Jour après jour, la Syrie semble glisser vers la guerre civile http://t.co/LoWegPXI via @Lexpress

November 18, 2011 3:15 pm via Tweet ButtonReplyRetweetFavorite

@Monde_LEXPRESS

Marie Simon

The lede:

Part of the opposition is resigned to letting the weapons talk to gain the fall of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, in the absence of any international intervention. The latest actions of the new “Free Syrian Army” trouble the international community.

Surely, if you have been following developments at all, you have noticed recent reports, ever-more frequent, of “Syrian Army deserters” fighting back against, and indeed killing, some fractions of the military and police forces sent to violently suppress the demonstrations. These demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful over these long, long months – months, and days, seem long when you head out onto the streets, time after time, to offer yourself to get shot – and this has been a point of pride for the opposition. Then again: eight months, and not only is Assad still in power, with over 3,500 dead at his hands according to UN figures (and thousands of others locked up and tortured in jail), but he is still playing silly games like promising the Arab League to withdraw the army from Syria’s cities and then doing no such thing.

It’s no surprise, then, that this “no violence” discipline has started to waver. Actually, more than that: this “Free Syrian Army” (ASL is its French-language abbreviation) has existed since July, where it was first formed on the Turkish-Syrian border by a renegade Syrian Army colonel, one Riad Al-Assad, of whom Reuters provides a photo in the article, in civilian shirt-sleeves. (You’d have to assume he is no relation to Syria’s ruling family.)

Why the Turkish-Syrian border? Because of some sort of Turkish support? Not at all: rather, Syrian Army deserters tend to flee in that direction. And there are more and more of these deserters, who, no matter what they might feel about the protestors’ cause, are often prompted to flee by the prospect of suffering the death penalty should they refuse orders to fire upon civilians. Only deserters are accepted – the ASL will not arm or train civilians – but apparently these forces already number some 10,000 to 17,000 soldiers (comparison: the Syrian Army is around 200,000), organized in 18 battalions, athough understandably short on arms and ammunition. This did not stop them, however, from carrying out a quite impressive attack on Wednesday (16 November) on a Syrian Secret Service aerial intelligence installation on the outskirts of Damascus.

Not Overjoyed

There’s just one thing: Too many parties are not particularly happy to see the emergence of this ASL. The Syrian National Council (the leading organization of dissident political leaders, located outside of Syria itself; French abbreviation CNS) has an awkward relationship with these forces; these politicians have largely not yet given up the attitude that the opposition should remain peaceful, and they are also suspicious of the post-Assad influence that ASL is likely to wield. Further, no foreign government or organization of governments (e.g. the Arab League) is pleased to see the ASL either, because none of them desire to see Syria descend into some bloody civil war – Libya all over again, you could say, but this time in quite different terrain and a much more crucial geopolitical position (in terms of the serious disruption such a civil war would surely cause among the neighbors, among which Israel). Not the Russians; not the Americans or anyone else.

The cruel irony, though, is that it is the seeming reluctance of any of these outside parties actually to intervene in an effective way to stop the continuing slaughter of the Syrian people which has provided a major impetus to the formation of these renegade armed forces, one of whose missions it is to try to stop it. Allah, many in Syria have apparently decided, will only help those who help themselves, no matter what that takes.

                          

Now this affair’s soap-opera credentials have been considerably boosted by surprise testimony arising out of the six hours of interrogation Ms. Banon’s mother, Anne Mansouret, underwent last week. (This is now all over the French press, but all articles point to L’Express, which had the scoop: Affair Banon-DSK: The secrets of Anne Mansouret). Get this: Mme. Mansouret actually had had intimate relations with DSK herself, namely at the Paris offices of the OECD in 2000, when DSK was special counselor to the Secretary General.

She claims it only happened once – it was “consensual but clearly violent/beastly [brutale]” and she had no desire for any repeat – but it is relevant to the case because it is likely to have affected the advice she gave her daughter as to how to proceed when Tristane unexpectedly found herself alone with DSK three years later in a room whose door he had just locked from the inside.

