Headline grabbers this week: Sarkozy-Dalai Lama meet, 2 million American jobs destroyed, US contempt for rule of law, cluster bombs

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Despite vulgar threats threats from Peking, President Nicolas Sarkozy keeps meeting with the Dalai Lama in Poland.

From Le Figaro: Première rencontre entre Sarkozy et le dalaï-lama First meeting between Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama

(Eric Feferberg / AFP)

[...] «Il convient de ne dramatiser aucun rendez-vous. Je suis libre de mon agenda», a tranché le président de la République, avant de s'entretenir avec le leader spirituel tibétain samedi en Pologne. [...] "There's no reason to over-react about any meeting. I'm free to do as I please", so decided the president of the Republic before meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader in Poland today.

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[...] C'est fait. Après des mois d'attentes, de polémiques et de menaces de Pékin, le président français Nicolas Sarkozy a rencontré le dalaï-lama, pour la première fois, samedi à Gdansk, au nord de la Pologne. L'entretien entre les deux hommes a débuté peu après 16h30 et se poursuit actuellement. Peu avant, lors d'une conférence de presse, le chef de l'Etat français avait affirmé qu'il convenait de «ne pas dramatiser» cette rencontre. [...] Done. After months of waiting, of controvery and of threats from Peking, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama met for the first time on Saturday (today) in the Polish town of Gdansk. The meeting between the two men began at around 4.30 PM and is still going on. More here.

Well, well... that will learn 'em Chinese not to go around threatening leaders of sovereign European states with whatever.

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Of course, it didn't stop Chinese authorities attacking France, qualifying Sarkozy's decision to meet with the Dalai Lama as opportunistic and hasty for not only ruffling Chinese feelings but also for weakening Sino-Franco relations. Frankly, who cares!

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On the other side of the pond, things are going from bad to worse. Reports have it that the US has almost reached the two million job loss mark for the year, the highest in the last 15 years. More than half a million jobs were lost for the month of November alone and still counting.

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From Le Monde: Le chômage aux Etats-Unis au plus haut depuis quinze ans The highest unemployment rate in the United States in the last 15 years.

Meanwhile in the :

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Roger Cohen writes about the "snub symbol of U.S. contempt for the rule of law."

[...] THE HAGUE: Of the many issues that have soured relations between Europe and the United States under the Bush administration, few have been as poisonous as America's refusal to join the world's first permanent war crimes court here. The snub symbol of U.S. contempt for the rule of law.

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In one of his last acts, Bill Clinton signed the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court, but the signature never led to U.S. ratification. On the contrary, President Bush withdrew the signature.

.../...

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The effect of U.S. rejection of the court, combined with the trashing of habeas corpus at Guantánamo Bay, has been devastating. Allies from Canada to Germany that are court members have been dismayed by the U.S. dismissal of an institution they see doing evident good.

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Other smaller nations from Latin America to Africa, browbeaten by the United States on the issue, have looked elsewhere for lost military or financial support. The American idea, grounded in legal principles, has been undermined. [...] More here.

Human rights be damned? Let's hope the incoming US administration will prove to be as good as the world expects them to be.

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And the good news is from Oslo: Afghans sign treaty banning cluster munitions

In a surprising last-minute change of policy, the government of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan agreed Wednesday to join about 100 nations signing a treaty banning the use of cluster munitions, Afghan officials said.

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The decision appeared to reflect Karzai's growing independence from the Bush administration, which has opposed the treaty and, according to a senior Afghan official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, had urged Karzai not to sign it.

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L'election présidentielle aux Etats-Unis en anglais simple

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok_VQ8I7g6I by leelefever

Pres Sarkozy takes intl lead reformer role amidst world economic crises

Crédits photo : AFP

La victoire de l'Europe

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The world has to move on - US election or no US election - and start addressing the world economic problems that was triggered in large part by the United States Wall Street meltdown. And Europe has taken the lead... Europe is prescient in move to mitigate financial crisis reports the IHT.

