As the abduction of the Venezuelan president has shown, Donald Trump’s expansionist and neo-reactionary policy is an assault on every citizen of the planet, writes Mediapart's publishing editor in this op-ed article. As their leaders abandon them, the citizens of European societies have no choice but to rally to defend their principles of equality and social justice.
France's president Emmanuel Macron has endorsed - without the slightest reservation - the military operation carried out by Donald Trump to seize Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. In doing so, argues Mediapart's political correspondent in this op-ed article, he has trampled over every principle on which French diplomacy has historically been based. Chief among these is the country's attachment to international law.
In a recent book, French historian Sabine Dullin argues that the way Vladimir Putin wields power - and his war of aggression in Ukraine – is rooted in methods of Russian rule developed over several centuries. The academic says with that the exception of some brief interludes, in Russia “autocracy and empire have fed off one another”. Mediapart looks at the lessons to be learnt from her analysis of Russia's past and present regimes.
France's head of state sought to put himself front and centre stage when delivering the traditional presidential New Year address to the nation on December 31st. “This will be a productive year,” promised Emmanuel Macron. Yet as Mediapart's political correspondent here explains, the president's room for manoeuvre both domestically and abroad is shrinking as fast as the approach of the end of his second five-year term.
After several months of preparation work, on December 24th the Algerian Parliament adopted a law which criminalises France's colonisation of the North African country and calls for reparations. Paris sees the move as another diplomatic affront amid the ongoing crisis in relations between the two countries. But as Driss Rejichi explains, this legislation is part of a wider movement across Africa seeking restorative justice.
Brigitte Bardot, who died on Sunday at her home in Saint-Tropez at the age of 91, was French cinema’s first “superstar”, once regarded as an icon of women’s liberation in conservative, pre-May 1968 France. Despite having an influence in the modernisation of French society, she would reject the feminist cause and took up that of animal rights after she left acting in 1973, and became close to the far-right in her later years. To better understand Bardot’s chequered life, Mediapart turned to Émilie Giaime, a senior lecturer in contemporary history and the media at the Catholic Institute of Paris, who argues that Bardot served as “the accelerator” of a new era of modernity in France, “both capitalist and hyper-mediatised”.
The activities of organised crime gangs in Corsica have long gangrened society on the French Mediterranean island, where intimidation tactics and their imposed law of silence have allowed corruption to flourish. But now, a growing “anti-mafia” movement, made up of an alliance of associations that for most were created in anger at the murders of whistleblowers, is gaining ground. Yet despite the success of their protest marches, the issue of cracking down on the criminal gangs and clans is largely absent from the agendas of the municipal elections due in March, to the relief of some.
“From Paris, I watch the European continent congratulate itself for finally recognizing Palestine, even as it bankrolls the projects of walls, buffer zones, and ‘migration management’ systems that make it easier to empty Gaza of its people and harder than ever for us to go home,” writes Gazan journalist Nour Elassy, now studying in France, in the latest of her regular contributions to Mediapart, which she began earlier this year, from within Gaza, chronicling the horrors of the unfolding war.
Before he joined the San Antonio Spurs in the US, the French basketball prodigy Victor Wembanyama, now an MBA superstar, played for one year with Metropolitans 92, based in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. The club was owned by the town hall, and the local mayor did his utmost to sign Wembanyama, including seeking funding from private companies in deals that are now at the centre of a prosecutors’ probe into suspected corruption.
Men with the lowest standard of living in France have an average life expectancy of 72 years, compared with 85 years for those in the wealthiest category, while women in the lowest income group have an average life expectancy of 80.1 years, compared with 88.7 years for the most wealthy. Those stark differences are detailed in a study published this week by France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, which found not only that the gap between the poor and the rich has widened over the past eight years, but that life expectancy for the poorest 25% of the population has declined over the same period. Romaric Godin analyses the findings.
