c'est quoi, cette histoire d'émeutes?

Thomas Coex (AFP/AFP - Thursday 3 November 3, 2005, 18:07)

Le tombeur de ces dames just got a message from John-Paul that made him feel very guilty indeed:

I'm not one to talk about lack of blog content, but where are ya, man? With the riots in France, we need you! [...]

Thanks John-Paul. Lately, I've found it very hard to devote myself to blogging on current events (and frankly I'd lost sight of any purpose in doing it so intensively...). I wrote back to Il Pagano to say that I didn't quite know what to say. Of course, there's plenty to talk about, I'm just afraid that once I start.... But I'm here aren't I?

All the English-language reporting is pretty darn good so I don't think I need waste time recapitulating what happened over the last 12 days. So let's have a few observations.

=>Firstly, Islam: the last time I got hauled down to a Paris police station (about two years ago... I won't tell you why), the policemen who escorted me were all Arab and African. The men I met that evening will have been busy the last few days. And I've been thinking about them as I browsed the net for news... This has been an occasion to hear from all the people we really do not need to hear from. The Internet appears to have convinced people that they can instantaneously inform themselves on vastly complicated matters and pronounce with total confidence on the causes of calamities and the meanings of conflicts.

They should really avoid this.

Over at FrontPage (blech!), Phyllis Chesler expounds on everything she in fact knows nothing about. Then the Bush-worshipper (and racist shit-for-brains) Mark Steyn chimes in with what has to be his stupidest column ever.

These two idiots are surely not the only ones who are blathering on about all this and who nevertheless don't even have a whiff of a notion about marginal topics such as how France's Arabs came to be in France, what their experiences have been since that time or what their current condition is. I wish they'd just shut up... but here's a tip for them: the riots have little to do with Israel, nothing to do with Osama, nothing to do with Iraq or Afghanistan. And really, if you think about it, Islam is also merely incidental to these events.

The Sétif massacre, Philippeville, the events of October 17, 1961, the oppression of, and war against the Algerian people, torture, the effective racial partitioning of French society, none of this gets any mention.

Instead, Steyn explains the riots by giving us a couple of grafs on the Moorish invasion that simply have to be seen to be believed. But before that, he offers us this brilliant insight:

If you had millions of seething unassimilated Muslim youths in lawless suburbs ringing every major city, would you be so eager to send your troops into an Arab country fighting alongside the Americans?

Dunno, Mark. How d'you think they managed it in 1991? (You pig-ignorant fuck.)

Radical Islam is a particularly acute problem in France and the phenomenon may be significantly affected by the events of the last few days. It has become a powerful organizing force in parts of French society. But the riots are not part of the war on terrorism.

Only Andrew Sullivan seems to have a functioning brain on this matter.

=>Secondly, schaddenfreude: In the NYT's "Week in Review," I notiecd this rather salty article by Craig S. Smith, which began:

PARIS — Just two months ago, the French watched in horrified fascination at the anarchy of New Orleans, where members of America's underclass were seen looting stores and defying the police in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Last week, as rioters torched cars and trashed businesses in the immigrant-concentrated suburbs of Paris, the images of wild gangs of young men silhouetted against the yellow flames of burning cars came as an unwelcome reminder for France that it has its own growing underclass.

Smith sure is Johnny-on-the-Spot, filing from Spain (like yesterday or something) and then making lastnight's deadline. However I hear he doesn't speak the lingo too well and I worry for him whenever his analyses go too far out on a limb. (He answers reader questions on video here.) However, his remarks here strike me as fair. And I noticed that over at Harry's Place, david t also had some remarks on schadenfreude.

If I were king, I'd outlaw the stuff. However, most important I find is not Anglo-American schaddenfreude but French amour-propre. In a report aired yesterday, NPR's Eleanor Beardsley quoted a man who's reaction illustrates what I mean:

"I am surprised to see this but I think the foreign media are exaggerating the situation," says 35-year-old Grégoire, who was walking with his wife and baby. "We're not on the verge of public chaos."

Ah, yes. What everybody else thinks. Le Monde has an interactive slideshow of screenshots taken from newspapers from around the world. This is entitled "The Global media look with discomfort on the events in France." Yesterday's editorial in Le Monde begins by citing editorials the Times and in El Pais and says that the two are hitting "where it hurts."

It's almost as if we in the US are so preoccupied by our own problems we don't give a shit what the world thinks while in France it's just the reverse: social problems go ignored until they explode and people are mainly concerned by what they're saying about us in the world's prestigious newspapers...

Sarko au micro

... Click for an mp3 of sarko's agenda. (via Reggae Time!)

The Lighter Side of Laurent Gbagbo

From the Sand Mountain Reporter (Alabama):

At the Albertville Rotary Club Tuesday, guest speaker Ibrahima Cherif astonished everyone present with his life story: a tale filled with intrigue, murder and political gain.

Cherif is an African refugee seeking political asylum in America. He is currently living with David Hough, who accompanied Cherif to the meeting and offered a brief introduction.

“Unfortunately his country doesn’t like him,” Hough said. “He is his country’s No. 1 enemy.”

That’s because in 1993 while Cherif was in charge of organizing a political rally in his hometown, he told a reporter that Laurent Gbagbo was a high school instructor instead of a university instructor. Little did Cherif know that Gbagbo would later become president of the Ivory Coast in 2000 and not forget Cherif’s voice in the media years ago.

After being attacked on a number of occasions and dismissed from his job, Cherif would face near death in March when a group of four militants caught up with him.

“He told me today is your last day,” Cherif said. “The only thing that saved me was the man with the gun said I was his former teacher.”

An important article I missed (sorry!) from 15 April 2003:

United States
The head of Fox News is doing business with the 'Frenchie' Thomson


Tuesday 15 April 2003 (Liberation - 00:00)

New York

ven for Fox, the television group owned by the warlike, ultraconservative Australian magnate Rupert Murdoch, the boycott against France has its limits. Though Fox News has for weeks been the most pointedly anti-French American channel, at the end of March it's parent company signed a "very big" contract with Thomson during the National Association of Broadcasters conference in Las Vegas.

