Salon.com > Amelia Gentleman

Special relationships

Tue, 16 Nov 2004 14:18:00 +0000

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac clashed openly Monday night over the future course of Europe's relationship with the United States as the Blair insisted they must work together for world peace and Chirac suggested it is increasingly pointless.

Chirac, speaking ahead of his state visit to London, said that Britain had gained nothing in return for supporting the U.S. over Iraq and that he did not think "it is in the nature of our American friends today" to pay back favors. "I'm not sure, the U.S. being what it is today, whether it is possible for anyone, even the British, to play the role of the friendly go-between," he said.

The French president's words came in direct contradiction to Blair, who insisted Monday night that Europe needed to work with America and could help shape its policies. Blair used a keynote speech in the Guildhall in London to warn Europe to stop "ridiculing American arguments and parodying their political leadership" and to concentrate on persuading Washington that "terrorism won't be beaten by toughness alone."

Poison pens

Fri, 29 Oct 2004 14:02:00 +0000

Rich, intelligent and reasonably photogenic, it is not surprising that France's most media-friendly philosopher is the target of the occasional attack. But the scale of the assault that is being mounted on Bernard-Henri Lévy this autumn has shocked and delighted Paris' literary elite. Seven books attacking the writer's methods, questioning his intellectual achievements and peering into the origins of his personal fortune are due to be published over the next few months. Several of the works promise to unmask him as an "intellectual imposter," and a series of libel suits is already underway as he struggles to save his academic reputation from ruin.

For three decades Lévy has reigned supreme as the demigod of the television debate show, famous less for his intellectual standpoints than for his beautifully coifed hair and fondness for displaying more chest than is polite in scholarly circles. Now his critics are questioning whether BHL, as he is semi-affectionately known, really deserves to occupy the space vacated by Derrida, Sartre, Foucault and other greats of French postwar philosophy.

Cheese eaters vs. hamburger eaters

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 13:20:00 +0000

The villagers of Saint-Briac-Sur-Mer are peculiarly obsessed by the American presidential election. In the Bar de la Mairie at lunchtime, there's a sophisticated dissection of the latest televised debate, which several people have stayed up until 4 in the morning to watch. Like most people in Europe, the bar's occupants are rooting for John Kerry, but here the support for the Democratic candidate is fervent. "It's looking good," one woman says, fresh off the golf course. "I wouldn't be too confident," another regular responds, frowning into his wine glass. "Everything depends on the swing states."

The source of this unusual fascination with the U.S. campaign lies with the local mayor, an influential environmental campaigner, former government minister and himself a onetime presidential candidate, who sports a "Vote John Kerry" sticker in the rear window of his Volvo. Although Democratic campaigners in the U.S. have asked him to keep quiet about it, everyone here knows that Mayor Brice Lalonde is Kerry's first cousin. Their mothers are sisters who spent much of their childhood in this Brittany village.

Pink TV

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 14:27:00 +0000

"A giant leap for television, a small step in high heels," the presenter promised, unveiling France's first gay television station, which aims to make gay culture mainstream and marks a new climate of tolerance in Roman Catholic France. Pink TV, which debuted Monday night, promises viewers a mixture of "Wonder Woman" repeats, prime-time opera, and gay and lesbian porn.

A daily cultural review will look at issues such as tourism, health, poetry and clubbing from a gay perspective, in a style that aims to be "more cozy than cheeky." Supported by France's three main commercial television networks, the cable and satellite channel benefits from a relatively new atmosphere of openness toward homosexuality in France.

Pascal Houzelot, the station's founder and president, said the country was ready for the channel. "Pink is coming at the right moment. There's been a real change in mentality. We've seen society change, we've seen the law change ... Gays in France have gone from the era of tolerance to the era of legality, which simply means equality."

The channel's creation has been met with enthusiasm in the French press. Gay rights have been hovering at the top of the French political agenda for months.

Education vs. faith

Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:32:00 +0000

A date France had feared for months passed without serious incident as more than 12 million pupils returned to school -- and only a handful defied the ban on Islamic head scarves that became law yesterday. An Education Ministry spokesman said the return had been "extremely calm" and that "hardly any" head teachers had reported problems.

The law outlaws the wearing in state schools of all conspicuous signs of faith, but is considered to be aimed at Muslim girls' headgear. Commentators said that, paradoxically, the declared intention of many pupils to flout the ban melted in the shock at the kidnapping of two French journalists by Iraqi militants who demanded the ban be revoked.

