Should rappers be able to sing whatever they like in the name of art and should politicians be able to stop them taking to the stage? The question of censorship has jumped back to the fore in France with President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government, in a rather unlikely about-turn, jumping to the defence of a foul-mouthed rapper, while a leading Socialist has tried to muzzle him.

The rapper — pictured in the video above — is called Orelsan, a white, middle-class singer sometimes referred to as “France’s Eminem”, who shot to prominence earlier this year when a video of one of his songs became an Internet hit. Here is a taste of the lyrics (with the worst of the sexual imagery omitted!)

“I hate you, I want you to die slowly, I want you to get pregnant and lose your child … you are just a pig who should go straight to the slaughter house … I am going to get you pregnant and then abort you with a shepherd’s knife.”

The song is old and no longer appears in Orelsan’s stage show, but the controversy lingers.

Organisers of a music festival in La Rochelle in Western France said this week they were forced to drop him from their line up after a local Socialist bigwig, Segolene Royal, threatened to cut their public subsidy if he appeared.

Royal was the Socialist party candidate in the 2007 presidential election, and news that she might have pulled the plug on Orelsan fuelled immediate outrage in the centre-right government, which accused her of “intolerable” interference.

(Photo: Segolene Royal, 1 May 2009/Regis Duvignau)

“Orelsan talks about unrequited love in terms that I wouldn’t use … but he has the total right to do so,” said Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand, the nephew of former Socialist President Francois Mitterrand.

He went on to compare Orelsan to Rimbaud, the bad boy of French 19th century poetry. “Rimbaud wrote much more violent things that went on to become classics.”

Mitterrand only took over as culture minister in a cabinet reshuffle last month. His predecessor, Christine Albanel, took a very different line back in March when she asked Internet sites to block the offending song. “Freedom of expression stops when incitement to violence and sickening hatred begins,” she said at the time.

(Photo Frederic Mitterrand, 24 June 2009/Benoit Tessier)

So what has changed? Is it that a man is now in charge of Culture in France, is it that a prominent Socialist tried to intervene or is it that France has suddenly become much less tolerant of any whiff of censorship?

The European Union has come under sharp criticism for having a fragmented approach to the financial crisis. It is exemplified by Ireland’s go-it-alone decision to guarantee all accounts and Germany’s surprise announcement after a meeting of leading members that it was taking unilateral action too.

Relief, then, that the 27 member states issued a statement on Monday that they would do what it takes to bolster citizens’ savings and build financial stability. Only problem was, they could not coordinate the announcement. First Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi released it, then Portugal. Only after a while did French President Nicholas Sarkozy weigh in. He does head the current EU presidency after all.

No wonder Washington called for more coordination.

There are moments when tectonic plates shift and history changes course.

Sometimes those shifts are barely perceptible — the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War One but also bred German resentment and the rise of Nazism; the Yalta conference that helped create the United Nations as a guardian of peace but also led to the Iron Curtain that divided Europe for nearly half a century; and the Great Depression (arguably the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century, says Martin Wolf).

It is only when we look back we see the world has changed.

Are we at such a point now? 

John Gray in The Observer speaks of a shattering moment in America’s fall from power. Germany’s Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck has said the United States has lost its financial superpower status. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has said we need to rebuild the whole financial system from scratch, as they did at Bretton Woods. The Telegraph called for a ‘better capitalism’.

What of its status in other areas, of diplomacy, defence and its lead role in NATO? Can an inward looking United States commit to billions of dollars to rescue its financial system and at the same time commit ever more money to military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and elsewhere?

There is a widely held view that September, 11, 2001 changed the world. Will the effects of 2008’s financial crisis prove even more profound?

French Socialist Segolene Royal has unveiled a chic, dishevelled new look, but the surprise makeover is unlikely to prevent her from suffering a fresh election defeat.

Royal came second in last year’s presidential ballot behind Nicolas Sarkozy. Having lost the chance to run the country, she has now fixed her sights on running her party, with Socialist party members due to elect their new leader in November.

Looking to promote her cause, Royal staged a rally in Paris on Saturday night that was more like a rock concert than a political meeting.

She stunned the audience when she took the stage, with her laid back appearance. Gone were the neat hair-do and well-tailored suits of the presidential campaign. Instead there was a wavy, youthful hairstyle and flowing blue dress.

Gone also were the notes and slightly rigid manner that marked her performances on the 2007 campaign trail. Instead she spoke off the cuff, sashaying around the stage like an energised yoga teacher and cracking Woody Allen jokes.

It wasn’t to everyone’s taste. One disgruntled Socialist party heavyweight, Henri Emmanuelli, said the meeting was a cross between “show business and the gathering of a sect”.

And it almost certainly won’t be enough to put her in contention to grab control of her party, which is still traumatised by its failure to win power in 2007.

An opinion poll in Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper on Sunday showed she was lying third in the Socialist race, some 20 percentage points behind frontrunner Bertrand Delanoe, the dapper mayor of Paris.

However, a second successive election defeat is unlikely to deter the ferociously ambitious Royal who has her heart set on challenging Sarkozy at the 2012 presidential vote.

“I am here today, I will be here tomorrow. Nothing is going to make me turn back from the path that I have chosen and which we are walking on together,” she told her adoring fans.

The question is, will the path take her away from the Socialists and into a new political adventure?

Today’s European edition of the International Herald Tribune is fronted by a photo montage of the presidents of Senegal, Afghanistan, Bolivia, Argentina, France and Brazil.

They have two things in common - all are attending this week’s United Nations General Assembly in New York and all see a global threat from the financial crisis that began on Wall Street and, in the words of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines, has moved “like a terrible tsunami around the globe”.

