In his rented flat in the Paris suburbs of Seine-St-Denis, Bakary Camara leafs through pages of character references from friends and colleagues.

The praise is fulsome, but so far to no avail. Despite his job with a local roofing company, the 29-year-old has been given formal notice to leave the country and risks being sent back to Mali.

He is not alone.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's government has pledged to deport 25,000 illegal immigrants each year, in spite of a plea from employers who say the clampdown is also penalising French businesses.

Some firms complain they are being forced to sack foreign workers they cannot replace, and they resent being forced to "play the police" in the battle against illegal immigration.

Now some companies have also been hit by a strike.

Carme Chacon, Spain's first female defence minister, appointed controversially last week when seven months' pregnant, silenced her critics at the weekend by making a surprise 24-hour visit to meet Spanish troops in Afghanistan.

The unannounced trip was criticised by some for potentially putting her child at risk. But Ms Chacon said her pregnancy was an easy one, and told journalists during a two-hour stopover in Kuwait "that she would never put her child's future at risk". Asked if she was tired by the 10-hour flight from Madrid, she replied; "The election campaign was harder, and longer".

Last week, the Socialist Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, appointed a mostly female cabinet.

Ms Chacon said that she decided to go ahead with the trip only after taking medical advice on Friday. A gynaecologist, an anaesthetist and a paediatrician accompanied her on a journey that included a three-hour transfer in a notoriously cold Hercules transport plane.

Leaked memos and French threat to Celtic Tiger economy could scupper Brussels-Dublin manoeuvring over EU treaty

Bertie Ahern was fiddling self-consciously with the buttons on his jacket when the gates of Dublin's Government Buildings swung open and the motorcade swept into the Edwardian quadrangle.

Out leapt José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, smiling broadly, striding confidently up the steps to clasp the hand of the Irish Taoiseach.

ELGOIBAR, Spain: A bomb exploded outside the offices of Spain's ruling Socialist party in a Basque town in northern Spain early Sunday, causing considerable damage. No one was injured.

Basque police said in a statement that the bomb exploded at 3:25 a.m. (0125 GMT) in Elgoibar, following a telephone warning in the name of Basque separatist group ETA.

The warning was received by emergency road services and police cordoned off streets and evacuated residents after finding a suspicious package. Elgoibar is an industrial town on the banks of the Deba River, 13 kilometers (8 miles) from Spain's northern coast.

Regional Interior Ministry spokesman Javier Balza said investigators had clues about the culprits behind the bombing.

"There is an idea, or analysis, shared by local, regional and national police forces about the structure of what we are facing," Balza said.

LONDON: Eight former Guantánamo detainees have filed lawsuits against the British government and security services, accusing them of complicity in their illegal detention and seeking millions of dollars in damages, a London newspaper reported.

The two lawsuits - filed at Britain's High Court - accuse the attorney general, the MI5 security service and MI6 secret intelligence service of being complicit in the abduction, treatment and interrogation of the eight men, The Daily Mail said Saturday.

All eight were detained in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Gambia at various times and were transferred for detention at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, on the southeast tip of Cuba.

They claim in the lawsuits that British authorities knew they would be taken to Guantánamo but nevertheless cooperated with the Americans, the newspaper said.

MOSCOW: Russia's state nuclear energy corporation was expected to switch off a nuclear reactor Sunday in a closed city in Siberia.

The reactor has been producing weapons-grade plutonium for four decades, a senior U.S. nonproliferation official said Saturday.

The reactor, ADE-4, is one of two in the city of Seversk that have been extraneous remnants of the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program since the Cold War. For 15 years, they produced plutonium that the Kremlin neither needed nor wanted.

Opened in secret in the 1960s to feed the arms race, the reactors have continued to operate because of their peculiar construction as defense-industry suppliers.

The Defense Ministry stopped purchasing plutonium in 1993, rendering the reactors obsolete for their primary purpose. But the reactors could not be closed, and plutonium was still produced, because the reactors were also a primary source of heat and power to the bitterly cold regions along the Tomsk River, where no equivalent utility sources had been built.

