France - Carla Bruni-Sarkozy on the Catwalk
Since marrying French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in February 2008, former supermodel Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has toned down not only her husband’s image but also her own, stepping out in stylish but demure suits, slacks, and knee-length dresses. Lest we forget that at one time she was paid millions to wear provocative clothing, here is a look back at some of the more avant-garde—and revealing—outfits she modeled.
Rachida Dati, France's Justice Minister
For the complete report from the Telegraph click on this link
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the French first lady, taunted one of the country's most senior women politicians about her failure to seduce President Nicolas Sarkozy, a new book claims.Following a New Year's Eve dinner at the Elysée, Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy and Miss Dati were walking in the palace's private apartments when the then Miss Bruni is said to have pointed at Mr Sarkozy's bed and said: "You'd have loved to occupy it, wouldn't you?" The book says the women "who were just getting to know each other, were also learning how to detest each other". Miss Dati a Muslim and France's Justice Minister was a close friend of Mr Sarkozy's ex-wife, Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, who called her "my little sister" - making the new Mrs Bruni-Sarkozy dislike her even more.
Two decades ago Rachida Dati, a French daughter of north African immigrants, got married to a man that she barely knew. It was not quite an arranged marriage. It was a marriage "to please her family". She immediately regretted her decision. She persuaded her Algerian husband to agree to an instant annulment. Rachida Dati was in her early twenties at the time and making her way as a young lawyer and businesswoman in Paris. Through hard work, as a law student and by taking menial jobs, she had already fought her way clear of her impoverished, immigrant family of 11 brothers and sisters just north of Lyons. Two decades later, Mme Dati is France's first senior minister of north African origin. She is a protégée of President Nicolas Sarkozy. She has been catapulted without previous experience – and her enemies insist without any political skills – into one of the most senior and potentially explosive jobs in French government.
Her political career is threatened by her response to a national debate over how much French law should be influenced by its minorities, based on a court decision that reflects Ms. Dati's own experience as a young Muslim woman struggling to make her way out of a ghetto north of the French city of Lyon. The controversy began last week when a Paris newspaper revealed that a court in the northern city of Lille had annulled the marriage of a Muslim couple because the bride, 20, had lied to her husband, 32, about her virginity. The judge did not cite the couple's religion or the bride's previous sexual experience but ruled that, under the French civil code, the young woman had breached the marital contract by being untruthful about what her husband considered "an essential quality decisive for [his] consent." Feminists, philosophers and politicians of all stripes have united to condemn the decision as a step backward for equality and a dangerous step toward incorporating religious beliefs into the laws of a proudly secular state. Note EU-Digest: Lying, if it is about one's virginity or something else, remains a lie, and has nothing to do about one's religion in order for the lie to qualify as a lie. Mme Dati is on the right track. President Sarkozy said calls for justice minister Rachida Dati to resign over comments she made about a Muslim marriage annulment amounted to a ‘baseless lynching’.
Bloody reality bears no relation to the delusions of this President - Robert Fisk
The President sat chummily beside the all-too-friendly monarch yesterday, enthroned in what looked suspiciously like the kind of casual blue cardigan he might wear on his own Texan ranch; he had even received a jangling gold "Order of Merit" – it looked a bit like the Lord Chancellor's chain, though it was not disclosed which particular merit earned Mr Bush this kingly reward. Could it be the hypocritical merit of supplying yet more billions worth of weapons to the Kingdom, to be used against the Saudi regime's imaginary enemies.
Over the past decade, the Gulf Arabs have squandered billions of their oil dollars on American weapons. The statistics tell their own story. In 1998 and 1999 alone, Gulf Arab military spending came to US$ 78bn. Between 1997 and 2005, the sheikhs of the United Arab Emirates – Mr Bush's hosts before he continued to Riyadh – signed arms contracts worth US$17bn with Western nations. Between 1991 and 1993 – when Iraq was the "enemy" – the US Military Training Mission was administering more than US$ 27bn in Saudi arms procurements and US$23bn in new US weapons acquisitions. By this time, the Saudis already possessed 72 American F-15 fighter-bombers and 114 British Tornados.
Note EU-Digest: Unfortunately several EU states are also playing along with this weapons sale charade in the Middle East. Unfortunately one day these weapons will be turned around and used against the countries which sold the weapons."
The Sarkozy's in better times
For the complete report from the International Herald Tribune click on this link
Cécilia Sarkozy tells her story - by Elaine Sciolino
"We tried everything, I tried everything," she said. "What happened to me has happened to millions of people: One day you no longer have your place in the couple. The couple is no longer the essential thing of your life. It no longer functions; it no longer works."
Sarkozy will live at the Élysée palace and Cécilia Sarkozy at their apartment in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. According to the divorce settlement, they will share custody of their 10-year-old son, Louis. Cécilia Sarkozy, who also has two grown daughters by a previous marriage, said she intended to spend more time with her family. She also said that although she had no projects at the moment, "I want to do many things and I feel I have the possibility to help others - that has always been my nature."
