Toronto Mayor Rob Ford isn’t pulling any punches as he speaks to Toronto city councilors at their monthly public meeting. He’s trying to persuade them to privatize garbage collection, a move that would undercut the city’s powerful labor unions. In Ford’s view, the councilors are either with him or against him.

“You’re going to have one side of council that is going to support high taxes, big spending, out of control union contracts,” Ford said, as some in the audience booed, “or we’re going to have the other side of people that are going to have respect for taxpayers’ money, that want to bring accountability to City Hall, that are sick and tired of the tax and spend socialists down in this city.”

Ford’s argument might seem familiar to an American audience. The millionaire businessman is often touted as a leader of a sort of ‘Tea Party North’. Since his election last November, Ford has relentlessly pursued a populist right-wing agenda, in a city that’s often seen as socially conscious, environmentally aware and easy-going.

On his first day on the job, he repealed a hated $60 per car environment tax. He canceled plans to add more light-rail to the city’s underdeveloped public transit system, saying it would have interfered with cars. And he’s frozen property taxes.

Now the city may have to cut services to make up for an $800 million shortfall. Toronto has rarely seen such a conservative leader, said Royson James, a columnist for The Toronto Star newspaper.

“Ford came in and immediately he’s saying we’re going to privatize everything. That’s the American ethos. It’s not Toronto,” James said. “The way he does politics is quite different from what we’re used to.”

One of Ford’s most vocal opponents, City Councilor Adam Vaughan, said Ford could undo decades of progress in Toronto, a city that was recently ranked as the second best place in the world to live.

“If you want to participate in a race to the bottom, cutting government and cutting taxes, you end up with a city that doesn’t provide services for itself, where the poor get poorer and the rich move out,” Vaughan said. “Then you’re left with what you have in many American cities, which is a dead downtown core. That’s the trajectory that this kind of ideology puts us on.”

But Ford is extremely popular here. Recent polls suggest 70 % of Torontonians support him. He’s especially well-liked in the city’s suburban areas like Scarborough, where he recently inaugurated a new bus stop in front of a treatment center for handicapped children. The center tried unsuccessfully for 30 years to get the stop. After he was elected, Ford made it happen. A woman at the new bus stop said that’s one of the reasons she voted for him.

“He stood up strong for what he believed in and he was real,” she said. “He just said what he said and you either liked it or you didn’t like it — period.”

Ford rarely meets with journalists, but when he does, he presents a simple vision for the city.

“It’s going to be a very clean, very safe prosperous city,” Ford said. “Taxes will be lower than what they are now. People will have more money in their pockets so they can spend more and create jobs and stimulate the economy.”

Ford said one way he’s already stimulated the economy is by ending what he calls the war on cars and repealing the $60 vehicle tax.

“How many cities introduce a $60 car tax?” Ford asked, and how many cities reduce lanes of traffic in order to make bike paths and bike lanes.

When he’s reminded that London has a car tax and New York is creating hundreds of miles of bike lanes, he seems surprised.

“They must not like cars,” he said.

Ford plans to spread his brand of taxpayers’ rights beyond Toronto. His former campaign manager is organizing an advocacy group to promote conservative values across the province of Ontario. Ford has said that someday, he’d like to be Canada’s prime minister.

Here’s one way to get under a Frenchman’s skin — suggest everyone in France should learn English. France’s education minister Luc Chatel recently announced he wants French children to study English, starting at age three.

That is already happening at some French private schools. At the Babylangue language school in Paris, toddlers sing songs and play games, to get a feel for the sound of English. They are too young to learn grammar and spelling, but they are learning colors and parts of the body.

Caroline Benoit-Levy, a linguist and founder of Babylangue, said it is easier for young children to learn a second language.

Learning a second language early

“Kids who learn a foreign language early in life have a better ability to read and write,” she said. “They have a vocabulary that’s richer compared to monolingual kids. Learning another language helps you get better at your first language. It enhances your mother tongue as well.”

But for most children in France, second language instruction doesn’t start until age seven, and most French people never master any language but their mother tongue. Education Minister Luc Chatel has said that he would like to rectify that.

“The fact the French have not mastered English is a major handicap,” Chatel said in an interview with French public television. He plans to reinvent how English is taught there. Chatel said that would mean starting English classes in nursery school, using the Internet and podcasts as learning tools.

Language of power

French governments have made other attempts over the years to persuade the French to learn English, but none has provoked quite as much anger as Chatel’s recent announcement has.

“It’s totally pointless, if not ridiculous,” said Claude Hagege, a linguist who is one of the loudest critics of Chatel’s plan.

Hagege has won awards in France for his work to promote and maintain a diversity of languages, and he supports the idea of people learning several languages if they can. But Hagege said that language is power, and focusing on English gives too much power to countries like the United States.

