Nicolas Sarkozy
President-elect of the French Republic
Taking� office 16 May 2007
Succeeding	Jacques Chirac
Minister of the Interior
In� office 31 May 2005� –� 26 March 2007
President	Jacques Chirac
Preceded� by	Dominique de Villepin
Succeeded� by	François Baroin
In� office 7 May 2002� –� 31 March 2004
President	Jacques Chirac
Preceded� by	Daniel Vaillant
Succeeded� by	Dominique de Villepin
Born	28 January 1955 (1955-01-28) (age� 52) Paris, France
Nationality	French
Political� party	UMP
Spouse	(1) Marie-Dominique Culioli (married 1982, divorced 1996) (2) Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz (married 1996)
Children	Pierre, Jean and Louis
Alma mater	University of Paris X: Nanterre Sciences Po
Religion	Roman Catholic
Website	sarkozy.fr

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Nicolas Sarkozy (IPA: [nikɔla saʁkɔzi] — pronunciation� (help·info)), born Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa on 28 January 1955 in Paris, France, is a French politician. He is leader of the UMP, and was elected President of the French Republic on 6 May 2007 after defeating Socialist Party contender Ségolène Royal during the 2007 election, and will take office on the morning of 16 May.

Sarkozy is known for his conservative stance on law and order issues and his admiration for a new economic model for France, suggesting that the country should have a more liberalised economy, inspired by the American and British examples. Until 26 March 2007, he served as the Minister of the Interior of France. His nickname Sarko is used by both supporters and opponents.

Personal life

Family background

Nicolas Sarkozy is the son of a Hungarian immigrant father, Pál Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa^[1] (Hungarian: nagybócsai Sárközy Pál; some sources spell it Nagy-Bócsay Sárközy Pál; Hungarian pronunciation� (help·info)), and a French mother Andrée Mallah.

Pál Sárközy was born in 1928 in Budapest into a family belonging to the lower nobility of Hungary. The family possessed lands and a small castle in the village of Alattyán (near Szolnok), 92 km (57 miles) east of Budapest. Pál Sárközy’s father and grandfather held elective offices in the town of Szolnok. Although the Sárközy de Nagy-Bócsa (nagybócsai Sárközy) family was Protestant, Pál Sárközy’s mother, Katalin Tóth de Csáford (Hungarian: csáfordi Tóth Katalin), grandmother of Nicolas Sarkozy, was from a Catholic aristocratic family.

As the Red Army entered Hungary in 1944, the Sárközy family fled to Germany^[2]. They returned in 1945 but all their possessions had been seized. Pál Sárközy’s father died soon afterwards and his mother, fearing that he would be drafted into the Hungarian People’s Army or sent to Siberia, urged him to leave the country and promised she would eventually follow him and meet him in Paris. Pál Sárközy managed to flee to Austria and then Germany while his mother reported to authorities that he had drowned in Lake Balaton. Eventually, he arrived in Baden Baden, near the French border, where the headquarters of the French Army in Germany were located, and there he met a recruiter for the French Foreign Legion. He signed up for five years, and was sent for training to Sidi Bel Abbes, in French Algeria, where the French Foreign Legion’s headquarters were located. He was due to be sent to Indochina at the end of training, but the doctor who checked him before departure, who happened to also be Hungarian, sympathised with him and gave him a medical discharge to save him from possible death at the hands of the Vietminh. He returned to civilian life in Marseille in 1948 and, although he asked for French citizenship only in the 1970s (his legal status was that of a stateless person until then), he nonetheless gallicised his Hungarian name into “Paul Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa”. Paul Sarkozy moved to Paris where he used his artistic skills to enter the advertising industry. He met Andrée Mallah, Nicolas Sarkozy’s mother, in 1949.

Andrée Mallah, then a law student, was the daughter of Benedict Mallah, a wealthy urologist and STD specialist with a well-established reputation in the mainly bourgeois 17th arrondissement of Paris. Benedict Mallah, originally called Aaron Mallah and nicknamed Benico, was born in 1890 in the Sephardic Jewish community of Thessaloniki (Salonica), Greece, which at the time had a Jewish majority. According to Jewish genealogical societies, the Mallah family of Salonica anciently came from Spain which they had left in 1492 when the Catholic Monarchs had expelled the Jews. Resettled in Provence, southern France, the family had moved to Salonica a century later. Benico Mallah, the son of a jeweler, left Salonica, then part of the Ottoman Empire, with his mother in 1904 at the age of 14 to attend the prestigious Lycée Lakanal boarding school of Sceaux, in the southern suburbs of Paris. He studied medicine after his baccalaureate and decided to stay in France and become a French citizen. A doctor in the French Army during World War I, he met a recent war widow, Adèle Bouvier (1891–1956), from a bourgeois family of Lyon, whom he married in 1917. Adèle Bouvier, Nicolas Sarkozy’s grandmother, was a Catholic like the majority of French people. Mallah, for whom religion had reportedly never been a central issue, converted to Catholicism upon marrying Adèle Bouvier, which had been requested by Adèle’s parents, and changed his name to Benedict. Although Benedict Mallah converted to Catholicism, he and his family nonetheless had to flee Paris and take refuge in a small farm in Corrèze during World War II to avoid being arrested and delivered to the Germans.

