Americans not in Paris
The France-US split showed no sign of healing this week.
Not that people arent trying, mind.
With one eye on Washington, the French police arrested more than 150 members of Mujahideen-e-Khalq, an Iranian opposition group, declared a terrorist organisation by both the US and the EU, and seized $1.3 million in hundred-dollar bills.
Of course, the hawk-eye of Washington was very much on the Islamic Republic of Iran this week. While France arrested the opposition groups in an effort to please the US, President Bush declared his support for the pro-democracy protestors in Iran who oppose the government, and expressed his desire to see a free Iran.
Its a complicated world.
Seeing as how thats the case, the Diary will focus on Associated Press reports that Francophile celebrities in the US have made a video which promotes all things Gallic to their sceptical compatriots.
The seven-minute film is called Lets Fall in Love Again. It is paid for by the French government.
Leading the cheers is, of course, Woody Allen. I dont want to have to refer to my French-fried potatoes as freedom fries and I dont want to have to freedom-kiss my wife when what I really want to do is French-kiss her, said Allen, sounding more French than the French, and conjuring up images that the Diary suspects might not seduce his fellow countrymen and women.
Of course, Allen is famously more popular in France than the US. Legend has it that the director has never been further west than Brooklyn.
He has often admitted himself that the European market, particularly that of France, keeps him in business. The Diary recalls a scene in the documentary Wild Man Blues, in which a huge crowd gathers outside Allens Parisian hotel just to catch a glimpse of him. It is in huge contrast to his reception in America, which remains focused on his acrimonious split with Mia Farrow.
In fact, Allens new film is called Hollywood Ending. According to AP, Allen plays a filmmaker whose latest movie bombs at home and is a hit in France. His agent tells him: Here, youre a bum, there youre a genius. The film-maker responds: Thank God the French exist.
The Diary points to a letter published in the International Herald Tribune this week from one Alexander M. Goren of New York, who writes, Until the French face up to the fact that their cold-blooded mercantilism was the prime cause for their opposition to the Iraq war, there is little to talk about.
Is that the same cold-blooded mercantilism that Woody can now be accused of?
Whatever, joining Woody in the promotional short is jazzman Wynton Marsalis (like Bechet, Ellington, and Miles before him, very popular in France); George Plimpton, editor of Paris Review (what a give-away!); and Daniel Boulud, the superstar chef supreme of cuisine Francais!
The video was shown to media representatives in 14 U.S. cities. What effect it has had is as yet unclear. American tourism to France is down 15-20% on this time last year.
Meanwhile, only days after the video went out, the New York Times ran the story Paris Air Show: Where are the Americans? It made the front page of the Paris-based IHT.
Apparently, this years Paris Air Show is suffering from a notable absence of U.S. fighter demonstrations.
These things matter.
This is one of those little telltale signs of a much broader drift in trans-Atlantic relationships that reveal the gradual breakup of the Western alliance, Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute in Arlington, is quoted as saying.
The biennial air show, held near the runway where Charles Lindbergh landed in 1927, is meant to celebrate a century of cooperation between the US and France. In other words, it is designed to promote business partnerships between military contractors.
President Chirac inaugurated the show on Saturday. The US never showed up.
(See We dont mind if our tuna sandwiches have little bits of dolphin ground up inside metrospy.com and boycottfrenchproducts.org. Also see the Diary of 20 March on Freedom Fries, and openDemocracys American Power and the World)
Europe gets tough
Continuing with this theme, a much-vaunted BBC poll this week showed that French attitudes towards America are hugely negative.
Europe is trying its best to counter this trend. Meeting in Luxembourg, foreign ministers from the EUs fifteen member states said that, if necessary, it is ready to use force against countries and organisations that threaten to use weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
In the current climate, of course, this can mean anything. What, for example, was Europe willing to do about Iraq? Oh, yes, conveniently, Iraq didnt have any WMDs, did it? The US and the UK made up the threat. If it had been real, then the EU would have driven Saddam from power. If WMDs turn up in Iraq (as French intelligence said they would) expect the EUs words to be watered down.
Anyway, the new tough-guy approach from the EU came in the shadow of more tactless remarks from US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rummy is peeved that Belgian law has been used to accuse the US of war crimes. Get rid of it, Rummy said, or We will have to seriously consider whether we can allow our civilian and military officials to come to Belgium.
In other words, you can forget about Nato.
