How do you say oops in French?

WHAT KIND OF RECEPTION WILL HE RECEIVE WHEN HE RETURNS?

Some will certainly embrace Strauss-Kahn as a martyr (like his friend and stalwart defender, Bernard Henri-Levy) on the cross of the U.S. justice system, but some in France seem less willing to give him a hero's welcome. The charges in New York led to other allegations against the former IMF leader that made him out to be -- at the very least -- a cad.

"Even if what he did was not criminal, all this is going to take time," Christophe Barbier, a political commentator and editor of L'Express weekly, told Reuters. "There is everything we have learned about him, the damage to his reputation. All this makes the idea he could be a candidate very hypothetical, it's science fiction."

As one French woman told the Times:  

"People are not going to forgive him. At a political level, he is dead," she said. "It would be terrible for France if he came and if we give him some credit again."

TIME TO RETHINK THE PERP WALK?

Initially, many in France expressed anger at DSK's treatment, whether or not he was guilty as charged. The infamous "perp walk," in which he was hauled out in handcuffs, looking disheveled before cameras -- something alien to the French justice system -- made the whole thing seem if not barbaric than certainly less genteel.

Doesn't this new revelation simply confirm those stereotypes about the American justice system? The New York Times got mixed reactions:

In several conversations there seemed to be little rancor toward the American justice system, beyond a broad sense that it was, as one French legal adviser put it, "muscular." But Patrice Randé, 50, the manager of an insurance office, said the case risked stoking anti-American feeling with the impression that the New York police had deliberately humiliated Mr. Strauss-Kahn. "We were made to believe he was guilty, we dropped him, we really bought this," Mr. Randé said. "I'm shocked that they didn't take more care," he said, referring to American prosecutors.

SO, WILL HE ENTER THE FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL RACE?

Before his arrest, Strauss-Kahn was leading in the polls to win the Socialist Party's nomination and many thought he could ultimately unseat Nicolas Sarkozy. Already, there are segments of the party that are suggesting Strauss-Kahn could return to the race -- even though the field is already crowded with other contenders.

One party  leader, Jean-Marie Le Guen, said his old ally, DSK, would now "be present in the presidential campaign," though he also said it was too soon to speculate on whether he would run. 

Socialist Michele Sabban said the party should postpone the primary calendar, in light of the news. (The current deadline to declare one's candidacy is July 13).

Jean-Louis Borloo, a potential Socialist candidate for president, seemed to endorse a DSK run on French TV. "What's stopping him from coming back if he has the strength and desire?" he asked.

The head of the Socialist Party, Martine Aubry, who announced this week she was running for president, said she hoped "the American justice system will establish the whole truth and allow Dominique to emerge from this nightmare," though she steered clear of questions about his political future.

One politician who doesn't seem likely to embrace DSK any time soon is leader of the far right National Front, Marine Le Pen. "I don't see how he can come back as a candidate in the Socialist primaries, no matter what happens," she said. Of course, this might have more to do with her own political fortunes. Analysts said she benefitted more than Sarkozy when Strauss-Kahn left the race.

And one unnamed senior Socialist told the New York Times the party shouldn't react too quickly.

"What if we all embrace him again and then he turns out to be guilty after all? We have to wait for a clear and definite outcome before making any decisions," he said. "Our voters have lost trust not just in him but the party. We have to be careful."

In an interview with German newspaper Die Zeit, Bernard-Henri Lévy continues to defend his buddy Dominique Strauss-Kahn. A translated selection:

Zeit: But Dominique Strauss-Kahn was treated like any other suspect.

BHL: Yes. But he's not like everyone else. When a run-of-the-mill murderer leaves the police station in handcuffs, a firing squad of cameras isn't awaiting him. But when it's Strauss-Kahn, the whole world is watching. To act like you don't see the difference there, that's the real injustice.

Zeit: Contempt for the American justice system seems to be spreading in France.

BHL: This is not a problem of justice, it's a problem of politics. On the one hand, they don't want to show the pictures of the dead Bin Laden so as not to insult Muslims. On the other hand, they present pictures of Strauss-Kahn on a constant loop without bothering to see if that might insult his wife or family.

Zeit: France's media has been discussing Strauss-Kahn's lifestyle for the past two weeks...

BHL: The fields were tilled in advance. Preparatory shots were fired. And now you have the result: the head of the IMF wearing the very corset of guilt that was designed for him.

Zeit: Are we learning anything new about the relationship between power and sex?

BHL: That puritanical nonsense has overtaken western society.

