Salon.com > Jon Henley

After the riots

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:20:00 +0000

Some 40 French towns and suburbs, ravaged by 13 nights of rioting, were Wednesday given powers to impose emergency measures, including curfews, as further details emerged of a government aid package for depressed suburbs.

Officials said France's worst urban violence in 40 years seemed to be running out of steam, with half as many cars going up in flames in half as many towns as on previous nights. "We are seeing a sharp drop in hostile acts," said the national police chief, Michel Gaudin.

The interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, ordered the deportation of all foreign nationals found guilty of participating in the riots, including those with residence permits. "When one has the honor to have a permit, one should not be caught provoking urban violence," he said.

Copycat arson attacks were reported in Germany and Belgium for the third day running, though police said they were small-scale incidents and not gang related.

Nine cars have been set alight in Berlin since the weekend, compared with hundreds a night in France. "These appear to be individual acts," said a German police spokesman. "Our situation is nothing like Paris. There is only a marginal connection."

Death of the “builder prince”

Thu, 07 Apr 2005 13:45:00 +0000

Prince Rainier III, the man who transformed Monaco from a faded Riviera gambling backwater into a hugely successful financial center and a haven for the super-rich, died Wednesday, plunging the tiny Mediterranean principality into a state of deep mourning. Even the fabled Monte Carlo casino shut down for the day as residents, many fighting back tears, paid tribute to the man best known outside Monaco for his marriage to film star Grace Kelly.

Rainier, who ruled the principality of 32,000 people -- the smallest state in the world after the Vatican -- for more than 50 years, died at 6:35 a.m. after a month in the hospital battling lung, heart and kidney problems. He was 81.

He will be succeeded as ruler by Prince Albert, 47. Rainier's body was transferred from the hospital back to his hilltop palace Wednesday morning, where he will lie in state in the chapel until the funeral on April 15.

"Everyone here feels orphaned," Patrick Leclercq, Monaco's minister of state, said on French television. The presidents of France and Germany praised his reign, and the European Commission and Britain sent their condolences.

Wooing Europe

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 14:16:00 +0000

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice launched a transatlantic bridge-building exercise Tuesday night, urging Europe and America to set aside their differences over the Iraq war and work together to spread democracy around the world. In what was billed as the keynote speech of her first official trip to Europe, Rice told an audience of 550 students and diplomats in Paris that it was "time to turn away from the disagreements of the past ... to open a new chapter in our relationship, and a new chapter in our alliance."

The Unites States and Europe should try to move beyond "a partnership based on common threats" and focus instead on "common opportunities, beyond the transatlantic community," she said at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, the elite politics college better known as Sciences-Po.

Rice's choice of France for the formal unveiling of Washington's effort to mend badly damaged fences was deliberate: Paris was by far the most outspoken opponent of George W. Bush's handling of the Iraq war, and popular anti-American feeling here still runs high.

Always cordial

Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:52:00 +0000

French President Jacques Chirac expressed fresh doubts about the invasion of Iraq on the eve of his visit Thursday to Britain, saying it had left "the world more dangerous." Chirac's comment, in an interview broadcast Wednesday night, came only 48 hours after he undercut Tony Blair by suggesting the British prime minister had failed to secure any concessions from George W. Bush in spite of supporting the war.

The French president is in Britain for two days to mark the end of months of events marking the 100th anniversary of the entente cordiale, the alliance agreed to after centuries of warfare. Chirac has prefaced his trip by describing relations between France and Britain as un amour violent (a stormy love affair), steeped in fierce competition and mutual esteem. "It has led us to love each other and to detest each other," he told British journalists.

After reviewing a guard of honor of British and French soldiers, he is to have talks with Blair at Downing Street, make a speech on transatlantic relations to an audience of diplomats and defense specialists, and join the queen in the evening at Windsor Castle.

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."

An honored friend of France

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 13:42:00 +0000

Pierre Salinger, former press secretary to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and France's "most French of Americans," died of heart failure Saturday. He was 79.

He died in a hospital near his home of Le Thor, outside Avignon, France, after recent surgery to fit a pacemaker, his wife, Nicole, said. The couple moved to the Vaucluse to run a B&B when George W. Bush won the 2000 election. "He was very upset because he thought Bush was not fit to be president," Nicole Salinger told the Associated Press. "He said he would leave if Bush became president, and he did."

Salinger was outspoken but cultivated, and had a distinguished career with ABC News after serving two Democratic presidents. Born to a French mother in San Francisco in 1925, he had two years on the San Francisco Chronicle before joining the U.S. Navy in 1943. Salinger returned to the paper after the war, then moved to Collier's magazine, and joined Kennedy's senatorial staff in 1957.

A trusted member of the Kennedy clan's circle, Salinger was JFK's press secretary for the 1960 presidential campaign. He was White House press secretary from 1961 to 1964, ran the first live TV presidential news conference in 1961, and stayed on at the White House after Kennedy's 1963 assassination. After a brief spell as a senator, he returned to journalism in 1964.

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."

A master’s flash

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 13:30:00 +0000

Henri Cartier-Bresson, universally acknowledged as one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century, was buried yesterday, two days after his unannounced death at home in the south of France. He was 95.

