Salut!

Voltaire, Gaza and beyond: why authorities mind you speaking your mind

That's me done with Voltaire. He's a great starting point for any discussion of free speech. But you always have to remember he didn't say it. He certainly thought it, but he never actually said or wrote - as far as is recorded - the words routinely attributed to him. For one last time, I invoked the great French philosopher for just that sort of discussion (and thanks to The National for letting me reproduce my articles here) ...

 

Nicolas de Largillière

Macron's 2022 nears end with comforting embraces for Mbappe, mixed balance sheet for France

 

 

Where else but Qatar to start a review of France and Emmanuel Macron's year? The mix of emotions on show at the end of a thrilling World Cup final no one really deserved to lose offered a useful metaphor. My thanks to the editor of The National for consenting to reproduction of my work here ...  

 

Amid high drama in Qatar, the faces of Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe firing the imagination of a watching world, an eventful year for France was reflected in other images capturing the changing moods of President Emmanuel Macron.

In Mr Macron’s expressions could be seen unbridled exhilaration at France’s comeback from being two goals down, the despair of ultimate defeat, grudging respect for the Argentine opposition and warm consolation for the deflated players, Mbappe in particular.

France was no longer top of the world in football. After the trophy-winning World Cup exploits of 1998 and 2018, finishing second in Doha was a slip from heady heights mirrored in at least one other aspect of the President’s experience of 2022.

 

Charlie Hebdo: judging terrorism and defending liberty

How Charlie Hebdo previewed the trial. I bought two copies by mistake and will send the spare to the first person to leave a comment persuading me it should go to them

For the next two and a half months, a court in Paris will consider the various secondary roles of 14 people accused in connection with the terrorist attacks of January 2015 that left 17 innocent people dead. The trial opened last Wednesday (September 1) and is being filmed for historical archives ... This is my preview for The National .. 

More than five years after attacks on the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket launched an ugly new wave of terrorism in France, the trial begins on Wednesday of 14 people accused of helping the killers.

Only 11 of the defendants can be present for hearings to be held at the new criminal court at the Porte de Clichy on the outskirts of the French capital.

Three others fled to Syria shortly before the attacks. Two are presumed to have died there while fighting  alongside ISIS but can still be tried because their deaths remain unconfirmed.

The grim events that unfolded between January 7 and 9 2015 shocked the world and intensified debate about blasphemy and the limits of freedom of expression. 

 

Sadiq Khan: who else would any sane Londoner have voted for?

One of my guilty pleasures is liking Boris. We always got on as colleagues, he greets me warmly on chance encounters and he writes - see his book on Churchill - like a dream. But now he's gone from the office of Mayor of London and I can revert to tribal loyalties. I am delighted at Sadiq Khan's election and, perhaps even more, at the Tories' defeat. Here's how I reported it for The National* ...

Sadiq Khan’s rise from the son of an immigrant bus driver to the first Muslim mayor of an EU capital has been accomplished with skill and commitment, but also the toughest of skins.

Cuba comes in from the cold

A piece for the business pages of The National* following my recent visit to Cuba. A companion article, quoting one couple's experiences of the very slow changes for ordinary people even as the country's rapprochement with the United States gathers pace, appears at http://www.francesalut.com/2016/03/cubas-rapprochement-with-the-usa-whats-it-like-for-ordinary-cubans.html....

As Cuba finally shrugs off the vestiges of Cold War isolation and prepares for its first visit in 88 years from a serving United States president, the potential for long-overdue business expansion becomes increasingly clear.

The Caribbean island is one of the world’s last Communist countries.

But while its president, Raul Castro, insists it will never abandon its core values, he seems determined to shake off the politics of defiance he once pursued as enthusiastically as his better-known brother and predecessor, Fidel, the leader of the revolution that ousted Fulgencio Batista’s regime in 1959.

The thaw in US-Cuban relations is gathering momentum and delivers eye-catching new initiatives almost weekly.

Recent breakthroughs include agreement on 20 daily flights from US airports to the island’s capital, Havana, a ferry link from Florida, further exceptions to the American trade embargo, plans for a US factory to make tractors and Barack Obama’s blueprint, as he prepares to visit Cuba this month, for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention centre for terrorist suspects.

Cuba's rapprochement with the USA: what's it like for ordinary Cubans?

Here is the accompanying piece, more or less a case study, to my item on Cuba's march towards a post-revolution, post-embargo, post-Cold War place in the world ...

Fidel Castro, the Marxist-­Leninist revolutionary leader who symbolises Cuba’s decades of defiance in the face of a neighbouring superpower, famously once said he found capitalism repugnant, filthy, gross and ­alienating, the cause of “war, hypocrisy and competition".

If the quotation betrays little scope for middle ground, Fidel’s younger brother Raul, who succeeded him in 2008 as the president of the Caribbean’s largest island, seems determined to find some on behalf of a younger generation restless for progress.

Auschwitz-Birkenau: industrial slaughter as a theme park, ghoulish but necessary

Four days before the world commemorated the 71st anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis' Auschwitz and Birkenau death camps, I walked the same ground where - to quote Unesco's sombre words - "1.5 million people, among them a great number of Jews, were systematically starved, tortured and murdered".

The first image is of the gallows where the camp commandant, Rudolf Höss, was hanged for freely admitted war crimes in 1947. What he willingly did and had done at the behest of his Third Reich masters challenged my lifelong abhorrence of capital punishment. I resisted the challenge, as I do the temptation to loathe all Germans for what some, even many, did - with enthusiasm or under orders it would have been fatal to disobey - during the wretched period until the Nazis were defeated, but would dutifully have throttled him myself given the opportunity and strength. I hope the distinction is clear.

How Charlie Hebdo, and the aftermath, illustrate a broadening terror threat

This was my analysis, after three days of successive terrorist attacks in France, for The National ...

During recent days of high drama and dispiriting tragedy, the temptation to present France as a country at war has been strong.

It is a notion that appeals more to headline writers and politicians than to common-sense analysis. But the events of Paris and its surrounding area have encouraged even cooler heads to identify lessons for the future of terrorism on western soil.

Brigitte Bardot pronounces as moment of truth nears: President Putin of France

The French election campaign has been, as people say of essentially dull 0-0 draws in football, absorbing. The country votes tomorrow, and then again on May 6 for the two who finish first.

Judge for yourselves but I was irrationally fascinated by this headline in the Var-Matin (I buy it daily but would have bought this edition anyway).

Exclusive: Bardot breaks her silence