This is so confused as to be really kind of delightful. Yes, just why didn't President Obama realize that allowing the release of the DSK photos would potentially jeopardize national security by angering the Strauss-Kahn household? And if only Americans had the foresight to realize that the history books will record  as the "real injustice" their treatment of DSK as a normal human being...

Anyway, I'd suggest resisting the temptation to correct the multiple misjudgments in favor of simply appreciating the floridness of Lévy's imagination. (Is a "corset of guilt" a real garment? Is that why Lévy keeps his shirt unbuttoned to his navel, to show he's not wearing one?) Here's hoping Strauss-Kahn calls BHL in as a character witness.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that France is planning hold a meeting in Brussels to develop a common European policy on whether to attend the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony for imprisoned Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo:

China's G20 negotiator Cui Tiankai last week said states that attend the award ceremony honoring Mr. Liu must be ready to "accept the consequences." Liu is currently serving an 11-year sentence in China for "subversion" in co-authoring "Charter '08," a manifesto promoting basic human rights and political reform.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told French RTL radio this morning that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Mr. Hu discussed human rights on top of signing $20 billion in trade deals. Mr. Kouchner added that, "I hope France will be represented at the prize-giving ceremony in spite of Beijing's warnings," but said France would be "consulting its European friends for a common response."

A French Foreign Ministry official separately told the Monitor that an upcoming meeting in Brussels will center on two questions: whether it is appropriate to attend the Nobel Prize ceremony, and if so, "whether ambassadors should attend, or should it be at the level of charges d'affaires."

"We have weeks and weeks to decide this," the Foreign Ministry official said adding that a Brussels meeting is set to take place in coming days.

As countries who have hosted the Dalai Lama have learned, China is deadly serious about "the consequences" for these types of gestures. But to not attend the ceremony or to put on an awkward show of sending a lower-level official would be the definition of what Vaclav Havel referred to as "soiling one's pants prematurely." It would signal to the world that with Kouchner on his way out, Sarkozy's government has indeed given up on human rights entirely. 

Update: Good news. Looks like they're going. 

Is Nicolas Sarkozy's so-called burqa ban, as my FP colleague David Rothkopf writes, an expression of rising intolerance in France? Perhaps. Coupled with his expulsion of more than 1,000 Roma, it sure looks like le président is trying to use a cultural wedge to shore up his flagging popularity.

Still, I think the "burqa" issue (or, alternatively, the jilbab + niqab, or abaya issue) is more complicated than David allows. For one thing, France has a long and well-known convention of laïcité -- a far stricter notion of secularism, enforced by the state, than the American variety. Banning burqas falls well within that tradition.

Second, one has to admit that critics of full veiling have a point. From 2005 to 2006, I spent about a year and a half in Cairo, Egypt, where full veiling is relatively rare but hijabs -- headscarves -- are increasingly common. That was one thing, but I've just moved to Doha, Qatar, which is more culturally conservative and currently filled with women cloaked in black and covering their faces (many of them likely Saudis visiting for the summer or the holidays).

Although many women here personalize their abayas with elegant embroidery (and it seems that most Qatari women do not wear the full face veil), I find it disconcerting and dehumanizing not to be able to read people's emotions, to tell if they are frowning or smiling, or even know what they look like. Some Muslim women may find the anonymity liberating or believe that their religion commands it, but full veiling is one cultural practice that I would be more than happy to see killed by globalization.

(I find it particularly absurd when I see a man dressed in, say, an Armani Exchange T-shirt and Diesel jeans walking along with a fully veiled woman and several kids in tow. If you're going to make your wife wear a shroud, at least man up and throw on a thobe and ghutra.)

Having said all that, I don't like the notion of French gendarmes arresting or fining people on the street for what they wear. If the French government wants to prohibit state employees from veiling, or require people to uncover their faces when they drive or enter government buildings, fine. Private businesses, like banks, should be allowed to do the same. But we shouldn't pretend there are easy answers.

A history teacher has been suspended in France for spending "too much" class time on teaching the Holocaust.

Here's a classic example of where France goes wrong. A July report condemned Catherine Pederzoli for "lacking distance, neutrality and secularism" and that by spending so much time on the Holocaust she was "brainwashing" her students.

For the past fifteen years, Pederzoli has organized annual trips for students to death camps in Poland and the Czech Republic. The number of students she was allowed to take had been cut in half, prompting her students to hold a protest when French Minister of Education Luc Chatel visited the school. Pederzoli was accused of inciting the protests.

Here's how ridiculous the report was: 

The ministry's report cites that in meeting with investigators, the teacher used the word "Holocaust" 14 times while using the more neutral term "massacre" only twice.