...After initially dithering, European leaders came up with a financial bailout plan that has now set the pace for Washington, not the other way around, as had been customary for decades.

That was clear when the U.S. Treasury Department decided to depart from its own initial bailout plan - the one approved by Congress this month - and invest as much as $250 billion directly in American banks. The nuts and bolts of that approach were laid out days earlier by European leaders as they tried to save their own financial systems.

And that outcome left Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, and Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, in something of a commanding position to claim the title of wise men. They are now speaking of creating a Bretton Woods agreement for the 21st century, while the leaders of the country that devised the postwar financial system worked out at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, prefer to stay away from such big-picture talk.

Sarkozy, who met over the weekend with President George W. Bush, told European leaders who gathered in Paris recently that he hoped "literally to rebuild the foundations of the financial systems."

There will be a series of summits and the first one will be held with incumbent albeit lame duck US president after the Nov 4 US election, most likely in the US, as Sarkozy imposes a world financial summit on Bush

Le premier de ces sommets «se tiendra aux États-Unis, peu après les élections américaines» du 4 novembre, précise ce communiqué. Cette rencontre au niveau des chefs de gouvernement visera à «examiner les progrès enregistrés pour faire face à la crise actuelle et à rechercher un accord sur les principes des réformes nécessaires pour éviter que se reproduise une telle crise», poursuit le texte. «Les sommets suivants se pencheront sur la mise en œuvre des mesures précises devant être prises pour concrétiser ces principes», lit-on encore.

The first of these summits "will be held in the United States, immediately after the US elections on 4 November" according to the press release (issued jointly by US Sec of Treas Henry Paulson, his French counterpart Christine Lagarde and Condoleezza Rice."

The meeting will be held among the heads of states and will examine the progress that will have been made in adressing the financial crisis and to agree on the principles of reforms required to prevent the occurrence of said crisis again.

The press release also said, "Succeeding summits will deal with the formulation of a set of measures to concretise these principles."

Sarkozy has taken the lead it seems, in the intl fight for global financial institutional reforms... I can only applaud him.

En revanche, le président américain, qui sera la puissance invitante du premier sommet, très certainement à New York, a refusé qu'il se tienne sous la houlette de l'ONU, comme le proposait Ban Ki-moon. Surtout, des divergences de fond sur l'ampleur des réformes devront être surmontées. «Il est essentiel que nous préservions les fondements du capitalisme financier», a dit George W. Bush, samedi. Certes, lui a répondu Nicolas Sarkozy, «mais on ne peut pas non plus continuer avec les mêmes causes qui produiront les mêmes effets».
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Meanwhile, the US president, who will be hosting the first summit which will most likely be held in New York, refused that it be held under the auspices of the UN. Diverging opinions on the magnitude of reforms are expected.

"It is essential to preserve the foundations of financial capitalism," Pres Bush said on Saturday.

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"Certainly, but we also cannot continue with the same causes which are bound to produce the same effects" Nicolas Sarkozy riposted.

(Translations mine.)

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Meanwhile, there are suggestions by some commenters to a Daily Kos post Polyphemus that Europe should wait for a President-elect Obama before beginning international initiatives aimed at finding solutions to reform "corrupt" practices by international financial institutions.

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One even suggested that Sarkozy is "bulldozing his way to jumpstart reforms" and implied that Americans might not take the French president's proposed reform summits well.

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Whoa! But why? I don't understand this obtuse attitude... It's like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

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I beg to disagree with those who believe that the world should wait for a new US president before jumpstarting the finding of solutions to the largely US induced global economic crisis. The take that anything negotiated & signed won't be honoured by the president elect is wrong; that the US president-elect re-negotiates any agreement he inherits is another matter.

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In my view, the world has to move on - US election or no US election - and start addressing the world economic problems that was triggered in large part by the United States before we find ourselves in another great depression. Proof is that the Sarkozy-led European initiative has produced a bit of positive result: bank lending has once again begun. It's all a question of restoring confidence in the market and Europe is jumpstarting this initiative. Is there anything wrong with that?