Across the globe, democracy appears to be in a curious state. One of the main indicators of the health or pathology of democracy is the turnout in elections. Some might claim that the high turnout for the Biden-Trump face-off last year was a sign of health for US democracy. But the aftermath...
Ever active as his 99th birthday approaches, Edgar Morin has for decades been one of France’s most respected philosophers. He has dedicated his career to holistically exploring complexity and the structure of complex thought. Complexity is an ancient idea that our modern consumer society, in its...
The website FAIR calls itself a “national media watch group” whose mission consists of “scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.” All commercial news outlets tend to represent an often easily identifiable point of view on the...
Over centuries, Europeans have developed local traditions that define the economy, the arts and the rituals of daily life. Those traditions sometimes belong to nations or are spread across the entire continent. Sometimes they are very local and remain unknown beyond a small region. The...
Bloomberg offers its readers a look at a typically French phenomenon: a government’s economic cheerleading around the promotion of a simplistic idea that makes its traditionally stale policies appear more modern and dynamic than they actually are. One of the classic ploys is to borrow...
The recent European elections have triggered dramatic changes in French politics but, with a murky political landscape, no one can predict where they might lead. The year 2019 has turned out to be rich in pretexts for political predictions. While India managed to hold an election that produced...
Holy week in Notre Dame de Paris got off to a catastrophic start, but the president and his ministers are there to raise our spirits, even if it’s hard to believe what they say. When Notre Dame cathedral in Paris caught fire on April 15, the number of associations in people’s minds as they...
In a startling development that risks shaking up the political chessboard in France for years to come, Emmanuel Macron has invited the yellow vests to work with him on a power-sharing plan. Exasperated by the repeated Saturday skirmishes with protesters that led him to mobilize the French army...
The gilets jaunes movement has become a part, even a fixture, of contemporary French culture. In an article for Fair Observer about how the far right in the UK has appropriated the symbols of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) movement in France, doctoral researcher Natalie James highlights the...
How real is the French-German pact signed at Aachen this week? Can it save and even reinforce Europe? What many assumed to be simply the routine renewal of the 1963 Elysée Treaty between France and Germany has turned into a possible pivotal moment in the history of modern Europe. As Brexit...
