France

Not for the first time, Americans appear to be slightly confused about events in France. The mass demonstrations that began as a protest against President Emmanuel Macron’s “climate-change” taxes gave comfort to conservatives here, and not without reason. The new levies on gasoline and diesel…

Algis Valiunas on the longing that defined Napoleon, man of action.

He denied that there were Nazi-operated gas chambers and received an award from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

French politician Marine Le Pen is a great fan of Vladimir Putin, a social progressive, and leader of a political party that from time to time flirts with the anti-Semitic right—she’s not a woman with whom we can ordinarily sympathize. Still, she has a talent for stirring European elites in ways…

How de Gaulle turned himself into a symbol.

Plus, a nugget catastrophe.

Tim Markatos on the challenges of bringing Joan of Arc’s story to the screen.

Last week, France’s youthful and dapper president Emmanuel Macron swaggered into a battle of wits with the inexperienced and much-mocked lugnuts who run Italy’s new populist government. Macron was humiliated. That very same Italian populist government, meanwhile, threw down a gauntlet before half a…

The art and architecture (and tourist souvenirs) of the Sun King’s palace.

Bumping an idol of French cinema off his pedestal.

Slapdash personnel decisions haunt the president and frustrate his party.

Marion Le Pen caused a minor scandal when when she appeared at CPAC last month. Matt Schlapp insisted that she was “a classical liberal.” Others suggested that the Le Pen family and the National Front represented something very different from classical liberalism. At the very least, Marion Le Pen…

In 1885, nearly broke from bad investments and dying of cancer, Ulysses S. Grant spent his final days writing the bestselling memoir that gave his family financial security after he was gone. The story of Grant’s swan song seems memorably American, touched by the mythic national themes of boom and…

It was a Frenchman who gave his surname to the term chauvinism, and it was a Frenchman, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose prosecution for sexually assaulting a hotel maid in New York in 2011 now looks like the earliest tremor of the #MeToo movement.

Not everybody likes Alsatian wine. Good. That means more of it for me. The slim, green adolescent bottles with sloping shoulders and no hips are distinguished by pollen-yellow labels, often bearing medieval-style lettering. Something happens to grapes in this region of France that makes them taste…

Paris

It was a busy news week.

You might think that a meeting of junior ministers at France’s Élysée Palace is nothing to get excited about. But French president Emmanuel Macron’s black labrador-griffon, Nemo, apparently found talk of inner-city investment a little too exciting late last month.

Eating disorders are not unknown in the land of foie gras (and we’re not talking about the force-feeding of geese), and authorities there blame the fashion industry’s unhealthy fondness for starvation-chic. Thus the French law that recently went into effect decreeing that fashion photos be honest…

Eating disorders are not unknown in the land of foie gras (and we’re not talking about the force-feeding of geese), and authorities there blame the fashion industry’s unhealthy fondness for starvation-chic. Thus the French law that recently went into effect decreeing that fashion photos be honest…

Recently, French president Emmanuel Macron addressed the Polish government with perhaps the most scathing criticism of any European leader to date. Polish citizens, he said, “deserve better” than the current government, which “has decided to isolate itself in the workings of Europe.”

As President Macron and President Trump stood side by side during the Bastille Day ceremonies in Paris, it was not difficult for commentators to point out the differences between the two men. Neither in personal style nor substantive policies do they have much in common. Indeed, Macron’s victory in…

As President Macron and President Trump stood side by side during the Bastille Day ceremonies in Paris, it was not difficult for commentators to point out the differences between the two men. Neither in personal style nor substantive policies do they have much in common. Indeed, Macron’s victory in…

It did not take the attack on Charlie Hebdo to reveal that the Islamic world has a terrible problem. For quite some time, that’s been clearer than day. This is not an assertion made from outside Islam or against Islam. On New Year’s Day, the president of Egypt, in a major speech, called for a…

This past week, at least a dozen French people, most of them journalists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, were gunned down during an editorial meeting by the brothers Chérif and Said Kouachi, two French Muslims who may have returned recently from waging jihad in Syria. French citizens…

Paris

Paris

Roland Garros is open for business!

