French Culture Now

Archives: February 7-11, 2008

French women get lucky
WashingtonPost. Feb. 11, 1008
Promoting the trope of France as the world’s bordel, “ "Lust in Translation” author Pamela Druckerman writes, “I have to get old, I want to do it in Paris. It's not because of the dank weather, the constant personal snubs or a fetish for unpasteurized cheese. It's because, quite frankly, I'd like to keep having sex.” Food, sex, fashion, art: does France have anything to offer the world except sensual gratification?
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Sarkozy plan for poor suburbs falls short
UKIndependent. Feb. 11, 2008
President Sarkozy unveiled a long-awaited "Marshall Plan" for France’s multi-racial suburbs but failed to make any clear commitments on levels of new spending. The so-called "Plan Espoir Banlieue" – or "suburban hope plan" - promised that €500m would be diverted over an unspecified period to improve rail links to poor, isolated suburbs but ignored a proposal that richer inner-city areas should share their local taxes with deprived suburbs.
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Sarkozy’s “intellectual deception”
UKGuardian. Feb. 11. 2008
Last month Nicolas Sarkozy floated a raft of policies under a flag of "politique de civilisation,” proposing that "we must fight the blunders and excesses of our own civilisation", threatened by "global environmental destruction" and "the mistakes of finance capitalism". Sarkozy aims at nothing less than the "moralisation of capitalism" and the "humanisation of globalisation". Nice words, but Sarkozy’s complete failure to enact his plan for revitalizing France has made a mockery of the high rhetoric. Less than a year into his Presidency, it is clear that Sarkozy’s promise of “new civilisation” is based on deception and cannot be based on contemporary French culture, writes author Pankaj Mishra.
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Smoking ban reveals body odor complaints
UKTimes. Feb. 11, 1008
Smoking is now illegal in French cafes and nightclubs. The downside? You can now smell the French people, and it ain’t pretty. French establishments are experimenting with perfumes to mask the repulsive body odor. Another problem: smokers are leaving restaurants for a quick puff between courses, then absconding without paying the bill. Ah, nicotine addiction and theft. Vive la France!
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Zeldin on the French Dream
FinancialTmes. Feb. 11, 1008
Theodore Zeldin, the British historian, philosopher, business lecturer, author of History of French Passions, Happiness, The French, An Intimate History of Humanity and Conversation, has spent his life marinating in French history and culture. He participated in th Attali Commission report and is enthusiastic about the possibilities for change but expresses frustration with the commission’s intensely technical discussions of subjects and the cobwebs of laws and regulations preventing new initiatives. For Zeldin, “France is an idea. It is not a territory. It is offering a dream that is different from the American dream.”
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France bans genetically modified corn
AFP. Feb. 11, 2008
France officially banned on Feb. 9, 2008 a strain of genetically modified corn from US agribusiness giant Monsanto, delighting environmentalists but sparking outrage from the company and French farmers. At least one association planned a legal challenge to the ruling, but leading environmental campaigner Jose Bove welcomed the decision.
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French paper consumption drops
NYTimes. Feb. 11, 2008
After rising steadily in the 1980s and ’90s, worldwide paper consumption per capita has plateaued in recent years. In the richest countries, consumption fell 6 percent from 2000 to 2005. France uses significantly less paper than comparable countries such as Germany, Canada, Belgium, UK, and Netherlands--roughly 20 percent less. This may be due to their lesser newspaper reading.
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Tough year for Sarkozy
Angus Reid Global Monitor. Feb. 9, 2008
Fewer adults in France express satisfaction with President Sarkozy, according to a poll by TNS Sofres published in Le Figaro Magazine. 41 per cent of respondents express confidence in their president’s ability to face France’s problems, down eight points since early January.
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French want EU treaty vote
AngusReidGlobalMonitor. Feb. 9, 2008
Most people in France want to have a say on whether the country should adopt the new common treaty of the European Union (EU), according to a Jan. 23-24, 2008 poll by CSA published in L’Humanité. 59 per cent of respondents want a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, while 33 per cent think parliament should decide on its ratification.
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Reporters Without Borders condemns Sarkozy
ReporterswithoutBorders. Feb. 9, 2008
Reporters Without Borders (RWB) condemns President Sarkozy’s suing the Nouvel Observateur newspaper under criminal law which could require revelation of confidential sources. “No French president had sued the news media for the past 30 years at least,” claims RWB. Sarozy is suing over a report on the newspaper’s website entitled “The obsession with Cecilia.” It claimed that, eight days before marrying former model Carla Bruni, Sarkozy sent his former wife an SMS message saying “If you come back, I’ll call it all off.”
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Le Pen sentenced for speech crime
BBC. Feb. 9, 2008
How France has changed since Voltaire vowed to “defend to the death” the right of dissenters to express unpopular opinions! French far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen has been given a three-month suspended jail term and fined 10,000 euros for describing the German occupation of France as "not especially inhumane” in an interview with the far-right magazine Rivarol in January 2005. The French court ruled that Le Pen had denied a crime against humanity and had been complicit in condoning war crimes.
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Chad to pardon French kidnappers
BBC. Feb. 9, 2008
In a cozy quid pro quo follwing France’s support of Chadian President Idriss Deby’s government against rebels, Deby has offered to pardon six French aid workers convicted by his own courts of the attempted kidnapping of 103 children out of the country. The six were sentenced to eight years' hard labour in Chad last year, but were flown home in December to serve equivalent jail terms in France. The French government said it was immediately sending a pardon request to Chad. Deby made the pardon offer after talks with Defence Minister Herve Morin. France has more than 1,400 troops in Chad. The pardon sends an unfortunate neo-colonial message that justice is flexible for white French citizens who get caught red-handed in the colored former colonies.
