Tag: france

Holocaust denier arrested in Scottish fishing village two years after fleeing French authorities

A Holocaust denier who fled France after he was convicted under anti-Nazi laws has been arrested in a Scottish fishing village.

Vincent Reynouard, 53, was arrested in Anstruther, Fife, on Thursday after a two-year search.

He had been working as a private tutor while living under a false identity in the UK, according to French media reports.

Holocaust denial has been a criminal offence in France since 1990, and Reynouard has been convicted on numerous occasions.

He was given a four-month jail term in November 2020 and a further six-month sentence in January 2021.

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Missing Paris girl, 12, found dead in suitcase with numbers ‘placed’ on body

A 12-year-old girl was found stuffed in a suitcase in Paris with her throat slashed and a bizarre, chilling clue — the numbers 1 and 0 “placed” on her corpse, authorities said.

The hands and feet of the French child, who was not named, were bound with tape, and she appeared to have died from asphyxiation, according to Fox News and the Independent.  

At least four people have since been taken into custody for questioning in the case, but no arrests have been announced.

The girl’s parents notified police when their daughter didn’t come home after school in the French capital Friday, the outlet said.

The girl’s father, who is a caretaker in their building, told police he saw his daughter with a woman in her 20s on video footage from the building — with the woman later emerging on the footage carrying a suitcase.Cops later found evidence of a kidnapping in the basement of the building.

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Let Them Eat Cake: Macron Blasted for Jet-Skiing While Telling Public to Save Energy

France’s President Emmanuel Macron has come under fire for using a gas-guzzling jet ski on the French Riviera while demanding citizens curtail their energy use.

In a modern take on the infamous, if possibly apocryphal, remark of the French queen Marie Antoinette that, if the starving people were unable to buy bread, the state should “let them eat cake”, President Emmanual Macron has caused a stir among his countrymen for jet-skiing while his country faces the worst energy crisis in decades, BFMTV reported.

The French leader, fresh off a stinging defeat in the National Assembly elections, losing his legislative majority and dashing his dreams of a “Jupitarean” presidency — and indeed his hopes of becoming the undisputed top dog of Europe — fled Paris to vacation with his wife Bridgette at Fort de Brégançon, the official retreat of the President of France since 1968.

Paparazzi pictures over the past week have shown the French leader lounging in the sun and cruising the Mediterranean in a not-so-eco-friendly jet ski, less than one month after calling on the public to engage in an “effort of solidarity” by cutting their energy usage in the face of European gas shortages amid the war in Ukraine.

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French digital minister tells Big Tech platforms to scale up “fact-checking capabilities”

Telecom ministers from European countries have asked the major online platforms to ensure they have the adequate capacity to handle “misinformation” in Central and Eastern Europe, which they say are the major targets of Russian propaganda.

On March 8, officials from EU governments and representatives from the major online platforms met in France to discuss how to fight disinformation being spread by the Russian government. Initially, the agenda of the informal meeting was the Metaverse, how to bring more women to the technology sector, and environment. The agenda was changed in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In a joint statement, the ministers said: “The battles initiated by Russia in the current conflict are raging not only on the ground but also on the internet.”

France’s digital minister Cédric O said that online platforms had made some efforts to fight Russian propaganda, adding that the accounts of Russian state-controlled media outlets Sputnik and RT have been removed on the major platforms. However, O said it was important to put “pressure on the platforms to do even more.”

During the meeting, the ministers made two requests, according to a report by EURACTIV. They asked the platforms to respond to take down requests from governments more quickly. And, they asked them to increase their content moderation teams in the languages spoken in Central and Eastern Europe.

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France’s Macron Stuns As He Declares Un-Vaxxed ‘Not Citizens’.

In a wildly authoritarian move, French President Emmanuel Macron has declared the nation’s unvaccinated public to be “not citizens” of France, and claims he is intentionally just trying to “piss them off.”

The bizarre and unlawful declaration comes as the French parliament debates new legislation that would eliminate unvaccinated people from public life entirely, even if they test negative for COVID-19.

The moves belie the oft-repeated claim that COVID-19 vaccines are purely a health measure, especially in the face of new data from surrounding countries that proves the vaccinated are now more likely to contract, and therefore spread, the virus.

Speaking to Le Parisien, Macron furiously ranted:

“I am not about pissing off the French people… But as for the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And we will continue to do this, to the end. This is the strategy.

