Photos of the Vieux Port of Marseille

Readers of the French press will be aware that newspapers invariably jump on every gangland killing in Marseille and hold it up as an example of the city's chronic problem with drug dealing and violent crime in general. The articles are often given angst-ridden and dramatic headlines such as 'Marseille: the most dangerous city in France!!' Much debate then follows about the best way to resolve the issues. Equally predictable is the reaction to these stories of the people of Marseille. They hold that the press is exaggerating the phenomenon and giving the city a bad name. The truth though - as is ever the case with this kind of phenomenon - lies somewhere in between these two extremes.

Also true though is that despite the city's problems, the Vieux Port of Marseille is one of the most beautiful ports to be found not only in France, but in the whole of Europe.

So here are some photos of it that I took a couple of years back. The one here at the top of the page is the statue of the Virgin Mary with Jesus on top of the Notre Dame de la Garde, which overlooks the port and is the highest point in the city. I'm posting these photos as a reminder that Marseille is not just about violence, it's about a historical past, grace and elegance too.

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Humans have inhabited Marseille and its environs for almost 30,000 years, but the Vieux Port didn't begin to take on an international aspect until after the Greeks arrived there. There is testimony to that in the form of a commemorative plaque that is imbedded into the quayside. It reads;

It was here that Greek sailors who had come from the Greek city of Phocea in Asia Minor came ashore in about 600 BC. They founded Marseille, from where civilisation would illuminate the West.

The port is of the picture postcard variety and it's easy to understand why.

The Vieux Port is home to many sailing boats and smaller yachts.

  

Here is the perimeter of the commercial shipping port, which is of vital importance to the city's economy. I took this photo from a vantage point at which I could turn around and see the Vieux Port.

The port is U-shaped, with the top of the U representing the exit towards the Mediterranean, but if you're near the exit and want to visit the other side don't worry, you don't have to go back down and all around the U to get there because some bright entrepreneur once had the excellent - and very popular - idea of operating a ferry from one side to the other. Here's the crew, and as this photo shows the people of Marseille like to take things easy when they can. From whence this dual command post, at which one of these guys sails the ferry across, and the other sails it back. Very efficient.

The Vieux Port was heavily defended many years ago by forts on either side of the entrance. Here's one of them, St Jean.

Once beyond it you are in the Mediterranean, and from the moment this fort is no longer in view you are en route for the rest of the world.......

But beautiful though it is, there is much more to Marseille than its port, so I'll be back in a few days to post some photos of the downtown area and its attractions.

Have a good day, wherever you may be..

The Marseille gangland payback execution video

Marseille suffers from drug-related crime and murder just like any other lage city, and it too has its share of rappers from underprivileged areas who produce videos which illustrate how the murky drug underworld goes about its business. One of those rap groups is Kalif Hardcore, who are from Marseille, and they produced a documentary-song video last year about the cruel reality of life in the drug-dealing world. They called it 'Marseille la Kalash Liga One' ('kalash' meaning a kalashnikov assault rifle - a weapon of choice for France's gangland killers).

The video depicts the cruel reality of life in the ghettos, where drugs and violence are omnipresent, and it features a sequence in which a young drug-dealer steals a bag of drugs from a lady who was 'looking after it' for other drug-dealers. His identity is discovered and there follows a scene in which he is abducted by armed men, driven to a lonely spot outside the city after being handcuffed and beaten up, thrust down onto the the ground, and shot in the head as payback. The killers then pour petrol over his body and set it alight before leaving the scene.

The 'victim' was played by 19-year-old Nabil Sedik, a young man from one of Marseille's poorer areas, and the drug-minding woman was played by his mother.

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The harrowing scenes contained in the video were of course fictional, and Nabil Sedik walked away unscathed from that fictional killing field, but real life underworld revenge killings such as that shown in it are not the stuff of fiction. They are a fact of life, and they have occurred every 10 days in Marseille since January of last year. The most recent of those executions took place a few days ago, when a young man was kidnapped in Marseille. His body was later discovered in the boot of a burnt-out car. He had been shot to death.

His name? Nabil Sedik.

His mother buried him on Tuesday.

France should understand that there is a difference between culture and cultural heritage

Marseille, taken by me, probably whilst drinking a beer on a terrace in the Vieux Port

It would seem that the 'Marseille 2013' European Capital of Culture event and its organising committee are currently the object of bitter criticism. Not that anything could ever go smoothly in this volatile and cosmopolitan city of course.

