats were all a dark, burgundy red, if I remember correctly. It's not often you get to be in a place like that. So it goes without saying that this is really bad news. Aéroports de Paris president Pierre Graff told Le Parisien that, "if all the rings that make up this terminal are irrecoverable, we'll raze the whole thing to the ground, of course." The architect who designed the place is Paul Andreu, who was in China working on the Beijing National Theater at the time of the collapse but has returned to France in a hurry. Among his many projects, Andreu has also designed a number of airport structures: terminal 3 of the Dubai International Airport; an extension to terminal 2 of Aéroport de Nice-Côte-d'Azur, a new terminal at Madrid Barajas International Airport; a new terminal at the airport in Canton-Baiyun, Guangzhou privince, China; another at the Ningbo Dongshe airport, also in Chna. According to the Times, he also designed the old departure gateway at Roissy where boarding passengers ascended up escalators through crisscrossing glass tubes that traversed a light-well in the middle of a donut-shaped glass building. Kind of cool, too. In an interview from Beijing, Andreu told L'Humanité that "everything was done according to the rules" during construction and that "I can't explain what happened. I can't understand." An administrative and a criminal investigation have been opened into the collapse. The magistrate leading the investigation has named an expert panel to assist him. The AP reported that interior minister de Villepin said that the investigation would be "something huge and really difficult." We'd be lost without him. (continued in 2nd column...)

(continued from 1st column...) This will be terrible for Andreu's career but clearly the heaviest immediate suspicions will fall on the engineers and contractors who worked on the place. Graff told Le Parisien that the terminal was built by the GTM construction company. However the Times reports that it was built by construction firm Eiffel architecture firm Laubeuf (incorrectly identified as a construction company). According to the Times, the terminal cost $900 million and was projected to handle 10 million passengers a year as part of French plans to turn Paris in Europe's largest air-travel hub — only one of the things that has been seriously called into question by yesterday's catastrophe. Le Monde's editorial to-day talks of a wound to French pride and of grave longer-term consequences. "The display of beauty and power made in the form of this building thus turns dramatically toward a show of weakness. [...] As the world's eighth largest airport, Roissy had begun expansions that were to allow it to rival London and Frankfort. The new Airbus A380 was to dock at terminal 2E. The 'earthquake' may call this ambition into doubt. Not to mention the consequences for the recent privatization of Air France and the one planned by the government for Aéroports de Paris ¶ Ultimately, an earthquake for French architectural know-how and its exportation abroad..." French Surgeons Threaten to Leave France en Masse The AFP is reporting that, citing a profession-wide crisis, a collective of French surgeons calling itself "Chirurgiens de France" is threatening to "leave French territory" if its "appeal isn't heard." "Most liberal surgeons are to-day ready to leave French territory entirely if their appeal isn't heard," a press-release read, according to the AFP. The group's grievances include sky-rocketing insurance premiums (which have increased by €15,100 in the last 11 years). On the other hand, they say that doctors' fees haven't been raised in 14 years. They also say that a crisis in staffing is looming, asserting that 50% of the positions for surgical interns in the Paris region went unfilled in 2003. meanwhile... The AFP also reports that a whopping 83% of the French public feel that the "lack of personnel" is the greatest problem they encounter in Public hospitals. Sixty-six percent complain of insufficient supply while 43% complain of the 35-hour work week rule. Nevertheless, 67% said they were satisfied overall with the French health system (which probably accounts for France's high average longevity). That percentage rose to 69% among hospitalized persons and to 72% among those of retirement age. Eighty-two percent have a "good opinion" of French public hospitals. Almost one in two (43%) said their views on French hospitals had improved in recent years (31% said they had worsened). Only 4% want the hospital system to be privatized and 37% expect the current situation to be maintained over the next 50 years. The results of the study are available here. It Finally Happened: Socialist Party bounces pro-Israel candidate to court Muslim vote According to Moroccan newspaper Le Matin, the Socialist Party has bumped euro MP François Zimeray — reputedly a fierce defender of Israel — from its list for next month's European elections the better to court the Muslim vote. Looks like the PS may have gotten rid of Pascal Boniface but kept his strategy... Meanwhile, debates on Israel at the European parliament haven't always been proud occasions, according to DF. Expect this matter to make lots of news in the coming days. Many French Feel Islam Undemocratic Forty-seven percent of French people feel that Islam is incompatible with democracy, according to a survey published in the right wing French newspaper FranceSoir and repeated here. A third disagree and twenty percent are undecided. France Won't Cancel All of Iraq's Debt Reuters reports that France has agreed in principle to cancel as much as 50% of Iraq's current French debts but is as yet refusing to go as far as the 80-90% sought by the US. Iraq currently owes France about €3 billion, largely in unpaid bills from the 1980s when France sold Iraq gargantuan amounts of military technology and built enormous large-scale constructions (Saddam International airport, for example). Turkish Imam Finally Expelled Turkish Midhat Guler, accused of inciting terrorism and placed under house arrest, was forcibly repatriated on Friday, according to al-Jazeera. See here for more about Guler's case.

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