“Speaking English is not quite innocent,” Hagege said. “Speaking English is a guilty act because it is the language of very wealthy, industrialized countries. And I think any person who has a minimum of sense of justice cannot accept that because this means domination by the countries whose mother tongue this language is.”

But for the parents who bring their children to study English at Babylangue, language diversity and international power struggles aren’t their primary concern.

One parent there, who didn’t give her name, said “French is a beautiful, melodious language but the fact is 80 percent of people in the world speak English, so it’s absolutely essential to speak it as well as another language.”

That statistic is an exaggeration.

Still, the woman said that she hopes she is giving her daughter a head start in a world where, like it or not, people who speak English often get the best opportunities.

Protestors took to the streets again in the Tunisian capital today, demanding that allies of the ousted president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, be removed from power. Ben Ali himself fled to Saudi Arabia last week. Now the hunt is on for the millions in cash and gold that he and his family is rumored to have taken out of the country.

Today, Switzerland froze Ben Ali’s holdings there, and France said its anti-money laundering agency is monitoring his assets. The French government was among the last to criticize Ben Ali’s crackdown on the protests in Tunisia over the past few weeks. But it is the first to announce it is trying to block assets of the toppled president.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said banks have been asked to inform the government agency that investigates money laundering of any unusual movement of funds in Tunisian accounts in French banks. She says any suspicious transfers could be blocked for 48 hours, and the funds could be frozen, if the current government in Tunisia government requests it.

In Switzerland, the government has already frozen Ben Ali’s assets. There’s still a lot of speculation about just how much money Ben Ali has taken out of Tunisia. Forbes magazine estimates he and his family are worth about five billion dollars. Their assets in Tunisia include real estate, an airline, supermarket chains, and newspapers and television stations. It is thought they control about half the Tunisian economy. In cables posted on WikiLeaks, a U.S. diplomat compared Ben Ali and his relatives to a mafia family.

French journalist Xavier Harel said the family head is Ben Ali’s wife, Leila Trabelsi, who used her marriage to enrich her family. “She used to be a hairdresser,” he said, “so she doesn’t belong to a rich family, but once she married Ben Ali and he became president, her three brothers became very rich thanks to her close connection to President Ben Ali.” Harel said the family has accumulated much wealth and controls many companies in Tunisia. “It’s hard to do business in Tunisia if you’re not connected to one of them,” he said.

Harel said Ben Ali has likely stashed most of what he has taken out of the country in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. But Ben Ali maintained close relations with the French government, and made frequent visits there. It is known that the former leader has at least three villas in France, worth tens of millions of dollars.

The anti-corruption organization, Transparency International, said it is likely Ben Ali also has millions in stocks and savings. Sherpa, another anti-corruption group, asked a French prosecutor to press criminal charges against Ben Ali for misuse of public funds. Sherpa lawyer William Bourdon said prosecutors must act quickly. “Every minute counts,” Bourdon said. “At any moment, a member of this corrupt network is organizing the transfer of their funds to friendlier places, such as Singapore.”

If the criminal charges go ahead, French investigators could trace and freeze Ben Ali’s holdings, with the hope of eventually returning some of the assets to the people of Tunisia. Download MP3

French audiences are flocking to the cinema this holiday season, but not for the usual helping of action movies and dodgy Santas. The big hit is an art house film that explores religion and spirituality.

“Of Men and Gods” won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s since become the most popular French art house film in the last thirty years. More than three million people have seen it, and that’s a little surprising in a country that’s resolutely secular.

“Of Men and Gods” is quiet, contemplative, and even by French art house standards, extraordinarily slow. In one scene, the camera lingers as seven monks perform their daily prayers.

Over the next two hours, the movie follows them as they dispense medicine and fellowship to Muslims in the Algerian community where they live.

The film takes place in 1996, at the height of the Algerian civil war. And it revolves around a moral and existential debate. Should the monks give in to their fears of Islamist violence and leave, or should they stay in a country they love?

Part of the film’s appeal is the fact it’s based on a true story. In 1996, France was shocked when seven Trappist monks were kidnapped and killed in Algeria. Their murderers were never found.

Ten years later, with Islamic extremism dominating headlines, screenwriter Etienne Comar decided to tell the story of the monks’ lives. Comar said “Of Men and Gods” is neither a historical nor a religious film.

“The most important thing for us was to keep the spirit of what the monks were doing,” he said. “It’s more a universal story about faith, about sincerity and how to be in order about what you think and what you are doing.”

Arnaud Schwartz, a French film critic, said he thinks the film has attracted a secular audience because it addresses basic human values that go far beyond religious belief.

