Le groupe LVMH a annoncé ce lundi matin le décès d’Yves Carcelle, « des suites d’une longue maladie ». Les hommages se multiplient pour saluer la mémoire de ce grand artisan de la transformation de Louis Vuitton.
“C’est avec beaucoup de tristesse et d’émotion que j’ai appris le décès d’Yves Carcelle. Infatigable voyageur, Yves était à l’image de la maison qu’il a si longtemps incarnée: un pionnier. Toujours curieux, passionné, en mouvement, il était l’un des meneurs d’hommes les plus inspirants qu’il m’ait été donné de rencontrer. Je pense aujourd’hui à sa famille, ainsi qu’à ses anciens collaborateurs chez Louis Vuitton, à qui il a laissé le souvenir d’un homme accessible, humain et droit. Le groupe LVMH perd aujourd’hui l’un de ses amis les plus chers, et je me joins à la peine que chacun pourra ressentir en se souvenant d’Yves.” À l’instar de Bernard Arnault, PDG de LVMH, la disparition d’Yves Carcelle (66 ans) suscite une vive émotion depuis qu’elle a été révélée ce matin.
Il faut dire qu’en 22 ans (Il a dirigé Louis Vuitton de 1990 à 2012), Yves Carcelle a fait du maroquinier la première marque de luxe au monde. «Un très grand CEO français vient de disparaître : #YvesCarcelle. Il est pour beucoup dans l’immense succès de @LVMH à travers le monde. Triste.», a tweeté l’ancienne présidente du Medef, Laurence Parisot.
«Goodbye my friend RIP #YvesCarcelle#CEO#LouisVuitton#GrandPatron» a de son côté écrit la journaliste mode Alexandra Golovanoff.
Suzy Menkes, rédactrice internationale pour Vogue, y est elle aussi allée de son hommage. «Yves Carcelle a marqué l’histoire de la mode, permettant avec LVMH de faire entrer le luxe dans un marché de masse global, a-t-elle souligné. (…) En embauchant Marc Jacobs pour concevoir la première ligne de prêt-à-porter de Vuitton, Carcelle a créé un format que d’autres marques d’accessoires -telles que Gucci et Prada ont ensuite repris.”
Yves Carcelle aura assurément marqué de son empreinte le monde de la mode.
Il n’a toujours pas d’Oscar, mais il reçoit tout de même quelques honneurs. Leonardo DiCaprio a été nommé hier « messager de la paix de l’ONU », spécialité écologie. L’acteur incarnera la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique.
« Une voix crédible au sein du mouvement écologiste. » C’est ainsi que Ban Ki-Moon a décrit Leonardo DiCaprio. Le secrétaire général de l’Organisation des nations unies a nommé hier l’acteur « messager de la paix de l’ONU ». « Il dispose de moyens considérables pour faire entendre ce message », a-t-il précisé en conférence de presse.
L’acteur fétiche de Scorsese est en effet engagé pour la cause écologique depuis longtemps : en 2008 déjà, il annonçait batailler pour une planète plus propre. Dans un communiqué de presse publié suite à sa nomination à l’ONU, Leonardo DiCaprio a précisé l’urgence de la situation et l’importance d’agir en faveur de l’écologie : « C’est le moment d’agir, notre réponse à la crise du climat dans les années à venir va sans doute décider du sort de l’humanité et de notre planète. » En juillet dernier, il avait enjoint ses amis les stars à participer au mouvement : Marion Cotillard, Robin Thicke ou encore Jared Leto avaient participé à son gala de charité à Saint-Tropez. Une vente aux enchères dont les fonds furent reversés à son association pour la préservation de l’environnement.
Très impliqué, Leonardo DiCaprio a pour sa part annoncé qu’il ferait sur les deux années à venir plus de 5 millions d’euros de dons à divers projets de conservation. Un militantisme motivé par l’idée que la planète Terre risque de vivre un scénario « apocalyptique ».
Alysson Paradis, 31 ans, est l’actrice principale de la série QI, dont la troisième saison reprend ce soir sur OCS City. Le Parisien lui a posé quelques questions.