Paul Sarkozy and Andrée Mallah settled in the 17th arrondissement in Paris and had three sons: Guillaume, born in 1951, who is an entrepreneur in the textile industry, Nicolas, born in 1955 and François, born in 1957 (an MBA and manager of a healthcare consultancy company [2]). In 1959 Paul Sarkozy left his wife and his three children. He later remarried twice and had two more children with his second wife.

Early life

During Sarkozy’s childhood, his father refused to give his former wife’s family any financial help, even though he had founded his own advertising agency and had become wealthy. The family lived in a small mansion owned by Sarkozy’s grandfather, Benedict Mallah, in the 17th Arrondissement. The family later moved to Neuilly-sur-Seine, one of the wealthiest communes of the ÃŽle-de-France région immediately west of the 17th Arrondissement just outside of Paris. According to Sarkozy, his staunchly Gaullist grandfather was more of an influence on him than his father, whom he rarely saw. His grandfather, a Sephardi Jew by birth, was a convert to Catholicism, and Sarkozy was, accordingly, raised in the Catholic faith of his household. Nicolas Sarkozy, like his brothers, is a baptised and professing Catholic. Sarkozy also said recently that one of his role models was former pope John Paul II.

Sarkozy’s father Paul did not teach him or his brothers Hungarian. There is no evidence suggesting that there was an attempt to educate the Sarkozy siblings about their paternal ethnic background.

Sarkozy has said that having been abandoned by his father shaped much of who he is today. As a young boy and teenager, he felt inferior in relation to his wealthy classmates.^[3] He suffered from insecurities (his physical shortness of 1.65 m, 5 feet 5 inches, or his family’s lack of money, at least relatively to their 17th Arrondissement or Neuilly neighbours), and is said to have harboured a considerable amount of resentment against his absent father. “What made me who I am now is the sum of all the humiliations suffered during childhood”, he said later.^[4]

Studies

Sarkozy was enrolled in the Lycée Chaptal, a state-funded (public) middle and high school in the 8th arrondissement, where he failed his sixième (equivalent to sixth grade in the US and Year 7 in England and Wales). His family then sent him to the Cours Saint-Louis de Monceau, a private Catholic middle and high school in the 17th arrondissement, where he was reportedly a mediocre pupil, but where he nonetheless obtained his baccalauréat in 1973. Later he obtained a bachelor’s degree in law from the Université Paris X Nanterre. He attended the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (more commonly known as Sciences Po), but did not graduate because he failed his exam in English ^[5]. He enrolled himself at Nanterre University in law, already run down some years after May ’68. After passing the bar exam, he became a lawyer specializing in French business law and family law, skills which he would later put to use in divorcing his first wife and helping his mother take legal action against his father in order to raise alimony ^[6].

Personal wealth

Sarkozy declared to the Constitutional Council a net worth of two million euros, most of the assets being in the form of life insurance policies. ^[7].

Political career

General traits

Nicolas Sarkozy speaking at the congress of his party

He is generally recognized by the right and left as a highly skilled politician and striking orator. Supporters of Sarkozy within France emphasize his charisma, political innovation and willingness to “make a dramatic break” amidst mounting disaffection against “politics as usual”; some see him as wanting to depart from traditional French social and economic principles in favor of American-style economic reform. Overall, he is generally considered to be somewhat more pro-U.S. than most French politicians.

Since November 2004, he has been president of the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP), France’s major right political party, and he was Minister of the Interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin, with the honorific title of Minister of State, making him effectively the number three man in the French State after President Jacques Chirac and the prime minister. His ministerial responsibilities included law enforcement and working to co-ordinate relationships between the national and local governments, as well as Minister of Cults (in this guise he created the CFCM, French Council of Muslim Faith). Previously, he was a deputy to the French National Assembly. He was forced to resign this position in order to accept his ministerial appointment. He previously also held several ministerial posts, including Finance Minister.

Career

Sarkozy’s political career began at the age of 22, when he became a city councillor in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy and exclusive western suburb of Paris (in the Hauts-de-Seine département). A member of the Neo-Gaullist party RPR, he went on to be elected mayor of that town, after the death of the incumbent mayor Achille Peretti. Sarkozy had been close to Peretti, as his mother was Peretti’s secretary. The senior RPR politician in the time, Charles Pasqua, wanted to become mayor, and asked Sarkozy to organise his campaign. Instead Sarkozy profited from a short illness of Pasqua to propel himself into the office of mayor.^[8] He was the youngest ever mayor of any town in France with a population of over 50,000. He served from 1983 to 2002. In 1988, he became a deputy in the National Assembly.

