Starting Points: France

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Apr 6, 2010

What changed between 1991 and 2003 Iraq invasions? « Adonis Diaries

Posted by: adonis49 on: April 4, 2010

What changed between 1991 and 2003 Iraq invasions? (Apr. 3, 2010)

The Morocco author Fatema Mernissi wrote in 1991 “Islam and democracy” after the first invasion of Iraq by President Bush the father or senior. In 2002, she wrote an introduction to the English edition. In 2010, the French editor Albin Michel asked Mernissi a fresh introduction to the updated French edition. Mernissi suggested that the English introduction should be fine and Michel replied: “Do you think that nothing happened between 2002 and 2010 that young Europeans might be interested in knowing?”

After a good night sleep Mernissi realized that among the many changes, apart that Islamic/Arabic youth are double the Western rate, one change stands out grandly: In 1991, the Arabs were terrified of Western supremacy in technology (smart bombs for example that CNN kept showing their devastating effects in collateral damages on civilians); in 2003 invasion it was clear that the American and British soldiers were the most scared of Islam virulence. Mainly, Islamic/Arab States had acquired the numeric information technology for disseminating instant news in sound, pictures, and videos and had begun rational communication discussions (jadal) on points and counter points to the benefit of every Arab/Moslems living in European States and the USA.

The unilateral monopoly in the diffusion and dissemination of information and “intelligence” was eroded: Moslems and Arabs could now enjoy 36 satellite channels broadcasting everywhere, including the most popular Al Jazeera channel that even the Western Medias watched for current and impartial news. Moslems in China were able to keep up with the rest of Islamic World events.

This information victory scared the Western civilization after it realized that the new Islamic/Arabic generations are no longer attuned to their local monopoly Medias run by dictators and monarchs: it is internet age and youth want changes and to discourse rationally. In 1991, Arabs had practically the CNN to cover the war in Iraq as direct source of information and it was biased toward showing the effects of “smart bombs” and Iraqi soldiers being shoveled alive under in the dune bunkers. Arab people got familiar with the term “collateral damages” and CNN failed to inform on the casualties. In 2003, Arab/Moslem masses had Al Jazeera channel to cover the war among 32 other satellite channels viewed for free. It is estimated that by 2012, Islamic/Arab States will have over 1,200 free channels as option for the world to watch information and discussion sessions.

For example, since 1948, Israel has devoured all Palestine and waged countless major pre-emptive wars and the Arab masses had to rely on American Medias for totally biased information; the pickiest watchers occasionally selected the BBC. Things have changed in this numeric information age. In 2003, Al Jazeera was offering as bonuses well targeted discussion panels with many foreign figures. For example, in 2001 and before the September attack on the Twin Towers, Al Jazeera ridiculed Taliban for bombing the ancient giant Buddhist idols in Bamyan (Afghanistan) while Richard Keller of the giant oil multinational UNOCAL was proclaiming “Taliban is good thing for us”

Western humanists grabbed the successes of the Islamic/Arabic satellite channels to become regular guest stars. For example, Dany Schechter of “Plunder: Investigating our economic calamity and the subprime scandal”; Adam Hochschild of “Burry the chains: Prophets and rebels in the fight to liberal”; and Chris Hedges of “War is a force that gives us meaning” are regular guests on Arab satellite channels.

Most ironic, it is the USA and a few European States that have been pressuring the obscurantist Arabic State dictators and monarchies to suppressing freedom of opinions and to shut down “controversial” Arabic channels. In France a few city mayors ordered Arabic channels banned for dissemination because the Arabs and Moslems living in these cities were hooked to Arabic channels and their mind being “poisoned” away from France patriotic indoctrination and inclusion programs.

Feb 28, 2010

Key leader of Eta Basque separatists held in France

One of the top leaders of the Basque separatist group Eta has been arrested in north-western France, the Spanish interior ministry has said.

Ibon Gogeascotxea was arrested with two other suspected Eta members in a French and Spanish operation in Normandy.

Madrid said the arrests had foiled a planned "commando" operation in Spain.

A militant group fighting for an independent Basque homeland, Eta has been blamed for more than 820 deaths during its 41-year campaign in Spain.

Eta called a short-lived truce in 2006, but broke it in December of that year.

Guggenheim plot

The Spanish interior ministry said Ibon Gogeascotxea was the "most senior" member of Eta and its military chief.

The arrests took place close to the small Normandy village of Cahan.

The Spanish interior ministry said the three arrested men had raised suspicion after renting a rural home with false identities and using a car with fake number plates.

Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said the operation was "very significant".

The other two men were named as Beinat Aguinalde Ugartemendia, 26, and Gregorio Jimenez Morales, 55.

Mr Rubalcaba said the pair "were part of a commando [unit] ready to enter Spain".

They had come to "say goodbye to the military chief, who gave them their final instructions as Eta has a habit of doing", Mr Rubalcaba said.

Ibon Gogeascotxea was born in 1965 and has been on the run since 1997 after members of the Eta group's Katu cell allegedly tried to kill King Juan Carlos when he attended the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

The cell is also wanted for attacks on Burgos and Majorca.

French and Spanish authorities have maintained close cooperation to try to track down Eta members.

Four suspected members of Eta were arrested in Portugal and France in January.

Three weeks ago Portuguese police also seized half a tonne of explosives at a house they said was being used as a base by Eta.

Although there have been a number of arrests of leaders, Eta has remained active - the group killed three Spanish police officers using car bombs in 2009.

In December, Spain raised its terror alert level to two on a four-point scale.

Mr Rubalcaba said that despite recent arrests, Spain did "not rule out an attack by Eta".

Eta is considered a terrorist organisation by the European Union and the US.

Jan 10, 2010

In Britain or France, my aging mother would have gotten better health care

Image by seiuhealthcare775nw via Flickr

By Sara Mansfield Taber
Sunday, January 10, 2010; B01

In the final months before her death in May, my mother kept her shoes on all day, even when napping. She had to -- at her assisted-living facility in Mitchellville, Md., three certified nursing assistants looked after 39 residents. My mom couldn't depend on one of them to have the time to put her shoes on when she needed to get out of bed. Only in the mornings and evenings, when one of her private aides was with her for about 30 minutes, did she have personalized care.