“I think of it as an ‘internal adventure’ film,” Schwartz said. “Even though there’s very little action in the movie, action is essential for each of the monks because they’re struggling with the most important decision of their lives.”

Schwartz said that “Of Men and Gods” has a lot in common with France’s last big homegrown hit, a slapstick comedy called “Welcome to the Chtii.”

That movie was released two years ago and became the most popular French film ever in France. Schwartz said the link between the two very different films is that they both deal with friendship and community bonds.

“That’s what’s missing in modern society — human connection,” Schwartz said. “When a film shows people coming together it catches on because life these days is harsh.”

“Of Men and Gods” is France’s submission for this year’s Academy Award for best foreign film. It opens in the US in February. Download MP3

Note: Anita Elash’s report includes the translated title “Of Men and Gods”. Sony Picture Classics is releasing the film with the title “Of Gods and Men”.

• Of Men and Gods official site
• Review: Of Men and Gods by Philip French

The wells near the town of Rosay en Brie were drilled twenty five years ago, during a mini oil boom in the region. They were shut down after a few years, but now they’re up and running again as test wells for the Canadian firm Vermilion Energy. Vermillion believes the wells may hold the key to a vast new oil resource a mile and a half below the surface.
Vermilion executive Patrick Monget, who runs the company’s operation in what’s known as the Paris Basin, says the industry has long known that the small amount of oil pumped out of the region over the years is part of a much larger deposit. But most of that petroleum is trapped inside fine-grained rock called shale. It’s difficult and expensive to get out, and for years it wasn’t worth the cost.

But these days, oil prices are high and there’s a new technology called hydraulic fracturing that makes it easier to get at the resource.

The technology, which was developed in the U.S, injects huge amounts of water mixed with small amounts of chemicals deep underground, to break apart the shale. Monget says tests using the two wells here show that hydraulic fracturing could unlock as much as 200 billion barrels of oil. That’s potentially enough that ten companies are competing to explore the ground under more than fifty thousand square miles of fields and forests around the Seine and Marne rivers east of Paris.

If their bets pay off, it could represent both a potential windfall for France and a huge problem.

France currently produces only one per cent of the petroleum it uses. Charles Lamiraux, who’s in charge of oil exploration for the French energy ministry, says the Paris Basin shale could increase that five-fold.

“That would be very important,” Lamiraux says. “It would be oil that we don’t have to buy from a developing country, and it would improve our trade balance.

But Lamiraux says development of the oil could have a big impact on the local environment.
“We will have to do the most we can to minimize that,” Lamiraux says.

The French government has three major concerns about the hydraulic fracturing process.
One is water. On average, hydraulic fracturing uses as much water for each well as a hundred thousand French people use in a day.

The second is potential contamination of both the soil and the ground water. And the third is the large number of wells needed to extract the oil—ten to twenty times as many as are used in conventional drilling.

All these concerns have all caused a backlash against hydraulic fracturing in parts of the U.S., and French environmentalists fear the impacts could be devastating to a region that has produced large quantities of vegetables, grain, and Brie cheese for centuries. The Paris Basin shale sits under the most fertile farmland in France, and the region is crucial to both the country’s food supply and its character. Local environmental activist Marie-Paul Duflot points to the gently rolling prairie, the 10th century yellow stone church, and the chance to see deer or wild boar at sunset as she walks through a dormant wheat field at the edge of the village of Sivry.  Duflot, who runs the organization Nature and Environment 77, says these are examples of what she likes most about this part of France.

People here long ago got used to seeing the occasional oil rig in the area, Dufflot says, but she was shocked to learn about the industry’s much more ambitious plans.

“I don’t want to see the countryside transformed into fields of oil derricks,” Duflot says.

She also says there’s already a water shortage in the region, and fears it could become even worse if the oil industry takes off.

The industry responds that it’s working to reduce the amount of water needed for the hydraulic fracturing process. Companies also say that done correctly, the technology presents no risk of water or soil contamination.
For its part, the French government says it will do whatever it takes to protect the environment, even if that means putting strict limits on the number of wells.

And that’s where things get sticky.

Vermilion Energy’s Vice-President of European operations Peter Sider says limits that are too strict could kill the project. He acknowledges that developing the shale oil here could have a significant impact on the surface, but says that as long as people need oil, there will have to be some tradeoffs.

“Unfortunately, the reality of the life on the world today is that we’re dependent on hydrocarbons,” Sider says. He acknowledges that there are a growing number of alternatives, but says they just don’t compete with oil at current prices.
“As long as hydrocarbons are relatively cheap then we’re addicted to it,” Sider says.

