French President Emmanuel Macron has sparked a continental debate after calling for the creation of a pan-European army to defend against Russia, China and even the United States. Speaking to Sputnik, Krzysztof Podgorski, a Polish political and military observer, explained why the proposal, while an interesting one, is Western European-centric.

Speaking ahead of Remembrance Day commemorations last week, French President Macron announced that Europe needs a "real army" to reduce the continent's military dependence on the United States, and to strengthen continental defence against would-be aggressors.

Victor Davis Hanson told Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow on Monday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily that French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal for a European Union army is “absurd,” noting France’s failure to meet its financial commitments to NATO.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called for a “real, true” European army to be created, just days after French President Emmanuel Macron did the same – and received backlash from Donald Trump for doing so.

“We should work on a vision of one day establishing a real European army,” Merkel said during an address to MEPs at the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Monday.

That statement was an apparent nod of support to Macron, who last week said that Europe has to “protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia, and even the United States of America.” Europe cannot do so, he said, “unless we decide to have a true European army.”

Just as France calmed down after the case of a student threatening a teacher with a ‘gun’ in class went viral, another scandal has hit the suburbs of Paris after a student beat and attempted to strangle his teacher at a school.

The violent incident took place at a vocational high school in the Bezons commune earlier in November, when a 16-year-old attacked his math professor after he told him to leave the class.

After widespread backlash over President Emmanuel Macron’s praise for a top military chief-turned Nazi collaborator, it looks like locals just don’t want Marshal Philippe Petain to rest in peace, as his tomb has been vandalized.
The military chief’s tomb on Yeu Island was defaced last weekend, as its wooden cross was torn apart and “For my father” was scrawled in black on its surface, French news outlet Le Parisiene reports. It is the third time that the tomb has been damaged. It was first defaced in 2007 and then again in 2016.

The fresh tweets came just a few days after US President Donald Trump dismissed his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron's idea of building a "true European army" as "insulting" and insisted that European states should first pay their fair share for NATO.

After returning from the Remembrance Day commemoration in Paris, where Donald Trump held a bilateral meeting with Emmanuel Macron, the US President launched into a Twitter tirade against his French counterpart, criticising his idea to build an EU army to protect the continent "with respect to China, Russia and even the United States":

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian stated Monday that France was in no possession of recordings related to the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi as far as he was aware, with the remarks provoking utmost fury in Ankara.

The Turkish side has branded French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian's statement on the Khashoggi tapes inadmissible.

"We find it unacceptable that he accused President Erdogan of 'playing political games'," communications director at the Turkish presidency Fahrettin Altun told AFP.

"Let us not forget that this case would have been already covered up had it not been for Turkey's determined efforts," Altun stressed adding that the comments do not "reflect the facts."

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced nationalism during an Armistice Day centennial observance in Paris on Sunday.

“Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism: Nationalism is treason,” Macron said, according to a Euronews translator.

Macron spoke in front of world leaders including President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“If we think our interests may only come first and we don’t care for others, it is a treason of our values, a betrayal of all moral values,” he said. “We must remember this.”

Macron said that the moral values of France helped them fight for the future of their country.

He praised the world leaders that formed the first League of Nations, after World War I.

Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump greeted one another during the World War I centenary commemorations in Paris, with the two leaders seen shaking hands and making other warm gestures during the event.

Although both leaders were late to the ceremony, they appeared to be happy to see each other upon their arrival. Putin and Trump were seen nodding at each other, with the Russian leader even tapping his US counterpart on the shoulder and offering up a thumbs up sign.

he US, UK, and French governments are behind millions of people starving in Yemen because they are “supporting this war,” an Oxfam representative told RT, urging London to stop beefing up Saudi Arabia’s military.

“We have 14 million people starving,” Richard Stanforth, Oxfam UK’s regional policy officer for the Middle East, said.

British, French, American governments are all behind this, they are all supporting this war.

Stanforth blamed the British government in particular, saying that London should stop its arms sales to Saudi Arabia, which is accused of targeting food supplies and even no-strike locations in Yemen.

“We’ve seen attacks on water infrastructure, on hospitals, warehouses of food. This pattern is continuing. Certainly, it’s the airstrikes that are killing most civilians,” he said.