The contract, the value of which has not been revealed, concerns the provision of an entire system of digital equipment for editing and production. However, ten days agao, Bill O'Reilly, one of Fox's star presenters, who has his own nightly talkshow, launched his own personal campaign to boycott French products. "France wanted to hurt us. Now it's our turn to hurt France," he promised, clenching his fists. "We are going to drive France into recession." Invited on the set, a somewhat incredulous economist tried to explain that attempts at boycott might not be imitated by the whole of America. "But if we try, bit by bit, we ought to be able to achieve a result," insisted O'Reilly. Despite the latest news, he has chosen not to mention the contract with Thomson.

Fabrice Rousselot

Visit this excellent blog

Should have said so sooner.

François Mitterrand Ordered the Hit

I asked the president if he was authorizing me to activate the neutralization plan [...] He gave his consent and expressed how important he felt the nuclear tests were. Therefore I did not enter into greater detail; the authorization was explicit enough.

A 23-page report (8 April 1986) written by Admiral Pierre Lacoste, the former head of France's spy agency, and which was recently unearthed in Paris, reveals that former president François Mitterrand personally authorized the July 10 1985 bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Docked for the night in the port of Auckland, the ship was to be used by Greenpeace in an attempt to disrupt French nuclear tests in the Mururoa atoll.

This revelation flies in the face of the official version of events according to which one of the greatest fiascos in the history of French espionage (which resulted in the death of the Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira) was due instead to the weakness of then Defense minister Charles Hernu (later exposed as a KGB agent), who supposedly acquiesced to the demands of the French navy. Hernu was forced to resign as a result of the scandal.

After lying to the point of ridicule in order to hide its involvement, the French government ultimately admitted its role in the matter and has paid compensation to Greenpeace but never formally apologized to the family of Pereira.

At the time, Mitterrand told two reporters who published a study of his presidency that the Rainbow Warrior bombing was "an idiotic business," a "crazy operation" and, rather than implicate himself, stated that the plan was a "scheme drawn up among the admirals."

Indeed, admiral Lacoste is not without an axe to grind. He has claimed he was "abandoned by the government and the president," who pinned blame for the matter partly on Lacoste. According to the admiral, the prime minister Laurent Fabius was not aware of the operation and, if it hadn't been for "the revelations in the press," the government would have denied everything until the end.

The details of his report appear internally consistent, according to Le Monde's investigative reporter Hervé Gattegno, who writes that Lacoste's debriefing "was forgotten like a message cast into the sea. All that remained, after 20 years, was to open the bottle."

Chirac Shoots Foot, then eats it...

And then Lance Armstrong wins! ... Imagine leaving the jumbotron screen at Hôtel de Ville after the anouncement that London got it. It starts to rain, according to Libé. Then you have to walk past all the Paris 2012 flags on rue de Rivoli and get into a metro car with a big decal on it that reads "Gagnons les jeux!" They'll have to take down the sign from the Eifel Tower. And all the ads purchased. Clean up the Place de Grêve. Cancel the the three ring circus. Stop all the clocks. Cut the phones. Silence the pianos. Pack up the moon and sun, as Auden would say.

It's over.

Le Monde describes the dejection this way:

Paris has lost. Her executioner is called London. The British capital will host the Olympic games in 2012. A candidacy described only two months ago as unrealistic by Olympic "experts." Once more Tony Blair shall have triumphed over Jacques Chirac. [...]

"We haven't got the same lobbyst culture that the Anglo-Saxons do," said Bertrand Delanoë mayor of Paris [...] .

Libé writes with a bit more detail:

The boos quickly follow the long groan of collective disappointment. Jacques, in his 60s and with tears welling up in his eyes, sets the tone for the moments to come: "Here we go with the Brits again." Even if he wants to "separate the stakes: the Olympics have got nothing to do with Europe," the anglophobia is no longer latent. Some hardcore PSG fans set off a smoke bomb and start chanting insults against Tony Blair, then British mothers, then the conditions for the vote. "Smells like a scam," chant the supporters, followed by a certain crowd. Eric, 26, affirms this feeling: "I'm not disappointed. I'm angry: as usual, it was decided in the backrooms in the Anglo-Saxon way." Beside him, a mother announces to her daughter the she will "never go study in London!"

A few English make themselves scarce. "Of course I'm happy but I won't shout too loud about it," says Martin. Others offer an explanation: "We in England are all united behind our Queen. Your republic is too weak," says Edward provocatively. Michèle had another: "I've just got back from London where I hadn't been for a long time. Well, I saw a young, dynmaic city that wanted this, quite unlike the high-flown Paris bid."

2:05 PM: the rain redoubles. A child whines, "It's like at Waterloo."

"No. Trafalgar," says the mother.

Sports.fr:

Like many, Jérôme Thomas, winner of two Olympic medals, can't find the words. "Fuck... I'm unhappy," he finally says with his voice muffled, the two little flags painted on his shaven head at half-mast. Eyes turn to Anne Hidalgo, first deputy mayor of Paris, stand-in for Bertrand Delanoë, in Singapore as a high-profile delegate. "The disappointment is terrible," she says, he throat full of quivering that betrays her emotion. "We had a wonderful bid. We congratulate London for this victory we hope they put on a great Games in 2012." Fair play doesn't prevent her from reviving patriotic fervor. The Socialist tells her audience: "Let's be proud of our athletes, proud of our delegation," which is accompanied by a few timid, "Vive la France!"

[...]

Meanwhile the corridors of city hall empty out. The Champagne bottles are quietly put away. The guests leave with their disappointment. Even in metro platforms of the Hôtel de Ville station, where a singer, perhaps inspired by the defeat of Paris in 2012, hums Yves Montand and "What remains of our love?" Of the "Love of the Games," slogan of the Paris candidacy, the IOC answered, nothing.

Alliance Base: CIA and DGSE join forces in Paris

At today's press conference at the Foreign Affairs ministry, someone asked:

"Are the claims of a CIA-DGSE base in Paris reported in the American press true? A comment?"

