115 Degrees — a Historic Heat Wave: June 23rd Was The Hottest Day in French History

In France, June 22nd turned out to be the hottest day on record, writes Le Parisien, only to be dethroned the very next day, with the symbolic mark of an average temperature of 30ºC (86ºF) nationwide overtaken for the very first time, while the heat managed to reach 46ºC (114.8ºF) in one town in the South of France.

Over at Le Journal du Dimanche, Sébastien Laye warns that 

In a France already stuck in low growth, extreme heat threatens productivity, investment, and public finances [and the country's] GDP threatens to melt in the sun.

In No Air Conditioning, Please, We’re French, the Wall Street Journal (merci à Vincent Bourdonneau) sounds dubious about France's (lack of a) response:

[What makes this] all the stranger [is that] that governments [in Europe] prefer that their citizens sweat it out rather than use the modern invention known as air conditioning. … Green virtue-signaling is now becoming a health risk in the summer. A report released recently by IGNES, a French trade alliance, warns of “a massive inadequacy of housing to cope with high temperatures.” Nearly half of the homes it looked at become “thermal kettles” during heat waves.

Over at Le Journal du Dimanche, Sébastien Laye warns that 

In a France already stuck in low growth, extreme heat threatens productivity, investment, and public finances [and the country's] GDP threatens to melt in the sun.

Canicule historique : ce mercredi est la journée la plus chaude jamais enregistrée en France, le record établi mardi déjà battu

La France a enregistré ce mercredi le record de température nationale, battant celui qui avait été établi hier. C’est la première fois que la barre des 30 °C de moyenne est atteinte.

L’épisode caniculaire en cours continue de battre tous les records. Pour le deuxième jour consécutif, la température moyenne recensée en France n’a jamais été aussi haute. Aujourd’hui, le mercure est grimpé jusqu’à 30 °C. Du jamais-vu. Mardi, la température moyenne nationale avait atteint 29,8 °C, dépassant ainsi le précédent record de 29,47 °C, observé le 5 août 2003.

La température nationale est mesurée par l’indicateur thermique national (ITN), moyenne quotidienne des températures aussi bien diurnes que nocturnes de 30 stations météorologiques de référence en France métropolitaine.

Cet indicateur diffère des records locaux de température, qui sont des mesures de température maximale à un instant précis de la journée dans une station du réseau. Le record absolu de température en France métropolitaine est de 46 °C, observé le 28 juin 2019 à Vérargues, dans l’Hérault.

La vague de chaleur qui touche la France métropolitaine depuis le 17 juin a fait monter les températures à 40 °C ou au-delà dans plus de 50 départements, principalement dans l’ouest et le sud du pays, selon l’analyse par l’AFP des données de Météo France jusqu’au 23 juin.

From the 13 Colonies' Insurrection to Independence: The Birth of the Young American Republic

• With Britons from the British Isles fighting against Britons from North America, the conflict of the 1770s was often described, certainly at first, as a civil war or a war between brothers. As a shocked Virginia farmer put it (none other than George Washington) after hearing the news from Massachusetts of Concord and Lexington, 

Unhappy it is … to reflect that a brother's sword has been sheathed in a brother's breast and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves.

Ten days before the 250th birthday of America's Declaration of Independence, I was a guest of Evelyne Joslain on her Radio Courtoisie program to talk not about the news for once, but to engage for an hour and a half on a history stroll through the first half century of the American Republic.

What is essentially a podcast goes over 50 years of American history, from the French and Indian War and the Boston Tea Party through the revolutionary years and the writing of the Constitution until Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana territory and the Lewis and Clark expedition. (Thanks for the the Instalink, Sarah.)

A second podcast, due a month from now on July 22, will treat the next century of American history, from the War of 1812 and the Texas Revolution through the conquest of the Wild West and the Civil War to the closing of the frontier and the Spanish-American War.