Seriously? She's brainwashing her students because she used an internationally recognized term for the heinous crimes committed against Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and other "undesirables" by Nazi Germany? It's hard to imagine a more preposterous condemnation.

France's republican tradition means that it doesn't officially recognize differences between demographic groups, and that secularism is the overriding state virtue. But that deliberate non-recognition --"I can't see you!" -- itself leads directly to policies that are often used, intentionally or not, in an anti-Semitic or Islamophobic manner.

The Iranian government-run newspaper Kayhan, which is closely tied to the office of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has apparently deemed it wise to call France's first lady, Carla Bruni, a prostitute.

Bruni has joined the international campaign against the proposed death-by-stoning sentence for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, which immediately drew a strong reaction in an editorial titled "French prostitutes join the human rights protest:"

Bruni, the singer and depraved actress who managed to break the Sarkozy family and marry the French president and who is said to have an affair with a singer, has said in S.M's (Sakineh Mohammadi) defence that the verdict is unfair.

The website of Iran News Network took another route to blast Bruni:

This promiscuous woman of Italian origin, due to her race and actions, is not popular among the French people.

The office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy declined to comment.

Tough times call for tough sacrifices. Economies everywhere, desperate to continue their uphill climb out of the global recession, have imbibed this sound logic, however grudgingly. The French, however, don't seem agree with the conventional wisdom: strikes erupted this morning across the country in response to President Nicolas Sarkozy's proposal to bump the retirement age from 60 to-gasp!-61 or 62.

Sarkozy has defended the new measure as a reasonable adjustment given increasing life expectancy. Indeed, he might be excused for merely following in the footsteps of his European colleagues-Germany recently raised the retirement age from 65 to 67. (Then again, these days any comparison to Angela Merkel may do more harm than help.)

So far, the French aren't buying the President's explanations, bringing the country to a near stand-still.  14 percent of teachers and 8 percent of hospital workers left work today to participate in protests, airport travel was disrupted, and even news agencies took a hit. NPR reported that "because there aren't enough journalists available to deliver news bulletins, the main public radio news channel in Paris is playing pop music intermittently."

Zurab Tsereteli, pretty much the raison d'être for our World's Ugliest Statues photo essay, has just been awarded France's highest decoration: 

Zurab Tsereteli, 76, a controversial sculptor known for his grandiose work, was to receive the Legion of Honor from French ambassador Jean de Gliniasty at the Russian Academy of Arts in Moscow on Tuesday evening, news agencies reported.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the award honored Tsereteli's “services to our country and the devotion to France that he exhibited,” as well as his contribution to strengthening ties between France and Russia.

Yep, the homeland of Auguste Rodin just conferred its highest honor on the designer of the above 9/11 memorial, a structure so ugly that Jersey City officials changed their mind and rejected it after actually seeing the thing. 

At least from this Wikipedia article, it does seem like France has been going a little overboard with conferring the legion on foreigners during the Sarkozy years.  

The State Department's 2010 Human Rights Report examines abuse and discrimination the world over, featuring China, Iran, and... Western Europe?

Europe is not exactly at the forefront of one's mind when thinking of places with poor human rights records. But creeping into European society are widespread and insidious anti-Muslim sentiments, says the report. These prejudices are increasingly visible across the Continent, with numerous cases last year highlighting the issue. The document puts it rather bluntly: "Discrimination against Muslims in Europe has been an increasing concern."

The biggest headline grabber was the Swiss ban of minaret construction, passed by a significant majority (57.5 percent in favor) in a popular referendum. (Notably, the ban was opposed by majorities in parliament and the Federal Council, but still won handily.) Compared to its bigger neighbors, Switzerland has a relatively tiny Muslim community, and there are only four minarets in the entire country -- making the  ban mostly symbolic. But the message, another contribution to the growing trend of Swiss hostility towards Muslims, resonated. The report further stated,

Islamic organizations have complained that authorities in many cantons and municipalities discriminated against Muslims by refusing zoning approval to build mosques, minarets, or Islamic cemeteries.

Switzerland was hardly the only country the Report criticized. France's anti-headscarf laws were criticized, as was French President Nicolas Sarkozy's claim that burqas are "not welcome" in France. In the Netherlands, right-wing politician Geert Wilders is cited for frequently stoking anti-Muslimsentiments

Italy, Germany, Britain, and most other European countries are similarly castigated for anti-Muslim hostility. 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has, in the past, shown little interest in discussing the darker periods of French history. His summed up his attitude while visiting former colony Algeria two years ago, saying:

"Young people on either side of the Mediterranean are looking to the future more than the past and what they want are concrete things. They're not waiting for their leaders to simply drop everything and start mortifying themselves, or to beat their breasts, over the mistakes of the past because, in that case, there'd be lots to do on both sides."