France is working to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, although less aggressively than some of its neighbors. Meanwhile, French environmentalists like Marie-Paul Duflot are just starting to learn about the hydraulic fracturing process and what it might mean for the Paris Basin.
On that point, at least, the greens are in much the same boat as the oil companies. Vermillion Energy says it will take several years of expensive exploration just to figure out the commercial potential of this new oil frontier. Download MP3

Pablo Picasso's La Vie (Cleveland Museum of Art)

The cache of art work dates from the beginning of Picasso’s career in 1900 through to 1932. It includes lithographs, portraits, watercolors and sketches, and nine Cubist collages that could be worth $40 million by themselves. Vincent Noce, the art correspondent for the French newspaper Liberation, which first reported the discovery, says the works – in particular, the collages — are valuable for their historical significance.

“In 1915, Picasso he was doing all sorts of experiments. He would cut pieces of paper or cardboard or even cloth and try to make a sort of paper sculpture,” Noce says. “And these are very, very rare. Because most of them have been destroyed when he moved from workshop to workshop.”

Experts say the works appear to be geniune. John Richardson, a friend and biographer of Picasso, says he believes he saw some of the pieces when Picasso shipped them from Paris to the south of France in the mid-1950s.

He says that he spent a couple of days sitting on the floor with Picasso, sorting through portfolios.

“You never knew what was going to come out of them,” says Richardson. Out of one would come nothing but sheets of old paper. Another one would have engravings by some other painter. Then you’d get very early portraits that Picasso had done of all his friends in Barcelona, and it was a fantastic lucky dip and he hadn’t seen much of this stuff for ages.”

The newspaper Liberation says the works came to light in September when the retired electrician, Pierre Le Guennec brought some of the works to Picasso’s son, Claude. Le Guennec said he had stored the artwork in a trunk in his garage in the Cote d’Azur region, and wanted to get it authenticated. Shortly after that, Claude Picasso filed suit against Le Guennec, accusing him of theft.

Liberation reports that Le Guennec worked for Picasso and once installed a security system for him. Le Guennec’s wife told the Associated Press, “We aren’t thieves. .. This was a gift.”

Picasso’s son Claude says that’s not plausible. He says Picasso was generous with his work but always dedicated and signed his gifts because he knew people might want to sell them.
Download MP3

• BBC coverage
• In pictures: Picasso – Peace and Freedom
• Pablo Picasso estate collection

Eric Cantona on BBC television (copyright BBC)

• BBC coverage
• Cantona homepage
• Cantona quotes

A scene from Godard's first film À bout de souffle (Photo courtesy: Wikipedia)

By Anita Elash

Jean-Luc Godard, the father of New Wave cinema, hasn’t had hit for decades. But the French director is still stirring up controversy. Godard is getting an Oscar tomorrow from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But he won’t be there to accept his lifetime achievement award. And some American critics say he shouldn’t get the award at all. They say Godard harbors anti-Semitic opinions, which are evident in some of his later films.

Godard’s 1960 film, “Breathless,” heralded the beginning of cinema’s New Wave. In the opening scene, Jean-Paul Belmondo talks to the camera as he sets out for a drive in the French country-side. It’s got all the Godard hallmarks. Music comes when you least expect it. Jump cuts move from a closeup of Belmondo’s face, to the blur of passing trees, to the road, and back to Belmondo’s face. Critics still revere the film for its freshness and innovation, and filmmakers around the world still imitate its casual intensity. But for many French film goers, Jean Luc Godard is yesterday’s story.

A man, who’s gone to a Paris multiplex for an afternoon matinee, says he’s heard of Godard but isn’t quite sure who he is. “He’s French, isn’t he?” he asks.

Another man says he saw Breathless a long time ago, but he didn’t like it.

Another man, who’s 27, says he loved Godard’s early films, but hasn’t seen any of his recent ones.

“The last one I really loved was um, um, um, phfft, I forgot the title,” he says. That’s how people in France talk about Godard, he says. “They love the old movies but probably don’t really care about the recent ones.”

It’s what critics in France say, too. Godard’s last movie, “Film Socialisme,” was released at this year’s Cannes film festival and shown in one movie theatre in Paris. Fabien Bauman, who writes for the film magazine Positif, was one of the many critics who panned Film Socialisme. He says Godard hasn’t made a decent movie in at least 20 years.

“He used to direct films who had the real stories and real characters,” he says. “Now his films are mainly essays.” Bauman says there are scenes where you can see people talking but you don’t know what they’re talking about. “We don’t know any more what he tries to tell us,” he says.

