The leading French daily Le Monde has a weblog on its website that I’ve just discovered, called V Pour Vidéo. The tagline it uses to describe itself translates as “Video-essentials in a blog with real pieces of video inside” – language I imagine that you’d rather expect to see on a cereal-box! In any case, it does seem to be a weblog based around video, in a loose sense at least, with at least one video embedded in each blogpost.

Also, the blog-author’s name is Karim El Hadj – that’s something that should cause a double-take, when you realize that this is an affiliated product of the renowned Le Monde! I’m not saying that it’s surprising that someone who is clearly originally of Arab origin can come up with high-quality weblog content; I’m saying I’m surprised that such a person is, in effect, sponsored by such a pillar of the French media establishment as Le Monde.

For his blogpost for today it seems that El Hadj has been inspecting various Disney animation-films rather closely and has come up with something rather interesting. I’ll pass the word directly on to him here:

Like many animation-lovers, while watching Disney animated cartoons you have also felt a certain déjà vu. Here’s the explanation of this phenomenon. For many years the Disney enterprise has continued to duplicate animation segments from one cartoon to another. Creativity and industry don’t necessarily always go together.

Here’s the video that proves his point, from DailyMotion.com:

In the comments following the post you have contributions from various readers offering their own judgments as to whether this is really such a bad thing. Comment #3, from “Matthieu,” does cut Disney some slack, reminding us that back when these films were made there were no computers to assist so that everything had to be drawn by hand, and maybe in view of this the duplication made some sense in order to “gain time” and not have to re-do everything all the time. But El Hadj remains hard-core, sticking in his own blog-author’s comment-to-the-commend (Message du blogueur) saying, in effect, yeah they gain time, and so they gain more money, and where’s the innovation?

Just as the Obama administration is getting prepared to ramp up US military strength in Afghanistan by about another 30,000 troops, a very real problem has arisen as to how to keep supplied the NATO troops already on the ground there, much less bring in brand new forces. The land supply-route from Pakistan via the Khyber Pass has lately become somewhat insecure and unreliable, but now the air route threatens to become much longer and more difficult due to the announced closure to NATO use, within six months, of the Manas airbase near the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek. The Washington Independent’s ace (US) national security reporter, Spencer Ackerman, now considers the Manas closing as inevitable, while Scott Horton over at Harper’s enlightens us as to the corrupt and high-handed (even deadly) American behavior there that caused relations with the Kyrgyz to sour to bring us to this point.

The world-renowned French daily Le Monde provides yet more context for that Kyrgyz government decision (Five countries of the ex-USSR create a fund for dealing with the crisis). Those five countries are Russia herself, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and, yes, Kyrgyzstan, and the article shows clearly how Russia has succeeded in re-extending it’s influence over the Central Asian countries both financially and militarily. Sure, there is that $2 billion loan and $150 million in an outright grant reported by the New York Times that Russia has offered to Kyrgyzstan. But that august newspaper failed to report that Kyrgyz president Kurmanbek Bakiev travelled to Moscow in the first place to take part in a summit with Russian president Medvedev and the presidents of five other ex-Soviet states. It was there that the subset named above established a collective $10 billion fund (with a disproportionate Russian contribution, one would expect) as an emergency and stabilization reserve for confronting the worldwide financial crisis.

But that same summit had an important military dimension as well. All seven of the presidents in attendance (i.e. the five listed above plus those of Armenia and Uzbekistan) agreed to create “collective armed forces” for responding to common external threats. And it was actually in connection with this summit meeting that Kyrgyz president Bakiev made his announcement that the Manas airbase would shortly be closed to the Americans.