Fighting has erupted in Southern Greece between strawberry farmers and migrant workers striking for higher pay.

According to a Greek trades union support the migrants, about 400 were attacked by farmers and what were described as "hired thugs".

Three trade unionists were hurt and one farmer was arrested, police say.

The clashes occurred in an area hit by last year's fires, and where slave labour conditions for fruit pickers have recently been revealed.

The fighting took place in the village square of Neo Manolada in the province of Ilia - which produces 90% of Greece's strawberries, and whose agriculture was ruined during the fires.

BERLIN: Confirming that Germany's agenda for economic changes is on the back burner, leading conservative politicians are adopting increasingly populist policies, calling for higher payments to retirees and an increase in the inheritance tax and other taxes as they seek to outdo their leftist coalition partners to strengthen their position before federal elections next year.

The call for higher spending was made by Jürgen Rüttgers, the conservative premier of North-Rhine Westphalia, who won elections in the most populous state in 2005 after breaking the stranglehold held by the Social Democrats for more than three decades.

Rüttgers, who is deputy leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, which favors a strong state with considerable intervention in the economy, said during the weekend that Germany's 20 million retirees deserved better treatment. He said that the obligatory basic state pensions had to be increased, even though the cabinet had already agreed this month to raise pensions by 1.1 percent. That decision will cost the taxpayer more than €12 billion, or $19 billion, from this summer to the end of 2012, according to the Finance Ministry.

"The basic pensioner, who has paid into the pension funds for a long time, should be getting a higher pension than the basic one," Rüttgers said. "The question is that some people do wonder why should they work at all if not having worked produced the same pension."

Berlusconi does it again. Zapatero zaps the conservatives. Will it be Boris or Ken for mayor of London? Europe, where democracy was invented 25 centuries ago, is now a hotbed of it. Messy, often corrupt, distorted by media ownership, sometimes disconcerting in its outcomes - Berlusconi! - but still definitely democracy, a system in which the people can change the government. Not a month goes by without an election somewhere in Europe. And you never know who's going to win.

What the ancient Athenians called demokratia may be old, but for most Europeans the reality is new: half today's European states have enjoyed consolidated liberal democracy for less than a generation. And from Portugal to Croatia, the prospect and process of joining the EU have strengthened democracy in country after country. This has been, and for a few candidate countries still is, Europe's transformative power - more effective in securing regime change than any army.

Now a great idea is stalking the corridors of Europe. It is that Europeans should resolve to promote a modern, liberal version of demokratia in countries beyond Europe's borders - in our own interest, and in theirs. This should become a central purpose of the European project for the next 50 years. Not imposing a single model of democracy by military means and not "exporting" democracy, but supporting it, by peaceful means. "Showing the way does not mean imposing the way," as European commission president José Manuel Barroso said earlier this week, at the launch of a new, non-governmental European Foundation for Democracy through Partnership.

The Bank of England will this morning agree to pump billions of pounds into Britain's financial system to bolster the struggling mortgage market. It is expected to announce it will lend the banks about £50bn of government bonds, taking banks' assets, in the form of mortgage-backed securities, as collateral.

Lending between banks has dried up since the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market in the US sparked a global credit crunch. The government hopes the banks will use the bonds to restart lending between themselves and that this in turn will make funds available to mortgage customers.

The bonds-for-mortgages swap is expected to be structured to try to ensure the credit and default risks on the mortgage-backed securities remain with the banks and are not switched to taxpayers. For example, the mortgage-backed securities are expected to be valued at a significant discount to their nominal value.

The government and the Bank are also likely to insist that banks disclose the losses they have on their mortgage books, and that they put forward plans to rebuild their balance sheets by asking shareholders to stump up cash.

PARIS: Lagging in the polls, President Nicolas Sarkozy is preparing to defend his record in office this week after a first tumultuous year disappointed French voters.

A new poll published on Sunday showed 79 per cent feel their lives have not improved in the past year since Sarkozy took over while only 36 per cent separately said they approved of his performance.

Struggling to seize back momentum, Sarkozy is to give a prime-time 90-minute interview on Thursday on French television that is billed as a key opportunity for the president to turn the tide in public opinion.