The 1974 film, “Here and Elsewhere,” is one of those early “essays.” It’s also one of Godard’s first films to contain what some people have called an anti-Semitic message. Godard superimposed images of then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir with images of Hitler and compared Israeli policy with that of the Nazis. In one scene, a family watches a TV screen that shows simultaneous images of a soccer game, a map of the Middle East, pictures of Israeli fighter jets and the Israeli flag. It ends with shots of a Palestinian girl standing in a bombed-out building reciting verses from the Koran.

Fabien Beauman, who is Jewish, says Godard’s anti-Israel views are mostly ignored in France. Beauman himself says he doesn’t think Godard is anti-Jewish.

“In his real life he’s never done anything anti-Semitic. It’s purely a pose.,” Beauman says. “It’s like, you have a friend at high school who makes jokes about black people. They are stupid, of course. But you know he’s not such a bad guy, it’s just a way to get the attention of the girls, for instance. And for Godard, even though he’s 80, it’s no more than that.”

Beauman has this advice for Americans unhappy about the filmmaker’s award: give Godard a lifetime achievement Oscar, go watch his films and don’t listen to anything he says.

Download MP3 (Photo courtesy: Wikipedia)

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. The protests against pension reform in France are dying down now. Today striking employees at the country’s oil refineries voted to go back to work. The plan to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 is all but certain to become law. Even the labor unions are talking about changing tactics. They say it’s time to focus efforts on making sure there are jobs for the older workers. Anita Elash reports from Paris.

ANITA ELASH:  For Daniel Depret, walking in the Park Monceau in Paris on a sunny weekday afternoon is one of the pleasures that comes with retirement. Another is having a decent income. He’s getting a pension of 2,000 Euros or about $2,800 a month. That’s about double what he was bringing in before.

DANIEL DEPRET:  I may have less stress than before because early this year it was difficult just to get 1,000 Euros. Today without doing nothing, I get more than 2,000 Euros per month.

ELASH: Depret starting collecting his pension at the beginning of June, on his sixtieth birthday. Before that, Depret had spent the last five years looking for work. He lost his high-paying position as a marketing manager at age 55 and couldn’t find a new one. So to make ends meet, he took a part-time job as a driver for handicapped people and as a night watchman.

DEPRET: I have a family, so my wife was working and I just bring small money at home but it was very, very difficult. We lost our house because no way to pay it.

ELASH: Depret can’t prove it, but he believes the reason he couldn’t get a good full-time job was his age. The experience of thousands of senior workers in France would seem to back that up. According to the OECD, older workers in France are more likely to leave their job in their mid to late fifties than any other workers in Europe. And once they’re out of work, it’s next to impossible to get back in. Economist Jean-Olivier Hairault says high unemployment among senior workers is a direct result of having an early retirement age.

SPEAKING FRENCH

ELASH: He says the practice has created the belief that older people are no longer employable. He says that in France you are relatively old at 57 years. Not because 57 is old, but because it’s only three years until retirement. Hairault says several government policies have eroded the job market for seniors. One of them is a government-subsidized early retirement plan meant to encourage older employees to leave their jobs well before they turn sixty to make room for younger workers. That’s being discontinued. But the culture it bred persists. Thierry Dudieu, with the CFDT labor union, says once the retirement age goes up, unemployment among seniors will only get worse.

THIERRY DUDIEU: There is a huge gap between the decision of the government about raising the age of retirement by two years and what’s going on in the company. And at the moment we still see that many seniors are unemployed and they would be very happy to find a job.

ELASH: Unions want to sit down with companies to find ways to keep older workers employed for longer. Dudieu says that could mean, setting minimum hiring quotas for those over 50. Allowing people to work half-time for the last few years before retirement, or making it easier for them to change jobs within the same company. Any measures to reduce unemployment for older workers in France will come too late for people like Depret. Even though he’s receiving a full pension, he says he still needs to work.

DEPRET:  I will start a new job as a taxi driver and so at the beginning I will probably start with full activity.

ELASH: Depret says he’ll have to work for at least another 10 years so that he can buy back the house he lost when he was unemployed. For The World, I’m Anita Elash in Paris.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• BBC coverage

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Paris is on edge. Last night, police evacuated the Eiffel Tower for the second time in two weeks. The French government has raised its security alert to red plus, that’s the second highest level. Officials say they did so after receiving word of a possible attack on public transit. In a few minutes we’re going to be hearing reports of the alleged terrorist plot to strike cities in Europe and possibly the United States. First, in France, authorities have evacuated train stations, they’ve been fielding calls about suspicious packages. But as Anita Elash reports, some in Paris are treating the terror alert with suspicion of their own.

ANITA ELASH:  The bustling Gare St. Lazare in central Paris is one of the places feeling the effects of the heightened terror alert. On Monday afternoon, police cleared the station because of a bomb threat. It turned out to be false. Things went back to normal today, except for one thing, extra security. Overhead screens flashed warnings to report any suspicious packages. Teams of soldiers in combat fatigues patrolled the station. Still, it’s the ninth time France has been on high terror alert since 2002. And some commuters say they’ve just gotten used to it.

