French press review 15 February 2011

There's a new name on the front page of Le Monde this morning. It is that of one Erik Israelewitz, who takes over as director of the centrist daily.

Reuters

Israelewitz has previously been the boss at the business papers, La Tribune and Les Echos. He takes the helm in the wake of a deal which saw three rich men agree to bail out Le Monde. He has promised to maintain the commitment of the founding editor, Hubert Beuve-Méry, to "clarity, truth, rapidity and thouroughness" in the presentation of the news.

Le Monde will continue to be independent of all political and economic power-brokers, says Israelewitz. How long it will be before that admirable policy brings him into conflict with the paper's three owners is a question worth asking, but will wait for another day, perhaps some time in 2012 as France prepares for presidential and legislative elections.

The new man admits that the future of the paper will be decided in a very different landscape to that of its post-Second World War launch: he says we live in an era of hyperinformation, of misinformation, of plain old manipulation, and that the world needs papers like Le Monde to provide honesty, clarity and unbiased analysis.

We wish Erik Israelewitz, and Le Monde, the very best.

Jean-Claude Trichet is interviewed by Erik's old paper, the business daily, Les Echos.

Trichet is the man at the helm of the European Central Bank, which is not really something to boast about. The Les Echos' headline reads "Trichet learns the lessons of the eurozone crisis".

Of course, it's not all his fault. Trichet blames certain member states for failing to abide by the rules, and certain others for failing to keep an eye on the strugglers. Not a word about the stupidity of expecting bog-economies like those of Ireland and Greece to keep pace with behemoths like France and Germany.

Anyway, soon it will all be behind him. Boss of the European bank since November, 2003, he's coming to the end of his stint. He will not be asking for a second mandate, and he may be difficult to replace. Axel Weber, the German slated to replace Trichet, has already said he wouldn't touch the job with a pig-sticker's pike staff.

Wikipedia says Trichet is paid 345,252 euros per year, plus a house and expenses. You can bet his pension won't leave him on the bread line. But he should be careful if he decides to take a retirement holiday in Greece, say, or Ireland.

Le Monde's main story keeps the focus on Egypt, where people are now beginning to wonder what the army might be up to. Are the military really going to lead the country towards real democracy, or are they simply going to ensure the continuation of a system which everybody else hates?

As Le Monde makes clear, the Egyptian army is far from adopting the cause of popular revolution, for the simple reason that the military have huge economic interests to protect. The generals, suggests the centrist paper, may turn out to be the only real winners when the dust settles on Cairo's Tahrir Square.

There's really bad news inside Le Monde. Apparently, there may very soon be too many of us.

Population experts have been suggesting for years that there's room on the planet for nine billion human beings. It was hoped that the human population would stabilise at around that level by the year 2050, but now the United Nations is sounding the alarm, warning that the continuing explosion of African and Asian birth rates could mean that there are 18 billion of us in forty years, and it simply won't be possible to feed that many mouths.

There are fewer than seven billion of us at the moment, and quite a few of those don't get three square meals every month.

Just to put the whole thing in perspective: it took the entire history of humanity until the year 1800 for the global head-count to get to the one billion mark. Then it took another 130 years for that figure to double. The most recent billion has been added in the space of just 12 years.

Part of the problem is that much less money is being spent on family planning in poor countries. The figure has been cut by half over the past decade.

By the way, the people who take an interest in this sort of thing tell us that the seven billionth human being will be born this year, sometime near the end of August.