"Everyone said it would be impossible to do what we did," France's new president, 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron, told a crowd of politely applauding supporters in the courtyard of the Louvre shortly after the polls had closed on May 7. "But they didn't know France!"

The most unpredictable presidential election campaign in the history of the Fifth Republic ended with a suitably surprising outcome: For once, the pollsters and the commentators were right. After the confounding of the experts in last June's Brexit referendum and last November's U.S. presidential…

What does France have against the free press?

You could tell the European political establishment had taken a shine to 39-year-old French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron by the number of articles in which he was referred to as both a "centrist" and an "outsider." Angelique Chrisafis, of Britain's Guardian, even called him a "maverick…

Paris

Paris

No journalist really understood the forces that over the past year made Donald Trump president, with the possible exception of the former newspaper publisher Conrad Black. In early 2016, with the primary season barely underway, Black wrote a column in Canada’s National Post entitled "Don't…

Accusations that French bureaucrats are insufficiently innovative are simply untrue. With Brexit forcing American bankers to reconsider maintaining their presence in London, the French finance minister hastened to New York to persuade Wall Street leaders that Paris is the city best positioned to…

The head of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde, has been convicted of criminal charges in a French court. She could face up to a year in prison. Here is the New York Times:

The last German offensive of World War II began at 5:30 a.m. on December 16, 1944. The rank-and-file German soldier thought he was giving Paris back to the Führer for a "Christmas present." The more experienced Wehrmacht commanders knew that, even should they reach the Meuse or—more…

George Will writes:

French president Francois Hollande will not seek reelection next year, he said Thursday, becoming the first incumbent in decades not to seek a second term.

It's impossible to pick up a newspaper or magazine without finding another story about Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly. Ms. Kelly secured her place in the pantheon of star reporters/pundits/celebrities by her fearless grilling of Donald Trump and, lately, by helping to unseat Fox supremo Roger…

Whenever an American presidential election threatens to produce a controversial or conservative victor, some of our intellectuals and celebrities swear that, should the dread event come, they're going to "move to Paris."

Whenever an American presidential election threatens to produce a controversial or conservative victor, some of our intellectuals and celebrities swear that, should the dread event come, they’re going to "move to Paris."

If the U.S. election season looks too depressing, you might consider following the presidential primaries in France instead. A week ago, the French magazine Le Point—which lies on the French center-right but is very far from the intellectual conservatism in the British or American sense—dedicated a…

A country is heading for trouble when its most popular writers worry that their words will land them in jail. France is that way now. Two years ago, TV commentator and journalist Éric Zemmour published Le Suicide français, an erudite, embittered, and nostalgic essay about the unraveling, starting…

A country is heading for trouble when its most popular writers worry that their words will land them in jail. France is that way now. Two years ago, TV commentator and journalist Éric Zemmour published Le Suicide français, an erudite, embittered, and nostalgic essay about the unraveling, starting…

On July 30, 1914, as war was beginning to be declared throughout Europe, Edith Wharton stood in the glow of Chartres Cathedral. Wharton’s collected writings about her travels to the front in World War I, originally published in 1915, begin with her visit to the medieval cathedral. She describes…

A surprising German poll showed Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) tied for second place with the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) just before this weekend's regional elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The incumbent Social Democrats are at 28 percent, the CDU and the…

New York

In the summer of 2007, I was working on a story for THE WEEKLY STANDARD about the cult of celebrity chefs. As part of my reporting, I spent time with Michel Richard, who then ran two restaurants, the acclaimed Citronelle and the brasserie Central Michel Richard. It was inside the gastronomic temple…

There's an old joke that goes "for sale–French rifle, never fired and only dropped once." It comes from an ugly old stereotype about the French military, one of white flags, hands thrust aloft, tails tucked in retreat. There's nothing wrong with good natured ribbing between military forces (just…

How on earth does Angela Merkel think she is going to get re-elected?

Perhaps not since Louis Réard introduced the first bikini to Paris in 1946 has beachwear been such a heated topic in France. The controversy began last week, when a women's group from Marseilles advertised a "burkini day" at a local waterpark. The event, which would have banned men over the age of…

Burkini day is off. The announcement on Wednesday brought a halt to what would have been France's most controversial pool party ever.