MALE SPEAKER:  You know, as soon as you have a suspect luggage, it’s better to empty the station than to have any catastrophe. That’s life we have to live with. That’s the 21 century.”

ELASH: Others here say they don’t trust the government’s high state of alert.

SPEAKING FRENCH

ELASH: We’re asking ourselves if everything they’re telling us is true or not, says this commuter.

SPEAKING FRENCH

ELASH: This woman says she doesn’t believe France is being threatened by terrorists. She says President Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to create a climate of fear to divert people’s attention from the scandals facing his government in the past few months. But security experts say the threat against France is real, and it’s increased substantially since July. That’s when French commandos attacked a cell from the North African group, al-Qaeda, in the Maghreb. France was trying to rescue a French aid worker who had been taken hostage in Niger. Since then, al-Qaeda in the Maghreb has kidnapped five more French nationals in Niger, and issues regular communiqués threatening France. The last serious terror attack on French soil was 15 years ago. But Former intelligence officer Louis Caprioli says France has been under constant threat for years.

SPEAKING FRENCH

ELASH: He says the only reason France hasn’t been attacked is because the police have foiled any attempts. He say that’s made the French believe they’re safe, but they’re wrong. Other security experts say the actual risk of an attack hasn’t actually gone up. They say the French government has raised the alert level because it doesn’t want people to be surprised and traumatized the way Americans were after the attacks on 9/11. There were still long lines of tourists waiting to get into the Eiffel Tower today. Security guards carefully checked everyone’s bags. This woman says she recalls the attack in Paris 15 years ago. She believes today’s threat is real but decided to visit anyway.

SPEAKING FRENCH

ELASH: She says her cousin is in town and wanted to come. She adds that if she paid attention to all the warnings, she wouldn’t go anywhere. For The World, I’m Anita Elash in Paris.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

• ‘Muslim’ gargoyle adorns French cathedral

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: There’s another religious controversy we want to tell you about. This one’s in France and it also involves Islam. At issue is a gargoyle adorning one of France’s most important churches. It’s the 12^th century Cathedral of Saint-Jean, in Lyon. The gargoyle in question immortalizes a Muslim stonemason who’s worked on the cathedral for decades. That’s outraged members of a far-right group in Lyon, as Anita Elash reports.

ANITA ELASH:  Gargoyles have traditionally been added to church facades to ward off evil spirits. Medieval stonemasons often modeled their gargoyles after the people who worked on a building. It’s in that tradition that a likeness of Ahmed Benzizine’s face was attached to a bird-like body towering from one of the outside walls of St. Jean Cathedral. Carved underneath it in French and Arabic are the words Allahu Akbar, or God is Great. That’s got a local far-right group railing about what it calls the Muslim takeover of France. Thomas Duron speaks for the group.

SPEAKING FRENCH

THOMAS DURON: In the Catholic religion we don’t use the expression God is Great to talk about the greatness of God. It would be the same as going to the Middle East and writing Ave Maria on the side of a mosque.

ELASH: Church officials say they’re not bothered. Gargoyles have been carved on the sides of churches to reflect society for centuries. One priest points out that St. Jean Cathedral even has some that are erotic. Sculptor Emmanuel Fourchet said he made the controversial gargoyle as a tribute to Benzizine, a practicing Muslim and a master mason who’s worked on renovations to the church for thirty years.

SPEAKING FRENCH

ELASH: Fourchet says it’s a story of friendship. He says it shows that people can get close to each other even if they come from different cultures. As for Benzizine, he says he’s puzzled by the uproar.

SPEAKING FRENCH

AHMED BENZIZINE: For me, a synagogue, a church or a mosque, these are all holy places. So it’s a place you have to respect. I find them beautiful, they’re made with love and I respect the people who build them.

ELASH: Benzizine says he’s pretty happy with the way his gargoyle turned out. It’s a spitting image, and one of the few on the church that’s handsome instead of grotesque. For The World, I’m Anita Elash in Paris.

WERMAN: You can compare the face of the master mason with his gargoyle look-alike. We’ve got photos at TheWorld.org.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN:  Authorities in France are struggling to deal with a binge drinking problem.  Last week a 21-year-old died in western France at a massive party organized on Facebook; 9,000 people showed up for it.  And as Anita Elash reports from Paris, an even bigger party is planned at the foot of the Eiffel Tower on Sunday.