France has vowed to fulfill plans to defy the US’ sanctions on Iran while increasing the international role of the euro in order to prevent Washington from acting as the world’s “trade policeman”.

France’s Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, told the British newspaper Financial Times that Europe is planning the formation of a special financial channel to Iran in order to keep trade flowing with the country and assure its own “economic sovereignty”, with the aim of making the euro as powerful as the dollar.

“Europe refuses to allow the US to be the trade policeman of the world,” Le Maire stated in an interview in Brussels, emphasising that Europe must “affirm our sovereignty” in regards to the US sanctions on Iran and its wider economic hegemony.

A SENIOR French government Minister has claimed Europe won’t allow the US to become “trade policeman of the world” in a dramatic outburst as he argued Europe should defy President Trump over Iran sanctions.

The statement of the French President calling Russia “threatening” a few days before the commemoration of the Great War’s end “hugely contradicts the announced spirit of the commemorations,” said the French historian Edouard Husson. According to him, in the 20th Century it is the Russian people who saved France twice over.

In an article for Atlantico, contemporary political historian Edouard Husson described as “paradoxical” the statement made by Emmanuel Macron on November 6th in Verdun.

“We will not protect the Europeans if we do not decide to have a real European army against the Russia that is on our borders and has shown that it can be threatening,” the French President pronounced.

Unlike many other world leaders, US President Donald Trump will not attend a conference hosted by France’s Emmanuel Macron, the organizers said today.

The Paris Peace Forum coincides with France’s program for the commemoration of the end of World War I taking place this week. Around 70 world leaders are to visit France for the event, including Trump.

An umbrella organization of French Jewish groups have criticized the French leader for paying tribute to a World War I Marshall Philippe Petain, who ended up becoming a Nazi collaborator later in history.

The president of the Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF), Francis Kalifat, reportedly said he was shocked by Macron's statement on Wednesday.

"Petain was the person who allowed the deportation of 76,000 French Jews to death camps. Petain signed the (law on) the status of Jews that meant Jews were excluded from public function, education and forced to wear the Jewish star," he added.

Prime Minister Netanyahu hoped to meet with Russian President Putin at a conference marking 100 years to the end of World War I, but as Moscow appears to be avoiding setting such a meeting and the French barred sideline meetings, the PMO is reconsidering the trip.

French President Emmanuel Macron called on Tuesday for a “real European army” as the continent marks a century since the divisions of WWI. “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,” Macron told Europe 1 radio. The French president has pushed for a joint EU military force since his arrival in power last year. He said Tuesday that Europe needed to reduce its dependence on US might, AFP reports.

A far-right party in France has gained a lead against President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party ahead of European Parliament elections.

An Ifop poll published on Sunday showed that for the first time in a poll of voting intentions for the May 2019 European Parliament elections, the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) — led by Marine Le Pen — had jumped ahead of Macron’s La République en marche (LREM).

The Ifop poll asked nearly 1,000 French people on Oct 30-31 who they would vote for if the European Parliament elections were to be held the next Sunday.

The far-right RN rose to 21 percent of the voting intentions compared to its 17-percent rating at the end of August, while Macron’s party gained 19 percent compared to the 20 percent it had gained back then.

A nationwide investigation has been launched in France amid growing concern at the increased number of instances of babies being born with birth defects, like missing or malformed arms, sparking a public health scare.

Assuring citizens that nothing “is being hidden from you,” head of Public Health France Francois Bourdillon told RTL radio listeners that an investigation was already underway and that results were expected in about three months.

“We will look at all suspect cases,” he assured.

The condition, a type of agenesis, is where the upper limbs of a fetus fail to form correctly during pregnancy. Those affected can be born with missing upper limbs, forearms, hands, or fingers.

French President Emmanuel Macron's unexpected decision to postpone a meeting with his ministers to take a four day break sparked questions about the 40 year-year-old's stamina for the stressful job.

Macron began his break following a working lunch with lawmakers in Hauts-de-France on Tuesday, with no meetings, public events or speeches scheduled for four days ahead of an upcoming six-day, 11 department, 17 city tour for centenary commemorations of the end of the First World War, Le Figaro has reported.

Voicing its surprise, the newspaper pointed out that this was the first time Macron has done anything like this in his close to one-and-a-half years in office. It also pointed out that "exceptionally, the president even advanced the Council of Ministers meeting," normally taking place Wednesdays, to next Tuesday.