Although it is true that “collective armed forces” is a vague phrase, and that one should wait and see what comes of it in operational practice (if anything – it’s highly unlikely to mean a fusion of all those nations’ armies, for example), it is nonetheless clear that Russia’s influence in Central Asia is waxing. But it’s also probably useful to remember that American access to airbases in the region, starting in 2001 (i.e. less than ten years after these states had gained a sort of “independence” from Soviet Russia) was extraordinary to begin with, and really only due to the world political climate in the wake of the 9-11 attacks, which among other effects brought about toleration for this extraordinary concept from the Russian government. If that attitude cooled soon thereafter, it did so somewhat less quickly in the states actually hosting American bases, namely Uzbekistan (with an airbase made available until 2005) and Kyrgyzstan, giving them for a while at least a veneer of policy “independence” from Moscow. The impending loss of the Manas base, however – although considerably helped along by American behavior, as Scott Horton reminds us – was in this geopolitical context something inevitable, so that one would rather hope and expect that contingency plans for what to do next are already in place at the Pentagon.

The leading French daily Le Monde today has a striking editorial, in the form of an open letter to Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, from the French writer Jean-Moïse Braitberg. That double first-name amounts to what in English would be “John-Moses,” so this is someone of the Jewish faith, in fact someone whose grandfather died in the gas chambers of Treblinka and of whom other relatives also perished during World War II in various other Nazi camps. The name of his late grandfather, Moshe Brajtberg, is even enshrined at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial, but now M. Braitberg is publicly writing the Israeli president to have it removed. “I ask you to accede to my request, Mr. President, because what has happened in Gaza, and more generally the fate given to the Arab people of Palestine for sixty years, disqualifies Israel in my eyes as a center for the memory of the evil done to Jews and thereby to all of humanity.”

He goes on:

You see, since my childhood I have lived within an entourage of survivors from the death-camps. . . . It was necessary, they taught me, that these crimes never resume again; that never again could a man, due to his belonging to an ethnic group or religion despised by others, be scoffed at while trying to assert the most elementary rights such as a dignified life in safety, without being shackled but with the light, however distant, of a future of serenity and prosperity.

Nonetheless, all that M. Braitberg writes that he has seen from Israel over decades towards the Palestinians has been “violence, spilled blood, confinement, incessant controls, colonization, [and] despoiling.” But what about the rockets that Hamas incessantly launches at Israel? What about the suicide bombers? “What I will say to you is that my feelings of humanity do not vary according to the citizenship of the victims.”

Then further:

On the contrary, Mr. President, you guide the destinies of a country that claims not only to represent Jews collectively, but also the memory of those who were victims of Naziism. It’s that which concerns me, and which I find intolerable. By preserving at the memorial of Yad Vashem, at the heart of the Jewish State, the name of my nearest relatives, your State keeps my family-memory a prisoner behind the barbed-wire of Zionism to make it a hostage of a self-proclaimed moral authority that each day commits the abomination that is the denial of justice.

So he wants his grandfather’s name removed. It’s all fairly powerfully – and, of course, publicly – expressed, not that Israeli officials will bother to take any notice. Still, together with the new accusatory Internet meme – “The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors from World War II are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them by Nazi Germany” – it is clear that Israel is harvesting the whirlwind that she sowed with her December attacks into Gaza.

Russia as a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC): how does that idea sound to you? What with the low oil price prevailing nowadays (lately just below $45 for a barrel of Brent crude), that seems just the ticket to Shakib Khelil, Algerian Minister for Energy and acting OPEC President, who recently declared that “Russia will provide a particular importance to OPEC if she re-joins it, that will augment OPEC’s power to control production, which would be around 50% instead of [the present] 40% of global production.” This was according to an article in the French daily Le Monde: Russia invited to rejoin OPEC. (more…)

You’ve heard by now of the remarkable welcome President Bush received at a press conference during his surprise visit to Baghdad yesterday, yes? Arab journalists may still be in the early stages of adjusting to the freer media environment in Iraq, but at least they don’t settle for flip-flops. No, what George W. Bush instead twice found coming in on a bee-line to his head were the formal dress-shoes of a certain Muntadar al-Zeidi, correspondent for the Cairo-based TV network “Al-Baghdadiya.”

