Bernard Cazeneuve, rapporteur for the French parliament's mission of enquiry into the deaths in a bomb blast in Karachi in 2002 of 11 French naval engineers, tells Mediapart of his outrage at the 'obstruction'of the judicial investigation into the murders, and says the Constitutional Council "owes it to the victims" to reveal the truth about Edouard Balladur's presidential election campaign funds.
Chinese political activist, the academic and author Liu Xiaobo, jailed for 11 years in 2009 for incitiment to subvert state power, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 8th for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China". His wife Liu Xia (pictured), subsequently placed under house arrest, gave this exclusive telephone interview to Beijing-based French journalist and Mediapart contributor Jordan Pouille.
The career of celebrated French film director Claude Chabrol, who died in September, spanned five decades and more than 50 films. But the director of thrillers like The Butcher and The Flower of Evil leaves behind an enduring mystery about himself and the true focus of his work. Jean Douchet, an authority on French cinema and a lifelong friend of Chabrol, offers a clue to understanding both.
Back in September 2010, former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz told Mediapart in a series of video interviews why austerity plans were "counter-productive", threatening a "double-dip recession", and warned how the flawed and derided financial practices that led to the 2008 crash were back in business. "It is conceivable that one or more countries would either default or drop the euro", said the 2001 winner of Nobel Prize in Economics. Why was no-one listening?
