France

The Irish take on "Thievery" Henry

Sophie Team Observers — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:21:58 +0100

The Web is ablaze over France's controversial qualification for the World Cup, or to be precise, Thierry Henry's handball, which shattered Ireland's chances of taking part in the 2010 tournament.

Facebook and YouTube have been bombarded with cries of injustice from Irish users (most of them in the most humorous of manners, as is the Irish way). Twitter too, where the tag #thierryhenry has proved a huge hit, even attracting French fans looking to apologise for the striker's blatant misdemeanour.

Posted onTwitpic.

Posted on "Antoine’s mouth"

Destroyed by police, the migrant "jungle" is up again by nightfall

Team Observers — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:49:53 +0100

French police bulldozed a migrant settlement in Dunkirk on Tuesday morning and arrested around 50 residents. Our Observer there explains that the very same day, the immigrants started rebuilding their "jungle".

Aïssa Zaibet is a school supervisor at a school in Dunkirk. He's also a member of the People's Anti-Racist and Pro-Friendship Movement (MRAP). He's been helping migrants from the Loon-Plage camp for seven years.

The operation began at 7.30am. When I got there, the police were taking down the shacks and handcuffing the Afghanis and Iraqis who live in them. Bulldozers then tore down their makeshift homes. This kind of operation is absolutely pointless - the very same night, the migrants had rebuilt the camp in the same place.

Five months ago, the police did exactly the same thing. It's always the same. Those who manage to run away in time come back as soon as the police have gone and start rebuilding with materials that we've given them. The ones who are arrested are released after a week with an order to leave the country. France doesn't deport people on charter flights, because there's so much opposition [three Afghanis were deported in October however]. And so it goes on...

The migrants are trying to get to the UK. They come to Loon-Plage because it's 300 metres from the ferry terminal. There, they try to sneak into trailers or onto bars beneath vehicles to get across the Channel illegally. It works. It can take up to four months to get there, but they almost always make it.

Everyone talks about the ‘destruction' of the jungle. But it's only for show. It doesn't do anything."

Photos taken by Aïssa Zaibet for the MRAP movement.

A dangerous desire to have fairer skin

Sophie Team Observers — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:05:41 +0100

Baking yourself in a tanning booth remains a popular activity among the vain and pasty of Caucasian descent, despite increasing health warnings. But at the other end of the spectrum, skin tempering practices are just as risky, and ever growing in popularity.

Since it emerged in the US in the 1960s, the practice of skin-whitening has worked its way across the world. If certain African, Asian and Latino societies consider fair skin a symbol of beauty and higher social standing, then the success of lighter skinned stars in the media has only confirmed their beliefs.

Skin-whitening involves the application of products made with strong toxins, which rarely carry a health warning. Increasingly popular, the hazardous "beauty solution" is posing a serious problem in many countries in Africa and elsewhere. On Tuesday (Nov. 3), a French MP launched a nationwide awareness campaign about the dangers of skin whitening.

Reports of a 245,772 euro temporary shower for Sarkozy spark public outrage

Team Observers — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:40:01 +0100

According to socialist lawmaker René Dosière, French President Nicolas Sarkozy had a 245,772 euro shower installed for him for a one day summit in Paris’ Grand Palais. The figure, although not entirely accurate, is just one of many reports emerging about the Sarkozy government’s extravagant spending.

A public audit report slammed the “opaque” accounting and “unjustified” costs of France’s EU presidency budget, the most expensive in the country’s history. The elaborate EU-Mediterranean summit at Paris’ Grand Palais on July 18, one of Sarkozy’s final EU presidency flourishes, was one such occasion. The audit report notably singled out a 1.07 million-euro dinner for 200 guests, which works out at 5,362 euros per guest. The webiste Mediapart also published published the list of event expenses considered ‘essential’ by the govenrment, including a full refurbishment of the Palace’s air conditioning system which cost 653,703 euros.

One of the most striking examples of lavish and misused presidential spending was a state of the art shower installed in the temporary Grand Palais presidential offices. It included a built-in spa system and massage chair, and was dismantled directly after the summit and reportedly never used. MP René Dosière claimed the shower cost 245,772 euros just as photos of the state-of-the-art installation were leaked on the web.

These photos were published by the website Mediapart, who obtained them from construction workers who took part in the massive Grand Palais refurbishment. The workers claimed they know the shower was never used, because the hot water tank counter was still at zero when they dismantled it.

French budget minister Eric Woerth tried to defuse rising public outrage by explaining that the figure of 245,772 euros was not just for the shower itself but for the entire 8-room presidential office area built in the Grand Palais, as confirmed by the French weekly Nouvel Observateur. The minister claimed that the shower wasn’t specifically for the President’s use, adding that his residence at the Elysée Palace was just a few minutes away.

Photos of the presidential office suite built for Nicolas Sarkozy in the Grand Palais. Photos : Mediapart

Illegal immigrants working on Paris metro "reduced to slavery"

Sophie Team Observers — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 18:45:22 +0200

These labourers, working on station platforms in the Paris metro, are illegal immigrants. The conditions they work in, shown in the following videos, are simply deplorable.

Under the pretence that they wanted to send photos home, the labourers were allowed to bring a small digital camera along to work. They then passed their videos to French labour union CGT, who brought them to the attention of the media. The images show the workers removing concrete slabs from the station platform, and then resurfacing the ground with boiling tarmac. Bare armed, gloveless, without masks, without helmets.

