Renegade Soundwave

So the inaugural Obama post is here and it's a suitably soft one, drawn from a lull in this week's news cycle. The Chicago Tribune, which liked Obama enough to endorse a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in its history, reports the not-so-top-secret information that his Secret Service codename was 'Renegade'. All nice and macho and, dare I say it, 'maverick'? Not to mention reminiscent of one Richard Kimble, who, if my memory serves me right, was also a Chicagoan. Wife Michelle is 'Renaissance' (a reference to Harlem and black history I wonder). Daughter Malia is 'Radiance' while Sasha is 'Rosebud', which anyone who knows the sordid connotations of that word related to both Citizen Kane and William Randolph Hurst will find just a bit unseemly.

The fighting Irish veep Joe Biden is, or presumably was, known as 'Celtic'. Pronounced with a 'c' or a 'k' I wonder?

President-elect Obama a real Renegade | World news | guardian.co.uk



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No Match for Quebec

Red faces at Paris Match where the mother of all glossy magazines did a 35-page spread to celebrate yesterday's 400th anniversary of the foundation of Quebec City (the first francophone settlement in North America) while concentrating mostly on the province of Quebec and its current capital Montreal, both of which date from somewhat later. Folks in Quebec aren't too happy, decrying French insularity and ignorance and despite an editorial mea culpa surely this will be an example of incompetence that will dog the magazine for years to come.

The Football So Far

Two days into the European Championship and though there hasn't been a game of absolutely excrutiating boredom (Austria v Croatia threatened to become that at times, mind), the tournament has yet to really catch fire. Both the hosts deserved better than the 1-0 defeats they suffered in their opening matches. Austria in particular will find it difficult to pull back the deficit. The pick of the games so far was tonight's between Germany and Poland. The Poles brought the game to Germany, playing some attractive attacking football but unfortunately they were lacking any real edge up front, where former Celtic reserve Maciej Zurawski struggled to carve out openings. The Germans, obviously having developed a strong understanding over the past couple of years, are playing a more expansive game than they did on their own turf in the World Cup of two years ago and on tonight's evidence they are worth their favourite's tag. Their defence (and Jens Lehman) look suspect and they may suffer against a side possessed of more incisiveness than the Poles. It looks unlikely they will be tested however until a potential semi-final against Portugal, and given the dreariness of Croatia's performance today, they shouldn't have to break a sweat to even reach the quarter-finals.

Once again I am restricted to watching the matches on French TV, whose coverage is appalling as ever. TF1's commentary is saved only by the presence of Arsène Wenger in the gantry, who is the only person who knows what he's talking about. Over on M6, Thierry Roland (the French John Motson) and Frank Leboeuf dispense inane patter, devoid of any insight or knowledge of any players not associated with either the French national team or Ligue 1, and littered with enthusiastic 'magnifiques', 'superbes' and 'belles actions' to describe the most workaday efforts by highly-paid professional footballers. The tone of deadening banality and politesse makes you feel like watching the damn thing with the sound turned down, listening to the radio, à la Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh. On top of this there is nothing in the way of pre-match, half-time or post-match analysis and commentators for both channels make the most pathetic attempts at pronouncing the names of players e.g. Peter Cech is Peter Sèche, which presumably means he hails from 'La République Sèche'. It makes you pine for Motson, Clive Tyldsley and Andy Gray, never mind the unrivalled trio of Giles, Dunphy and Brady.

As preparation for the tournament I went to see Emir Kusturica's documentary on Diego Maradona, which proved irritating and enjoyable in equal measures. A few short months ago i walked out of Kusturica's infinitely tiresome comedy Promise Me This and I was a little suspicious about this. Actually, my suspicions were mostly confirmed, it being a massaging of El Píbe's ego while making Kusturica look good too (interspersed with the interviews with Diego and the stock footage of the man in his prime are outtakes from most of Kusturica's films). Diego spouts shite about politics, most of which involves taking potshots at the Yanks and the Brits and lauding Chávez and Castro, in a typically populist Latin American way. But his gleeful remark about feeling he'd pickpocketed an Englishman when he rose above Peter Shilton to score the infamous 'hand of God' goal is a refreshing alternative to the insufferable piety of the English who complain incessantly about it (as if they didn't win the World Cup due to a non-existent goal or Gary Lineker didn't dive to win a decisive penalty against a superior Cameroon team in the 1990 World Cup quarter-finals). Kusturica throws in a couple of interesting asides about residues of aristocratic dignity amongst the poor and the birth of the Tango, that I suspect he has filched from Borges or García Marquez, and he must surely be one of the few film directors that could go for a kick-around with Maradona and emerge with credit. The film is most remarkable though for its YouTube-esque montages of Maradona goals, which of course look all the better on the big screen.