Which of the many available European lenses to take up for review of this incident? Obviously it should be from a culture with a certain shoe-expertise; the Italian press thereby suggests itself, but long-time readers (Hi Mom!) will realize that Italian coverage is here on €S an exception rather than a rule, due mainly to considerations of linguistic familiarity. The French should be a perfectly-suitable substitute. (more…)

The CEOs of Detroit’s “Big Three” automakers (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) made their pilgrimage to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, to make a plea for their own bailout from the federal government. You’d have to say that their show was a flop; media coverage afterwards included accusations of “tone deafness”, together with particular scorn for the fact that the execs had each traveled to Washington to beg for public money on their company private jets.

The foreign press was watching this performance, too, and from the pages of France’s leading newspaper Le Monde, Dominique Dhombres did not even need any mention of the private jets to quite effectively skewer the auto-bosses with an article entitled Ask for pardon? Out of the question! (more…)

On this seventh anniversary-day of the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the top news-story is probably the joint appearance at Ground Zero by the two main US presidential candidates. In addition to whatever they may have to say, the occasion will be worth savoring for the all-too-temporary respite it should provide in the ugly partisanship that has prevailed as of late (e.g. the utterly-contrived “lipstick-on-a-pig” contretemps). I hope to be able to cover foreign observations of and reactions to that Ground Zero ceremony in this space sometime in the coming days.

For today, though, I think that it would be suitable to turn our attention to the supposed ultimate source of that al-Qaeda attack, and also the first target for retribution by US forces in its aftermath. That is of course Afghanistan, or specifically al-Qaeda as embedded within a Taliban host environment. Actually, putting it that way shifts the proper focus a slight bit from Afghani territory per se to the so-called Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan lying along the Afghani border. These are hardly “federally administered,” they are in fact a region completely out of the control of the Pakistani government, where various varieties of “neo-Taliban” and Muslim fundamentalist forces are based (including, it is thought, what is left of al-Qaeda), and from which these forces sally forth to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.
(more…)

His “wonder-weapon”: that would be Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, whose personality dominated the Republican National Convention last week, and who apparently has much to do with the McCain campaign lately coming up neck-and-neck in the opinion polls with Obama.

That’s at least how Marc Pitzke, New York correspondent for Germany’s Der Spiegel, assesses the situation (Palin-effect turns forecasts on their head). He even maintains that the Obama campaign is now in Alarmstimmung – i.e. in a state of alarm – as the final, and toughest, 58-day period of electioneering up to November 4 gets underway. (First, however, there will be a brief non-partisan interlulde as both candidates appear on Thursday at New York City’s “Ground Zero” for a 9/11 anniversary commemoration.) (more…)

In the midst of all the fierce “anti-Eastern-elite” rhetoric issuing forth from this past week’s Republican National Convention, there she stood: Cindy McCain, wife of the Republican presidential candidate, in a series of designer-name outfits with matching bejeweled accessories, part of her recent fashion move to “crisper, more contemporary dresses with richer colors.”

The irony there was unmistakable, and I’m hardly the first or the only one to comment on it. But I’d prefer to bring up the more impartial judgment of Le Monde writer Corine Lesnes (that’s a woman’s name) and her article At the McCain’s, she’s the boss. (more…)

He came out to the podium, he gazed out upon the 80,000 upturned faces aglow – and then last night Senator Barack Obama laid out his vision for his presidential campaign and for the presidency presumably to follow.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying here to push any Republican-inspired “Messiah” or “Moses-parting-the-seas” irony to cast last evening’s events in a disparaging light. Indeed, it was an impressive spectacle – complete with letter-perfect weather! – that itself rightly dominated the news-cycle and to which reactions still dominate that news-cycle this morning.

The same is not quite true in Europe, which has plenty else to talk about today, but Barack Obama’s speech has still gotten plenty of attention even now (i.e. as your EuroSavant writes this), less than 12 hours after it was delivered. Let’s again start with reactions from those who were vouchsafed their own up-close look at the Senator’s speechifying, last July in Berlin, namely the Germans. (more…)

As with most other weblogs, EuroSavant has had in the past certain topics to which it regularly returns. I’d like to keep that up, even though at least one of these, the “Poles In Iraq” series (last entry here, which deals appropriately enough with the prospect of withdrawal of Polish troops) has pretty much expired. But there remains the still-riveting tale of the EU Constitutional Treaty, now about to embark on the phase during which it is supposed to be ratified by all 25 EU member-states.

