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French and German leaders joined together on Armistice Day for the first time to remember their war dead and pledged to work more closely together as partners in Europe.

To the sound of the national anthems of the two former enemies, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy laid down a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

It was the first time a German leader had attended France’s Armistice Day, marking the end of World War One hostilities on the Western Front on November 11, 1918.

“We gather this November to commemorate not the victory of one people over another, but hardship that was as terrible for one side as it was for the other,” Sarkozy said in a speech.

“German orphans cried over the death of their fathers in combat just as French orphans did,” he added…

A visibly moved Merkel shook the hands of frail, grey-haired veterans of World War Two.

Here in the United States, most have no perception that the “invalids of war” encompasses whole populations. The death of many millions of civilians is a vast ocean of sadness – even on a day when we remember those who died in the course of battle, the accepted confrontation of military against military.

Computer giant Apple will open its first French store beneath the Louvre museum on Saturday…

Apple’s French expansion will take place against an uncertain economic background, with consumer spending in France still volatile and supported by government measures such as the car scrappage scheme.

But spending on must-have gadgets such as the Apple iPhone has proven robust. France Telecom has sold 1.3 million iPhones between November 2007 and September 2009, while new entrants SFR and Bouygues Telecom have sold around 200,000 iPhones since France Telecom lost exclusivity in spring.

“We are highly confident in the French consumer,” Apple’s head of retail, Ron Johnson, told Reuters at an event in Paris to launch the store.

Microsoft opened a Cafe a few weeks earlier. They sell snacks and drinks and you can try Windows 7 – but they don’t actually offer any hardware or software for sale.

McDonald’s and art have always gone hand in hand.

French Image Crisis: “Look what they’re saying about us now!”

The news itself did not especially interest French editors. It got a few paragraphs on the economy pages of Le Figaro, and a column in Le Parisien.

The news about the news was a different story. Within a matter of hours, this tale of cultural desecration a la francaise had travelled the world….

At least that was how the tale was portrayed abroad. The French picked up on it and ran alarmed reports of the “Look what they’re saying about us now” variety.

But the truth is that the original story – the fact that McDonald’s is to set up an outlet in the underground shopping-mall that abuts the Louvre – did not strike most French people as particularly surprising.

Why was this so? Why did the French not take to the streets to defend their cuisine, as foreigners apparently believed they should be doing? Had they given up, or what?

The answer is that McDonald’s – or McDo as the French prefer to call it – is now rooted in France’s social landscape, to a degree that would have been considered impossible 15 years ago….

But since then – thanks above all to a brilliant marketing campaign – McDonald’s has manoeuvred itself so effectively into the national way of life that it is now almost as invisible as the corner tabac….

There are now more than 1,130 McDonald’s outlets in France. Astonishingly, France is the company’s second-most profitable market after the United States. It is also the country where customers spend most money per visit….

Face it, there are two kinds of people: those who admit to eating an occasional Big Mac, and liars.

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France and Kazakhstan have signed energy and business deals worth $6 billion during a visit to Astana by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Kazakhstan also agreed to allow French military supplies to pass through on their way to Afghanistan…

The biggest deal was signed between Total and GDF Suez and Kazakh state energy firm Kazmunaigaz to develop the Khvalynskoye Caspian Sea gas field…

The business deals come despite criticisms from rights groups that Kazakhstan flouts basic democratic rights.

Despite the criticism of its rights record, Kazakhstan is set to become the first former Soviet republic to chair the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe – an intergovernmental trans-Atlantic security and democracy body.

Mr Sarkozy gave his backing to Kazakhstan’s chairmanship, saying “it is a choice for peace”.

He said he had raised his concerns over human rights in Kazakhstan with Mr Nazarbayev…

“The best way to resolve problems, and there are problems and I have talked to the president, is not necessarily to come and give lessons,” said Mr Sarkozy in a news conference with Mr Nazarbayev.

Over a half-century of political activism, the sort of “help” I received from single-issue activists on any particular issue – sometimes brought as many problems as solutions. That never meant they weren’t welcome. They simply required as much negotiation as dealing with the “opposition”. Sometimes.

I guess that’s why diplomacy offends probably as many people as it may apparently benefit. At least at the beginning.

