Word: scandals
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That struggle is playing out in the same Paris courtroom in which a French revolutionary tribunal sentenced Marie Antoinette to the guillotine in 1793 (a detail that may not thrill history enthusiast Villepin). At the core of the trial is the Clearstream affair - a scandal named for the Luxembourg financial clearinghouse where 89 French politicians, businesspeople and public figures purportedly held accounts containing illegal kickback money from arms sales. A list of those names - including Sarkozy's - was brought to Villepin's attention in 2004, but was later deemed to be a fraud by a top French spy called...
...just as he was consolidating his control of the conservative Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) ahead of the 2007 presidential race. Chirac, however, remained furious over Sarkozy's earlier disloyalty and backed Villepin as the next President. It was in that atmosphere of antagonistic maneuvering that the Clearstream scandal erupted...
...that. Even Sarkozy's opponents concede that his pragmatism and push to modernize France - just as millions of regular French voters have modernized their own lives - are a large part of his appeal. Time-honored formalities, and the type of scheming in smoke-filled back rooms that the Clearstream scandal conjures up, are increasingly irrelevant in a country that now embraces everything from McDonald's to reality TV. (See the top 10 political sex scandals...
Read "Governor Gone Wild: The Blagojevich Scandal." Read "Behind the Blagojevich Mess: A State in Disarray...
...other hand, if you think the competition has been buried under layers of scandal and crass commercialism, you may have never been a fan of the torch relay - and you might be incensed to learn that its roots lie in Nazi Germany. Carl Diem, the secretary-general of the 1936 Berlin Games, pitched the event as a way to infuse the Games with pageantry and buff the mythic image of the Third Reich. That year, on its way from Greece to Germany, the flame passed through Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Czechoslovakia - all of which...