Alors que la nouvelle de l’arrivée au cinéma de Lily-Rose la fille de Vanessa Paradis a fait grand bruit, on sait moins en revanche, que la famille Paradis compte une autre comédienne. Alysson, 30 ans, a commencé il y a près de quinze ans. Elle jouait alors dans la série Le Grand patron au côté de Francis Huster. Il lui faudra attendre encore quatre ans pour faire sa première apparition au cinéma, dans Le dernier jour, avec Gaspard Ulliel.
On l’a aperçue depuis dans une douzaine de films au cinéma, mais c’est à la télévision qu’elle commence vraiment à se faire remarquer. Elle tient en effet le rôle principal de QI, une série comique diffusée depuis 2012 sur OCS City, et dont la troisième saison commence ce soir à 20h50. Elle y incarne Karine, alias Candice Doll, une ex-star du X qui se tourne vers la spiritualité et ses dérives dans l’espoir d’avoir un bébé. Elle qui dit “aimer le rire dans la vie”, mais c’est la première fois qu’elle décroche un rôle qui renvoie d’elle cette image.
On aurait pu penser qu’avec une telle carte de visite, la percée dans le cinéma aurait été plus facile pour la petite soeur de Vanessa Paradis, mais il n’en est rien. Lucide et admirative face à son aînée, elle confie à nos confrères que “Vanessa est une artiste sublime qui m’impressionne tous les jours, mais je ne pense pas qu’on puisse miser sur quelqu’un parce qu’elle est la soeur de” et continue en plaisantant que cela “peut quand même servir pour entrer dans certaines soirées”.
En plus de sa prestation dans QI, Alysson Paradis sera au cinéma au début de l’année dans J’pleure pas de Agathe et Noëllie Giraud.
Après les prix Femina et Médicis, le prix Goncourt a été décerné mercredi à Lydie Salvayre pour son roman Pas pleurer, tandis que le prix Renaudot est allé à David Foenkinos pour Charlotte.
Pas pleurer indique le titre de son livre, c’est pourtant les larmes aux yeux que Lydie Salvayre a appris la nouvelle. La romancière décroche en effet le prestigieux prix Goncourt 2014. Le jury, réuni comme le veut la tradition au restaurant Drouant, a eu du mal à se décider puisqu’il a fallu cinq tours de scrutin pour que le nom de Lydie Salvayre s’impose par cinq voix contre quatre à Kamel Daoud pour son roman Meursault contre-enquête.
«Je suis très heureuse, je suis très émue» a déclaré la lauréate de 66 ans au moment où elle arrivait chez Drouant. Son roman Pas pleurer (Seuil) s’inspire de l’histoire de sa propre mère, Montse, lorsqu’elle quitte son village natal à la fin des années 30 pour se rendre à Barcelone. En parallèle, Georges Bernanos décrit les horreurs de la guerre civile espagnole.
David Foenkinos voit le Goncourt lui échapper mais peut se consoler avec le prix Renaudot attribué à son livre Charlotte (Gallimard). Il devance Pétronille d’Amélie Nothomb.
Les deux primés, outre le prestige que va leur apporter cette reconnaissance, vont voir les ventes de leurs livres sensiblement augmenter dans les semaines à venir, jusqu’au moment des cadeaux de Noël. L’an dernier, le Goncourt a permis à Au-revoir là-haut de Pierre Lemaître de passer d’un tirage de 30 000 exemplaires à des ventes de 620 000 unités.
Wednesday on ABC’s “The View,” co-host Joy Behar said a law needs to be passed requiring forced vasectomies for the “white” male Alabama state senators who voted for a bill to ban nearly all abortions.
Highlighting an image of 25 white men who voted for the restrictive legislation, Behar said, “Can we look at a picture of the panel of men who did this? There it is. Gee, what do they have in common? They’re all men, all white guys.”
She continued, “Maybe we should make it a law that they should all be required to get a vasectomy, that group in particular.”
Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz (R) with his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto on May 17, 2018 in Warsaw | Janek Skarzynski/AFP via Getty Images
Brussels’ battle to tame Visegrad rebels
EU officials woo Prague and Bratislava — but play hardball with Warsaw and Budapest.
BRATISLAVA — Brussels has a new strategy for dealing with Central Europe’s obstinate capitals: divide et impera.