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French Facebook to be launched
UKTelegraph. Feb. 9, 2008
The California-based Social networking website Facebook announced today that it will launch French versions of Facebook in the coming weeks. Founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said: "Over 60pc of Facebook users are now outside of the US, and many live in countries where English is not the primary language.”
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Sarkozy caves to taxi union
UKTimes. Feb. 8, 2008
Sarkozy seems to have given up on the clean break that was supposed to end France’s bad old ways. Unpopular and facing an electoral thrashing next month, Sarko surrendered to the nation's taxi drivers after only a few days of protests. The taxi reform was one of the 317 ideas that Jacques Attali presented, at Sarkozy's request, for opening up the economy and "liberating growth". Sarkozy’s capitulation follows the time-honoured French practice of caving when a special interest takes to the street. The defeat means that Paris will continue to suffer one of the worst cab shortages of any world city.
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Sarkozy’s marriage unpopular
AustraliaNews. Feb. 8, 2008
In a poll carried out by IFOP and published on the website of the weekly Journal du Dimanche, 31 per cent of respondents said President Sarkozy's image was damaged due to his marriage to Bruni. Only four per cent said his image improved. IFOP also published another survey today showing Sarkozy's decline in popularity was continuing: 53 per cent of French people disapprove of his policies, a drop of 7 per cent over January.
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French parliament backs EU treaty
BBC. Feb. 8, 2008
France's parliament has voted to adopt the EU reform treaty, three years after a French No dealt a fatal blow to the European Constitution. MPs approved the law by a margin of 336-52 and the upper house, the Senate, later also approved the vote. French Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet said new life would be breathed into the European ideal.
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Chad Ready to Pardon French Aid Workers
NewYorkTimes. Feb. 8, 2008
Chad's President Idriss Deby, speaking on Europe-1 radio, said he was ''ready to pardon'' six French aid workers convicted in December of trying to kidnap over 100 children they said were orphans from Darfur. The workers were entenced to eight year’s hard labor. But now that France has intervened to protect Deby against rebels, a quid pro quo pardon for the French kidnappers may be in the cards.
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French Trade Deficit Widens
Forbes. Feb. 8, 2008
France's foreign trade deficit widened to record levels last year, reaching 39.17 billion euros in 2007 from 28.24 billion euros in 2006. Foreign Trade Minister Herve Novelli blamed the strong euro, general economic slowdown and the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States. French exports to the United States, a market that absorbs about 8 percent of French exports, fell by 5 percent last year.
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France is a racist dead end for many ethnic workers
AFP. Feb. 8, 2008
For some 15,000 people who leave France looking for work each year, Britain is the true land of “egalité” and “fraternité.” In France they face a restricted job market and racial discrimination, whereas in Britain, minorities are welcomed and diversity is seen as a positive. One French-Arab expat, Hamid Senni, wrote a book about his journey called "De la cité à la City" -- from a rundown suburban housing estate to London's booming financial district.
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SG culture of risk made scandal “inevitable”
NewYorkTimes/IHT. Feb. 7, 2008
A series of missteps by Société Générale led to the bank’s recent staggering $7 billion losses. The bank allowed a culture of risk to flourish, creating major flaws in its operations that enabled the rogue trader's activities to go undetected, according to bank officials, investigators and traders who worked with Kerviel. SocGen traders were rewarded for making risky investments and were permitted to exceed trading limits. "I have a suspicion that this was inevitable, given the way things were engineered," said Yves-Marie Laulan, a former chief economist at Société Générale.
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French medics sued in mad cow scandal
BBC. Feb. 7, 2008
Seven French health officials have gone on trial in Paris, charged over the deaths of more than 100 children from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), the human form of mad cow disease. The children had all been injected with growth hormones from the pituitary glands of human corpses in hospitals which specialised in infectious diseases and even neurological disorders, in the 1980s. The seven are accused of hiding the dangers of the treatment from the parents and breaching safety rules. All seven deny the charges but face up to 10 years' jail if found guilty.
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France backs Chad’s government
ChristianScienceMonitor. Feb. 7, 2008
After proclaiming its neutrality over the past few days, France and the UN Security Council may intervene to back up the government of President Idriss Déby against thousands of Chadian rebels hovering around the capital city of N'Djamena. On Feb. 5, President Sarkozy told reporters that France would "do its duty" to support the "legitimately elected" government if it was necessary.
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Sarkozy a “letdown” for French business
WallStreetJournal. Feb. 7, 2008
Nicolas Sarkozy's popularity is in free fall. French industrialists and bankers blame the President for not delivering what they expect and what he promised: a growth-friendly environment, budget discipline and structural changes that France needs. Business expected Mr. Sarkozy the free-marketer. Instead, it has had to contend with Sarko the haphazard interventionist.
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Sarkozy and Bruni win Ryanair ad case
BBC. Feb. 7, 2008
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his bride Carla Bruni have won a case against low-cost airline Ryanair for using their picture without consent. But the court in Paris awarded Ms Bruni only 60,000 euros (US$89,000; £45,000) - a fraction of the 500,000 euros she had asked for. Mr Sarkozy was given the symbolic single euro he had claimed for himself.
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Europe pushes for greener aviation
BBC. Feb. 7, 2008
Some of the biggest names in European industry have begun a public-private partnership with the EU to produce greener aircraft.
Airbus, Dassault, Saab and Rolls Royce are all taking part in the 1.6bn euro (£1.2bn) "clean sky" initiative. Half the money will be raised by the European Union and half by industry. EU Science and Research Commissioner Janez Potocnik said the investment would keep Europe at the cutting edge and help combat climate change.
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POLITICS AND SOCIETY NEWS AND EVENTS ARCHIVE FEBRUARY 2008-2