In 1993, Sarkozy was in the national news for personally negotiating with the “Human Bomb”, a man who had taken small children hostage in a kindergarten in Neuilly. The “Human Bomb” was killed after two days of talks by policemen of the RAID, who entered the school stealthily while the attacker was resting.

From 1993 to 1995, he was Minister for the Budget and spokesman for the executive in the cabinet of Prime Minister Édouard Balladur. Throughout most of his early career, Sarkozy had been seen as a protégé of Jacques Chirac. However, in 1995 he spurned Chirac and backed Balladur for President of France. After Chirac won the election, Sarkozy lost his position as Minister for the Budget and found himself outside the circles of power. It is widely believed that ever since 1995 Chirac has considered Sarkozy’s siding with Balladur as a form of treason, and that the two men now loathe one another.

However, he came back after the right-wing defeat at the 1997 parliamentary election, as number 2 of the RPR. When the party leader Philippe Séguin resigned, in 1999, he took the lead of the Neo-Gaullist party. But it obtained its worst result at the 1999 European Parliament election, winning 12.7% of the votes, less than the dissident Rally for France of Charles Pasqua. Sarkozy lost the RPR leadership.

In 2002, however, after his re-election as President of the French Republic (see French presidential election, 2002), Chirac appointed Sarkozy as French Minister of the Interior in the cabinet of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, despite the widely acknowledged friction between the two. Following Jacques Chirac’s 14th of July keynote speech on road safety Sarkozy as interior minister pushed through new legislation leading to the mass purchase of speed cameras and a campaign to increase the awareness of dangers on the roads.

Following the cabinet reshuffle of 31 March 2004, Sarkozy was moved to the position of Finance Minister. Tensions continued to build between Sarkozy and Chirac and within the UMP party, as Sarkozy’s intentions of becoming head of the party after the resignation of Alain Juppé became clear. It became increasingly apparent that Sarkozy would go on to seek the presidency in 2007; in an often-repeated comment made on television channel France 2, when asked by a journalist whether he thought about the presidential election when he shaved in the morning, Sarkozy commented, “not just when I shave”.^[9]

In November 2004 after party elections, Sarkozy became leader of the UMP with 85% of the vote. In accordance with an agreement with Chirac, he resigned his position as minister. Sarkozy’s ascent was marked by the division of UMP between sarkozystes, such as Sarkozy’s “first lieutenant”, Brice Hortefeux, and Chirac loyalists, such as Jean-Louis Debré.

Sarkozy was made Chevalier de la Legion d’honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by President Chirac in February 2005. He was re-elected on 13 March 2005 to the National Assembly (as required by the constitution,^[10] he had had to resign as a deputy when he had become minister in 2002).

On 31 May 2005 the main French news radio station France Info reported a rumour that Sarkozy was to be reappointed Minister of the Interior in the government of Dominique de Villepin without resigning from the UMP leadership. This was confirmed on 2 June 2005, when the members of the government were officially announced.

Raffarin government

First term as Minister of the Interior

Nicolas Sarkozy, here with then prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, meeting with bicycle-mounted officers of the French National Police.

Towards the end of his first term as Minister of the Interior, in 2004, Sarkozy was the most popular and also the most unpopular conservative politician in France, according to polls conducted at the beginning of 2004. His “tough on crime” policies, which included increasing the police presence on the streets and introducing monthly crime performance ratings, were popular with many and unpopular for many others. However, he was criticized for putting forward legislation which can be questioned as an infringement on civil rights, and adversely affected disadvantaged sections of the population.^{[citation needed]}

Sarkozy has sought to ease the sometimes tense relationships between the general French population and the Muslim community. Unlike the Catholic Church in France with their official leaders or Protestants with their umbrella organisations, the French Muslim community had a lack of structure with no group that could legitimately deal with the French government on their behalf. Sarkozy felt that the foundation of such an organisation was desirable. He supported the foundation in May 2003 of the private non-profit Conseil français du culte musulman (“French Council of Muslim Worship”), an organisation meant to be representative of French Muslims.^[11] In addition, Sarkozy has suggested amending the 1905 law on the separation of Church and State, mostly in order to be able to finance mosques and other Muslim institutions with public funds^[12] so that they are less reliant on money from outside of France.

Minister of Finance

During his short appointment as Minister of Finance, Sarkozy was responsible for introducing a number of policies. The degree to which this reflected libéralisme (a hands-off approach to running the economy) or more traditional French state dirigisme (intervention) is controversial. He resigned the day following his election as president of the UMP.

• In September 2004, Sarkozy oversaw the reduction of the government ownership stake in France Télécom from 50.4% to 41%.^[13]
• Sarkozy backed a partial nationalisation of the engineering company Alstom decided by his predecessor when the company was exposed to bankruptcy in 2003.^[14]
• Sarkozy reached an agreement with the major retail chains in France to concertedly lower prices on household goods by an average of 2%; the success of this measure is disputed, with studies suggesting that the decrease was closer to 1%.^[15]
• Taxes: Sarkozy avoided taking a position on the ISF (solidarity tax on wealth). This is considered an ideological symbol by many on the Left and Right. Some in the business world and on the Liberal Right, such as Alain Madelin, wanted it abolished. For Sarkozy, that would have risked being categorised by the Left as a gift to the richest classes of society at a time of economic difficulties.^[16] So Sarkozy preferred reducing the ISF with the bouclier fiscal.