As the EU’s battle with Hungary and Poland over what Brussels sees as a breakdown in democratic norms in those countries intensifies, the Commission is working behind the scenes to drive a wedge between them and the rest of the Visegrad Group, a Central European alliance that also includes Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
Diplomats and officials in the region say the Commission is using the power of its purse in ongoing budget talks to sow division among the four. If successful, the tactic could leave Hungary and Poland, both considered pariah states by much of Western Europe’s political establishment, even more isolated.
With countries in Central Europe facing the possibility of substantial cuts to their allotment of development funding in the EU’s next seven-year budget, the Commission has made it clear to leaders in both Prague and Bratislava that it’s not in their interest to lock arms with Poland’s de facto leader Jarosław Kaczyński or Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
While the unity of the Visegrad countries has run hot and cold ever since the group was founded in 1991, individual members’ interests have become increasingly divergent since they joined the EU in 2004, making it easier for Brussels to play them off against each another.
Those divisions were on display in recent days at an annual gathering of regional leaders organized by Slovakia’s Globsec think tank in Bratislava.
Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz warned that vesting too much power in the Commission and embracing proposals for greater EU integration, such as those put forth by French President Emmanuel Macron, would “impose the will of elites on people.”
But others from the region were cautious about advocating the alternative — an “intergovernmental” approach to EU decision-making that they fear would leave large countries such as Germany and France with even more influence.
“It would be very bad if we saw a process leading Europe to turn from a community-run institution into intergovernmental,” Ivan Korčok, Slovakia’s state secretary for EU affairs, said, adding that such a course would expose the “difference of weight” between large and small countries.
“Intergovernmental has become so catchy, but it would be a problem for small countries because seeking confrontation with the Commission is different to seeking confrontation with the big guys.”
Migration connection
The main issue that continues to bind the Visegrad countries is migration, with all opposing quotas and other proposals that would compel them to accept significant numbers of refugees. Yet here, they are also supported by a host of other EU countries, including several from the south, confounding the Commission’s effort to forge a compromise to reform the current system.
A more pressing concern for the Commission is Visegrad members’ position on its “rule of law” proposal, which would allow Brussels to suspend budget funds to countries deemed not to be upholding EU democratic standards.
The proposal follows the Commission’s decision in December to try to sanction Poland over a controversial judiciary reform that critics say sacrifices the legal system’s independence and undermines the constitution.
Under the so-called Article 7 process triggered by the Commission, Poland could lose its EU voting rights. Such an outcome is unlikely, however, because it would require a unanimous decision by all other EU members — and Hungary has signaled it would exercise its veto.
Orbán secured a third consecutive term with a landslide election win last month on the back of opposition to EU intervention and a public “Stop Brussels” campaign.
Still, some in Brussels believe Orbán’s campaign for “illiberal democracy” is little more than bluster and suggest he might trade his veto for better terms from the EU on the budget. Hungary relies on EU funds for more than 55 percent of public investment — money Orbán can’t do without.
Officials from Slovakia and the Czech Republic, meanwhile, have made it clear they aren’t willing to sacrifice their own interest to defend Poland and Hungary over the rule of law question. While the two also rely on EU largesse — EU funding accounts for 55 percent of public investment in Slovakia and 43 percent in the Czech Republic — they are also worried about their standing within the EU.
Both Bratislava and Prague face their own challenges with populism and political corruption, but their political interests increasingly converge more with Germany and Austria, with which their economies are already closely intertwined, than with their former Warsaw Pact neighbors. That’s particularly true of Slovakia, which is the only country in the region that belongs to the euro. If the pair’s economies continue on the current trajectory, both are likely to join the ranks of the EU’s net payers during the bloc’s next long-term budget cycle.
Despite the growing westernization of some parts of the Visegrad group, the Commission’s decision to play hardball with the region could yet backfire, especially if populist elements succeed in casting Brussels’ moves as part of a broader strategy to impose its will on the region. That happened over the migration issue, for example, making a compromise all but impossible.
The Commission’s failure to learn from that mistake highlights a more fundamental issue, said Milan Nič, a senior fellow with German Council on Foreign Relations who studies the region: “They don’t understand Eastern Europeans.”