France, struggling to regain a sense of normalcy after the Bastille Day atrocity in Nice, was stunned again by the murder of a priest in Normandy. It's just the latest in a string of attacks over the course of the last several years, which have left the French government struggling to find new…

The French have a clear vision of how want Britain's decision to leave the EU should play out: British businesses out of the EU, French businesses into the U.K.

What’s it like to be in the heart of a jihadist? He called her his "baby." Each morning she awoke to a string of missed Skype calls asking where she was. They talked for hours each night. "He" was Abu Bilel, the French right-hand man of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and she was an undercover reporter he…

After initial reports that the Nice attacker, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, was a self-radicalized lone wolf, French prosecutors said last week that he had a group of accomplices. Like Lahouaiej Bouhlel, all had been living in France for several years, some with dual citizenship. As the threat of…

During morning mass Tuesday, two ISIS terrorists stormed a Catholic church in France and killed an 86 year-old priest. Another person was seriously wounded. Monday afternoon, German authorities announced that a suicide bomb attack in Ansbach was perpetrated by a man pledging allegience ISIS leader…

“La Marseillaise," the French national anthem, was originally sung by the Revolutionary Army as it marched forth to defend "la république" against European monarchies who wished to quash the revolution as soon as it began. It's a song of war, calling Frenchmen to take up arms against "foreign…

In this first episode of the new WEEKLY STANDARD podcast Kristol Clear, editor Bill Kristol speaks with host Michael Graham about the fallout from this week's terrorist attack in Nice, Mike Pence's selection as Donald Trump's running mate, and the upcoming convention in Cleveland.

Jay Nordlinger writes a brief but poignant reflection on Thursday night's massacre of nearly 100 innocents in Nice, France. Here's Nordlinger at National Review Online:

Donald Trump announced he was delaying an expected Friday announcement of his vice presidential pick that was slated to take place in New York. Trump made the announcement on Twitter:

A truck drove through a crowd of celebrants in the French city of Nice Thursday night, reportedly killing at least 60 people and injuring many more.

As the sun rose over the valley of the Somme River in northern France on the first of July a century ago, the soldiers of the British Empire began their charge on the entrenched Germans. It would be the deadliest day—and the start of the deadliest battle—in British history.

Michel Houellebecq has a show of his own art photography opening in Paris on June 23—the day Britain votes on whether to leave the European Union.

As Londoners anoint their first Muslim mayor, Labour MP Sadiq Khan, readers of Michel Houellebecq's satire Submission might remember the fictional Muslim Brotherhood president of France, Mohammed Ben Abbes. In the controversial 2015 novel, Abbes' moderate theocratic platform slides into full…

Kings, queens, and emperors come and go, or used to anyway, in the good old bad old days, and the modern potentates who have left a lasting mark on the popular imagination are few. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I of England, Frederick the Great of Prussia, Peter the Great of Russia, Napoleon and Louis…

There is something hard, cold, and brutal about the structure. It looks like a concrete airplane hangar and rising above it is what is called the “Lantern of the Dead." The shape suggests, appropriately, an artillery shell.

Calais

Saturday the French ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud downplayed the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic facilities in Iran. Following the execution of controversial Saudi Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, Iranian mobs surely backed by the clerical regime set fire to the Saudi embassy in…

"The magazine of the Islamic State orders Muslim parents to withdraw their children from French schools and calls for them to kill those who teach there." Thus declares a recent headline in the French press.

After the astonishing German break through the French lines in May 1940, Winston Churchill flew to Paris to meet his French counterpart, Prime Minister Paul Reynaud, and army chief Maurice Gamelin. Reynaud had called Churchill in near-hysterics, but even Churchill wasn’t prepared for the utter…

If Europe doesn’t get serious about protecting its borders, it’s going to head back to the days of barbed wire and concrete walls. That’s what President François Hollande warned when he went before a rare joint sitting of France’s National Assembly and Senate to argue for an extended three-month…

In the confusion and horror of Paris in shock, the details stay with you. In the bleary early Saturday morning, behind the police barriers, a lone tour bus was still parked on Boulevard Voltaire in front of the Bataclan concert hall, where the Eagles of Death Metal gig had been bloodily interrupted…

