Tag Archives: France

This afternoon.

Paris, France.

For the day that’s in it.

Protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s decision for mandatory vaccines and passports across France.

Meanwhile…

This evening.

Earlier: Division Bell

Ireland’s Rhys Ruddock (left) and France’s Charles Ollivon contest the line-out during a Six Nations match at the Aviva Stadium last Sunday

This afternoon.

Suite aux tests PCR réalisés hier soir à Marcoussis auprès du XV de France, tous les joueurs ont été testés négatifs, un membre de l’encadrement technique a été testé positif, ainsi qu’un cas suspicieux et non avéré concernant Fabien Galthié qui sera testé à nouveau ce matin.

Huh?

Tournoi des 6 Nations : Protocole sanitaire (FFR)

Rapscallion writes:

French rugby team go into quarantine as a staff member gets positive result.

Eau.

At the going down of the sun.

We shall remember them.

Where are your masks?

Franco Prussian War?

Jacques Chirac in Dublin with With then Taoisigh John Bruton in 1996 (top) and Bertie Ahern (above) in 2000

This morning.

Jacques Chirac, the French president who led his country into Europe’s common currenc, has died aged 86.

After leaving office, Chirac was pursued by allegations of corruption from his years as mayor of Paris, becoming France’s first former head of state to stand trial and be convicted since World War II.

He also coined a phrase that has become a landmark of France’s climate policies since: “our house is burning down and we’re blind to it,” he said in a speech in 2002.

Chirac: Political chameleon who charmed France (BBC)

Jacques Chirac, tall, handsome and charismatic French statesman whose career was dogged by rumours of sleaze (Telegraph)


From top: the offending article in The Spectator; Ireland’s UK ambassador Adrian O’Neill and his letter to the magazine’s editor

Last night.

A diplomatic response to ‘ cheese-eating surrender monkey’ accusations leveled at Ireland in The Spectator by the suitably-named, Robert Hardman.

To wit:

Hardman said that Ireland was joining a group of “flimsily-connected” countries with “deplorable human rights records” and “French-speaking crooks”, some of whom, he added, appeared “at the bottom of every global corruption index”.

“Only the mean-spirited would suggest that little Leo will do anything to suck up to the top gang in the EU playground…,” he continued.

“How odd, then, to see the Irish — usually so quick to take offence at any whiff of imperialism — acting as a cheerleader for French aggrandisement.”

Ireland’s strange decision to join the French commonwealth (Robert Hardman, The Spectator – behind paywall)

Magazine criticised by ambassador for “anti-Irish sentiment” (The Irish World)

Previously: A Mere Spectator

A ‘Yellow Vest’ protest in Rouen, France; a mural in Paris by Pascal Boyart based on Eugene Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading The People

Today, in The Irish Times…

Lara Marlowe reports:

The revolt is ideologically closest to the far right.

Gratuitous violence, racism, sexism, anti-Semitism and homophobia are the dark side of the movement that has plunged France into its worst crisis of the past half century.

Like Donald Trump’s grassroots supporters in the US, the gilets jaunes deeply distrust traditional media.

“Journalistes, collabos, journalistes, collabos,” they chant in front of television, radio and newspaper headquarters. Journalists are regarded as part of the elite, and as “collaborators” of the Macron administration.

…The future of Europe, as well as the future of France, is at stake in Macron’s struggle quell the gilets jaunes.

Le gulp.

Yellow vests’ reactionary and populist traits not just a French problem (Lara Marlowe, The Irish Times)

Earlier: Force Majeure

Pic: Armani