Oddly enough, many of Sarkozy's woes have recently come from within his own camp, with ministers engaging in public bickering and forced to backtrack on a highly unpopular plan to scrap subsidised discounts on train tickets for large families.

Along with much of Europe, France is facing a gloomy economic outlook that significantly reduces Sarkozy's room to manoeuvre as he seeks to bring in the sweeping reforms he promised in his election campaign last year.

Former prime minister Edouard Balladur, a member of Sarkozy's governing party, said much had been done in a year but that the government needed to set clear priorities, which in turn would be better understood by French voters.

Plans to construct one of Europe's largest onshore wind farms has been refused by the Scottish Government.

Lewis Wind Farm proposed 181-turbines for Barvas Moor on Lewis on the Western Isles.

Ailing forestry-products giant Norske Skog started the week with a bit of rare good news: The third-richest man in the world (Bill Gates) has invested over NOK 30m (USD 6m) in the company's shares. Meanwhile, the struggling company's major investor was calling the board 'incompetent'.

(...)

Bill and Melinda Gates' humanitarian foundation has bought 1,499,800 shares in Norske Skog, giving it control of 0.79 percent of the shares, reports business newswire E24.

(...)

Norske Skog has gone from being an aggressive international player on an acquisition binge in the 1990s, to a company crippled by heavy debt. Declining markets for newsprint have hit hard, as have the strong Norwegian currency and rising costs, and its share price has plummeted.

(...)

Former Roman Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo has won Paraguay's presidential election, ending more than six decades of rule by the Colorado Party.

With results declared in most polling stations, Mr Lugo has 41% of the vote.

His Colorado Party rival, Blanca Ovelar, has 31% and former army chief Lino Oviedo 22%.

The BBC's Gary Duffy in the capital Asuncion says many wanted a leadership change to help confront the poverty and unemployment rife in the country.

Mr Lugo brought together leftist unions, indigenous people and poor farmers into a coalition to form the centre-left Patriotic Alliance for Change.

Ashutosh Gupta's home in Richmond Park has all the lifestyle comforts that many educated Indians of his generation left India to attain - lush and peaceful gardens, a gym, a pool and, most important, unwavering electricity and water supplies.

This luxury block in the ultra-modern Delhi suburb of Gurgaon (about 4,000 miles from Richmond, London) houses several hundred Indian families who have recently returned from living in the West, part of a 'reverse brain drain' migration which is gathering speed.

Indian politicians are beginning to highlight, approvingly, the emerging phenomenon of 'brain gain', as large numbers of Indian-born executives decide that job opportunities and living conditions are as good, if not better, in India and make their way home.

Gupta, 38, moved to this gated enclave after 15 years spent studying and later working as a Goldman Sachs banker in New York and London. 'Ten years ago, if I had considered moving back, people would have questioned my sanity, and assumed I couldn't hack it in the US,' he said. 'Now everyone recognises that India is a very exciting place. There are tens of thousands of people like me making the decision to return.'

When international corporations trample on human rights in developing countries, it's hard to find help. That's why human rights defenders are demanding improvements for getting legal compensation abroad.

When international corporations start mining resources in developing countries, both pollution and human rights abuses are frequently the result, according to Michael Windfuhr of the German Protestant Church's social aid organization, Diakonisches Werk. People suffer alongside the environment when the ground is dirtied by oil spills, such as in the Niger Delta, or when ancient-growth forests are in danger of being cleared, as in South America.

 

And most people generally find it hard to defend themselves, Windfuhr said.

 

"That often has to do with them having very few resources themselves, often being illiterate, having difficulty documenting their cases, lacking money -- both for lawyers and the trip to the district court -- and lacking knowledge of their own rights."

WASHINGTON: U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have in recent months urged a widening of the war that could include U.S. attacks on indigenous Pakistani militants in the tribal areas inside Pakistan, according to U.S. officials.

The requests have been rebuffed for now, the officials said, after deliberations in Washington among senior Bush administration officials who fear that attacking Pakistani radicals may anger Pakistan's new government, which is negotiating with the militants, and destabilize an already fragile security situation there.