"He had not been eating for several days. He grew gradually weaker," a family member told reporters from the photographer's summer home in the village of L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

Cartier-Bresson, who gave up photography 30 years ago for his first love, painting and drawing, was the creator of 700,000 black-and-white photographs. He abhorred artificial lighting, including flash, never used a wide-angle lens, and never cropped his prints.

A co-founder of the legendary Magnum photo agency, along with Robert Capa, David Seymour and George Rodger, he is seen today as the leader of that generation of photographers who succeeded in elevating what was until then a hobby, or at most a jobbing profession, into an art form.

Among his most famous images, many of them on display at the foundation bearing his name that was opened in Paris last year, are the moustachioed, bowler-hatted man caught peeping through the canvas surround at a sports event in Brussels in 1932; a female prisoner denouncing a Gestapo informer in 1945; a boyish Truman Capote in 1947; and children playing on the Berlin wall in 1962.

Unchecked anti-semitism

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 13:49:00 +0000

Followed closely by a battery of mainly foreign TV cameras, a chartered El Al jet took off from Paris this week carrying some 200 French Jews emigrating to Israel.

The event attracted zero attention in France because it was not news: each year for the past couple of years, some 2,000 French Jews have made the same journey (the number is rising, but remains pretty insignificant compared to the size of the community, estimated at 600,000).

It attracted substantially more attention abroad, mainly because of remarks by the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, who said earlier this month that French Jews should flee their country for his as a matter of urgency, to escape "the wildest anti-semitism".

France, its politicians, its commentators, even its Jewish leaders, was outraged by Mr Sharon's comments (made, it should be said, to an audience of visiting American Jews who thoroughly approved, the American Jewish community being seemingly convinced that life in France is unbearable for anyone in a skull-cap).

There are probably many reasons why Mr Sharon chose to say what he said, few of which have anything much to do with anti-semitism in France and many more to do with Israel's failure to keep its stream of immigrants flowing.

To your health?

Fri, 30 Jul 2004 13:58:00 +0000

An increasingly heated row is raging in France between wine makers and the medical establishment about how, or whether, this once most bibulous of countries should be persuaded to drink more wine.

The crisis facing French wine exports, reeling from an onslaught of New World competitors cheaper, easier to identify, more consistent and often far more drinkable, is well documented.

Less well known is the fact that the French themselves are now drinking a mere 340m litres of wine a year, against 430m litres in 1980, and that the annual consumption of each French adult has plunged from more than 100 litres in the 1960s to 58 litres (102 pints) last year.

A white paper presented yesterday by five MPs from wine-making areas says the decline could be halted by giving wine a special legal status, reclassifying it as a foodstuff with nutritional value, and advertising its beneficial and healthy properties.

Doctors disagree. They point out that alcohol is responsible for about 40,000 premature deaths a year in France, and that one of the government's recently stated public health objectives is to cut alcohol consumption by 20% within five years.

Court shuns France’s first gay marriage

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 13:03:00 +0000

France's first gay marriage was declared null and void by a Bordeaux court yesterday, confirming the conservative government's hostility on the issue and dealing a blow to the cause of same-sex unions in this traditionally Catholic country.

The court ruled that the marriage of Stephane Chapin, 33, a home nurse, and Bertrand Charpentier, 31, a warehouseman, in the south-western town of Bhgles on June 5 was not valid because "the traditional function of a marriage is commonly considered to be the founding of a family".

The couple's lawyer, Emmanuel Pierrat, said they would appeal against the ruling, taking their case up to France's supreme court and, if necessary, to the European court of human rights. He said the pair would remain legally wed until the appeals process had been exhausted.

"We have every confidence that these higher courts will have a slightly more avant-garde view of the concept of a family," Mr Pierrat said. Mr Charpentier promised to "fight to the end But this time we will win because we have faith in our country".

Woman sentenced for anti-semitism lie

Tue, 27 Jul 2004 13:16:00 +0000

A mother who claimed to be the victim of an anti-semitic attack that rocked France, but later admitted making the whole thing up was yesterday given a four-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to seek therapy. Marie-Leonie Leblanc, 23, who said she had been physically and verbally assaulted on a train by six youths of Arab origin, was convicted of denouncing an imaginary crime and placed on two years' probation.

"I wanted people to pay attention to me," Leblanc told the court at Cergy-Pontoise outside Paris. "I wanted my parents to pay attention to me; I wanted Christophe [her partner] to pay attention to me."

On July 9, she walked into her local police station and described the fictitious attack. None of her fellow passengers moved a muscle as the youths slashed her clothes, cut off locks of her hair, knocked over her 13-month-old baby's pushchair and scrawled swastikas on her stomach with a marker pen, she said.

She retracted her story four days later, saying she had inflicted the wounds on herself.

Asked by the judge, Jean Idrac-Virebent, if she had not realised that her allegations of anti-semitism she is not Jewish would "unleash passions", she said she had not. Asked why she had pointed the finger at north Africans and black people, she said: "When I watch the telly, they are always the ones who are blamed."