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French press review 29 July 2017

Is Venezuela on the verge of civil war? Is the French political sphere likely to be more honest as deputies vote to clean up public life? And who will be the next victims of the Russian cybercriminals who recently shut down Ukraine?

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Le Figaro looks at the current French drought, saying that the lack of water has reached dangerous levels much earlier this year by comparison with recent summers.

On its international pages the same conservative daily says Venezuela is on the brink of civil war, as opposition activists continue violent protests against plans by president Maduro to hold elections tomorrow to create a citizens' assembly.

At least 108 people have lost their lives in clashes so far.

And Colombia has said that it won't recognise the result of tomorrow's vote, thus adding a regional element to a tense situation.

Blame Marx, Lenin and Castro!

The right-wing paper's editorial is a strange concoction.

Strictly speaking it's about the situation in Venezuela. But it's also, or really, about the French hard-left leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Mélenchon, you see, has long been a big fan of what Le Fiagro contemptuously calls "Bolivarian socialism," the brand of revolution hawked by Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez and now Nicolas Maduro.

The editorial says Venezuela has the world largest crude oil reserves but, thanks to the misapplication of Marx and Lenin, is now mostly poor, suffering from shortages and endemic corruption. On top of that, the paper says, civil liberty is a fiction, legitimate protest leads to bloodshed. The system of government is nothing short of dictatorship, Le Figaro argues.

And that's where Jean-Luc Mélenchon enters the picture. He is criticised by Le Figaro for his failure to criticise the Venezuala of Nicolas Maduro, a country which the French hard-left politician says inspires him in his fight against the evils of social democracy. Despite the toll of 108 dead.

French politics are now whiter than white

The French political clean-up is a done deal.

Le Monde reports that the nation's deputies yesterday voted to do away with the so-called parliamentary reserve, the 150 million euros which the members of the National Assembly have, up to now and annually, been allowed to dole out to worthy causes in their constituencies.

That, along with the ban on the employment by deputies and senators of close family members, was at the heart of legislation intended to make the public sphere more visible, if not much less lucrative.

There were 319 votes for, and four against.

It took 50 hours of debate and 800 amendments to get the law through, a bill which was first presented by François Bayrou, forced to resign as justice minister after allegations that his MoDem party was skimming cash from the European Union to pay party employees.

Deputies' expenses will now be administered differently, they won't be able to work as business consultants while representing the people and any serious lack of correctness will be sanctioned by a period of ineligibility for public functions.

What next for Russia's cyberattackers?

Left-leaning Libération has a front-page exclusive claiming that someone in Russia was behind last month's cyberattack which virtually paralysed computer networks in Ukraine, with ripples even reaching France.

The paper says the whole thing looks like a real-time test of the attackers' ability to take down systems at a national level. It worked. So the big questions are what happens next, and who'll be the victims?

Trouble at t'mill in French branch of Wikipedia

And, staying with the web, what's happening to Wikimédia France, the local branch of the Wikipedia organisation?

Le Monde says the past 12 months have seen several members of the local management council resign, a group of volunteers in the city of Lyon have severed links with the operation, and numerous local supervisors of the site's content have given up the fight.

This spring the US headquarters, which controls the global financing of the Wikipedia effort, rejected the demand by Wikimédia France for 686,000 euros, awarding just half that.

The problem seems to be a question of governance, with the parent organisation worried about the rapid turnover of large numbers of French executives. They now want a review of the way the French branch is run.

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