Information on the new variant is extremely limited, but it is thought to have originated in Cameroon and carry multiple mutations in the spike protein. The area most affected, which is near Marseille, has shown a significant increase in hospitalizations, but it is possible that lower vaccination rates and an older population may be to blame and it remains far too early to draw conclusions on the new variant’s epidemiology.
Albert Camus agonised over his divided country
Algeria haunts France as Ireland haunts Britain. The spectres of its history have proved just as hard, or harder, to confront. Imagine, for example, that the Bloody Sunday killings of January 1972 had taken place not in Derry but around Parliament Square. Imagine that armed security forces had killed not 14 peaceful protestors but an estimated 200. Imagine that many bodies were then dumped into the Thames from Westminster Bridge. Imagine, too, that this state atrocity had been dropped into a pit of denial that lasted for half a century. And that a British leader’s eventual, modest admission that these events had been “inexcusable” still provoked howls of outrage.
A total of 874 cars have been set alight during New Years Eve celebrations in France, police say.
However, the interior ministry said the number was much lower than in 2019. Authorities also reported a rise in the number of people stopped and detained.
A curfew to tackle Covid-19 meant no significant disruption took place this time last year.
Car burning has effectively become an annual event in French suburbs since riots in 2005 in several cities.
So why do the French burn cars anyway?
The custom of setting vehicles alight on New Year’s Eve reportedly began in the east of the country, around Strasbourg, in the 1990s, in the the city’s poorer neighbourhoods.
It was then quickly adopted by youths in cities across the country.
Cars are often set ablaze whenever there is an outbreak of social disorder, as seen in the 2005 riots when hundreds of vehicles were torched.
A clash “of incredible violence” between CRS, gendarmes and migrants left “at least 15 wounded” this Thursday morning in Calais. The CRS say they were attacked by a hundred people armed with stones.
60 CRS and gendarmes who secured the area say they were attacked by a hundred migrants. According to a police source on the spot, the attack was of “ incredible violence ” . A CRS said that the migrants “ had bags full of stones and ballast in their tents ”. The fight lasted an hour, witnesses describe “ a scene of war ” with migrants throwing stones and CRS responding with tear gas and fire from defense bullets .
A mosque in the northern French region of Oise has been closed because of an imam’s radical sermons, said to have “defended jihad”.
The mosque in the town of Beauvais will remain shut for six months, local authorities say.
Oise’s prefect said sermons there called jihadist fighters “heroes” and incited hatred and violence.
France has been carrying out checks on Islamic places of worship suspected of having links to extremism.
Dozens of French academics have warned that freedom of expression is at risk after a German professor was suspended over a row with politics students.
Klaus Kinzler has been locked in dispute for months over accusations of Islamophobia at Sciences Po Grenoble.
In a case that has provoked allegations of left-wing cancel culture, the political studies institute has suspended him for “defamatory remarks”.
The institute is now set to lose local funding because of the row.
The father of the man who made the suicide vests used in the Paris attacks had no answers.
Driss Laachraoui told the court that he had watched, powerless, as his son lost interest in school and embarked on the tragic road that would lead from a local mosque to the Syrian war zone. Najim Laachraoui blew himself up in the suicide attack at Brussels airport in 2016.
The case of the Clain family was even more mysterious.
Only two of the three witnesses called on Thursday actually gave evidence. Both were associates of the Abdeslam brothers at their café in Brussels. Both spoke by videolink from the federal police building in the Belgian capital. Neither had much to say.
The first witness, identified as Rafik E. H., admitted that he had been a friend and business associate of Brahim Abdeslam.
“Brahim was a friend. We ran the café Les Béguines together. I knew the brother to say hello to, and the others, but I didn’t hang out with them. They were locals.
PARIS — France’s interior minister said on Tuesday he had launched a procedure to close a mosque for up to six months because of the radical nature of its imam’s preaching.
Gerald Darmanin told the Cnews TV channel he had “triggered” the process of shutting the mosque in Beauvais, a town of 50,000 some 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Paris, because of “unacceptable” preaching.
This could never happen in Canada where Islam is miraculously pacified by our magic tree sap or it may have something to do with the fact authorities do not monitor mosques here. Hard to say.