U.S. commanders would prefer that Pakistani forces attack the militants, but Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas have slowed in recent weeks to avoid upsetting the negotiations.

Pakistan's government has given the CIA limited authority to kill Arab and other foreign operatives in the tribal areas, using armed, remotely piloted Predator aircraft. But the government has put far greater restrictions on U.S. operations against indigenous Pakistani militant groups, including a group commanded by Sirajuddin Haqqani, son of the legendary militant leader, Jalaluddin Haqqani.

From Manchester to Qingdao, Paris to Xi'an, the world is witnessing an extraordinary display of Chinese nationalism, as expatriates and students take to the streets to express their anger about growing anti-Olympic sentiment and attack what they see as biased Western coverage of last month's crackdown in Tibet.

Anti-Chinese protests on the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay and President Nicolas Sarkozy's threat to boycott the Beijing Games' opening cere-mony have led to demonstrations outside the French-owned Carrefour supermarkets, of which there are 112 in China. In Paris, there were displays of support for the Olympics by expatriates saying, "Love Our China".

In Manchester and London, Chinese students staged silent protests against what they claim is distorted coverage by the BBC of Tibet. "We are here in a quest for objectivity, fairness and justice," an organiser.

Internet users are organising online protests against CNN over commentator Jack Cafferty's description of the Beijing government as "goons and thugs", while there have been street demonstrations in Washington and in Los Angeles. The focus on CNN is remarkable as most Chinese people cannot watch the channel because it is available only in compounds where foreigners live and in a few hotels.

Iraqi government forces, with US and British support, have moved into the Mehdi Army stronghold in Basra and have surrounded its main bastion in Baghdad as the Shia militia's leader Muqtada al-Sadr threatened "open war".

The Iraqi army, supported by US air strikes and British artillery, was able to advance into Basra against little resistance while there is still heavy fighting around Sadr City, a vast impoverished quarter of Baghdad in which some two million people are living.

"I'm giving the last warning and the last word to the Iraqi government," said Mr Sadr. "Either it comes to its senses and takes the path of peace ... or it will be [seen as] the same as the previous government [of Saddam Hussein]."

The Sadrists see the attack on them as orchestrated by the Badr Organisation, the powerful Shia militia which is allied to the government and many of whose men have joined the Iraqi army and security services. "If they don't come to their senses and curb the infiltrated militias, we will declare an open war until liberation," Mr Sadr said.

TEHRAN: Even at $115 a barrel, oil is priced too low, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in comments published on Saturday, adding that the commodity "should find its real value." "Oil at $115 a barrel in today's market is a deceiving figure. Oil is a strategic commodity and should find its real value," the state broadcaster's Web site quoted Ahmadinejad as saying on Friday. US crude hit a record of $117 on Friday.

Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari, whose country is OPEC's number-two oil producer and exporter, on Wednesday rejected calls from oil consuming countries for the cartel to take action to bring down prices.

"The oil price has reached $114 a barrel. When the price is suitable and supply is higher than demand, this shows the reason is somewhere else, and we should deal with this other reason," he said.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries - which produces 40 percent of the world's oil - has refused to raise its daily output quota, fixed at 29.67 million barrels.

After Tuesday's vote, the Democrats should move quickly to affirm Mr Obama's nomination. That is not just because his lead in elected delegates is already unassailable and the contest should be brought to a swift conclusion. It is also because he is, in fact, the better candidate.

The Financial Times?

I now officially pronounce this Democratic Presidential Nominating Season weird.

No one could have predicted

Chafing at ties between American intelligence agencies and Ecuadorean military officials, President Rafael Correa is purging the armed forces of top commanders and pressing ahead with plans to cast out more than 100 members of the American military from an air base here in this coastal city.

Mr. Correa -- who this month dismissed his defense minister, army chief of intelligence and commanders of the army, air force and joint chiefs -- said that Ecuador's intelligence systems were "totally infiltrated and subjugated to the C.I.A." He accused senior military officials of sharing intelligence with Colombia, the Bush administration's top ally in Latin America.