The participants of the four-party summit in Istanbul - Russia, Turkey, Germany and France - are committed to the territorial integrity of Syria, according to a communique released by the German government on Saturday.

The leaders of the four nations "confirmed their commitment to sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic," the document reads.

They are "full of determination to resist separatist plans, aimed at undermining sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria, as well as national security of neighboring states."

Besides, the participants of the Istanbul meeting said they were ready to work on creating conditions for the return of refugees and internally displaced persons. This will depend on providing them with "guarantees against armed conflicts, political persecution and unlawful detentions," as well as on rebuilding the country’s infrastructure to make sure that the population has access to water and electricity.

Leaders of Russia, Turkey, Germany and France have gathered in Istanbul to discuss the Syrian peace process. While the outcome of such tricky talks is hard to predict, the new format appears to be, at least, quite refreshing.

French President Macron intends to press US President Trump to present his Middle East peace plan after the upcoming midterm elections. If Trump fails to deliver, Paris will present its own plan, according to the Foreign Ministry's Political Director Alon Ushpiz.

"This has nothing to do with what we're talking about. Nothing. So I won't answer that question. I'm sorry but as long as I'll be in office this is how it will be, whether people like it or not."

FRANCE could deliberately disrupt British imports and exports out of Calais if the UK fails to pay the £39billion divorce bill in the event of a ‘no deal’ Brexit, it has been claimed.

On Saturday, a 38-year-old woman was sexually assaulted by a group of migrants in Calais. The victim was hospitalised.

Saturday night, around midnight, a woman walking her dog, in the Tourmaniantz Avenue, witnessed a group of migrants raping a woman.

She immediately went home to get her husband and when they went back to the scene of the incident, they discovered the victim, lying on the ground.

The only promise that is new about the promised peace plan is the way it will be forced on the Palestinians: no one has promised that the plan itself will be new. With Saudi Arabia and Egypt—the outside—brought onside with the promise of continued military aid despite their crimes against humanity and violations of international law and the Palestinians weakened by being silenced, economically crushed and stripped of any friends to help them, the United States and Israel are now free to attempt to impose a peace plan on the Palestinians.

Marine Le Pen seems to be under attack from all fronts as fresh charges of embezzling public funds are reportedly levied against her. She's also being investigated for posting an order for her psychiatric examination online.

French authorities have reportedly suspended their insistence on special labeling for West Bank products following a lawsuit alleging that the practice is discriminatory. The France office of the NGO Amnesty International complained about the suspension in a statement Wednesday. “Instead of complying with the request to end imports [from the West Bank], the government has chosen to roll back and suspend the demand for labeling,” the human rights group wrote.

A 615-page report was recently released, written by an adviser to President Emmanuel Macron, Hakim El Karoui, who is in charge of designing the new institutions of an "Islam of France." The report defines Islamism as an "ideology totally distinct from Islam" and also never addresses the links between Islamism and terrorism. The report also insists on the urgent need to spread "true Islam" in France and adopt the teaching of Arabic in public high schools.

The court's request, for Marine Le Pen to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine if she is sane, indicates that French authorities might be reviving the old Soviet use of "psychiatry" to silence dissidents or political opponents.

The legal offensive against Marine Le Pen was actually added to the financial offensive. Even if Le Pen is not sent to prison, the law seems to have been used to open the possibility of declaring her ineligible for the European Parliament elections scheduled for May 2019.

France has accused Iran's intelligence ministry of being behind a foiled plot to bomb an exiled opposition group near the French capital in a move that risks straining already complicated ties between Paris and Tehran.

The French government announced Tuesday it was freezing assets belonging to two suspected Iranian intelligence operatives, as well as others belonging to Iran's ministry of intelligence and security.

France's decision to take retaliatory measures and go public with the accusations was taken three months after the alleged plot to bomb a meeting of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran (MEK) in a suburb of Paris.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday that the U.S. will not reduce its support for the French-led military operations against insurgents in Mali.

"We have no intention of cutting back one bit on that support," said Mattis.

Speaking alongside Mattis at a press conference in Paris, French Defense Minister Florence Parly said the Pentagon chief reassured her that any changes in U.S. operations or forces in Africa would not affect support provided to France.