The tournament starts in earnest tomorrow with two intriguing matches in the group of death. Romania v France and Holland v Italy. As ever I am supporting the Dutch though I think they may struggle to make it out of this group. France look the best equipped to give the Germans a run for the title but they can't afford to slip up early on. More later in the week.

Virgin Territory

News in France at the moment is the annulling of a marriage by court order in Lille because the bride lied about her virginity, which was discovered by the groom on the wedding night. The court applied article 180 of the Civic Code, which states that if there is an 'objective error' about the status of one party (by this is usually meant a past of prostitution, according to most media commentators) the marriage may be annulled. Aside from the fact that this 'objective error' is probably more likely to be imputed to the female party, this troubling precedent would appear to restore the onus of virginity on the bride, something that we might have thought had long been banished from the modern world.

The couple in question are Muslim, and said to be not at all extremist; there will be those usual 'Gates of Vienna' fascists that will pipe up about this latest manifestation of the mortal danger posed to European civilisation by Islam, but the majority of people condemning this decision are on the left and, not surprisingly, French Muslim women, represented by groups such as Ni putes ni soumises, many of whom say they are fed up of the hypocrisy of those French Muslim men who play around sowing their wild oats but who go back to the old country (or al bled as Maghrebins call it) to find a pure bride. The article in Libé linked to above speculates whether hymen restitution surgery will become widespread among French Muslim women, as it has become in semi-liberated Muslim societies such as Lebanon. Of course medical consensus states that a ruptured hymen is no indicator of virginity and the virginity test has more purchase as a tool of gender domination but it's hard to explain all this to folk that but their faith in religion and tribal practices. Ironically, many of the 'pure' girls from al bled are said to have resorted to anal sex in order to protect the hymen for marriage, which leaves us at a very pretty pass indeed.

One Muslim women who has defended the court's decision, albeit on pragmatic grounds, is the Minister for Justice Rachida Dati. Quite what a member of government is doing giving her opinion on court decisions is unknown to me but Ms Dati said that it removed a threat to the safety of the bride, who may have wanted to get out of the relationship as soon as her 'impure' past was discovered. This may be true but surely there is a better way of going about getting an annullment than favouring the application of a stricture more suited to the Middle Ages?

Class Trip

A surprise from Cannes, which I haven't been blogging on for the very good reason that I'm not there; the host country got its first Palme d'Or since Maurice Pialat's Sous le soleil de Satan in 1987. The winner was Laurent Cantet for Entre les murs (known in English as The Class) an adaptation of Parisian teacher and Cahiers du Cinéma critic François Bégaudeau's novel of two years ago. The film was only admitted to competition at the very end of April, and though Cantet is a well-respected filmmaker, known for his lucid and even-handed approach to social themes, I found his last film Vers le sud, about sex tourism practised by women in Duvalier's Haiti, muddled and mechanical. Cantet had the stroke of genius (not to mention the nerve) to get Bégaudeau himself to play the role of the teacher. The cast is also made up of non-professional teenage actors (I hesitate to call them 'real-life students' as many media have - what else could teenage actors be, after all). In a nice touch, Cantet brought 28 of them along to the Croisette, where they predictably made quite a racket.

I thoroughly enjoyed Bégaudeau's book but I was sceptical both of its potential for film material and for its prospects of translation into English or any other language, given that much of the humour and the ideas extrapolated in it derive from the tension between the offical language of the French classroom and the reinvention of it by the urban, mostly Arab and African, teenagers. But I'm coming around to the idea of watching the film now, not least because it is likely to be a pleasing change from bleeding-heart feelgood films about educating the urban masses. If anything, it looks similar to the classroom scenes in season four of The Wire, albeit with less violence and crime.