But in the last two weeks there have been some signs that Sarkozy may be tentatively softening his relentlessly forward-facing outlook. Visiting Haiti last week to announce a debt cancellation package, Sarkozy had this to say about France's legacy of slavery, colonialism, and economic dominance over the country:

"Our presence did not leave good memories,'' Sarkozy conceded outside the still-standing French Embassy in downtown Port-au-Prince.

"The wounds of colonization, maybe the worst, [and] the conditions of our separation have some traces that are still alive in Haitian memories.''

Visiting Rwanda today, Sarkozy didn't exactly apologize for France's conduct during the 1994 genocide, but at least took note of his country's faults: 

"What happened here is unacceptable and what happened here forces the international community, including France, to reflect on the mistakes that prevented it from anticipating and stopping this terrible crime."

Asked what he felt those mistakes had been, the president cited a seriously flawed assessment of the situation in Rwanda as the genocide unfolded and a UN-mandated French military intervention that was "too late and undoubtedly too little".

But reflecting a thaw in relations, Sarkozy said he hoped the future would enable the two countries to "turn an extremely painful page" on a past fraught with mutual distrust. "Off the back of all these mistakes … we are going to try to build a bilateral relationship," he said.

Granted, this isn't much -- certainly less than the Rwandans were expecting and much weaker than the apologies Bill Clinton and Kofi Annan have made -- but it's a new style from Sarkozy, whose rhetoric has never exactly been known for its sensitivity. 

Al Qaeda's newest suicide bombing tactic -- cellphone activated explosives hidden inside the bomber's rectum -- has French security officials worried:

French anti-terrorism chiefs are expected to recommend widening examinations already used to catch drug smugglers after President Sarkozy’s new domestic intelligence directorate (DCRI) learnt of an attack in Saudi Arabia in which the bomber detonated such a device in his rectum. 

Al-Qaeda gave video publicity to its new method tested by Abdullah Hassan al-Asiri, a 23-year-old terrorist, who blew himself apart at a meeting in Jeddah in late August with Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi anti-terrorism chief. The Prince was slightly injured in the blast, but al-Asiri, who used a mobile telephone to trigger the bomb, was ripped into 70 pieces, the DCRI report said.

Such a blast, though limited in force, could be catastrophic in a pressurised airliner, say experts. Counter-measures would be draconian. As well as taking off shoes and handing in liquids, passengers could be subjected to X-ray screening or be required to hand in all electronic devices because they could be used as detonators, police commanders told Le Figaro newspaper.

Given that shoe removal has become an integral part of the "security theater" in U.S. airports since shoe-bomber Richard Reid's botched operation in 2002, one shudders to think where we're headed in response to the "keister bomber," as the Times calls him.

Normally I'm all for government transparency. But it seems like "body-bombing" is generally not a very effective tactic, since most of the explosion is absorbed by the bomber himself, but it could be very effective on a plane. Why exactly did French authorities choose to publicize this fact?

Nicolas Sarkozy's government is rolling out a "revolutionary" new economic indicator:

France plans to include happiness and well-being in its measurements of economic progress, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Monday, beckoning other countries to join in a "revolution" in the way growth is tracked after the global economic crisis. [...]

France — whose growth has lagged its peers in recent decades according to standard measures — will also try to convince other governments to change their economic tracking, Sarkozy said

"A great revolution is waiting for us," he said. "For years, people said that finance was a formidable creator of wealth, only to discover one day that it accumulated so many risks that the world almost plunged into chaos."

"The crisis doesn't only make us free to imagine other models, another future, another world. It obliges us to do so," he said.

One minor quibble: Sarkozy should really give some credit to King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck of Bhutan, the true pioneer of gross national happiness.

Skeptics can (and will) look at this new innovation as a ploy for France to "juke the stats," since its short workweek and social benefits look a lot more impressive than its GDP growth.

That aside, the transformation of Sarkozy's economic message has been pretty astounding. The president came to power promising privitization and economic modernization and was lambasted by French left-wingers for his attachment to "Anglo-Saxon" economic models. But since the economic crisis (and his own popularity crisis) he's made a habit of attacking the Anglo-Saxons for their free-market orthodoxy and consulting with market-skeptics Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz on new economic indicators.

Where have you gone, Sarko l'Américain?

MICHEL EULER/AFP/Getty Images