Once I discovered it, I hit the AFP news image site every day, starting back in early '03. The images were consistently fine, artistically and narratively, concise and aesthetic. Some time this spring they changed from a .jpg pop-up to a flash presentation where you can't grab the images without a screen capture, and they roll by on their own, you can only look at them for a couple seconds. The quality of the images themselves has remained high, though the aesthetic now is cheaper and more superficial, closer to Murdoch's FOX, and the narrative aspect has disappeared altogether.
The other French news site I hit with some regularity was Nouvel Observateur's photos du jour, they still have the same format they've always had, .jpg's in a pop-up, but their content was never as consistently artistic, and the editorial narrative is closer to being a french version of yahoo or Reuters. Some time ago I noticed that this man, Nicolas Sarkozy, formerly the Minister of Finance, currently the Minister of Interior, was being presented with regularity and increasing frequency at p. du j.. It had the same feel as the subliminal media presentations of Bush and the other pre-ordained officials in the US, as they were chauffered into office. Inevitable, a fait accompli.
At the same time that AFP underwent their site redesign Sarkozy began appearing there with much higher frequency, and in a more flattering light than he had before.
Though that may have subsided by now, I don't know, I quit checking in some time ago.
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On January 23, France's National Assembly passed Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's Internal Security Law, which had been in preparation since late September of last year. As in its previously proposed versions, the law gives police the option of intimidating poor neighborhoods with draconian sentencing and dramatically strengthens police powers. Ruling circles are also using the law to incite nationalism and generally spread the reactionary atmosphere created by the media cult around SarkozyAlex Lefebvre/WSWS 30.01.03
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Sarkozy has easily dealt with the half-hearted opposition of the left wing of the bourgeois establishment, but the opposition of the working class is another matter. Sarkozy's ridiculous populist pretensions and his claims to be working for the good of average working Frenchmen show that he is aware of the massive popular opposition to the type of police repression that he actually is preparing.
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When Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California in 2003, all French politicians sneered, except one. For Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of a center-right Gaullist party and the son of a Hungarian refugee, the rise to power of the Austrian-born Hollywood star was a sure sign of modernity.Marc Perelman/Foreign Policy 07.05
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...a significant gap between the ways in which George W. Bush and John Kerry approached the delicate matter of politics and religion. Bush was comfortable proclaiming his faith as an integral, if not the most essential, aspect of his life. Kerry, on the other hand, was considerably more reticent. Much of his rhetoric seemed to suggest that American politics is simply a secular affair, in which all political claims derived from religious teaching are prima facie illegitimate, because values cannot or should not be imposed on others who do not share them. These two Americans are poles apart regarding the manner in which they discuss religion and politics, and their disparity highlights the increasing differences with which American conservatives and American liberals and most Europeans view the role of religion in public life.Timothy Lehmann/Policy Review Online
On the other side of the Atlantic, Nicolas Sarkozy, formerly France's interior minister and minister of finance, who was recently overwhelmingly elected as leader of France's major center-right political party, is causing a stir with his singular understanding of this question. His new book, La Republique, les religions, l'esperance (The Republic, religions, and hope), is being touted as a quasi-revolutionary document that seeks to redefine relations between religion and politics in France. In it he unveils his "personal sentiments," the result of his experience in political life, condensed and revealed in a series of interviews.
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Nicolas Sarkozy, France's ambitious interior minister and head of the ruling UMP party, on Sunday blatantly threw down the gauntlet to rivals for the presidency in 2007 - even as his fiercest political opponent, President Jacques Chirac, lay in hospital recovering from a "minor vascular accident".MSN Money 04.09.05
The famously robust 72-year-old president, fond of beer and rich food, was admitted to the Val de Grace military hospital on Friday night after suffering blurred vision and headaches.
Mr Chirac is expected to remain in hospital for a week for tests. On Sunday doctors said test results so far were "very satisfactory" and he was reported to be working from his hospital bed.
But Mr Sarkozy, hosting a UMP youth rally in the seaside town of La Baule, unashamedly seized the opportunity to launch himself into the race to succeed Mr Chirac.
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In-depth pro-Sarkozy hype from TIME Europe October 2004
Telegraph UK - Nicolas Sarkozy: "We have to act against radical preachers!"
BBC News - Tony Blair on Sarkozy as the foreign leader who impresses him most.
Charles Trueheart on "this unusual force of nature" in The Atlantic/Financial Review