I am grateful that we have received lots of congratulations from people who added that they have learned a lot. The podcast is in French, but here are some of the subjects that, beyond the top paragraph above, I mentioned:

• What with the redcoats' aim at Concord and Lexington, it turns out that a major reason for the outbreak of the revolution was the government's attempt at (what we in today's parlance would call) gun control. 

• The term "Americans" (in centuries past used only for… the Indians) had slowly but surely come to be used for the Britons from North America — by both the latter and by the Britons from the British Isles — to mark the growing difference between — but to what extent is the following description 100% correct? — the two (?) peoples (or the two populations of the same people). In that perspective, the insurrectionists who dumped the tea in Boston's harbor during the Tea Party of 1773 not only disguised themselves as Indians, but disguised themselves in fact as… Americans!

• Why were the colonies so set against taxes from London? Weren't they ingrates regarding the French & Indian War? The answer is simply that, in the view of the colonists, the empire was sort of like the Commonwealth today. Granted, every member is under the king (George III or Charles III), but: apart from that, every part should take care of nobody but the people within its own domain. Let London take care of the Britons within the borders of England while Philadelphia takes care of the Britons within the borders of Pennsylvania. England should no more make decisions about (and levy taxes on) the Britons in Maryland or in Virginia than Philadelphia should make decisions about (and levy taxes on) Britons in Georgia and in South Carolina — or, for that matter, in… England itself! 

• However, we must be realistic, right? Britain is an empire, correct? Now, if you accept this and that, therefore, it needs a centralizing center of power, then fine, by all means let it be London. (Where else would it be?!) But in that case, let it be composed of Members of Parliament not only from Birmingham and Leeds and Edinburgh, but of MPs from all parts of the British Empire around the planet (including the 13 colonies and Québec). To summarize this in four (well-known) words: No taxation without representation. (By the way, did you know that while none of the colonies on the mainland had a representative in London, the sugar island of Jamaica did have one?)

• What is amazing is the young ages of the founding fathers. At the time of the Declaration of Independence (1776), Jefferson was 33, John Adams was 40, Washington was 44. At the time of the Constitution (1787), James Madison was 36, James Monroe was 29, Alexander Hamilton was 30, John Jay was 41. (And how about Lafayette — how old was he when he became a general in the Continental Army? Read the answer below…)

• Every single sentence of the Constitution provides the same message: that the citizen is a free man

• There are quite a number of parallels between POTUS1 and POTUS47 (aka POTUS45):

— As president George Washington had a powerful message:  "The promotion of domestic manufactures will, in my conception, be among the first consequences which may naturally be expected to flow from an energetic government." According to Ron Chernow, George Washington 

believed that "commercial connections, of all others, are the most difficult to dissolve," which foreshadowed his faith as president in enduring commercial rather than political ties with other countries.

— Also — just like Trump's bombings taking out Iran's leadership (not to mention his Caracas raid taking out Venezuela's lider maximo) — the Continental Army would deliberately aim for enemy officers; which was deplored by the Royal Army as that was not how wars were fought between "gentleman" in those times.

• Used to gathering at inns, the Founding Fathers' generation was higher into liqueurs and other types of alcohol than their descendants are two centuries later. Benjamin Franklin once said: “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.” The greatest distiller of whiskey in North America was located at… Mount Vernon; George Washington produced 41.000 liters of whiskey per year.

• After purchasing Louisiana territory, Jefferson offered the post of governor of the territory to a dual citizen, aka "the hero of two worlds" — the Marquis de Lafayette.

• Because it is a French podcast (en français), we focused quite a bit on French subjects such as Louis XVI's military intervention and French officers, notably the nobleman whom George Washington considered a son. Lafayette was only 19 when he became a general in the American army. His own (real) son was named Georges Washington de Lafayette and the last of his three daughters was named Marie-Antoinette Virginie Lafayette. This led Benjamin Franklin to quip that his wife had only 12 more children to give birth to (in order to have one child named after every state). 