Disabled by heart disease, two hip replacements and depression, my mother was often groggy when I visited. She needed me to take her hand and pull her up so she could grab the bed rail and maneuver into a sitting position. Though she brightened when I told her stories about her grandchildren over lunch in the facility's dining room, her joy vanished as soon as we returned to her unit. A blank look on her face, she would lay back on her bed, prone and helpless.

Like many American women of my generation, I struggled to figure out how to best care for my aging mother. As the end neared, I compared notes with my friends Fiona and Juliette. Fiona lives in Canada, but her mother lives in their native England, while Juliette lives with her mother in their family home in France. How could we establish safe and comfortable environments for our ailing mothers? How could we find high-quality medical care within reach of their incomes, and our own? And how could we preserve their mental health and sense of well-being while limiting our stress?

My mother's plight made my stress considerable. Each month, Lois Taber paid $4,069 to reside in her assisted-living community, $1,400 for private aides and an average of $140 for medications. Just before she died at age 82, she liquidated assets from her 401(k) to pay for a $5,800 hearing aid. At $169.50 per ride, the retirement home's fee for transporting her to medical appointments was prohibitive. Other than Medicare, my mom had no government-subsidized elder-care services. Already, the lack of affordable in-home support had forced my parents to leave their beloved house in Chevy Chase, Md., to receive the basic care they needed.

Overseas, things are different -- that is, better. In England, which has a national health system similar in structure to our Veterans Affairs system, Fiona's mum, Pat Reid, suffers from disabling arthritis and diabetes, and cannot move without great pain. But a government-supplied home health aide visits Pat at breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. This costs the family 120 pounds a week (approximately $785 per month), a little more than half of what my mom paid for private aides. Lower-income patients receive this service free. The National Health Service provides general practitioners, nursing care, ambulance services, diabetic clinic visits, medications and hospitalizations for no charge. Doctors and nurses make home visits.

In addition, Pat's son Simon, who has no work at the moment and lives in his mother's converted garage, receives 50 pounds a week (about $325 per month) from the government to help him look after her. With this government support, Pat is able to stay in the home where she lived with her husband for more than 35 years. The cost of her care is well within her monthly income of 2,000 pounds.

In France, Juliette's maman, Madeleine Fournot, has Alzheimer's disease. She receives assistance via a national health reimbursement system similar to Medicare as well as through a special program for the elderly and disabled called l'Allocation Personalisée à l'Autonomie ("Personal Autonomy Allocation"). Since the government refunds 560 of every 1,200 euros Juliette spends on her mother's medical expenses, she is able to hire a caregiver who looks after her mother around the clock 3 1/2 days per week. This allows Madeleine to stay in her suburban Paris home, where her family has lived for three generations, and provides Juliette a regular respite from elder care.

Madeleine receives one free doctor's visit per month, and the doctor makes house calls when needed. Four days a week, a physical therapist visits her, charging a one euro co-pay per visit -- less than the cost of a cup of coffee on the Champs-Élysées. Because Madeleine is on blood thinners, a hematology technician comes each week to check her blood levels. If she is in bed when he arrives, she can stay snug under her covers while he takes the sample. All medications related to Madeleine's Alzheimer's are free, as is transportation to her neurologist in Paris. Her doctor simply fills out a form stating that she cannot stand without assistance, and she is reimbursed for the 30-minute taxi ride into the city.

Other services available to Madeleine include daily medication-administration house calls by a trained nurse, daily meal service (a three-course lunch and soup for dinner) and a specially designed activity program for Alzheimer's patients. The total monthly cost of Madeleine's care is 1,500 Euros, or $2,205.

I am struck by all that Fiona's mum and Juliette's maman can take for granted. They enjoy access to services far beyond free and full medical and prescription drug coverage. In England, my mother's $5,800 hearing aid would have been free. While Mum and Maman get house calls from their doctors and cash compensation for family members who care for them, I often had to take time off from work -- an expensive proposition for a self-employed psychologist and writer -- to help Mom. Taking her back and forth to her medical appointments ate up entire days and, with her disabilities, she could barely get in and out of my car. This was hard work, not quality time with an aging parent.

Mom, Mum and Maman were not very different people. All three married civil servants, led middle-class lives and retired on government pensions. Pat and her husband, a BBC editor and translator who escaped five Italian prison camps during World War II, sought to create a peaceful life for their children. After her husband died, Pat took a job on the local council for village planning. Madeleine spent most of her middle years in Afghanistan, where her husband was posted with the United Nations. My mother worked in orphanages and schools in Asia, Europe and the United States as she followed my father, a CIA officer, across three continents. All three women eventually became widows and developed significant medical problems. Illness and enfeeblement limited their lives, and they came to require help with their daily activities.

There, the similarity ends. As seniors, each woman's quality of life was shaped by her government's health-care policies. The services offered to older people in Britain and France seem, to this American observer, straightforward, logical and humane. These countries provide the basic help their elders need to remain in their homes and in their communities, close to family and friends. It upsets me to think how much more peacefully my mother's life might have ended had she had the support available to older people in Britain and France. Why should Mum and Maman be able to grow old at home, but not Mom?

Many Americans protest that Europeans pay high taxes for medical care. It is true that people in other countries pay more in taxes, but, between out-of-pocket expenses and private health insurance premiums, many Americans spend much of their tax savings staying alive. Of course, high-quality health care costs money. Treating Mom like Mum and Maman is expensive. But Pat and Madeleine both have much lower living and medical expenses than my mother had, and, unlike Americans, they never had to pay for health insurance in their prime.

If our taxes were somewhat higher but we received dependable services that enabled us to spend less out of pocket on doctors' visits, medications and nursing care -- services that helped us remain independent, at home, and that relieved our families of financial and emotional burdens -- wouldn't peace of mind outweigh the additional cost?

My mother, a physical therapist and teacher with a blow of cumulus hair, was a hard-working person whose motto was: "If, at the end of the day, I can say I've helped someone's life to be better, then I've had a good day." It would have been nice if, at the end of her days, she could have taken her shoes off.

Sara Mansfield Taber, a psychologist and writer, is the author of "Bread of Three Rivers: The Story of a French Loaf."

