France
October 29, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Islamist violence in France that John describes in his post below is the bloody tip of the spear of the Islamic world’s reaction to President Macron’s attempt to defeat terrorism. Turkey’s president, the deplorable thug Erdogan, attacked Macron’s response to the beheading of that teacher in a Paris suburb, claiming that Macron “needs treatment on a mental level.” The Washington Post described Macron’s response as “a crackdown on Muslim
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October 29, 2020 — John Hinderaker
France has sustained a series of attacks by Islamic terrorists, leaving three dead. The Sun has a good account with lots of photos. The principal violence occurred at a church in Nice: France is under siege after a woman was beheaded and two others killed in a church by a suspected terrorist and a another gunman was shot dead in a wave of violence. Two separate suspects are understood to
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October 17, 2020 — John Hinderaker
We haven’t seen a lot of Islamic terrorism here in the U.S. lately, but yesterday a history teacher was decapitated in Paris: A history teacher who had shown caricatures of Islam’s Prophet Muhammed in class was on Friday decapitated and his assailant shot dead by French police as they tried to arrest him, police and prosecutors said. The attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he was confronted by police, a police
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July 8, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Anticipating the 50th anniversary of what the French euphemistically call “the events” of ’68, Professor Daniel Mahoney provided a retrospective assessment based on the work of Raymond Aron, Roger Scruton, and Pierre Manent in the Law & Liberty essay “France’s psychodrama of 1968.” Steve revisited the subject with Professor Mahoney last week in the podcast posted here. Rereading Professor Mahoney’s 2018 essay, I was most struck by this paragraph toward
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May 8, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Looking at the latest Wuhan coronavirus numbers, some of the best news I see is from France. That country has been hard hit by the coronavirus. It ranks fifth in the world in deaths attributed to virus, just behind Spain. (I’m not counting China which almost certainly has more deaths than France, but reports fewer.) Per capita, France also ranks fifth, with more deaths than the U.S. However, things are
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May 4, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Germany and France are set to reopen schools. However, the two nations are taking very different approaches. Germany is starting with two sets of students. Those about to move from primary school to secondary school and those about to take graduation/college entrance examinations will be the first back. Germany is still considering when other sets of students will be allowed to return. France will start with a much younger group
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April 16, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
French authorities report that domestic violence cases increased by more than 30 percent in the first week of France’s Wuhan coronavirus lockdown. In Paris, the percentage seems to have been even higher. According to Christophe Castaner, the French Interior Minister, there was a 36 percent increase in police intervention for cases of domestic violence in the City of Lights. Other nations have also experienced a significant rise in domestic violence
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April 15, 2020 — John Hinderaker
William Buckley famously said that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University. I share the sentiment. But in France, an exercise in random democracy is not faring well. President Macron’s attempt to appease yellow-vest protesters has saddled him with radical ecological policy proposals likely to further damage the wobbling French economy. I don’t claim to understand
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April 1, 2020 — John Hinderaker
The London Times reports from France. Even if we discount a bit for the fact that the British have often taken a jaundiced view of the French, the report is troubling: The wartime appetite for la délation — reporting wrongdoers to the authorities — has reappeared. In country towns, people are denouncing neighbours to the gendarmerie for breaching le confinement and leaving their homes too often. … Tempers are fraying
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February 27, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Italy is the European nation most affected by the coronavirus, so far. As of two days ago, more than 2,000 cases and seven deaths had been confirmed. Reportedly, a dozen towns, including Milan and Venice, have been placed on lockdown. Travel is permitted neither in nor out. Last Sunday, the two top-league soccer matches scheduled in northern Italy — one in Milan, the other in Bergamo — were postponed. Matches
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February 22, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Historically, French voters have declined to look into the private lives of their politicians. Which, for the most part, has been just as well. But politics in France are currently being roiled by the withdrawal of Benjamin Griveaux, a close ally of President Macron, from his campaign for Mayor of Paris. [Adult content alert] Griveaux’s withdrawal was prompted by publication of a video of him masturbating. The London Times reports:
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January 24, 2020 — John Hinderaker
From France comes this disturbing headline: “French teenager in hiding after insulting Islam online.” Police have told a French teenager to go into hiding after she received death threats for insulting Islam. The 16-year-old has been advised to stay away from her lycée (sixth-form college) in southeast France after calls on the internet for her to be killed, raped or attacked. Great police protection! A 16-year-old girl is threatened with
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December 5, 2019 — John Hinderaker
France is a country where, politically speaking, no good deed goes unpunished. Thus, protests against President Macron’s plan (as yet unspecified) to deal with that country’s unsustainable pension obligations have brought France to a near-standstill. Far-left activists attacked police and started fires in central Paris today as protests against President Macron’s plans for pension reform descended into violence. Officers came under a hail of bricks and other objects from extremists
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August 26, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, I wrote about what I called “Macron’s stunt” — the high-level meeting between French and Iranian officials that occurred while France was hosting the G-7 conference. I viewed the meeting as an affront to President Trump. Not because Trump doesn’t want France and Iran to talk, but because holding talks in the midst of the summit, and without Trump’s prior approval, seemed like grandstanding and an attempt to show
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August 25, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
French president Emmanuel Macron invited Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, to Biarritz, France, where the G-7 summit is convened. Zarif reportedly met for several hours with Macron, his foreign minister, and diplomats from Great Britain and Germany. Macron’s stunt didn’t just catch President Trump off guard. At least some leaders of other G-7 nations apparently weren’t told in advance about Zarif’s visit, either. Macron disagrees with the Trump administration’s
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July 3, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Steve has heaped deserved ridicule on the left’s hysterical reaction to President Trump’s decision to roll out tanks and other weaponry for a Fourth of July parade in Washington, D.C. As Steve noted, Larry Tribe sees a “chilling resemblance to the days before the Tiananmen Square massacre. Joy Reed thinks Trump is threatening his critics with tanks. But the inspiration for Trump’s parade isn’t China or any other dictatorship. The
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May 3, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
France’s Yellow Vest movement began as a grassroots protest movement with legitimate grievances, especially one over a government tax on fuel. For quite some time, though, the movement has been dominated by assorted thugs, including political extremists and anarchists, who get high on smashing windows and damaging property. On Wednesday, May Day, the thugs once again took to the street, and not peaceably. In one incident, demonstrators entered the Pitie
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