Though some of my own favourite contemporary directors, Lucrecia Martel, Nuri Bilge Ceylan and the Dardenne brothers were also in competition (and Ceylan apart, they all went away empty-handed) it is good to see French cinema back on the podium. Along with Abdelkettif Kechiche's La graine et le mulet, Entre les murs is evidence of life in the French film industry, which is all too often dismissed by lazy, misinformed pundits as being talky, cerebral and pretentious. The best summation of the film, which was unanimously rewarded by the jury, was from the splendidly imperious Marjane Satrapi, a Grand Jury prizewinner last year, and juror this year: "There's almost nothing I believe in anymore, but I believe that culture and education give us the opportunity to be less stupid. It's always better to be less stupid than more stupid." I'll go with 'less stupid' too. Here's the film's trailer (no subtitles, sorry):

And well done to Steve McQueen on the Caméra d'Or for Hunger; though I don't think the world really needs another film about the Troubles McQueen's video work has always been compelling and I look forward to seeing his step up to feature making.

Football etc.

The search for more gainful employment has kept me away from here of late. There has also been a lot of football to watch, as the seasons in various countries draw to their close. It has been a happy month for myself, having seen Celtic wrap up a third successive Scottish Premier League title, their first three-in-a-row since 1974. Despite this the supporters' discontent with Gordon Strachan is likely to cause him to step aside during the summer. In France, St-Etienne reached Europe for the first time since 1982, something that seemed unlikely in March, when they lay fifteenth in the league. Their bitter rivals Lyon won their seventh title in a row and also beat Paris Saint-Germain in the French Cup final last night, their first ever win in that competition.

Yesterday I watched the gallant Doonhammers from Dumfries, Queen of the South, give Rangers an awful fright in the Scottish Cup final. The third division side came from two down to equalise and at one point they looked like they might cause an upset until Kris Boyd scored a second to give Rangers a consolation prize. Later on there was the dull spectacle of Ireland against Serbia in Giovanni Trappatoni's first match in charge. The most remarkable thing about the match was how similar to Ireland under Steve Staunton the team were. I suppose that the players may be granted some indulgence at the end of the season but Serbia were the more fluid and more threatening side and were it not for Andy Keogh's spectacular volley in injury time would have claimed a deserved victory. The goal, impressive as it was, didn't quite warrant the reactions of Trappatoni and Marco Tardelli, who got a little carried away. Less theatrics will be needed come September. And, finally, Sligo Rovers move to fourth in the League of Ireland (yes, I still call it that). Can we hope for European football next season?

Tommy Burns RIP

Sad news from Glasgow where Celtic first team coach and former Parkhead great Tommy Burns lost his battle with cancer at the age of 51; Burns played in the first live game of football I ever saw, a 1-0 win over Finn Harps in a pre-season friendly, when I was aged eight, and signed my match programme afterwards. A few years later I got as a Christmas present a copy of his official autobiography Tommy Twists, Tommy Turns, not by any means a classic and a bit too enthusiastically religious for my liking, but it stayed in the memory at least.

Tommy had a run managing the Bhoys in the mid-nineties but despite one cup win and getting the team to play some attractive football, he was badly hampered by the pervasive corporate incompetence of the club at the time, not to mention Rangers' then dominance. More recently he assisted Bertie Vogts and Walter Smith at the reins of the Scottish national team. Hats off too to Rangers, who cancelled their open-top bus procession through Glasgow as a mark of respect, in the spirit of Burns' own disdain for sectarianism:

"I think the saddest thing about the Old Firm rivalry is the people who have lost their lives after these games in the past, for such stupid reasons," he once said.

"This is football. I remember Jock Stein always said that: it's just a game.

"To think that people can go out with hatred in their heart and take away people's sons or brothers or fathers is just beyond belief. That's the way I think about it now: it's only a game.

"Educate the kids to integrate with one another and not pay any attention to who's a Catholic and who's a Protestant, and any of that rubbish.

"Just go out there, support your team, make good friends and get on with your lives."

Link

Flagging Orders

We have already heard of Irish hurleys being manufactured in Poland (it appears one-third of our camánaí originate beyond the Oder), of Palestinian keffiyehs being made in China, but hearing that the Free Tibet snow flag is being made to order in a factory in Guangdong despite being banned in China is the strangest piece of news yet.