Filmed in September on the platform of Porte de Saint-Ouen metro station in northern Paris, the video immediately caused a stir in France, where it was published by several online publications, which outlined that the company in charge of the metro, RATP, is state owned. The 23 men we see in the clip, most of them of West African origin, are employed by temporary employment agencies, and passed over to RATP subcontractor Asten. They have contracts, they receive payslips, they calculate and pay taxes, but they receive no social benefits.

RATP responded to the video on October 13, explaining that: "We make regular checks on worksites to ensure that security rules and working conditions are respected" and added that, "to our knowledge, no employee working on these sites is an illegal immigrant".

Since the beginning of last week, more than 3,000 undocumented workers in Paris have gone on strike to protest their right to official recognition.

Sarkozy nepotism row viewed from abroad: “a return to monarchy”

Sophie Team Observers — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:43:49 +0200

The prospect of Nicolas Sarkozy's 23 year-old undergraduate son being catapulted to the head of a major public agency has sparked widespread accusations of favouritism both at home and abroad.

Jean Sarkozy is a regional councillor in the rich Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, where his father himself acted as mayor between 1983 and 2002. Still, he doesn't have any substantial business experience and is yet to complete his degree in law, leaving him considerably under qualified to run EPAD, a public agency in charge of overseeing development in the La Défense business district just outside central Paris. Except for a few hear-hears from conservative politicians in the country, the majority of French people find the idea outrageous. Our Observers in Gabon and China give their views on Sarkozy's latest imperial move.

French aviation company congratulates 'brother and leader of the Libyan revolution' Gaddafi

Sophie Team Observers — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:19:45 +0200

Photo from Bakchich.

It's not unusual for companies in Libya to publicly well-wish "Brother and leader of the Revolution", Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Except when it's... French military aviation company Dassault Aviation.

"Dassault Aviation sends to 'Brother and leader of the revolution', as well as to the people of Libya, its best wishes on the occasion of the 40^th anniversary of the glorious September 1 revolution". It's this indulgent splurge that greets both Libyans and foreigners alike when they drive into the popular Souk al-Thulatha commercial zone in Tripoli.

Contacted by FRANCE 24, the French aviation company confirmed that it had sent its compliments to the Libyan leader, but gave no further details about who produced the poster. The company's communication service however, told us that the poster was created in the run-up to the 2009 Libyan Aviation Exhibition (Lavex) in October. It also coincided with a project to repair a number of Libyan-owned Dassault Aviation planes, which have received no maintenance since 1992, when a 12-year embargo was placed on the country following the 1988 Lockerbie bombing.

On December 10, 2007, Dassault Aviation signed a protocol of agreement with Libya, which launched the negotiation of 14 fighter planes, 35 helicopters, and other military equipment, for the grand total of 4.5 billion euros.

'Skins' parties, even trashier than Woodstock? Really?

Team Observers — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:55:46 +0200

Photo: scene from the teen series "Skins"

If you've never heard of "Skins" Parties, chances are you're a dinosaur of 25 or over. Directly inspired by the British teen drama "Skins", the parties have been described as the craziest thing in French nightlife, where girls are loose and drugs roam free. But are they really all they are made up to be, or have they turned into commercialized gigs?

A Facebook page for an upcoming "Skins" party in Paris promises a "No Limits" bash, where anything goes. In the series, wild parties were a way for the teenage protagonists to escape their boring, frustrating lives. In the trashed homes and deserted warehouses imagined by the show's creators, lascivious tongues trade ecstasy pills, clothes come off and alcohol flows.

Online clips of the fictitious orgies inevitably prompted expressions of envy from teenage fans. Youths — first in Britain, then in France — began recreating the show's atmosphere in their own parties.

At closer inspection, however, the so-called "Skins" parties taking place in France today are a far cry from the uncontrolled and under-age get-togethers in the series. Although some die-hard "Skins" fans still organize romps at home when their parents aren't around, most larger events have merged into tightly supervised blow-outs that require months of organisation.

Sponsors work hard to keep up an underground feel (a "Skins" party organiser contacted by FRANCE 24 refused to answer our questions because we didn't fit their desired "image"), yet the series' initial influence seems to be fading.

Gay and Lesbian kiss-in in central Paris

Team Observers — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:41:08 +0200

On Saturday,September 26 at 4pm sharp, 11 French cities hosted the third edition of France's national "Kiss In", an informal gay rights movements where gay and lesbian couples assemble in a crowded public spot to kiss for all to see.

"The idea behind the movement is to make the statement that gays can kiss anywhere they want, same as heterosexuals. We deliberately chose crowded, public places on a Saturday afternoon, to give the event maximum visibility", Mathieu, the student behind the movement, told gayclick.com.

Video of the Paris Kiss-In on Saturday, September 26, at the Forum des Halles.

Charal slaughterhouses are awful... But no more than others

Team Observers — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:41:46 +0200

France's No.1 meat producer's slogan, "With us, you'll always love meat", doesn't go down well with animal-rights group L214. They have accused Charal of cruelty to animals and not respecting bovine slaughter regulations. To prove their point, one of its members penetrated a Charal slaughterhouse undercover and filmed what he saw.

Warning! These videos may be found disturbing

According to the association, Charal waits too long between the moment the cows are stunned and when they are bled to death. This gives the animal time to regain consciousness before its throat is slit, causing it unnecessary suffering.

Nevertheless, French veterinary services have never found a problem with Charal's slaughter practices. Their reports do not convince L214, who accuse sanitary authorities of favouring meat companies.