The problem seems to be that in the run-up to the festival the city solicited proposals for cultural projects, some of which the city refused, and three refusals in particular have enraged those who submitted or supported them.

The first concerns Marseille native Marcel Petit, a famous ballet dancer, choreographer and founder of ther Marseille National Ballet who died in 2011 at the age of 87. A project in his honour was supported by Edmonde Charles-Roux, a member of the Resistance in World War Two, the daughter of a shipping magnate and the wife of Gaston Defferre, another member of the Resistance who went on to become Mayor of Marseille. He died in 1986.

Then there was the project elaborated by Marseille author and actor Philippe Caubère in honour of the poet and author André Saurès, another son of Marseille. He died in 1950. Caubère's project was also refused.

Lastly, photographer and historical photo-documentalist Antoine Agoudjian, a specialist on Armenia (he has Armenian origins) saw his idea for a project for the festival's Euro-Meditteranean workshops refused. He is bitterly angry at the decision.

I was of course sorry to read that these proposals had been refused - after all, nobody likes to see their proposals refused in any sphere of activity - but although the anger of those who worked so hard to develop their projects is understandable, I consider nevertheless that the festival committee made the right decision in each case, and here's why.

The European Capital of Culture's entry on Wikipedian sums up the event's raison d'être quite well;

Preparing a European Capital of Culture can be an opportunity for the city to generate considerable cultural, social and economic benefits and it can help foster urban regeneration, change the city's image and raise its visibility and profile on an international scale.

The key to that description is in the second half of the sentence, which puts the accent on the fact that the event can be a springboard to the future development of a city. This was put in more precise terms in a review of a 2011 book titled 'European Cultural Capital Report 3, edited by Robert Palmer, Greg Richars and Diane Dodd. The reviewer wrote that;

Bob Palmer looked back over the 25 years of ECOCs comparing it to a growing child which was conceived with a kiss between the late Greek Minister for Culture, Merlina Mercouri and French Minister of Culture, Jacques Lang. The analogy proved to give a good overview of how the ambitions and demands of the ECOC have changed over the years.
In summary, the first five years saw capital cities being awarded recognition for their importance as already established cultural capitals. Whereas from 1990, when Glasgow won the title, there was already the idea that the title could help create cultural cities - and thus the award became a torch for cities to hold for one year in recognition of their aims. Later in the proceedings, Bob Scott suggested that receiving the ECOC title was like earning a ‘scholarship’ in order to go forth and do great things.

And it is precisely that forward-looking approach which has allowed the event to survive, as it was in danger of being ossified at the beginning by its backwards-looking stance.

Nobody would deny respect to Marcel Petit, a man who introduced the word 'ballet' into the vocabulary and culture of the people of Marseille. But he died many years ago and his work is now a legacy. André Suarès was also a great man, and his books and poems were full to the brim of mature reflections upon grandeur, the quest for one's inner self and an insatiable interest for the wider and more pragmatic issues of this world. But again, he too is a part of France's proud past and although he too deserves a place in France's collective memory his work would have been out of place here. Photographer Antoine Agoudjian, at 51 years of age, is thankfully still of this world, but should he really be surprised that the committee of a modern-minded celebration of culture would prefer a younger phototographer - Kathryn Cook - who has a more contemporary and possibly more objective approach to historical events, to deal with Armenia, the history of which which she knows well?

France has always had a tendency to conflate culture and cultural heritage, and this episode demonstrates that very well. As do French university literature faculties, which are only now waking up to the fact that the old rule which meant that 'if an author is still alive he cannot be a great author' is no longer applicable. And it was also this tendency to hark back to past glories which resulted in France submitting a disastrously poor video to support its candidature for the 2012 Olympic Games. That video, full as it was of dusty and pompous references to past glories and images of fine old buildings, contained relatively few images of younger people. London's submission was much more contemporary on the other hand, it centred upon the vitality of Britain and the world's youth, and that is why the French video was largely believed to have put the Olympics committee off the idea of choosing France.

'Culture' is a fairly vague term which, in terms of countries, encompasses the globality of a country's "socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought", whereas "cultural heritage' is its legacy, a legacy of its past.