Dec 19, 2009

Tensions grow for Muslims as French debate national identity

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 19, 2009; A09

When Muslim worshipers showed up at the Bilal Mosque early Sunday morning, they found two pig's ears and a poster of the French flag stapled to the door; a pig's snout dangled from the doorknob. "White power" and "Sieg heil" were spray-painted on one side, they recalled, and "France for the French" on the other.

Image by Passion Leica via Flickr

The desecration of the main mosque in Castres, a tranquil provincial town 50 miles east of Toulouse, was an ugly exception in generally easygoing relations between the native French population and a pocket of about 10,000 Muslims, mostly Algerian immigrants and their children, who in recent years have made Castres their home, according to Muslim as well as native French residents. Mayor Pascal Bugis was quick to condemn the outrage, visiting the scene to express dismay, and police vowed a swift arrest of those responsible.

But for Abdelmalek Bouregba, head of the Castres Islamic Association, which administers the mosque, the vandalism was a troubling sign of the times. Signals are flashing everywhere that France is increasingly uneasy with its more than 5 million Muslims, he said, and the atmosphere has soured particularly since President Nicolas Sarkozy's government last month began what it calls "a great debate on national identity."

In parallel with the government-organized debate, he noted, a parliamentary committee is holding hearings to determine whether legislation is necessary to forbid Muslim women from wearing full veils in public. Its chairman, André Gerin, said at a session Wednesday that such veils are "barbaric." Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux, a confidant of Sarkozy's, urged a ban in public buildings, such as town halls and hospitals, saying that "there is no place in France for burqas."

Image by RuTemple via Flickr

Some legislators from Sarkozy's coalition, the Union for a Patriotic Movement, have proposed a law to forbid foreign flags during immigrant weddings in city halls. And a small-town mayor from the Sarkozy coalition, André Valentin, warned during a government-sponsored national identity debate last week that "we are going to be gobbled up" unless something is done to halt the influx of immigrants, who he said "are paid to do nothing."

"All this encourages this kind of thing," Bouregba said at his mosque. "This gives ideas to extremists. Otherwise, they might have anti-Muslim ideas, but they would never act on them. . . . In my view, the national identity debate has stoked tensions."

The government-endorsed French Council for the Muslim Religion issued a similar warning the day after the desecration here was discovered. "The exploitation of these debates by some people presents a real danger of stigmatization against France's Muslims," it said. Outside the Muslim world, SOS Racism, a nongovernmental advocacy group, deplored what it called the "liberation of racist expressions, a liberation that the national identity debate permits and organizes."

Image via Wikipedia

The Socialist Party, France's main opposition group, called on Sarkozy to close the debate before it does further damage. Even within the governing coalition, some parliamentary figures not closely tied to Sarkozy also suggested it is becoming a Pandora's box.

A recent poll taken for the Nouvel Observateur magazine showed that 55 percent of those queried think the debate is at best unnecessary. Another 42 percent expressed fear that it has gone off in the wrong direction, focusing on problems caused by Muslims and immigrants rather than on what it means to be French.

The president, however, has portrayed his decision to launch the debate as a noble undertaking, a necessary expression of French people's feelings, and has shown no sign of backing down. After Swiss voters decided in a referendum Nov. 29 to ban construction of minarets, he issued a statement saying such unease was understandable, calling on Europe's Muslims to avoid ostentatious displays of their beliefs lest they jolt the continent's Christian traditions.

Eric Besson, Sarkozy's minister of immigration, integration and national identity, has been managing the debate and has also been assigned to sum up its conclusions in a major speech in two months. That, critics pointed out, will be just before March's regional elections, in which Sarkozy's coalition hopes to sweep up votes that normally would go to the ultra-right National Front, the country's main anti-immigration political movement.

Anti-Muslim vandalism has long occurred occasionally in France but the Interior Ministry did not respond to a query about how many desecrations were on record this year and whether the number has risen.

Formerly a farm building on the edge of town, the Castres mosque is surrounded by a Christian cemetery, with rows of crosses and statues of angels. It was remodeled in 1986 with Moorish tiles around the entrance and glass chandeliers for what became the main prayer room, which attracts about 300 worshipers for Friday prayers.

Before that, Muslims here had gathered to pray on Fridays in a church hall made available by a Roman Catholic priest.

The town's Christian origins are clear -- Christmas carols from town hall loudspeakers float over the main square -- but Muslims here have not encountered widespread hostility, Bouregba said. Only twice before in the mosque's 23 years of operation had vandals spray-painted slogans on the outside wall, he recalled, and once a pig's head was fixed to the gate.

Encouraged by their growing numbers, Castres Muslims this year began raising funds to build a new mosque. Bouregba, who works for city hall in a youth center and signs his e-mails "French citizen," said plans call for a considerably larger facility to include classrooms, a conference hall and perhaps a tea room "to embellish the situation of our religion in the community."

Although negotiations are under way with the proposed site's owner, there has been no sign of organized opposition. At a neighborhood meeting last week, however, homeowners questioned whether it was a good idea to build a mosque so close to a nearby public school, according to the weekly newspaper Ici Castres.

"It is a logical question," Bouregba said, declining to qualify it as a sign of hostility.

Dec 9, 2009

Sarkozy delivers a mixed message to France's Muslim immigrants

Image via Wikipedia

Call for tolerance comes with a caution on displays of religion

By Edward Cody
Wednesday, December 9, 2009

PARIS -- Faced with swelling unease over the place of Muslim immigrants in France, President Nicolas Sarkozy called Tuesday for tolerance among native French people but warned that arriving Muslims must embrace Europe's historical values and avoid "ostentation or provocation" in the practice of their religion.

Sarkozy's appeal, in a statement published by Le Monde newspaper, reflected concern that a government-sponsored debate on France's "national identity," sharpened by a recent referendum banning minarets in neighboring Switzerland, seemed to be contributing to expressions of anti-Muslim sentiment and generating resentment among Muslim citizens and immigrants.

"I address my Muslim countrymen to say I will do everything to make them feel they are citizens like any other, enjoying the same rights as all the others to live their faith and practice their religion with the same liberty and dignity," he said. "I will combat any form of discrimination.

"But I also want to tell them," he continued, "that in our country, where Christian civilization has left such a deep trace, where republican values are an integral part of our national identity, everything that could be taken as a challenge to this heritage and its values would condemn to failure the necessary inauguration of a French Islam."

