France
June 18, 2025 — Bill Glahn
From Politico, France is planning to put forward a proposal with its European partners to resolve the conflict between Israel and Iran amid fears of a regional escalation. I am trying to imagine a more useless effort. I cannot. I simply lack the imagination. What is French Pres. Macron planning? To “lead in the coming days an initiative, with our close European partners, in order to propose a stringent negotiated
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June 2, 2025 — Scott Johnson
If it weren’t for X, I would have missed the news about the riots in Paris yesterday. Christopher Caldwell foresaw the future in his 2009 book Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West. You may want to get a copy while you can. Amichai Chikli is Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Anti-Semitism. He does not appreciate President Macron’s apparent intention to recognize a genocidal
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May 26, 2025 — John Hinderaker
French President Emmanuel Macron is beginning a tour of Asia, and arrived first in Vietnam. As he was about to start down the stairs of his airplane, his wife Brigitte delivered a two-handed shove to Macron’s face. Macron first looked shocked, then, realizing that the door to the aircraft was open, put on a smile: It is a pretty shocking sight, and one can’t help wondering what else goes on
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May 25, 2025 — Bill Glahn
“Suspected arson causes a second major power outage in south of France,” reads an Associated Press (AP) headline from earlier today. Today’s outage hit Nice at 2 a.m. and left some 45,000 households without power. The outage on Saturday hit Cannes on the final day of that city’s famous film festival. The AP reports, The Nice public prosecutor said a criminal investigation has been opened for “organized arson.” The English
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March 23, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Earlier today, Arié Engelberg, the chief rabbi in the city of Orleans, France, was attacked while he was walking home from synagogue with his young son: French President Emmanuel Macron condemned Sunday the “poison of antisemitism” following a shocking attack on the chief rabbi of the central city of Orleans. French authorities are treating the incident as an antisemitic hate crime. Rabbi Arié Engelberg was assaulted Saturday evening while walking
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December 4, 2024 — John Hinderaker
It is extraordinary how impactful Donald Trump’s election has been. Without yet taking office, he is already bestriding the world stage. Thus, no sooner had Trump won the election than Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine may be willing to cede some territory to bring its war with Russia to an end, after all. Simply by winning the election, Trump might bring the Russia-Ukraine war to a halt. Next, Trump threatened
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November 19, 2024 — John Hinderaker
France, like a number of other Western European countries, is governed by a coalition of establishmentarians who are appalled at the popularity of the “far right,” a term that has no significance other than to denote skepticism of mass third-world immigration. For obvious reasons, that skepticism is ever more widely shared, on account of experience, and “far right” parties therefore pose an increasing danger to the European status quo. France
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July 7, 2024 — John Hinderaker
A week ago, the National Rally, a “far right” anti-mass third world immigration party, got the most votes in the first round of France’s two-step voting for the National Assembly. There was hope in some quarters that the Rally could win an absolute majority in today’s second round of balloting, and form a government. But it was not to be. President Macron and his party joined with leftist parties (including
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July 2, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about the first round of French elections, in which the “far right” National Rally scored an impressive plurality of votes for the National Assembly. But round two is coming up, and the left-wing and the relatively centrist (Macron) parties are combining to try to stop the “far right” from winning an outright majority in the National Assembly: At least 200 candidates have stood down days before France’s
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June 30, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The U.S. is not the only country experiencing rare political drama. In France, the first round of voting for the National Assembly, France’s lower house, took place today. This is the snap election that Emmanuel Macron called a few weeks ago, to the surprise of nearly everyone, after the “far right” trounced the other parties in EU elections. The National Rally looks to have won a plurality of the vote:
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June 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The results are coming in for today’s elections for the European Parliament, and so far it appears right-leaning populist parties are routing the establishment centrist and left parties. Green Parties are taking a disproportionate share of the losses. One of Bloomberg’s headlines in their election coverage package is “Macron and Scholz Get Trounced by Far Right in EU Elections.” In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won with 32% of
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March 22, 2024 — John Hinderaker
In France, at least two teachers have been murdered by Muslim students, one of them beheaded. The French press reports that “death threats and threats of rape have become common among pupils.” Those threats are directed toward both teachers and fellow students. Now, students at dozens of French schools have been sent “threatening messages and beheading videos” by Islamic radicals. The story is hard to parse out, and more is,
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January 29, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Farmers across much of Europe are protesting against their governments’ anti-agriculture policies. In France, farmers are shutting down access to Paris: Farmers set up roadblocks on eight motorways around Paris today as they made good their threat to place a stranglehold on the capital. “The siege of Paris is under way,” said Damien Greffin, vice-chairman of the country’s biggest farming union, the FNSEA. He said the plan was to “encircle”
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January 28, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Left-wing activists have taken to throwing food at paintings in order to make some kind of point. The latest victim is the Mona Lisa, in Paris’s Louvre Museum: In a video posted on social media, two women with the words “FOOD RIPOSTE” written on their T-shirts can be seen throwing soup at the glass protecting Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece and passing under a security barrier to get closer to the
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January 21, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Birth rates have fallen across Western Europe. In France, as in a number of other countries, the birth rate is below the replacement rate. This is the reason why European countries have turned to immigration to provide workers and to support their native populations as they retire. This policy has produced mixed results, at best. So it is easy to understand why western leaders would want to encourage population growth.
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December 11, 2023 — John Hinderaker
In France, two teachers have been murdered by Muslim students. So you can’t blame educators for being a little skittish: “Teachers strike after Muslim threats over nudes in art class.” Staff have gone on strike at a school near Paris saying they fear for their lives after Muslim pupils and parents voiced anger towards a teacher who displayed a Renaissance painting of nude women. This is the painting: The teacher
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December 3, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Actually, of course, we were anything but down and out. Rather, on vacation. Our plan was to spend a week in Paris, where we had never been, followed by a week in London, where we go pretty often. It didn’t quite turn out that way. Here are a few observations for those who might be interested: * We saw absolutely no political activity–no pro-Hamas demonstrations, in particular. On the contrary,
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