Salut!

Gabriel Attal: should the French wonder how Le Boy Wonder will do?

 

French politics: a very special, sometimes frenzied sphere and one I enjoy writing about. Oddly enough, I didn’t initially propose an analytical piece to The National on the elevation of 34-year-ôld Gabriel Attal to the role of prime minister. I misjudged what interest there’d be given how how firmly real power in France resides in the presidency. The National came to me. This - which you can see in original form at the newspaper's site  - is the result …

 

The next time political pundits mock British Conservatives for having worked their way, with scant success, through so many prime ministers – five in their 13 years of power – they should perhaps cast a glance across the English Channel at France, where an unpopular President, Emmanuel Macron, has announced his fourth in just seven years of office.

Mr Macron’s choice as successor to the earnest but beleaguered Elisabeth Borne is the youngest to hold the office in modern times. Gabriel Attal, just 34, has enjoyed a meteoric rise to the top and is regarded as the best-liked member of the centrist government, even though the administration’s inability to win public hearts and minds suggests he is merely the figure voters dislike least.

In many ways, Mr Attal is the mirror image of the President who, for now, is also his cheerleader.

Image: Conseil de l'Union Européenne

Out with the old but will the new year be any better ?

Well 2023 was hardly a year to remember for good reasons. What will 2024 bring? In my piece for The National, I struggle to sound an optimistic note…. 

 

Amid the profound uncertainty, hopes and fears that dominate thoughts as Europe enters 2024, some predictions can be made with confidence and have the power to impose radical change on the continent and its way of life. 

 

Beyond reasonable doubt, the terrible suffering of Gaza, itself following the horrendous attack of October 7, will continue to cause not only deep shock but deep division across Europe. While there remains great sympathy for Israelis killed, maimed or bereaved by Hamas, millions are also appalled at a military response that seems as indiscriminate and frankly inhuman as terrorist atrocities. These divisions are sure to assume increasing prominence. 

Salut!'s Christmas greetings

Salut! has not been as active this year as in some previous ones. I keep things going by reproducing articles I have published elsewhere, especially The National (UAE) but there is not currently a great flow of new material.

Nevertheless I would like to wish all readers a peaceful Christmas and a happy new year.

When Irish eyes are unsmiling. The Dublin riots, Conor McGregor and the Irish diaspora`

My love affair with Ireland began some time before I first set foot in the country.

I became hooked on Irish music while attending and running folk clubs in the North East of England. I would go on to spend several happy holidays there, later making repeated visits - Northern Ireland mostly but also, often enough venturing south, as a reporter.

I have made Irish friends in many walks of life and almost always experienced a warm welcome on my travels to their land. But the times are changing.

Europe's current obsession with immigration is affecting attitudes throughout the EU as well as in Britain. The politicians seem too incompetent and unimaginative to act in an effective way that does not at the same time lose sight of the need for compassion and a sense of proportion.

Recent events in Dublin are instructive, as I attempted to show in this analysis for The National ...

 

 

 

The island of Ireland, where the stabbing of three children outside a Dublin primary school last week led to rioting, is beautiful, often troubled and historically a great exporter of people.

Definitions vary but the Irish diaspora numbers between an official estimate of three million, born in Ireland but residing overseas, and an astonishing 100 million, the higher figure covering everyone of known Irish ancestry scattered around the world. Ireland's population, even taking account of Northern Ireland, part of the UK, stands at just seven million.

Dublin burning. Image: CanalEnthusiast

 

France and anti-Semitism: when the right for once seems right, is the left left wanting?

My look at the strangely changing nature of French politics, in which the far right reinvents itself as defender of Jews while elements of the left seem, by comparison, anti-Semitic. But be careful. As I try to explain below, in this Comment piece for The National (to which my usual thanks for permission to reproduce), there is nothing simple about the divisions arising from the deadly Israel-Hamas conflict ....

On Monday, French police arrested eight youngsters, aged from 11 to 17, suspected of chanting slogans calling for the death of Jews in an unsavoury episode on the Paris Metro last month.

Filmed on October 31 by another passenger, the group also targeted the police, sexual minorities, and France itself, before mocking one woman brave enough to intervene. “We are Nazis and we are proud,” they chanted during a tirade of hatred that lasted no less than 10 minutes, just weeks after Hamas killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel.

Image of the Battle of Gaza 312BC: from The illustrated history of the world

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

'Police partout, justice nulle part.' The over-the-top French protest slogan highlighting a real crisis

The phrase - Police everywhere, justice nowhere - appears in French on banners and in chants at all demonstration in Paris and around France against police violence. At some stage of most demos, the professional hoodlums known as Black Blocs, and other fringe elements, can be relied upon to have it both ways, namely by mounting vicious attacks on the police they accuse of being violent. But the hyperbole and double standards do not negate the valid nature of such protests. In France, but by no means only in France, the police do not always behave in a manner the public is entitled to expect. The resulting stain on the reputation of law enforcement officers as a whole is one unfortunate consequence, as I argue in this piece for The National (see the article and all my work for the newspaper at this link) ...

Image: Liftarn, Open Clip Art Library

 

 

Pope Francis in Marseille: if ever healing powers were needed ...

 

The Pope will be in Marseille this coming weekend. Parts of the left decry President Emmanuel Macron's intention to attend the main focus of the visit, open-air Mass at the OM stadium, the Velodrome, as an insult to France's secular status. I'm of the left, OK softishly, and have no such complaints since French presidents have often attended religious service, not as worshippers but as heads of state.

My preview for The National ...

Catherine de Medici marries the future King Henri II of France, 1533

Socayna: shades of Liverpool as French drug wars claim another innocent life

 

On Merseyside, it was little Olivia Pratt-Korbel, nine years old and shot dead when a deranged drug dealer fired through her front door after another lowlife, unknown to Olivia's family, had fled inside to avoid his pursuit. And Elle Edwards, 26, died after being hit by another gangland hoodlum who opened fire outside a pub.

In France, the focus is on Socayna, a 24-year-old law student whose life was ended by a gunman who fired randomly in an attempt to intimidate those running a rival drug sales pitch in Marseille.

The Merseyside gunmen shot to kill known targets. Socayna was killed by a bullet fired wildly in the air. One of the murderer's bullets penetrated the wall of Socayna's bedorom as she sat at her desk studying and shattered her face.

I don't suppose he cares too much, but I do. If wealthy, I'd happily offer a big reward  to get him caught and convicted and an even bigger one to snare his masters.

My piece for The National on the short life and horrible death of Socayna ...

 

 

If you can’t stand the heat, avoid southern France for now

 

 

Just now, down in the south of France, it feels impossible to go out without seeing an air conditioning installation van outside at least one house in every street. After the sleeplessly torrid nights of recent past, we'll soon enough be raiding the savings ourselves.

This is a piece I wrote about la canicule for The National.

 

The photograph of the monument below shows us things have been worse: it commemorates the Landes forest fires of 1949 that killed 82...

 

 

Image:  'Par moi'