• Although it depends on how the statistics are used, there seems to be more more places and townships named after Lafayette than after Washington, Jefferson, or Lincoln.

• How exactly were the Indians' lands "stolen"? By the end of July 1804, after sailing 600 miles up the Missouri River for two months (since leaving on May 21), the members of the Lewis and Clark expedition had not once met a single American Indian. 

 
Here are some related history NP posts written over the past 22 years: 

• What Caused Secession and Ergo the Civil War? Was It Slavery and/or States' Rights? Or Wasn't It Rather Something Else — the Election of a Ghastly Republican to the White House? 
• During the Winter of 1860-1861, Did the South's Democrats Obtain Their Aim — the Secession of 7 Slave States — Thanks to Elections Filled with Stealth, Lies, Voter Fraud, Intimidation, Violence, and Murder? (Wait 'til You Hear About… Georgia's Dark Secret)
• Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech" 
• The Greatest Myth in U.S. History: Yes, the Civil War Era Did Feature Champions of States' Rights, But No, They Were Not in the South (Au Contraire)
• Harry Jaffa on the Civil War Era: For Democrats of the 21st Century as of the 19th, "the emancipation from morality was/is itself seen as moral progress" 
• "Break Their Spirit" with "Maximum Warfare": What Nobody Tells You About Reconstruction in the South After the American Civil War
• Why Does Nobody Ever Fret About Scandinavia's — Dreadful — 19th-C Slavery Conditions? 
• A Century and Half of Apartheid Policies:  From Its 1828 Foundation, the Democrat Party Has Never Shed Its Racist Past 
• The Confederate Flag: Another Brick in the Leftwing Activists' (Self-Serving) Demonization of America and Rewriting of History 
• How to Prevent America from Becoming a Totalitarian State 
• Inside of a month, Democrats have redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy — And by “democracy”, they mean the Democrat Party
• Why They Don't Tell You the Whole Truth: The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence 

Libre journal du nouveau monde du 24 juin 2026 : « De l’insurrection des Treize Colonies à l’Indépendance : les débuts de la jeune Amérique »

• Patron d'émission : Joslain Evelyne Le 24 juin 2026

Libre journal du nouveau monde du 24 juin 2026

 

Evelyne Joslain, assistée d’Eric, reçoit :

• Erik Svane, porte-parole des Republicans Overseas France

Thème : « De l’insurrection des Treize Colonies à l’Indépendance : les débuts de la jeune Amérique » 

Cliquez sur le lien pour entendre l'émission d'une heure et demie…

Patron d'émission du Libre journal du Nouveau Monde à Radio Courtoisie, Évelyne Joslain est l'auteur d'une poignée de livres sur les États-Unis et l'Occident. Parmi ceux-ci, son chef d'œuvre est paru il y a deux ans.  Voici la revue du livre La Guerre Culturelle.

Laye: "The Dollar Is No Longer Alone in America's Financial Domination" of the Planet

The Americans are prioritizing competition between private companies and innovation, answers Sébastien Laye over at Valeurs Actuelles as he responds to the questions of the weekly's Eric Revel, who asks specifically how come the American economy is showing such a "superperformance."

"The dollar is no longer alone in America's financial domination" adds Sébastien Laye, who is an admirer of the Milei revolution, to Valeurs Actuelles, referencing such elements as stable coins, banking platforms. and world investment funds, along with the law. ) Merci pour l'Instalien, Sarah.)

"A Total Defeat," a "Capitulation," a "Catastrophe", Warns a French Trump Supporter Regarding the Iran-USA Treaty

It is a strategic defeat, a capitulation, a catastrophe, answered Philippe Karsenty when asked on Radio Shalom (FM94.8) whether he, as the spokesman of the Comité Trump France, isn't grieving. 

Echoing his own comments on BFMTV five days earlier, Philippe goes on to talk about his fears regarding the Versailles treaty between Iran and America. However, he does allow for it all being some sort of a Trump ruse… (After all, Fox News just reported that POTUS 47 warned Tehran that "he would take whatever action he deems necessary if Iran fails to uphold its commitments … after talks in Switzerland" while BFMTV — and Putin — is now wondering whether "Trump has tricked the Russians?")