Villepin government

Second term as Minister of the Interior

Sarkozy as Minister of the Interior with American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, after their bilateral meeting in Washington D.C.

During his second term at the Ministry of the Interior, Sarkozy was initially more discreet about his ministerial activities: instead of focusing on his own topic of law and order, many of his declarations addressed wider issues, since he was expressing his opinions as head of the UMP party.

Main article: Response to the 2005 civil unrest in France

However, the civil unrest in autumn 2005 put law enforcement in the spotlight again. Sarkozy was accused of having provoked the unrest by calling young delinquents from housing projects “rifraff” (“racaille”) in Argenteuil near Paris. After the accidental death of two youths, which sparked the riots, Sarkozy first blamed it on “hoodlums” and gangsters. These remarks were sharply criticised by many on the left wing and by a member of his own government, Delegate Minister for Equal Opportunities Azouz Begag.^[17]

After the rioting, he made a number of announcements on future policy: selection of immigrants, greater tracking of immigrants, and a reform on the 1945 ordinance government justice measures for young delinquents.

Action as UMP’s leader

Sarkozy currently is the president of UMP, the French conservative party, elected with 85% of the vote. During his presidency, the number of members has significantly increased. In 2005, he supported a “yes” vote in the French referendum on the European Constitution.

Throughout 2005, Sarkozy became increasingly vocal in calling for radical changes in France’s economic and social policies. These calls culminated in an interview with Le Monde on 8 September 2005, during which he claimed that the French had been misled for 30 years by false promises, and denounced what he considers to be unrealistic policies.^[18] Among other issues:

• he called for a simplified and “fairer” taxation system, with fewer loopholes and a maximum taxation rate (all direct taxes combined) at 50% of revenue;
• he approved measures reducing or denying social support to unemployed workers who refuse work offered to them;
• he pressed for a reduction in the budget deficit, claiming that the French state has been living off credit for some time.

Such policies are what are called in France libéral (that is, in favour of laissez-faire economic policies, although this judgment is made by French standards) or, with a pejorative undertone, ultra-libéral. Sarkozy rejects this label of libéral and prefers to call himself a pragmatist instead.

Sarkozy opened another avenue of controversy by declaring that he wanted a reform of the immigration system, with quotas designed to admit the skilled workers needed by the French economy. He also wants to reform the current French system for foreign students, saying that it enables foreign students to take open-ended curricula in order to obtain residency in France; instead, he wants to select the best students to the best curricula in France.

In early 2006, the French parliament adopted a controversial bill known as DADVSI, which reforms French copyright law. Since his party was divided on the issue, Sarkozy stepped in and organised meetings between various parties involved. Later, groups such as the Odebi League and EUCD.info alleged that Sarkozy personally and unofficially supported certain amendments to the law, which enacted strong penalties against designers of peer-to-peer systems.

Controversy

Many on the Left have a particular distrust for Nicolas Sarkozy; specific “anti-Sarko” movements have been started

Generally speaking, Sarkozy is a bête noire of the left (see below), and is also criticized by some on the right, most vocally by the supporters of Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, such as Jean-Louis Debré, but also by social Catholics such as Christine Boutin; Boutin however, in the end, gave up her presidential bid and became a political advisor to Sarkozy. [3] [4]

Critics have accused him of being an authoritarian demagogue, ready to trade away civil liberties for political gains.^[19] Some of these accusations are echoed by French civil rights organisations.^{[citation needed]} He is also accused by the Left of being a populist who favours far-right ideas.^[20]

Kärcher remark

Since his famous Kärcher remark, Nicolas Sarkozy has been lampooned about his fondness for cleaning out the riff-raff; here, electoral posters of Sarkozy were posted on a Kärcher car wash

In the midst of a tense period and following a shooting that killed an 11-year-old boy in the banlieue of La Courneuve in June 2005, he quoted a local resident and vowed to clean the area out “with a Kärcher” (nettoyer la cité au Kärcher, Kärcher being a well-known brand of pressure cleaning equipment), and two days before the 2005 Paris riots he referred to the rioters as voyous (thugs) and racaille, a slang term which can be translated into English as dregs or riff-raff, ^[21] this being criticised as being too hard on the rioters.^[22][23]

Separation of powers

As Minister of the Interior, Sarkozy has made bold statements following heinous crimes reported in the media. As a consequence, he has been accused in certain cases of failing to respect the separation of powers between the executive and the judiciary by trying to apply pressure in certain cases. Most famously, he was criticised, not only by the left-wing Syndicat de la magistrature judges’ union, but also by the centrist Union syndicale des magistrats for attacks on the independence of the judiciary.^[24]

In September 2005 some youths were acquitted of an arson attack on a police station in Pau for lack of proof and Sarkozy was accused of having pushed for a hasty inquiry—Sarkozy had vowed that the perpetrators would be arrested within three months.^[25] On 22 June 2005, he announced to law enforcement officials that he had questioned the Minister of Justice about the future of “the judge” who had freed a man on parole, enabling him to commit a murder.^[26] These comments were criticised by both moderate and left-wing magistrates since the decision had been made by three judges.

