In a letter sent to his committee of top executives, the head of luxury group LVMH, French billionaire Bernard Arnault, has listed those media outlets to whom staff are forbidden to speak. Among them is Mediapart. Indeed, for several months now, the company has refused to respond to our requests for interview. In this op-ed article, Mediapart's Yunnes Abzouz and Khedidja Zerouali explain the background to this blacklisting by one of the world's most high-profile commercial groups.
Former president Nicolas Sarkozy recently insisted that France was now politically a right-leaning country, probably more so than it has “ever been”. However, political scientist Vincent Tiberj disputes the widespread notion that there has been a rightwards shift “from the bottom up” in French society. Instead he prefers to point the finger of responsibility for recent voting patterns at media and political elites, against a backdrop of growing political disengagement among citizens. However, as Mediapart's Fabien Escalona writes, it would be unwise for the Left to seize on this as a reassuring counter-narrative.
Dominique Pelicot, accused of drugging his wife to sleep and recruiting dozens of men to abuse her for over 10 years, referred to the 50 co-defendants who are accused of raping his now ex-wife Gisèle, and said: "I am a rapist like the others in this room."
The French government on Wednesday announced the establishment of a state of emergency in the Pacific Ocean territory of New Caledonia, where four people, including a gendarme, have died and many others were injured after two nights of rioting. The troubles were prompted by anger at new legislation to change the electoral register which will have the effect of diminishing the political representation of the archipelago’s indigenous Kanak people. “We’ve entered a deadly spiral," said France's high commissioner for the territory, Louis Le Franc. Gilles Caprais reports from the New Caledonian capital Nouméa, after the second night of violence.