While I'm quite sanguine regarding the reality of lower manufacturing costs in China or elsewhere these days and I'm not too sentimental about the decline in symbolism occasioned by this, surely this is a desacralisation of old nationalist shibboleths; exposing them to the cold harsh light of global economics may be the beginning of the end.

Great Scot!

Ireland have three games left in the tournament and, rather than taking the opportunity to 'experiment' and thereby risk a further catastrophic fourth-place finish, we should approach all of them with the intention of winning. There is a useful precedent for this; two years ago, a post-Bertie Vogts Scotland team suddenly started performing in qualifying matches that were increasingly academic. In their final three matches they got a 1-1 draw at home to Italy and impressively defeated both Norway and Slovenia away, after having failed so badly at home to each team. The new-found spirit carried itself through to the current qualifying campaign, which the Scots started ominously with professional wins at home to the Faroe Islands and away to Lithuania. Nothing hugely impressive but, given the calamitous nature of the national team under Vogts, remarkable enough. When they defeated France at home last October people began to take notice and even subsequent defeats away to Ukraine and Italy had not completely dulled the Scottish challenge.

The level of professionalism in the Scottish set-up is an example to every single team in the entire world - armed with a group of players that make Ireland's pick look like Argentina, the team has ensured victory in all the easy games that no longer exist in international football. Shipping defeats away from home against the world champions and Ukraine is to be expected but the Scots still know how to brilliantly frustrate a team of the calibre of France as they did last night. Even if James McFadden's amazingly speculative long-range shot hadn't gone in last night, a scoreless draw would have been an exploit to match the French deadlocking of Italy in Milan on Saturday. Scotland were superb in every department and, just as the French played better than in their defeat at Hampden last year, so did the Scots. Their defensive holding was brilliant (and when it wasn't, Craig Gordon was) and they played themselves out of trouble elegantly. Walter Smith's rejuvenation of the national set-up survived his own shameful betrayal of both the team and his country, and Alex McLeish (a man already venerated by his former Celtic Park opposites Martin O'Neill and Gordon Strachan) has tightened the ship with remarkable poise. The Scots are ten years out of a major tournament now, and major tournaments need fans as fantastic as (most of) the Scots are. By the looks of it, the team wouldn't be out of place either. Here's hoping they make it.

Pûrement Coincidental

I wrote last October about a bizarre and grotesque case of infanticide involving a French mother living in Korea and wondered at the time how soon it would be before a writer or filmmaker used the story in a narrative form. Well, now it has happened and it is none other than François Mitterand's daughter Mazarine Pingeot, who has decided to incorporate it into her sixth novel. The mother in question Véronique Courjault has claimed that her case is being exploited, while Mme. Pingeot is covering herself, saying that there is no direct connection to events in real life. Well she would, wouldn't she?

I Had an Uncle Who Once Played for Red Star Belgrade

Reading in the Guardian today about Rangers' 1-0 win over Crvena Zvezda Belgrade in the Champions' League qualifying round I noticed yet another erroneous referral to the Serbian club being 'formerly known as Red Star Belgrade'. There's no 'formerly known' about it; they are still known as Red Star in English - as the official club site testifies - it is just that for some reason they are being referred to these days by UEFA and by English-language media by their Serbian name. The club was always known as Crvena Zvezda, as anyone that paid close attention to the Yugoslav lineups in the Panini World Cup sticker albums back in the 80s will know. If some in Britain or Ireland (the 'formerly-known as Red Star' line was used in the Irish media when they played Cork City in last year's competition) imagine that a Yugoslav club founded by communists in the last days of the second world war would choose an English moniker, only to change it to the Serbian sixty years later, then the English-speaking world has an even more Ptolemaic sense of its own position as centre of the universe than I previously thought. Funny that: they speak Serbian in Serbia. Will the Guardian's reporter be referring to Spartak Moscow - Celtic's European opposition tonight - as 'formerly known as Sparta Moscow'? Tomorrow on Underachievement: a piece on exotic club names from around the world. In the meantime, a bit of trivia: what song does the title of this post come from?