In many ways, the reaction to the horrific attacks in Paris has been familiar. There were the expressions of solidarity: flowers at French embassies; social media avatars changed from silly selfies to photos of the French flag snapping defiantly in the wind; buildings across the Western world lit…

For those of us who were in Mumbai during the 2008 terrorist attacks there, the bulletins from Paris on Friday night evoked queasy déjà vu. With each shocking addition to the story—drive-by shootings at one crowded restaurant and then another, explosions reported at the other end of town, casualty…

Speaking in Paris on November 17, Secretary of State John Kerry made what are already infamous comments about the fight against terrorists and terrorism. He spoke to the staff and families of the U.S. embassy in Paris, and his remarks deserve quoting at some length—because they display a deep…

There are a few tentative observations to be gleaned in the aftermath of the Paris attacks:

Mark Steyn has a typically great column about the reaction to the terror attacks in France and reading it is well worth your time. But I want to focus on one particular paragraph:

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie slammed Secretary of State John Kerry for remarks the top diplomat made Tuesday about the attacks in Paris and the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January. Kerry contrasted the Paris attacks, which he called “indiscriminate,” with the attacks on the French satire…

In remarks today in Paris, France, Secretary of State John Kerry justified the terror attack earlier this year that targeted the magazine Charlie Hebdo in January. This latest attack, by contrast, was different, said Kerry. 

Bernard-Henri Lévy has written an intelligent and forceful, if somewhat grandiloquent, piece on Paris and its implications. Highlights:

Give a man a reputation as an early riser, as the old saw goes, and he can sleep until noon everyday. The same phenomenon evidently applies to bad reputations as well. Brand Donald Trump a bigot, and suddenly every policy he endorses, no matter how innocuous or mainstream, becomes repugnant.

Like the Bourbons, Barack Obama and his national security advisers have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.  They have not forgotten that they were first elected in 2008 to “end” Middle East wars, and the administration’s response to the attacks in Paris last week reveals that they have yet to…

Bill Kristol joined ABC's This Week yesterday to discuss the terror attacks in Paris:

Since the terrorist attacks in Paris Friday that killed more than 120 people and injured hundreds more, world leaders from President Barack Obama to newly elected Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, and from U.K. prime minister David Cameron to German chancellor Angela Merkel, have expressed…

During Saturday night's Democratic debate, Hillary Clinton was asked about bringing in Syrian refugees.

As a committed, long-standing Twitter detractor, I’ve exhaustively bashed the social networking site for all imaginable crimes, and even unimaginable ones.  But through the gift of hindsight, I admit giving Twitter short-shrift in one department: it tends to work like they say old age does,…

Here's the most compelling and powerful reaction I've read so far to the attacks in Paris, by Mark Steyn, "The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates."

The Department of Homeland Security says there is no threat of a terrorist attack like the one in France happening immediately in America.

President Obama condemned tonight's terror attack in France in a statement he delivered from the White House:

The U.S. Navy is stretched thin, especially when it comes to aircraft carriers and as Richard Sisk writes at Military.com:

Russian warplanes have been conducting strike in Syria.  As have U.S. fighter-bombers.  And, lest we forget, France has been doing a little bombing there as well.  As Reuters reports: 

In an essay for Mosaic, a French professor writes that it's "The Twilight of French Jewry, the Twilight of France."

Moody’s must have it in for France. Sure, its economy is moribund. Sure, its trade unions are among the most intransigent in the world. But surely the socialist government deserves some credit for one of the most significant reforms in 200 years.

There was a memorable instance of multiculturalism last week that The Scrapbook heartily commends to readers. Google for the touching video of the ceremony at the Elysée Palace in which the president of France, François Hollande, pins the Legion of Honor ribbons on Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler,…

Secretary of State John Kerry defended the Obama administration's decision to take the Iran deal to the United Nations before the U.S. Congress votes on it. Kerry made the remarks in an interview this morning on ABC News:

As he has for much of his post-presidency, Bill Clinton was on the road again in June, traveling to Europe at the end of the month for various conferences and other public appearances. After a few days in London, the president popped over to Paris for a day or two to shop at Hermès, a well-known…

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange will not find a home in France. The French government has announced today it will not grant asylum to the fugitive.

