French press review 11 November 2010

Academic squabbles, a ticking off for interior ministry and diplomatic face-offs as Sarkozy heads to Seoul in his brand new plane are dominating the headlines this week, as the poppy, once again, demonstrates its power to cause conflict.

Plagiarism is rife in French universities, according to Le Monde. There's a report from the north about academic infighting.

Someone called M was found guilty of plagiarism in 2005, admitted it, paid a fine and the victim left it at that, but academic furore was unleashed.

M becomes hunted, driven out of jobs and mocked, like in a Philip Roth or a David Lodge novel, says the paper.

Le Monde says students, lecturers and professors are all at it and the paper dates the phenomenon fairly precisely to 2005, when the effect of the internet kicked in, apparently.

On the other hand, further down the page, a man recounts how he discovered that 148 pages of a 284-page thesis had been taken from his own PhD, which he'd defended two years before.

He discovered the thesis title on the internet and then went and looked it up. Maybe the internet's also made it easier to get caught.

To Libération, which leads with a confidential note that was revealed yesterday on France Info.

Jean-Paul Faugère, director of François Fillon's cabinet, reminded the interior ministry of the judicial principles governing telephone eavesdropping: they did not have the right to invoke article 20 of the law on intercepting calls for reasons of security when it came to listening in on journalists' investigations.

This refers to an incident over the summer when Le Monde journalist Gérard Davet found his mole in the Bettencourt saga being traced by the security services.

The left-wing paper also runs a piece on “Air Sarko”, which is the French Air Force One that and it's new and Sarkozy is taking it to Seoul today for its first official trip.

Sarkozy, says Libération, will finally be able to outshine Barack Obama. The US president has just lost the midterm elections, and France is taking control of the G20, but most of all: Sarkozy will be able to show off his new jet.

There’s a full colour diagram of the jet, which has a meeting room, medical centre, presidential chamber. Total cost: 176 million euros. Average cost of an hour's flight: 20,000 euros.

Elsewhere on the international scene, Figaro reports from Beijing that David Cameron's poppy caused offence when he met Chinese Prime Minister Hu Jintao.

The buttonhole did not evoke the poppies growing on the graves of fallen soldiers in the Chinese imagination, but the opium poppy, the symbol of Chinese humiliation during the 19th century opium wars with Britain.

The Chinese hosts had warned the delegates it would be inappropriate. Poppycock, said the British delegation.

In the shadow of this floral battle, says Figaro, the differences over the yuan or human rights are a playground scuffle.

They could perhaps take a leaf out of Japan’s book of diplomacy: we learn from Le Monde that 1,205 ancient works are being restored to South Korea by Japan.

The works were seized between 1910 and 1945 during Japanese colonisation. They include royal manuscripts dating from 1392.

French heritage makes it in today too. Le Parisien reports that a Basquiat picture has been vandalised in Paris. Cadillac moon (1981)  bears a small trace of felt tip. They don’t know where it came from.

Meanwhile, in Le Monde, Académie française historian Pierre Nora writes an open letter to Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand asking him to put a stop to Sarkozy’s planned museum of the history of France.

The project will have serious problems overcoming its impure and political origins, he says.

"Nicolas Sarkozy launched the project in January 2009 at the height of the comeback of the National Front to reinforce national identity.

He found himself in the shadow of this grim inquiry in to wretched identity. That was his original sin.

“The project is expensive and useless and has nothing crucial - that is why every attempt at a national musuem has failed in France, that of Louis-Philippe in Versailles, that of Napoléon III in the Louvre.

Aren't you, dear Frederic Mitterrand, the best-placed person to persuade him?”

Finally, watch out Europe: drug addicts are getting older, according to a study reported in Le Monde. Portugal is the worst; apparently 28 per cent of its addicts are over 40.