The French are a nation of incorrigible, rebellious frondeurs who resent those in power, whoever they might be. Sometimes the animosity turns viciously violent, as during the Jacquerie uprising of 1358, when overtaxed peasants went on a rampage against the…
Israel’s summer offensive against Hamas in Gaza sparked the predictable pro-Palestinian demonstrations across Europe. Organized by groups ranging from pro-Arab associations to far-left fringe parties, they were for the most part peaceful, but the Continent’s centuries-old anti-Semitism resurfaced in countries…
Maybe the third try will be a charm for President François Hollande. After doggedly attempting to apply socialist dogma for his first two disastrous years in office and bringing the French economy to its knees, he reshuffled his cabinet again…
When gendarmes arrested seven Muslim militants in Strasbourg in a pre-dawn sweep last May, it was the first major move in the government’s stepped-up attempt to stem the flow of French jihadists to Syria to join al Qaeda’s fight against…
Bardolaters are enjoying a movable feast in this 450th anniversary year of William Shakespeare’s birth. It began appropriately enough in Stratford-upon-Avon last April with fireworks, a giant horse-drawn birthday cake, and the beflowering of his grave at Holy Trinity Church,…
Who says there’s anything wrong with the European Union? I mean, apart from the fact that it’s founded on little more than political hot air, that it’s profoundly undemocratic, that it struts and frets on the world stage, but, insecure…
France’s pseudo-bolshevikian government has discovered a new problem in urgent need of a socialist solution: what to do about women. In the land where influential dames, if not dames,have for centuries dominated their menfolk beyond the wildest dreams of American…
President François Hollande, France’s most unpopular leader in the 56-year history of the Fifth Republic, has just been slapped upside the head with the worst electoral drubbing his Socialist Party — which he himself led for decades — has ever…
France’s reputation for a relaxed attitude toward sex has long fed the world’s public opprobrium—and its secret fantasies. Mark Twain articulated the typical American attitude when he declared that “France has neither winter nor summer nor morals—apart from these drawbacks…