May 31 - After the French voted "Non" on approving the EU constitution, President Chirac was expected to replace Jean-Pierre Raffarin as Prime Minister yet I must admit when I read this, Chirac named De Villepin prime minister to head new French government, I began to laugh.

Good old de Villepin. What an excellent choice. Despite his hauteur, he seems to have a bit of cowboy in him.

In August, 2003, the news broke that De Villepin had been involved in a botched attempt in July to free his former student, beauty queen and Columbian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt who had been kidnapped over a year earlier by FARC guerillistas. It was rumoured that he had offered money and medical treatment - and perhaps weapons - to a rebel leader in exchange for Betancourt's freedom, and that he tried to fly secretly from Brazil into Columbia without advising either the Brazilian or Columbian governments.

The French foreign ministry first denied the story and then apologized to Brazil

Tension between France and Brazil rose on Thursday when Samuel Pinheiro Guimaraes, the Brazilian deputy foreign minister, said M de Villepin had given information which proved false.

One deputy demanded the expulsion of French diplomats, saying they "would do better not to treat us like one of their African colonies".

In a written statement, M de Villepin offered his apology to his Brazilian counterpart, Celso Amorim, who accepted.

According to leaks from disgruntled officials at the Quai d'Orsay, the French foreign ministry, Mr de Villepin authorised the launch of "L'Operation 14 Juillet", to secure her release. His critics claim that he hoped to score a dazzling diplomatic coup by bringing Betancourt home on Bastille Day. Instead, Mr de Villepin is now carrying the can for a hideously bungled affair that not only seriously embarrassed his boss, President Jacques Chirac, but appears to have damaged the prospects of the hostage walking free in the near future.

Back in Paris, Mr de Villepin had told his senior adviser on Latin America, Pierre-Henri Guignard (who doubles as his deputy chief of staff) to set L'Operation 14 Juillet in motion. Guignard quickly assembled an experienced "protection team" from the Direction Générale de la Securité Exterieure (DGSE), the French equivalent of MI6. An 11-man squad of agents, including pilots, a doctor and communications specialists with jungle navigational equipment, set off with him for Manaus on July 8.

The unheralded arrival of the C-130 the following day, ostensibly to refuel en route for French Guyana, mystified the Brazilian authorities. Why would the aircraft make a 620-mile detour when it could more easily have flown directly to its destination?

When airport police requested a routine check of the Hercules, the entire French team produced official passports and claimed diplomatic immunity to prevent any such inspection. Most of them then set off for the palatial Hotel Tropical, bearing large metal cases. By the time Guignard and his three rugged colleagues left on their chartered flight to Sao Paulo de Olivena - directly across the river from the town where Astrid Betancourt was waiting - the Brazilian federal police were hard on their trail.

According to the flight plan that de Abreu [the pilot they hired] filed, the Caraja was to remain at the landing strip until four other passengers arrived the following afternoon, July 10. As soon as they arrived, the French team took a water taxi to the Flamingo hotel. Guignard [a priest who was Astrid's contact] then set off to contact another priest, Father Pedro, who had been enlisted to help on the Brazilian side. For de Abreu, the situation was becoming alarming: during the flight he had been questioned about his night-flying experience and his plane's ability to land on rough terrain.

Unnoticed by his new companions, he returned to the airstrip and flew to a neighbouring town where a police unit was stationed. "I informed them that I suspected a plot to seize my aircraft in mid-flight and divert it to another destination," he told Le Monde. "They advised me that the Frenchmen were already under surveillance and that I should return to Sao Paulo de Olivena and await developments."

Across the river in Colombia, Astrid was now fretting about the lack of progress in her own role in the mission. Despite making every attempt to be "visible" around town should Farc representatives be present, no contact had occurred. On impulse she made the long river trip back to Leticia to await further news. "I sat looking out over the Amazon watching dolphins leap and dreaming that suddenly I would see Ingrid's face on a boat arriving, and that I would almost die from the emotion of the moment," she says.

In fact, the rescue plan was rapidly unravelling. On July 11, after waiting in vain for Ingrid's expected passage into Brazil - the French team believed that if Ingrid was to be freed her captors would deliver her to the Brazilian border town Sao Paulo de Olivena - Guignard and his team flew back to Manaus, leaving a note at the Flamingo hotel asking Astrid to contact them at the Tropical hotel.

When they arrived, federal police detained them for questioning in the presence of the French honorary consul. All four invoked diplomatic immunity, providing only a work address in Paris: Boulevard Mortier, the headquarters of the DGSE. Soon after midday on July 13, the Hercules took off on the return flight to France where a political scandal was developing fast.