Here’s what happened afterwards, after the fold, as L’Express extracted from Mme. Mansouret’s testimony:

• After the alleged incident, Tristane was understandably upset and called her mother immediately, who rushed to meet her.
  
• Her mother – Mme. Mansouret – then called up her friend, Brigitte Guillemette, ex-wife of DSK – and also Tristane’s godmother! Upon hearing the story, Mme. Guillemette allegedly told Mme. Mansouret that she had been aware of various “incidents” DSK had had with students, but that she never thought he could go so far as what he was alleged to have tried with Tristane Banon.
  
• So Ms. Guillemette then called up DSK to confront him with what had happened. He told her that he just couldn’t control himself when he saw Tristane; after all, he had had sexual relations with the mother only a few years before, and he just freaked out in the presence of the daughter. (Péter un câble – literally “to fart a cable” – colorful, but it’s unsure here whether these were DSK’s actual words or the L’Express journalist’s paraphrase).
  
• After this, Mme. Guillemette called Tristane’s mother back. She wanted more information about the incident. She also wanted to know whether they intended to file a criminal complaint, and further advised her friend simply to go meet “Dominique” to sort things out that way.
  

What to do? She consulted widely with people whose judgment she respected, especially within the Socialist Party. The answers she got were that, although DSK’s deviant behavior was widely-known (one female politician admitted he was “dangerous towards women”), it would be better just to let things lie. This was what she also heard from no less than François Hollande, already then (as now) a Socialist Party leader, with whom she ordinarily would never expect to talk, but who here first sought her out, anxious that she would rock the boat by allowing her daughter to report to the police, and who even offered to call up DSK himself if that would dissuade her from that.

It’s clear, then, why Tristane Banon did not press charges eight years ago. But why is she doing so now? Obviously due to the influence of the New York Sofitel incident, even as that is petering out. But it’s again mainly under the influence of her mother, who claims to finally want to seize this chance to let the world know that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is not some charming French lady’s-man, but rather . . . well, in L’Express’ words, un predateur qui cherche non pas à plaire mais à prendre, se comportant avec l’”obscénité d’un soudard” – “a predator who seeks not to please but to take, behaving with the ‘obscenity of a marauder.’”

*Whew!* Is everything clear?

And if all that is not enough for you, DSK’s daughter Camille has also been drawn into this mess, having been called in for interrogation by detectives yesterday. “Aha,” you may say, “looks like in France they also follow the American practice of rounding up anyone who might have the remotest connection with the accused!” Not really: turns out Camille Strauss-Kahn’s is the daughter by DSK of Brigitte Guillemette*, Tristane’s godmother, and Tristan and Camille were good friends at the time of the alleged rape incident with DSK.

So she might also have some interesting things to say. Stay tuned.

* Why can’t daughters and mothers at least share the same last name in France? I thought it was somewhat of a traditionalist, Catholic society!

                          

You’ll get no credible answer asking the parties directly involved: each was quick to blame the other and to warn of “consequences” should anything further of this sort occur. Israeli officials even spoke of their troops being caught in an “ambush.”

No, the best bet for establishing further facts would seem to be finding some report from an on-the-scene but neutral observer. And we have one, from the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, namely Ulrike Putz and her article Observers puzzle over the background of Mideast firefight. I mean, “Ulrike Putz” sounds like a name you can trust, right? She’s a female, and of course she’s German, and I think those two things combined amount to a mark of journalistic objectivity as good as any other.

Plus, you don’t have to scroll down too far in her article to find bullet-points that lay everything out as clear as it can presently be ascertained:

• Where exactly was that infamous tree at the center of all this: on Israeli or on Lebanese territory? A UN spokesperson is willing to confirm that it was on the Israeli side.
  
• So who opened fire first? We get UN testimony again on this: the Lebanese did. Then the Israelis naturally reacted, but by throwing in everything but the kitchen sink, e.g. artillery, combat helicopters. But I understand Israelis tend to do that in the face of a provocation.
  