Cripes! A Euro-mime.
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The French and German economies both grew by 0.3% between April and June, bringing to an end year-long recessions in Europe’s largest economies.

Stronger exports and consumer spending, as well as government stimulus packages, contributed to the growth.

The data came as a surprise, with few analysts expecting Germany and France to start to recover so soon. But economic activity in the eurozone fell by 0.1%, showing the region as a whole is still in recession.

It was the fifth consecutive quarter of economic contraction in the eurozone, but was a marked improvement on the 2.5% drop recorded in the first three months of the year…

The UK government’s claims that it is a global recession maybe rings a little less true in terms of the mood music from each country over the last couple of days.

We’ve had the French finance minister hailing the figures as a sign of recovery and more optimistic noises from the US Federal Reserve.

Yet at the same time the governor of the Bank of England has said the recovery in the UK will be slow and protracted.

I’m not going to waste time on market responses. That’s still a day-to-day crapshoot. Even though I’ve been steadily making money since last November – my self-determined bottom for the market.

The several equities I’ve bought into since then average 46% growth. All I can whine about is a few of the chances I should have known about and overlooked.

Already the undisputed leader in the gas-electric vehicle market, Asahi (via Reuters) reports the Japanese automaker is planning to launch a new compact hybrid based on the next-gen Yaris platform and due to go on sale in Japan for $15,760 by 2011. That bargain-basement price will be made possible by a low-cost version of Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive, used in the current Prius and featuring a downsized four-cylinder engine that may make it even more fuel efficient than its larger sibling.

In addition to production plants in its home market of Japan, the report indicates that Toyota may also assemble the compact hybrid in France for the European market. This news comes just weeks after Toyota officially announced its intentions to build a hybrid version of its Auris hatchback in the United Kingdom. We certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Toyota imported either of the new hybrids to the States in light of the success it’s seen with the Prius.

It’s expected that the new Yaris-based hybrid will go head-to-head with Honda’s recently announced Fit Hybrid. While Toyota’s interest in hybrid technology is anything but new, the fuel-saving models have just recently earned the top sales spots in Japan and are expected to be increasingly important in over the next few years as the latest round of strict emissions and fuel economy requirements are implemented worldwide.

Another couple of choices welcome in our family for certain. My wife’s ancient Volvo is too old and gets gas mileage too good for the Cash for Clunkers program. If and when it croaks we’ll probably turn it into a planter. Not unknown in our community.

Having a couple of affordable hybrid options for commuting and errands covers 99% of our time spent on motorized wheels. Though I think I’d still prefer she have something with all the cushy bits of a Prius – more choices is what it’s all about.

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This week, France plunged into another bitterly divisive national debate on Muslim women’s clothing, reopening questions on how the country with western Europe’s biggest Muslim community integrates Islam into its secular republic. A parliamentary inquiry is to examine how many women in France wear full Islamic veils or niqab before a decision is made over possibly banning such garments in the street. More than 50 MPs from across the political spectrum have called for restrictions on full veils, called “degrading”, “submissive” and “coffins” by politicians. Yet the actual numbers of niqab wearers in France appears to be so small that TV news crews have struggled to find individuals to film. Muslim groups estimate that there are perhaps only a few hundred women fully covering themselves out of a Muslim population of over 5 million – often young French women, many of them converts.

That such a marginal issue can suddenly take centre stage in a country otherwise struggling with major issues of mass unemployment and protest over public sector reform shows how powerful the symbol of the headscarf and veil remains in France.

If men decided to join a religion that required playing dress-up like the pope, walking around with velvet slippers and swinging a incense brazier from the radio antenna of their mule – I think you’d get the same response from the officials of a nation that works more at being secular than are the critics from other purportedly secular nations. Hypocrites all.

The current initiative against full Islamic veils began in Venissieux, a leftwing area on the industrial outskirts of Lyon. Its communist mayor, André Gerin, led proposals for a clampdown, saying he saw increasing numbers of full veils in his constituency…

Gerin said women in niqab posed “concrete problems” in daily life. “We had an issue in a school where a headteacher at the end of the school day didn’t want to hand back two children to a phantom,” he said. Gerin has refused to conduct the town-hall wedding of a woman wearing niqab. Another woman wearing a full veil was refused social housing by a landlord in the area. The mayor said that when women haven’t removed their face covering, it has resulted in conflict with public officials who often felt insulted or under attack. But he denied stigmatising the wider Muslim population…

Two previous calls for a law restricting full veils have been left to gather dust. This time, the debate is gathering force.