The key work to understanding what this “constitution” is all about, and so to make up my own mind whether I’m for it or not, is I think Peter Norman’s The Accidental Constitution: The Story of the European Convention, from EuroComment, which I previewed here. (Then I had long-running problems getting ahold of it, but those are finally solved.) I hope to report to you about this book shortly. In the meantime, though, the only EU head of state who has made it clear that he is against ratification – Václav Klaus of the Czech Republic, of course – recently turned up the volume on his anti-constitution agitation, as the French leading daily Le Monde reports (The Czech President, the Ultraliberal Václav Klaus, Campaigns for a “No”). (more…)

Time for a quick “day-after” survey of French press coverage of the Iraqi elections.

As usual, “day-after” is sometimes too early when it comes to significant, multi-dimensioned world events, as journalists and editors get all caught up with the reporting and don’t yet have time to sit back and think about what it all really meant. If you want an example of what I’m talking about here, and can read French yourself, I refer you to Le Monde’s editorial this morning, The Iraqi Wager. Spotlight on young French-Iraqi student; for her and her mother, being able to vote for the first time is truly a moving experience. (And this in what Le Monde explicitly labels its “editorial,” written collectively by the editors.) Yes yes, and you know, Iraq has truly never had elections. These first were admittedly imperfect: Sunni underrepresentation, the threat of violence. Still, they were at least a relative success, and hopefully Iraqis can look forward to much less imperfect elections next December. Right, moving on . . .

Libération is a bit better in analyzing what author Jean-Pierre Perrin terms in his piece’s title The Lessons of a Confessionalized Election. (more…)

I’ve been away for a little while, lacking access to a reliable computer, and while I wasn’t looking it looks like the debate on immigration in France has taken an interesting new turn with the injection of the heavily-loaded word “quotas.” That happened last week Thursday, in a statement from the prominent French politician (and presumed future presidential candidate of the Right) Nicolas Sarkozy. But for all his presence in the current French political scene, these days Sarkozy has no policy-making role (he is instead president of the governing right-wing party, the UMP). When someone who does have such a role takes up the same chant, that’s when you know things are starting to get serious – especially when that someone is none other than the Interior Minister, and Interior Minister Dominique de Villepin let a meeting of legislators from the UMP party know earlier this week that his ministry has started work on a legislative proposal along the lines that Sarkozy had previously discussed, as reported in Le Monde (Dominique de Villepin Comes to Terms With the Idea of Quotas). The next element in this time-line looks to be a report his ministry will submit at the end of next month “containing its propositions on how to determine France’s needs for foreign workers.” (more…)

Last weekend’s regularly-scheduled European Council summit (the half-yearly meeting of European Union heads of government) was dominated by the prospect of Turkey as an EU member-state, and its most news-worthy result was the approval by the assembled leaders of the commencement of negotiations with Turkey to that end beginning in October of next year.

For me, the question of Turkey’s accession to the European Union brings with it two epiphenomena, one minor and one major. There is the way the question has already become entangled in the historic Turkey-Greece enmity, although at second-remove. Relations are now good between Turkey and Greece themselves, so that any veto of Turkish membership by the latter is hard to imagine (at least in the present situation). But there also remains the problem of the divided Turkish-Greek island of Cyprus, which Turkish armed forces invaded in 1974, and which more importantly is also an EU member-state. It seems that a lot of sweat and toil was expended at this just-concluded EU summit to find some compromise between Cypriot (and, actually, also Greek) insistence that Turkey recognize the Greek half of the island, and Turkish reluctance to do so. The compromise was that Turkey would not make such a recognition now, but would certainly do so before those entry negotiations start next October.

