An excellent analysis

Arnold Ahlert provides an excellent and highly amusing (the man is almost as good at cold sarcasm as this blog is) of the Sarkozy-Obama open mic debacle with a particularly nasty jab at the media.

Yet according YNet News if it were up to the journalists who heard the exchange, Wasserman-Schultz wouldn't have needed any luck at all:

"The surprising lack of coverage may be explained by a report alleging that journalists present at the event were requested to sign an agreement to keep mum on the embarrassing comments. A Reuters reporter was among the journalists present and can confirm the veracity of the comments."

"A member of the media confirmed Monday that "there were discussions between journalists and they agreed not to publish the comments due to the sensitivity of the issue."

"He added that while it was annoying to have to refrain from publishing the information, the journalists are subject to precise rules of conduct."

What conduct? Because Sarkozy's office asked journalists not to turn on their headsets until the conference began, the comments were considered private, according to French media "traditions."

That excuse ostensibly covers the collective behinds of the French reporters. What about everyone else? What reporter in his right mind would sign anything that prevents him from reporting on a story made available, not by subterfuge or anything else resembling illegality, but by the carelessness of two world leaders? Since when did a legitimate "gotcha" moment become off limits to the press?

You may well ask.

Goodness, I know how he feels

Sarko, apparently, told the Boy-King

We are sick of you criticising us and telling us what to do. You say you hate the euro and now you want to interfere in our meetings.

Not sure it is true the Boy-King hates the euro but many of us are sick of him telling us what to do.

Uh-oh!

One can't help being cheered by French politics. It always involves lots of money, frequently sex and drugs, not to mention various other crimes and, as an absolute minimum, the French security services.

As it happens I am not a fan of Le Monde, which is not "the newspaper of record", no matter what Jean-Paul Marthoz might think. It is not only unspeakably dull but also suffers from all the problems of the modern Western media: it is europhiliac in that it is anti-American, anti-Anglospheric, tends to be pro-Arab on all occasions, right or wrong. But there is something in its favour: it does not like President Sarkozy. Well, to be quite precise it does not like the fact that President Sarkozy does not like it.

The news is that Le Monde is actually suing the President's office

Earlier this week, Le Monde, the most prestigious French newspaper, announced the imminent filing of a lawsuit accusing the office of the president of unlawfully using the intelligence services to identify a source for its reporter Gérard Davet. He had been covering an influence-peddling scandal involving key members of the ruling center-right party UMP (Union for a Popular Movement).

The article gives a reasonable summary of the complex and long-running saga of Liliane Bettencourt and the supposed financial shenanigans that surround this l'Oreal heiress and the funding of UMP.

M Marthoz describes this latest development in very hushed and self-important tones:

The newspaper Le Monde against the Elysée Palace, the office of the president of the French Republic: Two of France's main symbols of influence and power are facing each other in a judicial battle that promises to be a litmus test in the running battles between the press and Nicolas Sarkozy's so-called "imperial presidency."

This blog, on the other hand, is delighted to be following a legal contest in which neither side deserves to win. As in that story that President Lincoln is supposed to have said, we can sit back with the man who was watching a bear attacking his wife and shout: "Go it woman; go it bear!"

President Sarkozy displays his credentials

As the Financial Times reports

The French government took steps to tighten its grip on partly state-owned companies to ensure they maintain factories and jobs in France.

Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, appointed a senior business figure to run a revamped agency responsible for government shareholdings. Jean-Dominique Comolli, deputy chairman of Imperial Tobacco, will act as commissioner for state shareholdings, reporting directly to Christine Lagarde, finance minister.

The government also set down rules obliging companies with a government stake to account regularly to ministers for their investment decisions, purchasing policies and supply chain management.

All this activism is the result of a feeling of betrayal. Earlier this year Renault, which had received government subsidies when it was in a tight corner, showed intentions of moving the production of the Clio to Turkey. The French government owns 15.01 per cent of the factory and up with that M. le President would not put. So Renault's CEO had to promise that the bulk of the manufacturing will stay in France, which, presumably, will mean that at some point soon the factory will have to be bailed out again. (Though Bagehot at The Economist thinks that M. le President agreed to let the matter drop but provides not link to the story.

Let us not forget that M. Sarkozy's popularity has hit an all-time low even by the standards of French presidents. He is clearly trying desperately hard to find some way of appealing to the electorate.

Are they all in this charade?

No way am I going to write about the Sarkozys' personal life. Or lives. Who cares? However, this story, sent to me by a blog reader is off interest. According to the Guardian President Sarkozy intends to warn the Boy-King of the Conservative Party about European defence. Yes, indeed, I hear you: what European defence? If NATO does collapse, thanks to the EU's shenanigans, we shall be left with precious little defence so let us hope nobody takes offence at us.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, is to deliver a firm warning to David Cameron that the Conservatives risk forfeiting vital French co-operation on energy, defence and the economy if they refuse to engage over the future of Europe.

In an attempt to lure the Conservatives into a friendlier stance, Sarkozy may be willing to offer concessions over the future of the European defence agency, seen by the party as the incubator for a future European defence force.

Sarkozy is due to meet Cameron on Friday after a working lunch with Gordon Brown in Downing Street. Sarkozy has developed close relations with Brown.

The EDA was set up in 2004 to develop European military capability and armament co-operation.

On the subject of the EDA and its surreptitious activity the best person to read is the Boss on EUReferendum. He has written a great deal and there is no need for me to copy any of it.