Sarkozy said he understood the fears of many native French at the growing visibility of Muslims. France has Europe's largest Muslim population, estimated at well over 5 million. That, he said, is what led him to propose the national-identity debate managed by Eric Besson, the minister of immigration, integration and national identity.

"This muffled threat felt by so many people in our old European nations, rightly or wrongly, weighs on their identity," Sarkozy added. "We must all speak about this together, out of fear that, if it is kept hidden, this sentiment could end up nourishing a terrible rancor."

Dismissing criticisms from leftist figures and some members of his own government, Sarkozy said the Swiss decision Nov. 29 to ban construction of minarets arose from a democratic vote and, instead of outrage, should inspire reflection on the resentment felt by Swiss people and many other Europeans, "including the French people."

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had said he was "a little scandalized" by the Swiss vote and suggested it "means a religion is being oppressed." Intellectuals in the Paris chattering class took their criticism further, suggesting the Swiss vote betrayed bigotry and isolationism.

But Xavier Bertrand, head of Sarkozy's political coalition, the Union for a Popular Movement, seemed to indicate that a referendum like the one in Switzerland would be a good idea for France. In an appearance before reporters, he questioned whether French Muslims "necessarily need" minarets for their mosques.

Bertrand's stand, and Sarkozy's entry into the controversy Tuesday, were seen against the background of regional assembly elections in March, in which the governing coalition is seeking to make inroads into provincial Socialist Party strongholds. The extreme-right National Front, which could drain votes from Sarkozy's party, openly applauded the Swiss decision and said minarets -- towers beside mosques from which the faithful are called to prayer -- should also be banned here.

Along the same lines, members of parliament from Sarkozy's coalition introduced a bill this month giving mayors the authority to ban foreign flags at city hall marriages, aiming at Algerian, Moroccan or Tunisian flags that often accompany the weddings of immigrants' children. Similarly, a mayor from the government majority complained recently that, in his city hall, weddings more often are accompanied by Arab-style ululating than polite applause.

While urging Muslims to avoid ostentation and provocation, Sarkozy avoided specific comment on another test soon to be posed for his government, this one over whether Muslim women should be allowed to wear veils that cover their entire faces. Although only a small number do so, a parliamentary commission has held three months of hearings and is expected to issue a report next month proposing legal restrictions.

The president has said publicly that "the burqa has no place in France," placing his opposition in the context of women's rights. But since then, a number of political leaders have suggested that the French constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, would make legislating on the question difficult no matter what the angle of attack.

Oct 31, 2009

French Ideal of Bicycle-Sharing Meets Reality - NYTimes.com

Image by the noggin_nogged via Flickr

By STEVEN ERLANGER and MAÏA DE LA BAUME

PARIS — Just as Le Corbusier’s white cruciform towers once excited visions of the industrial-age city of the future, so Vélib’, Paris’s bicycle rental system, inspired a new urban ethos for the era of climate change.

Residents here can rent a sturdy bicycle from hundreds of public stations and pedal to their destinations, an inexpensive, healthy and low-carbon alternative to hopping in a car or bus.

But this latest French utopia has met a prosaic reality: Many of the specially designed bikes, which cost $3,500 each, are showing up on black markets in Eastern Europe and northern Africa. Many others are being spirited away for urban joy rides, then ditched by roadsides, their wheels bent and tires stripped.

With 80 percent of the initial 20,600 bicycles stolen or damaged, the program’s organizers have had to hire several hundred people just to fix them. And along with the dent in the city-subsidized budget has been a blow to the Parisian psyche.

“The symbol of a fixed-up, eco-friendly city has become a new source for criminality,” Le Monde mourned in an editorial over the summer. “The Vélib’ was aimed at civilizing city travel. It has increased incivilities.”

The heavy, sandy-bronze Vélib’ bicycles are seen as an accoutrement of the “bobos,” or “bourgeois-bohèmes,” the trendy urban middle class, and they stir resentment and covetousness. They are often being vandalized in a socially divided Paris by resentful, angry or anarchic youth, the police and sociologists say.

Bruno Marzloff, a sociologist who specializes in transportation, said, “One must relate this to other incivilities, and especially the burning of cars,” referring to gangs of immigrant youths burning cars during riots in the suburbs in 2005.

He said he believed there was social revolt behind Vélib’ vandalism, especially for suburban residents, many of them poor immigrants who feel excluded from the glamorous side of Paris.

“It is an outcry, a form of rebellion; this violence is not gratuitous,” Mr. Marzloff said. “There is an element of negligence that means, ‘We don’t have the right to mobility like other people, to get to Paris it’s a huge pain, we don’t have cars, and when we do, it’s too expensive and too far.’ ”

Used mainly for commuting in the urban core of the city, the Vélib’ program is by many measures a success. After swiping a credit card for a deposit at an electronic docking station, a rider pays one euro per day, or 29 euros (about $43) for an annual pass, for unlimited access to the bikes for 30-minute periods that can be extended for a small fee.

Daily use averages 50,000 to 150,000 trips, depending on the season, and the bicycles have proved to be a hit with tourists, who help power the economy.

But the extra-solid construction and electronic docks mean the bikes, made in Hungary, are expensive, and not everyone shares the spirit of joint public property promoted by Paris’s Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë.

“We miscalculated the damage and the theft,” said Albert Asséraf, director of strategy, research and marketing at JCDecaux, the outdoor-advertising company that is a major financer and organizer of the project. “But we had no reference point in the world for this kind of initiative.”

At least 8,000 bikes have been stolen and 8,000 damaged so badly that they had to be replaced — nearly 80 percent of the initial stock, Mr. Asséraf said.

JCDecaux must repair some 1,500 bicycles a day. The company maintains 10 repair shops and a workshop on a boat that moves up and down the Seine.

JCDecaux reinforced the bicycles’ chains and baskets and added better theft protection, strengthening the mechanisms that attach them to the electronic parking docks, since an incompletely secured bike is much easier to steal. But the damage and theft continued.

“We made the bike stronger, ran ad campaigns against vandalism and tried to better inform people on the Web,” Mr. Asséraf said. But “the real solution is just individual respect.”

In 2008 , the number of infractions related to Vélib’ vandalism rose 54 percent, according to the Paris police.

