UPDATE 1: Now we know what prompted Blanc to issue a public apology:

Mohammed Belkacemi, a respected official responsible for liaising with young players in suburbs and highrise estates, on Wednesday admitted he was the whistleblower who had recorded the controversial meeting in November 2010 where race quotas were discussed. It is believed he gave the tape to other officials rather than directly to the media.

The French national coach Laurent Blanc first flatly denied any discussion about quotas, then apologised for any offence about certain terms he used.

The recordings show officials were debating French players with dual-nationality who could train in France but leave to play for other teams. Several officials suggested limiting these players. Blanc reportedly talks about black players' morphology. He says of the training centres, which produced French champions such as Thierry Henry and Nicolas Anelka: You have the impression that they really train the same prototype of players, big, strong, powerful … What is there that is currently big, strong, powerful? The blacks. He said other criteria should be used to bring in players with our culture, our history.

One can only imagine how the players at this meeting reacted to hearing their national coach talk like a Klansman.

INITIAL POST: From The Guardian:

France has been plunged into a fresh race crisis after claims that football officials tried to limit black and Arab players on youth training schemes to make the French team more white.

The French football federation has opened an internal investigation after website Mediapart reported that top management approved a quota system to limit young black players and those of north African origin emerging as candidates for the national team. The alleged plan involved limiting non-white youngsters as young as 12 or 13 from entering the selection process through training centres and academies.

For the top brass in French football, the issue is settled: there are too many blacks, too many Arabs, and not enough white players in French football, the website said.

According to Mediapart, one of the most senior football federation figures wanted to set a cap of 30% on players of certain origins, but insisted at a meeting the quota should be kept quiet. At another meeting, the French national team coach Laurent Blanc allegedly backed changing youth talent selection criteria to favour players with our culture, our history. Sources claimed Blanc cited current world champions Spain, saying: The Spanish, they say: 'We don't have a problem. We have no blacks'.

In response, the technical director of the French Football Federation, Francois Blauquart, has been suspended pending an investigation. But it just seems to get worse with every new revelation:

On Saturday Mediapart published further claims about a meeting at which Blaquart, the France coach, Laurent Blanc, the under-21 coach, Erick Mombaerts, and the under-20 coach, Francis Smerecki, among others, allegedly debated African players with dual nationality who were groomed in France but opted to play for their country of origin.

We can mark out, in an unspoken way, a sort of quota. But it needs to remain unspoken, Blaquart was quoted as saying by Mediapart. Blaquart told RMC radio's website: I cannot not acknowledge these remarks. But they have to be put in their context. We acknowledged the fact that there were many players with dual nationality ... we had to control the management of these players who might be leaving us. There is nothing more to it.

Blanc, who played in the 1998 World Cup-winning team that was dubbed Black-Blanc-Beur (Blacks, Whites and Arabs) by French media, has often raised the issue of dual nationality players, but rejected the claim he was in favour of quotas based on race. On Friday he said: No such project has been revealed to me. It's a lie. You cannot have quotas in football. It does not exist. Football is made of diversity. It really bothers me because it's against my values. To me, this is totally false.

Last night Blanc said in a statement: I do not withdraw what I said yesterday. I admit that some remarks made during a work meeting, taken out of their context, may be misinterpreted and, as far as I am concerned, I apologise if I have hurt some feelings. But I, who am against any form of discrimination, do not stand being accused of racism or xenophobia.

Note the deviousness of Blanc's emphasis upon the loss of players trained in France because of their dual nationality. By speaking critically of it, he motivates even more French Arabs to play for their countries of origin, insuring that the French national team is predominately constituted of players with our culture, our history. No need to worry, though, we can sure that Sarkozy will get to the bottom of it, given his empathy for Arabs living in France.

Labels: Eurocentrism, Europe, France, Immigration, Racism, Sarkozy

UPDATE 1: Oh, by the way, if you are a woman, and show silent support for a woman wearing a niqab, you'll get arrested, too:

Halima, a 53-year-old mother from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, who wears a normal headscarf, was detained by police for standing silently with the niqab-wearers at Notre Dame. She said: This is the first time I've ever protested over anything. I'm not in favour of the niqab, I don't wear it myself. But it's wrong for the government to ban women from dressing how they want. Islamophobia is on the rise in France. First it's the niqab, then they'll ban the jilbab, then it will be plain headscarves outlawed.

She was, you see, participating in an unauthorized protest.