"Oh, you Jews! Allah has permitted us to kill your brothers on French soil and here on the soil of the Islamic State.” So says the speaker in an Islamic State video released in March, which allegedly shows a Palestinian Mossad agent being shot dead by a child executioner. Standing next to the boy…

President Obama called French president Francois Hollande to tell him he's not listening to his calls.

Julian Hattem at The Hill reports that:

France needs Greece more than Greece needs France. So long as the Greeks grab the headlines with their defense of their unreformed economy, no one seems to notice that France is in violation of EU rules on the size of the allowed deficit, has such sustained high-level unemployment that its young…

Another Sunday, another New York Times magazine, this one featuring a cover story about “Scott Walker and the dismantling of American unions.” Readers of the Old Grey Lady, a newspaper not without its virtues, are undoubtedly aware of its sympathy for down-trodden workers, especially if they belong…

The new novel Les Événements (The Events), by the French author Jean Rolin, tells the tale of a France that has descended into a chaotic and multifaceted civil war involving jihadist, nationalist and Marxist militias, in various and fluctuating combinations, as well as remnants of the regular army.…

Many supporters of an Iranian nuclear agreement believe that a deal could help to moderate, even democratize, Iranian society. Barack Obama’s constant allusions to the transformative potential of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for U.S.-Iranian relations suggest that he believes an…

If anyone needs further evidence of why the news agencies often can’t be trusted to report accurately on Israel and the Palestinians, and why major news outlets such as the New York Times and the BBC should stop repeating agency copy without verifying it, here is an important example from this…

A French prosecutor named Andreas Lubitz, 28 years old, as the co-pilot who may have been responsible for the downed European flight. 

Dieudonne, the alleged “comedian” whose performances have been banned across France on account of his anti-Semitism, may not have won any Oscars this week, but he was given another award recently. In Tehran earlier this month, Iran’s Holocaust-denying former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, gave…

The recent controversy over a Fox News segment on “no-go zones” in France, culminating in Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo’s threat to sue the American channel, was a surreal experience for French-speakers, connoisseurs of France, and, above all, the French themselves. For while the original remarks by Fox…

President Obama referred to the Islamic terrorists who killed several French Jews last month as people who "randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris" in an interview with liberal website Vox.com. In Tuesday's press briefing, ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl asked White House press…

There are 6,100 streets in Paris. If you made a point of walking a different one each day, it would take you more than 16 years to see them all. That’s just meant to be illustrative​—​you can cover many more of them than that in a day, as The Scrapbook often made a point of doing in its student…

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Paris Friday in what was billed as a show of solidarity with the French people after terrorists attacked last week. The former Massachusetts senator brought fellow Bay Stater and singer-songwriter James Taylor to sing a slightly off-key rendition of…

John Kerry is going to France today to give "a big hug to Paris," a week after the brutal terrorist attacks there.

The White House won't be calling jihadists adherents to "radical Islam." At least, that's the reasonable take away from this extraordinary exchange the White House press secretary had today with a reporter:

Under a cloudless Jerusalem sky, a crowd of thousands gathered at the cemetery at Givat Shaul on Tuesday, to bury the four Jews murdered at the Hyper Cacher in Paris. Yoav Hattab, Yohan Cohen, Philippe Braham, and Francois-Michel Saada were laid to rest in Har Hamenuhot, on the approach to…

White House spokesman Josh Earnest offered this excuse to explain why President Obama skipped the weekend rally in Paris: it would've impacted "common citizens."

The terrorist attacks last week in Paris and the debate over the French government response brought back a simple discussion I had a few years ago regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest told the press today he doesn't know what President Obama was doing while world leaders gathered in Paris yesterday to rally:

The terrorist attacks in Paris were nightmarish in many ways, but perhaps the most worrisome news to come out of the Charlie Hebdo affair is that followers of a “pure” al Qaeda affiliate – al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula – and of ISIS – the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – worked together.

