They clearly deserved a lot better than going down 3-0 today.
Too bad Essien was not on the field : the lack of skilled shooters on Ghana’s part (and an horrendous call by an otherwise pretty good referee) doomed what could have been a tremendous upset.
Here’s hoping Spain or France send this cocky, overrated Brazilian team back home next Saturday.
So, Franz Beckenbauer, the president of the organizing comittee of the World Cup, got married yesterday with his long-time partner Heidi Burmester.
Nothing especially interesting here, except for the shocking fact that the Kaiser did not even bother to let his coworkers know beforehand about his wedding. World Cup spokesman Jens Grittner has this amazing reaction to the news:
Heute beginnt für ihn ein ganz normaler Arbeitstag. Er wird sich die beiden Achtelfinalspiele Deutschland gegen Schweden in München und Argentinien gegen Mexiko in Leipzig anschauen.
Loosely and badly translated as : “Today is really a normal working day for him. He will attend the two round-of-16 games between Germany and Sweden in Munich and between Argentina and Mexico in Leipzig.”
I was tempted to say “lucky bastard” but then I realized that Beckenbauer also had to endure the ghastly England-Ecuador game this afternoon.
The prospect of Sarkozy replacing Villepin as French Prime Minister has apparently been given a significant boost today, with a close aide of Sarkozy saying his boss could accept such an offer, provided he is allowed to carry out his (and not Chirac’s) political agenda.
Now, maybe this won’t come to pass (and I’ll argue below that it probably won’t). But it is worth recalling some recent history to show how extraordinary such a move would be.
It is not just that Chirac had considered Sarkozy a traitor since he chose to support the presidential bid of (then Prime minister) Edouard Balladur in the presidential elections of 1995. It is also that Chirac has done everything in his power to impede Sarkozy’s rise to power since 2002. In 2004, Chirac battled behind the scenes to try to foil the takeover of his own UMP party by Sarkozy, then the popular Minister of the Interior. When that didn’t work, he ordered him to leave the government, on the theory that having the head of the main party of the parliamentary majority in the cabinet would sap the authority of the Prime Minister (conveniently forgetting that Alain Juppé, a long-time Chirac protégé, was at the same time president of the RPR and Foreign Minister from November 1994 to May 1995).
That theory did last less than a year, since Sarko was back in the government after the failed referendum on the EU constitution in late May 2005. But Chirac ignored the calls of his parliamentary majority to name Sarko Prime Minister and went for Villepin instead, with the hope of making the latter a rival to the former for the next presidential elections. Asking now Sarko to replace Villepin would then be tantamount to a declaration of surrender on Chirac’s part.
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For those of you who aren’t closely following British news (or are being distracted by your own national scandals), it looks like the Blair cabinet is an wee bit of trouble, after being hit by what the media called either “triple whammy” or “black Wednesday” :
Labour’s authority as a government was severely shaken [Wednesday] when two of the prime minister’s closest allies faced calls for their resignation, and the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, went to ground after admitting an affair with his diary secretary.
The Tories and Liberal Democrats demanded that the home secretary, Charles Clarke, should quit over the chaotic release from prison of 1,000 foreign criminals. And Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, was repeatedly booed, barracked and slow-handclapped during her address to the Royal College of Nursing in which delegates shouted for her to go too. In the end, she was forced to abandon her televised speech because of repeated disruptions from the floor.
Tony Blair swiftly switched to full damage control mode, refusing to sack any of the three ministers and accusing the media of exagerating the crisis. To no avail. Today, The Economists talks (subscription required) ominously about a “Black April” threatening to engulf the reputation for sound management of the Blair cabinet (Blair haters : I know), in much the same way as the original Back Wednesday of 1992 had ruined that of the Conservatives for economic competence (Thatcher haters : I know).
Regardless of the impact of this week’s events on Blair’s future as Prime Minister (it’s all about economic models anyway), the whole stuff makes for fun political theater. Notably, it appears the “triple whammy” should really have been a mere double but for the attempt of John Prescott to use the media coverage of Charles Clarke’s blunders to try to bury the news, Jo Moore-style, of his extramarital adventure.
Seems like it didn’t quite succeed. At least John “Two Jags” Prescott has promptly earned a new nickname. Makes you love the British press.
