Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

Friday, October 29, 2021

Greek military goes shopping

 mondediplo.com /2021/11/01edito

3-4 minutes 1/11/2021

Christmas has come early for Greece’s armed forces: this year the government is giving them 24 Rafale fighter jets and three cutting-edge frigates; later, they’ll be getting Lockheed Martin F-35s, Sikorsky helicopters, drones, torpedoes and missiles. The Greek military won’t be the only ones celebrating, though: French arms manufacturers, Dassault in particular, are among their biggest suppliers.


Back in 2015, Greece was ruined, gasping, reduced to a protectorate of the ‘troika’ — the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund — which scrutinised every last item of its spending to force it to repay a debt even the IMF acknowledged was ‘unsustainable’. On Germany’s insistence, the troika was particularly tough on social welfare spending. There were huge increases in tax and health insurance contributions, and reductions in unemployment benefit and the minimum wage (cut by 32% for under 25s); retirement age rose to 67 (while pensions shrank 14 times in a row); and over-crowded hospitals ran short ofresources and drugs.


But military spending seems to have escaped these strict controls, rising from 2.46% of GDP in 2015 to 2.79% in 2020, the highest in the EU. Clearly, if you want peace, prepare for war. Greece does indeed feel threatened by Turkey, which is acting more and more provocatively in the eastern Mediterranean, and has illegally occupied part of Cyprus for nearly 50 years. But that hasn’t stopped Greece and Turkey from both being members of NATO, nor Germany from being one of Turkey’s main arms suppliers.


In 2015, when the European banks crushed the ‘Greek Spring’, Le Figaro was particularly savage, saying that Greece, even bled dry, was like ‘a patient who slaps his doctor in the face’ when it should be paying its creditors on the nail. Otherwise, Le Figaro claimed (as did almost all French media), ‘every French citizen will have to pay €735 to write off Greece’s debt’ (1). In 2015 that debt was 177% of GDP; as of December 2020 it had topped 205%. Yet Le Figaro has stopped worrying about European lenders. Why? No one dares suggest it is because Greece is buying armaments from the Dassault group, which owns Le Figaro (2).


There won’t be a happy ending until Turkish submarines purchased from Germany sink Greek frigates built in France. Then Greece may finally decide to buy back the port it sold to China (Piraeus) (3). And the ‘Franco-German partnership’ having demonstrated its flexibility, ‘Europe’s strategic autonomy’ will be well on its way...


(1) Le Figaro, 8 January 2015. France’s two largest TV channels, TF1 and France 2, echoed this the same evening, a few hours after the Greek left won the general election.


(3) A Chinese state-owned company has a 67% stake in the Piraeus port authority. See Niels Kadritzke, ‘Greece is sold off and sold out’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, July 2016.


(1) Le Figaro, 8 January 2015. France’s two largest TV channels, TF1 and France 2, echoed this the same evening, a few hours after the Greek left won the general election.


(3) A Chinese state-owned company has a 67% stake in the Piraeus port authority. See Niels Kadritzke, ‘Greece is sold off and sold out’, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, July 2016.

Thursday, October 29, 2020

Muslims have 'right to punish' French, says Malaysia's Mahathir

 Muslims have 'right to punish' French, says Malaysia's Mahathir

Reuters Staff

2-3 minutes

OCTOBER 29, 20205:32 PMUPDATED 27 MINUTES AGO

In a blog post Mahathir, 95, a respected leader in the Muslim world, said he believed in freedom of expression but that it should not be used to insult others.

“Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past. But by and large the Muslims have not applied the ‘eye for an eye’ law. Muslims don’t. The French shouldn’t,” Mahathir said in a blog post, which he also posted on Twitter.

“Since you have blamed all Muslims and the Muslims’ religion for what was done by one angry person, the Muslims have a right to punish the French,” he said.

Twitter said the message violated its rules and it had removed the tweet.

Several Muslim-majority countries have denounced remarks by French officials, including President Emmanuel Macron, defending the use of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in a French school classroom. The caricatures are seen as blasphemous by Muslims.

The dispute flared after a French teacher who showed his pupils satirical cartoons of the Prophet during a civics lesson was later beheaded in the street by an attacker of Chechen origin.

French officials said the killing was an attack on the core French value of freedom of expression and defended the right to publish the cartoons. Macron has also said he would redouble efforts to stop conservative Islamic beliefs subverting French values.


Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi; Editing by Jon Boyle and Toby Chopra

Sunday, October 25, 2020

Man Beheads Teacher on the Street in France and Is Killed by Police

 www.nytimes.com /2020/10/16/world/europe/france-decapitate-beheading.html

By Adam Nossiter

7-9 minutes

The victim was immediately depicted as a martyr to freedom of expression. France’s antiterrorism prosecutors are investigating the attack, which took place in a suburb north of Paris.

Police officers near the scene north of Paris where a man decapitated a schoolteacher.

Credit...Kiran Ridley/Getty Images

Published Oct. 16, 2020Updated Oct. 20, 2020

PARIS — A knife-wielding man decapitated a teacher near a school in a suburb north of Paris on Friday afternoon and was later shot dead by the police, officials said, abruptly hitting France with a national trauma that revived memories of recent terrorist attacks.

A police officer and parents with knowledge of the attack confirmed French media reports that the victim was a history teacher at the school who had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in a class on freedom of expression, which had incited anger among some Muslim families.

The teacher, still unidentified by Friday evening, was immediately depicted as a martyr to freedom of expression across the political spectrum. Representatives in France’s Parliament rose to their feet to “honor the victim’s memory,” as the president of the session, parliamentary deputy Hugues Renson, declared. And President Emmanuel Macron hurried to the scene of the attack Friday night.

“This was an attempt to strike down the republic,” Mr. Macron said.

Seizing on the symbolic nature of an attack against a schoolteacher, and reprising anti-Islamist themes he has lately emphasized, Mr. Macron said the teacher had been “the victim of a terrorist, Islamist attack.”

The teacher was struck down “because he taught, because he taught the liberty of expression, the liberty to believe and not believe,” the French president said in a brief televised address.

France’s antiterrorism prosecutors immediately took over the investigation of the attack, which happened at the junction of two adjoining Paris suburbs, Eragny and Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

Much remained obscure Friday night in the absence of an official police narrative. But the underlying themes of what was known conjured up France’s recent history of terrorist attacks: an assailant carefully choosing a victim thought to symbolize an offense against Islam.

President Emmanuel Macron of France visited the scene and spoke with the press on Friday.

Turmoil at the school over the teacher’s method of instruction — Mr. Macron alluded to this in his remarks — had evidently preceded the killing. “We have seen the principal, who in these last weeks has withstood with remarkable courage a great deal of pressure,” Mr. Macron said.

In a video that widely circulated on YouTube before the attack, a Muslim parent at the teacher’s school, College du Bois-d’Aulne, expresses anger that an unidentified teacher had asked Muslims in the class of 13-year-olds to leave because “he was going to show a photo that would shock them.”

The parent asks on the video: “Why this hatred? Why does a history teacher act like this in front of 13-year-olds?”

The assailant is not known to have a connection to the school. French media reported that he was 18 and of Russian origin.

A police union official told the French television station BFM that witnesses had seen the assailant cutting the victim’s throat. The national police were called, officials said, and after having discovered the decapitated victim, confronted the assailant nearby, close to the school. Brandishing a large knife, he threatened the officers, and after refusing to surrender, was shot 10 times, they said.

French media, quoting witnesses, said the assailant was heard to yell “Allahu akbar” at the moment of the knife attack. A photograph of a corpse lying in the middle of a leafy suburban street appeared on French television not long afterward.

The attack came three weeks after a knife-wielding assailant wounded two people in Paris near the site of the former Charlie Hebdo office — the scene of a 2015 terrorist attack targeting the satirical newspaper for its caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

French officials of all political stripes rushed to denounce the teacher’s killing. The interior minister, in charge of the police, cut short an official trip to Morocco and flew home to Paris.

“The assassination of a history teacher is an attack on freedom of expression and the values of the republic,” the president of the National Assembly, Richard Ferrand, said on Twitter. “To attack a teacher is to attack all French citizens and freedom.”

“Frightful. Huge emotion and anger in the face of this terrorist barbarism,” a leading Socialist parliamentarian, Boris Vallaud, wrote on Twitter.

“So this week, he allowed himself to tell them, the Muslims, Muslim students raise your hands,” the parents says. “So they raised their hands, and he said, ‘right, leave the class.’ So my daughter refused to leave and asked him, ‘why?’ And he said he was going to show a photo that would shock them. And then he showed them a naked man, telling them it was the prophet.”