… At the same time that Zemmour was in Armenia news emerged in France of an incident last Wednesday in Nanterre, just west of Paris. According to Le Figaro 30 Catholic worshippers were surrounded by a mob as they took part in a torchlight procession to celebrate the Immaculate Conception. Insults were hurled, the Catholics were reportedly told ‘this is Allah’s territory’ and there were threats to ‘slit your throats in the name of the Koran’.
Zemmour responded to the news with a tweet which warned that ‘Christians from the East to the West are in grave danger.’ There was also a declaration from the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, in which he expressed his outrage, and with good reason. The most recent government figures revealed that in 2019 there were 1,052 incidents in France classified as anti-Christian, compared to 657 anti-Semitic and 154 anti-Muslim incidents.
You don’t read much about what is really happening in France in our media. Funny that.
France’s interior minister is seeking to dissolve an “ultra right” group suspected of attacking anti-racism protesters who entered a campaign rally held by the far-right presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.
The Zouaves, who support Zemmour’s anti-immigration and anti-Islam ideology, are thought to be behind the brawl, which happened eight days ago.
Members from the anti-racial discrimination group SOS Racisme were set upon after they entered the rear of the venue to protest against Zemmour. The group said it had aimed to protest peacefully but five of its members were injured.
Anti-Racists? I think they mean the Antifas who attacked Eric Zemmour.
“On the Koran I will cut your throat!” Here is the land of Allah! “: A Catholic procession attacked in Nanterre, the priest threatened with death, the faithful treated as” kouffars “
On the evening of Wednesday, December 8, around thirty faithful from the parish of Fontenelles, in Nanterre, were attacked by ten people during a torchlight procession organized in honor of the Virgin Mary, celebrated by all Catholics on the feast of the Immaculate Conception – and especially at Fontenelles, whose parish church is dedicated to her. During this heated altercation, insults and threats were uttered against the clergy and parishioners present, so that the organizers had to give up the stations planned along the route to regain the point of arrival more quickly. of the procession.
Update – a proper translation can be found here.
Importing Islam was such a great idea!
Note – Google Translate.
Zemmour does not want yesterday’s Algeria to be the France of tomorrow where Jews are kidnapped and tortured by the decolonized.
“With Eric Zemmour, France would have its first president of Algerian origin. He has the genealogy, the history but also the tics: Zemmour is of Homeric, Mediterranean, Arab, Jewish and French audacity. Zemmour is the French unconscious, the great occult substitute, the paradoxical decolonial reparation, the memory returned in disguise. The theatrical representation of the martyr.” So writes the Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud in Le Point.
In the analysis of the cyclone Eric Zemmour, the right-wing independent essayist candidate in the next presidential elections of 2022, no one has dwelled on what is perhaps the most important aspect of his history. He is called “fascist” and “racist”, forgetting that Zemmour’s is the story of an Algerian Jew.
French security services have prevented a planned stabbing spree in public places during the Christmas season. Two suspected Islamic State sympathizers, who hoped to knife holiday shoppers and die as martyrs, have been arrested.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin confirmed the arrest of two individuals on Wednesday by the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), with a link to a report by the daily Le Parisien.
“The terrorist threat remains at a high level in France, we are not lowering our guard,” Darmanin said.
The terrible twins of the French far right vilify each other in public. But they need one another.
PARIS — The proposal of far-right nuptials came unprompted, as Marine Le Pen was touring a fair in the town of Vesoul, near National Rally heartlands in eastern France.
“If you could marry Eric …” a supporter cheekily suggested.
Le Pen laughed, then grimaced at the idea of tying the knot with far-right TV pundit-turned-candidate Eric Zemmour.
The National Rally leader has little immediate appetite for such an arranged marriage, but it’s a political match that would trigger alarm among the other runners in April’s presidential election. Together, she and Zemmour would win a third of the electorate, according to POLITICO’s poll of polls.
If they don’t join forces, they could scupper each other’s hopes. In the French political system, the two candidates with the most votes in the first round of voting face off in a run-off. Both Zemmour and Le Pen run the risk of splitting the far-right vote and canceling each other out.