ANITA ELASH:  The city of Nantes is often over run with tourists who come to see the castles in the nearby Loire Valley.  But last week, thousands of teenagers and young adults took over the town center.  They came for what’s known as an apero geant, or giant aperitif, that was organized on Facebook.  An aperitif usually refers to a drink or two with friends before dinner.  But in Nantes, the goal was to drink as much as possible.  By the time the evening was through, one man had fallen off a bridge and died, 60 others ended up in the hospital, many with alcohol poisoning.  The French Minister for Youth, Marc-Phillippe Daubresse, said the government would take emergency measures.  This phenomenon shows how much young people are suffering, he said on a French radio program.  They are expressing their unhappiness more and more by turning to alcohol.  Youth binge drinking is a relatively new phenomenon in France, where people traditionally grew up learning to drink wine in moderation at home.  The government has tried to keep binge drinking in check by raising the legal drinking age and putting strict limits on happy hour in night clubs.  But those controls seem to have had little effect.  Giant aperitif parties organized on Facebook have flourished.  The one in Nantes was the 58th such gathering this year.  Mark Burton Page is a project manager for the European Forum for Urban Safety.  He’s 24.  He says people his age have a different attitude toward alcohol than their parents.

MARK BURTON PAGE:  They want this very easy effect of alcohol.  They want to enjoy themselves now and why not do it with 10,000 other people?

ELASH: Burton Page is in charge of a Europe wide project tasked with finding ways to curb binge drinking.  He says prohibition won’t work.  He believes the most successful programs are being run in places like Seville, Spain.  The authorities there make sure there’s water, first aid and public transit available at street parties.  Social workers and mediators are on standby if needed to cool things down.  He says the French city of Brest tried the same strategy at a giant aperitif earlier this year.

BURTON PAGE: They had a couple of people that needed to go to hospital.  They had some people actually, violent groups fighting.  They had degradation of public goods and some private things, of course, that were some of that.  But what they didn’t have is people fighting the police which would have been quite bad.

ELASH: Burton Page calls that a success and other experts say it may be the best anyone can hope for.  After holding emergency meetings, the French government says it won’t ban giant aperitif, but party organizers will have to apply for permission three days in advance and promise that underage party-goers can’t buy alcohol.  Meanwhile the police in Paris have set up their own Facebook page.  They warn that alcohol is not allowed near the Eiffel Tower and that they’ll seize any alcohol brought into the park for the giant aperitif planned there for Sunday.  For The World, I’m Anita Elash in Paris.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

There’s a religious debate taking place in Canada. Some Muslims there say they want the country to set some limits on freedom of religion.The Muslim Canadian Congress is lobbying to ban burkas or any other kind of Islamic face covering. Anita Elash reports from Toronto.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: Another type of religious debate is taking place in Canada. Some Muslims there say they want the country to set some limits on freedom of religion. The Muslim Canadian Congress is lobbying to ban burkas or any other kind of Islamic face covering. Anita Elash reports from Toronto.

[PRAYER]

ANITA ELASH: Friday afternoon at the Umar Bin Khatap Mosque in downtown Toronto. About 100 people have gathered in the basement of a grey brick building on a street that’s filled with shops selling halal pizza and East African sweets. The men are kneeling at the front of the hall. The women are at the back hidden behind black office partitions. Most are wearing multi-colored shawls, floor-length skirts, and headscarves that cover their hair. But some are fully covered revealing only their eyes. Salehah al Shehri came here from Saudi Arabia two months ago. Outside the mosque I tell her that some people in Canada want to ban what she’s wearing – the niqab – which covers her face and reveals only her eyes. She says she doesn’t speak English very well so her husband translates.

SALEHAH AL SHEHRI: [SPEAKING ARABIC]

HUSBAND TRANSLATING: She said I’m so sorry to hear this because what we hear that this is a country of freedom. If she’s not doing something bad to the people around her, so why she’s not right to have her freedom.

ELASH: The niqab and the very similar burka are still rarely seen in Canada. But the Muslim population is growing fast and so is the number of women covering their face. And some Muslims are arguing that those women are hurting Canadian society and themselves.

TAREK FATAH: They cannot use religion to hide their identity. This is an insult to my faith, to my community … .

ELASH: Tarek Fatah is the founder of the Canadian Muslim Congress. His group has long opposed face coverings for Muslim women. So when the influential Islamic scholar Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi said the burka should be banned in Egypt the CMC called on the Canadian parliament to ban it in public places here. Fatah says the practice is a threat to public safety. Several banks have been robbed by men wearing burkas. And he says it’s a threat to women’s rights in a democracy.

FATAH: Anyone who propagates this has one objective – to make sure that the women in their family become unemployable and therefore dependent on them and therefore pose no economic, social, or political threat to their power structure within the family or the community.