Another parent, Carine Mendes, 41, whose child had attended the class, offered a more nuanced view of what happened. She called the teacher “a very sweet person, in his words, in his expressions.”

Ms. Mendes said the teacher had suggested to Muslim students who did not want to see the cartoon that they leave the classroom temporarily, and had asked those who remained not to tell their Muslim classmates about the cartoon in order not to offend their faith.

“He really tried to do things with respect, he didn’t want to hurt anyone,” she said.

But in a second class where the teacher gave the course, a shocked student refused to leave the room and told her father about what happened. He was the father who later complained in the video posted online.

The next day, the teacher apologized to his students and the principal sent an email message to parents to try to clear up the situation. The teacher’s suggestion to leave the classroom, the principal said, had been insensitive.

“Without wanting to offend anyone, it turned out that by offering this possibility to the students, he still offended the student,” the principal’s email read.

Ms. Mendes said that what happened “was awful.”

“He was just giving a course on freedom of expression,” she said.

“A teacher was killed just for doing his job,” Sophie Venetitay, a teachers’ union official, told BFM.

Constant Méheut and Antonella Francini contributed reporting.


Adam Nossiter is the Paris bureau chief. Previously, he was a Paris correspondent, the West Africa bureau chief, and led the team that won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for coverage of the Ebola epidemic.

A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 17, 2020, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Man Kills Teacher In Paris Suburb, Decapitating Him. Order Reprints | Today’s 

Friday, October 18, 2019

Terror Attacks in France: A Culture of Denial

www.gatestoneinstitute.org /15019/france-terrorism-denial
Alain Destexhe
7-9 minutes

Pictured: Police block a bridge near Paris Police headquarters, after a terrorist murdered four police employees on October 3, 2019 in Paris, France. (Photo by Marc Piasecki/Getty Images)

On October 3, 2019, a knife-wielding Muslim employee of the Paris Police Department Intelligence Directorate stabbed to death four other employees at police headquarters in the center of Paris, before a trainee police officer shot and killed him. While it was not the deadliest terror attack France has experienced in recent years, the fatal stabbings that took place at the Paris police headquarters were perhaps the most worrisome. Its author (a French public servant employed by the police), its highly sensitive target, and the catastrophic handling of the aftermath of the attack reveal the failure of the French institutions.

Friday, March 30, 2018

Turkey says will take action if militants do not leave Syria's Manbij

MARCH 28, 2018 / 8:09 PM / 2 DAYS AGO
Reuters Staff

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey will take action if militants do not withdraw immediately from Syria’s Manbij region and areas in the country east of the Euphrates, Turkey’s National Security Council said on Wednesday.

Turkey, which stormed the northern Syrian town of Afrin last week after a two-month offensive against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, has repeatedly threatened to push its operations further east to Manbij where U.S. troops are stationed.

Expanding Turkey’s military campaign into the much larger Kurdish-held territory further east, which President Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to do, would risk confrontation between the NATO allies who have been at loggerheads over the U.S. policy in Syria and other issues.

“In the meeting, it is stated that the terrorists in Manbij should be removed from the area, otherwise Turkey will not hesitate to take initiative by itself as it did in other regions,” the statement from the security council, chaired by Erdogan, said.

It said the same approach also applied to the militants on Syrian soil at the east of Euphrates, without elaborating where that would specifically apply to, or who it might target.

Turkey considers the YPG to be an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the state, and has been infuriated by the support Washington has provided the Syrian Kurdish fighters.

The Council said it also expected Iraq’s government to prevent the PKK operating in Iraq, especially in towns of Sinjar and Qandil. If that was not possible Turkey would prevent them itself, the council added.

“In the meeting it is stated that aside from Syria, Turkey expects Iraq to prevent operations by the separatist terrorist organization in its territory and if it is not possible Turkey will prevent them by itself,” the council statement said using the term it applies to PKK.

On Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Iraqi armed forces would prevent Kurdish militants based in northern Iraq from staging cross-border attacks against Turkey during a phone call with his Turkish counterpart.