France's cultural heritage is incalculable in its scope, and it has inspired literally billions of people over the years and all over the world. But that does not give it an automatic right to sit down at the table of a modern celebration of culture today. There are times when highlighting cultural heritage is appropriate and there are times when it should make way for the modern world.

It is a real shame that the French approach to culture seems to consist of clinging onto the outdated notion that pride of place should be given to the past at the very moment when its current cultural output is getting so little support from French cultural authorities and so few opportunities to showcase itself in major events.

These events are all too often hijacked by dinosaurs of the past and their present defenders who barge noisily in and throw their airy and grandiloquent weight around in an attempt to hog the limelight at the expense of those young creators who also need their opportunity to shine.

Bernard Tapie is back in business in Marseille

Bernard Tapie (left) with journalist Alexandre Delpérier

Marseille and France are still trying to measure the impact and implications of the business renaissance of one of the country's most colourful and controversial characters and you can almost feel the panic.

Bernard Tapie, who has what could be politely referred to as a chequered past record as a businessman and dabbler in politics, has just bought out one of France's most important regional papers, the Marseille daily La Provence, in a deal worth fifty million euros. The deal also gives him control of several other, smaller, papers in the South of France.

A flamboyant risk-taker, Tapie made his name and fortune in the late Eighties and Nineties as a troubleshooter for failing French companies who was known as a ruthless operator who did not hesitate to slash jobs if he thought it would increase a company's value to the point where he could sell it at a profit.

The high point of his business career came when he bought Olympique de Marseille football club in the mid-Eighties and subsequently took control of Adidas France. He then changed tack and became involved in politics, and his persistance paid off in 1989 when he became the socialist MP for Marseille. This success led him to be appointed as a cabinet minister in François Mitterand's government on condition that he sold off several of his holdings, including Adidas, but he lost that job in 1983 when the left took an electoral drubbing.

It was at this point that his luck began to run out. He was found guilty of match-fixing and witness coercion as Olympique de Marseille's owner in 1993 and was widely suspected of being behind massive financial irregularities which almost bankrupted the club. More bad news followed when he was investigated for subornation of witnesses and complicity to corrupt, and he was jailed for two years in 1995. His private yacht and expensive furniture were sold to help pay off his debts.

But his troubles were far from over and he was prosecuted for tax fraud before being declared personally bankrupt and banned from football. No longer the man with the Midas touch, he scratched out a living for a few years as a TV show host, a writer, an actor, co-starring in a Claude Lelouch film, and he recorded a song with French rapper Doc Gynéco. The political left shunned him because of his shady business dealings and he hit rock bottom.

The pendulum finally swung back his way in 2008 when he won a long-running court battle over the purchase and sale of Adidas and was awarded 285 million euros by the courts. Tapie was flush with cash and back in business.

Which leads us to the present day and his debuts as a press magnate. Owning newspapers has proved to be a stepping-stone to political success for several French business personalities, and it is this possibility which is leading Marseille's business and political communities to wonder just what his long-term plans may be.

Tapie has made many political and business enemies over the years and, as a man who is known to hold a grudge, there is growing speculation that he may use his new found power to get his revenge for what he considers to be past injustices.

The journalists at La Provence see his move as a potential job threat because of his stormy past relations with the paper's editors, and it is feared that he may get his revenge by asserting his authority over it, firing journalists he doesn't like and imposing his own editorial line.

This in turn is worrying local politicians, many of whom consider that he may use his position to relaunch his political career with a bid to become Mayor of Marseille in upcoming elections in 2014. The implications of this could not be clearer for his many political enemies on both the right and the left, and it can also be assumed that some of those businessmen who are currently enjoying the fruits of their business collusion with politicians are also fearing retribution should he succeed in becoming elected.

Their worries are understandable, and they were aptly summed up by one local Green politician, Sébastien Barles, who is afraid that Tapie "is bringing us closer to Berlusconi-style Italy, where affairism, press control, personal control and money are being mixed together in a cocktail which is putting our democracy in peril."

Is Barles exaggerating? Nobody knows at this stage of course, but one would be foolish to forget one of Tapie's most infamous quotes;

"Why buy a newspaper when you can buy journalists?"

Indeed, and now that Bernard Tapie is in a position to buy not only journalists but their papers as well, it would be wise to be wary...