In any case, Philippe adds, Israel must improve its public relations and, above all, Jerusalem must try to "neutralize the power of JD Vance." (Merci à Sarah pour l'Instalien)

22 juin 2026 - Philippe Karsenty s'exprime sur l'accord de Versailles et sur son implémentation 

Switzerland owes its good governance in part to the fact that its elected officials are often ordinary citizens who return to private life after their term of office

Asking that his fellow countrymen stop believing in leftist fairy tales over on the Atlantico website, Jean-Paul Oury calls for a fundamental change in how the president is chosen to run the country. For the 2027 presidential election, "let us not be satisfied with a future president, let us demand the president of the future" (En 2027, ne nous contentons pas d’un futur président, exigeons le président du futur).

There is no such thing as a providential leader, just as there is no such thing as a welfare state. It's a dangerous fiction. A bad leader, on the other hand, can cause considerable damage. 

 … Switzerland owes its good governance in part to the fact that its elected officials are often ordinary citizens who return to private life after their term of office.

This, of course, is the genius behind limiting American presidents to two terms in the White House; although as many have pointed out over the decades, it should be applied to both houses of Congress as well. Once they have run out of terms, let the (now ex-) politicians return to private life to live under the very rules that they have set up.

 

 

 

 

 

En 2027, ne nous contentons pas d’un futur président, exigeons le président (1) du futur 

Plus que les précédentes, les présidentielles de 2027 auront un enjeu existentiel. Il ne s’agira pas seulement d’élire le futur président mais de sélectionner le président du futur si on veut que la France continue de jouer un rôle dans l’histoire des grandes démocraties. Commençons

 par éliminer les caractères indésirables de ce candidat mystère avant de décrire le caractère spécifique recherché.

Jean-Paul Oury

Pas un homme providentiel 

Il n’existe pas plus d’homme providentiel que d’État providence. C’est une dangereuse fiction. Un mauvais dirigeant peut en revanche causer des dégâts considérables.

 … La Suisse doit en partie sa bonne gestion au fait que ses élus sont souvent des citoyens ordinaires qui retournent à la vie privée après leur mandat. À l’inverse, la France souffre de politiciens professionnels sans autre expérience, qui s’accrochent à leurs postes.  

James Fenimore Cooper, 2 Centuries Ago: “the American press is the pest of society, the bane of decency, the perverter of truth, and the pander of crime”

As the 1826 novel The Last of the Mohicans turns 200 this year, it is worth our salt to head to the New York Times in order to check out the Alexandra Jacobs book review of Alex Wright's EMPIRE OF INK: The Printers, Rogues, and Radicals Who Invented the American Newspaper. (Thanks for the Instalink, Sarah.)

Her New York Times review, titled A Spunky History of Newspapers Adds Color to the Black and White, of this "unsentimental history of the American newspaper from the Revolutionary War to the beginning of the 20th century" shows how, already two to three centuries ago, "newspapermen were held in low repute" (and how!) 

Besides Samuel Clemens, a.k.a. Mark Twain, a number of classic authors are mentioned in the review as well as in the book. What they thought about the press and how they fought back, in writing as in deed, can be described as far stronger than any railings and any comebacks Donald Trump has undertaken against "fake news." 

Charles Dickens, a former reporter … whose books were hugely successful in serial, found the American penny papers “so filthy and so bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house, for a water-closet door-mat.” The hero of his “Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit” is confronted with self-important scandal sheets like The New York Sewer and The New York Rowdy Journal.

James Fenimore Cooper filed 14 libel suits against various newspapers, all of which he won, and declared that “the American press is the pest of society, the bane of decency, the perverter of truth and the pander of crime.” (He would fit right in on Threads.)