There are, however, other issues here. In the first place, it is of interest that President Sarkozy thinks it is his job to dictate policy to the possible next government of the United Kingdom. But then, the truth is that it is his job. He is part of this country's government as are all the other 25 members of the European Council. So David Cameron had better listen.

A more interesting question is why does President Sarkozy think it is necessary to warn the Conservatives. Surely he does not think that they are about to turn eurosceptic or try to work for Britain's interests or, even, offer a referendum on anything to do with that noxious organization, the European Union. He obviously has not been in communication with the Shadow Foreign Secretary (and who can blame him for that) who said the following (the Guardian leads on the report and the article gets some incredibly stupid and ignorant responses but then what can you expect from Guardianistas):

The fourth theme of Conservative Foreign policy is the effective reform, use and development of international institutions and here we must start in our immediate neighbourhood.

The European Union is obviously an institution of enormous importance to the United Kingdom and its foreign policy. The Conservative Party has seldom shied away from frank criticism when we have thought the EU collectively has been getting things wrong but we have equally been the foremost champions of the EU's greatest achievements: the Single Market and enlargement.

If we win the coming general election, it is our firm intention that a Conservative government will be active and activist in the European Union from day one, energetically engaging with our partners. We will be highly active in furthering the Single Market, in promoting European co-operation on the environment and climate change, on energy security, on pressing for freer and fairer global trade that will benefit not just the peoples of Europe but the world's poorest who have not enjoyed the gains of globalisation.

We will uphold our conviction that the widening of the European Union, including to Turkey, is in Europe's collective interest.

The EU's future 2020 strategy on jobs and growth will, if we get it right, have an important contribution to enhancing Europe's competitiveness. The European Conservatives and Reformists Group's submission on the Strategy is a valuable contribution to the debate.

You have to scroll a fair way down in the speech to find this, so it is interesting that the Guardian picked up on that. Presumably they want more votes to go to UKIP.

The point is that it is all the same old blah: co-operation, heart of Europe, reform from within, blah, blah. At the same time, Mr Hague's earlier comments about Britain's relationship with other countries such as the United States, Australia, Russia and China (to pick some at random, which he seems to have done) indicate that he still does not understand what being in the European Union is all about. Well, let us hope, President Sarkozy can set him right.

We've all been there

Can we not all recall that desire to be friends with the most glamorous person in the school or on the block? You know, the one everybody wants to talk to for whatever reason? And can we not also recall the humilation of said glamorous person rebuffing our efforts to build bridges, change relationship, whatever?

The trouble is that most of us grow out of that. Certainly, by the time a person is big enough to become President of the United States, he ought to be able to distinguish between wannabe friendships and real ones.

From the beginning of his presidency, Obama has wanted to be friends with the Iranian government, clearly the most glamorous boys on the block. Sadly, he keeps being rebuffed, most recently by the arrest and now sentence of the American-Iranian journalist, Roxana Saberi.

Ms Saberi was born and brought up in the United States but maintains that she has dual citizenship. That cannot be right, since Iran does not acknowledge such a state of affairs.

She has lived in Iran since 2003, periodically reporting from that country and planning to write a book about it.

Her press credentials were revoked in 2006 by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, which accredits reporters working for foreign news organizations, CPJ reported.

"According to NPR, Saberi continued to file short news items with government permission," CPJ said.

Saberi was first detained in January, CPJ said, although no formal charges were disclosed.

"She told her family that she was initially held for buying a bottle of wine," CPJ said on its Web site. "A spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry said later that Saberi was being detained at Tehran's Evin Prison for reporting without proper accreditation."

Political prisoners are often jailed at the prison, CPJ said.

Word that Saberi was charged with espionage emerged on April 8, CPJ said. Hassan Haddad, deputy public prosecutor, told the Iranian Students News Agency that "without press credentials and under the name of being a reporter, she was carrying out espionage activities."

She appeared before a Revolutionary Court on Monday for a one-day trial that was closed to the public, CPJ said, quoting an Iranian judiciary official.

Her father, Reza Saberi, told NPR on Saturday he believes his daughter was coerced into making damaging statements. He said the verdict was issued Wednesday.

The court, which didn't meet Thursday and Friday, reconvened Saturday. Reza Saberi said his daughter was brought to the court, but he wasn't allowed to enter.

A lawyer later told him she was sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage.

CPJ is the Committee to Protect Journalists, an admirably inclined institution but not, one has to admit, a particularly successful one.

The US Administration is protesting and Secretary of State Clinton has been making all kinds of statements. We shall see what the result of it all will be. I very much fear that the new boy on the block will once again be rebuffed.

At least, Hugo Chavez seems to like him (Sister Toldjah and Fausta sum up). It makes me feel safer to know that the leader of the free world is trying to be chummy with all our enemies (for they are our enemies as well as America's) and shakes hands, whenever he can, with every oppressive dictator.

Meanwhile President Sarkozy has attacked three of France's supposed allies who have been described as world leaders. As one of them is Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, I wouldn't go as far as that myself but the whole story is embarrassing and absurd in about equal measures:

During the repast at the Elysee Palace, Sarkozy intimated U.S. President Barack Obama was inexperienced, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Louis Rodriguez Zapatero wasn't too smart and German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn't share his view about tackling the world financial crisis, The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

Sounds like he was merely stating facts.

What can one say? The Western alliance is in the very best of hands.