“We found many stolen Vélib’s in Paris’s troubled neighborhoods,” said Marie Lajus, a spokeswoman for the police. “It’s not profit-making delinquency, but rather young boys, especially from the suburbs, consider the Vélib’ an object that has no value.”

Sometimes the bikes are also victims of good old adolescent anarchic fun. These attitudes are expressed by the “freeriders,” and a bicycle forum, where a mock poll asks riders whether the Vélib’ can do wheelies, go down stairs and make decent skid marks.

It is commonplace now to see the bikes at docking stations in Paris with flat tires, punctured wheels or missing baskets. Some Vélib’s have been found hanging from lampposts, dumped in the Seine, used on the streets of Bucharest or resting in shipping containers on their way to North Africa. Some are simply appropriated and repainted.

Finding a decent one is now something of an urban treasure hunt. Géraldine Bernard, 31, of Paris rides a Vélib’ to work every day but admits having difficulties lately finding functioning bikes.

“It’s a very clever initiative to improve people’s lives, but it’s not a complete success,” she said.

“For a regular user like me, it generates a lot of frustration,” she said. “It’s a reflection of the violence of our society and it’s outrageous: the Vélib’ is a public good but there is no civic feeling related to it.”

Still, with more than 63 million rentals since the program was begun in mid-2007, the Vélib’ is an established part of Parisian life, and the program has been extended to provide 4,000 Vélib’s in 29 towns on the city’s edges.

So despite the increasing costs, Paris and JCDecaux are pressing on. The company invested about $140 million to set up the system and provides a yearly fee of about $5.5 million to Paris, which also gets rental fees for the bikes. In return, the company’s 10-year contract allows it to put up 1,628 billboards that it can rent.

Although JCDecaux will not discuss money figures, the expected date for profitability has been set back. But the City of Paris has agreed to pay JCDecaux about $600 for each stolen or irreparably damaged bike if the number exceeds 4 percent of the fleet, which it clearly does.

In an unsuccessful effort to stop vandalism, Paris began an advertising campaign this summer. Posters showed a cartoon Vélib’ being roughed up by a thug. The caption read: “It’s easy to beat up a Vélib’, it can’t defend itself. Vélib’ belongs to you, protect it!”

Oct 25, 2009

Letter from Dijon: In a place known for wine and mustard, Elithis Tower shows fine taste for energy conservation - washingtonpost.com

Image via Wikipedia

By Edward Cody
Sunday, October 25, 2009

DIJON, FRANCE -- The Elithis Tower, its builder says, is an office building like no other, an oval-shaped showcase for how to help save the planet on a reasonable budget.

According to Thierry Bièvre, the 10-story tower in the eastern city of Dijon has the potential to become the world's first commercially priced office building that produces more energy than it consumes. Already, he boasts, it is the most "environmentally sober" such tower in operation, using an average of 20 kilowatts per square meter, or 11 square feet, a year -- 400 is the average in France -- to heat, cool, light and otherwise occupy its 54,000 square feet of office space.

Getting the rest of the way, from 20 to zero and beyond, Bièvre adds, will entail cooperation from the people who work in the building -- turning off their computers at night, using low-consumption bulbs at their desks or walking down the stairs at quitting time rather than automatically taking the elevator.

"To get the best results, you have to change your behavior," he said, shortly before heading from his ninth-floor office down the brightly painted staircase to where his hybrid car awaited outside.

Bièvre, 49, who heads the Elithis engineering firm, said in an interview that he did not start out as an environmental missionary, but as a businessman who wanted to make money. The tower's main purpose, he specified, is to make a profit from rents and sales and, over time, attract clients from around France and abroad to hire his firm to build more such energy-saving towers.

With that in mind, the building was designed and constructed over three years for about $10 million, which Bièvre said was a standard commercial price for such structures. The difference, he said, was that his team of architects and engineers focused relentlessly on energy conservation, making it a priority in every decision and employing every known trick to cut back consumption of electricity, fuel and water.

The roof was covered with solar panels, and the tower's south side was shrouded in a "light shield," a grille that controls heat-producing sunshine without cutting off the natural light flowing in through windows that make up 75 percent of the building's surface. Water, collected from rain, turns off automatically in the lavatories when users walk away, as do the overhead lamps.

Carefully controlled ventilation means that 85 percent of the time there is no need for air conditioning to maintain an average of 68 degrees. At above 39 degrees outside, the building gets all the heat it needs from sunshine. When it is needed, heating comes from a biomass system that provides enough for a year with the equivalent of 86 square feet of wood.

"This building says who we are, and with this we want to develop our business," said Bièvre, a native of the celebrated Burgundy wine country that surrounds Dijon, about 190 miles southeast of Paris. "We don't just make mustard," he added, referring to the city's fame as a producer of the spicy condiment.

Dijon has long been known as a capital of conservation -- mostly of the kind of ageless traditions that make Burgundy's wine great and that local mustard a world favorite. Until only eight years ago, for instance, cafes here were barred from opening terraces because the then-mayor, Robert Poujade, a Gaullist conservative who ran the city for 30 years, thought customers might get rowdy and disturb the cosseted tranquillity of nearby residents.

But in 2001, Poujade was succeeded by François Rebsamen, a Socialist and champion of ecology, who has set out to make the city a center for a different kind of conservation. The new mayor welcomed Bièvre's crusade.

"This building is an example of what the world will have to do in the future," Rebsamen said in a conversation with foreign reporters. "We encouraged him. We helped him. And now I am happy to see that people are coming from around the world to visit it."

Rebsamen said some of the techniques fine-tuned by Bièvre will be put into use in "eco-neighborhoods" that the city and its suburbs plan to build in the next several years. The neighborhoods will have low-energy buildings throughout, he said, and will be serviced by public transportation with the goal of making cars unnecessary for people who live and work there.

In general, France has been slow to alter its energy consumption habits, particularly compared with Germany or the Scandinavian countries. But despite its late start, it has wakened in recent years to the appeal of conservation, turning it into a political issue that pays. President Nicolas Sarkozy, a conservative, has made the environment a major theme of his administration.

Sarkozy pushed hard last winter to get the European Union to adopt ambitious goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases and has prodded the Obama administration to do the same at the environmental summit scheduled for December in Copenhagen. His enthusiasm for the cause redoubled in June, when France's Green parties scored well in European Parliament elections, creating an opening for Sarkozy to attract votes from the Socialists, his main opposition.