And Hervé Ladsous answered, "As you know, it is not customary for us to comment on these matters. So we have nothing to say."

The WaPo's Dana Priest reports:

PARIS — When Christian Ganczarski, a German convert to Islam, boarded an Air France flight from Riyadh on June 3, 2003, he knew only that the Saudi government had put him under house arrest for an expired pilgrim visa and had given his family one-way tickets back to Germany, with a change of planes in Paris.

He had no idea that he was being secretly escorted by an undercover officer sitting behind him, or that a senior CIA officer was waiting at the end of the jetway as French authorities gently separated him from his family and swept Ganczarski into French custody, where he remains today on suspicion of associating with terrorists.

Ganczarski is among the most important European al Qaeda figures alive, according to U.S. and French law enforcement and intelligence officials. The operation that ensnared him was put together at a top secret center in Paris, code-named Alliance Base, that was set up by the CIA and French intelligence services in 2002, according to U.S. and European intelligence sources. Its existence has not been previously disclosed.

Funded largely by the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, Alliance Base analyzes the transnational movement of terrorist suspects and develops operations to catch or spy on them.

[...]

Most French officials and other intelligence veterans would talk about the partnership only if their names were withheld because the specifics are classified and the politics are sensitive. John E. McLaughlin, the former acting CIA director who retired recently after a 32-year career, described the relationship between the CIA and its French counterparts as "one of the best in the world. What they are willing to contribute is extraordinarily valuable."

The rarely discussed Langley-Paris connection also belies the public portrayal of acrimony between the two countries that erupted over the invasion of Iraq. Within the Bush administration, the discord was amplified by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has claimed the lead role in the administration's "global war on terrorism" and has sought to give the military more of a part in it.

But even as Rumsfeld was criticizing France in early 2003 for not doing its share in fighting terrorism, his U.S. Special Operations Command was finalizing a secret arrangement to put 200 French special forces under U.S. command in Afghanistan. Beginning in July 2003, its commanders have worked side by side there with U.S. commanders and CIA and National Security Agency representatives.

Organizing Alliance Base

Alliance Base, headed by a French general assigned to France's equivalent of the CIA -- the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) -- was described by six U.S. and foreign intelligence specialists with involvement in its activities. The base is unique in the world because it is multinational and actually plans operations instead of sharing information among countries, they said. It has case officers from Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Australia and the United States.

The Ganczarski operation was one of at least 12 major cases the base worked on during its first years, according to one person familiar with its operations.

Chirac Dumps on British "Food"

From Libé:

"The only thing [the Brits] ever did for European agriculture was mad cow disease," said Chirac, warning [Putin and Shroeder] that, at any rate, "you can't trust people who eat such awful food." He added, "after Finland, it's the country where people eat the worst."

"And hamburgers?" asked Putin, who nourishes a remainder of rivalry with the United States.

"No, no, hamburgers have nothing on it," answer Chirac. The French president then told of how the Scottish Lord Robertson, former Nato Secretary General, had Chirac try one of Scotland's appetizing specialties: "Whence our troubles with Nato..."

Notes the Beeb: "On Wednesday Mr. Chirac will be flying to Gleneagles for a dinner hosted by Queen Elizabeth II to open the G8 summit. ¶ The menu has not been published, but most of the food, provided by the Gleneagles hotel, will be locally sourced."

It was Chirac who demonstrated in early 2003 how NOT to flatter Americans, telling Time Magazine that "I know the US perhaps better than most French people, and I really like the United States. [...] I love junk food, and I always come home with a few extra pounds."

Sop Thrown to Readers

I know. I know. I know. I haven't blogged much recently. Here's a few things to keep you from complaining:

—> Window in Lebanon notes an interesting graf in a wire brief on Hussein Hanoun (the guide and interpreter of Florence Aubenas who was kidnapped and detained along with her) that appeared on lemonde.fr. Hussein was born July 1960 in Baghdad and is a father of three and was once a fighter pilot in the Iraqi army:

Like many former Iraqi fighter pilots, he was trained in France in the early 1980s at the height of military cooperation between the two countries, according to Libération. For four years, he fought the Iranians at the controls of his Mirage F1, which earned him three medals, the rank of colonel, a few scars on his shaven head and a reputation among his fellow servicemen for bravura. He was demobilized in 1991 following the second Gulf War.

(Of course, this implies that the "first Gulf War" was the Iran-Iraq war.) WiL comments: "So this Hussein is an old hand from Saddam's army, which it so happens led the charge against the Kurds and at any rate contributed to terrorising the Iraqi populace as a tool of the dictator. Mmm. Imagine if Milosevic turned guide, sorry 'fixer' [Hussein is decribed as a "fixer"] and was kidnapped with a French reporter. He would have been treated to a parade on the Champs-Elysées on being freed. But fine: party on anyway."

Just because Hussein Hanoun was in the Iraqi Air Force doesn't mean he participated in the Anfal Campaigns. Most people conflate or confuse Anfal with Halabja, the most famous and deadliest poison gas attack during the Anfal campaigns (to which, according to Human Rights Watch, Halabja was in reality only incidental).

While it is true that the Iraqi air force was in fact the principal means of deploying chemical munititions during the genocide, few realize that the Iraqis did most of the killing with small arms: if you look at this HRW table of known poison gas attacks during the Anfal, you can see that, while the genocidal campaigns killed somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 people, there were only 40 chemical attacks, many with only a few dozen killed. The chemical attacks allowed the Iraqi forces to break Kurdish resistance easily and to destroy villages. The Iraqi forces carted off residents of villages that resisted the onslaught and machine-gunned them into shallow pits in southern Iraq. That is how most died.