The Pentagon has been reevaluating its troop presence and operations in Africa after the ambush in Niger last year that killed four U.S. soldiers and four of their Niger counterparts. French forces were part of the rescue force that went to the aid of U.S. forces after the Niger attack.

FRN proposed that one purely military-strategic aim of the French downing of the IL-20, ascribed falsely to Syria, was to see how Russia would ‘plug the gap’ created by not having an IL-20. This appears to be a procedure aimed at that.

In addition, Russia has also formally stated that their IFF system did not fail. However Russia is overtly implying that because the Russian-built Syrian S-200 system which both Russia and the West alleges was involved in the downing Russian IL-20 did not have Russian codes, the IFF question did not come into play.

The Arabic-language website of RT quoted Russian military expert Mikhail Khodarenok as saying on Wednesday that the French frigate named Auvergne has intentionally or unintentionally played a role in the incident.

He noted that the French vessel fired cruise missiles at Syrian targets concurrent with the incident, and said that it further complicated the conditions in the airspace of Syria's Southern coasts and created more problems for the Syrian air defense system by its deployment in an improper place and time.

The Russian military said an Il-20 electronic intelligence plane was hit 35km off Syria's Mediterranean coast as it returned to its home base nearby. All 15 Russian crew members were killed.

Russian defense officials described maneuvers by Israeli fighter jets during the incident as "hostile" and said it had a right to retaliate.

In a decision that will undoubtedly outrage conservatives who have sought to highlight the horrors of terrorist groups like ISIS, a French court has ruled that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the party formerly known as the National Front (now National Rally) and runner-up in last year's French presidential vote, must undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether "she is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions."

In other words, the court is treating Le Pen as if being conservative is a mental illness.

The ruling follows formal charges that were brought against Le Pen in March after she tweeted gruesome photos of the bodies of innocent people subjected to horrific deaths at the hands of ISIS. The decision horrified conservatives who accused the French government of attempting to criminalize conservative political speech, as it was only the latest example of a disturbing trend in the European Union, per the Local.

French politician Marine Le Pen said a court ordered her to undergo psychiatric evaluation over a series of images she posted on Twitter showing Islamic State executions. She slammed the order as a “mind-blowing.”

The president of France's National Rally (formerly Front National) has released an order saying it comes from the magistrates in Nanterre near Paris, calling on her to “undergo a psychiatric examination."

A French army vehicle spotted in a photo taken in Deir ez-Zor province has led to questions about the extent of Paris’s involvement in the Syrian conflict. The image was reportedly shared by the US military on social media.

The vehicle in question is a wheeled armored personnel carrier equipped with a turret, which resembles the French army’s Aravis infantry mobility vehicle. It can be seen in the background of the photo, which purportedly shows US troops lending support to Syrian armed groups fighting Islamic State in the eastern province.

The Syrian government will face ‘consequences’ if they launch a chemical weapons attack on Idlib, warned French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian at joint press conference with his Chinese counterpart Wang Li in Beijing on Tursday.

The warning comes after Syrian regime forces amassed around Idlib in the past few weeks as they seek to oust rebels from their final stronghold.

The advisory also warns military activities linked to the bloody conflict in Syria have been ramped across Iran's airspace.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington are running high following Donald Trump’s controversial decision to pull out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal re-introduce economic sanctions last month.

Flight Service Bureau, which provides safety information on airspace to airlines, said "without seeming alarmist", the deteriorating relationship between the US and Iran must be taken into account when planning flights in Iran's airspace.

Paris wants to cooperate with Moscow on a number of issues, including in the UN Security Council, despite the existing differences between France and Russia, French Ambassador to Russia Sylvie Bermann told reporters on Thursday on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum (EEF).

“President Macron is holding a very honest dialogue with the Russian party … At the same time he finds it very important to develop relations between Russia and the European Union, between Russia and France … We have some differences but even if we disagree on some issues, Russia is a very important partner in the UN Security Council and it is very important to boost this dialogue,” the ambassador said.

France is headed to the European Court of Justice to establish whether it can force companies such as Google to de-list search results globally.

France’s data regulator is seeking clarification on whether material removed under the “right to be forgotten” (RTBF) law should only be removed within France or if it should be de-listed on every Google domain.

Germany may join possible airstrikes on Syrian government forces by western nations in the event chemical weapons are used by Damascus, according to local media.

