Category Archives: France

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A fresh wave of hard-right populism is stalking Europe

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In Germany, the AfD are weaponising climate change

The Economist — Sep 14th 2023
A spectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of a rising hard right. In Germany the overtly xenophobic Alternative for Germany (afd) has surged to become the country’s second-most popular party.
Its success is polarising domestic politics and it seems poised to triumph in state elections in the east next year. In Poland the ruling Law and Justice party is leading the polls ahead of a general election on October 15th, and it is being drawn further to the right by an extreme new party, Confederation.

Continue reading A fresh wave of hard-right populism is stalking Europe →

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Dyer: Police Killings & Trouble In France

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Violence in France

On Saturday, the fifth day of violent protests all over France against the police killing of an unarmed teenager,, the daily arrests dropped below 1,000 for the first time – but the violence became even more extreme.

By Gwynne Dyer, in Opinion — July 4 2023

Nahel Merzouk, shot by a French policeman


In L’Haÿ-les-Roses, a southern suburb of Paris, protesters rammed a stolen car through the gates of the mayor’s home shortly after midnight, and then set the vehicle on fire so that the blaze would spread to the house.

The mayor, Vincent Jeanbrun, was still at his office trying to deal with the situation, but his wife, Melanie Nowak, and their two children aged five and seven were in the house.

Continue reading Dyer: Police Killings & Trouble In France →

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In The Yard: Our Flowery May Day Demonstration

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In many parts of the world, May 1 is Labor Day, a holiday, and observances typically have a noticeably leftwing or socialist character.

But the U. S. Doesn’t recognize such subversive notions, preferring its very tame beer-hotdogs-and-baseball version in September. (That’s Labor — excuse me, Labour Day — in Canada also; I mistakenly thought that was their Thanksgiving Day, but they’ve slotted that in for the second Monday of October. I’ve also long believed that occasion is secretly focused on giving thanks that Canada’s long southern border remains yet unbreached from below since the War of 1812, which, by the way, they won.) Continue reading In The Yard: Our Flowery May Day Demonstration →

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Ukraine, Year Two: A Pair of Particularly Pointed Perspectives — Liz Sly & Gwynne Dyer: Escalation

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Washington Post — February 22, 2023

By Liz Sly

Year of war
: A global divide on the Ukraine war is deepening
Russia capitalizes on disillusionment with the United States to win sympathy in the Global South.

JOHANNESBURG — Clement Manyathela, who hosts a popular and influential talk show on South Africa’s Radio 702, remembers the outrage he felt when Russian troops first surged into Ukraine. He had believed Russia’s insistence that it wasn’t planning to attack and felt cheated when war broke out.
“We were lied to,” he said.
 Continue reading Ukraine, Year Two: A Pair of Particularly Pointed Perspectives — Liz Sly & Gwynne Dyer: Escalation →

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From France & Texas, Two Striking Takes on Racism, Identity Politics & Cultural Turmoil

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#1-France vs. “Le wokisme”:

THE FRENCH ARE IN A PANIC OVER LE WOKISME
The nation’s vehement rejection of identity politics made me recalibrate my own views about woke ideology.

By Thomas Chatterton Williams

Excerpts from The Atlantic, February 4, 2023

[NOTE: Williams] took part in “a two-day “taboo-free discussion” among public intellectuals about the crisis of Western democracies. More than 100 of us had gathered in a large tent set up beneath the window of Alexis de Tocqueville’s study, on the grounds of the 16th-century Château de Tocqueville, in coastal Normandy. . . . Continue reading From France & Texas, Two Striking Takes on Racism, Identity Politics & Cultural Turmoil →