open Democracy News Analysis - france - Comments

Anthony Barnett on "Sarkozyland: France's inward politics "

Anthony Barnett — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:56:47 +0100

Really helpful overview Patrice - better than the IHT!

Tony Curzon Price on "Le Pen. La fin."

Tony Curzon Price — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:11:44 +0100

quoi, Darbois? Le regne Le Pen?

tony

Darbois on "Le Pen. La fin."

Darbois — Thu, 21 May 2009 07:09:22 +0100

Un peu long ?

pacecom on "France's Obama fixation"

pacecom — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 00:36:17 +0100

I think that just like many groups in the US, the French are seeing a politician who is like a blank slate where they can project their ideals onto him.

Obama's ability to win the presidency was in part due to Democrats and moderate Rebuplicans projecting their values onto a candidate who mirrored their concerns because of his non dogmatic approach to the world's problems.

mundélé on "Sarkozy and Africa: big white chief's bad memory "

mundélé — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 15:21:38 +0000

It is quiet interesting to read articles about our home written from the point of view of another country.

I am half german, half french and I grew up in Congo Kinshasa util I was 9 years old.
It took me quiet a while to feel home in France. But now I do :o).

I have to say that in a lot of ways France is much more openminded, espacially concerning africa, than any other country I know.

Indeed, the french past in africa is not really the more beautyful one... I know about that, and maybe more than a lot of persons, because I did follow the african actualities for a while now. BUT : I really don't thing that France is the country that did the more wrongs to africa.

Meanwhile, I whould say that the USA are. Espacially since the Clinton area.

Everything that do happen in the eastern part of the congo is the result of american and english interrest(these two do have the biggest influence over there).

This war is the most heaviest drama the world have known since the 2nd WW. More than 4 million people died in the last 15 years.

France is not that involved in this conflict, because of the few economical activities it do have in this part of the world(Kivu, Rwanda, Burundi, Ouganda).

It is easy to understand why I do say so. If you take the Coltan for example. The Congo do have ~80% of the world content of this mineral. Rwanda and Ouganda are selling this minerals without beeing able to extract it !!! Because, they don't have any of these minerals on their ground. They steel it to Congo and sell it to the world. As you know, these contries are english speaking ones...

The coltan is used by cellphones(3G etc...), laptops, playstations, and hight technologies.

The two biggest Coltan harvesting and treating companies are : Sharp (a german fillial of Bayer), and Cabot corporation(USA).

These two companies do treat 90% of the world Coltan.

In 2003, the secretary of the forein office in the US Bush administration was the director of Cabot Corp.

Laurent Nkunda, one of the main dissident of the congolese people is member of an american association, as he said.

He killed thousand of civilians in this part of the world.

All these are facts...

Did you know that the uranium used for the first american nuclear bomb did come from Congo ?

ask the congolese population. They will tell you...

Müzik Dinle on "France in Afghanistan: a wounded mission "

Müzik Dinle — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:32:16 +0000

oke

willment1973 on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

willment1973 — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:17:39 +0000

www.paperdeals.co.uk

BigC on "France’s socialist crack-up"

BigC — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:10:39 +0000

If "all the "lefts" put together" amount to 40% of the electorate then that strikes me as a pretty good foundation on which to build.

Having a principled position, consolidating those who support it and attempting to persuade a sufficient number of the remainder that it is preferable to other positions is a democratic way forward.

Royal's (and Blair's) strategy of determining what people want then making her policies appear to provide it is not democracy. It is marketing.

Nadejda Letat on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

Nadejda Letat — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 02:45:31 +0000

Nadejda Letat

Yes, I too studied anthropology & a more fascinating subject you could not find. And I agree with willment1973 - Levi had a great sense of fashion design. Not only are "Levis" durable, they are stylish - or vise-versa! I believe Levi made his 1st "Levis" from canvas fabric - a tactical move born of frustration - frustration being "mother of all inventions" (design in Levi's case!). Apparently his regular pants kept falling apart during archeological digs (his other passion - or was it gold panning?). Anyway, ultimately, the rag trade became his most financially rewarding profession and his anthropological writings, I understand, brought in pin money. Heard he had a twin-brother who invented ......? But that's another story ...

Nadejda Letat, Melbourne, Australia

willment1973 on "Claude Lévi-Strauss at 100: echo of the future "

willment1973 — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:38:06 +0000

Congratulations to Claude Levi Strauss, great clothing that never seams to go out of fashion. He deserves to live another 100 years.

ducafeli on "France in Afghanistan: a wounded mission "