Sarkozy has personal friendships with some of the most powerful figures in the French business world; for example, Martin Bouygues (from the Bouygues group, owner of the TF1 channel, as well as telecommunications and public works companies) and Bernard Arnault (from LVMH) were his marriage witnesses. His brother, Guillaume, is a senior executive of the MEDEF, the foremost business union in France; in 2005, he renounced running for the top position of that union because he said he did not want to hinder his brother’s political career.

Religion and state

Sarkozy, a Catholic, has caused controversy because of his views on the relationship between religion and state. In 2004, he published a book called La République, les religions, l’espérance (“The Republic, Religions, and Hope”),^[27] in which he argued that the young should not be brought up solely on secular or republican values. He also advocated reducing the separation of church and state, arguing for the government subsidy of mosques in order to encourage Islamic integration into French society.^[28][29] He flatly opposes financing of religious institutions with funds from outside France. After meeting with Tom Cruise, Sarkozy was criticised by some for meeting with a member of the Church of Scientology, which is classified as a dangerous sect in France.^[30]

War in Iraq

Nicolas Sarkozy, like almost all French politicians, disapproved of the US-led invasion of Iraq, but was nonetheless critical of the way Jacques Chirac and his foreign minister Dominique de Villepin expressed France’s opposition to the war. Talking at the French-American Foundation in Washington, D.C. on 12 September 2006, he denounced what he called the “French arrogance” and said: “It is bad manners to embarrass one’s allies or sound like one is taking delight in their troubles.”^[31] He also added: “We must never again turn our disagreements into a crisis.” This speech, given without the assent of the French president by a member of the French government traveling abroad (Sarkozy was still Minister of the Interior), was criticized by many in France. Jacques Chirac reportedly said in private that Sarkozy’s speech was “appalling” and “a shameful act”.^[31]

Regularisation of immigrant families

Sarkozy issued a memorandum (the ‘circulaire Sarkozy’) on 13 June 2006. In this decision sent to all prefects of France (his representatives in the provinces), he proposed to hand some immigration papers to immigrant families with children integrated in French schools. A strict series of conditions were listed in order to accept the regularisation of the situation of these families (proofs of integration in the country, proof of job, etc.). This offer attracted a large number of applications (around 25,000) handed to police services, usually under the advice of charities of specialised social associations. Most of the files were refused because the minister had fixed, beforehand, a number of “about 6000″ files to be accepted, whatever happened. The remaining 20,000 or so people have however been carefully registered in police files, including their personal address and child’s school (one of the criteria was providing school certificates). Some consider the situation to be a possible ‘trap’ for integrated immigrants.

View on genetic predispositions

A few weeks before the first round of the 2007 presidential elections, Nicolas Sarkozy said during an interview with philosopher Michel Onfray^[32] that he thinks disorders such as paedophilia and depression have a genetic as well as social basis, famously stating “I don’t agree with you, I’d be inclined to think that one is born a paedophile, and it is actually a problem that we do not know how to cure this disease”; he also claimed that suicides among youth was linked to genetic predispositions by stating, “I don’t want to give parents a complex. It’s not exclusively the parents’ fault every time a youngster commits suicide.” These claims were criticized by a few scientists, including geneticist Axel Kahn.^[33][34]

Marriages, divorce and separation

On 23 September 1982 he married Corsican-born Marie-Dominique Culioli, daughter of a pharmacist from Vico (a village north of Ajaccio, Corsica). They have two sons, Pierre (born in 1985) and Jean (born in 1987). Sarkozy’s marriage witness was the prominent right wing politician Charles Pasqua, later to become a political opponent. Sarkozy divorced Culioli in 1996, although they had already been separated for some years. Culioli continues to be a practicing Catholic and a charismatic and affirms that she still prays fervently for Sarkozy.^[35]

As mayor of Neuilly, Sarkozy met Cécilia Ciganer-Albeniz (great-granddaughter of composer Isaac Albéniz and of a Russian father)^[36] At the time, she was then married to TV host Jacques Martin. In 1989, Ciganer-Albeniz left Martin for Sarkozy. After a divorce lasting four months, Sarkozy married her in October 1996 (with witnesses Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnault). They have one son, Louis, born in 1997.

