French weekly magazines review 8 March 2015

How Chad was brought into the fight against Boko Haram. Jihadists hope to purge other religions from the Middle East. Socialist face defeat in regional elections. French shops use software on checkouts to dodge taxes. And former prime minister Alain Juppé sets his sights on the presidency.

DR

We begin with a rare investigative report about the atrocities committed in Chad by the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram.

L’Express reports from the Lake Chad Island of Ngouboua where the insurgents went on the rampage on 13 February at dawn killing eight people and torching over 500 homes.

There are eyewitness accounts from survivors of the Boko Haram hurricane. According to the magazine, the attack forced some 20,000 refugees living in the Lake Chad basin to flee to Chad. But this may have marked a turning point of the battle against the jihadists, writes the magazine, as it spurred Ndjamena to set up a joint anti-Boko Haram military taskforce with its neighbours Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger.

Marianne consecrates this week’s editorial to the principle of a war of religions imposed on the world by the jihadist fundamentalists. For years they have wanted to eradicate Christianity from the Middle East and set up of an exclusively Muslim region, the magazine argues, adding that the “civilised world” cannot allow this. More so, it argues the Muslim world is not just about Al-Qaida, the Islamic State (IS) armed group and Boko Haram. The Christians of the Levant must be rescued, it declares, calling for an end to the quasi-silence which has accompanied the “spiritual genocide” taking place in the Middle East.

Le Point has been monitoring the exodus of Christians from Syria and Iraq where IS is pursuing its goal to set up a caliphate. Forty per cent of Syria’s 1.8 million Christians have fled the country, There are 140,000 Christians displaced in Iraq and 5,000 families have fled the country over the past year. The magazine says the savage decapitation of 21 Egyptian Copts by IS in Libya and the abduction of 220 Christians in Syria for use as human shields is caused outrage at the Vatican, forcing Pope Francis to start preparing a spiritual offensive.

Le Figaro Magazine is betting on the Socialist Party’s defeat come the 22 March regional elections, claiming that bureaucratic, taxes and civil servants have been suffocating France since the coming to power of the Socialists. The statistics include over 1,800 bonuses being paid by the state to civil servants in some 300 state institutions. They are extracted from a new sensational book by Agnès Verdier-Molinié, Saving 60 billion euros.

L’Express claims that a great tax revolt is looming in France.

According to the right-wing magazine, even if it is less audible in the media, the estimated amount of fresh revenue generated by taxpayers during the presidencies of Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande, the last 10 years, stands at a whopping 70 billion euros. That, it claims, has “forced” companies, households, shopkeepers and self-employed professionals to start developing all sorts of tax-avoidance schemes to bring down their levies.

Some are lawful, says L’Express, but it notes a disturbing trend on the rise - the discovery by taxmen of highly sophisticated software installed on some shop checkouts to hide their revenue. The fraudsters are growing in numbers, says the journal, estimating revenue shortfall at 10 billion euros a year.

Left-leaning L’Obs is all about Bordeaux mayor and ex-prime minister Alain Juppé. It looks at how he has transformed himself from France’s most hated politician 20 years ago to become the most popular leader in the country today.

L’Obs also scrutinises his strategy to outfox ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy the new UMP leader to win the 2017 presidential elections and the bi-partisan team of strategists working to take him to the Elysée Palace.