The dismissals point to a willingness by Mr. Correa, an ally of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, to aggressively confront Ecuador's military, a bastion of political and economic power in this coup-prone country of 14 million people. Mr. Correa's moves mark a clear break with his predecessors, illustrating his wager that Ecuador's institutions may finally be resilient enough to carry out such changes after more than a decade of political upheaval.

The gambit also poses a clear challenge to the United States. For nearly a decade, the base here in Manta has been the most prominent American military outpost in South America and an important facet of the United States' drug-fighting efforts.

Hint... hint... Europeans should close the U.S. bases too.

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded "the gulag of our times" by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

 The administration's communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as "military analysts" whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration's war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

In the meantime, anarchy and violent oppression is ruling Zimbabwe.

Mugabe minister accused of gun threats : Mail & Guardian Online

Zimbabwe's health minister armed himself with a Kalashnikov and threatened to kill opposition supporters forced to attend a political meeting unless they voted for President Robert Mugabe in a second round of the presidential election, according to witnesses.

The accounts of the incident involving Dr David Parirenyatwa -- as well as witness reports of other forced meetings at which Zanu-PF MPs and senior military officers oversaw the beating of people who voted against Mugabe in last month's elections -- establish a direct link between the highest levels of the ruling party and what the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) described on Sunday as a "war" against the people.

An affidavit made before a commissioner of oaths by an opposition activist names Parirenyatwa, along with a deputy minister and other senior ruling-party officials, as threatening to kill MDC supporters.

MDC: There is a 'war' being waged in Zim : Mail & Guardian Online

Zimbabwe's opposition on Sunday accused the authorities of waging a "war" that has killed 10 people and injured 500 others since disputed parliamentary and presidential elections.

"Ten people have so far been killed in Zimbabwe since March 29. The situation in Zimbabwe is desperate," Tendai Biti, secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told reporters in Johannesburg.

Biti said hundreds of homes had been burnt and 3 000 families been displaced in election-related violence. He also said that more than 400 MDC activists had been detained since the vote.

We haven't heard from the guy who has gone back to get his two kids for four days now. The only remaining line of communications, a land-line telephone, appears to be cut off. I'm concerned.

China's carmakers are embracing next-generation cleaner-car technology, motivated more by profit and pragmatism than any special love for the planet. <...>

Shanghai Automotive, or SAIC, China's largest domestic carmaker, said it would be producing more than 10,000 hybrid cars a year by 2010, including those made by its joint venture partners, General Motors and Volkswagen. Chery premiered a planned hybrid that it will pilot at the Olympic games.

Their belief - and that of their supporters in government - is that China is positioned to vault past existing automotive models into the new technologies, which require regulators' support in areas such as tax policy and investment in new technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells. <...>

However, the local industry's push into greener cars appears to be motivated mostly by China's preoccupation with energy security and a desire to build a world-class auto industry.

The West, home to only 12% of world population, jealously guards its control of organizations that were intended to serve the whole of humanity. Mahbubani rips apart propaganda in Western media outlets that participants in the annual Group of Seven summit "are meeting global challenges, not promoting their selfish national interests". (p 123) Newly energized Asians are consciously deciding to disallow their lives from being determined by Western interests.

Mahbubani asserts that a turbulent era of de-Westernization has commenced in Asia. With most Asians disavowing former beliefs that the West was the "most civilized part of the world", the latter has lost appeal as an ideal in human advancement. Chinese intellectuals, drawing on a history of insularity, have decolonized their mind the furthest and fastest. Accompanying China's accumulation of wealth and economic vitality is a popular rediscovery of its glorious cultural heritage and pride.

China is exchanging its depreciating reserves of US dollars for things of value, notably rice, with frightening consequences for dependent countries, and deadly consequences for American foreign policy.

The chart below shows the price of 100 pounds of rice against the euro's parity against the US dollar during the past 12 months. The regression fit is 90%. There is an even tighter relationship between the price of rice and the price of oil, another store of value against dollar depreciation.

