Contemporary France. News, Politics, Films, Books
Retirement reform is a third rail in French as it is in American politics. In both countries, the issue is the same: will old age be synonymous with poverty? And the generational aspect (Pay as You Go), that is to say the idea that current …
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 …
France in the 1950s. A postwar boom. The nation pulled into the modern world under the auspices of dirigisme (directed economic investment, encouragement of mergers in key sectors), a middle way between laissez-faire and communist central planning. Pressure against the small family business, the Mom …
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 …
Just before the European elections in May 2019, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe suggested that Les Républicains were engaged in “reconstructing the Trocadéro Right” behind François Xavier Bellamy, the socially conservative head of their list. Deputy Eric Ciotti of the LRs fired back, saying that Philippe’s …
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 …