But that is the minor epiphenomenon, and so not of much interest to me. (Although it is nonetheless conceivable that future problems along this line could be enough ultimately to torpedo Turkish entry, thus rendering the following “major” epiphenomenon moot.) In my view, that “major” epiphenonemon is the gulf that has opened up between the negative attitudes of EU national electorates (not all of them, to be sure, but quite a number) towards Turkish accession and the continued behavior of their political leaders in keeping that accession process on-track. By the very nature of the way the EU works in important membership questions such as this, that behavior has to be well-nigh unanimous, as serious objections from any member-state can substantially slow down the process or even stop it. (Ultimately, of course, ratification of any Turkish EU-entry will have to be unanimous among all current member-states.) Meanwhile, the level of actual political support for Turkish membership is nowhere near unanimous across the continent. When will one reality catch up with the other? Or is that alleged EU “democratic deficit” for real, even to the extent that the epochal decision of admitting Turkey could be made even in the face of its rejection by the voters who actually make up the EU’s population?

In this light, the French press is the most appropriate prism to use to examine last weekend’s summit – and not only because an eventual referendum to enable French public opinion on the subject to find its political expression has been promised. (more…)

The result is finally in – Bush wins – and most of the rest of the world is rather less than pleased. You would rather expect that, but can get filled in on the details here in the Washington Post. In that article there is a brief reference to a commentary from Le Monde; reason enough to go take a look at the full piece itself, in the original French (Electoral Archaism). It turns out that that Le Monde commentary is perhaps not the most definitive word to turn to from France’s newspaper of record, since at the time it was put on-line the presidential election’s final result was not yet known – it begins “Despite an advantage held by George W. Bush, the result of the American elections remains uncertain.” (more…)

The account is published in Le Monde, but you almost expect that the message was smuggled out in microfilm, in the form of text requiring a secret decoder-ring to decipher. It tells the tale of a dangerous “mole” who has managed to penetrate one of the Organization’s high rituals: a correspondent from this leading French newspaper reports from on-the-scene at one of the “Ask President Bush” campaign appearances the Bush campaign has recently held around the country (Meeting George Bush, Half Rock Star, Half God). (more…)

“Did the Israeli prime minister expect such a barrage [of criticism]? Did he even desire it?” Those were the questions posed by reporter Eric Favereau leading off coverage in the French left-of-center newspaper Libération yesterday of remarks by Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday, in which he called upon French Jews to move “immediately” to Israel to escape “unfettered anti-semitism” which is allegedly spreading in that country. (The lead article is [French foreign minister Michel] Barnier Harshly Criticizes Sharon’s Invitation to the Jews of France, although the verb that article-title actually uses translates to fustigate, perhaps an interesting addition to the vocabulary of us all.) But by making such remarks (in English, and in front of a delegation of American Jewish leaders visiting Israel, as it turned out), Sharon only managed to offend not only the French state, but Jewish organizations there. From the French foreign affairs ministry spokeswoman: “We have immediately made contact with Israeli authorities to ask for an explanation on the subject of these unacceptable remarks.” And from Richard Prasquier, executive board member of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (French acronym: CRIF): “We can’t accept this type of discourse. We all know that the situation of Jews in France is difficult. . . . [The Jewish community] knows that the [French] political class is doing everything to fight against this anti-semitism. But pouring oil on the fire this way is not acceptable.” (more…)

For whatever reason, Michael Moore’s blockbuster documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 was first exposed outside the US to French-speaking audiences, opening on 7 July in France, Belgium, and Switzerland. And, as you’d probably expect, it had a Smashing Début, as stated in the title of an article in the Nouvel Observateur. It was seen by 100,000 in France on its first day of showing alone (of which 30,000 in Paris), the best opening of all time for a documentary. Still, the (unnamed) writer does give Moore’s previous work, Bowling for Columbine, greater credit for being fully researched and documented. (more…)

Hey – I’ll trade you a John Edwards football card! Yes he played, during his college days at NC State. Actually, I’ll give you a free tip: if you move fast, you can print out the trading card showing the young Edwards suited up in his football uniform, but with the “John Edwards: President” logo underneath, used as promotional material during his Democratic primary campaign, which is featured on the French newspaper Libération’s best-of-the-pack article covering Edwards’ naming as the Democratic VP candidate. (more…)