Bièvre, however, emphasized that individual decisions, multiplied across society, remain the most effective way to reduce human pressure on the environment. Driving his hybrid the same way he used to drive his high-powered German cars, he found, meant he still used a lot of gasoline. To get the best results, he recalled, he had to train himself to accelerate slowly and hold down the speed.

"It's the little actions that will change things," he said.

Oct 15, 2009

Riots Rattle Ancient French Town - washingtonpost.com

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Lawmakers Denounce Weekend Disturbances by Self-Styled Anarchists in Poitiers

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 15, 2009

POITIERS, France -- Under a bright autumn sun, the narrow lanes of ancient Poitiers teemed with families enjoying a lighthearted celebration of street theater. Suddenly, a knot of black-clad youths emerged from the crowd. They donned plastic masks, pulled up their hoods and started destroying everything in sight.

In what police described as an organized attack, the band shattered store windows, damaged the facades of several banks and spray-painted anarchist slogans on government buildings. Aiming even at the historical heritage of this comfortable provincial town 200 miles southwest of Paris, they fractured a plaque commemorating Joan of Arc's interrogation here in 1429 and -- in Latin -- scrawled "Everything belongs to everybody" on a stone baptistery that is one of the oldest monuments in Christendom.

The wanton destruction, which lasted for about 90 minutes early Saturday evening, was a dramatic reminder that France and other European nations, below their surface of stability and wealth, harbor tiny bands of ultra-leftist activists who still want to combat the market economies and parliamentary democracies on which the continent's well-being is founded.

"We will destroy your morbid world," one of the Poitiers protesters sprayed-painted on a wall near the city's landmark Notre Dame Cathedral.

Based on politics of violent rejection dating from the 1970s, the groups have been largely overshadowed in recent years by the more mundane violence of big-city drug gangs and disaffected immigrant ghettos, particularly in France. But they have surfaced recently in dramatic ways. French, German and other European ultra-leftists set fire to a customs shed and a hotel during the NATO summit in Strasbourg in April, and others launched violent attacks that marred an otherwise joyous music festival this summer in the streets of Paris.

The outburst in Poitiers was particularly shocking to its 90,000 residents, most of whom traditionally regard themselves as comfortably distant from the political tensions of Paris and the world. Shop owners and local political leaders voiced astonishment that police were caught by surprise and wondered who the violent protesters were and where they came from.

"It's really strange," said Christine Simon, whose little shop hawking New Age spirituality lost a display window and several art works in the rampage. "Here in Poitiers, there is never anything like this. I don't mean nothing ever happens. We have a cultural life and all. But nothing like this."

Mayor Alain Claeys, from the opposition Socialist Party, suggested to Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux that his ministry's intelligence agents should have picked up signals that the ultra-leftists were planning something. Joining many other Poitiers residents, he said those who organized the destruction must have come from outside the city, perhaps even outside France.

"Extremism and violence struck brutally in the heart of the regional capital," said former prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, who represents the area in the Senate. He vowed to meet with Hortefeux to "draw conclusions from these sad and unacceptable events."

Police acknowledged to local reporters that they had no idea who the ringleaders were. They took 18 people into custody Saturday evening and Sunday and, in a show of firmness, put eight of them on immediate trial Monday. Defense lawyers argued the eight were just locals swept up in the movement, however, and judges sentenced only three to prison terms, from one to four months.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's political coalition, the Union for a Popular Movement, urged harsh punishment for the rioters despite the difficulty in finding who was responsible. "Prosecutions must be organized, and we expect the strongest possible firmness from the courts," said Frédéric Lefebvre, the coalition spokesman.

Sarkozy, a former interior minister known as an advocate of no-nonsense law enforcement, repeatedly has urged tougher tactics to combat crime and suburban unrest. He was elected in 2007 in part because his hard line captured support from voters who traditionally had cast their ballots for the far-right National Front.

Hortefeux flew down from Paris for a one-hour appearance Monday to show government solidarity and vow that something would be done. "I hope the courts will crack down, and severely," he said.

A law is before Parliament that will give police new powers to monitor such groups, he said. But he added that it might also be necessary to use another law, dating from the 1930s, to disband them before they can cause further trouble.

Claeys, however, asked how Hortefeux would disband the groups if his ministry does not know who they are or where they come from.

The violence seemed to have been carefully planned, police said. They discovered caches of masks, hammers, batons and smoke bombs at several points in the city center, apparently hidden in advance for use during the riot. Once it broke out, police said, the protesters used canvas tarps to protect themselves from rubber anti-riot projectiles used by police.

The number of rioters involved in the destruction was estimated at 150 to 300, some of whom waved the black flags often associated with anarchist groups. Their tactics were particularly successful, officers said, because they grafted their riot onto a protest that was being staged by local opponents to a new prison. Organizers of the prison protest issued statements dissociating themselves from the violence.

Merchants, festival-goers and others who witnessed the rampage said the rioters apparently did not aim to injure bystanders. Two policemen were lightly injured during the violence, authorities said. And while the protesters spray-painted anarchist appeals on buildings, they did not shout slogans or otherwise explain their acts.

"Objective: destroy, destroy, frighten the bourgeois, then disappear," commented Hervé Cannet, an editorialist whose local New Republic newspaper office was one of the buildings vandalized.

Oct 14, 2009

The French Get Lost in the Clouds Over a New Term in the Internet Age - WSJ.com

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By MAX COLCHESTER

PARIS -- The word on the table that morning was "cloud computing."

To translate the English term for computing resources that can be accessed on demand on the Internet, a group of French experts had spent 18 months coming up with "informatique en nuage," which literally means "computing in cloud."

France's General Commission of Terminology and Neology -- a 17-member group of professors, linguists, scientists and a former ambassador -- was gathered in a building overlooking the Louvre to approve the term.

"What? This means nothing to me. I put a 'cloud' of milk in my tea!" exclaimed Jean Saint-Geours, a French writer and member of the Terminology Commission.

"Send it back and start again," ordered Etienne Guyon, a physics professor on the commission.