Given the relatively small deployment of the airforce, one wonders how likely it is for Hussein to have been involved in the Anfal. WiL's comparison to Milosevic is probably unjustified, too. Membership in the Iraqi armed forces is not necessarily an indication of willful participation in bad things. That would include a great share of Iraq's population. According to Kanan Makiya (Repulic of Fear, p. 34 SEE TABLE HERE), 42 of every 1,000 Iraqis was under arms by 1984. "One fifth of the economically active Iraqi labor force (about 3.4 million people) were institutionally charged during peacetime (1980) with one form or another of violence," he writes on page 38. "This is an extraordinary relationship, complete out of proportion with any other country that I can think of." Earlier, on page 35, Makiya writes that the buildup of military personnel to 18 per thousand people by 1980 was an index "about twice its equivalent for Iran under the Shah at the peak of his manic military buildup, twice that of Egypt througout the 1970s, and about twelve times that of Brazil with the largest army in Latin America." Military conscription was a form of social control in Iraq and Hussein may not have been able to avoid, or not given cause to decline military service. If that is the case, then there are millions like him in Iraq.

For more on France's relationship with Iraq, particularly as regards the air war with Iran, see this.

—> Courier International has a roundup of press accounts discussing the ransom that might have been paid for Florence Aubenas' manumission: "To believe reports coming out of Paris — clearly impossible to confirm — the liberation on June 12 last of the reporter from Libération, Florence Aubenas, held hostage for 157 days, cost the sum of 15 million dollars," writes the Swiss daily Le Temps. The Independent reprinted a report that originally appeared in Le Canard Enchaîné according to which another $15 million had been "spent" (who knows how...) to free the last pair of French hostages, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot. According to the Independent:

By making generous payments, above the going rate, to release three journalists in the past six months, France has in effect placed its own citizens in Iraq at high risk. Both the French ambassador in Iraq (in private) and the French Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin (in coded language in public) warned this week that semi-criminal opposition groups in Iraq were on the lookout for new French hostages.

M de Villepin warned that French citizens should stay away from Iraq because there was now a "thriving hostage market" there. The ambassador, Bernard Bajolet, has warned in private messages to Paris, according to the French press, that the taking of another French hostage is only a matter of time. He has sent urgent messages to the handful of French citizens remaining in Iraq - one journalist, and a few businessmen and bodyguards - that they should leave the country immediately.

—> An opinion poll published June 19 that was conducted by IFOP for Journal du Dimanche found that a record-breaking SEVENTY PERCENT of the French public are unhappy with Jacques Chirac, who has suffered the sharpest-ever drop in popularity, losing 12% from his approval rating between May 29 and June 18.

With only 28% approving and 70% dissatisfied, the president of the Republic has whethered an unprecedented collapse: not since de Gaulle in the spring of 1963 during the coal miners' strike, a social crisis, has there been an equivalent drop (less 17% but over two months.) In terms of approval, 28% is not a record for the 5th Republic: Jacques Chirac himself once slipped to 27% (November 1995 and November 1996) and François Mitterrand, all-time record holder, was at 26% in 1984 and the summer of 1992, before Maastricht, and even as low as 22% in December 1991.

In terms of disapproval (and since telephone polling has lowered the number of undecideds), the level of 70% has... never been reached. The collapse is generalized across all categories and the retreat is particularly pronounced among those on the right (-20% among those in the UDF, -18% among the UMP.) The president now enjoys minority support among the UDF and is supported by a bare majority in his own party: 56% approve whule 44% disapprove among the UMP.

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148th anniversary

Baudelaire in an arm chair.

Today is the 148th anniversary of the publication of Les fleurs du mal, which Baudelaire published when he was 36. In honor of the date, I've translated a poem from the collection that I was less than familiar with. I attempted to produce a rhyming version in iambic pentameter and this required my meager poetic talents to brutalize the words so badly that I think my English version is almost hysterically funny. So before you read that, read a raw translation of the poem's meaning:

"In the the perfumed land that the sun caresses/Under a canopy of crimson trees/And palms from which idleness rains on the eyes,/I knew a creole lady with untold charms.//Her complexion is pale and hot; the brown enchantress/Has nobly mannered airs in her neck./Tall and lean, walking like a huntress./Her smile is calm and her eyes confident.//If you went, lady, to the true land of glory,/By the banks of the Seine or the green Loire,/A beauty fit to adorn antique manors,//You would, sheltered in shadowy retreats,/Make moan a thousand sonnets in poets' hearts,/Whom your big eyes would make more enslaved than your blacks."

A UNE DAME CREOLE Au pays parfumé que le soleil caresse, J'ai connu, sous un dais d'arbres tout empourprés Et de palmiers d'où pleut sur les yeux la paresse, Une dame créole aux charmes ignorés.   Son teint est pâle et chaud; la brune enchanteresse A dans le cou des airs noblement maniérés; Grande et svelte en marchant comme une chasseresse, Son sourire est tranquille et ses yeux assurés.   Si vous alliez, Madame, au vrai pays de gloire, Sur les bords de la Seine ou de la verte Loire, Belle digne d'orner les antiques manoirs,   Vous feriez, à l'abri des ombreuses retraites Germer mille sonnets dans le coeur des poètes, Que vos grands yeux rendraient plus soumis que vos noirs.

TO A CREOLE LADY In the perfumèd land that the sun balms, I knew, 'neath a canopy of crimson woods Where torpor rains into the eyes from palms, A creole lady who had untold goods. Her skin is pale and hot; the brown enchantress Has airs about her neck nobly mannered, Tall and lean while walking like a huntress; Her smile is calm and her eyes assurèd. Lady, the true land of glory had you seen, By the banks of the Seine or the Loire green, Your looks in antique manors a prize, You would make, sheltered in dusky homes, A thousand sonnets in poets' hearts moan; More slaves than your blacks would fall 'fore your big eyes.

Rainbow in Manhattan

New York ! D'abord j'ai été confondu par ta beauté, ces grandes filles d'or aux jambes longues.
Si timide d'abord devant tes yeux de métal bleu, ton sourire de givre
Si timide.  Et l'angoisse au fond des rues à gratte-ciel
Levant des yeux de chouette parmi l'éclipse du soleil.
Sulfureuse ta lumière et les fûts livides, dont les têtes foudroient le ciel
Les gratte-ciel qui défient les cyclones sur leurs muscles d'acier et leur peau patinée de pierres.

[...]