Muslims who campaigned fiercely earlier this year made no attempt to organize resistance. Schools in suburbs of Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Lille that had reported dozens of head scarves last year saw few or none yesterday. "We're telling girls not to defy the state," said Fouad Alaoui of the Union of French Islamic Organizations, before leaving for Baghdad to try to free the hostages. "They should make their schooling the priority."

Muslim schoolgirls risk expulsion for symbolic headscarves

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 15:26:00 +0000

When Samia and her twin sister, Samira, choose what to wear for the first day of term this morning, they will be making more than a fashion statement. Their choice of outfit is likely to bring them into conflict with the law and could seriously damage their academic future. The twins plan to wear Islamic headscarves to school, as they have done every day for the past seven years. Today, however, they will be in direct breach of new legislation banning all pupils in state schools from making any conspicuous show of religious affiliation. The veil, like skull-caps, turbans and large cruxifixes, will no longer be permitted.

The director of their secondary school in the suburbs of Strasbourg is under instructions to summon immediately any pupil found flouting the law.

Schoolgirls who arrive wearing the headscarf will be sent home, and repeated breaches will result in expulsion.

Politicians insist that they will enforce the law, despite the demands of the Islamic Army of Iraq, which has transformed this already controversial subject into a question of life and death, threatening to kill two French journalists unless the legislation is revoked.

Racial hatred in France

Wed, 11 Aug 2004 14:12:00 +0000

French President Jacques Chirac led politicians and religious leaders in a now familiar chorus of revulsion yesterday at the latest desecration of a Jewish cemetery to unsettle France.

Vandals smashed gravestones and scrawled swastikas, Celtic crosses and Adolf Hitler's name (misspelled) in black paint on 56 tombs in the graveyard in Lyon on Monday evening. A war memorial honoring Jewish members of the French resistance who died during the Second World War was also covered in graffiti.

It was the 11th similar attack on French cemeteries -- Jewish, Muslim and Christian -- since April. Victims' groups yesterday stressed that the government needed to translate its well-meaning expressions of disgust into action to punish the perpetrators.

Despite the intense national sensitivity to acts of race hatred, police have failed to identify those responsible for the spate of assaults that have seen more than 300 tombs defaced. It remains unclear whether coordinated neo-Nazi groups or lone vandals are to blame.

With politicians calling for the urgent arrest of the culprits, detectives were at the site at dawn yesterday. Families who arrived to see the damage wreaked on their relatives' tombs were turned away while the investigation continued.

Exodus from France

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 14:21:00 +0000

Preparations for a welcome party are under way in Tel Aviv for the arrival next week of a specially chartered El Al flight carrying 200 French Jews who have abandoned their homes, jobs and families in France to start afresh in Israel.

Awaiting them is the promise of help finding work, financial assistance with accommodation for the difficult transition period, language tuition and what they hope will be a release from a growing climate of tension in their home country.

These departures are an uncomfortable subject in France, a nation sensitive to accusations of anti-semitism. This week these migrants have become pawns in a debate raging over France's relationship with its Jewish population, triggered by the call from the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, for French Jews to emigrate immediately to escape what he described as "the wildest anti-semitism."

His appeal unleashed fury across the political spectrum yesterday, heightening unease among politicians and Jewish community leaders alike at the way Israeli government-funded groups have been using reports of the mounting anti-semitic climate in France to fuel an energetic programme to persuade French Jews to leave.

“Odious acts of hatred” in France

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 14:21:00 +0000

The French president, Jacques Chirac, made a national appeal for racial and religious tolerance yesterday as part of a campaign to tackle an alarming surge in racist attacks.

In his strongest condemnation yet of the desecration of Muslim and Jewish cemeteries over the past three months, Mr Chirac called for urgent action to stem a rise in the "despicable and odious acts of hatred soiling our nation".

The setting for this keynote speech was selected to add greater resonance to the president's words.

Mr Chirac travelled to a village in the hills of south-western France famous for the bravery of its inhabitants who risked their lives during the second world war to shelter Jews from the Nazis and French collaborators.

As many as 5,000 people were saved from transportation to death camps as a result.

"Discrimination, anti-semitism, racism all kinds of racism are spreading insidiously," Mr Chirac said.

"I ask [the French] to remind their children of the mortal danger of fanaticism, of exclusion, of cowardliness and resignation to extremism All these acts reflect the darkest side of human nature. They are unworthy of France. I will do everything to stop them."