Ireland in the World Cup Semis

Further to Sunday's post, the Irish ladies team today defeated France 1-0 to reach the World University Games semi-final. This is heroism on an unprecedented scale in Irish sport. Well done ladies, and best of luck against Russia in the semi-final. Here's hoping they believe in themselves and go on to win it rather than be satisfied with just making the last four.

Lee Hazlewood

Lee Hazlewood is the latest legend to go, having died of kidney cancer at the age of 78. Though I doubt his ailment was too bearable in his final years, the man lived the fullest of lives and kept recording until recently enough. May he rest in peace.

Lead Astray

Mattel, most famous for Barbie and, back in the day, He-Man, have recalled over one million toys made by a contract producer in China, because the toys - ranging over 83 different products - have been coated in lead paint. It reminds me of the title of one of the educational films that we might remember Troy McClure from: Lead Paint: Delicious but Deadly.

Underachievement's Annual Sumo Wrestling Post

The Guardian's always-entertaining Fiver mailshot is the source for today's scandalous news. Mongolia's sumo-wrestling pride and joy Asashoryu Akinori (apparently considered one of the greatest wrestlers in the long history of Sumo) has been banned from the next two grand tournaments after being caught playing football back home in Ulaan Baator, despite telling the sumo authorities he was injured. The chat forums (including this thread started in Dublin) are hopping and here is the newsflash from Japan just in case you don't believe us:

The Other Ingenious Michelangelo

They're dropping like flies in the world of cinema; the latest to go is Michelangelo Antonioni, probably Seanachie's favourite living director (or living until today that is). As with Bergman, Antonioni, 94, had a good innings and was directing until relatively recently; he made Beyond the Clouds ten years ago and contributed an episode to the film Eros two years back along with Steven Soderbergh and Wong Kar-Wai, both directed after he suffered a stroke in the 1980s rendering him mute. The son of a banker, he came to international prominence late enough, being already 44 when his seventh feature Il Grido (The Cry) was a success in Europe. Significantly it was influential enough to dissuade Albert Camus from naming his work in progress Le cri (he settled eventually for La chute or The Fall as we know it in English - who knows, if it weren't for Antonioni, Mark E. Smith might be fronting an entirely different group).

It was L'Avventura three years later that broke Antonioni in a big way, and the tale of a woman who reconciles herself suprisingly serenely to the disappearance of her lover on a Mediterranean island is probably the most influential arthouse film of the past fifty years, and I count the films of Bergman, Godard, Truffaut, Dreyer, Tarkovsky, Fassbinder, Fellini, Kurosawa, Lynch, Ozu and Kiarostami (all directors I greatly admire) among the competition. Pauline Kael might have repeatedly derided Antonioni's films as 'the sick soul of Europe on parade' but they had a chilly rigidity that perfectly befitted the attempted social pacification of post-war Europe. Watch L'Avventura today, or La Notte, or Il Deserto Rosso with a dubbed Richard Harris starring opposite Antonioni's actrice fétiche Monica Vitti, and you have a jarring sense of modernity that few films made since can provide. The trappings might be classic post-war Italian style and the cinematography lush black and white (except, of course, for Il Deserto Rosso) but they look, feel and sound like they might have been made last week. L'Avventura is also one of the most beautifully lit films in cinema history, which is all the more remarkable as its Director of Photography Aldo Scavarda never worked with Antonioni again and drifted into the staple bread-and-butter of Italian exploitation cinema.

Antonioni moved into English-language cinema with Blow Up in 1966, and though many people claimed he got swinging London all wrong, the film endures as an examination of the boredom and disillusion engendered by the nascent empty consumerism that its characters lived in. Zabriskie Point, his first American film, is, without any doubt bad, but it is beautiful to watch and is testimony to Antonioni's consummate filmmaking skill, allowing oneself to suspend the harshest of judgements until the very end. As for The Passenger, his film about identity theft and escape, made with Jack Nicholson in 1975, I posted on it a year ago, and it remains one of the most amazing films I have ever seen, and bears repeated viewing. Antonioni's icy, distant style is still favoured by the more arty elements in film schools and, in the right hands it can be exhilarating to watch, such as in Gus Van Sant's Gerry and Elephant, Nanook Leopold's Guernsey, Mathias Luthardt's Pingpong, Nobuhiro Suwa's M/Other, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Climates and the films of Tsai Ming-Liang and Todd Haynes. Few people would say that Ingmar Bergman was the second-greatest filmmaker to die this week, but I would be one. May both of them rest in peace.