New York ! je dis New York, laisse affluer le sang noir dans ton sang
Qu'il dérouille tes articulations d'acier, comme une huile de vie
Qu'il donne à tes ponts la courbe des croupes et la souplesse des lianes.

  SENGHOR, Ethiopique, 1956

Is Oprah Playing the Race Card?

Writes the WaPo's Robin Givhan:

It could be an example of a store treating a wealthy celebrity just like anyone else. It could be a case of rudeness. It could be racism. It could be a complicated blend of all that and more.

On June 14 in Paris, employees at the Hermès department store (24, Faubourg Saint-Honoré) denied entry to Oprah and now various parties appear to be alleging that this is because Ms. Winfrey is black. I would be the first to point out that this could indeed be true but a few aspects of this story don't quite pass the smell test, in my view.

The NY Post's feared gossip sheet, Page 6, broke the story last Monday, saying that an employee or employees told Oprah and two others accompanying her that they wouldn't be allowed in because the store had been having "a problem with North Africans lately." This quote did not reappear in the other versions of events that have since been told. The NY Daily News reported that that Oprah had arrived 15 mins after closing time and that, even though they normally would have made an exception in her case, that night they happened to be preparing for a private event — which explains the goings on Oprah saw inside and perhaps mistook for other shoppers. A flack for Oprah confirmed the News' version of events, according to the WaPo

Despite Hermès' issuance of an apology, Oprah has apparently authorized her friend Gayle King to speak to the press. King has called the event "one of the most humiliating moments of [Oprah's] life" and, according to the Chicago Tribune, Oprah has telephnoned the president of Hermès USA, Robert Chavez, and informed him that she will no longer be shopping at their stores. Meanwhile, Harpo Productions people are describing this as Oprah's "Crash Moment" (Crash, in case you were unaware, is a film that deals with race relations). Now Oprah plans to mention this episode on her TV show in September.

Somehow the NY Post got a quote about North Africans (and they sure as hell didn't get it from the Hermès people). No one in France would ever mistake Oprah for an Arab so this is simply not believable. Equally suspicious is the fact that Oprah's people quickly dropped this claim (wonder why...). Then the word goes out that Oprah's people are supposed to compare this event to that race-relations movie. How are the two alike? They don't say. Yet no one has denied that the store was indeed closed at the time or that staff were indeed preparing for a special event.

Is it possible that Oprah was stunned to find that there is a place on earth where she (She, Oprah Winfrey, Forbes Magazine's "most influential" celebrity in the world!!) is not immediately recognized? That she got the wrong impression and invented a few things for a story that would support her anger? Is she fully aware that France's difficulty discussing racial matters and American anger at France make the country particularly vulnerable to such accusations? Meanwhile, the event has been menioned by exactly two French language media outlets (of which one is, gasp, only Canadian!)

NYT Hires Object of Own Scorn

Hi Folks, I'm back. I noticed something recently: last month, the NYT announced that it was laying off 190 people. Then on June 5, Gretchen Morgenson wrote that a questionable business merger could lead to 17,000 lay-offs:

James Kilts, the chief executive of Gillette Company, stands to make $165 million from merging that venerable Boston company with the Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble. That payout was so large that Joseph F. Turley, the company's former president, and Joseph E. Mullaney, a former vice chairman of Gillette's board, deplored the merger in an open letter to Gillette's directors. ''Thousands of Gillette's employees will soon receive pink slips,'' they wrote. ''Their 'leader' will receive $170 million.''

Then, last Thursday, the NYT announced that it was hiring Kilts to serve on the company's board of directors, which Morgenson acknowledged in her column last Sunday, taking the time to bestow on Kilts' compensation "the award for most stupefying payout in a merger."

A few questions/observations: the split between business and editorial is rather pronounced here: the Times lays-off 190 and then skewers a corporate Titan, saying it appeared he could have been engineering lay-offs in the process of enriching himself. Then business hires the same man. Does Arthur Sulzberger really think that Kilts can turn the Times' sagging profits upward? Will Kilts aim to do this by urging more layoffs (hopefully not including troublesome business columnists) on the board? Are the Times' board members reading their own paper or are they partial to the thinking that one of its best reporters (Morgenson won a Pulitzer for Beat Reporting in 2002) is denouncing? Was the NYT in negotiations with Kilts while Morgenson was questioning his spokesman about the merger?

¡Luzca Bien Siéntase Bien!

Ever try working night AND day?

I can heartily recommend it!!

Happy Birthday, Moz

46 today.

Ricoeur - reborn in US - dies in France

(AP Photo/Keystone/Juerg Mueller)

Paul Ricœur died, aged 92, Thursday night. In Le Monde, U. Chicago's Charles Larmore published the essay below on the importance of Ricœur's time in the US.

Viewpoint
American Efflorescence, by Charles Larmore
LE MONDE | 05.21.05 | 13:56  •  Updated 05.21.05 | 13:56

Teaching in the United States saved my life, literally. It was in these dramatic terms that Paul Ricœur described to Charles Reagan, a former student who devoted a biography to him, the importance to his career of the turning point that were the twenty-two years (from 1970-1992) during which he was professor of theology and of philosophy at the University of Chicago.

At the start of the sixties, Ricœur felt terribly alone and marginalized in France. He had just been defeated by Foucault in an election at the Collège de France. His painful experience as a doyen at Nanterre had resulted in a resignation, following violent clashes between students and police. More generally, a new generation taken with "structuralism" no longer saw his hermeneutic thought as any more than an outmoded spiritualism.

Lastly, the attacks he suffered became increasingly personal, the worst doubtless being the crude accusation of plagiarism leveled by Lacan and his school, following Ricœur's publication (in 1965) of his own book on Freud, De l'interprétation.

But Paul Ricœur did not only find in the United States a refuge to work in peace and enjoy the respect he deserved. His American semesters also proved fertile. In this philosophical new world where not only the interlocutors but also the style of thought itself were different, and where openness to discussion and the development of sound arguments were more important than the tone of oratory or ideological denunciation, Ricœur discovered a climate that matched his own particular way of thinking. Given that dialogue was always the cardinal virtue of his "hermeneutical" thought, he could now genuinely practice it. He immersed himself in current debates, appropriated concepts and problems. In doing so, he changed but this was in fact in order to become more himself. Thus his spectacular return to the French intellectual scene, toward the end of the eighties, was the christening of a new Ricœur, one who had succeeded, as so few thinkers of our era had, in bridging the gulf of misunderstanding that separates so-called "Continental" and Anglo-American philosophies.