The German Defense Ministry has been mulling over joining possible airstrikes by the United States, the United Kingdom and France against Syrian government forces, Bild reported. The ministry is considering this option in the event of a possible use of chemical weapons in Syria, which they presume will be carried out by Syrian government troops, the outlet said.

Earlier in the day, French Minister for the Armed Forces Florence Parly said that if chemical attacks are carried out in Syria,a response will follow, including those from France.

Globalist international media outlets have been struggling to come to terms with seeing Emmanuel Macron’s popularity sink while Donald Trump’s America prospers, with The Guardian warning the development is “worrying for those in Europe’s pro-globalisation camp who placed their faith in [Macron] to halt the wave of populism”.

Abrupt resignations of two ministers in the government of French President Emmanuel Macron have dealt a heavy blow to the head of state's image as a progressive politician, experts told Sputnik.

French Ecology Minister Nicolas Hulot surprisingly resigned last Tuesday, saying that he felt alone in promoting ecology-related goals and could not pretend that his presence in the government helped to promote environment objectives. Shortly after, the country's Sports Minister Laura Flessel resigned for "personal reasons," but the media reported the move was prompted by a tax inquiry.

France has put its navy on standby to intervene to prevent more clashes between French and British fishermen hunting scallops off the Normandy coast. Sputnik looks at the history of conflicts which have broken out over foodstuffs.

French Agriculture Minister Stephane Travert said on Tuesday, September 4, the French navy was "ready to intervene in case of clashes" after fishermen hurled stones and insults in the latest episode of the "Scallops War".

French fishermen accuse the British of unfairly catching scallops in the Baie de Seine during the summer, when French boats are banned because of French regulations aimed at protecting shellfish stocks.

I’m David Tesinsky from Prague and I’m an independent photographer of the subcultures, urban cultures, street stories and people’s stories in general AKA reportage/social documentary photography.

I’ve made this series about “different” perspective of this city when you point your eyes up from Eiffel tower down to the ground to show that this city is not just a fake romance.

The European Commission on Wednesday urged France and Britain to find an "amicable" solution after fishermen from the two countries clashed in the English Channel over a hoard of scallops.

Brussels insisted however that it could not get involved in the fight as arrangements for trawling for the prized shellfish were made between individual countries, not at a European level.

French farmers lit flares and sowed grass seeds on land bought up by firms from China, complaining locals are being squeezed out of the countryside by foreign investors.
Around a hundred farmers converged on land near Châtillon-sur-Indre in the Loire valley, where China’s Hongyang consortium has bought more than 2,000 acres of farmland.

It bought 4,200 acres in the region in 2016, and all told, the Chinese have purchased an estimated €76 billion (£68bn/$88bn) in French land since 2010, including a large number of Bordeaux vineyards — up from 30 châteaux in 2012 to over 160 today, according to The Times.

“The land is there to provide for farmers’ families and to produce food,” complained Laurent Pinatel, a spokesman for the Small Farmers’ Confederation.

“The [Chinese] owners have come here to make a profit, to speculate on agriculture while monopolising the land,” Mr Pinatel.

Unions in France on Thursday called for a strike for October 9 in protest at the "ideological policies" of French President Emmanuel Macron's government, while rail strikes have also been scheduled and Air France staff look set to hold more industrial action.

The CGT and FO unions as well as two national student unions denounced "ideological policies targeting the destruction of our social model, favouring notably the explosion of inequality and the breaking of collective rights".

Macron, a 40-year-old former investment banker who swept to power last year promising to end decades of high unemployment and to reform the European Union, is trying to loosen French labour laws and reform the social security system.

The unions said in a joint statement that his policies would have an impact "once again on the weakest, the most insecure and most deprived".

French politicians have reacted with anger after Emmanuel Macron asserted that “true” Frenchmen and Danes “do not exist”, and attacked the people he rules over as stubbornly resistant to change while on an official visit to Denmark.

The French president made the remarks while on a three-day tour of Denmark and Finland, where he is hoping to establish a “progressive arc” of nations supporting his vision of a globalised EU superstate, which would revolve around a liberal conception of human rights, ahead of European Parliament elections next year.

France has told its diplomats and Foreign Ministry officials to postpone indefinitely all non-essential travel to Iran. An internal memo seen by Reuters cited a foiled plot to bomb a rally held by an exiled Iranian opposition group near Paris, which was also attended by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as the reason. The document also describes a hardening of Tehran’s attitude towards France. Paris has been one of the strongest advocates of salvaging a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, which US President Donald Trump pulled out of in May.