Unknown to the French authorities, a photographer for the respected Brazilian newspaper Carta Capital had been tipped off about the story and had taken a picture of the French plane on the runway at Manaus. The Brazilian media, quoting senior officials, then reported that it may have been carrying weapons destined for Farc as the ransom for Betancourt.

Both Mr Chirac and the French prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, were abroad when the first reports about the rescue mission appeared in the French media. Each immediately issued stringent denials, Mr Chirac insisting that "this kind of operation would not have happened without me being informed, and I was not informed". When he saw the photographs from Manaus airport last weekend, officials confided, he exploded in fury.

As more embarrassing details about L'Operation 14 Juillet began to leak out, the French government abruptly changed tack, flatly denying that any "direct negotiations" had taken place with Farc.

Last week, Farc intensified the debate by announcing that it had never considered liberating Betancourt or any other of its several hundred captives - among them three American CIA men - without direct negotiations with the Colombian authorities about the release of its own members being held by the military.

Raffarin, in a short address after the president accepted his resignation, promised that his successor would work to bring a significant drop in unemployment in the last two years of Chirac's second term - which could be his last.

"I confirm this commitment, even if the drop in the dollar and the rise in oil prices delay it for a few months," he said.

Raffarin defended his three-year record as prime minister, saying he acted to protect the future of the pension system and state health care, among other programs.

"I have always been aware that what is healthy for the nation does not go unblamed by public opinion," said Raffarin. Polls showed that he was one of the most unpopular prime ministers of the French Fifth Republic that was founded in 1958.

By the way, Nicholas Sarkozy will return to his former position as Interior Minister.

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May 29 - Ben Macintyre writes tongue in cheek for the London Times on the Canadian-American and French-British rivalries in Everybody needs bad neighbours:

In our thoroughly globalised world, the US and Canada, France and Britain, cling anachronistically to their singular, ancient rivalries. Australia and New Zealand look further afield than each other for economic comparisons; Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan do not expend energy anxiously surveying their respective sex lives. But the English Channel and the US border with Canada remain the distorting, two-way mirrors through which these neighbours perceive themselves.

Americans and Canadians will, at the drop of a hat, bring up the War of 1812 and work backward to 1776 to present our list of grievances, but that list seems downright contemporary compared to two countries who can begin theirs in 1066.

Macintyre is looking at a bigger picture set in European terms and his conclusions are interesting but he doesn't address (or perhaps even know about) the impact of Adscam on Canadian thinking and sensibilities.

The family nature of U.S. and Canadian relations is one that we tend to rush past and it has been made easier by the wholesale re-write of history which de-emphasizes British rule and influence up here in order to side-step the end of French rule at the Plains of Abraham (Canada's Culloden, if you will) which brought a reluctant step-brother into the family.

The current scandel proves the point that we can re-write history but we can't undo it. Adscam is directly related to (if only because it formed the pretext for) anglo- and franco-Canadian relations, and many of us are re-examining our former attitudes to the cause of Quebec sovereignty and recognizing that the exposure of how basely that issue was manipulated by the Liberal Party in their pursuit of one-party rule justifies Quebec outrage and, further, may have irreparably damaged prospects for a truly united Canada.

The divide-and-conquer strategy of the Libranos is being exposed, and some are beginning to realize that the implications go far beyond Quebec and permeate the very weave of today's Canada.

Every time Bombardier is granted a contract there are grumblings in Ontario, but which profit most when the contracts are awarded to Quebec: Quebeckers or those who own Bombardier? It's past time to get deeply suspicious of the quasi-Socialist pretentions of the Libranos and look closer at who gains from these contracts. If it is done in the name of national, or family, unity, then why are the kids bickering?

Once the Libranos decided that they were the natural governing party of Canada and set about to do whatever they could to assert their rule they forgot the danger that the kids might get together and compare notes. Some are noticing that one family analogy which may fit is that of a parent who purposefully incites quarrels between the adult children in order keep them bitterly divided and, in the case of a wealthy family with sizeable assets, ensures they will continue to pander to the parent in order to get what they perceive to be their rightful shares.

But Quebec and the West have had enough and, within their own families, are seriously thinking of getting out of the family business and setting up their own. Ontario is the "good eldest child" -- compliant and obediently determined to uphold the patriarch's dominance (although it privately feels that it should get more for its loyalty than the parent is alloting) and is so invested in the family business that it tends to dismiss the mutterings of those who wonder if the price of unity is worth the cost of their dignity.

Like many parents, the Libranos shrug aside the signs of rebellion, thinking that "kids will be kids," and forgetting that the blind love of children for the parent is replaced by a more critical view once the kids grow up. Should the judgement be that the parental unit makes decisions more for its own benefit than that of the family as a whole then the justification for maintaining family unity is lost.