His grand studies on metaphor (1975) and stories (1983-1986), and especially his magnificent book on the ego, Soi-même comme un autre (1990), demonstrate a patience in analysis, a concern with testing one's own ideas against the best objections of others, that he learnt to appreciate among American philosophers. But, at the same time, the author of these works never loses sight of the difficulty or of what is really at stake in the subjects he approached. To the contrary, he showed himself to be equal to the task, and in the only way that is worthwhile in philosophy, namely by proposing new systematic approaches. It was indeed during this period that he composed a theoretical work of the highest order, one which will certainly live for a long time to come.

Therefore we would wrong to see Paul Ricœur as a French thinker forced only by circumstance to spend much time abroad. In reality, his American exile was none, since it allowed him to find his path and to flourish, so much so that he ended up in the place of authority in French thought that became his over the last twenty years. Proof of this lies in his rediscovery of moral and political philosophy: in the United States, Ricœur was able to see firsthand how this discipline, while practically dead in France, was alive and well, despite the skepticism of the "Masters of Suspicion" (Marx, Nietzsche, Freud) whose influence he had himself helped to assure. The questions of what is good and right having been particularly important to him as a young man, what a joy it was to learn that contemporary philosophers could treat them in a manner at once systematic and responsible! Furthermore, it was he who then played an important role not only by the encouragement he gave to others but above all through the example of his own writings in the rebirth of this lines of inquiry at the center of French philosophy today. Think only of the essays he published on social justice that contributed to the introduction in France of the political thought of John Rawls and Michael Walzer. Thus it would not be an exaggeration to say that Ricœur, so highly regarded today, is partly an American philosopher.

At any rate, Paul Ricœur remains a major presence for many American philosophers, as if he had never left us. He is ours as much as France's. Everywhere, one finds his former students and young philosophers who study his writings closely. At the University of Chicago in particular, we always take pleasure in telling stories about his teaching and showing newcomers where he liked to dine.

Charles Larmore is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Article published in the 05.22.05 edition

Thanks, Bill

"There is no point living in the past," [Bill] Clinton said. "Look at where we are now. Everyone, all freedom-loving people would be better off with a genuinely representative, effective, free government in Iraq whatever your feelings are about what went on before." — the former president speaking yesterday in Copenhagen.

Even the Post agrees

Incidentally, if anyone in American journalism writes like a drunk, it's The New York Post's Andrea Peyser. She writes in today's paper, "somebody, please inject our senators with a heavy dose of testosterone." Peyser is an idiot who usually makes more correctable mistakes in a single column than I have in this entire blog. But here she is right. Her column accompanies an article ("Brit fries senators in oil") by DC correspondent Niles Lathem that reads in part, "Coleman and other senators [nb: there were only two in the room —D] were caught flat-footed by the ferocity of Galloway's counter offensive. They cut short the questioning of him and abruptly stopped the hearing." Above this is a picture of Coleman's thinning hair and awkward expressiion with a caption saying he was "stunned into silence."

When the Post says a Republican has done poorly you can be sure it was much worse than that...

Status Report

Just to let you all now: I, too, am a "drink-soaked former-Trotskyist popinjay" or if I'm not I'd like to be one.

And if Morrissey shows any admiration for that "man," it'll be the last straw!

Galloway Scares shit-for-brains Coleman

Just got finished watching Galloway testify before PSI. The web cast link is here (thanks Harry's Place) but they've just recessed for lunch.

Norm Coleman is a pussy. (Pardon my language.) He was intimidated and cowed by that bloated little turd Galloway. Now all the mealy-mouthed newscasters will have plenty of footage of a thundering Galloway to air this evening to make it seem as though Galloway defended himself admirably. He didn't: it was that Coleman got scared and was completely unprepared. Levin was far more effective (that's because Levin has a brain). Nobody ever wonders why the Repbulicans don't have a Henry Waxman or a Carl Levin (or a Jack Newfield). Republicans aren't investigators. There's no such thing as a "conservative reporter."

We were just treated to a depressing demonstration of this fact.

And is it true that the PSI report on Galloway refers to alleged OFF documents dating from before the program even existed?
... Dear God, what an embarrassment.

UPDATE: Over at Harry's Place, commenter Kojo writes, "I just saw Hitchens confronting Galloway on TV, at this senate room!" If that's true, I'll love him for ever. Too bad he wasn't questioning Galloway.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Norm Coleman is such a loser I am hereby revoking his status as a New Yorker. Norm, don't ever come back to Brooklyn, you gutless little grease spot. You let Galloway slip through your fingers!

Bravo, Andrew

There ought to be a new caucus of conscience for bloggers, particularly for the rightwing ones who dare to defy the bloggosphere's Web-traffic economy by openly criticizing the right's latest clap-trap and risking reduced readership. Bravo to Andrew Sullivan for having the guts to take on Glenn Reynolds. Today he writes:

We have yet to see what's at the root, if anything, of the Newsweek story. But I think it's telling that some bloggers have devoted much, much more energy to covering the Newsweek error than they ever have to covering any sliver of the widespread evidence of detainee abuse that made the Newsweek piece credible in the first place. A simple question: after U.S. interrogators have tortured over two dozen detainees to death, after they have wrapped one in an Israeli flag, after they have smeared naked detainees with fake menstrual blood, after they have told one detainee to "Fuck Allah," after they have ordered detainees to pray to Allah in order to kick them from behind in the head, is it completely beyond credibility that they would also have desecrated the Koran? Yes, Newsweek bears complete responsibility for any errors it has made; and, depending on what we now find, should not be let off the hook. But the outrage from the White House is beyond belief. It seems to me particularly worrying if this incident further intimidates the press from seeking the truth about what the government is doing in the war on terror. It is not being "basically, on the side of the enemy," as Glenn Reynolds calls it, to resist the notion of government-sanctioned torture and to report on it. It is patriotism and serving the cause that this war is about: religious pluralism and tolerance. The media's Abu Ghraib?? When Mike Isikoff is found guilty of committing murder, give me a call. Austin Bay still insists that Abu Ghraib did not constitute "deadly torture." The corpses found there (photographed by grinning U.S. soldiers) would probably disagree. (Will Bay correct?) Three factors interacted here: media error/bias, Islamist paranoia, and a past and possibly current policy of religiously-intolerant torture. No one comes out looking good. But it seems to me unquestionable that the documented abuse of religion in interrogation practices is by far the biggest scandal. Too bad the blogosphere is too media-obsessed and self-congratulatory to notice.