When Ingmar met Woody

Bergman's death has been a godsend (couldn't resist that one) for Libération, forever eager to find ways to pad out their summertime editions. They lead with a full-page photo, as they did on the deaths of Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard and Lucie Aubrac, and they follow with seven pages of analysis and interviews, with French directors such as André Techiné and Olivier Assayas. Interesting is Liv Ullmann recounting the 1995 meeting between Woody Allen and his Swedish idol, the only one that ever took place. Neither men spoke a word, despite having been keen to meet, and they then profusely thanked Ullmann for arranging the meeting. Poor Michel Serrault, ten years Bergman's younger, who also died yesterday, a formidable comic actor, best known for his roles in Louis Malle's Milou en mai, Bertrand Blier's Buffet froid and Claude Sautet's Nelly & M. Arnaud, was relegated to page 22, though he did merit two pages of homages.

Ingmar Bergman to Meet His Maker

Ingmar Bergman has passed away, and while I bear the man no ill will, I find the fulsome regret being expressed by some folk I know a bit silly. Bergman, great director that he was, was renowned for being a much less great man, admitting as such himself in his autobiography Laterna Magica, which is a wonderfully Proustian account of his life and career tinged with equal amounts of pride and regret. It is unlikely that Bergman would have been too disconsolate at the demise of many of the people he encountered over his long life and his familiar biliousness and misanthropy would have led him to scoff at those that think the cinema has lost a great talent. It is true that Bergman, like Ousmane Sembène, who passed away two months back, was working until close to his death - the majestic swansong Saraband was made three years ago - but one can hardly expect a man of his 89 years to go on forever.

My knowledge of Bergman's films is patchy; though I have seen over half of them, it has been over a period of ten years and some remain foggier in my memory than others - I still find it hard to distinguish Winter Light and Through a Glass, Darkly, more than ten years after having first seen them. In many of his films there was a mea culpa struggling to get out - Wild Strawberries in particular is a barely-disguised intellectual version of A Christmas Carol - while Scenes from a Marriage, Faithless (which he scripted for his ex-wife and sometime muse Liv Ullmann) and Saraband are all efforts to expiate his serial philandering and general unpleasantness. Personally my favourite of his films is Persona, where Bibi Andersson's mute actress grapples with her nurse, played by Ullmann. The references to God are less explicit than in the earlier films (this was made in 1966) and the shocks - as in The Silence, made a few years earlier, both more psychic and cerebral.

Bergman is not too well-known for his humour though there was, in spite of the man's almost inveterate misanthropy, an unusual strain of humanity (if not quite humanism) in many of his films, such as the early To Joy and Summer with Monika (which was absurdly marketed as soft-porn in the 1950s US). As I said there are a number of gaps in my acquaintance with the films, even if I have seen all the major works; it is only Fanny and Alexander, his greatest success - it won four Oscars - that I am missing. Thankfully his films are available on very cheap double-DVDs here in France. So it might be a good time to get back to them. Whatever about the difficulties of the man it has to be acknowledged that he took a greater interest in Swedish cinema and theatre than might have been expected for a man of such stature. Until his last days he would watch every new Swedish release (among many other films) shipped out to his island home on Fårö in the Baltic Sea. One of the few younger directors that merited his praise was Lukas Moodysson, whose very un-Bergmanesque Fucking Åmål was hailed by the old master as the 'young master's first masterpiece'.

The Suicides at Peugeot-Citroën

I stopped into Café Divan on rue de la Roquette this morning on the way to work, as I often do when I don't start too early. The only paper free was the local tabloid Le Parisien, which wasn't so bad as it is entertaining enough, an intellectual cut or two above its English-language counterparts and possessed of a charmingly innocent editorial voice. Many French people I know despise it but others find it a welcome change from the ideologically driven 'serious' press and an Australian friend of mine is of the opinion that reading it regularly will allow one to quickly understand Paris.