• OK then: Why did all this happen? Well, there are some clues. You’ll note that among the casualties was a Lebanese journalist – well, what was he doing there just at the right place and time to watch something interesting happen? Also, according to Israeli sources the Lebanese brigade commander responsible for that sector is a Shi’ite with rather extreme anti-Israeli attitudes. So the suggestion is that he had just been waiting for an excuse to open fire on the IDF, operating entirely under his own authority. (Yes, I realize that with this analysis Frau Putz seems to go over to the Israeli side. But assessing motivations is the hardest task of all, and that’s the only source where she can get her information.)
  

Similarly, Frau Putz reports that the Israelis also seriously considered reacting to the incident by unleashing a general bombing campaign against Lebanese Army positions, but then decided not to. But don’t sit back and relax yet: this piece in today’s L’Express (with a couple interesting pictures of deployed IDF equipment) reports that both sides (meaning Israeli and Lebanese) are moving more troops up to the border.

                          

Le TGV russe, symbole d'un pays à deux vitesses http://tinyurl.com/3ymelyk #sapsan

July 23, 2010 3:35 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Monde_LEXPRESS

Marie Simon

It links to this article in the French newsmagazine L’Express, with an accompanying photo-montage. So it’s true: the special train service is called the “Sapsan” (Сапсан), Russian for “peregrine falcon,” and has operated since last December on the classic Moscow-to-St. Petersburg route (and only there, so far; that particular route has been in service since 1851). Its Siemens-built trains, with top speeds of 250 km/hour, link Russia’s two premier cities in only three hours, forty minutes.

There are some notable things about the Sapsan, quite apart from its limited route. (It’s relatively new, after all.) As the reader realizes from the photo there at the top of the article, it operates on ordinary tracks, unlike some high-speed services in Europe (e.g. in France, the Netherlands) which use custom-built tracks which can be fenced off. Quite apart from technical considerations, in Russia such security measures are probably called for, given that country’s infamous plague of alcoholism; as things stand, the Sapsan amounts to yet another executioner (more deadly-efficient than other trains, due to its extraordinary speed) of the many drunks who wander onto the rails at the wrong time every year (almost 3,000 in 2009).

But the L’Express piece’s author, Axel Gyldén, takes his point further than that, as we can see in his very title, which translates to “The Russian TGV [high-speed train], symbol of a two-speed country.” In his view, the Sapsan amounts to yet another element of luxury in a country where the rich-poor divide is already rather obscene. That Moscow-to-St. Pete trip (or the other way) costs the equivalent of €90, he reports (double that for first-class – actually quite reasonable prices in European terms), in contrast to the €0.30 equivalent paid by commuters to take the older, standard train from, say, the village of Chuprianovka (Чуприановка) to work in Tver, the near-by regional capital. Except that that new Sapsan trains have taken up usage of the common tracks so much that Tver-Chuprianovka service now runs only once per morning, afternoon, and evening.

Back on the Sapsan, bags with the Vuitton label predominate in its luggage-racks, Gyldén claims, as the rich use it to travel down to Moscow to patronize the luxury stores there. Meanwhile, outside the train’s climate-controlled windows lies the “Real Russia” of the poor, as exemplified by that village of Chuprianovka where the combination of all the trains passing through it and its one level-crossing available across the tracks means that the place is effectively cut in half by railroad barriers for seven hours a day, an intervals of up to ninety minutes at a time!

No wonder there have been twenty incidents of sabotage against Sapsan trains already. It has become a high-profile problem, engaging the full energies of the town’s mayor, who finally managed to get a meeting with political higher-ups to convince them of the obvious, if costly, solution: either a bridge or underpass at the railway crossing so traffic can always flow unimpeded. He got the promise of a bridge – to be built in three years’ time.