As the chart makes clear, the ascent of the cost of rice to $24 from $10 per hundredweight over the past year tracks the declining value of the American dollar. The link between the declining parity of the US unit and the rising price of commodities, including oil as well as rice and other wares, is indisputable. China has bid aggressively for rice all year, and last week banned rice exports, along with Vietnam and several other producers.

For developing countries whose currencies track the American dollar and whose purchasing power declines along with the American unit, this is a catastrophe, as World Bank president Robert Zoellick warned the Group of Seven industrial nations in Washington last week. Food security suddenly has become the top item on the strategic agenda.

RAIL enthusiasts with a sense of adventure and 23 days to spare will be able to travel by train from London to Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, when a new link opens later this year.

The 7,000-mile Trans-Asia railway will follow one of the old Silk Roads through Istanbul, Tehran, Lahore and Delhi.

It is already being described by train buffs as "the world's greatest railway journey" and will be longer than the Trans-Siberian railway, which spans 5,772 miles.

Under a United Nations-sponsored scheme, Pakistan and Iran will link up their lines in the coming months to join the sub-continent's track to that of Europe for the first time.

The UN said the link would open up new trade routes within Asia and give the former Soviet republics of central Asia rail access to Iran's strategic sea port at Bandar Abbas on the Gulf.

The route was extended when the Calcutta to Dhaka line reopened earlier this month, more than 40 years after it was blocked during the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965.

Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops.

In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky.

"We cannot afford it," said a corn buyer at Kato Kagaku, a Japanese maker of corn starch and corn syrup.

In the United States, wheat growers and marketers, once hesitant about adopting biotechnology because they feared losing export sales, are now warming to it as a way to bolster supplies. Genetically modified crops contain genes from other organisms to make the plants resistance to insects, herbicides or disease. Opponents continue to worry that such crops have not been studied enough and that they might pose risks to health and the environment.

"I think it's pretty clear that price and supply concerns have people thinking a little bit differently today," said Steve Mercer, a spokesman for U.S. Wheat Associates, a federally supported cooperative that promotes American wheat abroad.

An unprecedented invasion, it began with the shock of a diminutive French president declaring he wanted to make love to us all. Or, at least, that's how it sounded when he launched the Anglo-French entente amicale after years of frosty entente cordiale. In the days of a gloomy Brown government, these Gallic love waves lapped willing UK shores.

Then Nicolas Sarkozy sent in the pièce de résistance, the triumphal, arching Amazon who would bring us to our knees: his loved-up, delicious new bride, Carla. We were putty in her elegantly gloved hands, and Sarkozy knew it. As each successive flabby politician or ageing royal kissed her cheek or breathed in her fragrance, the president's, er, stature visibly inflated.

But who was the mastermind behind this memorable seduction? Photographs confirm France's own first lady has been calling the killer public-relations shots. An accomplished musician, heiress and former supermodel, she has been busy shaping the mage of this presidency, wooing key French editors and photographers. In 2002, when she needed images for her first album, Quelqu'un m'a dit (Somebody Told Me), she called on the photographer Claude Gassian. The edgy, arty Gassian has been shooting portraits of musicians from Leonard Cohen to Mick Jagger to Madonna since the 1970s. And on last month's state visit to Britain, it was Gassian that Carla called on to record her trip behind the scenes.

The pictures reveal the casual ease of the charm and fashion offensive. From trying out clothes before the visit, to dressing at Windsor Castle, Gassian was there to record every moment: subject to Madame's approval, of course. He remains discreet about the visit: "There was no particular brief. We just have a trust that has been built over the years." Anything more to add? Rien.

"Hope, St. Augustine wrote, has two beautiful daughters. They are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain the way they are. We stand at the verge of a massive economic dislocation, one forcing millions of families from their homes and into severe financial distress, one that threatens to rend the fabric of our society. If we do not become angry, if we do not muster within us the courage to challenge the corporate state that is destroying our nation, we will have squandered our credibility and integrity at the moment we need it most."

Chris Hedges is author of "I Don't Believe in Atheists" and "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." This column was originally published by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Grabbing what you can, as John Ruskin said, isn't any less wicked when you grab it with the power of your brains than with the power of your fists.