In the spotlight: transition underway in Mali

Audio 05:10

Colonel Assimi Goita, head of the ruling junta in Mali, during the meeting with the Cédéea.

August 22, 2020 in Bamako REUTERS / Moussa Kalapo

By: Norbert Navarro

11 min

Publicity

The transition charter adopted this Saturday after three days of palaver was rejected by the opposition of the M5-RFP.

Seen from Paris, Mali is also compared to Afghanistan, a real fiasco.

Mali a French failure

 ", launches

L'Obs.

Seven years after the French military intervention Serval, the coup d'état which overthrew President IBK, the persistent presence of still “

active

 ”

terrorists 

and the corruption which “ 

still reigns supreme

 ”, indeed lead this weekly to wonder if Mali would not ultimately be " 

our Afghanistan

?"

 ".

Why this question ?

Because " 

it's the same scenario as in Afghanistan,

" former diplomat Laurent Bigot told this magazine.

We find ourselves considered the military supporters of a corrupt regime.

This feeds anti-French sentiment and gives arguments to our enemies to recruit from among the population.

As a result, insecurity increases although we pride ourselves on making the list of those we have executed

.

"

France's military-African policy

And yet, French diplomacy had been warned.

Laurent Bigot, in his time, had warned his superiors.

But then, " 

the omerta reigns,

reminds

L'Obs

:

he is dismissed from the Quai d'Orsay

 ".

And today, he is bitter: “ 

I was called a traitor because I said we were going to get bogged down,”

he laments in

The Obs.

We had no political objective backed by our military operation

.

Why this distrust of a diplomat who was wrong to be right?

Because " 

in fact, it is the soldiers who [took] the hand, dragging in their wheel a French diplomacy which [played] only a second role

 " in this Malian crisis, denounces again

L'Obs.

And if, ultimately, it was the Malians who had found the solution to these seven years of stagnation, asks

L'Obs

.

Journal in which a diplomat still wants to believe it.

We can hope that this coup d'état perpetrated by people in revolt against the regime will start a new political cycle

 ", he hopes.

In any case, for this magazine, France still has its role to play.

“ 

Without saying it, Paris has changed position but remains maneuvered;

and gives himself twelve to eighteen months to bring out a new leader

 ”in Mali.

Coronavirus, the end of recess

This Covid-19 alert now.

It was launched in the press in France by scientists.

According to them, the probability for everyone to be caught up by the epidemic justifies much more precautionary measures.

In a column published this morning by

Le Journal du Dimanche

, six renowned doctors call for " 

whistling the end of recess

 " in the face of the deterioration of the coronavirus epidemic, asking the French "to

avoid, as much as possible, private gatherings [and] postpone any meeting

 ”because, they still assure,“ 

the probability of being contaminated in these closed places increases

 ”.

In this forum, these scientists stress that this Friday, September 11 in Great Britain, the city of Birmingham banned meetings " 

between friends and family

 " and they believe that it is necessary " 

perhaps to whistle the end of recess

 " in France.

Nafissatou Diallo, the return

Here it is again.

Nafissatou Diallo who, in 2011, accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault, attempted rape and forcible confinement, breaks the silence this week.

To tell the truth in this affair which had caused the fall of the one who was then Managing Director of the IMF.

And for the first time in eight years, it was in

Paris Match

magazine that

she broke him, the ex-maid of Guinean origin at the Sofitel hotel in New York.

“ 

The DSK affair ruined my life,

 ” says Nafissatou Diallo on the front page of this weekly.

In the interview she gave

Match,

the least we can say is that she persists and signs: “ 

I told the truth.

I was trapped and betrayed, she

says.

I'll never get over the way New York prosecutors treated me.

Because of what they did to me, I wanted to kill myself.

I was called a prostitute

 !

"

And when

Paris Match

asks her if she has something to say to DSK, Nafissatou Diallo, proudly, replies: “ 

Nothing.

I don't want to know what's happening to him.

I don't want to think about him anymore

 ”.

And she adds that " 

if he had been poor, on the street, a tramp, he would be in prison today

 ".

Don't touch my text!

Should the title of this real masterpiece of

Ten Little Negroes

by Agatha Christie have been

changed

?

Question asked by

La Croix l'Hebdo

.

While taking care not to answer them, this very Jesuit magazine indicates that in the United States, “ 

sensitivity readers

 ” - in other words zealous censors watching over the presumed sensitivity of the readers - are already responsible for “ 

tracking

 ” in Handwrite '

inappropriate

 '

words 

such as the word ' 

nigger

 ', in order to ban them from published books, including - hang in there - when those hated words are uttered ' 

by racist characters

!

 ".

And

La Croix l'Hebdo

reports that " 

books like

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

by Mark Twain or

Don't Shoot the Mockingbird

by Harper Lee have been banned from libraries in sixteen states

 " in Uncle Sam's country. Or of Uncle Tom ...

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