                          

L’Express writer Aurélien Chartendrault (Now, doesn’t that name convince you right there that we’re talking about things French? That’s a “he,” by the way.) hitched a ride yesterday on the tractor of farmer Nicolas Combes, one of 1,200 farm-vehicles invading Paris’ city streets in a protest-action of around 10,000 corn and grain farmers unhappy about the prices they’re getting for their produce. The resulting video is below; in it, M. Combes gets the only speaking part and uses it mainly to go on about how he feels he can barely make a living anymore, and apparently also about some pointy-headed officials who are trying to get him to farm without using pesticides.

But here it’s best to leave all that stuff aside – indeed, best if you can’t understand French, although his enunciation is perfectly fine and without accent – so you can just concentrate on the sensation of riding through the Parisian scenery in a tractor-convoy.

Mon tracteur à Paris
Uploaded by LEXPRESS. – the latest news content.

What comes next? Inevitably something like “Grand Theft Tractor,” in a Paris setting – soon available for PSP, Wii and the XBox 360!

                          

Who better to look to for a first take on all this than the French? (Other than the Argentinians, but this weblog is called EuroSavant). For that we can go to L’Express’ correspondent in the States, Philippe Coste, and his blog-entry The governor and his labrynth. You might recall – although it was more than ten years ago – that the French, in particular, were mystified by the whole to-do around the Monica Lewinsky affair and President Clinton’s impeachment; powerful French politicians, all the way up to past President François Mitterand (and for that matter – who knows? – even president-at-that-time Jacques Chirac), had routinely kept mistresses on the side, but these had always been kept decorously hushed-up, in keeping with the French electorate’s acceptance of and lack of interest in such things.

Sure enough, here Coste mainly comes down on the side of Sanford; he makes it clear that he feels that the governor was unfairly hounded by the press:

I don’t know, but all that I see is a man in love, terribly in love. The State, the local newspaper, did not flinch at any sacrifice, dispatched to Argentina special personnel to trace the lady, and has just published their personal e-mails. I still dont know. . . . He only committed the crime of loving to the point of thinking for a while of just chucking everything for her.

He goes on, even as he describes the decision to publish those e-mails as “ignoble,” nonetheless to urge Sanford’s detractors to examine them again, as they will surely find “a human richness that contrasts as if by magic with the sticky and vulgar artifice, the virtuous poses American elected officials strike for the media.” He even undertakes to translate what he considers a particularly touching passage from one of Governor Sanford’s e-mails to his Argentine flame. (Hey, what the heck, the horse has long since left the barn since they’re all public now anyway.)

It’s all a bit touching; who in the US can you name who has similarly been willing to take Sanford’s side? (Not that the Governor can be expected to be appreciative; I understand that the very adjective “French” is a dirty word in the Republican lexicon.) But Coste probably goes to far with his sympathy, declaring at one point – referring to Sanford – that “this type has never played Father Virtue.” That of course is hardly true; it is largely the sheer hypocrisy that such behavior reveals in purported “family values” Republican elected officials like Sanford (or the philandering Senator Ensign of Nevada) that most offends many observers.

Poul Høj On the Case!

In view of this, it’s probably better to shift to a no-nonsense Northern European/Protestant media onlooker for a more iobjective view. Here it will come as no surprise to long-time readers of this weblog that I resort once again to Poul Høj, correspondent in the United States for Denmark’s Berlingske Tidende. Høj is all over the Sanford affair, coming out on BT’s on-line site with several articles dealing with various aspects, including one entitled Sanford took a hard line against other sex-scandal colleagues. That piece directly controverts the assertion by L’Express’ Coste mentioned above that Sanford had never been “holier-than-thou”; its lead: “Governor Sanford asks for forgiveness now, but he has never before been willing to forgive politicians who had flings.” And there’s another Sanford-related piece from him, a sort of nostalgic return to the ten “greatest hits” of American political sex scandals of times past, if you will, with the Big Dog naturally #1 on the list and a superb picture at the article’s very head of him pointing his finger at the press behind his presidential lectern (“I did not have sex with that woman!”) while the 1998-model Hillary glares sternly, with ruby-red pursed lips, from behind his right shoulder.

