French Resistance member Cecile Rol-Tanguy, who risked her life during World War II by working to liberate Paris from Nazi occupation, has died. She was 101.
Rol-Tanguy died on Friday at her home in Monteaux, in central France, as Europe commemorated the 75th anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied forces. The cause of her death was not disclosed by French officials.
French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Rol-Tanguy on Saturday, calling her a “freedom fighter.”
“It was just what you did,” Cécile Rol-Tanguy told the author Anne Sebba in an interview for The Times in 2014. “I never was afraid in my stomach. If you are, you can’t do anything. If you arrive at a Métro station with the Germans in front of you there’s no point in turning round as there are probably Germans behind you.”
From 1940 to 1944, Rol-Tanguy was a member of the French Resistance, working with her husband, Henri.
Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will this Earth Day — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America.
This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It’s too little, too late. Removed from the debate is the only thing that MIGHT save us: getting a grip on our out-of-control human presence and consumption. Why is this not THE issue? Because that would be bad for profits, bad for business. Have we environmentalists fallen for illusions, “green” illusions, that are anything but green, because we’re scared that this is the end—and we’ve pinned all our hopes on biomass, wind turbines, and electric cars? No amount of batteries are going to save us, warns director Jeff Gibbs (lifelong environmentalist and co-producer of “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine”).
This urgent, must-see movie, a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows, is guaranteed to generate anger, debate, and, hopefully, a willingness to see our survival in a new way—before it’s too late.
Featuring: Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Richard Branson, Robert F Kennedy Jr., Michael Bloomberg, Van Jones, Vinod Khosla, Koch Brothers, Vandana Shiva, General Motors, 350.org, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, Nature Conservancy, Elon Musk, Tesla. Music by: Radiohead, King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Blank & Jones, If These Trees Could Talk, Valentina Lisitsa, Culprit 1, Patrick O’hearn, The Torquays, Nigel Stanford, and many more.
With long-term confinement, the antennas adjust their grids to meet the demands of listeners
Thursday April 9, Médiamétrie will publish, as every quarter, the audience figures for French radio. With a week in advance and, due to the epidemic, different calculation methods, the field surveys having, for safety reasons, been suspended Monday March 16. Even without the usual analysis tools, these figures should bear witness to the explosion of hearings since the start of confinement. This is already notable in other surveys.
The Alliance for press and media figures (ACPM) reported on Monday April 6 that online radio listening had increased by 15% on average in France over the first two weeks of confinement – the information radios recording an increase of 40%.
The peak morning audience has shifted: 9 a.m., instead of 8 a.m.
Listening habits have also changed: a study carried out for Europe 1 by Kantar Profiles, Monday April 6, on 1,027 respondents in France, underlines that 44% of French people say they get up later since the start of confinement. The peak morning audience has shifted: 9 a.m., instead of 8 a.m., says Etienne Marut, marketing director for Europe 1. He also underlines a very strong increase in visits to the antenna site: 35 million in March, an increase of 125%.
Same story on the side of France Inter, whose site saw its audience grow by 111% in March. “At the time of the attacks, we already had a feeling that radio was the medium of the crisis ,” explains Erwann Gaucher, digital director of France Inter, even if the period was fortunately too short to draw conclusions from it. There, after a month, the numerical figures are still very high. “
Excitement of exchanges
Free time also strengthens the interaction between the radio and its listeners. “In February, says Erwann Gaucher, there were 800,000 interactions (comments and likes) on our Facebook page, in March: 1.4 million.” [ . . . ]
Streets that are normally busy, all of a sudden aren’t.
At noon today, as France slipped into confinement, I looked down from my balcony at the street below. A few people were riding bikes or walking. At the tobacconist next to the closed café, a woman was wiping down the door frame. The street is normally busy, and all of a sudden it wasn’t. For the next two weeks, and likely longer, we cannot go out except for urgent reasons: food, medicine, or essential work. A nationwide lockdown, enforced by police. “We are at war,” French President Emmanuel Macron said six times in a speech yesterday evening. “The enemy is there—invisible, elusive—and it is advancing.”
Macron is right. COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, has killed thousands and will likely kill thousands more, a tsunami that doctors have been warning will overwhelm the health-care system, as it’s already doing in neighboring Italy, the country hardest hit by this virus after China. This weekend, the government ordered all restaurants, cafés, and retail stores closed in France.
And finally, last night, Macron followed Italy and Spain—but not Britain or the United States—and mandated confinement to slow the exponential spread of the virus. Overnight, Macron, who was elected on a fluke and has faced popular revolts and flagging popularity, has become a war president.
We are at war. How strange to hear those words in Europe in 2020. It’s impossible, here in Paris, not to think of the Second World War. Not since Continue reading “A Letter From Wartime France”→
Pas De Merde 