Pasqua épinglé!!

Am I the only one who sees the similarity? (Pasqua: Sipa press)

No doubt by now you'll have heard the news. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) has released a report (pdf: 22 pp./484 k) on bribes paid to George Galloway and Charles Pasqua. These allegations follow those contained in last October's Duelfer report, which also damned Pasqua, among others.

Over at Harry's Place, they've been doing an admirable job keeping up the pressure on Galloway however less attention has been shown to Pasqua's role in this scandal so I thought I'd put together what I know. And there's a fair amount here...

Citing Iraqi Oil ministry documents and interviews with former regime functionaries including Taha Yassin Ramadan, the report released Thursday (complete with errors of spelling and punctuation) alledges in part that "Charles Pasqua was granted oil allocations for 11 million barrels of oil [sic] from the [Saddam] Hussein regime under the Oil for Food Program[me] in return for his continued support" of Saddam. PSI says documents from Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) indicate that Pasqua asked for his oil allocations to be lifted by a Swiss company called Genmar (incorporated in the British Virgin Islands). When SOMO asked for this in writing, says PSI, Pasqua's rep Bernard Guillet "refused to send such a letter, explaining that 'they cannot do that fearing political scandals.' " The report says that the commissions paid on the sale the allocated oil typically ranged from three to 30 US cents per barrel (implying that Pasqua stood to make between $330,000 and $3,300,000). On April 26, Guillet was detained by police (see below) as part of a French investigation into Oil for Food Programme (OFF) corruption.

The examples of Pasqua's supposed support for Saddam that the Senate PSI offers are his conspicuous advocacy for the lifting of UN sanctions, his chumminess with Tariq Aziz, whom he met in October of 1993 to discuss the sanctions six months before France "called for a statement recognizing that Iraq had taken positive steps" to come into compliance with the UN's requirements on WMD. The report also cites a WaPo article of May 8, 1994 ("The Saddam Lobby") according to which what the article calls "US intelligence sources" believed that Pasqua was "coaching the Iraqi’s [sic] behind the scenes."

The report notes that Pasqua has been "dogged by allegations of corruption for years," and briefly mentions Pasqua's alleged roles in party finance scandals and illegal arms sales to Angola before explaining that Pasqua had avoided prosecution by asking Chirac for a place on the RPR list that would guarantee him a seat in the Senate and consequently grant him immunity.

Pasqua's corruption and fondness for the Ba'th of course distinguish him little from many of France's elected officials. I've mentioned a number of times on this blog the depressing statistic that, according to the 2002 book Le casier judiciaire de la République ("The Republic's Rap Sheet") by Le Monde investigative reporter Bruno Fay and Laurent Olivier, between 1993 and 2003, more than 900 of France's elected officials were investigated for financial crimes, including 34 ministers or undersecretaries out of a total of 128, or nearly one in four! Furthermore, politicians from across the French political spectrum, from J.-M. Le Pen to J.-P. Chevènement, not to mention the president himself, also took a liking to the former Iraqi raïs: the Iraqi poet Salah al-Hamdani, who was assaulted by hooded Arab youths during a March 2003 anti-war march Paris, once wrote in the pages of L'Humanité that "the Iraqis exiled in France, who are victims of this dictatorship, know well the names on the black list of Saddam's supporters."

The presence of Iraqi oil money in French politics is of course not a shock. For example, in Notre allié Saddam ("Our Ally Saddam"), Stéphanie Mesnier and Claude Angleli quote an unnamed former intelligence official who said (p. 226) that "before 1980, I intercepted a numbered telegram sent to the Paris embassy of a Middle-Eastern country. It indicated that a commission of $80 million on a weapons contract was to be wired to a French group. These people were affiliated with a political party." (However, the source did not say whether this wire came from Saudi Arabia or Iraq.)

Pasqua has now denied all this several times. In a statement published by the BBC, Pasqua says he denied the allegation when it was made by the Iraqi newspaper al-Mada last year. al-Mada published a list of over 270 individuals in 50 countries who the paper claimed had received Oil for Food Programme allocations in 1999 in return for support of Saddam's diplomatic cause. (Among them were 11 French nationals, including Patrick Maugein, a businessman very close to Chirac, former UN ambassador Jean-Bernard Mérimée and Claude Kaspereit, the son of RPR mayor of the 9th arrondissement Gabriel Kaspereit — all of whom have denied the allegations). Pasqua erroneously claims that PSI's report "is largely based on these earlier [al-Mada] reports" when in fact the report claims that it is based on interviews with Ba'th officials and documents taken from the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) and the Oil Ministry.

"Charles Pasqua may well say he is 'entirely foreign' to the Oil for Food matter and describe the accusations that he 'trafficked in oil' as 'delirious,' " writes Le Monde's Michel Bôle-Richard, "the report by the two American Senators, the Republican Norm Coleman, and the Democrat Carl Levin, is devastating." However, the Foreign Affairs ministry had a more reserved reaction on Thursday. Spokesman Hervé Ladsous said that "France wishes that any and all possible irregularities committed as part of the 'Oil for Food Programme' should be brought to light" and noted that the allegations contained in the PSI report were "published without allowing the persons and entities concerned the chance to defend themselves. [¶] We have already had the occasion to state that we disapprove of this manner of conduct. [¶] Finally, if the American authorities decided to share with the French authorities those specific items concerning French persons or entities, we would be ready to examine them carefully [...]"

