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Posted on 04/01/2012 7:43:26 PM PDT by Cincinna
France and the United States have different notions of liberty, equality and fraternity, though the words look roughly the same in both languages. Methods of combating homegrown terrorism — another French word dating from 1789 — are also quite different, stemming from different histories, legal systems and conceptions of the state.
The horrors in Toulouse — the murders of seven people in a bit more than a week by Mohammed Merah, a 23-year-old French citizen of Algerian-born parents who claimed membership in Al Qaeda — created a fierce debate in France about whether the police and security services failed to identify him in time. The police also failed to take him alive, making it harder to discover the true breadth of his contacts and of his path to terrorism.
Mr. Merah clearly slipped through the French net, which relies heavily on human intelligence and judgment. The French are asking why, and whether he might have been more easily identified by the more automated — and expensive — American-style reliance on computerized monitoring of phone calls and the Internet. That question is unanswerable, of course. But the differences between the two countries and their methods are considerable.
“In the United States, it is the system that counts; in France, it is the men,” The French have been dealing with terrorism (and Islam) for much longer. With the largest number of Muslims in Europe — nearly 10 percent of the population, often concentrated in poorer neighborhoods — and closer proximity to the Middle East and North Africa, France has focused more on preventing the recruitment of potential terrorists through a regular infiltration of mosques and radical Islamic networks.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Stay informed about the French elections in detail.
There doesn’t seem to have been a post Toulouse terrorism bounce fir Sarkozy; his rise in the polls started before the terrorist attacks.
The big surprise is the enormous success of the extreme far left, anti-capitalist, anti-American, Jean-Luc Melanchon, who us now polling higher than Marine Le Pen.
Hollande is running scared, fearing that Melanchon is gobbling up all the far left votes that would normally go for him.
Another fact of note is the unprecedented people who say they will not vote at all.
Latest polls:
SARKOZY 28.5%
HOLLANDE 27%
MELANCHON 16%
MLP 14%
Nope. Probably 93 or 94. In 1789 everybody still thought there would be a kinder, gentler revolution.
No surprise as we hear the same in the USA....I think "the peoples" of the world, no matter what nation they are in are throughly fed up with corruption and politicians whose last concern, after they've acumulated their fortunes and power, is the people..if then.
Thanks Cincinna.
Why would they support the far left guy? After all they’ve been through with the religion of pieces?
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