And, then, there's the Saudi exception:

Shop-owners said luxury fashion boutiques near the Champs Elysées were unlikely to call the police to detain female tourists in niqabs from the Gulf. This would create a two-tier system between rich tourists and poor French people, one trader complained. Emmanuel Roux from the police union, Syndicat des Commissaires de la Police Nationale, said the law would be infinitely difficult to apply and infinitely little applied.

Roux no doubt understands that the poor Muslim women of France are the precisely the intended targets of this measure. After all, Hugo would have appreciated the care with with which the authorities drafted it:

The law is worded to trip safely through legal minefields: The words women, Muslim and veil are not even mentioned. The law says it is illegal to hide the face in the public space.

While Italy also has a law against concealing the face for security reasons, France's law was the first conceived to target veil-wearers. Sarkozy said he wanted a ban, and that the veils are not welcome in France.

INITIAL POST: The more things change, the more they stay the same. The French Communist Party, the PCF, supported the war in Algeria in the 1950s, and, now, if media reports are reliable, the French left supported the ban on the niqab as well. The level of police harassment associated with enforcement of the ban is ludicrous, consider, for example, the following:

The guide sent out last week to police notes that the burqa ban does not apply inside private cars, but it reminds officers that such cases can be dealt with under road safety rules.

The police presence in front of Notre Dame today, where 12 women participated in a protest against the ban, was predictably over the top:

Scores of plain clothes police, a riot van, several police vans and long police buses drivn in to take away 2 small women in a niqab

Sarkozy certainly spares no expense when it comes to street theatre for the purpose of entertaining the racist, sectarian part of his base. Women who wear the niqab now attract more cops than anarchists! The use of plain clothes police is particularly interesting. Will we soon be hearing of an effort to infiltrate the niqab movement by female undercover officers wearing the niqab themselves? All of this effort because of between 350 and 2,000 women in France who wear it. As Chuck D. of Public Enemy rapped decades ago, it takes a nation of millions to hold us back.

More seriously, though, there is a subtext here. And, you've probably already figured it out. In France, people like Sarkozy put forward the sinister notion that liberty, fraternity and equality are uniquely French, uniquely the creations of the European enlightenment. So much so, that, if necessary, they can be imposed upon balky people from purportedly feudal cultures, like those in the Islamic world, for example, by the police. Or, on a more international scale, they can used to justify the subjection of civilian populations in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan to military violence. No wonder that Sarkozy took the lead in launching airstrikes in Libya.

Labels: Eurocentrism, Europe, France, Islam, Libya, Police, Religion, Sarkozy

Sarkozy enlists in Bush's Middle East crusade:

Allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons could destabilize the world and lead to war, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the United Nations on Tuesday.

In his maiden speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Sarkozy said: "There will be no peace in the world if the international community falters in the face of nuclear arms proliferation."

Iran was entitled to nuclear power for civilian purposes, he said, "but if we allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, we would incur an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world".

In a broader warning against the dangers of appeasement, the new French leader said: "Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace. They lead to war."

Iran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but the West suspects the Islamic Republic of enriching uranium to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

Underlining French support for tougher sanctions against Tehran, sought by the United States but opposed by Russia and China, Sarkozy said: "We can only resolve this crisis by combining firmness with dialogue."

In other words, the US and France believe in the urgency of destabilizing the world now, and killing lots of Iranians in the process, to avoid the prospect that an Iranian nuclear weapons capability might do so in the future. Doesn't make much sense, does it?

Perhaps, though, it is easier to explain in relation to the French when one recalls that Sarkozy, as the French Interior Minister in 2005, described rioting Muslim youth "rabble" or "scum" after civil unrest erupted in response to the accidental electrocution of two young boys running from the police.

After all, Sarkozy specifically said that he wanted to clean out les banlieues with a Karcher, a high pressure cleaner manufactured in Germany. The predominately Muslim people of North African descent who reside in these suburbs believed, with good reason, that Sarkozy was referring to them.

In the past, one gets the impression that the French, like former President Jacques Chirac, advised caution in regard to issues involving US force in the Middle East, for fear that French support for US neoconservatives could result in a violent explosion within France. Sakozy, however, has no fear of it. Indeed, if you have a conspiratorial turn of mind, you have good reason to suspect that Sarkozy is actively instigating a US attack upon Iran to provoke even more intense unrest in les banlieues in order to justify a brutal domestic assault upon his own North African Muslim minority.

Labels: France, Muslims, Sarkozy, War with Iran