They played a good hand when they projected Paul Martin in the role of the sympathetic "other" parent and, by seeming to overthrew Chretien's iron rule, he gained some traction by apologizing to the kids for taking them and their contributions for granted and promising to address their concerns and to treat them with more respect, fix the democratic deficit, and distribute more of the profits from the family business.

But then the family quarrel was aired in the Commons, and the Libranos retained power by marrying both the NDP and Belinda Stronach and pre-emptively gave a larger share of the profits to the kids. Martin thus, to all appearances, retained control as this placated some of them, but there is a limit to how often that strategy can be successfully employed.

He will likely take the opportunity at the next family gathering (which would be the next election) to praise the children profusely and humbly, and this will work only to the extent that the kids are denied a thorough understanding of the business accounts for the family in part because foundations which receive federal money are not accountable for how they spend that money.

There is another who wishes to be made head of the family, and some of the siblings use their distrust or dislike of Harper as a pretext for their continued support for the Libranos, but I am genuinely perplexed that, by inference, Joe Clark is somehow be seen as more likeable and charismatic than Harper.

[In contrast, President Bush has many qualities I admire but even I wouldn't call him charismatic. My support for him stems from support for his policies, so his personal appeal is not even a factor. The same can be said for Australian PM Howard.]

I also fail to see how anyone can pretend that Paul Martin has personal appeal, and I am stunned that people still worry about the "hidden agenda" of the Conservative Party when, should the allegations at the Gomery Inquiry be proven, it would seem that it is the Libranos who had the hidden agenda and it was to enrich themselves and their friends at public expense rather than anything that resembled governance.

Oddly enough, it may be the experience of living under Liberal despotism that causes fears about the Conservatives; people may believe that the CPC is as capable of forcing unpopular legislation through Parliament as the Liberals.

I hope the Conservatives use the next period to craft and state their policies. Their failure to do so is probably due more to being a new party and needing to have those kind of discussions among their members but Eastern voters are not likely to buy another pig in a poke.

Canadians are facing a dilemma of another sort though when the media projects the value of personal appeal over policies. Is it possible to maintain illusions once the blinkers are off? The polls seem to say yes, and that is the challenge for both the Libranos and the opposition parties - everywhere except Quebec, that is. They, at least, had the grace to feel insulted by the bribery, and rightly wonder how much the rest of the family truly values them when the others don't share in that outrage.

And that's the real pity.

(Links via Neale News.)

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May 17 - At first I thought this was a joke: Europe unites in hatred of French.

Pollsters asked Europeans to list five words that describe the French and the answers were not very complimentary:

Why the French are the worst company on the planet, a wry take on France by two of its citizens, dredges up all the usual evidence against them. They are crazy drivers, strangers to customer service, obsessed by sex and food and devoid of a sense of humour.

But it doesn't stop there, boasting a breakdown, nation by nation, of what in the French irritates them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Britons described them as "chauvinists, stubborn, nannied and humourless". ..

For the Germans, the French are "pretentious, offhand and frivolous". The Dutch describe them as "agitated, talkative and shallow." The Spanish see them as "cold, distant, vain and impolite" and the Portuguese as "preaching". In Italy they comes across as "snobs, arrogant, flesh-loving, righteous and self-obsessed" and the Greeks find them "not very with it, egocentric bons vivants".

Interestingly, the Swedes consider them "disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty".

The French were also asked about other people:

Another section of the study deals with how the French see the rest of Europe.

"Believe it or not, the English and the French use almost exactly the same adjectives to describe each other - bar the word 'insular'," Mr Coldong said. "So the feelings are mutual."

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May 15 - Isn't he special? U.S. Congressional investigations into the U.N. Oil-for-Food Progam are getting our money's worth: Saddam spies 'offered to help Chirac get re-elected':

Saddam Hussein's spies planned a wide-ranging scheme to bribe members of the French political elite in the run-up to the Anglo-American invasion, including an offer to help fund President Jacques Chirac's 2002 re-election campaign.

That bid failed, according to Iraqi secret service papers seen by The Daily Telegraph, when Mr Chirac's aides allegedly said they did not need the cash.

[...]

A memo from the head of the 2nd Department of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence service, purported to report on conversations between its representative in Paris and Roselyne Bachelot, then a member of the National Assembly and the spokesman for Mr Chirac's re-election campaign. The Mukhabarat described Mrs Bachelot as "a friend of Iraq".

The spies claimed that Mrs Bachelot offered an assurance that France would veto any American proposal to invade Iraq at the UN Security Council and would work to have UN-approved sanctions against Saddam lifted.

Others deemed sympathetic to Iraq's cause are named in the Mukhabarat papers for consideration as to who might be approached, but although the papers detail the plans they don't confirm that any of these people were ever actually approached.

(Via Neale News.)

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