Between 2002 and 2005, the couple often appeared together on public occasions, with Ciganer-Albeniz acting as a sort of chief aide for her husband. On 25 May 2005, however, the Swiss newspaper Le Matin revealed that Ciganer-Albeniz had left Sarkozy for French-Moroccan national Richard Attias, head of Publicis in New York.^[37]. There were other accusations of a private nature in Le Matin. This led Sarkozy to sue the paper.^[5]

In late 2005, the press reported that Sarkozy was in a relationship with Anne Fulda, a journalist from Le Figaro. Finally, in January 2006, a reconciliation with Ciganer-Albeniz took place.^[38]

Ciganer-Albeniz and Sarkozy are currently believed to be living together.^{[citation needed]} In early 2006, Sarkozy suggested to the press that he had welcomed Ciganer-Albeniz back from the USA, although the exact circumstances of the reconciliation are not known.^[39]

Candidacy for President

Main article: French presidential election, 2007

Nicolas Sarkozy in 2006

In Toulouse for the 2007 presidential campaign

On 14 January 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was chosen by the UMP to be its candidate in the 2007 presidential election. Sarkozy, who was running unopposed, won 98% of the votes. Of the 327,000 UMP members who could vote, 69% participated in the online ballot.^[40]

In February 2007 Sarkozy appeared on a televised debate on TF1 where he expressed his support for affirmative action for minorities and the freedom to work overtime, but his opposition to homosexual marriage.

On 7 February, Nicolas Sarkozy finally decided in favour of a projected second, non-nuclear, aircraft carrier for the national Navy (adding to the nuclear Charles de Gaulle), during an official visit in Toulon with Defence Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie. “This would allow permanently having an operational ship, taking into account the constraints of maintenance”, he explained.^[41] This new view on the second aircraft carrier issue comes in conflict with a January report, where he was against a second carrier.^[42]

On 21 March President Jacques Chirac announced his support for Sarkozy, adding that he had his vote. Chirac pointed out that Sarkozy had been chosen as presidential candidate for the ruling UMP party, and said: “So it is totally natural that I give him my vote and my support.” To focus on his campaign, Sarkozy stepped down as interior minister on 26 March.^[43]

During the campaign, rival candidates had accused Sarkozy of being a “candidate for brutality” and of presenting overly hardline views about France’s future.^[44] He was also criticized by opponents for allegedly courting conservative voters in policy-making in a bid to capitalise on right-wing sentiments among some communities. However, his popularity was sufficient to see him polling as the frontrunner throughout the later campaign period, consistently ahead of rival Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal.

The first round of the presidential election was held on 22 April 2007. Nicolas Sarkozy came in first with 31.18% of the votes, ahead of Ségolène Royal of the Socialists with 25.87%. In the second round, Sarkozy came out on top to win the election with 53.06% of the votes ahead of Ségolène Royal with 46.94%. In his speech immediately following the announcement of the election results, Sarkozy stressed the need for France’s modernisation, but also called for national unity, mentioning that Royal was in his thoughts. In that speech, he claimed “The French have chosen to break with the ideas, habits and behaviour of the past. I will restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect for the nation.”

First term as president (2007-)

On 16th May, Nicolas Sarkozy will become the 23rd Président of French Republic.

The power transfer from Jacques Chirac is scheduled for the morning of 16 May at the Élysée Palace, where he will be given the nuclear codes of the nuclear deterrence and be presented the Grand Master’s Collar, symbol of his new function of Grand Master of the Legion of Honour. At that point he will become President. A public ceremony in Paris is also planned. The same day, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin will resign. Sarkozy will appoint his first Prime Minister on May 17. In a break with tradition, the first foreign statesman that the new President met following his election was the British Prime Minister Tony Blair on May 11. The first foreign statesman that he is scheduled to meet upon his taking up the office of President will be Germany’s Angela Merkel.

Early political career

He became a delegate to the Texas state Republican convention in 1974. He was an unsuccessful Republican candidate for election to Congress in 1974, a heavily Democratic year, against the incumbent Democrat Robert R. Casey. When President Gerald R. Ford appointed Casey as head of the Federal Maritime Commission, a special election was held in April 1976 to choose a new congressman. Paul won that election but lost six months later in the general election to Democrat Robert A. Gammage. He then defeated Gammage in a 1978 rematch. Paul won new terms in 1980 and 1982.

Paul was the first congressman to propose term limit legislation for the House of Representatives, where he declined to attend junkets or register for a congressional pension. Paul was an unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate in the 1984 GOP primary against Phil Gramm. In 1985, Paul returned to medical practice and was succeeded in his seat by Tom DeLay, then a member of the Texas House of Representatives.

In 1988, Paul won the nomination of the Libertarian Party for the U.S. Presidency. He placed third in the popular vote (with 431,750 votes – 0.47%), behind George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis. Although he had been an early supporter of Ronald Reagan, Paul was critical of the unprecedented deficits incurred by Reagan’s administration, for which his opponent George H.W. Bush had been vice-president.

Return to Congress

In 1996, Paul was again elected to the House as a Republican. Paul won the primary and went on to win the general election despite opponent Greg Laughlin’s support from leaders within the Republican Party, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Governor George W. Bush.