Serious stuff. The whole US focus is shifting eastwards to new Europe. Said one senior European diplomat quoted in the New York Times, When the French or German ministers spoke, [Rumsfeld] would make a show of not paying attention, reading notes or talking to his neighbors. He went out of his way to show he doesnt care.
At the same time, the UN Security Council granted American forces in Iraq a one-year exemption from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Kofi Annan expressed the hope that this does not become an annual routine. The US deputy ambassador to the UN, James Cunningham, called the ICC a fatally flawed institution.
In Luxembourg, the EU pushed Iran to urgently allow more inspections of its nuclear facilities and sign an international protocol promising not to produce nukes, berated Cuba for repressing dissidents, and toughened its sanctions against Burma.
Sounds positively American.
Fidel Castro, for one, is not impressed. Last Thursday, hundreds of thousands of angry people marched behind the Cuban leader to protest the EUs new harder stance against the islands communist regime. Down with fascism! they cried, calling Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar The Little Führer.
But this week at least, the EU seemed determined to bridge the transatlantic divide. On Monday, Brussels and Washington agreed to pool research into hydrogen fuel cells. Environmentalists arent happy, accusing the EU of caving in to Bushs agenda more fossil and nuclear, less solar and wind.
The EU energy commissioner, Loyola de Palacio said, We can cooperate in the interests of the whole world.
Whatever next?
RSVP Mr Kim
Last weeks Diary focused on the latest outburst of North Koreas Dear Leader Kim Jong Il.
This week, Kim received an invitation from the mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, to attend the annual ceremony marking the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city on 6 August 1945.
Nice timing, Tadatoshi!
This is what Mayor Akiba wrote to Mr Kim:
We would like to relay the reality of the damage wrought by atomic weapons, and the spirit of Hiroshima that longs for the abolition of nuclear weapons and eternal world peace.
Unfortunately, it looks like Kim wont be able to attend this year, as hes busy threatening to blow the world up.
Still, full marks to Mayor Akiba, the Diarys hero of the week.
Last year, Mayor Akiba urged President Bush to come and see Hiroshima and Nagasaki before embarking on his pre-emptive wars. Now, however, North Korea is expressing its fury at what David E. Sanger in the New York Times is calling Washingtons new pre-emptive pre-emption.
This is about pre-empting conflict by strangling a country in its trade of arms and WMDs. North Korea, as the Diary said last week, is feeling the pinch.
Pyongyang threatened an immediate physical retaliatory step against the US once it judges that its sovereignty is infringed upon by Washingtons blockade operation.
Gaddafi scores
Finally, to Italy, and as prime minister Silvio Berlusconi defends himself against charges of corruption in a Milan court with his cries of There is no body here, there is no weapon, there is no motive how can such a case be pursued?, other eyes are on the Serie B football club Perugia.
Now, youd be forgiven for thinking that the only transfer that mattered this week involved David Beckham and Real Madrid.
But youd be wrong. Perugia signed a new midfielder this week: Saadi Gaddafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar.
Gaddafi (Saadi, that is) already part-owns Turin giants Juventus. Now hes going to try and make his mark on the pitch.
For those of you not informed about these things, Gaddafi is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the captain of the Libyan national team. Still, he seems to have what is needed. Perugia coach, Serse Cosmi, said that he was positively impressed by Gaddafi a statement rarely heard in the western world.
The Diary cant help wondering: as Real Madrid goes after those Asian markets, is Perugia trying to capture the Middle Eastern market?
Quotes of the week
If it [the US] sees that disgruntled people and adventures want to cause trouble, and if it can turn them into mercenaries, it will not hesitate to do so in giving them their support. Leaders do not have the right to have any pity whatsoever for the mercenaries of the enemy.
Irans supreme cleric, Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, on the protests across Iran.
There can be no freedom of thought with turbans and beards.
A chant of the protestors in Tehran.
This is the beginning of people expressing themselves towards a free Iran, which I think is positive. I think that freedom is a powerful incentive. I believe that someday freedom will prevail everywhere because freedom is a powerful drive.
President George W. Bush on the protests.
One must remain humble.
Valery Giscard dEstaing, head of Europes Constitutional Convention.
We now have a draft constitution that is worthy of the word historic.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on the EU constitution.
Figures of the week
77.3%
The number of Czech voters who voted Yes to EU membership this weekend (on a 55% turnout).
$20 million
The amount of money expected to be collected by President Bush over the next two weeks of fund-raising for his presidential re-election campaign.
Contact the Diary editor: Dominic.Hilton@openDemocracy.net