Keeping the French language relevant isn't easy in the Internet age. For years, French bureaucrats have worked hard to keep French up to date by diligently coming up with equivalents for English terms. Though most French people say "le week-end" and "un surfer," the correct translations of the terms are "fin de semaine" ("end of the week") and "aquaplanchiste" ("water boarder"). A "start-up" company is referred to as "jeune pousse," or "young shoot" (the term pousse is used for vegetable sprouts), while the World Wide Web is translated as "toile d'araignée mondiale" (literally, global spider web).

But technological advancements mean new Anglicisms are spreading over the Internet at warp speed, leaving the French scratching their heads.

Before a word such as "cloud computing" or "podcasting" ("diffusion pour baladeur") receives a certified French equivalent, it needs to be approved by three organizations and get a government minister's seal of approval, according to rules laid out by the state's General Delegation for the French Language and the Languages of France. The process can be a linguistic odyssey taking years.

"Rigor cannot be compromised," said Xavier North, the 57-year-old civil servant who heads the General Delegation.

On the Beach

On its Web site, the General Delegation for the French Language reminds French citizens that the terms beach volleyball, beach tennis and beach hockey aren't always correct. As these sports are becoming more popular, "they are often taking place … in arenas," the General Delegation states.

As these sports don't necessarily take place on beaches, the word "beach" should be replaced with "on sand" ("sur sable").

Hence the terms hockey sur sable, tennis sur sable and volley sur sable are recommended by the General Commission of Terminology and Neology.

Mr. North? Vraiment? The guardian of French takes umbrage at the suggestion his name might be English. "My name is absolutely not Anglo-Saxon," he says. "It comes from Alsace," in the east of France. Also, he pronounces it Nort.

Article Two of France's Constitution states that, "The language of the Republic shall be French." The French government, therefore, has a duty to offer citizens French alternatives to English words, he says. "Our citizens have a right to communicate without speaking English."

French linguistic legislation started in 1593. That year, King François I ousted Latin as his country's administrative language and replaced it with French. Until the 20th century, things went well: Local dialects were supplanted, and French became the language of diplomacy and love. But after World War II and the rise of the U.S. as a superpower, French was pushed onto the back burner.

In 1994, the French government passed laws to ensure that all advertisements, work-contracts and government documentation were in French. The General Delegation was charged with overseeing the creation of new French terms.

Every year, about 300 new terms are officially introduced into the French language. Some -- like cloud computing -- get accidental priority.

About 18 months ago, Bénédicte Madinier, head of language development at Mr. North's General Delegation, was on holiday when she read a magazine piece about cloud computing. "I realized it was pretty important," she says. The 59-year-old quickly sent a request that the expression be sped through France's translation and definition system.

Each of France's government ministries has at least one terminology committee attached to it. The job of the people on the committee is to spot new English words and create and define French alternatives before the English version catches on. Ms. Madinier called on the committee in charge of computing terminology -- which is part of the French Finance Ministry -- to handle the expression "cloud computing."

The 20-person team of volunteers got off to a slow start because they weren't sure cloud computing was an important enough concept, recalls Ms. Madinier. Last summer, however, several committee members attended a conference on new Internet trends and realized that they had better get cracking.

The problem was the word "cloud." In French, to be "dans les nuages" -- or in the clouds -- is a common expression meaning to be distracted. So, committee members were wary of using the word "nuage." One would not want to have his head in the clouds. They came up with alternatives, including Capacité Informatique en Ligne (or online computing capability), which could be shortened to CIEL, which, of course, means "sky" in French.

"Going from 'cloud' to 'sky' seems to be a bit far-fetched," one committee member wrote his colleagues last August in an email.

Shortly after, another member complained that using a term that includes cloud "involuntarily causes laughter and at best a smile," according to another email. He suggested blending the French words for computing and cyberspace to create "cyberinformatique." That set off a series of other suggestions, including cybergerance (cybermanagement), cybercalcul and cyberservice.

Translating to Keep French Alive

As new English words pop up, the French government creates alternatives in its native tongue. It makes for some interesting translations; here are a few:

Automobile:

Air bag -- sac gonflable (inflatable bag)

Business:

Brainstorming -- remue-méninges (Brain-stirring)
Viral marketing -- bouche à oreille électronique (electronic word of mouth)

Fashion:

Supermodel -- mannequin vedette (model star)

Food:

Snacking -- grignotage (nibbling)

Sports (general):

Big air (when snowboarding) -- saut acrobatique sur tremplin de neige (acrobatic jump on a springboard of snow)
Draft -- recrutement des espoirs (recruitment of hopes)
Frisbee -- disque-volant (flying disc)
Skateboard -- planche acrobatique terrestre (terrestrial acrobatic board)
Stepper (Stepmaster) -- simulateur-ergomètre d'escalier (stair simulator)

Technology:

Emoticon -- frimousse (show-off)
Personal digital assistant (PDA) -- assistant électronique de poche (electric pocket assistant)
Trojan horse (computer virus) -- cheval de Troie (horse of Troy)

Tennis:

Break -- brèche (breach)
Let -- Filet! (net!)
Tiebreaker -- jeu décisif (decisive game)

Source: The General Delegation for the French Language and the Languages of France

No compromise was reached, so by the end of September, the committee went back to the literal translation, "informatique en nuage."

"It resembles the English term and does not distort the French language," committee member Bernard Bourguignon wrote his colleagues in an email. Another member ventured that the phrase was catchy enough to inspire good newspaper headlines announcing the new term:

"Desperate times in the computing cloud, the quiet before the storm" or "Lightning love in the computing cloud: ZZZ and YYY merge."

The term "informatique en nuage" was passed on for approval before the General Commission of Terminology and Neology.

But at the meeting earlier this month, the 17 members of the commission were quickly confused. "How are we supposed to understand it?" asked Alexandre Grandazzi, a Latin professor.

"I think we can survive without the term 'cloud computing,'" said physics expert Mr. Guyon, slamming his hand on the table.

"Cloud computing" will now go back to the drawing board.

Had it been approved, the term would still have required ratification by the Academie Française, which was founded in 1635 and is the official authority on grammar and vocabulary of the French language. It would have also required final approval by the French finance minister.

