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French press review 22 February 2017

Aside from blanket coverage on the race for the Elysée Palace - the main stories in this morning's French papers are about French Jihadists, health care and worries about what are called "no-go zones" in some French suburbs.

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In its front page lede centrist paper le Monde declares that "Paris does not want the return of French jihadists captured in Syria and Iraq."

"More and more French jihadists of the Islamic State organisation are being taken prisoner while the armed group is retreating on the Iraqi and Syrian fronts," says le Monde.

The paper wonders what should be done with these nationals who are considered enemies?

Le Monde has investigated and received what it calls "embarrassed answers.”

It says France seeks above all to prevent these nationals from being handed over to them

In truth "It is hoped that they were all killed," le Monde concludes. Paris seems more concerned about the fate of their families.

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Right-wing le Figaro's top story is headlined "Jihadists: the de-radicalisation policy in check."

The paper reveals that a Senate report on the handling of individuals recruited by the Islamists notes the failure of the policies carried out over the last three years.

After a certain stage of Islamic radicalisation - it says - the return path is impossible.

The paper's editorial under the headline ‘Utopia in check’ is savage and despairing.

Cohorts of social workers, supervised by battalions of psychologists and experts, will not succeed in overcoming the temptation of jihad, it observes.

"Was it reasonable to overcome Islamism through workshops on "citizen engagement". A pathetic illusion! says le Figaro.

While we nourish our well-thinking utopias of policies without effects, barbarism follows its course from Brussels to Nice.

These three years lost in vain projects illuminate the extent to which the Left failed to meet the "greatest challenge of our generation."

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Le Monde reports that Five candidates in the Presidential election gave their vision of health care yesterday.

I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that with longer life expectancy the national health care bill is rocketing.

Much of what's proposed is about achieving the right mix of State funding and private health insurance.

Though this seems to have escaped the Socialist candidate Benoit Hammon who spoke for the "right to universal health."

This is the man who proposes a universal basic income of 750 euro for all French
adults, regardless of income.

Depending on who does the sums, this would cost between 300 and 400 Billion euros a year. Maybe Hammon know of a magical forest where money grows on trees?

He wants also to legalise cannabis, tax the wealth created by robots and ditch labour law passed last year that made it easier to hire and fire.

One wonders what he's been smoking. Needless to say he is not the bookies' favourite to win the Presidency.

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Several papers are concerned about what they call no-go zones in some French suburbs.

The popular daily le Parisien ledes with the story reporting from Compiègne a town in northern France it says has been abandoned to drugs dealers.

The paper says the town has become "a supermarket for drugs" cannabis, heroin and cocaine.

The police don't have the resources to tackle this, le Parisien reports.

What's more ‘when dealers are actually prosecuted and convicted the punishments are astonishingly lenient.

As a result ‘respectable families are quitting the town en masse.

The right-wing press often blames what it considers the Socialist government's lilly-livered approach to law enforcement.

And left-leaning Libération seems to justify the charge this morning.

It's top story is about a 34-year-old man a government employee in Aulnay-sous-Bois who says he was violently arrested by police three days before and nearby the alleged anal rape by police of Theo a young black man.

Libé devotes the front and four inside pages to this and related matters ‘broadly blaming the police for criminality and riots in the country's poorer suburbs.'

The Left's velvet gloved approach to lawlessness looks likely to deliver the same result as its approach to radical Islam, a failure to contain it.
 

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