ELASH: Fatah says he’s concerned the growing number of women who do cover their face is a sign that Canadian Muslims are becoming more radical. The Muslim population here is diverse and well educated. But some experts say that many Muslims feel disenfranchised by discrimination and high unemployment and may be easy targets for radical leaders looking for new recruits. Even so constitutional law expert David Schneiderman says Canada has strong human rights laws and an official policy of multiculturalism. So there’s little chance it would ever ban the burka.

DAVID SCHEIDERMAN: I think the guiding principle here is that governments are expected to accommodate rather than ban forms of religious expression. And governments are expected to abide by those human rights commitments and probably no government wants to be seen to be trampling on charter rights and freedoms.

[PRAYER]

ELASH: Back at the Umar Bin Khatap mosque one young woman says that calls to ban the burka might actually encourage the radicalization opponents are worried about. Samiya Muselem is 18 and wears only a black hijab that frames her olive-skinned face. But she supports the right of other to veil.

SAMIYA MUSELEM: It really angers me and it makes me like question the society like how far are you going to go? And when you do that kind of stuff to people they think that you’re breaking them down but little do you know you’re making them more stronger because they’re going to hold onto it more better instead of like vice versa – taking it off.

ELASH: She adds that many of her young friends have recently donned the burka to let people know they’re Muslim and proud of it. For The World I’m Anita Elash in Toronto.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.

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This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

KATY CLARK: Have you heard the one about the man who earned $10 million dollars last year telling ethnic jokes?  That would be Russell Peters.  According to Forbes magazine, he’s one of the highest-earning comedians in the world.  The Indian-born Canadian has made his way to the top by tearing into his own and other cultures.  Reporter Anita Elash went to a Russell Peters performance in Toronto.

ANITA ELASH:  Thousands of people fill a city block in downtown Toronto to hear Peters’ special brand of ethnic comedy.

PETERS:  Last weekend was a very significant holiday for Indian people – it was July 11.  And it’s a very big holiday for my people because that’s 7-Eleven.

ELASH:  Peters always begins his routine with jokes about Indians.  But by the time he’s finished, pretty much no race or ethnic group is left standing.

PETERS:  Black people – I see there are black people everywhere, okay.  Let’s keep the gunshots to a minimum.

ELASH:  Peters is not what you’d call politically correct.  And that’s a big part of the appeal for this audience.  Most of them are brown-skinned, too.

WOMAN:  I love him.  You feel so much at home when he tells those jokes because we crack those jokes all the time back home.

MAN:  At the beginning he introduced us about jokes about his culture, and then he make jokes about everybody at the same level, and we like that.  We like to know about things that we are wrong on it.

ELASH:  Ethnic humor is nothing new on the comedy club circuit.  Here’s comedian Pat Paulson in black-face, on the Smothers Brothers show back in 1974.

PAULSON:  I really think it’s terrible what’s happening in this country.  Jokes they make about minorities.  I’d like to give you some examples of this bigoted humor.  You know what caused the California earthquake.  They buried a Polak and the earth rejected him.

ELASH:  More recently, comics like Dave Chappelle and Carlos Mencia made millions poking fun at stereotypes of blacks and Latinos.  Peters told jokes about Indians and other immigrants for 15 years before he got his first taste of fame.  Five years ago, one of his performances went viral on YouTube.  Since then, he’s become the leader of what some call the third path in comedy.  Not white or black, but brown.  And he’s opened the way for a whole new stream of ethnic comic.  Mark Breslin is the founder of the comedy club chain Yuk Yuk’s.

BRESLIN:  What you have to remember is that Russell has achieved this level of fame without first becoming a movie star or a TV star, and that makes his level of achievement even more amazing.  What it says to me is the incredible level of need for a voice of a people.  And that’s what Russell has become.  He’s become the voice of a people who have been denied, an active voice in global culture until now.

ELASH:  Peters says he didn’t set out to become the comedic voice of brown people. He grew up in an immigrant neighborhood just outside Toronto.  So he was just telling the jokes that came most naturally.

PETERS:  When I started doing this 20 years ago, I was the first Indian guy.  People weren’t ready yet.  Immigrants were still new in ’89, and immigrants are now more settled in and they’re more comfortable with their position.  And then they see someone who looks like not the norm, and they want to hear what this guy has to say.

ELASH:  This audience can’t seem to get enough of it.

PETERS:  I always think we should have an Indian ice hockey team.  That’s what I think we need.  They would be like the Toronto Maple Sikhs and they’d be incredible, and they wouldn’t wear helmets.  Just blue and white turbans.

ELASH:  Peters says he’s looking forward to a new kind of comedian, the brown guy who people will laugh at even if he doesn’t tell a single ethnic joke.  For The World, I’m Anita Elash in Toronto.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.