Edgar Allan Poe once challenged the editor of The Richmond Examiner, a defender of slavery who’d written about Poe’s rumored affair with a local widow, to a duel. The poet showed up too drunk to fight; they repaired to a tavern and became lifelong friends.

 
The "water-closet" that Dickens mentions is of course a toilet (WC). As far as Poe is concerned, who can deny they wouldn't love to see a duel between Donald Trump and George Stephanopoulos? (Pistols or sabers?) 

If the internet is to be believed (and I'm sorry, I don't remember exactly where I got this particular meme from), Hunter Thompson said something quite similar in the 20th century…

1994: Things I Remember From the Last Time the World Cup Was Held in the United States

I am impressed by the U.S. team at the 2026 World Cup. One thing they seem to have mastered (and how!) is how to sprint. But I am here to speak about America's previous FIFA extravaganza, one that happened during the Clinton presidency 32 years ago.

As Glenn Reynolds links to Ilya Shapiro's A World Cup to Remember — "the U.S. wins its first two games for the first time since the original tournament in 1930" — it brought to mind the last time the World Cup was held in the United States, in 1994.

• In 1994, European soccer fans were dismissive of FIFA's decision to hold the in tournament in the USA. Not only was "football" not a game of interest for most Yanks, it meant, or it might mean, that matches of interest to Europeans might be held in the middle of the day if not in the middle of the night.

• The above-mentioned Europeans were hardly wrong. The number of soccer fields and teams in America did not seem to rise significantly after the end of the tournament.

• Whoever was the top star of the American soccer team he was, as far as I can remember, never used — not once in the tournament — even when the team had poor results throughout (although they did make it to the knockout round). This made me surly during every match, and I remember thinking that the only reason must be that the coach (Bora Milutinović) probably thought that the top star was having, or had had, an affair with his wife or girlfriend.

• America's final game before being booted out from the tournament was, of all countries, against Iran. The American team played so poorly that when its members were gathered around the Iranian goal for a free shot (or a corner), the goalkeeper grew so incensed at the lack of progress, he left his goal to run across the field to try and participate in scoring a goal against the Islamic Republic. (The ball did not go into the net.)

• All the above is admittedly nothing when compared with the tragedy for the Columbian team. After a player from Columbia had the misfortune of scoring an Own Goal against his own team with the result of it being disqualified. After the whole team returning home, Andrés Escobar was gunned down in Medellín.

• The tournament was won by Brazil after Italy's Roberto Baggio misses his penalty shot, which dedicated its (3-2) victory over Italy to their countryman Ayrton Senna, the Formula One driver who had been killed in an accident at Italy's San Marino Grand Prix six weeks earlier that year (8:48 in the video below, Al Gore at 12:25). Because one of the players had just become a father, a trio of winners went before the cameras, rocking wildly back and forth as they pretended to be cradling babies. 

• In 1994, the Brazilians won a record fourth victory and eight years later, a record (and still unequaled) fifth victory, but every time the World Cup has been held in their country (1950 and 2014), they have fared poorly, with one of the most humiliating defeats in one 2014 match, when Germany scored four goals against them in the matter of six minutes (I will never forget the images of the horror-stricken audience) for an end result of 7-1. As I said at the time (2014), Brazilians should stop clamoring for home-soil World Cups, because the beautiful game is so entrenched in that country that it makes their players far too stressed out to perform well…

• In 1998, I was in a São Paulo bar during the finals of Brazil against the French team in France. There were two Frenchmen in the bar who cheered every time the French scored a goal, but they eventually noticed that it didn't make them very popular in the otherwise silent bar, and as France's goals increased, their cheers got more and more modest. After the loss, Brazilians accused their team of having been bribed to forfeit the game. I said that this was nonsense, since never could all players be made to agree with this, in view of the fact that no amount of money could equal the dishonor of losing on purpose. Moreover, a victory would bring just as many riches, besides opening all kinds of monetary contracts in the future. Finally, if I could be made to forfeit a game deliberately, I would insist it be by one goal only, and not by three (the final score was 3-0). However, the Brazilians — even Ronaldo! — did play so badly, I agreed, maybe the French had drugged the Evian bottles handed to Bebeto's team.

