Cercle de l'Oratoire
The Cercle de l'Oratoire (French for "Circle of the Oratory") is a French think tank created a short time after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Since 2006, it edits a journal, Le Meilleur des mondes. The Circle is led by the journalist Michel Taubmann, who is also in charge of the news at Arte-Paris, and his wife Florence, a pastor at the Temple de l'oratoire du Louvre and vice-president of the Amitié judéo-chrétienne group (Judeo-Christian Friendship). Many of its members (André Glucksmann, Pascal Bruckner, Romain Goupil, etc.) and the Meilleur des mondes journal supported the US invasion of Iraq, a minority viewpoint in France.
Le Meilleur des mondes
[edit]The journal Le Meilleur des mondes is published by the éditions Denoël and headed by Michel Taubmann. It launched a first petition in favor of United Nations's intervention in Afghanistan.[1] Two years later, it published another petition in Le Figaro supporting the US invasion of Iraq.[2]
This journal has been described by some in the French media as the "Voice of America" [3] or as a gathering point of French neoconservatives (néo-conservateurs à la française).[4] The journal, however, rejects these labels, describing itself as "anti-totalitarian". It considers radical Islam as a "real danger", and claims that "there has never been so much anti-Jewish propaganda."[5]
Composition
[edit]- Several intellectuals such as André Glucksmann and Pascal Bruckner
- Film makers such as Romain Goupil, Jacques Tarnero and Raphaël Glucksmann
- Historians such as Stéphane Courtois, Max Lagarrigue and Ilios Yannakakis.
- Mohammed Abdi, secretary general of the NGO Ni Putes Ni Soumises
- Jacky Mamou, former President of Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World),
- Pierre-André Taguieff, research director at the CNRS
- Thérèse Delpech, director of strategic affairs at the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA) and researcher at the CERI Institute
- Bruno Tertrais, former director of the civil affairs commission at the NATO Assembly and also a CERI researcher
- Frédéric Encel, a geopolitist specialist of the Middle East
- Antonio Elorza, a political sciences professor at the University of Madrid
- Writers Olivier Rolin and Marc Weitzmann
- Journalists Cécilia Gabizon, specialist of Islam issues at the Figaro newspaper, Elisabeth Schemla, founder of the website proche-orient.info, Antoine Vitkine, journalist at Arte TV, Jean-Luc Mouton, director of the Protestant weekly Réforme, Violaine de Marsangy, a freelance journalist and former responsible of logistics for the NGO Action contre la faim in North Korea and Indonesia, Claire Brière-Blanchet
- Lawyer Michel Laval.
References
[edit]- ^ "Cette guerre est la nôtre", published in Le Monde on 8 November 2001
- ^ "Avec Washington et Londres, pour le soutien du peuple irakien" in Le Figaro, 4 March 2003
- ^ Le Monde des livres, 24 March 2006.
- ^ Marianne, 10 June 2006.
- ^ Interview of Michel Taubmann by Anne-Juliette Brugière for the website Massorti.com, 15 October 2006