French Rap as a Flash Point

– By Scott Sayare, for The International Herald Tribune –
PARIS — A gentlemanly patron of the arts, Frédéric Mitterrand, France’s culture minister, seems an unlikely champion of rap. But when the French artist Orelsan called publicly for his support at the height of a months-long free-speech polemic around the rapper’s song “Sale Pute” (Dirty Whore), [...]

Strasbourg Journal: Mayhem

– By Scott Sayare –
STRASBOURG, France — Anarchists rise before dawn.
They wore black, the skinny, pale 20-somethings, tattooed and pierced, in masks or balaclavas – the “Black Bloc,” they were called. They were German, French, British, Turkish, all rallied around the anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-government cause. They carried red flags marked with the hammer and sickle, [...]