Some of the strongest words were directed at Washington lawmakers, Wall Street speculators and market regulators.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for those responsible for the crisis to be punished. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has said to the United States and Britain: “I told you so”.

Her finance minister, Peer Steinbrueck, believes the United States has lost its financial superpower status.

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has been quoted as saying: “There is an uprising against an economic model, a capitalistic system that is the worst enemy of humanity.”

How does this fit with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s assurance that the world still has confidence in the United States?

Who needs to adjust their lenses?

Tributes have been pouring in for Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian author, former Soviet dissident and Nobel Literature prize laureate who died on Sunday aged 89.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, described the author of “The Gulag Archipelago” and “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” as a man of unique destiny and said: ”He was one of the first people who spoke up about the inhumanity of Stalin’s regime with a full voice, and about the people who lived through this but were not broken.”

French President Nicolas Sarkozy called him ”one of Russia’s greatest consciences of the 20th century” and said: ”His refusal to compromise, his ideals and his long and eventful life make Alexander Solzhenitsyn a romantic figure, an heir of Dostoyevsky’s.”  He said Solzhenitsyn “belongs to the pantheon of world literature.” 

London’s Daily Telegraph said Solzhenitsyn ”was not only a great man, but a passionately committed writer - he believed it was his moral duty, in the face of systematic totalitarian obfuscation, to record Russia’s 20th-century experience for posterity.” 

The Washington Post described him as ”a symbol of freedom and the durability of the human spirit” whose subject matter was the struggle between good and evil in the Russian soul.

Yury Osipov, president of the Russian Academy of Sciences, last year said Solzhenitsyn was “the author of works without which the history of the 20th century is unthinkable”.  

Solzhenitsyn was widely read in the West and in Russia even though he did not court fame. He had admirers both for his literary work and for the contribution he made as a dissident.  

How good a writer do you think Alexander Solzhenitsyn was? How important do you think his role was as a dissident and as the nation’s moral conscience?     

The European-Mediterranean summit in Paris might have produced grand projects ranging from cleaning up the Mediterranean sea to using North Africa’s sunshine to generate power. But that is is not what it will be remembered for.

It will be remembered for the glorious welcome it bestowed on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who until yesterday was persona non-grata in the West, an autocrat leading a pariah regime, which many believe orchestrated the 2005 killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri.  

Assad was the star of the show, which sealed a new detente between Syria and Europe, with the Syrian and Israeli leaders sitting at the same table for the first time.

So what happened? And why are things finally looking up for Bashar? What lay behind this sudden turn in his fortunes? Are Bashar and his government really off the hook?       Is it all forgotten because Assad relaunched indirect peace talks with Israel and gave his blessing to a Qatari-mediated accord that ended Lebanon’s political crisis, allowing the election of a Lebanese president? After all, the new government was in Syria’s favour.

Or is it as some experts commented because Assad proved once again, like his father late President Hafez al-Assad before him, that there won’t be any stability or peace in the region without Syria, that Syria –  with its strong links with Iran, Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah, the Islamist Hamas movement and a string of hired guns — still  calls the shots and could act as a spoiler if ostracised? 

Some observers even speculated that there was collusion in Damascus for the killing in February of Imad Moughniyah, the chief of Hezbollah’s security network and an agent of Iran who topped the U.S. most wanted list for 25 years.

Those familiar with Syrian techniques joked that Syria keeps resorting to the same old get-out-of-jail-free-cards and dodges to get out of crises with the West.

In the 1980’s,  for example, Syria was shunned by the West for its alleged links to an El Al bombing plot in London, its alliance with Iran against Arabs in the Iran-Iraq war, and because of its support for Shi’ite Islamist bombings of U.S. and French targets in Lebanon.

Yet it regained its place in the Arab fold –  and the good grace of Washington – by joining the U.S.-led alliance that ended Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait. Syria was well rewarded - the US gave it a free hand to operate in Lebanon and Arab states gave aid and investment.  
Syrian journalists accompanying Assad were delighted by their leader’s confident performance at the Elysee Palace. He shared a table with Sarkozy, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman and the Qatari ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. Yet most journalists directed their questions to Assad.

Heading out of the palace one Syrian journalist joked with a colleague: “Our Lebanese friends will be upset because the story is no longer the Hariri tribunal”.

Assad and his glamorous wife Asma savoured their moment of glory. Both were invited to stay on for Bastille Day.

“Bashar is here to stay…It is a very different situation. We saw lots of self-assurance and self-confidence. He was conducting himself with a statesman-like appearance,” one analyst said.  

Is Syria back in the fold or is full rehabilitation a long way off? Has Assad outsmarted Syria’s critics?

It should all be music to the ears of top military brass in Brussels, Washington and at the United Nations, who have long been struggling to fill gaps in under-resourced peacekeeping missions from Africa to Afghanistan.

Although the total number of mission-fit French forces will fall to 30,000 from 50,000 under the plans, the idea is that they will be better equipped, more mobile and better able to respond to everything from terrorism to cyber-attacks.

That is what defence wonks mean when they talk about “transformation” of the world’s large but mostly lumbering standing armies built up during the Cold War.

Paris promises a win-win deal for NATO and the EU. Not only will it play a bigger role in the transatlantic alliance whose military structures it quit four decades ago, but it also sees scope for more pooling of Europe’s scarce defence resources.

Too good to be true? Perhaps.

Who gets priority if both NATO and the EU come knocking on France’s door for soldiers? Will the British agree to a French call for the EU to have its own military planning cell?

It is all very well for Sarkozy to revive an nine-year-old dream of the EU to have a 60,000-strong reaction force on call for crises around the world. But that came to nought the first time because nations didn’t cough up the troops — who is to say they will be any keener to do so this time around. Britain’s The Times newspaper has its doubts.

Have your say.