Tablet has one of the best articles I've seen from Paris, capturing the mood of French Jews--and the meaning for them of the state of Israel. Here are excerpts:

Secretary of State John Kerry said that criticism that he and the Obama administration skipped the unity rally in Paris yesterday is "sort of quibbling a little bit." He made the comments at a press conference in India, after announcing that he'd be visiting France on Thursday.

House Homeland Security Committee chair Mike McCaul said on CBS that he expects to "see more and more" of the Paris style attacks take place around the world:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with editor William Kristol on terrorism abroad, and Jeb Bush's 2016 pitch.

Reuters and Agence France-Presse report that four hostages at the Kosher market in Paris are dead.

CNN is reporting that the sounds of shots and explosions were heard near the Kosher market in Paris, where a terrorist has reportedly been holding several captives.

Roger Kaplan, a part-time Parisian and Weekly Standard contributor, reflects on the Charlie Hebdo murders:

There are new reports of a hostage situation in Paris at a Kosher market. The Associated Press reports:

On a frigid, windy night in Washington, a couple hundred people trekked to the Newseum for a vigil for the murdered French journalists from the Parisian weekly Charlie Hebdo, the police that died trying to protect them, and those that were wounded.

White House press secretary Josh Earnest explained to reporters today that the United States needs to "redouble" efforts to explain "what the tenets of Islam actually are." He made the comments in response to a question about how the U.S. might respond to the terror attack today in France. 

French authorities have reportedly indentified the three suspects in today’s massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices—Hamyd Mourad, whose nationality has not yet been identified, and two French nationals, Said Kouachi and his younger brother Cherif Kouachi. The French appear to have been well…

In remarks from the Oval Office, President Obama warned that the kind of terror attack that took place earlier today in Paris can "happen anywhere in the world."

The Islamist terrorist attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which, so far, has resulted in 12 deaths and many more wounded, should come as no surprise. The satirical weekly has been the target before, having been fire-bombed back in late 2011 after running a…

In remarks this morning from Washington, Secretary of State John Kerry said he agreed with the French imam who called the victims of today's murderous rampage in Paris "martyrs for liberty."

President Obama's statement on the terror attack in France:

This item was originally published on November 2, 2011, and is being re-posted after today's murderous rampage at Charlie Hebdo in France:

French readers follow the herd. They believe in prizes. When a French author wins the Goncourt or the Nobel, people rush to bookstores and send his books rocketing to the top of the bestseller lists. But today the French have other things on their minds. President François Hollande is France’s…

The Russians want delivery of their aircraft carrier.  They contracted with the French to build it and a deal is a deal.  But things are not (yet) so far gone that a NATO country is willing to arm the enemy for a few francs.

Following the lead of Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Secretary of State John Kerry Sunday began using the Arabic acronym "Daesh" at times when referring to the Islamic State (ISIL or ISIS). Kerry was in Egypt for a meeting with Egyptian foreign minister Shoukry, and spoke extensively about the…

President Obama announced this evening that France will join in bombing ISIS (also known as ISIL) in Iraq. 

It was a threat Europe’s security services had long feared coming true. In June, Mehdi Nemmouche, a French-born jihadist who had returned to Europe after fighting in Syria with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, shot four people to death in an attack at the Jewish museum in Brussels. While the…

Here, in the parlance of the times, is a “pro-tip.” When attempting to rebut the notion that anti-Semitism in Europe is largely a problem caused by young Muslim men, don’t cite two horrific anti-Semitic atrocities perpetrated by . . . young Muslim men.

In Bénouville, France, Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have gone out of their way to ignore each other.

At Tablet, French writer Marc Weitzmann explains what is behind the attack at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on Saturday that killed a visiting Israeli couple, a French volunteer at the museum, and a Belgian museum employee. Weitzmann is a well-known novelist, literary critic, screenwriter, and…

Secretary of State John Kerry did not shy away from pejorative language when addressing "climate change" in his commencement speech at Boston College on Monday.  Kerry referred to those skeptical of the Obama administration's climate claims as "members of the Flat Earth Society" who are "risking…

Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed French foreign minister Laurent Fabius to the State Department in Washington on  Tuesday to discuss a range of issues, from Iran to Syria to climate change. Or, in the words of the foreign minister, "climate chaos." Kerry and Fabius made a joint appearance…

Paris

At today’s press conference with French president François Hollande, a member of the French press asked President Obama whether France had replaced Great Britain as America’s closest ally.