• Finally: I have never fully understood the concept of being Offside, and I probably never will.

Related: The Football World Cup Starts Today, and the Vikings Sail to America

Live Aid 1985: What Nobody Tells You About the African Famine that Led to the Most-Watched Concert in History

Over on an X Twitter thread, Students For Liberty take us back to the mid-1980s and reminds us of what our young ones no longer learn in schools and universities:

In July 1985, over a billion people watched Live Aid. Months earlier, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie had written "We Are the World." All of it was a response to a famine in Ethiopia. Almost nobody remembers who actually caused the famine 

 

 … The crisis was framed almost entirely as a natural disaster, the work of a catastrophic drought striking a poor country. Television footage showed cracked earth, dying livestock, and skeletal children. The government in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, was barely named in Western coverage. Its policies were not named at all. 

… What was actually happening: in September 1974, a Marxist-Leninist military junta called the Derg overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie. By 1977, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam had killed his rivals inside the junta and taken sole control. He built a Soviet-style state. He nationalized all rural land in 1975 and imposed grain quotas that peasants had to deliver to the state at prices below the cost of production.

 

This is the mechanism Stalin had used to engineer famine in Ukraine in 1932. The state destroys the production incentive, then extracts grain by force. When drought arrived in northern Ethiopia in 1983, there was no surplus and no buffer. Forced collectivization had already destroyed the country's food reserves years before the rain stopped.

… [Médecins Sans Frontières] denounced the program publicly in October 1985. The Ethiopian government expelled [MSF] in December. Investigators later established that a large share of the international aid raised in the West was diverted into the resettlement program itself. The same money raised to save Ethiopians from starvation paid, in part, for the operation that killed between 50,000 and 100,000 of them.

 … If the cause of the Ethiopian famine had been a right-wing regime, it would probably be in every school curriculum alongside Live Aid. The famine that produced the most-watched concert in history was caused by forced collectivization, forced grain seizures, and a deliberate policy of using hunger as a weapon against civilians. Four decades later, that half of the story still does not appear in most accounts of Live Aid.

Read the whole thing… (Update: And āmeseginalehu
[thanks] for the Instalinks, Ed Driscoll and Sarah Hoyt…)

Over at the New York Post, Glenn Reynolds denounces

higher education’s foul products [aka] the toxic waste [that] it emits [which] isn’t chemical but intellectual sludge, in the form of racial bigotry, antisemitism and crude Marxism

 … Marxism, which has never worked in the real world, remains stylish on campuses — still treated as a hot new concept, though it hasn’t changed much in over a century. 

Racism, sexism, antisemitism and destructive economic ignorance, all from a huge and vastly expensive system that was supposed to make our society better. 

It’s time for a change.

No wonder that there are voices trying to fight back, such as those on the blogosphere like Students For Liberty and Instapundit and Sarah Hoyt, who fires the following shot across the bow: what with "the passing fancy of college professors drunk on socialism", Western society's massive problem

requires a willingness which I know doesn’t exist, to turn off the money spigot corrupting people here and abroad. And it might not exist but it NEEDS to. So if all you do is convince others that this stupidity needs to stop you won’t have lived in vain.

Socialism kills, fast or slow. But on the way there, it makes people into dumb animals posturing and killing for no good reason.

The enemy is collectivism. The enemy is welfare. The enemy is turning humans into dependent zoo animals.

Indeed, the dream of the world's leftists and its drama queens, as I have written before, is to make a world where all citizens are de facto welfare recipients (an update from the serfs and the peasants that they used to be during feudalism and in prior eras). And when and if any of said citizens disagree, the latter need to be gagged and gotten rid of — as we have seen in Ethiopia (plus in the USSR, China, Cambodia, etc, etc, etc) — by any means possible…