ducafeli — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:44:35 +0000

PARIS (AFP) — France announced Monday it will beef up its mission in Afghanistan with helicopters, drones and other military means amid debate over whether 10 French soldiers killed there were poorly equipped.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon said France had "learned the lessons" from last month's Taliban ambush that left 10 soldiers dead and 21 wounded, the country's worst military losses in 25 years.
"We have decided to strengthen our military means in the areas of air mobility, intelligence and support," said Fillon at the opening of a parliament debate on whether to keep French troops in Afghanistan.
The National Assembly voted in favour of continuing the mission, with the majority from President Nicolas Sarkozy's right-wing party easily overriding objections from the Socialists.
The Senate, also dominated by the ruling right, followed suit later, with a 209-119 vote in favour.
Fillon said transport and attack helicopters, drones, surveillance equipment, mortars and 100 additional troops necessary for the beefed-up operation will be deployed.
The reinforcements will be in place in a few weeks, he added.
But the prime minister denied a report in Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper that the 30 French soldiers were no match for the better-equipped and trained Taliban fighters who attacked them on August 18 in the mountains east of Kabul.
The newspaper quoted a secret NATO report stating that the paratroopers had run out of ammunition after only 90 minutes and had only one radio that was quickly knocked out, leaving them unable to call in air support.
"The reality is cruel enough without adding lies and disinformation," Fillon said.
There was no loss of radio contact and the troops were "always able to respond" to Taliban firepower, he added.
Both NATO and the French military denied the existence of any such report, saying the newspaper was referring to a leaked email sent by an officer to NATO command in Kabul that gave a partial account of the ambush.
France's armed forces chief of staff Jean-Louis Georgelin said it came from a member of a US special forces unit that was patrolling with the French troops before the ambush.
The mountain ambush was the deadliest ground attack on international troops since they were sent to Afghanistan in 2001 to oust the hardline Taliban regime.
The National Assembly approved by a vote of 343 to 210 a motion to maintain the 2,600-strong French contingent in Afghanistan, one of the largest serving in the NATO-led mission.
Socialist minority leader Jean-Marc Ayrault said France was being dragged into a "war of occupation" although he acknowledged that it could not "suddenly disengage from Afghanistan."
About 70,000 international troops -- 40,000 of them under NATO command -- are helping Afghans fight the Taliban who were ousted from Kabul in a US-led invasion launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Critics point to France's involvement in Afghanistan as a worrying sign of French alignment with US policy under Sarkozy, who is considered pro-American compared to his predecessor Jacques Chirac.
Heightening concerns is the unstable situation in neighbouring Pakistan, where a suicide bomb attack at an Islamabad hotel killed 60 people on Saturday.
Fillon called on Pakistan to do more to secure control over the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan and said France wanted to "broaden its political and security relations" with Islamabad.
The prime minister also called on allies to redouble their efforts to avoid civilian casualties during attacks on the Taliban.
"A bomb must not create more enemies than it eliminates," he said.
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alfredo.bremont on "France in Afghanistan: a wounded mission "

alfredo.bremont — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:40:48 +0100

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What the
French president hopes to do and what does in reality happens is quite a
different story. France is guided by a blind men, the
president has opted for a falling system, which is the Anglo Saxon liberal
method. However in this disguised operation it is not the president who benefits
from this disaster but rather the businessmen of high ranking, such as
lagardere and the others. Unfortunately their plan has turned vinegary and
today they have lots the plot themselves. The France of today is further from his goal
than what it was at the beginning of the 21 century, the reason for this is
that perception is absent, the government is persuaded that laws and propaganda
can make reality blend to his desires; once again at the moment France is
closer to a coconut nation than a leader of the EU. However the president has realized
that there is nothing he can do to fix the issue and he has opted for the Wall
Street blink, and is securing his future with the current economical elite. The
problem is that it is just the parvenus who are the real cancer of our
civilization. This Arnaults and pinaulds are just uncivilized they have no knowledge
at all, no nobility no class any education, and all they got is money, just new
rich plain and simple. And certainly the lack of grace pushes them to believe
in all that shines, which are the paparazzi cameras and the Jeff Koons giant oysters.
The result is a nation being turn into a land of idiots. The new bourgeois all
its got is money, reason why today the middle class is disappearing,
philosopher such as BHL and the rest are just as war mongers as saddam Hussein,
all they think about is themselves. In fact they have changed reality and have
inverted morals the truth is today a lie and a lie has become the truth. The future
looks closer to an orwellian animal farm than equality, fraternity and liberty. Democracy no
longer exist just a huge Mafiosi enterprise. Reason and logic have become
inoperative the only solution to this mayhem is progress, and not technological
progress but a real conscious evolution, a new way of reasoning and a newer
logic is what this nation needs if it hopes to pull it out in this 21 century.

Luna on "Nicolas Sarkozy, the frenetic leader "

Luna — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:05:39 +0100

Haven't we seen all this before? In 1995? The Barcelona Process or the Mediterranean Partnership that was initiated at the time by Spain's Prime Minister González started with a glamorous gathering, a show-up of all the Mediterranean leaders, except Libya, a much praised meeting of Israeli and Palestine leaders. Several funds and programs were created, although it took most of them a couple of years to start running, even cultural, social and human rights issues found their way into the partnership - but how much has this partnership really achieved anything of what it was designed for?

It undoubtedly raised González' profile as an international figure and representative of the Mediterranean region. It also gave many of the non-EU Mediterranean states the warming impression that the EU really cared about them - at least for some time. Unfortunately, there is not much left. The dire economic situation in Northern Africa remains dire. Much needed reforms in the economies and the states are only tackled at a very slow pace. Trade between the EU and Northern Africa hasn't much changed since 1995. The Middle East conflict is also well alive and has always been misplaced in the partnership as the US was and is the most important partner in the region.

Obviously, the Mediterranean remains a field that is more appreciated as an opportunity for profile-seeking and producing headlines than policy-making. Doesn't it deserve better?

live_life on "May ‘68: France's politics of memory "

live_life — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 17:23:59 +0100

"Freedom is not merely the opportunity to do as one pleases; neither is it merely the opportunity to choose between set alternatives. Freedom is, first of all, the chance to formulate the available choices, to argue over them -- and then, the opportunity to choose".

C. Wright Mills

www.thefaithdebate.com

Anthony Barnett on "May ‘68: France's politics of memory "

Anthony Barnett — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:36:30 +0100

Like Patrice, Regis Debray missed the barricades because he was abroad, only on his case it was a Bolivian jail. He later argued on its tenth anniversary that "France's route to Americanisation lay through May 68". While this is too simplistic a view (though it explains Sarkozy) 68 was an uprising against the French Communists as well as de Gaulle. Its political appropriation by gauchists hides the call for freedom that was not sectarian and was indeed in part an expression of the democracy of the market place and consumer society.