| It's official. The United States will turn over to France all "War on Terror" detainees currently held at Guantanamo Bay.
impérialisme culturel: In advance of the Cannes festival, there's a fair of amount of news emerging about the French film industry. The AFP reports that France is the largest movie market in Europe, with more than 174 million tickets purchased in 2003 for films shown on 5,295 screens, according to the National Center for Cinematography (CNC). Film production is at a "historic" level with 212 films. Five hundred thirteen films were distributed (a rise of 5.1%), of which 219 were French (the highest number in 20 years) and 160 were American (and that's counting Lord of the Rings as a New Zealand film). French films, however, are shown much less often than American ones. A French film is is distributed in 118 copies on average, against 242 for an American one. According to the AP, an American film (Finding Nemo) is the first American film in five years to top box office receipts. Of the 12 highest grossing films in France last year, no fewer than eight (and, again, that's discounting LOTR, 4th) were American: (Finding Nemo (1), Matrix Reloaded(2), Pirates of the Caribbean (6), Catch me if You Can (7), Jungle Book 2 (8), Matrix Revolutions (9), Terminator 3 (10) and X-Men 2 (12). Moreover, according to 01.net, CNC official Benoît Danard believes that 19% of French Web surfers (three million people, mostly between the ages of 15 to 24) download a million movies everyday. Here, there is no question of distribution (though there is one of age and class) and the preference for American films is still evident. Those surveyed preferred recent films to old ones and American films to French ones. When asked to name the films they download, respondents named more French films than American ones but the most downloaded films were: Finding Nemo, The Matrix, Matrix Revolution and the Lord of the Rings. Of the 60 films on this list, 25% were released in 2004 and only 35% were French. | Sans vergogne: According to the AFP, French lawyer Jacques Vergès is apparently not listed as part of Saddam's international defense team. Another French lawyer, Emmanuel Ludot, claims he has asked the US and UN to pay Saddam's legal fees. Funny though: he's defending the man the whose personal fortune is four times greater than that of Queen of England's (and that's a conservative estimate). Ludot says the Saddam family are in "a delicate financial situation" because "the American's have frozen all the accounts."
That should be news to the Americans as, according to the GAO (PDF: 268 kb; 16 pp), "U.S. efforts to recover Iraqi assets have had varying results... As of March 2004, Treasury reported that no more than 10 countries and the Bank for International Settlements had transferred approximately $751 million to the DFI. Little progress has been made in identifying and freezing additional Iraqi assets that remain hidden. While the amount of hidden assets accumulated by the former Iraqi regime is unknown, estimates range from $10 billion to $40 billion in illicit earnings." Furthermore, the Times reported last May that, "In the hours before American bombs began falling on the Iraqi capital, one of President Saddam Hussein's sons and a close adviser carried off nearly $1 billion in cash from the country's Central Bank..." And now he wants me to pay for his defense? | Astonishingly, French Elle magazine reports that a survey conducted on its behalf by IFOP finds that 64% of the French public favor gay marriage and 49% favor allowing gay couples to adopt children. At least something is going right over there. |
Behind the Façades in France: What expats and the mainstream media (French and American alike) fail to notice (or fail to tell you) about French attitudes, principles, values, and official positions…
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
News Roundup
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2 comments:
Douglas, this is in reference to your reply to my comment on "France's Efforts to Equate Iraq with Algeria," posted by Erik on May 10. You replied, "Indeed, anonymous, there'll be lots more about that this week if I can get to it." Perhaps I can help you with that. I was in France in the fall of 1999 and I read an article in Libération about a mass murder of Arab-Algerian protesters in Paris or possibly throughout France during the Algerian conflict on October 17, 1961. I don't have access to the archives of Libération, but as I recall the article stated that on that date a curfew had been called in France, or was already in place, as the anti-war protests had been getting out of hand. The article claimed that up to 1,000 Arabs and/or other protesters had been killed by the French police that evening for curfew violation and perhaps other "infractions." The exact number was never known, the perpetrators were never brought to any sort of justice, and supposedly most of the corpses dissappeared floating down the Seine. I believe the article was published on October 17, 1999 to commemorate the atrocity, which still begged, I repeat, begged, to be investigated. I have always wanted to know more about that incident, and I hope that you have some luck digging up anything on that if you decide to pursue it. Good luck!
Hey there, anonymous. I'm well aware of the events of October 17, 1961. In fact, there's even a number of Web sites devoted to the events of that day (try this one on for size). Once I even mentioned them obliquely here.
Incidentally, "Mass murder" may or may not be a slanderous description of what happened that day. Estimates of the death toll ranger from between dozen and several hundred.
However, this has little if anything to do with Jean-Marie Le Pen's conduct during the Algerian war, which was the origina subject.
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