Actual analysis of Sanford’s situation Høj provides in his article Sanford affair is far from closed. He puts forward a number of interesting points:

• Can he even survive in his job? Consider that his fiercest critics in South Carolina seem to have been fellow Republicans, even before this latest adventure, with at the head of the pack one certain State Senator (whom Høj does not identify, but it’s Jake Knotts) who denounced to the press the governor’s “lies, lies, and more lies.”
  
• Who is this Maria in Buenos Aires? The press is certainly on her tail, as they already know her address, so it’s inevitable that we will learn much more about her and maybe even get to hear her side of the story.
  
• Høj phrases his next point rather awkwardly: “What was the anatomy in Argentinagate?” What he specifically means here is that it seems that Sanford, during the six days of his disappearance, deliberately lied to his staff about where he was – isn’t that somehow against the law?
  
• Records show that Sanford has had multiple occasions to visit Argentina before, ostensibly for public business. So did South Carolina taxpayers actually end up paying for what we can assume were those visits to his mistress?
  
• Finally, what sort of effect will this affair have on Republican electoral fortunes, particularly in view of the fact that it follows so closely on the Senator Ensign affair? Will it convince people that the Republican Party is rotten at the core?
  

                          

Belgium’s La Libre Belgique has a good run-down (Re-start more, regulate better) of the task these leaders face. The lede:

The stakes of the “Twenty,” industrialized and developing countries, are at minimum double. Consolidate the chances of economic recovery and avoid new skidding from the financial markets. The G20 will have to convince in both registers.

As La Libre reporter Pierre-François Lovens notes, Barack Obama himself has gone on record as refusing to be satisfied with leaving London having achieved only “half measures.” Yet as Lovens also writes, “Four hours, maybe five . . . That’s the time – a priori derisory enough in view of the stakes – that the heads of state and of government of the G20 will devote on Thursday, in London, to the multiple dossiers” before them at the summit. Furthermore, the basic outlines of disagreement have not changed: the US wants greater spending on stimulus packages from other governments, especially those in Europe, while for their part the Europeans reject this idea while making it clear that they are after an expanded system of international financial regulation in which “no place, no financial product and no institution can exist anymore without supervision or transparency.”

Making a true success out of this highest-level conclave does seem to be a mission impossible; of course I plan to use this forum in a day or two to survey international opinion as to whether that objective was nonetheless achieved. Meanwhile, the French news magazine L’Express carries a treatment of what might be a vital development heading into the summit: France and China reconcile.

Wait, did I hear you object out there “I didn’t know China and France were arguing in the first place”? Of course they were: China last November even called off a planned summit with the European Union (whose presidency was then held by France) because French president Nicolas Sarkozy would not call off the meeting he had planned for the following month with the Dalai Lama. That Chinese pique persisted into last January, when the country’s premier, Wen Jiabao, did come halfway around the world to do a tour of European capitals, during which he skipped France. (Sino-French relations had started going bad even before all that, back last April when the Beijing Games Olympic torch could barely be carried through the French capital due to all the mass protests, even though strictly speaking that wasn’t the fault of the French authorities.)

That’s all over with now, though. Via a communiqué released simultaneously in Beijing and Paris yesterday (Wednesday) morning – and so really at the very beginning of the gathering-in-London around the G20 summit – both governments announced that they had decided . . .

. . . to hold, at the opportune moment, high-level contacts as well as new sessions of strategic dialogue . . . with a view towards promoting bilateral cooperation within different domains and towards assuring a harmonious and stable development of Franco-Chinese relations.

(That was the version out of Paris, I suspect, since the Beijing version probably mentioned at the end of that sentence “Sino-French relations.”) Plus, Sarkozy and Chinese president Hu Jintao got together in London that same day for a private (although certainly not secret) tête-à-tête, occurring shortly after they happened to find themselves seated next to each other at the dinner for all the assembled heads of state.