Leaders of the Texas Republican Party made similar efforts to defeat him in 1998, but he again won the primary and the election. The Republican congressional leadership then agreed to a compromise: Paul would vote with the Republicans on procedural matters, and remain nominally Republican, in exchange for the committee assignments normally due to him according to his seniority. Paul was convincingly re-elected in 2000 and 2002. Unopposed in 2004 he was re-elected to his ninth term in the Congress, and was re-elected again in 2006 for his tenth term by a 20-point margin.

Political affiliations and support

Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas. He also remains on good terms with the Libertarian Party and addressed its national convention as recently as 2004.

Paul served as honorary chairman and is a current member of the Republican Liberty Caucus, a political action organization dedicated to promoting the ideals of individual rights, limited government and free enterprise within the Republican Party.

Unlike many political candidates, Paul receives the overwhelming majority of his campaign contributions (96.8% in 2005-2006) from individuals.

Views

Main article: Political views of Ron Paul

In his campaign, Paul has said that he would like to “reinstate the Constitution and restore the Republic.” His voting record is consistent in rejection of a welfare state or nanny state role for the federal government, and advocacy of hard currency and a non-interventionist foreign policy.

He voted against the Iraq War in 2002 and has offered alternatives such as granting the President authority to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and allowing armed pilots. He is the only 2008 Republican presidential candidate to have voted against the Iraq War.

Paul’s desire to secure U.S. borders remains a key topic in his 2008 presidential campaign. He opposes the North American Union proposition and its proposed integration of Mexico, the United States of America, and Canada. Paul voted “yes” on the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorizes the construction of an additional 700 miles of double-layered fencing between the U.S and Mexico. Paul opposes illegal immigration as well as amnesty for illegal immigrants.

In the May 3, 2007 GOP Debate, Ron Paul stated that as President, he would seek the immediate abolition of the IRS and the abolition of the income tax. As Congressman, he has long fought for the prohibition of direct taxes by repeal of the 16th Amendment which created the income tax.

2008 Presidential Campaign

Main article: Ron Paul presidential campaign, 2008

Ron Paul formally declared his candidacy for the Presidential election in 2008 in 12 March 2007 as a guest on Washington Journal on C-SPAN.
Political analyst James Kotecki interviewed him regarding his candidacy, foreign policy, Congress and the Constitution, and personal liberties.

Ron Paul participated along with nine other Republican presidential candidates in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s 2008 Republican Presidential Candidates Debate on May 3, 2007 sponsored by MSNBC. In a six part MSNBC on-line survey following the debate, Paul with over 40% came in ahead of the other candidates with the highest positives and lowest negatives of the top 4 candidates, out of approximately 70,000 votes as of May 9. According to ABC News, the conclusion of the MSNBC vote was that Ron Paul appeared to win the debate. In an ABC News debate vote “WHICH REPUBLICAN CAME OUT ON TOP?”, Ron Paul garnered over 85%. The C-SPAN debate vote had similar results with over 70 percent casting their votes for Paul. ABC News has attributed Paul’s success to possible viral marketing by his supporters, noting that Paul has a “robust online presence”.

On May 9, 2007 “Ron Paul” was listed as the #1 top Internet search term by Technorati.com and ranked #815 on Wikicharts , a measurement of most-viewed Wikipedia pages, above mainline Republican contenders such as Mitt Romney, Rudy Guiliani, and John McCain. The U.S. News & World Report article titled “Ron Paul’s Online Rise” states “Technorati spokesman Aaron Krane confirmed that, to the best of the company’s knowledge, the online support for Paul is genuine. (Tech-savvy devotees occasionally attempt to enlist programs called “bots” to artificially boost their candidate on search engines, but Krane said Technorati is usually able to detect and delete the cheaters.)”

Source: wikipedia

Until now, officials have said they believed Hilton would serve the entire jail term ordered last week by Superior Court Michael T. Sauer after Hilton repeatedly drove her car while her license was suspended because of a DUI plea.

Sheriff’s Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said Hilton’s sentence could be cut nearly in half by state law allowing for credit for time served for good behavior. In addition, he said, overcrowding in the jail system could further reduce the time she spends in custody.

Overcrowding has been a major issue in the L.A. County jail system, with some inmates — even violent ones — serving as little as 10% of their sentences. (If that standard was applied to Hilton, she would serve less than a week in jail.)

Actress Michelle Rodriguez, who starred on “Lost,” was sentenced to 60 days in jail for a probation violation last year but ended up serving less than a day in jail.

“She will be treated like any other inmate who’s classified as a low-level security risk,” Whitmore said. “There are a series of issues that will come into play here, including her criminal history, the nature of the offense and the population of the facility.”

Using those and other factors “the decision will be made as she is booked into the jail,” Whitmore said. “We do this with every single inmate.”

Hilton says she will appeal Sauer’s sentence, which she considers too harsh. Hilton’s supporters have also asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to pardon her.