A friend re-writes the White House's readout of President Obama's call today with President Hollande of France (the actual White House readout is at the end of this post) to include the "thoughts behind the president's call" with his French counterpart:

The French administration appears tougher on Iran than the Obama administration, reports from Geneva, where the nuclear egotiations are currently taking place, suggest. 

Democratic senator Mary Landrieu says she's embarrassed to go to places in Europe like France and Spain because some Americans do not have health insurance. Landrieu, who is up for reelection in 2014, represents the state of Louisiana.

Paris

In a statement to the press, released this afternoon from Washington, D.C., Secretary of State John Kerry celebrates France's National Day.

Today is National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day, and who among us cannot celebrate that?  Well, perhaps Mayor Bloomberg could find that the iconic sandwich contains too many calories, especially if it has been supercharged by the addition of some bacon.  For the rest of us, it is interesting to know…

Walter Russell Mead writes that “Francois Hollande really can’t catch a break. One of the most memorable election promises he made was to raise marginal tax rates on the very rich—those making €1 million or more—to an eye-popping 75%. His government has, alas, finally decided to scrap that…

In downtown Algiers, on June 4, 1958, Charles de Gaulle expressed himself clearly, as usual. The conventional wisdom has it that he was “ambiguous,” even “duplicitous.” But what he said was that the page had to be turned in Algeria: Political and civil institutions had to be reformed; there could…

Secretary of State John Kerry showed off his French speaking skills at a joint press conference with his counterpart in Paris today:

Yesterday the Bulgarian government announced the results of its investigation into the July 18, 2012 bus bombing that killed 5 Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver in the city of Burgas. At least two members of what appears to have been a three-man team belong to Hezbollah. More…

After a meeting today in Paris with the French president, Francois Hollande, Vice President Joe Biden praised "the incredible competence and capability" of the French military. He was specifically referring to the recent military action taken by the French in Mali.

At the Presidential Palace in Paris, France this afternoon, Vice President Joe Biden complimented the French president, Francois Hollande, for sounding exactly like President Barack Obama on "climate change." The only difference, according to Biden? Hollande speaks French, and Obama speaks English.

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is moving to London to avoid France's high taxes, according to a report in the British Daily Mail. The move would mean that Sarkozy, along with his wife, Carla Bruni, would avoid France's top tax rate of 75 percent.

Perhaps the finest book ever written on the natural complementarity of the sexes and on marriage as the core building block of civil society was written by a Swiss who was then living in France.  (The book is Emile, and the author is Jean-Jacques Rousseau.)  So when Robert Oscar Lopez writes at the…

Determined not to lose Mali to Islamist forces, France’s president Francois Hollande ordered a rapid deployment of air and ground forces in Mali to block well-armed and motivated fighters of the Ansar Dine movement led by the veteran Tuareg leader Iyad Ag Ghali from crossing the Niger river and…

At Harry's Bar, 5 rue Daunou, 2eme, Paris—in the deepest of deep blue precincts!—Mitt Romney is doing surprisingly well in the early vote, trailing Barack Obama by only about 10 percentage points. Sophisticated statistical analyses of early voting trends suggest this may well mean diminished Obama…

It is not even close: In a world poll of the U.S. presidential race, President Barack Obama is the clear favorite over Governor Mitt Romney. By a margin of 50-9 percent, Obama is favored in the poll of 21,797 respondents in 21 countries around the world.

We've been skeptical of the arguments by some of our brethren on the right that Barack Obama is a quasi-socialist or a crypto-socialist ... or just a plain old socialist. But now the New York Times is weighing in, in favor of the proposition.

President Obama called French president Nicolas Sarkozy to say thanks and good bye, the White House press secretary announced. 

