Contemporary France. News, Politics, Films, Books
A first pass at it. The stakes are high, and France is in a certain amount of turmoil. Is Macron’s retirement reform a necessary means to bring pension funds to fiscal health and to mend the deficiencies of the current system, or is it, as …
A longtime nemesis suddenly revealed as a secret collaborator. François Ruffin, a self-proclaimed man of the people, unmasked as the clandestine partner of Emmanuel Macron, “president of the rich,” helping him to stage their disagreements for public consumption. Betrayal. Hypocrisy. Well: not exactly. But it …
(Image of Calais Jungle in France, from Shutterstock.com) ================================================= William Shakespeare, from Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1: “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war. . . .” And then, as Donald Trump would say, “We’ll see what happens!” Shortly after the invasion …
Jérôme Rodrigues, one of the leading Gilets Jaunes, announced this past week that he intended to take a break from the protests and go into a nursing care facility; he hopes to be back on September 21 (LCI, August 31, 2019). It is surprising only …
On August 24, 2019 the Gilets Jaunes accomplished Acte 41. Relatively few people turned out; the movement has been hampered for some weeks both by the dangerous heat wave of summer and by the August vacation season–and, implicitly, I suspect, by the possibility of a …
François Fillon was born in 1954, in Le Mans, France. Penelope Clarke was born in 1955, in Llanover, UK. Baby Boomers. She came of age during the Second Wave of the Women’s Movement–Women’s Lib–which meant that the choices she would make were more or less …
One of the most important results of the European elections has been the collapse of the two traditionally strongest political forces in the Fifth Republic: the conservative party, now called Les Républicains; and the Socialist Party on the Left. The Socialists fell apart in the …
Now that the fire is out, Now that we know that the shell is intact, and the work of the medieval stonemasons has stood the test of time, Now that we know that the bell towers are still part of the skyline, Only now is …
The coverage of the Gilets Jaunes protests on June 8 from the major newspapers and television stations was sharply down, as were their numbers. The Ministry of the Interior calculated the turn-out at 10,300 throughout the country, up by nearly 1,000 from the previous Saturday; …