Today's issue had a number of interesting stories, such as Socialist Party veteran, and former Culture secretary calling for the position of Prime Minister to be abolished, weighing firmly in with the Présidentialiste tendencies of Nicolas Sarkozy. Newly-appointed Keeper of the Seals (or Minister for Justice, as other countries would have it), the French-Moroccan Rachida Dati, has also had to endure the story of her junkie brother's latest brush with the law, having been convicted at the Lyon assizes for drug-dealing.

The cover story was the most arresting however (as Le Parisien operates a subscription-only web service, I will refer to Libé for a link); the PSA Peugeot-Citroën factory plant in Mulhouse (in the east of France) yesterday experienced its fifth employee suicide since February, in addition to one at another of its plants. A retired plant-worker, since turned writer, told Le Parisien that the culture of internal competitiveness generated by management in the past twenty years has destroyed staff morale and generated a poisonous atmosphere among the workers. The implementation of a bonus system among the workers has been mainly blamed and has resulted in a breakdown in worker solidarity and an every-man-for-himself mentality. The pressure has also been too much for some.

There will be those free marketeers, particularly from English-speaking countries, that will smile cynically at this predicament of the French working-classes, seeing it as yet further proof of the laziness of the French worker, cosseted as it is in the 35-hour working week and a costly social-welfare safety net. But French productivity remains among the highest in the world (20% higher than the UK) , so questions as to the diligence and industriousness of French workers can be easily dismissed. When people are ending their own lives in such dramatic fashion there are serious questions to be asked. The French culture of working to live rather than living to work may have a certain role to play in stunting economic growth but it would be stupid to imagine that this has turned its workers into pampered softies unable for the pressures of the modern world.

These issues were addressed last year in the documentary on work-related illnesses Ils ne mouraient pas tous mas tous étaient frappé, which I have not seen, but now seems all the more urgent. Later on today Libé reported that a 48-year-old female employee of the nuclear energy group Areva defenestrated herself; there are more alarming stories included in both of those articles.

Parity of Esteem

Another Twalfth has passed and as this charming Flickr photo album will attest, the sales of Irish tricolours along the Shankill show no signs of decreasing. Unfortunately I couldn't get hold of the 'money shot' with the Irish flag bearing the legend 'KAT' (Kill all Taigs), which can however be viewed here, courtesy of Slugger O'Toole. Slugger also reports that in Coleraine, a placard on one bonfire mocked the recent death of a 16-old Catholic schoolboy, and Loyalist paramilitaries threatened to kill his father after he removed it.

What I want to know is where is the chorus of condemnation from mainstream Unionism, those folks usually so fond of (rightly) calling on Republicans to condemn violence done in their name? Instead the main condemnation was of the DUP for bending its resolve and making a painful compromise with the Shinners. The Irish Times, meanwhile focussed more on the environmental threat posed by the bonfires (a genuine concern but not the priority in this context).

I have no quarrel with the Orange Order celebrating their day, provided there is no triumphalism and no intimidation of other people, as has been the case with the marches on the Garvaghy and Ormeau Roads in the past. When there is nobody that really cares, as with the marches in Rossnowlagh, the marches go off peacefully but, I suppose that would defeat the purpose for many Orangemen. For more than ten years there have been Twelfth celebrations at Áras an Uachtarán, which is a remarkably magnanimous gesture from its Northern Catholic incumbent.

Nobody is suggesting that Paisley and the Orange Order should start commemorating the Easter Rising but for some Ulster Unionists, a Republican acknowledgement of their traditions is not enough. Now, another 'Love Ulster' parade is planned for Dublin in August or September; the go-ahead has been given, which I say is fair enough. But what do the organisers want exactly? They state that they wish to highlight the Protestant victims of Republican violence, while being seemingly oblivious to the fact that the majority of people in the Republic were fully aware of those murders and abhorred them. There is a discomfiting (and most aberrant) use of the imperative in 'love' there. If you ask me, there is something vaguely vampiric about it. No doubt there will be a few teenage yobs on hand to hurl projectiles at the marchers (despite the exhortations of even Republican Sinn Féin) and they'll trot back over the border happy, confirmed in their bigoted preconceptions about the Republic. When will Ulster unionism grow up and cease cleaving to its persecution complex?