The French prefer “tenacity” to “cooperation” by a measure of 51-44 percent, according to a poll about political attitudes published this election season. By 57-41 percent they like “hard work and courage” better than “social justice and solidarity.” Such attitudes have not been widespread in…

Paris

USA Today reports: 

The New York Times reports on the French elections: 

Paris

Alain Juppe, France’s foreign minister, forcefully condemned the coup d’état that overthrew Mali’s president, Amadou Toumani Toure, a few days ago, and called for elections as soon as possible in the context of the restoration of constitutional order.  Elections, the first round of the presidential…

If you understood how French president Nicolas Sarkozy found himself holed up in a barroom in Bayonne last Thursday afternoon, it would take you a long way towards figuring out what is going to happen in France’s two-round presidential election, coming up in April and May. Sarkozy, who heads…

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Two employees of the Sofitel hotel in New York walk into what appears to be a storage room, exchange a few words, and then break into a “dance of joy” – as it is has been termed in the French media – ending with an emphatic shoulder bump. The entire sequence, captured by a Sofitel security camera,…

For the past three centuries and a half, Cardinal Richelieu has captivated students of politics. 

Before the latest issue of the French humor magazine Charlie Hebdo could even hit newstands, its office was firebombed. Apparently some did not find the humorists' depiction of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to be very funny and decided to say so by throwing a Molotov cocktail through the office…

As Maine is New England’s Texas, France is Europe’s U.S.A. It’s big. It’s ornery. Like us, the French are notably more inward-looking than Europe’s other populous, geographically big, and prosperous states. Despite France’s co-leadership of the European unification project, a new German Marshall…

TWS friend Tom Winkler has posted some wonderful photos from France's remembrance of 9/11 over the weekend on his blog:

The BBC reports that Syrians loyal to strongman Bashar al-Assad have attacked America's (as well as France's) embassy in Damascus:

In Western Europe, Fukushima’s power reactor disaster has produced a loud round of anti-nuclear power reactions. Germany says it will phase out atomic power by 2022, and the Swiss insist they will shutter their reactor fleet by 2034. Earlier this month, the Italian public rebuked Prime Minister…

On June 2, the convicted Italian terrorist Cesare Battisti walked out of a Brazilian prison a free man. He did so after Brazil’s supreme court upheld the decision of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to refuse to extradite Battisti to Italy. A member of the left-wing terror group Armed…

Paris Ever since the news broke, a week ago Saturday, of the IMF head’s surprise arrest, for alleged attempted rape, in the first-class cabin of an Air France jet minutes from takeoff on the JFK tarmac, the Dominique Strauss-Kahn meltdown has caused France to experience a kind of cosmic O.J.…

One of the most typical reactions of French commentators to the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York has been a kind of knee jerk disparagement of the American criminal justice system – or the “atrocious” American criminal justice system, as one “expert” put it on the French news channel…

Over the weekend, International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn was nabbed by police and accused of sexually assaulting a hotel maid. Even as that case is being sorted out, new allegations of sexual assault are emerging against the high-powered French bureaucrat:

This doesn't sound good: "Shadow Stat Misery Index Highest on Record"

And the Show Went On Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris by Alan Riding Knopf, 416 pp., $28.95

Both the so-called Republican Forces loyal to the new Ivoirian president Alassane Ouattara and French officials have been at great pains to insist that deposed president Laurent Gbagbo was captured by Ouattara’s troops and not by French troops. This is not what was initially reported. But, in any…

Amid budget battle, Obama scraps planned trip to Indiana.

CNN reports:

A disheartening report from Josh Rogin on the G8 foreign ministers' meeting on Libya. "Inside the foreign ministers' meeting, a loud and contentious debate erupted about whether to move forward with stronger action to halt Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's campaign against the Libyan rebels and the…

French foreign minister Alain Juppe "suggested in a radio interview Tuesday that events on the ground in Libya have already outpaced diplomatic efforts," according to the AP.

The Obama administration has been recklessly cautious -- and has even go so far as to say that the president "doesn’t want to fall into a Libya trap." But the trap in this case might be to do nothing at all.

There is a sweet spot in France’s cultural life, and maybe in the cultural life of all countries, where a thinker finds himself able to “raise profound questions” in a way that requires neither profundity nor questioning on the part of his readers. Never has a French book hit that sweet spot quite…

The European edition of Newsweek has discovered the face of European extremism. It peers out from the cover of the October 4 issue of the magazine. It consists neither of the hoary features of French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, nor the fresher look of the blond-coiffed Dutch anti-Islam…