In statement released by her attorney this week, she said: “I do not expect to be treated better than anyone else who violated probation,” she said. “However, my hope is that I will not be treated worse.”

Andrew Blankstein, Times Staff Writer

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Source: Wikipedia

In an encouraging act of collaboration, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft announced tonight that they will all begin using the same Sitemaps protocol to index sites around the web. The system instructs web masters on how to install an XML file on their servers that all three engines can use to track updates to pages. This should make it easier to get your pages indexed in a simple and standardized way. People who use Google Sitemaps don’t need to change anything, those maps will now be indexed by Yahoo and Microsoft.
Source: TechCrunch

Bayonets

* M9 bayonet
* OKC-3S bayonet

Fighting Knives

* Ka-Bar
* Strider SMF
* Gerber Mark II

Swords

*
o Marine Noncommissioned Officers’ Sword, 1859-Present
o Marine Officers’ Mameluke Sword, 1875-Present

Small arms

Pistols

* M1911A1 .45 Caliber Pistol
* M9 Beretta 9 mm Pistol
* MEU(SOC) pistol
* S&W Model 10
* S&W Model 66

Submachine guns

* Heckler & Koch MP5
* CAR15 SMG (Marine Recon only)

Rifles

* M16A2 & M16A4 Assault Rifles
* M4A1 Carbine
* M4A1 Close Quarter Battle Weapon (CQBW)
* USMC Squad Advanced Marksman Rifle (SAM-R)
* USMC Designated Marksman Rifle (DMR)
* M40A1 & M40A3 Sniper Rifles
* M82A1A & M82A3 Sniper Rifles
* Mk 11 Mod 0

Shotguns

* Remington 870
* Mossberg 590A1
* Masterkey
* M1014

Machine guns

* M2 .50 Caliber Machine Gun
* M240G 7.62 mm Medium Machine Gun
* M249 5.56 mm Squad Automatic Weapon
* M60E3 7.62 mm Machine Gun

Grenade launchers

* M203 40 mm Rifle-Mounted
* MK19 40 mm Grenade Machine Gun
* M79 40 mm Stand-Alone
* M32 Multiple Grenade Launcher

Less-than-lethal

* Mk 141 Mod 0 grenade

Mortars

* M224 60 mm Mortar
* M252 81 mm Extended Range Mortar

Artillery

* M198 155 mm Medium Howitzer
* M777 Lightweight Howitzer
* HIMARS

Missile Launchers

* AT4
* Shoulder-Launched Multipurpose Assault Weapon (SMAW)
* FGM-148 Javelin Anti-Tank missile
* Tube Launched, Optically Tracked, Wire Guided (TOW) Missile Weapon System
* Stinger Weapons System
* Predator Short-Range Assault Weapon
* M72 LAW

Vehicle-Mounted

* M2 .50 Caliber Machine Gun
* MK19 40 mm Grenade Machine Gun

Aircraft-Mounted

Guns

* GAU-12 25 mm Gatling gun
* GAU-16 .50 Caliber Machine gun
* GAU-17 7.62 mm automatic gun
* GAU-2B/A
* GAU-4 20 mm Vulcan (M61)
* M197 Gatling gun
* M2 .50 Caliber Machine Gun
* M240G 7.62 mm Medium Machine Gun

Bombs

* CBU-99 Cluster Bomb
* GBU-10 2000 lb laser guided bomb
* GBU-12 500 lb laser guided bomb
* GBU-16 1000 lb laser guided bomb
* MK82 series 500 lb bomb
* MK83 series 1000 lb bomb

Missiles

* AGM-45 Shrike Missile
* AGM-65 Maverick Missile
* AGM-84 Harpoon Missile
* AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-radiation Missile (HARM)
* AGM-114 Hellfire (Helicopter launched fire-and-forget)
* AGM-122 Sidearm (anti-radar) Missile
* AIM-7 Sparrow
* AIM-9 Sidewinder (anti-air) Missile
* AIM-120 AMRAAM

Rockets

* Hydra 70
* M260 70 mm Rocket Launcher

source: www.generaltorbert.com

A linkback from this site, will help increase your Google page rank, your Technorati rank, your search engine rankings and it will drive some traffic your way too.

You’ll get a permanent link in a blog post and get a link to your site on the cool blogs page.

How to Increase Your Page Rank

All you have to do is write a review about this blog, link back to this article and link to this blog’s home page with any of the following anchor text:

• Cottage
• Food
• Weekend
• Fun

You are also free to link to anyone of my posts as part of your review.

Here’s an example of what I’m looking for:

Everyday Weekender is a fun site that talks about everything from cottage life to food. If you review his blog, he’ll link to it and help increase your page rank!

Ohh, and he’ll also teach you a thing or two about cooking a juicy steak.

Once you post the review, let me know and I’ll give you a Page Rank 5 linkback. Send me the URL and the anchor text you want for your home page.

Happy posting!