The chain continues! Of articles examining EU economic performance and policy and/or that of individual member-states, that is. And, as half-promised previously, this time we go to the French press, specifically flagship Le Monde, which announces that The Netherlands Makes the Modernization of the European Economy Its Priority. (more…)

Failure in December – but success in June! At their just-concluded Brussels summit the European Union’s now twenty-five members finally accepted a draft to put forward to their constituent parliaments and/or voters as the new European Constitution. Perhaps this summit’s productive result can be ascribed to the rotating EU presidency being held now by Bertie Ahern and the diplomatically-astute Irish, whereas Italy and Silvio Berlusconi were in charge last December – the Council presidency will cease to rotate this way once the new Constitution is enacted, by the way – or maybe it was all due to the new governments in place in Spain and Poland, the two “medium-sized” EU states that were the principle obstacles to progress at the last summit in December. One thing is sure, though: France and Jacques Chirac were once again in the middle of the goings-on, and so a review of French reporting and comment is appropriate. (Tony Blair was also a leading protagonist – or at least according to the French press, as we shall see – but I’ll let you read the on-line British papers about that yourself – and pay for it, in the case of The Times.) (more…)

Today’s on-line Le Monde goes deeper into the question of who will succeed Romano Prodi at the beginning of next year as EU Commission President, putting forth five candidates in all under a link Les cinq prétendants: “the five claimants,” or even “the five pretenders” if you like.

(I simply reported yesterday on Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt being tipped as the likely successor by the Czech business newspaper Hospodárské noviny. By the way, I can’t give you any link to this Le Monde article, because the five putative candidates are presented in turn by means of a pop-up picture gallery, with underlying comment that is presented for such a short time that you can barely read it before it disappears for the next picture. So those of you who can read French, but slowly, you’ll have to give up on this one and simply go with what I can report to you below.) (more…)

The big news for many over the past weekend was Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 911″ being awarded the Golden Palm as best film at the Cannes Film Festival – the same movie, you’ll recall, that Disney does not want to distribute, despite the White House press statement issued in response to the award maintaining that it demonstrated that the US was a country of freedom of expression. (For others, with perhaps a more myopic view of the world, the big news was that President Bush fell off of his mountain bike. But we’ll be getting to that incident, too.) With his victory, Moore became the first documentary-maker since Jacques Cousteau in 1956 to win the Festival’s top prize, and at the same time he scored some big political points against the his arch-nemesis, the Bush administration.

As you would expect, the French press just lapped this all up. Surprisingly, though, the vehemence of the French fourth estate’s reaction seemed to vary inversely with the degree of the paper-in-question’s known partisan slant. (more…)

EuroSavant is back now, from an extended period of travel to Segway in cities located elsewhere in Europe. Fortunately, the scandal that erupted last week over the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by American (and seemingly also British) military personnel in Iraq shows no signs of dying down soon. I write “fortunately” not only from the immediate consideration that there is still plenty of coverage and commentary in the European press, but also because indeed this matter should not “die down” until all has been investigated, all has been revealed, and all those guilty have been relieved of their positions and punished. Some say that that would mean no such “closure” until Election Day next November.

As I make my way back into the €S groove, I have to shoot first at the big, obvious targets and leave subtlety (e.g. finding that telling commentary in some otherwise-obscure journal appearing in a more-obscure country) for later. What more obvious source to go to for non-English-language comment than France’s leading newspaper Le Monde? With its editorial from Sunday entitled Responsible Ones, Le Monde certainly does not disappoint. (more…)

Saddam Hussein is still in US custody, held at some secret location within Iraq, but presumably he will eventually be put on public trial in some way. That is certainly the plan announced by President Bush at the time of his capture, although exact details on the form, place, and machinery of this trial have been few and far between. This still raises the issue of legal defense – as in, who will conduct that for Saddam whenever the trial does happen. Recent developments seem to point to the involvement here of French nationals. (Wouldn’t you just know it? Pass me some more of those “freedom fries” . . .)