French President Emmanuel Macron commented Monday on the situation in Syria's Idlib as well as on the dependence of the European defense on the US.

France is ready to conduct further airstrikes in Syria in response to Damascus' use of chemical weapons, French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday during his speech to French ambassadors.

"We will continue acting this way if we see new confirmed cases of the chemical weapons use," Macron said.

In France, In a town called Saumur, gardeners employed by the town made a strange discovery. They went to work on an old church. Behind that church there are old natural caves. When they arrived there they saw 3 men getting in a white van and leaving the place. So they went to see inside that cave. They found ISIS flags, audio and video stuff, newspapers in Arabic, a generator.. So, they immediately alerted the local police, which in turn alerted all the other services of the state : national police, anti-terrorist forces, the prosecutor of the republic, the scientific police, etc..

Are the U.S. France and Britain preparing to launch punitive airstrikes against Syria in reprisal for another (forthcoming) “false flag” Chemical Weapons attack allegedly ordered by president Bashar al Assad against his own people.

U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton is reported to have told his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, that “Syrian President Bashar al-Assad may be preparing to use chemical weapons to recapture the northwestern province of Idlib from rebels.”

On August 22, at a press conference in Jerusalem, John Bolton, Trump’s (“Humanitarian”) National Security Adviser expressed his “concern” intimating that Assad is preparing to “kill his own people”:

“We are obviously concerned about the possibility that Assad may use chemical weapons again, …

As confirmed to Asia Times by diplomatic sources, a top summit featuring Germany, Russia, France and Turkey is on the way. Call it an expanded Eurovision – with Turkey included due to (wobbling) NATO membership.

Ostensibly, the summit would be on Syria – according to the Kremlin. That does not cut it – as Syria is already being discussed in detail in Astana by Russia, Iran and Turkey.

EU Disinfo Lab's attempt to pin the blame on Russia for the Benalla controversy is actually a Brussels-backed effort targeting French conservatives ahead of the EP vote in May 2019, Nicolas Bay, secretary general of Marine Le Pen's right-wing National Rally, told Sputnik.

The EU Disinfo Lab, a Brussels-based non-governmental organization, has kicked off a Cold War-style scandalous smear campaign ahead of the upcoming European Parliament (EP) elections, said Nicolas Bay, an EP member from France and secretary general of Marine Le Pen's right-wing National Rally, formerly known as the National Front.

On August 10, the NGO published a list of names of Twitter users who were actively criticizing French President Emmanuel Macron and his former security aide Alexander Benalla, who assaulted a street protester during a May Day demonstration in Paris. Many of those who found themselves on the list belong to the electorate of Marine Le Pen.

A Parisian Mayor was threatened and warned that he will be "blown up" after he named a street in honour of Palestinians who were forced out of their homes by the creation of the state of Israel. The Mayor, Dominique Lesparre and his colleagues at Bezons town hall said that they had received "a multitude of threatening calls." Lesparre was called a "Nazi Communist" and was warned "we will kill you", and "we will blow up the mayor".

After the illegal UN sanctioned partition of Palestine in 1948, Israeli terrorist organisations like the Haganah, Irgun and Stern gang expelled nearly 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and their land. The street in Bezons, in the north west of Paris, is now called Nakba Alley.

The Doubs river flows normally in Franche-Comté, France. But since about a week or so, the river has totally dried up over a length of more than 1 km, between Pontarlier and Morteau, although precipitation has been abundant this winter and spring. The river has disappeared, and with it, the fauna and flora. Everything is dead. Two weeks ago, 13km of the Risle River in Normandy also disappeared underground in a large crater. According to geologists, this unprecedented event is due to large cracks and craters in the riverbed.

Social science and psychology suggests this is normal. Bystander responses to emergency situations show this to be typical, a result of devolved responsibility to the state, and social acceptance of family disputes and fights, all rolled into one.

But what the actual hell? You sat there and did nothing.

What happened to being an empowered woman? What happened to “solidarity, sister”? Women love to march about in stupid hats waving placards to announcing “My vagina is made of steel,” but when push comes to shove, or punch. They make like bad dog owners and hope the shit goes away.