French press review 9 November 2009

by Michael Fitzpatrick

Article published on the 2009-11-09 Latest update 2009-11-09 08:19 TU

It's wall-to-wall Wall on this morning's front pages, with Berlin taking pride of place across the spectrum.

Communist l'Humanité, understandably enough, goes for the sober headline: "The end of a wall", the singularity perhaps intended to remind us that, since the end of the division of Berlin, we've seen similar barriers erected on the West Bank, in Belfast, and along the Mexican border with the United States, to name just three.

As the Chinese dudes who wasted their time and other people's sweat building the Great Barrier against Barbarism all of two and a half thousand years ago could confirm, walls don't work.

Libération goes for "After the Wall, another story", attempting to analyse the world in the wake of the Cold War certainties which vanished with the collapse of the Eastern bloc as a political entity.

The events of 1989 gave birth to several levels of unpredictability, says Libé, unleashing the unbridled menace of capitalism, and we all know the mess that got us into.

The chaps at right-wing Le Figaro are in no mood for messing about: "The death of communism" is how they summarise the events in Berlin on November the 9th, 1989.

A Figaro editorial assures us that the Russia of Putin and Medvedev is better than the USSR of Stalin and Brejnev, and that the former soviet satellites are better off inside the European Union than they were behind the Iron Curtain.

Le Monde went to press on Saturday, avoiding the Berlin mania, and so gives front-page prominence to the plight of the Catholic Church, which has been having trouble finding volunteers for the tough and wifeless post of priest.

The French top brass, the bishops, met last week to discuss the future, and, with typical Catholic positive thinking, decided that things aren't really all that bad: there are, indeed and lamentably, lots fewer priests but, since there are also lots fewer of the faithful, it all balances out quite nicely, thank you.

And then there's Burkina Faso, where, despite huge levels of success in the fight against malaria, one third of the population give up using the vital mosquito nets after just six months.

Why, when the nets are proven almost 100 percent effective in the fight against the number one African killer disease? Well, the problem is simply lack of living space.

Since most Burkinabe households consist of a single room, where sleeping is done at night, and everything else by day, you can't leave highly flammable nets dangling over cooking fires without risk.