Reporting by Ezgi Erkoyun; Editing by Alison Williams

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Monday, May 8, 2017

Macron and the Revival of Europe


Roger Cohen MAY 7, 2017

The New York Times

It’s not just that Emmanuel Macron won and will become, at the age of 39, France’s youngest president. It’s not merely that he defeated, in Marine Le Pen, the forces of xenophobic nationalism exploited by President Donald Trump. It’s that he won with a bold stand for the much-maligned European Union, and so reaffirmed the European idea and Europe’s place in a world that needs its strength and values.

With Le Pen defeat, Europe’s far-right surge stalls



The Washington Post

By Michael Birnbaum and Anthony Faiola May 7 at 10:08 PM
BRUSSELS — The anti-E.U. French leader Marine Le Pen’s larger-than-expected defeat Sunday in her nation’s presidential election was a crushing reality check for the far-right forces who seek to overthrow Europe: Despite the victories for Brexit and Donald Trump, they are likely to be shut out of power for years.

Monday, April 24, 2017

Brexit Bulletin: What Macron Means for May


Macron has pledged to be tough on Britain.
by Simon Kennedy
24 Απριλίου 2017, 9:30 π.μ. EEST

Bloomberg

Theresa May’s first electoral test came on Sunday in France.

Even as she heads for a general election at home, the U.K. prime minister will have been looking across the English Channel at the weekend in the knowledge that whoever wins the French presidency will have a key influence on Brexit negotiations.

Emmanuel Macron, the favorite to win next month’s run-off after the first round of votes, pledged on the campaign trail to be “pretty tough” on the British “because we have to preserve the rest of the European Union.” He also promised to coax “banks, talent, researchers, academics” to relocate to France.

Friday, December 16, 2016

France puts weight behind Greece in debt dispute


The Washington Post

By Associated Press December 15 at 9:06 AM
BRUSSELS — French President Francois Hollande has come to the defense of Greece after European creditors pulled a recently announced debt relief package for the country.

Hollande said ahead of Thursday’s summit of European Union leaders that “it is out of the question to ask for further additional efforts from Greece or prevent them from taking a number of sovereign measures that respect the commitments” that Greece previously took.

Friday, November 27, 2015

Russia to Target Syria Jihadists as Hollande Seeks Diplomacy

 Andrey Biryukov  Helene Fouquet  Henry Meyer
November 26, 2015 — 10:48 PM EET Updated on November 27, 2015 — 9:02 AM EET

Bloomberg

France and Russia agreed to coordinate strikes in Syria to increase the focus on jihadist militants, as French President Francois Hollande seeks to rally support against Islamic State before hosting world leaders in Paris next week.

Monday, February 2, 2015

France Offers Support, but No Debt Relief, to Greece

By LIZ ALDERMANFEB. 1, 2015

The New York Times

PARIS — French officials said Sunday they would support the new Greek government’s efforts to get the country back on its feet after five years of crushing austerity, but warned that there would be no write-down of Greece’s debt and pressed Athens to continue with reforms that are still needed to help mend the country’s economy.

“France is more than prepared to support Greece,” Michel Sapin, the French finance minister, said during a news conference after a two-day visit by Yanis Varoufakis, his new Greek counterpart. “Greece needs time to put things to work,” he said. But he added, there was “no question” of forgiving Greek debt.

Closed businesses in Athens. The European Central Bank will meet this week to discuss emergency loans for some Greek banks.For Greece, Bank Trouble Looms Again as New Government Takes ShapeFEB. 1, 2015
Mr. Varoufakis was beginning the first of a series of visits to European capitals this week after the leftist Syriza party won power in elections last month in a populist backlash against austerity. He said that although Athens was “desperate” for money, it would not seek a 7 billion euro installment on its 240 billion euro international bailout package because that would require the nation to adhere to austerity terms.

Economists say Greece needs the money to cover looming funding needs and debt obligations, and to help a recovery after the economy contracted around 25 percent in five years.

“We have resembled drug addicts craving the next dose. What this government is all about is ending the addiction,” Mr. Varoufakis said, adding it was time to go “cold turkey.”

President Barack Obama, in his first remarks on the situation since the Syriza government came to power, cast doubt on the soundness of Europe’s austerity policies during an interview with CNN that aired on Sunday.

“You cannot keep squeezing countries that are in the midst of a depression,” he said of Greece. “At some point, there has to be a growth strategy in order to pay off their debts and eliminate some of their deficits.”