So that’s nice, they’ve kissed and made up, but how did this rapprochement come about? Simple: the French have completely dropped any advocacy they once had for the Tibetans. More language from that joint communiqué: “out of respect for the principle of non-interference, France objects to all support for the independence of Tibet, in any form whatsoever.” Surrendering completely to Chinese political desires: yes, that’s no doubt an effective way to get the Chinese back on your side!

The question naturally arises: Why this now? The answer, of course, would seem to have at least something to do with this G20 summit. It’s interesting to speculate the possible impact of such a tighter Paris-Beijing axis on what happens today at the summit and what comes out of it. For example, both governments have been particularly insistent that this convocation yield solid results and not just window dressing. Sarkozy, as is well known, has even held out the possibility of walking out on it if he gets too disatisfied with the course of the procedings; President Hu, coming from the rather more decorous East, has gone nowhere near as far.

                          

“Surprise,” indeed; from a brief interview with Marie Simon of the French news-magazine L’Express, it seems that Zuroff is not ready to accept that Heim is dead yet. “I have serious doubts on this subject. . . . There is no body, no tomb, no DNA test possible.” He calls it a “curious thing” that Heim’s son has not tried to claim Heim’s inheritance, said to amount to some €2 million, and that, while he is now claiming his father died in Egypt in 1992, as of two months ago he also declared he had never seen him. (But, as the NYT reports, he now says he was with him when he died. Whether that is true – i.e. whether he ever was there, although travel and passport-control records could show that, and, more importantly, whether Heim actually died when claimed – is another matter.)

Zuroff indicates to his French interviewer his definite intention to travel to Cairo to examine the documents attesting to Heim’s death himself. But for now he believes (“according to our latest information”) that Heim may well still be alive, having absconded at some point to that more-traditional Nazi refuge, South America – although Zuroff also points out that Egypt actually was an even better place to hide after the war for Nazis on the run, one endorsed by Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka death camp, who made that country his first stop on the run.

(Wikipedia note: Strangely, the Wikipedia entry on the Simon Wiesenthal Center records that “In November 2005, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem Director, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, located Aribert Heim, who had been hiding in Spain for 20 years. Aribert Heim died in 1992 in Cairo, Egypt a free man.”)

UPDATE: An article in Le Monde now adds some further relevant details, mainly that German police now intend to travel to Egypt shortly to positively confirm Heim’s death by finding actual evidence, like the remains of a body.

It also recounts how the Austrian authorities submitted in 1950 a detailed request to arrest Heim to the (then West-) German Ministry of Justice, even listing his exact location of residence within Germany. Heim was originally Austrian, you see, plus the outrages for which he was most infamous occurred at the Mauthausen concentration camp located within Austria. But that request was ignored by the West German authorities.

                          

Time to assess reactions to that historical event from over on this side of the Atlantic. I’m tempted just to see what the Netherlands press has to say, particularly because of the great cover on today’s editions of the local quality free paper, De Pers: The black Jesus has landed! (Careful with that link: it will download for you the PDF of the entire issue.) “And now Barack Obama, since yesterday the new boss of the world, must really get to work,” the headline continues. “He is being looked to for carrying out wonders for every Tom, Dick, and Harry.”

I like that sort of irreverent, tongue-in-cheek attitude (at least I think that’s what the De Pers editors intended there), but let’s briefly survey instead coverage from the French press, to which it seems I traditionally turn first in the wake of some significant global event.

For one thing, the occasion of Obama’s inauguration seems to have inspired a bunch of graphic features that are fairly user-friendly even to the non-French-speaking. For instance, you can check out here, thanks to Libération, the president’s new armored limousine. (Yes, it’s true that each of those flashing orange dots is there to reveal further scintillating detail about the vehicle only in French, but you should be able to understand the fundamental spec numbers there on the page, inside that red box, fairly easily.)