For Mr. North, head of the French Delegation for the French Language, the long process is important. He points to various translation successes, including the French for email -- courriel -- which was approved in 2003 and has since become popular. Over the years, French language committees have succeeded in turning the word CD-ROM into "cédérom" and fuel into "fioul."

"We won't cut people's heads off if they don't use it," says Mr. North. But, he adds: "Language is what brought this country together."

Recently, Mr. North came upon another hot Internet term: the computer applications known as "Web widgets."

"I thought, 'Why not say that in French?'"

Write to Max Colchester at max.colchester@wsj.com

Sep 22, 2009

French Minister Rama Yade's Stardom Holds Political Promise - washingtonpost.com

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By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

LYON, France -- The photographer insisted on telling her how to pose. A television soundman thrust his microphone toward her face while behind him the intruding camera rolled. A knot of bystanders, meanwhile, edged in for a close-up look and opened fire with cellphone snapshots.

"Please, could you back away a little? I would like to be alone for a bit," pleaded Rama Yade, France's junior minister for youth and sports and, at 32, one of the most popular political personalities in the country.

The recoil from pop-star treatment during a recent visit to Lyon, in eastern France, was a rare moment of hesitation in Yade's swift rise to fame and political fortune. Only nine years after graduating from the prestigious Paris Institute of Political Sciences, Yade has become more than a minister. She has become a phenomenon: black, Muslim, female -- and one of the brightest stars in President Nicolas Sarkozy's political constellation.

Along with two women of North African Arab descent also named to the government, Yade's main mission when she was appointed in May 2007 was to embody Sarkozy's effort to bring minorities into positions of responsibility. But with her good looks and impudence -- qualities French people cherish -- she has ended up two years later not only as a poster girl for integration but also as a politician with her own support and the promise of a career on the national stage.

"There is not just the image; there is also substance," said Lyon Mayor Gérard Collomb of the opposition Socialist Party.

Collomb, only half-joking, added that he had told Yade over lunch that he would find a place for her in the local government or parliamentary representation if she wanted to jump ship from Sarkozy's neo-Gaullist coalition and run for office in Lyon.

At a forum here on the role of sports in forming good citizens, however, Yade cited Charles de Gaulle in advocating the need to cultivate athletes capable of bringing glory to France. She rolled off statistics on the number of jobs that would be created by building more stadiums. But most of all, she walked around shaking hands, signing autographs and being photographed.

Conscious of her status as a neophyte, Yade tried loyally to play her assigned role, that of conscientious minister with a Hillary-style pantsuit and a relentless schedule. "I'm not here pushing an image," she told reporters following her travels. "I'm doing my job."

Reminded that she was constantly accosted like a rock star, she smiled and replied: "I can't observe myself. I am an actor, not an observer."

The Yade act will be on tour this week in Washington, where aides said the young minister has been invited to attend the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual legislative conference. President Obama is likely to attend, they added, inviting a comparison with the U.S. leader whose charisma, like Yade's, seems to eclipse racial considerations.

Yade's ascension to stardom was not foreordained, however, in a country where politics traditionally are as exclusive as a London gentlemen's club. Born Mame Ramatoulaye Yade in Senegal, West Africa, Yade was brought up on a tight budget by her immigrant mother in the Paris suburb of Colombes. Her father, a diplomat and professor, by then had gone his own way. The young girl was educated at a Roman Catholic secondary school and, after a tough entrance exam, entered the Institute of Political Sciences for her launch toward fame.

After several years as a staff assistant in the Senate, she joined Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement, telling acquaintances she admired his proposals for positive discrimination to advance France's growing black and Arab populations. When Sarkozy was formally named the party's presidential candidate in January 2007, Yade gained celebrity with a conservative-oriented speech in which she castigated the opposition Socialist Party as the creator of a "service-window republic" in which immigrant children got "pity instead of respect."

About the same time her star began to rise in the party, Yade married Joseph Zimet, a high-level bureaucrat and the son of a well-known Yiddish singer.

Along with Rachida Dati, the daughter of Algerian immigrants, Yade emerged as a media star during the 2007 presidential campaign. When Sarkozy was elected, Dati was named justice minister and Yade was plopped down in the previously nonexistent post of junior minister for human rights under Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

During the same year, Yade published her first book, "Blacks of France," in which she analyzed the place in French society occupied by African immigrants' children and other French blacks. It reminded people that, despite her own swift rise in a conservative movement, Yade carried the heritage of a black woman in a predominantly white society.

As a girl, aides recalled, Yade pinned posters of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Michael Jordan in her room. Later, she collected press clippings of Obama's voyage to the White House, and she told French reporters after his election that she was "penetrated" by the history of American blacks and civil rights.

Soon after assuming her new job, Yade's refusal to submit to authority became an issue, rubbing fellow officials the wrong way but drawing favorable attention from the public.

Sarkozy, seeking political and economic gains, invited Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to Paris. Yade boycotted official functions, saying Gaddafi should be made to understand "our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can come wipe the blood of his deeds off his feet."

Kouchner, who helped found Doctors Without Borders and had made a career of promoting human rights, swiftly became irritated at Yade's refusal to play by traditional Foreign Ministry rules. On last year's Human Rights Day, he told an interviewer that creating Yade's post was a mistake, and according to aides, his complaints were among the reasons Sarkozy recently eliminated the position.

Yade also refused Sarkozy's exhortation to run in elections for the European Parliament, letting it be known she regarded the European Parliament as a political parking lot and wanted instead to run for the French National Assembly.

Against that background, many commentators expressed surprise to see Yade named junior minister for youth and sports in a government reshuffle in June in which Dati and others departed. According to Le Point magazine, Yade responded by handing a note to Sarkozy during the first government meeting, saying, "Mr. President. One word: thanks!"

Despite her second chance in government, Yade has yet to prove herself as a candidate in a significant election, which aides acknowledge is an obligatory next step. She was elected last year on a government-coalition list to the council of her former home town of Colombes. But now, aides said, she is contemplating running for an office that would give her a political foothold and allow her to transcend the role of Sarkozy's television-friendly integration symbol.

In that, she has a way to go. As Yade walked down a platform to board a train for Paris, for example, heads turned and many travelers pointed in her direction, recognizing the showcase minister. A tall black man, asked if he knew who she was, replied, "Yes, that's Rachida Dati." Told he was wrong, he said, "Oh, yeah, it's the other one."