Mr. Obama added: “More broadly I’m concerned about growth in Europe. Fiscal prudence is important, structural reforms are necessary in many of these countries. But what we’ve learnt in the U.S. experience is that the best way to reduce deficits and restore fiscal soundness is to grow.”

Friday, November 22, 2013

France With Italy, Spain Seek Flexibility in Euro Budget Talks

By Ian Wishart & James G. Neuger - Nov 22, 2013 10:48 PM GMT+0200.
Bloomberg
France, Italy and Spain sought to maximize the flexibility of European Union budget-deficit rules to boost their economies as northern euro-area countries saw little need for stimulus.
The growth-versus-austerity debate was renewed at a meeting of finance ministers in Brussels today, as euro-area governments attempted to coordinate budget policy for 2014 using powers that were introduced earlier this year as part of their response to a debt crisis now in its fifth year.
“No, no, no,” Italian Finance Minister Fabrizio Saccomanni told reporters when asked whether his government would modify its budget. “Reducing the debt load is also our goal, and we managed that both with fiscal policies by reducing the shortfalls and with additional measures that they have now fully understood.”

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Hollande to Play Up Euro Recovery Prospects in First Greek Visit


By Mark Deen - Feb 19, 2013 1:01 AM GMT+0200
Bloomberg
Francois Hollande plans to emphasize the prospects of a return to growth in the first visit of a French president to Athens since Greece triggered the European sovereign debt crisis more than three years ago.
Hollande, a Socialist who won last May’s election emphasizing growth over austerity, will repeat his commitment to keeping Greece in the 17-nation euro area and press Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to forge ahead on the revamp of his nation’s economy, said a French government official who briefed reporters.

Friday, October 19, 2012

EU leaders clash on fiscal powers as Greeks protest



Nikolia Apostolou and Sumi Somaskanda Special for USA TODAY
European leaders meet to discuss fiscal unity amid disagreement over how to achieve it and protests over budget cuts in Greece.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

France Loses AAA Status as S&P Wields Ratings Ax


Bloomberg
The first gauge of the report’s impact will come in two days when France sells as much as 8.7 billion euros…
U.S. Treasuries rose, pushing yields to the lowest levels this year…
Perhaps this will now concentrate the minds of EU policy makers making them realize that no country is immune to being pulled down by the euro crisis…
Greece’s creditors yesterday suspended talks…
The French and Austrian downgrades risk sapping the potency of the region’s current rescue program…

Monday, January 9, 2012

Merkel, Sarkozy Meet on Euro Rescue Plan Bloomgerg


By Patrick Donahue - Jan 9, 2012 1:32 PM GMT+0200
Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy… seek to craft a master plan for rescuing the euro over the next three months….
they also plan to discuss a financial-transaction tax…
draw up new fiscal guidelines…
debt reduction for Greece “could have to be larger”…
Germany favors a Europe-wide tax…

Monday, November 7, 2011

Merkel and Sarkozy Have Lost Credibility



The Wall Street Journal
Six weeks to save the euro," European leaders promised the world in September. That deadline passed at last week's Cannes G-20 summit with the goal looking further away then ever. Nothing of substance was agreed on the French Riviera to aid the cause of euro survival, but one giant decision was taken that could hasten its demise. Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy's announcement that Greece is free to leave the euro has transformed the nature of the euro.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Germany, France Delay Euro Rescue Plan



Leaders of Currency Zone's Two Largest Economies, at Odds Over Rescue Plans, Say No Pact Possible by Sunday Deadline
The Wall Street Journal
BERLIN—Europe's efforts to deliver a comprehensive plan to resolve the euro-zone debt crisis were in danger of unraveling Thursday as disagreement between Germany and France over virtually every point forced the 27-nation bloc to concede a much-anticipated summit of European Union leaders on Sunday won't produce an agreement.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Europe, under fire, seeks to get ahead of crisis



Reuters
4:40pm EDT
By Marc Jones and David Lawder
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - European policymakers showed signs they were preparing new steps to cope with the region's debt crisis even as talk of a possible Greek default gained pace on Friday.
World stock markets, which had plunged to a 14-month low on fears the euro zone crisis was not under control, steadied after European Central Bank officials said they would use their firepower to help the banking system through the crisis.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Greece 'integral' to the eurozone, say European leader



The leaders of Greece, France and Germany have said that Greece is an "integral" part of the eurozone.
It follows a telephone call between Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.