Or here is an on-line video from Le Point: “SEE – The sensual dance of Barack and Michelle Obama at the beginning of the ball.” The text then continues (just above the video itself):

After taking the oath of the 44th American president [sic], Barack Obama, white tie and black tuxedo, and his spouse, dressed in a long dress signed by the young New York designer Jason Wu, leaving one shoulder completely bare, opened on Tuesday evening the “Neighborhood Ball,” the first of ten “official” inauguration balls in which the presidential couple were to participate.

Entwined, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama danced to the song “At Last,” a slow number interpreted by the R’n'B star Beyonce Knowles, on a scene decorated with an immense American flag.

Oh, and perhaps once last dig at the departed 43rd president is in order here as well: L’Express offers The best of the worst of Bush, a “small review of the unusual moments of ‘W’ at the White House.” For example, you’ll see again here Dubya doing his best at African dance, but the one I particularly like is the panicky scene of him at the wheel of a vintage Russian car, with Vladimir Putin intervening from beside him.

Between Jealousy and Fascination

We’ll have to forgive the French their self-absorption, but it remains true that among the most interesting subjects of the coverage there of Obama’s inauguration is the sort of interplay that can be expected between him and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. The consensus seems to be that Obama will do much to dull what has recently been Sarkozy’s bright public profile world-wide.

You really have to concede the label “consensus” when you find such a viewpoint espoused in print not only in the rather left-wing Libération (Nicolas Sarkozy, the drama of jealousy), which is definitely not a paper boasting many admirers of the French president, but also by Alain Barluet in the Sarkozy-organ Le Figaro (For Sarkozy, an American “buddy” who will be a rival). That this is an issue at all can be attributed directly to George W. Bush: both articles speak plainly of an American vide (“emptiness,” or “absence”) in the world dating back at least to the Georgian crisis of early August, and then of course lasting onward through the various economic and financial collapses of the autumn – remember Bush’s lame-duck hosting of that G20 summit in mid-November? – to the latest Gaza crisis. This Bush administration policy vacuum, together with France’s presidency of the EU in the second half of last year, provided Sarkozy with the opportunity to jump onto the world stage and gain quite a lot of attention, despite still being, as the Libération writer Antoine Guiral reminds us, “at the head of a mid-range economic and military power.”

Now there’s a new top dog in town, and Sarkozy will have to give way. That’s the conclusion both writers cannot help but avoid, although naturally Le Figaro soft-peddles the message considerably. There, Sarkozy is nonetheless Obama’s copain – which really translates as “buddy,” or “close friend” – and also the one who was predicting “This guy will go far” as early as the two men’s first meeting (of two total so far) back in September of 2006, when Obama was just a US Senator and Sarkozy was just the French Interior Minister. Still, Barluet has to concede at the very end of his piece that Sarkozy realizes full well that “for his new partner, occupied first of all by domestic questions, he will not be a priority.”

For his part, Libération’s Guiral twists this knife a bit more cruelly. (No one ever said that French internal politics was not a contact sport.) In his account, Sarkozy has been trying strenously already to score the first face-to-face meeting with Obama from a European leader, but with little prospect for any success in doing so before the American president is scheduled to attend the next G20 summit in London (and thereby, essentially, meet everyone) on April 2. So Sarkozy is being left, in Guiral’s account, on the sidelines of the American’s attention to “oscillate between fascination and jealousy.” After all, he was known himself as a fairly early-achiever, defying an outsider’s background to become French president at age 52, but now the 47-year-old Obama has outclassed him. What’s more, as Guiral viciously continues, “[i]n the world Obama raises hopes while Sarkozy prompts above all curiosity through his wife Carla, his bad manners, and his energy-to-spare.”

                          

New tendencies in lingerie:

L’EXPRESS.fr Styles took its camera to the avant-première of the International Salon of Lingerie that will take place from 18 to 21 January at the porte de Versailles. How to wear the corset? Is the string dead? Responses to these crucial questions in pictures.

There then follows a two-minute video – no nudity, but definitely some beautiful women. (Foot-fetishists also get their moment of bliss.) And they often break out into some nice, feminine French!