In some nations, Jedi is becoming a significant minor religion – for whatever reason. Do I get to testify before a court of law wearing my Darth Vader helmet?

Their minds are already made up!
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It was the French equivalent of former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens’ description of the Internet as “a series of tubes,” which made him the subject of endless mockery on the Web.

In a video shot for an online news site, French legislators were asked whether they were familiar with peer-to-peer file-sharing technology. “No,” one lawmaker responded, rolling his eyes. “I speak French. Excuse me.”

While France has often prided itself on its contrarian approach to information technology — remember the Minitel? — the response summed up the ham-handedness of the latest digital initiative by the French government. The video appeared this spring, at the height of debate about a plan by President Nicolas Sarkozy to set up a government agency to disconnect persistent copyright pirates from the Internet.

The proposal, approved by Parliament last month after an earlier setback, was shot down last week by the country’s highest judicial review body, the Constitutional Council, which ruled that it violated constitutional guarantees of free speech and the presumption of innocence. Only a court of law is entitled to sever Internet connections, the council ruled…

The European Parliament has consistently maintained that Internet access is a fundamental right, at a time when communications, commerce and culture are shifting into the digital realm…

What all this shows, if more evidence was needed, is that an anti-piracy strategy based largely on enforcement is bound to fail.

In the United States, the recording industry has backed away from a legal campaign against file-sharers, realizing that suing its biggest fans is not a great marketing strategy.

Now, we just need someone to explain to Congress what the MPAA and RIAA are gradually beginning to get a glimmer about.

You don’t expect any of our elected officials to be courageous enough to learn something on their own – when there’s always a lobbyist around to ’splain it to them?

French politicians have unexpectedly rejected a bill that would have cut off the internet connections of anyone found to be repeatedly downloading music or videos without paying for them. The legislation would also have led to the creation of the world’s first state surveillance system on web pirates…

The bill had been championed by the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose wife, the singer Carla Bruni, has long advocated a crackdown on piracy. On Monday, film director Steven Soderbergh urged US authorities to draw inspiration from the French bill in their fight against piracy.

Under the proposed legislation, new powers would have been granted to music and film companies to enable them to monitor internet users and report illegal downloads to a new copyright protection agency.

Anyone found to have broken the law would have been traced via their IP (internet protocol) address and handed up to three warnings before their connection was severed for up to a year. Offenders would have had to keep paying for their internet connection despite it having been cut off…

Civil liberties campaigners and members of the Socialist party said the new surveillance powers were tantamount to “the criminalisation of an entire generation”.

Others had said it could end up punishing the wrong people, for instance parents whose children download in secret or employers whose staff use computers at work to break the law.

Always heartwarming to witness politicians with enough courage to support individual liberties over profit. The system may not be perfect; but, surveillance, threats and repression are illegitimate solutions.

Daylife/AFP/Getty Images – passed by military censors

A French appeals court has overturned terrorist conspiracy convictions of five former inmates of the Guantánamo prison camp who were tried and convicted in 2007, after they had been returned to France.

The court ruled that testimony gathered by French intelligence officials in interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, violated rules for permissible evidence and that there was no other proof of wrongdoing.

None of the men, captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002, is currently in jail, having been given time off for time already served.

But the case is likely to be seen as a precedent as more inmates are released from Guantánamo Bay, which President Barack Obama has vowed to shut down. Various European countries have expressed willingness in principle to take some of the inmates, depending on their potential for dangerous behavior and whether the United States also accepts some of them. Some European countries prefer that the European Union come up with a unified position, so Washington cannot play one country against another while trying to negotiate placements.

Governments, politicians and coppers can’t serve as both judge and jury. Not in civilized times.

The excuse always offered is “these aren’t civilized times – our enemies aren’t civilized”. That didn’t cut it for Goebbels. It doesn’t work for Cheney and the few remaining apologists for Bush League lawlessness. If we are to be civil and just, then, first of all, we must live up to our own standards.