The Mirror, on the latest bizarre twist of the Italian election campaign :
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi yesterday confessed to calling sex chat lines – to ask women what they thought of his policies. (…)
He called the girls to ask what they thought of him and Mr Prodi.
He told party workers at a briefing: “Seven out of the nine young ladies I called said they preferred me, which is very good news indeed.”
One aide said: “He was delighted that the women were in favour of him. It certainly perked him up.”
But a member of Mr Prodi’s camp said: “These women say anything to please the desperate men who call them.”
(via Yglesias)
While everyone in France is waiting for tomorrow’s decision (and not “démission” i.e. “resignation”, as Villepin said today in a dreadful slipe of the tongue) of the Constitutional Court on the CPE, I urge everyone to go read Wolfang Munchau’s refreshingly contrarian take on the current crisis.
The column is now safely protected by the FT’s subscriber’s firewall but, thanks to the wonders of globalization, freely available on the website of the Business Standard, an Indian financial newspaper:
At first sight, the travails of Mr de Villepin fit a depressing pattern of Europe’s chronic inability to reform. The prime minister is portrayed in the media as an idealistic political leader who tried to do the right thing, but failed. In the same vein, the young protesters on the streets of Paris look as though they stand in the way of France’s transition to the 21st century.
This narrative is as widespread as it is false. As far as I know there exists no reputable academic foundation for Mr de Villepin’s specific proposal – a work contract that removes employment protection for the young, while leaving it fully in place for the old.
Read the whole thing, as they say. It’s a lot better than the lazy drivel the international press has been offering on the subject of late.
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There are some offers you can’t refuse. An invitation to join the permanent roster of Afoe is one of them. Let me first say, then, that I was initially happy and thrilled and grateful to be part of this wonderful blog. All the more so since it means that I’ll be ineligible for the Afoe Awards next year, and thus spared the humiliation of a third crushing defeat in a row. (For those of you who are scratching their head and wondering “who the hell is this guy?”, check this post)
If is say “initially”, it’s because, as the French guy of the team, I now have the daunting task of trying to explain clearly our current social row over the Contrat première embauche (First job contract) to a mainly non-native readership. As it happens, the BBC has already done a quite decent Q&A on the topic. So go read it to get the basics. And then come back here if you want my long and -I hope- not too muddled thoughts on what it all means.
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A long time ago, in a year already far away, some commenters were mentionning a recent poll showing that Ségolène Royal was now leading the race to become the socialist party nominee for the 2007 French presidential election. One salient finding of the poll was that she was supported by a plurality of both French voters (36%) and socialist sympathizers (48%).
At this point, even casual observers of the French political scene would to tempted to ask : just who the hell is this Ségolène Royal I have never heard of? Well, I’m glad you asked and I was preparing to bore you with a clumsily written and long-winded summary about the race for the Socialist party nomination and Ms Royal’s short but happy political carreer. But I’ve just found that Doug Ireland has already done it, albeit in a clear way, complete with color pictures, snarky criticism of the French press and the inevitable comparison to Hillary Clinton. So go read him and come back if you really want to know my opinion about Segolène Royal’s chances.
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Not as much as you might think, argues The Economist in a long, Christmas-special piece about French anti-Americanism (article freely available to non-subscribers) :
In one 2004 poll, 72% of the French had a favourable view of Americans, more even than in Britain (62%) or Spain (47%). Some 68% of those questioned in another poll the same year said that what unites France and America was more important than what separates them. During the 60th anniversary of the Normandy landings in 2004, politicians were frosty, but the people at large showed an outpouring of gratitude to American veterans.
It’s true that there is a big gap between the view of the U.S. (pretty bad) and the view of the American people (quite good) in France, a sure sign that a substantial part of what is regarded as anti-Americanism is mainly driven by anti-Bushism.
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Many thanks to David for offering me a chance to raise my profile just before the second edition of the Satin Pajama Awards with a two-weeks guest-blogging stint here at AFOE.
For the 99% of you who don’t already know me, I usually display my limited knowledge of economics and politics at my own blog Ceteris Paribus and also, though not that often since a certain fateful 29th of May, at the group blog Publius. Oh, and I’m also French, which explains my awful English style and may or may not be a good reason to disregard my analysis about European matters.
Anyway, enough about me, since the quite unexpected European budget deal of last night offers plenty of things to write about.
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