These happenings have yet to see much coverage on the on-line American press, at least judging from what I could come up with via Google News. The best article I could find introducing Jacques Vergès, the “cigar-chomping French attorney” supposedly preparing Saddam’s legal defense, was from the New York Post (and those editors neglectfully leave out the “e avec accent grave” – that is, the “è” – that makes up a vital part of this Frenchman’s last name). But that’s all OK, because there has been plenty of French coverage, and these writers not only get the accent right but also have plenty of material in the files about the past antics of Me Vergès (“Me” for maître, the French title for a lawyer). (more…)

That whole “jokester” issue – dealt with in my previous post, and having to do with a young Frenchman touching off a bomb-on-plane scare at JFK airport – refuses to die down, at least as far as the conservative French newspaper Le Figaro is concerned. You see, that’s not the only instance recently of French citizens tangling with the American authorities. The newspaper even thinks it sees some sort of pattern emerging, as is apparent right away in the title of its latest article, Those Frenchies [that's the word the title uses] Being Maltreated by the American Authorities. (more…)

American security and air transport personnel these days truly do not joke around. Thank goodness I’m not telling you that out of sad personal experience arising out of my recent travels to and within the United States – recall that I advanced the heretical idea in this space not so long ago of displaying a sassy Dilbert cartoon while going through security checks. No, the above conclusion is instead clear from the recent experience of an unfortunate Frenchman – “a rather flippant French jokester,” some would conclude – named Franck Moulet who seemingly took a schtick about suspicious shenanigans on the American Airlines flight he was on rather too far a couple of weeks ago, and was jailed in New York City and put up on charges for his pains. English-language coverage of the incident (at least what I could find using that old reliable stand-by, Google News) is rather sparse. The French press, in contrast, has proved rather more willing to cover the story, as reporting attests to in Le Monde and in Le Figaro (Franck Moulet Freed in Exchange for Confession), and that last article even features a head-shot of the 27-year-old M. Moulet. Just look deeply into those eyes, I say, and then tell me whether this is some sort of comedian. (more…)

Wow: the split-up of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez is homepage news even for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (“Jennifer Lopez Gives Ben Afflek Walking-Papers), with column titles such as Doch wieder Puffy? (“So It’s Back to Puffy?”). That’s pretty tempting to get into. But it’s not like there isn’t anything else a bit more “legitimate” to discuss – like recent setbacks for the idea of banning the wearing of religious symbolism (primarily the Muslim head-scarf for females), in both France and Germany. (more…)

The big story is out there, the obvious one. Maybe you want the EuroSavant opinion on the capture last Saturday night of Saddam Hussein. I think . . . that that was a Good Thing.

“That won’t cut it, MAO!” perhaps you object. Ah, but allow me to remind you of what you could term the “EuroSavant essence”: It’s not necessary for me to pontificate on these pages. (Although that can also occasionally happen; actually, I feel another expatiation coming on now, but not on this Saddamned subject: stay tuned for the next entry.) Rather, my function is to lead you daily (or whenever) on a merry traipse through the motley landscape of one or more of the various European presses – a landscape in which, to extend the metaphor, the lay of the terrain as well as most of the bright and curious flowers to be found within it would remain unknown and incomprehensible to you without my (free!) services as surveyor, geologist, and naturalist.

Translation: I just need to find other writers, writing in one European language or another, to pontificate on the topic of the day, and tell you what they’re saying. Since Mr. Hussein was such a good customer of France back in his glory days, let’s see if the French press can comment on his capture in ways that transcend the obvious. (more…)

The decisive EU summit in Brussels this weekend to work out a final text of a Constitutional Treaty failed to achieve that aim. As had been expected, the principal stumbling-block was the question of the voting regime to be used for passing measures within the Council of Ministers by a “qualified majority”; both Poland and Spain stuck firmly to their demand that the current voting system, inaugurated by the December, 2000 Nice Treaty, be retained, while other states – principally the EU’s two biggest players, Germany and France – were equally as adamant that a new “double majority” system, proposed in the new Constitution, be implemented. But there were other points that had to be left for later resolution as well, as we’ll see. (more…)