When the al-Mada list was published, Le Monde ran a little-noticed essay by Horizon editor Véronique Maurus entitled "Saddam Hussein, France and the bad guys" (translated by February 30's Cinderella Bloggerfeller, aka J. Cassianus, here).

Maurus wrote that "for, for all its faults, the list from the newspaper Al Mada is true. Evidence collected throughout the world as well as from oil circles constantly confirms it."

"It was intended to create mischief," admits an oil expert, " but unfortunately it is accurate. We've all bumped into the lucky beneficiaries in Baghdad and the regime made no attempt to hide it."

Saddam Hussein thoroughly corrupted the entire world right under the nose of the UN. But some more than others. It's no surprise that first in line for this dubious distinction are the "old" friends of the regime. A mishmash of Russians (45 names cited), plenty of Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians (14 named), followed, with 11 citations, by the French.

Unlike Galloway, Pasqua will not be testifying before the PSI on Tuesday — his immunity from prosecution is the only veil protecting him from serious criminal scrutiny so he can scarcely desire to subject himself to highly public hostile questioning under oath. However, he has publicly responded to the report. The BBC quotes him as having told French television that "perhaps also those who are targeting Jacques Chirac through me ignore that the nature of our relationship has changed, at least politically, and they are mistaken if they think that I am in a position to influence French policy." In the US, said Pasqua, there is "an obsession which consists of saying that if France took a hostile stance against American intervention in Iraq, it was because of economic interests or privileged relations it might have had with Saddam Hussein." If that is the case, then I am obsessed, too.

All this is not to say however that Pasqua is wrong when accuses the report's authors and the Republican party in general of publishing such information out of political motives. Why has PSI so dramatically singled out Galloway and Pasqua and not the other 268 individuals on the list? Indeed, what was the purpose of producing an OFF report on the activities of only two individuals, neither of whom is a US national? Why in the Duelfer report were the names of American individuals also implicated in this trade at least initially kept secret while the French were named and shamed? The merits of the report aside, the desire to harm the ideological and political adversaries of US foreign policy is patent. "In Paris," writes Libération, "Senator [Coleman] is suspected of doing everything possible to hide the fact that some Americans have also been moistened in this matter."

As part of Philippe Courroye's investigation into OFF, Police detained Pasqua's "diplomatic adviser" Bernard Guillet on April 26 on suspicion of "concealment of the abuse of public funds" and "aggravated influence peddling." He was placed under observation. It's worth noting that Guillet never made a secret of his connections with the Saddam government. In an April 30, 2001 interview given to Le Monde, he said, "I consider myself an honest courtier for the Iraqi people."

According to Le Monde, when the Volker commission published its findings (first report, 3.26 mb, here; second report, 3.65 mb, here), they were collected by the anti-corruption investigative magistrate Philippe Courroye as part of an investigation into bribes allegedly paid by French oil giant Total to Saddam in an attempt to bust UN sanctions. The Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 ore has published reports according to which these documents detail the mechanisms through which Pasqua and his assistant Guillet were actually paid for the oil allocations, which the Senate PSI was not able to show. (Pasqua has announced that he intends to sue Il sole.) Allegedly, Pasqua and Guillet used a Lebanese businessman by the name of Elias Firzli, a member of the Lebanese Ba'th party, to resell the oil to other companies seeking to obtain oil outside of OFF (and therefore in violation of UN sanctions).

Courroye believes that Firzli is the link with Total as Courroye suspects Firzli of having in turn paid moneys from this operation to persons close to Saddam Hussein as bribes to obtain access to Iraqi oil for Total. In June 2001, Tracfin, the Finance ministry's financial crimes unit, reported that Firzli had worked "toward the end of the 1980s in the sale of weapons between Lebanese Christian forces and Iraq."

Firzli was also a donor to the association France-Afrique-Orient, which is linked to Pasqua, was once headed by Guillet and is under investigation by Courroye.

Most interesting in the Senate PSI report is the content related to high-level discussions on the Iraqi strategies used to gain influence. In October of 2002, Deutsche Bank drafted a report on the Iraqi oil industry that was later leaked to the press and cited by Le Monde (see this post for more info). The report speculated that Iraq was using negotiations with large foreign oil companies over mouth-watering potential contracts to force Russia, France and China (Iraq's staunchest supporters at the UN Security Council) to push for the lifting of the UN embargo.

Given the information revealed by al-Mada, ISG (Duelfer) and the PSI, we no longer need to speculate. In addition to reviewing SOMO and Oil ministry documents, PSI interviewed former Deputy PM Tariq Aziz, former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, "Senior Hussein Regime Official" Nos. 1 and 2.

[...] the Vice President of the [Saddam] Hussein regime, Taha Yassin Ramadan, confirmed to the Subcommittee that the allocations were indeed “compensation for support.” The Vice President also confirmed that “I know these people [i.e., allocation grantees] get [a] benefit.” Another senior [Saddam] Hussein official confirmed that the allocation scheme was “buying influence.” When asked whether allocation recipients would make a profit from the oil transactions, that official declared: “That’s the whole point.”

The Hussein regime used these lucrative allocations in its primary political struggle — ending U.N. sanctions. To that end, it primarily favored those individuals and entities from countries on the U.N. Security Council. Senior Hussein regime officials and numerous Ministry of Oil documents confirm that the regime steered a massive portion of its allocations toward Security Council members that were believed by the Hussein regime to support Iraq in its efforts to lift sanctions – namely, Russia, France, and China. For example, several Oil Ministry charts expressly separate the allocation recipients by country and specify whether the country is a permanent member of the Security Council. Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council, was consistently the largest recipient of oil allocations and, according to one Hussein regime official, this affinity for Russia resulted from Saddam’s desire to show “gratitude” to the Russians for their support at the U.N. Security Council. To ensure that the profits of the oil transactions would remain in the favored country, allocations recipients were required to assign their oil rights to purchasers in their country.