Gacem said the two had recently had a “heated discussion” about Ramadan, the holiest month of the Muslim calendar. “He told me that he had tried to observe Ramadan but didn’t want to continue because he had recently fallen asleep while driving and caused a car accident,” Gacem said.
.. Taoufik Bouhlel, who heads the Muslim “Association culturelle de Nice,” a few steps away from the home of Lahouaiej Bouhlel’s wife on Boulevard Henri Sappia, said he had never met him nor seen him at Friday prayers. “He never came to the praying room,” Bouhlel said. “His act has nothing to do with religion.”
.. A second senior security source said that investigators found the attacker had posted a “Hezbollah flag” on his Facebook page days before the attacks.
.. Gacem described Lahouaiej Bouhlel as a tall and robust man, who wore flowery shorts and tank tops “because he liked to show off his muscles.”
“I never saw him wearing a jellabah,” Gacem added. He went regularly to “Fitlane,” a nearby fitness club, and to salsa dance clubs.
Why Rich People Make the French Squirm
This ambivalence goes back centuries. Aristocrats were guillotined during the French Revolution, and new taxes were based on how wealthy people appeared — measured in part by the number of doors and windows in their homes. The well-off learned to be discreet.
.. But there are still rules against showing it off. Parisiennes rarely walk around wearing the giant diamonds that are de rigueur in certain New York neighborhoods. “It’s more in a private dinner that you see the wealth,” a French friend explained.
.. And they’re revolted when money seems to trump all. Last summer, locals made a stink when the Saudi king and his entourage were allowed to cordon off a public beach on the Riviera. “The point we wish to make is that not everything can be bought,” a politician leading the protest explained.
.. The typical “French dream” (or at least the one people admit to) isn’t of great wealth, it’s of great security, including a steady income and pension. When you apply for a mortgage here, banks don’t care what stocks you own, because stocks can go down; they want to see a monthly salary and a permanent work contract.
.. Brexit also offers a cautionary tale about what happens when the superrich dominate a city, pricing out practically everyone else. In London recently, I visited friends at the peak of middle-class careers who are living crammed with their children in a one-bedroom rental.
Why French Workers Are So Mad
Even though no one knows precisely what effect the law will have, very few wage-earners in France, unionists or not, believe that making firing easier will create more jobs. Logically enough, they think it will create more firings. But more important, the French know recent history and can perceive trends.
.. Their protests are focused on the part of the law allowing companies to set their own terms for workers’ vacation allowances and other benefits, rather than adhering to a national standard. The strikers fear that this measure will accelerate the disappearance of “bons boulots,” good jobs, and increase the number of precarious ones.
.. Today, 85 percent of new hires are temporary employees and the duration of their work contracts keeps shrinking — 70 percent of new contracts are for one month or less.
.. Occupy Wall Street left a legacy, the idea of the “1 percent” and of the noxiousness of ever-growing social inequalities. What’s going on in France now is similarly clarifying trends: To work in the future, you’ll have to settle for being less well paid, and for having worse health insurance and lower unemployment benefits. As for your children, they’ll live in a world with much greater inequality than yours. That’s the new rule.
A New Deal for Europe
the failures to make such reforms are not enough to explain the sudden plunge in GDP in the eurozone from 2011 to 2013, even as the US economy was in recovery. There can be no question now that the recovery in Europe was throttled by the attempt to cut deficits too quickly between 2011 and 2013—and particularly by tax hikes that were far too sharp in France. Such application of tight budgetary rules ensured that the eurozone’s GDP still, in 2015, hasn’t recovered to its 2007 levels.
.. the Erasmus education program—which provides opportunities for students and teachers to study and train abroad—is ridiculously underfunded. It has a budget of two billion euros annually, against the 200 billion euros set aside every year for interest on eurozone debt. We ought to be investing heavily in innovation and young people.
.. If France, Italy, and Spain (roughly 50 percent of the eurozone’s population and GDP, as against Germany, with scarcely more than 25 percent) were to put forth a specific proposal for a new and effective parliament, some compromise would have to be found. And if Germany stubbornly continues to refuse, which seems unlikely, then the argument against the euro as a common currency becomes very difficult to counter.