A professor at Antioch University in California argued this month that Game of Thronesencourages its audience to embrace white supremacy.
Antioch University Professor Timothy Malone argued that Game of Thrones pushed a “white supremacist” message in a recent column. Malone argued in the column that “white supremacist” themes appear throughout the plot of the popular show, which recently aired its final episode.
Malone argues that the fictional television show encourages its multiracial audience to adopt the mindset of “white supremacy.”
On May 18, Malone doubled down on his beliefs during an interview with Salon. In the interview, Malone argued that the modern white supremacist worldview is inspired by fantasy fiction works like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.
The professor has not expressed his opinion on the series finale of Game of Thrones.
Europe is ramping up its effort to defeat troll armies in a war against fake news.
Not Ruurd Oosterwoud. He’s trying to create them.
Oosterwoud is the founder of DROG, an initiative to boost awareness among Europeans that not everything you read on the web is real.
“If disinformation is rampant, we shouldn’t try to block it,” he said. “We should try to make people aware, one by one, what’s nonsense and what is real,” he told POLITICO on the sidelines of this week’s conference on election hacking at the European Commission.
DROG runs a sophisticated simulation game that aims to shock participants into understanding that they should be critical of the information they get online and through social media feeds. It runs experiments in schools, government services and military headquarters by letting participants create their own fake news and spread it in simulated news environments including social media.
The game, called Bad News, lets users in on the playbook to create a fake news website, attract readers with polarizing, opinionated content on clickbait topics like health scares or rumors of political corruption, and fight off fact-checkers. Players are taught to tread a fine line between credibility and clickbait.
Oosterwoud’s initiative is marketed as an “antidote” to fake news. For him, the cure to fake news lies with the readers.
European legislators are running as fast as they can in the opposite direction: putting responsibility on platforms like Facebook, Google, Twitter and others to filter, curate and sometimes delete false content.
The European Commission this week announced new steps that Facebook, Twitter, Google and others have agreed on to stamp out fake news on the web. Facebook pledged to include “training for all European Parliament political groups” on how to use its platform and roll out “political ad labeling and the political ads library” — a list of political ads that they started publishing — by next spring. Google said it is also planning “announcements as to the introduction of political advertising transparency tools that will be available during the European elections” in the fall.
For Oosterwoud, such measures are only a small part of the solution.
“Politicians want to do something but they often cling to the idea that it is about protecting ‘our own people’ against ‘evil people.’ It’s not that black and white,” he said.
“A lot of people actually believe what comes out of fake news campaigns,” he said, adding that politicians face the risk of losing the fight for hearts and minds among such people.
His simulation is just one of many ways in which the West is beefing up its defenses against disinformation — from fact-checking operations to strategic communications offices that monitor and combat manipulation efforts in real-time.
The EU laid out measures in September, including a Code of Practice that pushes Big Tech to engage in the fight. It’s also debating how to bolster the resources of its dedicated task force set up to “to challenge Russia’s ongoing disinformation campaigns.”
The backdrop to such drum-beating: widespread fears among EU politicians that their communications could get hacked and their elections meddled with, just like the 2016 U.S. elections.
“Those who seek to attack our elections have the necessary capabilities and the motivation. We also know that their tactics change and evolve very quickly,” European Security Commissioner Julian King said Monday, opening a two-day EU brainstorming session on election integrity.
Oosterwoud, a Russian studies scholar, got intrigued by the issue of fake news when the conflict in Ukraine broke out in 2014. “I got overwhelmed with disinformation,” he said. He wrote a dissertation about it and landed a job with the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs.
In late 2016, Oosterwoud dug deeper and wondered what more could be done to fight online disinformation. With partners, he started developing the game soon after, and it caught on with Dutch education officials in early 2017.
Paradoxically, Donald Trump gave the startup a boost: The U.S. president’s rhetoric on “alternative facts” also triggered a counterreaction by news organizations and others that want to restore trust in facts and journalism.
Since then, DROG has conducted exercises with numerous schools in the Netherlands, Germany and other EU countries. It got pulled into research work at Cambridge University to study how fake news spreads. The U.K. foreign office is paying to translate its app into 12 more languages.
