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2 THE ROVING
EYE Highlights of the (not so) silly
season By Pepe Escobar
PARIS - The war on Iraq has been
officially erased ... in France. It has simply
disappeared from the mainstream press and from the
nightly news. The feat cannot be entirely
attributed to the summer silly season - especially
in a country where most people are entitled to at
least 36 days of paid holidays a year (Americans
mostly get a meager week or so). Once again, it's
up to the adrenalin-junkie, vertically challenged
nouveau President Nicolas
Sarkozy, the best-loved
Frenchman in the US since Lafayette.
Way
beyond the ghastly weather provoking an additional
torrent of editorials on global warming,
jogger-in-chief Sarkozy was able to bury France's
fierce opposition to the war on Iraq by visiting
lame-duck-in-chief George W Bush in W's father's
cozy retreat in Maine. Long gone are the February
2003 days of former prime minister Dominique de
Villepin humiliating secretary of state Colin
Powell (and receiving a five-minute ovation) at
the United Nations Security Council, when grumpy
"old Europe" was pitted against those gung-ho
libertarians bent on bringing "freedom" to "the
Iraqi people".
The Bush-Sarko grill -
animated by informal burgers and French (not
"freedom") fries - may have sealed the end of "old
Europe", but in notoriously wary France, the real
talk of the town (and the street markets) was why
the preppy-dressed Sarko was not joined by his
wife Cecilia, a former Elsa Schiaparelli model.
Instead of joining the Bushes to talk interior
decoration with Laura the librarian, Cecilia opted
for hanging out with close pal Mathilde
Agostinelli, the head of communication for Prada,
and the reason Sarko was voted by Vanity Fair one
of the 10 best-dressed men in the world (who
wouldn't be, with all those Prada freebies?). The
first madame was working on her tan and hanging
around the New Hampshire resort town of Wolfeboro
in shorts the day before and the day after, but
conveniently fell ill right on the day of the Bush
burger fest.
After much Lacanian
deconstruction, the sycophantic French media still
could not come up with a reason. It's simple: the
hyper-fashion-conscious Cecilia - fresh from
charming Colonel Muammar Gaddafi on a face-to-face
in Tripoli into liberating a bunch of Bulgarian
nurses - wouldn't be caught dead appearing in the
same photo with the beaming Bush clan.
George W may be in dire need of some ritzy
European friends, but Cecilia certainly knows her
priorities - apart from being totally in sync with
the genius of (French) capitalism. The legendary
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the
former "evil empire" the USSR, has recently
reappeared, as sad as Marie Antoinette facing the
scaffold, in the back of a limousine side-by-side
with a Louis Vuitton bag, the real star of the
slick TV ad. The limo cruises past what's left of
the Berlin Wall. Gorby only did it for the money,
of course: he donated his take to Al Gore's
environmental fund. As for Cecilia, she would
rather converse with a mute Prada bag than with
Barbara Bush - and on top of it for zero euros.
And then there's the yellow peril
... The Chinese approach to globalization
can be fully grasped right in front of the Eiffel
Tower. One just needs to join the informal economy
and bargain his way with a slender black chap
recently arrived from Senegal, Mali or Burkina
Faso in exchange of a battery-charged
multi-colored plastic miniature of the tower. The
mini-tower, of course, is made in China. It sells,
officially, for 5 euros (but because of explosive
offers, one can bargain it down to 3 euros, almost
US$5). Its manufacturing cost in China is less
than 10 US cents apiece. No wonder the bureaucrat
hordes at the European Commission in Brussels are
cutting short their deepsea-diving holidays in
Madagascar to study ways of preventing (and
regulating) the phenomenon.
China is not
only taking over the mini-tower business, it is
threatening to take over everything around the
genuine article as well. Residents are frantically
petitioning local powers so the Chinese are
prevented one way or another from owning every
single business in the 15th arrondissement
of Paris, where the tower lies; a losing game, as
there are already four different Chinatowns (and
counting) in Paris alone. If you can't beat them,
join them: that's what the mighty Barcelona soccer
squad did, parading its fabulous attacking trio
(Brazilian Ronaldinho, Cameroonian Samuel Eto and
Frenchman Thierry Henry) on a lightning Chinese
tour. The Eiffel Tower might as well sponsor brand
expansion in Guangdong and Sichuan.
The
minor fact of two top Chinese government spokesmen
softly insinuating last week that should
Washington insist on sanctions "the Chinese
central bank will be forced to sell dollars, which
might lead to a mass depreciation of the dollar"
was completely
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