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French Prankster Admits to Hoaxing Mass UFO Sighting

A notorious French prankster has reportedly revealed that he was behind last week’s incident wherein multiple people throughout the southern part of the country spotted a glowing cigar-shaped UFO. The mass sighting, which occurred on Tuesday evening, sparked worldwide headlines and a considerable amount of coverage from national media outlets in France. However, the mystery of the eerie object was short-lived as YouTube personality and prominent French practical joker Remi Gaillard came forward over the weekend to take credit for the ‘extraterrestrial affair’ and explained how he pulled off the elaborate hoax.

In a video posted to his YouTube channel, Gaillard proudly introduced Marie, a horse breeder, and Loic, a meteorologist. “Thanks to them,” he boasted, “we succeeded in pranking all of you.” The video then shows how the two accomplices posed as bewildered witnesses who were interviewed by credulous news organizations in France. Looking back on her role in the stunt, which saw her leading a TV program out to a field where she ‘saw the UFO,’ Marie marveled that “I had to tell probably the biggest lie of my life.” Gaillard went on to indicate that the prank was weeks in the making and marveled at how quickly the videos of the odd object wound up becoming something of a media sensation last week in France.

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Armed police drag passenger off Eurostar train after staff member accused him of wearing the ‘wrong type of mask’

Eight armed, uniformed French police boarded a Eurostar train on Thursday afternoon, after it made an emergency stop in Lille, to forcibly remove a passenger who was accused of “not wearing the right type of mask.” 

The incident occurred on a Eurostar service that was traveling from Paris Gare du Nord to St. Pancras on Thursday afternoon but was halted in Lille after a train manager reportedly got into an aggressive argument with a man over his face mask, according to passengers.

Following the confrontation, the manager stated that they would be informing the police at Lille for his failure to follow Covid regulations, with the train making an emergency, unscheduled stop at the station where eight officers forcibly removed the passenger. As he left the train, the passenger, thought to be in his 40s, claimed he had been accused of “not wearing the right type of mask” and would now “be left alone in France,” calling it “very cruel treatment.”

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Nuns used crucifixes to rape girls during decades of abuse carried out by clergy in France’s Catholic Church that saw attacks on 330,000 children covered up ‘by a veil of silence’, damning report finds

Nuns used crucifixes to rape girls during decades of abuse carried out by clergy in France’s Catholic Church that saw attacks on 330,000 children covered up ‘by a veil of silence’, a damning report has found. 

The 2,500-page landmark report was released Tuesday after more than two years of investigations by an independent commission, in France’s first major reckoning with the devastating phenomenon.

A victim named ‘Marie’ testified that she was abused as an 11-year-old and that when she complained about the abuse to her parents they refused to believe a nun could do such a thing. The abuse continued for another year.

‘I was truly [a gift] for this nun… because she knew full well that she did not risk anything,’ Marie said. 

Eighty per cent of victims were young boys between the ages of 10 and 13, however many girls also suffered abuse, not only by priests but also by nuns.

Nuns used crucifixes to rape little girls or forced boys to have sex with them, according to the report.

Pope Francis today expressed to the victims his ‘great sorrow, for their wounds’, adding that he was grateful for the courage they had shown in denouncing what they had been through.  

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Macron Says Showing Police Your Papers to Visit a Cafe is About “Freedom”

After video emerged of Parisians having to show their vaccine passport papers to police in order to sit outside a cafe, President Macron asserted that the system protected people’s “freedom.”

Yes, really.

As we highlighted yesterday, footage showed uniformed French police patrolling cafes and restaurants demanding proof of vaccination.

Those unable or unwilling to show their papers face massive fines, while business owners could even go to prison if they refuse to enforce the system.

However, the new program may end up putting a lot of people out of business given the multitude of images that showed normally busy cafes and restaurants all but empty.

Ignoring the threat of legal action, half of the establishments canvassed by Reuters said they were refusing to enforce the checks.

Despite the fact that the French haven’t experienced such an intense ‘papers please’ society since the Nazi occupation, President Macron insisted that vaccine passports were about protecting people’s “freedom”.

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The latest example of ‘white privilege’: Eating French food

White privilege. White supremacy. White fragility. Whiteness. For the academic left, there’s no aspect of life which cannot be shoehorned into a relationship with these terms.

Law (yes, law) professor Mathilde Cohen of the University of Connecticut recently gave a talk at Sciences Po Paris and the University of Nanterre in which, according to The Times, she argued “French eating habits reinforced the ‘dominance’ of white people over ethnic minorities.”

“By this,” Cohen says in the clip below, “I mean the use of food to reinforce whiteness as a dominant racial identity.

“The French meal is often presented as the national ritual to which every citizen can participate equally. But French food ways are shaped by white middle- and upper-class norms … and the boundaries of whiteness are policed through daily food encounters.”

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