It also hosted a training day for the Dutch military at which 200 officers were tasked to attack NATO — as a game scenario. “Generals were slapping their knees laughing,” he said. But the game also showed how military operations could better fight the kind of hybrid warfare mastered by Russia.
Some of Oosterwoud’s games are about “transforming yourself into the bad guys,” he said. But behind this front of fun and mischief is a message that could help Europe become aware of the ongoing information battle. “It helps create insights in what can happen,” Oosterwoud said. “It helps staff understand how a problem manifests itself.”
Actress Debra Messing smeared White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders calling her a “traitor and a pathological liar” after she defended comments made by President Donald Trump about the intellect of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Speaking from Tokyo in with Chuck Todd of ABC’s Meet the Press, Sanders defended Trump’s assertion that he and Kim agree on the idea that Biden is a “low IQ individual,” after Todd accused him of “siding with a murderous authoritarian dictator over a former vice president in the United States.”
“Chuck, the president’s not siding with that. But I think they agree in their assessment of former Vice President Joe Biden,” Sanders responded. “Again, the president’s focus in this process is the relationship he has and making sure we continue on the path towards denuclearization. The president watched [Biden] and his administration with President Obama fail for eight years. He’s come in in two and a half, he’s cleaned up a lot of the messes that were left behind.”
Tweeting out an Axios report of the interview, Debra Messing accused Sanders of being a “traitor and a pathological liar.”
As part of her progressive activism, the Will & Grace star regularly rages against conservatives and the Trump administration. Last May, she warned that members of the Trump White House were “all going to hell” after reading an exaggerated NBC News report about proposed changes to federal hunting law in the state of Alaska.
“This is so DISGUSTING. THIS is where you are putting your time and energy???” she ranted at the time. “Killing sleeping bear cubs? What about health care? Gun violence Ag POC by cops? Women’s rights? KEEPING OUR ELECTIONS SAFE? Good G/d you are all going to hell.”
Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at [email protected].
Anti-government protesters gather in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw in July 2018 | Janek Skarzynski/AFP via Getty Images
Brussels ready to transfer Polish legal case to ECJ
Commissioners may decide to let the top EU court decide on Warsaw’s controversial legal change.
The European Commission could this week ask the bloc’s highest court to rule on the legality of a controversial judicial law introduced by the Polish government, according to two Commission officials.
Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans, who has taken the lead in pursing the rule-of-law case against Poland, will likely ask his fellow commissioners at their weekly meeting on Wednesday to allow the European Court of Justice to rule on a Polish law affecting the country’s Supreme Court. The issue is on the agenda, the Commission officials confirmed.
The law imposes a lower retirement age, removing many of the court’s judges including its president. Critics say the law violates the Polish constitution.
The Polish government argues that the changes are needed to root out judges tied to the old communist system and to make the courts more efficient, and that Brussels doesn’t have the right to interfere in the legal systems of member countries.
In July, the Commission launched an infringement procedure against Poland over the law, which took effect on July 3. A Polish government official said Warsaw has responded to the Commission’s requests for information. The ECJ can impose “financial penalties on the Member State concerned based on the duration and severity on the infringement and the size of the Member State.”
The Polish Supreme Court has also asked the European Court of Justice to rule on the new law.
Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Gowin told Polish media his country “will probably have no choice” but to ignore the ECJ if it decides to suspend the judicial law.
Last December, the Commission for the first time initiated so-called Article 7 proceedings against Poland, beginning a process that theoretically could lead to Poland losing its voting rights in the Council. In reality, the procedure has virtually no chance of success because Poland’s allies, particularly Hungary, have pledged to block it.
On Tuesday, EU affairs ministers met in Brussels at the General Affairs Council, at which Poland’s EU affairs minister, Konrad Szymański, defended his government’s constitutional changes.
In a joint statement, Nathalie Loiseau and Michael Roth, the Europe ministers of France and Germany, said the situation is “more urgent than ever.”
“We hope that Poland will act in a constructive way and won’t take irreversible measures,” the statement said. “A few months away from elections in the European Parliament, it is our responsibility to continue discuss our common values.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article contained an inaccurate description of the type of ruling the ECJ can issue in response to the Polish Supreme Court’s complaint. This has been removed.